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LIFE OF 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
f II •' 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ■ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ■ 
 
 
 
 
 
GIORDANO BRUNO 
 
 THE NOLAN. 
 
LIFE 
 
 ' \ V 
 
 OF 
 
 ORDANO BRU 
 
 THE NOLAN 
 
 BY 
 
 I. FRITH. 
 
 REVISED BY 
 
 PROFESSOR MORIZ CARRIERE. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 TICKROR & CO. 
 
 1887. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 ftmwzo (os w to , 
 
 R1ri»a 7- e^'-r 
 
BmZF 
 
 Jnscrtbeb 
 
 TO THE MEMORY OF 
 
 NICHOLAS TRUBNER , 
 
 THE FAITHFUL FRIEND AND KIND ADVISER WHO 
 PROPOSED THE SUBJECT OF THIS BOOK, 
 
 WHOSE INTEREST IN IT CONTINUED UNFAILING 
 TO THE LAST HOURS OF HIS LIFE, 
 
 AND WITHOUT WHOSE AID 
 THESE PAGES COULD NEVER HAVE BEEN 
 
 WRITTEN. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 There is a fact in the great history of Cardinal Baronius 
 by which certain writers take pattern. The Romans of 
 his day are divided by him into two parties, Catholics and 
 Schismatics: to the first he applies all the good, to the 
 latter all the evil, that is told of the city. Now although, 
 when judging the past in the light of the present, we are 
 like those who at high noon find fault with the shadows 
 of dawn, yet, even in these enlightened times, we are 
 apt to weigh our personal likes and dislikes with matters 
 above the jurisdiction of Church and State, forgetting the 
 words of Bacon, “ That we are much beholden to those that 
 write what men do, and not what they ought to do .” And, 
 unlike that Australian colony which sent up a petition 
 for “ convicts of good character ,” we may take exception 
 to certain critics, more learned in expression than in 
 research, who say that, for an atheist, Giordano Bruno 
 had extraordinary merits. But enlightened and honest 
 readers of his Works will discover them to be his best 
 defence against the unjust and terrible imputation of 
 atheism. “ No man,” says Sir Joshua Reynolds, “ can put 
 more in his sitter’s head than he has in his own;” and, 
 in the same way, if we would understand a philosophical 
 writer, we must meet him in a philosophic spirit, not with 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 viii 
 
 a disposition to tolerate no theories except, as the Prayer- 
 Book says, “ those hammered on our own anvils.” 
 
 The influence of this courageous thinker on the golden 
 age of English literature has hitherto almost escaped 
 notice. As, however, the existence of invisible celestial 
 bodies is foretold by the perturbations of visible stars, it 
 is interesting to show how, by the shining track of thought, 
 Bacon, Sidney, Marlowe, and perhaps even Shakespeare, 
 are related to an obscure foreign visitor. These resem- 
 blances can he traced by a moderately careful study of 
 the Italian works, notably the dialogues Della Causa. 
 
 During Bruno’s stay in England his best work was 
 accomplished ; and in the Cena delle Ceneri his notes on 
 English society and on English manners in the time of 
 Elizabeth will be found full of interest. England, which 
 had harboured him in his happier days, and for which he 
 entertained a sincere affection, is last in attempting to re- 
 instate his memory ; but it is a source of sincere gratitude 
 to the writer of these lines that Professor Carriere, the 
 philosopher who was among the first to recognise and to 
 make public the merits of Bruno, should, after the lapse 
 of nearly forty years, be found willing to revise the slender 
 and imperfect tribute of a country tardy to render him 
 justice. 
 
 In beginning at this late date an account of the life and works of 
 Giordano Bruno, acknowledgment is due to the labours of earlier 
 writers. Forty years ago two young students — Moriz Carriere and 
 Christian Bartholmess — of different nations, personally unknown to 
 each other, and ignorant of each other’s labours, undertook the task 
 of writing histories of the Nolan. The French Life of Bruno was 
 published in 1 846, at Paris, in two volumes ; the German history 
 occupies part of a work entitled Die Philosophische Weltanschauung 
 der Reformationszeit, printed in 1847 at Stuttgart. With few materials 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 IX 
 
 at their command the two young scholars overcame the contention, 
 raised by the Catholics, that Bruno never existed, or, if he existed, 
 was never burnt ; and, carefully sifting all the scanty evidence, they 
 pieced together with great pains historic accounts which are verified 
 by new facts as they appear ; while their system of the Nolan philo- 
 sophy is invaluable to later students. 
 
 To Professor Moriz Carriere is due the distinction of having been 
 the first to point out Bruno’s greatest achievement in philosophy, — 
 his doctrine that God is at one and the same time immanent and 
 transcendent ; that he is not only within us, nearer to ourselves than 
 we are to ourselves, the life of life, light of light, the vivifying Spirit 
 of all, but that he is self-conscious and self-existent, one in whom 
 act and power, possibility and reality, are one, who is all he can be 
 in every part, and thus plainly distinguished from the universe, 
 which is all it can be as a whole, but not in its parts. 
 
 Nor did Christian Bartholmess flinch in the cause of idealistic 
 philosophy, upholding, with great learning and with the insight 
 born of sympathy, the Platonic and essentially spiritual character of 
 Bruno’s teaching. 
 
 We have next the history of Bruno written by Dr. Brunnhofer of 
 Aarau (Leipsig, 1882), reviewing the philosophy from a materialistic 
 point of view, and embodying the latest discoveries with regard to 
 Bruno’s life ; and that of Signor Berti ( Vita di Giordano Bruno da 
 Nola, Florence, 1868), which contains a great quantity of valuable 
 material ; while two scholarly pamphlets by Professor Sigwart 
 ( Giordano Bruno vor dem Inquisitionsgericlit, 1881, and Die Lebens- 
 geschichte Giordano Bruno’s , Tubingen, 1880) present a searching 
 though brief analysis of Bruno’s history and philosophy ; and a 
 succession of smaller works bear witness to the growth of public 
 interest, first roused by Moriz Carriere and by Christian Bar- 
 tholmess. 
 
 N.B . — The full titles of Bruno’s works will be found in 
 the Appendix. In quoting various editions, it may be 
 necessary to notice that W. represents the edition of the 
 Italian works published by Wagner at Leipsic in 1830, 
 and Gfr. stands for the Latin works reprinted by Gfroerer, 
 Stuttgart, London, and Paris, 1834. 
 
 The documents of Bruno’s trial in Venice, which took 
 place in the year 1592, are reprinted by Signor Berti 
 
X 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 under the title Documenti intorno a Giordano Bruno da 
 Nola, Rome, 1880. 
 
 It is in contemplation to print a second volume, con- 
 taining a summary of the works, with the documents of 
 the trial and other confirmatory evidence. 
 
 The thanks of the writer are due to Mr. Wm. Heinemann, 
 who has kindly compiled a list of authorities which will 
 he found a valuable addition to the Appendix. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 PAGK 
 
 Birth at Nola, 1548 — The Spanish Yiceroys — The Poet 
 Tansillo — Dominicans — Aquinas — The Noah’s Ark 
 — Pope Pius Y 1 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Naples — The Florentine Academy — The Trials at 
 Naples and in Rome — Flight from Rome, 1576 — 
 
 Genoa — Noli — The Sphere — Bruno’s Theory of 
 the S tars and Sun s— Turin— Venice — Copernicus 28 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Geneva, May 20, 1579 — Lyons — Toulouse, 1579-80 . . 50 
 
 CHAPTER IY. 
 
 Geneva — Journey through France, 1581 — Paris — Lully 
 
 — Some Latin Works on the Art of Memory . . 68 
 
 CHAPTER Y. 
 
 England, 1583-85 — M. Castelnau de MauvissiJire — 
 Doctrine of Ecstasy — Traces of German Mysti- 
 cism— Bruno at Oxford, June 1583 — His Lectures 
 on the Immortality of the Soul — The Printer 
 Vautrollier — Sidney 104 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 xii 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Second Visit to Paris, 1585 — The Disputation — Por- 
 trait of Bruno — Value op Induction and of the 
 Imagination — Influence of his Philosophy upon 
 his Character — Its Influence on Descartes, 
 Spinoza, and Leibnitz 136 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Paris, June i, 1586 — Mayence, July 1586 — Marburg, 
 
 July 1586 — Matriculated at Wittenberg, August 
 20, 1586— Quits Wittenberg, March 1588 — The 
 Farewell Oration at Wittenberg . . . .163 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Prague, 1588 — Helmstedt, January 13, 1 5 S9 . . .189 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 Frankfort, July 2, 1590 — On the Threefold Minimum — 
 
 On the Monad, the Innumerable, the Immense, and 
 
 THE UNFIGURABLE — On THE COMPOSITION OF IMAGES, 
 
 Signs, and Ideas 205 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Zurich — Padua — The Trial at Venice .... 238 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 The Trial at Rome — The Death of Bruno . . . 284 
 
LIFE OF GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 “ Ecrivez philosophic ou filosophie comme il vous plaira ; mais convenez 
 que, des qu’elle parait, elle est persecutee.” — Voltaibe, Dictionnaire 
 Philosophique, Art. “ Pkilosophie.” 
 
 Birth at Nola, 1548 . The Spanish Viceroys. The Poet Tansillo. 
 
 Dominicans. Aquinas. The Noah’s Ark. Pope Pius V. 
 
 In the year 1548, at Nola near Naples, there was born a 
 man destined to mark out a new era in philosophy. One 
 of a group of noble figures, who, like the Israelites of old, 
 passed through the fire unharmed, Giordano Bruno died 
 for philosophy, and philosophy in return will keep his 
 memory green, not only among the laurels and olives of his 
 country, but in every land where the truth is honoured 
 among the emblems of peace and victory. 
 
 His life offers material of great interest. He was a 
 figure typical of his time, of that brilliant period of transi- 
 tion when the genius of the Middle Ages was merged in 
 the spirit of modern inquiry. Few and chilly the souls 
 which could come into the presence of that fiery spirit 
 without kindling into enthusiasm, nor without becoming 
 attached to a writer so fertile in contrasts. With a singular 
 inventive mind, it was incumbent on him to express him- 
 self in verse ; but he was rather a philosopher than a poet. 
 
 Bruno was born eight years after the death of Coper- 
 
 A 
 
GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 nicus, into whose inheritance he was to enter, and thirteen 
 years before the birth of Bacon, to whom in some degree 
 he was to bequeath his philosophy. His birthplace lay at 
 the foot of Mount Cicala, near Vesuvius, and under the 
 benign sky of Italy, “that region,” as he says (W. i. 222), 
 “ beloved of heaven, the head and dexter hand of this 
 globe, the queen and tamer of all other generations of man, 
 by us and others ever held to be the mistress, nurse, and 
 mother of all virtues.” Ardent and impetuous, he was called 
 in his own time the knight-errant of philosophy; for he 
 was one of the violent who take the kingdom of heaven 
 by storm. In his own words, “ Difficulty is ordained to 
 deter mean spirits ; rare, heroic, and divine men pass 
 over the road of difficulty and compel necessity to yield 
 them the palm of immortality ” (W. i. 142). His mind, 
 coloured by the luminous air and brilliant skies of his 
 birthplace, received the powerful impetus of the Renais- 
 sance, and his thought asserted itself with the greater 
 force from having snapped the restrictions laid upon it by 
 the Church. 
 
 “ Men,” says Tasso, “ resemble the earth which bears 
 them ; ” and the fire burning within Bruno was kindled near 
 Vesuvius and fostered on a volcanic soil. “ In their 
 entire historical appearance,” says Schwegler when speak- 
 ing of Bruno, Campanella, and Vanini, “ they are like the 
 eruptions of a volcano, rather precursors and prophets, 
 than originators and founders of a new era of philosophy;” 
 and the comparison is made acceptable by the place of 
 Bruno’s birth and by the fiery metaphors which other 
 writers have bestowed on him. “ He is,” says Hegel, “ a 
 comet,” and, like a comet, it may be said he returns to sight 
 after three hundred years. “ The works of Bartholmess 
 of Strasburg,” says Baron Bunsen (Memoirs, ii. 254), 
 “gave me occasion to become more nearly acquainted 
 with that strange, erratic, comet-like spirit, a genius, but a 
 Neapolitan, whose life was but a fiery fragment.” He is 
 called by Hallam “the meteor of science,” and Victor 
 
NOLA, 1548. 
 
 3 
 
 Cousin speaks of the “ traces of mingled blood and fire ” 
 which mark Bruno’s progress in the history of civilisation. 
 
 Abandoning contemplation for observation, he was the 
 champion of natural science; he sought knowledge in 
 nature, and preferring the inductive method, he was the 
 herald of the great Bacon. His theories anticipate many 
 modern discoveries, and in the pure ideality of his con- 
 ceptions he surpasses Descartes and Leibnitz, Berkeley, 
 Spinoza, and even Hegel, philosophers said to derive much 
 from his teaching. With him, nothing is real but the ideal ; 
 and, like the orator of Cicero, he maintains there is nothing 
 of any kind so fair that there may not he a fairer conceived 
 by the mind ; while with Plato he affirms the idea to be 
 an individual object, an eternal exemplar present in the 
 Divine mind, and received by man in participation, but 
 not in essence. 
 
 Something in the history of Hola itself contributed to 
 the energy of its sons. Italy was at the head of the 
 Renaissance. The genius of Dante and Petrarch, the 
 splendid discoveries of Columbus, Yespucius, and Cabot, 
 the ambition of the Medici, descended upon no unworthy 
 heirs, and the discoveries of Galileo in the heavens were 
 at least on a par with those of the great travellers in the 
 western hemisphere. But the dark thread in this glitter- 
 ing skein of wealth and adventure was the spirit of 
 intolerance, which had descended upon the leaders of the 
 people. The Inquisition, under the fostering care of Paul 
 III., sprang into renewed existence three years before the 
 death of Luther. It was, perhaps, merely an indication of 
 the intolerance 1 common to the whole of Europe. 
 
 1 But no foreign tyranny, nor blossom on that happy soil. If 
 even the insufferable shadow of the higher praise could be, Bruno at 
 Inquisition, which fretted Bruno’s least could dream of none ; and in 
 heart, could dim the lustrous image this he resembled Dante, who speaks 
 of his birthplace. In the Heroic { Convilo , ii. 16) of Boethius and 
 Rapture (W. ii. 402) he assigns to Tully as having directed him “ to 
 the nymph Diana, who is the symbol the love, that is, to the study, of 
 of truth, the “golden fields of this most gentle lady philosophy.” 
 Nola ” among “ beauteous nymphs” “I say and affirm,” he says again 
 who represent all the virtues that ( Convito , v. 16), “that the lady with 
 
4 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 These unfavourable conditions were increased by the 
 despotism of Spain. The Escurial gave the tone to Italy. 
 The little town of Nola is some miles from Naples, which 
 was the headquarters of the Spanish Viceroy. Bruno was 
 born under the sinister auspices of Spain, towards the end 
 of the reign of Charles V., and under the viceroyalty of 
 Don Pedro of Toledo, who, according to Brantome, was 
 for twenty years the scourge of Naples. Under Philip 
 II. the fanatic Duke of Alva presented himself as an 
 object of terror to the people. He was, says De Thou, 
 “ better for war than for peace ; and he was persuaded 
 that the foundations of empire should be laid, not in love, 
 but in terror.” He had slaughtered eight hundred heretics 
 in one Easter week, and pillage and massacre were the 
 ordinary accompaniment of his victories ; while such was 
 the cruelty of his rule, that in 1574 the seamen of Zealand 
 during a revolt wore a crescent on their hats with this 
 inscription, “ Bather Turks than Papists,” to imply that 
 the Turks had more humanity than Alva. The horrible 
 “ Spanish fury,” which was a proverb in the Netherlands, 
 did not belie itself in Italy. Spain was the aggressive 
 power of that day. Every nation trembled before her ; 
 
 whom I became enamoured after my 
 first love was the most beautiful and 
 modest daughter of the Emperor of 
 the Universe, to whom Pythagoras 
 gave the name of Philosophy. ” The 
 goddess of Bruno’s worship is made 
 to issue from a forest ; her sovereign 
 beauty and goodness eclipse all 
 others, and make them vile and 
 vain ; she is the highest bliss ; she 
 causes all earthly passions, all fear 
 and hope, yea, life itself to be for- 
 gotten ; he who is seized by this 
 divine passion loves the flame con- 
 suming him ; his sickness is better 
 than health ; his chains than 
 liberty. He is a prisoner, a slave ; 
 but the divine love does not weigh 
 his spirit down to earth ; it raises 
 him above all things, and above 
 liberty itself ; its yoke is of fire, but 
 
 lighter than air ; he who is its 
 slave is so thrice blessed that he 
 envies neither God nor men their 
 liberty. For this blissful concep- 
 tion the philosopher can choose in 
 the whole earth no happier home 
 than Nola, “the little city,” 
 which, according to Montaigne, 
 “ was ruined by barbarians ” — such 
 is the difference in men’s liking. 
 Yet in a foreign land Bruno writes 
 (W. i. 220), “ The true philosopher 
 makes every country his own ; ” and 
 this same spirit inspires his touch- 
 ing address to Castelnau, written 
 in exile ( Explicatio 30 Sigillorum), 
 where he speaks of his gratitude 
 to one who has made a home for 
 the homeless wanderer, by changing 
 England into Italy, and London 
 into Nola. 
 
THE “SPANISH FURY: 
 
 5 
 
 and Alva, after those victories which he followed up with 
 massacres so prodigious, that but for his own testimony 
 they would seem too monstrous for belief, Alva erected a 
 colossal statue to himself, attired in classical costume, the 
 base adorned with choice mythological figures — none of 
 which, it may be hoped, referred to that sacrifice by the 
 hangman of twenty thousand human beings, for which 
 the Duke was responsible, in the Netherlands. The king 
 of Spain, however, was the only power at all comparable 
 to the Grand Turk ; and the representative of the king 
 of Spain in Naples was a figure hardly less hideous and 
 terrific to the inhabitants of the rich and smiling Italian 
 country than that pagan neighbour who was perpetually 
 threatening a descent upon their coasts. 
 
 Nola is one of the oldest towns in Italy. Standing 
 midway between Vesuvius and the sea, it was encircled 
 in ancient times by walls of great height, and its twelve 
 gates were crowned with high towers, in order that the 
 city might stand a long siege. From its twelve gates, 
 twelve roads led into the outlying country, or brought 
 princes from Rome or from Athens to the palaces, the 
 stately temples, and amphitheatres which were set thickly 
 together under the shadow of Vesuvius. In the time of 
 Bruno, however, these splendid edifices had disappeared. 
 The hewn and polished marbles, which might have defied 
 decay, were seized by the first comer and worked into the 
 wall of an orchard or the roof of a pig-sty; and while 
 Petrarch sighed that Rome, the ancient capital of the world, 
 should adorn from her own bowels the slothful luxury of 
 Naples, Naples and the surrounding cities were given up 
 to the same work of devastation. The palaces of senators 
 were no longer adapted to the manners of peasants ; the 
 baths were prohibited because they spread the plague ; 
 the porticoes were neglected and their use forgotten ; in 
 the sixth century the games of the theatre, amphitheatre, 
 and circus had been interrupted ; some temples were used 
 as Christian churches, but where money was sufficiently 
 
6 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 plentiful the holy figure of the cross was preferred to the 
 ruins, however splendid, of buildings with heathen asso- 
 ciations. But if the people were unmindful of the use 
 and beauty of ancient architecture, they by no means 
 despised the bountiful materials at their disposal ; and 
 marble which could not be used to eke out modern build- 
 ings was burnt to lime and made into cement. Still, in 
 witness of their ancient grandeur, the people found from 
 time to time vases, gems, and coin embedded in the soil ; 
 and except for these, and for some legacy of gentleness 
 and cultivation which lingered among her sons, Nola 
 might have wept with the wife of Phinehas over her 
 departed glory. The historians of the beloved city count 
 among famous Nolans the poet Tansillo, Albertino Gentile, 
 the jurist; Algeri, who was the forerunner of Bruno in the 
 grievous ways of martyrdom ; Ambrogio Leone, the his- 
 torian of his native place and the friend of Erasmus, with 
 a number of lesser lights, ranging from Merliano the 
 sculptor, who was surnamed the Neapolitan Buonarotti, 
 to Santarelli Stellioli, names which still live in the history 
 of the little town. 
 
 Nola, according to Berti, preserved more and deeper 
 traces of Greek civilisation than any city of Magna Grecia. 
 It was a bishopric, and twelve years after Bruno’s birth 
 could boast a college founded by the Jesuits. “ The 
 Jesuits,” says Fuller in his Church History, “had two 
 most ancient and flourishing convents beyond the seas; 
 Nola in Italy, as I take it, where their house it seems 
 gives a bow for their arms ; and La Eleche in France, 
 where they have an arrow for their device : 
 
 “Arcum Nola dedit, dedit his La Fletche Sagittam ; 
 
 Illis, quis nervum, quem merdere, dabit.” . . . 
 
 No actual proof of the influence of Bruno’s parents on 
 his early training remains. But 
 
 “ There is a history in all men’s lives, 
 
 Figuring the nature of the times deceased,” 
 
 2 Henry IV., iii. i. 
 
THE POET TANS1LL0. 
 
 7 
 
 and the fact that his training was serious and philosophic, 
 and begun at a very early age, shows that the person 
 directing him, whether father or mother, was fully capable 
 of estimating and applying his powers. There seems also 
 no reason to doubt that the poet Tansillo 1 was the friend 
 of Bruno’s father; and in that case, the latter probably 
 came of a stock by no means ignoble. Tansillo, himself 
 of noble birth, belonged to the republic of letters. He 
 was befriended in his youth by Ariosto ; he was acquainted 
 with Tasso, and he was well received at the court of the 
 Viceroy, Don Pedro de Toledo. Learning and adventure, 
 poverty and noble antecedents had helped to form his 
 character, a touch of licentiousness serving to associate 
 him with the other minor poets of his time. He was born 
 about the year 1510, at Venosa, of Nolan parents, and 
 spent his early youth at Nola, where he probably made 
 the acquaintance of Bruno’s family, which is proved by 
 the register to have been settled for a length of time near 
 Mount Cicala. Tansillo lived for many years at Naples ; 
 and it is possible that under his neighbourly direction the 
 “Nolan Muse,” of which Bruno speaks so fondly, was 
 fostered and developed. 
 
 In any case, a powerful and lasting influence was brought 
 to bear on the young poet, and his descent, so far as it is 
 known, does not altogether account for his poetic gift. 
 His father was a soldier. His mother, Fraulissa Savolina, 
 was almost certainly of German extraction, and he was 
 born in or near the German colony outlying Nola. Among 
 the numerous women upon the Nolan registers, the singular 
 
 1 Tirabosclii speaks of Tansillo as hideous perverter of elegance than 
 an “ elegant writer, ” adding, “He Aretino probably never existed, 
 has been exalted above Petrarch, After the appearance of Tansillo’s 
 which is too great praise for him, first poem, the Yendemmiatore, his 
 and denied by persons of any dis- works were prohibited by Pope Pius 
 cernment.” The critic concludes IV. The poet then tuned his lyre to 
 by remarking that three comedies another strain, and wrote a devo- 
 ascribed to Tansillo were the work tional ode entitled The Tears of St. 
 of the infamous Aretino ; a fact Peter, on which the Pope was ap- 
 which completely dismisses the ques- peased, and Tansillo’s name was 
 tion of “ elegance,” since a more taken off the Index. 
 
8 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 name of Fraulissa does not occur; it is believed by Brunn- 
 liofer to be a form of Fraulinda, or of the old high German 
 Fraulich. The registers of Nola, which have been searched 
 by Fiorentino, show the father of Bruno to have been 
 twenty years of age in 1545; he was the son of one 
 Geronimo Bruno, then aged forty-six, and was one of a 
 family of nine children. It is possible that Geronimo 
 Bruno was still alive in 1591 when De Minimo was 
 written ; that is to say, if the words distantis imago 
 parentis (book ii. chap. 3) are to be taken literally, as 
 suggested by M. Paul de Lagarde. It is certain that both 
 the father and mother of Bruno were dead at the time 
 of his trial. An allusion to the foreign colony at the 
 foot of Mount Cicala occurs in the Expulsion (W. ii. 152), 
 when mention is made of a maestro Danese and of one 
 Franzino, a name of German origin. The charcoal- 
 burners of Mount Scarvacta near Mount Cicala are spoken 
 of in the Candle-Bearer (W. i. 30), and Bruno speaks 
 again of his native place towards the end of the play 
 (W. i. 10 1 ) — “ To Don Paulino, priest of S. Primma, which 
 is in a village near Nola, Scipio Savolino went one Good 
 Friday and confessed his sins, and though many and 
 great, they were speedily absolved, for the curate was his 
 friend. On the next occasion, without more ado, Scipio 
 said to Don Paulino, ‘ Father, to-day’s sins complete the 
 year,’ and Don Paulino replied, ‘ Son, thou knowest to- 
 day’s absolution completes the year. Go in peace, and 
 sin no more.’ ” 
 
 There is an allusion to the father of Bruno in the 
 Heroic Rapture (W. ii. 324), which seems to prove that 
 some of Bruno’s philosophy was inherited. On a neigh- 
 bour saying one evening after supper, “ I was never so 
 happy as I am now,” he was answered by Gioan Bruno, 
 the father of the Nolan, “’Tis because thou wast never 
 more foolish than now.” (This may be compared with 
 a story which appeared lately in an American journal. 
 “ The snow don’t pile so high as it did,” said one Yankee 
 
YOUTH OF BRUNO, 1548-76. 
 
 9 
 
 peasant to another. “ When we were boys we used to 
 make caves in the drifts that you could stand upright in, 
 and have room overhead too.” “ ’Tis because we were 
 shorter than we are now,” said his neighbour.) Bruno 
 preserves but one anecdote of his childhood (Gfr. 572). 
 When he was in swaddling-clothes (an elastic period in 
 Italy), a huge snake crept through a hole in the wall of 
 the house. The boy screamed, and his father, who was 
 sleeping in the next room, came running with a thick 
 stick. He overcame the serpent, pouring out meanwhile 
 “ vehement, irate words,” which so impressed the child, 
 that years after, “ his memory awaking as from a dream,” 
 he was enabled to repeat word for word all that had 
 passed. 
 
 The powerful order of the Dominicans, with the Spanish 
 Government at its back, offered a promising career to a 
 studious lad, and one which it was policy on the part of 
 his parents to accept, specially equipped as he was by 
 his own love of learning. Dominican and Franciscan 
 alike aspired to rule the universities, and to do so, the 
 universities must be met on their own ground. Besides, 
 the Dominican order having been founded by a Spaniard, 
 and sharing to a certain degree the acquisitive national 
 humour, was openly supported by Spain, not alone in 
 Naples, but in independent countries. St. Dominic and 
 his institution are, in fact, the expression of the hier- 
 archy of the West, while St. Francis represents the direct 
 resignation of the Christian spirit, not to the traditions 
 of a Church, but to love and to Christ. The Dominican 
 looked to the Church for salvation; the Franciscan taught 
 that the kingdom of God was within the Christian. 
 Poverty and self-denial, these were his rules, and these 
 instruments guided him on the way to heaven ; but the 
 Dominican’s hope lay in the power of the Word. The 
 Franciscan’s outward poverty was inward riches, the 
 riches of Christ ; he desired to be poor in this world that 
 he might be rich in righteousness. He preached by the 
 
IO 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 roadside, in meadows, and in fields, speaking the common 
 tongue of the people, exhorting to love, self-denial, and 
 poverty. The Dominican system demanded from each 
 preacher and confessor a rigorous examination by skilled 
 examiners ; he must possess not only a profound know- 
 ledge of the Scripture, but a special gift of preaching ; and 
 if he had not these, he was not permitted to preach at all. 
 Dor the Dranciscan, the inner light sufficed; if his calling 
 was from God, the learning of man was of no account. 
 
 Yet it may be said, in the words of Dante, “Unto one 
 end their labours were” ( Paradiso xi.), a verse imme- 
 diately following his celebrated comparison of St. Francis 
 to the flame, and St. Dominic to the light, “ the one 
 seraphic in ardour, the other, by his wisdom on the earth, a 
 splendour of cherubic light.” 
 
 But if their ends were the same, there was a vast dif- 
 ference in the means employed by the two orders. St. 
 Dominic, that saturnine and repelling Spaniard, the 
 “ Chastiser ” of Dante, was aptly characterised by his 
 funereal garb ; by the dog, his emblem ; and by the title 
 of Persecutor of the Heretics, bestowed on him by the 
 Inquisition of Toulouse, after his expedition to stamp out 
 the Albigenses. Twelve years after the death of the 
 founder, his powerful spirit was living still ; and the 
 brethren of his Order became the bodyguard of the 
 Inquisition — the domini canes, the dogs of the Lord, who 
 truly stood in no need of them. 
 
 The Church in troubled times offered a safe and peace- 
 able calling to a lover of letters, and Bruno from his early 
 youth was inclined to poetry and learning. He probably 
 quitted ISTola when in his tenth or eleventh year. Until 
 his fourteenth year he studied privately in Naples under 
 an Augustinian friar, Teofilo da Yarrano, and he may have 
 lodged with his uncle, Agostino Bruno, whom we know 
 by the Nolan register to have been a weaver of velvet, 
 living in Naples. He also attended the lectures of a 
 pjrofessor named II Sarnese, who may have been one 
 
LIFE IN THE CLOISTER, 1563-76. 
 
 11 
 
 Vincenzo Colle da Sarno, 1 the author of Destructio 
 destructionem Baldovini qtias quidem destructor ad im- 
 plevit, Neap, apud M. Cancer, 1554. 
 
 That Bruno attended private lectures is a proof either 
 of his precocious love of learning, or of the assiduous 
 attention of his parents and of their easy circumstances. 
 He learnt, he says at his trial, logic, dialectic, and what 
 was then called humanism, and later belles-lettres, beside 
 arithmetic, geometry, music, poetry, astrology, physics, 
 metaphysics, and ethics (W. ii. 187), which, with logic, 
 are counted by Bruno as the nine daughters of the great 
 mother Mnemosyne. 
 
 Thus pursuing his studies, Bruno was at peace while 
 the Neapolitan provinces were racked by earthquake, pest, 
 and famine. The Turks descended upon the people of 
 Chiaia, and carried them away as slaves. Calabria was 
 infested with a band of outlaws led by a robber chief, 
 who facetiously called himself il re Marcone. In the same 
 province the unhappy Waldenses, w r ho had fled from 
 Piedmont for refuge, endured unheard-of tortures, and 
 ended their wretched lives as martyrs. Eighty-eight of 
 them had their throats cut with the same knife, and the 
 rest were quartered, and their remains passed from hand 
 to hand to be a warning in the provinces ( Archivio Storico 
 del Viesseux, vol. ix.) What wonder that, in the midst of 
 such events, the young philosopher should turn for peace, 
 leisure, and advancement to the convent ? 
 
 It is said that had there been no Jesuits there had been 
 no Voltaire; and perhaps had there been no Dominicans 
 the philosophy of Bruno could not have come into exist- 
 ence. “ Mathematics,” said the Dominican Father Caccini, 
 when preaching at Florence on the Galileans, a punning 
 reference to Galileo, “ are an invention of the devil;” and 
 some such opinion may have prevailed in the Dominican 
 
 1 This Augustinian, after teach- and afterwards was called to Rome, 
 ing the doctrines of Aristotle for where he delivered lectures on meta- 
 some years in Naples, was named physics to the great satisfaction of 
 Rector of the convent of Florence, his hearers. 
 
12 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 convent in Naples. Either the young monk’s taste for 
 mathematics or his passion for disputation soon brought 
 him into collision with his spiritual masters, and it will 
 be readily understood why he spent a great part of his 
 life in travelling, as well whilst he was in orders as out of 
 them, since the course of this stormy spirit, flying before 
 the gust like a petrel, was beset with difficulties, of which, 
 to confess the truth, he was too often the author. 
 
 “ From my eighteenth year,” he says in the evidence of 
 his trial (Doc. xi.), “ I doubted within myself . . . regard- 
 ing the name of the persons of the Son and of the Holy 
 Spirit, not comprehending the two Persons distinct from 
 the Father, except as speaking philosophically, and assign- 
 ing the intellect of the Father to the Son and his love to 
 the Holy Spirit, without recognising that name of Person, 
 which by St. Augustine is declared to be a name, not old, 
 but new, and of his time.” 
 
 Nor were his views of the monks such as to make him 
 tolerant of their company. In the Expulsion he speaks of 
 them as “ personages very ready to give away places in 
 the kingdom of heaven, but incapable of earning an inch 
 of ground for themselves.” “ Let friars live,” says one of 
 the accusers at his trial, repeating the words of Bruno, 
 “ on a scanty portion of broth ” (Doc. iv.), and ascetio 
 contemplation or ecstasy he dismisses ( Sigillus Sigillorum, 
 Gfr. 576) with the strongest expressions of disgust. 
 
 At the age of fourteen, or between fourteen and fifteen 
 (1562-63), Bruno assumed the dress of the Dominicans, 
 when he changed his baptismal name of Filippo for that 
 of Giordano, and entered the cloister of St. Dominic in 
 Naples, once the home of Thomas Aquinas. The convent 
 itself wears an enticing aspect for the lover of study. It 
 stands among palaces upon a hill, its antique front turned 
 towards the city, and flanked by spacious perfumed gardens, 
 with cloisters running round their outer sides. Meditation 
 seems to wait upon the age and silence of the spot, which 
 bears the imprint of ten centuries on its strong walls and 
 
LIFE IN THE CLOISTER, 1563-76. 
 
 13 
 
 solitary cells. Three hundred years before, Aquinas had 
 watched the incomparable aspect of Naples daily brighten 
 and grow dim from the spot where Bruno now waited on 
 his destiny. The presence of the Angelic Doctor still 
 lingers in the ancient pile. In his cell, which is now a 
 chapel, he first designed the system of religious philosophy 
 which he taught, sitting in a hall on the right of the con- 
 vent church. The church itself, one of the most beautiful 
 in Naples, is full of historic tombs, embellished by hands 
 which lend another lustre to immortality, and above the 
 altar is the crucifix which it is said held converse with 
 the saint, and manifested its approval of his doctrine. 
 
 In this monastic seclusion the young philosopher spent 
 thirteen years, from 1563 till 1576. The Prior, Ambrogio 
 Pasqua, appears, according to his epitaph in the Church 
 of Santa Maria della Sanita, to have possessed a strong 
 character. He was vice-chancellor of the College of Theo- 
 logy, a public lecturer, and exemplary in his life and doc- 
 trine. Probably he resembled other Italian priests of his 
 day. The Church was their world ; they were nimble- 
 minded and persuasive, quick to discern merit, and to press 
 it into the service of their order; and the dawning powers 
 of the young monk were not likely to escape observation. 
 After a year’s novitiate Bruno made his full profession 
 before the Prior, and at the age of sixteen assumed servi- 
 tude for life — a precocity in which there was nothing 
 unusual, for Campanella was invested with the habit 
 when he was fourteen, and Sarpi at the age of thirteen. 
 
 We learn from the evidence which he gave when put 
 upon his trial at Venice, that in due time the young monk 
 was promoted to holy orders and to the priesthood, and 
 that he saDg his first mass in Campagna, a city of the 
 kingdom of Naples, in the mountains to the east of Salerno, 
 living meanwhile in a Dominican monastery dedicated 
 to St. Bartholomew. Afterwards, in pursuit of his priestly 
 calling, he celebrated mass and the other divine offices, 
 under the direction of his superiors, while travelling from 
 

 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 cloister to cloister, and applying himself to the treasures 
 of the libraries. 
 
 During these years of monastic life he laid the founda- 
 tion of those stores of learning on which he framed his 
 books ; and without that period of leisure it is certain his 
 best literary work would have lacked its richness and 
 variety. He had a complete knowledge of the philosophy 
 of the Greeks, was fairly acquainted with the Kabbalah, 
 though he w r as no Hebrew scholar, and he knew the Latin 
 translations of the great Arabic philosophers. Among the 
 scholastics his early training made him acquainted with 
 Thomas Aquinas, on whom he gave public lectures ; the 
 mystic teaching of Raymund Lully was blended in his 
 mind with the more practical natural philosophy of the 
 Cardinal Bishop of Cusa and the great astronomical dis- 
 coveries of Copernicus. His mind grew by that it fed 
 on ; and there is scarcely an author on whom it is easier 
 to point out the influences to which he was subject and 
 the sources to which he looked for enlightenment. “ What 
 vast reading and what varied study,” says Bartholmess, 
 “ appear on every page ! How many authors are praised, 
 blamed, and quoted ! how large a place the schools of the 
 Middle Ages, and above all, those of antiquity, hold in his 
 memory ! what an empire they exercise over his opinions ! ” 
 
 Bruno himself tells us that he became a Dominican in 
 order to pursue learning and to strengthen his imagina- 
 tion ; and in proof of his command over the wisdom of the 
 ancients, the German critic Jacobi writes that he (Bruno) 
 had made their writings his own, and that, penetrated as 
 he was by the spirit of antiquity, he nevertheless pre- 
 served his own identity. The love of Nature, the use of 
 induction (“ which,” says Bacon, “ is our only hope ” (Nov. 
 Or. Aphor. 14), “the only fitting remedy by which we can 
 ward off and expel idols ”), above all, the proper use of 
 the imagination — these were his weapons, and this the 
 method he chose. 
 
 It was not long, however, before the coercion of monastic 
 
THE NOLAN MUSE. 
 
 15 
 
 rule forced him to seek refuge in himself, and, in his own 
 words (W. ii. 3 1 3), “ Being drawn on the one side by the 
 tragic Melpomene (who has more sense than humour), and 
 on the other by the comic Thalia (who has more humour 
 than sense), it happened that while the one Muse would 
 steal him from the other, he remained in their midst, 
 rather neutral and inactive than diligent with both. 
 Moreover, those in authority withheld him from the 
 higher and more worthy aims to which he was disposed 
 by nature ; his mind was enslaved, and from being free 
 under virtue, he became the prisoner of a most vile and 
 foolish hypocrisy. Finally, through press of trouble, it 
 happened that having no other consolation, he turned to 
 those (the Muses), who are said to have inebriated him 
 with frenzies, verses and rhymes, such as they vouchsafe 
 to no other ; for they are worthy of laurels who sing 
 of heroic things, establishing heroic souls in philosophy, 
 or truly celebrating it, and holding it up as a mirror and 
 example to nations;” and a little later he says (316), 
 that with the Muses he is “ comforted, sustained, and 
 directed, and that they are his refuge in time of weariness 
 and peril;” concluding thus, “For to those who are 
 favoured by Heaven the greatest ills turn to blessings 
 yet greater, since necessity begets toil and learning, and 
 these for the most part give birth to the glory of a splendid 
 immortality.” But of his experience in verse-writing he 
 says, “ Doubtless the Poet at sundry times and from many 
 causes rejects the Muses. Firstly, he may lack the neces- 
 sary leisure, for leisure is lacking to one forced to strive 
 against the servants and slaves of envy, ignorance, and 
 wickedness. Secondly, because no worthy helpers and 
 defenders are beside him to make him steadfast.” 
 
 The development of his mind may be traced in several 
 passages of his books. When, as a boy, he looked upon 
 Cicala from his home, he could see chestnuts, laurels, and 
 myrtles ; and the more distant Vesuvius, that singular 
 and solitary hill, honeycombed with fire, seemed to him a 
 
i6 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 rude unfruitful mass. But when at length he came to 
 Vesuvius and could perceive the abundance of separate 
 things, the vines and all the other growth, and looked 
 over to Cicala, which in its turn had put on a blank and 
 shapeless aspect, he deduced the lesson that “ in Nature 
 there is no distance and nothing is near, but that Nature 
 is everywhere spacious and lofty.” (“ No one actually 
 sees distance; he sees only certain signs from which he 
 has learned to judge intuitively of it.” — Maudsley.) 
 
 “ The truest and most essential painter,” he says 
 (Gfr. 529), “is the liveliness of the fancy; the first 
 and most essential poet is inspiration, which is co- 
 equal with thought, and by the divinity or divinely-sent 
 influence of which thought becomes due and suitable 
 representation of both. Inspiration is the innermost 
 principle. Therefore, and in a certain measure, philo- 
 sophers are painters ; poets are painters and philosophers ; 
 ! painters are philosophers and poets. He who is not a 
 | poet and a painter is no philosopher. We say rightly 
 ) that to understand is to see imaginary forms and figures ; 
 and understanding is fancy, at least it is not deprived of 
 fancy. He is no painter who is not in some degree a poet 
 and thinker, and there can be no poet without a certain 
 measure of thought and representation.” And again, 
 ] “ Some men discover harmony by means of the eye, others, 
 ' though in a less degree, by the ear. The minds of true 
 poets, musicians, painters, and philosophers are clearly 
 related one to the other, since all true philosophy is at 
 the same time music, poetry, and painting. True poetry 
 1 is at the same time music and philosophy. True poetry 
 and music are in a manner divine wisdom and painting ” 
 (. De Imaginum Signorum et Idearum Composition e). These 
 words will be found peculiarly useful in dealing not only 
 with Bruno, but with his critics and historians. Numbers 
 of able and learned men have approached the subject, 
 and from every point of view it is certain that some light 
 may be gathered ; but too many of these writers bestow 
 
THE NOLAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 1 7 
 
 their own individuality upon facts and a philosophy 
 which demand more sympathising treatment. As a short 
 painter will unconsciously draw his figures too short and 
 a Jewish painter gives a hook to the nose of his hero, in 
 the same way a materialist writes of materialism and 
 makes his hero a materialist; and, indeed, every man puts 
 into his work something of his own. In works upon 
 Bruno and his philosophy he will be found to appear as a 
 materialist, an atheist, a pantheist, and sometimes in his 
 true character as an idealist. 
 
 Indeed, to rebut the charges of pantheism and atheism 
 levelled at his memory must be the task of every student 
 of the ISTolan philosophy, who cannot but feel with Sir 
 Philip Sidney when he wrote, “ It likes me much better 
 to find virtue in a fair lodging, than when I am bound to 
 seek it in an ill-favoured creature, like a pearl in a dung- 
 hill.” Had Bruno survived to write, like Descartes, a 
 Discours sur la Mtthode, the Nolan must have escaped the 
 accusation of pantheism which has risen from his concep- 
 tion of a world-soul, with its attendant difficulties. The 
 soul of the world is understood by Bruno to be, like the 
 soul of man, from God and in God, having its being from 
 him and doing its duty for him ; perfect in harmony, use, 
 and beauty, because it is inspired by him, a flaming 
 minister, a luminous and excellent star, a herald and 
 ambassador setting forth his glory. A firm believer in 
 the power of thought, he held it to be, like all the works 
 of God, divine in its origin, bearing within itself the ful- 
 ness of life, and sealed with the seal of infinity, and he was 
 a forerunner of all who have struggled and suffered in the 
 cause of religious freedom. “ He suffered,” says Coleridge 
 in his Table-Talk and Omniana , “ at Rome for atheism ; 
 that is, as is proved by all his works, for a lofty and 
 enlightened piety, which was, of course, unintelligible to 
 bigots and dangerous to an apostate hierarchy. If the 
 human mind be, as it assuredly is, the sublimest object 
 which nature affords to our contemplation, his lines, which 
 
i8 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 portray the human mind under the action of its most 
 elevated affections, have a fair claim to the praise of 
 sublimity.” 
 
 Few men at any period are more closely identified with 
 philosophy than Bruno, and yet there are few thinkers 
 whose names are less familiar to the world. No work 
 exists in English even with the small scope of the present 
 volume, viz., to give a review of the least abstruse of his 
 writings, and to lay before the public such scanty materials 
 as are at present forthcoming with respect to his life. But 
 fortunately, history is not entirely dependent on the 
 material facts of existence : thought plays a large part in 
 life; and a record of Bruno’s thought lies before us in 
 a long series of works occupied with the discussion of 
 scientific truths. Many of these truths are now no longer 
 tokens of battle, but remain like tattered flags to tell of 
 the struggle and pains of victory. Such is the theory of 
 Copernicus. Others, such as the theory of instinct, of 
 evolution, of the life of species, of the perfectibility of 
 man, of the history of the earth, and the relations of the 
 universe, still form the rallying-ground of thinkers. His 
 claim to distinction rests upon his vigorous scheme of in- 
 ductive thought, and upon a quality which, at that period 
 remote from modern science, is like the insight of a seer 
 into tli e hidden forces of Nature. “Why lean,” he says, 
 “ upon vain fancy when experience herself is our teacher ?” 
 (W. ii. 56). “Let us see, therefore, to what innumerable 
 discoveries we are enabled to proceed by the way of trial, 
 experiment, comparison, observation, and abstraction. For 
 does it not sometimes occur that, as we pursue a certain 
 end, another nobler still arises before us, as with alchemists 
 who, in seeking gold, find that which is far better and more 
 desirable?” (Gfr. 525). He looks upon the earth as a vast 
 body, living and dependent on the bounty of God. All the 
 moist stars or earths owe their existence to the suns, 
 thus illustrating the doctrine that out of oppositions of 
 heat and cold life is produced. 
 
THE NOLAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 '9 
 
 Speaking of Bruno as “this great man,” Tiraboscki 
 ■writes, “ It would be difficult to find bis equal, either in 
 his greatness or in his faults.” His pages are deluged in 
 ideas and obscured by a chaos of distinctions, and yet his 
 soul, like a particle of celestial fire, is not quenched ; and 
 “ such is his greatness,” writes Saisset, “ that his very 
 errors have a character of nobility ” ( Revue des Deux 
 Mondes, Nov. 18, 1847). No means was unfair, no con- 
 ceit too far fetched to rouse interest in the problems under 
 discussion. The name he chose for himself was the 
 Awakener ; and provided he could raise a laugh or startle 
 curiosity, he took no pains either to prune his style or to 
 lay the demon of quotation which came from his vast 
 stores of learning. Manzoni said of Dante that he was 
 master not only of anger but of smiles ; and Bruno writes 
 that his readers shall weep or laugh with him, as they may 
 be disciples of Heraclitus or Democritus : for he believed 
 it to be his mission to announce the truth ; not to develop 
 and establish it. Students will look in his work in 
 vain for close reasoning, or for that omission of detail 
 which we are told by Schiller is characteristic of the 
 artist ; yet of all the men who lived and suffered in that 
 great revival, none had a keener consciousness of the spirit 
 of the time than Giordano Bruno. 
 
 He believed a great revolution was in store for the 
 world, and he was never weary in repeating his convic- 
 tion that the hewn branch should blossom, ancient truths 
 revive, hidden truths be revealed, and that upon the dark- 
 ness of night a new light should arise and shine upon 
 men (W. ii. 82 ; De Trip. Min., p. 7). 
 
 “ Some dispositions,” says Lord Bacon in the Novum 
 Organum, “ evince an unbounded admiration of antiquity, 
 others eagerly embrace novelty. ... "VVe have reason 
 to expect much greater things of our own age than from 
 antiquity, . . . and the admiration of antiquity forces 
 man’s industry to rest satisfied with present discoveries.” 
 
 No present discovery and no expert of antiquity con- 
 
20 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 tented the restless spirit of Bruno or placed restraint upon 
 his speech. “ Calling things,” he says, “ by their proper 
 names, I say monks are monks, preachers preachers, 
 leeches leeches, and the like with everything in Nature.” 
 It was a maxim of the late M. Yan de Weyer that a diplo- 
 matist may say what he pleases, provided he is careful to 
 observe the form best suited to his purpose ; and it is cer- 
 tain that reckless speaking brought the Nolan into many 
 difficulties, and finally drew upon him the unmerited re- 
 proach of atheism. 
 
 A fresh source of danger to Bruno lay in the fact that 
 he neglected the severe and difficult language of the 
 schools, and, following the advice of Fuller, “ We must 
 speak with the Volge and think with the wise,” wrote in 
 Italian ; not caring with what asperity he spoke, nor on 
 whom the lash of correction fell. The style of his Italian 
 works is supple and amusing. They consist of dialogues in 
 which the scheme of the universe is expounded by one 
 speaker, and somewhat clumsily attacked by another. 
 Bold denunciations of false systems of philosophy and 
 religion are intermingled with spirited appeals to that love 
 of the beautiful and the divine which springs perennially 
 in the conscience ; and in familiar words, recalling the 
 passionate accents of Luther, men were taught physical 
 truths, and exhorted to prove all things and to hold fast 
 that which was good. Thus his works appealed to a large 
 class of the people, who, as on the Arabian carpet, were 
 carried from sphere to sphere without fatigue ; and in pass- 
 ing the limit of the world they were likely to elude their 
 spiritual masters, who did not lose sight of the objection- 
 able and dangerous fact. 
 
 Bruno’s works in Latin have been called by many 
 critics worthless and obscure, and it is true that to pene- 
 trate their secrets is to reach the golden branch which in 
 the Eastern story grew on a mountain top beset by troops 
 of hobgoblins and surrounded by a thicket of thorns. But 
 we learn from Winckelmann that “ Philosophy gives her 
 
THE NOLAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 21 
 
 hand to Art, and breathes into its figures more than 
 ordinary souls ; ” and if this be so, more indulgence is due 
 to the philosopher than to ordinary souls, who, in their 
 exertion to overcome the difficulties besetting him, share 
 in his triumph when the crowning achievement of their toil 
 is to attain a lofty and independent philosophy, its own 
 proof of merit and title of nobility. 
 
 The course of Bruno’s wanderings may be traced over 
 Europe by his books ; and it was strange that he always 
 succeeded in finding a printer and in producing something 
 new to be printed. In less than eleven years, this wan- 
 dering scholar, without means, without help, and almost 
 without disciples, was enabled to produce a vast quantity 
 of work ; and his discourses, his writings, and his general 
 activity forced recognition even from his enemies. The 
 age in which he lived, and the many towns in which he 
 was called upon to print his works, presented mechanical 
 difficulties of which modern writers have but a small con- 
 ception. But, triumphing over every obstacle, he was un- 
 ceasing in his labours for the truth, although the Inquisi- 
 tion, which understood the truth otherwise, was making 
 ready to reduce him to the silence of the grave. 
 
 Some one said of Caesar that he was “a monster of 
 diligence ; ” and if Bruno is to be judged by the quantity 
 of work which he produced during a life beset by difficulty 
 and danger, his diligence is as much to be admired as the 
 insurmountable patience with which he endured seven 
 years of captivity, and died at last by fire, a martyr to his 
 convictions. In vain he pleaded, as Voltaire pleaded 
 later, that he spoke not as a theologian, but as a 
 philosopher (“ humainement ”) ; in vain he sought for 
 shelter in a distinction between matters of faith and 
 matters of reason; for chance, with the “slippery foot” of 
 which Queen Elizabeth wrote to Queen Mary, delivered 
 him up to the Inquisition, that “ poniard aimed at the 
 throat of literature,” the yet more deadly enemy of 
 science. 
 
GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 The necessity of enlarging the proportions of the world 
 filled the Catholics with dismay. The innovators had 
 burst asunder the narrow inflexible skies of the Middle 
 Ages, opening a tremendous perspective of immeasurable 
 space. It was sacrilege to teach that the skies were sub- 
 ject to change and motion ; that space is the dwelling of 
 law, not of privilege ; and that new worlds arise, decay, 
 and submit to the eternal revolutions of life. 
 
 The Church shrank from the cold naked vault now 
 that it was no longer peopled with the familiar faces of 
 friends in heaven ; she could not soar aloft among forces 
 so far removed from the tapers which smoked on her 
 altars. Nor could she endure the shock of discovering that 
 the miracle of creation was not over. She would not face 
 the fact that a miracle is not less wonderful because it is 
 an everyday occurence, and she placed herself in oppo- 
 sition, not to sectaries and fanatics, as hitherto, but to 
 the tables of the law written on the face of the living 
 universe. The result of the struggle was certain ; but it 
 was slow, and it was not to be accomplished without 
 terrible sacrifices. 
 
 Charm is said by Lessing to be beauty in motion, and 
 philosophy may be said to be truth in motion, though, in 
 common with all advances, its forward course is twice 
 fatal — to him who opposes it, and to him who, moving with 
 it, is identified with it and destroyed by its enemies. The 
 latter was the fate of Bruno ; and if at first sight his 
 seems a hard lot, and the scheme of Providence inscrutable, 
 the tenor of his writings was always such as to show that 
 he longed for death, which was to make him immortal ; 
 while in every law of nature alike that beneficent scheme 
 lies veiled which out of pain and evil brings forth correc- 
 tion, and out of correction progress. 
 
 In the convent of St. Dominic at Naples Bruno pro- 
 bably wrote many of his sonnets, putting the finishing 
 touches to them later in England. The Candle-Bearer 
 
“ THE NOAH’S ARK,” 1366-72. 
 
 23 
 
 and the Noah's Ark seem to have been written about this 
 period. The latter work was dedicated, or was said to be 
 dedicated, to Pope Pius V., who filled the Papal seat from 
 1566 to 1572. It was therefore a very youthful produc- 
 tion. In the dedicatory epistle of the Cabal (W. ii. 255) 
 Bruno speaks of having “ consecrated and presented ” a 
 book called the Noah’s Ark to Pope Pius V. It has 
 never been printed, and it has totally disappeared. Berti 
 believes that the book was never really presented to the 
 Pope, and that its contents were probably repeated in 
 The Cabal of the Pagasean Norse, the fantastic dedica- 
 tion of which was addressed (without his permission) to 
 the Bishop of Casamarciano. 
 
 The argument of the Noah’s Ark, so far as it may 
 be gathered from Bruno’s vague and scattered allusions, 
 appears to lie in the symbolic representation of all the 
 society of men by means of animals. Within the wooden 
 walls of this ark the whole animal kingdom is collected, 
 and it is governed by the ass, on whom the gods have 
 conferred “ pre-eminence and a post in the poop.” The 
 ass, according to Bruno, is a symbolic and kabbalistic 
 animal, combining stupidity, hypocrisy, false piety, stupid 
 patience, and ignorance. Allusions to what is called 
 by Oliver Wendell Holmes “the ugly central fact of 
 donkeyism,” constantly occur in all Bruno’s works. In 
 the Supper of Ashes, while speaking in praise of the 
 binary number, Bruuo says (W. i. 124), “Two are the 
 numbers in kind — odd and even, whereof the one is 
 masculine, the other feminine. Of two sorts are the 
 Cupids — superior and divine, inferior and vulgar. . . . 
 Of two kind are the asses — domestic and savage.” 
 
 The Candle-Bearer (W. i. 17) opens with an invocation 
 “ in the name of the blessed tail of the ass.” “ I have 
 seen,” Bruno says (W. ii. 232), “the monks of Castello in 
 Genoa hold up the tail of an ass, veiled, for the people 
 to kiss, crying, ‘ Do not handle it ; kiss it. This is the 
 sacred relic of that blessed ass which was found worthy 
 
24 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 to carry our God from the Mount of Olives to Jerusalem. 
 Worship it, kiss it, and make your offerings to it.’” 
 
 (This relic is mentioned by Henri Estienne in his 
 Apology for Herodotus and by Calvin in his Treatise on 
 Belies. The tail of Balaam’s ass was preserved at the 
 Church of St. John Lateran in Rome. But what are these 
 objects compared to the coals which roasted St. Lawrence, 
 three of which in Bruno’s time were adored in three 
 Roman churches ; the tablecloth on which the Lord’s 
 Supper was celebrated — this was preserved at Userche 
 in Limousin ; a finger of the glove of St. Nicodemus, 
 worshipped in Normandy; and the lamp-oil which healed 
 the blind before the tomb of St. Peter at Rome ?) 
 
 The Cabal of the Pagasean Horse, with its sequel, the 
 Ass of Cyllene, is a complete work devoted by Bruno to 
 the ass. He demands (W. ii. 295) which is most worthy, 
 “an asinine man or a humanised ass?” and the “angelic 
 ass of Balaam” (W. i. 216) is treated with the humour of 
 Rabelais or of Heine. “ I have never seen an ass,” writes 
 the latter, alluding in a preface to the story of Balaam, 
 “ who spake as a man, though I have often met men who, 
 whenever they opened their mouths, spake as asses.” 
 When in the Expulsion Jove is about to reform the 
 constellations, he is more complimentary to the symbol 
 of foolishness, which Bruno exalts to the skies. “ I dare 
 add nothing,” he says, “ to the spotless majesty of those 
 two asses which shine in the space of Cancer, because 
 chiefly of these (both by justice and reason) is the king- 
 dom of heaven, as I shall invincibly demonstrate by most 
 powerful reasons some other time, for I dare not now 
 speak of such an important matter. But I am only 
 grieved and vexed that these two divine animals have 
 been so meanly treated, not having so much as a house of 
 their own to dwell in, but are glad to take lodgings of a 
 retrograde aquatic animal; besides, we have bestowed on 
 them only two little pitiful stars to each one, and these 
 two only of the fourth magnitude” (W. ii. 136). 
 
THE NOAH’S ARK,” 1566-72. 
 
 25 
 
 The ass is treated with the same sardonic humour in 
 the Supper of Ashes. “ Do you not know that when 
 the son of Kish, called Saul, went seeking the asses, he 
 was on the point of being esteemed worthy, and of being 
 appointed king of the Israelitish people ? Go, go and read 
 the first book of Samuel, and you will see that that gentle 
 personage made more account of finding his asses than 
 of being anointed king. Hence every time that Samuel 
 spoke to him of crowning him, he replied to him, ‘ And 
 where are the asses ? the asses, where are they ? my 
 father has sent me to find the asses, and do you not wish 
 that I should find my asses ? ’ In conclusion, he would 
 not be quiet until the prophet told him that the asses were 
 found, wishing perhaps to hint that he might be content 
 with having that kingdom, which was equal to his asses, 
 and even more” (W. i. 144). The same work contains (W. 
 i. 149) an allusion to the Noah’s Ark. “Dost thou not 
 remember, 0 ISTolan, that which is written in thy book 
 entitled the Noah’s Ark ? How, whilst the beasts ranged 
 themselves in order that they might allay the strife born 
 of precedence, in what danger was the ass of losing his 
 pre-eminence, which consisted in his taking a seat in 
 the poop of the ark ? ” (This curious expression recurs 
 (W. ii. 278) in the Cabal, “ The intelligence which is the 
 power of the soul, and president in the poop of the soul.”) 
 “ By what creatures are the noblest of the human race 
 represented at the dreadful day of judgment if it is not by 
 sheep and by goats ? ” 
 
 It will be easy to understand how the rest of the com- 
 pany fared at the hands of the Nolan, since he supposes 
 them capable of submitting to the rule of an ass. That 
 this book could have been dedicated to the Pope is impos- 
 sible. Pius Y. was a Dominican ; rigid and inflexible by 
 nature, he was made doubly rigid and inflexible by grace, 
 which had called him to his high estate. He sowed such 
 seeds in the Church as, three months after his death, 
 produced the massacre of St. Bartholomew. Himself an 
 
26 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 Inquisitor, he extended to his own people the merciless 
 treatment with which he corrected heretics, saying, “ He 
 who would govern must begin by himself.” Accordingly, 
 he had the courage to dissolve the debased and dissolute 
 order of the Umiliati, and his very look was believed by 
 the Eoman people to have the power of conversion. He 
 searched not only into present but into past errors of 
 belief, and sick men lay neglected on their beds by order 
 of the Pope if they did not make confession once in three 
 days. Monks and nuns, bishops and archbishops, received 
 visitations at his hands ; society, from the highest to the 
 lowest, was cleansed and renovated by him. Carnesecchi, 
 who had taken part in the first Italian movement towards 
 Protestantism, was delivered up in fetters to the Eoman 
 Inquisition, and not all his own reputation nor his con- 
 nection with royalty could save him from the stake. 
 The Archbishop of Toledo, who, as he himself said, “ had 
 converted many, . . . and had no other object than the 
 suppression of heresy,” was burnt because he was not 
 orthodox on the doctrine of justification. One auto-da-f6 
 followed another, till every germ of heresy was crushed 
 out. It was Pius V. who gave a Catholic leader orders to 
 massacre every heretic that fell into his hands. The Pope 
 had offered to pour out his blood and his treasure, “ even 
 to the sacred vessels of the Church,” to aid the Catholic 
 cause. Southern Europe was banded together at his 
 instigation against the Turks ; and when Lepanto was 
 won, the pious Pope was shown the victory in a trance. 
 Was this the man to accept the dedication of Bruno’s 
 book ? Moreover, the monk did not leave his convent in 
 the odour of sanctity ; and the Papal Inquisitors needed 
 little to put them on his track. If the Noah’s Ark 
 was in reality dedicated to the Pope, it was in no pro- 
 pitiatory spirit, such as prompts Highlanders to speak of 
 the “ kind gallows ,” or Eomans to allude to the Goddess 
 Fortune without naming her; and though Bruno might 
 not have allowed any consideration to weigh with him 
 
THE NOAH'S ARK. 
 
 27 
 
 when the truth, as he understood it, was at stake, it is 
 certain that the Pope could never have accepted such a 
 work, nor is it probable that its author would be per- 
 mitted to remain peaceably in Italy, which, as a fact, 
 he did not quit till four years after the death of Pope 
 
( 28 ) 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 By devout prayer that Eternal Spirit can enrich with all utterance and 
 knowledge, and sends out his Seraphim with the hallowed fire of his 
 altar to touch and purify the lips of whom He pleases.” — Milton. 
 
 Naples. The Florentine Academy. The Trials at Naples and in 
 
 Home. Flight from Rome, 1576. Genoa. Noli. The Sphere. 
 
 Bruno’s Theory of the Stars and Suns. Turin. Venice. 
 
 Copernicus. 
 
 The wealthy sea-board, that historic shore which was 
 soon to echo with the triumph of Lepanto, groaned under 
 the Spanish tyranny. Alva, who did not scruple to drain 
 Naples of blood and treasure himself, watched the en- 
 croachment of all strangers with a jealous eye, and during 
 the French campaign in 1556 observed that “he had no 
 intention to stake the whole kingdom of Naples against a 
 brocaded coat of the Duke of Guise,” adopting therefore 
 some such pacific measures as those of another Spanish 
 governor of the El Dorado, “ who,” says the historian, 
 “ conciliated the natives by seizing the chiefs, chaining 
 them up, shaving their heads, putting on wigs and 
 doublets, and sending them forth to spread civilisation 
 in the country.” 
 
 The Viceroy Granvelle was so detested in the Nether- 
 lands that the state papers record his unpopularity ; and 
 it was said that the nobles would eat him alive if they 
 caught him. In 1574 he was succeeded by the Marquis 
 de Mondejar, who was said to have increased eightfold his 
 patrimony at the expense of Naples, while advancing 
 each of his seven sons in military and ecclesiastical pre- 
 
THE VICEROYALTY OF NAPLES. 
 
 29 
 
 ferment. “ This new Themistocles,” wrote Parrino, “ was 
 hated in Italy.” The Viceroys at this time had orders to 
 take no steps without consulting Don John of Austria, 
 who was in garrison at Naples, remaining in charge of the 
 southern coasts until 1576, when he left to assume the 
 government of the Netherlands. What effect could such 
 rulers produce on a people made by nature for luxury and 
 slavery ? Capua was not far off ; the loveliness and sloth 
 of Capua were in the air. “ Do not desire,” writes Parrino, 
 “the viceroyalty of Naples; to leave it costs us dear.” 
 Thus, under the deadly sway of Spain, craft supplanted 
 virtue and piety was overridden by hypocrisy and fana- 
 ticism. The vices of a conquered people throve in a soil 
 but too open to evil influences. No career was open to 
 the Italian subjects of Spain but the army, the magistracy, 
 or the Church ; and the Church was too often chosen as a 
 means of advancement on earth, rather than as an unpre- 
 judiced and incorruptible guide to heaven. 
 
 The people of Naples, credulous by nature, lent them- 
 selves to the bigotry of the Government. The older 
 monastic orders increased, and a swarm of new orders 
 appeared. The wealth of the laity changed hands and 
 became clerical, or made its way to Spain. Two-thirds 
 of the revenue of the country was in the hands of the 
 priests, and their influence ran immoderately high. But 
 the powerful and ancient University of Naples, which was 
 founded by Frederick II., stemmed the tide. Distin- 
 guished for jurisprudence, it refused its prerogative to no 
 learning ; and under its fostering care so many academies 
 sprang up that they were at length forbidden to assemble 
 by the Church. 
 
 In the time of Bruno, contemporary historians declared 
 themselves unable to count the poets of Italy. Ippolito 
 di Medici is said to have supported a train of one hundred 
 poets. “ Our poets are more,” says Zerbo (Lett, di Diversi, 
 Venez, 1564, iii. 90), “ in number than the sands of the 
 sea, and may fairly overtop Parnassus.” But it was not 
 
GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 3 ° 
 
 to these groundlings that Bruno owed any of his remark- 
 able qualities. The philosophic genius of Plato was more 
 to the taste of the learned than the “ subtle metaphysics 
 (W. i. p. 255) of the divine Aristotle,” “whose desire,” 
 says Dante, “ is given evermore for grief.” It was to the 
 influences of philosophy, and, above all, to the study of 
 Nature, initiated by Porta and Telesio, that Bruno owed 
 his individuality. Of Telesio he speaks (W. i. 250) as 
 “ one full of judgment, having waged an honourable war 
 upon Aristotle.” The Nolan and the philosopher of 
 Cosenza were ardent followers of the science of Nature, 
 but in method they were radically divided. Telesio, 
 though the opponent of Aristotle, made use of his system ; 
 Bruno applied himself to pure reason on inductive prin- 
 ciples ; he was, moreover, the adherent of the high-minded 
 and liberal teaching of Plato. At that time the two 
 schools of philosophy in Italy were led by Plato and 
 Aristotle. The school of Plato had its headquarters in 
 the Academy of Florence, and spread itself southwards, 
 its ideas advancing with its march. The doctrine of 
 Aristotle was taught by Pomponaccio and others ; it was 
 propagated in Northern Italy by the universities of Bol- 
 ogna, Pavia, and Padua. It attained its highest develop- 
 ment in the labour of Galileo. 
 
 The advance of what may be called spiritualism was 
 due in a great measure to the Platonism of the Florentine 
 Academy. Thanks to the labours of the “ hearers ” and 
 the “ novices,” as, with some pedantry, the members were 
 called, and under favour of the Medici, the stimulative 
 qualities of the imagination came into play. At first a 
 natural reaction from the dusty squabbles of the schools, 
 this enthusiastic and poetic erudition soon led to a love of 
 the marvellous, and to a fanciful cry for inspiration, which 
 brought about the downfall of the society. But although 
 its light was at last quenched in the midst of a dis- 
 creditable mysticism, the Academy did not expire without 
 leaving its mark on the age. Bruno in especial owed 
 
THE FLORENTINE ACADEMY. 
 
 3i 
 
 much to the Platonism of the Florentines. There was a 
 similarity between his doctrines and those of Pletho, 
 whose discourses had so powerful an effect upon Cosmo dei 
 Medici, that he established an academy for the sole pur- 
 pose of cultivating this new and more elevated species of 
 philosophy. The conferences were held in the palace of 
 the Medici at Florence, or in their sombre villa at Careggi, 
 and the teaching spread widely in Italy ; while, with the 
 fickleness that was characteristic of the age, Pletho, after 
 his death, was declared to be “ a dangerous viper,” and 
 his books were burnt, a strange comment on the favour 
 of princes. The influence of his belief, that the stars 
 have souls, that the world is eternal, and that demons 
 are not malignant spirits, may be traced in the works of 
 Bruno. Nor was he unbiassed by the teaching of Ficino, 
 who, half a century earlier, was at the head of the 
 Florentine Academy. An imitator of the Neo-Platonists, 
 and holding that all the philosophic learning of antiquity 
 centered in the Alexandrian schools, Ficino believed that 
 man possesses two souls, one which is sensitive, and the 
 other intellectual — a divine existence breathed into man 
 by the Creator. The sensitive soul, or third essence of the 
 body, is inseparable from it, and is subject to the eternal 
 transformations of matter. The Supreme Being is Unity, 
 into which the intellectual soul can be drawn by a rapt 
 ecstasy, that blessed vision of the Deity which was granted 
 to Plotinus and Porphyry. Perfection, according to Ficino 
 and the Neo-Platonists, is The One, and as God is in his 
 essence one, it follows that he is Unity. The Creator 
 could not, however, stoop from his high estate to Nature. 
 He has surrounded his throne with angels, ministers, and 
 fostering spirits, by whom the third essences are created 
 and maintained. Bruno summarily destroyed this fabric 
 of the invention. The souls of Ficino, the third essence, 
 composing and figuring, so to say, rivers, pebbles, and 
 interpenetrating the whole structure of our planet in 
 various qualities and degrees, — these varying essences 
 
32 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 were seized and united by Bruno into one, which he called 
 the World-Soul, and which he believed to be the breath 
 and gift of God, as our souls are. The World-Soul is God 
 pf (, and Nature at the same time, for in God Nature lives and 
 ' a ^ 6 ' VV ' '* moves and has its being, as man does; in Nature he is 
 
 manifested by infinite ways and in infinite worlds, know- 
 ing neither time nor space ; in Nature the harmony of 
 Sfvw*evci. oppositions is made plain. Thus Bruno, having discovered 
 
 a new and higher unity, gave himself up to the living power 
 within him, declared war against antiquity, broke through 
 all the traditions of the schools, and called upon men to 
 behold in Nature the image and superscription of its 
 Maker. 
 
 Into the still seclusion of St. Dominic he fell like a 
 firebrand. To him the vows of obedience, poverty, and 
 chastity were more irksome than the chivalrous service of 
 courtesy, loyalty, bravery, and fidelity ; and his fantastic, 
 restless, and indocile nature soon asserted itself. In 
 Naples, it appears from the documents (No. vii.), he was 
 twice threatened with a trial, first for having given away 
 certain figures and pictures of “ St. Catherine of Siena, 
 and perhaps of St. Anthony,” after retaining the crucifix 
 only, which caused him to be thought a despiser of the 
 saints ; and for having bidden a novice, who was reading 
 the history of the Seven Joys of the Madonna in verse, 
 to throw the book away, and to read some other book, 
 such as the lives of the Holy Fathers. In another 
 document (No. xiii.) this evidence is repeated, with the 
 addition, that it was the master of the novices who twice 
 made an accusation in writing against Bruno, but that the 
 writing was destroyed. The matter evidently was thought 
 of slight moijnent, or Bruno could not have been permitted 
 to enter the priesthood. 
 
 As soon as. Ke became a priest he seemed to have 
 allowed his heretical tendencies the upper-hand of his 
 discretion. A second and more important trial was the 
 result. “ I could not tell,” he says (Doc. xiii.), “ upon 
 
FIRST TRIAL OF BRUNO. 
 
 33 
 
 what articles they proceeded against me, except that 
 reasoning one day with Montalcino (who was a brother 
 of our order, a Lombard), in the presence of some other 
 fathers, and he saying that these heretics were ignorant of 
 the language of the schools, I answered that although they 
 did not proceed in their arguments by the rules of logic, 
 yet they declared their meaning conveniently and in the 
 same way as the ancient fathers of the Holy Church; 
 giving the example of the form of heresy of Arius, of 
 whom the scholastics say that he understood the genera- 
 tion of the Son by the act of Nature, and not by will; and 
 the same thing is said in other words by St. Augustine” 
 (probably book vii. of St. Augustine’s work De Trinitate), 
 “ namely, ‘ that the Son is not of the same substance 
 with the Father, but proceeding from his will like other 
 creatures ; ’ whereupon those fathers fell upon me, saying 
 that I defended heretics, and that I maintained they were 
 learned men.” 
 
 It is clear, however, that Bruno leant towards the Arian 
 heresy. “ That Christ was the Son of God, and born of 
 the ever-blessed Virgin Mary,” he says (Doc. xiii.), “I 
 have not doubted, . . . but I have doubted the Divine 
 Incarnation, . . . for the Divinity being by nature infinite 
 (Doc. xxviii.) and humanity finite, the first eternal and 
 the latter temporal, it did not appear to me reasonable . . . 
 that humanity should be thus joined to Divinity.” 
 
 (Doc. xii.) — “ As for the Second Person, I say that I 
 held him in truth to be one in essence with the First, and 
 so with the Third; for being undivided in being, they 
 cannot be unequal, because all the attributes of the Father 
 belong to the Son also, and to the Holy Spirit. I have 
 doubted only how this Second Person could be made flesh 
 and suffer ; . . . hut I have declared the opinion of Arius to 
 appear less pernicious than it was esteemed and vulgarly 
 understood to be, . . . and I declared that Arius said the 
 Word was neither Creator nor creature, but a medium 
 between the Creator and the creature, as the Word is the 
 
 c 
 
34 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 medium between the speaker and the hearer ; and there- 
 fore he is said to be first born before all creatures, not 
 from whom, but by whom all things were created ; not to 
 whom, but by whom all things are related, and return to 
 their ultimate end, which is the Father” (Doc. xi.) 
 
 “ It was on this account,” Bruno adds in the same 
 document, “that I was suspected” (of heresy), “and per- 
 haps this, among other things, was the reason. ... I was 
 first tried in Naples” (Doc. xi. pp. 28-29). His doubts 
 seem to have centred on the actual distinction of the 
 Persons, as though in God he could admit no distinction 
 except the rational and logical distinction of his attributes. 
 He tells his judges plainly that he could not find the 
 doctrine of the Trinity in either Testament. He seems to 
 have held these opinions firmly from his eighteenth year 
 till the date of his trial. “ I do not understand,” he says 
 (Doc. xi.), “ the two Persons separate from the Father. . . . 
 I hold that there is an infinite universe, which is the effect 
 of the infinite Divine power ; for I esteem it to be a thing 
 unworthy of the Divine goodness and power that, being 
 able to produce another world than this, and an infinite 
 number of others, it should produce a finite world, so that 
 I have declared there are infinite individual worlds such 
 as this earth, which I hold with Pythagoras to be a planet 
 similar to which is the moon, with other planets and other 
 stars, which are infinite (Doc. xi. p. 26), and that all these 
 bodies, being worlds and without number, constitute the 
 infinite universality in an infinite space, and this is called 
 the infinite universe, in which are innumerable worlds ; 
 so that there is a twofold infinity — of the magnitude of 
 the universe, and the multitude of the worlds. Further, 
 in this universe I place a universal Providence, by virtue of 
 which all things live, grow, move, and attain perfection; 
 and I understand it in two ways — the one in that manner 
 by which the soul is present in the body, the whole of the soul 
 in all the body, and the whole in each and every part ; and 
 this I call Nature, the shadow and trace of the Divinity ; the 
 
DOCTRINE OF THE TRINITY. 
 
 35 
 
 other, in the ineffable manner in which God by his essence, 
 presence, and power is in all and above all ; not as a part, 
 not as a soul, but in a manner not capable of being made 
 plain to the understanding. 
 
 “ Next, in the Divinity, with the theologians and greater 
 philosophers, I understand all the attributes to be one. I 
 understand three attributes, power, wisdom, and goodness, 
 or mind, intellect, and love ; so that all things have first, 
 their being by reason of mind, then their order and distinct 
 succession by reason of intellect, then their concord and 
 symmetry by reason of love, . . . which I hold to be in 
 all and above all ; as nothing is without partaking of being, 
 and being is not without the essence of being ; as nothing 
 is beautiful without the presence of beauty, so nothing can 
 be without the Divine Presence, and in this manner, by the 
 way of reason and not by the way of substantial truth, I 
 understand distinction in the Divinity. . . . 
 
 “ Then with regard to matters of faith, ... to the indi- 
 viduality of the Divine Persons, to that Wisdom and that 
 Son of the mind called by philosophers the Intellect, and 
 by theologians the Word, who we are to believe took upon 
 him our flesh, I place myself within the bounds of philo- 
 sophy, and I have not understood this matter, but have 
 doubted, holding it with inconstant faith, though I do not 
 remember to have given signs (of doubt) in writing, or 
 by word of mouth, except indirectly ; . . . and I have not 
 been able to comprehend the Third Person and Divine 
 Spirit as I ought, but in the manner of the Pythagoreans and 
 of Solomon, who says in the Book of Wisdom ” (c. i. v. 7), 
 “ ‘ The Spirit of God filled the round earth and all that is 
 in it;’ or as Yirgil explained the doctrine of the Pytha- 
 goreans in the text of the iEneid ” (B. vi. ver. 724), “ and 
 from this Spirit, which is called the Life of the Universe, 
 in my philosophy I understand all life to flow, and the 
 souls of all things which have life and a soul ; and this I 
 understand is immortal, there being no death, but division 
 and congregation ; which doctrine I understand by a pas- 
 
 
3* 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 sage in Ecclesiastes, which says, ‘ There is no new tiling 
 under the sun ; . . . the thing that hath been, it is that 
 which shall be ; and that which is done is that which shall 
 be done. ’ ” 
 
 For these, and similar discordant opinions, the second 
 trial was instituted by the Church. The accuser was no 
 longer the master of the novices, but the provincial of the 
 order, Fra Domenico Yita (Doc. x.) It was either in 
 1575 or early in the year 1576, when Bruno was once 
 more in the monastery at Naples, that the doubt which 
 had tinged the mind of the novice became negation in 
 the monk. (Further evidence is yielded by the oration 
 delivered by him in 1589 at Helmstedt on the death of 
 the Duke of Brunswick, in which Bruno says that he 
 abandoned his country lest he should be compelled “ to 
 submit to a superstitious religion.”) 
 
 The counts against him reached one hundred and thirty, 
 according to the evidence of his accuser, Mocenigo, the 
 Venetian patrician, given in the first document of the last 
 and fatal trial at Venice. The old matter of the images 
 was revived, and fearing he should be cast into prison 
 (Doc. xiii.), Bruno fled from Naples, which he was never to 
 see again, and sought refuge in Borne in a convent of his 
 order, without, so far as appears from his words, any pre- 
 sentiment of the lurking shadow of death into which he 
 was to enter on that spot at the end of his pilgrimage. 
 “The year following the year of the Jubilee 1 I was in 
 Borne in the convent of Minerva (under obedience to 
 Maestro Sisto da Luca, procurator of the order), whither 
 I went to present myself because I was proceeded against 
 twice at Naples, . . . and the suit was renewed when I 
 went to Borne, with other articles which I do not know ; 
 for which reason I left the religious life, and putting off the 
 habit, I went to Noli in the Genoese territory” (Doc. viii.) 
 
 Mocenigo, the friend who betrayed Bruno into the 
 
 1 1576. The Jubilee was celebrated in 1575. 
 
THE SECOND TRIAL OF BRUNO. 
 
 37 
 
 hands of the Inquisition, accuses the monk of having 
 thrown his accuser into the Tiber, and says that he fled 
 away before taking his trial ; but as no other evidence of 
 this story is forthcoming, it is probably worthless. 
 
 The evidence continues : “ I fled from Eome because I 
 had letters from Naples, and was warned that upon my 
 departure from Naples there had been discovered certain 
 books of the works of St. Chrysostom and of St. Jerome, 
 with the forbidden commentaries of Erasmus, which I 
 had used secretly, and I had thrown them aw T ay into 
 a private place when I left Naples, lest they should be 
 found; . . . but I have never abjured either publicly or 
 privately, whether for these proceedings or for any other 
 cause ; nor have I at any time appeared before any other 
 tribunal of the Holy Office.” 
 
 The fugitive monk, casting aside his frock and aban- 
 doning his name in religion, left Eome secretly, and sought 
 refuge in the territory of Genoa, remaining there, accord- 
 ing to his historian Berti, for three days only, in 1576. 
 Sigwart, however, accepts the date with diffidence (Die 
 Lebensgeschichte Giordano Bruno’s, Tubingen, 1880, p. 8). 
 Under the Doge Prospero Fattinanti, in 1574, disturbances 
 had broken out between the rival factions of the old and 
 the new nobles, supposed to be secretly fomented by 
 agents of France. The king of Spain felt his interests 
 as protector of the Eepublic to be compromised, and Don 
 John of Austria was dispatched from his neighbouring 
 garrison at Naples to quiet and overlook the town. He 
 placed himself on the watch at Vigevano, and was there, 
 with some brief intervals, from April 1574 till the early 
 spring of 1576, when a brief outburst of civil war cleared 
 the air and was followed by peace. 
 
 The lands of the Eepublic of Genoa were kept intact by 
 the jealousy of its neighbours, who by carefully checking 
 each other’s depredations guarded the citizens from all 
 encroachment. Its territory stretched from Monaco to 
 Sarzana, a distance of about a hundred and fifty miles. 
 
GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 33 
 
 In theory it was a republic ; but it presented the singular 
 aspect of a republic with a crowned head and a body 
 of nobles. The Golden Book of Genoa contained the 
 names of a powerful and splendid aristocracy, who, en- 
 sconced in their towers on the close Mediterranean bays, 
 carried on the work of pirates. This they nominally 
 directed against Turks, Venetians, and other enemies of 
 Genoa, but they were not nice in discriminating between 
 foreign flags and that of their .own people when a 
 personal enemy fell in their way. Factions ran high. 
 Interminable feuds between Bampini and Mascherati, 
 between Guelphs and Ghibellines, led at last to con- 
 stant fighting between the nobles and the people ; the first 
 being tyrannous and quarrelsome, and their subjects surly 
 and impatient of control. Foreigners were waylaid and 
 stabbed : foreign soldiers were maltreated and besieged 
 in their homes ; the people flew to arms and fought in the 
 streets on the slightest provocation. In 1525 the Genoese 
 rabble had hooted Francis I. when he rode into their city 
 after the battle of Pavia, his fallen grandeur represented by 
 long files of Spanish guards ; and this jealousy of foreigners 
 ran so high that in 1574 a decree was issued forbidding 
 them as well as the citizens of Genoa to appear armed in 
 the streets ; upon which the contentious populace collected 
 in the town, called on their powerful and warlike neigh- 
 bours for help, and stood at bay, while Don John of Austria 
 kept watch in the interests of Spain, and whiled away the 
 time with learning dancing and assisting at tournaments. 
 
 The legate of the Pope and the ambassadors of France 
 and Spain had retired to Casale to consult on a reform of 
 the Genoese statutes, and meanwhile the town was lacerated 
 by internal dissension and ravaged by a pestilence. A 
 story is told by Bacon of a Prince of Orange who, being 
 dangerously wounded by a Spanish boy, could find no 
 means to staunch the blood but by men’s thumbs, succeed- 
 ing one another for the space of two days, and at last the 
 blood retired. Much the same process was applied by the 
 
NOLI, 1576. 
 
 39 
 
 three potentates in attendance on the hills of Genoa, and 
 by their united efforts the blood shed in the city was 
 stopped and order at last restored. 
 
 Meanwhile Bruno, whose living depended on such peace- 
 ful and scholarly appliances as a printing-press, a book- 
 seller, and a good school in which to teach, withdrew from 
 the scene of dissension to Noli, a little town on the coast, 
 seven miles from Savona and four from Finale. Noli 
 stands at the head of the gulf which bears its name, im- 
 prisoned between two mountain chains, which end on one 
 side with the Capo di Yado, and on the other with the 
 singular rocky peak of the Capo di Noli. The town is 
 surrounded by fine old walls crowned with towers, and it 
 still contains a church founded in the eighth century, with 
 other monuments of that youth of the world which is 
 called antiquity. One of those happy cities which has no 
 history, Noli remained free and prosperous, paying five 
 sequins a year for protection to its great neighbour Genoa, 
 and preserved for ever from oblivion by Dante {Purgatory , 
 canto iv.), who, in the spirit, had descended the craggy 
 hill to the rift in which the little city is situated. Three 
 centuries later, Bruno, coming probably by water, the 
 cheapest way, arrived in the town, and supported himself 
 “ by teaching grammar to the boys and reading the sphere 1 
 (astronomy) with certain gentlemen” (Doc. viii.-ix.), re- 
 maining in this humble office four or five months. 
 
 The sphere, as it was technically called in the sixteenth 
 century, while dealing with a science which, so far as we 
 know, is without limits or termination, did its best to 
 supply both to the universe. The earth was supposed to 
 stand still in the core or centre of a moving crystal sphere, 
 as a fly might hang in a bottle, receiving circular motion 
 from without. The heavens were held to be round like 
 the earth, because the circle is a perfect figure, having 
 
 1 “ My dear brother,” Sir Philip If you do, I care little for any more 
 Sydney writes to his brother Robert, astronomy in you.” — Zonch's Me- 
 “ I think you understand the sph&e. moirs of Sir P. Sidney, p. 171. 
 
40 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 neither beginning nor end, and also because of all bodies, 
 the sphere, as containing the greatest volume in relation 
 to its circumference, can support the greatest number of 
 living creatures. To this was allotted “the best of all 
 possible motions, the motion of uniform circular rotation.” 
 This immense ball in the inner part of heaven was sur- 
 rounded by nine or ten zones of transparent crystal, 
 forming so many hollow spheres or layers ; in these the 
 earth w r as fixed like a tulip-root in its outer surrounding 
 envelopes. The whole of these were supposed to roll in 
 a mass from east to west round an axis passing through 
 the centre of the earth ; the sun, the moon, and the seven 
 planets, each in its separate enclosure of celestial spheres, 
 had a contrary motion to that of the earth ; but such 
 obscurity and contradiction were caused by these inven- 
 tions that other inventions, called “inequalities,” we®e 
 resorted to to make things plain, on which fresh diffi- 
 culties arose. 1 
 
 Such were the views prevailing at the time of Bruno. 
 Bounded on the teaching of Aristotle, they were embodied 
 by one Sacrobosco, an Englishman, in a primer on astro- 
 nomy which was commonly received in all schools 
 ( [Sphcera Mundi, ist edit., Eerrara, 1472; Venice, 1490; 
 Wittemberg, 1540, preface by Melanchthon; Leyden, 
 1626). 
 
 Even thus early in his career Bruno’s teaching must 
 have differed widely from that in vogue. “ The eartli 
 moves,” he says; “it turns on its own axis and it moves 
 round the sun.” A truth which is now the common 
 property of every school-child was then the battle-cry of 
 progress, and Aristotle, “the familiar spirit of Nature,” as 
 he is called by Bruno, “ the butcher ( carnefice ) of the 
 other divine philosophers ” (W. ii. 403), was at the head 
 of the opposition. 
 
 1 So opposed were these inven- “Had the Creator of the universe 
 tions to Nature, that, on learning sought my advice the world would 
 the Aristotelian scheme of the zones be maintained in better order.” 
 
 King Alphonso of Castile exclaimed, 
 
THEORY OF THE EARTH. 
 
 4i 
 
 A complete break with the Church was the only possible 
 result. Extremes meet ; and the boy who began his career 
 as a monk, burning with the fervour of mysticism and 
 seeking in the convent that peace which the world cannot 
 give, rebelled against the fetters in which his reason was 
 placed by the Church. Passionate and enthusiastic in his 
 search for truth, he smarted under the indignity of beholding 
 his country-people adore the tail of a donkey at Gastello, 
 or sit in congress to decide whether a mouse which had de- 
 voured the Sacrament was to be killed or to be worshipped. 
 Added to these minor causes of discontent, the falsity of 
 the Aristotelian scheme of the universe filled him with 
 contempt and incredulity, and finally sapped his allegiance 
 to Catholicism. The movement of the earth was an essen- 
 tial necessary truth; and with Bruno, to feel truth and 
 to proclaim it were one. Space alone, he says, is destitute 
 of all power, virtue, and operation. Movement is a sove- 
 reign law of the universe. Why deny it to the earth ? 
 Despising “ the vile imagination of the figure of the sphere 
 and the diversity of heavens” (W. ii. 8), he taught that the 
 earth is of the same matter and form as the other stars ; 
 every created thing which moves and lives constitutes a 
 living being ; a star performing its appointed course in the 
 heavens with wisdom and exactitude holds the rank of an 
 intelligent being. (This was the view of Plato, who, in his 
 Timceus, says that the world is an animal ; and A r oltaire, 
 repeating the words of Plato, adds, “ Thus the nature of 
 this immense animal, which is called the world, is eternal.”) 
 “ The earth,” says Bruno ( Infinity , dialogue iii.), “ is no 
 more heavy than the other elements ; all the parts and 
 particles are moved and change place and disposition, as 
 do the blood, humours, spirits, and insensible particles 
 which perpetually flow in and out of us and in the other- 
 lesser animals. . . . These globes are sustained by infinite 
 ether, in which this our animal freely runs and keeps to 
 his prescribed course, as the rest of the stars do to theirs.” 
 And in another place he speaks of “those sensible com- 
 
42 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 X 
 
 Jb/UK' 
 
 pounded bodies, which are so many animals or worlds in 
 this spacious field called air or sky.” The life of these 
 vast worlds Bruno holds to be (W. i. 1 66) “not only 
 capable of sensation, but intellectual ; not only intel- 
 lectual, as ours is, but perhaps in a higher degree.” The 
 stars are “those sons of God (W. i. 174) who shouted for 
 joy at the creation ; the flaming heralds, his ministers, 
 and the ambassadors of his glory ” (W. i. 1 30). And later 
 he writes, “ There are innumerable worlds like ours, throned 
 and sphered amidst the ether, and pursuing a course in 
 heaven like ours ; and they are called . . . runners, am- 
 bassadors, messengers of Nature, a living mirror of the 
 infinite Deity, . . . having the principle of intrinsic 
 motion, their own nature, their own soul, their own 
 intelligence. . . . For it is right and convenient for them- 
 selves, and for the effect of the most perfect cause, that 
 the motion of the heavenly bodies should be natural and 
 l from within.” 
 
 The stars are “ a living mirror of the Infinite Deity,” 
 not the Deity itself ; they are “ the effect of the most per- 
 fect cause ; ” their souls are in his as our souls are ; and 
 they are to be understood as distinct from “ the outer up- 
 holder and providence” (W. ii. 66), by whom they are 
 preserved from dissolution. “ By this knowledge we are 
 loosened from the chains of a most narrow dungeon, and 
 set at liberty to rove in a most august empire,” he writes 
 (W. ii. 14); “we are removed from presumptuous boun- 
 daries and poverty to the innumerable riches of an infinite 
 space, of so worthy a field and of such beautiful worlds. . . . 
 Thus the excellency of God is magnified and the grandeur 
 of his empire made manifest. . . . This is that philosophy 
 which opens the senses, which satisfies the mind, which 
 enlarges the understanding, and which leads man to the 
 only true beatitude, . . . for it frees him from the solici- 
 tous pursuit of pleasure and from the. anxious apprehen- 
 sions of pain, . . . seeing that everything is subject to a 
 most good and efficient cause.” 
 
THEORY OF THE SUNS AND STARS. 
 
 43 
 
 If, therefore, the universe is infinite, why place the 
 earth at its centre ? The sun, the “ father of life ” (W. xi./ 
 51), is the centre of our world; but the centre of the 1 
 infinite universe is in all things. “ The motion of this ‘ 
 starry earth in which we dwell is caused by (W. ii. 51) 
 its own intrinsic principle, its proper soul and nature, . . . 
 and it makes its revolution about the sun and about its 
 own centre ; which, if we rightly understand, will open 
 the door of the intelligence to the true principles of 
 natural things, and we shall march swiftly by the way of 
 truth, hidden, since this cloudy night of sophistry followed 
 upon the day of antique wisdom, beneath the veil ” — (here 
 Bruno uses the words of Dante, Inf. ix. 60, “ laquale ^ 
 ascosa sotto il velame di tante . . . immaginazione ”) — 
 
 “ of sordid and bestial imaginations, and concealed by 
 the injury of time and by vicissitude.” 
 
 “ Of these stars ( Acrotismus 97, p. 25) none is in the 
 middle (although the Church and Ptolemy have taught 
 that our earth is the centre of all things), but the uni- 
 verse is immeasurable in all its parts.” “For the centre 
 of the universe is neither the sun ” (C. 4, X. Articuli, Art. 
 160) “ nor in the sun, neither the earth nor in the earth, 
 nor in any place whatever.” “ Every being is its own 
 centre, around which it moves ” ( I)c Immenso, book vii. 
 p. 600). “ Therefore there are as many centres as there 
 
 are worlds and stars, and these in number are in- 
 finite.” “They,” the worlds, “are free in space” (G-fr. 
 
 14, 159), “attracting each other, and moving by their ^ 
 own inward spiritual power.” (“ The great law of FTature 
 which regulates the movement of the heavenly bodies 
 is the law of attraction.” — Professor Ball, Meeting of the 
 British Association, Canada, 1884.) “Lift up thy soul 
 from this earth to the stars and worlds, and learn to 
 understand that in all places there . . . are the same 
 order, the same form, the same movement. Only one 
 bereft of his reason could believe that those infinite 
 spaces tenanted by vast and magnificent bodies, many of 
 
44 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 which, are certainly intrusted with a higher destiny than 
 ours, are designed only to give us light or to receive the 
 clear shining of the earth.” 1 “ It is not reasonable (Gfr. 
 
 384) to believe that any part of the world is without a 
 soul, life, sensation, and organic structure, and it is as 
 {foolish to believe that there are no beings, nor minds, nor 
 possibilities of thought beyond the objects of our own 
 ^senses.” 
 
 We pass now into the province of conjecture. The 
 suns are inhabited, as well as the surrounding earths 
 (W. ii. 54); “the fixed stars, those magnificent flaming 
 bodies (W. i. 234), are inhabited worlds and most excel- 
 lent powers, which seem and are innumerable worlds, not 
 greatly unlike the world in which we live.” “ The sun ” 
 (Gfr. 379), “ our nearest fixed star, is of a certainty a more 
 divine organism than our earth ; but how and in what 
 manner, it is not within our province to discover : in any 
 case, its conditions of life are different to ours.” And 
 [under no circumstances are we to believe that the matter 
 of our organic substance can give rise to one and to no 
 other kind of life. “ Reason would have us know ” (Gfr. 
 384) “ that the sun surpasses us, and that as it is a dwell- 
 ing-place full of glory, so the life within it infinitely 
 excels all forms of life on earth.” From this infinite All, 
 full of beauty and splendour, from the vast worlds which 
 circle above us to the sparkling dust of stars beyond, the 
 conclusion is drawn that there are an infinity of creatures, 
 a vast multitude which, each in its degree, mirrors forth 
 the splendour, wisdom, and excellence of the Divine 
 beauty (W. ii. 361-398). Beyond these, again, there may 
 be, and no doubt there are, an infinity of wouders which 
 the mind of man is not able to conceive ( Be Immenso, 
 635), “the scope and final cause of the whole being the 
 perfection of the universe” (W. i. 237). 
 
 1 “ Who has persuaded man,” says motion of the infinite sea, were 
 Montaigne, “ that this admirable established and have continued for 
 towering celestial vault, the eternal so many centuries for his use and 
 light of those proud torches which service ? ” 
 are above our heads, the terrible 
 
THEORY OF INFINITY. 
 
 45 
 
 The solar system was cleansed from the cobwebs of 
 scholasticism by Copernicus, for whom Bruno had a pro- 
 found admiration ( Oratio Vciledic., W. i. 127; De Mon., 
 327), although he affirmed that the Copernican system 
 was more concerned with mathematics than Nature (i. 
 127), and Copernicus “ a geometrician rather than a philo- 
 sopher” (De Immenso, 343). But in espousing the new 
 doctrines Bruno added to them, surpassing his master 
 in boldness and vigour of thought. The centre, which 
 Copernicus believed to be immovable and in the sun, 
 Bruno placed in sun after sun, even in the outermost 
 parts of the universe and in infinity. And perhaps his 
 greatest achievement lies in his application of the dis- 
 coveries of Copernicus and his extension of them to the 
 whole of the universe. “ Space,” he says, “ is not in 
 heaven; heaven is in space” (Gfr. 65). “Space is one 
 and infinite in continuity” (Gfr. 74). “This philosophy” 
 (W. i. 175) “not only contains the truth, but favours reli- 
 gion more than any other kind of philosophy.” Moreover, 
 he was the first to teach that the sun turns on its own 
 axis (. De Immenso, 305), that the earth is flattened at the 
 poles ; he insisted that the atmosphere is an integral part 
 of the earth (ib. 433), and that all the fixed stars are suns 
 (Gfr. 24), having their own system of visible and invisible 
 planets (De Immenso, 166). The cold stars or planets 
 require the warmth of the suns ; the suns in their turn 
 require the coolness and dewy refreshment yielded by the 
 earths ; and thus mutually sustained and cherished, they 
 pursue their course and set forth the glory of their Divine 
 Master. This is scarcely the place in which to speak of 
 the doctrine of evolution, first foreshadowed by him ; of 
 his theory of instinct, which is fully borne out by modern 
 science ; and of his appreciation of the purely phenomenal 
 value of the senses. He holds the universe to be infinite 
 and boundless (senza margine, W. i. 268). “ If,” he says 
 
 (De Immenso, 14), “ in the eyes of God there is but one 
 scarry globe; if the sun and moon and all creation are 
 
46 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 made for the good of the earth and for the welfare of 
 man, humanity may he exalted, but is not the Godhead 
 abased ? Is not this to straiten and confine his provi- 
 dence ? What ! is a feeble human creature the only 
 object worthy of the care of God ? dSTo ; the earth is but 
 a planet ; the rank she holds among the stars is by 
 usurpation ; it is time to dethrone her. The ruler of our 
 earth is not man, but the sun, with the life which breathes 
 in common through the universe. Let the earth eschew 
 privilege ; let her fulfil her course and obey. Let not 
 this contemplation dispirit man, as if he thought himself 
 abandoned by God ; for in extending and enlarging the 
 universe he is himself elevated beyond measure, and his 
 intelligence is no longer deprived of breathing space 
 beneath a sky, meagre, narrow, and ill-contrived in its 
 proportions. And better still ; if God is everywhere 
 present in the whole of the world, filling it with his 
 infinity, and with his immeasurable greatness ; if there 
 is in reality an innumerable host of suns and stars, what 
 of the foolish distinction between the heaven and the 
 earth ? Dwellers in a star, are we not comprehended 
 within the celestial plains and established in the very 
 precincts of heaven ? ” The infinite in extension, the 
 infinite in the universe, this is the Ultima Thule (W. i. 
 128) of the philosopher of Nola. 
 
