Transcriber's Note:
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This e-text is based on the 1903 edition of the original
book. Minor punctuation errors have been tacitly corrected.
Inconsistencies in hyphenation, ligatures, and accented
forms, such as 'sun-flower/sunflower', 'formulæ/formulae',
'Combinatoriâ/Combinatoria', etc., have been retained. Missing footnote
numbers have been added according to sequence.
The Table of Contents has been changed regarding the content
of the first section 'Biographies, Works, and Essays.'
Italic text in the original version has been placed between underscores
(_italic_); passages in small caps have been symbolised by forward
slashes (/small caps/). [oe] represents the respective ligature,
^{text} signifies a superscript passage.
The following passages have been corrected:
# p. 16: 'Beza' --> 'Béza'; 'before Venetian tribunal' --> 'before
the Venetian tribunal'
# p. 18 (sidenote): 'Circuæs' --> 'Circæus'
# p. 30: 'Artic' --> 'Arctic'; 'terrestial' --> 'terrestrial'
# p. 37: 'Mauvissère' --> 'Mauvissière'
# p. 64: 'aquaintance' --> 'acquaintance'
# p. 71: 'bann' --> 'ban'
# p. 131: 'fanastic' --> 'fantastic'
# p. 252: 'philosphy' --> 'philosophy'
# p. 295: 'allmighty' --> 'almighty'
# p. 330: 'intuites' --> 'intuits'
# p. 348: 'docrine' --> 'doctrine'
# p. 353: 'Carriére' --> 'Carrière'
# Index, Bartholmèss, Christian: ' 2, 16, 20, ...' -->
'5, 16, 20, ...'
GIORDANO BRUNO
[Illustration]
[Illustration: _Giordano Bruno._
_Statue by Ettore Ferrari._]
GIORDANO BRUNO
BY
J. LEWIS McINTYRE
M.A. EDIN. AND OXON.: D.SC. EDIN.: ANDERSON LECTURER IN THE
UNIVERSITY OF ABERDEEN
London
MACMILLAN AND CO., /Limited/
NEW YORK: THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1903
_All rights reserved_
To
MY WIFE
PREFACE
This volume attempts to do justice to a philosopher who has hardly
received in England the consideration he deserves. Apart from the _Life
of Giordano Bruno_, by I. Frith (Mrs. Oppenheim), in the English and
Foreign Philosophical Library, 1887, there has been no complete work
in our language upon the poet, teacher, and martyr of Nola, while his
philosophy has been treated only in occasional articles and reviews.
Yet he is recognised by the more liberal-minded among Italians as
the greatest and most daring thinker their country has produced. The
pathos of his life and death has perhaps caused his image to stand out
more strongly in the minds of his countrymen than that of any other of
their leaders of thought. A movement of popular enthusiasm, begun in
1876, resulted, on 9th June 1889, in the unveiling of a statue in Rome
in the Campo dei Fiori, the place on which Bruno was burned. Both in
France and in Germany he has been recognised as the prophet, if not as
the actual founder, of modern philosophy, and as one of the earliest
apostles of freedom of thought and of speech in modern times.
The first part of the present work--the _Life of Bruno_--is based
upon the documents published by Berti, Dufour, and others, and on the
personal references in Bruno's own works. I have tried to throw some
light on Bruno's life in England, on his relations with the French
Ambassador, Mauvissière, and on his share in some of the literary
movements of the time. I have, however, been no more successful than
others in finding any documents referring directly to Bruno's visit to
England.
In the second part--_The Philosophy of Bruno_--I have sought to give
not a systematic outline of Bruno's philosophy as a whole under the
various familiar headings, which would prove an almost impossible
task, but a sketch, as nearly as possible in Bruno's own words, of the
problems which interested this mind of the sixteenth century, and of
the solutions offered. The first chapter points out the sources from
which Bruno derived the materials of his thinking. The succeeding
chapters are devoted to some of the main works of Bruno,--the _Causa_
(Chapter II.), _Infinito_ and _De Immenso_ (Chapters III. and IV.), _De
Minimo_ (Chapter V.), _Spaccio_ (Chapter VI.), and _Heroici Furori_
(Chapter VII.),--and contain as little as possible of either criticism
or comment, except in so far as these are implied in the selection
and arrangement of the material. I have adopted this method partly
because Bruno's works are still comparatively unknown to the English
reader, and partly because his style, full as it is of obscurities,
redundances, repetitions, lends itself to selection, but not easily to
compact exposition. Several phases of Bruno's activity I have left
almost untouched--his poetry, his mathematical theories, his art of
memory. The eighth chapter turns upon his philosophy of religion, about
which there has been much controversy; while the last attempts to
bring him into relation and comparison with some of the philosophers
who succeeded him. I subjoin a list of works and articles which are
of importance for the study of Bruno. Throughout I have referred for
Bruno's works to the recent Italian edition of the Latin works, issued
at the public expense, 1879 to 1891 (three volumes in eight parts,
with introductions, etc.), and to Lagarde's edition of the Italian
works--Gotha, 1888. Of the latter there are two volumes, but the paging
is continuous from one to the other, page 401 beginning the second
volume.
J. LEWIS M'INTYRE.
/University of Aberdeen/,
16_th July_ 1903.
CONTENTS
PAGE
/Biographies, Works, and Essays/ xiii
PART I
/Life of Bruno/ 1
PART II
/Philosophy of Bruno/ 119
CHAPTER I
/The Sources of the Philosophy/ 121
CHAPTER II
/The Foundations of Knowledge/ 153
CHAPTER III
/The Infinite Universe--The Mirror of God/ 180
CHAPTER IV
/Nature and the Living Worlds/ 203
CHAPTER V
/The Last and the Least Things: Atoms and Soul-Monads/ 223
CHAPTER VI
/The Practical Philosophy of Bruno/ 252
CHAPTER VII
/The Higher Life/ 277
CHAPTER VIII
/Positive Religions and the Religion of Philosophy/ 294
CHAPTER IX
/Bruno in the History of Philosophy/ 323
INDEX 361
BIOGRAPHIES AND GENERAL WORKS ON BRUNO
Bartholmèss, Christian, _Jordano Bruno_, vol. i., Paris, 1846--on the
life and times of Bruno; vol. 2, 1847--on his works and philosophy.
Carrière, Moritz, _Die philosophische Weltanschauung der
Reformationszeit_, 1st ed., 1847; 2nd ed., 1887.
Berti, Domenico, _Giordano Bruno da Nola, sua vita e sua dottrina_.
Appeared first in the _Nuova Antologia_, 1867. Some new documents were
published in _Documenti intorno a Giordano Bruno da Nola_, 1880. A
second edition of the Life, including all the documents, appeared in
1889.
Dufour, _G. B. à Genève_ (1578). _Documents inédits_: Genève, 1884.
Also given in Berti's second edition.
Sigwart, _Die Lebensgeschichte G. B.'s_ (_Verzeichniss der Doctoren_,
etc., Tübingen, 1880), a paper which is expanded and corrected in his
_Kleine Schriften_, 1st series (pp. 49-124 and 293-304): Freiburg i.
B., 1889.
Brunnhofer, _G. B.'s Weltanschauung und Verhängniss_: Leipzig, 1882. A
vigorous eulogy of Bruno and his work.
Frith, _Life of Giordano Bruno_: London, 1887.
Riehl, _Giordano Bruno, Zur Erinnerung an den 17. Februar, 1600_:
Leipzig, 1st ed., 1889; 2nd, 1900.
Kühlenbeck ("Landseck") _Bruno, der Märtyrer der neuen Weltanschauung_:
Leipzig, 1890.
Pognisi, _G. B. e l'Archivio di San Giovanni Decollato_; Torino, etc.,
1891.
Italian biographies and pamphlets are innumerable. Among the best are--
Mariano, _G. B. La Vita e l'uomo_: Roma, 1881.
Levi, _G. B. o la Religione del Pensiero_: Torino, 1887.
Morselli, _G. B., Commemorazione_, etc.: Torino, 1888. Morselli regards
Bruno as the precursor of all modern philosophy, and as prophet of most
of the scientific discoveries of the 19th century.
Tocco, _G. B. Conferenza_: Firenze, 1886. On Bruno's religion and
philosophy of religion.
