Art News

A new app from the Vatican "brings to life" Giordano Bruno’s execution on Campo de’ Fiori

ROME.- On the occasion of the anniversary of the death of Giordano Bruno, burned alive at the stake on piazza Campo de’ Fiori, in Rome, on February 17, 1600, for his convictions, which were judged heretical by the Tribunal of the Roman Inquisition, the Vatican Secret Archives unveils the summary of the trial of Giordano Bruno, the 17th document on display at the Capitoline Museums in the Lux in Arcana: The Vatican Secret Archives Reveals Itself exhibition. The document, online as of today at www.luxinarcana.org, is extremely significant because the records of the proceedings of Giordano Bruno’s trial are lost. They may have been destroyed together with the records of other Inquisition trials some time before the Roman archives that had been taken to Paris by order of Napoleon in 1801, were returned to the Holy See, between 1815 and 1817. This summary – all that remains of the Inquisition’s file on Bruno – contains extensive quot