Chapter 21 20. Bruno

It is said (and well founded) that the World Wars were the wars of officers without rank.Generals, colonels, and three-star strategists sat in the great hall of some deserted mansion, by the lonely light, contemplating a map several feet long, until they came up with a new tactic that would allow them to get half a mile Territory (at the cost of 3,000 lives), while at the same time, junior officers, lieutenants, and corporals, with the help and instigation of clever corporals, were doing so-called "black work", which finally led to the collapse of the German border. The great campaign for the independence of the spiritual world is not far behind it.

No head-to-head confrontation involving hundreds of thousands of people. A charge without all-or-nothing offers an apparently easy target for enemy artillery. I went a step further, most people don't even know there's a war going on.From time to time curiosity drives people to ask who was burned in the morning and who will be hanged tomorrow afternoon.Then they may find that there are a few outlaws who continue to fight for several principles of freedom that Catholics and Christians heartily disapprove of.But I think this news will only make people sigh and regret it.However, if one's uncle had come to such a terrible end, the relatives would have been devastated.

That's probably all it will be.The martyrs gave their lives for a cause whose performance cannot be reduced to a numerical formula or expressed in terms of amperes and horsepower. A diligent student of a Ph.D. would peruse the anthology of Giordano Bruno, by patiently collecting all the emotive words such as "The state has no right to tell what people should think" and "Society should not be punished with the sword for disagreeing with commonly accepted dogmas man", wrote an acceptable treatise entitled Giordano Bruno (1549-1600) and the Principles of Religious Liberty.

But people who are no longer working on such an important subject see things differently. We said in the last analysis that there was a group of pious people who were deeply shocked by the religious fanaticism at that time, and they were also shocked by the shackles on people's heads, and the people of all countries were forced to live under yoke.So they rose up in rebellion.They are poor ghosts, with almost nothing but the cloaks on their backs, and there is no guarantee of a place to sleep.But the holy fire burns in their breasts.They shuttled across the land, lectured, wrote, pulled advanced professors in advanced institutions into advanced debates, held ordinary debates with ordinary bumpkins in ordinary country taverns, and as always preached the need to be kind, understanding, and merciful. Treat people.They wandered about with books and pamphlets, in rags, and died of pneumonia in a miserable little village in the backcountry of Pomerania, or were lynched by drunken villagers in a Scottish village, or The roads of France were crushed to pieces by the wheels.

If I mention Giordano Bruno's name, I don't mean he's the only one of his kind.But his life, his thought, his unceasing enthusiasm for what he thought was right and agreeable, was indeed typical of all pioneers, a good example. Bruno's parents were very poor, and their son was an ordinary Italian kid, without much talent, who just came to the monastery according to the general practice.He later became a Dominican monk.He was at odds with the group because the Dominicans ardently supported all persecutions and were known at the time as "the police dogs of the true faith."They are all alert.Heretics don't need to write out their opinions for the sniffing out of the trailing spies.A look, a gesture, a shrug of the shoulders were often enough to give him away and bring him into contact with the Inquisition.

Bruno grew up in an environment where everything had to be obeyed. How he became a rebel, discarding the Bible and picking up the works of Seno and Anaxagoras, I don't know.But this strange novice was cast out of the Dominican order before he could complete the prescribed lessons, and became a wanderer of the land. He climbed over the Alps.How many before him had ventured through this ancient pass in the hope of finding the beautiful freedom in the great forest where the Rhone and the Alve meet! And how many have left disheartened to find that here and there there is always an inner genie captivating people's hearts, and that changing a doctrine does not necessarily mean changing people's hearts.

Bruno had lived in Geneva for less than three months.The city was full of Italian refugees.They got the fellow countryman a new set of clothes and found a job as a proofreader.In the evening, he read and wrote.He got a de la Lame book and finally found like-minded people.De la Lame also believed that the world cannot progress until the tyranny preached in medieval textbooks is broken.Bruno did not go as far as his own famous French teacher to think that everything the Greeks taught was wrong.But why should man in the sixteenth century be bound by words written four centuries before Christ was born?Why exactly?

"Because it's always been that way," the supporter of the orthodox faith answers him. "What have we to do with our ancestors, and what have they to do with us? Let the dead die," replied the young iconoclastic. Soon, the police came looking for him and suggested that he better pack up and try his luck elsewhere. Bruno's later life was endless travel, trying to find a place to live and work with a certain degree of freedom and safety, but never did.From Geneva he came to Lyons and then to Toulouse.By then he had started studying astronomy and became an ardent supporter of Copernicus, which was a dangerous step, because in those days people were yelling: "The world revolves around the sun? The world is an ordinary planet orbiting the sun? Bah ! Who ever heard such nonsense?"

Toulouse also displeased him.He traveled across France, walked to Paris, and then came to England as private secretary to the French ambassador.But what awaited him was disappointment again.British theologians are no better than mainland ones.Perhaps they are more practical, for example, at Oxford University, instead of punishing a student who made a mistake that violated Aristotle's teachings, they fined him ten shillings. Bruno was getting sarcastic.He began to write prolific but dangerous short essays and religious-philosophical-political dialogues in which the whole existing order was turned upside down and examined carefully but not flatteringly.

He also teaches his favorite subject: astronomy. But those in power at the academy rarely smile at professors who are popular with students.Bruno was asked to leave again.He returned to France and then to Marlborough.Not long ago Luther and Zwinger were there arguing over the nature of the incarnation that took place in the pious Hungarian Elisabeth bunker. His "liberal" name has already preceded him.He was not even allowed to teach.Wittenberg should be more hospitable, but this stronghold of the Lutheran faith has just begun to be dominated by Dr. Calvin's followers, and since then there is no room for Bruno's liberal tendencies.

He headed south to try his luck in John Hess's land.New disappointments awaited him.Prague became the capital of the Habsburgs.As soon as Habsburg entered through the front door, freedom left through the back door.Come back to the road again, and go to far away Zurich. In Zurich he received a letter from a young Italian, Giovanni Mocenigo, inviting him to Venice.I don't know what made Bruno accept the invitation.Perhaps the Italian peasant, captivated by the splendor of a noble name, was flattered by the invitation. Giovanni Mocenigo's predecessors dared to despise the Sultan and the Pope, but he himself was not the material.He was weak-willed and timid, and when the officials of the Inquisition came to his house to take their guests to Rome, he did not lift a finger. The Venetian government has always guarded its power with great care.If Bruno had been a German merchant or a Dutch captain, they would have protested violently, and would have even gone to war if foreign troops dared to capture anyone in their jurisdiction.But why offend the Pope for a vagabond who can do nothing for the city but his ideas? It is true that he calls himself a scholar, and the Republic is also very honored, but there are more than enough scholars in the country. Say goodbye to Bruno, and may St. Mark have mercy on his soul. Bruno spent six years in the prison of the Inquisition. On February 16, 1600, he was burned at the stake, and his ashes were carried away by the wind. His place of execution was at the Campo di Fiori, and those who know Italian will be able to take inspiration from this short and beautiful metaphor.