A martyr for science and free thought, Giordano Bruno was murdered by the Church for his scientific beliefs (which turned out to be fairly accurate).
Born in 1548 in the Kingdom of Naples, the well educated Giordano Bruno grew up to became an Italian Dominican friar.
He studied philosophy, mathematics, and Hermetic occultism. He was also a poet, but he got in trouble for being a cosmological theorist.
Bruno proposed the wild idea that the distant stars in the sky were other suns and that these far off suns had their own planets. This was during the time when the majority of people believed that the Earth was the center of the universe. It’s believed that Bruno was the first to propose this idea.
His most controversial belief, however, that that there was other life on these planets. According to the Church, this was not possible as humans are created in God’s image and are God’s greatest creation.
His ideas threatened the Church and in 1593 he was tried for heresy.
Bruno did not believe in eternal damnation nor did he believe in the divinity of Christ, the virginity of Mary, and the Trinity. He refused to give up his personal beliefs and recant his teachings.
He was, of course, found guilty and branded a heretic.
He was sentenced to death and on February 17,1600 he was taken to the Roman market square. He was stripped of his clothes, gagged, hung upside down, burned at the stake. His ashes were then thrown into the Tiber river.
Bruno’s life and death gained interest in the 19th and 20th centuries as he was viewed as a martyr for science.
Now, in the 21st century, he is being looked at once again by ufologists who believe that Bruno gained his knowledge of the universe from an unearthly source.