 After four or five months spent in this revolutionary 
 teaching, Bruno left Noli for Savona, where he remained 
 a fortnight (Doc. ix.) Then making his way towards the 
 Alps, he went to “ the metropolis of Piedmont, the deli- 
 cious city of Turin” (W. ii. 218). 
 
 At that moment Turin was free from pestilence ; under 
 the sage administration of Emanuel Eiliberto, it was 
 unravaged by war, industry and the arts flourished, and 
 the schools, which had undergone a complete reform, were 
 earning justly merited laurels. But it was an inhospit- 
 able town. Tasso, when he presented himself at its doors, 
 poor and in misery, his clothes dilapidated, and fever 
 
“OF THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES ,” 1577. 
 
 47 
 
 burning in bis veins, was driven away, and taken for one 
 suffering with the plague ; and it was with the utmost 
 difficulty that he could obtain a morsel of bread. The 
 contrast between the poets was remarkable enough, for 
 the one died in the odour of sanctity and the other at the 
 hands of the Inquisition ; but in this at least their fortunes 
 met. Bruno, not finding “ entertainment ” to his satisfac- 
 tion, quitted Turin at once, and went by thePo to Venice. 
 
 Under his baptismal name of Filippo he took a lodging 
 in the Frezzaria with a person employed at the arsenal. 
 A visitation of the plague had begun in Venice in August 
 1 575, and though ending in December of that year, it re- 
 appeared in the spring of 1576, and raged until the win- 
 ter, having carried off forty thousand people. It is scarcely 
 likely that Bruno, however high his courage, would have 
 addressed himself to a plague-stricken city in order to 
 gain a living either by teaching or writing. The schools 
 in time of .plague were closed, the printing-presses ceased 
 their labours, and few booksellers cared to remain and 
 drive a trade depending on luxury and leisure for support. 
 Moreover he says, “ While I was in Venice I caused (Doc. 
 ix.) a small book to be printed, entitled Of the Signs of 
 the Times, and I had it printed in order to gather together 
 a little money for my sustenance.” Flow, in time of 
 plague, war, or commercial distress, the traffic in pictures 
 is among the first to suffer; next are gems; and books 
 come third on the list. Neither patron nor printer was 
 likely to remain behind at such a time ; and therefore 
 Bruno’s visit to Venice probably took place in the spring 
 of 1577, when the pestilence was over. 
 
 As soon as it was finished, the book was presented by 
 Bruno to Father Eemigius of Florence (Doc. ix.), a 
 Dominican distinguished for his version of the Psalter 
 of David, with other learned works ; and being approved, 
 it was printed, either without the author’s name or with 
 the name of Filippo Bruno. Though this work has com- 
 pletely disappeared, it was accepted by the pious Father 
 
4 s 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 llemigius, and was no doubt orthodox in its teaching. It 
 may have been occupied with the doctrine of Lully, “ that 
 uncultured hermit inspired by a divine genius ” (Gfr. 634) ; 
 for Bruno was taught in his youth by a man from Bav- 
 enna to connect things, such as the virtues, metals, mytho- 
 logical names, and so on, in a certain alphabetic order ; 
 and from this small beginning he worked out that art of 
 thought and memory to which a great part of his life was 
 dedicated. 
 
 From the idol of the mystics, Lully, to the splendid 
 and mysterious realities of Copernicus was more than a 
 step ; it was a revolution. Bruno’s faith was unshaken in 
 a religion which should bring the spirits of men out of 
 the depths of ignorance and error ( De Immense , 339) into 
 that infinite and exalted region where is the light of light 
 and the very springs of Divinity. 
 
 The Infinite, so to say, circles within his starry system, 
 even in its darkest and most mysterious spaces. Carried 
 on by the torrent of universal harmony, he was, as Flovalis 
 said of Spinoza, one drunk not with new wine, but with 
 God ; and he beheld the Infinite as in a mirror in all the 
 abounding parts of the creation. But he confessed with- 
 out hesitation before his judges opinions contrary to the 
 Church — and indeed his works lay open to the judgment 
 of his accusers together with the religious philosophy or 
 philosophic religion which he professed. “ A time would 
 come,” he writes (W. i. 20), “ a new and desired age, in 
 which the gods should lie in Orcus, and the fear of ever- 
 lasting punishment should vanish.” (See also De Trip. Min., 
 p. 94.) In his vast and comprehensive view of the uni- 
 verse, the earth shrinks to a mere vanishing-point rocking 
 in space. Where amid the whirling of the spheres could 
 any resting-place be found for the throne of God and for 
 the rock of St. Peter ? The destroying anger of the 
 Church fell upon this bold innovator. Kepler had recoiled 
 ( Kepler , i. 688, vi. 136) from speculations as bold. Teach- 
 ing not so revolutionary was abjured by the septuagenarian 
 
THE NOLAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 49 
 
 Galileo on his knees. “The starry Galileo and his woes” 
 have formed a subject for poetry, and it is pathetic to 
 remember that Galileo’s eyes became blind with gazing at 
 the sun, as Beethoven grew deaf in the midst of music. 
 But how little thought or sympathy has in the lapse of 
 ages fallen to the lot of Bruno. His unceasing labours in 
 philosophy, the ardent soul that lighted him on his way 
 to death, the profound faith which gave to the natural 
 philosopher the intuition of a seer, these are as worthy of 
 monumental alabaster as the patient investigations of the 
 inventor of the telescope. But for two centuries the name 
 of Bruno has lain hidden under the dust of the schools 
 or the unmerited reproach of atheism, while characters of 
 less distinction are embalmed in history and celebrated in 
 verse. 
 
 “The True is the object,” says Hegel, “not only of 
 conception and feeling, as in religion, and of intuition, as 
 in art, but also of the thinking faculty ; and this gives us 
 Philosophy. This is consequently the highest, freest, and 
 wisest.” An “ earnest beholder of the history of Nature 
 which is written in our minds” (W. ii. 12), Bruno aspires 
 to be a “ true natural philosopher ” and to discover the 
 “ true principles of natural philosophy.” His aims were 
 thus of the “ highest, freest, and wisest,” and his struggles 
 to accomplish them constitute his title to remembrance. 
 “ There is no virtue,” says Dryden, “ which derives not 
 its original from truth, as, on the contrary, there is no vice 
 that has not its beginning from a lie ; ” and the Truth, that 
 supreme essence which is one with being and unity (W. 
 ii. 1 8 1), was Bruno’s divine object (W. ii. 122), “the fount 
 of ideas, the ocean of all truth and goodness ; ” (W. ii. 343) 
 while the “first Intelligence, which is pure and absolute 
 light” (W. ii. 365), in its harmony and constancy rose 
 high above the confusion of his endeavours and lends 
 lustre to his name. 
 
 D 
 
( 5 ° ) 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 “ An age is justified by its existence ; for its existence is by the decree 
 and the judgment of God. The human race, like the individual, 
 lives by faith ; but the conditions of faith are renewed.” — ■Victor 
 Cousin. 
 
 Geneva, May 20, 1 579. Lyons. Toulouse. 
 
 1579-80. 
 
 After a stay of a month or six weeks, Bruno quitted 
 Venice for Padua. There he met with some brothers of 
 St. Dominic, who persuaded him to resume the dress of 
 his order for the greater convenience of travelling. He 
 then went through Brescia (Gfr. 578) to Bergamo, where 
 he caused a new habit of cloth to be made, over which he 
 laid the scapulary which he had retained on his flight 
 from Rome, and thus equipped he went by Milan along the 
 way to Lyons (Doc. ix .) ; and when he reached Chambery 
 he lodged in the convent of the order, where, seeing he 
 was treated with coolness, he spoke with an Italian father, 
 who said, “ I warn you that in these parts you will receive 
 no sort of civility, and the farther you go the less you will 
 find on which Bruno turned off into the road to Geneva, 
 then under the rule of Beza. 
 
 “ Man,” says Jacobi, “ experiences a natural desire either 
 to find his thoughts in other minds, or to instil them ; ” 
 and the stronghold of Calvinism was no exception to the 
 rule. Calvin had been dead fifteen years, but his spirit 
 had descended to his successor. “ When I consider what 
 aptitude this little corner has for promoting Christ’s king- 
 
GENEVA, 157Q. 
 
 5i 
 
 dom, I am naturally solicitous to keep my hold of it,” says 
 Calvin — an opinion in which all possessors of little corners 
 will be found to agree. 
 
 “ Truth,” says Montaigne, “ on one side of the Pyrenees 
 is a lie on the other ; ” and the heresy of Calvin was in his 
 own city a terrible and vindictive orthodoxy. Geneva 
 was called “ Canaan ” and the “refuge of all the poor and 
 afflicted children of God” by Beza ; but those who were 
 children of God in Geneva were sons of Belial in Paris. 
 “ Calvin could not endure,” says Gribaldi of Padua, “ that 
 there should be one man in Geneva a heretic in religious 
 matters.” “ Heretics were forced,” writes a friend of Beza, 
 “ to depart the country.” The Genevese magistracy in- 
 spired as much terror in heretics as the Council of the 
 Inquisition. Beza administered “ the just judgments of 
 God on the wicked ” (Beza, Life of Calvin) with the un- 
 flinching spirit of his master, whose dying instructions were 
 to “ proceed roundly ” with the heretics. 
 
 Arrived in this uncompromising city of the saints, Bruno 
 was registered on the list of Italian fugitives in 1579. He 
 went to lodge at an inn. “ Shortly after,” he says, “ a 
 Neapolitan, the Marchese di Yico, who lived in the city, 
 asked me who I was (Doc. ix.), and whether I was there to 
 remain and to profess the religion of that place ; to whom, 
 after I had given account of myself and why I had quitted 
 my order, I added that I did not intend to profess the 
 religion of that city, for I did not know what religion it 
 was, and that I was there to dwell in peace and safety, and 
 for no other end ; and he persuaded me at all events to 
 put off the habit which I wore.” Bruno then assumed a 
 secular dress ; and the Marchese di Yico, with some other 
 Italians, made him a present of a sword, a hat, a cloak, 
 and other things, without extending their charity to trunk 
 hose, which Bruno made for himself out of stuff that he 
 had worn. Thus apparelled, and his tonsure, it may be 
 supposed, having disappeared, the Nolan sought work in one 
 of the printing-houses as a corrector of proofs— a post 
 
52 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 which eminent students of that age never thought beneath 
 their dignity, and to which, when on their travels, they 
 looked usually for support. 
 
 Di Yico was a convert on whom the Calvinists had 
 reason to plume themselves, for his mother was the sister 
 of Pope Paul IV. The Marchese had received his first 
 instruction in the new religion from Juan de Yaldes, the 
 Spanish reformer, who established himself for some time in 
 Naples. Di Vico was looked upon by Calvin as a prop to 
 the Church ; he accepted the dedication of Calvin’s Com- 
 mentary on the First Epistle to the Corinthians ; and no 
 stranger of any mark passed through Geneva without 
 paying his respects to the Italian noble, who was never 
 recognised by his own family after lie joined the Reformed 
 religion. Like the Gauls, “ of whom,” says the simple his- 
 torian, “ the best men commonly forsook their ivivcs when 
 they were ordained ,” Di Vico, on embracing the Reformed 
 religion, had left his wife and children ; and when he 
 bestirred himself to find employment for Bruno, it was 
 naturally in the expectation that he would join the army 
 of the faithful. Pie had already, no doubt at the instance 
 of Di Vico, heard Niccolo Balbani of Lucca preach the 
 Gospel and read the Epistles of St. Paul ; for Balbani was 
 pastor of the Italian congregation in Geneva, and on the 
 death of the noble proselyte in 1586, his memoir was 
 written by his fellow-sojourner in a strange land, and was 
 translated into Latin by no less a person than Beza him- 
 self. But neither the sermons of Balbani nor those of the 
 other French and Italian preachers in the city produced 
 any effect on Bruno, who, as he remained unconverted, 
 was given to understand that without accepting the Cal- 
 vinistic doctrines he was not to expect any further succour, 
 nor could he be so much as permitted to remain in the 
 city. The natives, moreover, were of a temper not pro- 
 mising in future advancement to those who did not espouse 
 the cause of Calvin. They were called some years later 
 by Casaubon “ swindlers, rascally brigands, pretentious 
 
GENEVA, 1379. 
 
 S3 
 
 Pharisees, diabolical hypocrites, and mock pietists ; ” and 
 without wing to these lengths, the fact that Aristotle 1 
 was as indispensable to the town as the Bible must in 
 itself have rendered life impossible to his outspoken Italian 
 opponent. 
 
 Like the philosopher Campanella, and like the great 
 Savonarola, Bruno owed much to the Dominicans. The 
 doctrine of the order was identified with the name of 
 Aristotle. He barely escaped canonisation ; he was looked 
 upon as the forerunner of the Messiah ; he was said to 
 participate in the Divine infallibility and infinity ; he 
 personified the splendour of scholastic learning. His 
 dominion was as stable as that of the Holy See itself, and 
 to deny his doctrine was to open the door to heresy. To 
 the scholastics of the Middle Ages the highest ideal of the 
 human mind was attained when the sublime philosophy 
 of Christianity was added to the accomplished art of 
 Aristotle. They overlooked or did not understand the 
 dualism taught by him, together with those doctrines of 
 God’s providence and man’s immortality which are essen- 
 tially at variance with Christian teaching. Nor is their 
 want of comprehension wonderful when the difficulty of 
 studying Aristotle at that period is remembered. Averroes, 
 who is called by Petrarch “ a mad dog barking against the 
 Church,” declares that he read Aristotle forty times over 
 before he succeeded in perfectly understanding him. At 
 the one-and-fortieth time light broke upon him, though 
 he might well have spared his labour if it produced the 
 speculative hidden atheism ” of which he is accused by 
 Victor Cousin. 
 
 Whether Bruno became acquainted with the works of 
 Aristotle at second, third, or fourth hand does not appear. 
 They were translated by Averroes into Arabic from a 
 Latin translation of a Hebrew translation of a com- 
 
 1 “ The Genevese have decreed,” in logic nor in any other branch of 
 says Beza (Epistle 34), “ once and for learning, turn away from the teach- 
 ever, that they will never, neither ing of Aristotle.” 
 
54 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 mentarv fabricated out of an Arabic translation of the 
 Syrian translation of a Greek text. 
 
 It is probable that Bruno knew little Greek ; and Buhle 
 has remarked that his accents are ill-placed, and that he 
 could not spell. Indeed, neither then nor a hundred and 
 fifty years later was Greek essential to a learned education. 
 “ I never learned Greek,” said the Principal of the Univer- 
 sity of Louvain to Oliver Goldsmith, “ and I don’t find 
 that I have ever missed it. I have had a doctor’s cap and 
 gown without Greek ; I have ten thousand florins a year 
 without Greek; I eat heartily without Greek; and, in 
 short,” he continued, “ as I don’t know Greek, I do not 
 believe there is anv good in it.” Passed through lialf-a- 
 dozen translations, exposed to the heat of religious contro- 
 versy, and transfused with the sunless and mystical spirit 
 of Oriental lore, the Aristotelian philosophy reached the 
 Middle Ages. “ The ancients,” says Bayle, “ would laugh 
 aloud did they but know all that is attributed to them ; ” 
 and if Aristotle could have heard mediaeval scholars dispute 
 upon his philosophy, he might have said he was Aristotle 
 but no Aristotelian; as Wilkes thanked God he had never 
 been a Wilkite. 
 
 Plato was treated with the same license. Bruno, 
 though nurtured upon the doctrines of Aristotle, did not 
 hesitate to attack them at a time when to do so was to 
 stir up persecution and to expose himself to sore trouble. 
 Though others called in question the logic of the Stagyrite 
 — his least vulnerable point — Bruno confined himself to 
 natural philosophy, haughtily rebuking the presumption 
 which caused him to usurp the title of a natural philoso- 
 pher (W. ii. 281). “For he is one holding himself apart 
 from Nature and building on vain imagination ” (W. i. 
 243-259, ii. 33). His “vile fancies and the vanity of his 
 arguments” (W. ii. 8) on the scheme of the universe 
 roused an inextinguishable spirit of opposition in the 
 adherent and successor of Copernicus. The contempt 
 with which Bruno received the Aristotelian system did 
 
GENEVA, TJ7g. 
 
 55 
 
 not stop with, the master ; it was extended to his disciples. 
 In an allegory Aristotle himself is made to wear the shape 
 of a “gross and lazy ass” (W. ii. 281). In his theories on 
 the nature and substance of things, on motion and the 
 universe, he is accused of being “ madder than madness.” 
 His disciples are said to be those “to whom Aristotle 
 appears to be a miracle of Nature ; whereas they who 
 have the poorest understanding and comprehend him 
 least are they who magnify him most” (W. ii. 11). In 
 another place the Peripatetics of the time are compared 
 to two blind beggars at the gate of the archbishop’s palace 
 in Naples, one of whom called himself a Guelph and the 
 other a Ghibelline, without knowing why, till they were 
 found fighting by a bystander, who asked them what they 
 meant by a Guelph and a Ghibelline, when the one could 
 not answer at all, and the other said, “ My master, Signor 
 Pietro Costauzo, is a Ghibelline” (W. i. 133). “In the 
 same way men fight for and against Aristotle.” 
 
 Bruno’s opposition was purely grounded on Nature. He 
 speaks of Aristotle as “a prophet and diviner (W. i. 192), 
 who, though mixing some of his own errors with the 
 divine frenzy, is yet chiefly and for the most part a 
 follower and proclaimer of the truth. But he did not 
 comprehend local motion, which is the principle of all the 
 dispositions and qualities of the earth.” Moreover, Bruno 
 borrows front Aristotle his definitions of possibility and 
 reality, wdiicli are described at length in the dialogue of 
 the Cause ; and his definition and division of the cause 
 itself is clearly of Peripatetic origin. “ Let us imitate 
 Aristotle,” he pleads in his letter to the rector of the Paris 
 University, “ who withdrew himself of his own instance 
 from the philosophers who were his father’s forerunners 
 and masters. By the same right we withdraw front 
 Aristotle ; following his example, we depart front a soli- 
 tude which is now remote from the company of philo- 
 sophers. Let us follow the counsels of the leader, re- 
 membering that each one of us may become subject to 
 
5<5 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 ignorance and error. The title of innovator which is 
 bestowed upon us is not ignominious. There is no doc- 
 trine in antiquity which was not at one time new ; and 
 if age is the mark of truth, our century is fuller of 
 dignity than the century of Aristotle, since the world has 
 now attained a greater age by twenty centuries.” 
 
 The self-contained power and the reserve of moral force 
 so characteristic of Calvin, added to the respect professed 
 by the Calvinists for Aristotle, explains not only Bruno’s 
 reception at Geneva, but also his disappearance from that 
 complete and comfortable community. Those who were 
 to dwell in peace among the Genevese must not only add 
 to their knowledge, but be added to them ; he who was 
 not with them was against them ; for in them independ- 
 ence of spirit ran so high that they could brook it in none 
 but themselves. 
 
 Bruno met their opposition in no conciliatory humour. 
 If he had not already declared war on Aristotle, his mind 
 was preparing itself for the conflict ; while on the more 
 vital subject of religion, a chasm never to be bridged 
 divided the five points of Calvin from the Nolan’s warm 
 natural sense of justice and from the optimism of his 
 philosophy. Against the doctrine of original sin he held 
 with Plato that evil is a defect of good, as, for instance, 
 that justice being the excellence of the soul, injustice is 
 the defect of the soul. The world he taught to be 
 “ good, in a good state, and for a good purpose . . . 
 a most high vestige, an infinite representation of him . . . 
 that can neither be imagined, nor conceived, nor compre- 
 hended” (W. ii. 14), and he was at no pains to conceal 
 liis contempt for the doctrines of election, particular 
 redemption, effectual calling, and perseverance of the 
 saints. “ There is a dastardly race of pedants,” he wrote 
 (W. ii. 146), “ who, doing no good thing, either by the 
 divine law or by the laws of Nature, esteem themselves, 
 and desire to be esteemed, religious and pleasing to the 
 gods, saying that though it is well to do good and evil to 
 
THE FIVE POINTS OF CALVIN. 
 
 57 
 
 do wrong, we can only be made acceptable to tire gods, 
 not on account of the good we may do or the evil we 
 leave undone, but by hoping and believing according to 
 the catechism. . . . They speak evil of works, yet they 
 live on the works of others ; . . . and while saying that 
 all their desire is for invisible things (which neither they 
 nor any others truly comprehend), they profess that destiny 
 is immutable, and that it produces these invisible things by 
 means of certain inward affections and imaginations ; with 
 all of which the gods are infinitely entertained. . . . Such 
 men merit persecution, and they ought to be exterminated, 
 for they are pests, and deserve no more mercy than wolves, 
 bears, and serpents. To cleanse the world of them is an 
 honourable and meritorious office.” His views on pre- 
 destination are to be gathered from a passage in the Expul- 
 sion (W. ii. 152), in which, while deriding the Calvin- 
 istic theory, he yet maintains that all, “ even the poorest 
 trifles” (155), are under the infinite providence of God, 
 although his ways are not as our ways (156) nor is his 
 knowledge like ours. “ Faith and opinion shall be approved 
 (164), but they shall never be made the equal of works 
 and deeds ; so with confession and profession, when they 
 tend to amendment and abstaining from evil.” And that 
 he maintained this opinion is clear from the record of his 
 trial, in which he says, “ For I have always held, and I 
 hold, that works added to faith are necessary to salvation ; 
 this is proved by my book entitled the Cause , and by the 
 first dialogue of Infinity In his valedictory discourse at 
 Wittenberg, while publicly pronouncing an eulogium on 
 Luther, he was ominously silent with regard to Calvin ; 
 and on his trial he admits that he was favoured by the 
 Lutherans at Wittenberg, and not by the Calvinists, on 
 whose accession to power he quitted the town. The 
 Calvinists no doubt caused Bruno to leave Geneva also, 
 and the remembrace of Servetus, who was burnt twenty- 
 three years before for denying the Trinity, may have 
 hastened his departure from the shores of Lake Leman. 
 
5 ? 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 In the words of Madame de Stael, “ II cst devenu trop grand 
 poisson pour notre lac ; ” and when, from the hanks of the 
 Thames, he reviewed the whimsical career of superstition, 
 it was to deride the “impure Puritanism” of the Pie- 
 formers, whom he called Deformities. 
 
 The documentary evidence given by Bruno at his trial 
 in Venice must now be supplemented by the records dis- 
 covered in the archives of Geneva , 1 and printed by the 
 learned and courteous archivist, M. Theophile Dufour. 
 In the Venetian documents Bruno says he was two 
 months in Geneva, although he must have remained four 
 or five months in that city. The wandering scholar spent 
 sixteen years in different countries, often in peril of his 
 life, and that his memory is not altogether without a flaw 
 is proved by small errors in his evidence. For instance, 
 he was in Paris three years, not five (Doc. ix.) The 
 “ Supper of Ashes ” took place, not in the house of Cas- 
 telnau (Doc. xiii.), but in that of Fulke Greville. It may be 
 
 1 Giordano Bruno d Geneve. Docu- 
 ments inedits publics par Theophile 
 Dufour, directeur dcs archives de 
 Geneve. Geneve, imp. Schuchardt, 
 18S4. An entertaining pamphlet, 
 La Legende Tragique de Jordano 
 Bruno, par TMophile Desduits, Pro- 
 fesseur de Philosophie au Lycee de 
 Versailles (Paris, Thorin, 1885), ap- 
 pears to be suggested by the work 
 of M. Theophile Dufour. M. Thdo- 
 phile Desduits is the author of a 
 work on Metaphysics, and on the Phi- 
 losophy of Kant, both of which were 
 crowned by the Prench Institute. 
 An interesting and learned examina- 
 tion of this pamphlet, written by Mr. 
 R. C. Christie, appeared in Mac- 
 millan’s Magazine for October 1885. 
 M. Desduits, evidently an ardent 
 Catholic, seeks to prove that Bruno 
 did not suffer martyrdom, on the 
 authority of the two antiquated 
 writers Haym and Quadrio, who 
 declared Bruno to have been burnt 
 in effigy. “ Perhaps,” says Clement, 
 “ they considered fire too hot for an 
 
 enthusiast, and they thought the 
 Inquisition might be contented to 
 burn his likeness and to send the 
 original into a madhouse.” M. 
 Desduits revives the foolish charge 
 of Scioppius that, the Expulsion 
 was “a ferocious book written by 
 Bruno against the Pope,” although 
 Scioppius is called “that base slan- 
 derer,” and his letter “ an atrocious 
 calumny.” “What!” cries the 
 author, “was the severity of the 
 ecclesiastical authority to be com- 
 pared to that of the lay tribunals ? 
 Who may lay claim to the greater 
 number of victims — Rome, or France, 
 Spain, or England ? Did not Va- 
 nini, when he was accused of atheism 
 before the terrible Parliament of 
 Toulouse, request as a favour to be 
 judged by the Inquisition ? ” The 
 conclusion is drawn that ‘ 1 there is no 
 ground for belief in the tragical fate 
 of tjie philosopher.” The author has 
 forgotten that all doubt on the point 
 is removed by the three Avvisi lately 
 discovered in the Vatican Library. 
 
NEW EVIDENCE FROM GENEVA. 
 
 59 
 
 objected that the memory of a prisoner before the Inqui- 
 sition was likely to prove treacherous on questions of 
 adherence to the heretic Churches. The objection has its 
 weight, though it is doubtful whether Bruno, who was at 
 no pains to hide his own heresies (Doc. xi.), but confessed 
 them openly, would have cared to prevaricate had he 
 embraced the religion of Geneva. He was a consistent 
 hater of Calvin ; and it was scarcely likely that imme- 
 diately after freeing himself from the irksome restraint of 
 a religious life into which he was born, he should at once 
 embrace another, foreign to his education and directly 
 opposed to all his known principles. 
 
 We learn, then, from these newly discovered documents 
 that the entry of Filippo Bruno in the records of the 
 university took place on the 20th May 1579. Until the 
 discovery of M. Dufour set all doubt at rest, the exact 
 date of Bruno’s stay at Geneva was uncertain, in conse- 
 quence of the vague and uncertain data on which earlier 
 historians were compelled to base their researches. In 
 1650 Vincent Burlamachi, the then deacon and treasurer 
 of the Italian Church, made a copy of the archives, which 
 contained a list of Italian refugees and their ministers, 
 beginning in the year 1550. This work consists of 
 seventy manuscript pages, preserved in the state archives; 
 and on page 23 the entry occurs, “Filippo Bruno, of the 
 kingdom of Naples.” Burlamachi contented himself with 
 a single date at the top of each page. Every page con- 
 tains beween twenty and thirty entries ; and the date 
 given seems to refer to the names standing first on the 
 page. At the head of the page on which Bruno is named 
 is the date 1577; his name is fourteenth in a list of 
 twenty-seven ; and at the head of the following page is 
 the date 1580. Bruno, therefore, was entered in the 
 original archives, now lost, between 1577 and 1580, which 
 agrees in all respects with the date 1579 yielded by the 
 records of the university, by the registers of the council, 
 and by the registers of the consistory. 
 
6o 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 The proceedings in the consistory began on the 6th 
 August 1579 and ended 27th August 1579; and almost 
 immediately after the last entry Bruno must have quitted 
 Geneva, perhaps with the intention of showing his com- 
 plete indifference to the privileges which he had regained. 1 
 The documents collected by M. Dufour in his careful and 
 scholarly pamphlet run as follows : — 
 
 Extract from the Registers of the Council (vol. lxxiv. 
 folio 136.) 
 
 “ Thursday , 6th August 1579. — Philippe Jordan, called 
 Brunus, an Italian, detained for having caused to be 
 printed certain replies and invectives against M. de la 
 Paye, 2 reckoning twenty errors in one of his lessons. 
 
 “ Besolved that he should be examined after dinner 
 before the learned council and Mr. Secretary Chevalier. 
 
 “Jean Bergeon, imprisoned for having printed the said 
 invectives, persuaded by the said Italian that those papers 
 contained nothing except philosophy. 
 
 “ Besolved he should remain in prison till to-morrow, 
 and should be condemned to pay a fine of fifty florins. 
 
 “ Friday , yth August. — Jean Bergeon, printer, petitions 
 for pardon of the fault committed by him in printing a 
 calumniatory paper against M. de la Paye, for the which he 
 is imprisoned, having been led astray by the monk, who 
 maintained there was nothing in it against God or the 
 magistracy. 
 
 “ Besolved that yesterday’s decree shall hold good, 
 except for the fine, which shall be diminished by twenty- 
 five florins on account of his small means. 
 
 1 M. Dufour makes the valuable visit. News equally disappointing 
 suggestion that under the name of comes from Helmstedt and Wolfen- 
 Philippe Brun or Brunet records of biittel. 
 
 Bruno’s progress are yet to be found. a Antoine de la Faye, professor 
 The archivists of Lyons and Tou- of philosophy in the Academy of 
 louse unfortunately at present offer Geneva. Later he became professor 
 nothing to assist the student be- of theology, and the quarrel pro- 
 yond civil assurances that they bably arose therefore on a philosophic 
 possess no further traces of Bruno’s and religious question. 
 
THE TRIAL AT GENEVA. 
 
 61 
 
 “ Monday , io th August . — Philippe Brunet, an Italian, 
 having responded in prison respecting the calumnies 
 which he caused to be printed against M. Antoine de la 
 Faye, having acknowledged his fault Friday last, in pre- 
 sence of the ministers and of Mr. Varro, 1 resolved, that 
 he shall be set at liberty, but that he must ask pardon of 
 God, of the law, and of the said de la Faye, and that he 
 shall be again sent to acknowledge his fault before the 
 consistory, and he shall, moreover, be sentenced to tear the 
 said defamatory libel into pieces ; for the rest, he shall be 
 granted his costs.” (Register of the Council, vol. lxxiv. 
 folio 138.) 
 
 In what humour Bruno attended to make the required 
 apology appears from the following entry : — 
 
 “ Thursday, 13th August . — Prohibition of the sacrament. 
 Philippe Brun appeared before the consistory to acknow- 
 ledge his fault, forasmuch as he had erred in the doctrine, 
 and had called the ministers of the Church of Geneva 
 'pedagogues, alleging that in that matter he would neither 
 excuse himself nor would he plead guilty, for the truth 
 was not told of him, since he was of opinion that the story 
 was had upon the report of one Mr. Antoine de la Faye. 
 Asked whom he called pedagogues, he answered with 
 many excuses and allegations that he was persecuted, 
 bringing forward several random opinions with sundry 
 other accusations ; and nevertheless he confessed that he 
 appeared in this place to own his fault, which he com- 
 mitted when he made sundry and divers reflections upon 
 the ministers. Was admonished to follow the true doc- 
 trine. Said he is prepared to submit to the censure. 
 And seeing that he calumniated the said De la Faye, and 
 brought forward an accusation against him, that he had 
 said a thing which he did not say, saying, moreover, that 
 he would not ask pardon for his conduct, but that he was 
 obliged to do what he had done, it is recommended that 
 
 1 Michael Varro was secretary to occupied himself chiefly with natural 
 the council and afterwards coun- science and mathematics. He died 
 sellor. He had studied law, but in 1586. 
 
62 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 lie shall be soundly reasoned with, and that he shall be 
 caused to acknowledge his fault, and that he shall be for- 
 bidden the sacrament in case he will not acknowledge his 
 fault ; and, moreover, shall be sent 1 before the Seigneurs, 
 who are entreated to show no grace whatever to such a 
 fellow, for he may bring strife into the schools ; and he 
 must promptly recognise his fault. Who answered that 
 he repented of his fault and would make amends for it 
 by better conversation, and, moreover, he confessed to his 
 calumny with respect to the said Sr. de la Faye. The 
 said remonstrances and prohibition of the sacrament were 
 made to him, and returned with remonstrances. 
 
 “ Thursday, 27^/1 August . — Absolution from the prohi- 
 bition with remonstrances. Philippe Brun, a scholar liv- 
 ing in this city, appeared before the consistory to require 
 that the prohibition of the sacrament laid upon him should 
 be removed ; and he was forbidden the sacrament because 
 of his calumnies against the ministers and against a tutor 
 of the college named M. Antoine de la Faye, acknowledg- 
 ing that in this he had committed a grave error ; it is 
 recommended that good counsel should be bestowed 
 upon him, and he be given liberty to participate in the 
 sacrament ; on which he was reasoned with, and he was 
 made free from the prohibition, for which he returned his 
 hearty thanks.” 2 
 
 It has been stated that Bruno could not have become a 
 ’ student in the University of Geneva without consenting in 
 writing to the confession of faith imposed by the statute 
 of 1559. 
 
 In 1576, however (J. E. Cellerier, Li Acad&mic de Gen&ve, 
 1872, p. 150), this stipulation was withdrawn, and Bruno, 
 therefore, was not compelled to sign any profession of 
 faith before he entered the university. M. Dufour considers 
 
 1 No other summons is recorded of Pastors, which might have thrown 
 
 by the registers of the council. light on this matter, are missing 
 
 2 The registers of the Company from the year 1579 to 1584. 
 
THE TRIAL AT GENEVA. 
 
 6 3 
 
 it proved that Bruno had formally accepted the Protestant 
 religion because his name is on the return of Italian re- 
 fugees made by the Protestant Church in Geneva. But 
 we have it on his own evidence that he had attended many 
 sermons in Italian and in French, and also the teaching 
 and sermons of Balbani, with the object of acquainting 
 himself with the religion of the city. It is clear that he 
 could not have embraced Calvinism without knowing its 
 principles. Giving himself, therefore, due time for the 
 study, he must plainly have decided against Calvin and 
 quitted the city. It will be remembered, also, that he found 
 Calvinism a particularly detestable religion. Moreover, for 
 having “erred in matters of doctrine” he is called before 
 the consistory ; and though we are told “ he was ad- 
 monished to follow the true doctrine,” he made no profes- 
 sion of doing so. The point was passed over, and he 
 escaped on withdrawing the accusations which he had 
 made against De la Faye, and on asking pardon for the 
 epithet pedagogue, which he had applied to the ministers 
 of the Church of Geneva. With regard to the prohibition 
 of the sacrament, Bruno’s disposition was such, that to 
 forbid him what he chose to consider his rights was to 
 make him insist upon them whether he wanted them or 
 no. Like the Irish nation, which has been said to be never 
 at peace except when it is at war, he revelled in conten- 
 tion, and being a stickler for privilege, it is by no means 
 certain that he was a partaker in the sacrament merely 
 because, with characteristic pertinacity, he insisted that he 
 was in no way disqualified for the communion. 
 
 From Geneva Bruno went to Lyons, and as a sect of 
 Socinians 1 is known to have existed there, the hope was 
 reasonable that he might also be treated with tolerance. 
 Moreover, Lyons was the centre of the French book trade. 
 It rivalled Geneva in the cheapness of its wares ; and 
 though Lyons was famous for missals and books of hours, 
 
 1 Castlenau speaks of the “Deists and Trinitarians” of Lyons. Their 
 chief died at Zurich in 1562, 
 
6 4 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 and Geneva for its Bibles, so completely were the two 
 towns free from any narrow sectarian spirit, that they 
 drove a thriving; but underhand trade in each other’s 
 commodities ; and Genevese mass-books went out into the 
 world side by side with Calvinistic commentaries printed 
 in Lyons. Thus competition was open and keen ; and 
 the grudge was embittered by the fact that many French 
 refugees were established on the banks of Lake Leman, 
 where they led away their compatriots into exile with the 
 promise of high wages. The Lyonnese printers retaliated 
 by branding the publications of Geneva as heretical ; and 
 the Genevese, who had no Index, avoided the prohibi- 
 tion by placing on their title-pages the name of Cologne 
 or Antwerp, or by sending a member of their printing- 
 houses into a foreign town, and even to Lyons itself, 
 which was thus forced to bring the contraband goods into 
 the market. 
 
 Bruno remained at Lyons a month, but being unable to 
 find sufficient employment there, he went to Toulouse, 
 where there was a famous school, which numbered ten 
 thousand scholars. Supported by a sense of his own 
 merit, he ventured into the lion’s mouth ; for Toulouse 
 was a bulwark of the Inquisition, “ the rampart of the 
 faith in Languedoc;” and Bruno, who had read Babelais, 
 must have known that Pantagruel declined to visit the 
 city of the troubadours, because, as he said, he was always 
 athirst and always dry, and therefore he needed no warm- 
 ing, since in Toulouse men were grilled like so many red 
 herrings. It is sufficient evidence that Bruno was not a 
 professed Calvinist, since for more than a year he was 
 permitted to lecture and to teach in this intolerant city. 
 “ The students,” says an old chronicle, “ rose at four in 
 the morning, and after their prayers were said, they were 
 on their way to college by five o’clock, with their folios 
 under their arms and lanterns in their hands.” 
 
 The fair city of the gay science and of the floral games 
 was then at its zenith. Its rich and powerful schools 
 
TOULOUSE. 
 
 65 
 
 attracted a large population to the town, which had not 
 as jet begun to suffer from the distress in France. Here 
 Bruno met with better days. He made the acquaintance 
 of “ persons of intelligence,” and was invited to read 
 astronomy with the scholars of the city. In about six 
 months, when the place of ordinary lecturer became 
 vacant, he took his degree as Master of Arts, and quali- 
 fied himself for the professorship, which was bestowed 
 upon him. He remained in the town a year or more, 1 
 giving lessons and lectures on philosophy, and in parti- 
 cular on Aristotle’s book on the Soul, — a subject which 
 agitated Italy for nearly a century, and was awakening a 
 deep interest in the whole of Europe. Whether Aristotle 
 did or did not lapse from the doctrine of personal immor- 
 tality was discussed with the bitterest invective in the 
 schools, and professors lecturing on other subjects were 
 recalled to the question of the hour by their pupils, who 
 shouted “Anima, anima,” that the long and ardent dispute 
 might be revived. It is supposed that Bruno may have 
 reproduced the substance of his lectures at Toulouse in 
 his book on the Shadows of Ideas, printed in 1582 in Paris. 
 Nothing certain is known except that he lectured on the 
 soul, and it is probable that he availed himself of the 
 method of Lully for developing the memory of liis pupils. 
 It is known that he did not consider himself altogether 
 parted from the Church. “ Twice in seventeen years,” he 
 says at his trial, “ I attended the confessional ; once in 
 
 1 From the somewhat ambiguous 
 wording of the ninth document of 
 the trial, Bruno seems to think that 
 he remained two years or two years 
 and a half at Toulouse. But since 
 we know he was at Geneva in 1579, 
 and spent, as he says, “ about live 
 years ” in Paris, he could not have 
 remained two years in Toulouse. 
 If he arrived there early in the 
 winter of 1579, he may have re- 
 mained till the beginning or 1581, 
 when he must have gone to Paris. 
 How otherwise could the impression 
 
 remain on his mind that he spent 
 so long a period as five years in that 
 city ? The books which he printed 
 there were dated 1582. Early in 
 1583 he was in London; from the 
 autumn of 1585 till 1st June 1586 
 he was once more in Paris. At the 
 outside, therefore, and counting the 
 two periods in one, he could not 
 have spent more than three years in 
 Paris; and it scarcely seems possible 
 that he stayed much more than a 
 year in Toulouse. 
 
 E 
 
66 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 Toulouse with a Jesuit, and another time in Paris with 
 another Jesuit.” His masterful nature rebelled at the 
 obedience of the cloister, as his mind refused to refine on 
 the distinctions in the Godhead ; but he clung with an 
 unreasonable and passionate attachment to the material 
 part of the Catholic religion, though openly professing 
 himself unable to accept its spiritual teaching. “ Souls 
 learned and generous,” he says (W. i. 172), “ do right, not 
 by law, hut by expedience,” — a commentary on the words 
 of Paul to the Eomans, “ For ye are not under the law, 
 but under grace : ye are become dead to the law.” It is 
 clear that he had not realised his position with regard to 
 the Church in his own mind, but that, believing, as he 
 did, theology and philosophy to be roads leading but to 
 one end, and that end divine, he held it to be altogether 
 immaterial which way was chosen, providing the great 
 doctrine of love to God and man is borne in the mind and 
 manifest in every action of life. 
 
 It is difficult to understand how so lax a Catholic could 
 have been permitted to exercise his calling in Toulouse, 
 even for one year or one year and two or three months. 
 Toulouse was a city of fanatics, and though the seat of 
 the Parliament of Languedoc, freedom of thought was ex- 
 cluded, and no heretic could either live, or even print a 
 book there. Here, a century before, Eaimond Sebond, for 
 whom Montaigne made himself the apologist, was per- 
 mitted to profess opinions both novel and irregular. But 
 the times had changed, and the spirit was developing itself 
 which forty years later decreed the martyrdom of Yanini, 
 whose tongue, in the words of an old chronicle “ was nut 
 out, his body was cast into the flames, and his soul was 
 delivered up to Satan.” Moreover, for other reasons, Bruno’s 
 stay in the town was rapidly becoming impossible. Al- 
 ready, in April and May 1580, Henry of Navarre overran 
 the neighbourhood with his troops. Between the years 
 1579 and 1580 the Huguenots made “more than forty 
 assaults ” {Sully s Memoirs i. 87-98) on different cities 
 
TOULOUSE. 
 
 67 
 
 and villages in the neighbourhood; and for some years 
 later the headquarters of the King of Navarre were at 
 Montauban, a city not far from Toulouse, which was thus 
 rendered an unsuitable spot for a traveller indisposed to 
 assume that “thin habit of spirits” which Sir Thomas 
 Browne declares to be “ beyond the force of sivor els.” 
 
 It was probably about a year later (1581-82) when the 
 Nolan took his departure, “leaving,” as he says, “on 
 account of the civil wars ; ” though his allusions to “ his 
 enemies at Toulouse, and to its “ clamours, its murmuring, 
 and its scholastic frenzy ” (Gfr. 624), with certain words 
 cancelled in his deposition (Doc. ix.), clearly indicate that 
 some of his afflictions were on a smaller scale than civil 
 war, and were due to his natural love of disputation. 
 Thus, as has been well said by Washington Irving, “ mere 
 pebbles make the stream of truth diverge into different 
 channels, even at the fountain-head.” 
 
( 68 ) 
 
 CHAPTEE IV. 
 
 “ The earth is the cut de sac in the great city of God — the camera ob- 
 scura full of inverted and contracted images from a fairer world, the coast 
 of God’s creation, a vaporous halo round a better sun.” — J. P. Richter. 
 
 Journey through France, 1581. Paris. Lully. Some Latin 
 Worlcs on the Art of Memory. 
 
 It was probably early in 1581 when Bruno travelled 
 northwards to Paris. He was thirty-three years of age, 
 in the prime of life, and for a man who by his own act 
 was shut out from the monastic career, and who hoped to 
 make his living by writing and speaking, the road to the 
 capital promised help and advancement, since France, 
 racked as it was by war, was alive to learning and to 
 philosophy. 
 
 We learn from the Spanish biographer of Don John of 
 Austria that the courtiers rode to court in carts drawn 
 by oxen, while driving was prohibited by royal command 
 on account of “ that infernal vice the coach,” which had 
 done great injury to Castile. In France, the system of 
 relays not being yet established, it was common for the 
 coachmen of noble ladies to lose their way in the dark 
 and their horses in the rivers. Journeys by water 
 were made in tow-barges, which were often cut down 
 and upset by heavier craft. Sometimes the crazy 
 wherry was full three times over ; sometimes the wind 
 was high and caused delay ; there was no awning ; 
 infants died on their way to baptism ; the miserable 
 
PARIS, 1381. 
 
 69 
 
 passengers were beaten by the tempest, and too often 
 assailed with clubs and stones from the banks by hasty 
 Catholics with a gift for discovering and punishing 
 stray lambs of another persuasion. 
 
 For sixteen years Bruno wandered in Europe, at a time 
 when to travel meant to spend eight days on the road 
 from Paris to Calais, and seven days from Lyons to 
 Paris, to sleep in inns pell-mell with travellers of the 
 roughest description, and often with no bed but straw. 
 
 But, in spite of every obstacle, it was a matter of 
 necessity that a man of learning should travel. To print 
 in Paris, a writer was forced to be in Paris ; for to correct 
 proof-sheets at a distance, and with the post wanting, was 
 impossible. 
 
 Book marts, too, . were so few and far between, that 
 transcripts were often made by hand and sold. Books 
 published abroad were very costly in London, and books 
 published in Oxford were not to be had in the Lon- 
 don shops, so ill was the trade organised. Moreover, 
 as the fame of a book nowadays is said to be made by 
 word of mouth, so the fame of a professor in the Middle 
 Ages was made by disputation. To these tournaments of 
 letters Bruno looked even more than to his books for 
 credit and support. A crowd of hearers spread abroad 
 the fame of the disputants, and the fury of debate added 
 a zest to a ready speaker with a disputatious temper. 
 Regnault, the secretary of the Grand Prior, Henri 
 d’Angouleme, speaks of the Nolan in a preface to one of 
 his works ( The, Song of Circe ) printed in Paris, as “an 
 author in the disesteem of the populace,” and that he was 
 out of suits with fortune was as much due perhaps to his 
 love of debate as to his heretical opinions. 
 
 The echoes of war had crossed the Alps and penetrated 
 the still seclusion of the Neapolitan cloister (W. ii. 198; De 
 Lampad. Comb. Dedici) “ It was,” Bruno writes, “ one long 
 and horrid tumult.” In another place he speaks of “ the 
 frenzy and tumult of France,” and of “ the sanguinary 
 
70 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 Seine” (W. i. 231). Although he lamented the intestine 
 wars which ravaged the country at that time, he had 
 a just appreciation of the valour, gaiety, and quickness 
 of the people, and in the Song of Circe the cock is 
 celebrated as “ a most beauteous, lucid, and almost divine 
 animal.” 
 
 The sight of tbe country as he journeyed through 
 France was not calculated to cement his allegiance to the 
 ancient religion. “ It was,” says Castelnau in his 
 Memoirs, “ one long and bleeding wound.” Mornay 
 writes to Queen Elizabeth in 1585 that France was 
 transformed into a scaffold. The country was literally 
 torn in halves between the League and the Cause, between 
 Lorraine and Navarre. “It is not possible for them ” 
 (the French), writes Sir William Cecil, “ to be poor and 
 peaceable for many years.” The priests said prayers in 
 coats of mail, the crucifix in one hand and the sword in 
 the other. “ Kill them all; God will know his own,” cried 
 a monk in the streets of Paris. “ Towns,” to quote from 
 an old chronicle, “ were no longer towms, but the haunts 
 of lions and tigers.” The king ordered his people “ on 
 pain of death to love one another.'” The Papists razed the 
 temples of the Huguenots; the Huguenots pillaged the 
 Papal sacristies. 
 
 Into Paris, then containing not quite four hundred 
 thousand people, Bruno entered towards the middle of 
 1581. Antique philosophy had expired, or rather, like 
 he river Lethe, which runs underground, it had vanished. 
 Suddenly, with the revival of thought, there arose what 
 has been called by an old writer “ an hydroptique immo- 
 derate desire of humane learning and languages.” Not 
 even the plague had caused a lapse in the instruction 
 given at the schools or in the attendance of the scholars. 
 They rose with the lark. The first morning class was 
 held at six ; the students dined at ten, and the court at 
 twelve, or even an hour later on hunting-days. The 
 court exchequer was low, and the science of credit, 
 
PARIS, 15S1. 
 
 7i 
 
 instead of parading in open exchanges, lurked as yet in 
 the dark alleys of the Jewish quarters. Men of learning, 
 even in the next reign, were not received without mis- 
 givings and lapses in comfortable entertainment. “You 
 cost the king 1 too much, sir,” said Sully to Casaubon ; 
 “ your pay exceeds that of two good captains, and you 
 are of no use to the country.” Moreover, free quarters 
 even at court were not what we are used to call princely. 
 Voltaire, writing of the palaces in 1562, says that the 
 courtiers slept three and four in the same bed, and lived 
 in rooms unfurnished, except with oaken coffers ( Essai 
 sur les Mo&urs). 
 
 The streets of Paris were not pleasant resorts, for not 
 only were night and day made insufferable by brawling, 
 but so late as 1607 Casaubon complains that the plague 
 nurses came out of the plague hospitals to walk about 
 the town; and there is no reason to suppose that in 1 58 I 
 the nurses were less solicitous either for the health of 
 their patients or for their own. 
 
 Under the shadow of his great golden lilies Henri III. 
 loved to assemble the countrymen of his mother and of 
 
 1 “ King Henry IV.,” says Scali- 
 ger, “ could not do two things : he 
 could not keep his countenance, and 
 he could not read.” He had Casau- 
 bon in his library “ to tell him what 
 was in his books, for he understood 
 them not at all ” ( Epistres Francises 
 a M. de la Scala, p. 105). However, 
 the king’s want of learning did not 
 impede his career as a politician. 
 He undertook in writing to the 
 Pope, Clement VIII., so to manipu- 
 late “the edict which I have pub- 
 lished to the tranquillity of my 
 kingdom, that its solid results shall 
 he in favour of the Catholic religion.” 
 This dissimulation was characteristic 
 of the age, and men of mark did not 
 escape its influence. Like that Lord 
 Shaftesbury who objected to telling 
 too much truth, Bruno writes of dis- 
 simulation as “the handmaid of 
 Prudence and escutcheon of Truth 
 
 and in speaking of simplicity in the 
 same work he says (W. ii. 190), 
 “ This handmaid of Truth ought not 
 to travel far abroad from her Queen, 
 though sometimes the goddess Neces- 
 sity constrains her to decline towards 
 dissimulation, lest simplicity and 
 truth may not be inculcated, or to 
 shun some other inconvenience. 
 This being done by her not without 
 method and order, may therefore be 
 very well done without error or 
 vice.” But that Bruno knew the 
 true aspect of dissimulation is shown 
 by his allusion to “ her suspicious 
 steps and fearful appearance, and 
 she is esteemed unworthy of heaven, 
 though even the gods are forced to 
 use her at times . . . for sometimes 
 Prudence hides the truth with her 
 garments in order to escape envy, 
 blame, and outrage.” 
 
72 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 Maccliiavelli. “ He was good at heart, but too easily 
 governed,” writes De Thou ; “ a good prince, had he but 
 met with better times.” “ He loved letters, and protected 
 science and the arts ; he thought it princely to reward 
 men of letters, whether they were foreigners or French- 
 
 >5 I 
 
 men. 
 
 The philosopher who had been despised and rejected 
 by so many towns was grateful when he found in Paris a 
 reception of better augury. He was named professor 
 extraordinary, to escape assisting at mass, which was 
 compulsory on ordinary professors, and according to 
 Scioppius he would have been accepted as titulary pro- 
 fessor if he had consented to follow Catholic observances. 
 However, by favour perhaps of the king, and perhaps on 
 account of the doctorate which he had obtained at Tou- 
 louse, he was permitted to deliver thirty lectures (Doc. 
 ix.), taking for his subject thirty divine attributes from 
 St. Thomas Acjuinas — Dante’s “ good brother Thomas” — 
 who exercised so powerful an influence on the Domini- 
 cans, that the noblest defenders of Catholicism looked to 
 the shining example of his saintly spirit for help in 
 establishing the ancient order of things . 1 2 
 
 It was chiefly by the king’s favour that Bruno was 
 permitted to follow his calling in Paris. “ King Henry 
 III.,” he says, “ called me one day before him, and de- 
 sired to know whether the memory I have had and pro- 
 fessed is natural or by arts of magic ; whereupon I gave 
 him satisfaction, and by that which I said and did I 
 proved to him that my memory came by knowledge and 
 not by magic arts.” Some light is thrown on Bruno’s 
 
 1 From liis time French with the ground. A modern instance occurs 
 Italian accent became the rage, in the imitation of the German 
 The round sounds aroit, fraru;ois, court r in English aristocratic cir- 
 anglois, and so forth, were flattened cles. 
 
 into the pronunciation of Italian 2 Bruno, when opposing the doc- 
 queens and courtiers ; and although trine that the Virgin was born with- 
 Henri Estienne condemned le non- out sin, was supported by St. Thomas 
 vcau languaige italianise, it held its and by the authorities of his order. 
 
OF THE SHADOWS OF IDEAS: 
 
 73 
 
 character by bis dedication of tbe Shadows of Ideas to 
 Henry III. of France. Tbe king is represented as a 
 “ spectacle transporting tbe nations by bis virtue, bis 
 genius, bis magnanimity, bis glory.” 
 
 In good report and evil report Bruno’s gratitude ap- 
 peared in magniloquent praises of tbe king — of “ tbe 
 bigbness of tbis great and powerful monarch, tbe most 
 generous heart in Europe, who makes tbe farthest poles 
 of earth resound with bis fame ; be who when be roars 
 in anger, like a lion in his lofty cave, inspires fear and 
 mortal terror in tbe other mighty beasts of prey ; and 
 when be is at peace gives out a flame of liberal and 
 courteous love, such as lights up the neighbouring tropic, 
 beats tbe frozen bear, and dissolves to dew tbe rigid 
 arctic desert, which lies beneath tbe eternal watch and 
 ward of fierce Bootes” (W. i. 122). 
 
 Again, when it becomes a question whether tbe trium- 
 phant beasts or vices shall be expelled, or tbe virtues 
 exalted to tbe skies, “ Apollo asked bow should they dis- 
 pose of tbe tiara ? ” (W. ii. 249). “ That, that is the 
 
 crown,” said Jupiter, “ which by tbe high decree of Fate 
 and tbe instinct of tbe Divine Spirit is deservedly awaited 
 by tbe invincible Henry III., king of tbe magnanimous, 
 tbe potent, and tbe warlike land of France, the crown 
 which be looks for after those of France and of Poland ; 
 as be testified in tbe beginning of bis reign by taking 
 that celebrated device, where two crowns below and one 
 more eminent make tbe body, and tbis motto serves for 
 tbe soul, Tertia coelo manet. Tbis most Christian king, 
 holy, religious, and pure, may securely say, Tertia ccelo 
 manet, because be knows that it is written, Blessed are 
 tbe peace-makers ; blessed are tbe pure in heart, for theirs 
 is tbe kingdom of heaven. He loves peace ; be maintains 
 bis people as much as possible in tranquillity and devotion. 
 He is not pleased with tbe noise of martial instruments, 
 which administer to the blind acquisition of tbe unstable 
 tyrannies and principalities of tbe earth ; bis pleasure is 
 
74 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 justice and holiness, which discover the way to the king- 
 dom of heaven. The fiery, tempestuous, and turbulent 
 spirits of some of his subjects may not hope that while 
 he lives whose tranquil mind is as it were a stronghold 
 against warlike fury, they shall receive any assistance in 
 vainly disturbing the peace of other countries under pre- 
 tence of adding other sceptres and crowns to his ; for 
 Tcrtia ccelo manet. 
 
 “ In vain shall the rebellious French forces set forth 
 against his will to disquiet the borders and coasts of 
 others ; for not the proposals of unstable counsel, the hope 
 of changeable fortune, nor the advantage of foreign 
 administrations and suffrages will be able, under a pretence 
 of investing him with robes and adorning him with 
 crowns, to take from him otherwise than by necessity the 
 holy adornment of a tranquil spirit, he being more liberal 
 of his own than covetous of what belongs to others. Let 
 others endeavour to mount the empty throne of Portugal, 
 and others be solicitous for the Belgic dominion. Why 
 should you break your heads and beat your brains about this 
 or the other principality ? Why suspect and fear, 0 kings 
 and princes, that your neighbours should conquer your 
 armies and rob you of your crowns ? Tertia ccelo manet. 
 
 “Let the crown remain,” Jupiter concludes, “waiting 
 for him who is worthy of so magnificent a possession. 
 And here also let victory reward perfection, honour and 
 glory have their throne ; for if they are not virtues, they 
 are the end of virtues.” 
 
 Bruno’s was no fair-weather affection. When the 
 power of Henry III. was despised, and in a country 
 where his very Christianity had been severely censured, 
 Bruno gratefully remembered his protector, and in the 
 preface to the Acrotismus he places his book under the 
 patronage of “ the most Christian and most puissant 
 king.” The Shadows of Ideas appeared “ with the king’s 
 privilege,” and these panegyrics drew on the writer the 
 anger of the Inquisition, since it was one of the counts 
 
“OF THE SHADOWS OF IDEAS: 
 
 75 
 
 against him when he was arraigned at Venice that he 
 had praised heretic princes, among whom Henry III. was 
 noted ; for the news of his death in 1589 was saluted by 
 the cannon of Rome, where a panegyric was pronounced 
 on his assassin, the Dominican Clement. In the epistle 
 dedicatory he is careful to give his opinion of the book to 
 the king. “ Great gifts, 0 sacred Majesty,” he says, “are 
 due to great men — the greater to the greater, the greatest 
 to the greatest. It is, therefore, manifest why this book 
 (which is numbered among the greatest by reason of its 
 noble subject, the singularity of its invention, and the 
 gravity of demonstration wherewith it is expounded) 
 addresses itself to you, 0 admirable light of nations, by 
 reason of your excellent and most mirrorific mind, by the 
 high renown of your genius, which is famous, magnani- 
 mous, and of good right merits the obeisance of all learn- 
 ing. Be it yours to accept this work, graciously to pro- 
 tect it, and to examine it with mature wisdom.” 
 
 This work contains the germs of Bruno’s system of 
 philosophy. It bears a device showing it is addressed to 
 readers “ not inept but learned,” and it initiates Bruno’s 
 revolt against the fixed system of Aristotle. Plato and 
 the “ Hebraic Plato,” Plotinus, look on the great globe 
 itself as but “ a shadow, eiScoXov, of the truth, which is 
 the sphere of ideas, those divine images . . . which 
 are the shadows of true existence ” ( Plato’s Republic, 
 Jowett, iii. 420). Bruno, seizing the view of Plato, 
 works it out in this book by defining ideas as the nature 
 of things, and the shadow of ideas as that which is in 
 accordance with the nature of things (Gfr. 299). The 
 Shadows of Ideas is in reality the first part of a work 
 of which the Art of Memory is the second part. The 
 Shadows of Ideas discloses the metaphysical principles of 
 Bruno ; the Art of Memory applies those principles to 
 the Lullian art. “ For that art,” says Bruno (Ars 
 Memoriae, fol. 1, 8), is based on ideas, sometimes out- 
 running idle Nature, and enticing her to labour, some- 
 
76 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 times guiding her in the way she should go, or, when she 
 wearies, staying and strengthening her, or correcting her 
 when she errs, or when she is perfected, imitating and 
 striving after her diligence.” 
 
 Thus the Nolan, like Garrick between Tragedy and 
 Comedy, stands beside the twin studies, the dark and 
 mysterious oracle of the Catalonian monk, and the en- 
 lightened form of Nature. 
 
 This Rabelaisian dedication, so characteristic of Bruno’s 
 delight in the magniloquent, is followed by three sets of 
 verses, and preceded by twelve lines of Latin poetry. 
 After alluding to the aspect of the shades, which he is 
 about to evoke from the profound darkness, and promising 
 that they shall be pleasant to look upon, Bruno, assuming 
 the name of Merlin, continues : “ The depths of wisdom, 
 if but lightly stirred, shall yield delectation ; but they 
 will confound and cover with disgrace instead of glory 
 him who would rashly plunge into them.” If a little 
 learning is a dangerous thing, Merlin is wrong ; but 
 Buhle is of opinion that the lines are ironical, and 
 intended to deter ignorant persons from reading the 
 book. “ To travel,” Merlin continues, “ with any surety 
 in the labyrinth of science, it is essential we should not 
 lose the thread held out to us by Wisdom.” This is 
 succeeded by an “ apologetic dialogue ” between one 
 Hermes Philothimus and Logifer, — evidently a violent 
 attack upon Bruno’s enemies living at Paris and else- 
 where, who are described as beasts expressing themselves 
 after their kind. “ Ravens croak, wolves howl, pigs 
 grunt, oxen low, sheep bleat, donkeys hee-haw ; each 
 pleases himself and his kind. Who will reply to them ?” 
 (Gfr. 296.) Later he speaks of these would-be philo- 
 sophers as “ asses who slowly hurry to the chase,” resem- 
 bling Midas “by reason of their great ears;” and again 
 he calls them mules (Gfr. 1 95), “neither horses nor 
 asses, mixing braying with neighing.” 
 
 The Shadows of Ideas is divided into two parts. The 
 
OF THE SHADOWS OF IDEAS: 
 
 77 
 
 first ( Triginta intentiones umbrcirum) contains thirty points 
 to be considered respecting the shadows of ideas. The 
 second part ( Triginta idearum conceptus ) lays down thirty 
 axioms which are composed of simple primordial ideas, 
 and of primordial ideas coupled with shadows of ideas. 
 By sharply defining the nature and hidden laws of active 
 thought, Bruno desired to clear the ground for those rules 
 of mnemonics which figure prominently in all his teach- 
 ing. The expression, “ shadow of ideas,” he says, is just 
 “ because man cannot know the absolute truth ; for his 
 being is not a being absolute and real, but its shadow.” 
 
 This is reasoning adopted from the Neo-Platonic and 
 Cabbalistic philosophy. The shadow of the idea has its 
 share of light and darkness. It is composed of both, 
 having traces of light, but not the fulness of light. 
 Light can be recognised by beholding the substance, and 
 also by beholding the accident of the substance, which 
 may be its shadow. For as the light of the substance 
 (■ materia prima ) emanates from the primordial light ( actus 
 primus lucis), so the light of the accident (or shadow) 
 emanates from the light of the substance. (“ The firs t 
 form ,” says Bacon, in his Advancement of Learning , 
 u that was created was light, which hath a relation and 
 corresp ondence in Nature and corporal things t o know- 
 ledge in spirits and incorpora l things. ”) Somewhat later 
 Bruno says ( Intentio , xxiii.), “ The shadow is opposed 
 neither to light nor darkness. It is related to both. 
 Man took refuge in the shadow of the Tree of Knowledge 
 that he might know light and darkness, truth and falsity, 
 good and evil.” 
 
 But the substance and its accident cannot receive the 
 fulness of light ; they are therefore within its shadow ; 
 and the idea of them is again a shadow. Now these 
 shadows of ideas, being composed of light and darkness, 
 are of a twofold nature. They will lose themselves in the 
 darkness if the high properties of the soul are inactive 
 and subservient to the lower appetites ; or they will 
 
78 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 ascend to the purer light if the higher faculties gain the 
 mastery, and as the soul rises to the knowledge of the 
 eternal and the imperishable. And all knowledge of 
 truth proceeds from unity to plurality, and from plurality 
 to unity. (Perhaps the same spirit moved Bacon when 
 he wrote, “A little philosophy inclineth men’s minds to 
 atheism, but depth of philosophy bringeth men’s minds 
 about to religion. For while the mind of man looketh 
 upon second causes scattered, it may sometimes rest in 
 them and go no farther ; but when it beholdeth the chain 
 of them confederate and linked together, it must needs 
 fly to Providence and Deity.”) It was necessary 1 that 
 the universe should in its various parts be unequal. 
 Were they equal, the beauty of the world would be im- 
 possible , 2 for its perfection is manifested only by the 
 connection of its various parts to the whole . 3 If, there- 
 fore, the world is a complete and organised whole, we 
 cannot conceive more than one ruler, as it is inconceivable 
 there can be more than one order. ( ££ We are all,” 
 says the Apostle, “ members of one body.”) The world 
 has many members and but one body : the chaos of 
 Anaxagoras is number without order. 
 
 There is no real difference between the shadows of 
 ideas. Beauty and ugliness are conceived by the same 
 operation of the mind. There are many ideas, but there 
 is but one method of perceiving ideas : imperfection, evil, 
 and ugliness are not separate conceptions. Their pecu- 
 liarity consists in their being a negation in reality, a 
 nonentity in entity, a defect in effect . 4 (Leibnitz makes 
 use of this definition in his Theodicceci.) 
 
 The shadows of ideas differ in degree according to 
 the position of their substance with regard to the pri- 
 mordial Unity. They may be related to the truth, its 
 
 1 Intentio, viii., ix. dantia prater inattingibile esse ne- 
 
 2 Ve Triginta Idearum Conceptus, quit.” — Cusa, Dialogus de Genesi, 
 
 ii. 71a. 
 
 3 “ Differentia, sine qua concor- 4 Intentio, xxL 
 
“ OF THE SHADOWS OF IDEAS." 
 
 79 
 
 distinctness and purity, although they never reach the 
 absolute truth, the pure light itself. Without following 
 Bruno into the mazes of a definition between physical 
 and ideal shadows of ideas, it is easy to understand a 
 definition such as the following : — Physical shadows of 
 ideas are like the real shadows thrown by a real body. 
 A hoi’se in motion casts a shadow which changes with 
 the motion of the horse. This shadow is divided from 
 the substance, and is therefore no part of the substance, 
 though it could not exist without the substance. In like 
 manner shadows of ideas are not in time, place, nor 
 motion; but the object is in all. Bruno conceives a 
 great procession of things, at the head of which he places 
 things which by themselves and in themselves are real, 
 and at its end he places the immaterial. That spirit 
 is truly active which comprehends pure ideas untram- 
 melled by place or time. The forms of things are in 
 themselves ; they are in heaven ; they are in ideas ; they 
 are in germs ; they are in the nearest acting causes ; 
 they are individual in their operation ; they are in the 
 senses and in the mind. Matter is not complete when 
 it receives a form, as the eternal changes of matter 
 testify. That which is real is not individual ; it is not 
 capable of being perceived by the senses, as Aristotle 
 expressly declared when he spoke of substance (Kvplws 
 overlay). That which is real remains the same, therefore 
 what is produced and perishes is not real. That alone is 
 real which is the same (Idem) — the Abiding — the Eter- 
 nal : the terms are identical. 
 
 “ The highest intelligence,” says Bruno, u is the; 
 Highest Light , 1 and he who desires to comprehend that; 
 which is absolute and steadfast must strive after the lio-ht, 
 for every creature can receive it according to its capa- 
 city. All things proceed one from another, diversity from 
 
 1 Conceptus, ix. ; De Triginta Idearum Conceptus, ii. 
 
8o 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 diversity in infinite multitudes, and lie alone can number 
 them who has numbered the stars in the sky. But they 
 must return to the First Principle, and they become lost 
 in that absolute Unity which is the source of all units. 1 
 
 The Primeval Intelligence, from its copiousness, does 
 not produce new ideas, nor does it operate in a new 
 manner. Nature produces new things as regards num- 
 ber, but not in a new manner, because it invariably works 
 in the same manner. Those virtues which are, as it 
 were, unwound and dispersed in matter, become united as 
 they approach the First Cause, and are one with it. In 
 the First Cause there is but one idea of all things. It is 
 light, life, spirit, unity ; in it are all species, perfections, 
 truths, numbers, and degrees of things. Contrast and 
 diversity in Nature are in it harmony and unity. Here 
 Bruno inserts a quantity of mnemonic rules which it 
 would be tedious to follow. 2 After declaring that except 
 the One and the First all must be number, he proceeds 
 to show why the lowest degree of beings must be infinite 
 in number, and that in the highest the Infinite Unity is 
 alone the most absolute Reality. He then complicates 
 his subject by four definitions of form, dividing the Idea 
 of the subject again into four, the first technical, the 
 second logical, the third physical, the fourth metaphysical. 
 If, he says, the First Principle acted from chance, and not 
 from free will, it would require no ideas, for there can be 
 no activity which is not founded on freedom of reflection. 3 
 Anything is more easily understood by means of the idea 
 in the mind than by means of the real form and substance 
 itself, because these are material. In like manner a 
 subject is best conceived, not through its own objective 
 being, but through the idea of it in the Divine under- 
 standing. 
 
 True to his admiration for Lully, Bruno proceeds to 
 
 1 Conceptus, x. Compare Causa, 4th Dialogue (W. i. 261). 
 
 2 Conceptus xiii. 
 
 3 Hegel follows the same train of reasoning. 
 
OF THE SHADOWS OF IDEAS." 
 
 assert that the golden chain of things, which reaches from' 
 heaven to earth, and from earth to heaven, and binds to- 
 gether the uttermost parts of each, is, in its connection 
 with knowledge, an excellent help to the memory (Buhle, 
 726). 1 As, he says, there are six sorts of shadows, differ- 
 ing according to the position of bodies in their relation to 
 the sun, so do the shadows of ideas differ in their relation 
 to the First Principle, who, by addition, subtraction, and 
 attraction, calls forth, combines, and weighs all things. 
 The Divine Spirit has but one idea, which comprehends 
 totality in unity ; in a human intelligence ideas manifest 
 themselves by irregular and detached actions, but they 
 are declared in God by manifold, connected, and active 
 power ; they are revealed by Nature like an imprint, but 
 in man, per uvibree modum, they are but shadows. 
 
 Of mysteries, Bruno 2 says that they divide and 
 diminish as the intelligence expands, for they were in- 
 stituted to use men’s eyes to see clearly, lest the sight 
 should be offended by a too abrupt transition from dark- 
 ness to light. With characteristic want of prudence, he 
 expounds without scruple or hesitation matters about 
 which he had been better silent ; while Lullian maxims, 
 which he might have proclaimed upon the house-tops, he 
 wraps in the mystery of the sibyl, accompanying his 
 comments on Lully with such tags as these : “ It is not 
 given to all men to enter Corinth ; ” “ He who desires to 
 understand, understands;” “He who desires to elicit the 
 truth, elicits the truth.” 
 
 It was natural that this teaching should excite com- 
 ment in Paris. “ These shadows,” says Bruno in his 
 
 1 Perhaps this golden chain of the highest link of Nature’s chain 
 things is only visible to the poet, must needs be tied to the foot of Jupi- 
 wliose eye “doth turn from hea- ter’s chair” [Advancement of Learn- 
 ven to earth, from earth to heaven.” mg, 10). 
 
 But the conception is antique. 2 In his book De Imaginum 
 “When a man . . . seetli the de- Bruno gives it to be understood 
 pendence of causes and the works that “Be Umbris Idearum” and 
 of Providence,” says Lord Bacon, the “ Cantus Circaus” are to be 
 “then, according to the allegory of interpreted cabalistieally. 
 the poets, he will easily believe that 
 
 F 
 
82 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 dedication to liis comedy the Candle-Bearer, ££ terrify the 
 brnte creation, and, like the devils of Dante, put the asses 
 in a panic.” He represents his adversaries under the 
 names of “ Master Bobus,” “ Anthoc,” “ Roccus,” ££ Phar- 
 faeon,” ££ Berling,” ££ Maines,” “ Scoppet,” ct Clyster,” ££ Car- 
 pophorus,” ££ Arnophagus,” ££ Psicoteus ” (Gfr. 296). He 
 visits all dependent thinkers with his contempt. “ I 
 have sworn to no philosophy,” he says, “ but I despise no 
 means of knowledge. I esteem him highly who from his 
 own mind adds his mite to the art and science of the 
 contemplation of things. I do not think ill of the 
 Platonists, nor do I reject the doctrine of the Peripa- 
 tetics so long as it has a foundation in what is real ; and 
 this I say that I may set my foot against them who 
 measure other minds by their own. Of that kind is 
 the unhallowed crew w r ho have not formed their own 
 souls by occupation with the best philosophers, and who 
 speak constantly out of the mind of others because they 
 have no mind of their own.” 
 
 Few persons perhaps suffered more from these than 
 Bruno. ££ One man,” he writes in his preface to Infinity , 
 ££ as if I had an eye to himself, menaces me ; another, for 
 being only observed, assaults me ; for coming near this 
 man, he bites me ; and for laying hold of that one, he 
 devours me. It is not one who treats me in this manner, 
 nor are they few ; they are many, and almost all.” It is 
 true that Bruno makes no secret of his aversion to the 
 * mob,, for which they repay him in kind. “ I hate,” he 
 says in the same preface, ££ the vulgar rout ; I am dis- 
 pleased with the bulk of mankind.” And in the dialogues 
 on the Immense and the Innumerable, he speaks of having 
 been sped by the Beautiful and by Truth towards the 
 goal where the shouts of the throng and the storms of 
 the age can never more trouble him. 
 
 In brief, Bruno 'desires to convey -by this work that 
 what we call ideas are real, and what we call real is but 
 an image or shadow of the reality. What is real is ever- 
 lasting and unchangeable, such as truth, order, love, 
 
“OF THE SHADOWS OF IDEAS: 
 
 33 
 
 beauty. Tlie image is of matter, which changes and 
 passes away ; such is man, a chair, a leg of mutton. But 
 the Idea is stable, universal, eternal ; it is an attribute of 
 God, who is also eternal. It is infinite of itself and by 
 itself, because it is divine ; an essence everywhere and 
 always essential to man, and yet above him. He alone 
 can give the body of the truth its form and pressure who 
 has in his understanding a precise image of the real. 
 Under such guidance let him study the outward forms of 
 human speech with the images of truth and reality that 
 are within him and about him. Ideas are his true light. 
 If they ceased to be, he would be plunged in darkness and 
 the world would escape him. Let him behold the round 
 world and its fulness as a scroll bearing the imprint of 
 the finger of God, each character a living symbol, and the 
 whole creation a copy of an ideal picture, an expression 
 of the beauty, truth, and order of the Divine mind. 
 Bruno having thus defined the shadow and the idea, pro- 
 ceeds to set up a machinery of expression. Men’s minds 
 had not yet recovered from the surprise of the invention 
 of printing ; and Bruno, taking the universe as a printed 
 book — a simile common to that century, which was 
 beginning to compare the book of Nature with the Scrip- 
 tures — proceeds to compile a dictionary or syllcibicum of 
 the objects of the understanding, of forms and modes of 
 understanding, reducing the whole of these to order by 
 the art of Lully. Mnemonics assume so complete a form 
 in the eye of Bruno as to embrace not only the practice 
 of representation, but its theory, and the very theory of 
 thought. He looks upon thinking as an accomplishment 
 of the mind, a representation, so to say, in the inner 
 mind by inner writing, of that which Nature represents 
 externally, as it were, by external writing. A familiar 
 illustration of this process, is in the sensitive plate of the 
 photographer, which receives a shadow on its surface, and 
 by its inner process retains the shadow as if it were the 
 autograph of Nature. 
 
 
 rfv 
 
 C bJL 
 
 Kv<AA. ^ 
 
 fUU 
 
8 4 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 Thus Bruno conceives what has been written by the 
 spirit in Nature ; and thus he rises to the conception of 
 the Idea. He is no sooner under the empire of this 
 harmony than he feels he is one with the life of the 
 universe, which, with his human mind, constitutes but 
 one principle, flowing from and animated by one and the 
 same Being. Thus writing, as he says, as one dwelling 
 under the shadow of ideas, he builds up his theory, 
 which binds man by his inner thought as by a cord to 
 the order of Nature, and both to the unity of God. 
 
 The second part of the Shadows of Ideas is called the 
 Art of Memory. It contains a number of psychological 
 observations and rules of memory, intended for the king’s 
 use. Mnemonics is held by Bruno to possess a threefold 
 mission. It must first determine the subjects of the 
 cognition and their nature ; secondly, it deals with 
 forms ; and, thirdly, with the instrument itself, and its 
 t use in exercising and strengthening the mind. Hence 
 everything depends on the precision and clearness with 
 which obj ects are perceived ; the perceptions must be 
 | retained in the mind in such order that they may at 
 I pleasure be recalled, so that the chaotic fancy is re- 
 strained and ordered by the thinking faculty. Several 
 rules follow in a technical language, the key to which has 
 perished. What to us are opinions and conclusions take 
 actual shape and form in the mind of Bruno, and his 
 Organon contains directions for the government and 
 security of the mind, and the attainment of just per- 
 ceptions. 
 
 He distinguishes nine mental states which concur in 
 perception : (a) the intention, when either the sense or 
 the mind is moved by an object ; ( [b ) the provocation of 
 the imagination, thus indirectly or directly excited ; (c) 
 the passive movement of the imagination, by which it is 
 urged towards inquiry ; (cl) the active movement of the 
 imagination, by which it makes active inquiry ; (e) the 
 
“ THE ART OF MEMORY.” 
 
 35 
 
 scrutiny in behalf of which the imagination proceeds ; 
 (/) the formed representation of a striking idea; ( g ) the 
 representation of the reason why this idea is more strik- 
 ing than another ; ( li ) the recognition of the representa- 
 tion, by means of which it can be recalled ; and last, the | 
 determination that the recognised representation of thej 
 striking idea accords with the idea itself. The judgment 
 is the most excellent condition of the nine, and it is the 
 peculiar instrument (organon) of the faculty of thought. 
 Bruno compares it to a stick in the hand, by means of 
 which we stir a heap of chestnuts to seek out a particular 
 chestnut. 
 
 The mystic figures and hieroglyphics in this work are 
 not to be unriddled without a key. We have, among 
 others, illustrations and figures disposed to the use of 
 this art. Out of the ordinary representations of the sun, 
 the moon, the planets, and the signs of the zodiac, Bruno 
 devises subjects for the plastic arts of great ingenuity and 
 beauty, and to these his learned admirer Buhle is care- 
 ful to draw attention. Buhle also refers the system of 
 metaphysics here developed to Plotinus, who undoubtedly 
 influenced Bruno from the beginning to the end of his 
 literary career. 
 
 To Plotinus and to Jamblichus, his disciple in fantastic 
 philosophy, constant allusions occur in the Heroic Ectpture , 
 the latest of Bruno’s Italian works. Plotinus called him- 
 self a Platonist, but he went beyond his master in the 
 great question of the One or the Good, which, in the, 
 Timceus, Plato declares to be the highest of the ideas, 
 while Plotinus ascribes the source of the highest good to 
 One above the sphere of ideas and beyond the grasp of 
 reason. We find in Plotinus Bruno’s cherished instance, 
 the sun, standing for the image of the One or the Good. 
 Out of its abundance it sends forth an image of itself, as 
 the suns pour forth their rays. This image is the sphere 
 of the ideas ; to them true being and life belong : in its 
 passive aspect it is the object of knowledge ; in its active 
 
S6 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 sense it is the knowing subject or reason. To sever the 
 highest idea from the others dependent on him is to cut 
 them adrift from the source of life and being ; and the 
 Notts or image of him in which ideas dwell and perform 
 circles about him, combined with another image produced 
 by the Nous , which is the mind, and performs circles 
 about the Notts, is a confusion which strikes the modern 
 reader with amazement. The knot, however, was found 
 in ecstasy, which was to bind man to God, and make him 
 one with the Idea. 
 
 Bruno, however, had the strength of mind to perceive 
 these differences and to overcome them. He took the 
 best of each system and created a plan of his own ; and 
 since (as Sir Joshua Beynolds says in his excellent dis- 
 course on imitation) “ invention is one of the great marks 
 of genius,” Bruno may logically lay claim to genius. 
 
 “ Mnemosyne,” he writes, “ is the mother of the Muses ” 
 (Gfr. 557, 561). Like Hegel, he ascribed to his method 
 qualities belonging to his mind, and credited mere forms 
 with his own creative power and progression. Bruno’s 
 active inventive qualities gave life to abstractions, and he 
 expected other minds to be as vivid and fruitful as his own, 
 which was alive with what Lamb calls “ elemental fires.” 
 
 Perhaps, as has been suggested, this book was the 
 outcome of Bruno’s reasonings and writings at Toulouse, 
 which may have been embodied in a lost work on the 
 Soul, the principal doctrine of which reappeared in several 
 of Bruno’s other works, and notably in the third part of 
 the Shadows of Ideas. Berti believes that another work, 
 called the Grand Key, was the first of Bruno’s composi- 
 tions on Lully, and that it also has vanished. It is 
 certain Bruno speaks in Paris perpetually of a Key. He 
 proposes with this grand key to unlock the portals of 
 the Lullian penetralia, to make the learned and the un- 
 learned alike acquainted with hidden things, to reveal the 
 occult, to elucidate the obscure ; and he ironically en- 
 treats the Humanists to forgive him for searching after 
 
THE GRAND KEY. 
 
 87 
 
 gold in the mud of Lully. But the full title of a later 
 work (the Torch), and the words, est ct unica clavis, seems 
 to point to this as the only key to the system of Lully. 
 On the other hand, towards the end of the Shadows of 
 Ideas, Bruno refers to a book, the Great Key, in which 
 certain “ species, forms, appearances, images, semblances, 
 patterns, indications, signs, notes, characters, and seals ” 
 are set forth at length. This “ First Book of the Great 
 Key” 1 is again alluded to some years later at Wittenberg. 
 If it ever existed, it shared the lot of those lost or forgotten 
 writings to which he alludes ; and it is remarkable, not 
 that they were lost, but that so many small divided 
 chapters on the art of memory should survive. The 
 doctrine remained though the pamphlets had perished, 
 and it was no doubt repeated, as well in the Gi'and Key 
 as in the long series of writings succeeding the Shadows 
 of Ideas. 
 
 After much hesitation we are told that Bruno decided 
 to give the Shadows of Ideas to the world, observing that 
 were men in all things to consider possible perils and 
 evils, none would ever succeed in performing good and 
 efficient work. 
 
 Three books on the art of Lully were published by 
 Bruno in Paris in 1582 — the Shadows of Ideas, with its 
 second part, the Art of Memory, the Compendium of 
 Architecture , and the Song of Circe. The first, and, in 
 numbers, the largest group of his works, is chiefly written 
 in Italian prose and mostly occupied with mnemonics ; 
 the second, written in Latin hexameters, deals exclusively 
 with mathematics. 
 
 It is with the first group that we have to do at present. 
 Hallam, in speaking of the works on memory, dismisses 
 them as “ unintelligible chimeras, confused and obscure 
 rhapsodies, strange and nonsensical propositions ; ” and 
 
 1 Bartliolmess numbers the Grand clavis magnae as further setting forth 
 Key among Bruno’s lost works, these matters ; but I do not know it, 
 Buhle says, “ Herein” (in Be Umbris nor whether and where it has been 
 1 dearum ) “ Bruno refers to a Liber printed.” 
 
88 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 protests with some temper that he does not care either to 
 comprehend the method or to acquaint himself with it. 
 Accordingly we find (vol. ii. p. 95) that the Italian 
 works, in themselves plain and easy enough, have tried 
 his patience beyond its limits, and in speaking of forms 
 as the accidents of matter he is attributing to Bruno a 
 doctrine (W. i. 251) expressly repudiated by him some 
 half-dozen lines lower down in the page quoted. A 
 traveller on arriving at a Swedish inn found written on 
 the wall, “ Here is excellent entertainment for man and 
 beast if they provide it themselves ; ” and the student of 
 an obscure foreign philosophy must come to it furnished 
 with a moderate supply of patience and discernment. 1 
 
 However, to do him justice, Hallam is not singular in 
 his ungracious conduct. Helfferich in his pamphlet on 
 Lully (Berlin, 1858) says that if Aristotelian and Bibli- 
 cal symbols were shaken up in a hat, Christianity and 
 metaphysics would appear in novel combinations, and 
 the art of Lully would be reproduced. Helfferich 
 believes he has traced in Lully the influence of an 
 Arabic philosopher, Bathliusi, whose work Be Sphceris 
 Spemlcttivis was translated into Hebrew. “ The method 
 of the great art,” says Trendelenburg, “ is combina- 
 tion. The art does not answer the question whether 
 these combinations are possible in reality ; it merely pro- 
 duces them in representation.” 
 
 “ Old Raymond Lully,” as he is called by Charles 
 Lamb, “ the Illuminated Doctor,” as he was known to his 
 disciples, was born about 1235 at Palma, the capital of 
 Majorca, whither liis father had gone with James I. 
 of Arragon, when this prince took the island from the 
 Saracens to punish them for ill-treating his ambassador. 
 He was by origin a Catalonian, of that rough mountain 
 stock which was later to mingle its blood with the 
 
 1 Burton in Iris Anatomy of M cl an- others,” as a cure for melancholy, 
 choly (I.) prescribes the - study of and, in Dr. Johnson’s words, “there 
 the Art of Memory, lately revived is great spirit and great power in 
 by Copernicus, Brunus, and some what Burton says.” 
 
THE ART OF RAYMOND LULLY. 
 
 89 
 
 conquerors of Naples and of tlie Spanish Indies. Sprung 
 from this sturdy race, Lully caught the spirit of the times. 
 His plan was decided by a dream. He lay at the foot 
 of a lentisk tree, and on its leaves he beheld a multitude 
 of characters resembling Turkish or Arabic letters. No 
 sooner had he woke than he believed himself called to a 
 sacred mission of evangelisation. He imagined he had 
 discovered an infallible means of convincing infidels of the 
 truth of Christianity by mathematical demonstration, and 
 the signs and characters of his art were to produce by 
 no less a method than multiplication the great doctrines 
 of the faith, such as the Trinity and others. He taught 
 that mysteries were not opposed to reason, and he applied 
 himself zealously to the Oriental languages, that he might 
 preach the Christian faith to infidels, composing a method 
 (his General Art) by which he sought to show that attri- 
 butes the most elevated dwell in common things and lie 
 at the root of their existence. 
 
 The clue that had fallen from the hand of Lully was 
 seized by Bruno, who at once detected all the advantages 
 promised by the Grand Art. His playful fancy, his 
 memory stored with classical allusions, his profound and 
 original mind, gave him the advantages which he ascribed 
 to the art, but which in truth were altogether independent 
 qualities. Like modern aids to memory, the art of Lully 
 was founded on the fact that that part of the mind which 
 we call memory — “ la partie la plus viaterielle de Vintelli- 
 gence ” — has a mechanical function which can be trained 
 and perfected by mechanical means. Lully differed from 
 the Greek and Roman logicians and rhetoricians. Their 
 system of mnemonics consisted of mere aggregates of 
 general conceptions, commonplaces, and psychologic rules ; 
 while Lully composed tables of those fundamental con- 
 ceptions in which all present conceptions are compre- 
 hended, or out of which future conceptions can be con- 
 structed ; on these he bestowed symbols, flattering himself 
 that he had discovered how to simplify the cumbersome 
 
9 ° 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 methods of past dialecticians and metaphysicians, and to 
 lay open fresh paths in science. 
 
 The key of the whole lay in the association of ideas, 
 because if a symbol represented a fact, which led to a 
 chain of facts, it was necessary to remember the first fact, 
 or the whole system fell to the ground. The subject and 
 the attribute, however, were not associated without reason, 
 and the whole was represented to the eye in certain circles 
 or frames, forming a species of logical and metaphysical 
 calculating machine. These circles were six in number, 
 and were concentric. Each was larger than the other, 
 and they were so contrived as to lie on each other and to 
 turn. Two circles indicated the subjects , 1 three the attri- 
 butes, and the last and outermost circle — which stood 
 alone — contained the questions, and was called the key of 
 the invention. The first of the movable closed circles 
 (which was the circle nearest to the circle of questions) 
 was devoted to the nine essential categories of beings. 
 The second contained the nine classes of attributes of 
 physical being ; the third the attributes of the moral 
 being, which were also divided into nine classes, nine 
 virtues, and nine vices ; the fourth and fifth contained 
 relative and absolute attributes of physical and meta- 
 physical being; the absolute attributes under the three 
 heads of being, unity, and perfection, the relative attri- 
 butes as definition, division, and collection ( collectio ). 
 
 All knowledge exists in the combination of ideas ; and 
 if there is a method of discovering all possible combina- 
 tions of ideas, the road to all knowledge is laid open. 
 Different trains of fundamental conceptions were re- 
 presented in letters on the thinking machine, like the 
 figures on the face of a clock ; and every kind of com- 
 bination was produced by setting the circles in motion. 
 When the subjects were brought in contact with the 
 attributes, propositions and axioms were produced in such 
 
 1 For illustrative diagrams see the Compendium of Architecture (Gfr. 244, 
 245, 254). 
 
THE ART OF LULLY. 
 
 9i 
 
 a vast number of combinations that “ at the end of a 
 thousand years they would be past counting, even 
 reckoning a million in every hour.” Lully believed he 
 had opened out a new province for the human mind, and 
 that he had made not the demonstration only, but the 
 actual discovery of fresh fields of thought, an exercise 
 easy and mathematically certain. 
 
 The method was designed for the treatment of various 
 subjects by directing them all towards the principles 
 of the highest philosophy, but it degenerated into mere 
 disputes and declamation ; it became an art for discussing 
 rather than for acquiring science, and men came at last 
 to believe they were practising the grand art when they 
 were occupied with pedantic quibbles, or with what Bacon 
 calls “ the canker of epitomes.” 1 
 
 The insufficiency of the art of Lully as soon as it was 
 put to the proof could not fail to be noticed. Memory, 
 as Locke says, “ is the storehouse of our ideas.” The 
 more the storehouse is widened, strengthened, and 
 
 1 In speaking of Lully, Bacon says 
 ( Advancement of Learning, Book ii. 
 17. 14), “There hath been also 
 labouredandput in practice a method 
 which is not a lawful method, but a 
 method of imposture ; which is to de- 
 liver knowledges in such manner as 
 men may speedily come to make a 
 show of learning who have it not. 
 Such was the travail of Raymundus 
 Lullius in'makingthat art whichbears 
 his name, not unlike to some books of 
 typoeosmy, which have been made 
 since, being nothing but a mass 
 of words of all arts to give men 
 countenance that those which use 
 the terms might be thought to 
 understand the art — which collec- 
 tions are much like a fripper’s or 
 broker’s shop that hath ends of 
 everything, but nothing of worth.” 
 Again he says (Book ii. 15, 3), 
 “For the other principal part of the 
 custody of knowledge, which is 
 memory, I find that faculty in my 
 judgment weakly inquired of. An 
 
 art there is- extant of it, but it 
 seemetli to me that there are better 
 precepts than that art and better 
 practices of that art than those re- 
 ceived. It is certain the art (as it 
 is) may be raised to a point of ostenta- 
 tion prodigious ; but in use (as it 
 is now managed) it is barren, not 
 burdensome nor dangerous to natural 
 memory, as is imagined, but barren, 
 that is, not dexterous to be applied 
 to the serious use of business and 
 occasions. And, therefore, I make 
 no more estimation of repeating a 
 great number of names or words 
 upon once hearing . . . than I do of 
 the tricks of tumblers, . . . the one 
 being the same in the mind that the 
 other is in the body, matters of 
 strangeness without worthiness.” In 
 another part of the same book, 
 Bacon says, “ By means of this 
 science he who knows the words of 
 an art believes he has acquired the 
 very art itself ; ” and in another place 
 he calls it “ metkodus impostura.” 
 
92 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 generally enlarged, the better. But a memory in itself 
 excellent, such as that of a bird when he learns a tune, 
 may be without reflection, and therefore useless ; while a 
 memory applied to fruitful labour has rich and varied 
 treasures, each justly balanced, compact, and confederating. 
 Minds of the latter class, like Jack in the fairy tale, could 
 climb on a beanstalk into heaven, while the former could 
 never rise above the ground, even if Jacob’s ladder were 
 at their doors. 
 
 To expect too much of a mechanical aid to memory is 
 to require a man to become a painter by practising the 
 stencil, or a sculptor by moulding a hat or a pair of boots. 
 In this manner the deficiencies of the art struck all the 
 thinkers who had first looked to it for help. It made no 
 deductions, it developed nothing, ready-made conceptions 
 were mechanically tacked to attributes and questions, and 
 the scheme produced resembled thought as a barrel-organ 
 resembles a nightingale. 
 
 What, it may be asked, was the attraction to Bruno’s 
 passionate and imaginative nature in an art which was the 
 very epitome of cut and dried learning ? The mystic 
 shrouded meaning veiled under the emblems of the art 
 took strong hold upon his imagination, while the method 
 appealed to his reason, which revolted against Aristotle, 
 whom Lully detested, pronouncing his metaphysics to be 
 a mere barren category, and his morals to consist of ideas 
 perceived through the senses. Besides, Bruno believed in 
 the Grand Art as a sovereign means of conveying to the 
 people the germ of his philosophy, which is the dialectic 
 of Plato. The idea, the pure archetypal essence, the 
 unity which is the inexpressible excellence and beauty of 
 all things, escapes human science. But as a step in this 
 direction Plato undertook in his old age to reduce ideas to 
 numbers, after having originally developed the theory of 
 ideas apart from all consideration of their relation to 
 numbers. 
 
THOUGHT A MODE OF CALCULATION. 
 
 93 
 
 The Platonic idea is colourless, without figure, imper- 
 ceptible by any sense, and accessible only to the contem- 
 plative view of the reason. The Idea is eternal, without 
 origin or decay, neither increasing nor decreasing, remain- 
 ing absolutely like itself ; it cannot be represented by the 
 fancy, because it is not a material thing ; nor is it a 
 conception and form of knowledge ; it is not wholly 
 in any other object nor in any living being. The Idea 
 has with the individual objects corresponding to it a cer- 
 tain community and participation; it is in some sense 
 present in them, though in part only, as the rays of the 
 sun estend to the earth ; yet the earth is not the sun nor 
 in the sun, though without the sun we cannot conceive of 
 existence. The Idea is supreme and difficult of cognition ; 
 it is the cause of all truth and beauty. To it objects owe 
 their being and the mind its power. 
 
 Primarily, therefore, Bruno looked to the Lullic art as 
 a swift and easy expedient for conveying abstract ideas. 
 Was it so wonderful that he should seek to express by 
 signs the operations of reason ? Why should logic fail 
 to attain a language such as has been granted to mathe- 
 matics ? 
 
 From time immemorial the great philosophers had looked 
 for a science of signs such as that offered by Lully. 
 Among the Pythagoreans ethical notions were invested 
 with a mathematical form, and symbols filled the place of 
 definitions. For example, justice was defined by them as 
 square number, by which it was intended to express the 
 correspondence between action and suffering, or, in other 
 words, retribution. 
 
 All his life Bruno cherished the hope of bring the art 
 to perfection, and in this he was not singular. 
 
 Leibnitz never abandoned his project for devising an 
 algebra of thought. All his life he had been in search of 
 a “ universal language,” a hieroglyph containing a species 
 of calculation by means of which to reason in that 
 language and to calculate were one and the same ; and 
 
94 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 errors in reasoning were to appear as plainly as errors in 
 calculation. Bruno was persuaded that it was possible to 
 formulate a logical expression of the ruling order of the 
 universe, and he believed that by defining the primary 
 elements of thought and the essential laws of their com- 
 bination, the very root and essence of created things 
 would be laid bare. Locke 1 shared the same belief; it 
 is the fundamental idea of Hegel’s logic, and Dubois 
 Raymond and Professor Stanley Jevons are of opinion 
 that there is a quality in mathematics which is inter- 
 changeable with logic. 
 
 But there is a depth in Bruno’s conception of this art , 2 
 and a strength and freedom in his treatment to which 
 Lully could never attain. The fundamental unity of 
 being and thought, the supreme identity of thing and 
 idea, the union between ideality and reality, form the 
 principles on which Bruno believed he could build up an 
 imperishable art. 
 
 Language and memory he considered identical not only 
 with thought, but with the nature of things ; and by virtue 
 of the primitive essential harmony of the human mind 
 with the creation he believed that he could teach the har- 
 mony which exists between the laws of intelligence and 
 the permanent manifestation of law in things. He hoped 
 to perfect a method for connecting universal ideas with 
 real knowledge, while furnishing rules for discussion and 
 directions for the exercise of thought and of speech. The 
 pupil was to learn not only how to expound, to attack, 
 and to defend, but to combine conceptions, to form new 
 ideas, to conceive all which is or can be ; not to think 
 alone, but to use the thoughts of others. 
 
 Thus the art would be profitable in the sense of Sir 
 
 1 On the Human Understanding , Valerio dei Valerii, Petrus Tholo- 
 
 “ Semeiotica.” sanus, Julius Paccius, Alstedius, 
 
 2 Berti adds to the number of &c. Brueker speaks of the art as 
 masters professing the Lullian art having been highly esteemed in 
 the names of Duns Scotus, Lefevre, Germany. 
 
