The prisoner scenario: a though experiment

[Jorge_Stolfi]

Giordano Bruno (1600) is a famous case, but again this is in 1600.

Indeed the attitude of the Church changed a lot in that mean time because of the Protestant schism.  But, even in the post-Reform times, the Church was sensitive mostly to challenges to its authority. 

Giordano Bruno was popular among European royalty and was insinuating that the Pope should stay away from interfering in politics, succession, etc.  Savonarola was executed only after he point blank refused to obey the Pope's orders.  Galileo was persecuted by the Church mainly because he offended the astronomers at the Vatican Observatory, insinuating that they were idiots. (And at his trial the court pointed the printer's mark on one of his books and asked whether it was somehow connected to Giordano Bruno.)

One of Giordano Bruno's arguments was something like this.  It was known that the planets were worlds like the Earth, and "therefore" should be inhabited -- because God would not have wasted them by leaving them barren.  But then Jesus must have come to those planets too, to save those people.  And therefore on each planet there must be a true Christian Church.  And therefore a legitimate Pope.  Thus the Pope in Rome was not meant to be the unique Pope...

And another was something like this.  If you put a candle close to a globe, it will illuminate only a small circle on it.  As you move the candle away, the illuminated area grows; until, when the candle is very far away, the entire globe is illuminated. [Clearly he was not as good in Geometry as in Rhetoric... But his noble audience must not have been much better.] "Therefore", if the Pope wants to illuminate the whole world, he should stay as far away from it as possible... 

All the best, --stolfi