Customer Reviews

The Pope and the Heretic: The True Story of Giordano Bruno, the Man Who Dared to Defy the Roman Inquisition

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

This is a horrible book. I checked it out from my local library because I didn't have much faith in it, and I was sorry I even wasted my time reading it.

Who does this book serve? For those who know anything about Giordano Bruno, it is a waste of time. And those who don't know anything about him might be discouraged by how poorly-written this book is, and thus decide not to look further into Giordano Bruno or his philosophy.

Only the most titilating aspects of Bruno's execution at the stake are really described with any detail in this book. Michael White doesn't really explain anything about Bruno's complex philosophical system, based upon the Art of Memory and founded through the Renaissance perspective that ancient wisdom had more to offer than the modern knowledge of the time. Bruno intuited that the sun was the center of our solar system and that the earth was only one of an infinite number of planets, not through data compiled by looking through a telescope, but by reading ancient texts -- from Plotinus to Nicholas of Cusa and others -- and picked out the parts that made sense to him. He then syntesized these ideas into a coherent worldview that reflected his perception of the world around him. In the work On the Composition of Images, Signs and Ideas, Bruno's discussion about images and ideas the humans construct in their minds and how they relate to the actual objects themselves can be seen as a precursor to semiotics.

If you are looking for a biography of Bruno in English, then read Giordano Bruno: His Life And Thought by Dorothea Waley Singer. It is out of print, but might be out there still on the internet. The writing is clear, it avoids sensationalistic descriptions of bloodshed (unlike Michael White), and has a more firm understanding of Bruno's philosophy.

If you are looking for inspired attempts to place Bruno's philosophical system within the context of other streams of thought in Renaissance Europe, then look into Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition and/or The Art of Memory, both of which are by Frances Yates.

The main drawback with these books by Yates is that she thinks of everything as "Hermetic." Their are Cabalistic influences in Bruno's thought, and Yates doesn't always bring that out in her analyses. But there are other books available that follow up on the good scholarship in Yates, and question her bold enthusiasms when they overstep the evidence. Such works are Eros and Magic in the Renaissance by Ioan Couliano, the book by Hilary Gatti -- which analyzes how he operated as a scientist and not just a philosopher, and Giordano Bruno and the Philosophy of the Ass by Nuccio Ordine -- which tries to place his theory of the path to wisdom through ignorance in a well-established tradition.

If you want to read Bruno's work itself, there are many of his works available in English, including the Rabelaisian and bawdy play, The Candlebearer, published by Dovehouse Editions in Canada, as well as his more philosophically mature dialogues, The Ash Wednesday Supper, The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast, and The Cabala of Pegasus.

In short, anyone expressing even the slightest interest in any aspect of Giordano Bruno should look elsewhere, and avoid this book by Michael White.

Take one of the most fascinating topics in Renaissance history and give it to the most inexperienced History Channel screenwriter -- you know: the ones who don't have too much to say, and consequently repeat every thin fact endlessly -- and you have this book. After having read it, I know no more than if I had read the Encyclopedia Britannica entry for Giordano Bruno. I was not only uninformed but bored as well. The only reason I finished the book at all is that I couldn't believe that the author went so far with so little data.

Firstly, I would like to know more about Giordano Bruno's contribution to Renaissance thought. Although some Italian sources were referenced in the notes and bibliography, I am not convinced that White actually tackled them himself. Secondly, I would not have minded some more apropos quotes from Bruno himself -- even if it meant padding the book a bit -- anything but the endless repetition of a few basic biographical facts.

It appears that Michael White has written other books on the general subject of scientific history, books that garnered some decent reviews. I sincerely hope that this was just an odd lapsus menti and not the sign of a fourth-rate biographer.

I have a bad record of choosing books from the Airport Bookstores. I have made some really attrocious choices. This one is not that bad, but I could not recommend it to anyone. If I would have read the inside flap I would have realised that Michael White was the "Science Editor of British GQ Magazine" --- I did not know that anyone who read GQ would be even interested in Science, but if they are, there taste would be light to the point of idiocy, like this book.