Of writers in English on Bruno may also be named:--Owen, in his
_Sceptics of the Italian Renaissance_: London, 1893 (pp. 244-342);
Daniel Brinton and Thomas Davidson, _G. B., Philosopher and Martyr,
Two Addresses_: Philadelphia, 1890; Plumptre, in his _Studies in
Little-known Subjects_: London, 1898 (pp. 61-127); Whittaker in _Essays
and Notices_, 1895 (reprinted from _Mind_, April 1884 and July 1887);
the _Quarterly Review_ for October 1902, "Giordano Bruno in England";
and R. Adamson, _The Development of Modern Philosophy_: Edinburgh and
London, 1903, vol. 2 (pp. 23-44).
PART I
LIFE OF BRUNO
I
[Sidenote: Birth and Family.]
In 1548, at a stormy period of the history of Italy, Bruno was
born in the township of Nola, lying within the kingdom of Naples,
which at that time was under Spanish rule. His father, Giovanni,
was a soldier, probably of good family, and in deference, it may be
supposed, to the King of Spain, the son was named Filippo; the more
famous name of Giordano was only assumed when he entered a religious
order. Through his mother, Fraulissa Savolina, a German or Saxon
origin has been claimed for Bruno; there were several inhabitants of
Teutonic name in the village of his birth--suggesting a settlement of
_Landknechts_,--and the name, Fraulissa, has a German ring;[1] but
Bruno himself nowhere in the addresses or works published in Germany
makes any hint of his own connection with the race, while the name was
probably a generic term for the wife of a soldier, borrowed from the
Swiss or German men-at-arms.[2]
[Sidenote: Nola.]
Their home was on the lower slopes of Mount Cicala, which rises above
Nola, and amid its laughing gardens Bruno first imbibed a love of
nature, which marked him out from so many of his contemporaries. The
soil of Nola is among the most fertile of all Italy, and the pleasant
plain in which it lies is ringed with hills which lie shadowy under
the clear sky; most prominent and most mysterious is Vesuvius, a
few miles to the south. But the charms of natural beauty in Nola
were surpassed by those of picturesque antiquity: the half-mythical
Pelasgians founded it before the walls of Rome were begun; they were
followed by the Chalcidians of Cuma, from whom the Nolans inherited a
Greek spirit, calm yet quick, eager in the pursuit of wisdom and in
the love of beauty, which down even to the 16th century distinguished
them above other Italians. There followed a chequered history in
which the Samnites, the early Romans, Hannibal, Sulla, and Spartacus,
played successive parts. Nola was the death-place of Augustus, and to
that fact owed its greatness in Imperial times, when its two great
amphitheatres and multitude of beautiful temples topped a great city,
shut in by massive walls, with twelve gates that opened to all parts
of Italy. Evil times were to come; Alaric, the Saracens, Manfred, and
others had their will of Nola, and earthquakes, flood, and plague
reduced it by the end of the 15th century to one tenth of its former
self. It had its own martyrs, for the old faith and for the new; one of
the latter, Pomponio Algerio, suffered during Bruno's lifetime a fate
that foreshadowed his own; accused while a student at Padua of contempt
for the Christian religion, he was imprisoned in Padua, Venice, and
Rome, and finally burnt at the stake. Its sons never lost their love
for the mother-town; Bruno speaks of it always with affection, as to
him "the garden of Italy"; of a nephew of Ambrogio Leone, the historian
of its antiquities, we are told that, on returning to Nola after a
few days' absence, seeming ill with longing, he threw himself on the
earth and kissed it with unspeakable joy.[3] Perhaps the suggestion
of Bartholmèss is not groundless, that the volcanic soil and air of
Nola influenced the character of the people as of the wine. "Hence the
delicacy of their senses, vivacity of gesture, mobility of humour, and
passionate ardour of spirit."[4]
[Sidenote: Childhood of Bruno.]
Of the childhood of Bruno little is to be learned. Cicala, his home,
he describes as a "little village of four or five cottages not too
magnificent."[5] In all probability his upbringing was simple, his
surroundings homely. We need not go further, and suppose that his
surroundings were not only homely, but degraded and vicious.[6] His
father, although a soldier by profession, seems to have been a man
of some culture; at least he was a friend of the poet Tansillo, who
excited the admiration of the young Bruno, and first turned his mind
towards the Muses. Tansillo's poetry, following the taste of the age,
was not too refined, but its passion called forth a ready reflection
in the ardent nature of the lad. It was perhaps the only door to
the higher artistic life of the time which was open to Bruno; the
neighbours, if we may judge from satiric references in the Italian
Dialogues, were of a rough homely type. Bruno tells, for example,[7]
how Scipio Savolino (perhaps his uncle) used to confess all his sins
to Don Paulino, Curé of S. Primma that is in a village near Nola
(Cicala), on a Holy Friday, of which "though they were many and great,"
his boon companion the Curé absolved him without difficulty. Once was
enough, however, for in the following years, without many words or
circumstances, Scipio would say to Don Paulino, "Father mine, the sins
of a year ago to-day, you know them"; and Don Paulino would reply,
"Son, thou knowest the absolution of a year ago to-day--go in peace and
sin no more!"
One incident of Bruno's childhood, which has been thought a promise of
extraordinary powers, he himself relates in the _Sigillus Sigillorum_.
Describing the different causes of "concentration,"[8] (_Contractio_),
he instances fear among them:--"I myself, when still in swaddling
clothes, was once left alone, and saw a great and aged serpent, which
had come out of a hole in the wall of the house; I called my father,
who was in the next room; he ran with others of the household, sought
for a stick, growled at the presence of the serpent, uttering words
of vehement anger, while the others expressed their fear for me,--and
I understood their words no less clearly, I believe, than I should
understand them now. After several years, waking up as if from a dream,
I recalled all this to their memory, nothing being further from the
minds of my parents; they were greatly astonished."[9] As well they
might be! It is hardly right, however, to see in the story evidence
of marvellous faculty showing itself in infancy, beyond that of an
impressionable and tenacious mind. No doubt the drama had been repeated
many times by the parents for behoof of visitors.[10]
Superstitious beliefs abounded among Bruno's fellow-countrymen; many
of them clung to him through life, were moulded by him into a place in
his philosophy, and bore fruit in his later teaching and practice of
natural magic. Thus we are told how the spirits of the earth and of the
waters may at times, when the air is pure and calm, become visible
to the eye. He himself had seen them on Beech Hill, and on Laurel
Hill, and they frequently appeared to the inhabitants of these places,
sometimes playing tricks upon them, stealing and hiding their cattle,
but afterwards returning the property to their stalls. Other spirits
were seen about Nola by the temple of Portus in a solitary place, and
even under a certain rock at the roots of Mount Cicala, formerly a
cemetery for the plague-stricken; he and many others had suffered the
experience when passing at night of being struck with a multitude of
stones, which rebounded from the head and other parts of the body with
great force, in quick succession, but did no injury either to him or
to any of the others.[11] It was at Nola that Bruno saw what seemed a
ball or beam of fire, but was "really" one of the living beings that
inhabit the ethereal space; "as it came moving swiftly in a straight
line, it almost touched the roofs of the houses and would have struck
the face of Mount Cicala, but it sprang up into the air and passed
over."[12] To understand the mind of Bruno, it is necessary to remember
the atmosphere of superstition in which he lived as a child.
[Sidenote: Unity of Nature.]
One lesson from nature was early implanted which gave body and form
to Bruno's later views: he had seen from Cicala, the fair mount, how
Vesuvius looked dark, rugged, bare, barren, and repellent; but when
later he stood on the slopes of Vesuvius itself, he discovered that
it was a perfect garden, rich in all the fairest forms and colours,
and luxurious bounty of fruits, while now it was his own beloved hill,
Cicala, that gloomed dim and formless in the distance. He learnt once
for all that the divine majesty of nature is everywhere the same, that
distance alters the look but never the nature or substance of things,
that the earth is everywhere full of life,--and beyond the earth the
whole universe, he inferred, must be the same.[13]
II
[Sidenote: Naples.]
[Sidenote: 1563.]
[Sidenote: The Dominicans.]
When about eleven years of age, Bruno passed from Nola to Naples in
order to receive the higher education of the day--Humanity, Logic,
and Dialectic,--attending both public and private courses; and in his
fifteenth year (1562 or 1563) he took the habit of St. Dominic, and
entered the monastery of that order in Naples. Of his earlier teachers
he mentions only two,--"il Sarnese," who is probably Vincenzo Colle da
Sarno, a writer of repute, and Fra Theophilo da Vairano, a favourite
exponent of Aristotle, who was afterwards called to lecture in Rome.
