[Footnote 118:  ’Londinam perfectus, libellum istic edit de Bestia triumphante, h.e. de Papa. quem vestri honoris causa bestiam appellare solent.’]

He then enumerates Bruno’s heterodox opinions, which had been recited in the public condemnation pronounced on the heresiarch.  ’Horrible and most utterly absurd are the views he entertained, as, for example, that there are innumerable worlds; that the soul migrates from body to body, yea into another world, and that one soul can inform two bodies; that magic is good and lawful; that the Holy Spirit is nothing but the Soul of the World, which Moses meant when he wrote that it brooded on the waters; that the world has existed from eternity; that Moses wrought his miracles by magic, being more versed therein than the Egyptians, and that he composed his own laws; that the Holy Scriptures are a dream, and that the devils will be saved; that only the Jews descend from Adam and Eve, the rest of men from that pair whom God created earlier; that Christ is not God, but that he was an eminent magician who deluded mankind, and was therefore rightly hanged, not crucified; that the prophets and Apostles were men of naught, magicians, and for the most part hanged:  in short, without detailing all the monstrosities in which his books abound, and which he maintained in conversation, it may be summed up in one word that he defended every error that has been advanced by pagan philosophers or by heretics of earlier and present times.’  Accepting this list as tolerably faithful to the terms of Bruno’s sentence, heard by Scioppius in the hall of Minerva, we can see how Mocenigo’s accusation had been verified by reference to his published works.  The De Monade and De Triplici contain enough heterodoxy to substantiate each point.

On February 9, Bruno was brought before the Holy Office at S. Maria sopra Minerva.  In the presence of assembled Cardinals, theologians, and civil magistrates, his heresies were first recited.  Then he was excommunicated, and degraded from his priestly and monastic offices.  Lastly, he was handed over to the secular arm, ’to be punished with all clemency and without effusion of blood.’  This meant in plain language to be burned alive.  Thereupon Bruno uttered the memorable and monumental words:  ’Peradventure ye pronounce this sentence on me with a greater fear than I receive it.’  They were the last words he spoke in public.  He was removed to the prisons of the State, where he remained eight days, in order that he might have time to repent.  But he continued obdurate.  Being an apostate priest and a relapsed heretic, he could hope for no remission of his sentence.  Therefore, on February 17, he marched to a certain and horrible death.  The stake was built up on the Campo di Fiora.  Just before the wood was set on fire, they offered him the crucifix.[119] He turned his face away from it in stern disdain.  It was not Christ but his own soul, wherein he believed the Diety resided, that sustained Bruno at the supreme moment.