The title is inane enough. It lured me in like a sucker... I was interested in reading the counterpoint of what would be two personalities --- the Pope and Bruno. But the Pope does not even really appear in the book.

The main problem is twofold:

1) Lack of any discernable organisation. The book is a mess. It is hard to put together any discernable record of the like of Bruno after I read this --- was he in Frankfurt first and then Paris? Maybe it was the other way around?

This means that White mixes everything up, chronology, main themes and the roles of people in the book. Ideas are not at all well developed. There is a sometimes peurile feeling about his writing style: when an idea is developed a little he switches to other things --- one feels that he is writing at times for the attention span of a 12- yr-old reader.

2) Weak development of themes inside the book. Scholastic ossification of the ideas of the Catholic Church is a great topic, but White's starts with a description of how Aristotle was always wrong on everything... and vaguely brushes him off as an almost personal hindrance to development of ideas. Such comic-book interpretations really show a lack of mastery of his subject.

White intimates a tremendous importance for the hermetic tradition, although he keeps this significantly nebulous (something that a reader of GQ or Omni might be interested in). As usual his work verges towards veneration for mysticism.

At the end of the day he should have marshalled his forces with more discipline and spent the time on making this into a serious work that it should be, and as Bruno deserves. It appears that he merely cranked this one out. He will pay for this as readers such as I will never buy another of his books.

Back to the Thompson Twins Mr. White!

This book is far from being either a thorough or balanced biography of Bruno. When its not digressing into the author's sweeping and judgmental generalizations about history - "For such people, everyday life was an agony and the society in which they lived was almost stagnant...all but a few... spent most of their time inebriated" - and his demonization of Christianity, it focuses only on Bruno's arrest and trial and covers only in bad summary or not at all the rest of his life. White rips on Catholicism and Protestantism beyond the facts, yet depicts Renaissance intellectuals anticipating a supposedly true faith of modern scientific theories and method as humanity's salvation. What few and poor citations and footnotes are provided - "Christian doctrine does not evolve; it is based upon cast-in-stone tenets and therefore cannot develop or offer anything radical or original." - are too little to justify the sweeping judgments, and leave one confused as to whether the Hollywood style dialogues between Bruno and his confessor are actual quotes or White's embelishments.

Its no secret that the churches and governments of Europe abused their power severely during the last 1900 years. A lot of the bleakness of situation that White describes is true. But he goes beyond history to paint a black and white picture of a purely evil church and intellectuals martyred for their belief in scientific methods and theories that DIDN'T YET EXIST. The complexity of the historical situation and the intelectual relationships between the Christian clergy and scholars is glazed over; the motives and reasons for the atmosphere of suppresion are chalked off solely to the evil ignorance and greed of every single person of power in the church. The complexity of the crossover identities of European Christian scholars and their struggle to reconcile their faith and observations goes out the window - White has Bruno convenienently seeing the good in everything mainstream science currently cheers, and totally condemning everything it currently despises. His treatment of Bruno's interests is completely anachronistic and belays all the tenets he held to that scientists would balk at, and vice versa.

This book isn't about Bruno's views - its about White's. Like a bad Hollywood movie set against a historical backdrop, this is more about what's going on now then what happened back then.

Michael White succeeds in personalizing the heretic monk Giordano Bruno, giving us a more complete picture of the man than we find in other sources. His book educates us about the social, political, and religious environment in which Bruno lectured and wrote. We also feel his suffering at the hands of the Inquisition. Unfortunately, we learn less about Bruno's ideas, which covered a remarkably wide range of speculations. We are given only shorthand versions.

White's writing is very readable, but one sometimes wonders if all of it is based on documented fact. For example, he writes that "A sudden hush fell over the room; the judges sat motionless. Bruno, his confidence clearly ebbing away, his energy almost drained, looked around the room once more, seeing the still faces, the eyes of witnesses quickly averted." How does White know all these details? Passages like this read as if the author were using literary invention to make the dry records of the Inquisition more interesting.