Much ingenuity has been exercised in attempting to find a reason for
Bruno's choice of a religious life; but the Church was almost the
_only_ career open to a clever and studious boy, whose parents were
neither rich nor powerful. The Dominican Order into which he was taken,
although the narrowest, and the most bigoted,[14] was all-powerful in
the kingdom, and directed the machinery of the Inquisition. Naples
was governed by Spain with a firm hand, and the Dominican was the
chosen order of Spain. Just at this time there were riots against the
Inquisition, to which an end was put by the beheading and burning of
two of the ringleaders.[15] The Waldensian persecution was then fiercer
and more brutal than it had ever been; on a day of 1561 eighty-eight
victims were butchered with the same knife, their bodies quartered,
and distributed along the road to Calabria.[16] Plague, famine,
earthquake, the Turks, and the Brigands, under "King" Marconi, swelled
the wave of disaster that had come upon the kingdom of Naples. Little
wonder then that one whose aim was a life of learning should seek it
under the mantle of the strong Dominican order.
[Sidenote: The Cloister.]
[Sidenote: 1572.]
The cloister stood above Naples, amidst beautiful gardens, and had been
the home of St. Thomas Aquinas, whose gentle spirit still breathed
within its walls. In its church, amid the masterpieces of Giovanni
Merliano of Nola, "the Buonarotti of Naples," stood the image of Christ
which had spoken with the Angelic Doctor, and had approved his works.
Long afterwards, at his trial, Bruno spoke of having the works of St.
Thomas always by him, "continually reading, studying and re-studying
them, and holding them dear." On his entry into the order, Bruno laid
down, as was customary, the name Filippo, and took that of Giordano, by
which, except for a short period, he was thenceforth known. After his
year's probation he took the vows before Ambrosio Pasqua, the Prior,
and in due course, probably about 1572, became priest, his first mass
being said in Campagna.[17]
[Sidenote: Processes for heresy.]
[Sidenote: 1576.]
[Sidenote: Rome.]
It was the age of the counter-reformation which had been inaugurated
by Loyola, its course set by the decision of the Council of Trent "to
erase with fire and sword the least traces of heresy," and Bruno early
began to feel his fetters, and to suffer from their weight. During his
noviciate even, a writing had been drawn up against him, because he
had given away some images of the saints, retaining for himself only a
crucifix, and again because he had advised a fellow-novice, who was
reading _The Seven Delights of the Madonna_ to throw it aside and take
rather _The Lives of the Fathers_ or some such book. But the writing
was merely intended to terrify him, and the same day was torn up by
the Prior.[18] In 1576, however, the suspicions of his superiors took
a more active turn, and a process was instituted in which the matter
of the noviciate was supported by charges of later date, of which
Bruno never learned the details. He believed the chief count was an
apology for the Arian heresy made by him in the course of a private
conversation, and rather on the ground of its scholastically correct
form than on that of its truth.[19] In any case Bruno left Naples while
the process was pending, and came to Rome, where he put up in the
cloister of Minerva. His accusers did not leave him in peace, however:
a third process was threatened at Rome with 130 articles;[20] and, on
learning from a friendly source that some works of St. Chrysostom and
St. Hieronymus, with a commentary of the arch-heretic Erasmus, had been
discovered--he had, as he supposed, safely disposed of them before
leaving Naples,--Bruno yielded to discretion, abandoned his monkly
habit, and escaped from Rome. From this time began a life of restless
wandering throughout Europe which ended only after sixteen years, when
he fell into the power of the Inquisition at Venice.
III
[Sidenote: Noli.]
[Sidenote: 1576?]
[Sidenote: Savona. Turin. Venice.]
Bruno, who resumed for the time his baptismal name of Filippo,
journeyed first to the picturesque little town of Noli, in the Gulf
of Genoa, whither a more famous exile, Dante, had also come. There
he lived for four or five months, teaching grammar to boys, and
"the Sphere"--that is, astronomy and cosmography, with a dash of
metaphysics,--to certain gentlemen. Thence he came to Savona, to
Turin,[21] and to Venice. In Venice six weeks were spent, probably in
the vain attempt to find work--the printing offices and the schools
were closed on account of the plague which was carrying off thousands
of the inhabitants; but the time was utilised in printing the first
of his books--no longer extant--on the _Signs of the Times_,[22]
written, like so many other works of other people, to put together a
few "danari." It was shown to a reverend Father Remigio of Florence,
therefore was probably orthodox, or its unorthodoxy was veiled.
This work may have been the first of Bruno's writings on the art of
memory or on Lully's art of knowing. Another work belonging to this
early period was the _Ark of Noah_. It was probably written before
he left Naples, and was dedicated to Pope Pius V., but is not known
to have been published: its title is that of a mystical writing of
Hugo of St. Victor, but according to the account in the _Cena_,[23]
it was an allegorical and probably satirical work, somewhat after the
fashion of Bruno's _Cabala_:--The animals had assembled to settle a
disputed question of rank, and the ass was in great danger of losing
his pre-eminent post,--in the poop of the Ark,--because his power lay
in hoofs rather than in horns; when we consider Bruno's frequent and
bitter invocations of Asinity, we can hardly avoid seeing in the work
an allusion to the credulity and ignorance of the monkhood.
[Sidenote: Padua.]
[Sidenote: Brescia.]
[Sidenote: Milan.]
[Sidenote: Bergamo.]
[Sidenote: Chambéry.]
[Sidenote: Geneva.]
[Sidenote: May 1579.]
[Sidenote: Did Bruno adopt Calvinism?]
[Sidenote: Freedom of speech.]
[Sidenote: De la Faye.]
"From Venice,"[24] Bruno tells us, "I went to Padua, where I found
some fathers of the order of St. Dominic, whom I knew; they persuaded
me to resume the habit, even though I should not wish to return to the
order, as it was more convenient for travel: with this idea I went to
Bergamo, and had a robe made of cheap white cloth, placing over it the
_scapular_ which I kept when I left Rome." On his way to Bergamo he
seems to have touched at Brescia and Milan, at the former place curing,
"with vinegar and polypod," a monk who claimed to have the spirit of
prophecy.[25] At Milan he first heard of his future patron and friend,
Sir Philip Sidney.[26] From Bergamo he was making for Lyons, but at
Chambéry was warned that he would meet with little sympathy there,
and turned accordingly towards Geneva, the home of exiled reformers
of all nationalities, but especially of Italians. It is uncertain how
the time was distributed among these places,--possibly Bruno spent a
winter, as Berti suggests, at Chambéry, having crossed the Alps the
previous autumn;--what _is_ certain is, that he arrived at Geneva in
April or May of 1579. Under the date May 22, of that year, in the
book of the Rector of the Academy at Geneva, is inscribed the name
_Philippus Brunus_, in his own hand. On his arrival at the hostelry
in Geneva, he was called upon by a distinguished exile and reformer,
the Marquis of Vico, a Neapolitan. To the court at Venice, Bruno gave
the following account of this visit and of his life in Geneva:--"He
asked me who I was, and whether I had come to stay there and to profess
the religion of the city, to which, after I had given an account
of myself and of my reasons for abandoning the Order, I said that I
had no intention of professing the religion of the city, not knowing
what it was, and that therefore I wished rather to remain living in
freedom and security, than in any other manner. I was persuaded, in
any case, to lay aside the habit I wore; so I had made for myself
from the cloth a pair of trews and other things, while the Marquis
himself, with other Italians, gave me a sword, hat, cape, and other
necessaries of clothing, and enabled me to support myself so far by
correcting proofs. I stayed about two months, and attended at times
the preachings and discussions, both of Italians and Frenchmen who
lectured and preached in the city; among others, I heard several times
Nicolo Balbani of Lucca, who read on the epistles of St. Paul, and
preached the Gospels; but having been told that I could not remain
there long if I did not make up my mind to adopt the religion of
the city, for if not I should receive no assistance, I resolved to
leave."[27] When the inscription of Bruno's name in the book of the
Rector of the Academy was found, a doubt appeared to be thrown upon
the truth or frankness of this evidence about himself. The regulations
of 1559 had made it necessary for intending members to accept and sign
the Calvinist confession of faith; but from 1576 onward, it was only
required that they should belong to the community, a condition Bruno
fulfilled by attending the ministrations of Nicolo Balbani at the
Italian Church; this would account also for his name being in the list
of the Protestant refugees. The real cause of his departure from Geneva
has, however, been revealed by the documents which Dufour published
in 1884.[28] On Thursday August 6, 1579, "one Philippe Jordan called
Brunus, an Italian," was brought before the Council, for having "caused
to be printed certain replies and invectives against M. de la Faye,
enumerating twenty errors made by the latter in one of his lectures."
