To Rome then he went and here he was lost, so far as documentary records go, for a period of six years. How to explain this fact and this apparent clemency has bothered the biographers not a little. Whether this time was spent in an examination of his voluminous writings, which would seem incredible, or whether the Dominicans labored so long to procure his more absolute recantation in order to prevent scandal in and reflection on their order, or whether Pope Clement himself regarded kindly--in some degree-- the great scholar who was so anxious to dedicate to him a _magnum opus_;--to these queries history answereth not. The Dominicans pretended--years later--to doubt if he ever had been put to death, or whether he had ever really belonged to their order. These statements are too characteristic to provoke more than a sad smile. Finally matters were hastened to an end by the efforts of Fathers Commisario and Bellarmino; the latter being the zealous bigot who decided that Copernicanism was a heresy, who later laid the indictment against Galileo. Through their machinations Bruno was, in February, 1599, decreed on eight counts as a dangerous heretic, who might still admit his heresies, and he was to be granted forty days in which to recant and repent. But this period was stretched out some ten months, until December, when it was reported that Bruno refused to recant, having nothing to take back. Among the Tribunal at this time was San Severino, fanatical, bitter because of his failure to secure the papacy, who had declared that St. Bartholomew's was "a glorious day, a day of joy for Catholics." It was decided that the high officers of the Dominicans should make one last effort to compel or coax Bruno to abjure. This he declined to do, Whereupon, January 20th, 1600, it was decreed that "further measures be proceeded to, _servatis servandis_, that sentence be passed, and that the said Friar Giordano be handed over to the secular authority." A few days later Bruno was degraded, excommunicated and handed over to the Governor of Rome, with the usual hypocritical recommendation to "mercy," and that he be punished "without effusion of blood," which meant of course burning at the stake. Bruno's reply to his judges deserves to be printed in letters of gold whenever it can be recorded;--"_Greater perhaps is your fear in pronouncing my sentence than mine in hearing it._" Let us spare ourselves a too minute account of his execution. Some reports are to the effect that his tongue was tied, because he refused to listen to the exhortations of those members of the Company of St. John the Beheaded, better known as the Brothers of the Misericordia, who accompanied the condemned to the scaffold or the stake, resorting to the most cruel methods in order to provoke at least some appearance of recantation or repentance during the last moments of life.