Bruno executed

Giordano Bruno, the Dominican friar turned philosopher of an infinite universe of countless worlds, is burned in the Campo de' Fiori at Rome on 17 February 1600 after eight years in the Inquisition's prisons. His statue on the spot, raised by freethinkers in 1889, makes him the martyrology's central figure.

Tagged: Freethought Secular and Non-Theistic

The Event

Date

1600 (exact)

Era

Persecution and Print; Standard periodization of secular and non-religious history

Location

Rome; today Italy

Traditions

Secular

Streams

Freethought

Key figures

Giordano Bruno

Primary Sources

• The tradition's own record of the event.

Secondary Sources

• Gottlieb, Anthony. The Dream of Enlightenment: The Rise of Modern Philosophy. New York: Liveright, 2016.
• Jacoby, Susan. Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2004.
• Taylor, Charles. A Secular Age. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007.
• Zuckerman, Phil, ed. Atheism and Secularity. Santa Barbara: Praeger, 2010.

Provenance: HIST-1305; confidence 0.95; accessed 2026-10-28.

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