Most of you are probably aware of the famous statue of Giordano Bruno in Rome. What almost none of you probably know is its origins, and by learning its origins you can get a better picture of his place in history. The statue is explicitely Masonic. ๐งต
The average tourist or local who passes by the statue in Campo de Fiori, would probably assume its dedicated to โscienceโ or โfree thoughtโ or some other meaningless modern platitude. This would be understandable, as pop culture has tried to frame him as a martyr of science.
This could not be further from the truth. Bruno wasnโt a modern man. He was a man of the far past. A student of hermeticism. He had more in common with an adept of an Egyptian mystery school than he did with a modern scientist.
But im not getting into all that now. We are no discussing bruno, but how his legacy is appropriated. Lets discuss the statue. It was not some benign and apolitical monument marking the place of his immolation. It was inherently political, anti catholic and masonic.
In 1884 Pope Leo XIII published the encyclical Humanum genus. An encyclical primarily condemning Freemasonry. This was by no means the first Papal encyclical condemning the craft. A dozen or so had been published by numerous popes in the past century. Leo says:
The Italian freemasons and adjacent societies had done everything they could in the years before to destroy the church, including the grand masonic project of Italian unification that culminated in 1870, stripping the Pope of his holding in central Italy.
In direct response to the encyclical, the Italian masons commissioned this statue, as an explicitly anti papal monument. It is why the sides of the statue are decorated with medallions of the faces of individuals who conflicted with the Holy See, including Martin Luther
The sculptor of the statue, Ettore Ferrari, would go on to become Grandmaster of the Grand orient of Italy, the main masonic body of the Italian state at the time.
He was radically anticlerical even for masonic standards at the time
He was radically anticlerical even for masonic standards at the time
The unveiling of the statue was commemorated with a speech by the politician Giovanni Bovio, a 33rd degree mason of the Scottish rite, surrounded by hundreds of masonic flags. The event sparked fears of an atheistic mob.
Pope Leo XIII had this to say about the statue.
You must understand a simple fact. The supposedly secular symbols that dominate are streets and squares, which have been sanitized and their meanings forgotten by an apathetic public, quite frequently conceal powerful meaning.
When you can read the symbols of a street, you can quite often piece together things completely occluded to the public eye. Sometimes the streets speak their secrets, you must simply be fluent in their language.
For example: the old location of the Grand masonic councils headquarters is in the same piazza as the Jesuits mother church. the masonic symbol staring at the facade of the church which houses the body of the Jesuits founder. no great effort has gone into concealing this
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