Rebels

I would have thought that Giordano Bruno, the rebel monk Liudmila wrote about in her post at Vacation and Travel Talk was Nicolaus Copernicus himself. Liudmila wrote that Giordano Bruno had this idea that the earth moves around the sun and that sounds very much like Copernicus's heliocentric model which has the Sun at the center of the universe. Copernicus's idea was very much opposed by the Catholic Church but today, it is often considered as the starting point of modern astronomy. Giordana who did not want to follow the philosophy of the church and had his own point of view had to run away from the church all his life and was burned at the stake by Roman Inquisition after 7 years in prison.Copernicus was reportedly buried in Frombork Cathedral and a grave in poor condition with parts of a human remains with DNA matching hair samples taken from a book owned by Coppernicus most probably makes one wonder if the astronomer died a horrific death too. For me though, I was wondering if Che Kong or Ji Gong (濟公), like Giordano Bruno, should be considered a rebel monk. The former, a popular Chinese folklore figure from the Southern Song Dynasty, is said to be a Buddhist monk but he is not bald like your average Buddhist monk and is always portrayed wearing rags, a funny hat and holding a fan.Even worse, he reputedly drank and ate dog meat; which meant, he broke the basic Buddhist precepts. A Johnny To comedy, The Mad Monk (inset), has Stephen Chow Sing Chi playing the title role of Ji Gong and there are many many more serious and not so serious movies and TV series on him and being so popular,there are of course temples dedicated to him. It is a wonder he has not been spurned by the masses.

Who has been spurned and who has been not?