Terrence Howard on history: what the evidence says · JRE #2152
SUBJECT: HISTORY
Not a true/false call. Every claim is logged with its sources; read the exhibits below.
And they still killed him. They hung him upside down. In 1600, the catholic church, 1599, hung him upside down in a stake and set him on fire because he refused to recant
What the evidence says 01 / RECORD
Giordano Bruno, an Italian philosopher tried by the Roman Inquisition for heresy, was executed on 17 February 1600. The events Howard places in 1599 were not the execution itself: the Inquisition's Holy Office approved its list of heretical charges on 14 January 1599, and Bruno gave his final refusal to recant on 21 December 1599, with the burning following weeks later in February 1600. Documentary accounts of the execution describe Bruno being led to the Campo de' Fiori in Rome, stripped, tied upright to a stake with a metal plate clamped over his tongue, and burned alive; no scholarly account describes him being hanged upside down before or during the burning. The claim that he was hung upside down is not supported by the documentary record. The underlying facts that Bruno was burned at the stake by order of the Catholic Church for refusing to recant heretical beliefs are accurate, but the specific detail of being hanged upside down, and the framing of 1599 as the execution date, are false or misleading.