Tom MacDonald writes at God and the Machine:
“The final question to all this is “Why”?
Why are we replaying the Bruno story in a documentary about space?
What is the purpose? What is the result?
Is it to show how science and religion came into conflict? The Galileo case would be a better example for that, but people already know that one and Galileo didn’t have the benefit of a cinematic death that makes his opponents looks like mindless savages.
In the development of theories about the cosmos, Bruno was almost irrelevant, and perhaps even harmed those debates because he meshed those theories with a staggering level of heresy and New Age-style nonsense. He was a hermeticist and cabalist, and viewed heliocentrism not as some verifiable scientific truth, but as a sign of the return to the true, superior religion of ancient Egypt. He saw his work as a corrective to Copernicus, who failed to understand the religious significance of heliocentrism. He was more influenced by Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, an occultist and magician, than by anyone else. His work had little to do with science.
Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa would have been a far better figure to illustrate the development of the idea, but he died peacefully in his bed, a cardinal and officer of the papal court, so he’s not as useful as Bruno.
Bruno makes for good propaganda, and continues the Church versus Science lie so dear to the hearts of reactionary atheists. Never mind that it’s not true and that we have only one scientist really punished by the Church at least in part for his science, and that was 400 years ago.”