Giordano Bruno Commemoration Giordano Bruno

¶ … Giordano Bruno Commemoration Giordano Bruno was a gifted mathematician and early astronomer who lived from 1548 until 1600. Among his prescient deductions were the fact that our sun was just an ordinary star whose brightness was explained by its proximity to earth and not because it was the center of the universe. Bruno rejected the idea that God had a special relationship to earth or to our solar system and he rejected the idea of the fixed spherical theory of planetary and stellar orbits.

Bruno also argued that the universe was infinitely large and whose borders were impossible to image. Finally, he promoted the belief that there was nothing special about earth or about the existence of man on earth and that the universe was likely full of sun-like stars that supported life on the planets that orbited them exactly the way life on earth is supported by our sun. Bruno's ideas were extremely advanced for his time and demonstrated imagination and the ability to think in original, creative, and open-minded ways.

It would take another 400 years of scientific thought and empirical experimental research for scientists to confirm Bruno's ideas, but they were indeed confirmed. Today, we know that our sun is merely a medium size star on the inside of one of the arms of an ordinary spiral galaxy that contains more than 100 billion star and countless planets, many of which may be very similar to earth. We also know that the boundaries of the universe are defined by a complex concept of space time.

Unfortunately, the world was not ready for these ideas in Bruno's time because they conflicted with the dominant view of the universe held by religious authorities. Instead of recognizing his brilliance, the Church authorities tried him for heresy, and when he refused to recant the ideas that we know today were completely true, he was burned alive at the stake in 1600. This monument is intended to commemorate the brilliance and courage and integrity of Giordano Bruno.

It consists of a life-size bronze figure tied to a vertical wooden stake behind him. His face is angry but focused as though he is staring into the eyes of those who murdered him for being right. Bronze flames surround him and reach almost up to his neck.

At his feet is a flat stone bearing the inscription of what Bruno was said to have responded to the judges after they pronounced him guilty of heresy and sentenced him to death: Maiori forsan cum timore sententiam in me fertis quam ego accipiam along with the English translation "Perhaps you pronounce this sentence against me with greater fear than I receive it." Behind Bruno is a representation of the Milky Way galaxy depicted against a background of many similar galaxies that are smaller because they are far away.

Within the Milky Way, earth and the sun are depicted.