Definitions

Heretics Burnt at the Stake

1.) Mr. Michael Servetus (the Spanish theologian and physician known for his discovery of the pulmonary circulation of blood) had unsuspectingly answered ‘do you doubt it’ to Mr. John Calvin’s leading question ‘then the Devil also must be God, substantially’ during the Protestant trial for his heresy. This opinion regarding the divine/ diabolical dichotomy was to cost him his life ... although Mr. John Calvin pressed for his beheading, he was burned alive by Calvinists on 27 October 1553.

Mr. Giordano Bruno’s proposal of a single infinite universe (published in the slender Italian book ‘On the Infinite Universe and Worlds’) was to be most fatal proposition for him to make, in the judgement of the Papal Tribunal, and upon the order of Pope Clement VII he was burned alive (with his tongue in a gag) on February 17, 1600.