Bruno, Giordano (1548–1600)

Italian philosopher. He entered the Dominican order of monks in 1563, but his sceptical attitude to Catholic doctrines forced him to flee Italy in 1577. He was arrested by the Inquisition in 1593 in Venice and burned at the stake for his adoption of Copernican astronomy and his heretical religious views.

After visiting Geneva and Paris, he lived in England in 1583–85, where he wrote some of his finest works. Drawing both on contemporary science (in particular the theories of Copernicus) and on magic and esoteric wisdom, he developed a radical form of pantheism in which all things are aspects of a single, infinite reality animated by God as the ‘world soul’. His views had a profound influence on the philosophers Benedict Spinoza and Gottfried Leibniz.