 Buuilly, Paracelsus (the three last A catalogue of the works of Lully 
 are mentioned by Bruno, Gfr. 628), is in the Escufial Library. 
 
THE ALGEBRA OF THOUGHT. 
 
 95 
 
 Joshua Reynolds when he said, “ He who has the most 
 materials has the greatest means of invention ; and if he 
 has not the power of using them, it must proceed from 
 a feebleness of intellect, or from the confused manner 
 in which those collections have been laid up in his mind.” 
 Out of nothing, nothing can come. The “ sursum corda,” 
 as Bruno himself says, “ is not said to all men, but 
 to those who have wings” (W. ii. 403). 
 
 “ To an atheist,” says Montaigne, “ all writings tend 
 to atheism ; he corrupts the most innocent matter with 
 his own venom ; ” and, in fact, to a genius all methods 
 tend to genius ; but except to a genius the method of 
 Lully was dry and dull. Lully was dry and dull to 
 such a degree that Bruno himself apologises for his 
 repetitions (Gfr. 281, 282, 265), and, indeed, once 
 accuses him of a mean and mad spirit {pauper . . . semper 
 idem . . . delirando tentavit). 
 
 It was far otherwise with Bruno. Solger, the German 
 philosopher, writes of him that his poetic inspiration was 
 such as to compel him to express himself in verse. 1 In 
 him poetry was a passion, which, working silently within 
 him, transformed his nature; and by a thousand appar- 
 ently aimless or sportive touches, by his lofty and power- 
 ful themes, by his conceptions vaster and more splendid 
 than any vouchsafed to common men, we are bidden to 
 recognise the handiwork of genius. Hegel, in his Lec- 
 tures on the History of Philosophy , says of Bruno, “ The 
 most striking characteristic of his writing is its inspira- 
 tion. The spirit dwelling within him knows the unity of 
 its being and of all being.” He then speaks of Bruno’s 
 luxuriant fancy as “ Bacchantic ; ” and Carriere says of 
 
 1 It was related of tlie renowned tailed on him by that action, for 
 Dr. Watts that the same obligation Quakers have a conscientious objec- 
 w.as conferred on him by Nature, tion to graven and molten images, 
 and that on being whipped by his The repression ought to have been 
 father for writing verses, he asked indefinitively extended ; to spare the 
 pardon in poetry, and got another rod was to spoil the artist. “Art,” 
 beating. When Benjamin West said an amateur to Constable, “ is a 
 made paint brushes out of the cat’s passion with me.” “ It is a bad 
 tail, personal chastisement was en- passion,” replied the'great painter. 
 
96 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 him, “ The personal energy of his thoughts endows him 
 with vivid dramatic power ; he writes in verse because he 
 discerns that unity is all things and all things are unity ; 
 the harmony of the universe possesses him, like a chord 
 of the cosmic lyre of Apollo.” Carriere concludes his 
 appreciative and excellent criticism by saying that Bruno’s 
 spirit, thus attuned to the music of the spheres, could not 
 fail to manifest itself in harmonious expression, quoting 
 in illustration some admirably-rendered lines in German 
 from De Immenso (p. 201, Fiorentino’s edition), which 
 may be roughly translated thus : — 
 
 “ ’Tis thou, 0 Spirit, dost within my soul 
 This weakly thought with thine own life amend, 
 
 Eejoieing, dost thy rapid pinions lend 
 Me, and dost wing me to that lofty goal 
 Where secret portals ope and fetters break, 
 
 And thou dost grant me, by thy grace complete, 
 
 Fortune to spurn, and death ; 0 high retreat, 
 
 Which few attain, and fewer yet forsake ! . . . 
 
 Girdled with gates of brass in every part, 
 
 Prisoned and bound in vain, ’tis mine to rise 
 Through sparkling fields of air to pierce the skies, 
 
 Sped and accoutred by no doubting heart, 
 
 Till, raised on clouds of contemplation vast, 
 
 Light, leader, law, Creator, I attain at last.” 
 
 Again, when contemplating, as in a vision, the heights 
 | and the nether world, Bruno invokes the love which 
 ; unites sea and sky and the earth our mother, and prays 
 that love may wound and quicken him till darkness is 
 changed into light, and he, becoming one vast eye, may 
 behold the past, the present, and the future hovering 
 around him in an encircling procession . 1 Solger speaks 
 of these poetic outpourings as hymns of philosophy, and 
 remarks with some acuteness that Bruno appears to have 
 attained philosophy by means of mysticism. 
 
 With such vigorous characteristics it is impossible 
 
 1 This idea will be found in some of the sonnets in The Heroic Rapture. 
 
THE ART OF LULLY. 
 
 97 
 
 Bruno should fall into the dulness and dryness of his 
 master Lully. All his life he had felt the need of giving 
 his thoughts poetic expression, and even the Grand Art 
 was invested by him with the pictures and symbols, with 
 the allegoric subtlety and admirable variety of his own 
 creative fancy. All that fantastic scholasticism, hiero- 
 glyphic designs, kabbalistic and geometric quibbles, dia- 
 logues, verses, and even play of words could do to vary 
 and enliven the subject was done by Bruno. His dif- 
 ferent books on the art are, as Bartholmess says, different 
 aspects of one country ; and a general survey of them is 
 all that is necessary, for the aim of each is to demon- 
 strate the point of unity in which both reality and 
 ideality are combined and from which they are de- 
 veloped. Thus man must turn to the foundation-head ; 
 to the Divine Being from whom all things emanate, and 
 in whom they are ; to the inspiration of that Being 
 which permits one in union with Him to participate in 
 Him and to comprehend all things. This view is clearly 
 derived from the Kabbalah. It will be necessary later 
 to notice a certain relationship between Spinoza and 
 Bruno. Spinoza was called by Kant “ the Cartesian of 
 the Kabbalah,” and it may have been on the common 
 meeting -ground of Hebrew philosophy that the two 
 thinkers acquired a certain likeness in their ideas. 
 Bruno’s leaning towards Platonism, his fervid and bold 
 imagination, and his love of mysticism combined to 
 throw him on the Kabbalah. But he imprinted all he 
 touched with the sign manual of his own individuality. 
 His poetic genius came to his aid, and showed him that 
 the world is not a mere concourse of barren images 
 multiplied by each other in endless rotation. The figures 
 of which he made use were types not of earth but of 
 heaven ; a double significance waited on these symbols ; 
 they were real shadows of ideal things ; and in this way 
 he hoped to reconcile the warring schools, and to show 
 the link between ideality and reality. The words by 
 
9 3 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 
 wliicli objects are represented to our senses are signs ; 
 the objects themselves are forms; they are the shadows 
 of ideas, eternal and creative, and they proceed from the 
 Creator. 
 
 This sublime mission Bruno believed himself called 
 upon to expound and to lead ; and in the Kabbalah he 
 found the term which denominates Divine Wisdom — 
 Chocmali , the inaccessible light which is beyond the 
 world and humanity. Being infinite, it is known only 
 to infinity ; and thus in its fulness “ the Divine super- 
 natural Essence” ( Wagner , i. 233), “the most high 
 contemplation of which rises beyond Nature” (ib. 275), 
 
 “ is debarred from our consideration.” 
 
 This principle, according to the Kabbalah, descends 
 within the grasp of our comprehension by means of ten 
 Sephiroth or Intelligences, to which it communicates 
 itself. The Kabbalah permits, and even enjoins, the use 
 of allegory. From the figure of an archetypal man, 
 of whom the earthly man is a faint copy, emanate in- 
 telligences, powers, and angelic principalities like rays 
 from the sun ; they differ from each other and from 
 the sun ; and they form a strict unity. The mysticism 
 of the Hebrew doctors endows these Intelligences with 
 sex. The right side of the archetypal Man (with the 
 Intelligences flowing from it) is masculine, and represents 
 J ustice ; his left side is feminine, and represents Mercy. 
 The union of these Intelligences produces the universe 
 in their image ; and the crown and completion of the 
 universe is Man. “ Just as we see in the firmament above, 
 covering all things, different signs which are formed of 
 the stars and the planets, and which contain secret things 
 and profound mysteries studied by those who are wise 
 and expert in these things ; so there are in the skin, 
 which is the cover of the body of the son of man, and 
 which is like the sky that covers all things above, signs 
 and features which are stars and planets of the skin, 
 indicating secret things and profound mysteries whereby 
 
THE KABBALAH. 
 
 99 
 
 tlie wise are attracted wlio understand the reading of 
 the mysteries of the human face ” ( Zoliar , ii. 76 ; quoted 
 by Ginsburg, art. “ Kabbalah,' - ’ Encyclopaedia Britannica, 
 ed. 1881). 
 
 A full description of the procession of the Intelligences 
 from the Supreme Light will be found at the beginning 
 of the Cabal (W. ii. 266, 267); and in the Expulsion 
 (W. ii. 228), where the subject is developed, it receives 
 striking and masterly treatment. After tracing the Kab- 
 balah to Egypt, through Moses, who was learned in all 
 the wisdom of the Egyptians, Bruno points out the like- 
 ness between religious systems, and their equality, as 
 modes of attaining to the true God. The Ineffable Name 
 which stands at the head of the Intelligences, and from 
 which, in their various degrees, all lower excellences 
 proceed, is represented in “ the magical and divine wor- 
 ship of Egypt,” by “the God of gods, and the Fountain 
 of ideas above Nature.” The Powers and Intelligences 
 lower in the Hebrew scale stand for the ancient gods 
 which preside over the various benevolences of Nature. 
 To ask the sea for fish was to call upon Neptune ; when 
 the sun was entreated to shine, he was invoked as Apollo ; 
 the earth became Ceres, and the woods Diana. But these 
 seeming gods in Nature were in truth various ideas of 
 God, who is above Nature (W. ii. 228). 
 
 “ Thus in all things whatever, and in every effect, each 
 in its own degree, the ancients beheld Divinity ; and 
 they knew all things after their kind in the lap of Earth, 
 and how to obtain them, and their virtues” ( W . ii. 228). 
 Bruno then brings the subject to a striking and em- 
 phatic close. Using the inductive method, he argues, in 
 an ascending scale, from the particular to the general, 
 from the gifts to the giver, from that which is beautiful 
 and wisely contrived to Beauty and Wisdom. Here we 
 may descry clearly the connection between the Platonic 
 doctrine and the Kabbalah, with their influence on the 
 philosophy of Bruno. 
 
100 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 The conception is made plain by reducing it to a 
 rough table. 
 
 Q Supreme Light and Platonic Fountain of Ideas. 
 
 0 Virtues and Intelligences. 
 
 O Material Gifts. 
 
 Man is placed side by side with this conception. In 
 the lowest stage of his intelligence man perceives God pas- 
 sively and through the medium of his own wants and 
 comforts. This is a concrete conception, and corresponds 
 with the stage marked Material Gifts in our table. In 
 the next stage God is made manifest actively by his 
 qualities or attributes. This is an abstract conception, 
 and corresponds with the degree marked Virtues and 
 Intelligences in the table. 
 
 In the last and highest stage, God is known not by 
 his gifts only, nor by his gilts and his attributes, but 
 as himself. Being infinite, he cannot be known by the 
 i finite. This degree, therefore, is beyond our grasp, and is 
 the proper logical standing-ground of faith. . . . (“ The 
 knowledge of not knowing brings forth faith,” Cusa.) 
 
 It is in establishing the link between these concep- 
 tions, in announcing their true place to be in man’s 
 intelligence, in claiming value for every religion, and in 
 declaring the relation of all religions to God that Bruno’s 
 greatness lies. “ So,” he concludes, “ every man in his own 
 tongue calls upon a God, an angel, an intelligence, a power, 
 yet in the end the whole deity is found to be one source, as 
 all light is of the first Principle, which in itself is lucid ; and 
 as the images which are in diverse and countless mirrors 
 
THE ART OF LULLY. 
 
 IOI 
 
 (or individual subjects) are of one formal and ideal prin- 
 ciple, which is their source.” 
 
 The system of Lully was, at the best, but a crutch ; 
 yet Bruno cherished hopes that it would become like 
 Aaron’s rod, which budded ; that it would work miracles, 
 and be at last laid up in that “ vast temple which is our 
 earth, the palace and shrine of the Most High.” 
 
 Only the desire to prove the unity of thought and 
 being in strict mathematical terms could have induced 
 Bruno to espouse a method in all respects opposed to his 
 nature. He found a system of empty and barren out- 
 lines. Aided by his knowledge of the classics, he en- 
 larged and beautified the art, and did with a desert 
 and sandy soil all that learning, ingenuity, and vigour 
 could accomplish. The Grand Art was to be more than 
 a mere tool, more than a “ key,” a “ weapon,” or a 
 “torch.” Future generations were to receive it at the 
 hand of philosophy ; it was to be the very edifice, light, and 
 treasure of truth. The unity of science, developed and 
 applied by the Grand Art, was to replace the Organon 
 of the Stagyrite. The laws of reason are unchanging, 
 because they are divine ; the universe follows them like 
 their shadow, their evidence is irresistible, their authority 
 is supreme ; they constitute the unity of the thinker with 
 thought, of the mind with knowledge. 
 
 This sense of mystic unity is altogether opposed to the 
 method of Aristotle. His categories, Bruno says frankly, 
 lead to no end. They are confused ; and their point of 
 departure is from probability, not from proof. But Bruno 
 required a philosophic system, producing the very prin- 
 ciples of the highest science, the essential ideas, and the 
 primitive elements of truth. Perhaps, too, he looked to his 
 art to recover the faded traces of the former life, in which 
 Socrates and Plato believed, and to which St. Augustine 
 himself did not deny a title of nobility ( Socrccticum illucl 
 nobillisivium inventum, St. Aug., ep. vii. conf. x. 12, 
 26, 27). 
 
102 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 Nor must it be forgotten that Bacon himself, who could 
 not tolerate Lully, considers the memory ( rctincre ) as one 
 I of the four essential parts of his method. But Bruno 
 desired to apply this marvellous faculty of memory not 
 to the mere vulgar facts of personal history, but to the 
 eternal history of the universe and of humanity ; to that 
 which is, rather than to that which passes away ; to being 
 and the Idea, not to shadows and figures. “ Antiquity,” 
 he says (Gfr. 306, 345, 359, 360, 558), “was astounded 
 by the progress possible to the memory which rises from 
 a vast store of notions to a notion in its turn containing 
 the germs of fresh subjects of thought.” But antiquity 
 laid down no rules for the mind in the development of 
 the memory, and these it was Bruno’s desire to supply. 
 A well-formed judgment must either extend the sphere of 
 our knowledge or enlighten it, and Bruno looked to the 
 Grand Art as the means of arriving at well-balanced judg- 
 ments by a mechanical process. The march of thought 
 must be regulated by law ; it rests on a foundation which 
 observation reveals but does not create. Thought in a 
 sane and orderly condition operates with the regularity of 
 arithmetical and geometric progression ; and he believed 
 it unreasonable that there should be any l'adical opposi- 
 tion between the laws governing the mind and matter, 
 between our conceptions and the real objects on which 
 they are based. 
 
 But the toughness and ingratitude of the art forced 
 its enthusiastic advocate in several of his works to exhort 
 the reader to patience, and to encourage him with the 
 assurance that great things are designed by the gods to 
 be difficult of attainment (Gfr. 206, 335). He is so per- 
 suaded of the rare excellence and use of the method that 
 he counts it an honour to be a Lullist (628). He was 
 attracted as a lad (Gfr. 526) by discerning the fact that 
 beneath the signs and symbols of Lullism lay a philosophic 
 doctrine which had escaped the master himself (2 5 2, 278, 
 260, 242). The spark (modica favilla-sparsum semen , 
 
“ THE MONAD." 
 
 103 
 
 527) which caught his imagination was the point, the 
 Monad, the atom ; that from which all things proceed ; 
 and this, with some prescience of modern thought, he calls 
 the germ of the immensity of the universe. Thus, while 
 retaining the letter of Lullism, Bruno completely reformed 
 the spirit of the art ; and the Monacl , one of his best 
 works, though owning the influence of Lully, attains in 
 its wide scope and lofty aim to enlightenment far beyond 
 the reach of the Catalonian monk. 
 
( 104 ) 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 “ History is a council in perpetuity, in which the voice of every nation is 
 heard, living voices which are the echoes of Providence. Nothing 
 can prevail against the assembly of the ages ; private excommuni- 
 cations and anathemas are empty forms in the hour of universal 
 alliance and reconciliation.” — Edgar Quinet. 
 
 England, 1583-85. M. Castelnau de Mauvissi&ve. Doctrine of Ecstasy. 
 
 Traces of German Mysticism. Bruno at Oxford, June 1583. His 
 
 Lectures on the Immortality of the Soul. The Printer Vautrollier. 
 
 Sidney. 
 
 Having printed a comedy entitled the Candle-Bearer, 
 which was probably composed some years before, in a 
 Neapolitan cloister, Bruno took his departure from Paris. 
 Clement (. Bibliotheque Curieuse, vol. v. 294) marks the 
 Candle-Bearer “ very rare,” and says, “With all the care I 
 have taken to look for this piece in the greatest libraries, 
 and even in foreign countries, I have not been able to 
 find it.” Abbe Goujet mentions the comedy in the 
 Bibliotheque Franqaise (vol. viii.), and he says of the 
 French translation, Boniface et le Pddant, that it is anony- 
 mous, in prose, and ill-written. Tiraboschi does not appear 
 to have read the play ; and Lewes, in his Biographical 
 History of Philosophy, copies the analysis given by Bar- 
 tholmess, perhaps on the principle of Piron, who, when 
 speaking of our literary forerunners, says, “ Leurs Merits 
 sont des vols qu’ils nous ont faits d’avance.” Ueberweg 
 says in his History of Philosophy (vol. ii. p. 26), “Ac- 
 cording to the theory of Falkson ( Giordano Bruno, p. 289) 
 and of Benno Tschischwitz (Shakespeare’s Hamlet; Halle, 
 1868), Shakespeare became acquainted with a comedy 
 
“ HAMLET. 
 
 i°5 
 
 entitled El Candelajo (sic), written by Bruno while resid- 
 ing in London (1583—86), and perhaps with others of 
 his writings, and derived from them some of the ideas — 
 particularly on the subject of the indestructibility of the 
 material elements and the relativity of evil — which he 
 expresses by the mouth of the Danish Prince.” 
 
 A passage which has excited comment, because of its 
 resemblance to Shakespeare, will be found in the Dialogues 
 of the Cause (W. i. 253 ) — “ Seest thou not that what was 
 seed becomes grass, the grass becomes corn, the corn 
 becomes bread, bread becomes chyle, blood, man ; the 
 man becomes a corpse, and that turns to earth, and so 
 forth, till all things attain to all the forms of Nature.” 
 
 “ To me,” says Furness, “ this similarity is of the 
 faintest ; ” yet the passage may suggest a comparison 
 with Hamlet’s speech to Horatio (act v. scene 1 ). 
 “ Why may not imagination trace the noble dust of 
 Alexander till he find it stopping a bunghole ? ... As 
 thus : Alexander died, Alexander was buried ; the dust is 
 earth ; of earth we make loam ; and why of that loam, 
 whereto he was converted, might they not stop a beer- 
 barrel ? ” 
 
 Tschischwitz marks for comparison with Bruno the pas- 
 sage in which Octavio asks Manfurio, “ What is the matter 
 of your verse ? ” and Manfurio answers, “ Words, words, 
 words.” The excellent Mrs. Pott, in her Promus, lands 
 herself in a slough of despond when founding a theory 
 of identity on the fact that Shakespeare and Lord Bacon 
 wrote “ Good-morrow.” What could any man read but 
 words ? Tschischwitz, however, goes further, and the 
 reader fares worse. When Polonius is answered by 
 “ Slanders, sir ; for the satirical rogue says here that 
 old men have grey beards,” and so forth, Tschischwitz 
 believes Hamlet must have been reading Bruno’s Expul- ■ 
 sion, because it contains a like description of old age. 
 Was not Hamlet’s reply dictated by his own “ antic dis- 
 position,” and by the appearance of Polonius, as children 
 
io6 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 sometimes pretend to read correction to tlieir elders out 
 of books ? Furness, in his New Variorum Shakespeare, 
 dismisses the suggestion of Tschischwitz. But, quoting 
 from Klein’s History of the Drama , Furness adds that 
 Bruno delivered lectures at Wittenberg during the year 
 that Hamlet was a student there, and that Hamlet might 
 have attended them — supposing that he, like most of 
 Shakespeare’s characters, was the poet’s contemporary. 
 
 The names of three Englishmen appear on the register 
 of Wittenberg during the years 1590—92. They are 
 Fynes Morison of Lincolnshire, Anthony Everstild of 
 Sussex, and Martin Turner of York. One or other of 
 these must have been the friend of the writer of Hamlet. 
 It is more than probable that Morison was known to 
 Bacon. But to connect either of these names with the 
 life of Bacon would, perhaps, be a greater triumph for 
 the painstaking Mrs. Pott than the fact that both Shakes- 
 peare and Bacon wrote “ Good-morrow ” and used the 
 word “ really.” Furness continues thus “ Although 
 Tschischwitz is evidently convinced of the genuineness 
 of his discovery, he is moderate in his demands on those 
 who are inclined to be sceptical, and says that he does 
 not wish to maintain that Shakespeare went any deeper 
 into Bruno’s system than served his immediate purpose 
 in Hamlet , but that such instances of parallelism as he 
 adduces prove that when Shakespeare wrote Hamlet he 
 had ascended to the height of the consciousness that 
 had been attained in those days ( Zeitbewusstsein ), and 
 had become familiar with the most abstract of sciences.” 
 Another critic ( Shalcespeariana , vol. i., No. I 2, Oct. 1884; 
 Philadelphia, L. Scott ; London, Trubner), in an article 
 entitled “ Shakespeare and Giordano Bruno,” desires to 
 prove from the passage, “ If the sun breed maggots in a 
 dead dog, being a God-kissing carrion,” that the author 
 of Hamlet knew the works of Bruno (“ Sol et homo- 
 generant hominem ”) and was acquainted with the atomic 
 theory. The correspondent goes further, and from the 
 
BACON. 
 
 1 07 
 
 facts that no translation of the Expulsion existed until 
 1713, and that no English form of the poem by Par- 
 menides on Nature appeared till the beginning of the 
 seventeenth century, he seeks to deduce the fact that the 
 author of Hamlet knew both Greek and Italian, “ as was 
 the case with the learned Francis Bacon.” 
 
 The grounds for this assumption are small, but they 
 may interest the reader. 
 
 Bruno was at the Court of Elizabeth from 1583 to 
 1585. Bacon, though only twenty-five when Bruno’s 
 visit ended, was called to the Bar in 1581, and it was 
 unlikely that a distinguished lad, and one related to the 
 Cecils, was not acquainted with illustrious visitors at 
 Court. Moreover, two facts pointed out by the Rev. B. 
 Wrey Savile, of Exeter (the correspondent in question), 
 are sufficiently important. At the age of fifteen Bacon 
 wrote an essay adverse to the Aristotelian philosophy ; 
 and the atomic philosophy as interpreted by Bruno and 
 by Descartes, his son in philosophy, was entertained by 
 Bacon. Many curious points of contact with Bruno will 
 reward the seeker in Bacon's philosophy. The simile of 
 the carver which occurs in the Second Dialogue of the 
 Cause was taken bodily from Bruno. We have, moreover, 
 the curious expression, “ that true form is such that it 
 deduces the particular nature from some source of essence, 
 existing in many subjects, and more known (as they 
 term it) to Nature than the form itself” ( Novum Organon, 
 Book ii. aphor. 4), which is repeated in part from the 
 words of Bruno (W. ii. 229), “God, as an absolute Being, 
 is not concerned with us ; but in so far as he communi- 
 cates himself to the effects of Nature, he is nearer to 
 Nature than Nature itself ; so that if he is not Nature 
 itself, he is of a surety the Nature of Nature, and he is 
 the soul of the soul of the world, if he is not the soul 
 itself.” The effect of Bruno’s theory of form on the 
 philosophy of Bacon may be traced in the Novum Organon 
 (Book ii. aphor. 1, 4, 13, 15, 17). Bacon’s term, 
 
io8 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 “ form,” means no more than law (“ For the form of a 
 thing is its very essence ”), and with Bruno 1 form 
 and matter are terms which stand for forces ( Cause , 
 Dialogue iii.) 
 
 It is difficult, without considerable help from the im- 
 agination, to reduce the England of to-day to its slender 
 proportions in the age of Elizabeth. The country was 
 weak ; Ireland was unruly ; Scotland, with its strong 
 party of Catholics, was a continual source of danger. 
 Spain was an open enemy; France was the ally of the 
 Scotch and the humble servant of the Pope. Our revenue 
 was but half a million, and our entire population ex- 
 ceeded by about a quarter of a million the present popu- 
 lation of London. London then contained about one 
 hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants. It was hardly 
 the equal of Antwerp ; in many respects it was inferior 
 to Paris and Lisbon. Its sanitary condition was so im- 
 perfect that the deaths almost equalled the births taking- 
 place within its walls. A coil of dirty narrow streets, 
 each with a black gutter which ran down the centre of 
 the road ; the houses tall and high, with overhanging 
 upper storeys and gables shutting out the daylight ; one 
 hundred and twenty churches, conspicuous among which 
 was the enormous mass of old St. Paul's, with its solid 
 square tower ; a single street leading from the Tower by 
 the river, and past Westminster Hall and Southwark 
 Bridge, with its double row of shops and houses, to the 
 
 1 Scheible, in his work Die Sage 
 vom Faust (Stuttgardt, 1847, page 
 223 seq.), makes an attempt to 
 identify the Bruno of Marlow’s 
 Faust with the Nolan philosopher. 
 There are some obscure lines in the 
 British Museum (Epigrammes and 
 Elegies, by J. D. and C. M., 32mo ; at 
 Middlesborougli, 1590 ?) which seem 
 to show that Marlow — since he is 
 supposed to be the writer — applied 
 the name Bruno to a living person- 
 age. The lines run as follows : — 
 
 “Bruno which thinks himself a faire 
 sweet youth 
 
 Is thirty-nine years of age at least ; 
 
 Yet was he never, to confess the truth, 
 
 But a dry starveling when he was at 
 best,” &c. 
 
 Strangely enough the “ lothed 
 Lollard and base schismatic ” Bruno, 
 is sent to Wittenberg, and con- 
 demned to be burnt alive. The 
 bill for these additions to Marlow’s 
 play, which were made some years 
 after the poet’s death, is still ex- 
 tant. 
 
LONDON, 1583. 
 
 IC9 
 
 stately houses, each in its own garden, which edged the 
 Thames, — such was London in the time of Elizabeth. 
 
 “ Miracles,” said Shakespeare, “ are ceased ; ” but, 
 indeed, miracles and revelation were then abundant. In 
 the “ green islands and golden sands ” of the distant 
 Spanish main a new world had arisen as if by magic out 
 of the bosom of the watery waste. This El Dorado was 
 said to contain wedges of clean gold as large as a man’s 
 hand ; with streets broader and richer than those of 
 London, cottages stored with pearl, and banqueting-houses 
 built of crystal, with pillars of massy silver and gold. 
 Moreover, the natives were said to worship and to hold 
 converse with a devil which assumed the shape of a calf ; 
 and there were monsters in the land as large as two 
 ordinary oxen, which it was great sport to kill, besides 
 fiery dragons which reddened the air through which they 
 travelled. Perhaps the crowning marvel of the age was 
 the discovery of the Bible, for centuries sepulchred in the 
 cells of monks. Within its newly unfolded pages lay 
 another and a better world. In the surpassing beauty of 
 its ethics was the assurance of a new life ; it came bring- 
 ing fire and sword, and yet was full of promises, sweet as 
 the honey-bee which was fabled to have built in the 
 mouth of Plato. 
 
 Heine, with an incomplete appreciation of what was in 
 truth the dawn of a new day, describes England at the 
 time of Shakespeare as “ shining with the last rays of 
 the perishing light of chivalry.” When Bruno visited 
 London, however, it shone with the more sinister and 
 disastrous glow of fires, which, spreading from Paris to 
 peaceful German and Italian market-places on the one 
 hand, and to Smithfield on the other, were yet to free the 
 air for ever from spiritual tyranny. The enlightened and 
 scholarly qualities of Elizabeth were not shared by her 
 people. The London mob hated foreigners. Writing to 
 Baudius, Casaubon says, “ It is not the manner of the 
 English to import distinguished men of learning from 
 
I 10 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 other countries.” And Thomson writes to the same 
 correspondent (1605), “Our English students 1 seldom 
 travel abroad, so that you need not wonder that you see 
 few of them where you are.” 
 
 In the short demand made by the Patriarch and the 
 members of the tribunal of the Inquisition in Venice for 
 the extradition of Bruno (Doc. xix.), a special accusation 
 is brought against him as an lieresiarch and a writer of 
 books praising the Queen of England and other heretic 
 princes. “ I have praised,” he says in his reply (Doc. 
 xiii.), “ many heretics and heretic princes, not as heretics, 
 but only on account of the moral virtue which they pos- 
 sessed ; . . . and in my book Of tli& Cause I praise the 
 Queen of England, calling her a goddess, not in religion, 
 but as an epithet given by the ancients to princes ; and 
 in England, where I was when I wrote the book, it is 
 their habit to give the title of goddess to the Queen; and 
 I was the more induced to give her that name because 
 she knew me and I went continually to Court with the 
 ambassador.” 
 
 According to Lord Clarendon, it was usual humbly to 
 follow the Court before aspiring to become what is called 
 by Sir Philip Sydney “ a smally learned courtier.” But 
 for Bruno it was unnecessary to serve any such appren- 
 ticeship. Furnished with letters from the King of France 
 to his ambassador in London, M. de Castelnau, the Nolan 
 took leave of Paris, “ on account of the tumults ” (Doc. 
 ix.), arriving in England in the spring of 1 583. “ Queen 
 Elizabeth,” the Italian ambassador wrote of her ( Rdazione 
 degli ambasciatori Veneti, S.I., vol. ii.), “ speaks the 
 Italian language, and takes so much pleasure in it that, 
 from ambition, she will speak no other language with 
 Italians ” — in itself fortunate, for Bruno could not speak 
 
 1 According to Scioppius, there richer than the Tici who dwell on 
 was good reason why English stu- the golden mountains, he will not 
 dents did not travel abroad. In be able to get together twenty 
 1615 he wrote, “It James were learned men in England.’’ < 
 
M. CASTELNAU DE MAUVISSIERE. 
 
 1 1 1 
 
 English. “ Being asked if he understood English (W. i. 
 151),“ the Nolan said ‘ No;’ and he told the truth ; . . . for 
 though he hath taught a year in this country, he under- 
 stands no more than two, or at most three, very ordinary 
 words, which he knows are greetings ; . . . but he knows 
 not their meaning ; . . . for all gentle and loyal men, with 
 whom alone he holds converse, speak Latin, French, 
 Spanish, or Italian ; they, knowing that the English lan- 
 guage is nowhere used but in this island, would hold 
 themselves to be savages if they could speak no language 
 but their own. And it is also true,” he continues, “ there 
 are many who are gentlemen in nothing but race, and 
 with whom, therefore, for their advantage and ours, it is 
 well to have no further acquaintance.” 
 
 With the favour shown by the Court to Italians, added 
 to his own gifts in oratory and philosophy, which were 
 best displayed in Latin, he had a fair prospect of advance- 
 ment in London ; and here, accordingly, we find that he 
 printed several works on the Art of Memory ; while it was 
 here also that his chief Italian works saw the light, mostly 
 under the auspices of the French ambassador, M. Castel- 
 nau de Mauvissiere. Castelnau was a striking figure even 
 in an age renowned for men above the common. He was 
 “ a pi’odigv of parts ; ” dexterous and resolute, fond of 
 letters, a munificent protector, and an attached friend. 
 He had translated a treatise by Ramus on the manners and 
 customs o£.the Gauls, and as the author also of some ex- 
 cellent memoirs, he knew that the solace and variety of 
 honest labour ought to be free from the pangs of hunger. 
 Sieur de Castelnau Mauvissiere was born in 1520 near 
 Tours. Brantome speaks of him with admiration as M. 
 de Castelnau de Languedoc, and he is variously styled 
 by other writers. He was one of the first generation of 
 statesmen by profession. Before his time countries had 
 been ruled by soldiers or by priests ; it remained for 
 a third profession to combine the arts of war and peace. 
 His mind was just and penetrating, his memory pro- 
 
I 12 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 digious, his courage unimpeachable. He travelled much, 
 and having visited various courts, learnt enough of 
 government in each to feel assured that he was justified 
 in refusing a military career, though for a short time he 
 accepted service in the French marine. His religious 
 sentiments were warm, but they were just, and his toler- 
 ance did not approach indifference. His observations are 
 profound, and his literary style is said to be modelled on 
 that of Philippe de Comines, but perhaps only as the 
 sentiments of one earnest and sagacious observer resemble 
 those of another when expressed in simple and dignified 
 language. 
 
 O O 
 
 Castelnau had two daughters, Marie and Elizabeth, and 
 two sons, for whom his admirable memoirs were written. 
 Unfortunately the work was only carried down to the 
 year 1569; and thus we have no record of Bruno’s visit 
 to the ambassador. We may quote a passage (page 185, 
 ed. Petitot) showing the memoirs were written after 
 Castlenau knew Bruno : — “ For it is certain that the ruin 
 and perdition of one kingdom is for the preservation and 
 growth of others ; and no man loses anything in this 
 world on the right hand which some other does not gain 
 on the left ; and out of the corruption of many things 
 comes generation.” A passage suggesting these words 
 will be found at the end of the Cause (W. i. 291), 
 and in the preface to the Candle- Bearer. Again, in 
 speaking of the murderers of Rizzio, Castelnau makes 
 use of the expression, “ Time, the eternal bearer of 
 vicissitude,” which may be traced to the Expulsion (W. 
 ii. 121,122). The philosophic turn of his mind appears 
 in his temperate judgment and in his patient search for 
 reasons and causes, among which, as Bartholmess has 
 pointed out, he did not forget to note “ necessity, which 
 is not subject to the laws of man.” Justice is represented 
 by him as the “ foundation of human society,” and as 
 altogether opposed to the changes of terrestrial things. 
 He was firm and temperate in the matter of the religious 
 
M. CASTELNAU DE MAUVISSIERE. 
 
 113 
 
 wars which were then turning France into a debatable 
 land ; proving the excellence of his judgment in many 
 passages which do his heart and understanding equal 
 credit. 
 
 In the dedication to Castelnau of the Opening of the 
 Thirty Seals, after speaking of his book as “ a not ignoble 
 offspring of the Muses,” Bruno addresses the ambassa- 
 dor in a finely-turned compliment : “For those beholden 
 to me are beholden to the Muses, and those beholden to 
 the Muses are in truth beholden to you, who favour and 
 guard them continually. For they are native to every 
 soil, and not alien here, since, through an Italian scholar 
 in distant Britain, you have extended to them the royal 
 hospitality of France. Farewell ! I thank you ; and I 
 would have you know him for ever bound to you for 
 whom you have changed England into Italy, London into 
 Nola, and the perils of a strange land into the sacred ties 
 of home.” 
 
 Four of his works were dedicated to his protector — 
 the Thirty Seals, the Sapper of Ashes, Of the Cause , and 
 Of Infinity. In each he shows a grateful spirit towards 
 Castelnau, offering him thanks for courteous hospitality, 
 and for gentle and honourable treatment received at his 
 hands. He is addressed as the Nolan’s defence and the 
 unique refuge of the Muses ; and he is admonished to 
 look towards Unity, which is the “ texture, disposal, and 
 order of the sciences,” the “ key without which it is im- 
 possible to enter into the true contemplation of Nature.” 
 
 In the dedication of the Cause (W. i. 205) Bruno 
 calls on the whole world to bear witness that to Castel- 
 nau alone is due the glory of fostering this generous and 
 divine offspring of philosophy, which but for him would 
 have withered in its swaddling-clothes ; but “ now it 
 shall inherit life as long as this earth with her lively bur- 
 den turns beneath the bright eternal aspect of the stars.” 
 This dedication is preceded by a fantastic catalogue of 
 Bruno’s perfections, contrasted with the odious miscon- 
 
 H 
 
GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 1 14 
 
 duct of his enemies. “ I, whom no man durst accuse of 
 ingratitude nor of discourtesy ” — the pink of politeness, 
 indeed — “ and on whom none can justly lay any blame ; 
 having dwelt with you in your house, . . . defended by 
 your gracious and ready succour and bountiful libera- 
 lity ; receiving sustenance which turned my scarcity and 
 dearth into plenty, with a sufficient and stable defence 
 against violent onslaughts of fortune, a sea of troubles, 
 and huge perilous tempests, ... to you I consecrate 
 this my sheet-anchor ; this poor little ship, laden with 
 commodities most dear to me, and precious to succeeding 
 generations” (W. i. 205), . . . “lest it be swallowed 
 up in the iniquitous rage of my enemy, the ocean. Let 
 these works hang in the sacred temple of Fame, to the 
 end that they may prevail against the spells of ignorance 
 and the voracity of Time, and may bear unfading witness 
 of your grace and favour.” 
 
 In the dedication of the Infinity , Bruno, after dwelling 
 upon the philosophic scheme of the book, makes an ap- 
 peal to Castelnau which is full of dignity, though mode- 
 rately tinged with self-appreciation. (Epicurus wrote in 
 the same strain : “If thy heart is stirred by love of 
 glory, my letters will give thee greater glory than all 
 those things which are honoured by thee, and in which 
 thou seekest honour.”) Bruno says : “ I effectually re- 
 commend one to you, whom you are not to entertain 
 among your domestics as having need of him, but as a 
 person having need of you. ... You can neither be so 
 much esteemed by the world, nor so acceptable to God 
 for being beloved and favoured by the greatest monarch 
 on earth, as for loving, cherishing, and maintaining such 
 as these ; for there is nothing that your superiors in 
 fortune can do for you, who surpass many of them in 
 virtue, which will endure when your walls and tapes- 
 tries have perished ; but you may do that for others 
 which may come to be written in the book of eternity, 
 since that which you receive from others is a testimony 
 
M. CASTELNAU DE MAUVISSIERE. 
 
 IT 5 
 
 of their virtue, while that which you do for others is the 
 token and express image of your own.” 
 
 In the Supper of Ashes (W. i. 199) he again com- 
 mends himself to “ the most illustrious and most gene- 
 rous soul of Seigneur de Mauvissiere,” under whose 
 auspices so much solemn philosophy has seen the day, 
 “ that there may perchance be found some sufficient 
 means by which the stars and the powers on high should 
 guide the Nolan to a spot remote from outrage.” In 
 this tone of timorous solicitation, so foreign to his usual 
 manner, he shares, with all poor men of humble means 
 and great powers, the longing to be free from want and 
 from the insults which too often followed upon his 
 haughty and imperious conduct. Throughout his troubled 
 life he looked in vain for a retreat. Peace and safety 
 were denied him ; and his hope to obtain them and to 
 enjoy their use, apart from the changes of this checkered 
 world, with its fleeting appearances and transitory joy, 
 was never destined to be realised. 
 
 Of himself he says that he is cc of fools hated, of the 
 mean slighted, reviled by rascals, followed by sheepish 
 souls, beloved by the wise, admired by the learned, 
 esteemed by the great, treasured by the mighty, favoured 
 bv God.” In another place he says (W. i. 129) he had 
 “ freed men's minds and knowledge, cleared the air, 
 penetrated the skies, wandered among the stars, stridden 
 over the edges of the world, demolished the fantastic 
 ramparts of the spheres, illuminated the blind, given 
 speech to the dumb, and made manifest . . . the myriad 
 bodies in heaven which assist in the ministry and con- 
 templation of the first, universal, infinite, and Eternal 
 Efficient.” 
 
 “ Envy,” said Cosimo de’ Medici, “ is a plant that must 
 not be watered.” Bruno not only did not avoid disputes, 
 but, conscious to the full of the value of his doctrine, he 
 never lost an opportunity for bringing it forward, writr- 
 ing, teaching, and trusting to friction to bring about an 
 
1 1 6 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 improvement only to be effected by gentler means. He 
 included in one condemnation every philosopher, illustri- 
 ous or obscure, dead or living, who ignored or mistook 
 the true principles of natural science. The first rank in 
 any art or science was not his, but he touched every 
 subject, moved many, was ardent and sincere in all he 
 undertook ; “ for,” he says, “ by stirring, stimulating, 
 surprising, contradicting, exciting men’s minds, they are 
 made fruitful ; and this, according to Socrates, is a salu- 
 tary vocation.” 
 
 In another place he writes (W. ii. 195), “Administer 
 me that leisure by the help of which I may accomplish 
 better and more excellent things than what I leave 
 undone ; for in the house of Leisure sits Counsel and a 
 happy life. There are occasions best perceived ; there 
 Labour is more vigorous and successful, for it is im- 
 possible to run well without being first well placed. 
 Thou, Leisure, afford me the means to be esteemed less 
 idle than all others, because by thy help I shall be able 
 to do service to the commonwealth, and my words will 
 be a better defence to my country than its swords and 
 shields, its tribunes or its emperors.” 
 
 The philosophy of Bruno was deeply imbued with 
 German mysticism. A direct influence on his mind was 
 exercised by Nicholas, Cardinal- Archbishop of Cusa. All 
 the doubt and difficulty arising from our failure to appre- 
 hend the nature of God was to be vanquished, according 
 to Cusa (He Covjechcris), by ecstasy, which has power to 
 overcome the world and all things hemming in the soul. 
 Professor Carriere traces the relation of this mystic ecstasy 
 to the Indian Bhagavad-Ghita. in which man is enjoined 
 to withdraw himself, to lose his soul in Brahma, and to 
 find Brahma in his soul. 
 
 “ To understand,” says Bruno, “ is to see forms and 
 figures in the imagination, and intelligence is imagina- 
 tion, or not devoid of imagination” (Gfr. 529). These 
 words are important if we would master the peculiar 
 
INFLUENCE OF THE GERMAN MYSTICS. 
 
 ii 7 
 
 views of the philosopher. His mission was not that of 
 exact inquiry ; he did not desire to establish facts by a 
 slow intellectual process : he sought to enter into the 
 very nature and quintessence of things by means of that 
 intellectual intuition which was called by his master, 
 Nicholas of Cusa, an organ of the highest knowledge. 1 
 In his poems especially, Bruno describes that exalted 
 impulse of the feeling and the will on which great stress 
 is laid by the Cardinal- Archbishop. The aim of the Nolan 
 philosophy is to overcome the fear of deatli and to till the 
 soul with noble aspirations ; and the teaching of Bruno 
 is always full of personal interest, even when it is not 
 altogether supported by scientific principles. 
 
 In many points the doctrines of Aquinas professed by 
 Bruno nearly approached that of Meister Eckhart, who is 
 defined by Ueberweg as a spiritualised Thomist. Eckhart 
 has several other points of contact with Bruno. Accord- 
 ing to the German mystic, God communicates himself to 
 all things, to each according to the measure of its ability 
 to receive him. Corresponding passages occur in the 
 Expulsion (W. ii. 226, 227, 343, 409, &c.) “If thou 
 wilt know God divinely,” says Eckhart, “ thy knowledge 
 must be changed to ignorance.” This is the doctrine of 
 the Cabal (W. ii. 271). Again, Eckhart gives to evil 
 the character of privation ( Intentio , xxi.) 
 
 It was the design of Eckhart to point out the nearest 
 way to union with God. On account of its abuses he 
 severed himself from the Church. He rejected Scholasti- 
 cism with its artifices in learning, and commended that 
 supra-rational cognition which dominates all the faculties 
 (the same with the a<pi) of Plotinus), and, pressing onward, 
 attains at last the very sources of the soul, the absolute, 
 the unity, beyond which is nothing. “ When,” says 
 Meister Eckhart, “ the reason arrives at the limit of her 
 power, there remains a transcendent sphere, which she 
 
 1 Schelling held Bruno in high philosophy of identity.” (Schelling’s 
 esteem as “the forefather of the Bruno, 1S02, pp. 310, 32S-332.) 
 
1 1 8 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 cannot fathom. This she then reveals in the innermost 
 recesses of the soul, where reason and will stand in living 
 interchange, or in the will ; and the will, illuminated by 
 the divine light, plunges into a state of not-knowing, and 
 turns from all perishable light to the highest good — to 
 God. Thus faith arises, an exaltation which, beginning 
 with the understanding, takes possession of the whole 
 soul, and guides it to its highest perfection.” 
 
 Eckhart, however, with sound sense, remarks that mere 
 contemplation is selfishness, and that if a man were in an 
 ecstasy like St. Paul, and knew of one needing a little 
 pottage, he should quit his ecstasy and minister to the 
 needy ; for works do not cease when sanctification is 
 attained, but rather multiply. 
 
 Immediately after his arrival in London, Bruno ad- 
 dressed himself to the University of Oxford in a prefix 
 to the Opening of the Thirty Seals. This was appropri- 
 ately styled the Awakener ; and, like Descartes, who in- 
 formed the magistrates of Utrecht that he knew more 
 philosophy than the whole of their academicians, Bruno 
 accosts the University with a blast of trumpets. “ Philo- 
 theus Jordanus Brunus of Nola,” he wrote, “a doctor in 
 ]3erfected theology ; a professor of pure and blameless 
 wisdom ; a philosopher known, approved, and honorifi- 
 cally acknowledged by the foremost academies of Europe; 
 to none a stranger, save barbarians and the vulgar ; a 
 waker of slumbering souls ; a breaker of presumptuous 
 and stubborn ignorance ; Avho, in all his dealings, pro- 
 fesses love to all men, love to the Italian and to the 
 Briton, to man and woman, to the mitre and to the 
 crown, to him wearing a toga and to the warrior, to the 
 frocked and to the unfrocked, but who is inclined chiefly 
 to him whose way is peaceable, enlightened, true, and 
 fruitful ; who looks not to the anointed head nor to the 
 consecrated brow, not to the pure in hand nor to the 
 circumcised, but thither where man’s true countenance is 
 to be found, towards his soul, and the perfection of his 
 
OXFORD, JUNE 1583. 
 
 119 
 
 spirit ; whom dispensers of foolishness and hypocrites 
 abhor; whom upright and sincere men love; whom noble 
 souls receive with acclamation, — To the honoured and 
 noble Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford and to 
 his fellows, greeting.” 
 
 The rough staff of Brutus, we are told, contained a rod 
 of gold ; and this extravagant address, like Don Quixote’s 
 balsam, was not to be appreciated except by “ persons of 
 honour and discernment.” When Bruno’s turn came to 
 visit the more enlightened academies, he addressed them 
 in a different spirit. To Wittenberg he puts forward his 
 humble claim as “a wanderer, a stranger, and an exile;” 
 and to the Rector of the Sorbonne in Paris he appeals in 
 dignified language from the tribunal of antiquity to 
 “ Nature and the laws of a beneficent Divinity.” The 
 mock-heroic vein reappears in the dedication of the Cabal 
 to the Bishop of Casamarciano, which contains a fair 
 share of those rousing epithets adapted by Bruno to the 
 slumbering state of Oxford. 
 
 There was, in fact, little life in the English universities . 1 
 Edinburgh and Dublin were at the outset of their career; 
 and if there had been a maturity of performance, it was 
 surely to be expected from the elder foundations, since 
 they had passed the age of promise. Of these antique 
 seats of learning, Oxford, “ the right eye and the light of 
 the whole realm,” was under the rule of the intriguer 
 Leicester, and the circumspect Burleigh governed Cam- 
 
 1 Hentzner notes that in 1598 the 
 students led a life almost monastic. 
 Erasmus affirmed, says Holiushed, 
 “ that our orders far exceeded all the 
 monastic institutions that ever were 
 devised.” Fuller writes as follows : 
 “ And thus much in general of our 
 noble universities, whose lands some 
 greedy gripers do gape wide for, and 
 of late have (as I hear) propounded 
 sundry reasons whereby they sup- 
 posed to have prevailed in their 
 purposes. But who are those that 
 have attempted this suit, other than 
 
 such as either hate learning, piety, 
 and wisdom, or else have spent all 
 their own ? In Queen Mary’s time 
 the weather was too warm for any 
 such course to be taken in hand. 
 What comfort should it be for any 
 good man to see his country brought 
 into the estate of the old Goths and 
 Yandals, by means wdiereof those 
 people become savage tyrants and 
 merciless hell-hounds, till they re- 
 stored learning again, and thereby 
 fell to civility.” 
 
120 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 bridge. The Queen, who was the head of the Church, 
 piqued herself on her supremacy in letters. 
 
 The universities were subject to the Star Chamber, 
 which checked the growth of learning. No printers 
 were licensed except in London, Oxford, and Cambridge ; 
 every publication was rigorously examined, and more than 
 one printing-press was demolished by order. Free dis- 
 cussion was impossible except on such sterile subjects 
 as arose out of the dissensions of the Church. Cal- 
 vinist rose against Calvinist, Puritans against Episco- 
 palians, and the whole against the Catholics — a name so 
 hated that no knowledge, either modern or antique, which 
 was derived from Rome, could be tolerated in the strong- 
 hold of Protestantism. An unreasoning faith in Aristotle 
 added rancour to the strife in religion. By the university 
 statute it was enacted that no one could take a degree 
 “ in philosophy or in theology if he had not drunk at the 
 fountain of Aristotle” (W. i. 226). The professors loved 
 to enforce doctrines which they showed no patience in 
 deciphering and no philosophy in interpreting. 
 
 Bruno, though he called Aristotle “ a learned and 
 judicious gentleman” (W. i. 180), attacked the followers 
 of Aristotle as parrots (W. i. 175) and Sophists ( De 
 Min., v. p. 98; W. ii. 281), “subtle metaphysicians 
 of the cowl, seeking to excuse the insufficiency of 
 Aristotle, their divinity” (W. i. 255). Learning, ac- 
 cording to Lord Bacon ( Interpretation of Nature), was 
 “ an infinite chaos of shadows and moths, wherewith 
 both books and minds are pestered.” “ They pursue 
 words and neglect matter,” 1 Sir Philip Sidney writes to 
 his brother Robert. 
 
 Bruno had little in common with “ this ungracious 
 crew,” as Spenser calls the Puritans. Oxford, in its 
 
 1 Less than twenty years after we bestow their time in the fathers and 
 find ( 1612) issued by the Crown to councils, schoolmen, histories, and 
 the A r ice-ChanceIlor of Oxford in- controversies, and not to insist too 
 structions “according to which long on compendiums and abbrevia- 
 young students were to be incited to tions.’ 
 
OXFORD, JUNE 1583. 
 
 121 
 
 intolerance, liad become an Anglican Eome. Tlie rule 
 of the University ran counter to every new thing, and 
 antiquity was either completely disregarded or treated as 
 the source of innumerable quibbles. The Dons were court- 
 nominees, following the Queen instead of living at Oxford; 
 and Bruno describes them as “ men arrayed in long robes 
 of velvet, with hands most precious for the multitude of 
 costly rings on their fingers, golden chains about their 
 necks, and with manners as void of courtesy as cowherds ” 
 (VV. i. 123, 137). The scholars were said to be ignorant, 
 boorish, and indevout, 1 occupied in horse-plav, drinking 
 and duelling, toasting in ale-houses and country inns, or 
 graduating in the noble science of defence. In short, they 
 took their ease everywhere, whether in lecture-rooms or 
 in taverns ; and the Dons being usually at court, Oxford 
 was in the plight of that Irish province which was said to 
 be “ full of absentees.” 
 
 In June 1583 Bruno was permitted to hold a public 
 disputation in Oxford before the Chancellor and an illus- 
 trious foreign visitor. He also delivered lectures on the 
 immortality of the soul and the quintuple sphere (Doc. 
 ix.) No trace of these lectures remains, and it would be 
 hard to define his theory of immortality at this period, 
 though his final belief is known through his deposition at 
 his trial. “ I have held, and I hold,” he says (Doc. xii.), 
 “ that souls are immortal, and that they are subsisting 
 substances (that is, the intellectual souls), and that, speak- 
 ing in a catholic manner, they do not pass from one body 
 to another, but they go either to paradise or to purgatory 
 or to hell. Nevertheless in philosophy I have reasoned 
 that the soul, subsisting without the body and non-existent 
 in the body, may in the same way that it is in one body 
 be in another, passing from one body into another ; the 
 
 1 A cause of disorder was the years standing ; and Robert Deve- 
 extreme youth of the students, reux, Earl of Essex, took his degree 
 Sidney held a public disputation at as Master of Arts at Cambridge 
 Oxford with a lad named Carew, when he was but sixteen years old. 
 then only fourteen, and yet of three 
 
122 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 sSAdAf- Spvrulf. 
 
 cy^v/. 
 
 "5 
 
 which, if it is not true, at least appears to be the opinion 
 of Pythagoras.” 
 
 Bruno is convinced of the indestructibility of the 
 central monad which constitutes our inmost being. ££ No 
 substance being of itself dissoluble, we may not, according 
 to Pythagoras, suffer fear of death, since we must await 
 our passage to another place. For dissolution can only 
 appear in that which is compounded, that which is no 
 substance, but a circumstance, otherwise our substance 
 would be continually changed by the perpetual flow of 
 matter which enters into and issues from our bodies. So 
 then we are that which we are by the indivisible substance 
 of our souls, around which, like the centre, the atoms 
 assemble, and from which they depart. Hence it happens 
 that in birth and in growth the quickening spirit ex- 
 pands ; it retires lastly to the heart, and departs by that 
 way which was its entrance ” 1 ( De Trip. Min. I 3). 
 
 ££ If, under the dominion and virtue of the soul, corporal 
 matter, which is compounded, divisible, changeable, and 
 consistent, is not subject to annihilation, and can in no 
 point nor atom be annulled ; that more excellent nature, 
 the ruler, mover, vivifier, maintainer, and container of the 
 flesh, cannot be of inferior condition. . . . This principle 
 is the true man, and not an accident derived from the 
 composition of the man. This is the divinity, the demon, 
 the hero, the particular god, the intelligence . . . which 
 moves and governs the body, and is in itself subject to the 
 high justice which presides over all things” (W. i. 1 13). 
 
 Even at this early period when the Expulsion was 
 written, Bruno did not enforce the doctrine of metemp- 
 sychosis. He held it to be, “ though not an article 
 of faith, very well worthy of consideration ” (W. i. 1 1 3). 
 ££ Hence it may be concluded,” says Chaufepie, ££ that 
 Bruno speaks of a real metempsychosis.” Toland, how- 
 
 1 A beautiful and poetic German body will be found in Professor 
 translation of Bruno’s Latin verses Carriere’s Weltanschauung,]). 452. 
 on the relation of the soul to the 
 
THEORY OF IMMORTALITY. 
 
 123 
 
 ever, says justly that by transmigration Bruno understands 
 no more than vicissitude, and an eternal revolution of the 
 different forms of matter. 1 
 
 The book on Heroic Rapture presents a clear view of 
 Bruno’s teaching. “ The soul is not in the body locally, 
 but as its intrinsic form and extrinsic mould, as that 
 
 which makes the members and shapes the whole within 
 and without. The body, then, is in the soul, the soul in 
 the mind ; the intelligence either is God or is in God, 
 according to Plotinus, so as by its essence it is in God, 
 who is its life, in the same manner by intellectual opera- 
 tion and the will consequent on such operation it is 
 related to its light and its object” (W. ii. 335). 
 
 “ For love, if it be finite, is fixed, and of a certain 
 measure ; but to behold it rising ever higher and higher 
 is to know that it turns towards the Infinite” (W. ii. 372). 
 “ The intellectual power is appeased with comprehended 
 truth only by advancing ever nearer and nearer to incom- 
 prehensible truth. The being of the soul is not related 
 to any other end than to the source of its substance and 
 entity” (W. ii. 392). “The divine perfection of the 
 individual soul is the aim of all progression. The soul 
 of man is comforted and receives all the glory of which 
 finite nature is capable when it shares in the infinite love 
 of the Divine ” (W. ii. 336). “ Love is more than know- 
 
 ledge ” 2 (W. ii. 3 3 8). 
 
 1 “The soul,” says Saisset, when 
 considering the philosophy of Bruno, 
 lievue des Deux Mondes, vol. xviii., 
 
 1847, “is a monad. It is not the 
 harmony of the unities which com- 
 pose the body, but it is that which 
 constitutes and maintains the har- 
 mony of the body. It is simple and 
 uncompounded in being ; and its 
 unknown destiny may be on quitting 
 its terrestrial dwelling to form 
 and vivify other bodies, to travel 
 through space from planet to planet, 
 or to plunge once more into that 
 ocean of goodness and light which is 
 its natural abiding-place, il natio 
 
 scggiorno. Be this as it may, the 
 soul knows and desires the infinite; 
 it seeks after the means of becoming 
 one with the infinite; therefore its 
 end is to live for ever.” 
 
 2 “For even,” says Spinoza, “the 
 knowledge which we have of our 
 own body is not such that we know 
 it fully. And yet what union, what 
 love ! Thus may man by love re- 
 ceive the Infinite, though by know- 
 ledge he may not reach it. . . . God 
 is nearer to us than our own body, 1 
 and we know him better than we) 
 know ourselves.” 
 
 y/^iAc//Y^ . 
 
124 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 SrnusJ- - C)Uv//~ 
 
 Another argument for immortality is drawn from the 
 infinite character of love. 
 
 “ Q. How can our finite intellect pursue the infinite 
 object ? 
 
 “A. With the infinite power which it possesses ; . . . for 
 our finite intellect pursues the infinite object because the 
 human mind is eternal, and therein is its delight ; and it 
 lias neither end nor measure in its felicity ” (W. ii. 372). 
 
 Another argument is founded on the fact that, as the 
 food of the soul is truth, which is immortal, the soul must 
 be immortal as the food it feeds on. “ Everything which 
 requires nutrition ” (W. ii. 406) “ has a natural know- 
 ledge of its food ; to everything is inborn the understand- 
 ing of those things which are necessary for the preserva- 
 tion of the individual and the stock, and which later 
 furthers their perfection. On this knowledge depends 
 the zeal with which food is sought ; and thus striving is 
 implanted in the nature of all things, and from cognition 
 emanate desire and love. The soul desires the beautiful, 
 the good, and the true ; and as the seeing connects itself 
 with the sight, so the desire connects itself with what is 
 desirable.” 
 
 A second argument to prove the separate nature of the 
 body and soul is grounded on the fact that the soul 
 cannot be nourished on bodily food only ; nor can the 
 body live on food proper for the soul. Again, the body 
 and soul do not resemble each other, as would be natural 
 if they were one and the same essence ; but a great soul 
 will dwell in a little crooked body, and the proportions of 
 a hero do not necessarily envelop a heroic soul. Since 
 the food for the soul is goodness and beauty and truth, it 
 follows that they are incorporal and spiritual things. 
 Indeed we see that types are not to be found in natural 
 bodies, though existing in the mind ; which again proves 
 truth to be above matter ; while our desire for truth 
 comes from an innate knowledge ; we cannot desire that 
 which we do not know ; innate knowledge is a gift ; and 
 
OXFORD, 1583. 
 
 125 
 
 a gift supposes a giver. “ For I am assured that Nature 
 has endowed me with an inward sense by which I can 
 reason from the beauty before my eyes to the light and 
 eminence of more excellent spiritual beauty, which is 
 light, majesty, and divinity” (W. i. 175; W. ii. 381). 
 “ The soul ” (W. ii. 416) “ drinks of the divine nectar, 
 and at the font of eternal life. . . . The light is beyond the 
 circumference of the horizon . . . The soul which has 
 tasted those eternal streams burns with an ardour of love 
 which the ocean could not quench, and which the rigour 
 of the arctic circle could not temper.” 1 
 
 It is probable, remembering the infirmity of Bimno’s 
 temper, that these truths were placed in a light objec- 
 tionable to the Oxford doctors ; for his lectures roused an 
 acrimonious spirit which resulted in his quitting the town. 
 According to his version of the encounter, he was near 
 coming to blows with the pedagogues, who were slenderly 
 endowed in argument. They came armed, not with 
 prudence and power, but with “ hearts that died of 
 cold, and learning that died of hunger.” Fifteen times 
 they rose to the fray, and fifteen times “ that chicken in 
 
 1 This reasoning may be contrasted 
 with the Platonic arguments for im- 
 mortality. The first is based on de- 
 struction. All moral things have 
 their especial evil and destroying 
 enemy. Blindness destroys the eye- 
 sight — does wickedness destroy the 
 soul ? No. It may cause a man to 
 be put to death by others. But 
 nothing can destroy the soul, not 
 even its own wickedness ; therefore 
 the soul is immortal (Book x. Repub- 
 lic). We perceive the soul dwindle 
 and apparently disappear in bodies 
 consumed by wickedness ; but the 
 same will happen in an injured or 
 idiotic body when the soul wanders 
 in illusions, babbling of green fields, 
 and of its ruling passion, vanishing 
 and reappearing like dying flashes 
 in fire. The destruction, therefore, 
 is apparent only, and, like the rain 
 from heaven, it falls alike upon the 
 
 just and the unjust. In a second 
 argument Socrates endeavours to 
 show that the soul, like the eye, the 
 ear, and every other thing, has a 
 work or function to perform, and 
 possesses a virtue by which alone it 
 can be enabled to perform that work. 
 This virtue of the soul is justice, 
 which is a kind of natural harmony 
 and healthy habit of mind, turning 
 the mind from the shadows which 
 are seen, to their forms or archetypes, 
 from the visible to the invisible, and 
 filling the soul with the divine, the 
 immortal, the eternal, which it 
 would itself become if it were in- 
 variably to pursue divine things. 
 Thus all those pursuits which excite 
 the mind to reflect upon the essen- 
 tial nature of things bring it under 
 the dominion of a just and divine 
 principle. 
 
126 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 stubble,” the Corypheus of the Academy, was worsted by 
 the Nolan. “ Let it be recounted to you,” continues 
 Bruno, “ with what incivility and discourtesy that pig 1 
 proceeded, and with what patience and humanity that 
 other responds, who showed the bearing of a Neapolitan 
 born, of one nurtured under a more benignant sky. 
 Learn, too, in what manner the Nolan’s public lectures 
 were brought to an end” (W. ii. 179). 
 
 Bruno’s arguments were very ill received, as he himself 
 said at Wittenberg ( De Lampade Combin.), but there is no 
 contemporary account of the disputation, and in about 
 three months his career at Oxford was over. The house 
 of Castelnau was his home, and he seems to have looked 
 to the circle of friends in London for appreciation — the 
 chief of these being Philip Sidney and Fulk Greville. 
 
 The printer Vautrollier 2 gave Giordano Bruno the 
 
 1 Mediseval pedagogues eomnionly 
 called each other pig, with accusa- 
 tions of buffoonery, discreditable 
 pretension, ignorant and stupendous 
 asinity, &c. Charpentier spoke of 
 his rival Ramus as “ un pore;” 
 Luther called the schoolmen “ lo- 
 custs, caterpillars, frogs, lice.” Gol- 
 dast was “an execrable biped,” “a 
 lying monster,” and the author of a 
 “damnable book.” Scaliger calls 
 Marcile (who was professor of elo- 
 quence at the Royal College of 
 France) a monkey, a scarabceus, and 
 worse. The Elector of Saxony was 
 called “a pig ” by the Jesuit Guig- 
 nar. Calvin and Beza, at the formal 
 colloquy of Poissy, were distin- 
 guished as “apes, foxes, and mon- 
 sters.” Nor have modern times im- 
 proved on this plain dealing, for 
 O'Connell addressed his opponents 
 in the House of Commons as “pigs 
 and scorpions.” 
 
 2 Erdmann, Basis for the History 
 of Philosophy, vol. i. p. 553. Ames’s 
 Typographical Antiquities contains 
 the following Thomas Vautrol- 
 lier was a scholar and printer 
 from Paris or Roan, came into Eng- 
 land about the beginning of Queen 
 
 Elizabeth’s reign, and first settled 
 his printing-office in Black Friers. 
 What he did to the year 1574 don’t 
 appear to me. Pie married his 
 daughter Jakin to Richard Field, 
 printer, in Black Friers, the 12th 
 January 1588, and buried several 
 children in that parish, as appears 
 from their church books. He was a 
 most curious printer, as will be 
 evident to any that look into his 
 books ; and commonly used an 
 anchor within a compartment, with 
 this motto, Anchorci Spei. Mr. 
 Baker, in a letter to me, says he 
 was the printer of Jordanus Brunus 
 in the year 1 584, for which he fled, 
 and the next year being at Edin- 
 burgh, in Scotland, he first taught 
 that nation the way of good print- 
 ing, and there staid until such time 
 as by the intercession of friends he 
 had got his pardon, as appears by 
 a book dedicated to the Right 
 Worshipful Mr Thomas Ran- 
 dolph, Esq., where he returns 
 him thanks for his great favour 
 and for assisting him in his dis- 
 tress ; printed in octavo, 1587. 
 ‘ 1584. — Spacio de la Bestia 
 Trionfante, proposto da gioue, effet- 
 
DISPUTATION IN LONDON. 
 
 127 
 
 opportunity of explaining liis philosophy in London. 
 Here in quick succession his best Italian works were 
 printed. “ It cannot be called a chance,” says Erd- 
 mann, “ that he who had broken with the Church, and 
 could hope for nothing from the universities, despised 
 the language of both, and spoke in the speech which 
 was his mother tongue, and favoured beyond all at the 
 English court and in the refined circles of London.” 
 Accordingly we find that his only theme was no longer 
 the art of Lully, with its antiquated and mystical sym- 
 bols ; and it is remarkable that the six philosophical 
 works in Italian which were printed by Vautrollier in 
 London do not contain a vestige of this complicated 
 system. 
 
 In a second disputation, Bruno seems to have fared 
 no better than at Oxford. He relates in the Supper of 
 Ashes that Fulk Greville invited him with other persons, 
 on the evening of Ash Wednesday, “ to hear the reasons 
 of his belief that the earth moves.” “ To whom the 
 Nolan responded that he could give him no reasons, not 
 being acquainted with his capacity, nor knowing how he 
 might be heard by him, and therefore he feared to be like 
 those who give their reasons to statutes and parley with 
 the dead. But from the desire he had to show the im- 
 becility of such opinions by the self-same principles on 
 
 tuato dal conseglo, revelato da Mer- 
 curic), recitato da Sophia, Vdito 
 da Saulino, registrato dal Nolano. 
 Diviso in tre dialogi, subdivisi in 
 tre parti. Consecrato al molto 
 illustre et eccellente cavalliero Sig. 
 Philippo Sidneo. Stampato in 
 Parigi, mdlxxxiiii.’ It contains 
 261 pages. The epistle dedicatory 
 to Sir Philip Sidney contains 15 
 leaves, and was not translated by 
 Toland (if he was translator) when 
 he reprinted the English edition 
 in the year 1713. Interlocutori, So- 
 phia, Saulino, Mercurio. This, Mr. 
 Baker says, is that little atheistical 
 book lately sold at Charles Ber- 
 
 nard’s sale for £ 28 to "Walter 
 Clavel, Esq., and is now in the 
 Bodleian Library, that of James 
 West, Esq., and in my own study. 
 ‘ 1585. — Giordano Bruno Nolano, 
 de gli Heroici Furori, al molto 
 illustre et eccellente Caualliero, 
 Signor Phillippo Sidneo. Parigi 
 appresso Antonio Baio, 8vo.’ ” 
 
 It will be seen that this list is by 
 no means complete. Vautrollier’s 
 patent was granted 16 of Eliz., 
 19th June 1574, and the first book 
 printed by him on Ames’s register 
 is a New Testament, dated 1574. 
 He could not, therefore, have come 
 to England with Bruno. 
 
123 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 which their confirmation is founded, it would afford him 
 no small pleasure to find persons worthy of this teaching, 
 and he would be always ready and willing to respond.” 
 A full account of the meeting will be found in the fourth 
 dialogue of the Supper of Ashes (W. i. 179—183), and 
 it is easy to imagine how a disputation would end which 
 was undertaken in this stubborn humour. 
 
 It was not till 1579, when passing through Milan on 
 his way to Lyons and Paris, that Bruno first heard the 
 name of Sidney (W. i. 145), although the English poet 
 had studied at Padua not three years before Bruno’s visit 
 to that city. As a philosophic poet Sidney had much in 
 common with the poetic philosophy of Bruno ; and a 
 society in imitation of the Italian Academies, numbering 
 Sidney, Greville, Dyer, Spenser, and Temple among its 
 members, soon received the Nolan into fellowship. 
 
 “ Philosophical and metaphysical subjects of a nice 
 and delicate nature,” we learn from Zonch, the biogra- 
 pher of Sidney, “ were there discussed, and the doors of 
 the apartments in which they met were kept shut ; ” and 
 in the Supper of Ashes Bruno says (W. i. 1 1 7, 137, 
 150), “We met in a chamber in the house of Sir Fulk 
 Greville ... to discuss moral, metaphysical, mathema- 
 tical, and natural speculations.” It was here probably 
 that many of the sonnets in the Heroic Rapture were 
 first read ; and though few English readers will agree 
 with Dr. Brunnhofer that these verses equal Shakespeare 
 and Petrarch, yet for fire, lyrical tone, and exalted pur- 
 pose they may compare favourably with the poetry of the 
 age. “ There is none more proper,” he writes in the 
 argument to the Heroic Rapture (W. ii. 31 1), addressed 
 to Sir Philip Sidney, “ to receive the dedication of these 
 discourses than you, excellent sir, lest I should hold a 
 miri’or to the blind and a lyre to him who is deaf, as I 
 have done from want of heed, and as others do from 
 habit. To you, therefore, they are presented, that the 
 Italian may reason with him who has understanding ; 
 
“ UPON HEROIC rapture: 
 
 129 
 
 that verse may be under the countenance and judgment 
 of a poet ; that Philosophy may show herself in present 
 nakedness to your fair understanding ; that heroic things 
 may be directed to an heroic and generous soul, such as 
 that with which you are endowed ; and that homage may 
 be offered to one of such worth as is ever made manifest 
 in you.” 
 
 The following rough translations will serve to give 
 some idea of Bruno’s verse. The opening sonnet in the 
 work upon Heroic Rapture runs as follows (W. ii. 312) : — 
 
 The Defence of The Nolan. 
 
 Inscribed to the most Virtuous and Delightful Ladies. 
 
 0 ye whose beauty decks the English land ! 
 
 Not mine the soul your sweet array to scorn ; 
 
 And not to write you less be mine the hand, 
 
 Save when I write you women ; for the morn, 
 
 The twinkling eve, and sable cove of night 
 Bore never children of the light 
 Fairer than ye, 0 stars of happy earth ! 
 
 Spouses and daughters of angelic birth, 
 
 Not Envy’s breath, and not her hand austere, 
 
 Withhold your praise, and none your beauty mars. 
 
 Asps have no sting and venom no endeavour 
 Where, set on high, fair Dian 1 doth appear 
 Above you like the sun above the stars ; 
 
 And mine the task to do you homage ever. 
 
 The first dialogue of Heroic Rapture opens with a 
 sonnet, the substance of which, together with certain of 
 
 Bruno’s comments (W. ii. 
 following lines : — 
 
 o 
 
 1 Before Elizabeth, the unique 
 Diana of these lines, was born, 
 Erasmus wrote his often-quoted 
 letter in praise of Englishwomen — 
 “ those bland and easy nymphs, with 
 more than Muse-like charms. En- 
 tering, they salute thee ; departing, 
 they embrace thee. O Eaustus, didst 
 thou but know the delicacy and 
 sweetness surrounding these divini- 
 
 316), will be found in the 
 
 ties, thou wouldst engage to travel, 
 not ten years, but all thy life, and 
 for ever in England.” In spite of 
 the roughness of the populace, de- 
 plored by him, Bruno records an 
 equally candid tribute to the charms 
 of Englishwomen. The Supper of 
 Ashes opens with their praises, and 
 they are twice singled out for appro- 
 bation in the Heroic Rapture. 
 
 I 
 
1 3 o 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 Come, Muse, 0 Muse, so often scorned by me, 
 
 The hope of sorrow and the balm of care, 
 
 Give to me speech and song, that I may be 
 Unchid by grief ; grant me such graces rare 
 As other ministering souls may never see 
 Who boast thy laurel, and thy myrtle wear. 
 
 I know no joy wherein thou hast not part,' 
 
 My speeding wind, my anchor, and my goal ; 
 
 Come, fair Parnassus, lift thou up my heart ; 
 
 Come, Helicon, renew my thirsty soul ; 
 
 A cypress crown, 0 Muse, is mine to give, 
 
 And pain eternal ; take this weary frame, 
 
 \ Touch me with fire, and this my death shall live 
 On all men’s lips'hnd in undying fame. . . . 
 
 A sonnet follows in the mock-heroic vein dear to the 
 
 0 Heart, ’tis you my chief Parnassus are, 
 
 Where for my safety I must ever climb. 
 
 My winged thoughts are Muses, who from far 
 Bring gifts of beauty to the court of Time ; 
 
 And Helicon, that fair un wasted rill, 
 
 Springs newly in my tears upon the earth, 
 
 And by those streams and nymphs, and by that hill, 
 
 It pleased the gods to give a poet birth. 
 
 No favouring hand that comes of lofty race, 
 
 No priestly unction, nor the grant of kings, 
 
 Can on me lay such lustre and such grace, 
 
 Nor add such heritage ; for one who sings 
 Hath a crowned head, and by the sacred bay, 
 
 His heart, his thoughts, His tears, are consecrate alway. 
 
 The moth beholds not death as forth he flies 
 Into the splendour of the living flame ; 
 
 The hart athirst to crystal water hies, 
 
 Nor heeds the shaft, nor fears the hunter’s aim ; 
 The timid bird, returning from above 
 To join his mate, deems not the net is nigh ; 
 Unto the light, the fount, and to my love, 
 Seeing the flame, the shaft, the chains, I fly ; 
 
 So high a torch, love lighted in the skies, 
 Consumes my soul, and with this bow divine 
 
 Sonnet XII. 
 
UPON HEROIC RAPTURE: 
 
 
 131 
 
 Of piercing sweetness what terrestrial vies ? 
 
 This net of dear delight doth prison mine ; 
 
 And I to life’s last day have this desire— 
 
 Be mine thine arrows, Love, and mine thy fire. 
 
 — (W. ii. 331.) 
 
 Sonnet XVI. 1 
 
 Winged by desire and thee, 0 dear delight ! 
 
 As still the vast and succouring air I tread, 
 
 So, mounting still, on swifter pinions sped, 
 
 I scorn the world, and Heaven receives my flight. 
 
 And if the end of Ikaros be nigh, 
 
 I will submit, for I shall know no pain : 
 
 And falling dead to earth, shall rise again ; 
 
 What lowly life with such high death can vie ? 
 
 Then speaks my heart from out the upper air, 
 
 “ Whither dost lead me 1 sorrow and despair 
 Attend the rash : ” and thus I make reply, 
 
 “ Fear thou no fall, nor lofty ruin sent ; 
 
 Safely divide the clouds, and die content, 
 
 When such proud death is dealt thee from on high.” 
 
 Somewhat later in the book (393) Bruno again alludes 
 to this sonnet. “ As happens to one flying in the air, 
 the higher he rises above the earth the more he has of 
 air beneath sustaining him ; and, in consequence, he is 
 the less exposed to the plagues of gravitation : thus he 
 can fly the higher because he cannot return to the under 
 world without painfully dividing the air, although he may 
 consider it were easier to divide the depths of air about 
 our earth than the heights of air about the other stars. 
 Thus with proficiency in this progress comes greater and 
 
 1 This sonnet (No. 16 in the 
 Heroic Rapture) is the work of Tan- 
 sillo, the Neapolitan poet, in whose 
 mouth it is placed by Bruno. It 
 is in part an echo of a sonnet by 
 Petrarch (No. cxxxv., Part ia): — 
 
 “ Sentofar del mio cor dolce rapina 
 E si dentro cangiar pensieri e voglie, 
 Ch'io dico; or fiandi me Vultime spoglie 
 Se il del si onesta morte mi destina." 
 
 The sonnets in the Heroic Rapture 
 numbered 3, 5, 6, 13, are also written 
 by Tansillo. The third sonnet has 
 
 the words odio me stesso, which occur 
 in Sonnet cxiv., written by Tansillo. 
 There is a marked resemblance be- 
 tween Bruno’s sonnet, No. 33 (which 
 is compared by Brunnhofer to Shake- 
 speare), and the sonnet by Tansillo 
 numbered CL. inFiorentino’sedition. 
 Traces of the influence of Tansillo 
 may be found in Bruno’s third son- 
 net at the beginning of the Infinity, 
 in No. 12 of Heroic Rapture, and in 
 a Latin sonnet in the fourth book 
 of He Immenso (chap. i. ) 
 
132 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 greater 
 
 facility in mounting aloft. For every part of 
 bodies and of the said elements, when approaching their 
 natural home, move with the greater impetus and potency; 
 thus whether a man will or no, he must needs arrive there. 
 And as we may divine bodies from parts of bodies, so we 
 may judge of things intellectual by their objects, as their 
 places, countries, and aims.” 
 
 Some verses on the same page faintly recall the lines, 
 “ Doubt that the stars are fire.” The “ felicitous phrase ” 
 of Sir Philip Sidney, “ that sweet enemy France,” which 
 delighted Charles Lamb, was perhaps borrowed from Bruno. 
 FTe speaks of “ my sweet enemy ” in Sonnet 49, and the 
 expression occurs again in Sonnet 52. As the book was 
 dedicated to Sidney, the words may very well have found 
 their way into his sonnets. Bruno uses them when speak- 
 ing of heroic love, with “ its sweet anger, the efficacious 
 assaults of that gracious enemy, too long a stranger and 
 „ pilgrim.” “ 0 worthy love of the beautiful ! 0 desire for the 
 
 A/At/An. ^ divine 1 ” he cr ies, “ lend me thy wings ; bring me to the 
 
 U****^-^* dayspring, to the clearness of the young morning; and 
 the outrage of the rabble, the storms of Time, the sling s 
 _ and arrows of Fortune, shall fall upon this tender body 
 
 UlliUUO W J. i UUUU, Q1U 
 
 /A . < / shall weld it to steel.” 
 
 L ^^^^^y^^The following lines (W. ii. 392) are inspired by this 
 ’ 7 subject : — 
 
 fa Wo *'****- 
 
 C****** c f 
 
 te*— 
 <T<- - 
 
 \ 
 
 L. Ow»vl*M> 
 
 1 
 
 “ While that the sun upon his round doth burn, 
 
 And to their source the roving planets flee, tk 
 Things of the earth do to the earth return, 1 
 And parted waters hasten to the sea, £\) , (bvuilci'b. 
 
 So shall my spirit to the high gods turn, 
 
 And heaven-born thought to Heaven shall carry me. 
 
 
 
 The work continues in the same spirit. Love is the 
 foundation of all spiritual life ; without love man cannot 
 live, for, owing to his weakness, he must find strength in 
 union with another. Love, according to its object, is the 
 source of good and evil : the lower love of transient things 
 and the higher love of eternal and divine things correspond 
 
“ UPON HEROIC RAPTURE .” 133 
 
 with the various degrees of cognition. To know God and - • • -j ■ 
 
 not to love him is impossible : the love of the higher good 
 of necessity purifies man of all lower desires ; the fine 
 conception of a perfect union with God, by means of which 
 love and the beloved object become one, — these ideas are 
 repeated with the innumerable decorations and enrich- 
 ments of a luxuriant poetic fancy unchecked by any severe 
 sense of form. 
 
 The following graceful version is from the pen of the 
 late Isa Blagden d — 
 
 The Song of the Nine Singers. 
 
 The first sings and plays the cithern. 
 
 0 cliffs and rocks ! 0 thorny woods ! 0 shore ! 
 
 0 hills and dales ! 0 valleys, rivers, seas ! 
 
 How do your new-discovered beauties please ? 
 
 0 Nymph, ’tis yours the guerdon rare, 
 
 If now the open skies shine fair ; 
 
 0 happy wanderings, well spent and o’er ! 
 
 The second sings and plays to his mandoline. 
 
 0 happy wanderings, well spent and o’er ! 
 
 Say, then, 0 Circe, these heroic tears, 
 
 These griefs, endured through tedious months and years, 
 
 Were as a grace divine bestowed 
 If now our weary travail is no more. 
 
 The third sings and plays to his lyre. 
 
 If now our weary travail is no more ! 
 
 If this sweet haven be our destined rest, 
 
 Then nought remains but to be blest, \ 
 
 To thank our God for all his gifts, 
 
 Who from our eyes the veil uplifts, 
 
 Where shines the light upon the heavenly shore. 
 
 The fourth sings to the viol. 
 
 Where shines the light upon the heavenly shore ! 
 
 0 blindness, dearer far than others’ sight ! 
 
 0 sweeter grief than earth’s most sweet delight ! 
 
 For ye have led the erring soul 
 By gradual steps to this fair goal, 
 
 And through the darkness into light we soar. 
 
 1 One of the earliest English this accomplished lady, appeared in 
 articles on Bruno, from the pen of Fraser s Magazine for March 1871. 
 
134 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 The fifth sings to a Spanish timbrel. 
 
 And through the darkness into light we soar ! 
 
 To full fruition all high thought is brought, 
 
 With such brave patience that ev’n we 
 At least the only path can see, 
 
 And in his noblest work our God adore. 
 
 The sixth sings to a lute. 
 
 And in his noblest work our God adore ! 
 
 God doth not will joy should to joy succeed, 
 
 Nor ill shall be of other ill the seed ; 
 
 But in his hand the wheel of fate 
 Turns, now depressed and now elate, 
 
 Evolving day from night for evermore. 
 
 The seventh sings to the Irish harp. 
 
 Evolving day from night for evermore ! 
 
 And as yon robe of glorious nightly fire 
 Pales when the morning beams to noon aspire 
 Thus he who rules with law eternal, 
 
 Creating order fair diurnal, 
 
 Casts down the proud and doth exalt the poor. 
 
 The eighth plays with a viol and bow. 
 
 Casts down the proud and doth exalt the poor ! 
 
 And with an equal hand maintains 
 The boundless worlds which he sustains, 
 
 And scatters all our finite sense 
 At thought of his omnipotence, 
 
 Clouded awhile, to be revealed once more. 
 
 The ninth plays upon the rebeclc. 
 
 Clouded awhile, to be revealed once more ! 
 
 Thus neither doubt nor fear avails ; 
 
 O’er all the incomparable End prevails, 
 
 O’er fair champaign and mountain, 
 
 O’er river-brink and fountain, 
 
 And o’er the shocks of seas and perils of the shore. 
 
 (These verses will recall the well-known lines of Car- 
 dinal Newman : 
 
 “ So long thy power hath blest me, sure it still will lead me on, 
 O’er moor and fen, o’er crag and torrent, till the night is gone.” 
 
“ UPON HEROIC RAPTURE: 
 
 135 
 
 The original “ stagni, fiumi, mari, rupi, spine” is still 
 closer than the translation.) 
 
 As soon as these verses have been sung severally by 
 each singer to his own instrument, the nine singers form 
 a moving circle, and sound the praises of the English 
 nymph in sweet consent. In this allegoric poem Jove 
 and Neptune are represented in friendly strife for pre- 
 cedence. 
 
 Canticle op the Shining Ones. 
 
 “ Nothing I envy, Jove, from this thy sky,” 
 
 Spake Neptune thus, and raised his lofty crest. 
 
 “ God of the waves,” said Jove, “ thy pride runs high, 
 
 What more wouldst add to own thy stem behest 1 ” 
 
 “ Thou,” spake the god, “ dost rule the fiery span, 
 
 The circling spheres, the glittering shafts of day ; 
 
 Greater am I, who in the realm of man 
 
 Eule Thames, with all his Nymphs in fair array. 
 
 In this iny breast I hold the fruitful land, 
 
 The vasty reaches of the trembling sea, 
 
 And what in night’s bright dome, or day’s, shall stand 
 Before these radiant maids who dwell with me ] ” 
 
 “ Not thine,” said Jove, “ god of the watery mount, 
 
 To exceed my lot ; but thou my lot shalt share : 
 
 Thy heavenly maids among my stars I’ll count, 
 
 And thou shalt own the stars beyond compare ! ” 
 
 This portentous compliment to English ladies brings 
 the Heroic Rapture to an appropriate close. 
 
( 136 ) 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 And when I leave this rabble rout and defilement of the world, I leave 
 it as an inn, and not as a place of abode. For Nature has given us 
 our bodies as an inn to lodge in, and not to dwell in.” — Cato. 
 
 Second Visit to Paris, 1585. The Disputation. Portrait of Bruno. 
 Value of Induction and of the Imagination. Influence of his 
 Philosophy upon his Character. Its Influence on Descartes, 
 Spinoza, and Leibnitz. 
 
 The last three months of 1585 and six months of 1586 
 were spent by Bruno in Paris. “ The ambassador,” he 
 says, “ returned to the court of France, and I was in his 
 train ; and I remained in Paris another year, keeping 
 company with certain gentlemen of my acquaintance, the 
 greater part of the time at my own expense.” In another 
 place he speaks of his return from London “ with him who 
 preserved me from the Oxford pedants and from hunger,” 
 two evils which he seems to have regarded as equal. 
 
 It is not clear in what month M. Castelnau de Mau- 
 vissiere quitted England. His recall was dated July 
 1585, but “ a passport for M. de Malvisier and his wife ” 
 was not issued until September. For some months he 
 was in treaty with Elizabeth for the removal of Mary 
 Stuart from Tutbury to Chartley, which was not effected 
 until the 1 3th of September. And a letter is extant, 
 dated November 1 7, in which Mary Stuart speaks of the 
 ambassador’s long absence from London, whence it seems 
 fair to conclude that Mauvissiere left England with Bruno 
 during the second fortnight of September. “ I remained,” 
 Bruno says in the evidence at the trial (Doc. ix.) “ two 
 years and a half in England, not going to mass when it 
 was said indoors, nor out of doors, nor to sermons.” 
 
PARIS, 1586. 
 
 1 37 
 
 In Paris lie lived privately, busied with two dialogues 
 upon the mathematical works of his countryman, Fab- 
 bricio Mordente, and with a commentary on a book of 
 Aristotle, which were printed in 1 586. 1 
 
 But these works were not his chief occupation. While 
 in Paris he made efforts to reconcile himself with the 
 Church, through the Pope’s Nuncio and through Don 
 Bernardino di Mendoza, who was ambassador of the King 
 of Spain. “ But I was told ” (Doc. xii.) “ that they could 
 not absolve me from my apostasy, and that I could not 
 go to the divine offices ; and therefore I remained away 
 from confession and from the mass, with the intention, 
 however, to escape this condemnation, and to live like a 
 Christian, and a religious man.” He sought (Doc. xvii.) 
 to avoid returning into the bonds of regular obedience, 
 cherishing the hope that certain works of his might be 
 acceptable in the Pope’s eyes, and that thus, though no 
 longer a monk, he might dwell in peace and at liberty. 
 Moreover, he adds, that in the hope of pardon, and that 
 he might be received into the bosom of the Catholic 
 Church without being forced to return to a religious life, 
 he earnestly prayed and besought the Nuncio to address 
 himself to the Pope ; “ but Sixtus V.” (Doc. xvii.) “ being 
 then alive, the Nuncio would not write, fearing not to 
 obtain this favour, offering, however, to write and to help 
 me if I would return to the religious life ; and he then 
 directed me to a Jesuit father, whose name I remember 
 was Padre Alons, a Spaniard, who, being alive, can con- 
 firm it to you, and I spoke with him upon my case, and 
 
 1 Fabbrieio Mordente of Salerno and to prove that the descent of the 
 was a personal friend of Bruno, Magi is still unbroken. Mordente 
 whose easily aroused enthusiasm re- travelled much, in order to observe 
 garding this “ divine discovery” is the customs and laws of men, with 
 recorded in a long preface. Mor- the precise elevation of the poles of 
 dente aspired to revive the fallen their countries. The “divine dis- 
 meehanical arts by means of an covery ” purported to take the exact 
 “ excellent, dignified, and majestic measure of the earth and to square 
 invention ; ” he is addressed as one the circle. Mordente was appointed 
 of the Mercuries dispatched from on mathematician to the Emperor 
 high to minister to our necessities, Rudolf II. 
 
GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 ijS 
 
 lie persuaded me that it was necessary I should procure 
 absolution from the Pope’s censure, and that I could do 
 no less than return to the religious life ; and he likewise 
 warned me that, being excommunicated, I could not assist 
 at the divine offices, but that I might hear sermons and 
 say my prayers in church.” 
 
 This evidence is confirmed by a Dominican friar, Do- 
 menico da Nocera (Doc. x.), who in May 1592, when 
 quitting the sacristy of the Church of SS. Giovanni and 
 Paolo, was accosted by a man wearing a secular habit. 
 This was Bruno, who assured the friar that he strongly 
 desired to be reconciled to Rome, and to dwell there in 
 peace, and to follow his literary calling. 
 
 Full of the same hope he undertook a parting disputa- 
 tion at Pentecost in Paris, where it seems he was subject 
 either to a trial or to a preliminary examination ; for 
 in the eleventh document of the trial at Venice, while 
 asserting that he had taught nothing directly against the 
 Christian and Catholic religion, he adds that “ it was 
 determined in Paris ” that his doctrines were indirectly 
 opposed to the Catholic religion. 
 
 The university, which was no doubt closed to him on 
 account of his uncompromising attitude towards the 
 Church, had signified its willingness, through the rector, 
 Jehan Filesac, to hear him in disputation. One hundred 
 and twenty theses against the Peripatetics, with thirty 
 Pytliagoric and Platonic theses, were submitted by Bruno 
 to the rector ; and on the understanding that the theses 
 were to be regarded in the light of natural philosophy, 
 and not with the eye of faith, permission to hold the dis- 
 putation was granted. A delicate compliment was offered 
 to the King by appointing the disputation for Pentecost, 
 a season on which he looked with special favour, because 
 it had endowed him in one day with the crowns of Poland 
 and of France. 1 
 
 1 The order of the Holy Ghost was instituted by Henry IY. to com- 
 memorate these events. 
 
PARIS, 1386. 
 
 139 
 
 According to the custom of the universities, Bruno’s 
 theses were placed in the mouth of a candidate, Jean 
 Hennequin, “ nobilis Parisiensisi’ In his own words, 
 Hennequin espouses the cause of the Nolan because he is 
 “ single and alone, an innovator not approved by the 
 many, but rather rejected by them ; seeing him supported 
 by the little band of wise and divine men long since for- 
 gotten, . . . and desiring to defend him against the solid 
 train of those who, during the long course and lapse of 
 ages, in so many countries and in a great multitude of uni- 
 versities, have brought the Muses into bondage” (Gfr. 1 1). 
 
 According to the custom of these literary tournaments, 
 the president was responsible for the candidate’s proposi- 
 tions, objections, citations, and augmentations, and when 
 his stock of logic was exhausted, the president came to 
 his assistance. At times the former scarcely opened his 
 mouth, and the president engrossed the audience. This 
 was probably the method employed by Bruno. For a 
 president the title of Master of Arts was indispensable. It 
 was granted to students in philosophy of three years and 
 a half standing in Paris, although foreigners who held a 
 degree from other universities were so far recognised that 
 two years of foreign study were reckoned as equal to one 
 in Paris. 
 
 “ I am about to thank you,” Bruno wrote to Filesac, 
 “ together with the rectors and professors of your univer- 
 sity, for many acts of kindness. The most learned of your 
 body have honoured my teaching either with their pre- 
 sence or with their indulgence. Thanks to you, I am 
 not accounted a stranger in this academy, which is the 
 mother of letters. Now that I must wander abroad 
 through other universities, I cannot nor must I depart 
 without greeting you, nor without discussing certain 
 articles 1 with you as a token of gratitude and remem- 
 brance. If I were able to persuade myself that you would 
 always receive the Peripatetic doctrines for truth, I should 
 1 The word “ article ” was then synonymous with thesis or proposition. 
 
140 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 without any doubt abstain from discussing them, for your 
 university owes less to Aristotle than Aristotle owes to 
 your university. Then my labour would be rash and 
 hostile, and my undertaking, which is prompted by affec- 
 tion and deference, would appear wanting in respect. 
 But I firmly believe that in your prudence and magnani- 
 mity you will receive my proffer of service with kindness. 
 Nay, more, I count upon your favour, since philosophers 
 who are led by rational doctrine (even though it be novel) 
 ought to be permitted to reason philosophically, that is, 
 with liberty. 
 
 “ Moreover, if I reason and do not convince you, I do but 
 confirm you in your principles, and therefore I shall have 
 done nothing unworthy of this high assemblage. While if, 
 as I hope, this outcome of a new philosophy establishes that 
 which posterity can and must sanction, I shall have accom- 
 plished a work most worthy of your sovereign university/’ 
 
 In a spirited address, “ Excubitor,” next following, 
 Hennequin, as Bruno’s mouthpiece, beseeches his hearers 
 to bend before the majesty of truth, not heeding “the 
 fire of his speech ” so much as the “ weight of the reasons” 
 which he is enabled to bring forth ; finally entreating 
 them, as lawful and unbiassed judges, to accept the 
 liberation and power of the Copernican doctrine. 
 
 The points of difference between Peripateticism and 
 the truth are then advanced. 
 
 “ The truth,” he says, “ is new rather than old. In 
 antiquity there is no belief which was not once new.” 
 Tradition and credulity are to cede to reason ; and the 
 inquirer is to enter on the way of truth, cheered by the 
 light of the rising sun of philosophy. In conclusion, 
 Bruno is made by Hennequin to say that he withdraws 
 himself from the company of the Peripatetics and from 
 the vulgar herd of Sophists, and that he will keep a 
 sequestered state, as one desiring the glory of God rather 
 than the kingdom and riches of this world (Gfr. io). 
 “ He believes rashly who believes without the aid of 
 
PORTRAIT OF BRUNO. 
 
 141 
 
 reason ; for God, who bestowed reason upon us, designed 
 us to use it in research.” 
 
 There is no mention in history of this disputation. 
 Under the title of Camoeracensis Acrotismus it was 
 printed the same year in Paris, and two years later it 
 was again printed at Wittenberg, with the one hundred and 
 twenty articles De Physico Auditu, which were combated 
 by Bruno’s nominee in the hall of the College of Cambrai. 
 
 Prom various sources we may gather the appearance of 
 the Nolan at this period. He is described at his trial by 
 an eye-witness, the librarian, Giambattista Ciotto (Doc. vi. 
 p. 10), as “a small man, thin, with a little black 1 beard, 
 about forty years old ; ” and in the valedictory oration 
 which he pronounced at Wittenberg he speaks of himself 
 as “ the plaything of fortune, small in body and estate, 
 hated and persecuted by the multitude.” But although 
 described as a small man, with a small man’s weakness, 
 he speaks of himself as “ manly, strong-limbed, unchecked 
 in sturdy strength, unconquerable.” 
 
 With the exception of an oil-painting at Wolfenbiittel, 
 the only portrait of Bruno extant is on the frontispiece. 
 Berti speaks in melting terms of the philosopher’s refined 
 and noble face, and of the fire of phantasy burning in his 
 eye, which was “ full of melancholy and foreboding.” 
 The description has been faithfully repeated, though on 
 what authority it would be hard to say ; and the portrait, 
 a wretched performance in point of art, and quite with- 
 out character, was printed by Wagner (Leipsig, 1830). 
 It first appears in Rixner and Siber’s translation of the 
 Cause (Sulzbach, 1824), and it was taken by them from 
 a print “ in the interesting collection of Herr Kreisregie- 
 rungsrath Wirthmann in Munich.” 
 
 “ I am rough-hewn,” he says, “ by Nature,” unlearned 
 in smoothing the hair, colouring the cheek, crowning the 
 head with the fragrant hyacinth, unbending to the dance, 
 
 1 At the same time and place the to be of middle stature, and his 
 prisoner is said by another witness beard is said to be chestnut. 
 
142 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 or tuning harsh accents to a ditty. A man, he will not 
 “ stoop to play the woman or the hoy,” words which 
 recall the speech of Gloucester : — 
 
 “ But I, that am not shaped for sportive tricks, 
 
 Nor made to court an amorous looking-glass ; 
 
 I that am rudely stamped and lack love’s majesty, 
 
 To strut before an ambling wanton nymph .” 1 
 
 With a due sense of artistic keeping, Bruno writes 
 that if his verses have not the sweetness, delicacy, and 
 concord of poesy, if they are harsh and unpolished, they 
 may yet possess a pleasing quality. He is no imitator 
 of Yirgil, having no emperor nor Maecenas ; he has not 
 adopted the tender tones of Ovid, for they are not suited 
 to a bearded satyr, such as he ; and yet he is charmed, 
 and even transported beyond himself, by the sight of 
 beauty, though destitute of it himself. For his manner 
 in working, we learn from his pupil Raphael Eglin 2 that 
 “ he stood on one foot, dictating and thinking as fast as 
 the pen could follow, so swift was his mind and so strong 
 his thought.” He appears, moreover, to have prided 
 himself on scientific inaccuracy in dress, for he speaks 
 in the Supper of Ashes of his coat with several buttons 
 wanting, and of his fingers undecked with gems, while 
 the Oxford doctors wore “ twelve rings on two fingers, 
 and two chains of shining gold.” 
 