De la Faye was then Professor of Philosophy in the Academy, of which in
1580 he became Rector, resigning that post for the theological chair a
few years later. His one title to fame is, that he was the biographer
of Béza, and he was in no sense a strong man; all the more bitter and
intense was his anger at the intruding Italian who criticised his
views, and--a far graver crime--disparaged his learning. Bruno, heard
before a body of councillors, and having confessed his fault, was to
be set free on giving thanks to God and an apology to M. de la Faye,
admitting his fault before the Consistory (the governing body of the
Church in Geneva), and tearing up the defamatory libel.[29] But when
he did appear, on August 13, the philosopher adopted a different
tone:--"Philippe Brun appeared before the Consistory--to admit his
fault, in so far as he had erred in doctrine, and called the ministers
of the Church of Geneva '_pedagogues_,' asserting that he neither
would excuse nor condemn himself in that, for it had not been reported
truly, although he understood that one, Anthony de la Faye, had made
such a report. Inquired whom he had called pedagogues, he replied
with many excuses and assertions that he had been persecuted, making
many conjectures and numerous other accusations."----Finally, "it was
decided that he be duly admonished, that he have to admit his fault,
and that, should he refuse to do so, he be forbidden communion, and
sent back again to the Council, who are prayed not to endure such a
person, a disturber of the school; and in the meantime he shall have to
admit his fault. He replied that he repented of having committed the
fault, for which he would make amends by a better conversation, and
further confessed that he had uttered calumny against De la Faye. The
admonitions and exclusions from the communion were carried out, and
he was sent back with admonitions."[30] Apparently these steps were
effective; the required apology was made, and on August 27 Bruno was
absolved from the form of excommunication passed upon him. No doubt,
however, life in Geneva was made less easy for him, and he left soon
after. The sentence of excommunication passed by the Consistory--the
only one within its power--does not prove that Bruno was a full member
of the Protestant community, nor that he partook of the communion,
which at his trial in Venice he absolutely denied ever having done; but
formal excommunication must have entailed many unpleasantnesses, so
that his appeal for remission is quite comprehensible. His unfortunate
experiences in Geneva account, however, for the extreme dislike of
Calvinism which his writings express. Of the two reformed schools,
Lutheranism was by far the more tolerant, and gave him, later, the
more cordial welcome. Calvin, we must remember, whose spirit continued
in Theodore Béza, had written a pamphlet on Servetus, a "faithful
exposition of the errors of Michael Servetus, a short refutation of
the same, in which it is shown to be lawful to coerce heretics by
the sword." It was more probably, however, Bruno's attitude towards
the Aristotelian philosophy which brought him into conflict with the
authorities: Geneva was as thoroughly convinced of the all-wisdom of
Aristotle as Rome.[31] Béza had written to Ramus that they had decided
once for all, _ne tantillum ab Aristotelis sententiâ deflectere_, and
Arminius, when a youth of twenty-two, was expelled from Geneva for
teaching the Dialectic of Ramus.
IV
[Sidenote: Lyons.]
[Sidenote: Toulouse.]
[Sidenote: 1579-81]
After a short stay in Lyons, where "he could not make enough to keep
him alive," Bruno passed to Toulouse, which boasted then of one of the
most flourishing universities in the world. In his account of his life
before the Venetian tribunal, he gives two years and a half to Toulouse,
but he must have left it before the end of 1581, so that his actual
stay was only two years. While he was holding private classes on the
Sphere, and other philosophical subjects, a chair at the University
fell vacant. Bruno was persuaded to become a candidate; to that end
he took a Doctorate (in Theology), and was allowed to compete. By the
free election of the students, as the custom was, he was chosen for
the chair, and thereafter for two sessions lectured on Aristotle's _De
Anima_ and on other matters. Part of these lectures is perhaps given to
us in the works published afterwards at Paris. It was fortunate that
the University did not require of its ordinary professors that they
should attend mass, as was the case, for example, at the Sorbonne.
Bruno could not have done so owing to his excommunication, but that he
was unconscious of any want of sympathy towards the Catholic Church is
shown by his visit in Toulouse to the confessional of a Jesuit.
The city was not generally favourable to heretics, and in 1616 Lucilio
Vanini was burnt there for his opinions. A cancelled phrase in the
evidence suggests that Bruno's departure from Toulouse was owing to
disputes and difficulties regarding his doctrine, but his alleged
reason was the civil war that was then raging in the south of France,
with Henry of Navarre in the field. While at Toulouse, Bruno seems to
have completed a work in more than one volume, the _Clavis Magna_, or
"Great Key," a general, and as Bruno thought, a final textbook on the
art of memory:--"All the ideas of the older writers on this subject (so
far as we are able to make out from the books that have come to our
hands), their doctrines and methods, have their fitting place in our
invention, which is a superlatively pregnant one, and has appropriated
to it the book of the Great Key."[32] One volume only, it appears, was
published by Bruno, and that in England, the _Sigillus Sigillorum_.
[Sidenote: Works published in Paris.]
[Sidenote: _De Umbris._]
[Sidenote: _Ars Memoriæ._]
[Sidenote: _Cantus Circæus_.]
To Paris Bruno came about the close of 1581, and almost at once
sprang into fame. A course of thirty lectures on "The thirty divine
attributes" (as given by Thomas Aquinas) brought him the offer of an
ordinary professorship, but this he could not take, being unable to
attend mass. However, his fame reached the ears of the king, Henry the
Third, who summoned him to his presence, to know among other things
"whether the memory Bruno had, and the art of memory he professed,
were natural or due to magic." Bruno proved to him that a powerful
memory was a natural product, and dedicated to him a book on the
Art of Memory. Henry III. was the son of an Italian mother, and had
a keen, if uncritical and dilettante, love of learning. At the time
Bruno arrived in Paris philosophy was one of the king's chief hobbies,
and the fact had a great influence on Bruno's future. During his stay
in Paris Bruno published several works, of which the first perhaps
was the "Shadows of Ideas" (_De Umbris Idearum_), 1582, dedicated to
Henry III., along with which, but without a separate frontispiece,
was the _Art of Memory_ (_Ars Memoriæ Jordani Bruni_); there followed
"The Incantation of Circe" (_Cantus Circæus_), 1582, dedicated to
Prince Henry of Angoulême, and edited by Regnault. The _De Umbris_
gives the metaphysical basis of the art of memory, the _Ars Memoriæ_
a psychological analysis of the faculty, and an account of the theory
of the art itself, while the _Cantus Circæus_ offers first a practical
application, and secondly a more elementary account of the theory and
practice of the system. Obscurity was, in those days of pedantry, one
of the safest ways of securing a hearing: there is nothing of value in
Bruno's art except the philosophy by which he sought to support it--a
renovated Neoplatonism. It has been pointed out, however, "that the art
was a convenient means of introducing Bruno to strange universities,
gaining him favour with the great, or helping him out of pressing money
troubles. It was his exoteric philosophy with which he could carefully
drape his philosophy of religion hostile to the Church, and ride as a
hobby horse in his unfruitful humours."[33] There can be no question of
Bruno's own belief in it; it was not, for example, a cipher language
by which he covered his real thoughts: the Copernican theory is not,
as Berti says, absent from the Parisian writings, rather it is forced
obtrusively into them.[34]
[Sidenote: _De Compendiosâ Architecturâ, etc._]
[Sidenote: _Il Candelaio._]
In Paris was published also the "Compendious Architecture" (_De
Compendiosâ Architecturâ et Complemento Artis Lullii_), 1582, dedicated
to Giovanni Moro, the Venetian Ambassador in Paris. It is the earliest
of the Lullian works in which Bruno expounds or comments upon the art
of Raymond Lully, a logical calculus and mnemonic scheme in one, that
attracted many imitators up to and after Bruno's time. In the same year
appeared a work of a very different stamp, _Il Candelaio_, or "The
Torchbearer," "a comedy by Bruno of Nola, _Academico di nulla academia,
detto il fastidito: In tristitia hilaris, hilaritate tristis_." It is
a satire upon some of the chief vices of the age--in the forefront
pedantry, superstition, and sordid love. Without great dramatic
power--the characters are personified types, not individuals--it has
been judged to be second to none of the comedies of the time, in
spirit, wit, and pert comedy. It certainly excels in many respects the
_Cortegiana_ of Aretino, to which it is similar in character. It is
equally realistic in the sense that it "calls a spade a spade," and
does not shrink from representing vice as speaking in its own language.
