ABSTRACT
This chapter has the aim of reconstructing what took place in the Venetian prisons in which Giordano Bruno was confined between 1592 and early 1593. These events can help us to understand what really happened over the course of that long trial. This is because the fundamental turning point of the trial – which permitted the actual prosecution and final sentencing – was brought about by the testimony of a fellow prisoner with Bruno, the Capuchin friar Celestino da Verona. Without this testimony the accusations against the philosopher could not have taken shape and served as the basis for developing the trial. The evidence requires careful consideration of the Capuchin friar’s background, and more broadly, the nature of his relationship with the Roman Curia, the Inquisition, and the Capuchin Order in the years during which the Bruno trial unfolded. Finally, the chapter tries to redraw the Venetian “topography” of the first phase of the trial, in order to correct some traditional beliefs which I consider to be mistaken, and to show how understanding this story must also involve knowledge of the physical locations of the accused’s imprisonment of the and the setting of the trial.
