Giordano Bruno: Philosopher and Heretic

Giordano Bruno (1548–1600) is one of the great figures of early modern Europe, and one of the least understood. Ingrid D. Rowland's biography establishes him once and for all as a peer of Erasmus, Shakespeare, and Galileo—a thinker whose vision of the world prefigures ours. Writing with great verve and erudition, Rowland traces Bruno's wanderings through a sixteenth-century Europe where every certainty of religion and philosophy has been called into question, and reveals how he valiantly defended his ideas to the very end, when he was burned at the stake as a heretic on Rome's Campo de' Fiori.

Rowland's biography of Giordano Bruno has been praised by various literary critics for its compelling and insightful portrayal of this complex historical figure. John Leonard of Harper's describes it as "a loving and thoughtful account of [Bruno's] life and thought, satires and sonnets, dialogues and lesson plans, vagabond days and star-spangled nights," and states that Rowland "has her reasons for preferring Bruno to Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler, even Galileo and Leonardo, and they're good ones."

Joan Acocella of The New Yorker commends Rowland's ability to capture the "explosiveness of the period" and her "admiration of Bruno for participating in it—indeed, dying for it—that is the central and most cherishable quality of the biography." Anthony Grafton of The New York Review of Books praises Rowland's skill in "concentrating as much on Bruno's thought as on his life," and notes that "His restless mind, as she makes clear, not only explored but transformed the heavens."

The New York Times Book Review's Anthony Gottlieb describes Bruno as "an unclassifiable mixture of foul-mouthed Neapolitan mountebank, loquacious poet, religious reformer, scholastic philosopher, and slightly wacky astronomer," a characterization that highlights the complexity and multifaceted nature of this remarkable thinker.

Peter N. Miller of The New Republic calls Rowland's biography "a marvelous feat of scholarship" and "intellectual biography at its best," while Paula Findlen of The Nation suggests that it serves as an "excellent starting point for anyone who wants to rediscover the historical figure concealed beneath the cowl on Campo de' Fiori."

These glowing reviews underscore the significance of Giordano Bruno's life and thought, and the importance of Ingrid D. Rowland's comprehensive and insightful biography in illuminating this complex and often misunderstood figure of early modern Europe.

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