Germano Maifreda
Ed. Laterza, Bari 2018
pagg.313
The author, professor of economic history at the Department of Historical Studies of the University of Milan, in this essay delves into the trial of Giordano Bruno, in the light of new unpublished documents.
Born in 1548, the Nolano - as Bruno defined himself - moved to Naples and took the Dominican novice's habit in June 65, changing his first name, Filippo, in Jordan, "In honor of Giordano Crispo, former prior of the local convent of San Domenico Maggiore and master of theology and metaphysics."
Ordained priest in 1573, while he was in Rome he was advised, from Naples, that forbidden books had been found in his cell, which would have entailed "The referral to the Holy Office and, therefore, the opening of a real inquisitorial process for heresy." After a murder charge was added to this incident, he decided to permanently leave the state of the Church and began traveling to Europe.
In Geneva he was imprisoned for printing a defamatory book by a minister of the Geneva church. He retracted, was freed and resumed traveling to Lyon, Toulouse, Paris, London, Prague, Frankfurt and then, in the summer of 1591, to return to Italy, to the Republic of Venice, which “Boasted a long tradition of resistance to interference by ecclesiastical authorities. This, alongside the prestige and independence of the University of Padua, could have seemed to Bruno reason enough to feel protected. " It was perhaps for this reason that the philosopher in Venice lowered his guard and started "To vent, in those months between the autumn of '91 and the spring of '92, the bitterness and frustrations that had accompanied him in the long years of exile."
On May 23, 1592 the Venetian nobleman, Giovanni Mocenigo, who hosted him, filed a complaint against him. "We will never know what happened in that building in the San Marco district in the first weeks of May 1592. (...) For sure the aristocrat's mood was motivated by personal disagreements, perhaps - a hypothesis that is not implausible, although never considered by scholars - sentimental. " That same evening, Bruno, taken from the nobleman's house, was taken to the inquisitorial prisons. "I will tell the truth: several times I have been threatened to make me come to this Holy Office, and I have always kept it as a joke, because I am ready to give an account of myself." With these words Bruno appeared before the judges, three days after the arrest. Listened to several times, "At the end of his Venetian depositions, he showed that he had no intention of defending his philosophy at the price of death."
On July 4, 1592, Fra Celestino da Verona was arrested and taken to the prisons of the Inquisition in Venice. Thanks to his terrible accusations Giordano Bruno could be sentenced to death. Indeed, "When the Venetian inquisitors secured Giordano Bruno to prisons, they faced two major problems: the insufficiency of the evidence against the offender and the dubious usability of Giovanni Mocenigo's testimony." It is therefore believed that Fra Celestino, who was also investigated and sentenced to death, was an informer of the Holy Office and perhaps, in exchange for the service rendered, despite the death sentence, he was never sent to the stake thanks to a last-minute replacement of person.
After ten months in prison in Venice, Bruno, at the end of February 1593, was extradited to enter the prisons of the Holy Office in Rome on February 27. Here, on January 18, 1599, he was given the list of the eight propositions considered heretical, drawn up by the Jesuit Roberto Bellarmino - in charge of re-examining the entire file of the trial - which he should have abjured, under penalty of being sentenced to death. "On January 25, 1599, after reading the eight propositions, Bruno declared himself willing to revoke them, but presented a written memorial in his defense." Subsequently, in an attempt to gain time, he sent other written memoirs to the court which, however, having sensed Nolano's plan to lengthen the time of the trial with strokes of memoirs, imposed him, as the last date to send the abjuration, on September 10.
“It was necessary to make the opinionated philosopher understand that the era of disputes had definitively passed, that the Renaissance was over. That in Italy we had entered the age of the courts of conscience. " From that day on there was a radical change in the attitude of the philosopher who, closing in an obstinate mutism, interrupted all communication with the court. On January 20, Pope Clement VIII ordered that the case be closed with a death sentence.
"Perhaps with greater fear you pronounce the sentence against me, than I feel in receiving it" it is the sentence that Bruno would have addressed to the inquisitors after listening to the reading of the condemnation at the stake, with sentence executed in Rome, February 17, 1600, in Campo de 'Fiori.
Gianlorenzo Capano
