The Forbidden Universe by Lynn Picknett, Clive Prince

when Bruno left.
    And then, suddenly, it all became too obvious. In May 1592, when Bruno was preparing to return to Frankfurt, Mocenigo refused to let him leave, hiring a gang of gondoliers to lock him in a room, and sent for the Inquisition. Bruno was to be their prisoner for the remaining eight years of his life, with the resulting agonizing ending usually reserved for those who spoke out against ignorance and tyranny.
    No evidence remains to suggest why Mocenigo decided to play the villain. Some believe his invitation was a trap from the start, or even that he had been in the pay of the Inquisition from the moment he bought On the Threefold Minimum and Measure . Others think that Mocenigo’s enthusiasm for Bruno’s philosophy was genuine but that he became disillusioned or alarmed. Perhaps Mocenigo simply feared for his immortal soul.
    Bruno was questioned by the Inquisition and then tried in Venice. The major concern was the ‘great reform’ he preached. He did recant his heresies and begged for mercy from the judges, but the Supreme Inquisitor in Rome sent for him. Bruno was kept in prison in Rome for five years without so much as being questioned. After finally being interrogated, he was kept imprisoned for a further threeyears, without being tried. Heretics who admitted their errors – as Bruno appears to have done – were generally either given a prison sentence or released, albeit with restricted movements. Those who didn’t were tried and, if found guilty, imprisoned or executed. Either way, a prisoner was generally dealt with relatively swiftly. Why the Inquisition dithered over Bruno is a puzzle, although we can offer a possible explanation that relates to the Hermetic undercurrent.
    The inexorable endgame for Bruno finally began with the arrival of the newly appointed Cardinal Inquisitor Roberto Bellarmino (1542–1621, canonized in 1930). One of the most formidable intellects of the Church, Bellarmino was a loyal and capable pair of hands trusted by a succession of popes. He was a member of the Society of Jesus – another prong of the Counter-Reformation formed some sixty years earlier. The Society, known commonly as the Jesuits, was and is a notoriously unsentimental brotherhood, zealously committed to the unswerving maintenance of Catholic doctrine. Bellarmino’s speciality was combating heresy, about which he knew a great deal, having taken infinite pains to comprehend the mindsets and arguments of heretics (although in his case, studying the subject was unlikely to see him accused of being suspect of a suspicion of heresy). A fierce and clever polemicist, he even engaged in a pamphlet war with James I of England.
    Bellarmino had been an assistant to the papal emissary sent to negotiate with the Catholic League over the successor to Henri III after they assassinated him, negotiations that were trumped by the accession of Henri of Navarre. So he was aware of the Protestant and Hermetic expectations centred on the French kings.
    When Pope Clement VIII appointed Bellarmino Cardinal Inquisitor in 1599, he reopened proceedings against Bruno, who asked that he be allowed to write a petition to PopeClement VIII declaring that he was prepared to defend the beliefs he was charged with, but that if Clement proclaimed them to be heretical, he would abide by his decision. Bellarmino didn’t even show the petition to the Pope. According to the Cardinal Inquisitor, when Bruno was presented with a list of specific heresies in his work he abjured them, but then later withdrew this admission. This, as Bruno must have known, was the worst thing he could have done, as the most severe sentences were reserved for relapsed heretics. It was inevitable that he would be burnt at the stake. So had Bruno really changed his mind? No one will ever know. When he was led out to the pyre, his tongue was tied to prevent him speaking.
    The record of the prosecution in Rome was lost after being taken to Paris in 1810 with the papal