Giordano Bruno: Mystic, Heretic, Spy
Not Just the Tudors
History Hit
4.8 • 3K Ratings
🗓️ 20 February 2025
⏱️ 42 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake 425 years ago this month. His crime? Radical thinking which clashed with the ideas of the Roman Catholic church. But his extraordinarily colourful life, ideas and tragic fate continue to resonate in our modern understanding of the universe and the ongoing tension between scientific inquiry and religious authority.
Professor Suzannah Lipscomb is joined by best-selling author S.J. Parris - pen-name for journalist Stephanie Merritt - who has written a series of novels with Bruno as the main protagonist. Together they delve into the life of a revolutionary and engaging character who took on the church in the 16th century and paid the ultimate price.
Presented by Professor Suzannah Lipscomb. The researcher is Alice Smith, audio editor is Amy Haddow and the producer is Rob Weinberg. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.
Theme music from All3Media. Other music courtesy of Epidemic Sounds.
Not Just the Tudors is a History Hit podcast.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb. |
| 0:02.4 | If you'd like not just the Tudors ad-free to get early access and bonus episodes, |
| 0:08.4 | sign up to History Hit. |
| 0:09.9 | With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, |
| 0:15.2 | including my own, on Catherine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn, Brilliant Rivals. |
| 0:19.3 | And enjoy a new release every week. |
| 0:22.0 | Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. |
| 0:27.6 | Hello, I'm Professor Susanna Lipscomb and welcome to not just the Tudors from History Hit, |
| 0:33.3 | the podcast in which we explore everything from Anne Berlin to the Aztecs, |
| 0:37.7 | from Holbein to the Huguenots, from Shakespeare to Samarise. |
| 0:43.1 | Relieved by regular doses of murder, espionage and witchcraft. |
| 0:47.6 | Not in other words just the Tudors, but most definitely also the Tudors. |
| 1:01.1 | Rome. |
| 1:04.0 | Ash Wednesday, the 17th of February 1600. |
| 1:09.0 | The early morning light casts a strange glow over the Campo de Fiore. |
| 1:12.7 | As the city stirs to life, an unusual procession makes its way through the cobbled streets. In the heart of the throng, riding on a mule, is a man whose |
| 1:18.5 | ideas have shaken the very foundations of religious thought. This is Giordano Bruno, philosopher, |
| 1:24.7 | cosmologist, and now condemned heretic. |
| 1:28.8 | Stripped naked and gagged with the leather bridle to silence his voice, |
| 1:32.4 | Bruno is led to the centre of the square. |
| 1:34.8 | The crowd looks on intense anticipation as he's bound to a stake |
| 1:38.7 | atop a pyre of wood, charcoal and pitch. |
... |
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