The Book Shelf: stake

Thursday, February 17, 2022

Burned Heretic Giordano Bruno on This Day in History

This Day in History: Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake on this day in 1600 for the crime of heresy. His crimes were believing in the heliocentric system of the universe, but also for his denial of eternal damnation, the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, the virginity of Mary, and transubstantiation. Hegel wrote that Bruno's life represented "a bold rejection of all Catholic beliefs resting on mere authority."

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All of Bruno's works were placed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum ("List of Prohibited Books") in 1603. The inquisition cardinals who judged Giordano Bruno were Cardinal Bellarmino (Bellarmine), Cardinal Madruzzo (Madruzzi), Camillo Cardinal Borghese (later Pope Paul V), Domenico Cardinal Pinelli, Pompeio Cardinal Arrigoni, Cardinal Sfondrati, Pedro Cardinal De Deza Manuel and Cardinal Santorio (Archbishop of Santa Severina, Cardinal-Bishop of Palestrina).

The measures taken to prevent Bruno continuing to speak have resulted in his becoming a symbol for free thought and free speech in present-day Rome, where an annual memorial service takes place close to the spot where he was executed.

The Vatican has published few official statements about Bruno's trial and execution. In 1942, Cardinal Giovanni Mercati, who discovered a number of lost documents relating to Bruno's trial, stated that the Church was perfectly justified in condemning him. On the 400th anniversary of Bruno's death, in 2000, Cardinal Angelo Sodano declared Bruno's death to be a "sad episode" but, despite his regret, he defended Bruno's prosecutors, maintaining that the Inquisitors "had the desire to serve freedom and promote the common good and did everything possible to save his life". In the same year, Pope John Paul II made a general apology for "the use of violence that some have committed in the service of truth".

As to his rejection of the Trinity:

"Unitarians do not find in the Bible or in reason any warrant for accepting the doctrine of the Trinity; they believe that Jesus represented himself as being, not God the Son, but the son of God, our brother, the reconciler of man to God, not of God to man. They believe that history makes it clear that the early Christian church was not Trinitarian, but Unitarian, and that the doctrines of the deity of Christ and of the Trinity came into Christianity only by degrees, and as corruptions from outside,- never being accepted by the church in any authoritative way until the council of Nicea in the year 325. They also believe that in this manner the doctrines of vicarious or substitutional atonement, total depravity, the infallibility of the Bible, etc., came in from without as corruptions of the Christian stream, and at points that are easily traced. Hence a leading aim of Unitarianism in all its later history has been to get back to the simplicity and purity of the teachings of Christ.

In the great controversy that culminated at Nicea, Athanasius was the leader of the Trinitarian party, and Arms of the Unitarian. The decision was long doubtful, but was finally turned by the Emperor Constantine in favor of the Trinitarians. Trinitarianism being thus adopted as the state religion, Unitarianism began to decline; and after the rise of the Roman Catholic church was gradually crushed out. However, Ulfilas, the eminent missionary to the Goths in the fourth century, was a Unitarian, and the Gothic nations continued to hold Christianity in its Unitarian form for several centuries.

With the revival of letters, and especially with the appearance of the Protestant Reformation in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Unitarianism reappeared and came somewhat prominently to the front. Many noted scholars, writers, preachers, and martyrs of those times were Unitarians; among them being Servetus, Lelius and Faustas Socinus, Bernardino Ochino, Blandrata, and Francis David. The celebrated Giordano Bruno, though not calling himself a Unitarian, was in the exact line of Unitarian thought. As the Roman Catholics persecuted the Protestants, so both Catholics and Protestants combined to persecute the Unitarians." The Unitarian, 1890

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Thursday, January 6, 2022

Joan of Arc on This Day in History

This day in history: Joan of Arc was born on this day in 1412. Joan of Arc, aka "The Maid of Orléans", is considered a heroine of France for her role during the Lancastrian phase of the Hundred Years' War. Joan said that she received visions of the archangel Michael, Saint Margaret, and Saint Catherine of Alexandria instructing her to support Charles VII and recover France from English domination late in the Hundred Years' War. The as-yet-unanointed King Charles VII sent Joan to the siege of Orléans as part of a relief army. She gained prominence after the siege was lifted only nine days later. Several additional swift victories led to Charles VII's consecration at Reims. This long-awaited event boosted French morale and paved the way for the final French victory at Castillon in 1453.

