The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast

The itinerant Neoplatonic scholar Giordano Bruno (1548–1600), one of the most fascinating figures of the Renaissance, was burned at the stake for heresy by the Inquisition in Rome on Ash Wednesday in 1600. The primary evidence against him was the book Spaccio de la bestia trionfante, a daring indictment of the church that abounded in references to classical Greek mythology, Egyptian religion (especially the worship of Isis), Hermeticism, magic, and astrology.
The “Triumphant Beast” signifies the reign of multifarious vices. Cast in the form of allegorical dialogues, Bruno’s work presents the deliberations of the Greek gods who have assembled to banish from the heavens the constellations that remind them of their evil deeds. The crisis facing Jove, the aging father of the gods, is symbolic of the crisis in a Renaissance world profoundly disturbed by new religious, philosophical, and scientific ideas.

The author of more than sixty works on mathematics, science, ethics, philosophy, metaphysics, the art of memory, and esoteric mysticism, Bruno had a profound impact on Western thought.