The Forbidden Universe by Lynn Picknett, Clive Prince Page A

archives on the orders of Napoleon. However, we discovered from a summary of the Roman Inquisition’s evidence found in 1942 (among the personal papers of the nineteenth-century Pope Pius IX) that Bruno was condemned for holding opinions contrary to the teachings of the Catholic Church, in particular about the Trinity, Jesus’ divinity and transubstantiation and speaking out against the Church; denying Mary’s virginity; practising magic and divination; and claiming that there were many worlds in an infinite universe, and that the Earth moved. The German scholar Caspar Schoppe, who witnessed the execution, listed the heresies for which Bruno was being burned. These included the belief that there are innumerable other worlds; the promotion of the practice of magic; the claim that the Holy Spirit and the anima mundi are one and the same; that Moses learned magic from the Egyptians; and, finally, that Jesus Christ, too, was a magus. Any one of these would have ensured that Bruno be roasted alive – perhaps the Inquisition was furious Bruno had only one life to lose in the crackling flames.

CHAPTER THREE
     

THE THRICE-GREAT TRIO
    Giordano Bruno had made heliocentricity the centre of his Hermetic revolution, the sign that would trigger either the downfall or the reformation of the Church, neither of which was regarded with any great enthusiasm by the Vatican. For Bruno and the Giordanisti, heliocentricity was not just a theory: they believed its acceptance would usher in a new Hermetic utopia. And even with Bruno out of the way, it was feared that he had left behind a secret society – who and where nobody knew – which was proactively committed to bringing the Hermetic revolution about. Tommaso Campanella, Bruno’s spiritual heir, who shared his view of the importance of heliocentricity and was possibly even one of the Giordanisti, had conspired in a rebellion against the Kingdom of Naples and therefore against the Spanish crown, aiming to attack those who were deemed most loyal to the Catholic cause.
    Given this context, Copernicus’ original evocation of Hermes Trismegistus’ name in On the Revolutions of the Celestial Spheres was hardly likely to have been missed by those whose job it was to protect the Church. Perhaps placing the sun at the centre had been a devilish Hermetic plot all along? There was no way for those organizations whose task it was to defend the Church – the Inquisition and the Jesuits – to be sure, and every reason for them to be nervous. During the sixteenth century the Roman Church had only just survived its greatest trauma, a seeminglyimpossible undermining of its authority by the rise of the Protestant Churches. So who was to say what might happen next? The ideas of Bruno and other Hermeticists were being discussed across Europe, and even highly placed members of the Catholic Church had embraced them. Hermetic principles were being openly advocated. And then there were the Giordanisti – how many there were, and how widely they were spread, nobody knew. Maybe the Inquisition and Jesuits were over-reacting, but these were times that engendered paranoia. And so it was considered that – at the very least – establishing heliocentricity would attract more converts to Hermeticism. More readers would devour Bruno’s works, and possibly attempt to act on his agenda of radical reform.
    As long as Copernicus’ idea remained simply a theory, however, the Hermetic implications barely registered. But when an individual claimed he had come up with proof , then the Church began to become seriously worried. And ecclesiastical anxiety ran even deeper when it was discovered that the threat came from a direct associate of the mystical revolutionary Tommaso Campanella and other Giordanisti suspects, such as Pinelli and his circle in Padua – in other words, Galileo.
    The Hermetic interpretation of heliocentricity adds an important and otherwise missing element to the story of Galileo’s persecution,