This is the story of the under-appreciated philosopher and scientist Giordano Bruno, who was executed by the Roman Inquisition for exercising free anti-church thought. A very specific historical episode like this requires hard history and scholarship, but Michael White writes as if this is a general interest story for a general audience. Therefore this treatment is nonsensical from the outset. White fails to deliver the goods on any of the important areas influenced by Bruno's story, and the book flies over a great many interesting areas of subject matter but lands in none of them.

The key flaw in the book is White's attempt to place Bruno's work in a historical context, which merely results in disjointed coverage of his actual philosophy and extremely unconvincing attempts to show Bruno's supposedly vast influence on figures like Galileo, Shakespeare, and Spinoza. White takes the opportunity to cover, in two short chapters, the evolution and history of scientific and religious thought in Europe (chapters II and III), but these treatments are far too basic too be of much use, and show the writing style of a quick high school research paper. White even assumes that he's qualified to call the works of Aristotle "amateurish." Another possibility that is squandered is deeper insight into the causes and effects of the Inquisition, but White only provides a basic reporter's coverage of Bruno's trial.

Worst yet is the biographical aspect of the book, as the story of Bruno's life is out of order and fragmented. His actual philosophical and scientific works, which should be the centerpiece of the book, are given short shrift, especially his important attempts at unified knowledge rather than specialization. White fails as a biographer as he includes the supposed private thoughts and opinions of Bruno and the other players in the story, men who have been dead for centuries and didn't write autobiographies. This is unprofessional and quite impossible to take seriously. In the end, we are left with little knowledge of Bruno the man and his potentially important story, so one must wonder about the very point of the book. Not recommended.

Having just finished a biography of Servetus (Out of the Flames by Lawrence and Nancy Goldstone - which I highly recommend) - I was thirsty for more of the same, so I picked up 'The Pope and the Heretic' and bought it without a second thought (along with 'The Perfect Heresy: The Revolutionary Life and Death of the Medieval Cathars').

I was very disappointed. The author takes a prurient interest in Medieval torture techniques which lends a sensationalist slant to the book. This in microcosm, is what it wrong with his treatment of the subject as a whole: it is a sensationalised account of an important scholar which pays scant attention to the man's ideas, and too much attention to his ultimate sad fate.

I realise that the 'general reading public' probably has little taste for a dry, academic approach, but the author surely underestimates his readership badly here: anyone interested enough in the period to pick up and buy a book on an obscure 16th century heretic is likely to have a strong interest in the period, and may have a good working knowledge of the historical background. White's 'simplifications', at first simply annoying, become insulting, as they start to mount. He gets the details of Servetus' imprisonment in Calvin's Geneva wrong - understandable, maybe. He then describes Charles V's rag-tag soldiery who sack of Rome in 1527 as 'teutonic hordes': Charles was the most powerful (secular) man alive at the time, and as Holy Roman Emperor, commanded an army which was a mixture of many nations (including Spanish and French). At first I wondered if White was confusing Charles V with Atilla the Hun (it's difficult to tell, because he doesn't actually mention the name of the ruler who led the army which marched on Rome, or, for that matter why they did so). His gross characterisations of the complex and (to our modern minds) contradictory characters of the period (Elizabeth I, is a prime example) have all the heavy handedness of a poorly researched high-school essay: an analogy which occurred to me more than once as I read through this work.

The book's structure is equally annoying. Perhaps the author is aiming to shake things up by intentionally chopping around in time (we learn the details of Bruno's life when he left his monastry at second hand, whole chapters after the author has him depart) - but the end result is that the book feels fragmented and sloppily put together. Repetitive detail in subsequent chapters creates the feeling that what we have here is a succession of essays, hastily cobbled together by an author who couldn't really decide how to order his work.

But the biggest defect is in the writing, which is cliche ridden and soul-less. Important passages which deal with the turning points of Bruno's life are marred by pointless excursions into silly detail (at one point, for example, one of the characters 'pushes Bruno downstairs', while he is being arrested - and White speculates wildly on Bruno's state of mind when he is imprisoned by the Roman Inquistion - detail which he can have no way of actually knowing) in order to add colour, while there is little or no attempt to dig into the Bruno's ideas (which is surely the only reason anyone would be interested in the man - as White points out, the inquistion gave us plenty of martyrs (over a million)if all we want to contemplate is christian's inhumanity to fellow christian).