 Such was the outward appearance of the man who 
 appealed to the University of Paris at Pentecost 1586. 
 He was, however, never destined to see his dream accom- 
 plished — his cherished hope of reconciling religion with a 
 
 1 When, however, Bruno speaks trained, and, becoming involved in 
 
 of being , beloved by the nymphs, the Catholic riots, was driven out of 
 some of his commentators cry shame Sondrio, and went from Winterthur 
 on him, while others possess the to Zurich, where he busied himself 
 comfortable assurance that the with alchemy ; and after having 
 nymphs are Muses. consumed a great part of the pro- 
 
 2 It was at Zurich that Raphael perty of confiding neighbours, and 
 Egli or Eglin first became acquaint- the whole of his own, he fell into 
 ed with Bruno. A man of learning, debt and was forced to leave the 
 though of an unruly disposition, he town. We find him in 1607 profes- 
 quitted the Evangelical community sor of theology at Marburg. 
 
 in Graubunden, in which he was 
 
THE NOLAN PHILOSOPHY. 
 
 143 
 
 new and better era in philosophy. The chrism of death, 
 the sacred flame of martyrdom, were to make him the 
 spiritual ancestor of Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibnitz ; and 
 his labours, though never destined to be realised during 
 his lifetime, were to bear precious and immortal fruit 
 after his death. He must have quitted Paris immediately 
 after the disputation (May 25, 1586, new style). 1 Civil 
 war was in the air, and France offered no security for 
 a man of learning. Moreover, much in Bruno’s nature, 
 much too in his teaching, made his contact with his 
 fellow -men difficult and dangerous. The object of oratory 
 is not so much truth as persuasion ; truth is the object of 
 philosophy and history. It is hard to realise that genius 
 is subject to the same laws of supply and demand which 
 regulate the markets, but it is none the less true ; and to 
 fail to acknowledge these laws is to fail in the first prin- 
 ciples of existence. 
 
 A somewhat closer view of Bruno’s philosophy will 
 show that it partly failed to convince on account of the 
 obscure medium in which he chose to envelop his thought. 
 But it is also easy at the same time to prove that the 
 effect of his principles upon his own character and upon 
 his successors was such as could only have been produced 
 by true and living springs of thought. 
 
 The art of Lully bears a resemblance to those gallipots 
 of apothecaries which Plato is said to have compared to 
 his master Socrates, because “ they had on the outside 
 apes and owls and antiques, but contained within sove- 
 reign and precious liquors and confections ” ( Advance- 
 ment of Learning , Book I. iii. 8). “ The book of God, 
 
 which is Nature,” says Baimond Sebond, “is often 
 more intelligible than the characters written in Holy 
 
 1 Du Boulay and Crevier, in their since the disputation took place in 
 several Histories of the Paris Uni- the hall of the College of Cambrai, 
 versity, maintain that Bruno did not which was often hired by the public, 
 fill the office of professor extraordi- it is quite possible that Bruno’s offi- 
 nary. But they allow that at Pente- cial connection with the university 
 cost 1586 Jean Hennequin held a was then over, 
 disputation on theses of Bruno ; and, 
 
144 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 Scriptures ; ” and it is not wonderful, therefore, that the 
 clumsy symbols of Lully failed to expound the mysteries 
 of the universe. Bruno looked upon the words repre- 
 senting determinate objects as signs 1 suited to our intel- 
 ligence, while the objects themselves he considered to be 
 forms, 2 shadows of the eternal creative ideas, which pro- 
 ceed from God. Thus what to the people was but the 
 play of a strange machine, revealed to the disciple the 
 admirable and symbolic unity of the universe. 
 
 Stripped of its outlandish array of signs, seals, and 
 images, of square and three-cornered wheels, keys, penta- 
 gons, &c., Bruno’s attempt to describe unity — an attempt 
 in which he has but forestalled many of his great succes- 
 sors — becomes less formidable. He teaches that scientific 
 research has its negative and positive function. The 
 first, by uprooting error, frees the ground on which the 
 new edifice is to arise ( De Min., B. i. c. 5); the second 
 preparation consists in an ordered meditation on all sub- 
 jects of thought (ib. c. 5). 
 
 The first process is doubt. Let the attention be fixed 
 on reason, on examination, on comparison. Tradition, 
 fame, antiquity, authority, all are to be cast aside, and 
 the philosopher is to be guided by evidence, by the light 
 
 1 ‘i Words are the images of cogi- 
 tations, and letters are the images 
 of words .” — Advancement of Learn- 
 ing, Book ii. 
 
 2 “Forms are the true object of 
 
 knowledge” ( Advancement of Learn- 
 ing, Book II. vii. 5). “Every form 
 of a thing,” says Hegel, “ is its in- 
 ward intellectual principle, its pro- 
 ducing cause; but both are not dis- 
 tinct, although the form in itself is 
 the cause, and thus is a final cause ” 
 ( Philosophy of History, 229). “ The 
 
 ^"Organic living principle, the princi- 
 ple of which is life, the Former, has 
 within itself its own centre of acti- 
 vity; and within it activity remains 
 and is preserved, . . . while the 
 effect is activity, activity determined 
 within itself” (ib.) “The Peripate- 
 tic Moor Avicebron,” says Bruno, 
 
 “ holds a doctrine that matter is a 
 necessary, eternal, and divine prin- 
 ciple ; for he called matter, God 
 which is in all things ; and we shall 
 fall into that error if we look for 
 form to be accidental, and a circum- 
 stance of matter, and if we do not 
 see and acknowledge that Form 
 which is necessary, eternal, and first, 
 which is the source of all forms, and 
 which the Pythagoreans call the life 
 or soul of the world” (W. i. 257). 
 “ Thus” (W. i. 22S) “ the whole of 
 the Deity is reduced to one source, 
 as the whole of light to one lumi- 
 nous first principle, and the images 
 which are in diverse and numerous 
 mirrors (as in so many particular 
 subjects), to one formal and ideal 
 principle which is their source.” 
 
PHILOSOPHY OF BRUNO. 
 
 145 
 
 of truth and reason, by the strength of the doctrine, by 
 its inner harmony with itself and with the nature of 
 things. When all is duly weighed and comprehended, 
 the philosopher’s judgment may be formed. “Evidence, 
 the clear and distinct perception of that which in itself 
 is manifest, reason, and sense,” he writes in his letter to 
 the Rector of the Paris University, “ these are to deter- 
 mine the mind of the thinker. . . . Let these be our arms 
 against the foolishness of the crowd, who shut their eyes 
 upon the evidence of their senses. Let us begin by 
 doubt. Let us doubt so long as time leaves us a diffi- 
 culty to solve ; let us doubt till we know all ; let us 
 doubt that we may be enabled to plead our own cause 
 with freedom and sincerity.” “ The inward light of know- 
 ledge and of the conscience, our own thought, our indi- 
 vidual reflection, our human common sense, is not in 
 contradiction with the voice of GocL The truth is to 
 be sought out in every aspect and with all solicitude ; 
 only a sordid soul follows the crowd because it is great ; 
 and it is more noble to obtain glory without empire than 
 empire without glory. 
 
 “ The sage must not expect to overcome all things at 
 once. He must sow his seed and await the harvest, as in 
 the course of nature and the seasons the grain of this 
 world ripens and the wheat yields its increase. So with 
 history. Aristotle was the forerunner of Plato ; and 
 Aristotle himself, if he were present, would counsel us to 
 be followers of Nature. . . . Above all, let us be care- 
 ful not to think that we know. . . . Time and fortune 
 overcome all things ; slaves descend from the kings of 
 antiquity, and kings have counted slaves among their 
 ancestors. So the truth, if it is to endure, must show 
 itself in conformity with the will of a beneficent God and 
 with the laws of Nature.” 
 
 “ Passing,” says Berti, “ rapidly from the particular 
 to the general, Bruno rose by means of the intricate 
 labyrinths of the art of memory to the shining heights 
 
 K 
 
146 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 of metaphysics and astronomy.” To “ rise by means of 
 an intricate labyrinth ” is a proceeding of some diffi- 
 culty, unless it were by a flying labyrinth or castle in 
 the air. We recall the criticism of Dr. Johnson on 
 Cibber : “ Why, sir, in one of his couplets he makes a 
 linnet soar on an eagle’s wing.” 
 
 Bruno looked to the mystical arithmetic of Lully as a 
 means of expounding the secrets of Nature, but not as a 
 means of discovering them. They were attained by that 
 faculty of induction which calls into action the highest 
 qualities of the human soul, and, when rightly used, leads 
 the student, by intuition and by the proper exercise of 
 the imagination, to enter into the profoundest mysteries 
 of Nature. “ He seems,” says Professor Carriere, 1 “ to 
 have reached his conclusions by means of intuition and 
 induction, for his mathematics are insignificant ; and when 
 approaching figures and geometric formulas, he is so little 
 able to bridle his imagination that he continually falls 
 into a mystic symbolism.” 
 
 The same has been said by Libri ( Histoire des Sciences 
 Matlidmatiques en Italie, vol. iv. p. 145, note). “Bruno,” 
 says Libri, “ seems a priori to have embraced the Coper- 
 nican system by a species of intuition, being no mathe- 
 matician whatever : his works contain the most singular 
 errors in geometry. Take, for example, what he says in 
 the Cena delle Ceneri on the manner in which a luminous 
 body gives light to other bodies.” But by imagination, 
 that golden quality which realises conceptions beyond the 
 scope of the senses, Bruno attained many valuable con- 
 ' elusions. “ Coleridge,” says Lewes, “ used to say that ima- 
 I gination was the greatest faculty of the philosopher ; ” 
 
 < and the German critic Hillebrand was told by Leibnitz 
 ( himself “ that all his discoveries had been the result of 
 I lightning-like intuition and divination, 2 ascertained after- 
 
 1 Die Philosophische Weltanscliau- gart unci Tubingen, 1847. Art. 
 vng der Rcformationszeit in ihren “ Bruno,” p. 381. 
 
 Beziehnugen zur Geyenwart. Stutt- 2 “It is,” says Fuller, speaking 
 
PHILOSOPHY OF BRUNO. 
 
 147 
 
 wards by observation and experiment.” Again, “ Physical j 
 investigation, more than anything besides,” says Sir Ben- 
 jamin Brodie, in his address to the Royal Society (Nov.i 
 30, 1859), “helps to teach us the actual value and right 
 of the imagination — of that wondrous faculty which, left 
 to ramble uncontrolled, leads us astray into a wilderness 
 of perplexities and errors, a land of mists and shadows, 
 but which, properly controlled by experience and reflec- 
 tion, becomes the noblest attribute of man, the source of 
 poetic genius, the instrument of discovery in science, 
 without the aid of which Newton would never have in- 
 vented fluxions nor Davy have composed the earths and 
 alkalies, nor would Columbus have found another con- 
 tinent.” 
 
 With the instruments at his command, the results 
 attained by Bruno were marvellous. In his system of 
 induction he forestalled Bacon, who said (Nov. Or. 117), 
 “ Our course aud method is, . . . in our capacity of legi- 
 timate interpreters of Nature, to deduce causes and axioms 
 from effects and experiments, and new effects and expe- 
 riments from those causes and axioms.” By what he 
 called “ industry of experiment,” Bacon sought in the 
 means closest to his hand for truth profitable to man. 
 Application, not speculation, was his aim in life. His 
 philosophy was but a machine to aid the mind in accom- 
 plishing what had hitherto overtasked its power ; and if 
 he desired to discover the springs of action and the 
 hidden forces of Nature, it was that he might extend the 
 usefulness of man rather than his knowledge. “ Philo- 
 sophy,” says Bruno (W. ii. 339), in a less utilitarian 
 
 of the fancy in a more poetic vein, charges, fights ■without bloodshed ; 
 “the most boundless and restless in a moment striding from the 
 faculty of the soul ; for while the centre to the circumference of the 
 understanding and will are kept, as world ; by a kind of omnipotency 
 it were, in libera custodia, to their creating and annihilating things in 
 objects of rerum et bonum, the fancy an instant ; and things divorced in 
 is free from all engagements ; it digs 1ST ature are married in fancy as in a 
 without spade, sails without ships, lawless place.” 
 flies without wings, builds without 
 
MS 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 spirit, “ rises on the wing of the intellect towards the 
 Divinity." “ We must not add wings,” says Lord Bacon 
 {Nov. Or. 1 04), “ but rather lead and ballast to the 
 understanding, to prevent its jumping or flying;” although 
 he grants that “ many great discoveries are made not by 
 reason, but by chance and opportunity.” Much, how- 
 ever, that the great Verulam accepted without a question, 
 or did not care to consider, was upheld by Bruno at the 
 cost of his life. Bacon was content to make over to 
 those ££ few astronomers, carmen who drive the earth 
 about ” ( In Praise of Knowledge), the task of accommodat- 
 ing the peculiarity of the heavens ; 1 while with Bruno, 
 to seek out the truth in all things was a matter of life 
 and death. He enlarged the boundaries of the visible 
 universe beyond Aristotle, beyond Copernicus ; not by 
 such calculations as were open to the astronomers of that 
 day, but by means of intuition and induction, and by 
 advocating the true interrogation of Nature, which is 
 observation and experiment. 
 
 “ The speculation of scholars,” he says ( Shadows of 
 Ideas , Intentio xviii.), “ proceed correctly if they advance 
 from the physical shadow to the ideal shadow correspond- 
 ing with it.” ££ By induction we are made rich in spirit ” 
 (Gfr. 737). ££ If the road of investigation is open, in 
 
 order to attain the truth it is only necessary to hold fast 
 by Nature” (J)c Immenso, Book ii. chap. x. p. 605)- 
 <£ He who impedes Nature in her course is impious and 
 insane” 2 ( ib . Book i. chap. ix. p. 26—28). We are 
 to comprehend inner things by what is outward, and 
 high things by means of the lower creation. ££ For 
 all things are so created that they correspond the one 
 with the other. For since all things were ordained not 
 by chance, but by a determining spirit, it follows that a 
 
 1 “ The same phenomena in astro- vancement of Learning, Book ii. 
 nomy are satisfied by the received viii. 5). 
 
 astronomy, . . and by the theory of 2 “Nature,” says Lord Bacon 
 Copernicus . . . the calculations are [Nov. Or. 115), “is only to be com- 
 indifl'erenthj agreeable to both ” (d.rf- manded by obeying her.” 
 
PHILOSOPHY OF BRUNO. 
 
 149 
 
 soul filled with contemplation and speculation can, by 
 means of that which is in the outward appearance, divine 
 inner things” (Gfr. 304). He repeats constantly that 
 Nature and the sense within us will lead us to the truth. 
 “ The truth, like the kingdom of God, is within us ” (W. 
 ii. 12), “ It is in the object of the senses as in a 
 mirror ; in the reason, by the means of argument and 
 discourse ; in the intellect, by the means of principle and 
 conclusion ; but in the mind there is the essential and 
 living form of truth” (W. ii. 18). “The senses them- 
 selves are useful to excite the reason, to indicate, to 
 testify; in part, but not altogether” (ib. 18). “When I 
 was a boy,” he writes ( De, Immenso, Book. ii. chap. viii. 
 p. 232), “I believed that beyond Vesuvius there was 
 nothing, and at that time I understood nothing except 
 through my senses.” “ The senses do not deceive us,” he 
 says again ; “ they do not tell us what is not true, but 
 they do not tell us the whole truth. We do not see the 
 effects and true species of things, or the substance of ideas, 
 but their shadows, traces, and similitude” (W. ii. 426). 
 
 “ In the things of Nature, Cause and Principle are 
 divided ; but in God, Cause and Principle are one. Thus 
 the reason rises to God by means of Nature ” (W. i. 
 234—239). “There is nothing in Nature without Provi- 
 dence and without a final Cause” (W. i. 1 90). 
 
 Such was the labour of the great Italian. Passing 
 by the ways of Induction and Imagination, he came to 
 Immanence, and to that reconciliation of Immanence 
 and Transcendence which is his most signal service 
 to philosophy. “ For though,” Enfield writes in his 
 History of Philosophy , “ he acknowledges only one sub- 
 stance in Nature, yet it appears from many passages in 
 his writings to have been his opinion that all things 
 have from eternity flowed from one immense and infinite 
 fountain, an emanative principle essential to the Divine 
 nature. From this source he derives his minima, or 
 atoms, of which the visible world is formed. To these 
 
150 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 he ascribes perception, life, and motion. Besides these, 
 he supposes a distinct principle of combination and union, 
 or a soul of the world, derived from the same fountain, 
 by which the forms of Nature are produced and pre- 
 served. This intermediate agent, which connects all the 
 other emanations from the eternal fountain, is, in the 
 system of Bruno, Nature, by means of which, out of in- 
 finite emanations from the eternal fountain, infinite and 
 eternal worlds are produced ; whilst in truth only one 
 being exists which is infinite, immutable, indivisible, 
 good — the uncreated light which pervades all space, 
 and which has within itself one substantial form of all 
 things.” 
 
 Again, writing of the “ sparks of truth ” shining in 
 Bruno’s pages, he adds, “ Some of his original concep- 
 tions are . . . luminous and satisfactory, and nearly 
 coincide with the principles of philosophy of Descartes, 
 Leibnitz, and others.” 
 
 Scarcely heeding that bracing of the will to re- 
 peated undeviating action, which, though it may not be 
 genius, is capable of producing a masterpiece, the Nolan 
 aspired to be a “ philosopher, which is the most honour- 
 able title a man can possess” (W. ii. 233), and to 
 assail “ the impregnable walls of true philosophy ” (ib. 
 241). “Philosophy,” says Lord Bacon [Nov. Or. 57), “is 
 the great mother of the sciences ; ” 1 and the result of 
 Bruno’s application, or more properly of his insight, led 
 him to foreshadow many modern discoveries. “ Every 
 part of creation has its share in being and in cognition ” 
 (Summa Ter. 508). This is a direct consequence of the 
 immanence 2 of God. “ Intellect and the powers of 
 
 1 Hazlitt, when he says “How 2 “ Thinking is not to be severed 
 little has the human understanding from what is thought, nor will from 
 been directed to find out the true movement” (Plato) ; “lor mind is 
 and useful! how much ingenuity nothing else but Nature come to the 
 has been thrown away in the de- consciousness of itself : its essence 
 fence of creeds and systems,” being the essence of Nature, its con- 
 repeats Bacon’s magnificent open- tents the contents of Nature ” (Karl 
 ing of the Novum Onjanum. Iiillebrand). 
 
THEORY OF INSTINCT. 
 
 I5i 
 
 thought are not in place, but as the form is in the sub- 
 ject. The intellect, which is the universal substance and 
 the cause of all knowledge in all things and in each 
 thing, is the one substance or essence of the whole, as the 
 soul is in the body” ( Summa Ter. 513). “ There is a 
 
 difference, not in quality but in quantity, between the 
 soul of man, the animal, and the plant ” (W. ii. 2 77). 
 
 “ Among horses, elephants, and dogs there are single 
 individuals which appear to have almost the understand- 
 ing of men” (I)e Immenso, Book iv. chap. ii. p. 404). 
 
 “With what understanding the ant gnaws her grain 
 of wheat, lest it should sprout in her underground habi- 
 tations ! The fool says this is instinct, but we say it is 
 a species of understanding” ( Summa Ter. 509). Aud 
 when stones display their marvellous properties, contract- 
 ing, expanding, attracting, the crowd of ignorant Sophists 
 declare this is instinct.” 
 
 The transition from this point to the Darwinian theory 
 of development is not difficult. “ No body is to-day the 
 same as yesterday ” {Be Trip. Min.) “ All things, even 
 the smallest, have their share in the universal intelli- 
 gence. We do not doubt that there is a soul within all 
 things, and with the soul the intelligence or universal 
 thinking power ” {Summa Ter. 499). 
 
 “ For without a certain degree of sense or cognition 
 the drop of water could not assume the spherical shape 
 which is essential to the preservation of its forces. All 
 things participate in the universal intelligence, and hence 
 come attraction and repulsion, love and hate ” (ib. 496). I 
 “ Nature shows forth each species before they enter into 
 life. Thus each species is the starting-point for the l 
 next” (Gfr. 309). 
 
 After this rapid glance at the peculiar means employed 
 by Bruno, together with the results obtained by him, 
 it may not be amiss to consider next the effects of his 
 
 1 This subject is amplified in the Cabal of the Horse Pegasus. 
 
152 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 philosophy on his mind. It may be gathered from the 
 following extracts : — 
 
 “ From my youth up I was exposed to the slights of 
 fortune, but notwithstanding, I am firm and constant in 
 my course, and to this God is my witness. And I am 
 either not so unfortunate as I think, or in submitting to 
 my misfortunes I despise them ; for death itself does not 
 terrify me, and the greatness of my soul is such that 
 all things mortal are in subjection to it ” 1 (He Immenso, 
 Book i. ch. i. p. 3). 
 
 “ For those men most fear death and most desire to 
 live who have not the light of true philosophy, who con- 
 sider no other than their present being, and who think 
 that nothing can happen but to them, because they have 
 not attained the knowledge that the principle of life is 
 not in the properties which result from the composition, 
 but in individual and indissoluble substance ” (W. ii. 76). 
 
 “ The body is a composition and congregation of in- 
 numerable properties and individuals” (W. ii. 208).“ 
 
 “Being present with the body ” ( Wagner , ii. 387), 
 “ he (the sage) is yet, as by an indissoluble oath, bound 
 and united to divine things, so that he is not sensible 
 either of love or hatred for mortal things, knowing he is 
 greater than these, and that he must not be the servant 
 and slave of his body, which is to be regarded as no 
 other than the prison of his liberty, a snare for his wings, 
 a chain upon his limbs, and a veil impeding his sight. 
 Let him not, therefore, be a slave, nor evil, nor in chains, 
 nor idle, nor blind, nor imprisoned. For the body has 
 no power over him ; it waits on his consent, seeing that 
 
 1 In another place — is an unusual tendency to unite in 
 
 “Persentire datur paucis quam vivere multiples.” — II. Spencer, Principles 
 
 nostrum hoc of Biology, vol. i. 23. Cicero, in his 
 
 S't perune, mon hoc sit Ter* adsurgere Rj q/ writes as folIows . 
 
 Life is but a manner of death, death — “ They aliv ® w , ho have escaped 
 a true birth, an awakening to true from the fetters of the body as from 
 life a prison ; that which is called your 
 
 2 “Among those elements out of life is really death.” 
 which living bodies are built, there 
 
CHARACTER OF BRUNO. 
 
 153 
 
 the spirit is above the body in such proportion as the 
 corporeal and material world is subject to the Divinity 
 and to Nature. Thus he will be strong against fortune, 
 magnanimous in injury, undaunted in poverty, sickness, 
 and persecution.” 
 
 Even more in his life than in his works Bruno showed 
 that it behoves a philosopher not to attach himself to 
 earth. He desires “ that he may not shrink when con- 
 fronted by death” (W. ii. 238), and “that he may be 
 strengthened against the onslaughts of fortune.” The 
 hare is called by him “ the type of fear, by the contempla- 
 tion of death ; ” and he prays to be delivered from “ the 
 blind tremors of death ” ( ib . 241). “ Death,” he writes, in 
 
 emulation of the Latin poet, ££ is less horrible than the 
 fear of death” (W. i. 40 1). 1 Again, in the Heroic Rap- 
 ture (W. i. 313) he pours out his soul in the entreaty 
 that his death may be changed to life, the cypress into 
 laurel, hell to heaven, and his mortality to immortality. 
 
 A striking presentiment, which did not fall short of 
 prophecy, 2 underlies his writings. “ If it should come 
 to pass,” he wrote (W. i. 199), “that the Nolan is car- 
 ried to his grave in a Catholic country, even if it be 
 broad day, he will be accompanied by fifty, nay, by 
 a hundred torches.” ( ££ The spirit of man,” says the 
 Preacher, ££ is the candle of the Lord.”) Again, in a 
 sonnet addressed to his own soul, he writes, “ Touch 
 me, 0 God, and I shall be as it were a flame of fire,” — 
 words repeated and perfected by Shakespeare : 
 
 “ Heaven doth with us as we with torches do, 
 
 Not light them for ourselves.” 
 
 When, too, towards the spring of 1591, Bruno set off 
 for his native land, driven by some unaccountable im- 
 pulse to meet the death which, in his own words, should 
 
 1 “Fear is more pain than is the Melancholy foretold the day and hour 
 
 pain it fears.” — Sonnet, Sir Philip of his death, and was said to have 
 Sidney. taken pains to fulfil the predic- 
 
 2 The author of the Anatomy of tion. 
 
154 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 make him live for all time (W. ii. 316), these words 
 occur, among the last lines written by him in Germany : 
 “ The wise man fears not death ; yea, there may be times 
 when he seeks death, or at least goes peacefully forth 
 to meet his end.” 
 
 “ To talk of Nature and a man’s soul,” says Goethe, 
 “ is not for Christians ; therefore men burn atheists, such 
 discourses being highly dangerous.” Persecution, “ that 
 rarest argument of wonder,” embittered the life of Bruno, 
 but the succession of time will reinstate his memory. 
 
 “It is a plain proceeding,” says Edgar Quinet, “ to 
 calculate problems and to solve equations, but to apply 
 them justly, and to understand their due relations to 
 each other and to the world, demands intuition and in- 
 spiration. The pure and incorruptible formulae which 
 were before the world was, which are above time and 
 space, and which are, as it were, an integral part 1 of God, 
 those sacred formulae which will survive the ruin of the 
 universe, place the true mathematician in communion 
 with the very spirit of God. Science is Christian when 
 it discovers in the infinitely little as much power and 
 mystery as in the infinitely great. Science is pious when 
 it recognises miracles in all things, for it then beholds 
 itself enveloped by revelation. It is universal when it 
 subjects every world and every truth to one law and to 
 one unity. It is Catholic when it conforms to that living 
 and immutable orthodoxy proclaimed in the great council 
 of creation, in the church of the worlds, that sacred geo- 
 metry and sublime mathematics which are unswerving 
 in their course, for they are written in the very thought 
 of the Creator.” 
 
 Such was the piety of Bruno ; and it was to that 
 “ living and immutable orthodoxy,” and to the laws written 
 in the hand of the Creator on the face of the universe, that 
 
 1 A parallel passage occurs in ginning of tilings co-eternal, God 
 Kepler’s Harmonices Mundi (bk. iv. Himself.” 
 p. 1 19): “Geometry, before the be- 
 
VIRTUE OF MATHEMATICS. 
 
 155 
 
 lie proclaimed his submission. It is interesting to note 
 that the same feeling has actuated many men of science. 
 
 “ The work of the intellect,” says Humboldt, “ shows 
 itself in its most exalted grandeur where, instead of re- 
 quiring the aid of outward material means, it receives its 
 light exclusively from the pure abstraction of the mathe- 
 matical development of thought. There dwells a power- 
 ful virtue, deeply felt and acknowledged in all antiquity, 
 in the contemplation of mathematical truths ; in the 
 eternal relations of time and space as they disclose them- 
 selves in harmonics, number, and lines.” 
 
 The remarkable manner in which Linnaeus, — he is called 
 by Edgar Quinet “ the smallest of the great discoverers,’’ 
 — speaks of his vision of God was probably suggested by 
 the history of Moses on the Mount. The Patriarch, it 
 will be remembered, was covered by the hand of God in a 
 cleft of the rock, and he saw “ the back parts of God.” 
 Linnaeus writes the following : “ I have seen pass before 
 me the back parts of the almighty, all-knowing, and 
 ever-living God, and I stood in awe of him.” The words 
 of Kant, “ Two things fill me with wonder — the starry 
 heavens and the sense of moral responsibility in man,” 
 are thus noted by Professor Tyndall : “And in his hours 
 of health and strength and sanity, when the stroke of 
 action has ceased and the pause of reflection has set in, 
 the scientific investigator finds himself overshadowed by 
 the same awe. Breaking contact with the hampering de- 
 tails of earth, it associates him with a power which gives 
 fulness and love to his existence, but which he can 
 neither analyse nor comprehend ” (Tyndall, Fragments of 
 Science , 335). 
 
 But it is, perhaps, in considering the influence of 
 Bruno’s philosophy on others that its value becomes most 
 apparent . 1 
 
 1 The relation of Bruno’s philo- treated by M. Carriere. Bruno’s 
 sopliy to Descartes, Leibnitz, Kant, services to Descartes and Leibnitz 
 and Hegel has been exhaustively have also been carefully pointed out 
 
ij6 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 Evidence as the criterium of truth, doubt as the 
 initiation of the truth — -these were his legacy to Des- 
 cartes. He bequeathed to Spinoza the idea of an 
 immanent God and the distinction between active and 
 passive Nature. To Leibnitz he gave the germ of the 
 theory of monads and the theory of optimism. More- 
 over, with regard to the mathematical and physical 
 sciences, the theories of the centre of gravity of the 
 planets, the orbits of the comets, the imperfect sphericity 
 of the earth, and the first idea of the vortex are due to 
 him ; and the boldest thinkers of our time owe to him 
 the principle of the absolute identity of the subjective and 
 the objective, the ideal and the real, the thought and the 
 thing. 
 
 Many writers claim 1 for Bruno the high distinction of 
 having modified all the modern sources of philosophic 
 thought. Even Tiraboschi, who professes himself unable 
 to comprehend Bruno’s philosophy, is willing to grant the 
 extent of his influence on later thinkers. “ If,” says this 
 writer (vol. vii. p. 472), “Bruno had taken the pains 
 to regulate his fancy and his foolish ambition, which 
 taught him to oppose every idea that was not his own, 
 he might have ranked among the most illustrioirs phi- 
 losophers. Any one with patience to examine his 
 work may discover he has the germs of opinions which, 
 when adopted by Cartesius, Leibnitz, and other modern 
 thinkers, were received with applause, and were at least 
 for some time followed by many. Brucker, citing authors 
 who have reasoned on such points at length, demonstrates 
 that the vortices of Cartesius, and the system of globes 
 revolving on their own axis, together with the pi'inciple 
 of universal doubt, are to be found in the works of 
 
 by Bartholm&ss. The indebtedness Mensclien und dessen GluclcseliglceU. 
 of Spinoza is described with great Gotha, 1866. 
 
 minuteness in a small treatise by 1 See Lasson. Steffens, Ueber das 
 Professor Sigwart : — Spinoza’s Neu- Leben des Jordanus Brunus. Berlin, 
 entdeclder Tractat von Gott, dem 1846, pp. 43, 75. Revue de Bruxelles, 
 
 Altmeyer, January, March 1840. 
 
INFLUENCE ON DESCARTES. 
 
 IS 7 
 
 Bruno, which, contain, moreover, the atoms of Gassendi 
 and the optimism of Leibnitz. . . . But I challenge,” 
 Tiraboschi continues, with some temper, “ the most acute 
 intelligence to comprehend his system, or the most patient 
 of men to tolerate his books.” 
 
 Unlike the philosophy of Condillac, which is happily 
 said by Victor Cousin “ to mutilate the human mind in 
 order to explain it more easily,” Descartes taught that 
 “to know is to be,” and held with Bruno the effective 
 action of our doubt and ignorance . 1 Doubt in thought 
 is an act of thought ; and the achievement of Bruno in 
 thus defining the use in philosophy of doubt and igno- 
 rance was, says Professor Carriere, “ a declaration in philo- 
 sophic consciousness such as that of Luther in religion : 
 ‘ God is almighty ; but he who has faith is a god.’ ” 
 
 From the dualism into which Descartes soon fell 
 Bruno was preserved by the poetic spirit with which he 
 was inspired ; but the dry precision of the art of Lully 
 possessed no charms for the philosopher of method. “ I 
 had laboured somewhat,” Descartes writes, “ upon the other 
 branches of philosophy, such as the art of Lully, which is 
 compounded from syllogisms more proper to encourage idle 
 talk upon things which we ignore than to aid learning.” 2 
 
 1 “ The wisest among you,” says 
 Plato in his Apology, “ is he who 
 recognises, with Socrates, that his 
 wisdom is nothing.” And what is 
 this but the becoming a little child 
 in order to enter into the kingdom of 
 heaven ? “ Before all things,” says 
 
 Bruno, “ keep us from ignoring our 
 own ignorance.” True ignorance is 
 said by Bruno to be , as it were, a gate 
 (W. ii. 271) to the apprehension 
 of truth ; “ since wisdom without 
 ignorance cannot apprehend the 
 truth, . . . and thus wisdom dis- 
 covers the truth by the road, the 
 gate-keeper, and the gate of ignor- 
 ance.” This is one of the contra- 
 dictions in which Bruno delighted. 
 Negative ignorance in a mind re- 
 flecting upon itself is, however, not 
 to be confounded with the positive 
 
 ignorance of blindness. “ Ignorance 
 and arrogance,” Bruno writes (W. 
 i. 175), “are twin sisters;” and, 
 again (W. i. 131), he writes of “rash 
 and foolish ignorance, with pre- 
 sumption and discourtesy, which are 
 her faithful companions.” This was 
 the ignorance which Montaigne 
 desired to quell when he wrote, 
 “All wisdom is folly that does not 
 accommodate itself to the common 
 ignorance.” 
 
 2 Although Descartes describes 
 his Meditations as a book contain- 
 ing “ demonstrations of the exist- 
 ence of God and the distinction of 
 the soul from the body,” he treats 
 a number of other subjects, such as 
 the circulation of the blood, the 
 theory of animals, instinct, &c. 
 With a certain sense of humour he 
 
GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 158 
 
 In liis theory of instinct, moreover, as inherited habit, 
 Bruno shows himself to be far in advance of the automatic 
 theory of Descartes. “Because a clock marks time and a 
 bee makes honey,” says Descartes, “we are to consider the 
 clock and the bee to be machines. Because they do one 
 thing better than man, and no other thing so well as man, 
 we are to conclude that they have no mind, but that Nature 
 acts within them, holding their organs at her disposal.” 
 “ Nor are we to think, as the ancients do, that animals 
 speak, though we do not know their language ” ( Discours 
 sur la Mdthode , sect, v.) ; “ for, if that were so, they, 
 having several organs related to ours, might as easily 
 communicate with us as with each other.” How would 
 the reverse of this axiom read from the point of view 
 of the animals ? “ We must not think that men speak, 
 
 though we do not know their language. For if this 
 were so, since they have several organs related to ours, 
 they might as easily communicate with us as with each 
 other.” 
 
 It remains to indicate in a few words the influence of 
 Bruno on Spinoza, “the Cartesian of the Kabbalah,” as 
 he was called by Kant in a letter to Moses Mendelssohn. 
 While Leibnitz resolves the material world into unex- 
 tended monads, Spinoza, truer to his great forerunner, 
 unfolds the divine system in a geometric procession, and, 
 though he does not own how far he is beholden to 
 Bruno, a close connection in the system of the two 
 philosophers has been pointed out by Professor Sigwart 
 of Tubingen. 
 
 The most important of Bruno’s writings, and those 
 nearest allied to the philosophy of Spinoza, are the dia- 
 logues of the Cause, of Infinity , and of Heroic Rapture. 
 Spinoza was known by his biographer Boulainvilliers to 
 be well versed in Italian. The works of Bruno were read 
 
 begins tlie sixth part of his discourse published it notwithstanding, for 
 upon Method by announcing that he remarks that it will be found in 
 he had found it advisable to abstain substance in the pages he has just 
 from publishing a certain treatise completed, 
 from fear of the Jesuits, and yet he 
 
INFLUENCE ON SPINOZA. 
 
 159 
 
 in Paris at that time, among others, by Pere Mersenne 
 and by Huet, the opponent of Descartes ; and they must 
 have passed into Holland, for England was closely con- 
 nected with that country. The Heroic Eapture, as we 
 have seen, was dedicated to Philip Sidney, who fell at 
 the head of the English auxiliaries in defending the in- 
 dependence of the Netherlands. 
 
 Spinoza, in common with Bacon, Leibnitz, and many 
 other writers, was not accustomed to name the philoso- 
 phers from whom he derived assistance. His political 
 treatise on the Existence and Cause of the State, an essay 
 closely following the theory of Hobbes, does not by so 
 much as a single syllable allude to the English writer. 
 Much of the work on Method is derived from the Novum 
 Organum, but there is not a line in the book alluding 
 by name to Bacon. The treatise on God, Mankind, and 
 Happiness owes much to Descartes, who is only once 
 named, and then not as the master whose teaching the 
 treatise is repeating, but on the occasion of an objection 
 for the refutation of which Descartes is referred to. 
 Spinoza may have shrunk from naming Bruno, the un- 
 compromising enemy of all Aristotelians, by whom he had 
 been hunted from town to town, everywhere roving and 
 rejected, the author of the Expulsion , which was re- 
 puted to have denied God, and accused, moreover, of 
 having written De Tribus Impostoribus. But it is also 
 probable that the manner of life of the Dutch philoso- 
 pher had its share in his apparently ungrateful silence. 
 Despising the world, he knew neither pleasure, action, 
 nor glory; and as he was completely indifferent to his 
 own fame, he desired his name should be concealed 
 after his death. Effaced in his work, which was his 
 only life and his true glory, he had almost earned the 
 right to appropriate the thoughts of others, which he 
 looked upon as due contributions to the joint-stock of 
 learning. When he was young he desired love ; but he 
 did not find it, for he did not inspire it : poor and 
 
i6o 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 suffering, his life was spent in the hope and meditation 
 of death ; 1 and in the outskirts of Amsterdam or in an 
 obscure corner of the Hague he earned the scanty share 
 of bread and of milk necessary to his sustenance by 
 polishing glasses. He was repudiated by the men of his 
 own communion, and suspected by every other sect : all 
 the clergy in Europe detested him because he taught the 
 subjection of the Church to the State ; and it was only 
 by living in hiding that he escaped persecution and out- 
 rage. His humbleness and silence, his gentleness and 
 his patience, formed a character little fitted for dwelling 
 in the world, where, indeed, he did not desire to remain ; 
 he was not anxious to be remarkable while he lived, nor 
 to be remembered when he died. 
 
 However, some acknowledgment is to be expected from 
 a writer under many obligations, and accordingly we find 
 in the preface to the third part of his Ethics, Spinoza 
 speaks of writers, whom he does not name, but to whom 
 he owes thanks for having written “ much that is most 
 excellent on the right conduct of life.” It is probable 
 that Bruno is counted among these, and distinct traces of 
 relationship to him appear in the writings of Spinoza. 
 The unity of being, the infinity of its attributes, the im- 
 manence of the Godhead in the universe, the comprehen- 
 sion of evil as deficience — these are principles alike in 
 both philosophies ; all teaching of God as one being, who 
 is all, without whom nothing is, nor can be thought ; 
 whose being is also the being of individual things : every 
 allusion to God as the highest good, all teaching that the 
 Divine Mind is the source of all minds, of all direct know- 
 ledge, which is reached not by inference, but by direct 
 contemplation of the highest Being as he stands revealed 
 in his handiwork; of love as the perfect union of the 
 soul with God, which, by freeing man from the love of 
 earthly things, causes him to attain the highest happiness 
 
 1 “ Yita est meditatio mortis.” — Spinoza. 
 
INFLUENCE ON SPINOZA. 
 
 1 6 1 
 
 — this Neo-Platonic teaching of Bruno is to be found in 
 the Ethics of Spinoza. 
 
 Spinoza, however, fell too soon under subjection to a 
 law of mechanical necessity, resulting in what has been 
 called “ Spinozism ” or atheism, which, says Kuno Fischer, 
 
 “ is a philosophy presented by Spinoza in the form of the 
 Gorgon’s head.” God, in the language of Spinoza, loves 
 no one {Ethics, v. 1 7 coroll.) ; he is the possessor of per- 
 fection in perfect and eternal rest. Busied and absorbed 
 in his conception of God, he lost sight of a just concep- 
 tion of man. The God of his creation was a natural out- 
 come of the terrible God of Judah, the fighting Lord of '? 
 Hosts, the jealous God : his God is the infinite, which 
 manifests itself in blind destruction of the finite. But in 
 comparing the teaching of Spinoza and Bruno, there is a 
 marked distinction in favour of the Italian philosopher. 
 His exalted view of Nature as a living mirror in which 
 we behold the “pictures of natural things and the shadow 
 of the Divinity,” is far removed from the realism of 
 Spinoza ; and in the crucial test of philosophy a great 
 and striking divergence arises. With Spinoza the ideal 
 and the real are one ; with Bruno nothing is real but the 
 ideal. Form or the idea is the source of all things. 
 Thought precedes Nature [ante naturalia ) ; Nature is the 
 shadow of ideas ( forma sine vestigium idearum). When 
 thought follows Nature ( post naturalia ) it is called under- 
 standing ; and in the same proportion as the things of 
 Nature are more perfect than the shadows of ideas, the 
 original idea is more perfect than Nature. 
 
 According to Bruno, it is the soul which gives shape to- 
 the forms of the world ; all movement being the expres- 
 sion of an inner life, a seeking- for and fleeing from of- 
 kindred souls and souls opposed. But the poetic aspect 
 bestowed by him on the universe was completely removed 
 from the theory of Descartes, which, in its separation of 
 soul from matter, sets up the dualism against which 
 Bruno strove. All motion, even that of organic beings, 
 
 L 
 
162 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 was attributed to atomic attraction, and tlie spiritual 
 world was regarded as a world in itself, opposed to the 
 world of mechanism. While adopting this system of 
 mechanical physics, Spinoza sundei’ed himself from 
 Bruno’s soul of the Universe. Of that wealth of con- 
 ditions and images out of which Bruno fashioned his 
 principle of Unity, nothing remains to Spinoza but the 
 abstract conception of substance and causality. In his 
 Etliics he identifies God with Nature ; but it is not the 
 living Nature of Bruno, that mother of all things, who, 
 herself unchanging, brings forth all things and sup- 
 ports all things. Spinoza teaches the unity of things 
 emanating from their cause by a law of mechanical neces- 
 sity. The spiritual world was to him independent of 
 the world of matter ; that unity escaped him, the seal of 
 which every man carries within him in the close union 
 of soul and body ; and although, with Bruno, Spinoza 
 believed in an immortal union of our love with the love 
 of God ( Treatise on God, Mankind, and his Happiness, 
 154, p. 206), yet his view of the Supreme Deity is that 
 of a dumb bearer of the predicates, mere trappings and 
 insignia of office, from which in an uncontrolled manner 
 virtue goes out, as from the garment of Christ. 
 
( 1 63 ) 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 “The past and the present are two relations in eternity, which is a con- 
 tinual present.” — V ictor Cousin. 
 
 Paris, 1st June. Mayence, June 1 586 . Marburg, J uly 1 5 86 . Matri- 
 culated at Wittenberg, August 20, 1586 . Quits Wittenberg, March 
 1 588 . The Fareviell Oration at Wittenberg. 
 
 On delivering liis theses to the rector of the university, 
 Bruno announced his intention to quit Paris, and he 
 presented the disputation as his formal leave-taking of 
 the town. It has been suggested that his departure was 
 a direct result of the disputation. But this is not so, 
 since he took that opportunity not only to bid farewell 
 to Paris, but to declare his intention of visiting other 
 universities. 
 
 On account of the civil wars, Paris itself appears to 
 have been an unprofitable abode for a man of learning. 
 “ There was a time,” says the Leaguer of the Satire 
 Meni'p'pie, “ when we longed to know the Hebrew, Greek, 
 and Latin tongues, but we now rather desire a good salt 
 ox-tongue for an excellent commentary on hay-bread ; ” 
 the latter being only a degree better than the bread 
 called after Madame de Montpensier, which was made of 
 bones. 
 
 “ I left Paris,” the Documents resume, “ on account of 
 the tumults ; ” and in the oration which he pronounced 
 at Wittenberg in 1588, Bruno was at the pains to con- 
 gratulate himself (Gfr. 634) on having escaped the “ dis- 
 asters of Paris.” It was about the 1st of June 1586 
 
GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 164 
 
 when he set off to seek more peaceful employment in 
 Germany. He went first to Mayence (Mez in the docu- 
 ments of the trial ; in the Rhenish dialect the n is sup- 
 pressed), where he remained about twelve days ; and not 
 finding suitable entertainment either there or at Vispure? 
 “a place not far off” (Doc. ix.), he went to Marburg, 
 thinking to resume his work of teaching. This attempt, 
 however, was checked by the unruly spirit which had 
 shown itself earlier in Geneva, and which was inseparable 
 from his conduct and character. 
 
 Mount Sinai, we are told by Heine, was but a little 
 pedestal for the feet of Moses, whose head was raised to 
 the skies, and whose speech was with God. The whole 
 earth was to Bruno what Mount Sinai was to Moses, 
 though with this difference, that an essential condition 
 for peaceful communion with the skies, which is indiffer- 
 ence to troubles on earth, was absent from his composi- 
 tion. 
 
 Every pin-prick angered him. Indications of his char- 
 acter abound in his works. He speaks (W. ii. 221) of 
 “ heroic generosity, which can pardon those beneath it, 
 compassionate the weak and infirm, subdue insolence, 
 trample upon temerity, rebuke presumption, and van- 
 quish pride.” A true Neapolitan, he practised no re- 
 serve except in silence and other negative qualities. He 
 scouted compromise, allotting a place in the skies to 
 Anger, which he regarded as “ a most necessary virtue ” 
 (W. ii. 219); “ for it favours law, strengthens truth and 
 judgment, and sharpens the wit, opening the road to 
 
 1 It has been suggested that this too far. The Rhenish pronuncia- 
 place is Wurzburg. At its newly tion, joined to the spelling of the 
 founded university Bruno might Italian copyist, accounts for the un- 
 have sought employment, and soon couth exchange of Wurzburg into 
 finding there was no opening for Vispure. Professor Carriere is of 
 him, he might have quitted the town opinion that Wiesbaden is the town 
 without inscribing his name on the designated. It is pronounced Wis- 
 register of the university. Weissen- bare by the peasants, and it is not 
 burg, in Alsace, which has been sug- too far removed either from May- 
 gested by one of his biographers, is ence or from Marburg. 
 
MARBURG, JULY 7386. 
 
 165 
 
 many notable virtues of wliicli peaceable minds know 
 nothing.” In another work he says (W. ii. 424), “ No 
 man truly loves goodness and truth who is not incensed 
 with the multitude, as, in what is commonly called love, 
 he would be jealous and fearful for the thing beloved.” 
 It was his prayer to be all arms and all eyes, a new) 
 Briareus and a new Argus, that he might penetrate and I 
 embrace the whole of the infinite universe together with; 
 “ the matter of Nature,” which, “ being always the samel 
 under all forms of Nature, is not to be seen by the eye, \ 
 but with the reason alone, with the intellect.” He calls 
 upon “heroic Fear” to make him as much afraid of 
 perishing from among the illustrious as from among the 
 living. “ 0 memory of a well-spent life ! ” he cries, 
 “ make old age and death carry me away before my mind 
 comes to be disordered. And thou, Fear of losing the 
 glory acquired in life, make old age and death not 
 bitter, but desirable and dear” (W. ii. 96). In the 
 same work (W. ii. 186) he writes: “Fortitude is 
 
 ordered to mark those things which the strong ought 
 not to fear — hunger, nakedness, thirst, pain, poverty, 
 solitude, persecution, death ; but from those other things 
 which ought to be dreaded, because they injure, men 
 must flee with all diligence. These are ignorance, in- 
 justice, unfaithfulness, falsehood, avarice, and the like.” 
 Again, he asks of the gods to make him “ unmoved and 
 intrepid when honour and the common welfare are at 
 stake.” 
 
 The records of Marburg remain to show in what an 
 uncompromising spirit this petition was fulfilled. On the 
 25th of July 1586, Bruno applied to the then rector of 
 the university, Nigidius, professor of moral philosophy, 
 and matriculated as doctor of Roman theology. “ But,” 
 says the rector of the university, “ permission to hold 
 public disputations on philosophy for weighty reasons 
 having been denied to him by me, with the consent of the 
 whole Philosophic Faculty, he fell into a passion of anger, 
 
GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 1 66 
 
 and lie insulted me in my house, as though I had acted 
 in this matter against the rights of man and the usages 
 of all the German universities, and against all zeal in 
 learning ; and, therefore, he desired not to continue a 
 member of the academy, to which desire we agreed 
 gladly, and his name was cancelled by me on the rolls of 
 the university.” In a later hand Bruno’s name is restored 
 in the records of Marburg, and the words “ with the con- 
 sent of the whole Philosophic Faculty” are struck out. 
 The records lately discovered at Geneva offer a clue to 
 those “ weighty reasons ” which hindered Nigidius from 
 accepting Bruno as a lecturer in the university. 
 
 It was strange that the opposition of the Catholic 
 Church to freedom should be signalised by one remark- 
 able exception. This was the reform of the calendar, 
 which was as heartily opposed by the innovators as if to 
 bring the equinox under control meant to assail the 
 life and liberty of all true Protestants, who pinned their 
 faith to the old Calendar. Pope Gregory, the patron of 
 the reform, gave such tokens of his satisfaction at the 
 massacre of St. Bartholmew in the shape of pictures, pro- 
 cessions, medals, and indulgences that the Protestants 
 sickened at his name. His effort to pass over the eleven 
 days from the 4th to the 1 5th of October 1582 was re- 
 ceived with an outburst of indignation. People followed 
 the carriages of ministers of state crying “ Give us back 
 our eleven days.” The Diet of Augsburg roundly declined 
 to consider the matter at all, and the quarrel ran so high 
 that respectable German burgomasters resigned their 
 robes and chains of office and left their country rather 
 than submit to a change suspected of concealing ultra- 
 montane designs. The Gregorian calendar was accepted 
 for its catholicity, like the mass and the sign of the 
 cross. Kepler did not escape the suspicion of his fel- 
 low-Lutherans when he announced his adherence to the 
 new scheme ; and it was a curious contradiction to see 
 the new Christians cling to the old style, while the 
 
WITTENBERG , AUGUST 1586. 167 
 
 Christians of the ancient faith did their utmost to estab- 
 lish the novelty. 
 
 It may be imagined that Bruno, who conformed to 
 the new calendar, was rejoiced to show his obedience to 
 the Church, when for once she did not run counter to 
 science. But Marburg was radically opposed to the 
 reform of the calendar, which being called after a Pope, 
 was naturally regarded by all good Protestants with sus- 
 picion. The Copernican theory was looked upon with 
 equal distrust, and Bruno, a warm advocate of both 
 innovations, was not likely to receive quarter from the 
 professors of the Reformed religion. He matriculated at 
 Marburg on the 25th July, and finding it impossible 
 to bridle the malevolence of the rector, he thought it 
 prudent to leave the town almost immediately. 
 
 Supposing that Bruno begged his way, he would have 
 done only what was common among English university 
 students three hundred years ago, or among German 
 students even thirty years ago, although begging was, 
 personally, extremely distasteful to him, for he spoke 
 contemptuously of the monks who hold their breviaries in 
 one hand and extend the other for alms (Doc. xii.) He 
 was in poor circumstances, encumbered with but little 
 luggage, though no doubt he carried some of his pam- 
 phlets on the art of Lully with him, — we could not other- 
 wise account for their appearance in so many of the cities 
 through which he passed. Nor was he exposed to what 
 Macaulay calls “ the disease of admiration ; ” for, quoting 
 Tasso, the Nolan speaks of “ that idol of error and deceit 
 which is called honour by the vulgar” (W. ii. 201), and 
 it was one to which he never paid any court. 
 
 The wandering philosopher appeared next at Witten- 
 berg, hoping for liberty of discussion, and for the frank 
 and simple hospitality given by the German people to 
 men of letters. That little city, the centre of Lutheran- 
 ism, received him cordially. Standing in the hill-country 
 of Saxony, Wittenberg shared with the Swiss, the Scotch, 
 
1 68 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 and other mountain people the renown of independence. 
 The town had known reverses. In 1547 the Spanish 
 troops overran the neighbouring villages, stealing cattle, 
 sacking houses, and leaving the unburied bodies of the 
 wretched cottagers in the fields to be eaten by dogs. The 
 Spaniards threatened not to leave one stone upon another 
 in the dens of the heretics. But the Emperor Charles V. 
 gave his word that not a Spanish soldier should enter 
 the walls, and Wittenberg capitulated, only too soon, how- 
 ever, to be ravaged by the Thirty Years’ War. Many 
 tokens of peace and prosperity were preserved by the city 
 throughout its troubles. In Bruno’s time Luther’s his- 
 toric oak stood, as it still stands, outside the walls, and 
 within them the Augustinian monastery to this day 
 frowns at its strange and distasteful post of guardian 
 over the traces of happy married life. Here Luther lived 
 for nearly forty years, and his memory was still green 
 within the walls, which he had quitted scarcely a quarter 
 of a century before. 
 
 On the 20th August 1586 Bruno was permitted by 
 the Hector Albinus to enter his name on the lists of the 
 university, and at the same time he received permission 
 to deliver private lectures. He remained in Wittenberg 
 nearly two years, and, after London, the German city 
 seems to have held the first place in his affection. Here 
 he met once more his countryman Alberico Gentile, the 
 founder of international law, whom he had first known in 
 Oxford, and to whose good offices he owed his introduction 
 to his post as lecturer upon the Organon of Aristotle 
 (Doc. ix.) He received much kindness, too, from other 
 professors, grateful notice of whose names is made in the 
 short work on Lully, which was published in 1587 and 
 dedicated to the senate of the university. The professors 
 of Toulouse, Paris, and Oxford, he says, received him with 
 grimaces, with upturned noses, puffed cheeks, and with 
 loud blows on their desks ; but the learned men of 
 Wittenberg showed him courtesy, and left him at peace 
 
WITTENBERG, 1587. 
 
 169 
 
 to pursue the tenor of his philosophy. Besides the works 
 on Lully and the theses of the Paris disputation, Bruno 
 dictated to a pupil, Johann Heinrich Alsted, the historian 
 and theologian of Herborn in Nassau, a small work upon 
 the Rhetoric of Aristotle. In the dedication of the Com- 
 binatory Lamp of Lully , the first book with which he 
 accosted the town, Bruno praises the “ liberty of philo- 
 sophy” practised by Wittenberg, “ the Athens of Germany, 
 the daughter of Minerva, and the queen of German 
 schools.” In these grateful terms he addressed the senate 
 of the university, and the same spirit showed itself in his 
 farewell oration. His dignified and pathetic tone is in 
 striking contrast to the trumpet-blast with which he 
 thought proper to assail the walls of Oxford. To the 
 university senate of Wittenberg he writes (Gfr. 624) : 
 “ You have received and supported me ; you have dealt 
 kindly with me up to this day. I was a stranger to you, 
 a fugitive from the tumults of Gaul, not distinguished by 
 any royal commendation, bearing no ensigns of hononr, 
 not proved nor questioned in your religion ; but finding in 
 me no hostile spirit (for I desire to follow the tranquil 
 course of universal philanthropy), you received me gladly, 
 deeming my name worthy to stand in the book of your 
 academy, and to be counted among the most noble and 
 learned of your people, that I might acknowledge as my 
 own, not any private school, nor ordinary assemblage of 
 scholars, but the German Athens, which is this great 
 university.” The book to which this address serves as a 
 preface is a treatise on the art of Lully, presented to the 
 university under the figure of a lamp or torch, by means 
 of which ideas are evolved and marshalled in order, and 
 the mysteries of Pythagoras and the Kabbalah unveiled. 
 Bruno thinks it necessary in his address to apologise to 
 the university for the novelty of his terms, because they 
 were unavoidable in a science so novel as that of Lully ; 
 but as a fact the Combinatory Lamp of Lully was little 
 more than a commentary on the Compendious Architecture. 
 
i;o 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 Short explanations are given ; they are compared with 
 the Alphabet , the Syllabicum, and the Dictionarium. The 
 same nine elementary concepts, with absolute and relative 
 predicates and questions, appear arranged under the nine 
 letters of the alphabet serving as signs or symbols. These 
 are more accurately treated, and the notes, rules, and 
 figures are much more numerous and better. 
 
 Another favourite image with Bruno is the chase. It 
 is a figure to which he makes many allusions in the 
 Heroic Rapture , and it serves for a title to a second 
 work on Lully printed at Wittenberg. The Chase of 
 Logic was dedicated to George Mylius, the chancellor of 
 the university. It is an allegorical representation of 
 logic and its application under the emblem of a hunt. 
 The objects of perception are represented by a pathless 
 and thorny enclosure (campus). In the midst of this 
 enclosure is a tower ( turris ), which represents the object 
 of speculation. The nearest fields or spaces ( agri ) to 
 this tower are called accident, property, species, genus, 
 definition. These latter, with the tower, are the objects 
 of the chase. The hunter is man ; the game is the 
 solution of a dialectic problem ; the hounds are of two 
 kinds — the first, which are swift and light-footed, repre- 
 sent inductive reasons ; the second, which are slow and 
 strong, represent syllogisms. The parable is developed 
 to the utmost limits of ingenuity. The net is the faculty 
 of readiness in the choice of propositions and in uniting 
 them to the syllogism in order to be able to bring down 
 the game. A watch-tower is required to discover the 
 game, signifying that we must carefully examine the 
 object of the chase or investigation; and as the enclosure 
 in which the hunt takes place is dense and thorny, means 
 are offered for penetrating the thicket and clearing a path. 
 The allegory is finished with a full description of the 
 fields lying round the tower, and to each separate alle- 
 gorical figure Bruno applies the mnemonic rules suited 
 to it. The work concludes with an allegoric figure or 
 
THE UNIVERSITY OF WITTENBERG. 17 1 
 
 table of the supreme attributes of the Absolute, cut doubt- 
 less by Bruno’s own hand. These attributes stand within 
 a circle and round a sphere. They consist of Glory, 
 Bounty, Magnitude, Duration, Power, Wisdom, Will, 
 Virtue, and Truth. They are so arranged as to resemble 
 a modern scientific diagram of the various modes of 
 Power : heat, motion, sound, electricity, &c. They are, 
 as it were, rays of light from a sun ; each attribute occu- 
 pies the same, space as the other ; each stands in the 
 same relation to the Absolute (the centre or sphere) ; 
 and each is apparently interchangeable with every other. 
 
 A university, which is a private union of men engaged 
 in teaching and learning, was in the days of Bruno 
 purely ecclesiastical by nature ; and the University of 
 Wittenberg was the first to obtain precedence for the 
 Emperor instead of for the Pope. It was created on the 
 model of the venerable school at Bologna, and consecrated 
 in 1502, on the 1 8th of October, a day on which the 
 horoscope was drawn and discovered to be propitious. 
 St. Augustine was the chosen patron of the university, 
 and St. Paul was patron of the Theological Faculty. Dr. 
 Fleck, Prior of the Minorites, who preached the sermon 
 on the day of consecration, predicted that out of this 
 White Mountain (as he rendered the name of the town) 
 living waters of wisdom should proceed and spread over 
 the face of the earth. Six years later the prediction 
 began to be verified, when Martinus Luder of Mansfeld 
 entered his name on the rolls of the university. On the 
 1st of October 1517, Luther fastened to the doors of 
 the church of All Saints the celebrated ninety-five theses, 
 requiring, among other reforms, “ that Christians should 
 learn that if the Pope knew the extortions of dealers in 
 indulgences he would blow the Church of St. Peter into 
 the air with gunpowder rather than build it anew with 
 the skin, flesh, and bones of his flock,” and that “ the 
 true treasure of the Church is the most holy gospel of 
 the glory and forgiveness of God.” 
 
172 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 Such was that “ wisdom, of the White Mountain ” of 
 which Dr. Fleck was the harbinger. Before a fortnight 
 had passed Germany was ringing from north to south with 
 the theses of Luther, and a few weeks later they had 
 spread into Italy and Spain. The Priors besought him 
 not to disgrace his order ; and he answered in the words 
 of Gamaliel, ££ If this counsel be of men, it will come to 
 nought ; but if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it.” 
 Hieronymus Schurff, when walking early in November 
 with Luther to the Kemberg, said that no one in the 
 Christian world would endure it if he persisted in writing 
 against the Pope ; on which Luther answered, “ What if 
 they must endure it ? ” 
 
 Dr. Fleck wept with joy when he read the proclamation 
 of reform on the doors of the church. ££ He will accom- 
 plish this work,” he cried ; “ it is he for whose coming all 
 men look.” Leo. N. in his letters acknowledged Brother 
 Martin to be more prudent and ingenious than all his 
 opponents put together ; and the Emperor Max, openly 
 declaring the tenets of Luther to be worthy of respect, 
 was a joyful spectator of the opening of his struggle with 
 the priests. 
 
 It was said that for one in Germany for the Pope, there 
 were three for Luther. The profoundest scholar of the 
 Greek language, Philip Melancthon, a youth one-and- 
 twenty years of age, with a boyish and insignificant 
 exterior and with an extraordinary charm of manner, took 
 up his abode in Wittenberg in 1518. From that 
 moment the study of the New Testament was ardently 
 pursued, and Germany resounded with the fame of the 
 two reformers. A square of stone is still shown near 
 Leipsig, where, after a disputation, Luther and his com- 
 panions dined, surrounded by two hundred students 
 armed to the teeth. As a result of the disputation held 
 with Eck of Ingolstadt, who hastened to Rome to lay his 
 complaint against the reformer before the Pope, Luther’s 
 theses were ordered to be burnt, and he was himself pro- 
 
LUTHER. 
 
 173 
 
 nounced to be a dry branch, and one that could no longer 
 be permitted to abide with the true vine. The question 
 of Melancthon’s belief or unbelief was discussed at Rome 
 by the Pope and by Cardinal Bembo, the future Pope, 
 in full counsel and with the solemnity of an affair of 
 state. Meanwhile believers increased by hundreds yearly. 
 Luther retaliated on those who had publicly burnt his 
 theses at Ingolstadt and elsewhere by burning the Pope’s 
 bull before the Kreuzthor of Wittenberg, probably in the 
 very spot where the effects of the plague-stricken were 
 committed to the flames. “ As thou,” he is recorded to 
 have said to the Papal instrument of correction, “ hast 
 afflicted the saints of the Lord, so may eternal fire afflict 
 and consume thee ; ” and as soon as Luther left the spot 
 some hundred of the students joined in a Te, Deum and 
 in a requiem for the Decretals. The reformer defended 
 his action in a pamphlet in which he said he was ready 
 to justify himself “ in everything to every one.” He was 
 soon called upon to prove his words. The next year he 
 was required to appear before the Emperor and the 
 Imperial Diet at Worms, and he lay under the ban of 
 the supreme civil authority, joined to the interdict of the 
 Pope. Nothing abashed, he turned his time of imprison- 
 ment into consolation by revising the divine services and 
 translating the Bible, and his deserted people in Witten- 
 berg were gladdened at intervals by news of their leader 
 and by his vindication of himself in his glorious render- 
 ing of the 37th Psalm. 
 
 Indeed his presence was sadly needed in his own 
 town. As a consequence of the marriage of the priests, 
 disturbances had broken out ; celibacy was denounced out 
 of the very pulpits from which it had been preached, and 
 thirteen friars quitted the Augustine convent to become 
 plain citizens or students. On the 3d December 1521 
 the younger burghers, armed with knives, forced an entry 
 into the church during mass, seized the missals on the 
 altar, and drove away the priests. Two days later an 
 
174 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 attack was made upon the convent of the Minorites ; an 
 altar in their chapel was demolished, and such a defiance 
 fastened to their gates that the friars went in fear of 
 their lives, and begged protection from the soldiery. 
 
 The Elector called upon Melancthon, then only twenty- 
 four years of age, and upon three representatives from 
 the university, with a convention of Augustine friars, to 
 consider the question ; the partakers in rebellion were 
 sent to prison, and the Elector, who hesitated in sanction- 
 ing any change, saw himself forced to submit to anarchy. 
 The town rose, the churches were shorn of all superfluous 
 splendour, and a sect began to administer the communion 
 with reformed rites, raising meanwhile such an outcry 
 against learning and learned men, that the affrighted 
 burghers dared not send their children to school. It was 
 high time Luther should reappear. Against the will of 
 the Elector, but with a firm reliance on the help of God, 
 the monk returned and took the affairs of the town in 
 hand. A few months later the first copies of the New 
 Testament appeared, and the power of the Papacy was 
 broken. Henceforth the chaplains of the city were 
 free to marry, and the Elector himself provided the 
 game for the bridal table. The town-council, the 
 chapter, and the university joined issue and forbade the 
 Minorites to gather alms ; the older monks were sent to 
 nurse the sick, and the young monks were l’ecommended 
 to learn a trade. The very prince who, in 1518, had 
 written to Cardinal Rovere, “ It would grieve me to the 
 heart if errors were to arise and multiply within the 
 Holy Church,” was brought to receive the evangelic 
 sacrament, and to acknowledge at his death that in the 
 Lutheran doctrine he had found comfort and salvation. 
 Thus, through the example of Frederick the Wise, 1 the 
 strife came peacefully to an end, and while in many 
 foreign cities martyrdom was following fast upon adher- 
 
 1 Wittenberg im Mittelalter, von Beilage zur Allgemeinen Zeitung, 
 G. Stier, Wittenberg, 1S55 ; and Miinchen, Nov 7 8, 9, 10, 1883. 
 
LUTHER. 
 
 175 
 
 ence to Luther, it was in Wittenberg that the hour 
 struck for the Reformation, not of Northern Germany 
 alone, but of the whole of Northern Europe. 
 
 The Electors, who were charged with the defence of 
 the altar and the hearth, had placed themselves at the 
 head of the universities. As in England and in France, 
 Latin was the language of the schools and theology, “ the 
 divine omni-science ” still held undisputed sway. The 
 faith had been guarded with zeal by the members of a 
 Lutheran consistory. The Formula of Concord (which 
 was nicknamed the Formula of Discord) had been pro- 
 mulgated ; free examination of the Scriptures was rigor- 
 ously forbidden. The gentle conciliatory teaching of Mel- 
 ancthon was seized upon by a sect calling themselves 
 Philippists, and celebrated in invectives worthy of the 
 Philippics of old. Another party proclaimed a blind 
 allegiance to Luther. But the mantle of intolerance had 
 descended upon the Reformers ; and Bruno’s star in Wit- 
 tenberg was high, until it chanced that the Calvinists 
 got the upper hand of the Lutherans, who favoured the 
 Italian philosopher. While the Lutherans prevailed, 
 Bruno was suffered to teach, but the old Elector, the 
 father of the Concord, being dead, his son Christian 1 
 professed the teaching of Calvin, and Bruno, its desperate 
 opponent, saw himself compelled to quit the city. When 
 he arrived in Wittenberg in August 1586, some months 
 alter the accession of the Calvinist Prince Christian, 
 (Feb. 1 1, 1586), the two factions must have been already 
 at strife. By degrees the old order of things gave way 
 to the new, and in 1588 the chancellor promulgated a 
 decree by which the Lutherans were strenuously for- 
 bidden to molest the Calvinists on any point of doctrine. 
 It was at this period that Bruno determined to depart, 
 
 1 Born in 1560, this prince died the feeble and gluttonous son of a 
 at the age of thirty-one, and, an in- wise father, 
 stance of contrariety in Nature, was 
 
176 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 and on the 8th of March he pronounced the farewell 
 oration to the senate, an outline of which next follows : — 
 
 Valedictory Oration of Doctor Jordanus Brunus of Nola to 
 the Professors a 7 id Assemblage of the University of 
 Wittenberg , March 8, 1588. 
 
 Of the splendour of the sun (which is apparent to 
 the eye of sense), of the vastness of the universe 
 (which is assured to every rational being), and of the 
 power of God (which by the necessity of Nature we 
 perceive to be boundless), who would not fear to speak ? 
 For is it possible that Avords, which in this conjuncture 
 are but the signs and tokens of things, and of those 
 ideas which are either born within us or acquired by 
 experience, could do more than specify the presence 
 and evidence of objects ? It is, however, a worthy 
 and exalted task to celebrate the praise of wisdom, 1 
 even though, when we denote the clear shining of the 
 lig'ht, we do but darken it with obscure and feeble 
 words. Yet I look for your pardon ; and since fate 
 decrees we shall deal in words with that which is un- 
 speakable, let us bestow upon it what time and pains we 
 may. Yet will I praise it as far as in me lies ; although 
 the soul to which this majesty has been imparted is 
 below the measure of so lofty and sublime a conception, 
 and as I perceive it the more with the eye of my mind, 
 I am so much the more deprived of words, for I am one 
 without the common graces of speech. Still rather than 
 cause by silence the appearance of ingratitude, I would 
 be taken for a most unlettered speaker. 
 
 When the three goddesses were presented to Paris on 
 Mount Ida, that he might bestow the golden apple on 
 
 1 The praise of wisdom and the monstrous, crooked, humpbacked, 
 vision of wisdom are the themes of little old man,” this oration was 
 the oration. According to “ Hear- said to be a speech in praise of the 
 say,” which Eabelais describes as “ a Devil. 
 
VALEDICTORY ORATION. 
 
 1 77 
 
 her who was most beautiful, he stood irresolute, his eyes 
 and his heart distracted at the three presences. After 
 a lapse of time he cried in doubt, “ Each deserves the 
 prize ! 0 happy should I be, and worthy my judgment, 
 
 if the three goddesses were one divinity, or if the apple 
 were three ! Behold, here is majesty, not without beauty 
 and wisdom ; wisdom not wanting in majesty and beauty, 
 and beauty not without wisdom and majesty. O turn 
 away your eyes from me, or I am lost ! I cannot, O 
 Mercury, make choice of one when I see the goddesses 
 together ; to choose, I must judge each deity alone.” 
 
 First to the consort of Jove he cried, “ 0 admirable 
 divinity, radiant in queenly and awful aspect, thou alone 
 art worthy of Jupiter! What can exceed this majesty, 
 this divine glory ? I am now assured that I prefer her 
 before all others.” 
 
 “ Nay,” said Mercury, “ first let each goddess be 
 judged alone.” 
 
 Minerva now appeared. “ 0 sky, 0 sea ! ” he cried, 
 “ what maid is this in whom such terrible splendour is 
 united to such divine beauty ? What eyes ! 0 eternity, 
 what a countenance, and what a wondrous form ! What 
 is all Nature compared to this ? None other shall please 
 me better, and I will not give my judgment against such 
 excellence and glory.” 
 
 “ Consider,” said Mercury, “ the third goddess.” 
 
 As soon as she appeared he exclaimed, “0 Jupiter, 
 thou enchanter ! what a delight to the eyes, what wondrous, 
 ensnaring, captivating beauty ; how seductive and yet 
 how innocent is her smile ! Nothing, 0 Mercury, remains 
 to be said ! ” 
 
 “ Each goddess,” he replied, “ thou hast beheld and 
 judged. Deliver thy judgment.” 
 
 To whom Paris : “ The beauteous prize, the apple of 
 beauty, is allotted to the most beautiful.” 
 
 See then, friends, in what manner he judged each and 
 all of these ; she who was last was first with him, for at 
 
 M 
 
i 7 3 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 her singular presence and aspect the memory of that 
 beauty which was absent fell into oblivion. 
 
 This legend denotes that which befalls me and many 
 others when the question arises between desire and wis- 
 dom, or the giits of fortune and of fate. They bestow 
 the prize on Juno who aspire after high place, treasure, 
 principalities, kingdoms, and empires ; they seek Minerva 
 who prefer judgment, wisdom, and understanding before 
 all other gifts ; and such as love friends, comrades, a life 
 of ease, and the exquisite intercourse of beauty, will give 
 the prize to Venus. Now, although all and each of these 
 is by Nature pleasing to man, destiny has so provided 
 that man can by no means serve each of these three 
 deities faithfully, and therefore he cannot look for the 
 favour of each. To one, not to three, is his rightful 
 service due ; for the golden apple (which is the heart’s 
 desire) is not three, but one. Therefore, let those in love 
 give their service to Venus, for she is beloved of gods and 
 men. Let others pay homage to Juno, who with Jove is 
 the ruler of nations. Would you know who is the star 
 and goddess of my adoration ?’ What can I say of her ? 
 Have I beheld her unveiled and in her natural beauty ? 
 What mortal eye could look upon such beauty and such 
 majesty and live ? To see her is to become blind ; to 
 become wise by her is to be foolish. Have I seen her in 
 truth, or was it a dream ? I have seen her, and yet I 
 became not mad nor blind . 1 . . . For though she looked 
 upon me with a dark and threatening aspect (by which I 
 knew she was not Venus, but Minerva), she drew me to 
 her, and fettered me, as with a magic spell. And why 
 has that maid so forbidding an air ? I make reply, that 
 Wisdom is without either the charms of beauty or the 
 plenteous horn of wealth. True philosophers are few, 
 but princes and marshals are many ; and they who have 
 
 1 Parts of tlie speech are omitted The intrusion of words foreign to the 
 or transposed, on account of ob- sense has been carefully avoided, 
 scurity and repetition in the text. 
 
VALEDICTORY ORATION. 
 
 179 
 
 seen Venus and Juno in tlie fulness of their beauty are 
 more in number than those beholding Minerva clad and 
 in arms. For her appearance, her garments and armour, 
 she was equipped with a shining and terrible helmet, 
 which overshadowed the virginal sweetness of her face, 
 since no man is so defenceless that, having succeeded in 
 approaching her, he cannot the better repel the onslaughts 
 of fortune or bear them wisely. For since the life of man 
 on earth is but warfare, it is Minerva who foils the devices 
 of the ungodly, overcomes the proud, and frustrates the 
 deceiver. Thus did she vanquish FEgeo, and, fastening his 
 skin to her breast, she possessed a shield from danger 
 and a glorious ensign of her exploits : FEgeo, that almost 
 unconquerable monster, who, with the giants his fellows, 
 sought to overthrow the might of h eaven ; that son of the 
 earth, whose fifty heads breathed fiery flames, and whose 
 hundred hands were armed with fifty swords, in which 
 he trusted to subdue the adamantine gates, and with fifty 
 shields to quench the dreaded lightnings of death hurled 
 against him by Jupiter. In this war upon the giants 
 (who scaled the loftiest crags and hurled against heaven 
 such monstrous rocks that at their overthrow they came 
 forth like islands from the sea), Minerva would have us 
 learn how vain a thing is the very height of man’s power 
 against the truth of God ; and how vain, too, in the sons 
 of man are audacity, presumption, and the foolish ima- 
 ginings of ignorance.” 
 
 Next follows a description of the goddess’s helmet, 
 which is ornamented with a tuft of feathers, in order to 
 signify that we are not to put our trust in strength alone, 
 but at all times and in all places we are to show forth the 
 ornament of a courteous and quiet spirit. The cock with 
 outspread wings which adorns Minerva’s crest represents 
 the swiftness, vigilance, and foresight of the combatant ; 
 her keen-edged lance is his intelligence, ready for offence 
 and for defence ; while to them who oppose her she shows 
 the Gorgon’s head, for her formidable and admirable quali- 
 
GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 i So 
 
 ties are such as strike the beholder dumb with awe. 
 “ Who is she, moving like the dawn ? It is Wisdom, 
 beautiful as the moon, shining like the sun, and terrible 
 as a host arrayed for battle. Her throne, says the lyric 
 poet, is next the throne of Jove ; and, in the words of the 
 prophet, 1 I am Wisdom, and I dwell on the top of the 
 high mountains, and my throne is on a pillar of cloud.’ 
 On the outer part of the throne I beheld and saw engraven 
 an owl, which is her emblem ; for night is not darkness to 
 her, and for her the night shines with the light of day, 
 and my countenance is not hidden from her. . . . 
 
 “ And upon the surface of the throne, which is the 
 work of Vulcan, was a wondrous representation of the uni- 
 verse, which is the work of the gods, a plastic picture, 
 and underneath was written, ‘ He bestowed upon me the 
 knowledge of all living things, so that to me the disposi- 
 tion of the sphere of the earth is laid bare, the powers of 
 the elements, the beginning, the end, and the midst of 
 time, the sway of fate, the changes of custom, the course 
 and lapse of years, the order of the stars, the nature of 
 life, the deadly rage of beasts, the powers of the winds, 
 the thoughts of men, the variety of herbs, the virtue of 
 roots ; for that which is hid from others lies open for ever 
 before me. For mine is the sacred spark which is unity 
 and diversity ; which is subtle, certain, sweet, sharp, 
 learned, stable, benign, having all virtues, foreseeing all 
 things.’ I saw the palladium near the throne, and upon 
 it power and deliverance ; for a town having that statue 
 within its walls is safe from plunder and from the enemy. 
 She (Minerva) is a flash of light, the radiance of wisdom, 
 and if she participates in the government of a state, 
 she is its shield and its salvation. Now, therefore, if 
 you inquire of her descent, it is from Jove ; she has no 
 mother, for she sprang from the head of Jupiter, according 
 to the witness of the Orphic poets and the confirmation 
 of the prophets. Hence this saying, 1 1 came forth from 
 the mouth of Jupiter. Before the worlds were, I was.’ 
 
VALEDICTORY ORATION. 
 
 i S i 
 
 She is, as it were, the bi’eath of the power of God and 
 like a beam of the brightness of the Almighty. . . . She 
 is radiant, because she is a spotless mirror of the majesty 
 of God, and she is the emblem of his bounty ; she is all- 
 powerful, for she is unity, and she is able to accomplish 
 all things ; and enduring herself, she changes all things ; 
 she is all good, for she goes forth to the righteous among 
 nations, establishing the friends of God and the prophets ; 
 she is pleasing to God, since he loves them who love 
 wisdom ; she is incomparable, for she is more beautiful 
 than the sun ; and if we liken her to the light of the stars 
 she is still beyond compare. Those who behold her or 
 her similitude are filled with enchantment. Hear the 
 words of Solomon : ‘ I have preferred her before empires 
 and thrones ; riches are nothing in comparison to her. 
 There is gold and a multitude of rubies, but the lips of 
 knowledge are a precious jewel (Prov. xx. 15). How 
 much better is it to get wisdom than gold, and to get 
 understanding rather to be chosen than silver ! ’ ( ib . xvi. 
 16). She is an inexhaustible treasure of wealth, and he 
 who participates in her benefits attains the friendship of 
 God. And since in friendship all is for the common 
 good, he who has wisdom is rich. What can Juno 
 bestow which is not within the gift of Minerva ? What 
 are the beauties of Venus which thou canst not behold 
 in Minerva ? I have loved her with my whole soul from 
 my youth up. ... I have addressed myself to God, im- 
 ploring him ; I have called upon him out of the depths of 
 my soul, ‘God of my fathers, merciful Lord, thou who hast 
 made all things by thy word, and who hast created man, 
 according to thy wisdom, that he may rule over all the 
 creatures which thou hast made ; give me the consort of 
 thy throne, give me Wisdom, and do not despise thy 
 servant. Let her dwell with me, and work with me, 
 acquaint my heart with Wisdom, that I may know where 
 I am found wanting, and that which is pleasing to thee, 
 for she knows all and comprehends all things ; she will 
 
GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 182 
 
 guide my actions with circumspection, and I shall dwell 
 in her keeping.’ Of a certainty she is sent forth by the 
 Father of all ; she is a most fruitful spirit, and he sends 
 her forth ; but under what aspect ? Truly, in such wise 
 as our spiritual eye is able to discern, dimly, and as it 
 were in twilight. Like the sun, she is unapproachable, 
 inapprehensible, lost as in deep concealment and abund- 
 ance of light.” . . . This and the succeeding passage 
 repeat the opening of the oration. The three modes of 
 perceiving the visible sun are then compared with the 
 three inodes of perceiving the sun of intelligence — in 
 essence, in substance, and in activity. “ In the first, the 
 sun of the intelligence is called by the Cabalists Sephirot- 
 cochma ; in the second, Pallas or Minerva, receiving in 
 the third the universal name of Sophia. In the first 
 mode, wisdom is not acquired, nor imparted, nor compre- 
 hended, for it is removed from all things. Hear what 
 Job says : “ But where shall wisdom be found ? and 
 where is the place of understanding ? Man knoweth not 
 the price thereof, neither is it found in the land of the 
 living. The depth saith, It is not in me ; and the sea 
 saith, It is not with me. ... It is hid from the eyes of 
 all living, and kept close from the fowls of the air. 
 (That is to say, it is hidden from the sons of God, which 
 are the stars, and from the watery earths, which move 
 in the firmament and describe their course on high). 
 Destruction and death say, ‘ We have heard the fame 
 thereof with our ears. God understandeth the way 
 thereof, and he knoweth the place thereof.’ 
 
 “ In the second mode, Wisdom is apparent in the shape 
 and body of all things ; it calls upon man with a thou- 
 sand voices, and in all parts of the earth. For all things 
 — the stars, animals, all bodies, and their adornment — 
 are living voices of wisdom, the token and work of God. 
 They manifest the most high Providence, and in them, 
 as in a book, are written the wisdom, power, and bounty 
 of God. For the invisible being of God is perceived and 
 
VALEDICTORY ORATION. 
 
 183 
 
 recognised by that which he has created. Hear also 
 what the Psalmist saith, ‘ The heavens declare the glory 
 of God, and the firmament showeth his handiwork. 
 There is no speech nor language where their voice is 
 not heard. Their line is gone out to all the earth, and 
 their words to the end of the world.’ 
 
 “ In the third mode, Wisdom is implanted within the 
 spirit : established in the poop of the soul, guiding the 
 helm of the ship, which is tossed hither and thither on 
 the stormy waves of life. It is, moreover, the beacon of 
 a spirit moving on the face of the darkness. These three 
 abodes has Divine Wisdom : the first is not temporal, but 
 eternal, and the very seat of Eternity ; the second, or 
 first-born ( 'jorimogenitd ),* is the whole visible world ; a 
 third, the second-born, is the soul of man. Of the first 
 Job says, £ The Lord knoweth their dwelling-place.’ Of 
 the second, Solomon, £ I, Wisdom, dwell in the high 
 places,’ — that is to say, among the stars and in the 
 everlasting firmament. Of the third he says, £ I dwell 
 in counsel and in the consideration of the wise, and my 
 delight is to abide among 1 the children of men.’ Here, 
 then, among the sons of men Wisdom has built herself 
 a house of reason and design (which is after the world), 
 where may be seen the shadow and faint image of the 
 first temple of the Archetype and the Ideal, which is 
 before the world,” (united with) ££ the sensible, natural 
 image, the image according to the senses and to Nature, 
 which is the world. 
 
 ££ Here she has hewn for herself seven columns, namely, 
 the seven liberal arts, which are grammar, rhetoric (with 
 poesy), logic, mathematics, physics, ethics, metaphysics. 
 . . . Upon these seven columns Wisdom has built her 
 palace in earth ; first in Egypt, in Assyria, and in Chal- 
 daea ; next, under Zoroaster, with the priests of Persia ; 
 later, among the Gymnosophists of India, and with 
 Orpheus in Thrace ; descending among the Greeks upon 
 1 Unigenita (W. i. 261). 
 
GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 184 
 
 Thales and the other sages, among the Italians with 
 Lucretius, Archimedes, Empedocles, and others. And, 
 lastly, it is found among the Germans of our own times, 
 moving, with Jove and with the seal of empire, from east 
 to west ; 1 for it is the image of a celestial palace, which 
 follows the change and progress of the sun. 
 
 “ And yon, were you but to search the treasures you 
 possess, you would not think me proue to flattery, for 
 you are enlightened beyond all other nations. For since 
 your country attained to the imperial dignity, there have 
 been found among you many men great in art and in 
 inventive genius, the like of whom there is not among 
 any other people. Who is worthy to be compared with 
 Albertus Magnus the Suabian ? Is he not one greater 
 than Aristotle, whose secret disciple he was accounted ? 
 And who, ye gods, who shall be likened to Cusa ? Is 
 he not so much the greater because he is accessible but 
 to the few ? Had not his priestly trappings checked the 
 advancement of his soul, would he not have been, not 
 the equal of Pythagoras merely, but one far greater 
 than he ? ” 
 
 A panegyric is next pronounced upon “ the sublime 
 genius ” of Palingenius ; upon Paracelsus, “ that wondrous 
 physician, the rival of Hippocrates' — what would not the 
 gift of sober investigation have accomplished in him, had 
 he not given the reins to his fantastic humour ? I omit 
 many who followed and still follow the Greek and Roman 
 poets. Hath not Wisdom raised her palace among you ? 
 And let not kings envy kings the sacred knowledge of 
 the stars, that lofty glance of princes into heaven, which 
 went up, as it were, from vessels of divine wisdom among 
 the leaders of the early nations, according to the saying 
 of the poet Manilius, ‘ that kings were first deemed 
 
 1 “ Westward the star of empire spread from east to west, and it is 
 takes its way .” — Bishop Berkeley. from the moryen land, or eastern 
 
 This curious progression occurs countries, that the seeds of learn- 
 throughout Nature. Towns usually ing travel to the virgin soil of the 
 increase on the west side, colonies West. 
 
VALEDICTORY ORATION. 
 
 iS S 
 
 worthy to touch the high things nearest heaven and to 
 behold the fates linked to the moving stars .’ 1 
 
 “ For the Egyptians held Hermes Trismegistus and 
 others in veneration for their high offices and great 
 wisdom, placing them, when they died, on high among 
 the stars ; the Greeks also accounted Perseus, Cheiron, 
 and Hercules for constellations ; and in Germany there 
 are princes who guard the secrets of the stars. The 
 Emperors Charles V. and Maximilian, Rudolf, and the 
 kings of Denmark and Norway, Christian III. and 
 Frederick II., are not only the patrons, promoters, and 
 restorers of the science, but they are the depositors 
 of that which has been sepulchred for many ages, after 
 having flourished in the time of the Chaldeans.” Next, 
 the Landgrave William 2 of Hesse receives commenda- 
 tion, as one who sees with the eye of his own under- 
 standing, and perceives the justice of the Copernican 
 theory. “ Here, therefore,” he repeats, “ Wisdom has 
 built her house. Grant, O Jupiter! to the Germans to 
 know their own strength and to practise the virtue of 
 abstinence . 3 Grant them grace to aim at lofty things, 
 and they shall be not men, but gods. For the spirit of 
 this nation is divine, and vast its strength, when inclina- 
 tion goes hand in hand with study. But whom have we 
 passed by in silence ? Who but he, the mighty hero, 
 armed to the teeth with club and sword. He resisted 
 the devouring monster, half fox and half lion, that vicar 
 of the princes of hell, who by cunning and violence pol- 
 luted the world, and, under the cloak of divine wisdom 
 and of a simplicity which was pleasing to God, imposed 
 on men a superstitious and barbarous worship. Who 
 
 1 “ The stars above us govern our tion Aquila, “ the divine and heroic 
 
 conditions.” — King Lear. bird, which is the type of empire,” 
 
 2 William IY. of Hesse-Cassel to “ Germany, the wine - bibber,” 
 
 (1567-1592), the friend and protec- where “inns are more plenteous 
 tor of Tycho-Brahe. than rooms.” The cup, moreover, 
 
 3 In the Expulsion (W. ii. 212) we is dedicated by him to the service of 
 find Bruno banishes the constella- the Teutons (W. i. 247). 
 
GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 1 86 
 
 but he went forth single-handed to encounter that raven- 
 ous beast and to raise up the fallen and corrupted age ? 
 Whence came he ? From Germany, from the banks of the 
 river Elbe, from the abundance of the springs of living- 
 water. Out of the depths of Orcus, your Hercules drew 
 the monster with his triple crowns, triumphing over the 
 steely doors of hell, and over the city guarded by three- 
 fold walls, and enfolded nine times in the streams of 
 Styx. Thou hast seen the light, 0 Luther, thou hast 
 seen it ; thou hast heard the awakening spirit of God, 
 and hast not withstood it ; thou hast fought with the 
 adversary which dwelt safely among the mighty upon 
 earth : with the power of the Word thou didst encounter 
 and drive him back, and the trophies of the insolent 
 enemy thou hast laid at the foot of the throne of 
 God. 
 
 “ Here hath Wisdom built her house, here hath she 
 poured out wine for her libation, and here she bids all 
 men enter in to her supper, — Italians, and men from 
 France, Spain, England, dwellers in the East and in the 
 West, in the south country, and in the polar isles. 
 Among them, I came hither also, that I might visit this 
 palladium and behold this house of Wisdom, for whom 
 I suffer poverty willingly, with envy and hatred, and the 
 execration and ingratitude of those I was wont to serve 
 or desired to serve ; for they whom I loved turned upon 
 me, and those who owe me honour cast me off and 
 slander me. 
 
 “ But I will not be abased by insult, nor by the scorn 
 of the vile and ignorant ; for though they wear the garb 
 of men, at heart they are wild beasts and full of evil 
 and arrogance. Therefore I will not shrink from grief 
 and banishment, because labour aided me, and sorrow 
 gave me counsel, and out of exile came the lesson of 
 adversity ; for in the suffering which endures but for a 
 moment I have found length of rest ; out of my light 
 affliction came the fulness of joy, and in the barrenness 
 
VALEDICTORY ORATION. 187 
 
 of exile were the consolations of my kindred and my 
 country. . . . 
 
 “ For I came to you a stranger and a pilgrim, outlawed, 
 the sport of fate, small of stature, poor in fortune and in 
 defenders, oppressed by the hatred of the multitude, and 
 despised by the ignoble herd, who look for merit to be 
 ushered in amid the applause of their fellows, and with 
 sounding gold and tinkling silver. 
 
 “ You, 0 most learned, grave, and courteous senators, 
 do not despise me ; you have not rejected the Nolan 
 philosophy, which is not altogether alien to the philosophy 
 of your own nation. Nay, I had liberty to teach, and 
 for the space of almost two years I shared the protec- 
 tion of your domestic deities, and I received generous 
 entertainment at your hands. Lending no ear to my 
 enemies, you displayed the virtues of your courtesy and 
 forbearance to the whole of the world ; and when I signi- 
 fied my desire to depart, you came in numbers to hear 
 me ; not your youths only, but studious men and full of 
 academic honours. How, 0 Jove, shall I declare my 
 gratitude ? 
 
 “ Let me invoke the gods of the elements, the tutelary 
 deities of the stars and stainless skies. I beseech you, ye 
 nymphs, dryads, and hamadryads, dwellers in those woods 
 whose spicy roof-trees have so often yielded me shelter ; 
 and you, ye lawgivers like Numa, ye mighty emperors 
 and kings, ye poets like Virgil, ye orators like Cicero, 
 give your benediction to the land, and bid it bear laurels, 
 myrtles, clasping ivy, the juicy vine, the blessed olive, 
 and the palm of victory. Ye fauns, ye satyrs, and ye 
 sylvan gods, tend the fields, govern the plains, foster the 
 herds, and make the land fruitful ; not alone in heroes, 
 but in such blessings as crown the rich Campagna, Araby, 
 and the garden of the Hesperides. Ye, too, nymphs 
 and nereids of that stream on whose verge I could cry 
 peace and gladly breathe my soul into the air, keep 
 watch and ward over the land ; let the river run with 
 
GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 i S3 
 
 silver ; inlay her shores with gold, and bid her triumph 
 over the Nile, the Euphrates, the Tigris, the Rhone, the 
 Po, and the insolent Tiber. And thou, Eye of the World, 
 Light of the Universe, thou who turnest darkness into 
 light, return and bring this nation happier days, months, 
 years, and ages. And thou, Bootes, untiring guardian 
 of earth, thou who guidest Charles’s wain, and never 
 turnest thy watchful eye from man, deliver the land from 
 bears, wolves, lions, and all ravening beasts, which 
 wander in the darkness. And may the Omnipotent 
 Father of all, the God of gods, under whose sway is all 
 good and evil fortune, mine and yours alike, may he 
 answer and confirm our prayers.” 
 
( 189 ) 
 
 CHAPTER YIII. 
 
 “ That knowledge only which is of Being and the unseen can make the 
 soul look upwards.” — Plato. 
 
 Prague, 1588 . Helmstedt, January 13 , 1589 . 
 
 Immediately on pronouncing this oration Bruno quitted 
 Wittenberg, and the way by water being cheaper than 
 by land, he probably went by the Elbe to Prague, then 
 the seat of a purely German university and the residence 
 of the Emperor Rudolph II. The Nolan arrived in 
 Prague towards Easter 1588, but the records of the 
 university for this period are missing, and the exact date 
 of his matriculation is not known. He was no doubt too 
 sanguine in looking for liberty of philosophy as his right 
 in an age when it was not even accorded as a privilege ; 
 but the lingering and impressive words in which he paid 
 his tribute to the heroes of German science, and to Ger- 
 many as the country which had harboured him in happier 
 days, the memory he preserved of the trees in whose 
 shadow he had found repose, and of the stream on the 
 banks of which he had breathed liberty with the air, 
 prove his grateful spirit, and justify in some measure the 
 hope he entertained of finding comfort and employment 
 in Prague, such as he had received in Germany and in 
 France. Many circumstances might have assisted in pro- 
 curing him a welcome : the well-known inclination of 
 Rudolph II. for science ; the protection of the Spanish 
 ambassador, who was high in the Emperor’s favour ; and 
 the memory of Sir Philip Sidney, who may have assisted 
 the Nolan with letters to the court. Some twelve years 
 earlier Sidney had been sent by Elizabeth to this prince 
 
GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 i go 
 
 to communicate her condolence on the death of the Em- 
 peror Maximilian. The young Emperor was at that 
 period mild and humane, a lover of the arts, and pos- 
 sessed of more than a fair share of credulity. “ The 
 Emperor,” writes Sidney to Walsingham, who was then 
 the Secretary of State, “ is holy (wholly) by his inclination 
 given to warres, few of words, sullain of disposition, very 
 secrete and resolute; nothinge the manners his father had 
 in winninge men in his behaviour, but yet constante in 
 keeping them ; and such an one, though he promise not 
 much outwardly, but, as the Latins say, aliquid in recessu 
 — extremely spaniolated.” 
 
 Of Rudolph II. may be said what in alter times was 
 said of Frederick, Prince of Wales — “ His condescension 
 was such that it led him into very bad company.” At 
 this court the renowned Dr. Dee found refuge, and in 
 1584 he was permitted to dedicate a work on magic to 
 the Empei’or, who spent days in attendance on the cru- 
 cible or in the society of locksmiths. His nights were 
 devoted to drawing horoscopes, and he passed so much 
 time in the stables that he wore a groom’s dress to escape 
 observation. To this prince Bruno addressed a small 
 work, entitled One Hundred and Sixty Theses against the 
 Mathematicians and Philosophers of the Age, receiving a 
 counter-present of three hundred dollars. The dedication 
 breathes the intrepid spirit which had already so often 
 shown itself. Bruno once more announces it as his 
 mission to free the souls of men and to triumph over the 
 ignorance which accounts itself as learned ; he laments 
 the detestable strife of creeds, and he proclaims charity 
 and love to be the only true religion. 
 
 If, he said, the distinction between light and darkness 
 were recorded by Nature, that ancient conflict of opinions 
 for which generations have persecuted each other would 
 come to an end ; nor would man lift his hands to heaven, 
 thinking himself the sole possessor of the truth, and be- 
 lieving that God, though the Father and Giver of life 
 eternal to him, is an inexorable and cruel judge, the 
 
PRAGUE, 1588. 
 
 191 
 
 Avenger, who awards eternal death to others. Whence 
 it follows, that whilst the various races and sects of men 
 have each their own worship and discipline, every one 
 usurps for himself the highest place, and holds in con- 
 tempt the worship and discipline of others. Hence pro- 
 ceed wars and the breaking of natural bonds ; hence 
 those men who by means of imposture lift themselves on 
 high and give themselves out to be messengers from God; 
 hence the innumerable ills which afflict the world, because 
 of which it may be said that man is more hostile to man 
 than to all the other animals ; and hence the law of love 
 made known amongst the nations is now fallen into 
 neglect ; while men do not seek to practise that general 
 philanthropy which makes them love their enemies, and 
 likens them to God, who suffers his sun to shine upon 
 the good and upon the wicked, and the rain of his mercy 
 he showers upon the just and the unjust. “ This is the 
 religion,” he adds, “ which, without any controversy and 
 beyond all dispute, I observe, as well by the assured 
 resolution of my soul as by reason of the customs of my 
 country and of all nations.” The battle between light 
 and darkness, between knowledge and ignorance, rages 
 eternally ; but by the hand of truth and by the leading 
 of the light which is divine, the philosopher overcomes 
 hate and envy, clamour and insult, though in peril of his 
 life from the people, in themselves dull and void of 
 reason, and stirred up by the fathers who have graduated 
 in the senate of ignorance. He holds it right not to 
 yield to the habit of faith, but to doubt all things, even 
 that which others receive for established truth. For it is 
 contrary to the dignity of human freedom to follow the herd, 
 and he would look upon himself as ungrateful and unworthy 
 of the light given to him by God if he came forth except 
 as the adversary of the rusty learning of the schools . 1 
 
 1 Berti, who cannot be called a fess himself the follower of a Christi- 
 friendly critic, says of this dedica- anity which is found in all religions, 
 tion, “ Here Bruno appears to pro- and therefore excludes none.” 
 
