Campo De' Fiori, Giordano Bruno, And The Talmud

This title to this post is not a Jeopardy question.  But it could be.  The subject here is instead, ultimately, a little-known footnote regarding Jewish history in Roma about which I knew nothing until last week -- even though echoes of it have literally sat before my eyes for 6 months.  With Rosh Hashana on the horizon, the discovery is timely.  The history is far broader than Jewish history; these are lessons about tolerance and freedom of thought.

The Background:

Campo de' Fiori is one of the best spots in Roma.  Yes, it's buzzing with tourists.  The morning throngs at the fruit and veggies stands are a mix of locals and tourists (perhaps more tourists than locals), and the evening crowds at the cafe/restaurants that line the square also include lots of tourists.  But it's fun.  For 2 months, I bought my morning fruit there almost every day.  And over the past 6 months, I've spent many evenings sitting there with friends and drinking aperol spritzes and/or vino.  Great place to just chill and people-watch.

Amidst the light-hearted action and frivolous fun, however, there is somber history.  In the center of Campo de' Fiori is this statute.  Although everyone who visits necessarily sees the statue, I suspect that most do not know what and who it represents.

The statue is of Giordano Bruno.  The inscription at the base of the statue says (in Italian), "To Bruno - from the century predicted by him - here where the fire burned."  Bruno's story is chilling.

Giordano Bruno:

Giordano Bruno was a Napoli-born Dominican monk who fled from his monastery in the mid-1580s and wandered around Italy, France, and England.  He was brilliant, reckless, charmingly charismatic, and insufferably argumentative.  During his stay in England, Bruno wrote a series of strange works that were critical of organized religion.  He wrote of the absurdity of organized Christianity -- both the militant Protestantism he encountered in England, and the Counter-Reformation Catholicism from which he'd fled in Italy.  He viewed both strains of Christianity as bigoted and narrow-minded.  But Bruno was not a melancholy spirit who brooded over his skepticism.  The universe as Bruno conceived it was a thrilling place that had the potential for delight and pleasure.

Bruno considered Copernicus a hero.  He championed Copernicus' theory that the earth was not the center of the universe.  And Bruno took it further.  Bruno asserted that there was no center to the universe at all, neither the earth nor the sun.  We are a mere speck in this universe, which is a fact that Bruno believed we should embrace with wonder and awe.  These were all scandalous and extremely unorthodox ideas.

Bruno's fate might have been different if he'd remained in England -- or in Frankfurt, Zurich, Prague or Wittenberg, the other places to which he wandered.  But Bruno decided to return to Italy in 1591.  He thought he could find safety in Venice and Padua.  He was wrong.  The Roman Inquisition had Bruno smack in its cross-hairs.  Bruno was arrested in Venice, extradited to Rome, and imprisoned in a papal cell near St. Peter's.  The Church charged him with heresy.  His interrogation and trial went on for 8 years -- even longer than most U.S. patent cases last, which is bizarre given that I don't think there were very broad discovery rights back then.  The Church threatened to torture Bruno, and he responded by challenging the Church's authority to dictate what was heresy and what was orthodox belief.  That was the final straw.

Bruno was burned at the stake in Campo de' Fiori.  Throughout his interrogation and torture -- and as his head was shaved and he was wheeled out on a donkey to the stake -- Bruno refused to repent.  Before he was burned alive, Bruno's tongue was bridled.  That means that a pin was driven into his cheek, through his tongue, and out through the other cheek.  Another pin then was driven through his lips, sealing them shut.  The pins formed a cross.

Bruno is one of the most high-profile victims of the Inquisition.  The statue at the center of Campo de' Fiori commemorates the torture he suffered, stands as a tribute to freedom of thought, and serves as a reminder that we must resist the darker human impulses towards absolutism and violence.  His brooding figure faces right towards the Vatican.

The Jewish Angle:

Although few in the crowds that buzz through Campo day-and-night know Bruno's story, they do see his figure.  Just behind Bruno and to his left lies another marker of dark history that, by contrast, I think almost nobody even sees.  I know I did not notice it for almost 6 months.  

Here is a plaque that lies on the ground right near Bruno's statue.  It is another tribute to a monstrous act of intolerance.

In 1553, the Roman Inquisitors confiscated every copy of the Talmud in Italy.  (The Talmud is a central text of Judaism.  The Talmud contains the opinions of thousands of rabbis on a variety of subjects, including law, ethics, philosophy, customs, history, theology, lore and many other topics.)  It took them 9 days to gather up all the copies.  The search culminated on Rosh Hashana in 1553: on September 9, 1553, the Talmud and many other Jewish books were burned in Campo de' Fiori.  This plaque, which was laid in 2011, commemorates the event.

I do not know exactly what the 2 quotes in Hebrew say.  One of them is from the Talmud, while the other is from an elegy written after copies of the Talmud and other Jewish texts were burned in a Paris marketplace in 1242.  The Italian text in the middle of the plaque translates to, "in memory of the burning of the Talmud that took place in this piazza."  

After the Inquisitors burned the Talmuds in 1553, one could not find a complete copy of the text anywhere in Italy for the remainder of the 16th century.  Today in Italy, scholars of Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and other backgrounds are free to read the book.