Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: BRUNO AND CAMPANELLA. The Italian Government has permitted the erection of a monument to Giordano Bruno in the capital of the Christian world. We understand that the work is sufficiently artistic to bring no great discredit on the mistress of the fine arts; but, since its sole reason for existence is based on an insecure foundation, we are not surprised that the details of its design are not all true to history. It has been erected only because of the presumed fact that Bruno was done to death by the Papal authorities. To render it more impressive, and to illustrate the eventful career of its subject, it presents to . our contemplation some bas-reliefs of other alleged martyrs to truth, such as Huss, Servetus, Arnold of Brescia, and Campanella. Now it is by no means certain that Bruno was put to death. We know that in 1592 he was arrested by the State Inquisitors of Venice on the charge of heresy; that after six years of imprisonment hewas delivered to the Holy Office, or Roman Inquisition, tried, (and perhaps) condemned to the stake on February 9, 1600. But was the sentence executed, or, as frequently happened in similar cases, was Bruno burnt merely in effigy? A letter purporting to be from an erudite German then in Eome, Gaspar Schopp, describes the execution, but many good critics have denied the authenticity of this epistle. Again, Schopp is alone in his assertion. The Vatican Archives contain documents of the trial, but not of the condemnation, nor is there any account of the execution; whereas, in every similar case, both of these are detailed. Again, the Relations of the foreign ambassadors resident at the Holy See, which never omitted any such items, say nothing of this event. Not even in the correspondence of the Venetian Ambassador, the agent of that Governmen…
