Italian Notebook

Giordano Bruno

Rome - Despite strong Catholic values and convictions, Romans have always been ambivalent about the Church's seat of power itself, just across the Tiber river at the Vatican. This is a 2000 year old case of "too close for comfort". Mind you, it's not a blatant and overt sentiment. Romans and the Vatican get along well enough, but an undercurrent of disconnect is discernible. On February the 17th each year however, this palpably rises to the surface.

On this day in the year 1600, Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake in Campo de Fiori for heresy. Bruno was a priest and philosopher who has (arguably) become a symbol for Humanism and free-thought due to some of his work and certainly his disturbing death. As a general pain in 16th-century-European-academia's neck, he pretty much managed to tick everyone off for having ideas that were either too ahead of their time or a bit too left field. These got him booted out of the Jesuits, the Lutheran, Calvinist, and Catholic churches, and most of the important European universities and royal courts of the time.

Every year on this day many Romans still visit the statue, wreaths and flowers are laid (photo 1), the atheist and agnostic associations show up and push some propaganda of their own, even Rome's 'talking statues' (more on these soon) have something to say. Honoring Giordano Bruno in Roman dialect and using fairly accusatory words towards the Church (photo 2), 'Pasquino' here reminds us that all too often wrongs are committed in the name of right.

Granted it was all during the counter-reformation, and hence inquisition, and the Church has since admitted its mistake and expressed profound sorrow. However, as an elderly Roman gentleman visiting Bruno's statue yesterday diplomatically put it, "remembering what happened here makes it difficult to accept 'Truths' professed by any given authority".

And that is genuine Roman sentiment through and through . . .

--contributed by GB, Editor, Italian Notebook

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