On 23 May 1430, she was captured at Compiègne by the Burgundian faction, a group of French nobles allied with the English. She was later handed over to the English and put on trial by the pro-English bishop, Pierre Cauchon, on a variety of charges. After Cauchon declared her guilty, she was burned at the stake on 30 May 1431 at the young age of 19.

In 1456, an inquisitorial court authorized by Pope Callixtus III examined the trial, debunked the charges against her, pronounced her innocent, and declared her a martyr. In the 16th century she became a symbol of the Catholic League, and in 1803 she was declared a national symbol of France by the decision of Napoleon Bonaparte. She was beatified in 1909 and canonized in 1920. Joan of Arc is one of the nine secondary patron saints of France.

Joan of Arc has remained a popular figure in literature, painting, sculpture, and other cultural works since the time of her death...however, there are alternative theories about Joan of Arc.

In 1819, Pierre Caze published La Vérité sur Jeanne d'Arc, which argued that Joan of Arc was the bastard daughter of the Queen, Isabeau of Bavaria, and Duke Louis of Orléans. According to Caze's reasoning, the queen hid their daughter in the countryside with the d'Arc family. When Joan of Arc met the future King Charles VII she would have given him a private sign that she was his half-sister. It has been theorized that the coat of arms he later granted her included a sword as a baton of bastardy.

Also, several women claimed to be Joan of Arc after the execution date. The most successful was Jeanne (or Claude) des Armoises. Claude des Armoises married the knight Robert des Armoises and claimed to be Joan of Arc in 1436. She gained the support of Joan of Arc's brothers. She carried on the charade until 1440, gaining gifts and subsidies. One chronicle states, "In this year there came a young girl who said she was the Maid of France and played her role so well that many were duped by her, and especially the greatest nobles." Claude finally confessed she was a fraud after Charles VII asked her to repeat the secret which the real Joan had revealed to him when they first met at Chinon in March 1429, which Claude could not do. Some modern authors attempt to revive this claim by asserting that some other victim was substituted for Joan of Arc at the stake.

Dr. Cobham Brewer wrote in his nineteenth century volume Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable: "M. Octave Delepierre has published a pamphlet, called Doute Historique, to deny the tradition that Joan of Arc was burnt at Rouen for sorcery. He cites a document discovered by Father Vignier in the seventeenth century, in the archives of Metz, to prove that she became the wife of Sieur des Armoise, with whom she resided at Metz, and became the mother of a family. Vignier subsequently found in the family muniment-chest the contract of marriage between 'Robert des Armoise, knight, and Jeanne D'Arcy, surnamed the Maid of Orleans.' In 1740 there were found in the archives of the Maison de Ville (Orléans) records of several payments to certain messengers from Joan to her brother John, bearing the dates 1435, 1436. There is also the entry of a presentation from the council of the city to the Maid, for her services at the siege (dated 1439). M. Delepierre has brought forward a host of other documents to corroborate the same fact, and show that the tale of her martyrdom was invented to throw odium on the English."

Graeme Donald argues that much of the story of Joan of Arc is a myth. He says there are no accounts or portraits of Joan of Arc's victories during her time period, nor is she mentioned as a commander of the French army by Chastellain. He also states that the most definitive work of her life was written by Jules Quicherat between 1841 and 1849, after he discovered a cache of documents relating to her trial. Donald argues that she was most likely not burned at the stake.

In 1921, anthropologist Margaret Murray argued that Joan was correctly identified as a witch by the religious authorities who condemned her to death, but that what they called witchcraft was, in fact, a survival of the pagan "old religion" of ancient Europe. Murray claimed that Joan and Gilles de Rais were leaders of a pagan witch-cult that was a rival to the Catholic church. Joan was the "incarnate God" of a cult derived from the worship of the virgin huntress Diana.

Witchcraft, by Charles Alva Hoyt