Burning People For Their Own Sake Poem by Paul Hartal

On a February day in the year 1600
Giordano Bruno was burnt at the stake
at the Campo de Fiori of Rome.
An Italian Dominican friar, Bruno was
also a philosopher, cosmologist and poet.
His "crime" was, among other things,
that he believed in an infinite universe
devoid of a defined center,
and that distant stars were surrounded by planets
where different life forms could exist.

However, in the eyes of the Catholic establishment,
the friar was a heretic and the Inquisition
sentenced him to death for his apostasy.

The medieval agency of the Inquisition
was set up by the Catholic Church
in order to save the heretics' soul
from the sufferings of Hell.
Thus, ironically, the aim
of the "autos-da-fe" was "helping" the heretics
to go to the Purgatory: For the inquisitors
burning people at the stake was a "benevolent" act,
as they held the belief that the earthly fire
saved their victims from hell fire.
The flames of autos de fe consumed the lives of
thousands of innocent people.