Giordano Bruno, shared inheritances. Nola, 17.2.2025
(by Pasquale Giustiniani) Introduction
According to inheritance law, there is joint inheritance when the deceased is succeeded by several heirs, who become co-owners of the assets and joint holders of the rights and debts that are part of the inheritance. Therefore, if there are several heirs (for example, children and spouse), each of the co-heirs becomes co-owner of a share of the assets and relationships belonging to the deceased.
Of what rights and debts has the tradition become co-owner that has investigated Filippo Bruno, in religion Fra’ Giordano? The interest of the Roman Inquisition in Fra’ Giordano Pope Clement VIII (Aldobrandini), manifests his great satisfaction to the Venetian Republic for the granted extradition to Rome, via Porto di Ancona, of the preaching friar Giordano Bruno, a man now known almost throughout Europe for his great intelligence and his doctrine. The Venetian Tribunal of the Inquisition was investigating the Dominican friar not only as an apostate from the religious Order of origin, but also as a formal heretic and as a heresiarch, since he had composed several books dedicated to European heretical princes and had personally visited and lived in several Protestant states. The Venetian Senate's resistance to the Pope was almost useless, objecting that this new practice of sending those already detained in Venice to Rome would be detrimental and a bad example for the Venetian Inquisition, to whose tribunal, as the "natural seat", the pending trials should have been "sent". The interventions of the Apostolic Nuncio finally convinced the Senate to give in, not without the positive opinion of the Prosecutor Federico Contarini, who underlined, in any case, the outstanding intelligence and doctrine of the accused.
Two powerful influences were exerted on the Pope in those years by two men whom he elevated to the dignity of cardinal: Giulio Antonio Santoro (or Santori), later Cardinal of Santa Severina, who would later lead the Congregation of the Holy Office for almost twenty years, elected censor for religious matters; Roberto Bellarmino for philosophical matters. And, consequently, more in-depth studies on these two figures would allow for a more considered judgment, especially as, as we have already seen, during the Venetian interrogations Bruno had clearly stated, elegantly distancing himself from the accusation of material and formal heresy: I have read books by Melanthone, Luther, Calvin, and other transmontane heretics, not to learn their doctrine, nor to make use of it, considering them more ignorant than me, but I have read them out of curiosity, and I have never kept these books with me, meaning those that professedly deal with matters contrary to and repugnant to the Catholic faith, that I have also kept with me other books by damned authors, such as Raymond Lullius, and others, who have dealt with philosophical matters. And he responds to the interrogation. I despise the aforementioned heretics, and their doctrines, because they do not deserve the name of theologians, but of pedants, but of Catholic Ecclesiastical Doctors. I hold them in the esteem that I owe, and in particular of St. Thomas, who I have always esteemed as I said above, and loved by me as my soul, and that it is the truth, here is that in my book entitled de Monade, numero, et figura, carte, or 89 pages, I say in praise of St. Thomas, as much as you can see, ostendens in dicto libro infrascripta verba videlicet ille omnis cuiuscumque Theologantium generis el Peripatheticorum in specie philosophantum honor, atque lux Thomas Aquinas omnem. While acknowledging, in short, that he has read books by heretics and condemned people, Fra Giordano claims in Venice that he consulted them out of curiosity, without sharing their theses, which he actually judged to be such that they do not even deserve the name of theological theses, but rather theses of pedantics, while maintaining his esteem for true Catholic authors, first and foremost Thomas Aquinas. Because in Rome, the Pope and the Roman Tribunal have not recalled, particularly in recent years, not only Bruno's prodigious and sincere memory, but also those lines from Spaccio della bestia trionfante in which the Nolan asserted his clear and forthright speaking: ((⏱️=400)) Here Giordano speaks in the vernacular, names freely, gives his name to those who nature gives her being; he does not call shameful what nature makes worthy; he does not cover up what she shows openly; he calls bread, bread; wine, wine; the boss, boss; the foot, foot; and other parts, by their own name; it says eating, eating; sleeping, sleeping; drinking, drinking; and so the other natural acts means by their own titleCertainly, the extradition and subsequent Roman trial must have been influenced by the fact that the Nolan was still considered a professed