Bruno is not, however, to be blamed for an obscenity which was _de
rigueur_ in the literature of the time. But although the humour is
broad and occasionally amusing, there is no grace, no lighter touch;
the picture is all dark. The attack upon the pedant, however, strikes a
keynote of Bruno's life; in him he saw the greatest enemy his teaching
had to face, and therefore he struck at him whenever the opportunity
offered.
[Sidenote: The University.]
Owing perhaps to some of these works, Bruno was granted an
Extraordinary Readership at the university. There were, however, two
universities in Paris, and it is uncertain at which Bruno taught:
they were the Sorbonne, catholic and conservative, the censorship
of which must have passed his Parisian works, and the College of
France--following the liberal policy of its founder, Francis II.,
declaring war against pedantry in general, and the Jesuit Society in
particular.[35] As has been said, Bruno was at this time eager to be
taken back into the fold of the Church, and turned to the Jesuits for
assistance, so that the latter college could hardly have been his
habitation; on the other hand, his revolutionary teaching could not
fail in the end to excite the indignation of the Sorbonne pupils:
Aristotle was, here as elsewhere, "divine." Yet when Bruno returned
to Paris in 1585, and when he was on the eve of a second departure,
he recalled with pleasure the humanity and kindness shown to him by
rectors and professors on his first visit. They had honoured him by
"the continued presence of the more learned at his lectures both
public and private, so that any title rather than that of stranger was
befitting him with this kindly parent of letters."[36] And Nostitz,
one of Bruno's pupils, remembered with admiration, thirty-three
years later, the skill and versatility of his teacher: "He was able
to discourse impromptu on any subject suggested, to speak without
preparation extensively and eloquently, and he attracted many pupils
and admirers in Paris."[37]
But Bruno's evil genius would not allow him rest; whether on account,
as he himself says, of "tumults,"--which may mean either the civil
war[38] or an active resistance to his own teaching on the part of
the youth of Paris,--or because of the attraction of a less bigoted
country, he was drawn in 1583 to exchange Paris for London.
V
[Sidenote: England, 1583.]
England under Elizabeth was renowned for its tolerance; all manner
of religious refugees found there a place of safety: to Italians its
welcome was particularly cordial, their language was the favoured one
of the court, and Elizabeth herself eagerly saw and spoke with them
in their own tongue. Florio--an Italian in spite of having had London
for his birthplace, the friend of Shakespeare, of Spenser and Ben
Jonson--was constantly at court; two of Elizabeth's physicians were
Italian, as were several of the teachers of the universities. Perhaps
the happiest days of Bruno's troubled life were spent here; he had
access to the most brilliant literary society of the time; he was able
to speak, write, and publish in his own tongue, and in consequence gave
all the most polished and brilliant of his works to the world during
this period.
[Sidenote: Oxford, 1583.]
[Sidenote: The University and Aristotle.]
In April, May, and June of 1583 Bruno was in Oxford, although the
university and college records make no mention of his name. He must
have known it as a stronghold of Aristotelianism; on its statutes stood
"that Bachelors and Masters who did not follow Aristotle faithfully
were liable to a fine of five shillings for every point of divergence,
and for every fault committed against the Logic of the Organon"; and
that this was no dead law had been proved a few years before when one
Barebones was degraded and expelled because of an attack on Aristotle
from the standpoint of Ramus. The only living subject of teaching was
theology, there was no real science, and no real scholarship. This
peaceful school was not likely to be gratified by the letter which
Bruno wrote asking permission to lecture at Oxford; it is printed in
the _Explicatio Triginta Sigillorum_:[39] "To the most excellent the
Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford, its most famous Doctors
and celebrated Masters--Salutation from Philotheus Jordanus Brunus
of Nola, Doctor of a more scientific theology, professor of a purer
and less harmful learning, known in the chief universities of Europe,
a philosopher approved and honourably received, a stranger with
none but the uncivilised and ignoble, a wakener of sleeping minds,
tamer of presumptuous and obstinate ignorance, who in all respects
professes a general love of man, and cares not for the Italian more
than for the Briton, male more than female, the mitre more than the
crown, the toga more than the coat of mail, the cowled more than the
uncowled; but loves him who in intercourse is the more peaceable,
polite, friendly and useful--(Brunus) whom only propagators of folly
and hypocrites detest, whom the honourable and studious love, whom
noble minds applaud." The epistle which so begins is the preface to a
work on the art of discovering, arranging, and remembering facts of
knowledge, by which Bruno hoped to commend himself to the English, as
he had succeeded in commending himself to the French universities.
He attempted to disarm prejudice by sheltering under the twofold
truth--"if this writing appears to conflict with the common and
approved faith, understand that it is put forward by me _not as
absolutely true_, but as more consonant with our senses and our reason,
or at least less dissonant than the other side of the antithesis. And
remember, that we are not so much eager to show our own knowledge, as
moved by the desire of showing the weakness of the common philosophy,
which thrusts forward what is mere opinion as if demonstratively
proved, and of making it clear by our discussion (if the gods grant it)
how much in harmony with regulated sense, in consonance with the truth
of the substance of things, is that which the garrulous multitude of
plebeian philosophers ridicule as foreign to sense."
[Sidenote: Alasco of Poland.]
[Sidenote: The disputation.]
[Sidenote: The _Cena_.]
[Sidenote: The _Causa_.]
He was coldly received, however; in common-sense England his new art
could evoke no enthusiasm, and his real and vital doctrines met with
nothing but opposition at the old university--"the widow of true
science," Bruno calls it. From the 10th to the 13th June the Polish
prince, Alasco, was in Oxford, and disputations were held in his honour
as well as banquets. Among others, Bruno disputed publicly in presence
of the prince and some of the English nobility.[40] Alasco appears to
have caused some excitement to the Elizabethan court. According to Mr.
Faunt (of the secretary's office) he had been General in more than
forty fought battles, spoke Latin and Italian well, and was of great
revenues. Mauvissière grumbled in a letter to the French king, that
the Palatine Lasque and a Scottish ambassador seemed to be governing
the court.[41] The real object of the visit was apparently political,
to prevent the traffic in arms between England and Muscovy.[42]
Whether Alasco succeeded in this design or not, he seems to have found
life in England too fast for his purse--"A learned man of graceful
figure, with a very long beard, in decorous and beautiful attire,
who was received kindly by the Queen, with great honour and praise
by the nobles, by the university of Oxford with erudite delectations
(_oblectationibus_) and varied spectacles; but after four months,
being harassed for debt, he withdrew secretly."[43] The arrival of
this tragic-comic figure in Oxford appears to have gratified the city
and university; he was most hospitably received, and put up at Christ
Church. On the following day there was a dinner at All Souls, at which
"he was solemnlie satisfied with scholarlie exercises and courtlie
fare." That evening was performed a "pleasant comedie," the _Rivales_,
and on the following night a "statelie tragedie," _Dido_,[44] and there
were in the intervals shows, disputations in philosophy, physics,
and divinity, in all of which, we are glad to know, "these learned
opponents, respondents, and moderators, acquitted themselves like
themselves, sharplie and soundlie." Let us hope that Bruno too, who
took part in one of these disputations, made this impression. According
to his own account the protagonist put forward by the university could
not reply to one of his arguments, and was left fifteen times by as
many syllogisms, "like a hen in the stubble," resorting accordingly
to incivility and abuse, in face of the patience and humanity of the
Neapolitan "reared under a kinder sky." The result was unfortunate for
Bruno; it put an end to the public lectures, which he was giving at
the time, on the Immortality of the Soul and on the "Five-fold Sphere."
