Giordano Bruno's De la causa, principio et uno

De la causa, principio et uno is Giordano Bruno’s second manuscript in italian. Printed in 1584, it is divided into five dialogues that Giordano Bruno dedicates to Michel de Castelnau, the French ambassador. The content of the manuscript is well known because of its effect. On 20 January 1600, the Congregation, with Pope Clement VIII presiding, ordered to place the De la causa, principio et uno and other manuscripts on the Index of Prohibited Books. Giordano Burno was consigned to the secular authorities of Rome for punishment as a heretic. He was stripped, tied to a stake, and burned alive.

Giordano Bruno’s revolutionary ideas were that the universe is infinite, animate, and populated by numberless solar systems. In this sense, according to Giordano Bruno, the universe has no center. 

In this performance, Valentina Luporini — actress and scientific collaborator for philosophie.ch — engages herself in an improvised theatrical reading of a passage of the De la causa, principio et uno. This reading is accompanied by very suggestive music produced by Miro Caltagirone, Hervé Thiot, Benjamin Weber, and Silvia Berchtold.

«È dunque l'universo uno, infinito, inmobile. Una, dico, è la possibilità assoluta, uno l'atto, una la forma o anima, una la materia o corpo, una la cosa, uno lo ente, uno il massimo ed ottimo; il quale non deve posser essere compreso; e però infinibile e interminabile, e per tanto infinito e interminato, e per conseguenza inmobile.»

Teofilo: Dialogo V

The event, organized within the framework of Agora project, took place in Monte Verità (Ascona), a meeting place for the well-known life-reformers (Lebensreform), artists, writers, and supporters of various alternative movements in the first decades of the 20th century. 

Discover other performances that took place in Monte Verità:

Enola Rindlisbacher on Descartes' Discours de la méthode

Rafaela Scheiwiller's philosophical meditation

Philipp Blum, Fabienne Forster, and Simon Kräuchi on Wissenschaft der Logik 

Here is the recording: