Giordano Bruno, Niccolò Copernico, Galileo Galileo, and other stories
In between the folds of history, other stories emerge.
On February 17, 1600, “that wicked Dominican friar from Nola was burnt alive [...] he said that he would die a martyr, gladly, and that his soul would ascend with that smoke into paradise”. Clement VIII, Aldobrandini, was the Pope.
Rome's opulent seventeenth century had begun.
_The Loggia dei Vini at Villa Borghese was built between 1609 and 1618 at the behest of Camillo Borghese, Pope Paul V since 1605.
In 1616 Niccolò Copernico's “De Revolutionibus” was included in the List of Forbidden Books.
On March 3, at the Congregation of the Holy Office convened in the presence of Pope Paul V, Cardinal Bellarmine read the report acknowledging that Galileo Galilei had agreed to abandon the thesis that “the sun is ... motionless, but the earth is mobile,” following an official admonition.
The fortunes of the Borghese family were intertwined with the sumptuous banquets held at Villa Borghese from the 17th to the 19th century. The famous reception at the Loggia dei vini, held on the occasion of the 1619 Japanese embassy to the court of Pope Paul V, was an example of international diplomacy.
The trial against Galileo began in Rome on April 12, 1633, and ended on June 22, 1633, with his condemnation for “vehement suspicion of heresy” and compulsory abjuration. The Pope was Urban VIII (Barberini).
_The Loggia dei vini hosted a banquet in 1772 in honor of Electress of Saxony and another in 1802 in honor of General Joachim Murat, husband of Caroline Bonaparte, on his way to Naples.
Villa Umberto I, the largest park in Rome at the time, opened to the public on July 12, 1903.
Amidst the folds of History, other stories emerge.
The context is half the work.