The philosopher Ramus, for traversing some of Aristotle’s dicta, was cited as an enemy of religion, a disturber of the public peace, and a corruptor of the minds of youth. Copernicus (1473–1543) waited thirty years before he dared make public his discovery that the sun was the centre of our universe. Happily he died a few hours after the publication of his book, hence this “upstart astrologer,” this “fool who wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy” these were Luther’s terms escaped the deathly clutch of the Inquisition.

For espousing the heresy of Copernicus, Giordano Bruno was burned in 1600. On hearing his doom, he uttered the memorable words, “You have greater fear in pronouncing this sentence than I have in receiving it.” Vanini (1585–1619) on being led forth from his prison to the hurdle for execution exclaimed: “Let us go, let us go joyfully to die as becomes a philosopher.” Before being burned, his tongue was torn out. In the words of an unsympathising onlooker “Vanini was ordered to put forth his sacrilegious tongue for the knife. He refused: it was necessary to employ pincers to draw it forth, and when the execution’s instrument seized and cut it off, never was heard a more horrible cry. One might have thought that he heard the bellowing of an ox which was being slaughtered.” For declaring that the earth revolved, Galileo was martyred in 1642. “Are these then my judges?” he exclaimed, on retiring from the Inquisitors whose ignorance astonished him. The priest who perused the posthumous manuscripts of this great philosopher, destroyed such as in his judgment were not fit to be known to the world.

Descartes (1596–1650) was horribly persecuted in Holland. He was accused of Atheism and narrowly escaped being burned on an eminence favourably situated for observation by the Seven Provinces.

The fate of one Bartholomew Hector, a poor glow-worm, was probably typical of a thousand others equally grim. Hector was a stationer and was burned for some unknown reason in 1555. He “died with admirable constancy, and edified the assistants and standers-by in such manner that he drew tears from their eyes.”

Telesius Bernardino (1509–1588). The first two books of his major work, De Natura Juxta Propria Principia [On Nature According to Its Own Principles], were published in 1565, and the complete edition of nine books appeared in 1586. Although he had been encouraged in his writings by contemporary Roman Catholic popes, the above work and two of his minor works remained on the Roman Catholic Church Index of Forbidden Books from 1596 until 1900. Bacon has commended him as “the best of the novelists.”