The jacket promises us that Bruno inspired Spinoza. How? Spinoza is mentioned in passing, but the subject is never explored in great enough depth to convince the reader that Bruno's ideas helped fashion Spinoza's philosophy. Other key figures in the enlightenment are dragged in (Newton, Locke etc.), but there is little or no attempt to link them and their thinking with Bruno. Instead of proof, the author falls back on assertion - and the scant footnotes do little to back the assertions with evidence.

I was left wondering if I could trust any of the history I found in this book, much less White's attempts at analysis and synthesis.

I can't say if the book will fail its audience: but I know that it failed me: not just in a lack of scholastic rigour (which is bad enough) but by being deficient in that lightness of touch which is the hallmark of great historical writing.

I really do not understand the negative responses I just read about "The Pope & The Heretic". This book I hold dearest to my heart and my heart will be forever changed to have read about Giordano Bruno. I was raised as a catholic and to be able to study and read what this religion was really all about is earth shattering. White's book profoundly moved me about Giordano Bruno's life and death under this regime. I learned much and my book is highlighted and then research done on my highlights. Therefore..... some of you perhaps have been more educated and infomed of the Medieval ages of papal rule.....as for me this history was hid from me even in my college studies and still is and I am 58. The only way to really be educated is to take Philosophy classes in college which I am now doing and or read Michael White's book and books of this nature. We are still being denied and deceived of Medieval history in our society so if one is not taking college classes of this nature then the only way left to educate is through books such as Michael White's. Do not criticize him...instead give him the credit for the enlightmnet that he has bestowed upon people such as myself and for bringing this man back to life for all of us to question the hundreds of years of dogma relgion that has suppressed our souls.

I only gave it a one star because I could not give it a zero. White only used Bruno's biography as an excuse to perpetuate centuries of baseless anti-Catholic propaganda. I expected a biography portraying Bruno as a hero to be anti-Catholic--that was a given. However, this book went way beyond my wildest expectations on that score. White needs to look up in objective, credible histories who actually burned witches in Europe--it was NOT the Catholic Church--hint, you might look to Northern countries where there was NO presence of the Catholic Inquisiton, nor did the Catholic Church have any power there. The Church did not "persecute" Bruno because of his "science" (even Bruno did not claim to be a scientist, but a philosopher)--the Church has been the single greatest supporter of science (a historical fact that seems to have been lost in the repitition of anti-Catholic propaganda). If one looks at history OBJECTIVELY, one would see that. Bruno was a rebellious "free thinker", yes; hero, hardly. He was also a pantheist, who as a Catholic monk was causing a great deal of scandal. It was the sole purpose of the Roman Inquisition of the Renaissance period to protect the Church against the Turks and the Protestants (dozens of sects by then-all warring with each other, by the way), and to bring heretics like Bruno back to the Church--it was never, ever as White erroneously states to force ANYONE to become Catholic. These lies have been perpetuated and passed on so much, without ever being verified, that people now swallow this claptrap without batting their eyes. Well, I won't. This book is trash, and that is where it is now. My only regret is that I spent a penny on it. I can not in good conscience pass this on or sell it.

Since I have not studied philosophy all that much, I did not know of the heretic Bruno and his burning at the stake. Bruno believed in the Catholic Church, he just didn't believe in how it came about in its philosophy. Bruno was a native of southern Italy, and self exiled himself to Switzerland, Germany, France, and England. After his lonely life of exile and teachings, he returned to Venice, with a thought of trying to convince the Pope of his thinking. The Catholic Church thought little of him, tried him in the Inquisition, and then eight years later burned him at the stake. Bruno's death was gruesome.

Many of the previous reviewers have held the author liable for a weak story. I though Bruno's life biography was OK, and that he justifiably made some assumptions on his belief. This is a good example of the Inquisition's affect on life in old Europe.