192 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 It will be remembered that in the farewell address to 
 Wittenberg, the name of Rudolf is mentioned by Bruno 
 with praise ; and the Emperor himself, though he ranked 
 among what are called the Middlings by a late English 
 writer, was ready to help genius, partly no doubt from a 
 shrewd disposition to help himself ; for he was one of 
 those princes “ whose lofty glance searches the skies ” 
 (Or. Valed ), and to the secrets of astrology and alchemy 
 he looked for the good fortune which fate denied to his 
 talents. Great wit, we are told by the poet, is nearly 
 allied to madness, and astronomy is not far removed from 
 astrology. “ Nature,” wrote Kepler, “which has conferred 
 upon every animal the means of subsistence, has given 
 astrology as an adjunct and ally to astronomy;” and it would 
 have been a hard matter had the Emperor, among the 
 crowd of charlatans and magicians by which his court was 
 infested, not lighted upon some names likely to give it 
 lustre. Tycho Brahe, who is called by Bruno the prince 
 of the astronomers of his time (JDe Mon. 167), was per- 
 mitted to follow his calling in Prague ; and here the great 
 Kepler spent eleven years in developing his poetic theories 
 on the universe. How far he was indebted to the studies 
 of his predecessor it is hard to say. A letter is extant 
 (Galileo Opere Compiute, vol. viii. p. 59) in which Martin 
 Hasdale intimates to Galileo the regret of Kepler for 
 having omitted in the Nuncio Siclerco 1 to make “ lauda- 
 tory commemoration ” of the Nolan. 
 
 Bruno did not arrive at the court of Rudolph II. 
 
 1 In another letter, written by 
 Dr. Brengger, and dated 7th March 
 1608 ( Joannis Kepleri Astronomi 
 Opera Omnia, ed. Frisch, vol. ii. p. 
 591), we find, “They write of Bruno 
 prunis tostis, which I take it is that 
 he was burnt ; is this certain, and 
 when and for what reason ? Tell me, 
 for I have compassion for him.” 
 On the 5th April Kepler replied, 
 “ I know from Wacker that Bruno 
 was burnt in Rome, and that he 
 bore the anguish with fortitude, 
 
 declaring that all religions are vain, 
 and that God is one with the 
 world, the circle, and the point.” 
 'When this extravagant assertion 
 reached Brengger, he shrewdly re- 
 plied, “ What advantage could 
 Bruno reap from enduring torments 
 for the sake of such crazy imagina- 
 tions ? ( insania ). If there exists no 
 God to avenge wickedness, as he be- 
 lieved, could he not with impunity 
 have feigned one and so saved his 
 life ? ” 
 
THE “ LULLIAN ARCHITECTURE .” 
 
 193 
 
 altogether unbefriended. Attracted by the doubtful fame 
 of the Emperor, and hoping no doubt that astronomy and 
 the art of Lully might receive the welcome given by the 
 court to the occult sciences, Bruno, moreover, had a right 
 to expect that his name would be known at Prague, where 
 Fabrizio Mordente (on whom it will be remembered the 
 Nolan had written a laudatory pamphlet two years before) 
 held the post of astronomer- royal. Accordingly we find 
 that the dedication of two small Latin works on the Art 
 of Memory was accepted by the Spanish ambassador San 
 Clemente, “ to whom,” says Bruno (Gfr. 604), “ the Art 
 of Lully was dear.” 
 
 These small divided chapters on mnemonics, or “ mne- 
 monic proposals,” were printed as Bruno moved his 
 quarters, partly to explain his system and to aid his 
 pupils at the various academies, aud partly to bring 
 the art as he pursued and developed it into public 
 notice. Substantially they contained little that was new. 
 The Lullian Architecture was presented under different 
 aspects and with fresh dedications to suit its various 
 patrons ; but in this instance, the little work sent into the 
 world under cover of the envoy of Philip II. was the same 
 at all points as that printed at Wittenberg under the 
 title of the Combinatory Lamp of Lully , except for the 
 addition of a few fresh pages by way of dedication and 
 preface. The Art of Lully, the improvement of which 
 had occupied the whole of his life, was, in Bruno’s opinion, 
 a wrondrous specific for purifying and strengthening the 
 memory, for reviving the invention and for furthering 
 description and argument. Accordingly, a forest, a hunt, 
 game, hounds, nets, arms, every symbol was employed to 
 rouse the interest of his pupils in this epitome of the 
 universe. The science of Lully is raised on one founda- 
 tion, which is eternal or universal, and tends to one end, 
 which is the Being of beings. Thus it forms a circle, the 
 beginning and end of which is God. This idea of Being 
 will be found to lie at the base of Bruno’s calculations ; 
 
194 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 lie divides it into nine, perhaps in honour of the Muses, 
 perhaps because Dante wrote of nine sciences and 
 Ptolemy accepted nine heavens ; and Bruno looked to 
 the Grand Art to display at a glance the unity of Being 
 and its branches. 
 
 He held thought to be a representation within us, the 
 inner writing of that which is written by Nature in out- 
 ward things. These, though exterior to us, are reflected 
 within us ; and our power to receive them and to arrange 
 them is the same as the power of Nature, which receives 
 within itself and reflects in its bosom shadows of the vast 
 and glorious reality which is one with God. 
 
 The city of Prague, however, offered the wandering 
 scholar no inducement to lengthen his stay. The comfort 
 and encouragement of pupils, so dear to his heart, were 
 denied him, and after six or seven months (Doc. ix.) he 
 soon found it advisable to quit the city. 
 
 He left Prague towards the close of 1588, and making 
 halts by the way, of which no record is left, he turned 
 his steps towards Helmstedt, in the hope of finding 
 succour and advancement in the flourishing academy of 
 Julius. The university in which Bruno next tried his 
 fortune was then the newest of the great German schools. 
 Founded in 1576 it soon became the rallying-point of 
 Protestantism. Its professors, animated by the liberal 
 spirit of their patron, Duke Julius of Brunswick- Wolfen- 
 biittel, taught the new doctrines with enthusiasm. On 
 entering upon their course they had to reckon with cer- 
 tain antique prejudices ; but these once overcome, fair 
 sailing under royal auspices began. 
 
 In a few imperious words the old Duke had signified 
 his intention to break loose from the thraldom of the 
 theologians. “ We will not,” he said in conference on 
 the 6th of July 1 582, 1 “ be ruled by the theologians, for 
 they, as well as we, are subject to the will of God. He 
 
 1 Bodemann in his article on Duke ZeitscTirift f. dcutsche Culturge- 
 Julius of Brunswick in Muller’s schichte, vol. i., 1872, p. 197-238. 
 
HELMSTEDT, 1589. 
 
 L95 
 
 does not purpose to fill tils mansions on high with theo- 
 logians only, nor did he die for them only, but for 
 all men upon earth, without distinction or differ- 
 ence ; heaven is for us as well as for them. More- 
 over, we declare them to be as far asunder from each 
 other as heaven and earth, since there is not one of them 
 can dwell in love and harmony with his brother, but each 
 and all strive after the world and the goods of the world, 
 following in many things the thoughts and desires of 
 mortal men. We, however, are not minded to be ruled 
 by theologians who stand with one foot in the pulpit and 
 the other in the Duke’s council-chamber. These doings 
 are not for us, and we eschew them, and we admonish all 
 other princes from our soul to resist the theologians to 
 the death, lest the land be given over to war and blood- 
 shed. For churches are neither built nor maintained by 
 haughty and envious misdoers ; and the hearts of these 
 theologians are full of hatred and malice, while they 
 strive to establish the formula of concord among their 
 neighbours.” It is one of the strange contradictions of 
 human nature that the distaste of this prince for bigots 
 stopped short at his own person. A passionate Lutheran, 
 it was in order to protect his people in their youth from 
 the inroads of the Papacy, and to ground them firmly in 
 the tenets of the Lutheran Church, that he founded the 
 university, over which he watched with deep and unre- 
 mitting care, relaxing his naturally miserly habits in 
 order to provide munificently for the foundation, and to 
 furnish it with a costly library ; although it was spitefully 
 said by a professor of the neighbouring town of Marburg 
 that the Duke set up his school as much from opposition 
 to the views of his late father, who was a bigotted 
 Catholic, as to aid the Reformation. The Duke rested 
 neither night nor day till the benefits of learning were 
 secured to his people. The university soon became noted 
 as the resort of princes and of many distinguished 
 foreigners. Its delightful situation between the banks 
 
196 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 of the Lower Elbe and the Weser, the fame of its pro- 
 fessors, on whom, since they held a six months’ contract, 
 the rust of the schools could scarcely fasten ; above all, the 
 freedom allowed to the reformed religion, combined to 
 attract a numerous and wealthy concourse of students. 
 
 Unfortunately the time arrived too soon for the re- 
 formed Church to arrogate to itself not merely spiritual 
 but temporal dominion. The history of theology became 
 the history of the German universities, and while at Tub- 
 ingen all heads were busy with the ubiquity of Christ, 
 the ruler of Helmstedt made a solemn declaration “ that 
 he could not endure a Calvinist ; nay, had his consort 
 a son who was a Calvinist, he should be disowned and 
 called the offspring of the devil.” Stern Protestant as he 
 was, Duke Julius was not without liberal sentiments. He 
 sought to pass a law favouring the Jews ; and he per- 
 mitted his heir, then a lad of fourteen, to become Bishop 
 of Halberstadt, where he was inducted with the full Papal 
 rites, while at the same time two younger princes sub- 
 mitted to the tonsure in return for church-lands which for 
 some time had been alienated from the ducal family of 
 Brunswick. 
 
 In 1589 the University of Helmstedt supported fifty 
 professors and had matriculated some five thousand 
 scholars. On their installation the professors were re- 
 quired to take an oath to “ maintain concord and peace 
 among their fellows, to hurt no man’s dignity, and to give 
 no occasion for discord ; and (which God in his mercy 
 forbid) should matter for dispute arise, to do all things 
 possible for the fulfilment of the true end of the law, 
 which is peace, and brotherly affection.” In what spirit 
 these excellent recommendations were followed, the history 
 of the University of Helmstedt (Henke, Georg Calixtus 
 und seine Zeit , Halle, 1853) remains to prove. Eye and 
 brain alike weary in following the trivial contentions 
 which lacerated the academic body ; for these learned 
 professors were distracted by vanity and intolerance, 
 
HELMSTEDT, ijSg. 
 
 197 
 
 and completely given over to the proverbial qmrelle alle- 
 mande. 
 
 At the turn of the year Bruno was in Helmstedt, where 
 he matriculated on the 13th January 1589. 1 After the 
 lapse of a few months, on the 3d May 1589, Duke 
 Julius died, and the Nolan was again thrown upon his 
 resources by the death of a protector. The academy 
 appointed four days, from June 8 th to the 1 ith, on which 
 to deliver funeral orations in memory of its founder; and 
 Bruno, on account of the favour shown him by the late 
 Duke, was permitted to join in this ceremony. His 
 oration at the close of the proceedings was shortly after 
 printed. On the 1st of July, before the assembled 
 university, he pronounced his eulogium on the Duke, 
 praising the propitious fate, which, after he had suffered 
 many adversities and much tribulation for the cause 
 of truth, had at length brought him to a land of 
 liberty. “ Remember, 0 Nolan ! ” he cried, “ remember 
 that when, torn from thy country, thy labours, and thy 
 friends, thou wast an exile for love of truth, this country 
 received thee as a citizen. There, thou wert exposed 
 to the fang of the Roman wolf ; here, thou art a free 
 man. There, thou wert the bondsman of a vain and 
 superstitious worship ; here, thou art encouraged to follow 
 the rites of a reformed religion. There, thou wert dead 
 under tyranny ; here, thou art alive under the rule of a 
 
 1 It has been affirmed by several 
 biographers that Bruno was called 
 by Duke Julius from Prague in order 
 to act as tutor to the heir-apparent. 
 No evidence of this fact is forth- 
 coming, although it is quite possible 
 that Bruno may have given the 
 Prince, then twenty-five years old, 
 instruction in astronomy and in the 
 Lulliau system of mnemonics. The 
 words of Bruno in the opening of 
 the funeral oration, “Not chance, 
 but Providence brought me hither,” 
 seem to prove that he did not arrive 
 at Helmstedt on the invitation of 
 the Duke. 
 
 The following is a copy of the 
 entry of matriculation as it is given 
 by Professor Sigwart : — 15S9, Jan. 
 13.- — Jordanus Brunus Nolanus, 
 Italus. — M. Justus Meierus Nonio- 
 magus, Geldrus, Grat.” 
 
 No other person was entered on 
 that date : the word Grat. denotes 
 that the reception of the person 
 against whose name it stands, was 
 free of expense. Inquiry made at 
 Wolfenbuttel results in a courteous 
 reply from Dr. Yon. Heinemann, 
 the Ducal librarian, that there are no 
 unpublished documents relating to 
 Bruno in that place. 
 
GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 19S 
 
 gentle and lramane prince, and loaded with favour and with 
 honours. To him, as to thy true sovereign, thy protector 
 and thy benefactor, thou shalt fulfil the obligations im- 
 posed on thee by thy gratitude. Here the Muses, whose 
 freedom is ensured by the law of Nature, by the right 
 of nations, and by the just demands of civilisation, dwell 
 in peace and liberty under the safeguard of a high-minded 
 prince ; while in Italy and Spain they are trodden under 
 foot by a vile disorderly priesthood; in France they are 
 subjected to the evils of civil war; in the Netherlands they 
 are cast down and afflicted, and in other regions of Germany 
 they languish miserably.” 
 
 Henry Julius, who now ascended the throne, was that 
 Bishop of Halberstadt who, according to a preacher of 
 the time, by receiving the tonsure had been sacrificed to 
 Moloch. The liberal education which the old Duke had 
 never enjoyed he was careful to give to his son, and the 
 fame of the young prince’s learning had spread to all the 
 courts and universities in Germany. The strife of the time 
 and the dissensions of creeds, which, we are told by Hazlitt, 
 sharpen the understanding and brace the will, had their 
 due effect upon his nature. He had experimentalised in 
 alchemy till he had thoroughly searched out its weakness; 
 theologic quarrels, the favourite pastime of princes of that 
 age, had no charm for him; he learnt thirteen trades; 
 he was a better writer of original German plays than any 
 of his contemporaries, according to the historian Gervinus; 
 and he was learned alike in Greek philosophy and in 
 Roman law. Connected by marriage with the more luxu- 
 rious courts of England and of Denmark , 1 he loved state; 
 and he expended the resources husbanded by his father in 
 raising palaces and public buildings, and in maintaining 
 a large army. 
 
 Eighty dollars “ of that country ” (Doc. ix.) were 
 handed to Bruno in token of the young Duke’s thanks for 
 
 1 Henry Julius was present at the of Denmark, with James VI., No- 
 marriage of his sister-in-law, Anne vember 23, 1589. 
 
HELMSTEDT, OCTOBER 6 , ij8g. 
 
 199 
 
 tlie oration. But, in placing his reliance wholly on the 
 protection of Henry Julius, the Nolan proved to be 
 reckoning without his host. “ Where Lutheranism pre- 
 vails,” Erasmus wrote, “ letters are destroyed ; ” and the 
 fury of the contending sects in Helmstedt ran so high, 
 that to be a lover of antiquity meant to be no Christian, 
 while the hope of the Church was held to be irreconcilable 
 with learning. All the ducal patronage did not avail 
 against the carping spirit of the doctors and schoolmen. 
 On the one side was the Nolan breathing defiance, and 
 on the other the army of place-hunters to whom the rules 
 of grammar and the ceremonies of the Church were more 
 vital than the whole of the law and the gospel. These 
 men repaid tenfold the scorn and intolerance which 
 Bruno openly professed for them. The opinion of the 
 many was, he said, the judgment of fools; a dangerous 
 sentiment in one keenly sensitive to attack and persecu- 
 tion, and forced to cope single-handed with the world. 
 
 Some months after the funeral of Duke Julius, Bruno 
 came into collision with Boethius, then pastor of the Evan- 
 gelic Church ; and on a Sunday morning the unfortunate 
 philosopher found sentence of excommunication had been 
 pronounced upon him from the chief pulpit of the city. 
 
 All that is known of this matter appears in the following 
 letter now preserved in the archives of Wolfenbiittel : — 
 
 “Most Illustrious and most Reverend Master Pro-Rector, 
 — Jordanus Brunus, the Nolan, excommunicated by the 
 chief pastor and superintendent of the Church of 
 Helmstedt (who constituted himself judge in his own 
 cause, and did himself execute his own sentence delivered 
 against an adversary who was not permitted to respond in 
 his own defence), humbly protests before your magni- 
 ficence, and before the potent and reverend members of 
 your senate, against the public execution of this private 
 and most iniquitous judgment. He demands to be heard, 
 that he may judge whether the attack made upon his 
 person and reputation is just ; for, in the words of Seneca, 
 
2CO 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 ‘ He who delivers judgment, and hears but one side, 
 though he judge justly, is not just.’ 
 
 “ Therefore he entreats your Excellence to summon the 
 reverend pastor, and to examine and see whether (if it 
 please God) he can establish his cause, and prove that in 
 invoking the thunders of the Church he had regard not 
 to any private malice, but to his duty as a shepherd and 
 to the welfare of his flock. — Helmstedt, Oct. 6, 1589, 
 written in the hand of Jordanus Brunus.” 1 2 . . . 
 
 It would seem to follow from the sentence of excom- 
 munication that Bruno had formally joined the Church of 
 Helmstedt. This is scarcely more likely than that he 
 joined the Church of Geneva. In spite of his panegyric 
 upon Luther at Wittenberg — inspired perhaps by a fellow- 
 feeling for one against whom every man’s hand was raised, 
 rather than dictated by sympathy for the theologian — he 
 not only did not accept the dogmas of Protestantism, but 
 jested at them openly. Certain formalities, even in our 
 own time, are essential to matriculation, and with these he 
 must proformd have complied, or he could not have looked 
 for subsistence in any university town. There could have 
 been no other ground of adhesion to the reformed religion; 
 and the danger of the excommunication of course lay in 
 the fact, not that Bruno was not permitted to attend the 
 church, but that to forbid his attendance was to attack his 
 existence, since his pupils would fear to attend his lessons. 
 
 In Helmstedt he appears to have occupied himself in 
 working out a new and connected scheme of his philosophy, 
 on a basis rather mathematical than metaphysical ; and 
 here he probably began his work on the Threefold Minimum , 
 in April 1 5 90. For from the first book it appears that he 
 was still at Helmstedt during the festivities attending the 
 marriage of the Duke; 1 and having chosen two of his works, 
 on the Threefold Minimum and on the Monad , to mark his 
 
 1 The date and signature only are said by Dr. Yon Ileinemann to be in 
 the hand of Bruno. 
 
 2 The marriage took place 011 the 19th of April 1590. 
 
ATTACKS UPON PRIEST AND GRAMMARIAN. 201 
 
 gratitude to Henry Julius, so it remained for a third to 
 serve him as an instrument of vengeance on the offending 
 theologians. The poem Dc Immenso, published in 1591 
 at Frankfort, contains countless thrusts at two individuals, 
 called the Priest and the Grammarian, for whom, in all 
 probability, Boethius and Hofmann had sat as portraits ; 
 and here is the key to the mystery, and the clue to the 
 disappearance of the daring herald of the Copernican 
 theory from the limited horizon of Helmstedt. The point 
 of dispute was the constitution of the heavens, but the 
 quarrel was embittered by matters pertaining to earth. 
 “ It is,” Bruno wrote from Frankfort, in that array of 
 Latin hexameters and prose notes upon conceptions of 
 unity, number, quantity, and space to which he gave 
 the name of De Immenso, — “ It is true that the dust and 
 ashes of honest thinkers weigh more upon the balance 
 than the souls of such as falsify the words of the great 
 (Copernicus), maintaining that the heavens stand still while 
 the earth moves, but not the moon and all the other stars.” 
 
 With a pardonable want of civility, he exhorts the 
 cobbler to stick to his last (p. 266 ; P. I. p. 1 73-1 74 ; 
 B. iv. c. 10, p. 399, &c.), and finally calls in plain terms 
 upon his two enemies to abstain from compromising their 
 dignity by meddling with matters which they did not 
 understand. It was no doubt a hardship that Boethius, 
 the instigator of Bruno’s excommunication, should have 
 put forward another ecclesiastic to accuse the philosopher, 
 allotting to himself the part of judge in the cause, with- 
 out giving ear to the Nolan’s defence, and, so far as we 
 know, without answering his demand for satisfaction ; and 
 Bruno, whose stormy spirit exulted in strife, was not slow 
 to take vengeance. 
 
 In this forcible and well-merited attack upon peda- 
 gogues and theologians, Boethius appears as the neotericus 
 and reverendissimus, the latter a title bestowed upon him 
 by Bruno in his letter to Hofmann. The Grammarian is 
 once entitled Rector, which points to the intolerant Hof- 
 
202 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 mann, who was rector of the Helmstedt University ; one, 
 according to Bruno, not less ignorant in grammar than in 
 philosophy, and whose hide was scarcely fit for leather 
 (P. i. 175)- The Protestant zealot, Daniel Hofmann, to 
 whom Bruno’s letter was addressed, was then pro-rector 
 and professor of philosophy ; and, beginning life as a 
 student in philosophy (a science which, later in life, he 
 considered the enemy of religion), he comprehended all 
 philosophers in his hatred of their calling. In 1578 he 
 became doctor of divinity, and he was soon known as 
 the chief of a rancorous intolerant party calling themselves 
 Hofmanniani. He first came into notice when the Duke 
 intrusted him with the task of refuting the Formula of 
 Concord at the colloquy of Quedlinburg. One of the 
 vulgar indestructible species which, from time immemorial, 
 have oppressed and tortured the lonely forerunners of 
 progress, he spent his time in battling with the doctrine 
 of ubiquity and the confession of faith ; and when attack- 
 ing the scholastic philosophy, he declared that Aristotle 
 favoured Pelagianism, and that many matters true in 
 philosophy were false in religion. 
 
 It is satisfactory to know that Bruno’s accusers, some- 
 what later, fell severally under the censure of the govern- 
 ing body. Boethius incurred formal condemnation. As 
 a result of one of the countless quarrels upon the ubiquity 
 of Christ, he was called before the General Consistory 
 held in March 1615, and there admonished “never to 
 commit himself in such wise again, and to hold that 
 learned assembly in greater respect than heretofore ; ” 
 with no salutary result, however, for the next year brought 
 him once more under censure. 1 
 
 1 The students were careful to at times against the professors, when 
 follow the turbulent examples set by it became necessary to call in the 
 their pastors and masters. In 1590 help of the law to settle their differ- 
 Caselius of Rostock found their ences. In 1601 Hofmann was called 
 manners open to severe reproof, upon by the Duke himself to make 
 They were said to be soldiers rather a formal recantation of his errors, 
 than students ; lubberly and quarrel- and to apologise to two of his oppo- 
 some youths ; the elders bullying nents, after which he was bidden to 
 the younger, and the whole uniting quit Helmstedt for ever. 
 
FRANKFORT, 1590. 
 
 203 
 
 The results of Bruno’s protest against the tyranny of 
 Boethius and Hofmann are easy to divine. We have 
 it on his evidence that he remained u about a year ” 
 (Doc. ix.) in Helmstedt ; which would give him at least 
 three months in that city after his excommunication. 
 Deprived of the power of lecturing at the university, he 
 saw his livelihood slowly ebbing from him, and having 
 entered on a mortal combat with powers above his own, 
 no choice was left him but to depart. 
 
 He appeared at Frankfort, which was his next resting- 
 place, towards the middle of 1590; and, though some 
 time must have been consumed on the journey, it is 
 scarcely likely that he quitted Helmstedt before April or 
 May of that year. The rancour of the theologians may 
 have passed out of his mind when “ beholding,” in the 
 words of Milton, “ the bright countenance of Truth in the 
 quiet and still air of delightful studies,” although the 
 stress of his poverty must sooner or later have recalled 
 him to himself. In the midst of all peril and difficulty, 
 however, he preserved a grateful remembrance of the 
 younger Duke. While at Frankfort in 1591 he dedicated 
 his book Of the Monad to Duke Henry Julius, and on 
 leaving Frankfort for his ill-timed journey to Venice, he 
 committed to the hands of the printer, Wechel, his 
 finished manuscript of the Threefold Minimum, with a 
 recommendation that it should also be dedicated to the 
 Duke. These dedications and his eulogium ( [De Trip. 
 60, 80) on the occasion of the prince’s marriage remain 
 as his thanks for the hospitality of the German prince. 
 
 “ Behold, 0 Divinity ! the earth’s best possession ; be- 
 hold the son of Julius, issue of the antique kings who 
 vanquished the nations of Europe, overcame the sultry 
 empires of Lybia, the vast lands of Asia, and gave back 
 to Germany the trophies wrested from her by the arms of 
 Rome.” The high-flown verse then calls down blessings 
 on the Duke and on his royal bride, Elizabeth, the sister 
 of Anne of Denmark, who, “ even when entwined with 
 
204 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 garlands at the festival of hymen,” are adjured to remem- 
 ber their lofty estate, to entertain projects worthy of their 
 heroic race, and to fulfil the duties of their calling with 
 wisdom and moderation. These compliments, vague and 
 high sounding as they were, set their seal upon the fate 
 of Bruno. Before the tribunal of the Inquisition he was 
 charged with the offence of “ composing books in which 
 he had praised the Queen of England and other heretic 
 princes ; ” and in the margin of the ninth document of 
 his trial in Venice the ominous words ££ who was a 
 heretic ” stand against the name of Henry J ulius, Duke of 
 Brunswick. 
 
( ^05 ) 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 “ The persuasion that there is indeed a Sovereign, the Upholder of the 
 worlds, rejoices the soul of the sage, and causes him to despise the 
 fan of vulgar souls, which is death .” — De Immense). 
 
 Frankfort , July 2, 1590. On the Threefold Minimum. On the Monad , 
 the Innumerable , the Immense , and the Unfigurable. On the 
 Composition of Images, Signs, and Ideas. 
 
 As soon as a certain quantity of Ms work was ready for 
 the press, Bruno set off for Frankfort, then the capital 
 of the German book-trade. Towards the end of the six- 
 teenth century it was so difficult to obtain scarce volumes 
 that copies were still made by hand . 1 A book printed in 
 Oxford was to be had in London only at great trouble 
 and expense ; and to buy books printed abroad agents 
 from London attended the yearly or half-yearly fairs at 
 Frankfort, Leipsic, and other places on the Continent. 
 
 Italian booksellers came to Frankfort to exchange their 
 own literary productions and those of other Italian presses 
 against the work of the German printers, and from Frank- 
 fort catalogues of books issued and spread over Europe 
 like so many precious chronicles of literary progress. 
 
 The fairs at Frankfort were held at Easter and 
 Michaelmas, and the quantity of books which changed 
 hands was so great, that, in the words of an eye-witness , 2 
 
 1 The work on the Composition should travel towards the kead- 
 of Images, Signs, and Ideas was quarters of the booksellers, 
 probably finished, and a certain 2 Relatione della Corte e State del 
 part of the book on the Minimum Serenissimo Ferdinando Maria, da 
 appears to have been written, in Conte G. Gualdo Priorato. Leyden, 
 Helmstedt. With so much work on 166S. 
 hand, it was natural that Bruno 
 
2c6 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 writing some half century later, “ it was in truth a feast 
 for the Muses, so many and so marvellous were the boohs 
 displayed at this fair.” Estienne, in his encomium upon 
 Frankfort, writes, “ Let the Italians visit these antique 
 fairs, and say whether the Germans are not accomplished 
 in other things beside the mechanical arts ; let them look 
 at home, and see whether they possess any show to equal 
 these fairs.” 
 
 On the 2d July 1590 an entry occurs in the record 
 of the town-council of Frankfort-on-the-Main, 1 in which 
 Bruno petitions for permission to live in the house of the 
 printer Wechel. 2 This was peremptorily refused by the 
 Burgomaster, in the following terms : — 
 
 “ Thursday , July 2, 1590. — Since Jordanus Brunus 
 Nolanus, philosophise naturalis studiosus, entreats to be 
 graciously permitted to spend several weeks in the house 
 of Johann Wechel, printer 3 . . . Resolved his request 
 shall be refused and he required to go and earn his bread 
 elsewhere.” 
 
 The excommunication of Boethius, informal as it was, 
 perhaps designated Bruno as an enemy, and by follow- 
 ing him to Frankfort may have warned the community 
 against him. Refuge in the house of Wechel having 
 been denied him, the convent of the Carmelites gave him 
 shelter ; and here, at the cost of Wechel, he spent about 
 seven months, while his books were printing, cutting 
 with his own hands the explanatory figures, and engaging 
 to be responsible for all corrections. Here he made the 
 acquaintance of the booksellers who went twice every year 
 to the Frankfort fair, some of whom were lodged in the 
 
 1 Book of the Burgomaster, No. correctors for the press during that 
 
 160, p. 48. period. Earlier in the century (1542) 
 
 2 The family of Wechel were Rabelais was employed in this man- 
 
 known to Sir Philip Sidney. ner at Lyons for the house of Sebas- 
 
 3 With regard to Wechel’s plan tian Gryphius, and Aldus of Venice, 
 of lodging Bruno in his own house, Froben of Basle, Estienne of Lyons, 
 it was common to the great printers with the home-bred Wechel, prided 
 thus to secure the services of scholars, themselves on nourishing and sup- 
 Many illustrious names appear as porting men of letters. 
 
FRANKFORT, 1590. 
 
 207 
 
 monastery. Among these were the two Venetians Ciotto 
 and Bertano, who afterwards gave evidence at the trial. 
 According to the deposition of Bertano (Doc. vii.), the Prior 
 of the Carmelites of Prankfort declared Bruno to be a man 
 “ of fine intellect and of great knowledge, but of no religion 
 whatever, so far as he knew,” adding that Bruno had said 
 he possessed more learning than the Apostles, and that 
 he had “ the power, if he pleased, to make the whole 
 world of one religion.” He was described as “ busied 
 with writing for the most part all day long, or in going 
 to and fro, indulging in subtle inquiries, wrapt in 
 thought, and filled with fantastic meditations upon new 
 things.” He was also said to have held “ heretical con- 
 ferences ” with heretic doctors upon the Lullian art of 
 memory. 
 
 We have thus a fair picture of this period in Bruno’s 
 life. Among the friars he enjoyed complete liberty ; 
 cheered, in the words of Milton, by the thought that by 
 “ labour and intent study (which he took to be his portion 
 in this life), joined with the strong propensity of Nature, 
 he might perhaps leave something so written to after 
 times as they should not willingly let it die.” Such 
 hours as were not devoted to writing, to correcting 
 for the press, or cutting explanatory figures in wood, 
 were given to conferences with pupils, and to philoso- 
 phic and literary discussions in the booksellers’ shops, 
 then the centre of literary progress. In Frankfort, as 
 in London, he found expression for his profoundest 
 thought. 
 
 Early in 1591 four Latin works, on the Threefold 
 Minimum, on the Monad, on Immensity , and on the 
 Composition of Images, Signs, and Ideas, went to press, 
 and attest this period of literary activity. 
 
 In these works Bruno advocates that metaphysical medi- 
 tation which perceives in the all-penetrating spirit of the 
 universe the last and supreme unity of the sum of 
 souls, which, according to their particular disposition, do, 
 
20S 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 by mutual separation or combination, represent the soul 
 of the world, as by a like separation or combination 
 corporal atoms or monads represent the life or body 
 of the universe. Each monad exists by itself ; in each 
 monad the universe is reflected ; in each is its owxl 
 centre ; and thus there are as many centres of the 
 universe as there are worlds, stars, living creatures, 
 and living hearts, and these are in number infinite. 
 Finally, the thinker will discover that the soul, the life 
 penetrating all monads, that moving primitive power 
 which animates all monads in ascending and descending 
 gradation, is no other than the substance of substances, 
 the monad of monads, God (D^ Trip. Min. p. 85). 
 
 Bruno’s view of metaphysic truth and its application to 
 the new doctrines of science appears in the Italian books 
 printed by Yautrollier in London, and in the Latin series 
 printed by Wechel. While writing Italian, Bruno’s style 
 may be called clear and simple, even when dealing with 
 abstract ideas ; but in Latin, he gave the reins to his 
 poetic fancy, using Italian forms, and too often violating 
 the rules of verse. Abstract ideas, in themselves hard 
 to grasp, are disguised in Latin hexameters ; and these, 
 added to the abundance of poetic images and allegoric 
 figures crowding upon his mind, create considerable con- 
 fusion and obscurity. Still these works are said by 
 Professor Carriere to contain the philosopher’s best and 
 ripest thought. “ The great doctrine of Copernicus,” he 
 writes ( Allgemcine Zeitung , October 20, 1868) “ released 
 him from the thraldom of tradition ; he had cast off the 
 bonds by which the world of thought was enslaved, and 
 his glance pierced even to infinity. He was the first of 
 the philosophers to perceive the necessary result of this 
 teaching, and it was this which drew upon him the scorn of 
 Scioppius, scorn which in truth is now returned tenfold to 
 its author. In these works God is displayed in the uni- 
 verse, a conscious, real, ruling existence.” “ Although,” 
 says Brunnhofer, “ investigators of to-day may smile at 
 
FRANKFORT, 1590. 
 
 209 
 
 certain of Bruno’s theories, yet there is an enduring charm 
 in these extraordinary poems ; for the unity of the 
 universe, the interrelations of the life of the earth and 
 the stars, and the close connection in the processes of 
 the mind and body, never found an exponent so poetic 
 and so intellectually gifted as Bruno. Towards the 
 close of his work the poet-philosopher is borne aloft on 
 a flight of inspired verse, dictated by the enchanting 
 beauty of the universe and the sublime order of its 
 laws.” 
 
 In contrast to this criticism it should be remembered 
 that certain of Bruno’s biographers find his Latin poems 
 especially dull, unintelligible, and obscure. “ For getting 
 a strong impression that a skein is tangled,” says George 
 Eliot, “ there is nothing like snatching hastily at a single 
 thread and perhaps none of Bruno’s works demand more 
 patience in unravelling than the three books printed in 
 Frankfort. It is to the patient and affectionate care 
 of Bartholmess that we owe their revival from the dust 
 of three centuries. He speaks frankly of Bruno’s ti’eat- 
 ment, of his shocking disdain for the rules of prosody, of 
 the haste and negligence of the composition, of number- 
 less faults in taste ; he even repeats the criticism of 
 Brucker, “ more obscure than night,” and of Heumann, 
 “ a theatre of fantastic shadows,” with the addition, “ he 
 has four times more imagination than good sense.” The 
 subject, however, of the sequence of Latin didactic poems 
 is plain, and it is plainly stated by the author. Bruno 
 approaches truth, the subject of speculation, the vast and 
 eternal object of all science, under three separate terms 
 or titles, On the Threefold Minimum and Measure ; On the 
 Monad, Number , and Figure ; and On the Innumerable, the 
 Immense, and the Unfigurable. 
 
 Bruno’s aim in the works of this series is to show 
 that mathematics, and indeed all the sciences, have for 
 their basis the Minimum or the point, the Monad or 
 
 o 
 
210 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 unity. It is in tlie first instance essential to understand 
 that by the Minimum or Monad, as by spiritual sub- 
 stance, the philosopher defines a force, not a body ; and 
 these terms are used by him the one for the other, 
 as where he says (and here Leibnitz follows him) that 
 God is the Minimum or Mouad above all things ( De Min., 
 P- 10). 
 
 Science proceeds from the Minimum, which is immea- 
 surable and indivisible, because it is small, to bodies 
 capable of measure and division ; and from these to the 
 immensity of the universe, which, by reason of its great- 
 ness, is immeasurable, without number, and without figure. 
 Thus we have the infinitely little on the one hand and 
 the infinitely great on the other, and between these ex- 
 tremes there are finite comparative gradations, each of 
 which tends towards the infinite, either by small and 
 slender qualities or by immensity ; such are the three 
 degrees of Bruno’s encyclopaedic ladder, which, he says, 
 “ are revealed by Nature; they are contemplated by the 
 reason, and they are upheld by God in all things.” 
 
 Thus “ the unity of the republics of the world is 
 declared to us, of that boundless monarchy which is 
 swayed by the Infinite Prince and Ruler. . . . Neither 
 sense, nor words, nor things, neither that which is com- 
 pounded, nor abstract, nor simple, nor that which is 
 physical, nor that which is mathematical, nor that which 
 is divine, nor bodies, shadows, and souls ; not one of these 
 is incomprehensible to him who possesses a just apprecia- 
 tion of littleness, greatness, and immensity. For these 
 three terms comprehend the three modes in which being 
 makes itself manifest, that being which, under all form and 
 in every degree of existence, is one and the same, the very 
 substance of things, for ever immutable in reality, yet in 
 appearance for ever subject to the inconceivable variety 
 of change” (Preface to the Monad). “The Monad is 
 not extreme littleness alone. It is the germ of grandeur ; 
 
THE MINIMUM— THE MONAD. 
 
 211 
 
 it is the point, the atom, unity, a minimum of force, the 
 invisible foundation of things visible, of matter and 
 spirit, and of the Maximum (Ibid.) 
 
 The Monad is the Maximum reduced to its primary 
 condition, and the Maximum is the Monad amplified to 
 infinity. The one touches and resembles the other, as 
 the drop of water touches and resembles the ocean. The 
 one encloses and produces the other ; the one is the 
 beginning and the end of the other. Without the 
 Monad there could be no Maximum, and nothing could 
 exist. So the Monad is the point of departure and 
 basis of physics and mathematics. Not the forces and 
 elements only, but space and dimension testify the 
 existence of a Monad, a physical and mathematic unity, 
 in essence metaphysical and divine (De Min., p. 16). 
 The Unity of unities, the Monad of monads, the Being of 
 beings, is the Minimum (p. 109). 
 
 By the grace of this Supreme Being, all things are 
 one and all things have their being. If God, the 
 Optimus Maximus, is the Minimum, he is the Maximum 
 also ; or rather lie is not the one and he is not the other, for 
 in him all is unity. He, who is all possibility, is neither 
 great nor small, nor simple, nor multifold ; in him all 
 things are comprehended, with all spaces and dimensions. 
 But inasmuch as the Divinity is the substance of sub- 
 stances, the being of beings, the cause and condition of 
 all things, he may be distinguished by us as the Minimum 
 or Monad (De Min., p. 10). 
 
 With this wide signification of the term Bruno attri- 
 butes to it a vast number of effects. As the veritable 
 point, the Minimum is not only the unique principle of 
 the line, of the surface, and of the body ; it is a living 
 point ; it is the radical molecule of the body, the formative 
 principle of body and soul alike. (This teaching is 
 directly derived from Cusa and Plotinus, as will be seen 
 by a reference to Ueberweg (History of Philosophy, vol. 
 ii. p. 23.) “And since the Minimum is comparable to 
 
212 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 tlie point, it is above all things (He Min., B. i. c. 2) 
 comparable to the point which generates the circle, to the 
 centre. The circle, the sphere, is an expanded centre, 
 and the centre is no other than a closed circle; and 
 these two forms and motions manifest the identity of the 
 power and the act, of possibility and reality.” 
 
 The first book, after proving the existence of the Mini- 
 mum, declares that all things are circular in their motion, 
 which is practically the same as the doctrine of the Cause 
 that the centre of the universe is everywhere and its cir- 
 cumference nowhere. The reader is furthermore expressly 
 warned never to confound the Minimum, as it is apparent 
 to the senses, with the simple absolute Minimum (B. i. 
 c. 9). 
 
 A great part of the second book is occupied with the 
 circle. We are once more emphatically told that the 
 true circle is not more apparent to the senses than the 
 point. The smallest is the substance of all things and 
 of infinite greatness. Where the Minimum is not, there 
 is nothing ; it bestows existence on things, for without 
 it there is neither number nor species. Annihilate the 
 Minimum, and the greatest is annihilated also ; for the 
 Minimum determines the basis of increase and decrease, 
 and thus of all formation. 
 
 j (This was the view of Aristotle, who said, “ The nature 
 
 1 of everything is best seen in its smallest portions ; ” and 
 Lord Bacon, in his Natural History (Exp. 98), writes as 
 follows : “ The knowledge of man hitherto hath been 
 determined by the view or sight, so that whatsoever is 
 invisible, either in respect of the fineness of the body 
 itself, or the smallness of the parts, or of the subtlety of 
 the motion, is little required. And yet these be things 
 that govern Nature principally.”) 
 
 The Minimum is chosen for the object of contempla- 
 tion because it is easier for the reason to grasp a small 
 object than one that is immeasurable. The Minimum has 
 no parts, for there is nothing smaller than the smallest ; 
 
THE MONAD. 
 
 yet in itself it is great, because it is tlie basis of all 
 greatness. It is not in its essence determinable by the 
 comprehension, for it is one, indissoluble, impenetrable, 
 incomposite, and not subject to composition ; but by join- 
 ing itself to its like, the compounded material world is 
 originated. Although the Minimum in itself is but one 
 (p. 62), it is infinitely varied in its manifestations. 
 Matter is incapable of producing two figures or two lines 
 precisely alike 1 (c. 5). All created things are unceasing 
 in their motion ; all things move, as the waves of the sea 
 move ; and, like the sea, all things submit to the regular 
 alternations of ebb and flow (p. 69—70). Through this 
 universal mutability, intelligent substance preserves its 
 permanence and identity (p. 70— 73). 
 
 “ They are fools who dread the menace of death and 
 of destiny, for all things in the stream of Time are sub- 
 ject to change and are unconquered by it ; and this thy 
 body, neither as a whole nor in its parts, is identical with 
 yesterday. The substance of the limbs passes away and 
 is renewed, and yet the unchangeable essence dwells 
 within the heart amid the changes and chances of 
 life.” 
 
 “ The Minimum has no body. It is indivisible by any 
 force of Nature. Lightning cannot devour it, nor flame 
 consume it, for it is indestructible, like the elements of 
 the body, among which it dwells at peace. It is the 
 indivisible, unchanging essence, dwelling in separable 
 unchanging parts.” “ Order and place, and the use 
 of the parts, change constantly, but the Minimum, the 
 indivisible essence, is tranquil and immutable.” “ The 
 Minimum is the veritable essence and basis of things, 
 
 1 It is a doctrine of the philo- points, but after much time spent in 
 sophy of Leibnitz that two things searching the garden, was forced to 
 cannot be exactly uniform (Nou- own he was beaten. It is not pos- 
 veaux Essais, Avant propos). He sible, Leibnitz adds, to find two 
 then proceeds to tell a story. In the drops of water or milk which are 
 garden of the Electress Sophia at exactly the same when seen through 
 Herrenhausen, a gentleman thought the microscope, 
 he could find two leaves alike at all 
 
214 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 not composed , but composing.” “ Life is the expansion 
 or unfolding of the centre. The Minimum is the 
 source of life and growth, until the time is fulfilled 
 when the spirit retreats to its centre, and thence to 
 the world of the infinite. This we call death, be- 
 cause the light after which we strive is covered ; but 
 some there are who know this life in the under-world 1 is 
 death, and dying the awakening of true life. Yet do 
 not all men ascend from the prison of the body ; for, 
 succumbing to that solidity and compounded mass, and 
 devoid of divine flame, they are cast into the dungeon of 
 darker abysses.” 
 
 i “ Thus the spirit, in obedience to unseen law, clothes 
 itself with the atoms, shaping for itself limbs as for the 
 prison-house of death. The spi rit pours itself forth into 
 . the whole of_tke hody, until it withdraws from the web 
 ! of its weaving and from the slumbering substance into 
 I the core of the heart, and passes out into the incorporeal 
 i air.” 
 
 “ The distinctive character of the soul is unity, indivi- 
 sibility, and their sequence, incorruptibility ; and this pre- 
 rogative is from God himself, the Soul of souls” (p. 74). 
 £C For plurality is in unity, and number is in the Monad, 
 and infinite extension is in the point ; and substance, 
 which is the foundation and basis of the body, changes 
 its form, but does not cease to exist ; how much less, 
 therefore, shall the soul be subject to mortality ?” (Book i. 
 chap. 3). 
 
 The third book aims at establishing a sound method for 
 deducing all science from a small number of self-evident 
 truths, of which the following is one: “All greatness 
 poceeds from the Minimum, and is resolved into the 
 Minimum.” 
 
 (The identity existing in various phases of the Monad 
 is designed as indifferentism in the school of Schelling, 
 
 1 “ This earthly load 
 
 Of death called life, which us from life doth sever.” — Milton. 
 
THE MONAD. 
 
 215 
 
 by which Schelling desired to show that object and sub- 
 ject, nature and spirit, the real and the ideal, are identical 
 in the Absolute. The original indifferentiated unity or 
 indifference is said to pass into the popular opposites of 
 positive or ideal, and negative or real, being. The negative 
 or real pole is Nature. The positive or ideal pole is spirit. 
 Bruno’s doctrines upon the Coincidence of Oppositions and 
 the spiritual character of matter reappear in this phase 
 of Schelling’ s philosophy.) 
 
 The fourth book describes the manner in which the 
 Monad is developed and multiplied. Part of the last 
 dialogue of the Cause (W. i. 288) is occupied with some- 
 what similar reasoning. The fundamental harmony (Be 
 Min., 132) of things is displayed in geometry; for the 
 line, the triangle, and the circle are one in the eyes of 
 him who is able to grasp the coincidence of dimensions, 
 or the inner virtues of the point. 
 
 The fifth book treats of measure, and the last chapter 
 is full of allusions to the art of Lully. Bartholmess, who 
 does full justice to the thought, ingenuity, and brilliant 
 learning displayed in this poem, does not pass over its 
 incongruous sallies of wit, and its ponderous allegorical 
 interpretations ; but he is careful to call attention to the 
 passages in which Bruno recommends moderate doubt to 
 lovers of philosophy (B. i. c. 2), whom he exhorts to walk 
 with sure and well-ordered steps (B. i. c. 4) ; to clear 
 the ground of all prejudice before seeking to raise the 
 temple of Truth ; to determine the relation of the senses 
 to the understanding and the reason (p. 20) ; and to 
 establish the fact that the senses do not deceive him who 
 is careful to limit them to the objects with which they 
 correspond (B. i. c. 2). 1 
 
 1 “ The sight does not deceive consequently a false appreciation of 
 us ; none of the senses deceive, any position proceeds not from the 
 The eye does not possess the innate eye, but from the mind .” — Alfred 
 faculty of appreciating the relative Binet : La Rectification des Illusions 
 position of bodies in space, and, per Vappel aux Sens. 
 
2l6 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 In conclusion, Bruno strives to demonstrate that the 
 soul is the animating principle, not only of the spiritual 
 I substance, but of the body, and that it is in some sort the 
 very architect and central point of the body (p. I 3) ; and, 
 | finally, he proclaims in impassioned language the inef- 
 faceable character of the soul, its absolute simplicity, its 
 indestructible substantiality, its immateriality, and, as a 
 consequence, its personal immortality. The formative 
 power of the soul and its general pre-eminence is the 
 .leading characteristic of this work. Man’s place in life is 
 I between the divine and the earthly ; he is a link between 
 } the ideal and the real ; sharing in both and uniting in 
 I himself two natures. He is eternal, and in his wandering- 
 through space he receives all forms. He is wondrously 
 devised, and being divine, he passes into God, overcoming 
 all things that he may be in God and with him, and 
 striving after the infinite because God is infinite, immea- 
 surable, and everywhere. The soul is an individual, a 
 thinking monad, the rule and shape of the body. We 
 are what we are by means of the invisible substance of 
 the soul ; for c onst ant attraction, reception, and ejec- 
 tion of the atoms occurs round an active all-present 
 ‘centre^ 
 
 In birth and generation the controlling spirit expands 
 from its centre, the heart, to the outermost portals of 
 sense ; and in death the spirit contracts, departing by the 
 same way and by the same gate of entrance. Thus birth 
 is extension of the centre ; life is a constituent part of the 
 sphere ; death is contraction into the centre. “ And herein 
 is proof of the immortality of the soul ; for the power and 
 essence, the principle and member of harmony, which 
 wondrously builds up the body, orders it and gives it 
 animation — this can be no lower in dignity nor meaner in 
 its destination than the body, the substance of which we 
 know to be eternal and imperishable, even when reduced 
 to dust or cast into the deep of the sea.” 
 
THE MINIMUM. 
 
 217 
 
 “ And learn 
 
 That what of us was taken from the dust 
 Will surely one day to the dust return ; 
 
 And what the air has lent us,- Heaven will hear 
 Away, and render back its own to air.” — Lucretius. 
 
 These works, printed in Frankfort, consisting of a series, 
 the first upon the Minimum, the second upon the Monad, 
 and the third upon the Innumerable , the Immense , and the 
 Unfigurable , are dedicated to Duke Henry Julius. Before 
 Wagner collected and printed Bruno’s Italian writings, 
 this was his only known work on philosophy. In the 
 seventeenth century it was looked upon as his most 
 important achievement. Yogt says of the series, “ This 
 is the rarest of Bruno’s rare books.” Zimmermann, a 
 warm admirer of the Nolan, dedicated his book Scriptura 
 Sancta Copernicans to Duke Rudolf Augustus of Brunswick, 
 in the hope of persuading that prince to reprint the 
 Minimum and its sequel. “ It is,” Zimmermann wrote, 
 “ a wise and profound book, full of fire, faithful in depict- 
 ing Nature, and formerly patronised by Duke Henry Julius 
 of Brunswick.” It was the pious object of Zimmermann to 
 show that the laws of Kepler and the theories of Copernicus 
 were once under ducal patronage, and ai’e at no time 
 contrary to Scripture ; and Bruno is distinguished as one 
 of the noblest and most steadfast disciples of the astronomer 
 of Thorn. 
 
 Another Zimmermann (J. J.), in a book entitled Dis- 
 sertatio de Atheismo J. Bruno Nolano impacto, remarks 
 that Bruno’s memory is wronged by those who look upon 
 him as a heretic and an atheist. Readers with a sense of 
 humour will be amused to find that Zimmermann defends 
 Bruno 1 against a charge of Spinozism , which is as much 
 as to say he was not affected by the ailments of posterity. 
 
 1 This series of Bruno’s works Played Out from the Candle-Bearer. 
 apparently served for the basis of It is, moreover, interesting to Eng- 
 the Comic History of the States and lish readers to trace the influence of 
 Empires of the Sun and Moon, by Bruno on Huyghens, of whose Cos- 
 Cyrano de Bergerac, who has been motheoros (1695) Newton spoke with 
 shown to have borrowed his Pedant admiration. 
 
2 1 3 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 Many pages convey in verse passages from the books 
 published in London, and Bruno appears to have desired 
 that the Minimum should contain the quintessence of 
 his doctrine. Berti considers the metrical form of this 
 work a “ grave impediment,” and he pronounces the 
 Frankfort works to be inferior to the Italian in many 
 respects, “ especially with regard to the order and pre- 
 cision of the expositions, and the vigour and efficacy of 
 the dialectic connection.” “ Nevertheless,” he adds, “ the 
 book is of exceptional value ; and in places it surprises 
 and startles the reader with its profound thought, with 
 its wealth of imagery, and with the language and bearing 
 of prophecy assumed by its author when announcing the 
 renewing of science, policy, and religion on the terrestrial 
 globe.” The work is pronounced to be “ a metaphysical 
 and cosmological epopceia. intermingled with episodes 
 in which he (Bruno) delineates his own character with 
 singular precision and faithfulness ; ” and, piercing the 
 grandiloquent style which Berti assumes as poets do their 
 singing-robes, it is pleasant to see a gleam of pity for 
 the troubles of the philosopher. “ Who does not gather 
 the whole of Bruno’s life,” he continues, “ from the fol- 
 lowing extract ; his love of philosophy, his labours for it, 
 the perils he overcame, the journeys undertaken by him, 
 and the ends for which he strove ? ” “ Many there be,” 
 
 the Nolan cries, “ who desire Philosophy, but few there be 
 who seek after her ; and these few put off in their ships 
 from the mother country, commit themselves to the 
 waves, spread their sails, and very soon the little bark 
 is in the midst of the sea, and full of fear lest the tem- 
 pestuous wind should deliver it to the mercy of the ocean. 
 Or they encounter and overcome other perils by land ; 
 mountains, rivers, and deserts present themselves, fall of 
 snares and ambuscades ; and they are grievously per- 
 plexed, ill-lodged, or, worse still, they are overtaken 
 by the night. Through dark valleys, over inaccessible 
 mountains, they fly from inhospitable nations, and seek 
 
PERSONALITY OF THE POET. 
 
 219 
 
 shelter in the caves of wild animals. Returned to Italy, 
 in a little while they set forth to seek a better fortune ; 
 they quit the Tiber, the Arno, and the Po ; they pass the 
 Alps, the Rhone, and the Garonne ; they cross Navarre 
 and the Pyrenees, and the superb waters of the Tagus ; 
 and behold them on the shores of ocean, beyond the pillars 
 of Hercules, sailing towards nations whose day dawns 
 to westward of us, and their setting sun is in our east ; 
 and this to attain the fountain of wisdom, understanding, 
 and learning. Thus they lavish the inheritance of their 
 forefathers and the flower of their age ; they keep the 
 watches of the night ; they visit the monuments of anti- 
 quity to share the sacred poetic frenzy and to acquire the 
 fame and splendour of the disciples of true wisdom.” 
 
 Brunnhofer, when giving a German version of this 
 passage, points out that in places it is a literal transla- 
 tion from the Expulsion (W. ii. 193). 
 
 Fiorentino’s 1 uncivil comments on the “ distinguished 
 Berti ” (who first noted the passage) is in amusing con- 
 trast to the gravity of the other historians. “ Bruno 
 had no inheritance from his father ; far from it ! He 
 did not cross the Pjmenees nor the Tagus, and therefore 
 the passage does not apply to him ; and to say otherwise 
 is to place his character in a light which is sinister and 
 contrary to all historical accuracy.” “ En quoi,” says 
 Rabelais, “ cognoissez vous la folie anticque ? En quoi 
 cognoissez vous la sagesse presente ? ” And it may be 
 broadly stated that few men write history in hexameters, 
 while poetic license is a form of antique folly omitted in 
 the studies of Signor Fiorentino. 2 
 
 1 Jordani Bruni Nolani. Opera 
 Latine Conscripta rccensebat F. Fio- 
 rentino. Naples, 1879. In the 
 Italian preface, p. 38. 
 
 2 Professor Sigwart, one of the 
 most enlightened of Bruno’s critics, 
 promptly administers a correction 
 to Fiorentino. “ Why,” says Sig- 
 wart (Gottingische gelehrte Anseigen, 
 5th and 1 2th Jan. 1S81), “is there 
 no order in Fiorentino’s reprint ? 
 
 Why is the numbering of the verses 
 omitted '? Why is the second part, 
 Be Immenso, printed before the 
 first ? Why are there semicolons 
 for commas ? Why are there seven 
 errors in Latin in nineteen lines ? ” 
 A continuation of this work, printed 
 at Naples (18S6), contains Be Um- 
 bris Idearum, Ars Memoriae, Cantus 
 Circceus. 
 
220 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 The series is written in hexameters in the manner of 
 Lucretius, interspered with prose notes and illustrations. 
 “ The first part aspires towards the truth ; the second 
 searches it out somewhat uncertainly ; in the third the 
 truth is found and declared. The first book is surpassing 
 in understanding, the second in speech, the third in 
 matter. The first discloses our innate qualities ; the 
 second, that which comes by hearing ; the third, that 
 which we obtain by discovery ; and the whole represents 
 truth, goodness, and beauty.” 
 
 The second in the series, the Monad, is chiefly interest- 
 ing to the historian of astronomy. It contains a quan- 
 tity of astronomical, mythological, and astro-theological 
 mottoes and verses, with illustrations in prose, discovering 
 the state of the science in the interval between Coper- 
 nicus, Kepler, and Galileo. 
 
 A commentary on the doctrine of the Pythagoreans, 
 it is composed of eleven chapters, explaining the secrets 
 of numbers and figures, and their office in the scheme of 
 creation. The powers and forms of Nature, and even 
 those of the moral world, are arbitrarily forced into 
 numerical tables, related to the Lullian encyclopaedia. 
 Thus two stands for the two souls of man, one which is 
 animal, the other intellectual. Three represents the three 
 perfections of God, Power, Wisdom, and Love, with the 
 three principles of the Pythagoreans and Platonists, Unity, 
 Truth, and Goodness. Four is an unlucky simile, for 
 Bruno attributes to it great perfection, “ because among 
 all the learned nations the name of God is spelt in four 
 letters.” Nine is the natural symbol of wisdom, “ where- 
 fore the Latin poet recommends authors to preserve their 
 writings in desks for nine years,” and so forth. Who 
 would divine that beneath this grotesque surface lie a 
 number of true, beautiful, and powerful ideas, waiting, 
 like seeds in the earth, to be released by favouring in- 
 fluences ? 
 
 Of Tycho Brahe Bruno speaks in his expansive style 
 
UPON IMMENSITY. 
 
 221 
 
 as “ most noble, and the prince of the astronomers of 
 his age” (p. 1 66). At the same time he advances his 
 own claim to the discovery that the fixed stars have 
 their proper motion, and that stars of the first magnitude 
 are not necessarily fixed within equal distances of each 
 other, coupling this with the assertion that ten years later 
 Tycho Brahe announced the discovery as his own. But the 
 point most striking in this work and its sequence, is the 
 strength and tenacity with which Bruno strives to unite 
 his conception of the Divine presence with the immensity 
 of the universe, insisting continuously that so great a 
 Being must possess a dwelling in consonance with his 
 grandeur, a vast and immeasurable palace, which is the 
 living universe ; while the order and harmony of the starry 
 skies, the even and apparently intelligent progress of the 
 flaming orbs, bear witness that these are but ministers 
 and heralds of the infinite and glorious presence of God. 
 
 Infinity, which is true and living, is before the eyes of 
 man, shining like the sun, and, like the sun, too glorious 
 for mortal gaze. From the nature of the Divinity, as the 
 reason is compelled to conceive it, Bruno proceeds to 
 argue the infinity of the universe ; if God is eternal, if his 
 years and his deeds are without end, then the stars are 
 innumerable and the universe infinite (De Inn. 173). 
 But Bartholmess points out with justice that reason can 
 conceive God to be the source of repose, as well as the 
 source of action, if we suppose, as we must, his will to be 
 absolute in his independence. 1 The universe is immense 
 
 1 It will be remembered that her children will be able to predict 
 Bruno held free-will and necessity how under certain given circum- 
 to be united in God in the following stances each child will act. Their 
 manner : — free-will is a necessity, because it is 
 
 God is all good ; without goodness a result of their character. In the 
 he is not God. His will is goodness ; same manner, but in a far higher 
 goodness is necessary to him ; and degree, God knows the hearts of 
 thus his will and his necessity are men. To one who beholds the 
 one. sources of character and springs of 
 
 Our free-will and our necessity action a defined course is inevitable, 
 may be thus regarded. A mother as the farmer will predict the plant 
 who has studied the dispositions of from the seed ; and leaving on one 
 
GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 by the grace not only of the presence of God, but of his 
 Will ; and an infinity which is relative and conditional 
 must be indefinite. 
 
 With Rabelais, who writes, “ Let us not seek honour 
 nor applause from men, but the truth only,” Bruno, too, 
 proclaims his only desire to be for the Truth, for the 
 support of Nature, and the protection of God. Never- 
 theless, he is not altogether proof against the slings and 
 
 arrows of outrageous fortune. 
 Presbyter and Grammaticus . 1 
 
 side the inherited organisation which 
 is said to be destiny, it is clear that 
 God, in permitting to us the neces- 
 sity of our will, gives us also the 
 power to gain an inalienable expe- 
 rience, by means of which our iden- 
 tity is preserved. 
 
 The action is a necessary result 
 of the character ; character is built 
 up out of action, and every action is 
 the result of those other actions to 
 which it succeeds. “ The reward,” 
 says George Eliot, “ of one duty per- 
 formed is the power to perform 
 another ; ” and in the same manner 
 the punishment of one evil action 
 is the proneness to commit another. 
 It may be said that although in the 
 knowledge of God our free-will is 
 necessity, because he beholds all 
 things, past, present, and to come, 
 in one action, and the instant and 
 eternity with him are one, yet the 
 knowledge of God does not concern 
 us, and in our knowledge our free- 
 will can only be reconciled with our 
 necessity when we strive to imitate 
 God, in whom free-will and neces- 
 sity are one state, and that state is 
 goodness. 
 
 1 Of the intolerant Hoffmann of 
 Iielmstedt Leibnitz remarked, that 
 “ he became the enemy of philosophy 
 in his desire to reform the abuses of 
 philosophers.” 
 
 The pedant or grammarian is 
 Bruno’s favourite emblem of the 
 ridiculous (see De Trip. Min., v. 
 128-130, p. 5; ibid. v. 1 49—151, 
 p. 6. “Pedantry,” he says (W. 
 
 proved by his attacks upon 
 
 ii. 404), “ never came nearer ruling 
 the world than in these our times.” 
 Milman, in his History of Latin 
 Christianity, compares the works of 
 the Scholastics to the pyramids of 
 Egypt — vast oppressive piles, which 
 display immense human power 
 wasted, great efforts which lead to 
 nothing but darkness and perplexity. 
 All was vanity, feeding the wind, 
 folly. The works of the Scholastics 
 would occupy a life of serious study ; 
 and we may say, with Lord Bacon, 
 that ‘ ‘ they end in monstrous alter- 
 cations and barking questions, by 
 means whereof men have withheld 
 themselves too much from the con- 
 tem plation o f 1 ST ature an d the obser va- 
 tions of experience, and have tumbled 
 up and down in their own conceits 
 . . . This kind of degenerate learn- 
 ing did chielly reign amongst the 
 schoolmen, who having sharp and 
 strong wits, and abundance of leisure 
 and small variety of reading, but 
 their wits being shut up in the cells 
 of a few authors (chiefly Aristotle, 
 their dictator), as their persons were 
 shut up in the cells of monasteries 
 and colleges, and knowing little his- 
 tory, either of Nature or Time, did 
 out of no great quantity of matter 
 and infinite agitations of wit spin 
 out into us those laborious webs of 
 learning which are extant in their 
 books. . . . For the two ways of 
 contemplation are not unlike the 
 two ways of action commonly spoken 
 of by the ancients. The one plain 
 and smooth in the beginning, and 
 
UPON IMMENSITY. 
 
 22 
 
 As in the Italian dialogues on Infinity, this work on 
 Immensity is entirely occupied with the infinity of the 
 universe. The globe which we inhabit is a planet, and 
 therefore it does not constitute a world in itself. All 
 planets, like the earth, must be filled with life, with 
 plants and animals, and with beings endowed as we are 
 with reason. The sun, round which the earth turns, is 
 not the only sun ; there are multitudes of suns, as there 
 are myriads of planets. Of this splendid and majestic 
 parade of stars and heavenly bodies the universe is made. 
 All is filled with infinity, and beyond infinity there is 
 nothing. In fine, since the universe exists and since it 
 is immense, God is present in it. In him it lives and 
 moves and has its being ; for he is Being, eternal, in- 
 finite, one only, the Being of beings. If God is illimited 
 Being, his palace is without limits also (p. i 5 3). 
 
 “ The destiny of man is made plain by the order and 
 harmony of the universe, as well as by his own natural 
 organisation. 
 
 in tlie end impassable ; the other 
 rough and troublesome in the en- 
 trance, but after a while fair and 
 even. So it is in contemplation ; if a 
 man will begin with certainties, he 
 shall end in doubts ; but if he will 
 be content to begin with doubts, he 
 shall end in certainties.” 
 
 The pedant who began with cer- 
 tainties ended, as a rule, in doubts. 
 “ Great scholars,” says De Quineey, 
 “were poor as thinkers.” They 
 could turn Latin into Greek out of 
 hand, and without a lexicon, but 
 though they could correct Cicero, 
 they spoke their native tongue like 
 peasants, and they read so much 
 that, as Scaliger said of Marcilius, 
 “ he read himself into ignorance.” 
 Scioppius, when writing of the vices 
 which infect the art of grammar, 
 says, with his usual love of vileness, 
 that Crates, who first studied the 
 art, was induced to do so by falling 
 into a sewer, and that grammar pre- 
 served for ever the taint of its 
 
 origin. That web of subtlety and 
 Spinozity, the Scholastic theology, 
 however, had its uses. As it was the 
 work of the fifteenth century to re- 
 discover antiquity, so it was the 
 work of the sixteenth century to de- 
 cipher antiquity. Cicero and Yirgil, 
 Livy and Ovid, so long shelved in 
 dark corners, were now studied by 
 scholars who, if they wrangled over 
 words, did so with authority, since 
 they were better acquainted with 
 dead languages than with their 
 own. Indeed, the Middle Ages coun- 
 tenanced no science but theology. 
 Even the classics were believed by the 
 people to be written by the monks, 
 who, for their part, made light of 
 the distinction ; for it was their 
 custom, when signifying a wish for 
 Yirgil or Horace, or any other 
 heathen work, while under the dis- 
 cipline of silence, to scratch their 
 ears like a dog, because dogs and 
 Pagans were associations familiar 
 and agreeable to the mind. 
 
224 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 “ Every being, by virtue of his organisation, aspires 
 towards the end of his existence. The more noble a 
 nature, the more active his striving after good. Thus it 
 is with man. Man, in truth, is of all creatures the only 
 one destined to a double perfection, that of the soul and 
 body. Man is placed upon the limits of time and eter- 
 nity, between perfection and its faint imperfect image, 
 between reason and sense. He shares in this existence, 
 he passes from extreme to extreme, upright on the verge 
 and horizon of Nature. 
 
 j “ His true destiny is perfection of spirit. His spirit 
 indeed is an indivisible, independent, divine thing, lord 
 of matter, not its vassal ; living by its own virtue, entire 
 and invulnerable in all parts, endowed with inexhaustible 
 force, invested with the power of beholding eternal truth, 
 always acting and having power to overcome outer things 
 and itself. The body is contrary to the spirit. It is 
 finite, limited, subject; in itself nothing save a means 
 and an instrument. . . . Now, what in life is the due 
 calling of the spirit ? This is evident : to seize supreme 
 truth by means of the reason, and to practise sovereign 
 good by means of the will. This vocation of man is 
 proved by his insatiate untiring reason and will. The 
 spirit no sooner perceives goodness or light than its 
 desires and investigations awake ; for the instinct of per- 
 fection is born within us ; we cannot endure that which 
 is divided, fleeting, in part imperfect ; we look for all 
 things to be full, lasting, universal, and necessary. 
 
 “ Even our senses, with our imagination, have an illimi- 
 table domain ; howsoever directed, they discover a centre, 
 but they can attain to no circumference. The need of 
 infinite perfection by which we are possessed is not in 
 vain ; it is no caprice nor superfluity of thought ; it is 
 real and lasting, the most noble and the most lawful 
 
 v of our desires. The whole creation, in all its splendour, 
 ' offers us satisfaction. Since, then, it is the high call- 
 ing of man to comprehend the universe, let him raise his 
 
OF IMMENSITY. 
 
 eyes and his thoughts to the heavens which surround him, 
 and the flying worlds above. They are a picture, a book, 
 a mirror, wherein he can behold and read the forms and 
 the laws of supreme goodness, the plan and total of perfec- 
 tion. There is ineffable harmony, and beyond the stars is 
 the height from which he shall behold all the generations 
 of men and all the ages of the earth. Let him be with- 
 out fear, for he that thirsts after immensity shall take no 
 thought for the present, nor for the things of this world. 
 Let no vain scruple withhold him from wondering with- 
 out ceasing at the glory of the Divinity and the august 
 dwelling of the Most High. To consider the stars in 
 their sublime array, still choiring the glory of their Lord, 
 is the most worthy occupation of man. The persuasion 
 that there is indeed a Sovereign, the Upholder, rejoices 
 the soul of the sage, and causes him to despise the fan of 
 vulgar souls, which is death ” (B. i. c. i.) 
 
 Two obstacles are declared by Bruno to encumber true 
 philosophy : the first is the preference given to the senses 
 and to appearances, instead of to the understanding and 
 to reality ; the second is the precedence given to sects 
 rather than to disinterested love of virtue. The sectarian 
 spirit is the root of all evil. “ When science is made 
 traffic, wisdom and justice shall quit the earth. Of all 
 miserable men, they are the most miserable who practise 
 philosophy to gain their daily bread, . . . and he is 
 richest who despises inches ”(155). Of the errors of the 
 senses he says, “ While insisting that we are deceived 
 by our judgment and not by our perception, you invoke 
 the law of the senses, I appeal to the law of nature, which 
 cannot be other than the law of reason. . . . When we 
 go up into a high place and look around us, do we not 
 imagine the earth is bounded by the sky ? As we advance 
 towards that boundary it withdraws, and beholding a new 
 extent of heaven and earth, we are forced to extend the 
 horizon, and it would extend to infinity if we were but 
 able to follow it.” “ It is not the senses,” Bruno con- 
 
 P 
 
226 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 tinues, “ which deceive us ; they confirm reason.” This 
 argument repeats a passage in the beginning of the In- 
 finity (W. ii. 1 8 ). “ The vale,” says Lord Bacon, “ best 
 
 discovereth the hill ; ” and our senses deceive us, not be- 
 cause they are deceitful, but because we misapply them. 
 
 We have next a curious passage on the movement of the 
 earth. Movement is at one and the same time the sign 
 and result of life ; and since the earth moves, it lives, 1 and 
 its life is in its soul, which reposes in God, as our souls do. 
 “ Since the universe is infinite, it is unreasonable to 
 imagine that beyond the universe there is space as in- 
 finite as the universe itself, or a heaven into which God 
 withdrew himself after his creation of the world”(B. i.c. 6). 
 
 (It will be remembered that in the Infinity , God, hav- 
 ing ceased from his labours, is compared to a fiddler who 
 might play, but did not for want of a fiddle. But it 
 is clear that God, having supreme liberty, might either 
 create or cease creating, and to say otherwise is to limit 
 his illimitable power.) 
 
 “ What, then, is space ? Is it immovable- or is it 
 superficial ? No. Space is a continuous physical quan- 
 
 1 It is a curious fact that modern 
 science is now approaching many 
 theories which in the age of Bruno 
 were regarded as wild and visionary. 
 As a fact, the earth, like a living 
 body, is in a state of constant move- 
 ment. Our globe is solid nowhere. 
 An earthquake, according to the 
 recent investigations of Mr. Robert 
 Mallet, of Mr. Milne, professor of 
 engineering at Tokio, Japan, and of 
 the latest Italian inquirers, is but a 
 variety, gigantic in its proportions, 
 of a process always in operation, and 
 part of the regular machinery for 
 the action of Nature. The earth is 
 perpetually breathing and sighing 
 throughout its entire frame. There 
 is, moreover, a larger volume in 
 the form of oscillations. The firm 
 mountains and locks are in truth 
 a quivering mass. No doubt, be- 
 cause the world is thus sensitive 
 
 it is the more fitted to support 
 the innumerable dependents on its 
 bounty ; for the tide of microsco- 
 pic earthquakes, and the oscilla- 
 tions beneath which great expanses 
 of the earth’s wrapping or crust are 
 ascertained to dilate and contract, 
 are signs that Nature is not dead or 
 torpid, and are modes in which it 
 performs its infinite functions. The 
 laws which laid out ' the earth are 
 active still ; the earth’s action is 
 benevolent and potent in the fine 
 pulsations which only the most deli- 
 cate instrument can record, and in 
 the terrible and convulsive shiver- 
 ings which scar the surface of con- 
 tinents. And since in a mild degree 
 these phenomena are present within 
 the most temperate regions, Nature, 
 though most multiform in its energy, 
 shows itself to he the more uniform 
 at heart. 
 
OF IMMENSITY. 
 
 227 
 
 tity, constituted of three dimensions, capable of receiving 
 all magnitudes and bodies, existing before and after all 
 things. It is not a substance nor a property ; it is with, 
 before, and after all things ” (B. i. c. 8 ; ib. c. 9). (This 
 definition approaches that of Newton and of Clarke, who 
 consider space an attribute of God.) “ Space,” Bruno 
 continues (c. 9), “ cannot be told from space. Our senses 
 are overwhelmed and stricken dumb in all places. If 
 there is an eternal power, its action is entire and un- 
 broken. If being is goodness, not-being is evil, and it 
 follows that if there is no other world than ours, goodness 
 is finite and solitary, while evil is infinite and multiplied. 
 God being the most simple essence, possibility and reality 
 in him are one ; and since with God all things are pos- 
 sible, the universe is infinite.” This reasoning can, how- 
 ever, be met with the reply that since with God all things 
 are possible, it might have pleased the Everlasting to set 
 bounds to the universe. Why place power higher than 
 supreme liberty and independence, which are also divine 
 attributes ? Moreover, they are the loftiest aims of man. 
 He enjoys them in a finite measure, but why conceive of 
 a God who does not enjoy them in infinite measure ? 
 
 The thirteen chapters of the second book are in the 
 same strain. “ Our senses show us that there are imper- 
 fections in the universe, but the universe embraces the 
 infinity of space and time, while our senses show us these 
 in part. Doubtless no part is perfect and complete, and 
 the whole is divine” (Be Immense, p. 1 1). 
 
 “ The universe may be at one and the same time finite 
 and infinite : infinite with regard to the capacity of the 
 human soul, and finite with regard to the Divine power. 
 
 It is infinite because it is the effect of an infinite cause ; S 
 it is finite because it is an effect distinct from its cause. 
 
 It is infinite so long as the Infinite Being wills ; it is 
 finite because it depends on the Infinite Being, who may 
 will it to cease and to dissolve, with its uses, fabric, and 
 dominion.” 
 
228 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 In Books iii. and iv. tlie ground is changed and 
 another reform is advocated. 
 
 The tyranny of Aristotle, the routine of antiquity, pro- 
 voked Bruno’s anger, and in the face of so many vast 
 problems he pauses to attack the king and oracle of the 
 schools. “ It is better,” he cries with an ironical appli- 
 cation of the words of Cicero, Malo cum Platone crrare 
 quam cum aliis rede sentire — “ It is better to err with 
 Aristotle than to follow knowledge with another ; ” con- 
 cluding, “ The earth and the planets move round the sun 
 once a year.” (Between the year of Neptune, the outer- 
 most planet, and our own year, there is a difference of 
 nearly sixty thousand days or 163.6 years.) “ The 
 earth is not a perfect sphere ” (B. iv. c. 1 7). “ The 
 
 moon has spots ; these spots indicate the continents, and 
 the luminous parts the sea. The sun must contain living 
 beings of whom the nature is unknown to us, but in all 
 likelihood they are superior to the inhabitants of the 
 earth” (379). (Huygens, who defines the figure, manners, 
 and learning of the people of the stars, declares the sun 
 to be uninhabitable.) 
 
 The remarkable theory of the Cabal is repeated in 
 Book v. 
 
 In the Monad (c. iv.) Bruno speaks of the spirit as “ a 
 medium establishing communication between the soul and 
 the body; ” he accords to this spiritual principle the title 
 of “ architect of the body;” and in this place he attri- 
 butes a like principle to the earth (see W. i. 242), a 
 vital spark which is a spirit of motion. That which 
 lives, moves; and all moving things have life. “All 
 things live ; the celestial bodies are animated beings ; all 
 things on the face of the earth and things under the 
 earth have, in a certain measure and according to their 
 state, the gift of feeling ; the stone itself feels in a fashion 
 Avhich escapes the definition of man.” 
 
 A passage from the Cause (W. i. 242) will serve to 
 explain this point. 
 
OF IMMENSITY. 
 
 229 
 
 ££ If, therefore, spirit, soul, life, are found in all things, 
 in ordained degrees filling the whole of matter, the spirit 
 is clearly the true actuality and the true form of all things. 
 Therefore the soul of the world is the constituting formal 
 principle of the universe, and of that contained in the 
 universe. I say, that if life is found in all things, the 
 soul is the form of all things, for it is throughout the 
 ruler and governor of matter, and it governs compound 
 things, producing composition and consistency in the 
 parts. . . . This I look upon as the unity of all things ; 
 for, according to the diversity of the dispositions of 
 matter, and according to the power of the active and 
 passive principles in matter, this (unity) produces diverse 
 figurations and faculties. 
 
 ££ The outward form alone changes and perishes, be- 
 cause it is not a thing, but of a thing ; it is not sub- 
 stance, but the accident and circumstance of substance.” 1 
 
 Parts of this work are devoted to the theory of 
 
 1 The views of Bruno (more espe- 
 cially as they are expressed in the 
 works printed at Frankfort) will be 
 found to coincide in a remarkable 
 manner with what is said by Her- 
 bert Spencer on function. “ Does 
 life produce organisation ? ” he asks 
 ( Principles of Biology, v ol. i. p. 152), 
 “ or does organisation produce life ? ” 
 And after alluding to the obscurity 
 in which these problems are wrapt, 
 he says, “ There is one fact imply- 
 ing that function must be regarded 
 as taking precedence of structure ; ” 
 and proceeds to draw the following 
 conclusions, “ to be accepted for as 
 much as they seem worth:” — “ But 
 since the passing from a structure- 
 less state to a structured state is 
 itself a vital process, it follows that 
 vital activity must have existed 
 while there was yet no structure ; 
 structure could not else arise. That 
 function takes precedence of struc- 
 ture seems also implied in the de- 
 finition of life. If life consists of 
 inner actions so adjusted as to 
 balance outer actions, if the actions 
 
 are the substance of life, while the 
 adjustment of them constitutes its 
 form, then may we say that the 
 actions to be formed must come before 
 that ivhich forms them — that the 
 continuous change which is the 
 basis of function must come before 
 the structure which brings function 
 into shape. 
 
 “ Or, again, since throughout all 
 phases of life up to the highest, 
 every advance is the effecting of 
 some better adjustment of inner to 
 outer actions, and since the accom- 
 panying new complexity of structure 
 is simply a means of making possible 
 this better adjustment, it follows that 
 f unction is from beginning to end the 
 determining cause of structure.” 
 
 That relation of the atoms to each 
 other, on which existence depends, 
 has been called “ the expression of 
 the arrangement of the atoms, which 
 is force ; ” and as an “expression of 
 arrangement ” necessarily has prece- 
 dence over the matter arranged, so 
 function may be thought of as the 
 predecessor of structure. 
 
230 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 comets. ( Dc Max. B. i. iv. vi.) Bruno had collected a 
 
 number of observations upon the “ great star ” which 
 appeared suddenly in November 1572 in Cassiopeia, and 
 as suddenly vanished in the month of April 1574; and 
 he asserts that the researches of Tycho Brahe have led 
 him to the conclusion that comets are not fiery meteors, 
 but celestial bodies, whose motion across the plains of air 
 is positive proof that neither the earth nor the stars are 
 enclosed within a solid crystal sphere. The comet is a 
 planet, but it is to be distinguished from ordinary 
 planets. Its appearance is more rare, and it is visible to 
 us only at certain periods of its passage round the sun. 
 The appearance of the tail is a mere accident ; our earth, 
 it is possible, may sometimes appear with a train of fire, 
 and if there were a comet without a tail, it would be 
 equally one in substance with those planets which are 
 always within our knowledge. The existence of the 
 comet, moreover, proves that celestial bodies are not com- 
 pounded of an essence entirely foreign to our elements. 
 The uniformity and exactitude of their motion, their 
 invariability of mass and constitution, their pure and 
 silvery splendour, the duration of their stay, the regularity 
 with which they return to visit the earth, and the steadi- 
 ness with which they wax and wane, force the conclusion 
 upon us that “comets are in truth stars.” Bruno even 
 goes so far as to declare that there may be planets which 
 we have never seen (CLX. Articles). 
 
 “Truth,” he says (Gfr. 495), “ can never be contrary 
 to truth, nor light to light.” Again, “ Behold how one 
 truth reveals another” (W. i. 187). “The gilts of faith 
 cannot oppose the light of reason” (Gfr. 495). “God, 
 who cannot deceive nor be deceived, who is not jealous, 
 but who is supreme goodness, and who is truth itself and 
 bounty itself, is the God of the philosopher and of the 
 theologian. In course of their development, religion and 
 philosophy differ, philosophy, obeying reason, seeks for 
 evidence ; theology, guided by faith, silently awaits the 
 
COMPOSITION OF IMAGES, SIGNS, AND IDEAS. 
 
 231 
 
 voice of revelation. Tlie philosopher awaits the voice of 
 Nature, which is in truth the voice of Gocl, who is the 
 author of Nature ” (Gfr. 495). As with revealed religion, 
 philosophy takes its stand upon indubitable principles, 
 which are self-evident, and which give certainty to the 
 operations of science. And the philosopher, though 
 cherishing his natural perception of truth, is eager to 
 follow the traditions of religion. Because he loves to 
 trace the infinite within all finite things, he studies 
 sacred books, and he learns the myths, prayers, and 
 hymns inspired by piety among many races of men (W. 
 ii. 308, 1 13, 9, 254; Gfr. 175). Never forgetful of 
 these numerous sources of instruction and edification, he 
 does not presume to cite the Eternal before his tribunal, 
 but' he submits the results of all things to the examina- 
 tion of his reason. He approaches dogmas and doctrines 
 on their natural and human side, leaving that which is 
 supernatural and miraculous to the theologians. “ Truth 
 is one, as God is one ; but it can be approached by two 
 ways, either by thought or by feeling. Let theology then 
 leave to philosophy the kingdoms of this world, and be 
 contented with the empire of faith, and with the divine 
 grace which is beyond the order of Nature and above the 
 calamities of our present state of being.” 
 
 The third of these works, and the last which Bruno 
 was enabled to print, is entitled Of the Composition of 
 Images, Signs, ancl Ideas } The dedicatory epistle cele- 
 brates the power of the grand art in philosophy, and 
 especially in enlarging the sphere of the perception. 
 The whole of the work of God, of reason, and of Nature, 
 Bruno declares to consist in the idea and our conception 
 of the idea. Nature, in a manner that is highly admir- 
 able, reflects the mind of God, and is in its turn reflected 
 
 1 “ This book,” writes Berti (236), expressed in pointed and brilliant 
 “would be reckoned among the language. Unfortunately the mag- 
 Nolan’s masterpieces if the last nificent peristyle is but the screen 
 pages had been equal to the first, for a mean edifice on the model of 
 which are full of profound thought, Lully.” 
 
GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 in the mind of man. These processes are related. Both 
 in Nature and in man there are certain elements, and by 
 arranging, combining, moving, subjoining those elements 
 fresh forms are produced. But simplicity, self-continu- 
 ance, and unity are not in man, and they are not in 
 Nature. Things exist, as we perceive them, in combina- 
 tion, comparison, and plurality ; we understand nothing 
 if we do not at the same time contemplate a form or 
 figure ; and the singleness of cause and principle we 
 behold, as it were, in a glass darkly. Nature holds the 
 mirror up to us (and we in our turn hold the mirror up 
 to Nature) ; and by the light of reason and the rules of 
 the great art we shall behold the figures in this vast 
 mirror shining clearly, and pointing, as on a dial, to 
 Unity, which is the sum and substance of all. Thus the 
 spirit of man will ascend to the highest truth and happi- 
 ness ; and the object of this treatise is to equip the 
 student for the just conception of the signs and symbols 
 of Unity in himself and in Nature. 
 
 Ideas precede things, because they are the causes of 
 things ; the marks of the ideas are the things themselves 
 or in the things ; the shadows of ideas are from the 
 things or after the things. In proportion as the things 
 of Nature are more perfect than those shadows of ideas 
 which are in our conception and understanding, so the 
 original idea is more perfect than Nature. 
 
 Bruno’s inquiry in this work does not concern things 
 in themselves, but their marks or signs. As a bank-note 
 passes current for five sovereigns, so our idea of a rose 
 passes current for a rose, though we are acquainted only 
 with the outer form and semblance of a rose, and we are 
 in gross ignorance of its true being, that exquisite quint- 
 essence and ethereal spirit, that wild, luxuriant, and 
 humble sweetness which circles under its tinted petals 
 and fills the air with springs of beauty. Its delicacy and 
 loveliness escape expression ; for every form in Nature 
 which is discernible to the understanding, no matter how 
 
COMPOSITION OF IMAGES, SIGNS, AND IDEAS. 233 
 
 it is deciphered, must be placed upon the intellectual 
 horizon — that is, it must be figurative. 
 
 These images may be discerned and considered from 
 a physical, mathematical, or logical aspect. Therefore 
 Bruno assumes that a just contemplation of Nature will 
 display the forms of things to the thinker ; for matter 
 does not contribute so much to the production of things 
 of Nature as idea and form. In the idea and principle 
 all things meet, and they represent Unity. 
 
 In man the understanding and memory correspond 
 with idea and form. Nature is a shadow, for Nature is 
 a type and mark of the Divine, a living mirror, in 
 which we behold pictures 1 of natural things, and the 
 shadow of Divinity. Nature contains the idea (form) as 
 its cause and principle. In the same manner the repre- 
 sentation of the object is the basis of understanding in 
 the artist, and determines his work. But in Nature the 
 idea is in truth the substance ; for the idea is in matter, 
 producing countless forms in eternal vicissitude. Here, 
 to guard against misconception, Bruno immediately de- 
 fines Form under twelve aspects, the first of which is the 
 Idea, the metaphysical principle, form in general, “ the 
 basis of which is above Nature.” 
 
 Next comes a peculiar and poetic treatment of the 
 theory of light. Light in general is an invisible sub- 
 stance, diffused throughout infinity ; it is the vehicle of 
 pictures, inherent to all parts of the universe, and by a 
 
 1 “There are many ideas,” says 
 Buhle, ‘ 1 in this work which might 
 be useful to artists, if they could be 
 induced to search for material in 
 books.” The book, an improved and 
 enlarged recapitulation of the Sha- 
 dows of Ideas, is dedicated to J. H. 
 Hainzel, a member of a distinguished 
 Protestant family at Augsburg. His 
 father fostered artistic and literary 
 merit, and his uncle, Paul Hainzel, 
 constructed a large astronomical 
 quadrant under the direction of 
 Tycho Brahe. The patron of Bruno’s 
 book, after a misunderstanding with 
 
 the Town Council of Augsburg on 
 the reform of the calendar, threw up 
 his rights as a citizen and went to 
 Ulm, where he composed a pasquin- 
 ade on his brother councillors, which 
 so exasperated them, that, having 
 with great want of circumspection 
 re-entered their precincts, he was 
 seized and imprisoned. He escaped, 
 and after spending a short time in 
 Zurich, he bought a property at 
 Haldenstein near Chur, and after- 
 wards the estate of Elgg or Elgau in 
 Zurich. Here his acquaintance was 
 probably made by Bruno. 
 
2 3t 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 constant connection and mingling of this substance with 
 the darkness it is turned into light. 
 
 The same comparison holds good in supernatural things. 
 God, who is the primal light, must first mingle with the 
 darkness and shadow of material things before he can 
 be discerned by our eyes. Our method is faulty if we 
 confound pure and simple light with compounded per- 
 ceptible light, such as sunlight. Not our soul alone, but 
 the soul of the world also is gifted with pure spiritual 
 light, and it is the foundation of that faculty of the mind 
 by which we see in waking or in dreams figures which 
 are absent, and this without the help of sunlight or any 
 common fire. By this power man is enabled not only 
 to call up the visible world in the recesses of his spirit, 
 but by means of comparison and combination to raise a 
 countless multitude of appearances and to walk like a new 
 Adam in a world of new creation. This faculty is the 
 source of pictures. If we withhold from it the name of 
 light, we may call it the sense of the senses or spirit of 
 the fancy. It seizes forms, links them together, draws 
 new inferences, and stores them in the memory. With 
 Locke, Bruno looks upon the memory as the store- 
 house of ideas ( horreuvi specierum ), the keys, the door- 
 keeper, and door of which is the Will. 
 
 “As the forms of Nature cannot objectively exist without 
 matter and a certain subject (for all compounded bodies 
 require matter, size, and space), in the same manner the 
 representations of the senses and the mind require a real 
 or represented subject, and the compounded, real, or 
 imagined representations cannot exist without place and 
 limitations.” According to Ivant, space is not a form 
 of the existence of objects in themselves. Only from 
 the point of view of human beings can we speak of space, 
 extended beings, &c. If we make abstraction of the sub- 
 jective condition, under which alone external intuition is 
 possible for us, i.e., under which alone we can be affected 
 by external objects, the idea of space has absolutely no 
 
COMPOSITION OF IMAGES, SIGNS, AND IDEAS. 235 
 
 signification. Space is real, i.e., is an objectively valid 
 conception in respect of everything which can be pre- 
 sented to us as an object of external perception, but it 
 is ideal in respect of things when they are considered by 
 the reason as they are in themselves, and without refer- 
 ence to the sensible nature of man. 
 
 By an altogether analogous metaphysical and trans- 
 cendental exposition of the conception of time, Kant seeks 
 also to demonstrate its empirical reality and transcendental 
 ideality. Like space, time is not a thing subsisting for 
 itself, or so inherent as an objective qualification or order 
 in things that if abstraction were made of all subjective 
 conditions of perception time would remain. Time is 
 in itself, out of the conscious subject, nothing; it cannot 
 be reckoned among objects in themselves, apart from 
 its relation to our sensible intuitions, either as subsisting 
 or as inhering. To the objection that the reality of 
 the change in our ideas proves the reality of time, 
 Kant replies that the objects of the “ internal sense,” 
 like those of the external sense, are only phenomena 
 having two aspects, the one regarding the object in itself, 
 the other the form of our intuition (perception) of the 
 object, which form must not be sought in the object in 
 itself, but in the subject to which it appears. 
 
 But this analogy in thought stops short in its highest 
 aspect. With Bruno, man is a mirror within a mirror ; 
 and his perception of things is a reflection of Nature, 
 which is the reflection of the thought of God. In the 
 words of Bruno, “ The act of the divine cognition is the 
 substance of things.” 
 
 Kant, on the other hand, while recognising the un- 
 reality of the real and fully acknowledging the reality of 
 the ideal, is divided from the pure idealism of Bruno, 
 and does not go beyond the thought that form and 
 matter, idea and appearance, are one. He does not grasp 
 the masterly conception that form and idea are the only 
 truths, and that appearance and matter are finite and 
 
GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 236 
 
 ■ changing shapes, figurated by our minds, which are finite, 
 
 | but not having more relation to infinity than the type in 
 which a book is printed has relation to the writer’s 
 thought. Bruno denies true being to compound things, 
 which require matter, size, and space ; for these are 
 shadows, fugitive types, and marks of the Divine ; and by 
 contemplating the mind as a storehouse for the forms 
 of Nature, a gallery as it were of statues and pictures, 
 themselves but the vestiges and imperfect traces of the 
 Divine Primal Idea, he is careful to distinguish between 
 the faint copies of the ideal which are in the mind, and 
 the true ideal reality or real ideality in which we live 
 and move and have our being. 
 
 These images are derived from the fount of forms, the 
 primal idea and principle which is above Nature. Every 
 form in Nature which is discernible to the understanding, 
 no matter how it is indicated, must be created anew or 
 figurated in the intellect. This process of creation is re- 
 lated to the process by which Nature receives at the hand 
 of the great fount of forms and primal idea those shapes 
 and beings which she reproduces ; and it will be noted 
 that this philosophy differs from that of Descartes , 1 be- 
 cause it advances from “ I know Nature, therefore it is,” 
 to “ Nature knows God, therefore he is.” 
 
 Bruno furnishes the reader with a quantity of rules for 
 the marks and signs of ideas which precede things of 
 Nature, as form in the mind of the artist precedes the work 
 of art ; and these ideas abide in Nature, as the mind of the 
 artist abides in the work of art ; they are in man as he 
 receives the impression of the artist’s mind when behold- 
 ing a work of art. It must, however, be understood that 
 Bruno’s philosophy is remote from the extreme imma- 
 terialism of Bishop Berkeley on the one hand, and from 
 physical and pantheistic views on the other. In opposition 
 
 1 “ It seems to me that I may tinctly and clearly are true.” — Res- 
 adopt as a general rule that all cartes, Meditationes de Prinna Philo- 
 things which I conceive very dis- sophia, Med. iii. 
 
 
COMPOSITION OF IMAGES, SIGNS, AND IDEAS. 237 
 
 to Hobbes, who assumed, with Democritus and the Epi- 
 cureans, that the body accounted for the mind, and that 
 matter was the root of the universe, Berkeley taught that 
 there is no material substance, and that all ideas may be 
 reduced to mind and ideas in a mind. Bruno, choosing 
 a middle course, says plainly that “ in Nature it is 
 necessary to recognise two kinds of substance ; the first, 
 which is form, and the second, which is matter ” (W. 
 i. 251); continuing, “It is manifest to every man that 
 it is not possible that this power can always make 
 all things without that which always made all things. 
 How can the soul of the world, which is form, itself indi- 
 visible, produce forms without the subject of extension 
 or quantity, which is matter ? ” Here it is essential 
 to refer this passage to the foregoing passages in the 
 Composition of Images. Though we are unable to con- 
 ceive even in our minds of any material thing without 
 form, or, as Bruno says, without figure, it by no means 
 follows that true being is possessed of figure. The 
 attributes of true being and the higher qualities of our 
 nature are without shape and dimension in the abstract : 
 but it is a property of the finite to require limits and 
 shackles, for these comfort the soul under the awe excited 
 by unmeasured spaces, and by wonder, which Bacon say s 
 is t he garment of Go d. Love, when harboured in a 
 beloved form, possesses the shape of beauty, and is the 
 very mould of form ; but love in the abstract is not sub- 
 ject to shape, though our finite minds attach it to an 
 obj ect. Truth is without figure ; so with the other 
 Divine attributes. When, therefore, matter is stripped 
 away, possibility is no more ; we come face to face with 
 reality ; and the pure power untranslated to us by its 
 effects will be revealed to us. 
 
( 238 ) 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 In the capacities and parts of men there are three sorts of degrees ; one 
 man understands of himself, another understands what is explained, 
 and a third understands neither of himself nor by any explanation. 
 The first is excellent, the second commendable, the third altogether 
 unprofitable.” — Machiavelli, The Prince. 
 
 Zurich. Padua. The Trial at Venice. 
 
 The work on the Threefold Minimum was printed to the 
 very last sheet ; the second, on the Monad , was certainly 
 begun, when, a little before the 13th February 159 1, 
 Bruno suddenly left Frankfort, not even taking time 
 to write his dedication to Duke Henry Julius, and con- 
 fiding to his publishers the task of delivering the work to 
 his patron. All that is known of his sudden departure 
 we learn from the printer Wechel, who says in the dedica- 
 tion of one of these books that Bruno was “ forced by an 
 unexpected event to leave the city ” before his work was 
 finished. 1 
 
 1 This was not due, as Professor 
 Carriere has pointed out (Allgemeine 
 Zcitung, 292, 294, 1868), to the in- 
 vitation of Mocenigo, but to some 
 rupture, all trace of which is now 
 lost. The following entry appears 
 in the Censur Register of Frank- 
 fort: — “Johann Wechel is permitted 
 to print the small Latin book in 8vo, 
 under the title of Jordani Bruni 
 Nolani, De Tri/plici Minimo ct Men- 
 sura, on the 17th March 1591.” No 
 such permission appears to have 
 
 been granted for printing the two 
 other works which appeared in 
 Frankfort. 
 
 In the Catalogue of the fair for 
 Easter, 1591, Be Triplici Minimo 
 appears among the poetical works 
 issued in that city. The Monad and 
 the work on the Images, Signs, and 
 Ideas are not in these lists, perhaps 
 because they may have lain under 
 the censure of the authorities. But 
 in the catalogue compiled in 1592 
 by Nicholas Bassano, bookseller, of 
 
THE TIES OF HOME. 
 
 =39 
 
 Whatever may be the reason, Bruno's departure was 
 clearly a matter of necessity, and it was equally neces- 
 sary that he should not be too far away from the town 
 where two of his works were passing through the press. 
 Tempted by the thought of revisiting his country, he 
 drew a little nearer to the borders of Italy, hoping, no 
 doubt, that in the sweetness of home he might less per- 
 ceive the bitterness of life. 
 
