Giordano Bruno in his 1584 book:
"On the Infinite Universe and Worlds."
QUOTE]...
theorized that,
there is a single general space, a single vast
immensity which we may freely call Void; in it are
innumerable globes like this one on which we live
and grow. This space we declare to be infinite…
In it are an infinity of worlds of the same kind as
our own.
if there are an infinity of worlds, and if some worlds
have sentient beings created by God, then wouldn’t
these planets also need to be saved by the
personification of God?
Bruno expressed the idea in strong terms:
“The Supreme Ruler cannot have a seat so narrow,
so miserable a throne, so trivial, so scanty a court,
so small and feeble a simulacrum” as our earth
alone, he scoffed. Instead, Bruno argued that God
must be “glorified not in one, but in countless suns;
not in a single earth, a single world, but in a
thousand thousand, indeed in an infinity of worlds.”
Now that – essentially the theory of an infinite number
of intelligent beings worshipping an infinity of
extraterrestrial Gods that are the various incarnation
of the one Supreme Being – is the sort of thing that
got you burnt at the stake in the sixteenth century.
... And so it came to pass.
the Roman Inquisition declared him “an impenitent,
pertinacious, and obstinate heretic."
