As much as I hate to keep picking on Cosmos, its good to see that its historical inaccuracy has not gone uncontested, even outside of the religious media. Here’s Discover‘s Corey Powell asking, “Did ‘Cosmos’ Pick the Wrong Hero?”:
“Despite his heresies, Bruno was neither impoverished nor alone. In reality, he had a series of powerful patrons. In 1579, he was appointed a professor of philosophy in Tolouse, France. In 1581, King Henry III of France offered him a lucrative lectureship at the Sorbonne. In 1583 he visited England, lived with the ambassador to France, and met regularly with the Court…and so on. The gaunt, lonely fellow you see on screen in Cosmos is not the real Bruno.
Nor was Bruno the simple, humble figure shown on TV. A major reason he moved around so much is that he was argumentative, sarcastic, and drawn to controversy. He engaged in bitter academic disputes, many of which had nothing to do with his cosmic framework. One example: He fled France because of a violent dispute about the proper use of a compass (seriously).
None of this means that Bruno in any way deserved his fate. But neither does he deserve to be reduced to a cartoon about intellectual freedom. He was a brilliant, complicated, difficult man.”
UPDATE: A response from Cosmos cowriter Steven Soter, and a reply from Powell.