 It was long since he had quitted his native land to be- 
 come a wanderer on the face of the earth. “ He would 
 have done well,” says Bayle, “ had he continued his 
 journeyings.” “ Providence,” writes Lacroze, “ led him 
 back to cut short the sum of his errors ; ” and indeed the 
 heavy hand of the Church was all too soon to be laid upon 
 him in correction. Strange to say, as yet he had not 
 once entered into personal conflict with the Catholic 
 party. His name was well known on both sides of the 
 Alps, but, so far as evidence is forthcoming, he had for 
 many years fallen into no serious difficulties with the 
 Church. A fugitive monk, and under the ban of excom- 
 munication, he not only escaped molestation in Paris and 
 Toulouse, but obtained some standing in both cities. Ac- 
 cording to the evidence of Fra Domenico da Nocera, a 
 professor in the monastery of St. Dominic of Naples (Doc. 
 x.), Bruno asserted that he had put off the habit because 
 he was forbidden to wear it by Fra Domenico Vita, the 
 Provincial of the Order ; but at other times he made no 
 secret of the past, though, as far as was possible, he held 
 himself aloof from the Church. He had no care for the 
 morrow, believing that, come what might, he w’as chosen 
 to raise such a temple to God as would brave the lapse of 
 
 Frankfort, we find, “Jorclani Bruni A. stand respectively for the vernal 
 Nolani, de Triplici Minimo. 1591. and autumnal fairs ; and therefore 
 V. 8. Ejusdem, Be Monade, Numero it is clear that the Monad and the 
 et Figv.ro, Liber : item, Be Innumer- book upon the Idea did not come 
 abilibus, Immense et Infigurabili . . . upon the market till some six 
 Libri. 1591. A. 8. Be Imaginum months after the work upon the 
 Signorum et Idcarum Compositionc. Minimum. 
 
 1591. A. 8.” The letters V. and 
 
240 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 ages ( De Min. ii. p. 8) ; for lie was assured that it was 
 his mission to proclaim infinity everywhere present, in 
 things great and small, in that atom or monad which 
 is inappreciable to the senses, as in the suns and 
 stars which move in the outermost spaces of the sky. 
 
 “ The wise man,” he wrote as he left Frankfort, with 
 a strange foreboding of his fate, “ fears not death ; 
 nay, even there are times when he sets forth to meet it 
 bravely.” 
 
 Zurich, then containing a large company of Italian re- 
 fugees, offered refuge to the wanderer. He was not far 
 removed from the “ subtle air of Italy,” nor too distant from 
 his work in Frankfort. And if it was the air of Tuscany 
 which lured Galileo 1 away from the University of Padua, 
 it was no less certain that a lingering 1 love for his native 
 land drew Bruno nearer to Italy. As a philosopher, 
 he claimed “ the earth for his mother and the sun for 
 his father,” but as a man his heart clung to the village 
 which skirted the sea, basking among vineyards or lying 
 within the refreshing shadow of Mount Cicala. Perhaps 
 the longing to see his home awoke as he met his country- 
 men day by day in the booksellers’ shops in Fi'ankfort, 
 and their familiar accents called up before his mind a 
 vision of the myrtles and laurels of Cicala, of the vines of 
 Asprinio near Nola, “ than which there are no better in 
 the world” (W. ii. 209), and of the Bay of Naples, its 
 brightly coloured strand gay with sunshine such as never 
 lights the chilly shores of the North. Hainzel, to whom 
 Bruno’s last printed work was dedicated, had that year 
 acquired the castle of Elgg or Elgau ; it was he, probably, 
 who induced the Nolan to make Zurich his halting-place. 
 
 1 It was Galileo’s motto that no He treats science as Raphael treated 
 man can teach the truth to others ; art, widening, creating, but never 
 he can do no more than aid them to pausing in his activity to assume the 
 find it in themselves. This was the passive character of one pointing 
 theory of Bruno and of Bacon ; hut out a road which he cannot himself 
 while Bacon is content with teach- follow, 
 ing how to discover, Bruno discovers. 
 
GIOVANNI MOCENIGO. 
 
 241 
 
 Bat whatever the causes may have been which conspired 
 to drive Bruno suddenly away from Frankfort, it is clear 
 that his departure must have been hastened, not only by 
 his longing to see Italy once more, but also by a letter 
 which he is known to have received from Zuane Mocenigo, 
 a patrician of Venice. One of those offshoots of a noble 
 house which gave seven Doges to Venice, four of whom 
 were his ancestors, Giovanni or Zuane Mocenigo was one 
 in whom great qualities had run into their extremes. 
 In him the wisdom of his forerunners had degenerated 
 into cunning, and their strength into brutality. He had 
 exhausted the vigour natural to his race ; and as in a vine 
 a certain quantity of grapes must be pruned, so a share of 
 the productions of the human race appear in our narrow 
 vision as if they called for the same summary treatment. 
 
 A book by Bruno 1 — probably a work on the Art of 
 Lully — fell into the hands of Ciotto, a Venetian book- 
 seller, and was brought by him to Venice, where Mocenigo 
 became acquainted with it. He at once conceived a lively 
 desire to make the author's acquaintance, not, it may be 
 imagined, from any love of learning, but partly perhaps 
 because he felt his own deficiency, and hoped to remedy 
 it by the Art of Memory ; and chiefly, no doubt, because 
 he had the love of a weak nature for the marvellous. 
 
 1 In the margin of the sixth 
 document the title Heroici Furori 
 is cancelled, and Be Minima Magno 
 et Mensura is substituted for it, 
 showing there was uncertainty in 
 Ciotto’s recollection of the particu- 
 lar book which first attracted the 
 attention of Mocenigo to Bruno. 
 As Sigwart has pointed out ( Ver- 
 zeichniss der Doctoren, p. 28), the 
 book on the Minimum was scarcely 
 finished when Bruno quitted Frank- 
 fort, nor could it have reached 
 Venice at the earliest until after the 
 fair at Easter in 1591. Mocenigo 
 owned, moreover, to Ciotto that he 
 desired to see Bruno in order to 
 learn “ the secrets of memory and 
 
 others which he professed” (Doc. 
 vi.), and the contents of the Mini- 
 mum being purely metaphysical and 
 mathematical, while the tenour of 
 the Heroic Rapture is chiefly poetic, 
 neither of these works were likely to 
 rouse curiosity upon the mysterious 
 science of Mnemonics. The book 
 in question was, more probably, 
 either the Song of Circe, the book 
 on Memory printed in Paris, or the 
 book Be Lampade Combinatorial of 
 which Bertano speaks in his 
 evidence (Doc. vii.) as “curious 
 works, and finely written, and works 
 well known in Frankfort,” whence 
 they could readily make their w-ay 
 to Venice. 
 
 Q 
 
242 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 Tlie question now remains, When did Mocenigo’s invi- 
 tation reach Bruno, and was it the cause of his leaving 
 Frankfort ? Scarcely, or why was Bruno eight months 
 on the road between Frankfort and Venice ; and why did 
 he wait to receive a second summons ? In the “ last 
 year,” Bruno says in his evidence (Doc. viii.), May 29, 
 1592, “ finding myself at Frankfort, I received two letters 
 from Sr. Giovanni Mocenigo, a Venetian gentleman, in 
 which he invited me to go to Venice, and desired, accord- 
 ing to that which he wrote to me, that I should teach him 
 the art of memory and invention, promising to treat me 
 well, and that I should be satisfied with him ; and so I 
 came about seven or eight months ago.” 
 
 A clue to Bruno’s departure from Frankfort is with far 
 greater likelihood furnished by the Burgomaster’s book, 
 with its entry of civic excommunication dated the 2d of 
 July. Yet this banishment must not have seemed irre- 
 vocable, or why in the same document (Doc. viii.), when 
 desiring to take leave of Mocenigo, should Bruno assei’t 
 that he had taken measure to despatch his packages to 
 Frankfort, where he intended to return, in order to see his 
 books through the press ; and again (Doc. ix.), that during 
 his stay at Venice he had visited Frankfort afresh ( e andcivo 
 a Francoforti di novo partendowii di qui) in order to have 
 other works printed ; and once more (Doc. xvii.), that he 
 purposed “to go back to Frankfort to print some of his 
 works on the seven liberal arts and on seven other in- 
 ventive arts ” ? Some quarrel, such as he had already 
 roused in a score of towns, was no doubt the chief cause 
 of his sudden departure ; and the invitation of Mocenigo, 
 added to the inscrutable spirit of wandering by which the 
 Nolan was possessed, drove him onward till he reached 
 his native land. Other motives too led him to put this 
 daring plan into execution. The son of a soldier, he was 
 not blind to the danger, before which he did not quail. 
 He was, as he says of himself, “ a man with no head- 
 piece but my own” (W. i. 217), “seeing not with the 
 
THE PHILOSOPHER AND THE THEOLOGIAN. 243 
 
 eyes of Copernicus nor of Ptolemy, but with his own ” 
 (W. i. 1 26). “ Insane atheism ” (W. ii. 1 20) was doomed 
 
 by him to destruction ; and — without echoing the words 
 of Goethe, 1 “ He who has religion needs not knowledge, 
 and he who has knowledge has no need of religion ” — 
 Bruno did not hold the symbol higher than the thing 
 symbolised ; for he taught that the kingdom of God is 
 within men, and he believed a church to be little better 
 than a prison when its cold dividing stones rose up 
 between man and man, or shut the worshipper out from 
 the face of heaven. But at his trial he declared himself 
 willing to withdraw certain writings in which he had 
 expressed himself not altogether (“ non troppto ”) as a 
 good Christian. Following Scot as Erigena, and Nicholas 
 of Cusa, he adhered to his right of interpreting the doc- 
 trines of theology as a philosopher. “We may not 
 search for the Divinity,” he writes, “ beyond the infinite 
 world and the infinity of things, but behind and within 
 them. In this matter alone the faithful theologian ap- 
 pears to differ from the true philosopher” (W. i. 275). 
 Hence it follows (W. ii. 27) that theologians who are both 
 learned and religious have never curtailed the liberty of 
 philosophers, and true and courteous philosophers have 
 ever favoured religion ; for each of them knows that 
 faith is required for the maintenance of churlish people, 
 who must be governed, while demonstration is for con- 
 templative men, who can govern themselves and others.” 
 “ Let the Nolan,” he wrote in the Supper of Ashes, “ be 
 taken home with a torch, and if that be too much, lend 
 him a lanthorn with a rushlight.” In the words of 
 Lowell, “ He was not one of the meechin kind, that sets 
 and thinks for weeks the bottom’s out of the universe 
 because their own gill-pot leaks.” He put his trust in 
 philosophy, the object of his pursuit from his youth 
 
 1 An interesting article on the in- 240, Frankfort, 1886. It is written 
 flaence of Bruno upon Goethe will by Dr. Brunnhof'er, who has treated, 
 be found in the Goethe Jahrbueh, the subject in his Life of Bruno, pp. 
 edited by Ludwig Geiger, vol. vii. p. 151-134, 169. 
 
244 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 up, and lie believed that nothing can befall man 
 which wisdom will not frustrate or patience overcome. 
 Never relinquishing the hope of reconciling philosophy 
 with religion, that Utopian vision was always before him, 
 but never to be realised. In his earlier Italian works, 
 as in his Latin writings, and especially in the Sum- 
 mary of Terms, composed at this period, he returns 
 again and again to insist that science should be free. 
 Despite his belief in the unity of man’s knowledge, 
 he insists on the necessity of dividing philosophy from 
 religion in their effects, though they have but one cause, 
 and lead but to one end. Philosophy, rightfully used 
 and followed, will reveal a rational theology and a natural 
 system of morals. Nature and man’s heart alike be- 
 hold the divinity and the universal law of absolute 
 justice. Reason discovers the laws which rule the 
 
 universe, and reason makes plain that ideal of justice 1 
 which is apparent in the pages of history, and inseparable 
 from a right understanding of the labours and the destiny 
 of man. On the one hand philosophy or natural science, on 
 the other positive theology or supernatural science, are, 
 it might seem, opposed ; but they are in truth bestowed 
 upon us by God to lead us, each according to our several 
 peculiar gifts, towards the divine perfection. Their ways 
 are devious, their modes of thought differ. The philosopher 
 obeys reason and seeks evidence ; the theologian, who is 
 guided by faith, inclines his head before revelation. Since, 
 moreover, his sole aims are those of the theologian, to 
 walk in the ways of wisdom, to succour (Gfr. 160) his 
 fellows, and to demonstrate that universal principle from 
 which all being flows and to which it returns, the 
 philosopher and theologian should be united in the closest 
 bonds of fellowship. To the philosopher, as to the theo- 
 logian, the same liberty should be granted. Theology is 
 not to war upon philosophy, nor truth with truth, nor 
 is light to be confounded with light, nor goodness with 
 1 This is the doctrine of Hegel’s Philosophy of History. 
 
THE PHILOSOPHER AND THE THEOLOGIAN. 245 
 
 goodness ; and in the conception of a God who can neither 
 deceive nor be deceived, who is not jealous, but in whose 
 sovereign goodness is truth itself and light itself, in this 
 supreme conception the philosopher and the theologian 
 cannot but meet and be at peace. 
 
 For Bruno’s view of the relations of Nature to God 
 we may cite the following : — “ Above all, God is mind 
 (Intelledus). Mind is common to all things in Nature. 1 
 Mind pervading each thing and everything is Reason. 
 God dictates and commands : Nature effects and produces: 
 Reason beholds and searches. God is the first Monad, the 
 foundation and source of all number. Simplicity (unity ?) 
 is the substance and the excelling quality of all greatness 
 and composition, above every other condition and quality 
 innumerable and immense. Nature is number which can 
 be numbered, greatness which can be measured ; it is 
 apparent to the senses and comprehensible. Reason is 
 numbered number, measured greatness ; it is the power 
 which estimates. God by means of Nature passes into the 
 reason. Reason is brought through Nature to God. God 
 is love ; he is creative ; he is light. Nature is to be loved ; 
 it is the creature ; it is ardour and fire. Reason is loving ; 
 in a certain measure it is the subject inflamed by Nature 
 and enlightened by God” (see Gfr. 564, 496, 582). 
 
 Thus all that which we understand by heaven and all 
 that we call earth submits to one law. In the whole of 
 the universe, of which our globe is but a particle, there 
 is continuous motion, rotation, revolution, and change. 
 “ Which sphere or celestial vault is none other than a 
 delusion of the eye, and those stars which we call fixed 
 are no other than so many suns, around which planets 
 describe circles, as with our sun ; nor is it any wonder 
 that by reason of their great distance they are unseen by us. 
 And if these suns are, as it were, the centre of systems of 
 
 1 Tlie same thing has been said passage was quoted hy Bruno (W. 
 by Virgil : “ Mens agitat molem, i. 242). 
 magnoque se corpore miscet.” This 
 
2 4 6 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 planets related to ours, they may be called worlds, and 
 every celestial body may be called a world, which, like our 
 earth, harbours a multitude of living creatures ” ( De Im- 
 mense), vi. 2, v. 7). “ Of these worlds there is not one, 
 
 nor two, but an infinity, infinite as the space containing’ 
 them.” “ Nevertheless, it can by no means be granted 
 that these do not form an universe because they do not 
 all gravitate towards a single centre nor are enclosed by 
 one periphery ; for they do in nowise take from a more 
 lofty and ideal unity; one being the space in which these 
 heavenly bodies travel, they are formed of one substance, 
 informed by one spirit ” ( De /mm. vii. 1 3 , v. 16; De 
 Mon. c. 2, v. 236). “ God (is) the First Cause in so far 
 
 as all things are distinct from him, as the effect (is) from 
 the efficient, the thing made from the maker” (W. i. 261). 
 All is subject to endless transformation except the One 
 which transforms and changes all things, the central force 
 of stars and suns, of bodies and of souls ; the force which 
 bestows upon all living things both form and matter, and 
 which therefore we call the Soul of souls and the Being 
 of beings. The Soul of souls is the Unity which cannot 
 perish, the Identity revealed in all changes, the simplicity 
 which is the foundation of all that is composite and 
 multiplied. The Being of beings is the cause and 
 principle of law, the immutable substance, unseen by the 
 eye of sense, but visible to the eye of reason, the bond of 
 union in that which is multiplied and changing, the last 
 and the first of the powers of Nature, and it is a result 
 of their supreme origin that all forms of physical and 
 moral being apparent in the universe, no matter how 
 different in constitution and in destiny, share a common 
 life, and form, as it were, the members of one vast and 
 harmonious whole. Firmly grounded in this faith, and 
 believing it to be inconceivable that any thinker or 
 theologian should seek offence in his theories, he was blind 
 to all danger. Wearied with the arduous struggle 
 against poverty, chilled to the heart with others’ mistrust 
 
ZURICH, 1591. 
 
 247 
 
 and his own failure, roving, rejected, the favour of great 
 men given him only to be withdrawn, unsolaced by the 
 company of disciples or the ministering of a single friend, 
 he took the fatal decision to approach his native land, 
 lie hoped, no doubt, to remain unmolested in Venice, 
 which more than any other Italian city had preserved a 
 certain independence of the Papacy. 1 Moreover, the high 
 place and noble name of Mocenigo offered him security 
 and protection. At Zurich, accordingly, he awaited a 
 second summons from the young patrician. To Raphael 
 Eglin, 2 a pastor of the Reformed Church and a poetic 
 philosopher, Bruno dictated an abridgment of his Meta- 
 physics , a portion of which was twice printed under the 
 title Summa Terminorum Metapliysicorum , the first time 
 in 1595 during Bruno’s imprisonment in Rome, and 
 again after his death in 1 609. The first or exoteric part 
 of this work contains a quantity of definitions founded on 
 the categories of Aristotle, the second or esoteric portion 
 being occupied with the doctrine of emanation taught by 
 the Neo-Platonists. According to Brunnhofer, this work 
 contains entire propositions recalling sometimes word for 
 word the Ethics of Spinoza. The flowing style, accord- 
 ing to the same writer, entirely justifies Eglin’s admira- 
 tion for his master’s adroitness in logic. 
 
 It is evident that Bruno never ceased to cherish the 
 hope, not only that it might be granted him to teach 
 
 1 When Venice was placed under 
 the interdict, the Senate signified to 
 the grand vicar of the Bishop of 
 Padua that he was forbidden to pub- 
 lish the decree. The grand vicar 
 replied that he would act as God 
 should inspire him ; to which the 
 Senate responded that God had 
 already inspired the Council of Ten 
 to hang the disobedient. 
 
 2 In the same year Eglin had 
 received the freedom of the town 
 from the magistrates of Zurich in 
 return for his services to the state 
 schools. Some years later both 
 
 Hainzel and Eglin were concerned 
 in a charge of practising alchemy 
 and of falsifying coin. This had dis- 
 astrous consequences for the accused 
 men. Perhaps their credibility on 
 this point may have caused Bruno 
 to withdraw from their society, for 
 he had signified his contempt for 
 magical investigations at the outset 
 of his literary career in the Candle- 
 bearer when deriding the efforts of 
 Bonifacio to make gold by means of 
 the imposture of the alchemist 
 Cencio. 
 
2 4 8 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 the truth as a philosopher, but that he might succeed in 
 making his peace with the Pope. During the whole of 
 his travels he had approached the confessional twice only; 
 and he postponed his desire to reconcile himself with the 
 Church till the advent of a Pope less terrible to back- 
 sliders than Sixtus Y. When the stern pontiff’ was dead, 
 Bruno probably hoped for tolerance at the hands of 
 Gregory XIV. — “ a soul of virgin innocence,” as he is 
 called by Ranke. A second change in the Papacy em- 
 boldened the philosopher yet further, and gave rise to 
 the hope that by dedicating a work to Clement VIII. 
 the Papal favour might be secured, together with a safe 
 return to the Church. 
 
 Accordingly we find that one work in particular, upon 
 the Seven Liberal Arts, was destined by Bruno for pre- 
 sentation to the sovereign pontiff. “ This I desired,” he 
 says in his evidence at the trial (Doc. ix.), “ to have 
 printed in Frankfort, intending to take it, and some 
 others of my printed works which I approve (for some I 
 do not approve), and to place myself at the feet of his 
 Holiness 1 (for I have heard that he loves men of learning), 
 and to state my case to him, and to endeavour to obtain 
 absolution for my sins and permission to wear the clerical 
 habit without entering religion ; and I have spoken with 
 many Neapolitan fathers of the Order, and in particular 
 with Fra Domenico da Nocera and with Zuane Mocenigo, 
 who also promised to help me in all things which were 
 right.” Being asked to explain himself further, he added, 
 that with respect to not approving his own works, he 
 desired to say that they were those in which he had 
 discoursed as a philosopher and not in all respects like a 
 Christian, adding, “ And in especial I know that in some 
 of these works I have maintained and handled certain 
 matters philosophically which ought to be attributed to 
 the power, wisdom, and glory of God according to the 
 Christian faith, and I have founded my doctrine upon 
 1 Clement VIII. assumed the tiara February 3, 1592. 
 
FRA DOMENICO DA NOCERA. 
 
 249 
 
 sense and reason, and not upon faith ; and this is for the 
 generality, and for particulars I refer to my -writings, for 
 I do not now recall any especial doctrine.” The evidence 
 of Fra Domenico da Nocera, written in a cramped hand 
 on a coarse sheet of letter-paper, follows in confirmation. 
 “ I, Fra Domenico da Nocera, of the Order of Preachers, 
 and regent of the College of St. Dominic in Naples, — I 
 say about this present, that to-day, May 31, 1592, the 
 day of St. John and St. Paul, meeting with the very 
 reverend father the Inquisitor of Venice, he called me, 
 and in presence of the very reverend Provincial of the 
 Holy Land and of the very reverend Provincial of Venice, 
 commanded me to put upon paper, Had I spoken with 
 Fra Giordano of Nola here in Venice, and what he had 
 said to me ? and desiring to obey, I make reply that on 
 one day of this month of May, near to the Feast of the 
 Pentecost, coming out of the sacristy of the church of St. 
 John and St. Paul, I saw a secular making a reverence to 
 me, whom at first sight I did not know, but when he 
 accosted me, saying, ‘ Come into a safe place,’ I became 
 aware that he was one who was one of our brethren in 
 the province of the kingdom, a man of letters, whose 
 name was Fra Giordano da Nola, and so we retired into 
 a part of the aforesaid church, where he told me the 
 reason of his departure from our province, and that he 
 had put off the habit because it was taken from him by a 
 father, Fra Domenico Vita, then Provincial by what was 
 said, telling me also of many kingdoms in which he had 
 travelled, and royal courts, with his important exercises 
 in lecturing, but that he had always lived as a Catholic. 
 And when I asked him what he did in Venice, and how 
 he lived, he said that he arrived in Venice but a few 
 days back and that he had enough of his own to live 
 comfortably, and that he was resolved to be quiet, and to 
 set to work to compose a book which he had in his mind, 
 and then, by important assistance and accompanied by 
 favour, he would present it to his Holiness and obtain his 
 
2 :o 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 pardon for that which he had related, to give rest to his 
 conscience, and finally to see if he could stay in Rome 
 and- there devote himself to the literary calling, and to 
 show his worth, and perhaps to deliver some lectures.” 
 
 It was this hearty desire for reconciliation with the 
 Papacy, and this premature confidence iu the concord 
 between philosophy and religion, added to his warm 
 desire to see his native land once more, which led Bruno 
 to take the disastrous step of revisiting Italy. His pro- 
 ject filled those who knew him with dismay. Rumour 
 brought the news, which they could scarcely credit, to the 
 inhabitants of Bologna. A native of Brandenburg and 
 student of Helmstedt, Yalens Acidalius, being at Bologna, 
 where he was staying in the house of one Persio, wrote on 
 the 1 2th February I 592 to the Bavarian Michael For- 
 gacz, baron of Gimes, then living at Prague, the following 
 letter : — “ I would ask of thee one thing. It is said that 
 the Nolan, Giordano Bruno, thy friend at Wittenberg, is 
 at present at Padua living and teaching. Is it truly so ? 
 What man is this who dares to return to Italy, whence 
 he once fled ? I am in amazement, and can give no 
 credit to the story, though I hear it from persons worthy 
 of confidence. Instruct me, as I desire to be assured, or 
 to be undeceived in this matter.” 1 
 
 The glory of Venice was past its prime, but the Re- 
 public was still sufficiently splendid, at the close of a 
 century of splendour, to justify the wonder and admira- 
 tion which it everywhere encountered. The empire of its 
 nobles was extended even to the realm of thought, which, 
 by a humorous freak of despotism, “ was decreed should be 
 free.” The government, which displayed a supreme con- 
 tempt for individual rights, manifested for independent 
 speculation a respect hitherto unknown — a respect inspired 
 by the incomparable education of the governing body. 
 
 1 Before the discovery of the docu- that Bruno had lived and taught in 
 ments of Bruno’s trial at Venice Padua, 
 this letter was the only evidence 
 
THE SCHOOLS OF PADUA. 
 
 251 
 
 Other states were ruled by soldiers or the sons of soldiers, 
 the might of whose fathers had made them princes ; but 
 the nobles of Venice were men who owed nothing to their 
 birth but certain hereditary offices, and on whom undue 
 or uninvited prominence would have been visited with all 
 the jealousy once shown by Athens. 
 
 In Venice, as at Athens, each man suspected and 
 dreaded a despot in his neighbour ; and men of eminence 
 were compelled to turn their attention to learning, for 
 that “ is exempted from the wrong of time,” as from the 
 wrongs of men. For more than a hundred years the 
 liberal schools at Padua had moulded the minds of the 
 patricians of Venice. There was hardly one noble 
 Venetian who had not taught or learnt in the school 
 founded by the Republic at Venice in 1470. The Senate 
 discussed the choice of the professors ; their rewards and 
 dignities were matter of state control ; and a special 
 officer of the highest standing was appointed to direct 
 public instruction. But the professors were granted full 
 freedom with regard to their own interpretation of the 
 subjects intrusted to them by the Senate. Thus, though 
 philosophy was supported by the state, it was free in the 
 best sense of the word ; and such was the pride of the 
 Venetians in their academy, that in 1571 the Senate 
 decreed that they would recognise no degrees except those 
 granted by their own university. Yet the schools of 
 Padua, so dear to Venice and so richly endowed by that 
 city, were the centre of a sterile philosophy ; and the 
 pantheistic doctrine of Averroes, 1 then ruling, was entirely 
 opposed to the comfort and safety of an idealistic philoso- 
 pher such as Bruno. This doctrine was descended, as it 
 seemed, from the old Greek ethics ; for although it is true 
 that Plato was the first to use the term Divine Providence, 
 yet, knowing no truly moral distinctions, the Greeks called 
 a right action beautiful (/caAa) and a wrong action ugly 
 
 1 Etude Historique sur la Philo- ( Cesare Cremonini ), par L. Mabil- 
 sophie de la Renaissance en Italie leau, Paris, Hachette, 1881. 
 

 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 (atcr^pn). In Averroism, which may be called philoso- 
 phical Islamism, individual immortality was lost in an 
 active intellect, supposed to brood over the face of Nature, 
 opening and closing like an automaton in order to receive 
 again, or to send forth, those individual particles of one 
 universal reason which wear out their short day among 
 men. 
 
 The Averroistic doctrine 1 ruled in Padua till the middle 
 of the seventeenth century, although it was in truth the 
 enemy of religious faith. “ Nearly the whole of the 
 world is occupied,” Picinus says with some rhetorical 
 exaggeration in the preface to his translation of Plotinus, 
 “ by the Peripatetics, who are divided into two sects, the 
 Alexandrists and the Averroists. The former believe the 
 human intellect to be mortal ; the latter contend that it 
 is one in all men. Both parties alike are the enemies of 
 the very foundation of true religion, chiefly because they 
 seem to deny that human affairs are controlled by a 
 Divine Providence.” 
 
 At the time of Bruno’s appearance, the philosophic 
 spirit of Padua had finished the cycle in which all purely 
 materialistic studies are condemned to move. Starting 
 from the contemplation of Nature, Paduan philosophy 
 exhausted logic and metaphysics, and proceeded to search 
 for the absolute under its twin forms, idea and being ; 
 after which, returning upon itself, it sought to investigate 
 the nearest reality to which it could attain, the human 
 soul. Each of these phases occupied a century, and at 
 length that unfruitful region was attained in which 
 nothing remains to be done except to reduce to synthetic 
 expression the labours of the past. 
 
 It was at this moment that Bruno, fresh from his 
 struggles in Germany, and full of heart at finding him- 
 self once more among his countrymen and speaking his 
 
 1 The Dccamcrone of Boccaccio rings, the conception underlying 
 contains (I. Nov. 3) the story (re- which is to be found in the philoso- 
 vived and dramatised by Lessing in phy of Averroes. 
 his Nathan der Weise) of the three 
 
PADUA. 
 
 253 
 
 own language, arrived at Padua. Neither eagles nor 
 eagles’ young, we are told, are fed with flies, and Bruno 
 was not disposed to content himself with petty means or 
 ends when once more inspirited by his native air. A 
 natural philosopher, the sterile and abstract character of 
 the method in vogue at Padua must have revolted him, 
 while making him familiar with the bitter disappointment 
 which too often rides pillion with success. In Padua the 
 dream of many a day of exile was realised ; the arduous 
 struggle against penury in a foreign land was over ; the 
 wanderer once more heard the familiar accents of his 
 childhood, and scented that peculiar vigorous savour 
 which rises only from the soil of Italy. But, as one of 
 the Ishmaelites of this world, his hand was against every 
 man’s ; and to hope better times were in store for him 
 was to ignore his nature, for he carried within himself 
 the elements of his own destruction ; and duller men, 
 discerning his fiery spirit, sought to quench it lest it 
 should cause a general conflagration. 
 
 Bruno quitted Zurich in the early summer, if we may 
 judge from a manuscript dated Sunday, 1 the 1st of July 
 1591, according to the Gregorian calendar, while in 
 Zurich tho Julian calendar was still in force. In Sep- 
 tember or October he appeared in Yenice, where he took 
 a lodging and prepared himself to instruct Mocenigo 
 (Doc. ii., v.), though for the greater part he lived at 
 Padua, where, taking advantage of the university, he 
 gave private lectures to the German students, with 
 whom the Nolan had much in common (Doc. vi.) His 
 stay at Padua, moreover, was broken by the journey to 
 Frankfort already mentioned for the purpose of seeing 
 his works through the press. At specified times he re- 
 turned to Yenice to superintend the studies of Mocenigo, 
 
 1 Professor Sigwart, in his mas- This was a mistake of one day ; for 
 terly sketch of the life of Bruno, in 1591 the 1st of July fell on Mon- 
 points out that by a pen error the day. The work was begun in Zurich 
 philosopher dated his MSS. Sunday, and finished in Padua on the 22d 
 July 1st, Liber Triginta Statuarum. of October (Noroff Catalogue). 
 
GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 25 + 
 
 and at Padua, in the autumn, we find him engaged with 
 a pupil, Hieronymus Besler from Nuremberg, who became 
 his secretary, and with whom he made a copy of a manu- 
 script called De Sigillis Hcrmitis Ptolomci et Aliorum, 
 which from its title was perhaps a work on the occult 
 sciences, intended by Bruno to entertain his superstitious 
 Yenetian patron. Orientals say that the vast Asiatic 
 ruins were the work of enchanters, and only the un- 
 learned believe that works beyond their compass are 
 due to magic. But there can be no doubt that the at- 
 traction of Mocenigo for his philosophic studies was not 
 founded upon metaphysics, which, we are told by Bruno, 
 in the Expulsion , “ considers the universal principles 
 of all things falling under human cognisance, . . . those 
 species of ideas and sorts of ends and efficients above 
 natural effects, as well according to the reality that is 
 in things as according to the representing conception.” 
 Nor is it likely that “ the bright shining of the world, 
 that luminous and excellent star ” (W. ii. 99 ),* caused any 
 wonder in Mocenigo. No “ fruitful progress of contem- 
 plation ” (W. ii. 393) was likely to awaken in his sordid 
 mind interest in the sources of the soul or in the life of 
 the “ vast universe which is subject to our sight and to 
 our common reason” (W. ii. 393). 
 
 The scheme of creation, when expressed in Lullian 
 figures, was, in Bruno’s mind, like the Urirn and Tlium- 
 mim in whose symbols were the judgment of God ; but 
 this lofty conception was no more to Mocenigo than if it 
 had been the pane of an inn-window scrawled with a 
 hundred trivial signatures. 
 
 The Yenetian, whose mind turned solely upon his own 
 profit, and upon Mnemonics, which he thought a royal 
 
 1 “ It should seem that the and splendour of flame: so that 
 celestial bodies, most of them, are flame above is durable and con- 
 true fires or flames, as the Stoics sistent, and in its natural place ; 
 held, more fire perhaps and rarified but with us it is a stranger and 
 than our flame is. Tor they are all momentary and impure ; like Vulcan, 
 globular and determinate, they have that halted with his fall.” — Bacon, 
 rotation, and they have the colour lx. vol. 2. 
 
GIOVANNI MOCENIGO. 
 
 255 
 
 road to success, was not able to perceive the true nature 
 of the philosopher. Casaubon, we are told by his bio- 
 grapher Mark Pattison, suffered “from the disease of double- 
 mindedness, and when he was reading the classics, wished 
 he was reading the Fathers ; ” and Mocenigo was probably 
 in the same plight, wishing to command Venice while he 
 was learning, and to learn while he exhausted himself in 
 fruitless struggles to rival the Doges who were members 
 of his family. It was not, we learn from books of her- 
 aldry, till somewhat late that fathers and sons bore the 
 same arms ; the sons, when their faces were concealed for 
 battle, preferring to be known apart from their fathers by 
 another crest ; 1 and some such plan might be adopted 
 once more ; for as a writer’s early triumphs are said to 
 be his most formidable rivals, so the successful members 
 of a family are not precisely those with whom the younger 
 branches would choose to measure their strength. Un- 
 fortunately, Mocenigo, who, had he been without a great 
 name, might have lived reputably upon his small ability, 
 found himself compelled to have recourse to magic, and 
 failing that, to still meaner arts and subterfuges. When 
 the Tartars, we are told, see a strong or brave man, they 
 seek to kill him, in the belief that they will inherit his 
 useful qualities, but Mocenigo had not the plea of these 
 savages in causing the death of his master. 
 
 It was a strange coincidence that Padua and Venice, 
 which Bruno had quitted soon after the Roman trial of 
 1576, should have been the first Italian cities to receive 
 the exile, and the last in which he was master of his 
 liberty. Padua appeared to offer a safe resting-place 
 
 1 Sir Philip Sidney at every 
 tournament displaj'ed a new device. 
 At a tilt the day after the birth 
 of a son to Lord Leicester, Sidney 
 assumed the motto Speravi, the 
 word crossed with a black line to 
 show his hope was dashed. Bruno 
 on one occasion took for his motto 
 the words, “ Sad in joy, joyful in 
 
 sorrow ,” and solaced himself with 
 the title “ Academician of no 
 Academy,” reflecting meanwhile 
 upon the full academicians who are 
 “fathers in ignorance.” At another 
 time he was the “ citizen and 
 servant of the world, son of the 
 earth his mother, and of the sun his 
 father.” 
 
256 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 not only as harbouring a great school, then the first in 
 Italy, but also because it was a city dependent upon 
 Venice, that state of which Lord Bacon writes as “ the 
 wisest of Europe, whose prosperity hath made them secure, 
 and underweighers of peril.” Venice perhaps was not so 
 much in need of a university as the university needed 
 the protection of Venice. “ It was not,” said Junius, 
 “ Virginia that wanted a governor, but a court favourite 
 that wanted a salary ; ” and without the help of its astute 
 and powerful protector, Padua might have found itself in 
 bad case, lying exposed on four sides to neighbours, whose 
 only feeling of brotherhood lay in an unmixed desire for 
 community of goods . 1 
 
 But, despite what has been called by Addison “ very 
 fine moralities,” the attraction of Italy remains unequalled, 
 
 1 “ In which city,” says Roger 
 Ascham, “ I saw more wickedness in 
 a week than in all my life in Eng- 
 land.” Three years before Bruno’s 
 first stay in Padua, Sir Philip Sid- 
 ney passed though the city on his 
 way to Venice. And desiring, as he 
 tells us, to eschew “ strange and 
 in'khorn terms,” he confesses that 
 “next to the Greek and Latin, he 
 likes and loves the Italian tongue 
 above all other.” Yet he writes of 
 Italianised Englishmen as “ready 
 backbiters, sore nippers, and spiteful 
 reporters privily of good men.” And 
 of Italy he says, “ Virtue once made 
 the country mistress over all the 
 world; vice nowmaketh that country 
 slave to them that before were glad 
 to serve it.” A kindred feeling seems 
 to have possessed other Elizabethan 
 moralists. “ Suffer not thy sons,” 
 writes the great Lord Burleigh to 
 his second son Robert, “ to pass the 
 Alps, for they shall learn nothing 
 there but pride, blasphemy, and 
 atheism.” Hubert Languet, too, 
 writes to Sir Philip Sidney, “It is 
 difficult for a man clothed in white 
 apparel to remain in an apartment 
 filled with smoke and dust without 
 soiling his garment ; nor can the 
 complexion which lias been long ex- 
 
 posed to the sun retain its native 
 hue. Equally difficult it will be for 
 you to preserve your mind pure and 
 spotless if you converse with the 
 Italians, the inhabitants of Venice 
 and Padua alone excepted ; ” add- 
 ing, “ If you should fall into the 
 hands of those robbers who live in 
 Rome, you must either renounce the 
 religion which you profess or expose 
 your life to extreme danger. In 
 Rome . . . you run the hazard of 
 losing your religion, your conscience, 
 and your reputation.” Accordingly, 
 Sidney spent several months at 
 Venice and in Padua, writing to his 
 brother without any remarkable in- 
 crease of respect for the Italians, as 
 follows : — “ For Italy, wee know not 
 what we have or can have to doe 
 with them, but to buy their silkes 
 and wines ; and as for the other 
 point, except Venice, whose good 
 laws and customes wee can hardly 
 proportion to ourselves, because they 
 are quite of a contrary government, 
 there is little there but tyrannous 
 oppression and servil yielding to 
 them that have little or no right 
 over them. And for the men you 
 shall have there, although indeed 
 some be excellently learned, yet are 
 they all given to counterfeit learn- 
 
VENICE. 
 
 257 
 
 and of all Italian cities Venice bears away the palm. 
 Swift, who “ could write finely upon a broomstick,” might 
 sue for such a subject, for in Venice there is every ele- 
 ment of fine writing. When the sun raises his great 
 globe of vivid red, the air and those antique pieces of 
 water shine like fire ; in the deep moonlight, pillars and 
 statues seem to be turned to carvings in silver and 
 ebony ; while sunset strews the water-way with myriads 
 of sparks and paints upon it a lustrous image of the sky, 
 which stretches away, a bright celestial expanse, into the 
 distance, where the trembling surface of the sea shines 
 with liquid hues of amethyst and opal, such as pave the 
 New Jerusalem. The firmament above is scarcely divided 
 from the firmament below, which repeats again and again, 
 like an echo, tones of heavenly blue, carnation, and opal. 
 Reflection on reflection, sun to sun and moon to moon, 
 fill the water and multiply the beauty of the scene ; each 
 thing seeks its mysterious double; every bridge reflected 
 in the shining streams becomes a ring of pierced ivory or 
 coloured marble, and a transparent image lies at the foot 
 of every palace. Fact and fancy go hand in hand through 
 that tissue of light, the sparkling haze which is cast over 
 the city like an enchanter’s spell. Lingering in the narrow 
 causeways of the anchored city, the gorgeous and fantastic 
 forms chronicled in the splendid annals of Venice are not 
 more real than the immortal figures sung by poets or 
 painted by the great masters. On those broad lagoons rode 
 the ships of Bassanio side by side with the golden Bucen- 
 taur. The Rialto and the Bridge of Sighs are peopled 
 with dead princes and ambassadors, as with the luminous 
 forms immortalised by the colours of Giorgione and Tin- 
 toret, and by the gentle art of Shakespeare. Here they 
 
 ing, as a man shall learne among paynting, and such are better there 
 them more false grounds of things than in other epuntries ; hut for 
 than in any place I knowe ; for other matters, as well, if not better, 
 from a tapster upwards they are all you shall have them in nearer 
 discoursers in certain matters and places.” 
 qualities, as horsemanship, weapons, 
 
 E 
 
GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 258 
 
 are domiciled for ever, with the iridescent flight of 
 pigeons, the lustre of bronze wrought into a fabric as 
 delicate as dreamwork, the pearly hue which marble 
 takes from age, and those varied graces which are the 
 matchless legacy of the Renaissance. Here and in Hol- 
 land is the especial kingdom of the painter, who by 
 his vivid filial likeness proves that genius gave him 
 birth ; and in just measure as he is true to Nature, 
 so Nature is true to him, aud by right of that exquisite 
 spirit which he has captured and fixed upon his canvas, 
 by the flower-like hues of Venice, by the silver radiance 
 of Holland, Nature becomes his inalienable patrimony 
 for ever. 
 
 Bruno had now entered upon the last year of his 
 public life in Venice, where the links between the 
 governing and the governed, so often relaxed and so often 
 unduly strained in other parts of Italy, still held good in 
 the bonds of mutual confidence. For him Venice was 
 still “ the eldest child of Liberty,” in spite of the threat- 
 ening aspect of the Inquisition. When the Fi’ench 
 ambassador congratulated Cervantes on the great reputa- 
 tion of Don Quixote , “ Had it not been for the Inquisi- 
 tion,” said Cervantes, “ I should have made my book 
 much more entertaining ; ” and the influence of the In- 
 quisition penetrated every country and every rank of 
 society. Before he was captured by the Holy Office 
 some tranquil months fell to Bruno’s lot, for we find that 
 he left his lodging and went to live upon the Grand 
 Canal, in the quarter of San Samuele, where the house of 
 Mocenigo stood. It is astonishing that, being without 
 means, without adherents, suspected in many quarters, 
 hunted from town to town by the ban of excommunica- 
 tion, Bruno should have found courage and fresh hope to 
 teach, to reprove, and to exhort anew. His reputation as 
 a philosopher and a man of lively conversation and great 
 attainments had preceded him. He was made free of the 
 literary circles, which met and disputed in the book- 
 
VENICE , MARCH 1392. 
 
 259 
 
 sellers’ shops, and in the house of the noble Venetian, 
 Andrea Morosini, standing in the division of San Luca, 
 upon the Grand Canal. “ Here,” says Morosini in his 
 evidence, “ certain gentlemen are used to resort, and also 
 prelates, to entertain themselves with discoursing, and 
 upon philosophy chiefly.” 
 
 It was not long, however, before Mocenigo began to 
 grow discontented with his master. No one will become 
 a painter by looking at models, nor is a thinker made by 
 patterns for thought ; and Mocenigo, let him turn the 
 concentric circles of Lully as he might, was not likely 
 to become either inventive or retentive, although, like 
 Gianozzo Manetti, who kept a Jew in his house in order 
 to learn Hebrew, the Venetian kept a philosopher in his 
 house in order to learn philosophy ; not comprehending 
 Bruno’s doctrine upon that “ remembrance of the soul’s 
 high inheritance which is penitence ” (W. i. 1 8 8) ; nor, 
 again, on that “ love of the good and beautiful which is 
 not forgetfulness but memory, . . . since we cannot desire 
 that which we do not know” (W. ii. 330). He was able 
 to grasp the conception of sorcery ; for in sorcery we 
 have not the idea of a God, of a moral faith ; it exhibits 
 man as the highest power, regarding him as alone occu- 
 pying a position of command over the power of Nature. 
 But true religion is like the bright glimmering of the 
 dawn. It issues from man’s consciousness of a higher 
 Power, in relation to which he owns his weakness and 
 humility. 
 
 The fate of Bruno was sealed. With his eyes open 
 he placed his head in the noose prepared by the In- 
 quisition, entering the house of Mocenigo in March 
 1592. Between the pupil and the master there must 
 have been no more than the sympathy which Lord 
 Bacon pretends to exist between the weapon and the 
 wound. The storm was gathering. The discontent of 
 Mocenigo increased daily. The little he learnt from 
 Bruno, who no doubt soon discovered his incapacity, 
 
26 o 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 was no compensation for the expense and trouble of 
 lodging an unmannerly stranger. The two men had 
 not a point in common ; and at last, as no magical 
 effects were forthcoming, Mocenigo became persuaded 
 that Bruno had kept back his chief secrets ; and soon 
 after they first met, the bookseller Ciotto deposes that 
 at Easter 1592 he was commissioned by Mocenigo to 
 inquire, when visiting the fair in Frankfort, whether 
 Bruno was a man who could be trusted, and whether 
 his pretensions were worthy of credit. “ I have,” said 
 Mocenigo to Ciotto, “ this man here at my expense ; he 
 has promised to teach me many things ; he has had clothes 
 and money in quantities from me on this account. I 
 cannot bring him to any conclusion, and I suspect he is 
 not a good man ; and since you are going to Frankfort, 
 you will do me a favour by taking some trouble to dis- 
 cover if he is trustworthy, and if he will keep his word.” 
 “ So,” Ciotto adds, “ when I was at Frankfort I spoke 
 with different scholars, and I found that he had made pro- 
 fession of memory, and of other such secrets, but that 
 nothing came of it, and all those who had dealings with 
 him were dissatisfied.” To which Mocenigo answered, 
 “ I doubt him also ; but I desire to make him repay me 
 something of the money which I have squandered upon 
 him, and I will then deliver him up to the Holy Inquisi- 
 tion ” (May 26, I 592). Accordingly Mocenigo appealed, 
 according to his own story, to his confessor, though to do 
 so was, as the French say, ertfonccrune porte cmverte. The 
 confessor desired his willing penitent to deliver Bruno up 
 to the Inquisition. It is scarcely likely that the confessor 
 was consulted when Mocenigo hoped to learn by the 
 black art the secrets of alchemy and the elixir of life, 
 or that the same pious authority was asked when the 
 unhappy exile was tempted to return to his native land by 
 Mocenigo. As soon, however, as he determined to betray 
 his master, he naturally sought to throw the burden of the 
 deed upon religion, which was forced to set its seal upon 
 
VENICE, MAY 1592. 
 
 261 
 
 the act of betrayal and murder. As a result, Mocenigo 
 threatened to lay before the Council of the Inquisition an 
 account of Bruno’s “ wicked words, both against our Lord 
 Jesus Christ and against the Church ; ” to which Bruno 
 answered, “ that he had no fear of the Inquisition, for his 
 manner of life offended no man ; that he did not remem- 
 ber having said any wicked thing whatever, and that even 
 if he had said it, he had said it to me alone, and that he 
 could, therefore, have no fear I would injure him; and 
 that even if he were to fall into the hands of the Inquisi- 
 tion, at the most they might force him to resume the 
 habit which he had abandoned.” “ So you have been a 
 monk ! ” said Mocenigo ; and he answered, “ I have 
 taken the first vows only, and in any case, therefore, I 
 shall be able to adjust my affairs.” Mocenigo replied, 
 “ How can you adjust your affairs if you have no 
 faith ; first adjust your opinions, and then you may 
 hope to adjust your affairs ; and for that, if you are 
 willing, you shall have all the help I can give you. 
 Though you have shown yourself so wanting in faith 
 to me, and ungrateful for all the courtesies I have 
 used towards you, yet in all things I wish to be your 
 friend.” 
 
 To this offer Bruno made no reply, “ except to entreat,” 
 says Mocenigo, “ to be set at liberty, and to say that 
 though his packages were in order and he ready to depart, 
 it was not that he desired to leave me, but to bridle my 
 impatience for learning ; and if I set him at liberty he 
 would teach me all he knew, and that to me alone he 
 would discover all the secrets of all the works written 
 by him.” 
 
 Mocenigo’s puerile complaints roused Bruno’s anger, 
 and he told his discontented pupil roundly that he had 
 taught him enough, and more than was incumbent on 
 him, and as much as was equivalent to the gifts and 
 the lodging and the favours cast in his teeth ; and that 
 he was determined to say farewell, and to return to 
 
262 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 Frankfort to print the remainder of his works, and in 
 particular that work on the Seven Liberal Arts which 
 was to reconcile him with the Pope ; averring, moreover, 
 that Mocenigo had wounded him to the quick by seizing 
 his writings, his books, and his clothes ; and “ this he 
 did because he not only desired me to teach him all that 
 I knew, but he would not permit me to teach any other 
 person, and he did not cease to threaten me in my life 
 and in my honour if I did not teach him all that I 
 knew ” (Doc. xiv.) 
 
 Thereupon, as has been said, Mocenigo took the formal 
 step of denouncing Bruno to the Father Inquisitor in 
 Venice. The denunciations, three in number, are in the 
 form of letters (1, 2, 3, 'Documenti Intorno a Giordano 
 Bruno , Roma, Salviucci, 1880), and they are dated sever- 
 ally May 23d, 25th, and 29th, 1592. 1 In these docu- 
 ments Bruno is accused of uttering blasphemies against 
 
 1 Document I. 
 
 Giovanni Mocenigo denounces Gior- 
 dano Bruno to the Father Inqui- 
 sitor of Venice. 
 
 23 d May 1592. 
 
 Very Keverend Father and most 
 Honoured Sir, — I, Zuane Moce- 
 nigo, son of the most noble Messer 
 Marcantonio, constrained by my 
 conscience and by order of my 
 confessor, denounce to your most 
 reverend Paternity Giordano Bruno, 
 having heard him say several times 
 when discoursing with me in my 
 house, that to say bread is made 
 flesh is a great reproach to the 
 Catholics ; that he is the enemy of 
 the mass ; that no religion pleases 
 him ; that Christ was a wicked man 
 (un tristo); that since he worked evil 
 to lead away the people, he might 
 very well foretell he would be hanged; 
 that in God there is no distinction 
 of persons, which in God would be 
 imperfection ; that the world is 
 eternal, and that there are infinite 
 
 worlds, and that God makes them 
 infinite without ceasing, because, he 
 says, he wills as much as he can ; * 
 that Christ worked miracles in ap- 
 pearance, and that he was a magi- 
 cian and the Apostles also, and that 
 he (Bruno) could do as much and 
 more ; that Christ was unwilling to 
 die, and fled from death so long as 
 he could ; that there is no punish- 
 ment for sins ; and that souls, 
 created by the operation of Nature, 
 pass from one animal to another, 
 and that as brute beasts are born of 
 corruption, so man is born when he 
 is born again after the deluges. 
 
 His design was to found a new 
 sect, under the name of the New 
 Philosophy. He said that the Virgin 
 could not have borne a child ; and 
 that our Catholic faith is full of 
 blasphemy against the majesty of 
 God ; that the friars should not be 
 permitted to dispute, nor to enjoy 
 their revenues, because they defile 
 
 * This childish and absurd rendering 
 of Bruno’s philosophy is in itself a suffi- 
 cient comment on Mocenigo’s under- 
 standing. 
 
THE TRIAL IN VENICE, 1592. 
 
 263 
 
 the Trinity, “ which is impossible, and whereby he 
 blasphemes the name and majesty of God ; ” continuing, 
 
 tlie face of the earth ; that they all 
 are asses, and that our opinions are 
 the doctrines of asses ; that we have 
 no proof that our faith is approved 
 by God ; and that not to do to 
 others that which we desire them 
 not to do to us suffices for good 
 living ; and that he laughs to scorn 
 all other sins ; and that he marvels 
 how God endures so many Catholic 
 heresies. He says he will apply him- 
 self to the art of divination, and to 
 practise the black art, and all the 
 world would follow him ; that St. 
 Thomas, with all the doctors, knew 
 nothing compared to him ; and that 
 he could reason with all the greatest 
 theologians in the world, so that 
 they should not be able to reply. 
 
 He told me that in former times 
 in Rome the Inquisitors sought a 
 quarrel with him on one hundred 
 and thirty articles, and that he made 
 off whilst they were being presented, 
 because it was imputed to him that 
 he had thrown him into the Tiber 
 who accused him, or whom he be- 
 lieved to have accused him, to the 
 Inquisition. 
 
 I desired to learn of him, as I said, 
 by word of mouth, not knowing how 
 wicked he was, and, having taken 
 note of all these things, to give 
 account of them to you, reverend 
 father, when I doubted that he might 
 depart, as he said he would do. I 
 shut him in a room to be examined 
 by you ; and because I believe him 
 to be possessed by the devil, I pray 
 for a speedy decision in this matter. 
 Ciotto the librarian, and Messer 
 Giacomo Bertano, another librarian, 
 will be able to speak conformably 
 with me to the Holy Office, the said 
 Bertano having spoken particularly 
 ot him to me, telling me that he was 
 an enemy to Christ and to our faith, 
 and that he had heard him give 
 utterance to rank heresy. 
 
 I also send your most reverend 
 Paternity three of his printed books, 
 with some things hastily noted by 
 
 me, and also a small work from his 
 hand on God, by deduction of cer- 
 tain of his universal predicates,* 
 upon which you can pass judg- 
 ment. 
 
 Further, he frequented an aca- 
 demy of Ser Andrea Morosini, son 
 of the most noble Ser Giacomo, 
 which many gentlemen frequent, 
 who perhaps may have heard him 
 expound certain of his opinions. 
 
 Those matters done by him for 
 me, which are of no account, I will 
 willingly submit to your judgment, 
 for I desire in all things to be a 
 true and obedient son of our Holy 
 Church. 
 
 And, finally, I reverently kiss the 
 hands of your most reverend Pater- 
 nity. 
 
 From my house the 23d of May 
 1592. — Your most reverend Pater- 
 nity’s most obliged servant, 
 
 ZUANE MOCENIGO. 
 
 Document II. 
 
 Second Denunciation of Giovanni 
 Mocenigo in accusation of Bruno. 
 
 25 th May 1592. 
 
 Very Reverend Father and my 
 most Honoured Sir, — On that day 
 when I had Giordano Bruno under 
 lock and key, having asked him if 
 what he would not teach me (al- 
 though he had promised it to me in 
 return for many courtesies and many 
 gifts which I had made to him), he 
 should do so, at least so that I might 
 not accuse him of many wicked 
 words both against our Lord Jesus 
 Christ and against the holy Catholic 
 Church, he made response that he 
 had no fear of the Inquisition, be- 
 cause he had offended no man by 
 
 * Brunnhofer suggests that this MSS. 
 was a copy of that part of the Summa Ter- 
 minorum Metaphysicorum which is en- 
 titled De Deo Seu Mente. 
 
264 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 “ And on my bidding him be silent, and that he would 
 be pleased to use despatch in what he had to do for me, 
 
 liis maimer of living, and that he 
 did not remember having said any 
 wicked thing whatever ; and that 
 even if he had said it, he had said it 
 to me alone, and that therefore he 
 could have no fear that I should 
 injure him in this manner; and that 
 even if he were to fall into the 
 hands of the Inquisition, at the 
 most they could force him to wear 
 the habit he had abandoned. 
 
 “ So you were a monk ? ” said I to 
 him. He answered, “ I took the first 
 vows only, and in any case, there- 
 fore, I shall always be able to adjust 
 my affairs.” I added, “And how can 
 you adjust your affairs if you do not 
 believe in the most Holy Trinity, if 
 you hold our souls to be made of 
 filth, and that all the operations of 
 this world are guided by fate, as you 
 told me before l You must first ad- 
 just your opinions, and then it will 
 be easy for you to adjust the re- 
 mainder; and for that, if you like, I 
 offer you all the help I can give you, 
 so that you may know that although 
 you have shown yourself so wanting 
 in faith to me, and so ungrateful for 
 the courtesies which I have used 
 towards you, at any rate I wish to 
 be your friend in all things.” To 
 this he only answered by praying 
 me to set him at liberty, and that if 
 indeed he had his garments ready, 
 and had told me he wished to de- 
 part, it was not with the thought of 
 leaving, but to bridle my impatience 
 for learning, with which I continu- 
 ally tormented him, and that if I 
 set him free he would teach me all 
 he knew, and that to me alone the 
 secrets of his works should be in- 
 trusted, with many works still more 
 marvellous and more beautiful, which 
 he intended to write ; and that he 
 would be my slave, without any 
 other recompense than what I had 
 given him, and that if I wanted 
 everything which he had in my 
 house, he left it to me, and that he 
 would be satisfied with a copy of a 
 
 little book of conjurations which I 
 found amongst some of his written 
 papers. 
 
 I desired to give account of all 
 this to your most reverend Paternity, 
 so that by adding it to the rest you 
 may judge of the facts according to 
 the wisdom of your judgment. 
 
 There are money, clothes, papers, 
 and books of his, and these you will 
 be pleased to dispose of ; and since 
 by your favour and charity you are 
 pleased to overlook my offence in 
 delaying this accusation, I pray you 
 to be pleased to excuse it before 
 those most illustrious lords in re- 
 spect of my good intention, for I 
 could not discover the whole at 
 once, besides which, I did not know 
 the depravity of this man until after 
 I had kept him in the house it may 
 be about two months, because after 
 he came here he was for some time 
 in lodgings in this city, but for the 
 most part in Padua; and then I de- 
 sired to get the advantage of him, 
 and by his manner of proceeding I 
 could also be assured that he would 
 not have left me unawares ; so that 
 I have always promised myself to 
 be able to make him submit to the 
 correction of the Holy Office. This 
 I have succeeded in doing, and with 
 all thankfulness to your reverend 
 Paternity for your very diligent care 
 in this matter, I reverently kiss your 
 hands. 
 
 From my house, 25th May 1592. 
 
 ZUANE MOCENIGO. 
 
 Document III. 
 
 Fresh deposition of Giovanni Mocenigo 
 with regard to Bruno, in continua- 
 tion of the denunciations quoted 
 above. 
 
 iqtli May 1592. 
 
 Since your most reverend Pater- 
 nity requires me to recall with ex- 
 treme carefulness all the sayings of 
 
THE TRIAL IN VENICE , 1592. 
 
 265 
 
 because I being a Catholic and he worse than a Lutheran, 
 I could not endure him, he said, c Oh, you will see what 
 profit you will have from your belief ! ’ and laughing, 
 told me to wait for the judgment, when the dead should 
 arise, ‘ and then you shall be rewarded according to your 
 deeds.’ And in another discourse he said that howsoever 
 wise this Kepublic might be reputed in other matters, in 
 the matter of the wealth of the friars, he, for his part, 
 condemned the Venetians, who ought to do as they do in 
 France, for the revenues of the monasteries should be 
 bestowed upon the nobles, and the friars should live upon 
 broth, and that in this manner all would be well ; for 
 those who turn friars nowadays are asses, in whom the 
 enjoyment of such wealth is a very great sin. Besides, 
 
 Giordano Bruno against our Catholic 
 faith ; I remember to have heard 
 him say, beside the things already 
 written to your most reverend 
 Paternity, that the Church in these 
 times does not deal with men as the 
 Apostles did, for they converted the 
 people by preaching and by the ex- 
 ample of good living ; but that now 
 he who will not follow the Catholic 
 faith must be chastised and tormen- 
 ted ; for they take men by violence, 
 and not by love; that this world could 
 not remain as it is the abiding-place 
 of ignorance and without any re- 
 ligion that was good ; that truly the 
 Catholic religion pleased him much 
 more than the others, but that it 
 had great need of reform as well as 
 they, and is not good as it is ; but 
 that the world would speedily bring 
 about a general reform of its own, 
 because it could not remain so 
 corrupt ; and that he hoped great 
 things from the King of Navarre, 
 and that he therefore desired to 
 hasten his works that he might be 
 well thought of, because he wished 
 to be captain when the time came ; 
 and that he would not always remain 
 poor, because he should enjoy the 
 treasures of others. He also told me 
 with regard to the want of know- 
 
 ledge of these days, that greater 
 ignorance flourishes now than ever 
 was in the world, because men say 
 they know that which they do not 
 understand, which is that God is 
 one and triune, and that these are 
 impossibilities, errors, and great 
 blasphemies against the majesty of 
 God. 
 
 And on my bidding him be silent, 
 and that he would please to hasten 
 in what he had to do for me, 
 because I being a Catholic, and he 
 worse than a Lutheran, I could not 
 endure him, he said to me, “ Oh ! 
 you will see how you will profit by 
 your faith ! ” and he laughed and told 
 me to wait for the judgment when 
 the dead should arise, and I should 
 then see the reward of the righteous. 
 
 All which I affirm to your re- 
 verend Paternity on my oath to 
 be most true, and finally I humbly 
 kiss your hands. 
 
 I also send you a book by the said 
 Giordano, where I have noted a foul 
 passage, as you can see, and you can 
 place it under consideration with the 
 rest. 
 
 From my house, 29th May 1592. — 
 F rom your most reverend Paternity’s 
 very humble servant, 
 
 ZUANE MOCENIGO. 
 
266 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 lie told me that in the matter of marriage, 1 the Church 
 committed a sin in making that a sin by which we render 
 a service to Nature, and one which he thought of very 
 great merit.” 
 
 The accusations of Mocenigo may be taken as a mea- 
 sure alike of his capacity and of his character. When 
 asked on the 3d June if he had had dealings with 
 the evil spirit and had made profession of the black 
 art, Bruno answered, “ No ; that he had ever despised 
 such matters ; but that he purposed to look for a solitary 
 and quiet place (which he had not as yet discovered), and 
 to study astrology at his leisure, in order to see if there 
 was any truth in them, for it was the only science with 
 which he had not as yet acquainted himself.” Next day 
 he was asked if he had an enemy in those parts of the 
 country and for what reason ; and in reply the unhappy 
 prisoner shows that he knew by whom he was betrayed. 
 “ My only enemy,” he answered, “ is Ser Giovanni Moce- 
 nigo, who threatened my life and my honour, and that 
 continually.” 
 
 On his own showing, the Venetian enticed Bruno 
 away from the comparative security of Germany with the 
 intention of delivering him up to the terrors of the 
 Inquisition. Avarice, too, seems to have had its share 
 in the promptings of his shallow nature, if we may 
 judge by the querulous and complaining tone of his evi- 
 dence when it touches upon money. No sooner was his 
 curiosity appeased, and his mind satisfied that all his 
 expenses were in vain, than he rifled the baggage of the 
 guest, for whom the sacred rites of hospitality were no 
 protection, and gave him up to destruction. 
 
 Bruno, on his side, could not have been long in measur- 
 ing the capacity of Mocenigo, and it is within our 
 knowledge of the philosopher’s outspoken and impetuous 
 disposition that he should have permitted himself every 
 freedom of speech before his dangerous pupil, who, with 
 
 1 This statement is a perversion of the last verses of De Immcnso. 
 
THE TRIAL IN VENICE , 1592. 
 
 267 
 
 the understanding of a child and the power of a malicious 
 man, perverted the doctrines of his master, and took 
 upon himself the office of executioner as soon as he saw 
 his plan defeated for winning, by means of magic, that 
 superiority which was denied to him by Nature. Once 
 assured that no hope of magical interposition remained, 
 he immediately put in action his plan, which, he said, was 
 in his mind when he first invited Bruno to visit Venice, 
 but which, no doubt, occurred to him only when he felt a 
 desire to punish the Nolan because he was a philosopher 
 instead of a magician. Thus it was reserved for this 
 feeble son of a great house to set in motion the vast and 
 terrific machinery of the Inquisition. 
 
 When, on the 2 1 st May, Bruno waited upon his patron 
 to take his leave, Mocenigo, stripped of his delusions, 
 showed himself in his true colours. “ He insisted upon 
 it that I should remain,” Bruno says in his evidence, 
 “ and I insisted that I must go ; and he first began to 
 complain that I had not taught him as much as I was 
 under engagement to do, and he then threatened and said, 
 if I would not remain willingly, he would force me to 
 stay ; and on the night of the day following, which was 
 Friday, seeing that I persisted in my resolution, and that 
 I had arranged my affairs and had taken measures to 
 despatch what was mine to Frankfort, he came when I 
 was in bed, under pretence of wishing to speak with me, 
 and he was followed by his servant called Bartolo, with, 
 if I mistake not, five or six others, who were, I believe, 
 the gondoliers of persons living in that neighbourhood, 
 and they forced me to rise from my bed and brought me 
 to a garret, and locked me into it, Ser Giovanni himself 
 saying that if I would remain and teach him the terms 
 of the memory of words and the terms of geometry which 
 he had required from me at tli6 beginning, he would set 
 me at liberty, otherwise a worse thing would befall me ” 
 (Doc. viii.) Bruno, however, insisted that he had taught 
 all that was requii-ed of him, and that he had done nothing 
 
268 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 deserving sucli treatment, and Mocenigo then bolted the 
 doors upon him and quitted him. 
 
 On the day after, the 23d May, the traitor put the 
 crowning touch to his work, sending his first denunciation 
 to the Father Inquisitor. By an officer of the Inquisition, 
 accompanied by a body of men, the prisoner was con- 
 ducted to the lower parts of the house, and left in a 
 storehouse until nightfall, when another officer appeared 
 with his followers to convey the unhappy philosopher to 
 the prisons of the Holy Office. 
 
 On the 25th May Mocenigo took his oath of confirma- 
 tion before the Father Inquisitor, present in the Holy 
 Office. 1 The trial at once began. On the 29th May 
 Mocenigo made his third denunciation, instancing against 
 Bruno his assertion that the Church in the time of the 
 Apostles converted the people by preaching and by the 
 example of a holy life, but that he who will not be a 
 Catholic in these times is chastised and tormented, and 
 used with violence instead of with love. Moreover, he 
 stated, as one of the counts against Bruno, that the 
 unfortunate philosopher foretold a reform in the Catholic 
 Church, which reform he desired to hasten, as he in- 
 tended to be captain and to enjoy the treasures of others. 
 
 Upon these counts the trial proceeded. The tribunal 
 of the Inquisition consisted of the Father Inquisitor, 
 Giovanni Gabrielli di Saluzzo ; the Apostolic Nuncio in 
 Venice, then Ludovico Taberna ; the Patriarch of Venice, 
 then Lorenzo Priuli ; and lastly, one of the three noble 
 members of the “ Savii dell ’ Uresia,” who attended the 
 trial by turns as delegates of the Council of Ten, for 
 whom they watched the proceedings of the Inquisition. 
 These were Aloysio Foscari, Sebastian Barbadico, and 
 Thomas Morosini. 
 
 1 The Patriarchal palace, in which these trials, the last of which was 
 these examinations probably took held by the Inquisition in 1793- 
 place, adjoins the palace of the The prisons of the Holy Office were 
 Doges, against the Bridge of Sighs, in the walls on the western side of 
 The Patriarch usually presided at the Bridge of Sighs. 
 
THE TRIAL IN VENICE, 1592. 
 
 269 
 
 The evidence of the witnesses was then taken. On 
 the 26th May the bookseller Ciotto was examined, and on 
 the 29th follows the deposition of Bertano, the bookseller 
 of Venice. 1 While testifying to Bruno’s learning and 
 ability, they are both careful to guard themselves against 
 any suspicion of consorting with a heretic, perhaps as 
 much from a sense of self-preservation as from the desire, 
 which they no doubt felt, to shield the prisoner as far as 
 possible from the wrath of the Inquisition. “ Never,” 
 says Ciotto, “ did he give utterance to a word by which I 
 might have doubted that he was a Catholic and a good 
 Christian.” This evidence is loyally supported by Ber- 
 tano. “ While with me, he did not say, nor have I 
 perceived, anything whatever which is not Christian.” 
 Both librarians had made the acquaintance of Bruno in 
 Frankfort, where the Catholic party placed no restriction 
 on freedom of speech. 
 
 On the 29th May 1592 Bruno appeared before the 
 Tribunal. He is described by Ciotto as a “ small man, 
 meagre, with a small black beard, about forty years 
 of age.” When conducted into the presence of the 
 judges, he swore, with his hand upon the Scriptures, 
 to speak the truth, and when, before his interrogation 
 began, he was admonished to speak the truth, he cried 
 of his own accord, “ I will speak the truth. Many times 
 I have been threatened with this Holy Office, and I have 
 always taken the threat for a jest, for I am one ready to 
 give account of myself.” 
 
 A summary of the chief events of his life then follows, 
 and his philosophy naturally mingles with the recital. 
 On being questioned, he replies : “ Being at Frankfort 
 last year, I had two letters from the Signor Giovanni 
 
 1 If the evidence of the bookseller the year 1589 was spent by the 
 Bertano is trustworthy (Doc. vii.), Nolan in Helmstedt. There is, 
 Bruno was in Frankfort at the however, no reason apparent why 
 Easter fair of 15S9. Professor he should not have paid a short visit 
 Sigwart, however, is disposed to to Frankfort in the spring of that 
 think that Bertano was in error, as year. 
 
270 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 Mocenigo, a Venetian gentleman, in which he invited me 
 to come to Venice, desiring, according to what he wrote 
 to me, that I should teach him the art of memory and 
 invention, promising to treat me well, and that I should 
 he content with him ; and so I came about seven or eight 
 months ago ; and I have taught him various terms relat- 
 ing to these two sciences, at first living elsewhere, and 
 then with him in his own house ; and it appearing to me 
 that I had done and taught him enough, and as much 
 as I ought, of those things which he desired of me, and 
 meditating a return to Frankfort to print some works of 
 mine, last Thursday, in order that I might depart, I took 
 leave of him ; and on this, suspecting that rather than 
 go to Frankfort, as I said, I wished to leave his house in 
 order to teach other persons the same sciences which I 
 had taught to him and others, he entreated me with much 
 earnestness to remain ; and I continually insisting that I 
 would go, he first began to complain that I had not 
 taught him as much as I had promised, and then to 
 threaten me, by telling me that if I would not remain 
 willingly, he would find a way to compel me to stay.” 
 
 Bruno then gives the account of his capture already 
 quoted concluding with his arrival in the prisons of 
 the Holy Office, “ where I believe myself to have been 
 brought by means of the said Ser Giovanni, who being 
 angry, for the reason I have already given, has brought 
 an accusation against me.” 
 
 At the interrogation of his judges, he next repeats the 
 story of his life 
 
 “ My name is Gioi'dano, of the family of Bruni, of the 
 city of Nola, twelve miles from Naples. I was born and 
 brought up in that city, and my profession was and is 
 letters and the sciences. My father’s name was Gio- 
 vanni, and my mother Fraulissa Savolina, and my father 
 was a soldier by profession ; he is dead, and my mother 
 also. I am about forty-four years of age ; I was born, 
 as far as I have heard, in May in the year ’48 ; and 
 
THE TRIAL IN VENICE, 15Q2. 
 
 271 
 
 I remained in Naples acquiring learning, logic, and dia- 
 lectics until I was fourteen ; and I used to attend the 
 public lectures of one who was called the Sarnese ; and 
 I went privately to learn logic from an Augustinian 
 father called Fra Theophilo da Yairano, who afterwards 
 taught metaphysics in Rome ; and at about fourteen or 
 fifteen years of age I took the habit of St. Dominic in the 
 monastery or convent of St. Dominic at Naples, and was 
 invested by a Father, who was then Prior of the convent, 
 named Maestro Ambrosio Pasqua ; and, the year of pro- 
 bation ended, I was admitted by himself to the profession, 
 which I solemnly made in the same convent ; and I do 
 not think that any one else made profession at the same 
 time, except a lay brother ; and afterwards I was pro- 
 moted to holy orders, and in due time to the priesthood ; 
 and I sang my first mass in Campagna, a town of the 
 same kingdom, far from Naples, staying at the time in a 
 convent of the same Order, dedicated to St. Bartholomew. 
 And I continued in this habit of St. Dominic, cele- 
 brating mass and the divine offices, and under obedience 
 to the superiors of the same religion, and to the Priors 
 of the monasteries, and convents in which I was, until 
 the year ’76, which was the year following the year of 
 the Jubilee, when, being in Rome, in the convent of 
 the Minerva, under obedience to Maestro Sisto de Luca, 
 Procurator of the Order, where I had gone to present 
 myself because I had been proceeded against twice at 
 Naples, first, for having given away certain figures and 
 images of saints, retaining a crucifix only, whence it 
 was imputed to me that I despised the images of the 
 saints ; and also for having said to a novice who was 
 reading the History of the Seven Joys in verse, that he 
 should rid himself of that, and rather read some other 
 book, as the Life of the Holy Fathers. The which suit 
 was renewed at the time that I went to Rome ; with 
 other articles which I do not know. For which reason 
 I left a religious life, and, putting off the habit, went 
 
2J2 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 to Noli, in the Genoese territory, where, by teaching 
 grammar to boys, I supported myself for four or five 
 months.” 
 
 At the second examination of Bruno, he is required to 
 say where he went when he left Noli, and in what parts, 
 countries, towns, and places he was from then till this 
 time, and how he was occupied, and what he did. To 
 this he replies : “ I remained at Noli, as I have said, 
 about four months, teaching grammar to boys and read- 
 ing astronomy with certain gentlemen ; and then I left, 
 and went first to Savona, where I remained about a 
 fortnight, and from Savona to Turin, where, not finding 
 entertainment to my satisfaction, I came by the Po to 
 Venice, where I remained for a month and a half in the 
 Frezzaria, lodging in the house of a man in the Arsenal, 
 and I do not know his name ; and whilst I was here I 
 caused a certain small book, entitled Of the Signs of the 
 Times, to be printed, and had this work printed to get 
 a little money together to be able to support myself, 
 the which work I first showed to the Reverend Father 
 Maestro Renigio of Florence ; and leaving this, I went 
 to Padua, where, finding some fathers of the Dominican 
 Order, acquaintances of mine, they persuaded me to wear 
 the habit again, although I had not wished to return to 
 a religious life ; but it appeared to them more convenient 
 to wear the habit than not ; and with this intention I 
 went to Bergamo, and had a gown made for myself of 
 common white cloth, and over it I put the scapulary 
 which I had kept when I left Rome, and in this habit I 
 took the road for Lyons ; and when I was at Chambery, 
 going to lodge at the convent of the Order, and seeing 
 myself very coldly treated, and discoursing upon this with 
 an Italian Father who was there, he said, 1 Be warned, 
 for you will find no sort of kindness in these parts, and 
 the farther you go the less you will find ; ’ therefore I 
 turned towards Geneva, and on arriving there went to 
 lodge at the inn ; and shortly after the Marchese de Vico, 
 
THE TRIAL IN VENICE, 1592. 
 
 273 
 
 a Neapolitan, who was staying in that city, asked me 
 who I was, and if I desired to remain and to profess the 
 religion of that city ; to whom, after I had given account 
 of myself, and of the cause for which I had left the 
 religious life, I added that I did not intend to follow the 
 creed of this city, because I did not know what religion 
 it was ; and that therefore I rather desired to remain 
 there, and to live at liberty and to be in a place of 
 safety, than for any other reason, and being recommended 
 in any case to put off that habit which I wore, I took 
 those clothes and caused a pair of breeches to be made 
 for myself, with other things, and the said Marquis, with 
 other Italians, gave me a sword, a hat, a cloak, and other 
 things necessary to clothe me, procuring these that I 
 might be enabled to support myself and to correct for 
 the printers, in which employment I remained about two 
 months, going sometimes, however, to the preaching and 
 sermons of such Italians and Frenchmen as taught and 
 preached in that city. Many times, amongst others, 
 I heard the readings and sermons of Nicolo Balbani of 
 Lucca, who read the Epistles of St. Paul and preached 
 the Gospels ; but being told that I could not remain there 
 longer if I was not disposed to embrace the religion of the 
 citizens, without doing which I had no more help to 
 expect from them, I resolved to go away, and I went to 
 Lyons, where I remained a month ; and not finding means 
 of gaining sufficient to live by and for my needs, I went 
 from there to Toulouse, where there is a famous school, 
 and having made acquaintance with men of learning, I 
 was invited to lecture to different scholars on the use of 
 the globes and asti’onomy, which I did, and I delivered 
 philosophical lectures for perhaps six months ; and mean- 
 while the place of ordinary lecturer on philosophy in that 
 city, which is given by general vote, being vacant, I 
 sought to take my degree, which I did as master of arts, 
 and thus presented myself to the said general vote, and 
 was admitted and approved, and afterwards I delivered 
 
 S 
 
274 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 lectures in tliat city for two years continually on the text 
 of Aristotle, Dc Anima, with other lectures on philoso- 
 phy ; and then , 1 because of the civil wars, I departed and 
 went to Paris, where I proposed to give an extraordinary 
 lecture to make a name for myself, and to show such 
 powers as I had, and I gave thirty lectures on the thirty 
 divine attributes from St. Thomas, from the first part ; 
 and then being desired to take an ordinary lectureship, 
 I refused, and would not accept it, because the public 
 lecturers of this city usually go to mass and to the other 
 divine offices, and I have always avoided this, knowing 
 that I was excommunicated because I left the religious 
 life and put off the habit ; for although in Toulouse I held 
 that ordinary lectureship, I was not obliged to go to mass, 
 as I should have been in the said city of Paris if I had 
 accepted the said ordinary lectureship ; and I acquired 
 such fame by giving that extraordinary lecture, that King 
 Henry III. had me called one day to ask me whether the 
 memory which I had and which I taught was natural or 
 came by magic arts ; to whom I gave satisfaction, and he 
 perceived, both by what I told him and by what I caused 
 him to accomplish himself, that it was not by art magic, 
 but by science ; and after this I had a book printed De 
 Memoria, under the title of Umbris Idcarum, which I 
 dedicated to his Majesty, and on this occasion he made 
 me lecturer-extraordinary and a pensioner ; and I con- 
 tinued to lecture in that city, as I have said, about five 
 years, and because of the tumults afterwards, I took leave, 
 and, with letters from the same King, I went to England 
 to stay with his Majesty’s ambassador, who was called the 
 Sr. Della Malviciera, by name Michel de Castelnovo, in 
 whose dwelling I did nothing, but passed for his gentle- 
 man. I remained two years and a half in England, not 
 attending at this time also where mass was said in the 
 house, nor going to mass out of doors, nor to sermons, for 
 
 1 Here certain words are cancelled which imply that Bruno’s departure 
 was caused by private dissensions. 
 
THE TRIAL IN VENICE, 1592. 
 
 2 75 
 
 the aforesaid reason ; and the ambassador returning to 
 France to the court, I accompanied him to Paris, where I 
 remained for another year, keeping company with those 
 lords whom I knew, however at my own expense for the 
 greatest part of the time ; and leaving Paris because of the 
 tumults, I went away to Germany. I went first to Mez 
 alias Magonsa (Mayence), which is an archiepiscopal city, 
 and the first electorate of the empire, where I remained for 
 twelve days ; and not finding suitable entertainment there, 
 or at Vispure (Wiirzburg), a place not far off, I went to 
 Wittenberg in Saxony, where I found two factions, one of 
 philosophers who were Calvinists, and the other of theo- 
 logians who were Lutherans ; and a doctor among the 
 latter who was called Alberigo Gentile a Marchegiano, 
 whom I had known in England, a professor of law, 
 received me with kindness and presented me as lecturer 
 on the Organon of Aristotle, and I gave other lectures 
 on philosophy for two years, in which time the old Duke 
 was succeeded by his son, who being a Calvinist and his 
 father a Lutheran, began to favour the party opposed to 
 those who favoured me, so that I went away, and went to 
 Prague, and remained there six months, and whilst I was 
 there I had a book on Geometry printed, which I pre- 
 sented to the Emperor, from whom I received a gift of 
 three hundred thalers, and with this money I left Prague 
 and remained for a year at the Julia Academy in Bruns- 
 wick, where the death of the Duke (margin, “ Who was a 
 heretic,”) occurring at this time, at his obsequies, together 
 with many others of the university, I made an oration, for 
 which his son and successor gave me eighty crowns of 
 that place ; and I departed and went to Frankfort to have 
 two books printed, one De Minimo, and the other De 
 Numero , Monade , et Figura , &c. ; and in Frankfort I 
 remained for about six months, lodging in the convent of 
 the Carmelites, the place assigned to me by the printer, 
 who was obliged to give me lodging ; and from Frankfort, 
 as I have said in my other examination, invited by Ser 
 
276 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 Zuane Mocenigo, I came seven or eight months ago to 
 Venice, where that which I have recounted in my other 
 examination then took place, and I went again to Frank- 
 fort, leaving this to have my other works printed, and one 
 in particular on the Seven Liberal Arts , . . . hoping to 
 obtain leave to resume the clerical habit without entering 
 the l’eligious life ; and at this chapter held here during the 
 past few days, where there were many Neapolitan fathers 
 of the Order, I have spoken of this matter, in particular 
 with Father Fra Domenico de Nocera, Father Fra Serafino, 
 bachelor of arts, of Nocera, and with Fra Giovanni, of I 
 know not what place, but he is from the kingdom of 
 Naples, and with another, who also himself quitted the 
 religious life, but a short while ago he resumed the 
 habit ; he is of Atripalda, but I do not know his name — 
 in religion he is called Fra Felice ; and besides these 
 fathers I have spoken with Zuane Mocenigo, who also 
 promised to help me in all things which were right.” He 
 adds, “ I have said that I wished to present myself at the 
 feet of his Holiness with some of my approved works, 
 having some others which I do not approve, meaning 
 thereby to say, that there are certain works of mine com- 
 posed by me and printed which I do not approve, because 
 in them I have spoken and discoursed too philosophically, 
 dishonestly, and not altogether as a good Christian ; and 
 in especial I know that in some of these works I have 
 taught and held certain things philosophically which 
 ought to be attributed to the power, wisdom, and good- 
 ness of God, according to the Christian faith, founding 
 my doctrine upon sense and reason, and not upon faith ; 
 and this is for the generality, and for particulars I refer 
 to my writings, for I do not now recall any precise article 
 or particular doctrine which I may have taught, but I 
 will reply according as I shall be questioned and as I 
 shall remember.” 
 
 Being asked on the 2d of June, in presence of D. 
 Sebastian Barbadico, if he had a memorandum of all 
 
THE TRIAL IN VENICE , 1592. 
 
 2 77 
 
 the books which he had printed, and if he remembered 
 their subjects and doctrine, Bruno responded : “ I have 
 made a list of all those books which I have given to be 
 printed, and also of those which I have composed and 
 which are not yet printed, and which I was revising to 
 give them to the press as soon as I should have oppor- 
 tunity, either at Frankfort or elsewhere, the which note 
 and list is this . 1 . . . The subject of all these books, 
 speaking generally, is philosophical matter, diffei’ing 
 according to the titles of the said books ; as may be 
 seen in them all, I have always defined things 
 philosophically, and according to natural principles and 
 the light of Nature, not having regard chiefly to that 
 which ought to be held according to the faith ; and I 
 believe that nothing can be found in them by which I 
 can be condemned for professing rather to desire to attack 
 religion than to exalt philosophy, although I may have 
 uttered many' impious things founded on my natural 
 light.” 
 
 Asked whether, publicly or privately, in the lectures 
 given by him in different places, according to what he 
 had said above in his other examinations, he had ever 
 taught, held, or disputed any article contrary or repug- 
 nant to the Catholic faith, and according to the terms of 
 the holy Koman Church, he replied : “ I have taught 
 nothing directly against the Christian Catholic religion, 
 although I have done so indirectly, as was determined 
 in Paris, where, however, I was permitted to hold cer- 
 tain disputations under the title of ‘ A Hundred and 
 Twenty Articles against the Peripatetics and other Ordi- 
 nary Philosophers,’ printed by permission of the Superiors ; 
 and I was allowed to treat them according to natural 
 principles, not prejudicing the truth according to the 
 light of faith, in which fashion the books of Aristotle and 
 Plato may be read and taught; for they in the same 
 
 1 The list is not forthcoming at submitted, with other papers, to the 
 Venice. It was probably, therefore, supreme tribunal at Rome. 
 
GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 way are indirectly contrary to the faith — indeed, much 
 more contrary than the articles philosophically propounded 
 and defended by me, all of which may be known by what 
 is printed in these last Latin books at Frankfort, called 
 De Minimo, De Monade, De Immenso et Innumerabilis, 
 and in part of De Compositions Imaginum ; and in these 
 books particularly may be seen my intention and what 
 I have held, which is, in a word, that I hold that there 
 is an infinite universe, which is the effect of the In- 
 finite Divine Power, because I esteem it to be a thing 
 unworthy of the Divine Goodness and Power that, being 
 able to produce another world, and an infinite number 
 of others beside this world, it should produce one finite 
 world.” “ With regard to the personality of the Holy 
 Spirit, I stand,” he says, “ within the boundaries of philo- 
 sophy ; and though I do not remember to have given in 
 writing or in speech any sign that I do not hold these 
 doctrines, I do not understand the Divine Spirit to be a 
 Third Person, except in the manner of Pythagoras and 
 of Solomon, as the soul of the universe or contributive 
 ( assistente ) to the universe. From this Spirit, which is 
 One, all being flows ; there is one truth and one good- 
 ness penetrating and governing all things. In Nature 
 are the thoughts of God. They are made manifest in 
 figures and vestiges to the eye of sense ; they are repro- 
 duced in our thoughts, where alone we can arrive at 
 consciousness of true being. We are surrounded by eter- 
 nity and by the uniting of love. There is but one centre, 
 from which all species issue, as rays from a sun, and to 
 which all species return. There is but one celestial ex- 
 panse, where the stars choir forth unbroken harmony. 
 In the circle, which comprehends in itself the beginning 
 and the end, we have the figure of true being ; and cir- 
 cular motion is the only enduring form of motion. From 
 this Spirit, which is called the Life of the Universe, pro- 
 ceed the life and soul of everything which has soul and 
 life, — the which life, however, I understand to be im- 
 
THE TRIAL IN VENICE, ijgs. 
 
 279 
 
 mortal, as well in bodies as in their souls, all being 
 immortal, there being no other death than division and 
 congregation ; which doctrine seems to be expressed in 
 Ecclesiastes, where it is said nothing is new under the 
 sun ” (Doc. xi.) 
 
 This frank and manly avowal of his chief philosophic 
 doctrines, added to the declaration that he had ab- 
 stained from polemics, that he had made no public 
 profession which was contrary to Catholic tenets, availed 
 him nothing. If the errors of the age in which he was 
 born were great, his own errors were even greater. To 
 proclaim the rights of reason, to insist that in Nature 
 “ shines and will shine the divine intellectual sun,” and 
 to declare himself the herald of the truth at a time when 
 superstition was blended with ignorance, was to incur 
 the extreme penalty of the law ; and, quoting his own 
 words, he might have said, “ I soon found that mis- 
 fortunes were gathering thickly around me, and that I 
 had committed myself to a perilous destiny, having built 
 up for myself the walls of my own prison, and delivered 
 myself up to my own ruin.” 
 
 Many details with respect to his doctrines are con- 
 tained in the long examination of Tuesday, the 2d of 
 June. Of the miracles and death of Christ he says, “ I 
 have said that they bear witness to the Divinity, but a 
 greater witness than these is the evangelical law.” He 
 gave an absolute denial to the question whether he had 
 said Christ was an evil-doer, adding, “ with an extreme 
 sadness,” “ I know not how these things can be imputed 
 to me. I hold that Christ was conceived by the Holy 
 Spirit, and born of the Virgin Mary ; and I will submit 
 to any punishment if proof is given that I have said or 
 taught the contrary.” To the question if he had addicted 
 himself to studies in theology, he answered that, having 
 regard to philosophy, which was his profession, he had not 
 laboured much in theology. With regard to his esteem 
 for theologians, he appeals to his works, in which he 
 
2^0 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 had handled Catholic theologians with great respect ; 1 
 more particularly St. Thomas , 2 3 “ whose works I have 
 always by me, continually reading, learning, and approv- 
 ing them.” He admits his study of heretic theologians, 
 but asserts that he despises them and their works, “ for 
 they are not theologians, but pedants ; and I have read 
 their books from curiosity, not from desire to learn their 
 doctrine ; for I hold them to be more ignorant than 
 myself.” 
 
 To the question, “ What things are necessary to 
 salvation ? ” he gives the answer, “ Faith, hope, and 
 charity.” Being asked if he had said that the miracles 
 of Christ and the Apostles were miracles in appearance 
 only, and that he could do as much and more, so that all 
 the world should follow him, he raised both hands 
 aloft and cried, “ What thing is this ? I have never 
 said it, nor has it so much as passed through my 
 mind.” 
 
 It is evident from the tone of the next interrogation 
 that the inquiry caused the prisoner to manifest distress, 
 for he is desired by the Inquisitor in dignified but not 
 unkind terms to submit to these questions, since the Holy 
 Office is aware that he has spent much time in heretic 
 countries and has had dealings with many heretics ; and 
 in addition, the Holy Office finds it easy to believe that 
 such statements are not incompatible with the philosophy 
 of which he has made confession. He is then exhorted 
 “ to unburden his conscience and to tell the truth, and 
 
 1 He insists upon (W. i. 27) tlie 
 friendliness which should subsist 
 
 “between learned theologians and 
 learned philosophers ; ” and in 
 numerous other passages the same 
 views are advanced. 
 
 3 Although deprived of his papers 
 byMocenigo, Bruno must have been 
 permitted access to them, or he could 
 scarcely quote the passages neces- 
 sary for his defence. He appeals, 
 for instance, to page 89 of his book 
 
 on the Monad to prove his high 
 esteem for Thomas Aquinas, the 
 Angelic Doctor, whom he calls 
 (note to page 6) “ the honour and 
 the light of all and every sort of 
 theology, and in especial of the peri- 
 patetic philosophy.” And he also 
 mentions a passage on page 19 of 
 the Infinity supporting the doctrine 
 of good w'orks as taught by the 
 Catholic Church. 
 
THE TRIAL IN VENICE , 1592. 281 
 
 to expect that the tribunal will extend to him every sort 
 of kindness possible, necessary, and expedient for the sal- 
 vation of his soul.” 
 
 The peril in which he stood seems at last to have 
 dawned upon this undaunted spirit. “ As God shall 
 pardon me my sins, so I have spoken truth in all things ; 
 but for my greater satisfaction, I will once more con- 
 sider my life, and if I have said or done anything against 
 the Christian and Catholic faith, I will confess it openly ; 
 and I have said that which is just and true, and will 
 say it.” 
 
 Once more, on the 4th of June 1592, the relation of 
 the trial having been read over to him, Bruno was ad- 
 jured to add to his evidence, or to take from it, if it con- 
 tained any facts which he was unable to confirm. To this 
 he responded that he had nothing to add and nothing to 
 take away, and that he confirmed his evidence as it 
 stood. 
 
 Three weeks elapsed before a further hearing took place. 
 On the 23d June, Andrea Morosini was called upon to 
 give his evidence. In all the Italian cities, and especially 
 in Venice, men of learning were in the habit of congre- 
 gating once or twice a week in the leading houses of the 
 town to discuss such questions as are now made public 
 in the press. Two of these gatherings were famous in 
 Venice : the one assembled in the house of Bernardo 
 Secchini, a merchant, at the sign of the Golden Ship in 
 the Merceria ; the other was held by Andrea Morosini, 
 the historian, living in the division of San Luca, upon 
 the Grand Canal. “ He was sought out,” says the 
 anonymous biographer of Fra Paolo Sarpi, “ not only by 
 men of letters and by the nobles, but by every man of 
 learning, both secular and religious, native not only to 
 Venice and to Italy, but to every other nation.” The 
 evidence of this distinguished Venetian is short and to 
 the purpose. Bruno, having been brought to the assem- 
 bly by means of the librarian Ciotto, had confined himself 
 
202 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 to reasoning upon philosophy, and Morosini (perhaps with 
 as much regard for his own safety as for that of the 
 prisoner) asserts persistently that had he thought Bruno 
 other than a good Catholic, he would not have been per- 
 mitted to enter the assembly ; 1 adding, that his reasoning 
 was always upon letters, nor was it on any occasion 
 evident that he professed opinions contrary to the faith. 
 
 The librarian Ciotto is next recalled in order to confirm 
 the fact that Bruno actually intended to present his book 
 on the Seven Liberal Arts to the Pope, and thus to make 
 his peace with the Church. 
 
 This disclosure, however, did not dispose the hearts of 
 the Inquisitors to mercy. 
 
 On the 30th July Bruno was again brought before his 
 judges. He repeated that he remained by his evidence; 
 that he had already negotiated with a Roman nuncio and 
 with a Jesuit father respecting his reconciliation with the 
 Church, and that it was his sole desire to be permitted to 
 live for philosophy and to be free from the monastic rule. 
 He had composed a work on the Seven Liberal Arts , 2 which 
 he desired to present as a peace-offering to the new Pope, 
 in the hope of leading a studious life in Rome. He re- 
 pented of all he had done wrong, and of his errors in 
 thought and in teaching ; he would for the future abstain 
 from wrong-doing, and he desired to comply with what 
 might be judged expedient for the salvation of his soul. 
 He still clung to the hope of convincing the Inquisitors 
 that he had always felt remorse in his conscience and 
 desire to return to the Church, though he adds frankly 
 that he sought to avoid the bonds of regular obedience, 
 and that he was actuated by no motives “ except fear of 
 the rigour of the Holy Office and love of liberty.” 
 
 He repeated his declaration that he was sorry for what 
 
 1 It is a fact significant of the 
 power of the Inquisition that the 
 
 history of Venice written by Moro- 
 sini preserves silence regarding the 
 trial and death of Bruno. 
 
 2 The Seven Liberal Arts compre- 
 hended the Trivium and the Quad- 
 rivium: grammar, rhetoric, and dia- 
 lectics ; arithmetic, mathematics, 
 astronomy, and music. 
 
THE TRIAL IN VENICE, ijg2. 283 
 
 he had done wrong, and for what he had thought or 
 taught falsely ; that he would follow all things necessary 
 for the salvation of his soul ; if he had given scandal, he 
 would atone for it by the life he intended to lead in 
 future. This has been called a recantation, but — as has 
 been pointed out by Professor Carriere in his appreciative 
 notice of the trial — it is, in truth, no more than an en- 
 treaty for pity and pardon, which might occur to any 
 Christian man in extremity, and which might be repeated 
 by any thinker without implying that he had abated or 
 retracted a single conviction. 
 
( 284 ) 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 “ Touch me, 0 God, and I shall he as it were a flame of fire.” 
 
 Bruno, Hymn to his own Soul. 
 
 The Trial at Rome. The Death of Bruno. 
 
 The records of Bruno’s trial, together with his books and 
 manuscripts, were at once despatched to Rome, in defer- 
 ence to the oi’ders of the Tribunal in the Papal city, 
 which was extremely jealous in exercising the supreme 
 authority. Application was then made, on the 1 7th 
 September 1592, by Cardinal di San Severina, in the 
 name of the supreme tribunal of the Holy Office at 
 Rome, for the delivering up of Giordano Bruno to the 
 Governor of Ancona. Here, however, difficulties arose. 
 The Italian states were involved in innumerable quarrels 
 with the court of Rome ; and Venice, though prudent and 
 pliant to a fault in matters temporal, felt herself bound 
 to offer a check to all spiritual aggressions. Moreover, 
 Rome had been sacked and Florence conquered, but 
 Venice, having preserved her independence, prided herself 
 on being regarded by all as a city of refuge. Men of 
 letters from Rome, patriots from Florence, and fugitives 
 on religious questions flocked to the protection of the 
 Republic when the gates of their native city were closed 
 upon them for ever. The quarrel between the two cities 
 was exasperated by the conduct of the officers employed 
 upon the Index, who, enjoying the profits of Roman 
 printing-offices, took care to place as many publications 
 
ROME, 1592. 
 
 285 
 
 of their neighbours under interdict as possible. The 
 large trade of the Venetian booksellers was crippled by 
 this jealous and unjust supervision ; and a thousand other 
 small differences arose to make the relation between the 
 two states one of hatred and constraint. The Pope de- 
 manded that all spiritual offenders should be delivered up 
 to him ; the officers of the Republic answered that they 
 would not yield one hair’s-breadth from the fundamental 
 laws of their state, which had been handed down to them 
 by their ancestors, and which it was the sacred duty of 
 the Republic to keep inviolate. 
 
 Accordingly it was not until eleven days later that the 
 application of Cardinal San Severina was conveyed by the 
 Venetian members of the Tribunal to the Doge, and by 
 him remitted for further consideration. A second visit 
 from the Father Inquisitor to the secular authorities 
 elicited the reply that the matter was of moment and 
 demanded consideration ; that the occupations of this 
 state were many and grave ; that the Savii could not 
 as yet arrive at a resolution ; concluding with a sig- 
 nificant recommendation to his Reverence to dismiss a 
 boat in waiting at Ancona to convey the prisoner to 
 Rome. 
 
 It is possible that Bruno’s promise of amendment and 
 his longing for reconciliation with the Church might 
 have availed towards sparing a life devoted to learning, 
 which was always dear to Venice, had the Republic re- 
 mained staunch to its first decision of giving him trial 
 within Venetian precincts. But this was not to be. 
 The jealousy between Rome and Venice was running 
 high, and a serious rupture might be looked for at any 
 moment. Under these circumstances a policy of con- 
 ciliation involving no large sacrifice was naturally wel- 
 come to the Republic, which, like a coquette, played 
 with the surrender, making much ado to relinquish that 
 which in reality cost her nothing, and astutely propos- 
 ing later in the political game to appeal to her own 
 
2S6 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 sacrifices in order to extort as much and more from 
 her rival. 
 
