What is relevant is the corollary assumption that Bruno was in possession ofadvanced views on cosmology by the time he arrived in England and that his profound and daring teaching was lost on audiences who were unqualied to appreciate it.The truth is,as we shall see below,that in 1583 Bruno was only beginning to formulate his natural philosophy,and the reputation he had hitherto garnered was that of an expert in mnemonics with unsettled religious views.Thus,his audience had little reason to take his rather abstruse mixture ofcosmological,metaphysical,and magical ideas as the harbinger ofa profoundly new natural philosophy—especially in view ofhis contemptuous attitude toward mathematics and astronomy and his unacknowledged borrowings from other authors.Upon his arrival in England,in fact,insofar as cosmology and natural philosophy were concerned,Bruno was as much a learner as he was a teacher,something that his haughty rhetoric tends to obscure.Bruno’s famed rhetoric—which portrays himselfas the sole bearer ofenlightenment and wisdom,and anyone who fails to comprehend (and admire) him as both a pedant and an enemy oftruth—is long overdue for thorough scrutiny.

Giordano Bruno in England, Revisited
Mordechai Feingold
Huntington Library Quarterly
Vol. 67, No. 3 (September 2004) (pp. 329-346)

Yes, you are wrong for excusing shoddy historical reporting by a brilliant scientist and a mega production company.

I am tempted to end this with QED as far as COSMOS being untrustworthy, at least with respect to Bruno, but there is much more in the article which shreds the COSMOS show's presentation and I think the Group will take this on as a project.

stahrwe wrote:The show include one brief reference to religious heresies Bruno was convicted of at the end of the segment on Bruno. If the show was being fair the time ratio should have been reversed. The religious heresies Bruno was involved with would have been focused on with only an aside mention of the science.

Ant said Copernicus, Kepler, Stigliola, Digges, Maestlin, Rothmann, and Brahe.
.... NONE of the aforementioned men were pursued by the Inquisition for holding views contrary to the most common held at the time.

Ant said As to a thought police discouraging freedom of thought?
Well, tell that to the prestigious universities at the time and their intellectual students. It would be interesting bringing them all back from the dead to ask them - "Did anyone keep you from thinking freely while you were at university?"

I have also shown that COSMOS was wrong in a number of instances in the science it presented.

the 'logical' conclusion is that COSMOS included the Bruno episode as an attack on the Church.

. . . But at the same time, and unlike many science champions (such as the biologist Richard Dawkins), Tyson is quite careful not to pit science against religion. For instance, the first episode of the new Cosmos tells the story of Giordano Bruno, an Italian monk who was persecuted and ultimately burned at the stake by the Inquisition over his ideas about the universe, including the notion that there are an infinite number of suns and worlds beyond our own. Some have argued that to tell this story is in effect to pick a fight over science and religion, but Tyson counters that "Giordano Bruno himself was a deeply religious person. In fact, you could argue that he was more religious than the people prosecuting him."

The stance of Cosmos, Tyson emphasizes, is not anti-religion but anti-dogma: "Any time you have a doctrine where that is the truth that you assert, and that what you call the truth is unassailable, you've got doctrine, you've got dogma on your hands. And so Cosmos is...an offering of science, and a reminder that dogma does not advance science; it actually regresses it."