The Saint and the Heretic

The man who formulated the eight propositions for which Giordano Bruno burned is today a saint and Doctor of the Church. Bruno does not appear in his portrait.

I. A Portrait with a Gap

On their website the German Jesuits present the saints of their order. One of them is Robert Bellarmine, “the champion”. One learns that he was born in Montepulciano in 1542, taught controversial theology at the Collegio Romano and was considered the most important polemicist of the Roman Church. His catechism was translated into 62 languages. He became a cardinal in 1599 and died in 1621. In the proceedings against Galileo he played a “mitigating role”. He was canonised in 1930 and declared a Doctor of the Church in 1931.

One name is missing: Giordano Bruno.

II. What Happened in the Trial

In 1592 Bruno was betrayed to the Inquisition in Venice by his host and in 1593 transferred to Rome. There he spent seven years in prison. Bellarmine appears in the records no later than 24 March 1597, when Bruno was interrogated before the congregation of cardinals.

On 18 January 1599 Bruno was presented with eight propositions drawn from his writings and statements, which he was to abjure as heretical. Bellarmine had formulated them. With that, a procedure that had gone in circles for years acquired a clear form: recantation of these eight propositions, or death. Bruno demanded to know whether the Pope himself stood behind this list. In March 1599 Bellarmine became a cardinal and thus one of the judges. In August he believed he saw a willingness to recant in Bruno’s written reply. In the autumn Bruno reaffirmed his teachings and finally refused to recant.

On 20 January 1600 Pope Clement VIII confirmed the condemnation. The sentence of 8 February names ten cardinals as inquisitors general. One of them is “Roberto Bellarmino, cardinal of Santa Maria in Via”. On 17 February 1600 Bruno was burned alive on the Campo de’ Fiori.

Among the judges was also Cardinal Camillo Borghese. Five years later he became Pope as Paul V. On his instructions Bellarmine informed Galileo in 1616 that he could no longer teach the motion of the earth. It is the same small circle of men.

III. What Must Be Said in Fairness

Bellarmine was not alone. The sentence was passed by ten cardinals and confirmed by the Pope. He apparently sought a recantation, and a recantation would have saved Bruno’s life. In 1615 he wrote to the theologian Foscarini that if anyone could truly prove the motion of the earth, Scripture would have to be interpreted differently. For a cardinal of his time that was a remarkably open sentence. He lived modestly and was regarded as honest even by opponents.

And he was a man of his time. Burning heretics was considered lawful almost everywhere in Europe around 1600, among Catholics and Protestants alike. Calvin’s Geneva had burned Michael Servetus in 1553.

IV. What a Canonisation Means

But the argument of other times does not help here. Bellarmine was not canonised in 1600 but in 1930. He was not made a Doctor of the Church by the inquisitors of his day but by Pius XI in 1931. A canonisation is not a historical judgement but a present one. It says: this life is an example, and the whole of it.

In 2000, on the four hundredth anniversary of the execution, Cardinal Secretary of State Sodano called Bruno’s death a sad episode, but added that the inquisitors had wished to serve freedom. In the same year Cardinal Poupard declared that a rehabilitation of Bruno was out of the question. We described this in “The Case of Giordano Bruno and the Credibility of the Catholic Church”. The situation has remained the same since: the judge is a saint, the condemned remains condemned.

V. A Request

One need not deny anyone’s sainthood to ask for a complete portrait. Cities that keep a street named after a compromised figure today often hang a plaque beside it explaining who that was. Universities that name a building after a donor with a dark history now write that history alongside. It does not harm the name. It makes it credible.

In our fool’s speech to the Jesuits we reminded the order of its own standard: confess, renounce, commit. Here confessing would be very simple. It needs only one paragraph in the portrait of a saint: that Robert Bellarmine formulated the eight propositions for which Giordano Bruno was burned, and that he was among the judges.

A saint with a gap in his biography is not an example. He is an advertisement.