 The next step was to procure the assistance of the law. 
 Ferigo Contarini, a procurator, was consulted as to the 
 propriety of yielding up Bruno to the Church, and he 
 gave the advice required. “ His errors,” said this officer 
 of the law , — “ His errors in heresy are very grave, though 
 for the rest he possesses a most excellent rare mind, with 
 exquisite learning and wisdom.” 
 
 The lawyer finds in the following terms : “ That this 
 friar was a foreigner and no subject, and was not, there- 
 fore, entitled to the protection of Venice ; that he was 
 first accused and detained at Naples for a grievous trans- 
 gression in heresy ; that having escaped and fled to 
 Rome, he was there tried and imprisoned for the same and 
 other offences : and that his trial having been begun in 
 Naples and in Borne some seventeen years earlier, ought 
 in justice to be brought to a termination in those domi- 
 nions.” 
 
 The next count in the indictment sets forth that, 
 escaping again a second time from those prisons, he sailed 
 into England, “ where he lived according to the custom of 
 that island ; ” after which he is pronounced to have led 
 “ a licentious and diabolical life in heretic countries;” and 
 “ finally, leaving Geneva, he came to Venice, and took 
 refuge in the house of a gentleman, who, to acquit himself 
 of his duty as a Christian, made the friar known to the 
 Holy Tribunal.” It having been judged expedient that 
 he should return and be judged where he had first 
 offended, the position is strengthened by the unfounded 
 assertion that he had “ prepared a writing by which it 
 seems he will be pleased to be remitted to the justice of 
 Home.” In this manner Bruno’s innocent assertion that 
 he desired to present a book to the Pope and to make his 
 peace with Borne was twisted into an admission that he 
 had appealed to the Papal tribunal. It was therefore 
 thought proper, “ in order to satisfy the Pope,” that Bruno 
 
ROME, 1593. 
 
 287 
 
 should be delivered up to Rome. Like St. Paul, he had 
 appealed to Caesar ; at the seat of Csesar he should appear 
 to look for judgment. The lawyer’s indictment ends with 
 a characteristic entreaty that his evidence may be kept a 
 profound secret, for “ public and private reasons : ” and he 
 is then dismissed by the Doge, with praises for care and 
 adroitness. 
 
 The decree of consent is carefully worded. Having 
 regard to the fact that the case was extraordinary, the 
 accused a Neapolitan who had broken loose from prison, 
 and who had to undergo his trial for heresy both in 
 Naples and in Rome, it is agreed that, in order to please 
 the Pope, Fra Giordano Bruno shall be handed over to 
 the Tribunal of the Inquisition at Rome. That all the 
 capital possible might be made out of the event, the 
 Venetian ambassador in Rome is further directed to 
 impress upon the mind of his Holiness the respectful 
 filial obedience of Venice, and the readiness of the 
 Republic to do his pleasure in this matter. The decree 
 is dated January 7, 1 5 9 3 - 1 
 
 On the 1 6th of the month the Pope returned such 
 hearty thanks for this consent, that it might have been 
 a meritorious action; and here the Venetian trial closes. 
 Towards the middle of January Bruno was given up to 
 the Papal Nuncio in Venice. On the 27th February 
 I 5 9 3 he entered the prisons of the Inquisition in Rome ; 
 and we approach the period of darkness in which the 
 remainder of his life was passed. There is nothing to tell 
 us of with what hopes and fears the prisoner quitted 
 the Venetian piombi, in which he had spent eight months, 
 in order to make his journey to Rome under safe convoy. 
 We may believe his statement that he was not afraid of 
 the Inquisition, to which he had given no offence ; and 
 we may also believe that he took courage, and hoped for 
 
 1 It was signed by the same Doge, professorship of mathematics at 
 Pasquale Cicogna, who some months Padua, 
 before had appointed Galileo to the 
 
288 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 justice from the Pope, trusting to move him to pardon 
 more easily than the Venetian inquisitors, and looking 
 for recognition as a philosopher who esteemed the light 
 of reason to be on a par with the light of faith. He may 
 have hoped, too, that his learning and goodwill might save 
 him, since he had long determined to go of his own free- 
 will to Rome, and to make his peace with the Church. 
 But it would be an act of injustice to imagine that he was 
 actuated by hypocrisy or base desire of denial. 
 
 Convinced that it was the unceasing labour of philo- 
 sophy to raise the mind of man to God by bending all 
 the forces into the pursuit of wisdom, he was unable 
 to realise that the Church was more chary in tolerance 
 than himself. He looked with sorrow upon his rupture 
 with Rome, and welcomed any means of reconciliation 
 which did not bring him under the yoke of monkish 
 tyranny. It is clear from his history that no form of 
 Protestantism was agreeable to him ; he embraced no 
 other religion, nor did he love any so well as the 
 Church in which he was nurtured. The speeches at 
 Wittenberg and in Helmstedt, in which he pronounced a 
 panegyric upon Luther, were dictated by the gaiety of 
 rhetoric, and were not the mature and deliberate utter- 
 ances of the philosopher. The basis of evangelic teach- 
 ing, that Heaven is to be won by faith instead of by 
 works, he invariably combated with asperity. In the same 
 manner, his desire for reform must not be construed as an 
 attack upon the Church ; for he is completely j ustified 
 when saying that in no part of his works had he expressly 
 censured any Catholic dogma. He no longer approved 
 certain of his writings, as he said at his trial ; but he had 
 examples and to spare before his eyes showing that a mea- 
 sure of freedom in philosophic thought was allowed even 
 in the Church so long as her specific teaching was not 
 directly attacked. 
 
 On entering life he had to reckon with it, and the 
 struggle continued to the end. What consolation he drew 
 
ROME, 1599. 
 
 289 
 
 from the fact that in running counter to all prejudice he 
 was following the dictates of that “ high spirit which 
 whispered in his inward ear ” will never now be known. 
 Of a restless and passionate spirit, loving life and the 
 society of men, in the flower of his age and full vigour 
 of mind, he was suddenly separated from all human com- 
 panionship. 
 
 He, however, who looked steadily through the gates of 
 death upon the hope of immortality, was not curbed or 
 humbled, though a prisoner in a cell to be exchanged for 
 one yet narrower, without books, deprived of pen and 
 paper, with all wonted solace of society and occupation 
 gone. The Pope no doubt extended the term of his 
 imprisonment to an unusual length in the hope of break- 
 ing his spirit and of avoiding the scandal attending the 
 execution of a monk. It was not until January 14, 
 1 599, that eight heresies propounded in the works of the 
 unfortunate philosopher, and extracted from his evidence 
 at his trial, were laid before the Congregation of the In- 
 quisition by a commission appointed to inquire into the 
 case, and it was resolved that they should be communi- 
 cated to the prisoner in order that he might consider 
 whether he would abjure them as heresies. 
 
 It is remarkable that although Bruno had spent six 
 years almost to a day in Home, this document is worded 
 as though his formal trial had only then begun. Scioppius, 
 whose relations with Cardinal Madrucci were close and 
 intimate, believed Bruno to have been in prison two years 
 only. Every trace of information fails from the beginning 
 of I 593 to the beginning of 1599. Year by year passed 
 by ; no sentence was delivered ; nor is it apparent that 
 the choice between abj uring and death by fire was offered 
 to the prisoner. This long suffering on the part of the 
 Holy Office is without precedent. 
 
 Bruno’s name is first on a list of twenty fellow-sufferers 
 made on Monday, April 5, 1599. The greater number 
 remained in confinement only a few months ; one alone 
 
 T 
 
290 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 remained more than nine months ; for it was the custom 
 of the Holy Office in serious cases to administer speedy 
 justice. If the doctrines held by the Church to be 
 heretical were only indicated to Bruno in 15 99, how had 
 he been treated in the sis long years that had passed ? 
 To test his printed works and his manuscripts, and to 
 question and re-question him on all points of dissent from 
 the Church, could scarcely occupy sis years unless matters 
 were purposely deferred. 
 
 The Congregation of the Roman Inquisition, in whose 
 hands the fate of Bruno lay, consisted of “ Cardinals Mad- 
 rucci Ludovico, Santorio Giulio Antonio (San Severina), 
 Deza Pietro, Pinelli Domenico, Berneri Girolamo, Sfon- 
 drati Paolo Emilio, Borghese Camillo, and Arigoni Pompeo, 
 assisted by their counsellors Dandini, Beccaria, Millini, 
 Fragagliolo, Bellarmine, Filonardo, Monterenzi, and Fla- 
 minio Adriani, the notary.” 
 
 In the absence of the full records of the trial, now 
 preserved in Rome, it is impossible to denote the heresies 
 which Bruno was called upon to abj ure ; but that they 
 were not altogether founded on the accusations of Mo- 
 cenigo is clear from the examination in Venice, where it 
 appears that the Inquisition scarcely thought it worth 
 while to notice a great part of the charge, although in 
 the recapitulation of the trial by Scioppius he repeats 
 part of the denunciation word for word, and it must, 
 therefore, have been read over in the final scene of the 
 trial. The accusations were probably based on the pri- 
 soner’s unsoundness in the matter of the Trinity, with his 
 impenitent and stubborn determination to place philo- 
 sophy on the same footing with theology. 
 
 The charge was then submitted to the prisoner, who 
 was no doubt once more directed to probe his con- 
 science and to discover what further evils he had to admit. 
 His position, however, was unchanged. “ All matters,” 
 he says, in what Hennequin called “ the justificatory 
 harangue,” pronounced in Paris , — “ All matters concerning 
 
THE THREE-HEADED MONSTER: 
 
 291 
 
 civil and religious law should be divided from matters 
 belonging to pure science and cosmology ; ” and with 
 singularly characteristic affection he appealed to his 
 hope of a union with religion, dwelling continually on 
 the then baseless fabric of reconciliation between the 
 opposing powers of theology and philosophy. When he 
 put off the habit of a monk in Rome, he had kept his 
 scapulary. He had attended the confessional of a Jesuit 
 priest at Toulouse when he might have been supposed to 
 be indifferent to the sacraments, and he had declared his 
 belief in tran substantiation when in the same breath 
 frankly avowing to his judges that, philosophically speak- 
 ing, he could not accept the doctrine of the Trinity. In 
 every age men have loved to avenge their God better than 
 to forgive their enemies, and Bruno had little mercy to 
 expect from the fang of the “ravening wolf” which he 
 had publicly apostrophised as having its seat in Rome ; 
 while his offer of dedicating a book to the Pope was but 
 a sop to the “ three-headed monster,” so stigmatised by the 
 philosopher in Wittenberg. Rome itself was suffering 
 from a dual control. The people were ranged on one 
 side, religious authority was on the other. “ The nearer 
 a nation is to Rome,” Machiavelli wrote in 1500, “the 
 more impious are the people ; ” and in truth Rome coveted 
 no title to Christianity so much as to be called the capital 
 of the republic of letters (W. ii. 164). The Romans 
 were without respect for their most sacred institutions. 
 Before the breath was out of the body of Paul IV., the 
 people had risen like one man. They broke open the 
 prisons of the Inquisition, burnt the house of the Grand 
 Inquisitor, who narrowly escaped with his life, and to show 
 their hatred of their master they tore down the escutcheons 
 of his arms from the public edifices, and seizing his statue, 
 they broke it into pieces, and rolled his head into the 
 Tiber, amid the groans and curses of the bystanders. Nor 
 was the example of those high in authority likely to lead 
 to better results on the part of the people. 
 
292 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 Sixtus Y. saw the soul of Pope Gregory in a dream 
 enduring the torments of hell ; and, in what has been called 
 by Rabelais, “the most monkish city of all monkery,” it 
 was once the custom, according to Montaigne, for the Rope, 
 when at mass in St. Peter’s, to drink from the chalice by 
 means of an instrument which was a precaution against 
 poison ; while to this day the vicegerent of God is be- 
 lieved by the Romans to possess the evil eye. 
 
 “ The Court of Rome,” writes Cardinal D’Ossat ( Letters , 
 tom. v. p. 2 2, Amsterdam, 1 708), “ is a school of dissimu- 
 lation.” “ If,” said Casaubon in reply to Scioppius, who 
 had called him an atheist, — “ If I were an atheist I should 
 now be at Rome, whither I have been often invited.” 
 
 The then occupant of the pontifical throne, Ippolito 
 Aldobrandini, had assumed the name of Clement VIII. 
 Born in exile, the son of a homeless fugitive, he was early 
 schooled by the excellent uses of adversity, and turned the 
 rising fortunes of four clever and distinguished brothers 
 to such advantage, that he ascended the chair in the full 
 vigour of life. He had scope to exercise his talents 
 in controversy, for a quarrel having broken out between 
 the Dominicans and the Jesuits on the question of free- 
 will, appeal was made to the Sovereign Pontiff, and the 
 qualities which had been turned to such excellent account 
 in the conversion of Henry IV. of France were once 
 more in requisition to bind up the wounds which were 
 lacerating the fair estate of the Catholic Church. 
 Courageous and far-sighted, he did not turn aside the 
 influence of the Papacy to his own selfish purposes, nor, 
 by exalting himself above the law, set the first example 
 of breaking it ; but perceiving that the moment had 
 arrived for the Pope to identify himself with his sacred 
 office, his personal inclinations and advantage were forced 
 into compliance with the spirit of the times ; and since 
 human institutions are strong only so long as they and 
 the living possessors of power are in harmony, the 
 power of the Papacy was greatly enhanced in the posses- 
 
THE INQUISITION. 
 
 293 
 
 sion of a Pope whose sole intention was to efface himself 
 in his pontificate, and to assume a demeanour befitting 
 the ideal head of the Church. Under the sway of this 
 prudent and politic ruler the Papacy gradually rose to 
 the high and holy offices of peace and mediation among 
 nations. But the Inquisition, in which, with blood for 
 cement, union between the children of the faith was ini- 
 tiated, received no check at the hands of Clement VIII. 
 
 The ancient Dominican Inquisition had fallen into 
 decay, but out of its ashes sprang the wonted fires of per- 
 secution, and under the sway of Caraffa in Spain the 
 lagging genius of terrorism was not suffered to go astray, 
 but was even directed upon the capital of Christendom. 
 <c As it was in Rome,” says Caraffa, “ that St. Peter over- 
 came the first heresiarchs, so must the followers of Peter 
 subdue all the heresies of the world in Rome.” The founder 
 of the Jesuits supported this proposition by an express 
 memorial to the Cardinal Inquisitors. Authority was given 
 to them over every individual, without any exception, and 
 without regard to any rank or dignity. They had full 
 power to imprison the suspected, and to punish the guilty 
 with death and confiscation. But, like the Abbot of Battle, 
 who, says Fuller, “ carried a pardon in his presence,” 
 the Pope had the right of remitting capital punishment, 
 though this right was accorded to no other human being. 
 The Inquisitors had a mission “ to contrive and to execute 
 everything that could tend to suppress the errors that 
 had broken out in the Christian community, and to pluck 
 them up by the roots ; ” and the Society looked with a 
 jealous eye upon the privileges of their order. Strong 
 bolts and locks, with dungeons, chains, and bonds, and all 
 the hideous appliances of the Tribunal, set a guard upon 
 the lambs in the fold, and marked the fearful office of the 
 potentates who, calling themselves messengers from the 
 God of Love, had had the assumption to copy the mien 
 of the Good Shepherd. 
 
 Persecution and terror now broke out in Italy on every 
 
- 9 \ 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 side. The mutual hatred of factions came in aid of the 
 Inquisitors. Denunciations mounted up ; and disappear- 
 ance, as deadly as the stroke of doom, followed upon each 
 denunciation. “ It is hardly possible,” exclaims Antonio 
 dei Pagliarici, “ for a man to be a Christian and to die 
 in his bed.” 
 
 The Tribunal of the Roman Inquisition comprised a 
 Congregation of cardinals under the personal leadership of 
 the Pope. That part of the terrible body before which 
 Bruno was condemned to appear consisted of fifteen mem- 
 bers and a notary. Of these, Madrucci was Inquisitor- 
 in-chief, and next to him in influence stood San Severina. 
 Of all the cardinals, Santorio, who had the title of San 
 Severina, might be regarded as the most zealous Catholic. 
 Even in his youth he had fought out many a battle with 
 the Protestants at Naples. In his autobiography, which is 
 extant in MS., he speaks of the massacre of St. Bartho- 
 lomew as “ the celebrated day of St. Bartholomew, most 
 joyful to the Catholics.” He had always professed violent 
 opinions, and he had long been the soul of the Inquisition. 
 
 Not the least inflexible of this stern assembly, nor the 
 least distinguished in learning, was the litigious Cardinal 
 Bellarmine. It was he who said that, as the spirit guides 
 and governs the flesh and not the flesh the spirit, so the 
 secular power should not dare to exalt itself above the 
 spiritual, or attempt to guide, to order, or to restrain it, 
 since it was absurd for the sheep to attempt to guide the 
 shepherd. "With due regard also to the temporal com- 
 forts of the shepherd, Bellarmine maintained that, as 
 belonging to the family of Christ, the priest should be 
 exempt from all burdens on person and property. Such 
 was the uncompromising and hostile figure to whom 
 Bruno’s case in its legal aspect was intrusted. As the 
 contriver of numberless controversial works, and the 
 writer of an enormous book in folio upon the heresies 1 
 
 1 With the discretion for which the trial of Bruno is passed over by 
 the Roman Church is remarkable, these volumes in silence. 
 
BRUNO NOT AN APOSTATE. 
 
 295 
 
 of his time, he was entitled to judge a case of pure error 
 in faith, and it may be conjectured that the cause of the 
 Church lost nothing in his hands. 
 
 To Clement VIII. the logical error of punishing spiritual 
 offences by bodily pains was not apparent. The monk 
 who had abandoned the Order of St. Dominic was an 
 apostate ; but in order to fall under the jurisdiction 
 of the Holy Office he ought to have been proved not an 
 apostate as a monk alone, but as a Catholic. This 
 fact has never been proved against Bruno. Neither 
 England, Geneva, nor the German universities can claim 
 him as a disciple in religion. In Marburg, as in Paris, 
 he did not relinquish the title of doctor in Roman 
 theology. He never ceased to cherish the hope that he 
 might be reconciled to the Church. When he came into 
 collision with the authorities of the Inquisition, with 
 Aristotle and Ptolemy, and with the traditions of the 
 schools, he proclaimed before those who looked upon 
 themselves as guardians of divine truth a belief more 
 spiritual than their faith, a God not to be measured by 
 the eye of sense, and dwelling in a vaster temple than 
 the mind of man had hitherto conceived. He believed 
 in the reality of the unseen, in the existence of the 
 unknown. The crystal was not yet discovered with 
 which Galileo searched the skies, but, like Columbus, 
 Bruno proclaimed the New World while the company of 
 men laughed him to scorn. The day had not yet 
 dawned when his theories were to become demonstrations 
 in the hands of Kepler, Huygens, Newton, and Herschel ; 
 and meanwhile, because he proclaimed the movement of 
 the earth amid countless orbs, which are flaming heralds 
 of the Almighty, and because he demanded freedom for 
 the spirit of man, the courageous thinker lay under the 
 stigma of atheism. “ Is he,” says his biographer Bar- 
 tholmess, “ an atheist who protests unceasingly against 
 materialism, or who considers the world to be the 
 image and likeness of God ? who declares that in all 
 
2c;6 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 things there dwells an individual living Unity, a Presence 
 perfect and beloved, a Father of men and a Father which 
 is in heaven ? Is he an atheist who admits a moral law, 
 and who perceives in the whole universe the presence 
 of a Legislator whose thoughts appear in laws beyond 
 the scope of our finite senses ? Is he an atheist who 
 looks upon the world and sees it filled to overflowing 
 with causes which are essential and unvarying ? and in 
 the fabric of the stars, as in the action of the mind, per- 
 ceives but one Source and Maker, who is a Spirit ? ” 
 
 A second decree, dated 4th February 1599, followed 
 quickly upon the order of the 14th January. The 
 assembly which was once more called upon to decide 
 the fate of Bruno counted among its members a number 
 of cardinals, with Madrucci and San Severina again at 
 their head, and among others Bellarmine and the General 
 of the Order of the Dominicans, Ippolita Maria Beccaria. 
 The Congregation was presided over by the Pope in 
 person, by whom it was enacted that the eight heresies 
 pointed out in the works of Bruno by Cardinal Bellar- 
 mine and by the Father Commissary, should be acknow- 
 ledged by the prisoner as heresies, “and not as heresies now 
 and for the first time declared, but as heresies known to 
 the Fathers, to the Church, and to the Apostolic chair, 
 and if acknowledged, good ; if not, a further term of forty 
 days should be granted.” 1 We have no clue to Bruno’s 
 demeanour under this pressure. It was used to move 
 him to full submission to the doctrines of the Church and 
 to unconditional surrender of his philosophy. A course 
 of advice and persuasion, perhaps even of torture, was 
 
 1 Hence it is clear that the pri- 
 soner sheltered himself under the 
 plea advanced by him in Venice, 
 that he was the interpreter of dog- 
 mas apiproved by the Church, and 
 supported by her oldest and soundest 
 traditions. His appeals to the autho- 
 rity of St. Augustine respecting the 
 persons of the Trinity were no doubt 
 repeated in Rome. Religion, he be- 
 
 lieved, concealed beneath the veil of 
 symbolism the truths taught by phi- 
 losophy ; and he thought himself 
 justified in following closely upon 
 Cusa, Lully, the Catalonian monk, 
 in their philosophic rendering of 
 religious dogmas, while expecting to 
 enjoy the liberty accorded to car- 
 dinals and friars in more ancient 
 times. 
 
APPROACHING MARTYRDOM. 
 
 297 
 
 administered to induce him to recant, and thus to 
 avoid the scandal of condemning as a heretic a priest of 
 the Order whose pride it was to be guardians of the sheep- 
 fold and “ dogs of the Lord.” How the Dominican Order 
 was satisfied to represent the final catastrophe as an im- 
 possibility was proved by their historian, Echard , 1 who 
 asserts that the Order could not bring forth an arch- 
 heretic, as though Luther were not an Augustinian, nor 
 Ochino a Capuchin. 
 
 Bruno’s final refusal to admit that he had taught or 
 held any heresies is easy to understand, since he believed 
 himself, as a philosopher, to be independent of the dogmas 
 of the Church ; and since, too, he held that a doctrine 
 could not be declared a heresy which was propounded 
 from a purely philosophical standpoint. He seems to 
 have met the accusations of the Congregation with manly 
 candour, and to have sacrificed to the immortal spirit all 
 that was mortal without flinching. The treacherous 
 thought may have stolen upon him that he was suffering 
 for a mere quibble ; and out of the wreckage of his 
 philosophy he might with ease have fashioned a spar that, 
 with the Pope’s clemency, would have saved his life. 
 Had he permitted himself to intimate a doubt upon the 
 rights of reason, it would have been welcomed with 
 alacrity by those who desired but to cause him to return 
 to the paths of salvation and to see him partake once 
 more in the means of grace. 
 
 But it is clear that Bruno gave no sign of any disposi- 
 tion to gratify the Congregation, for, as a sheep of the 
 fold, they must have preferred to grant him his life and 
 to set him at liberty. He was suffered to pine in prison 
 for seven years, and in all details we are restricted to 
 pure conjecture, for the acts of the Inquisition at present 
 forthcoming do not reveal any trace of the trial beyond 
 
 1 “Was ever a heretic more I infer that he was never one who 
 severely treated,” he writes, “than wore our habit.” 
 
 Bruno by the Dominicans ? whence 
 
29S 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 the record of the decisions of the Tribunal. From the 
 letter of Scioppius (Appendix) it appears that the prisoner 
 remaining unmoved, a second term of forty days was 
 granted ; 11 and all the while his design was to trifle with 
 the Pope and the Inquisition.” On the same authority 
 he is made to recant and to persist in a breath, which 
 was scarcely more consistent than the story of the his- 
 torian Ecliard. 
 
 At last, on the 2 1st of December 1599, on the occa- 
 sion of a visitation made to the prisoners lying in the 
 dungeons of the Inquisition, the answer of Bruno is 
 placed on record. With a spirit not broken by silence 
 and torture, nor by hope deferred, and being more weary 
 of delay than of death, he said, “ That he ought not to 
 recant, and he will not recant ; that he had nothing to 
 recant, nor any reason to recant, nor knew what he 
 should recant.” 
 
 The court now began to waver in the hope of conquer- 
 ing this obdurate heretic and of sparing the open scandal 
 which would be caused by his execution. Certain officers 
 were told off to make a last attempt to turn him from 
 his errors, and to cause him to abjure. But the efforts 
 of the General of the Dominican Order, Ippolito Maria 
 Beccaria, and of his vicar, Paul di Mirandola, were 
 steadfastly repelled by the prisoner, who, in no doubt 
 as to what must be the result, silently awaited his 
 end. 
 
 At a session presided over by the Pope on the 20th 
 of January of the next year, the General reported that 
 Brother Jordanus had made no recantation, but main- 
 tained, on the contrary, that his opinions had been ill- 
 interpreted by the ministers of the Holy Office, he not 
 professing any sort of heresy. With this a memorial 
 addressed by Bruno to the Pope was received and opened, 
 but it was not read; and on the same day (20th January) 
 the Pope decreed that the prisoner should be delivered 
 over to the temporal power. 
 
THE SECULAR ARM. 
 
 299 
 
 On the 8 th February 1 the Congregation assembled 
 once more in the palace of the Chief Inquisitor, Cardinal 
 Madrucci. The presence of the Governor of Borne 
 marked the sinister intervention of the temporal power. 
 Bruno was led from the prison in Santa Maria della 
 Minerva, where, scarcely eighteen years before, he sought 
 refuge from the persecution then on foot against him in 
 Naples, and he was conducted into the presence of his 
 judges, where he heard the reading of his sentence on 
 his knees. It began in the usual form, by enumerating 
 the titles of the cardinals “ specially commissioned by his 
 Holiness our lord Clement VIII. to act as Inquisitors- 
 General against heretical pravity throughout the whole of 
 Christendom.” 
 
 The history of his life and the tenor of his studies and 
 doctrine were next recounted, and what diligence the 
 Inquisition had used in converting and fraternally ad- 
 monishing him, and with what pertinacity and impiety 
 their efforts had been rejected by him. He was then 
 declared an apostate from the Order of the Preachers, a 
 heretic, impenitent and pertinacious. He was degraded 2 
 
 1 The documents of the Inquisi- 
 
 tion give Tuesday, February 8, as 
 the day on which sentence was 
 passed and Bruno delivered up to 
 the temporal power. Scioppius and 
 the Avvisi di Roma agree in declar- 
 ing the day to have been Wednesday, 
 February 9. Carnesecehi of Florence, 
 who was committed to the flames for 
 “ obstinate and pertinacious heresy ” 
 in Rome in 1567, received liis sen- 
 tence on August 16, 1567, and on 
 the 2 1st September the sentence was 
 published openly before the people. 
 Judgment was delivered upon Bruno 
 probably, therefore, on the 8th of 
 February, and on the 9th the sen- 
 tence was published in the venerable 
 Church of the Blessed Mary above 
 the Minerva. In the Piazza di 
 Minerva religious executions were 
 
 formerly held. The eastern side of 
 the . square is dominated by the 
 church, to which a convent of Do- 
 minicans is attached ; and on this 
 spot it was the custom to publish 
 openly before the people sentences 
 passed by the Inquisition. This 
 solemn proclamation was made in 
 the presence of a court of the Con- 
 gregation of the Holy Office, assisted 
 by the secular Governor of Rome. 
 
 2 In the registry of the expenses 
 of the general Pontifical depository 
 administered by Signor Guiseppe 
 Guistiani, from April 1, 1599, to 
 July 3, 1600, the following entries 
 occur : — 
 
 It Veseovo di Tidomi (Sidonia?), 
 for the degradation of Brother 
 Cipriano dei Cruciferi . . 27 sendi. 
 
 Giordano Bmno, heretic . . 27 scudi. 
 
300 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 and handed over to the secular arm. The formal sen- 
 tence ran thus •} — 
 
 “ Because that you. a priest and nurtured in the Holy 
 Catholic Church, not having any esteem for the unspeak- 
 able truth of the Holy Catholic faith, nor any reverence 
 for the authority of the Holy and Apostolic Church of 
 Rome, and without consideration for that state of life 
 into which you were called, have wandered from the 
 straight path of true salvation and have fallen into sun- 
 dry heresies contrary to the said holy faith, holding and 
 believing many various heretical and unsound opinions. 
 
 . . . Wherefore it being expedient to make progress and 
 to despatch your cause, a certain time was allotted to you 
 for making every preparation possible in your defence ; 
 and you were permitted a copy of the necessary legal pro- 
 ceedings, and the time allotted to you was prolonged. 
 But you have failed to bring forward any plea in your 
 defence or to prove that your first confessions made before 
 this tribunal, and confirmed by abundant evidence, were 
 in any particular erroneous or false ; and after your cause 
 had been brought forward and investigated in our General 
 Congregation, we, being anxious to show compassion to- 
 ward you (notwithstanding the clear exhibition of your 
 obduracy), determined on proceeding with some forbear- 
 ance ; and hence, in addition to the repeated warnings 
 given you by word of mouth and in writing, we caused 
 you to be admonished by our officials once or twice in a 
 general manner, and that other definite periods should be 
 appointed for you to consider and reflect upon your cause, 
 and to make such amends as you were bound to render 
 in compliance with your duty, in order that you might be 
 received into the bosom of the Holy Church, provided 
 that you should say and solemnly declare that you were 
 
 1 The form employed by the offi- lished by Dr. Richard Gibbings in 
 cials of the Inquisition in pronounc- Dublin in 1856. See also Masini, 
 ing sentence will be found in a Sacro Arsenale o Fraction del Sant' 
 highly interesting edition of the Offizio, as quoted by Berti in his 
 MS. trial of Pietro Carnesecclii, pub- Life of Bruno, pp. 291, 292. 
 
THE SENTENCE. 
 
 301 
 
 willing to refer yourself to the judgment and decision of 
 his Holiness and of us. . . . And it appearing to be now 
 no longer the time for delaying the despatch of this 
 affair ; We , — having fully examined and deliberated 011 
 the testimony you have given, and the legal procedure 
 and the aforesaid errors and heresies ; and you having 
 first been summoned at the suit of our fiscal, to receive 
 sentence, this, your cause, has been propounded and 
 scrutinised ; and we, paying attention to the powers 
 committed to us principally by our lord the Pope with 
 reference to the review of causes belonging to our tri- 
 bunal, and being therefore desirous of arriving at such 
 a conclusion as justice requires — having invoked the 
 most holy name of our Lord Jesus Christ and of the 
 glorious Virgin Mary, from the countenance of whom 
 come forth right judgments, and by whom the eyes of 
 arbiters behold the truth, in this cause and these causes 
 pending in the Holy Office, between the illustrious 
 Master on the one side, and you on the other side, who 
 have been (distinctively) arraigned and prosecuted, and 
 have admitted charges, and been found criminal, — by 
 this conclusive sentence which we issue in this writ, 
 Pronounce, adjudge, determine, and declare that you have 
 been a heretic, one who confided in heretics and who 
 was their abettor and entertainer severally, and that you 
 have consequently become amenable to the decisions, 
 censures, and penalties, legal and ecclesiastical, imposed 
 upon such-like offenders by the sacred canons, laws, and 
 ordinances, general as well as special. And having 
 regard to obstinate resistance to the acknowledgment 
 of the truth, and the obduracy manifested by you in 
 numerous instances, and your established continuance in 
 errors, and intercourse with heretics, and your hopeless 
 depravity, you have not improved nor reformed ; and per- 
 suaded that for these reasons the Holy Office can place 
 no further confidence in you, nor have any assurance that 
 you have really and unfeignedly repented, nor expect 
 
302 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 the slightest amendment in you. On this account we 
 accordingly declare and adjudge that you are an impeni- 
 tent heretic, a dissembling convert, and debased ; and that 
 by the very law you are deprived (and so far as it is 
 necessary, we deprive you anew) of every rank, privilege, 
 and eminent position, and of your preferments, emolu- 
 ments, and occupations, spiritual and secular, whatever 
 they may be, and howsoever designated ; and that they 
 have ceased to be enjoyed by you from the date of 
 your heresies, and that thenceforward you were in- 
 capable of obtaining them. And we condemn you to 
 the forfeiture of all your property, personal and real, and 
 of all consequent rights and claims agreeable to the 
 appointment of the sacred canons, to be applied, as we 
 do apply it, to the purpose to which it should be justly 
 assigned. And, as one irreclaimable, without remorse, 
 we in like manner pronounce and ordain that you ought 
 to be degraded, as we direct that you be actually degraded 
 from the orders to which you have attained. And as a per- 
 son so henceforward, as well as from the previous time, we 
 expel you as an unprofitable branch from our ecclesiasti- 
 cal court, and from the safeguard of our Holy Church ; 
 and we surrender and deliver you up to the secular 
 court, that is, to your lordship the Governor of Rome, 
 that you may take him under your jurisdiction, and that 
 he may be subject to your decision, so as to be punished 
 with due chastisement ; beseeching you, however, as we 
 do earnestly beseech you, so to mitigate the severity of 
 your sentence with respect to his body, that there may 
 be no danger either of death or of shedding of blood. 
 So we Cardinals, Inquisitors General, whose names are 
 written beneath, decree.” 
 
 The Inquisition was accustomed to vary its interroga- 
 tions from time to time, without permitting the accused 
 to read over his replies, which were submitted to persons 
 skilled in comparing evidence, and fresh inquiries were 
 then instituted on matters which seemed to open out the 
 
THE SENTENCE. 
 
 303 
 
 discovery of new criminals, or contradiction and evasion 
 in tlie prisoner. Nothing points to the conclusion that 
 Bruno was submitted to the torture . 1 “ Such pro- 
 ceedings,” writes Bartholmess, “ would have been useless, 
 since there was no doubt whatever on the ‘ intents.’ ” 
 
 The testimony of Scioppius survives to show in 
 what spirit Bruno received the judgment of the Holy 
 Office. Cast off by the Church, his natural anger ex- 
 hausted and turned to patience under the load of sorrow 
 which he was called upon to bear — as herbs, when 
 crushed, are made to yield up their virtues — he knew 
 that his days were numbered, and he did not quail when 
 the soldiers of the Governor advanced to seize him. The 
 vaults of the Inquisition opened and gave up their prey, 
 and the condemned prisoner passed into the keeping of 
 the law. In the presence of that august assemblage of 
 spiritual princes and theologians stood the indomitable 
 figure of the philosopher, unwearied by suffering and 
 degradation ; and as the agony of death began, he was 
 called upon to listen to the hypocritical words in which, 
 when the wrath of the Church was to be appeased by 
 punishment by fire, she required the temporal power to 
 proceed “ most mercifully and without shedding of blood.” 
 The prisoner, hearing this, said with a menacing aspect, 
 “ It may be you fear more to deliver judgment upon me 
 than I fear judgment.” After pronouncing these words 
 he was led away from the judgment-hall, vigilantly 
 guarded by the soldiers of the Governor, and a final 
 
 1 Campanella writes as follows 
 in Ills Atheismus Triumphatus : “I 
 am held fast, like Prometheus in 
 Caucasus, for having kindled a 
 torch. I am no prophet nor worker 
 of miracles, though may be I see 
 great things ; as Balaam’s ass be- 
 held the angel with the sword, and 
 her master gave ear to her. I have 
 been shut in fifty prisons ; seven 
 times I was examined under the 
 most cruel torture. Forty hours I 
 
 lay lately under torment. I was 
 bound with cords which cut to my 
 bones, and with my hands tied at 
 my back I hung upon the sharp 
 edge of a log, which stripped me of 
 a pound and a half of flesh, while 
 the earth swallowed ten pounds of 
 my blood. At last after six months 
 by the grace of God I recovered. 
 I was cast into an underground 
 dungeon. I was five times ques- 
 tioned before the Tribunal.” 
 
3°4 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 attempt was made to induce him to repent. But he re- 
 mained firm and his faith unshaken. 
 
 The action of the Inquisition was short and sharp ; and 
 it was the custom to allow two days to elapse between 
 passing a sentence and its execution. Sometimes the term 
 was even briefer, but it was never extended beyond a week. 
 If in this interval the condemned prisoner gave signs of 
 repentance, his lot might be commuted to imprisonment 
 for life, or the mercy shown him might be restricted to 
 a change in the mode of his death. Left in the public 
 prisons entirely alone, unvisited even by the terrible 
 officers on their mission of conversion, the prisoner was 
 abandoned to his own thoughts. Day dawned and night 
 fell ; and as in the darkness and silence hour succeeded 
 hour, there was nothing to show which moment would be 
 his last. In that still and solitary cell he had need of all his 
 philosophy, and of that “ height of perfection ” which he 
 had described many years before in the Expulsion (W. i. 
 193). “The height of perfection is not to feel fatigue 
 and sorrow when these are our portion.” Many times 
 he had reasoned with his own soul on the likelihood that 
 death would be the result of his opinions, and many times 
 he had assured himself that when death came he would 
 meet it bravely. When speaking of the philosophers of 
 antiquity, and of the death of St. Lawrence by fire, Bruno 
 inquires of himself what it was which gave these men 
 courage to endure the pangs of martyrdom. “ There are 
 men,” he writes (Gfr. 578, 579), “in whom the working 
 of the will of God is so powerful that neither threats nor 
 contumely can cause them to waver. He who fears for 
 his body has never felt himself to be one with God. He 
 alone is truly wise and virtuous who feels no pain ; and 
 he is happy (so far as the conditions of this present life 
 admit) who regards all things with the eye of reason.” 
 Heaven, with its tent of stars, had shaped his lonely 
 course in life, casting a lustre on his death before which 
 his funeral fire paled and became ineffectual. 
 
THE DEATH OF BRUNO. 
 
 305 
 
 At the time of the trial multitudes of pilgrims from 
 every country in Christendom were met in Rome. Nor 
 were the flocks unshepherded, for some fifty cardinals 
 had assembled to celebrate the jubilee of the astute Pope 
 who had converted Henry IY. of France to Catholicism. 
 The Church in all its glory was mustered to do honour to 
 its chief, and as Nero with his court mounted guard over 
 burning Christians, the ministers of peace and pardon 
 were summoned to watch the lingering agony of the 
 dying philosopher. On the 17th of February, clad in a 
 san benito 1 painted with flames and devils, he was led to 
 the stake in the Campo di Flora, that place of execution 
 of which he had spoken in London as a spot frequented 
 by Roman outcasts. “ A herd of desperate men ” (W. i. 
 148), “servants disgraced by their masters, outlaws, 
 pilgrims, the useless and the idle, from those who have 
 nothing left to steal, to those who, but newly escaped 
 from prison, are bent on mischief and deceit, and on a 
 speedy return to their place of punishment,” — such were 
 the wretched beings who sought refuge in this quarter of 
 the town appropriate to executions., Near the senate- 
 house in which Caesar received his death-blow stand two 
 modern theatres, and the spot has often echoed with the 
 funeral psalms of those who in their death were divided 
 from the crowd as much by faith as by a barrier of fire. 
 The cries of dying heretics were sport for the descendants 
 of a people who in the Campo di Flora had hailed with 
 applause the Ave Caesar of the dying gladiators. Stand- 
 ing within a stone’s-throw of the Tiber, the ancient 
 square, which now resounds with the homely cries of the 
 market-women, was once within earshot of the actors in 
 Pompey’s theatre ; while the Romans turned the steps of the 
 temple of Yenus Yictrix to such neighbourly account, that 
 they served as often to seat the spectators at a play as to 
 
 1 Those condemned by the Inqui- on each division flames, devils, and 
 sition wore, at their execution, a a cross of St. Andrew, 
 sulphur-coloured scapulary, having 
 
 U 
 
3°6 
 
 GIORDANO BRUNO. 
 
 conduct the wandering feet of the people to their devo- 
 tions. “ And now,” in the words of Isaac Walton, “ he 
 was so happy as to have nothing to do but to die.” And 
 on the Campo di Flora the Nolan philosopher died with- 
 out a murmur, as bravely as he had lived, refusing to listen 
 to the priests or to receive any consolation, 1 and saying 
 in his last moments that he died “ a martyr and 
 willingly ; ” 2 while predicting that his soul should ascend 
 upon that smoke to Paradise. His ashes were then given 
 to the winds, that nothing might remain of him upon the 
 face of the earth save the memory of his execution, of his 
 rare constancy, and of his tragic end, which, if it offered no 
 proof of the truth of his doctrines, was none the less a dis- 
 tinguishing mark of the steadfastness of his soul. Many 
 times he had reasoned with himself on the likelihood that 
 death would be the result of his opinions, and many times 
 he had assured himself that when death came he would 
 meet it bravely. “ For I esteem,” he wrote (W. ii. 4), 
 “ all fame and all victory displeasing to God, and most 
 vile and worthless if there is no truth in them ; and for 
 the love of true wisdom and learning I am full of weari- 
 ness ; I am crucified and tormented.” In London he 
 wrote (W. ii. 195), “When I am in trouble and in 
 danger, thou, 0 courage, with the voice of thy lively per- 
 suasion fail not to murmur within my ear the sentence, 
 Tu ne cede malis, sed contra audentior ito.” The fame 
 and honours which allure vulgar minds to him were 
 nothing. His life was a long protest. God is, God is 
 truth ; and that truth shines forth in Nature, which is his 
 handiwork. God is, and all is in God, but in a manner 
 befitting his perfection. Infinity is within the evidence 
 of our senses ; it is proved to us by the multiplicity in 
 
 1 Berti, Documents, p. 73. 
 
 2 “ Diceva die moriva martire et 
 volentieri." Avvisi di Roma, 1600, 
 19th February. He is said by the 
 renegade Scioppius to have rejected 
 “ with a terrible menacing counten- 
 
 ance ” a crucifix which was held up 
 to him, and which may have been 
 heated red-hot, as was customary, 
 in order to convince the spectators 
 of the sufferer’s impiety. 
 
THE DEATH OF BRUNO. 
 
 307 
 
 figures based upon unity ; and shall we deny infinity to 
 God ? It is difficult to imagine a theme more moving 
 and more animated than this which inspires the words of 
 the poet and philosopher. The most inert, the most in- 
 sensible, and the most minute parts of the earth become 
 in his hand infused with energy and contrivance. The 
 whole creation shows forth the glory of God; it is vivified, 
 spiritualised, and made radiant with power and delight. 
 In the eyes of the seer the universe is ever hymning the 
 praise of its Maker, living and rejoicing with a life in- 
 comparably fuller than the life of man, and proclaiming 
 its glorious mission of adoration and love. By the way 
 of poetry Bruno became a philosopher. Love of art made 
 him a lover of men ; love of the true and beautiful made 
 him the worshipper of God. In what philosophy does the 
 doctrine of the soul play so large a part ? Not the soul 
 of man alone dwells in God ; but the soul of the world is 
 in him, moves in him, and has its being from him. The 
 things of Nature by which we are surrounded are shadows, 
 unreal and not abiding ; but the spirit, the soul, the 
 form, the act of the divine cognition, the substance which 
 no human eye has ever seen, the Monad which can never 
 be perceived by mortal sense, this alone is real, abiding, 
 and true ; this was before the worlds were ; this is In- 
 finity. To perceive it is the only true knowledge ; to be 
 joined with it is the only true happiness. The majesty 
 and immutability of God dawn upon the eye of man, and, 
 led by love, the great revealer, the eager human spirit is 
 united with its Giver. If this assurance should penetrate 
 the heart of but one reader, the Nolan will not have died 
 in vain, nor will the humble labours of his biographer be 
 counted as nothing. 
 
APPENDIX 
 
 TABLE I. 
 
 THE EXISTING WORKS OF BRUNO. 
 
THE EXISTING WORKS OF BRUNO. 
 
 310 
 
 Date. 
 
 1582. 
 
 1582. 
 
 Title. 
 
 Where Printed. 
 
 Jordanus Brunus Nolanus 
 de umbris idearum im- 
 plicantibus artem, Quae- 
 rendi, Inveniendi, Judi- 
 candi, Ordinandi et Ap- 
 plicandi ; ad internam 
 scripturam et non vul- 
 gares per memoriam 
 operationes explicatis. 
 
 Ad Henricum III. Sere- 
 niss : Gallorum Polono- 
 rumque Begem, etc. Pro- 
 testatio. 
 
 Umbra profunda sumus, 
 vA nos vexetis inepti. Non 
 vos, sed dodos tam grave 
 quaerit opus. 
 
 With its second part Ars 
 Memorise Jordani Bruni. 
 
 Parisiis apud iEgid. 
 Gorbinum, sub in- 
 signe Spei, e regione 
 gymnasii Camera- 
 censis. 
 
 Cum privilegio regis. 
 
 Philothei Jordani Bruni 
 Nolani Cantus Circseus, 
 ad earn memoriae praxim 
 ordinatus quam ipse judi- 
 ciariam appellat. Ad 
 
 Altissimum Principem 
 Henricum d’Angoulesme, 
 magnum Galliorum prio- 
 rem, in provincia regis 
 locumtenentum, etc. 
 
 Parisiis apud iEgid- 
 ium Gillium via S. 
 Joannis Lateranen- 
 sis sub trium coron- 
 arum signo. 
 
THE EXISTING WORKS OF BRUNO. 
 
 3 ” 
 
 Reprints. 
 
 Notes. 
 
 Gfrorer, p. 285-412. 
 
 The Art of Lullus applied to tbe 
 Platonic Idea, and to its shadow 
 
 “ Jordanus Bruns No- 
 lanus. De umbris 
 Idearum. Editionova 
 curavit Salvator Tu- 
 gini. Berolini (apud. 
 E. S. Mittlerum & 
 filium, bibliopolas 
 curiae Begis), 1868.” 
 
 8 vo, pp. xxvi. and 178, 
 with the figures from 
 tbe original. 
 
 J. Brunus. Opera La- 
 tine conscripta, vol. 
 ii., ISTeapoli in 8, p. 
 257, 1886. De Um- 
 bris Idearum Ars 
 Memoriae, Cantus Ar- 
 caeus. 
 
 or reflection in the mind of man. 
 In this work and the follow- 
 ing allusion is made to a Liber 
 clavis vicignce, in which the Art 
 of Memory is said to be per- 
 fected. Buhle believes it to be 
 a work by Bruno ; it has com- 
 pletely disappeared. 
 
 The second part or continuation, 
 Ars Memoriae, has in the origi- 
 nal no separate title, though 
 the numbering of the leaves 
 (80) begins afresh. Affixed are 
 three short chapters, under se- 
 parate titles, containing enigmas 
 and paradigms in Latin verse 
 with prose illustrations. They 
 are dedicated to King Henry 
 III. of France, and are devoted 
 to Mnemonics. 
 
 Gfrorer, p. 179-234. 
 J. Brunus. Opera La- 
 tine Conscripta, vol. 
 ii., Neapoli, 1886. 
 
 A work on the Lullian Art of 
 Memory. 
 
312 
 
 THE EXISTING WORKS OF BRUNO. 
 
 Date. 
 1 582. 
 
 I 582. 
 
 Title. 
 
 Where Printed. 
 
 Philotlieus Jordanus 
 Brunus Nolanus, de com- 
 pendiosa arcliitectura et 
 complemento artis Lullii. 
 Ad illustriss: D.D. Joan- 
 nem Morum, pro serenis- 
 sima Venetorum Repub- 
 lica apud Christianissi- 
 mum Gallorum et Polo- 
 norum Regem legatuin. 
 
 Parisiis apud AEgid- 
 ium Gorbinum, sub 
 insigni Spei, prope 
 Collegium Camera- 
 cense. 32mo. 
 
 LI. numbered 143, 
 with many tables 
 and diagrams. 
 
 Caudelajo. Comedia del 
 Bruno Nolano, Achade- 
 mico di nulla Achademia 
 detto il fastidito. 
 
 In tristitia hilaris, in Jiilari- 
 tate tristis. 
 
 Paris. 
 
 In Parigi. Appresso 
 Guglelmo Giuli- 
 ano, A1 Segno 
 de l’Amicitia. 
 MDLXXXII. 
 
 1 47 small 11., with 
 a Sonnet, Dedi- 
 cation, Argument, 
 j Antiprologue, and 
 Proprologue occu- 
 pying thirty -two 
 additional pages — 
 in all 179 pages. 
 Tall i6mo. 
 
THE EXISTING WORKS OF BRUNO. 
 
 3i3 
 
 Reprints. 
 
 Notes. 
 
 Gfrorer, p. 235-284. 
 
 Giovanni Moro was a man 
 of rare merit, a lover 
 of letters, an accom- 
 plished statesman, and 
 an orator. Bruno, in 
 the Dedication, says he 
 looks upon his work as a 
 pearl, and he entreats 
 Moro to preserve it from 
 the swine. This work 
 is on the art of Lully. 
 
 It is interesting to note that the 
 printer of De Compendiosa 
 Arch.itectv.ra lived near the 
 College of Cambrai. See 
 Camocracensis Acrotismos. 
 
 Opere di Jordano Bruno Nolano. 
 Ora per la primavolta raccolte 
 et pubblicate da Adolfo Wag- 
 ner Dottore. In due volumi. 
 Lipsia : Weidmann, 1830. 
 Yol. I. p. 1 — 1 1 2. 8vo. 
 
 BibliotecaBara,Vol. 1 8. IlCan- 
 delajo. Commedia di Giordano 
 Bruno, nuovamente stampata 
 e diligentemente corretta. Mi- 
 lano: G.Daelli e Comp. 1863. 
 
 11 Candelajo. Commedia in 
 cinque atti. (Teatro Classico 
 Italiano.) 1829. 8vo. 
 
 1 5 1 pages, with an Introduc- 
 tory Notice by Carlo Teoli. 
 
 In the bibliography of Tugini 
 (see De Umbris Idearum) II 
 Candelajo is said to have 
 been reprinted in 1583. 
 
 A comedy in five acts, 
 and in prose. “ It is 
 dedicated,” says M. de 
 Chaufepie in his sup- 
 plement to Bayle’s 
 great Dictionary, “ to 
 the Signora Morgana 
 (perhaps some English- 
 woman).” A French 
 adaptation (8vo) of 
 this play, under the title 
 “Boniface et le Pedant, 
 comedie, en prose, imi- 
 tee de 1 ’italien de Bru- 
 no,” appeared in Paris 
 in 1633. A second 
 imitation by Cyrano 
 de Bergerac is called 
 “ Le Pedant Joue.” 
 
3 1 4 
 
 THE EXISTING WORKS OF BRUNO. 
 
 Date 
 
 Title. 
 
 Where Printed. 
 
 [1583 ] Philothei JordaniBruniNo- [London.] 
 
 lani, Explicatio triginta 
 Sigillorum, ad omnium , 
 scientiarum et artium in- 
 ventionem, dispositionem 1 
 et memoriam. Quibus ; S. 1 . and d. 
 adiectus est Sigillus Sigil- 
 lorum ad omnes animi 
 operationes comparandas i 
 et earundem rationes ha- 
 bendas maxime conducens. : 
 
 Et non temere ars artium 
 nuncupatur: hie enim 
 
 facile invenies, quidquid 
 per logic am, metaphysi- 
 cam, cabalam, naturalem 
 magiam, artes magnas 
 atque breves, theoretice 
 inquiritur. 
 
 [I583-] 
 
 Philothei Jordani Bruni 
 Nolani Sigillus Sigillorum 
 ad omnes animi disposi- 
 tiones comparandas 
 habitusque perficiendos 
 accomodatus. 
 
 [London.] 
 
THE EXISTING WORKS OF BRUNO. 
 
 315 
 
 Repriuts. Notes. 
 
 Gfrorer, p. 517—550. 
 
 This was the first work printed 
 by Yautrollier for Bruno in 
 
 Gfrorer omits an open- 
 ing poem of fourteen 
 lines, the Dedication, 
 the Presentation, the 
 diagrams, and the 
 leaves numbered 16 
 in the text. 
 
 London. It was dedicated 
 to the French Ambassador 
 Castelnau (W. ii. 255), and 
 presented to the Vice-Chancel- 
 lor of Oxford. The pages are 
 beautifully printed in italics, 
 and decorated with eight white 
 mnemonic figures on a black 
 background. The verses Dux 
 gregis of the Shadows of Ideas 
 are repeated. The first 3 2 
 pages only are numbered on 
 one side of the leaf, and were 
 probably, therefore, not printed 
 at the same time as the re- 
 mainder. Three sets of verses, 
 beginning respectively Lumine 
 ae clarone, Uranie vatem, and 
 Irrugit licec, are reproduced, 
 according to Bruno’s habit, 
 from the Ars Memoriae. 
 
 Gfrorer, p. 551-600. 
 
 Next after the JExplicatio Triginta 
 Sigillorum we have the Seal 
 of Seals ; the pages unnum- 
 bered and in fine italic type. 
 
 The printing of this work begins 
 on the last leaf of the last 
 sheet of the Explicatio Triginta 
 Sigillorum. 
 
i6 
 
 THE EXISTING WORKS OF BRUNO . 
 
 Date. 
 
 Title. 
 
 Where Printed. 
 
 I 583 - 
 
 Philothei Jordani Bruni Nolani, 
 Recens et Completa Ars Be- 
 miniscendi et in phantastico 
 carapo exarandi Ad plurimas in 
 triginta sigillis inquirendi, dis- 
 ponendi, atque retinendi, im- 
 plicitas novas rationes et artes 
 introductoria. 
 
 No date or place. 
 
 Closely followed by : Jordani 
 Bruni Nolani Ars alia brevior 
 et expeditior ad verborum 
 memoriam. 
 
 
 1584. 
 
 La Cena de le Ceneri descritta 
 in cinque dialogi per quattro 
 Interlocutori con tre Considera- 
 zioni, circa doi Suggetti. 
 
 [London.] 
 
 SL. 
 
 
 All’Unico Refugio de le Muse 
 L’lllustrissimo Michel di Cas- 
 telnovo Signor di Mauvissier 
 Concressalto, e di Jonvilla, Ca- 
 valier del’Ordine del Re Chris- 
 tianiss: E Consiglier nel suo 
 privato Conseglo, capitano di 
 5oHuoxnini d’arme,Governator 
 e Capitano di S : Desiderio ; et 
 Ambasciator alia serenissima 
 Regina d’Inghilterra. 
 
 0 O 
 
 
 
 L’universale intentione e dichia- 
 rata nel proemio. 
 
 
THE EXISTING WORKS OF BRUNO. 317 
 
 Reprints. 
 
 Notes. 
 
 Gfr. 517. 
 
 The introduction to this work, beginning 
 “ Intentio nostra est is repeated from 
 Cantus Circceus (Gfr. 206—208), and 
 the entire work, including the Ars alia 
 brevior et expeditor, is reproduced from 
 the Paris publication : Gfrorer there- 
 fore only prints the title-page. The 
 opening verses Jordanus Libro, and 
 what may be called the fable of the 
 Cantus Circceus are omitted from the 
 Recens et completa Ars Reminiscendi. 
 Eight extraordinary figures, containing 
 mnemonic signs placed in lines and 
 squares, complete the work. 
 
 Wagner, vol. i. 
 p. 1 1 3-200. 
 
 i2mo; 11. 8 ; 128 numbered pages. 
 
 Biblioteca rara, 
 vol. 3 6. La 
 Cenade leCe- 
 neri.per Gior- 
 dano Bruno 
 (Milano : G. 
 Daelli et C., 
 1864). 
 
 ISTuova edizione 
 diligentemen- 
 te corretta. 
 
 
1 8 
 
 THE EXISTING WORKS OF BRUNO. 
 
 Date. 
 
 Title. 
 
 Where Printed. 
 
 1584. 
 
 Giordano Bruno Nolano, De 
 la Causa, Principio, et 
 Uno. A l’lllustrissimo 
 Signor di Mauvissiero. 
 
 [London.] 
 
 Stampato in Venezia, 
 Anno mdlxxxiv. 
 
 1584- 
 
 Giordano Bruno Nolano, [London.] 
 
 De l’infinito, Universo, e 
 
 Mondi. AH’illustrissimo Stampato in Venezia. 
 
 Signor di Mauvissiero. 
 
THE EXISTING WORKS OF BRUNO. 319 
 
 Reprints. 
 
 Notes. 
 
 Wagner, vol. i. p. 201— 
 292. An excellent 
 annotated transla- 
 tion of this work, 
 Giordano Bruno , Von 
 dor Ursache, dem 
 Princip und dem 
 Binen, by Adolf 
 Lasson, appeared at 
 Berlin, 1872 (Hei- 
 mann). An imper- 
 fect rendering is 
 furnished by Bixner 
 and Siber, Leben und 
 lehrmeinung en be- 
 riihmter Physiker am 
 Ende des XVI. und 
 am Anfange des 
 XVII. Jahrhunderts, 
 Sulzbach, 1824. 
 
 LI. 12, and 142 pages. 
 
 Printed in London. In the 
 eleventh document of the Trial 
 Bruno says, “ All those (books) 
 said to be printed in Venice, 
 were printed in England, and 
 it was the Printer who desired 
 it to appear they were printed 
 in Venice, in order to sell them 
 more easily, for if he had said 
 they were printed in England 
 it would have been more dif- 
 ficult to sell them in that 
 country ; and almost all the 
 others were printed in England, 
 even when they say Paris, and 
 elsewhere.” 
 
 The opening passages of The 
 Cause are repeated in Dc Im- 
 menso, i. c. 2, p. 1 5 3. 
 
 Wagner, vol. ii.p. 1-104. 
 
 A German translation 
 of this work by Rix- 
 ner and Siber (title 
 as above) omits the 
 Introduction. The 
 
 Introduction only is 
 translated into Eng- 
 lish and printed in “A 
 Collection of Several 
 Pieces of Mr. John 
 Toland,” 2 vols. Lon- 
 don : Peele, at locke’s 
 Head in Paternoster 
 Row. MDCCXXVI. 
 
 LI. 16 and pp. 175. 
 
 1 
 
32 o 
 
 THE EXISTING WORKS OF BRUNO. 
 
 Date. 
 
 1584. 
 
 Title. 
 
 Where Printed. 
 
 Spaccio de la Bestia 
 Trionfante, pro- 
 posto da Gioue, 
 Effettuato dal con- 
 seglo, Eeuelato da 
 Mercurio, recitato 
 da Sophia, iudito 
 da Saulino, regis- 
 trato dal Nolano , 
 Diuiso in tre Dia- 
 log i, subdivisi in 
 tre parti. 
 
 Consecrato al motto 
 illustre et eccellente 
 Caualliero Sig. 
 Philippo Sidneo. 
 
 [London.] 
 
 Stampato 
 in Parigi. 
 MDLXXXIIII. 
 
 Reprints. 
 
 Wagner, voL ii. 
 p. 105-250. 
 
 Spaccio della 
 Bestia Trion- 
 fante Biblio- 
 teca rara. Yol. 
 xxvi. Milano: 
 G. Daelli et 
 Cie. 1863. 
 
THE EXISTING WORKS OF BRUNO. 
 
 321 
 
 Notes. 
 
 Two hundred and sixty-one pages, i2mo; with an Intro- 
 duction,- the pages of which are not numbered. 
 
 “This book,” says Father Niceron, “is despicable in itself, 
 and is despised to such a degree that at the sale of M. Bigot’s 
 library, in 1706, it fetched (with five other works by the same 
 writer) but 25 sous, though,” he adds, “by the folly of biblio- 
 maniacs, it has since reached an exorbitant price ” ( Niceron , 
 Memoires pour servir dux hommes illustres, vol. xvii. p. 2 1 1 ). 
 At the sale of the Abbe de Rothelin the Expulsion fetched 1132 
 francs. A translation of this work was published in London 
 under the title, “Spaccio della Bestia Trionfante, or the Expul- 
 sion of the Triumphant Beast. Translated from the Italian of 
 Giordano Bruno. London: Printed in the year 1713.” The 
 Dedication to Sir P. Sidney is omitted. 
 
 In the British Museum Catalogue there is the following note: 
 “Translated (by W. Morehead) from the Italian of G. B. Engl. 
 Only 50 copies printed.” Mr. Bohn, however, says that more 
 than sixty copies have passed through his hands alone. 
 
 A French reproduction of this work has the following title : 
 “Le Ciel Reforme. Essai de traduction de partie du livre italien 
 Spaccio della Bestia Trionfante. Demus alienis oblectationibus 
 Veniam, dum nostris impetremus. — Plin. L’an 1000,700,50.” 
 The translator, in a dedication to “ Monsieur * * promises, in 
 quaint terms, that if his patron favours him, his pen will revive, 
 and he will finish the work ; but if not, he will refrain from the 
 amusement of his leisure, and will repair to abodes of peace, 
 “ where books are esteemed at their just value, not because they 
 are rare, but because they are efficacious and deserving.” On 
 the “reviving pen” has been laid the silence of the grave, and 
 the work remains unfinished ; the translator ominously with- 
 holding his name. In a too sprightly humour he speaks of the 
 martyrdom of Bruno, whom he calls “this good Jacobin,'" as “a 
 literary anecdote,” perhaps because he wished to make light of 
 the event : although, to do him justice, he warmly denied the 
 charge when a friend whom he met told him that Bruno’s book 
 was a satire against the Court of Rome. 
 
 Harking, a German writer, gives an interesting review of 
 Bruno’s Ethics, chiefly founded upon the Expulsion ; “ Grund- 
 linien einer Ethik bei Giordano Bruno,” Leipsig, 1878. Enfield, 
 in his not unkindly notice of Bruno (History of Philosophy, 
 vol. ii. p. 474), humorously renders the title, “Dispatches from 
 the Triumphant Beast.” 
 
 x 
 
322 
 
 THE EXISTING WORKS OF BRUNO. 
 
 Date. 
 
 Title. 
 
 Where Printed. 
 
 1 535 - 
 
 Cabala del Cavallo Pegaseo. 
 
 [London.] 
 
 Con l’agguinta dell’ Asino 
 
 Cillcnico. Descritta dal 
 Nolano: dedicata al Ves- 
 covo di Casamarciano. 
 
 Parigi, appresso An- 
 tonio Baio. Anno 
 I 535- 
 
 
 1585- 
 
 Giordano Bruno Nolano. 
 
 De Gli Heroici Furori. 
 Al molto illustre et excel- 
 lente Caualliero Signor 
 Philippo Sidneo. 
 
 [London.] 
 
 Parigi, Appresso An- 
 tonio Baio. L’Anno. 
 I 585- 
 
THE EXISTING WORKS OF BRUNO. 
 
 323 
 
 Reprints. 
 
 Notes. 
 
 Wagner (vol. ii. 
 p. 253-296). 
 
 Biblioteca rara, vol. 3 5, 
 Cabala del Cavallo 
 Pegaseo con l’agguin- 
 ta del Asino Cillenico 
 per Giordano Bruno. 
 Milano : Daelli et 
 Comp. 1864. 
 
 Wagner (vol. ii. 
 p. 297-437). 
 
 Biblioteca rara, pubbli- 
 cata da G. Daelli, 
 vol. 57. Gli Eroici 
 urori di Giordano 
 Bruno. Milano, 1 864. 
 
 LI. 47. Pages unnumbered. 
 
 This book was also printed in 
 London (Doc. xi.) It con- 
 sists of a Dedicatory Epistle, 
 three Sonnets, a“Declamation,” 
 three Dialogues, of which the 
 second is again divided into 
 three, and an Appendix. The 
 theme of the book is that 
 Piety, which, according to 
 Bruno, takes undue advantage 
 of certain passages in the Scrip- 
 tures, and setting itself up to 
 be better than Science, falls a 
 prey to the dull idleness and 
 ignorance of the Ass. An en- 
 graving of two lively donkeys 
 in a wood, designed and pro- 
 bably cut by Bruno, completes 
 the whole. 
 
 LI. 140. Pages [unnumbered] 
 beautifully printed on fine paper. 
 
 A beautiful and poetic render- 
 ing of some of the sonnets in 
 this work is given by Professor 
 Carriere. Dr. Brunnhofer also 
 translates several of the poems. 
 A great number appear in the 
 “ Programme des stadtischen 
 Gymnasiums zu Stolp fur das 
 Schuljahr 1869—70.” They are 
 carefully rendered into verse 
 by Prof. Hermann Schiitz. 
 
324 
 
 THE EXISTING WORKS OF BRUNO. 
 
 Date. 
 1 586. 
 
 1 586. 
 
 Title. 
 
 Jordani Bruni Nolani dialog! duo 
 de Fabbricii Mordentis Saler- 
 nitani prope divina adinven- 
 tione ad perfectam Cosmimet- 
 riae praxim. 
 
 With an affix, Jordani Bruni 
 Insomnium. 
 
 In the same volume, and printed 
 at the same time and place, is 
 Jordani Bruni Nolani Figu- 
 ratio Aristotelici physici audi- 
 tus ad eiusdem intelligentiam 
 atque retentionem per quinde- 
 cim imagines explicanda, ad 
 illustrem admodum atque re- 
 verendum dominum D. Petrum 
 Dalbenium Abbatem Belleville. 
 
 “ Centum, et rigiati articuli de 
 natura et mundo adversus 
 peripateticos. Per Joh. Hen- 
 nequinum Nobilem Parisien. 
 Lutelie proposito. Sub clipeo 
 and moderamine Jordani Bruni 
 Nolani, infra octava Pente- 
 costes, an 1586. 
 
 
 Where Printed. 
 
 Parisiis, ex ty- 
 pography Pe- 
 tri Chevellot, 
 in vico S. 
 Joannis late- 
 ranensis sub 
 Rosa rubra, 
 1586. 
 
 Impressum 
 Parisiis, ad 
 Authoris in- 
 stant. 1586. 
 
THE EXISTING WORKS OF BRUNO. 
 
 325 
 
 Reprints. 
 
 Notes. 
 
 This work has hitherto escaped 
 notice, probably because it 
 appears with the name of 
 Hennequin. There is a copy 
 in the British Museum. 
 
THE EXISTING WORKS OF BRUNO. 
 
 3 -(> 
 
 Date. 
 
 1587. 
 
 1 587 - 
 
 Title. Where Printed. 
 
 Jord. Brunus Nolanus. De Wittenberg. 
 Lampade Combinatoria 
 Lulliana. Ad Amplissi- 
 mum Witebergensis 
 academiae Senatum. 
 
 Jordanus Brunus Nolanus. 
 De Progressu et Lampade 
 Yenatoria Logicorum. 
 Ad prompts atq copiose 
 de quocumq proposito pro- 
 blemate disputandum. 
 
 Next comes Jord. B. No- 
 lanus. De Progressu 
 Logicae Yenationis, and 
 then Jordanus Brunus 
 Nolanus. De Lampade 
 Yenatoria Logicorum. 
 
 [Wittenberg.] 
 
 SL. 
 
THE EXISTING WORKS OF BRUNO. 
 
 327 
 
 Reprints. 
 
 Notes. 
 
 Gfrorer, p. 621—702. 
 
 To introduce the art of Lully to 
 the Academy at Wittenberg. 
 An enlarged and perfected 
 reproduction of The Compen- 
 dious Architecture. It dis- 
 plays, among others, a wheel- 
 shaped figure, or sphere, often 
 drawn by Bruno, containing 
 within itself nine Divine attri- 
 butes — glory, bounty, magni- 
 tude, duration, power, wisdom, 
 will, virtue, truth. 
 
 Gfrorer, p. 703-770. 
 Baymundi Lullii opera. 
 Argentorati, 1 609, p. 
 
 735 ~ 7 86 - 
 
 On second page, Excellentissimo, 
 et Adm. Bev. D. D. Georgio 
 Mylio, Augustano, Witeber- 
 gensis Academiae Cancellario, 
 Jordanus B. Nolanus, S. P. D. 
 LI. 3-9. Pp. 1-79. LI. 8, 
 and 79 pp. 
 
3?S 
 
 THE EXISTING WORKS OF BRUNO. 
 
 Date. Title. Where Printed. 
 
 1588. Jordani Bruni Nolani Ca- Wittenberg apud 
 
 moeracensis Acrotismus, Zachariam Cra- 
 
 seu Rationes Articulorum , tonem. 
 
 physicorum adversus Pe- 
 ripateticos Parisiis pro- 
 positorum, etc. 
 
THE EXISTING WORKS OF BRUNO. 
 
 329 
 
 Reprints. 
 
 Notes. 
 
 Gfrorer, p. 1 - 112 . 
 
 LI. 20 and pp. 128. 
 
 The heads of a public disputa- 
 
 Jordani Bruni Nolan i 
 opera latine con- 
 scripta recensebat F. 
 Fiorentino. Naples, 
 apud Dom. Morano. 
 1879. 
 
 p. 53-190. 
 
 tion held in Paris at Whit- 
 suntide 1586, in the hall of 
 the College of Cambrai. Cre- 
 vier, in a note in his History 
 of the Paris University, says 
 the title proves that the dis- 
 putation did not take place in 
 the Sorbonne. A college was 
 founded in Paris by three 
 bishops, one of whom was 
 Bishop of Cambrai ; hence the 
 title. When Francis I. founded 
 a school of Hebrew, Greek, and 
 Latin, the royal professors, 
 having no college of their 
 own, hired a hall, usually in 
 the College of Cambrai, and 
 Bruno may have done the 
 same. The College of France 
 now stands on the site of the 
 College of Cambrai, and it 
 was here that Edgar Quinet 
 delivered his lecture on Bruno 
 in 1842. 
 
33 ° 
 
 THE EXISTING WORKS OF BRUNO. 
 
 Date. 
 
 Dictated 
 
 Witten- 
 
 berg, 
 
 1587- 
 
 Printed 
 P rank- 
 fort, 
 1612. 
 
 8th 
 
 March 
 
 1588. 
 
 Title. 
 
 Where Printed. 
 
 Artificium perorandi tra- 
 ditum a Jordano Bruno 
 Nolano Italo, commui- 
 catum a Johan Henrico 
 Alstedio In gratiam eorum, 
 qui eloquentiae vim et 
 rationem cognoscere cu- 
 
 Francofurti prostat 
 apud Antonium 
 Hummium, 1612. 
 
 piunt. Following Al- 
 sted’s Introduction, Ex- 
 plicatio rhetoricae Aris- 
 totelis ad Alexandrum 
 privatim a J. Bruno No- 
 lano Italo dictata. Wit- 
 tembergae Anno 1587. 
 With Secunda Pars rheto- 
 rices addita praecedenti a 
 J. Bruno Nolano Italo. 
 
 Oratio Yaledictoria a Jor- 
 dano Bruno Nolano D. 
 habita, Ad Amplissimos 
 et clarissimos professores, 
 atque auditores in acade- 
 mia witebergensi Anno 
 1588, 8 Martii. 
 
 Wittenberg Typis 
 Zachariae Cratonis. 
 
THE EXISTING WORKS OF BRUNO. 
 
 33i 
 
 Reprints. 
 
 Notes. 
 
 Gfrorer, p. 113—178. 
 
 i2mo., pp. 144, numbered. 
 
 Heumann. Acta philos. 
 9, 408 ff. 
 
 
 Jordani Bruni Nolani 
 Opera Latine Con- 
 scripta recensebat, F. 
 Fiorentino (Naples : 
 Apud. Dom. Morano, 
 1879), p. 1-25. 
 
 
332 
 
 THE EXISTING WORKS OF BRUNO. 
 
 Date. 
 
 Title. 
 
 Where Printed. 
 
 I Oth 
 
 Jordanus Brunus 
 
 l'ragae, ex- 
 
 J une 
 
 Nolanus,de speci- 
 
 cudebat 
 
 1588. 
 
 erum scrutinio et 
 
 Georgius 
 
 
 Lampade Combi- 
 
 Nigrinus. 
 
 natoria Raymun- 
 di Lullii Doctoris 
 Heremitse omnis- 
 cij, propk modum- 
 que divini. 
 
 Reprints. 
 
 Gfrorer, p. 60 1 — 
 702. 
 
 This series was 
 reprinted with 
 the works of 
 Lully, Argen- 
 torati, 1598, 
 8vo, p. 682, 
 seq. ; also, ed. 
 1609, p. 664. 
 
 
 
 
 1588. 
 
 Centum et Sexa- 
 ginta Articuli ad- 
 versus hujus tem- 
 pestatis mathe- 
 maticos. 
 
 Prague. 
 
 1 
 
THE EXISTING WORKS OF BRUNO. 
 
 333 
 
 Notes. 
 
 68 11., unnumbered, 8vo. Ad excellentissimum Guil. 
 de S. Clemente regis Hispaniee in aula imperat. legatum. 
 
 Buhle and others hold this work to be a reprint 
 or repetition of the Wittenberg publication De Lampade 
 Combinatoria. It is neither the one nor the other, 
 but simply the Wittenberg edition itself, as can be 
 proved by a careful comparison of the Wittenberg book 
 and of the book issued at Prague. The explanation is 
 probably that when Bruno left Wittenberg for Prague 
 the whole of his edition was not sold. He took the unsold 
 copies with him to Prague, wrote an Introduction entitled 
 De Specierum Scrutinio, cancelled the Wittenberg title- 
 page, and bound up the new pages with his unsold copies. 
 The Introduction with its special title consists of the 
 Dedication to the Spanish Ambassador. It contains 
 further the tables of the nine elementary concepts ; their 
 absolute and relative predicates, and the figures denoting 
 their manifold combinations. Forty leaves of this work 
 (from the title De Lampade Combinatoria Lulliana to the 
 first four lines of Chapter IV., De Multiplications regu- 
 larum ) are printed on paper considerably thicker and of 
 a different colour to the rest, and probably form part of 
 the original edition. The remaining twenty-four leaves 
 resemble the paper of De Specierum Scrutinio. The same 
 print is used throughout ; the protruding letters, battered 
 letters, decorated initials, and finals, are those of the 
 Wittenberg publication. 
 
 Dedicated to the Emperor Budolf II. 
 
334 
 
 THE EXISTING WORKS OF BRUNO. 
 
 Date. 
 
 Febr. 
 
 1589. 
 
 
 Febr. 
 
 1591 - 
 
 Title. 
 
 Where Printed. 
 
 Oratio Consolatoria J or- 
 dani Bruni Nolani Itali. 
 D. babita in illustri cele- 
 berrima que Academia 
 Julia. In fine solern- 
 nissimarum exequiarum 
 in obitum Illustrissimi 
 potentessimique Principis 
 Julii, Ducis Brunsvicen- 
 sium Luneburgensium, 
 etc. 
 
 Helmstedt. 
 
 Jordani Bruni Nolani de 
 
 triplici Minimo et Men- 
 sura ad trium specula- 
 tivarum scientiarum et 
 multarum acti varum ar- 
 tium principia libri v. 
 Ad illustrissimum et 
 reverendiss. Principem 
 Henricum Julium, Bruns- 
 vicensium et Luneb. 
 Ducem, Halberstaten- 
 sium Episcopum. Capita 
 cuiusq libri, proxime post 
 praefationem sunt expo- 
 sita : Schematum item 
 
 et definitionum praecipu- 
 arum Index alphabeticus 
 in fine additus. 
 
 Francofurti apud 
 JoannemWechelum 
 et Petrum Fiscbe- 
 rum consortes. 
 
THE EXISTING WORKS OF BRUNO. 
 
 335 
 
 Reprints. 
 
 Notes. 
 
 F. Fioren- 
 tino, p. 
 27-52. 
 
 Delivered at the Julia Academy of Helmstedt 
 on the death of its founder, Duke Henry 
 Julius of Brunswick. 
 
 
 LI. 4 and 218 pp. 
 
 This poem is closely allied to the Italian dia- 
 logue Della Causa. Certain pages of De 
 Minimo and of De Monade are almost literal 
 versifications of Della Causa and DelT Infini- 
 te). The following, with regard to the order 
 of the didactic poems, occurs in the Dedica- 
 tion: Adsuntprimo De Minimo libri; secundo 
 de Monade liber; tertio De Immenso. The 
 words “ consequens quinque de Minimo ,” 
 printed with the title of De Monade, prove 
 it to be a sequel to De Minimo. 
 
 The printing was finished February 1591 ; 
 the Dedication is dated February 13. The 
 work is in three parts : the first part is 
 metaphysical ; the second mathematical, 
 with problems resembling those of Euclid, 
 and introductory to those mystic figures 
 of Lull us, with which the third part of this 
 work is occupied. 
 
33 6 
 
 THE EXISTING WORKS OF BRUNO. 
 
 Date. 
 
 Title. 
 
 1591- 
 
 Jordani Bruni Nolani de Monade, 
 Numeroet Figura liber, consequens 
 Quinque de minimo, magno et 
 Mensura. Item de Innumera- 
 bilibus Immenso, et Infigurabili ; 
 seu de Universo et Mundis libri 
 octo. Ad illustrissimum et reve- 
 rendissimum Principem Henricum 
 Juliurn, Brunsvicensium et Lune- 
 burgensium ducem, Halberstaden- 
 sium Episcopum, &c. After 146 
 pages, Jordanus Brunus Nolanus ! 
 De Immenso et Innumerabilibus 
 seu de Universo et Mundis. Ad 
 lllustriss.et Reverendiss. Heroem 
 Henrictm (sic) Juliurn Bruns- 
 vicensium et Lunseburgensium 
 Ducem, Halberstadensium Epis- 
 copum, &c. On the 198th page 
 we have a new title with continu- 
 ous paging, Jordani Bruni Nolani, 
 de Maximo et Immenso. On page 
 346, Jordani Bruni Nolani De 
 Immenso et Innumerabilibus, 
 which heads the pages, according 
 to Bruno’s habit, until page 507, 
 when a further change takes 
 place, Jordani Bruni Nolani De 
 Universo et Innumerabilibus. 
 Book YII. and Book VIII. have 
 each different titles, 655 pages in 
 all; prefixed 12 unpaged leaves. 
 
 Where Printed. 
 
 Francofurti 
 apud Joan. 
 Wechelum 
 et Petr. 
 Fischer um 
 consortes. 
 8vo. 
 
THE EXISTING WORKS OF BRUNO. 
 
 337 
 
 Reprints. 
 
 Notes. 
 
 Under the title Jorda- 
 nus Brunus Nolanus 
 De Immenso et In- 
 numerabilibus seu de 
 Universo et Mundis, 
 Signor Fiorentino 
 prints the Dedication 
 to the Monad. The 
 whole of that work, 
 145 pages in all, is 
 then omitted, and 
 three hooks follow, 
 one of which is en- 
 titled De Immenso ; 
 the other two, De 
 Maximo et Immenso 
 (page 19 1 to 398). 
 The Editor’s capri- 
 cious treatment is 
 severely taken to 
 task by Professor 
 Sigwart in the 
 
 Gelehrte Anzeigen 
 of Gottingen, 5 th 
 and 1 2 th January 
 1881. 
 
 This poem contains the substance 
 of the dialogues Dell ’ Injinito. 
 Both are concerned with God 
 as the Cause and Principle, 
 and in his Essence ; in contra- 
 distinction to the foregoing, 
 
 O 0 7 
 
 which treats of his works. 
 These works are substantially 
 one ; the paging is continuous. 
 
 Y 
 
338 
 
 THE EXISTING WORKS OF BRUNO. 
 
 Date. 
 
 Title. 
 
 Where Printed. 
 
 1591- 
 
 Jordani Bruni Nolani, De 
 
 Erankfort apud Joan. 
 
 Imaginum, Signorum et 
 
 Wechelum et 
 
 
 Idearum compositione, ad 
 
 Petrum Fischerum 
 
 
 omnia Inventionum, Dis- 
 positionum et Memoriae 
 genera libri tres. Ad 
 illustrem et generosiss : 
 loan. Hainricum Hain- 
 cellium Elcouiae Domi- 
 num. Credite et intelli- 
 getis. 
 
 consortes. 
 
 1 595- 
 
 Summa Terminorum meta- 
 
 Zurich apud Jo.Wol- 
 
 
 physicorum ad capessen- 
 dum Logicae et Philoso- 
 pliiae studium, ex Jordani 
 Bruni Nolani Entis De- 
 scensu manusc. excerpta : 
 nunc primum luci com- 
 missa a Baphaele Eglino 
 
 phium. 
 
 
 Iconio, Tigurino. Tiguri. 
 
 
 1609 . 
 
 Summa Terminorum Me- 
 taphysicorum Jordani 
 
 Marburg. 
 
 
 Bruni Nolani. Acessit 
 
 Marpurgi Cattorum, 
 
 
 ejusdem Praxis Descen- 
 
 Ex OfFicina Rodol- 
 
 
 sus, seu applicatio Entis 
 ex manuscripto per Ra- 
 phaelum Eglinum, Ico- 
 nium Tigurinum. 
 
 phi Hutovelckeri. 
 
THE EXISTING WORKS OF BRUNO. 
 
 339 
 
 Reprints. 
 
 Notes. 
 
 
 4 11 . and 213 pages. A curious fault in 
 the paging occurs next page 209. The 
 third book is the same as the Explicatio 
 triginta sigillorum. 
 
 The preface speaks of this work as unam 
 de ingenii mei foeturis jam diu conceptam 
 atque retentam. It belongs to the cetera 
 industrice momumenta alluded to in the 
 Dedication of the Threefold Minimum, 
 as already finished. 
 
 
 4to, 28 leaves. 
 
 A portion of an abridgment of Bruno’s 
 metaphysics and a lexicon of philoso- 
 phic concepts, dictated to his pupil, 
 Raphael Eglin, seemingly under the title 
 Lampas de Entis. Eglin entitles them 
 Praxis descensu sen Applicatio Entis. 
 With a Dedication dated vi. Cal. May 
 1595. Dictated at Zurich towards 
 Easter 1591. 
 
 Gfrorer, pp. 
 413-516. 
 
 Nine years later, when Eglin was Pro- 
 fessor of Theology at Marburg, he re- 
 printed the work with considerable 
 additions. 
 
TABLE II. 
 
 THE NOROFF COLLECTION OF MANUSCRIPTS. 
 

II. 
 
 In the year 1866 the booksellers Tross of Paris an- 
 nounced that they had in their possession a number of 
 manuscripts written in Bruno’s own hand, and hitherto 
 unpublished. The manuscript, in small 4to, consists of 
 184 leaves, and contains nine treatises and an entire 
 book, written by the Nolan. This valuable collection 
 was said by Messrs. Tross to he in Bruno’s hand ; and 
 M. Abraham de Noroff, a member of the Petersburg 
 Academy and Russian Minister of Instruction, who bought 
 the manuscripts and made them over to the Moscow 
 Library, shares the opinion of Messrs. Tross. 
 
 M. Dufour points out that, on comparing the facsimiles, 
 Bruno’s autograph in the Book of the Rector of Geneva, 
 for example, does not resemble, even in the most remote 
 degree, the writing of the treatise De Vinculis in Genere, 
 reproduced by M. Berti from the Noroff manuscripts. 
 The latter is extremely fine and small, while Bruno’s 
 autographs are unusually large and bold. M. Dufour 
 suggests that the Noroff manuscripts are probably in the 
 hand of one of the numerous pupils to whom Bruno was 
 in the habit of dictating. 
 
 One of the Noroff manuscripts, De Rerum Principiis 
 et Elementis et Causis, is dated 16th March 1590 (Monday 
 in the Julian Calendar). It was finished during Bruno’s 
 stay at Helmstedt. Another — Liber Triginta Statuarum 1 
 
 1 In Libro Triginta Statuarum the soul, which may perhaps be part 
 non edito sed Scripto (De Monade, of the lost work, De Anima. The 
 p. 128). The whole of this work, book is remarkable, because it speaks 
 over which Bartholmess pronounces of the immateriality and substan- 
 a touching lament, is in the Noroff tiality of the soul, and of Bruno’s 
 Collection. It contains a chapter on belief in revelation. 
 
344 
 
 THE NOROFF COLLECTION OF MSS. 
 
 — is dated 1st July 1591. It opens with a passage which 
 is substantially repeated in the Eroici Furori (W. ii. 405, 
 406). The work was finished at Padua, 1st October 1591. 
 
 M. Dufour points out that in the autumn of 1591 
 Bruno employed as his secretary for about two months 
 a scholar named Jerome Besler 1 (Doc. XI.), of Nurem- 
 berg. De Triginta Statuarum therefore may be in the 
 hand of Besler. A monogram of the interlaced letters, 
 G. J. B. (Giordano Bruno, Jerome Besler), seems to point 
 to this conclusion. 
 
 Although it is possible that the more finished treatises 
 were copied by, or dictated to, his pupils, there can, in any 
 case, be no reason why the disjointed notes, of which the 
 first section of MSS. is composed, should not be in Bruno’s 
 own hand. On leaf 85 will be found eight lines in 
 poetry, which appear in a finished form as the ninth 
 sonnet in the Eroici Furori. It is therefore a mistake to 
 imagine that the whole of the manuscript is of one period, 
 or in one hand. 
 
 It is the opinion of Professor Sigwart that Bruno’s letter 
 to the Bector of Helmstedt is “ an undoubted autograph,” 
 and when comparing it with the facsimile of the Noroff 
 MSS., the learned Professor adds, “ The resemblance of the 
 handwriting is not great enough to warrant the belief 
 that both are written by the same person.” I am assured 
 by Dr. Yon Heinemann, the librarian-in-chief of Wol- 
 fenbiittel, in a very kind and courteous letter, that of the 
 celebrated Helmstedt manuscript (now in the Ducal library 
 at Wolfenbiittel), only the date, October 6, 1589, and 
 the signature, are in Bruno’s hand, notwithstanding the 
 formula qui script manu propria, which, as I saw in Venice, 
 does not apply to an entire letter, but to the signature 
 only. Doc. III. of the Venetian trial ends with a similar 
 phrase, referring to the signature, not to the document 
 in its entirety, which is written in another hand. M. 
 
 1 Besler, himself a celebrated doc- Besler of Nuremberg, a pupil of 
 tor (Brunuhofer, p. 324), was born Luther. The brother of Jerome, 
 in 1566. He was the son of Michael Basil, was a noted botanist. 
 
THE NOROFF COLLECTION OF MSS. 345 
 
 Noroff concludes his notice of this valuable collection in 
 the following words : — 
 
 “We call the attention of the learned world to passages 
 in these manuscripts which completely remove from the 
 memory of this celebrated Italian the scandalous charge 
 that he professed unchristian doctrines and believed 
 in the transmigration of souls. . . . The book De 
 Triginta Statuarum acknowledges revelation, and dwells 
 upon the words of Christ (whose holy name is traced by 
 the hand of Bruno in capital letters) ; and again, those 
 passages which speak of the immateriality and substan- 
 tiality of the soul protest aloud against those of his foes to 
 whom, doubtless, he applies the wrnrds of Christ quoted by 
 him upon page 48, Hie dies vestra et potestas tenebrarum.” 
 The following bibliographical notice of the ISToroff 
 Catalogue is printed in the Documenti inlorno a Giordano 
 Bruno (Borne, 1880), by Domenico Berti : — 
 
 NOTICE BIBLIOGBAPHIQUE, 
 
 SUR UN MANUSCRIT AUTOGRAPHE DES (EUVRES INCITES DE 
 GIORDANO BRUNO NOLANO. 
 
 (: Tiree du Catalogue de la Bibliotheque de M. Abraham de Noroff.) 
 
 104. (Jordani Bruni Nolani Opera INEDITA, MANU 
 propria scripta). Pet. in-4 0 , 1 84 f. Enveloppe en parche- 
 min, formee d’une feuille qui a appartenu a un Missel 
 MS. du XV e siecle. 
 
 Cette precieuse collection renferme 9 traites plus ou 
 moins considerables et tout le livre : “ De triginta statua- 
 rum.” On y retrouve, comme on le verra, presque tous 
 les ouvrages de Bruno qu’on croyait perdus. II n’y a que 
 (sic) V Arc de Nod, le Temple de Mndmosyne et le Purgatoire 
 de Venfer, qui n’y sont pas compris. 1 
 
 1 Ne pouvant pas placer dans le detaillee de ces oeuvres, nous nous 
 cadre d’un catalogue une analyse bornons a un aperQU oil l’on trouvera 
 
346 
 
 THE NOROFF COLLECTION OF MSS. 
 
 On rencontre en premier lieu un brouillon de 6 feuil- 
 lets decousus dont les 4 premiers sont numerates. 
 
 Les pages de ce brouillon se rapportent k l’opuscule 
 intitule De vinculis spirituum. 
 
 Elies ont une importance particuliere, vu qu’elles deno- 
 tent tout d’abord l’origine italienne du celebre auteur et 
 prouvent d’une maniere irrecusable que ce MS. est auto- 
 graphe. On y trouve des versets italiens intercales dans 
 le texte latin d’une maniere provisoire, sans se rapporter 
 directement au sens du texte de cette page, mais qui 
 peuvent s’adapter au quatrieme feuillet ou il est question 
 des liens ou des noeuds ( vincula ) de lamour spirituel 
 ( animi vinculum). On lit sur le recto de la f. i le : 
 
 “ Se si potesse a te chiuder l’entrata 
 Tant’il regno d’amor saresse piu vago 1 
 
 Quant’il mondo senz’odio et senza morte.” 
 
 Les deux premiers vers et ce dernier sont separes par 
 le texte latin qui se trouve en partie biffe et par conse- 
 quent, doivent etre unis, ce qui explique leur beau sens. 
 
 Au recto de la feuille 5 e , qui n’est pas numerotde, on 
 lit : 
 
 “ Chi mette il pie su l’amorosa pania. . . 
 
 Ce vers appartient a Arioste. Ensuite : 
 
 “Dove l’amor Venereo spinge piu gagliardamente. . . 
 
 Nous n’avons pas pu bien lire ce passage qui consiste en 
 trois lignes. 
 
 Finalement on trouve cinq vers dont nous avons 
 dechiffre seulement ce qui suit : 
 
 les titres des traites et des chapitres 
 et quelques fragments de chaque 
 traite. 
 
 1 Nous soulignons les mots qui ne 
 sont pas bien lisibles. 
 
 A noi pare stando al fac-simile 
 che si debba leggere saria invece del 
 saresse; cosi piii sotto noi leggianio, 
 ne distanza di loco, etc. 
 
THE NOROFF COLLECTION OF MSS. 
 
 347 
 
 “ Ne distanza di loro ne di tempo 
 Ne altra alcuna affectione chi le . . . 
 
 . forte 
 
 affaticarmi.” 
 
 Ce feuillet est termine par un trace d’un vinculus. 
 
 Au recto de la feuille 5“®, qui n’est pas numerotee, on 
 ne trouve que sept lignes ecrites en latin avec un intituU 
 qu’il est difficile de dechiffrer. 
 
 Le recto de la sixieme et derniere feuille detachee se 
 trouve vide, mais le verso est occupe par une figure 
 ( schemata ) qui se rapporte ii la formation de la Terre. 
 
 Yoici main tenant la description du texte de cette col- 
 lection dont Tecriture est tres serree, mais tres lisible, avec 
 des remarques et des corrections qu’on dechiffre quelque- 
 fois difficilement. 
 
 Le premier opuscule n’a pas de titre separe, il est com- 
 pose de 15 f. et commence par ces mots : 
 
 “ Antequam de Magia, sicut antequam de quocunque 
 subiecto disseratur, nomen in sua significata est divi- 
 dendum. . . . 
 
 “Magus I.° sumitur pro sapiente, cuiusmodi erant Tri- 
 megisti apud iEgyptios, Druidm apud Gallos, Gymnoso- 
 phistse apud Indos. . . 
 
 Suivent neuf definitions de la Magie, c.-a-d. des sciences 
 naturelles, physiques. Au recto de la 8® f. on trouve un 
 chapitre intitule : 
 
 “ De Motu rerum duplicj, et attractione : Duplex est 
 rerum motus. ISTaturalis et prseter naturalis. . . .” (Les 
 deux derniers mots ont remplace : violentus qui est biffe), 
 etc. Au recto de la 9® f. un autre chapitre est intitule : 
 
 “ Quomodo Magnes trahat ferrum, corralium sanguinem, 
 etc. Ex istis sequitur ratio, quam magnes secundum genus 
 attrahit : Porro attractio est duplex : qusedam ex consensu, 
 ut quando partes moventur ad suum totum : locata ad 
 suum locum, similia rapiuntur h similibus, et convenientia 
 a convenientibus. . . .” 
 
343 
 
 THE NOROFF COLLECTION OF MSS. 
 
 Sur le verso de la I l e f. le troisieme chap, est 
 intitule : 
 
 “ De vinculis Spirituum. Supra dictum est spiritus 
 alios crassiorem, alios subtiliorem incolere materiam.” 
 
 Sur le verso de la f. 1 2 e le quatribme chap, est 
 intitule : 
 
 “ De Analogici spirituum. Porphirius, Plotinus et alii 
 Platonici ita spiritibus corpora distribuunt. . . .” 
 
 On y trouve f. 14 r. une citation de 7 vers de Vir- 
 gile : “ Principio coelum et terras camposque liquentes,” 
 etc. . . . (iEn. vi. 724—30) confrontes avec la Bible: 
 
 “ Idem dicit sensus Sacrorum arcanorum ab omni vulgo 
 receptus ut in Psalmo et in Libro Sapientise Spiritus 
 Domini replevit orbem terrarum et hoc quod continet 
 omnia : et alibi : Coelum et terram ego impleo.” 
 
 Le traite finit au recto de la f. 1 5® par ces mots : 
 
 “ Prseter hsec generalia vincula sunt quie in 1 7 arti- 
 culis ex Alberti doctrina colliguntur quorum quaedum 
 sunt relata quantum referenda supersunt.” 
 
 Le verso de la f. est laisse en blanc. Sur la f. suivante 
 commence la traite intituld : 
 
 “ De Vinculis Spirituum et primum de eo quod est ex 
 triplici ratione agentis material et application^. ” Ce titre 
 est ecrit par-dessus un premier titre que l’auteur a biffe, 
 mais qui est bien lisible : 
 
 “ De rationibus quibus alius in aliud agit et ab alio 
 petiher. Ad hoc ut actiones in rebus perficiantur tria 
 requiruntur. Potentia activa in agente, potentia passiva 
 in subiecto. . . .” 
 
 Sur le verso de la f. 1 7® on lit : 
 
 “ Secundum vinculum ex voce et cantu. II a vinculi ratio 
 est a conformitate numerorum ad numeros, mensurie ad 
 mensuram, momenti ad momentum, unde illj rythmj 
 atque cantus qui maximam habere efficaciam perhiben- 
 tur. . . .” 
 
 18. f. v. : “ Tertium vincidorum genus ex visu. Per 
 
THE NOROFF COLLECTION OF MSS. 
 
 349 
 
 visum etiam vincitur spiritus ut passim quoque superius 
 est antedictum, dum formae aliter atque aliter ante oculos 
 obversantur, bine fascinationes activae et passivae ab 
 oculis proficiscuntur, et per oculos ingrediuntur unde 
 illud : Nescio quis oculis teneros mihi fascinat agnos. . . .” 
 
 1 9. f. r. “ Quartum vinculum est ex Phantasm.” Ce 
 dernier mot a remplace : Imaginations, que l’auteur a biffe. 
 “ Cuius quidem munus est recipere species a sensibus de- 
 latas et continere et componere eas et dividere, quod 
 quidem _accidit dupliciter uno pacto ex arbitrio vel 
 electione imaginantis, quale est poetarum et pictorum 
 munus. . . 
 
 F. 20. v. “ De vinculo quinto quocl est ex Cogitativis. 
 Vinculum Phantasiae leve per se est, si vinculum 
 Cogitativae, vires non conduplicet, ea enim spectra, quibus 
 Idiotae, stulti, creduli et superstiosioris ingenii animum 
 devinciunt et obligant, deridentur, contemnuntur et veluti 
 inanes umbrae & sobrio et bene nato et disciplinatio 
 ingenio. . . 
 
 Ce traite finit sur le verso de la f. 21 par ces mots : 
 “ et haec de vinculis in genere dicta sint. Finis.” 
 
 F. 22. r. Le traite qui suit ne porte pas de titre ; il 
 commence ainsi : “ Magi a sumitur multipliciter : Com- 
 munissime, communiter, proprie et propriissime. 
 
 “ 1° modo pro omnj genere scientiae et sapientiae : 
 
 “ II 0 Pro scientia naturalj, seu rerum naturalium in 
 genere. 
 
 “ 111 ° Pro sapientia, quae complectitur triplex genus 
 scientiarum realium cum triplici moralium, et triplici 
 rationalium. ( Ethic . Polit. Qlconom. — Logica : Metaphys. 
 Mathem } 
 
 “IV° Pro aggregato habitu ex omnibus bis vel pluri- 
 bus, cum facultate mirabiliter cognoscendi vel operandi, 
 et hoc dupliciter vel per se vel per aliud : et hoc trip- 
 
 1 Note marginale. 
 
350 
 
 THE NOROFF COLLECTION OF MSS. 
 
 liciter, vel per superiora, vel per aequalia, vel per in- 
 ferioria. . . . 
 
