Burning People For Their Own Sake

On a February day in the year 1600 Giordano Bruno was burnt at the stake at the Campo de Fiori of Rome. An Italian Dominican friar, Bruno was also a philosopher, cosmologist and poet. His "crime" was, among other things, that he believed in an infinite universe devoid of a defined center, and that distant stars were surrounded by planets where different life forms could exist. However, in the eyes of the Catholic establishment, the friar was a heretic and the Inquisition sentenced him to death for his apostasy. The medieval agency of the Inquisition was set up by the Catholic Church in order to save the heretics' soul from the sufferings of Hell. Thus, ironically, the aim of the "autos-da-fe" was "helping" the heretics to go to the Purgatory: For the inquisitors burning people at the stake was a "benevolent" act, as they held the belief that the earthly fire saved their victims from hell fire. The flames of autos de fe consumed the lives of thousands of innocent people.