If there ever was a man who was in the wrong place at the wrong time but perhaps with the right ideas, it may be none other than Giordano Bruno. Or another way to look at it: a man who took what Copernicus and Da Vinci started and stretched it as far as he could go, papal warnings be damned! A habitual line-stepper if there ever was one.
How The Pope and the Heretic: The True Story of Giordano Bruno, the Man Who Dared to Defy the Roman Inquisition ended up in my reading list I don’t recall and upon looking more into the book itself when deciding whether or not to give it a go, I noticed not too long after it came out, another book also on Giordano Bruno was published. For those who may be like me at that time wondering what makes them different, the answer seems simple: our book here reads more like historic fiction alternating with historical overviews, the former focused mainly on the latter events of his life. Whereas the other book by Ingrid D. Rowland seems to focus more on his peregrinations and less on what came after.
The Pope and the Heretic is both an awesome read, but for me at least, may have been ‘too entertaining’ with not enough source referencing to back up the claims. For these types of books at least, I have come to expect most any time an author makes a statement such as “A century before Bruno’s birth there had been fewer than thirty thousand books in existence, all written by hand; by the time he was teaching and traveling throughout Europe during the late sixteenth century there was already a canon of some fifty million printed books.” (page 13, eBook), I’d expect to see where this figure came from as it’s pretty audacious. While we do get a decent number of footnotes, ones affixed to that quoted statement are missing which is a bit worrisome from the “is this book really accurate?” perspective.
Thus, some grains of salt may be needed and as others have noted, Michael White very much lays his cards out when penning vitriol against the church as being the ‘bad guys’ (sure, it was them who burned Bruno—not directly, see chapter 1 for why), but more objectivity would have been preferred. That I did not see any ‘this author made everything up!’ type of claims after lightly perusing reviews makes my own issues seem trite and maybe they are. History buffs perhaps then can rest easy.
Nevertheless, in a way what we have here is both a lively look at the life of a historical figure of note not many nowadays know about in spite of his contributions and convictions to the truth at any cost. For curious minds who may normally have reservations about reading history books worried they’ll be dry affairs, a nightmare of a chore to get through, this could be a good gateway drug. But on the other end of the spectrum where seasoned buffs of academia dwell, this book in a way violates three cardinal rules and caution should be used if picking it up: written by a non-historian (albeit a fan of history), very light on footnotes, and not published by an academic publisher.
A question arises for someone like me (who probably is similar to—and let’s be honest here—most others reading this book): before The Pope and the Heretic I had almost no idea who Giordano Bruno was. But already early on I have found out that he was the writer of a number of pretty interesting books/treatises yet here I am reading a biography about him without first reading his own materials. Did I get the order wrong?
The answer: it depends. It should be noted that “Bruno wrote five important books on memory, and although these are revelatory and contributed much to the discipline, they are but five of perhaps five thousand texts on the subject that were already in existence during the Renaissance.” (page 73-74). But what made the man different was perhaps less what he wrote and his iron-clad beliefs: he did not skirt around the issue with esoteric wording ala Copernicus whom in is his most well-known work On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres, “complicated what was otherwise a simple idea with unnecessary obfuscation.” (page 60). Wherever Bruno preached/taught (your pick), he was straight as a bullet shot in a vacuum and this goes doubly for his writing. And perhaps most important, when he was finally put on trial, he held firm till the wood began to smolder.
And I can’t deny it. After the dust has settled, the smoke from his burned remains dissipated into the air, after “the rain carried into the soil molecules that had once composed parts of his body”, after little Bruno “molecules were broken open, their atoms absorbed by plants”, and surely after those “plants were eaten by animals and some found their way to the tables of Rome and beyond”, and possibly after “on an atomic level at least, the pope himself was conjoined with the heretic after all” (all from page 184), I really, really enjoyed this book. It’s a ride, a wild ride even though it’s nowhere near as sourced as I’d liked (but the dialog at least is). White makes conjectures beyond count, the wall between history and fiction is blurred, but my respect for Giordano Bruno, a man I barely knew before beginning this book has skyrocketed. Even after “[a] long metal spike was thrust through Bruno’s left cheek, pinning his tongue and emerging through the right cheek. Then another spike was rammed vertically through his lips,” (page 181) the man held his ground. As should we all if we believe in something with total conviction.
The end result: now I will read some books by him. At the very least, it will be The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast, noted as “perhaps his most accomplished literary work, he uses the allegory of an internal struggle among the pagan gods of the ancient world to rip into the authority of the Church, satirizing, mocking, and exposing the inconsistencies and weaknesses of what he saw as a manmade religion fabricated by the Council of Nicaea.” (page 78). I’ve also discovered a few more academic works about him that before this I didn’t know about that I will note at the end of the review. My interest before was microscopic, now I can see my curiosity burgeoning without need of a magnifying glass. I have seen the outer results of why Bruno did what he did and now it’s time to see what his artistry actually produced.
3.5/5
Recommended reading beyond our book of the hour and the 2009 biography:
The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast by Giordano Bruno
The Trial of Giordano Bruno (Routledge Research in Early Modern History) by Germano Maifreda
Giordano Bruno: Philosopher of the Renaissance by Hilary Gatti
by kobushi