 “ Magia est triplex : Divina, Physica et Mathema- 
 tica. . . . 
 
 “ Magia Mathematica media est inter Divinam et Phy- 
 sicam Magiam, sicut mathematica media simpliciter est 
 inter Naturalem et Methaphysicam. . . 
 
 P. 22. v. “ Principium Magiae est considerare ordinem 
 influxus seu scalam entium, qua Deum in deos, deos in 
 astra, astra in daemonas, daemones in elementa, elementa 
 in mista. ( aliquid immittere comperimus ).” 1 
 
 F. 23. r. “ Hanc mundi distinctionem, iuxta tria prae- 
 dicta significata, comprobant Natuile Veritas, Eatio, 
 et Divina Eevelatio. i um quia nihil est in mundo sensibili 
 quod ab archetypo non dependeat. Secundum quia nihil 
 est in intentione quod non sit in rebus fundamentaliter. 
 Distingue fundamentaliter et realiter, fundamentaliter 
 secundae intentiones, realiter ut primae. Tertium quia 
 veritas veritati non contradicit et multoties haec distinctio 
 in divinis libris reperitur.” 
 
 F. 24. r. “ Anima per se et immediate non est obligata 
 corpori, sed mediante spiritu. . . 
 
 F. 26. r. “ De attractione vero magnetis a polo, variae 
 sunt sententiae, nos tamen omnibus bisce praetermissis 
 earn eius rei rationem probamus quae non est ab attrac- 
 tione similis speciei nempe quod illinc sint montes mag- 
 netis, haec enim causa effectus iste non sequitur, sed 
 universam rationem ac firmam ex contrarii fuga esse 
 asserimus et antipathiam quandam quam babet ad loca, 
 opposita. (Rationes sunt in XXIII articulo.) ” 
 
 Ce traite finit au v. de la f. 32 par ces mots : “ . . . 
 unde fortasse amor k Platonicis daemon magnus est 
 appellatus. Finis." 
 
 Au recto de la f. 33 commence le traitd intituld : 
 
 1 Note marginale. 
 
THE NOROFF COLLECTION OF MSS. 
 
 3Si 
 
 De Rerum Principiis et Elementis et Causis. 
 
 Bruno a inscrit au haut de la marge de cette f. la date 
 de la composition de ce traite: “A 0 1590 i6Martij D.” 
 
 Le traite commence ainsi : “ Rerum causae efficientes, 
 et moventes, sunt intellectus et anima supra quibus est 
 principium Unum absolutum, mens, seu veritas. . . 
 
 F. 34. r. “ De Luce et Igne. Lux est substantia spiri- 
 tualis, insensibilis per se. . . Sur le v. de la meme f. 
 une importante reclame sur le I e Chap, de la Genese. 
 
 F. 3 6. v. “ De Aere seu Spiritu. Spiritus subinde est 
 quredam substantia per se mobilis, unde motus corporibus 
 compositis et sensibilibus loculis omnis emanat. . . 
 
 F. 38. r. “ De Aqua: Quod diximus de spiritu in II a 
 significatione universum ad aquam possumus referre. . . 
 
 F. 39. r. “ De Terra. Terra est elementum solidissi- 
 mum, simplicissimum, unde soliditatem habere corpora 
 communiter existimatur. Hinc non accipimus terram, 
 pro hoc globo animali, unde vitam, nutrimentum et cor- 
 pus nacti sumus, quam unum ex astris atque planetam 
 intelligimus partibus consistens proportionalibus. . . .” 
 
 F. 40. r. “ De Tempore. Ad complementum istius per- 
 tractationis maximum et preecipuum negotium et ut 
 videtur totius rei forma est, temporis habere rationem, 
 actionis (?) enim turn naturales, turn voluntarise, certa 
 quadam vicissitudine et ordine veniunt ut sensibus ipsis 
 est manifestum. . . 
 
 Suit une fig. explicative sur le verso de la meme f. 
 inseree dans le texte : I. Annus Cceli, II. Ann. Telluris © 
 is. III. Annus circumferential telluris diei. Sur le recto 
 de la f. 41 au bas de la marge se trouve une remarque 
 avec un signe qui la rapporte au texte avec une multi- 
 plication de 30 (jours) par 12 (mois) = 360, puis 51^- 
 suivi de ces mots peu lisibles : “ Post inventum cogita an 
 mens hie sit Nolani (?).” Sur le verso de la meme f. on 
 trouve une figure astrologique. 
 
352 
 
 THE NOROFF COLLECTION OF MSS. 
 
 F. 42. r. Sur la marge un renvoi sur son livre “ De 
 Umbris I diear urn ” et sur Corn. Agrippa, de occultu philos. 
 
 F. 43. r. fig. astrologique : “11°. Animadvertendum 
 quidem et signa et reliquie imagines coelestes et mansio- 
 nes ]) ae . . . .” Plus bas sur la marge est inscrit : “NB. 
 “ Eationes dc nominationibus Planetarum.” 
 
 Sur le verso de la rneme f. un autre NB. qui renvoie 
 sur: “ Ptolomseus, Julius Firmicus, Guido Bonatus, Alca- 
 bitius : significations breviss. lib. Planet., Aratus, Cusanus, 
 Thomae (Aquin.) ” 
 
 F. 44. r. “ De Yirtute et Yitiis Signorum et Pla- 
 netarum SINGULORUM nempe luce et tenebris, quibas singuli 
 definiuntur (?). Ad banc doctrinam spectat considerare 
 qusedam ubique sunt in mundo corporeo et in his quie 
 circa corpora sunt bona admista malis, et malis. bona 
 sicut nusquam est materia sine forma neque forma sine 
 materia in pbysicis, actus sine potentia, potentia sine actu, 
 lux sine tenebris et tenebrse sine luce. . . .” 
 
 On voit sur le verso une figure : “ in qua suo ordine 
 Planetarum circa fortunas distribuendas ordo insinuatur 
 in annui circuli peripheria ’5’ planetarum nomina. . . .” 
 F. 45. r. “ De Virtute Loci.” L’auteur cite l’histoire 
 sacrce et l’histoire profane en faveur de la vertu occulte 
 de certains lieux, particuliferement des montagnes. 
 
 F. 46. v. et 47. r. “ De Virtute Nominum. Ad hiec 
 etiam principia pertinet considerare vim magnam insitam 
 esse in nominibus, cum quorum virtute fortunam et statum 
 rei nominate eurrere existimant, proptereaque cum nomi- 
 num mutatione convenire mutationem fortume vel genii 
 plurimi affirmant, hoc credidisse Hebrseos, Grcecos et 
 alias gentes per edita est valde manifestum i m vero his 
 (hi ?) qui magis religioni et fidei sunt addicti et qui Deum 
 nihil perperam facere habent pro principio et axiomate, 
 non sine causa pluribus patribus nomina mutasse con- 
 cionantur, mutatum fuit enim nomen Abrahami, et dicunt 
 Cabalistse in virtute unius litterae H ilium acquisivisse 
 
THE NOROFF COLLECTION OF MSS. 
 
 353 
 
 facultatem generandi : Idem dicunt quod cum deberet 
 Jacob praeesse fratri et gentibus per benedictionem et 
 primogenituram, mutatum fuisse eius nomen in Israelem, 
 item de Isaac, de Saraj in Saram, in volumine item Chris- 
 tianorum invenimus Christum Simonem Galliheum ap- 
 pellasse Petrum, item Cepliam : Saulem quoque cum in 
 vas electionis vellet promovere mutato nomine appellavit 
 ilium Paulum. Observant hoc plurimse Cbristianorum 
 sectse, ut cum de Laicis recipiuntur in numerum cucul- 
 latorum, vel de clericis in numerum Pontificum perperam 
 nomina mutant, solum sequendo consuetudinem nominis 
 non rationem. Eomani pontifices sorte quadem proiecta 
 (ut referunt) nomina sibi deligere ex decreto debent, pro- 
 hibitum ne quis nomine Petri intituletur, metuunt enim 
 sub illo nomine exitium. . . 
 
 F. 48. r. et v. “ De Numero et Mensura” qui constitue 
 le dernier chap, de ce traite. Nous citons le commence- 
 ment : “Praeter rationem temporis quo omnia distribuuntur, 
 elargiuntur, quod Salomon etiam ad 7 capita redegit cum 
 dixit : Omnia tempus habent et suis spaciis transeunt 
 universa sub © e subdidit 7 Contradictoria cum 14 mem- 
 bris, tempus gaudendi, tempus tristandi, tempus eolligendi, 
 spargendi, &c. Et Christus dixit se plenitudine tem- 
 poris venisse cum premeretur ab adversariis dixit : hsec 
 dies vestra et potestas tenebrarum. Cum aufugisset a 
 volentibus eum lapidare nec multo postquam ad eos iterum 
 redire vellet, objicientibus discipulis nunc volebant te 
 lapidare et vis reverti, Pespondit nonne 1 2 horae sunt 
 diei : Ubi nihil apertius quam quod non omnis hora dat 
 omnia et eadem sed varia varise. . . 
 
 Le traite finit par ces mots : “ Et haec sunt praecipua 
 capita circa quae oportet meditari, aggregare universalia, 
 exercere actum contemplationis et applicare praxes eum 
 qui plene magiam vult in pristinum et nobilissimum 
 statum instaurare. Et de his satis."’ 
 
 F. 49. r. “ Medicina Lulliana partim ex Mathematicis, 
 
 z 
 
354 
 
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 partim ex Physicis principiis cducta, Jideliter collecta per 
 nos, niliilo propter et extra intentionern adducto, addito neque 
 diminuto.” 
 
 § i . r. “ Intentio nostra est non tam vulgari more 
 principia medicinse quam praxi proxima snnt adducere, 
 quam artem Lullii illam generalem ad omnes scientias et 
 facultates ita limitare et modificare iuxta ejus intentiones, 
 ut quilibet facile in verse medicinse totius cognitionem 
 venire possit.” 
 
 Ce traitd remplit I 5 f. On y trouve sur le recto de la 
 3 e f. une espece de calendrier Medico- Astrologique figure 
 dans plusieurs cercles concentriques dont celui du milieu 
 tourne sur son centre. 
 
 Sur le recto de la 66 e f. commence un traite qui rem- 
 plit 17b II n’a pas de titre et commence par ces mots : 
 
 1 . “ Influit Deus in angelos, angeli in corpora coelestia, 
 coelestia in elementa, elementa in mixta, mixta in sensus, 
 sensus in animum, animus in animal.” 
 
 Le sujet de ce traitd se rapporte directement a la Kab- 
 bale. Une serie de bons et de mauvais anges avec leurs 
 uome se rattache aux mois, aux jours, aux saisons et meme 
 aux lieux : “ de Principibus locorum ” et de Ducibus deter- 
 minatum locum non habantibus, &c. Sur le recto de la 
 f. 76 se trouve colle un petit morceau de papier portant 
 en gros caracteres le nom d 'Abihail, par-dessus un § in- 
 titule de Ignis potentia, nec non Terrce Aquce et Aeris. 
 L’auteur se refere dans quelques endroits sur Dionyse 
 l’Areopagite, sur Albert le G d et sur Corn. Agrippa. 
 
 Le traite finit par ces mots : “ . . . quod si qui libros 
 maiores inscripsisse videatur, ipsum est qua extranea et 
 ad rem minus facientia plurimum immiscuere fortasse ut 
 artem minus perviam facerent, quod nos fecisse potuimus. 
 Finis.” 
 
 La f. 83 est en blanc. Suit (sur un papier d’un format 
 un peu plus petit) le traitd intitule : 
 
THE NOROFF COLLECTION OF MSS. 
 
 355 
 
 JORDANI BRVNI NoLANI 
 DE VINCULIS IN GENERE. 
 
 On voit vis-a-vis de ce titre, au haut de da page, 
 devant le nom de hauteur, son monogramme : la lettre B 
 renfermee dans la lettre G-, c.-a-d. Griordano Bruno, comme 
 dans l’exemplaire de I’Ars magna de Lullius, qui a appar- 
 tenu a Bruno. Le traite commence par : 
 
 “Ut Eum qui vincire debet, necessarium est rerum 
 quodammodo universalem rationem habere, ut hominem 
 qui Epilogus quidam omnium est aleat alligare, quando- 
 quidem ut alibi diximus, in hac potissimum specie, rerum 
 omnium species maxime per numeros licet intueri, ut 
 eorum alii referuntur ad pisces, alii ad aves, ad serpentes, 
 alii ad reptilia, turn secundum genus, turn secundum 
 eorum species. Singulis item horum accidit diversitas 
 Usus, Consuetudinis, Finis, Inclinationis, Complexionis, 
 BEtatis, atque ita ut de Prothes fingunt atque Acheloo, 
 eandem licet subjectam materiam in varias formas atque 
 figuras transmigrantem, ut continue ad vinciendum aliis 
 atque aliis et nodorum utendum sit speciebus. Hue 
 spectat quod consideratio de moribus hominum, nunc 
 Juvenum, nunc Senum, nunc Mediorum, ISTobilium, Divi- 
 tum, Potentum, Fortunatorum, quibus adde mores Invi- 
 dorum, Ambitiosorum Militum, Mercatorum, et id genus 
 aliorum, quando et tales in Beipub. administrationem 
 plerisque in partibus assumuntur, vel talibus etiam opus 
 sit mediis et instrumentis, quos propterea vincire sibi 
 etiam oporteat. Nihil tandem esse videtur, quod a Civili 
 speculatione, sub forma huiusce consyderationis (quatenus 
 vel vinciunt, vel vinciuntur, vel vincula qusedam sunt, 
 vel horum circumstantiae) possit esse alienum. Qua- 
 propter adiecimus hanc considerationem, quae de Vinculo 
 in Genere intitulatur.” 
 
 Cette citation explique sommairement le sujet de la 
 premiere partie du Traite, divise en XXX. articles. 
 
356 
 
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 On trouve sur le recto cle la f. 85, une octave Italienne 
 a la suite de l’article IX. ainsi que suit : 
 
 “ Ut idem eodem contrariis alligat.” “ Confusa et 
 quodammodo etiam contraria videntur esse vincientia ab 
 eodem etiam vincientis genere, ubi contrarii vinculorum 
 effectus et affectus inspiciuntur, quem enim (verbi gratia) 
 Cupidinis vincula invaserint, uno eodemque igne, atque 
 laquei sensu, videbitur cogi ad exclamandurn, et tacendum, 
 Iseticiam, tristitiam, spem et desperationem, timorem et 
 audaciam, iram et mansuetudinem, lletum et risum, unde 
 illud : 
 
 “ Io che porto d’amor l’alto vessillo, 
 
 Gelate ho speme e li desir corenti. 1 
 A un tempo, aggliiaccio et treino, ardo'et sfavillo, 
 
 E muto (e) colmo il ciel de strida ardenti. 
 
 D’al cuor scintillo, et da gli occlii acqua stillo. 
 
 Et vivo et muoio et fo risa et lamenti. 
 
 Ho vive l’acqui et l’incendio lion more, 
 
 Che han Tlieti h gli occhi et ha Yulcano al cuore.” 
 
 La seconde partie commence sur le r. de la f. 88. 
 Elle est intitulbe : “ De vincibilibus in genere ,” et se trouve 
 divisbe pareillement en 30 articles; elle finit sur le v. de 
 la f. go. A la f. suivante se trouve la 3“® partie inti- 
 tule : “ De vinculo Cupidinis, et guodammodo in genere ] ” 
 de meme divisiie en 30 articles, mais Bruno n’a pu ter- 
 miner ce traitb ; il s’arrete a l’article XXII. dont la fin 
 (f. 95. r.) est brusquement interrompue, presque au com- 
 mencement de la page, comme suit : 
 
 “ Vinculorum Gratia. Ar. XXII.” 
 
 “ Gratitudinis speciem concupiscere faciunt Vincula, 
 Oritur quippe (ut in uno vinculorum genere inducam) 
 inter amantes querela, ubi mutuo alterum alteri debere 
 prtesumunt, judicat amans debitum amatse, ut animam 
 illi ablutam restituat, ubi in proprio corpore mortuus in 
 alieno vixit. Si amans amatse minus blanditur, queritur 
 
 1 Cuocenti. This sonnet is No. 9 Eroici Furori. 
 
THE NOROFF COLLECTION OF MSS. 
 
 357 
 
 hsec quasi earn ille curet minus, queritur amans versus 
 amatam si.” 
 
 Sur le recto de la i re f. du cahier suivant commence 
 l’ouvrage de Bruno mentionnd dans ses ceuvres, mais qui 
 n’a pas vu le jour : 
 
 Liber triginta statuarum. 
 
 Ce titre n’est pas inscrit a la tete de l’ouvrage, mais 
 il s’annonce de suite dans le texte qui commence sans inti- 
 tule, comme suit, par une grande lettre initiate A, ou 
 Bruno a intercald l’annee, le mois et le jour de la redac- 
 
 tion de l’ouvrage : 
 
 I59i- 
 
 YII .1. 
 
 o 
 
 “ Animse cibum esse veritatem, utpote quse in eius 
 substantiam, veluti proprium nutrimentum transmutabilis 
 est, esse constat. Perfectio et finis huius nutrimenti est 
 Lumen contemplationis, quo animus noster oculis intelli- 
 gentic© primum quidem Solem primse veritatis, deinde ea 
 quae circa ipsum sunt valet intueri. Inventio particu- 
 lariurn, est veluti prima cibi apprsehensio : Collatio 
 ipsorum in sensibus externis et internis est veluti digestio 
 quredam: Intelleetus perfecta informatio est tandem 
 augmentum perfectionis nostras, in prassenti statu, ad 
 quern quasi ad animse utilitatem et perfectam consisten- 
 tiam, omnes in Natura scire desiderant promoveri con- 
 cupiscunt : hoc habitu imbuti et istiusmodi corroborati 
 alimento, in ea intelligimur dispositione, qua per artem, 1 et 
 scientiam in operibus intelligentise progredimur. . . .” p. 1. 
 
 Le texte, divise en chapitres, est ecrit en doubles 
 colonnes, exceptd les introductions ; il est pagind par 
 l’auteur ; nous indiquons les pages dans nos citations. 
 
 P. 2. “ De pluribus investigandi speciebus.” A u ' j YI. 
 de la colonne de ce chap, on lit : “ Comparatur multi- 
 plicibus methodi speciebus quam explicavimus in Libro 
 30 S igillorum.” Et le § VIII. de la meme colonne dit : 
 “ Maxime comparatur Ratio quam in prsesentia tarctare 
 
 1 Eroici Furore , W. 406. 
 
353 
 
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 intentamus.” Apres quoi : “ Haec quidem constat 30 
 statuis, in quibus 30 intentiones continentur, eo quo 
 videbitur modo explicandae, sicut quidem generalis, ut 
 esse debeat, specialissimis autem speciebus magis applica- 
 biles, quam principia Architica, Aristoteliea et Lulliana, 
 quibus quam melius informetur Eatio, aliorum esto 
 iudicium.” 
 
 P. 4. “ Ordo erit procedendi a notioribus nominibus, 
 sensibilibus et phantasiabilibus, ad intelligibilia, et con- 
 templabilia, universalia, quae sunt Causae et Eationes 
 omnium particularium, et ideo ab iisdem tanquam a 
 Causis et principiis, facillimo negotio media desumere 
 licebit : Sensibilia erunt figuratae species, et opera phan- 
 tasiae, et imaginantis fabrefactae, per quas, subinde 
 volumus ea, quae k sensu sunt remotiora, significari : 
 Itaque usum atque formant antiquae philosophiae, et 
 priscorum Theologorum revocabimus, quo nimirum arcana 
 Naturae ejusmodi typis, et similitudinibus, non tantum 
 velare consueverunt, quantum declarare, explicate, in 
 seriem digerere, et faciliorj memoriae retentionj accomo- 
 dare. Statuam quippe sensibilem, visibilem, imaginabilem, 
 cum eadern ratione sensibilius appositis facillime retine- 
 mus, fabulas effinctas levissimo negotio memoriae com- 
 mendamus, mysteria, consequenter doctrinas, et disciplinales 
 intentiones per easdem significabiles, istorum suffragio, 
 consequenter considerare omnem citra difficultatem : Non 
 ergo huius docendi rationis primi sumus inventores, sed 
 forte in hoc tempore, qualecunque sit ipsum, exuscitatores, 
 ut natura comparatum est, ut vicissitudine quadam sibi 
 succedant, non solum Tenebrae atque Lux varia philoso- 
 phandi gratia. Neque enim novum est quod dicit 
 Aristoteies in lib. de Coelo. Necesse est easdem opiniones 
 atque sensus certis statutisque regulis redire. Jam ergo 
 quasi per Umbram atque titulum, per haec intentio, 
 Utilitas modus et ratio procedendi explicata sit. Quod 
 superest, ad ea quae ad substantiam rei pertinent, acceda- 
 ” Suivent : 
 
 mus : . 
 
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 359 
 
 P. 5. “ De tribus informibus, et infigurabilibus. Ipsa 
 sunt Chaos. Orcus et Nox : Ex quibus Chaos signifieat 
 Vacuum ; Orcus passivam, seu reeeptivam potentiam ; 
 Nox, Materiam.” 
 
 “ Dc Chaos 1 ° Infigurabili . . . Ipsius 30 sunt arti- 
 culi : . . (Tous les chap, sont divises en 30 articles.) 
 
 P. 9. “ Dc 11 ° informi, Oreo sive Abysso.” 
 
 P. 13. “ De III 0 infigurabili , puta de Node, seu Tene- 
 bris.” 
 
 P. 15* “ De Nodis Statua.” 
 
 P. 1 7. “ De opposita superna Triade, puta, Plenitudinis 
 seu Mentis innominabilis, et incircumscriptibilis, Apollinis 
 Universali, et Spiritus seu lucis.” 
 
 “ Quemadmodum ab infernis est Chaos, Orcus et ISTox, 
 ita ab supernis est Plenitudo, Idccarum fons, et Lux.” 
 
 “ De Patre seu Mente, seu Plenitudine.” 
 
 “ Statua quidem Patris nulla est, Typus tamen ipsius 
 est Lux infinita, in qua tria concurrunt ; ut undique et 
 ubique sit sol. . . 
 
 P. 20. “ De primo intellectu.” 
 
 P. 25. “ De Lumine, seu Spiritu TJniversi. Sicut a 
 centro plenitudinis prodit lux, h luce fulgor : Ita a mente 
 processit Intellectus, ab intellectu procedit Affectus qui- 
 dam seu Amor. Mens super omnia videt et distribuit : 
 Amor omnia fabrificat et disponit : Mens dum sui quo- 
 dammodo meminit, similitudinem quodammodo apprae- 
 hendit, quae est verbum suum, principium prcedicans et 
 referens ; ex qua relatione et eonceptione, prodit pulcliri- 
 tudinis illius amor: Mox ad secundi Universi constitu- 
 tionem, primus intellectus concipit sui idseam, et in 
 simplici ilia specie idseas universorum, quarum specie 
 delectatus, quasi calore quodam percitas spiritum producit, 
 qui ab eo procedit, veluti a luce fulgur, bic sane fulgur 
 implet universa, in omnia se totus diffundit, et sicut in- 
 tellectus intelligit omnia in omnibus : ita iste affectat 
 omnia in omnibus : operatur omnia in omnibus : unde 
 
j6o 
 
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 anima muncli dicitur, et spiritus Universorum : quem 30 
 conditionibus alioqui infigurabilem denotemus : . . 
 
 P. 28. “ Epilogus clictorum.” 
 
 P. 29. “ I)c Apolline, et Monade seu Unitate.” Vis-a- 
 vis a la marge : “ Or do Secundus.” 
 
 P. 31. “ De Batumi Statua, et Principio.” 
 
 P. 34. “ De Statua Promethei : Causa efficient e.” 
 
 P. 36. “ Dc Officina Vulcani, seu de 30 formce condi- 
 tionibus vel rationibus.” 
 
 P. 3 8. “ De Statua Vidcani, vel formce propriis distinc- 
 tionihus et definitionibus .” 
 
 P. 41. “ De Thetidis Statua, seu de Subjecto.” 
 
 P. 45. “Statua Sagittarii pro explications Causes 
 finalis.” 
 
 P. 47. “ De Monte Olympo, ad describendas omnes seu 
 universas finis Significationes.” 
 
 P. 49. “ Or do tertius. . . . De Campo Coelii, Bonitate 
 Naturali.” 
 
 P. 51. “ De Campo Vestce, seu Bono Morali.” 
 
 P. 5 2. “ De Campo Oceani, seu Magnitudine .” 
 
 P. 5 4. “ De Statua Martis, seu Virtutis.” 
 
 P. 55 . J‘ De Campo Telluris, seu de Potential’ 
 
 P. 57 - “ De Campo lunonis, seu Medio!’ 
 
 P. 59. “ De Momorgene, hoc est Habitudine, seu Rela- 
 tione! ’ 
 
 P. 61. “ Explicatio Cornu Aelieloi, seu de Habere.” 
 P.63. “ De Campo Minervce, seu de Noticia.” 
 
 P. 65. “ De Schala Minervce , seu de Habitibus Cogni- 
 tionis.” 
 
 P. 67. “ De Campo Veneris, hoc est, de Concordia .” 
 
 P. 69. “ De Veneris Statua, Concordia in Voluntate.” 
 Ce chapitre est separb & l’article XIX. par un titre parti- 
 culier : “ Sequuntur rationes proprice rationalibus et intel- 
 lectualibus.” 
 
 P. 71. “ Tela seu nodi Cupidinis, Concordia inadione.” 
 “ De Statua, et membris Cupidinis seu differ entiis volun- 
 tatis.” 
 
THE NOROFF COLLECTION OF MSS. 361 
 
 P. 74. “ De jpelle Amaltheae caprcc. Diversitatis signi- 
 ficationibus.” 
 
 P. 75. “ I)e Campo Litis. Contrarietatis conditionibus .” 
 P. 76. “ De Campo DEonos, seu JEternitatis.” 
 
 P. 78. “ Ik Application Triginta Statuarum. Prime 
 de Applicatione sex infigurabilium.” 
 
 P. 80. “ De ratione prcedicatorum communicabilium , 
 diversis Schalce gradibus.” 
 
 “ De quatuor infimis simplicibus.” 
 
 P. 81. “ De quatuor prope simplicibus.” 
 
 “ De tribus generibus imperfede incompositorum, hoc est 
 mixtorum.” 
 
 “ De tribus perfede compositis.” 
 
 “ De Quinque animalium generibus .” 
 
 P. 82. “ De Imperfectis conpositis prope lucem, seu plcni - 
 tudinem.” 
 
 “ De pefede compositis prope lucem.” 
 
 P. 83. “ De iis quce sunt prope simplicia.” 
 
 P. 84. “ De substantiae, pura , et simplici. . . . Sequitur 
 arbor substantise ” (figure sur la page suivante). 
 
 P. 8 6. “ De explicata Schala prcedicatorum, seu, attri- 
 butorum Substantiae , et Naturae, universaliter didce ” 
 (divisb en cinq parties). 
 
 P. 90. “ De Constituenda Arbore, pro captanda distinc- 
 tiore horum, terminorum definitione ” (figure sur la page 
 suivante). 
 
 P. gi. “ De Statuis didionum ... sit ergo I Statua 
 Athlantis.” 
 
 “In 15 geminas partes divisa seu distributa, ita ut 30 membris 
 distinguatur, quorum Dextrum sit membrum Lucis, sinistrum Tene- 
 brarum : Alterum inquam perfections Rationis, Alterum imperfec- 
 tions. NB. I Gygas eius dextra pertinet ad II m Gygantem. . . .” 
 
 . . . Tabula statute distindionis : . . . 
 
 P. 94. “ De statua Typhonis.” 
 
 P. 95. “ De tribus Gygantum hypostasibus, in quibus 
 triplex sequens distindionum genus significatur.” 
 
 P. 96. “ Primum Genus in Persona Cereri Gygantis.” 
 P. 98. 11 De Hypostasi Alchionei.” 
 
362 
 
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 P. 99. “ Dc Polypoetis hypostasi.” 
 
 P. 1 00. “ Dc Applicatione Artis inventivce et indica- 
 tives, explicata in 30 statuarum vocibus.” 
 
 P. I o I . “ Utilitas Lampadis hums ad alias.” 
 
 “ Dc distinctions ministeriorum spedantium ad diver sa 
 membra 30 statuarum.” 
 
 P. 103. “ De Praxi inventionis per preedida.” Divise 
 en cinq parties, la derniere est intitulee “ Dc Casibus 
 definitionis . . . Pxcmpla quorundam definibilium.” 
 
 P. 109. On lit a la fin: “Quid est Calamus? Est 
 instrumentum seu organum artificiale, ad delineandum 
 seu designandum ea, quae sunt in Voce, seu dictiones 
 vocales, vel aliquid aliud huiuscemodi notandum et pin- 
 gendum, quod si lubet addere materiam, dicas ex avis 
 pluma, vel canna. Finis!’ 
 
 Ce 11’est pourtant pas la fin de l’ouvrage. A la page 
 suivante on trouve le chapitre Dc rations verificandi seu 
 enunciandi, qui finit a la p. 1 1 3 par ces mots : “ Utrumque 
 perfecimus, et tuas intellectus operationes sufficientissime 
 regulavimus,” termine par “ Finis.” 
 
 Ce n’est pas non plus la fin : a la page suivante (1 14) 
 on trouve le chapitre “ De tertia et ultima praxi,” qui 
 est d’une grande importance, parce qu’on y trouve le 
 mode de proc^der dans Implication de la doctrine de 
 Bruno espose dans ce livre dont le vrai titre est, comme 
 nous le verrons : “Ars inventiva per triginta Statuas.” 
 E11 voici quelques citations (pp. 1 14— I 2 1) : 
 
 “ . . . Per exemplum : Homo est substantia composita 
 ex intellectuali et materiali, media inter superiorem et 
 inferiorem Naturam, et nexus utriusque. Ideo Unitas 
 illi non convenit secundum rationem absoluti, simplicis, 
 sed contracti et compositi, coordinati conspirantium par- 
 tium et cseteris consequentibus rationibus : sicut ergo est 
 unum ita et est magnum, ita potens, ita cognoscens, utpote 
 habet magnitudinem intelligibilem, et sensibilem poten- 
 tiam, materialem et immaterialem, cognitionem secundum 
 sensum et intellectum, itaque de caeteris praedicatis 
 
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 3 6 3 
 
 utpote de contrarietate, concordia, differentiis et cseteris. 
 lam de homine quidlibet possumus demonstrare, quod 
 vere illi convenit per quodlibet aliud. Yel si sophistice 
 procedendo volumus falso demonstrare; ejus definitionem 
 alteremus oportet, ut appellando hominem tantummodo 
 illam internam naturam, si de ipso magnified sentire 
 volumus, vel animalem tantum partem, nihil illi supra 
 bestiis attribuentes, si de ipso perperam iudicare volumus. 
 
 “ Jam ut exemplum unum accipiamus, quo per propo- 
 sita principia discurrendo de aliqua re discurramus, pro- 
 ponatur nobis : 
 
 Anima non est accidens. 
 
 I. Omne accidens ita con- 
 tinetur a subjecto, ut non 
 possit esse a subjecto. 
 
 Anima vero potius con- 
 tinet subjectum : quia om- 
 nis forma naturalis terminus 
 est, et appellatur et est 
 ratio termini (omne accidens 
 continetur a subjecto). 
 
 II. Nullum accidens ab- 
 solvitur & subjecto, et reali- 
 ter existit sine subjecto. 
 
 Omnis forma simplex non 
 extenta ad subjecti exten- 
 sionem et per se subsistens 
 est substantia. Anima est 
 huiusmodi. 
 
 III. Omnis forma acci- 
 dentalis cum subjecti incon- 
 stantia et varietate (varia- 
 bili) mutatur. 
 
 Anima non est huius- 
 modi, quia ut etiam Aris- 
 
 toteles fatetur, si seni detur 
 oculus juvenis videt ut ju- 
 venis. 
 
 IY. Omne cui convenit 
 ratio et essentia substantise 
 verb est substantia. 
 
 Sed animse convenit esse 
 ens per se existens et sub- 
 jectum potentiarum. 
 
 V. Nullum accidens est 
 solum et separatum. 
 
 At anima est sola et se- 
 parata. 
 
 VIII. Omne accidens re- 
 quirit materiam et subiec- 
 tum pro sui existentia. 
 
 Anima vero per se existit 
 et substat, et subiectum est 
 accidentium et potentiarum. 
 
 A Saturni statua juxta 
 tres jprimas rationes. 
 
3 6 4 
 
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 A principio originali. 
 Quia anima patrein dicit 
 Deum, unde vel est ex 
 divina substantia vel ex 
 peculiari quadam, pariter 
 non potest denominari ac- 
 cidens. 
 
 A semine. Quia anima 
 non est virtus seminis, 
 neque accidens, sed est 
 agens et formatrix in eo et 
 per ipsam. 
 
 Eatione praesidentice. 
 Quia ipse regit, gubernat, 
 omnino corpus. 
 
 Ergo hoc est potius in- 
 strumentum, quam princi- 
 pium illius. 
 
 || Ex campo Thetidis. 
 
 Omne accidens habet se 
 sicuti color, omnis materia 
 sicut tenebrae. 
 
 Anima vero pertinet ad 
 sphaeram lucis. Est neque 
 accidens est neque materia, 
 sed immaterialis substantia. 
 Maior est manifesta, quia 
 praeest, dominatur rei, et 
 vivificat materiam h. e. 
 subiectum compositum. 
 
 || Ex Saggitario. 
 
 Ex distindione finis. 
 Anima est finis, ad quern 
 ordinantur omnes materiae 
 partes, Potius enim corpus 
 
 propter animam, quam 
 anima propter corpus. 
 
 Ex media ultimi parte. 
 Anima est ultima et suprema 
 species inter divina et 
 naturalia, ad quam omnia 
 inferiora ordinantur, sicut 
 ordo schahe requirit. 
 
 || Ex Monte Olympi. 
 
 Ex parte dimensionum. 
 Nulla forma accidentalis 
 entelechiam corporis tran- 
 scendit, neque transcendere 
 potest limites corporis. 
 
 Sed anima multo inter- 
 vals relmquit post se ma- 
 teriam tanquam nihil. 
 
 || Ex campo Cceli. 
 
 Ex meditate. Omnis 
 forma accidentalis est veluti 
 indumentum materiae, et 
 substantialis forma corporea, 
 necessario est accidentibus 
 induta. 
 
 Anima vero neque sub- 
 stantiae corporeae indumen- 
 tum, neque secundum suam 
 naturam accidentibus induta 
 est corporeis, sed nuda sub- 
 stantia et simplex. 
 
 Solitudine. Omne acci- 
 dens in corporis compositione 
 consistit, utpote emanans ex 
 
THE NOROFF COLLECTION OF MSS. 
 
 36s 
 
 coitu materise et formse 
 substantialis. 
 
 Anima vero dicitur forma 
 sine materia existens, et 
 etiam necessario est, quia 
 illi dominatur. 
 
 || Ex campo Vestce. 
 
 Indole. Anima dicitur 
 ad imaginem et similitudi- 
 nem Dei a Theologis et a 
 Philosophis, simulachrum 
 Divinitatis, vel filia mentis. 
 Tale non dicit esse materiale, 
 vel forma materialis. 
 
 II.. Ipsa forma materialis, 
 est lux alligata tenebris. 
 Accidens materiale estveluti 
 nigredo seu color resultans 
 e tenebris. 
 
 Animas vero substantia, 
 neque a materia resultat 
 neque materise est alligata. 
 
 Ex voluntate . Anima 
 aspirat vel ad propriam 
 regionem,et propriam lucem, 
 quia amat veritatem, et 
 alitur veritate nititurque 
 Divinis. 
 
 Ergo non est accidens, 
 neque forma corporis cui 
 indolem referat. 
 
 || Ex campo Oceani. 
 
 Ex magnitudine latitud. 
 et profunditatis. Anima 
 secundum esse, posse et 
 operari, subsistit, valet et 
 
 agit ultra fines et limites 
 mundi corporei et appe- 
 tit ultra materiam atque 
 corpus. 
 
 Anima vero non corpori 
 accedit, sed tota materia 
 accedit et absumitur ab 
 anima, ex qua corpus sibi 
 fabrefecit. 
 
 Ergo neque corporis acci- 
 dens. 
 
 Minor manifesta, quia 
 parvo synapis grano, accedit 
 forma arboris, tamquam 
 animse existentis in centro 
 seminis, non autem anima 
 advenit arbori iam fabre- 
 facto. 
 
 III. Cognoscentise omnis 
 vis et efficacia formse 
 materialis adolescit et per- 
 ficitur. . . . 
 
 Anima vero est quse 
 adolescere facit, cum ipsa 
 non adolescat, sed perpetuo 
 constat eadem quod est 
 etiam ab adversariis conces- 
 sum. 
 
 || De Telis Cupidinis. 
 
 Ex parte kabitudinis, seu 
 inclinationis. Quia anima 
 intus Deus fieri, et in simili- 
 tudinem Dei trasformari. 
 Ergo est quasdam sub- 
 stantia. 
 
 II. Quia illam Deus alio- 
 
366 
 
 THE NOROFF COLLECTION OF MSS. 
 
 quitur tangit, pulsat, talis 
 autem subiectio est suppositi 
 non accidentis alicuius. 
 
 || Ex campo JEonos. 
 
 Ex parte ceterni, quod 
 non eget conservatione. Omne 
 autem accidens et forma 
 corporea, in compositione 
 consistens, conservante in- 
 diget tempore et loco et 
 complexione quadam. 
 
 Anima vero ipsa seipsam 
 movet, seipsam servat, et 
 non exinde mutuatis princi- 
 piis, quo aliquo connectente 
 et retinente consistent, est 
 formata sed individua sub- 
 
 stantia. Est vita seipsam 
 servans, sicut k seipsa dis- 
 cedere non poterit. 
 
 Ex parte transmutationis. 
 Omne quod corrumpitur vel 
 evanescit ut accidentia, et 
 formaa accidentales cor- 
 rumpi, dicuntur, vel in 
 aliud transit. 
 
 Anima vero neque eva- 
 nescit, quia non est accidens, 
 quia est neutrius formee 
 rationale, neque in aliud 
 transit, quia substantia est 
 simplex et nuda. . . , 
 
 “ Itaque disseruimus probando animam esse sub- 
 sistentem, non accidentalem formam, non Entelechiam, 
 non harmoniam, non aliud simile. 
 
 “Media plura ad idem probandum et quodcunque 
 aliud desumi possunt, persequendo csetera statuarum 
 membra, quorum tria priora tantum selegimus : com- 
 modiora vel graviora, videbuntur esse consequentia ubique, 
 quia hunc ordinem servare consuevimus, ut a levioribus 
 mediis ad graviora et potissima procederemus, adeo ut 
 ultimum cseterorum omnium complexionem includere 
 videatur. 
 
 “ Itaque Gratias Deo agentes Artem inventivam per 
 30 statuas perfecimus. Keliquum est ut quo quisque 
 prout credit posse ex istius lumine bonum, meliorem, vel 
 optimum fructum comparare, bene, melius, vel optime in 
 istis assuescat: Multum enim confert bonam non solum 
 incurrisse disciplinam, et k bono lumine, sed illud prseci- 
 puum esse videtur, ut aliquis quod habet fidat se habere 
 et iuxta fidem excolat agrum et iugi meditatione rerum 
 
THE NOROFF COLLECTION OF MSS. 
 
 367 
 
 rigans agrum, ingenii, propria iniecta semina adolescere 
 faciat, incrementum sumat, et fructus suo tempore praesto- 
 letnr. Infidi vero et desperantes quos neque numina 
 posse curare testantur, ocio et torpore et innata desidia, 
 talentum suffodiunt, et segetem muribus corrodendam 
 prsetermittunt.” 
 
 F Anno 1591. I Mens: Octob : N Die 22 c?. I 
 Paduge. S. 
 
 Le livre finit sur le recto de la p. 1 2 1 . Suivent deux 
 f. bl. 
 
 Le MS. est termine par un cahier de 20 f. (d’une 
 ecriture peu soignee et sur un tout autre papier) qui 
 contient : 
 
 (F. I. r.) 
 
 Artificiosa Methodus Medicine ex Lullianis 
 Fragmentis. 
 
 Cet opuscule est divise en XIII. trait es. Les trois 
 premiers qui contiennent le subjectum ne portent pas de 
 titre ; ils se terminent a la f. 5® dont le verso est occupe 
 par un cercle astrologique. Les dix autres traites sont : 
 Tract. IV. De febribus. — T. V. De urinis. — T. VI. De 
 pulsibus. — T. VII. De regionibus digestionum. — T. VIII. 
 De causis doloris. — T. IX. De appetitu. — T. X. De 
 kumoribus. — T. XI. De gradibus infirmitatum. — T. XII. 
 De curis infirmorum. — T. XIII. De XVI. electuariis 
 generalibus. Ce dernier ckap. est termine sur le recto 
 de la f. 19 par ces mots : “ . . . Quia ista XVI. electuaria 
 debet medicus in promptu : habere, ut subito infirmitati- 
 bus possit succurere, et talis doctrina est utilis et facilis 
 scientibus istum librum, et quia sine isto Libro vel arte 
 non potest kaberi scientia de omnibus supradictis : quia 
 ars sine scientia thesaurus pauperum vere erit.” 
 
 Au bas de cette feuille se trouve surcolle un lambeau 
 
363 
 
 THE NOROFF COLLECTION OF MSS. 
 
 de pap. sur lequel on lit une recette pour confectionner le 
 colirium. Le derniere f. suivante se trouve occupde par 
 un cercle astrologique. Outre cela une feuille volante et 
 un parchemin a 4 te trouvee dans le MS. Elle forme un 
 reseau en parallelogram in e dont un cote est divise en i 3 
 parties et l’autre en 22 ; les petits quarres que forment 
 les lignes de division sont en partie decoupes, tandisque 
 les filets des lignes sont soigneusement conserves. 1 
 
 C’est une de ces schemata ou figures explicatives des 
 theories mnemoniques ou metaphysiques de l’auteur qu’il 
 se complaisait a executer de ses propres mains comme 
 l’atteste Wechel de Franc fort, editeur de quelques-unes 
 de ses oeuvres : “ Opus agressus, ut quam accuratissime 
 absolveret, non schemata solum sua manu sculpsit, sed 
 etiam operarum se in eodem correctorem prsebuit.” 2 
 
 L’explications de la table se trouve probablement dans 
 le texte du manuscrit. 3 
 
 Nous appellons l’attention du monde savant sur les 
 passages du MS. qui levent compietement l’accusation 
 calomnieuse qui a ete portee contre le ceiebre philosophe 
 italien d’avoir prof esse des dogmes antichretiens, et la 
 transmigration des ames. Les passages consignes sur les 
 £f. 23. r. et 48. r., ainsi que les propositions emises dans 
 le livre De Triginta Statuarum (pp. 1 14— 1 21), qui adop- 
 tent la revelation, qui s’appuyent sur les paroles du Christ 
 (dont le tres saint nom est trace par la main de Bruno en 
 lettres majuscules), et enfin qui parlent de l’immaterialite 
 et de la substantial^ de lame, protestent hautement 
 contre les farouches ennemis de Bruno, auxquels sans doute 
 il applique les paroles du Christ citees k la f. 48. r. : 
 “ Hie dies vestra et potestas tenebrarum.” Ce passage et 
 ce qui le suit forme comme une prediction du sort qui 
 
 1 Noi sopprimiamo il disegno per 3 C’est aux recherches dclairdes de 
 le difficolth che incontrano le nostre M. Tross, libraire h Paris, que je 
 
 tipografie nel riprodurlo. dois l’acquisition de ce precieux MS. 
 
 - J. BruniNol. detripliciminimoet exporte de l’Allemagne. 
 mensura ; dans la preface de Wechel. 
 

 THE NOROFF COLLECTION OF MSS. 369 
 
 etait reserve au hardi pliilosophe. Pouvait-on mecon- 
 naitre un pliilosophe chretien dans celui qui disait dans 
 le dernier ouvrage qu’il a publid (De Triplici Minimo et 
 Mensura, L. I. p. 2, v. 33, 34); 
 
 “ Novi Telluris faciem nihilomiims esse 
 Fulgentem, vere sanctum et venerabile sidus.” 
 
 2 A 
 

 
 
III. 
 
 THE LOST WORKS OF BRUNO. 
 
• ( 
 
 
 
THE LOST WORKS OF BRUNO. 
 
 373 
 
 Date. 
 
 Title. 
 
 Notes. 
 
 I 570? 
 
 L’arca di Noe. 
 
 Bruno alludes twice to this 
 work(W. ii. 255; W. i. 149). 
 He says he dedicated it to 
 Pope Pius V. (1566-72). 
 
 1570 
 
 or 
 
 1571. 
 
 Poems. 
 
 These are treated by Berti as 
 a separate work. They are 
 spoken of in the beginning 
 of II Candelajo, and may 
 be embodied in the Heroici 
 Furori. 
 
 1576. 
 
 De Sphsera. 
 
 On somewhat insufficient 
 grounds Berti implies the 
 existence of this work. In 
 his evidence before the Ve- 
 netian inquisitors Bruno 
 uses the following words : 
 “Io stetti in Noli circa 
 quattro mesi insegnando 
 la grammatica ai figluoli, 
 et leggendo la sfera a 
 certi gentiluomini.” This 
 scarcely implies the ex- 
 istence of a book on the 
 subject written by Bruno. 
 
 1576 
 
 or 
 
 1577- 
 
 Dei Segni dei 
 Tempi. 
 
 Printed at Venice. 
 
 In the documentary evidence 
 at Bruno’s trial we read, 
 “ Whilst I was here ” (in 
 Venice) “I caused a cer- 
 
374 
 
 THE LOST WORKS OF BRUNO. 
 
 Date. 
 
 Title. 
 
 Notes. 
 
 
 
 tain little book, entitled Of 
 the Signs of the Times, to be 
 printed, and I bad it done 
 to get a little money for 
 my support.” This work 
 was probably printed either 
 without a name or under 
 that of Filippo Bruni or 
 Bruno. 
 
 1577-8 
 
 De Anima. 
 
 “ This book,” says Berti, “ was 
 the fruit of Bruno’s teach- 
 ing at Toulouse.” Part of 
 the Noroff Collection con- 
 tains, towards the close of 
 the book De Triginta Statu- 
 arum, a number of para- 
 graphs on the Soul, headed 
 “Anima non est accidens.” 
 
 1578-9 
 
 Liber Clavis 
 Magnae. 
 
 “ This book,” says Berti, 
 “ was composed in Toulouse, 
 as may be inferred from 
 Bruno’s constant references 
 to it in his first hooks printed 
 in Paris.” Is this state- 
 ment reconcilable with Est 
 et XJnica Clavis, “ Bruno’s 
 second title to his De Lam- 
 pade Combinatoria ” ? 
 
THE LOST WORKS OF BRUNO. 
 
 375 
 
 I 
 
 Date. 
 
 Title. 
 
 Notes. 
 
 578-9 
 
 Dei Predicamenti 
 di Dio. MSS. 
 
 Berti believes this book to 
 have been written in Paris 
 between 1579 and 1583, 
 and to be the work alluded 
 to by Moeenigo (Doc. I.) 
 as “ a small work in his 
 hand on God by the de- 
 duction of certain of His 
 universal predicates.” It 
 is perhaps in Pome in the 
 archives of the Holy Office. 
 
 “ I place in the hands of 
 your reverence,” says Mo- 
 eenigo, “three printed books 
 of this same man, wherein 
 are noted other things that 
 
 have escaped me, along 
 with a small work in his 
 hand of God, by the de- 
 duction of certain of His 
 universal predicates, where- 
 by you may measure his un- 
 derstanding.” ( First Docu- 
 
 1582. 
 
 Purgatorio 
 
 Inferno. 
 
 dell’ “ 
 
 merit : Trial.) 
 
 A voi Smitho, mandaro quel 
 dialogo del Nolano, che si 
 chiama Purgatorio dell’ In- 
 
 ferno, e ivi vedrai il frutto 
 de la redenzione ” ( Cena de 
 le Ceneri). 
 
3/6 
 
 THE LOST WORKS OF BRUNO. 
 
 Date. 
 
 Title. 
 
 Notes. 
 
 1591. 
 
 De Eerum 
 ginibus. 
 
 Ima- 
 
 “ In libro de rerum imagini- 
 bus (volente Deo) explica- 
 bimus, ut quaelibet res duos 
 habeat dextrum sinistrum- 
 que ; genios, eosque ; active 
 vel passive, et secundum 
 plurimas in prima entis divi- 
 sione et diadis ordine, dif- 
 ferentias ” {Be Mona.de , p. 
 33)- 
 
 I 59 I - 
 
 Libro delle Sette 
 Arti Liberali. 
 
 “ Disegnava,” says Bruno in 
 his evidence, “ di ritornare 
 in Francoforte per far stam- 
 pare alcune mie opere 
 delle 7 Arti Liberali, et 7 
 altre arti inventive.” 
 Unprinted, and perhaps in the 
 archives of the Holy Office 
 in Eome (Doc. XVII.) 
 
 1591 . 
 
 Templum Mnemo- 
 synes. 
 
 Bartholmess (vol. ii. p. 60 ) 
 thinks this may have been 
 a collection of Latin poems. 
 Berti (p. 30 ) believes it to 
 be entirely or in part re- 
 produced in the work Be 
 Compositione Imaginum — 
 another name perhaps for 
 the work Be Rerum Im- 
 aginibus. 
 
THE LOST WORKS OF BRUNO. 
 
 277 
 
 Date. 
 
 Title. 
 
 Notes. 
 
 1591. 
 
 De Multiplici 
 Mundi Yita. 
 
 De Naturae Gesti- 
 bus. 
 
 De Principiis Veri. 
 De Astrologia. 
 
 These four works are quoted 
 by Berti and Bartlhomess. 
 
 The latter believes them to 
 have been works on logic. 
 He says that Bruno has al- 
 luded to them all by name. 
 
 1591- 
 
 De Physica Magia. 
 
 De Triplici Minimo, p. 74 . 
 See the Noroff Catalogue. 
 
 I 59 I - 
 
 De Physica. 
 
 Dc Triplici Minimo, p. 12 . 
 
 Berti further counts among 
 Bruno’s lost works a Libretto 
 di Congiurationi. Mocenigo, 
 Bruno’s denouncer, says in 
 his evidence at the trial, 
 that Bruno “ entreated me 
 to keep all I had of his (for 
 all he had was mine), and 
 that it would suffice him 
 if I would but bestow on 
 him a transcript d’un libretto 
 di congiuratione die io ho 
 trovato tra certe sue carte 
 scritte ” (Doc. II.) May 
 not this work be the Libro 
 de Sigillis Hermetis et Ptolo- 
 mei, a transcript of which 
 was made at Padua for the 
 use of Mocenigo ? 
 
( 379 ) 
 
 IY. 
 
 ALPHABETICAL LIST OF AUTHORITIES. 
 
 [Adelung (J. C.) ?], Geschichte der menscblichen Narrheit, oder Le- 
 bensbesckreibungen beriihmter Schivarzkiinstler, Goldmacher, 
 Teufelsbanner, Zeiehen & Liniendeuter, Scliwarmer, Wahr- 
 sager, und anderer philosophischer Unholde. 2 vols. 8vo. 
 Leipzig, 1785-86; vol. i. pp. 241-301. Jordanus Brunus , ein 
 verwegener Religions- Spotter. 
 
 Alaux (J. E.), Histoire de la Philosophie. 8vo. Paris, 1882. Con- 
 tains, pp. 197-199, a short account of Bruno’s life. 
 
 Allgemeine Zeitung, Beilage zu Nos. 292 and 294, Oct. 18 and 20, 
 1868. 4to. Augsburg, 1868. 
 
 M. Carriere, Giordano Bruno’s Inquisitions Process in Yenedig. 
 
 Ditto, ditto, Beilage zu No. 39, Feb. 8, 1883. 4to. Miinchen, 
 1883. 
 
 M. Carriere, Giordano Bruno’s Weltanschauung und Verhdngniss. 
 (Review of Brunnhofer' s Life.) 
 
 Ditto, ditto, Beilage zu No. 48, Feb. 17, 1885. 
 
 M. Carriere, Giordano Bruno. (Review of ThSophile Dufour’s 
 “ Giordano Bruno d Geneve. Documents inedits. Geneve, 1884.”) 
 
 Ditto, ditto, (Monatsblatter zur Erganzung der). Dezember 1847. 
 4to. Augsburg. Contains in an article “ Zur Faustsage und 
 zur Faustlitteratur ” by Dr. Notter, some remarks on the Bruno of 
 Marlowe’s Dr. Faustus, who is traced back to Giordano Bruno. 
 (Reprinted in Scheiblds Kloster. Vol. v.). 
 
 Atlantic Monthly , devoted to Literature, Science, Art, and Politics, 
 vol. xxxviii. No. 229, Nov. 1876. 8vo. Boston [1876]. 
 
 pp. 550-577, J. H. Browne, Giordano Bruno. 
 
 Balau (P.), Di Giordano Bruno e dei meriti di lui ad un monu- 
 mento. Saggio storico popolare. i2mo, pp. 127. Bologna, 1886. 
 
 Bartholmess (Ch.), Jordano Bruno. 2 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1847. 
 
3S0 ALPHABETICAL LIST OF AUTHORITIES. 
 
 Bayle (P.), Dictionnaire Historique et Critique, troisieme edition. 
 4 vols. fol. Amsterdam, mdccxx. 
 
 Yol. i. pp. 672-74, /. Brunus. 
 
 Berti (D.), Vita di Giordano Bruno da Nola. ' 8vo. Firenze, 1868. 
 
 Copernico e le vicendi del sistema Copernicano in Italia 
 
 nella seconda metii del secolo xvi., e nella priina del xvii. 
 Con documenti inediti intorno a Giordano Bruno E. Galileo 
 Galilei. 8vo. Roma, 1876. 
 
 pp. 218-235. 
 
 Documenti intorno a Giordano Bruno. 8vo. Roma, 1880. 
 
 Besant (Mrs. A.), Giordano Bruno. Biographical sketch. 8vo. 
 London, 1877. 
 
 Bibliotlieque Universelle et Revue Suisse. 89me annee. Troisieme 
 periode, tome xxiv. Nos. 71 and 72, Nov. and Dec. 1884. 8vo. 
 Lausanne, 1884. 
 
 Marc-Monnier, Giordano Bruno et ses Derniers Biographes. 
 
 Bionda (Pietro), Giordano Bruno. 8vo. Lecce, 1873. 
 
 Bruckeri (J.), Historia Critica Philosophise a tempore resusci- 
 tarum in occidente litterarum ad nostra tempora. 6 vols. 4to. 
 Lipsiae, 1742-67. 
 
 Tomi iv. Pars altera, pp. 12-62. De Jordano Bruno Nolano. 
 ( N.B . — A very minute narrative of all that is known of Bruno’s 
 life and of his writings. The notices contained in Enfield’s 
 and Wallace’s works on the History of Philosophy are taken 
 from this article, and they contain nothing new.) 
 
 Brunnhofer (II.), Giordano Bruno’s Weltanschauung und Verhang- 
 niss aus den Quellen dargestellt. 8vo. Leipzig, 1882. 
 
 A Chapter from Brunnhofer’s Life of Giordano Bruno. 
 
 Translated from the German (by N. Triibner). Privately 
 printed. 8vo. pp. 12. [London, 1883.] 
 
 Buddei (J. F.), Theses Theologicse de Atheismo et Superstitione 
 variis observationibus illustratse, 8vo. Trajecti ad Rhenum, 
 1737 - 
 
 On pp. 83-85, J- Bruno’s doctrine and works are described from the 
 Roman Catholic point of view as heretic and blasphemous. 
 
 Buhle (J. G.), Geschichte der neuern Philosophie seit der Epoclie 
 der Wiederherstellung der Wissenschaften. Zweiten Bandes 
 zweite Halfte. 8vo. Gottingen, iSor. 
 
 p. 703, &c. Vierter Abschnitt. Geschichte und Philosophie des 
 Jordan Bruno. 
 
 Buonafede (A.), Della restaurazione di ogni filosofia nei secoli, 
 xvi., xvii., xviii. 8vo. Milano, 183S. 
 
 pp. 174-182. Giordano Bruno. 
 
ALPHABETICAL LIST OF AUTHORITIES. 381 
 
 Carriere (M.), Die philosophische Weltanschauung der Reforma- 
 tions-Zeit in iliren Beziehungen zur Gegenwart. 8vo. Stutt- 
 0 gart und Tubingen, 1847. 
 
 pp. 365-494. Filoteo Giordano Bruno. 
 
 Chalmers (A.), The British Essayists ; with prefaces, historical and 
 biographical. Yol. x. The Spectator , No. 389, Tuesday, May 
 27, 1712, contains an account of the “ Spaccio della Bestia 
 Triomfanti,” from the Puritan point of view. 
 
 Chaufepi£ (J. G. de), Nouveau Dictionnaire historique et critique 
 pour servir de supplement ou de continuation au Dictionnaire 
 historique et critique de Mr. P. Bayle. 4 vols. fol. Amsterdam 
 and La Haye, 1750-56. 
 
 Tome ii., pp. 454-462, Jordanus Brunus. 
 
 Clemens (F. J.), Giordano Bruno und Nicolaus von Cusa. Eine 
 philosophische Abliandlung, 8vo. Bonn, 1847. 
 
 Clement (D.), Bibliotheque curieuse, historique et critique, ou 
 Catalogue raisonne de livres dificiles a trouver. Tome cin- 
 quieme, 4to. Hannover, mdccliv. 
 
 Contains pp. 290-329 ; an incomplete list of G. Bruno’s Works. 
 
 Colburns New Monthly Magazine. Vol. cxviii., No. 704. (New Series, 
 No. 14). August 1880. 8 vo. London, 1880. 
 
 pp. 1 25- 1 3 1, Jane Cowen, Giordano Bruno. 
 
 Colocci (A.), Giordano Bruno. Cenni Biografici con documenti. 
 8vo. Roma, 1876. 
 
 Debs (A.), P. J. Bruni Nolani vita et placita. 8vo. Amiens, 1844. 
 
 Desdotjits (Th.), La legende tragique de Jordano Bruno, comment 
 elle a ete formee. Son origine suspecte, son invraisemblance. 
 8vo. Paris, 1885. 
 
 Deutsche Litter aturzeitung, No. 40, October 2, 1886. 4to. Berlin, 18S6. 
 “ Felice Tocco, Giordano Bruno. Conferenza tenuta nel circolo 
 filologico di Firenze. Firenze, 1886.” Reviewed by Paul Natorf. 
 
 Dufour (Th.), Giordano Bruno a Geneve (1579). Documents 
 inedits. 8vo. Geneve, 1884. (Extrait du Journal de Geneve du 
 15 Juillet 1884, avec additions et corrections.) 
 
 Erdmann (J. E.), Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie. Erster 
 Band. Philosophie des Altertlmms und des Mittelalters. 8vo. 
 Berlin, 1878. 
 pp. 551-561, ‘■'■Bruno.” 
 
 Zwei Martyrer der Wissenschaft, Vortrag. i2mo. Berlin, 
 
 1864. 
 
 Giordano Bruno and Giovan Domenico Campanella. 
 
382 ALPHABETICAL LIST OF AUTHORITIES. 
 
 Falckenberg (R.), GrundzLige cler Philosophic des Nicolaus Cusanus 
 xnit besonderer Beriicksiclitigimg der Lehre vom Erkennen. 
 8vo. Breslau, 1 880. 
 
 Falco (F.), Giordano Bruno. 8vo. Torino, 1863. 
 
 Falkson (F.), Giordano Bruno. i2ino. Hamburg, 1846. 
 
 Ditto, ditto. 8 vo. Detroit, Mich., 1868. 
 
 Frankfurter Zeitung,Fo. 292. October 19,1882. Fol. Frankfurt, 
 1882. 
 
 M. Brasch, Giordano Bruno. Fin Martyrer der Walirheit. 
 
 Fraser’s Magazine. Edited by J. A. Froude. March 1871. New 
 Series, Vol. iii. No. xv. 8vo. London, 1871. Pp. 364-377, 
 “ Giordano Bruno.” (By the late Isa Blagden.) 
 
 [Fulin (R.)], Giordano Bruno, a Venezia. Documenti inediti tratti 
 del Veneto Archivio Generale. Roy. 8vo. Venezia, 1864. 
 
 (Notice of Bar tholmess’ Jordano Bruno.) 
 
 Gentzkenii (F.), Historia philosophiae in qua philosophorum cele- 
 brium vitse eorumque hypotheses notabiliores ac sectarum fata 
 a longa rerum memoria ad nostra usque tempora succincte et 
 ordine sistuntur. 8vo. Hamburgi, 1724. 
 
 pp. 154-156. A short sketch of Bruno’s life and doctrines, in which 
 he is represented as the chief reviver of the philosophy of the ancie?it 
 Epicureans. 
 
 Gerando (H.), Histoire comparee des systemes de philosophie consi- 
 ders relativement aux principes des connaissances liumaines. 
 Deuxieme edition, 8 vols. 8vo. Paris, 1822-1847. 
 
 Tome v. pp. 385-415. Contains a careful analysis of Bruno’s 
 philosophy and of his relative position among his contemporaries 
 (i.a., J. Cardan, Nicholas of Cusa, Campanella, <£-c.) 
 
 Ginguen^ (P. L.), Histoire Litteraire d’ltalie. Seconde edition. 14 
 vols. 8 vo. Paris, 1824. 
 
 Tome septieme, pp. 524-531. Contains a not very appreciative 
 account of Bruno's life and works. 
 
 Giornale Napoletano. Nuova serie. fasc. 49. Aprile-Maggio, 1882. 
 8vo. Napoli. 
 
 pp. 43-47. Fiorentino , Dialoghi morali di Giordano Bruno. 
 
 Giornale Napoletano della Domenica. Numero 5. Gennaio 29. 
 1882. Napoli. 
 
 Contains — Fiorentino, La fanciulleza di Giordano Bruno. 
 
 Goethe (J. W. v.), Sammtliche Werke, Ausgabe letzter Hand. 55 
 vols. 1 2mo. Stuttgart. 
 
 Vol. xxxii. “ Tag- und Jahres-Hefte, als Erganzung meiner 
 sonstigen Bekenntnisse, Jahrgang 1812,” pp. 78-9. 
 
ALPHABETICAL LIST OF AUTHORITIES. 383 
 
 Goethe- Jahrbucli, herausgegeben von Ludwig Geiger. Siebenter Band. 
 8 vo. Frankfurt, 1886. 
 
 pp. 241-250. H. Brunnbofer, Giordano Bruno’s Einfluss auf 
 Goetbe. 
 
 Gottingische gelehrte Anzeigen, unter der Aufsicbt der Konigl. Gesell- 
 schaft der Wissenscliaften. Stuck 1-2, Jan. 5 and 12, 1881. 
 8vo. 
 
 pp. 25-32 — “ Jordan i Bruni Opera latine conscripta, rec. F. 
 Fiorentino.” Reviewed by G. Sigwart. 
 
 Graf (A.), Studii Drammatici, 8vo. Torino, 1878. 
 
 Pp. 163-204. II Gandelajo di G. Bruno. 
 
 Hallam (H.), Introduction to the Literature of Europe in the Fif- 
 teenth, Sixteenth, and Seventeenth Centuries. 4 vols. 8vo. 
 Paris, 1837-39. 
 
 Yol. ii. pp. 91-96. 
 
 Hartung (E. B.), Grundiinien einer Ethik bei Giordano Bruno, 
 besonders nach dessen Schrift, Lo Spaccio de la Bestia Trion- 
 fante. 8vo. Leipzig, 1878. 
 
 Henke (E. L. Th.), Georg Calixtus und seine Zeit. 2 vols. 8vo. 
 Halle, 1853. 
 
 Yol. i. p. 53. 
 
 (Originally published in 1833 under the title of “ Die Universitat 
 Helmstadt im i 6 ten Jahrhundert .”) 
 
 Internationale Monatsschrift. Band i. heft 1-3, 8vo. Chemnitz, 1882. 
 
 H. von Stein, Ueber Lelire und Person Giordano Bruno’s. 
 
 [Jacobi (F. H.)], Ueber die Lehre des Spinoza in Briefen, an den 
 Herrn Moses Mendelssohn. Neue vermehrte Ausgabe. 8vo. 
 Breslau, 1789. 
 
 pp. 261-277. Beylage I. Auszug aus Jordan Bruno von Nola, 
 von der Ursache, dem Prinzip und dem Einen. 
 
 Johnson (A.), A Manual of the History of Philosophy, translated 
 from the German of Tennemann. 8vo. Oxford, mdcccxxxii. 
 pp. 283-288 — Giordano Bruno. 
 
 Jordani (Caroli Stephani), V. D. apud Potzlorienses Ministri Galli- 
 cani Disquisitio historico-literaria, de Jordano Bruno Nolano. 
 Primislaviae Literis Bagoczyanis, 8vo. LI. 3 and pp. 32. S. 1 . eta. 
 Koch (M.), Vierzig Sonette von Giordano Bruno, iibersetzt, erlautert 
 und mit einer Einleitung versehen. 4to, pp. 48. Stolp, 1870. 
 Lange (F. A.), History of Materialism and criticism of its present 
 importance. Authorised translation by E. Ch. Thomas. Second 
 Edition. 3 vols. 8vo. London 1879. 
 
 Vol. i. pp. 232, etc. 
 
 Lauckhardt, Disputatio de J. Bruno. 8vo. Halae, 1783. 
 
 Leigh (Aston), The Story of Philosophy. 8vo. London, 1881. 
 
384 ALPHABETICAL LIST OF AUTHORITIES. 
 
 Lewes (G. H.), The Biographical History of Philosophy, from its 
 origin in Greece clown to the present day. 8vo. London, 1857. 
 PP- 3 1 4-334* 
 
 Libri (G.), Histoire des Sciences Mathematiques en Italie, depnis 
 la renaissance des lettres jusqu’a la fin du xvii e siecle. 4 vols. 
 8vo. Paris, 1838-41. 
 
 Vol. iv. pp. 1 4 1 - 1 45 and pp. 407-437. 
 
 Macmillan’s Magazine. October 1885, No. 312, 8vo. London, 1885. 
 pp. 435-440, R. C. Christie, Was Giordano Bruno really burned ? 
 
 Majlath (N. J.), Mnenomik, oder Kunst, das Gedachtniss nach 
 Begeln zu starken, und dessen Kraft ausserordentlich zn 
 erhohen. (Drei Stellen der Klassiker iiher Mnenomik. Ueber- 
 setzt von Kastner. — Uebersiclit des Systems des J. Brunus. 
 Yom Freiherrn Aretin). 8vo. Wien, 1842. 
 
 Mamiani della Bovere (T.), Del rinnovamento della filosofia 
 antica Italiana libro uno. Terza edizione, i2mo, pp. xvi. and 
 612. Firenze, 1S36. 
 pp. 28-29. 
 
 Mariano (R.), Giordano Bruno. La vita e l’uomo. Saggio Biogra- 
 fico-Critico. 8vo. Roma, 1881. 
 
 Mazzuchelli Bresciano (G.), Gli scrittori d’ Italia cive notizie 
 storiclie, e critiche intorne alle vite, e agli scritti de letterati 
 Italiani. 2 vols. fol. Brescia, 1763. 
 
 Yol. ii., Part 4, pp. 2187-2192. Account of Bruno’s life and list of 
 his works. 
 
 Mersenne (M.), L’Impiete des Deistes. — Ensemble la refutation des 
 dialogues de J. Bruno, &c. Part 2, 8vo. Paris, 1624. 
 
 Meyer (M.), Etudes de Critique ancienne et moderne. 8vo, pp. 295. 
 Paris 1850. 
 
 pp. 89-92, “ Jordano Bruno." 
 
 Mind. A Quarterly Review of Psychology and Philosophy. No. 34. 
 April 1884. 8 vo. London, 
 
 pp. 235-264, Th. Whittaker , Giordano Bruno. 
 
 Nachrichten von der Konigl. Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften und der 
 Georg-Augusts-Universitat zu Gottingen. No. 7, 31. Marz 1882. 
 8vo. Gottingen. 
 
 pp. 153-163. Paul de Lagarde, Mittheilungen iiber Giordano Bruno. 
 
 Neue Welt. No. 34. 4to. Stuttgart 1878. 
 
 p. 403, &c. Giordano Bruno, von Dr. L. Jacoby. 
 
 (Nici5ron).— Mdmoires pour servir ii l’histoire des liommes illustres 
 dans la republique des lettres, avec un catalogue raisonnd de 
 leurs ouv rages. 43 vols. 1 21110. Paris, 1732. 
 
ALPHABETICAL LIST OF AUTHORITIES. 385 
 
 Tome xvii. pp. 201-220. u Jordanus Brunus.” A sketch of liis life 
 and doctrine, together with a list of his published works. 
 
 Noroff (A. de), Notice Bibliograpliique sur un manuscrit auto- 
 graphe des ceuvres inedites de Giordano Bruno Nolano, tiree du 
 catalogue de la bibliotheque. 8vo, pp. 26, 4 litb. plates. St. 
 Petersbourg, 1868. See Table II. 
 
 Plumftre (C. E.), General Sketch of the History of Pantheism. 
 2 vols. 8vo. London. 
 
 Vol. i. pp. 348-366. 
 
 Preussische Jahrbiicher, Herausgegeben von H. von Treitschke und 
 H. Delbriick. Zweiundfiinfzigster Band. Sechstes Heft. Dezem- 
 ber 1883. 8vo. Berlin, 
 pp. 559-578— A. Lasson, Giordano Bruno. 
 
 Punjer (G. Ck. B.), Geschiclite cler Christlichen Religionsphilo- 
 sophie seit der Reformation. In zwei Banden. 8vo. Braun- 
 schweig, 1880. 
 
 Yol. i. pp. 69-75 — Giordano Bruno. 
 
 Reimmanni (J. F.), Historia universalis Atheismi et Atlxeorum falso 
 et merito suspectorum, &c. 8vo, pp. 562. Hildesite, 1725. 
 
 PP- 374~376 — Jordanus Brunus Atheus. 
 
 Revue de Bruxelles. Troisieme Annee. J anvier 1 840. 8vo. Bruxelles, 
 pp. 73-107 — A. Moeller, Giordano Bruno. Sa Vie et ses Doctrines. 
 
 Mars 1840. 8vo. Bruxelles. 
 
 pp. 41-54 — Answer to above article by J. J. Allmeyer. 
 
 Revue des deux Mondes. Tome dix-huitieme. Dix-septieme annee. 
 Nouvelle serie. 8vo. Paris, 1847. 
 pp. 1071-1105 — Saisset (£■), Giordano Bruno et la philosophic au 
 seizieme siecle. [ Jordano Bruno, par Chr. Bartholmess.\ 
 
 Revue Nouvelle. Tome treizieme. Troisieme annee. 8vo. Paris, 1847. 
 pp. 468-486 — “ Jordano Bruno, par M. Christian Bartholmess,” 
 reviewed by Gh. Jourdain. 
 
 Ritter (H.), Geschichte der Christlichen Pliilosopliie. Ftinfter 
 Theil. 8vo. Hamburg, 1830. 
 pp. 595-652. 
 
 Rixner (Th. A.), und Siber (Th.), Leben und Lehrmeinungen 
 beriihmter Physilcer am Ende des xvi. und am Anfange des 
 xvii. Jahrbunderts, als Beitrage zur Geschichte der Physiologie 
 in engerer und weiterer Bedeutung. Heft Y. — Jordanus Brunus, 
 mit dessen Portrait. 8vo. Sulzbach, 1824. 
 
 Scartazzini (J. A.), Giordano Bruno. Ein Blutzeuge des Wissens. 
 Vortrag. 8vo. Biel, 1867. 
 
 Schelling (F. W. J. v.), Bruno oder iiber das gottliche und natiir- 
 liche Princip der Hinge. Ein Gesprach. 8vo. Berlin, 1842. 
 
 2 B 
 
386 ALPHABETICAL LIST OF AUTHORITIES. 
 
 Bruno, ossia un discurso sul principio divino e naturale 
 
 delle cose. Dialogo, soltato in Italiano dalla Marchesa FI. 
 
 Waddington, aggiuntavi una prefazione di Terenzo Mamiani. 
 
 8vo, pp. viii. and 236. Milano, 1844. 
 
 Mamiani’ s introduction (pp. 1-99) is a sketch of Bruno’s and Schel- 
 ling’s philosophy, their points of resemblance, and the mutual 
 relations of the Italian and German schools of philosophy. 
 
 Schroder (E. A.), Anteckningar i Pliilosophiens Historia I. G. 
 
 Bruno. 8vo. Upsala, 1848. 
 
 SciOPPius (Caspar), Epistola ad Conradum Rittersliusium. See Ap- 
 pendix v. 
 
 Giving an account of Bruno’s death, and criticising his doctrines 
 from the Roman Catholic point of view. It is printed in 
 
 “ Machiavellizatio, qua universorum animos dissociare nitentibus 
 respondetur, in gratiam domini archiepiscopi castissimae vitae 
 Petri Pazman, succincte excerpta.” 4to, Saragossa, per Dida- 
 cum Iborrum, 1621. 
 
 Burcardi Gotthelfjii Struvii, Collectanea Manuscriptorum ex codici- 
 bus, fragmentis antiquitatis atque epistolis, anecdotis erudito- 
 ruin exerpta atque in decern fasciculis digesta. i2ino. Jenae, 
 MDCCXin. — Acta Litteraria ex Manuscriptis eruta atque col- 
 lecta cura B. G. Struvii. Fasciculus Quintus. Jenae, 
 mdccvii., pp. 64-74. 
 
 Entretiens sur divers sujets d'histoire, de litterature, de religion et de 
 critique (par de la Croze). 8vo. Cologne, 171 1. 
 
 Poland’s Miscellaneous Works, with an account of his life by Des 
 Maizeaux. 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1747. 
 
 Vol. i., p. 305, &c. 
 
 Histoire des sciences matldmatiques en Italie, depuis la renaissance 
 des lettres jusqu’d la fin du xvii” sibcle, par G. Libri. 4 vols. 
 8vo. Paris, 1838-41. (See above.) 
 
 Also, with exception of the postscript and a marginal note , in Berti’s 
 Vita di G. B. ; and a shortened version is given by Barthol- 
 mess in Latin and French in the first volume of his life of 
 Bruno, p. 332, &c. Victor Cousin reproduces some passages 
 in his “ Fragments de philosophic cartesienne.” 8vo. Paris, 
 1845. An English translation is contained in the 2nd volume 
 of La Roche, “ Memoirs of Literature,” and a French one 
 in an article on Vanini in the “ Revue des deux Monies,” 
 April 1843. 
 
 Shakespeariana. Vol. i. No. 12. October 1884. 8vo. Philadelphia 
 and London. 
 
 Contains an article on “ Shakespeare and Giordano Bruno.” 
 
 Sigwart (Ch.), Spinoza’s neuentdeckter Tractat von Gott, dem 
 Menschen und dessen Gliickseligkeit, erlautert und in seiner 
 
ALPHABETICAL LIST OF AUTHORITIES. 38 7 
 
 Bedeutung fur das Verstandniss des Spinozismus untersucht. 
 8 vo. Gotha, 1866. 
 
 pp. 107 -134 on Spinoza's relations to Giordano Bruno’s works. 
 
 Die Lebensgeschichte Giordano Bruno’s. 4to. Tubingen, 
 
 1880. 
 
 Ivleine Schriften. 2 vols. 8vo. Freiburg, 1881. 
 
 Yol. i., pp. 49-151 — Giordano Bruno vor dem Inquisitionsgericht. 
 Spaventa (B.), Saggi di Critica Filosofica, Politica e Religiosa. 8vo. 
 Napoli, 1867. 
 
 Vol. i., pp. 139-267 — Giordano Bruno. 
 
 Steffens (H.), Nachgelassene Schriften. Mit einem Vorworte von 
 Schelling, 8vo. Berlin, 1846. 
 pp. 41-76 — Ueber das Leben des Jordanus Brumus. 
 
 Stockl (A.), Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters. 8vo. 
 Mainz, 1866. 
 
 Yol. iii., pp. 106-136. 
 
 Tafuri di Nardo (G. B.), Istoria degli scrittori nati nel regno di 
 Napoli. 3 vols. 8vo. Napoli, 1755. 
 
 Vol. iii., Part 4, pp. 204-218 — Giordano Bruno. 
 
 Tennemann (D. G.), Geschichte der Philosophie. 11 vols. 8vo. 
 Leipzig, 1798-1819. 
 
 Vol. ix., pp. 372-416, contains a minute, but not very lucid article 
 on Giordano Bruno. 
 
 Tiedemann (D.), Geist der spekulativen Philosophie. 6 vols, 8vo. 
 Marburg, 1796. 
 
 pp. 571-582 — Sketch of Bruno’s life and works. 
 
 Tiraboschi (G.), Storia della litteratura Italiana. Tomo VII. 
 Dali’ anno md. fino all’ anne mdc. Parte Secunda, 8vo, pp. 
 viii. and 609-1 160. Milano, 1824. 
 pp. 689-700 contains an account of the life and writings of Giordano 
 Bruno. 
 
 Tocco (F.), Giordano Bruno. Conferenza tenuta nel circolo filologico 
 di Firenze. 8vo, pp. 92. Firenze, 1886. 
 
 Toland (J.), Collection of several pieces of Mr. John Toland, now 
 first published from his Original Manuscripts : with some 
 memoirs of his life and writings. 2 vols. 8vo. London, 
 MDCCXXVI. 
 
 Vol. i.,pp. 316-349 — An account of Giordano Bruno’s Book of the 
 Universe. 
 
 Tyndall (J.), Address delivered at Belfast before the British 
 Association, on Wednesday evening, August 19, 1874. Re- 
 printed in Fragments of Science, a series of detached essays, 
 
388 ALPHABETICAL LIST OF AUTHORITIES. 
 
 addresses, and reviews. By John Tyndall. Sixth edition, 2 
 vols. London, 1879. 
 
 Yol. ii., pp. 137-203. 
 
 Vierteljahrsschrift ftir Kultur nnd Litteratur der Renaissance. Her- 
 ansgegeben von Dr. L. Geiger. Zweiten Bandes erstes Heftes. 
 8vo. Berlin, 1886. 
 
 pp. 27-56 — A. Nicoladoni, Giordano Bruno’s Leben und Lehre. 
 
 Vierteljahrsschrift ftir wissenscliaftliche Philosophie. VIII. Jahr- 
 gang. Erstes Heft. 8vo. Leipzig, 1884. 
 pp. 18-55 — Lasswitz, Giordano Bruno und die Atomistilc. 
 
 Wernekke (H.), Giordano Bruno’s Polemik gegen die Aristotelische 
 Kosmologie. 8vo. Dresden, 1871. 
 
 Willis (R.), Benedict de Spinoza, his life, correspondence and ethics. 
 8 vo. London, 1870. 
 pp. ix-xi. 
 
 Windelband (W.), Die Geschiclite der neueren Philosophie, in 
 ihrem Zusannnenhange mit der allgemeinen Cultur und den 
 besonderen Wissenscliaften., Erster Band. 8vo. Leipzig, 1878. 
 pp. 65-76. 
 
 Zeitschrift ftir Philosophie und philosophische Kritik. Neue Folge. 
 Vierundfiinl’zigsten Bandes, Erstes Heft. 8vo. Halle, 1869. 
 pp. 128-134, M. Carriere, Neue Thatsachen zu Giordano Bruno’s 
 Leben und Lehre. 
 
 Zimmermann (J. J.), Dissertatio de Atheismo J. Bruno Nolano 
 impacto dissertatio. (J/ms. Helvet ., Tom. v., pp. 557-602. 
 Tom. xxi., pp. 1-34.) 
 
 Zouch (Th.), Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Sir Philip 
 Sidney. 4to. York, 1808. 
 pp. 337, &c., treat on Sidney’s relation to Bruno. 
 
y. 
 
 THE LETTER OF SCIOPPIUS. 
 
 This letter is to be found in the Town Library at 
 Breslau, where it was brought from the library of the 
 Elizabeth Church at Breslau. It is in a collection con- 
 sisting of several thousands of letters, mostly originals, 
 and therefore furnished on the outside with the addresses. 
 On the letter of Scioppius (which fills nearly three pages 
 in folio) the address is wanting, and the conclusion is, 
 therefore, that it is not the original. It is written so 
 distinctly that there can be no doubt about any of the 
 letters. Struve’s copy was sent him by the then librarian 
 of Breslau, Krantz, and is very accurate. I have com- 
 pared it carefully with a copy of the original kindly 
 made by Dr. Markgraf, the town librarian of Breslau, 
 and officially certified by him. 
 
 CUNKADO PlTTERSHTJSIO SUO Gr. SCHOPPIUS, Fr. S. 
 
 Quas ad nuperam tuam expostulatoriam Epistulam 
 rescripsi, non jam dubito, quin tibi sint redditae, quibus 
 me tibi de vulgato responso meo satis purgatum confido. 
 Vt vero nunc etiam scriberem, hodierna ipsa dies me 
 instigat, qua Iordanus Brunus propter haeresin vivus 
 vidensque publice in Campo Florae ante theatrum Pompeii 
 est combustus. Existimo enim et hoc ad extremam im- 
 pressae epistulae meae partem, qua de haereticorum poena 
 egi, pertinere. Si .n. nunc Eomae esses, ex plerisque 
 omnibus Italis audires, Lutheranum esse combustum, et 
 
39 ° 
 
 THE LETTER OF SCIOPPIUS. 
 
 ita non mediocriter in opinione tua de saevitia nostra 
 confirmaveris. At semel scire debes, mi Kitterhusi, 
 Italos nostros inter haereticos alba linea non signare 
 neque discernere novisse, sed quicquid est liaereticum, 
 illud Lutheranum esse putant, in qua simplicitate, ut 
 Deus illos conservet precor, ne sciant unquam, quid 
 haeresis alia ab aliis discrepet. Yereor enim ne alioquin 
 ista discernendi scientia nimis caro ipsis constet. Vt 
 autem veritatem ipsam ex me accipias, narro tibi, idque 
 ita esse fidem do testem : nullum prorsus Lutheranum 
 aut Calvinianum, nisi relapsum vel publice scandalosum, 
 ullo modo Romae periclitari, nedum ut morte puniatur. 
 Haec sanctissimi Domini nostri mens est, ut omnibus 
 Lutheranis Romam pateat liber commeatus, utque a Car- 
 dinalibus et Praelatis Curiae nostrae omnis generis bene- 
 volentiam et humanitatem experiantur. Atque utinam 
 hie esses, Rittersliusi ! scio fore, ut rumores vulgatos 
 mendacii damnes. Fuit superiore mense Saxo quidam 
 nobilis hie apud nos, qui annum ipsum domi Bezae 
 vixerat. Is multis Catholicis innotuit, ipsi etiam Con- 
 fessario Pontificis Cardinali Baronio qui eum liumanissime 
 excepit, et de religione nihil prorsus cum eo egit, nisi 
 quod obiter eum adhortatus est ad veritatem investi- 
 gandam. De periculo jussit eum fide sua esse securis- 
 simum, dum ne quod publice scandalum praeberet. Ac 
 mansisset ille nobiscum diutius, nisi sparso rumore de 
 Anglis quibusdam in Palatium Inquisitionis deductis per- 
 territus sibi metuisset. 
 
 At Angli illi non erant, quod vulgo ab Italis dicuntur, 
 Lutherani, sed Puritani et de sacrilega Venerabilis sacra- 
 menti percussione Anglis usitata suspecti. Similiter 
 forsan et ipse rumori vulgari crederem Brunum istum 
 fuisse ob Lutheranismum combustum, nisi S. Inquisi- 
 tionis officio interfuissem, dum sententia contra eum est 
 lata, et sic scirem, quamnam ille haeresin professus fuerit. 
 Fuit enim Brunus ille patria Nolanus ex regno Neapoli- 
 tano professione Dominicanus : qui cum jam annis ab 
 
THE LETTER OF SCIOPPIUS. 
 
 39i 
 
 hinc octodecim de transubstantiatione (rationi nimirum ut 
 Chrysostomus tuus docet, repugnante) dubitare, imo earn 
 prorsus negare, et statim virginitatem B. Maria (quaru 
 idem Chrysostomus omnibus Cherubin et Seraphin purio- 
 rem ait) in dubiurn vocare coepisset, Genevam abiit, et 
 istic biennium commoratus, tandemque quod ad Calvinis- 
 mum, qua tamen nihil recta magis ad Atheismum ducit, 
 per omnia non probaret, inde ejectus Lugdunum, inde 
 Tholossam, hinc Parisios devenit, ibique extraordinarium 
 Professorem egit, cum videret ordinarios cogi Missae 
 sacro interesse. Postea Londinum profectus libellum 
 istic edit de Bestia Triumphante, h. c. de Papa, quern 
 vestri honoris Causa bestiam appellare solent. Inde 
 Witebergam abiit, ibique publice professus est biennium, 
 nisi fallor. Hinc Pragam delatus librum edit de im- 
 menso et infinito, itemque de innumerabilibus (si titu- 
 lorum sat recte memini ; nam libros ipsos Pragae habui) 
 et rursus alium de umbris et Idaeis, in quibus horrenda 
 prorsusque absurdissima docet, ut q. mundos esse innu- 
 merabiles, animam de corpore in corpus, imo et alium in 
 mundum migrare, unam animam bina corpora informare 
 posse, magiam esse rem bonam, et licitam, Spiritum 
 Sanctum non esse aliud nisi animam mundi et hoc 
 voluisse Moysen, dum scribit, eum fovisse aquas ; mun- 
 dum esse ab aeterno, Moysen miracula sua per magiam 
 operatum esse, in qua plus profecerat, quam reliqui 
 Aegyptii ; eum leges suas confinxisse, sacras literas esse 
 somnium, Diabolos salvatum iri, solos Hebreos ab Adamo 
 et Eva originem ducere, reliquos ab iis duobus, quos 
 Deus pridie fecerat, Christum non esse Deum, sed fuisse 
 magum insignem et hominibus illusisse, ac propterea 
 merito suspensum (Italice impiccato) non crucifixum esse, 
 Prophetas et Apostolos fuisse homines nequam, magos et 
 plerosque suspensos denique infinitum foret omnia ejus 
 portenta recensere, quae ipse et libris et viva voce 
 asseruit. Uno verbo ut dicam quicquid unquam ab 
 Ethnicorum Philosophis vel a nostris antiquis et recen- 
 
392 
 
 THE LETTER OF SCIOPPIUS. 
 
 tioribus liaereticis est assertum, id omne ipse propug- 
 navit. Praga Brunsuigam et Helmstadium provenit et 
 ibi aliquandiu, professus dicitur. Inde Francofurtum 
 librum editurus abiit, tandemque Yenetiis in Inquisitionis 
 manus pervenit, ubi diu satis cum fuisset Eomam missus 
 est, et saepius a S. officio, quod vocant, Inquisitionis 
 examinatus, et a summis Theologis convictus, modo 
 quadraginta dies obtinuit quibus deliberaret, modo pro- 
 misit Palinodiam, modo denuo suas nugas defendit, modo 
 alios quadraginta dies impetravit ; sed tandem nihil egit 
 aliud, nisi ut Pontificem et inquisitionem deluderet. Fere 
 igitur biennio post, quam hie in Inquisitionem devenit, 
 nupera die nona Februarii in Supremi Inquisitoris Palatio 
 praesentibus Illustrissimis Cardinalibus S. officii Inquisi- 
 tionis (qui et senio et rerum usu et Theologiae Iurisque 
 scientia reliquis praestant) et Consultoribus Theologis, et 
 saeculari Magistratu, Yrbis Gubernatore : fuit Brunus ille 
 in locum Inquisitionis introductus, ibique genibus flexis 
 sententiam contra se pronuneiari audiit. Ea autem fuit 
 hujusmodi: FTarrata fuit ejus vita, studta et dogmata, et 
 qualem Inquisitio diligentiam in convertendo illo et 
 fraterne monendo adhibuit, qualemque ille pertinaciam 
 et impietatem ostenderit: inde eum degradarunt, ut dici- 
 mus, prorsusque excommunicaruntq: et saeculari magis- 
 tratui cum tradiderunt puniendum, rogantes ut quam 
 clementissime et sine sanguinis profusione puniretur. 
 Haec cum ita essent peracta, nihil ille respondit aliud, 
 nisi minabundus. | Majori forsan cum timore sententiam 
 in me fertis, quam ego accipiam. Sic a Lictoribus 
 Gubernatoris in Carcerem deductus ibique octiduo asser- 
 vatus fuit, si vel nunc errores suos revocare vellet, sed 
 frustra. Hodie igitur ad rogum sive piram deductus cum 
 Salvator is Crucifixi imago ei jam morituro ostenderetur, 
 torvo earn vultu aspernatus rejecit, sicque ustulatus 
 misere periit, renun ciaturus credo in reliquis illis, quos 
 finxit mundis, quonam pacto homines blasphemi et impii 
 a Romanis tractari soleant. Hie itaque mi Rittershusi 
 
 
 
THE LETTER OF SCIOPPIUS. 
 
 393 
 
 modus est, quo contra homines, imo monstra huiusmodi a 
 nobis procedi solet. \ Scire nunc ex te studeam, isne 
 modus tibi probetur : an vero velis licere unicuique 
 quidvis et credere et profiteri. Equidem existimo te non 
 posse eum non probare. Sed illud forte addendum 
 putabis : Lutheranos talia non docere neque credere, ac 
 proinde aliter tractandos esse. Assentimur ergo tibi et 
 nullum prorsus Lutheranum comburimus. Sed de ipso 
 Propheta vestro Luthero aliam forte rationem iniremus. 
 Quid .n. dicis, Rittershusi, si asseram et probare tibi 
 possim, Lutherum non eadem quidem, quae Brunus, sed 
 vel absurdiora magisque horrenda non dico in Convivali- 
 bus sed in iis quos vivus edidit libris, tanquam sententias, 
 dogmata et oracula docuisse ? quid tu hoc non credis ? 
 Mone quaeso, si nondum satis novisti eum qui veritatem 
 tot saeculis sepultam vobis eruit, et faciam ipsa tibi loca 
 indicentur, in quibus succum quincti istius Evangelii 
 deprehendas, quamvis istic Anatomiam Lutheri a Pistorio 
 habere possitis. 1 Nunc si Lutherus Brunus est, quid eo 
 fieri debere censes ? nimirum tardipedi Deo dandum, in- 
 felicibus ustulandum lignis-quid illis postea, qui eum pro 
 Evangelista, Propheta, tertio Elia habent ? hoc tibi cogi- 
 tandum potius relinquo : tantum ut hoc mihi credas, 
 Romanos non ea severitate erga haereticos experiri, qua 
 creduntur, et qua debebant forte erga illos, qui scientes 
 volentes pereunt. Sed de his satis. 2 . Quae nuper a te 
 petii, rogo pro veteri nostra amicitia rires diligenter : qui 
 si tuo nomine similiter quid facere potero, faciam neque 
 fidem neque industriam in me desiderare queas. Sulpitii 
 vitam cum acceperis, quaero quando editionem sis auspi- 
 eaturus, et hoc te amice moneo apud doctos potius quam 
 apud juvenes vel vulgariter eruditos laudem ex ea quae- 
 rere cogites. Satis jam datum aurae isti. Nunc solis 
 majorum gentium literatis placendum quod fiet, si non 
 
 1 Catullus, Ode 26. 
 
 2 At this point the copy iu the Macchiavellizatio of 1621, concludes 
 with the words, Rome, 9 February 1886. 
 
 2 c 
 
394 
 
 THE LETTER OF SCIOPPIUS. 
 
 Haec ni9i 
 amicus non 
 scriberem, 
 quae si ami- 
 cus es in 
 bonam par- 
 tem acci- 
 pies. Mihi 
 liic non seri- 
 tur, nec 
 metitur. 
 Vtinam 
 eadem liber- 
 tate in me 
 usus esses 
 olim ante- 
 quam libros 
 ederem. 
 
 omnia quae in scholiis ciici possunt, attuleris, sed ea, quae 
 velles ab alio magno viro tibi proposita esse. Deinde 
 ne appareat affectatio aliqua multae lectionis vel scientiae, 
 ut q. cum in Gunthero annotas Chaos ab Hebraeo dici 
 quod postea putaut alii de iudustria esse positum, ne 
 Hebraearum literarum rudis videaris. Tertio ne quic- 
 quarn contra Catholicos, maxime de iudustria arrepta 
 occasione, afferas, non quod putem esse cur Catholici sibi 
 a te metuant (erunt .n. illi cum tu non eris) sed quod 
 nolim libris et nomini tuo aditum Italiae et Hispaniae et 
 forte brevi Galliae ipse intercludas. Si enirn Concilium 
 Tridentinum, velut nuper se laboraturum Pontifici Rex 
 Christianissimus promisit, in Gallia recipiatur : actum 
 erit de libris vestris. Et quando tandem, mi Ritterskusi, 
 serio sapere incipies, ut quanto cum animae corporisque 
 periculo inter Novatores vivas, intelligas ? Cede sodes, 
 mi carissime, cede inquam tantis doctoribus, et puta eos 
 melius Biblia intellexisse. Causabonus noster, ut video, 
 bonum tibi exemplum praeire incipit, qui nuper modes- 
 tissimam in hoc genere Epistolam ad Card. Baronium 
 perscripsit. Deus ilium magis illustret, teque illi secu- 
 torem faciat. 
 
 De studiis tuis quid nunc prae manibus habeas vel 
 confectum vel adfectum, scire velim : item num Pandectas 
 praelegere coeperis, postquam a vobis discessit vapulator 
 tuus Wesembecius. Ego sub finem superioris et anni et 
 saeculi Commentarium de Indulgentiis absolveram, qui in 
 Germania imprimetur. nunc Spicilegium Apuleianarum lec- 
 tionum absolvi. mox editioni epistulae cujusdam Dionisii 
 Alexandrini accingar. Inde novam Agellii aeditionem 
 (ne vide) cogito, invito quamvis Fiannio, qui adeo in aula 
 foelix esse incipit, ut illis quoque sordeat, qui iisdem 
 dediti literis humanioribus, quid credis propediem futu- 
 rum ? Erancisci Schotti Itinerarium Italicum vidistine ? 
 Si non vidisti, autor sim istic ut emas. mittam ego prima 
 occasione Romae antiquae et novae delineationes, magno 
 tibi usui futuras in scriptoribus interpretandis. Wacke- 
 
THE LETTER OF SCIOPPIUS. 
 
 395 
 
 rius noster ait se humanissime et prolixissime ad te scrip- 
 sisse, sed a te ne mh 1 quidem Lucillii accipere adhue 
 potuisse. Ynde, inquit, plane suspicor ipsum nobiscum 
 Stomachari, et cum hominibus Idolatris rem amplius 
 habere nolle : quod nobis ferendum est. Ego mi Bitters- 
 husi, non video quid tibi amicitia tanti viri nocere possit. 
 noli quaeso ab humanitate, quam profitemur, tarn alienus 
 ut illud accusari in te forte queat, quod innuere, quam 
 dicere nimio malo. Sed fortassis literae ejus tibi non 
 sunt redditae : id quod ego suspicari malo et hoc etiam 
 modo ipsi te nunc purgo. Tu si me audis, nullam tibi 
 hebdomadam elabi sines, qua nihil ad ipsum scribas, 
 praesertim de literis nostris. Mihi crede vir est ille tui 
 cupidissimus, quique te quamvis non Catholicum juvare et 
 vellit et possit. Lipsius noster, sed secundus, ubi gen- 
 tium est ? quid ejus Sallustius, quid liber de comitibus 
 ubi haerent ? Guldinastus quorsum pervenit, quorsum 
 Kuchelius, Hubnerus, Ignatius ? quaeso mecurn com- 
 munices, si quid de illis certi habes. Uxorem tuam 
 liberosque : D. Queccium, Scherbiumque salvere jubeo. 
 Boma, ut soleo, raptim A.D. 17 Febr. A 0 . 1600. 
 
 Tuus ex animo et nunc et olim, 
 
 G. Schoppius Fr. 
 
 Antonius Faber elegans ille, ut Giphanius aiebat, 
 Jurisc ls . nunc Bomae vivit cum familia in negociis 
 Ducis Lotharingiae, vir optimus et humanissimus, et 
 in vera solidaque jurisprudentia tradenda plus quam 
 Giphanianus. Yalde vellem ad eum scriberes, 
 spondeo tibi amicitiam Yiri minime poenitendam. 
 
 1 = mu, compare Lucian, Muller, Lucilius, ii. v. 27. Lathmann, v. 1138. 
 L)ousa, Luc. Sat. vel., p. 50. 
 
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 EDINBURGH AND LONDON. 
 

 
 
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