Four hundred twelve years ago today, in the year 1600, the philosopher Giordano Bruno was burned alive for heresy (depicted, above, in a relief on the plinth of the 1889 statue erected to him in Rome). His sins included an endorsement of the Copernican view of the universe, a belief in multiple worlds and in reincarnation, some doubt about the Virgin Birth, and more.
Himself a Dominican since the age of 17, he was tried and convicted by the Dominican-administered Inquisition, and sentenced to be burned at the stake.
A martyr to the senseless conflict between science and religion.
