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Giovanni Bruno- Heretic or Scientist
Born Filippo Bruno in Nola in the Kingdom of Naples in 1548. A precocious student, Bruno eventually found himself in the regional capital as a Dominican friar. The Dominicans had the best university, but were very orthodox and unimaginative. This did not sit well with Bruno, who was a very innovative thinker as well as being extremely cantankerous. He often called his fellow friars “asses”. In his cell at San Domenico Maggiore, he stripped imaged of the Virgin of the walls saying it was idolatry. This put him on his superior’s bad list as a possible Protestant. Then he brilliantly defended the Arian heresy to a professor. Bruno’s name was…
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Christina of Sweden
All the signs pointed to a son, and a son was what was needed. Gustav II Adolf and Maria Eleonora of Brandonburg had already had two daughters, a stillborn girl in 1620 and then the first princess Christina, who was born in 1623 and died the next year. Sweden needed a son. The queen went into labor and the child was born on December 8, 1626 in the midst of a rare astrological conjunction. The child was born “hairy” and screamed with a “with a strong, hoarse voice”. They were convinced it was a boy, but they were wrong. There was deep embarrassment when the midwives had to correct their…
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Dante Alighieri- Divine Literary Retribution
Dante Alighieri was born in 1265 in Florence, Italy. At that time, Florence was not part of a princely kingdom, but run as a commune, or run by municipal councils. These harken back to their republican past and the members of the council call themselves consuls. Despite this, this was a time of great upheaval, and the Alighieri family was intimately involved in the internal turmoil. During this time, two rival factions were jockeying for power in Florence- the Guelphs and the Ghibellines. The Guelphs supported the Pope and the Ghibellines supported the Holy Roman Emperor. In this background, Dante grew up, a Guelph on his father’s side and a…
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Tycho Brahe- Death by Manners
He was born Tyge Ottesen Brahe on December 14, 1546 in Skane, Denmark, now Sweden, to parents from the Danish nobility. When he was two, his uncle, Jørgen Thygesen Brahe, took him from his parents and raised him to adulthood. Brahe later wrote “without the knowledge of my parents [he] took me away with him while I was in my earliest youth to become a scholar”. Perhaps this was a fostering arrangement, however, it was strange that his parents made no move to get back their young son. One story says that the Brahe’s had promised a son to Jørgen Thygesen Brahe to raise and had not kept their promise,…
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Michelangelo and de’ Medici
Born to a family of minor nobility in Florence, Italy in 1475, Michelangelo Buonarroti became one of the world’s most famous artists. However, his path to artistic greatness was not smooth. His father sent him to study with an eminent Humanist, but Michelangelo copied the paintings on the walls of the church instead. At 13, he became an apprentice of painter Domenico Ghirlandiao. Unusual for the time, Ghirlandiao paid the Buonarroti family for the apprenticeship not the other way around. This had to be due to the burgeoning talent of young Michelangelo. When Lorenzo de’ Medici requested two of Ghirlandiao’s most promising students, Michelangelo was sent to study at the…