The same month he returned to London, and shortly after published
the _Cena_ (Ash-Wednesday Supper), in which he ridiculed the Oxford
Doctors. _Inter alia_, he thought they knew a good deal more of beer
than of Greek.[45] The impression this attack produced in his London
circle was apparently not that which he desired, for in the following
dialogue, the _Causa_, he was much more judicious.[46] He admitted much
in the university that was well instituted from the beginning: "the
fine arrangement of studies, the gravity of the ceremonies, careful
ordering of the exercises, seemliness of the habits worn, and many
other circumstances that made for the requirements and adornment of a
university; without doubt every one must admit it to be the first in
Europe, and consequently in all the world--nay, more, in gentleness
of spirit and acuteness of mind, such as are naturally brought out
in both parts of Britain, it equals perhaps the most excellent of
the universities. Nor is it to be forgotten that before speculative
philosophy was taught in any other part of Europe it flourished
here, and through its princes in metaphysics (although barbarians in
speech and of the profession of the cowl) the splendour of one of
the noblest and rarest spheres of philosophy, in our times almost
extinct, was diffused to all other academies in civilised countries."
What Bruno condemned in Oxford was the undue attention it gave to
language and words, to the ability to speak in Ciceronian Latin and
in eloquent-phrase, neglecting the realities of which the words were
signs. As for the knowledge of Aristotle and of philosophy generally
that was demanded for the degree of Master or Doctor, Bruno suggests
an evasion that probably had its origin in the undergraduate wit of
the time. The statute read "_nisi potaverit e fonte Aristotelis_," but
there were three springs in the town, the _Fons Aristotelis_, _Fons
Pythagorae_, _Fons Platonis_, and "as the water for the beer and cider
was taken from these springs, one could not be three days in Oxford
without imbibing not merely of the spring of Aristotle, but of those
of Pythagoras and of Plato as well." Doctors were easily created and
doctorates easily bought. There were of course exceptions, men renowned
for eloquence and doctrine like Tobias Matthew[47] and Culpepper,[48]
but as a rule the nobility and best men generally refused to avail
themselves of the "honour," and preferred the substance of learning to
its shadow.
VI
[Sidenote: London.]
It was after his return from Oxford that the pleasant and busy life
in London literary society began--the period of Bruno's greatest
productiveness. In the house of the enlightened and cultured
Mauvissière he found, for the first time since leaving Nola, a
home.[49] Bruno's position in London has given rise to great difference
of opinion; none of the ordinary contemporary records make mention of
him, or the slightest allusion to his presence in England. At his trial
he professed to have brought letters to the French Ambassador from the
King of France, to have stayed at the house of the former continuously,
to have gone constantly to the Court with the Ambassador, and to have
known Elizabeth; and in his works he claims intimacy with Sidney and
Greville. It was consequently thought that he moved in the highest
English society of the time, and from the _Cena_ that he belonged to
a literary coterie, or club, of which Sidney, Greville, Dyer, Temple,
and others were members. Lagarde, believing Bruno (but on ludicrous
grounds)[50] to have sprung from the lowest of Italian society, could
hardly accept this familiar legend of Bruno-biographies, and more
recently, the _Quarterly Review_ has questioned both the friendship
with Sidney and Greville, and the existence of the supposed Society.
As to the last, there was certainly at one time a literary society,
Sidney's _Areopagus_, to which Spenser belonged in 1579, but which
concerned itself chiefly with artificial rules of versification, and
the merits of various metres; the habit of meeting may have very well
persisted for a few years, after the first flush of enthusiasm had
passed, and the Ash Wednesday supper may have represented one of these
meetings to which Bruno--the defender of the Copernican theory--may
have been invited as Protagonist. As for Bruno's position, it must
have been that of a secretary or tutor, perhaps both, in Mauvissière's
employment. The French Ambassador was constantly in want of funds, and
could not very well afford to support any casual stranger whom the
King of France recommended to him. In November 1584 he complained of
absolute penury, of being unable to obtain money due to him from the
King of France (the King paid him by occasional doles only), of being
hard pressed by London and Italian bankers, while his wife was in ill
health. He was not greatly respected either by the Court, who, with
good grounds, believed him to have no influence with the French King,
or by Mary of Scotland and the English Catholics, partly because of
his supposed Huguenot leanings, and partly because of their distrust
of Henry III., or by the French King himself. Mauvissière had been
sent to England as one who could be trusted not to err by way of
undue zeal. Henry had no desire to see the unfortunate Queen of Scots
liberated, although he put out all his diplomatic power to save her
life; the _status quo_ in England suited his policy only too well;
there was no need for active interference. It was Mary of Guise that
spurred on Mauvissière to act as energetically as he did for Queen
Mary. We may assume then that Bruno, when Oxford rejected him, entered
the French Embassy as an unofficial secretary. The words he employed
at the Venetian inquiry quite harmonise with this supposition: "In
his house I stayed as his gentleman, nothing more," not as friend or
guest, but as "_his_ gentleman."[51] That he went constantly to Court
with the Ambassador, and was introduced to Queen Elizabeth, would be
natural in the case of a secretary--it would be curious in the case of
a mere guest, or of any servant lower than a secretary. Finally, in the
_Infinito_[52] the grateful remark that Mauvissière entertained Bruno
within his family, "not as one who was of service to him (Mauvissière),
but as one whom he could serve on the many occasions in which aid
was required by the Nolan," obviously suggests that services _were_
rendered by Bruno to the Ambassador. A man who was prepared to make a
living by teaching children as readily as by lecturing to students, by
setting books in print as readily as by writing them, was not likely to
be an expensive secretary, and it must have been pleasant to Bruno to
escape from the turmoil of scholastic strife and its bitter antagonisms
to the quiet haven of the Embassy. His host was a well-meaning, kindly,
but unfortunate man, unequal to the great issues that were being
decided around him. Although it was a Catholic family, and mass was
frequently said in the house, Bruno's religious freedom was respected.
He attended neither mass nor any of the preachings, on account of his
excommunication. If one may judge from Bruno's enthusiasm, the wife
and daughter of Mauvissière must have been charming companions, the
one "endowed with no mean beauty of form, both veiling and clothing
the spirit within, and also with the threefold blessing of a discreet
judgment, a pleasing modesty, and a kind courtesy, holding in an
indissoluble tie the mind of her consort, and captivating all who come
to know her"; the other, "who has scarcely seen six summers, and from
her speech you could not tell whether she be of Italy, of France, or
of England; from her musical play, whether she is of corporeal or
incorporeal substance; from the ripe sweetness of her manners, whether
she is descended from heaven or risen from earth."[53] For Mauvissière
himself, to whom the three most important of the Italian dialogues
are dedicated, no words that Bruno can invent are too high praise. In
the dedication of the _Causa_, after comparing his persevering zeal
and delicate diplomatic powers to the dropping of water upon hard
stone, and his steadfast support of Bruno in face of detractions of
the ignorant and the mercenary, of sophists, hypocrites, barbarians,
and plebeians, to the strength of the rock against seething waves,
the philosopher adds, "I, whom the foolish hate, the ignoble despise,
whom the wise love, the learned admire, the great honour--I, for the
great favours enjoyed from you, food and shelter, freedom, safety,
harbourage, who through you have escaped so terrible and fierce a
storm, to you consecrate this anchor, these shrouds and slackened
sails, this merchandise so dear to me, more precious still to the
future world, to the end that through your favour they may not fall
a prey to the ocean of injustice, turbulence, and hostility." The
merchandise of which Bruno thought so highly was the Dialogue itself;
we must of course allow for the grandiloquence of the dedications
of the time, and of Bruno's especially, but a real gratitude shines
through the words.
[Sidenote: Queen Elizabeth.]
[Sidenote: Mendoça.]
His account of the Queen must be taken much less seriously, although
his praise of her formed one of the many counts against him in Venice.
