Corpus Hermeticum Category

“Religion” as a Modern Invention

Upon returning from my trip to England, I was delighted to find Amazon’s trademark smiling boxes waiting for me. I had ordered a number books before my trip, and among them was Brent Nongbri’s Before Religion: A History of a Modern Concept (2013). I first came across Nongbri’s book in a footnote in Peter Harrison’s […]

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Myths about Science and Religion: That Giordano Bruno was the First Martyr of Modern Science

In 1600, on the seventeenth of February, Giordano Bruno (1548-1600), an Italian Dominican friar, philosopher, mathematician and astronomer, was ceremoniously burned at the stake in Rome’s Flower Market by the Roman Inquisition. His end is brutal to modern sensibility but not exceptional in the early modern period. But Bruno’s death stands out, mentioned in passing […]

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