The Pope and the Heretic

The Pope and the Heretic asks why, on the morning of February 19, 1600, following years of hideous torture, philosopher Giordano Bruno was led out to a stake in the middle of the Field of Flowers in Rome, to burn to death. This lucid and illuminating book is an attempt to find the answer.

One reason, carefully and cleverly teased out by Michael White, author of the bestselling Leonardo: The First Scientist, is the era that Bruno was unfortunate enough to live and work in. The late 16th century was a time of savage religious and ideological conflict across Europe. A ruthlessly honest, determinedly original, exuberantly syncretist thinker like Bruno, willing to question the theological and historiographical verities espoused by the Vatican, was a noisome thorn in the flesh of a Roman Catholic Church already wrestling with Protestant dissent.

Another reason, not elided by White, was Bruno's intellectually pugnacious personality. As White says, "If he had applied more cunning, as did Erasmus, he may have lived to enjoy old age. Instead, Bruno actually courted danger and controversy, confronting his enemies head-on."

A third reason for Bruno's terrible fate was the Inquisition. This institution could have been expressly designed to root out someone like Bruno, who was cheerfully willing to add a dash of occultism and Greek philosophy to the pure dogma of Catholic thought. The Inquisition certainly relished Bruno's demise: after his charred corpse was brought down from the stake, the remaining flesh was pulverised with gavels and the ashes hurled to the wind, as if to nullify for all time Bruno's repellent heresies.

The Inquisition failed, of course. Bruno's original and clairvoyant contributions to the fields of psychology and theology continue to resonate to this day. This elegantly concise, pleasingly readable book is a fitting memorial to such a remarkable thinker. --Sean Thomas

View other editions of The Pope and the Heretic.
View books by Michael White.

Repays reading! - Rated
I bought this straight after Michael White's 'Machiavelli- a man misunderstood' and so arrived at this with raised expectations and eager anticipation. And it did not dissapoint. It does not have the vivid, ringing clarity of the Machiavelli book but, as befits the subject matter, facts are teased out in shades and nuances. The hard life of the runaway monk-turned-philosopher around the byways of european intellectual circles, the plots in Venice, the convoluted but inescapable nets of the inquisition- all of these are described with intelligence and passion. The narrative swoops from misty vistas to episodes of stark reality and, untimately, horific brutality. I was informed and engaged. Fantastic! But why only four stars? The book is irritatingly short!

To think is to speculate with imagesý - Rated
The quote that is at the head of these comments is from the subject of Michael White's new book Giordano Bruno, "The Pope And The Heretic". The same thought was to send him and almost unimaginable numbers to the most evil tortures ever devised, and usually to forms of death that have not been outdone by even today's cruelty. One statistic that is offered by the writer is that The Inquisition put to death 1,000,000 people, including men women and children. At the time this represented 1 out of every 200 people then living on Earth. Using the number of 6 billion for today's population of our planet, this murderous spree would slaughter some 30 million souls today.

The power behind these numbers that should be incomprehensible becomes instantly clear when the power that decreed this historic slaughter is named, The Catholic Church. Or perhaps in a macro view of history, religion in general, but here the evil radiated from Rome. Thinking was forbidden unless you repeated what the Church deemed to be the truth. Speculating would get you maimed and killed, and living and conducting yourself like any of the inquisitors or many of the Popes would also have ended you life. The Ten Commandments have nothing to do with those that ran, and in many cases still run the church. To this day The Vatican will only say that it deeply regrets the torture and killing of Bruno, and not only is he not pardoned, those who tormented him were in many instances Canonized, granted Sainthood. The idea that these sadists can hold the same place that Mother Teresa will inevitably rise to is vulgar, obscene, and nauseating.

So, 400 years has passed and how is this man who inspired and influenced men like Galileo, Isaac Newton, and men like Niels Bohr, and Werner Heisenberg in the 20th Century now viewed by The Vatican? Well the The Vatican has one document on its site, and that only in Italian, not a word in English or even Polish. The Catholic Encyclopedia describes him thusly, "his system of thought is an incoherent materialistic pantheism", an idea that was nonsense 4 centuries ago remains so today, one cannot fault dogmatics for lack of consistency! It also must be noted that obfuscation is still the preferred manner of communicating ideas that the Church would rather have as few people understand as possible. Thinking and or speculating with images is as intolerable now as it was when the fire was lit under Giordano. What can one expect from those who brought you the St. Bartholomew's Massacre?

Michael White's book is fascinatingly compact, but it is massive in both breadth and depth. Giordano Bruno and others, that like him were willing to question absurdities and the hypocrites that espoused them are owed a debt, by all who dare to think and to speculate, in word, deed, and image.