Giordano Bruno, martyr of science?

Latest post in my blog on popular science:
Giordano Bruno, martyr of science?
https://populscience.blogspot.com/2021/11/giordano-bruno-martyr-of-science.html

Regards,

To be burned at the stake for heresy was not unique to the Catholic and Protestant churches. In occurred in the Russian Orthodox Church as well – a famous leader of the Old Believers, Avvakum, was burned at the stake in 1682, for resisting reforms in the Russian church.

This brings to mind Lewis’s hatred of theocracy (or its equivalent within a church). This is what he writes in his essay, “Lilies That Fester”, from the “World’s Last Night” collection:

“The loftier the pretensions of the power, the more meddlesome, inhuman, and oppressive
it will be. Theocracy is the worst of all possible governments. All political power is at best a necessary
evil: but it is least evil when its sanctions are most modest and commonplace, when it claims no more than to be useful or convenient and sets itself strictly limited objectives. Anything transcendental or spiritual, or even anything very strongly ethical, in its pretensions is dangerous and encourages
it to meddle with our private lives. Let the shoemaker stick to his last. Thus the Renaissance doctrine of Divine Right is for me a corruption of monarchy; Rousseau’s General Will, of democracy; racial mysticisms, of nationality. And Theocracy, I admit and even insist, is the worst corruption of all.”

A church has a right, of course, to insist on orthodoxy. But when it kills someone for not adhering to it, I think it assumes for itself the legitimacy of a theocracy.

Dimitry

“Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. Love does not demand its own way. Love is not irritable, and it keeps no record of when it has been wronged. It is never glad about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance. Love will last forever.” (1 Corinthians 13: 4-8)

To be burned at the stake for heresy was not unique to the Catholic and Protestant churches. In occurred in the Russian Orthodox Church as well – a famous leader of the Old Believers, Avvakum, was burned at the stake in 1682, for resisting reforms in the Russian church.

Yes, this form of execution was widespread at the time. In fact, strictly speaking, it was not a “religious” execution, for those condemned to being killed in this way were usually delivered to the civil justice for the actual execution.

I wonder which was the worst way to die. Those “burnt at the stake” usually died before they were burnt, by smoke suffocation. In England, on the other side, the typical way to execute those convicted of “treason” (which includes Sir Thomas More and many Catholic priests) was “hanging, drawing and quartering,” which means that the convicted person was dragged around the city, hanged (slowly, not to the death) and then dismembered, one internal organ after another, until extracting the heart put an end to their life.

Sir Thomas More was actually condemned to this type of death, but as the king (Henry VIII) was his friend, he commuted this way of dying by beheading.

What are friends for, right?

Dimitry