Many believe that the Inquisition executed Jordano Bruno at the fire because he supported the concept of heliocentrism. We figure out how it really was.

Jordano Bruno is one of the most famous thinkers of the Renaissance, who spoke out in support heliocentric Models of the world. True, unlike Galileo Galileo and Nikolai Copernicus, he finished his days at the stake of the Inquisition, and in many sources this is associated with his scientific beliefs. Even the monument, erected at the place of execution of Bruno, adorns the inscription: "From the century that he had foreseen, in the place where the fire was lit."

To begin with, Jordano Bruno was not a scientist in the sense in which they were Copernicus or Galileo - it would be more fair to use the word “philosopher” or “thinker”. Being a Dominican monk, Bruno did not construct a telescope, did not draw cards of the starry sky and did not conduct scientific experiments, and found his thoughts for the most part on the Christian doctrine, trying to rethink it from the standpoint of Neoplatonism, Pythagoreanism and other teachings based on ancient philosophy. This difference is also reflected in the statues of Bruno in Rome, Copernicus in Warsaw and Galilee in Florence - compare the monk’s arms crossed in a hood and men in secular clothes, holding either an astrolab with a circul or a scroll.

Why was Bruno executed then? For many years he was persecuted for ideas that contradict Christian dogma, which is why the thinker was forced to leave Italy. However, in 1591, he returned to give private lessons to Aristocrat Giovanni Mochenigo, the relationship with which quickly deteriorated. The uterine inquisitors sent three denunciations to Venetian inquisitors, where the concepts expressed by Bruno and critical remarks regarding the organization of the Church, the personality of Christ and the foundations of Christian creed, and also emphasized the desire of his former mentor to establish a sect called “New Philosophy”.

Over the next seven years, Bruno was under the investigation of the Inquisition. Judging by the preserved documents, the leading theologians tried to convince him and prove the correctness of the official teaching, to which Bruno answered with more seditious statements - in particular, he admitted that he did not believe in the dogma of the Holy Trinity. How Notes Researcher Francis Yates, preserved by a brief presentation of the trial "shows how little attention was paid to philosophical or scientific issues during interrogations." At the 1600 -expressed proposal to renounce his heretical statements, Bruno replied that he had never expressed those, so he had nothing to renounce, and the authorities made a decision on the execution.

In the preserved sentence there is no detailed description of the arguments confirming the accusation - we can judge with some confidence about them by the letter of Jesuit Kaspara Choppe, which was probably present at the announcement of the verdict. Heliocentrism is not mentioned at all, unlike Bruno's such statements: “Christ was a famous magician ... And for this, they are hung and not crucified”, “Moses invented his own laws,” “the soul moves from one body to another and even to another world.” Thus, the conclusion that the cause of the execution of Jordano Bruno was his faith in the ground, rotating around the Sun, is unreasonable.