Bruno.
“On the 17th of February, 1600, a vast concourse of people was assembled in the largest open space in Rome, gathered together by the irresistible sympathy which men always feel, with the terrible and tragic in human existence. In the center stood a huge pile of faggots, from out its logs and branches rose a stake, crowding around the pile were eager and expectant faces, men of various ages and of various characters, but all for one moment united in a common feeling of malignant triumph, religion was about to be avenged; a heretic was coming to expiate on that spot the crime of open defiance to the dogmas proclaimed by the church—the crime of teaching that the earth moved, and that there was an infinity of worlds. The stake is erected for the ‘maintenance and defense of the holy church, and the rights and liberties of the same.’ Whom does the crowd await? Giordano Bruno—the poet, philosopher, and heretic—the teacher of Galileo’s heresy—the friend of Sir Philip Sidney, and the open antagonist of Aristotle. A hush comes over the crowd. The procession solemnly advances, the soldiers peremptorily clearing the way for it. His face is placid though pale. They offer him the crucifix; he turns his head; he refuses to kiss it! ‘The heretic!’ They show him the image of him who died upon the cross for the sake of the living truth—he refuses the symbol! A yell bursts from the multitude.
“They chain him to the stake. He remains silent. Will he not pray for mercy? Will he not recant? Now the last hour has arrived—will he die in his obstinacy, when a little hypocrisy would save him from so much agony? It is even so; he is stubborn and unalterable. They light the faggots; the branches crackle; the flame ascends; the victim writhes—and now we see him no more. The smoke envelopes him; but not a prayer, not a plaint, not a single cry escapes him. In a little while the wind has scattered the ashes of Giordano Bruno.” (G. H. Lewes’s “History of Philosophy.”)
“What a contrast between this scene of manly honor, of unshaken firmness, of inflexible adherence to the truth, and that other scene which took place more than fifteen centuries previously by the fireside in the hall of Caiaphas the high priest, when the cock crew, and ‘the Lord turned and looked upon Peter.’ ([Luke 22 : 61].) And yet it is upon Peter that the church has grounded her right to act as she did to Bruno.
“But perhaps the day is approaching when posterity will offer an expiation for this great ecclesiastical crime, and a statue of Bruno be unveiled under the dome of St. Peter’s at Rome.” (Draper’s “Conflict Between Religion and Science.”)
“A divine revelation must necessarily be intolerant of contradiction; it must repudiate all improvement in itself, and view with disdain that arising from the progressive intellectual development of man.” (Draper’s “Conflict Between Religion and Science.”)