"That most singular and rare of ladies, who from this cold clime, near
to the Arctic parallel, sheds a bright light upon all the terrestrial
globe. Elizabeth, a Queen in title and in dignity, inferior to no
King in all the world. For her judgment, counsel, and government, not
easily second to any other that bears a sceptre in the earth. In her
familiarity with the arts, knowledge of the sciences, understanding
and practice of all languages spoken in Europe by the people or by
the learned, I leave the whole world to judge what rank she should
hold among princes."[54] In a satirical passage of the _Causa_, where
Bruno is proving that all vices, defects, crimes are masculine, all
virtues, excellences, goodnesses, feminine, Elizabeth is given as
a crowning example:--"than whom no man is more worthy in the whole
kingdom, among the nobles no one more heroic, among the long robed
no one more learned, among the councillors no one more wise."[55]
Exaggerated as the language is, it is not more so than was common with
the writers who adorned Elizabeth's Court; and it was one of his errors
which Bruno could easily regret before his judges. "In my book on 'the
Cause, Principle, and One,' I praise the Queen of England and call
her 'divine,' not as a term of worship, but as an epithet such as the
ancients used to apply to their princes, and in England where I then
was, and where I composed this book, the title 'divine' is usually
given to the Queen. I was the more inclined to call her so, that she
knew me, as I went continually with the Ambassador to Court; but I know
I erred in praising this lady, she being a heretic, and in calling her
'divine.'" Through Mauvissière, Bruno made acquaintance with Bernardino
di Mendoça, Spanish Ambassador to England from 1578 to 1584, a much
stronger man as well as a more unscrupulous servant of his king than
Mauvissière could be. Bruno says definitely that Mendoça was known by
him at the English Court. So well was he known that Bruno approached
the Ambassador in Paris on the delicate subject of his own relations
with the Catholic Church, and was introduced by him to the Papal
Nuncio. There is absolutely no reason for doubting these statements,
and if true, they are quite compatible with acquaintance, if not
friendship, between Bruno and Sir Philip Sidney, or the others whom he
mentions. Mendoça was not, however a _persona grata_ at Court: he was a
thorough-going supporter of the Scottish Queen, and seems to have had
a finger in almost every conspiracy that was planned or formed by the
English Catholics. He became unbearable to Queen Elizabeth; his recall
was demanded and refused; but in January of 1584 he was compelled to
leave England, and a formal rupture with Spain was the consequence,
which became actual war four years afterwards. Philip of Spain did not
desert his champion, in whom he had the highest confidence. In October
of 1584 Mendoça became Ambassador to France, and there in 1855 Bruno
renewed acquaintance with him.
[Sidenote: Sidney.]
[Sidenote: Greville.]
[Sidenote: Spenser.]
Like all his contemporaries, Bruno came under the spell of Sir
Philip Sidney's charm. He had already heard in Milan and in France
of that "most illustrious and excellent cavalier, one of the rarest
and brightest spirits in the world." To Sir Philip are dedicated the
two chief ethical writings of Bruno, the _Spaccio_, and the _Heroici
Furori_, with the expressed assurance that the author is not presenting
a lyre to a deaf man, nor a mirror to a blind. "The Italian reasons
with one who can understand his speech; his verses are under the
censure and the protection of a poet. Philosophy displays her form
unveiled to so clear an eye as yours. The way of heroism is pointed
out to a heroic and generous spirit." Sidney was one of the first to
take an interest in the Italian on his arrival in England, and when
the _Spaccio_ was published, on the eve, as Bruno thought, of his
departure from England towards the close of 1584,[56] Bruno could not
turn his back upon Sidney's "beautiful, fortunate, and chivalrous
country, without saluting him with a mark of recognition, along with
the generous and humane spirit, Sir Fulke Greville." There was some
disagreement, however, between Greville and Bruno, "the invidious
Erinnys of vile, malignant, ignoble, interested persons, had spread
its poison" between them, in Bruno's emphatic words. What the ground
of division was we do not know; possibly the tone in which the _Cena_
spoke of Oxford men, and of English scholars generally, had offended
Greville, and this may have called out the partial retractation in the
_Causa_. As is well known the friendship of the two men, Sidney and
Greville (with whom Edward Dyer was closely associated), was of the
noblest type. Greville died in 1628 in the fulness of years and of
honours, but had retained the impress of his young friendship fresh
to the end.[57] It may be added that he became an intimate of Francis
Bacon, who may through him have been introduced to Bruno's works. It
must have been in some such way also that Spenser knew of Bruno, as it
is probable that the Cantos on Mutability (first published posthumously
in 1609, but written probably after his visit to England in 1596) were
"suggested" by Bruno's _Spaccio_.[58] The "new poet" certainly could
not have met Bruno, for he was in Ireland continuously, as secretary,
from 1580 till 1589, when he came over to publish the first three books
of the _Faerie Queen_.
[Sidenote: Bacon.]
[Sidenote: Shakespeare.]
It is possible, on the other hand, that Bruno met Bacon, who was a
rising young barrister and member of Parliament when he arrived in
England, and had already achieved some fame as a critic of Aristotle.
The idea, however, that he knew and influenced Shakespeare, is
entirely fanciful. Richard Field, a friend of Shakespeare, had come to
London in 1579, and served his apprenticeship with Thomas Vautrollier;
and Field was Shakespeare's first publisher, having set up for himself
by 1587. It has been suggested that before this time Shakespeare
worked in Vautrollier's printing office. On the other hand, it has
been universally received that Vautrollier was Bruno's publisher in
England, and Bruno usually corrected his own proofs. Hence the two may
have met, Shakespeare and Bruno, in a grimy printer's den. The idea is
charming, but it has to yield before the light of fact. Shakespeare
did not come to London until 1586, and there is no proof that he
worked with Vautrollier. Bruno had left England by the end of 1585,
and there is no proof that Vautrollier was his printer. The suggested
analogies between one or two ideas in Hamlet and Bruno's conceptions
of transmigration, of the relativity of evil, and the rest, are of
the shallowest.[59] Thomas Vautrollier, a French printer who came to
London some years before, and set up a press in Blackfriars, was said
(by Thomas Baker) to have gained an undesired notoriety as Bruno's
printer, and to have been compelled to leave England for a period,
which he spent in Edinburgh, to the advantage of Scottish printing.
The _Triginta Sigilli_ and all the Italian Dialogues of Bruno were
certainly published in England, although Venice or Paris was set down
as their place of publication. According to Bruno, this was "that
they might sell more easily, and have the greater success, for if
they had been marked as printed in England, they would have sold with
greater difficulty in those parts." It is doubtful, however, whether
Vautrollier was really the printer; in any case it was not on that
account that he went to Edinburgh.[60]
[Sidenote: Florio.]
[Sidenote: Alexander Dicson.]
[Sidenote: _Antidicsonus_.]
[Sidenote: Watson.]
Of the Italians in England during Elizabeth's reign the most familiar
to us is Florio, whose father had been preacher to the Protestant
Italians in London. Florio had been at Oxford, from which university
he dedicated his "First Fruites" to Leicester in 1578, so that he was
already well known as a scholar when Bruno came to England and made
his acquaintance. This may have occurred through Sidney; or _vice
versa_, Sidney's attention may have been called to Bruno by Florio.
The latter was described by Cornwallis as one who looked "more like a
good fellow than a wise man," yet was "wise beyond his fortune or his
education." It was long after Bruno's departure that Florio devoted
himself to the charming translation of Montaigne (published in 1603),
of which a copy has been found bearing Shakespeare's name, while to
Shakespeare is attributed a sonnet in praise of Florio. Curiously, we
find him in his translation acknowledging assistance from one with
whom Bruno also has casually connected him in the _Cena_, viz. Matthew
Gwinne. Of Bruno's more intimate acquaintance in England we know
little: there are two whose names occur in the dialogues, "Smith" in
the _Cena_, and Dicson in the _Causa_, both sympathetic listeners and
adherents of _Theophilo_, who is Bruno's representative. The former
it is naturally difficult to place: he may however have been the poet
William Smith, a disciple of Spenser, who published a pastoral poem
"Chloris, or the Complaint of the Passionate Despised Shepherd." Of
Dicson,--"learned, honourable, lovable, well-born faithful friend
Alexander Dicson, whom the Nolan loves as his own eyes,"[61] a little
more can be told. He was the author of a _De Umbra Rationis_, (1583),
obviously inspired by Bruno's _De Umbris Idearum_, and on the same
basis of Neoplatonism. The work is extremely sketchy, occasionally
diffuse, and of little value even were there anything of value in the
Art of Memory which it teaches. But it seems from a reply it called
forth (_Antidicsonus_) to have had some vogue, and to have been backed
by a vigorous and aggressive school in which Bruno, who is joined
in condemnation with Dicson, may have had a place.[62] The poet
Thomas Watson has also connected Bruno with Dicson in his _Compendium
Memoriæ Localis_, published in 1585 or 1586. Watson also published a
translation of Tasso's _Aminta_, in Latin hexameters,--in 1585, _i.e._
in the year following the appearance of Bruno's _Spaccio_, with its
satire on Tasso's _Age of Gold_.[63] Watson had been in Paris in 1581,
when he met Walsingham, and he may of course have met Bruno also: he
was a scholarly poet, although his work lay more in the direction of
translation and imitation of foreign writers, than in that of original
verse, but during his lifetime he ranked as the equal of Spenser and
Sidney. The _Compendium of Local Memory_ is in clear, simple, classical
Latin, in strong contrast with the corresponding works of Dicson and of
Bruno; but the principles of the Art which it describes are those of
Bruno, or Ravenna, or of some common source, more skilfully arranged
and more aptly expressed.
