It took a long time for that to prove true, yet thanks to those idealistic 19th-century students, everyone who comes to Rome to behold the splendor of the Vatican is also presented with a reminder of its bloody, repressive past.

Let's also not forget their more recent past, and their present. Such as their assistance of known Nazis, SS escaping via the infamous "ratlines" to S. America after WWII, as documented by Aarons and Loftus in their superb book, Unholy Trinity:The Vatican, The Nazis and the Swiss Banks, St. Martins Press, 1998.

Then there was their role in assassinating the first Pope John Paul (I) in 1978, because of his intended investigations of the Vatican Bank and Paul Marcinkus (see David Yallop's excellent recounting in In God's Name.

Finally, there is the more recent Vatican role in protecting prosecution of priest pederasts even as they shake their fingers at Catholics for practicing birth control. But, these rascals would rather overwhelm the planet with poverty, disease and destitution, as Yallop notes after Pope Paul VI issued an encyclical ('Humanae Vitae') basically shooting down his own appointed papal commission on the issue of artificial birth control and over-population.

to say that "Bruno's idea of magic was "pointedly natural and physical" rather than occult.

Thanks for this article about Giordano Bruno. Articles like this make me glad of reading Salon.

Wow, Laura!

A fantastic poem about this subject by Heather McHugh:

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15450

By suggesting that Bellarmine was merely some sort of intellectual thug for the Church, this article does the man a great disservice. Bellarmine is still probably the most renowned of Jesuit thinkers, a man who produced translations of the Hebrew and Greek books of the Bible in light of Renaissance scholarship.

While obviously an opponent of the Reformation, Bellarmine closely studied the works of Luther, Calvin and other Protestant scholars and produced a huge volume of writings in response.

Galileo was Bellarmine's friedn long before the controversies came between them. As for Bruno, I think that Ms. Miller has documented his confrontational nature fairly well, so well that she does not need to villify Bellarmine to make her point.

just when I wonder why I keep a paid subscription on the internet, you publish an article like this. I have had a copy of Yate's book on Bruno for years in my stash. I am going to read it now. I did not realize the art of memory was connected with Bruno. It is interesting how Western scientists have ignored consciousness and the potential of the human mind until recently. Maybe a resurgence of interest in the art of memory will help to elucidate some of this potential. Heck, the Dalai lama now talks with neuroscientists about the effects of meditation on the human mind. Maybe this stuff is what it is all about.

That let's the Church off the hook!

Most likely he caught fire all by himself for being too fiery, combustible and causing too much friction between himself and the true believers of the true Church.

Don't get me started on Joan of Arc . . .

The declarations of theology do not qualify as knowledge. But, no matter how false and fraudulent, declarations, like those of "creationists" (or IDers), persist in the face of the overwhelming evidence against them. Why? Because theological claims "legitimized" what many want to believe, by being the words that many want to be true, especially "you will exist forever". Thus they give "divine" authority over believers as a god's "earthy representatives". Luckily it is not life and death power as much as it use to be except in cultures that cannot forgo these ancient superstitious thought-forms.

"We who doubt that “theology” is a subject at all, or who compare it with the study of leprechauns, are eagerly hoping to be proved wrong. Of course, university departments of theology house many excellent scholars of history, linguistics, literature, ecclesiastical art and music, archaeology, psychology, anthropology, sociology, iconology, and other worthwhile and important subjects. These academics would be welcomed into appropriate departments elsewhere in the university. But as for theology itself, defined as “the organised body of knowledge dealing with the nature, attributes, and governance of God”, a positive case now needs to be made that it has any real content at all, and that it has any place in today’s universities." by Chris RichardDawkins.net

They don't like that.

One thing the review (and perhaps also the book?) overlooks is that Bruno probably spied for some of his patrons--certainly he was suspected of being a spy, and that greatly contributed to the sense that he was a dangerous person.

Anuran has too limited a sense of what was involved in the evolution of the modern sciences. When Descartes was looking for method, he saw the art of memory as a useful foil for his own efforts. Galileo was not just a researcher but a great propagandist for the new theories of motion and the order of the heavens.

Thanks for the article. It just reminds me how dark, brutal and abysmal human civilization was in the not so distant past. (and still is in many places) Makes me want to work to maintain and improve what we have and never go back there.

But I think Bruno was right about reincarnation as I think I work with him - contrary and stubborn as ever.

The Church (and I think the current Pope would agree with this) cannot be reminded often enough of their failures.

This book looks interesting and I will have to give it glance.

The review and many of the commentors are a little heavy handed, (common when one applies modern sensabilities to past events) but that's too be expected, and it is not entirely undeserved. It will be interesting to see if this book tries for that heavy handedness or moves more into the context and the times in which this shameful act occured.

Who also speak forbidden truths, understand gnosis, and detest the Crowd for making pathways to truth not only taboo but sources of paranoid, reflexive fear.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/03/magazine/03trolls-t.html

More information at the NYT article above.