“Very Reverend Father and Most-to-be-observed Sir: “I, Gioanni Mocenigo, son of the Clarissimo Messer Marcoantonio, compelled by my conscience and ordered by my confessor, denounce to Your Very Reverend Paternity Giordano Bruno of Nola, whom I have heard say on various occasions when he was conversing with me in my own house, that Catholics do but blaspheme when they hold the Bread to be transubstantiated into the Flesh; that he is against the Mass; that no religion satisfies him; that Christ was a charlatan who, since he resorted to tricks to fool people, might well enough have foreseen that he would die a criminal’s death; that there is no distinction of Persons in God; ... that the world is eternal and that there are an infinite number of worlds, and that God is continually making an infinity of them because He wants as many as He can have; that Christ performed specious miracles; that he was a magician and the apostles were magicians too.”... The letter runs on in breathless denunciation, but already one begins to make out the image of Bruno reflected in the average mind of his time. The limited intelligence of Mocenigo has honestly misunderstood some of Bruno’s utterances, his malice has distorted others; but the perversity of the whole is not due to these faults of detail. Lost in this jumble of stock heresies lies hidden a great idea, the greatest perhaps that has ever been contributed by a single mind to the cause of our science. “And he says the world is eternal and that there are an infinity of worlds.” This sentence has brought the old world to an end, has shattered the heavens under which Christendom was then living, yet it falls on the ear of its time with no more meaning or portent than a doubt respecting the doctrine of transubstantiation or the authenticity of miracles. Bruno, throughout the course of his driven life and up to the moment of his tragic death, knew most forms of martyrdom. He bore none of these meekly, for his was a lusty soul that did not love to suffer. But neither the hatred nor the cruelty of his world seems to have hurt him so to the quick as did its stupidity. Doubt him and hate if you will; but value him you must! He was master of a great idea and unacquainted with modesty.