member and ordained in sacris in the Order of Preachers, whose General was, moreover, in those years very convinced of the profound decadence of the Order and of the need to restore its ordinances. Indeed, it is symptomatic that, in the trial against the Nolan (on 21 December 1599, together with Fra' Paolo Isaresi from Mirandola), Father Beccaria was entrusted by the Tribunal with the task of submitting to Giordano Bruno a list of erroneous propositions to be abjured. On 20 January 1600, almost on the eve of the condemnation, the two friars gave an account of the task received, informing that Bruno had rejected them, stating that until then he had been misunderstood by the judges. Why, then, did the Tribunal entrust the Dominican Father General Ippolito Maria Beccaria (1550-1600) and his vicar with the specific task of contacting Bruno and convincing him to recant his positions, which the Tribunal considered formally heretical, not without a, it seems ambiguous, payment of money? Had the money perhaps been paid with corrupt intent, or even to help him with the inevitable expenses for drafting briefs and writing responses in the phase of the so-called expeditio causae, which in fact coincided with the formulation of the sentence? The Roman Inquisition, as will be remembered, was founded in 1542, with the substantial intent of blocking the expansion of the Protestant Reformation in Italy; by the end of the century, heretical positions or erroneous interpretations of the Holy Scriptures had by then been assimilated by Catholics to Protestantism, which had already torn Europe and the once Christian states apart. The vision that guided the inquisitors was not, therefore, narrow. Likewise, a vision that also attributed this tribunal of consciences to the inevitable intolerant attitude of the modern Church, moreover following the medieval revival, would be narrow. The original structure of the Roman Tribunal, beyond some basic analogies with the Spanish Inquisition, had a very different structure and functioning with regard to both the center and the peripheral seats. In any case, between the pontificates of Paul IV and Pius V, the Inquisition became in all respects a supporting structure of the Church and led the final fight against the Reformation, with the essential contribution of the bishops, with some momentary second thoughts during the final years of the Council of Trent, and with a recrudescence of death sentences under Pius V, a Pope who also strengthened censorship with the creation of a commission of cardinals for the reform of the Index of Prohibited Books. In the flat prisons of the Roman Inquisition, therefore, the trial file of the Bruno affair is now being prepared, not without integrating Mocenigo's confession, as well as the first Venetian interrogations and their repetitio. As Berti had already observed, collecting evidence from the two writings published by the Nolan in Frankfurt, namely the De monade and the De triplici, minimo et mensura, the inquisitors could in any case have at their disposal a large dossier of suspect propositions: Much more copious was the catalogue of heretical propositions that the inquisitors removed from the books that bore his name and that he had recognised as his Therefore he was further convinced by the Holy Office to maintain: that the worlds are innumerable; that souls pass from one body to another, from one to another world; that the same soul can inform two bodies; that magic is good and lawful; that the Holy Spirit is one with the soul of the world, and that this was meant by Moses when he said that the Holy Spirit was diffused over the waters to fertilize them; that the world is eternal; that Moses worked miracles by means of magic, in which he went before all the Egyptians; that he himself invented his laws; that the sacred Letters are nothing but a dream; that the devil will be saved; that the Jews alone have Adam for their father; that other men draw their origin from the progenitors whom God created before Adam; that Christ is not God, that he was a great magician, and that having deceived men, he was deservedly hanged and not crucified; that the prophets and the apostles were sad men, magicians, and that many of them were also hanged. The trial will end several years later, with a peculiar final sprint during 1599, which will lead, as we will see, to a conclusive Roman sentence, in which Bruno will be condemned as a negative and unrepentant heretic, remembering that negative heretics are those who, convinced of their heresy do not want or cannot detach themselves from it and, without confessing, remain firm in their denials, confessing in words the Catholic faith and proclaiming that they reject heretical malignity
heretic whoever does not confess the guilt of which he has been convicted is clearly unrepentant The archivist reported at the end of the nineteenth...