Some important documents about the trial of…
December 1599 CE
Some important documents about the trial of Giordano Bruno are lost, but others have been preserved, among them a summary of the proceedings that was rediscovered in 1940.
The numerous charges against Bruno, based on some of his books as well as on witness accounts, included blasphemy, immoral conduct, and heresy in matters of dogmatic theology, and involved some of the basic doctrines of his philosophy and cosmology.
Luigi Firpo lists them as follows:
* Holding opinions contrary to the Catholic Faith and speaking against it and its ministers.
* Holding erroneous opinions about the Trinity, about Christ's divinity and Incarnation.
* Holding erroneous opinions about Christ.
* Holding erroneous opinions about Transubstantiation and Mass.
* Claiming the existence of a plurality of worlds and their eternity.
* Believing in metempsychosis and in the transmigration of the human soul into brutes.
* Dealing in magics and divination.
* Denying the Virginity of Mary.
In these grim circumstances, Bruno has continued his Venetian defensive strategy, which consist n bowing to the Church's dogmatic teachings, while trying to preserve the basis of his philosophy.
In particular Bruno holds firm to his belief in the plurality of worlds, although he has been admonished to abandon it.
The Inquisition will in early 1600 make him pay for his beliefs with his life .