Giordano
Most men follow their destiny; a few invent it.
Historical drama following
the extraordinary life of Giordano Bruno; a unique man with a superlative mind that brought him face to face with the murderous Catholic Inquisition... His days ended in flames at the stake, in Rome, February 17, 1600.
Giordano
Synopsis
Giordano Bruno died in Rome, burnt at the stake, at the hands of the Inquisition, in the winter of 1600. He was 52.
As dramatic as were his trial for heresy before the supreme Vatican authorities and his ghastly execution, these events were but the final episodes in a life replete with high drama.
Born with a brilliant, probing mind, in a time when free thinking equated with heresy, Bruno was destined to live the life of an errant philosophical genius. As a young monk, in a Neapolitan monastery, he first confronted the deadly intransigence of Catholic beliefs, when he was denounced by a brother monk, for reading “forbidden” books. To save his young life, he fled Naples and never looked back.
Bruno’s extraordinary life is mostly dramatized in this film through his passionate relationships to Sisto Lucca, his mentor and master from his youth days in their Dominican monastery, and to the beautiful Venetian noble, Morgana Morosini, daughter of the Doge of powerful Venice, and the love of his life.
During his two decades in exile, Giordano revolutionized philosophical thought, knew carnal love, did violence, acquired celebrity, made enemies, nurtured the admiration of kings and queens, inspired at once awe and ridicule, was acclaimed and banished, loved and despised. The one constant in his errant life was controversy; controversy shadowed him where ever he went. And in a perverse way, he thrived in it. Piling dangerous debate upon reckless disregard for religious authority, pontifical and otherwise.
He was twice excommunicated, and finally denounced to the Italian Inquisition by a disgruntled, former pupil. During the film, he is brought to trial by the Inquisition, in Venice. When it becomes apparent that he will defeat his accusers through brilliant rhetoric, Pope Clement VIII steps in and forces Venice to deport him to Rome. There he is retried and does battle with The Church during seven more long years, becoming a figure of cult. He finally choses to face the flames, rather than recant his judged heretic beliefs.
Bruno and Lucca originally shared the same philosophical convictions, but while Giordano threw himself into the philosophical adventure, drawing fire for defending Copernican theory and knocking at the door of the scientific, modern world, Lucca, a ruthless, devious man with pontifical ambitions, renounces their friendship, and colludes with Rome to bring him down.
After years of relentless persecution, Lucca and Bruno confront each other for the last time, before the tribunal of the Inquisition. Bruno’s dialectic prowess reduces Lucca’s arguments to pitiful mumbling, but Bruno’s fate is finally sealed when he refuses to recant his beliefs.
Watching his friend and protégé burn at the stake, Lucca loses his mind.
The men that voted to burn Bruno at the stake -
Pope Clement VIII and two of 6 judges, Cadinal Robert Ballarmine and Giroglamo Agucchi
