THE MAN who was forced by the INQuisition to renounce what he knew and had seen with his own eyes is now honoured in Florence – thank God for Galileo Galilei and for clear skies.
This image – now below – is on the the outside of the house that he lived in way back when, and definitely shows he must have really been a feisty old geezer.
He was under house arrest, by command. Giordano Bruno, however, declined to repent and so when he was being killed by the INQuisition, they stuck a wedge of wood into his mouth so he could not utter his profanities.
Bruno proclaimed the universe was infinite with gazillions of stars. So he burned and burned and burned and burned again. He was a neo-Platonist, so we suspect that condemned him. That and his feisty nature, we guess. Apparently even Kepler wasn’t keen on Bruno’s idea of the harmony of the spheres, even though Kepler and Newton after him were died in the wool astrologers.
Florence! The name rings bells. So here’s another photograph we took of the Olde Place, filled with the spirit of Renaissance philosophy and to heck with the Olde Monke Savonarola and his totally daft “Bonfire of the Vanities”! ♣
We managed to reach the Uffizi from the top of the slopes. There we were lucky enough to see Botticelli’s “Primevara” (Spring), which thankfully he did not have to fling into the very famous “Bonfire of the Vanities”. We burst into tears spontaneously to see the real thing. His “Birth of Venus” is more famous, and was in the same room, but without “Primavera”, there never would have been a Renaissance, IMHO. ♥
Ah, Fierenze! What a beautiful city; wish I could have spent more time there.
Me too. Was lucky enough the first time a long time to go there with Oracle. It had the “wherewithall” to take me to Michaelangelo’s villa above the Arno for the most wonderful meal and gaze down on this fab place. But that was 15 years ago!