The Philosopher Ghost in Ca’Mocenigo

In the once glorious palace Ca’Mocenigo in Venice, strange hauntings related to water have been happening since the middle ages. Some claim it is the ghost of Giordano Bruno, a former philosopher that used to reside in the palace.

Giordano Bruno wasn’t the usual heretic. He was actually a 16th century Dominican friar as well as a philosopher, mathematician, poet and most dangerously for him, a cosmological theorist. He was one of the forward thinkers and questioned the geocentric doctrine of the Catholic Church. Something he had to pay greatly for.

For this and other things he was arrested by the Venetian Inquisition on 22nd of May 1592. It was the local patrician Giovanni Mocenigo that once invited Giordano Bruno to Venice in 1592 for eight months to teach Giovanni Mocenigo about the secrets of memory, and also, most likely some alchemy and magic as well.

Giordano Bruno had already fled Rome for being a suspected heretic, still, he continued his teachings. Together, they stayed in Giovanni Mocenigo own palace in Campo San Samuele Ca’Mocenigo. However, only two months into his stay, they had a fallout.

Convicted as a Heretic and Burnt at the Stake

On May 23, Mocenigo himself gave Giordano Bruno’s name to the inquisitors and they denuncieted him and put him in prison as a heretic. Why the sudden fallout? There are several theories, one being that Giordano Bruno was about to leave Venice. There are also those saying Mocenigo did this because he didn’t like the philosopher as a person as well as he didn’t like the then controversial teachings he did.

Giordano was extradited to Rome where he for seven years was imprisoned and tried. In Roma he refused to take back what he had been teaching about the world. He considered it science, the church saw it as blasphemy. They eventually burned him at the stake in 1600 in Campo de Fiori in Rome for his crimes.

The Haunting of Ca’Mocenigo by Giordano Bruno

But this wasn’t the end of the dispute between Giordano and his former host, Giovanni. He came back in his afterlife, just to haunt his palace called Ca’Mocenigo of his old master and patron.

Every year on the death anniversary on February 17th, strange things started to happen that related to water in the palace Ca’Mocenigo. Pipes would burst and flood the rooms for example, but there would be no known cause to just why it happened.

One very specific legend is that the face of Giordano Bruno can be seen in the upper right window of the palace Ca’Mocenigo, engulfed in flames as his burning on the stake. However, according to this legend it can only be spotted by ladies over 85 years old.