author
Giordano Bruno
1548–1600
A restless Renaissance thinker who refused to accept a small, closed universe, he imagined an infinite cosmos filled with countless worlds. His bold ideas—and his refusal to recant them—have made him one of history’s most debated intellectual rebels.
2 Audiobooks
About the author
Born in Nola near Naples in 1548, Giordano Bruno entered the Dominican order as a young man and was ordained a priest. Over time, his unorthodox religious and philosophical views brought him into conflict with church authorities, and he left Italy, spending years traveling and teaching in cities including Geneva, Paris, London, and several German centers.
Bruno wrote on philosophy, memory, cosmology, and religion. He is especially remembered for arguing that the universe is vast—indeed infinite—and that the stars may be suns with their own worlds. Those ideas were far more expansive than the standard picture of the cosmos in his day, and they helped give later generations a powerful image of intellectual daring.
After returning to Italy, Bruno was arrested by the Inquisition. He was tried for heresy and executed in Rome on February 17, 1600. Since then, he has often been remembered not only as a philosopher and writer, but also as a symbol of free inquiry and the costs of challenging accepted beliefs.