Giordano Bruno was one of the first humans to intuit and thus consciously occupy the universe in its full immensity. Thus he seemed to his contemporaries to be like an alien from a different world. And so they killed him. Charged with heresy, burned in Rome on Feb 17 1600.
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Trained as a Dominican, he left his monastery and became an itinerant scholar. He believed Copernicus, who denied the idea of earth as center of the universe, did not go far enough. Bruno posited idea of an infinite universe with infinity of worlds, with intelligent creatures.
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He said in the future we might develop means to visit these worlds. Arrested by Inquisition in 1592; after years in prison he was deemed a “pertinacious and obstinate heretic.” Turned over to the “secular arm” for punishment, he was burned before a cheering crowd.
Before his execution Bruno addressed his judges: “Perchance you who pronounce my sentence are in greater fear than I who receive it.” In later centuries the republican government of Rome erected a statue in his honor in the square where he died.
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