La Cena de Le Ceneri

Book excerpt: Giordano Bruno was an itinerant Italian friar who was burned at the stake in 1600 for heresies, which included his rejection of the Ptolemaic cosmology. Of his important writings, 'La Cena de le ceneri' was one of the first works in which Copernican theory had impact outside the sphere of the natural sciences. Arguing for the physical reality of the infinite universe with no centre, Bruno sought to prove that each man is every man, that conflict would be resolved if all men accepted the unifying potential of his hermetic religion. Using this radical cosmology, Bruno sought to heal the secular and religious wounds of sixteenth-century Europe.