ABSTRACT
This chapter returns to following the fate of the Capuchin friar Celestino da Verona, Bruno’s bitter accuser, who after his testimony given in Venice was in all likelihood exiled to a monastery of his Order within the borders of the Papal States. The friar returned to the scene of the Bruno trial at its crucial moment, when Bruno had set in motion his “strategy of the defense briefs,” which is interpreted in this book not only as a dilatory tactic but also as the heart of the political project that Bruno constructed around his trial. The chapter suggests that Celestino’s appearance in the Roman prisons where he encountered Giordano Bruno – again – was not a coincidence, but the result of the will of some part of the curia and the Holy Office, embodied in the faction led by the cardinal-inquisitor Giulio Antonio Santori, to extort an abjuration from Bruno. They knew that the trial had weak foundations, and that it was necessary to reach a conclusion as quickly and peacefully as possible.
