The Statue of Giordano Bruno, created by Ettore Ferrari, was erected at Campo de' Fiori in Rome, Italy, in 1889.
The inscription on the basement recites:
A BRUNO - IL SECOLO DA LUI DIVINATO - QUI DOVE IL ROGO ARSE(English: To Bruno - the century predicted by him - here where the fire burned)
The sculptor, Ettore Ferrari, was the Grand master of the Grande Oriente d'Italia, the Masonic jurisdiction of Italy, who were strong supporters of the unification of Italy over the previous Papal rule of Rome.
On April 20, 1884, Pope Leo XIII published the encyclical Humanum Genus. As a response, the Freemasons decided to create a statue of the pantheist Giordano Bruno. The statue was unveiled on June 9, 1889, at the site where Bruno was burnt at the stake for heresy on February 17, 1600, and the radical politician Giovanni Bovio made a speech surrounded by about 100 Masonic flags. In October 1890, Pope Leo XIII warned Italy in his encyclical Ab Apostolici before the realization of Freemasonry and called for its dissolution, whose members he called anti-Christian and enemies.
Today, the square is the center of an annual commemoration by atheists and freethinkers.
A statue of a stretched human figure standing on its head designed by Alexander Polzin depicting Bruno's death at the stake was placed in Potsdamer Platz station in Berlin, Germany on March 2, 2008.
Famous quotes containing the words giordano bruno, statue of, statue and/or bruno:
“We delight in one knowable thing, which comprehends all that is knowable; in one apprehensible, which draws together all that can be apprehended; in a single being that includes all, above all in the one which is itself the all.”
—Giordano Bruno (1548–1600)
“The Statue of Liberty is meant to be shorthand for a country so unlike its parts that a trip from California to Indiana should require a passport.”
—Anna Quindlen (b. 1952)
“The mind, in short, works on the data it receives very much as a sculptor works on his block of stone. In a sense the statue stood there from eternity. But there were a thousand different ones beside it, and the sculptor alone is to thank for having extricated this one from the rest.”
—William James (1842–1910)
“The universe is then one, infinite, immobile.... It is not capable of comprehension and therefore is endless and limitless, and to that extent infinite and indeterminable, and consequently immobile.”
—Giordano Bruno (1548–1600)