Silencing of a freethinker
QUESTION
Is it a myth that Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake in defence of science?
Many consider the Italian Dominican friar Giordano Bruno (1548-1600) to be a martyr to science. He supported the Copernican view of the solar system, envisaging an infinite universe of worlds.
His cosmology anticipated modern physics and astronomy, but didn’t accord with the views of the 16th-century Church. He was burned at the stake for his beliefs, seven years after being arrested and tortured by the Roman Inquisition.
For his execution, he was taken to Rome’s Campo de’ Fiori on a mule and, according to witnesses, upon mounting the pyre, a crucifix was held up to his face. He turned away angrily — he was unable to speak because an iron spike had been driven through his tongue.
after he was burned alive, his remains were dumped in the Tiber.
a bronze figure of Bruno stands at the centre of Campo de’ Fiori and on the anniversary of his death, people cover it with flowers.
But there are those who are sceptical about Bruno’s credentials as a scientist and consider him primarily a philosopher.
They say his arguments don’t exhibit any understanding of scientific reasoning or purpose. Rather, they were an allegorical description of a metaphysical relationship between Man and God, as well as between Catholic and Protestant.
He saw nature as the signature of God and believed this could best be perceived through the Copernican theory of the Sun being at the centre of our solar system.
It can be argued that Bruno wasn’t killed in defence of science, but in defence of free-thinking. Emilie Lamplough, Trowbridge, Wilts.
QUESTION
What tributaries of the Thames have been built over or blocked up?
Many tributaries of the Thames in London have disappeared underground, having long since been built over.
However, they still exist in culverts and pipes. Clues to their presence are visible to those in the know, whether a dip in Farringdon Road, a steel pipe in the roof of Sloane Square Tube station, a large pipe over Tufnell Park overland railway lines or the sound of rushing water under a manhole cover outside a pub in Lyme Street.
The Victorians converted many of these subterranean rivers into sewers.
The most famous of these hidden rivers is the Fleet, which has its source on Hampstead Heath, where it was dammed to form Highgate and Hampstead ponds.
Leaving Hampstead, the river flows under Tufnell Park, its two branches eventually meeting at Kentish Town.
It then flows down Ray Street to Saffron Hill, and to Holborn Viaduct, Ludgate Circus and Blackfriars Bridge, where 2.5 ton iron flaps hold it back.
There are at least 20 other underground tributaries, including the River Peck, source of the name Peckham.
C. Ellis, Northampton.
QUESTION
From where does the word ‘shambles’ come? SHaMBLeS has come to mean a scene of total chaos or an event organised in an amateur way.
We also refer to someone who shuffles and walks unsteadily as having a shambling gait. Both meanings have their origins in medieval Britain.
Medieval town streets were very busy places. They would be thronged with traders and shoppers; horses with affluent riders, carrying goods on their backs or pulling wooden carts laden with goods; and farm animals being driven to market or slaughter.
People and goods could be knocked over and the animals would leave piles of dung in the streets.
It was a townsperson’s legal right to be able to keep a pig, and often these were left to roam at will.
Medieval shops were open-fronted, with wooden flaps that would be pulled down and used as a counter to display their goods. Traders selling the same goods, such as bakers, butchers and blacksmiths, sometimes congregated together in the same street, leading to names such as Baker Street in London.
There are several streets known as The Shambles, the most well-known being in york and Bradford-on-avon.
These were where medieval butchers operated, with the name originating from the mayhem this caused in the streets.
animals would be slaughtered in the shop, in a yard behind or even on the street itself. The offal would be thrown on the side of the street or into a nearby river.
Historical researchers have suggested that shambles referred to the trestlestyle tables on which the meat was butchered after slaughter.
It is also thought that this is where the term a ‘shambling gait’ originated, as the wooden counters or butchering slabs were often at odd angles, as a consequence of being held up by a couple of wooden trestles or posts on the muddy, well-trodden street.
Lyn Pask, Blackwood, Gwent.