I saw this blog post about Giordano Bruno today:
Giordano Bruno, profession heretic [the link no longer works, but it was romecityapartments .com/blog/?p=753 and it was archived here]
Also from the same blog:
Campo dei Fiori and dear Friar Giordano Bruno [the link no longer works, but it was romecityapartments .com/blog/?p=149]
The posts don’t go over Bruno’s memory techniques, but just some of the history.
“Perhaps you pronounce this sentence against me with more fear than I have in hearing it”
Badass.
I always feel sad when I look back on history. The persecution that religions inflicted upon those of knowledge. The Pythagoreans murdering (or possibly stranding) Hippasus because he proved that the square root of 2 was an irrational number. The burning of the Library of Alexandria (I’ll never forgive the Church for this one) because it contained “pagan doctrines”. Persecution of Bruno and Galileo for contradicting the Bible. I’m still not quite sure why Copernicus wasn’t met with the same fate…
Then there’s Darwin who was terrified of publishing On the Origin of Species due to fear of upsetting the Church and his wife. Countless times knowledge has been destroyed because it contradicts what a group believes. It’s truly saddening.
Josh, here a GREAT video about Bruno
Thanks… I’ll check it out. 
The crux of the matter is this quotation from the first article:
“anyone who does not conform to an established attitude, doctrine, or principle”
Stalin would not let Einstein’s Theory of Relativity be taught, he called it ‘Jewish mathematics’, it was only when the Soviet Union fell behind in science they had to change. More recently Professor Simon Baron-Cohen wrote a book in the 1980’s about his research into the difference between male and female brains. Publication was delayed to the 1990’s because ‘polical correctness’ would not tolerate any views that suggested a difference between the sexes. Both these cases were the result of athiest institutions.
In my opinion, if new information challenges your beliefs, then your beliefs are not that secure to start with.
“The burning of the Library of Alexandria (I’ll never forgive the Church for this one) because it contained “pagan doctrines”.”
Although not a historian, as far as I know the cause of the fire is not known. Apparently the early fire fighters did not consider the library particulary important and tended other fires first. There is a suggestion that a Muslim leader instructed it to be burned down but there is little evidence to support this and I believe this theory is now largely discounted.
I’m not a fan of Simon Baron-Cohen’s research because I don’t agree with his theories about how autistic brains like mine work. He thinks we can’t empathize at all, whereas I believe we empathize in an atypical manner compared to people like him who aren’t autistic.
Men have physically larger brains and are more likely to have outlier IQ scores.
I am a fan of Giordano Bruno’s life and legacy. I learned about him from the 2014 series Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey, hosted by Neil Degrasse Tyson, with executive producer Seth MacFarlane (known for his animated comedy series Family Guy). I can empathize with Bruno’s philosophy about the universe, and he was indeed proven right centuries after his death. The show did not discuss his use of mnemonics - I learned that when I looked further into his life.
hmmm… neither link will load. I’ll try it again later.
I added a note about the broken links in the top post.
Hi there,
The burning of the Alexandrian library was NOT the so-called Church’s fault…it was the fault of particular so-called Christians in Alexandria.
We always have to qualify, sir or miss/ma’am, what we mean by such buzzwords as “Church” and “Them.”
The discussing gets murky very quickly if terms aren’t defined.
And YES it was sad…as a Greek I’m astonished that this would have happened by fellow Greeks and others on a Greek center of learning…very sad.
Stefos
I was taught that the Library of Alexandria was burned by early Christians because it contained pagan teachings. Said early Christians also disapproved of women in positions of power, and the last librarian of it was a woman, Hypatia of Alexandria.
Hi there,
There might have been some “early Christians” there but there needs to be clarification as to WHAT
they believed exactly, not just “Yes some early Christians.” Early Christians that I’ve researched wouldn’t torch
the Alexandrian library my friend as they were concerned about being actually like Jesus not just mouthing it.
There were a LOT of documentaries slamming certain Christians around Alexandria a number of years ago.
These are mostly revisionistic T.V. shows…Research the matter please.