VII
[Sidenote: _The Thirty Seals._]
[Sidenote: _Cena de le Ceneri._]
[Sidenote: _De la causa, principio et Uno_, 1584.]
[Sidenote: _De l'infinito universo et Mondi._]
No fewer than seven works from Bruno's facile pen were published
in England; the first of these was the Thirty Seals, and the Seal
of Seals (1583) _Explicatio Triginta Sigillorum, quibus adjectus
est Sigillus[64] Sigillorum_. It was dedicated to Mauvissière, but
the introductory epistle was addressed to the Vice-Chancellor of
Oxford. Bound along with it, in front, was a _Modern and Complete Art
of Remembering_ which is merely a reprint of the last part of the
_Cantus Circæus_. The work belongs to the mnemonic and psychological
writings of Bruno; the thirty seals are hints "for the acquiring,
arranging, and recollecting of all sciences and arts," the Seal of
Seals "for comparing and explaining all operations of the mind. And
it may be called Art of Arts; for here you will easily find all that
is theoretically enquired into by logic, metaphysics, the cabala,
natural magic, arts great and small." (The part called _Sigillus
Sigillorum_ was a volume of Bruno's _Clavis Magna_, perhaps the only
volume published.) It was followed by an Italian dialogue, "the
Ash Wednesday Supper," _La Cena de le Ceneri_, also dedicated to
Mauvissière. Written in praise of the Copernican theory, it goes beyond
Copernicus himself in its intuition of the infinity of the universe,
of the identity of matter in the earth with the matter of the planets
and stars, and of the possibility that such living beings inhabit
them as inhabit the earth: earth and stars themselves are also said
to be living organisms: so there are not seven planets or wandering
stars only, but innumerable such; for every world, whether of the
sun-type or of the earth-type, is in motion, its motion proceeding
from the spirit within it. Finally, this philosophy is shown to be
in complete accord with all true religion, to conflict only with the
false. After the "Ash-Wednesday Supper" came "Cause, Principle, and
Unity" (_De la causa, principio et Uno_), 1584; again dedicated to
Mauvissière.[65] The first of its dialogues is an apology for the
_Cena_, which, as we have seen, had caused considerable feeling in
Bruno's circle of readers, for the severity and irony of its strictures
upon Oxford, and England generally. In the others the immanence or
spirituality of all causation; the eternity of matter; its divinity
as the potentiality of all life; its realisation in the universe as a
whole (as a "formed" thing); the infinite whole and the innumerable
parts, as different aspects of the same: the origin of evil and of
death: the coincidence of matter and form in the One: the source of
all individual and finite forms in the one material substance: the
coincidence in the One of the possible and the real, the century and
the moment, the solid and the point: the universe all centre and all
circumference: diversity and difference as nothing but diverse and
different aspects of one and the same substance: the coincidence of
contraries:--these are among the chief topics of this, the freshest
and most brilliant of Bruno's philosophical writings: "a dialogue
worthy of Plato," Moritz Carrière has said. In the same year appeared
_The Infinite Universe and its worlds_ (_De l'infinito universo et
Mondi_), dedicated to Mauvissière.[66] It contained a masterly array of
reasons, physical and metaphysical, for the belief that the universe
is infinite, and is full of innumerable worlds of living creatures;
sense and imagination are shown to be at once the source and the limit
of human knowledge. Yet the argument is mainly _a priori_: the infinite
power of the Efficient Cause cannot be ineffective, the divine goodness
cannot withhold the good of _life_ from any _possible_ being; the
divine will is one with the divine intelligence and with the divine
action: all _possible_ existence falls within the sphere of the divine
intelligence, therefore is willed; but whatever is willed is realised,
for the power is infinite; and whatever is is good, for it is willed by
the infinitely good. Whatever really is, is a substance, and therefore
immortal. The substance of us is immutable, only the outward face or
form of it changes, passes away; in the whole all things are good;
where things appear evil or defective, it is because we look at the
part or the present, not at the whole or the eternal.
[Sidenote: _Spaccio de la bestia trionfante._]
[Sidenote: The _Cabala_, 1585.]
"The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast," _Spaccio de la bestia
trionfante_, 1584,[67] was dedicated to Sir Philip Sidney. In form
an allegorical, satirical prose poem, it is in fact an introduction
to a new ethical system. A repentant Jupiter resolves to drive
out the numerous beasts that occupy his heavenly firmament--the
constellations--and to replace them by the virtues, with Truth as their
crown. He calls a council of the gods to consider this plan, and in
the discussion that follows numberless topics are touched upon--the
history of religions, the contrast between natural and positive
religion, and the fundamental forms of morality. The _Spaccio_ is,
however, preparatory to a future work, in which moral philosophy shall
be treated "by the inner light which the divine intellectual sun has
irradiated into my soul," says Bruno;[68] in it, and other dialogues,
the whole structure of the philosophy is to be completed, of which
the _Bestia_ is merely a tentative sketch.[69] Jupiter represents the
human spirit; and the constellations, the Bear, the Scorpion, etc., are
the vices of the age, which are to be driven out by Bruno's hierarchy
of virtues. The work, which is rich in both moral and religious
suggestion, was early regarded as an attack on the Pope or the Church,
the supposed "Triumphant Beast." Gaspar Schopp, for example, writes
to that effect after witnessing Bruno's death. It is really an attack
upon all religions of mere credulity as opposed to religions of truth
and of deeds. The "Cabal" (_Cabala del Cavallo Pegaseo, con l' Aggiunta
dell' Asino Cillenico_) was published in 1585.[70] It is dedicated
to an imaginary Bishop of Casamarciano, who represents the spirit
of backwardness, ignorant simplicity, and was not a real person, as
some biographers supposed. It is a still more biting, a merciless
satire on Asinity (_i.e._ ignorance, credulity, and unenquiring faith
in religion). In a later work[71] there is a remark on the _Asinus
Cillenicus_, "the image and figure of the animal are well known, many
have written on it, we among the rest, in a particular fashion; but
as it displeased the vulgar, and failed to please the wise, for its
sinister meaning, the work was suppressed." Whether this refers to the
whole _Cabala_, or to the last part of it, is not known.
[Sidenote: _Heroici Furori_, 1585.]
The "Enthusiasms of the Noble" (_De gl' heroici furori_), 1585,[72]
dedicated to Sir Philip Sidney, consists of sonnets, with prose
illustrations, after the model of Dante's _Vita Nuova_. Its theme is
that of the _Phædrus_ and _Symposium_, the rising of the love for
spiritual beauty out of that for sensible beauty, reaching its height
in the divine _furor_--an ecstatic unity with the divine life, in which
all the miseries and misfortunes of the merely earthly life disappear.
Many of the sonnets are of extreme beauty, although Brunnhofer goes
too far when he speaks of them as surpassing Petrarca's, except in
smoothness of form, and as equalling Shakespeare's.
VIII
[Sidenote: The women of England.]
It may not be amiss to give from these works some illustrations of life
in England as Bruno found it.
England, as in the days of Erasmus, was renowned on the continent for
its beautiful women, and Bruno's passionate and enthusiastic nature
could not but feel the attraction of "the fair and gracious nymphs of
England." In the _Cena_ he appeals to the muses of England, "gracious
and gentle, soft and tender, young, fair and delicate, blond-haired,
white of chin, pink of cheek, of enticing lips, eyes divine, breasts
of ivory, and hearts of adamant: how many thoughts do I weave for you
in my mind, how many emotions besiege my spirit, how many passions
fill my life, how many tears pour from my eyes, sighs burst from my
breast, fires sparkle from my heart?"[73] Nature was taking its revenge
indeed for the long years of suppression in the Church. If this dark,
slender, "interesting" Italian found favour with the fair and cultured
inhabitants of England, he was the less successful with the people
in general, the _Plebs_, then as now uncompromisingly opposed to the
"foreigner." In his belief England "could boast of a Plebs which
for want of respect, rudeness, roughness, rusticity, savagery, ill
training, was second to none in the world."[74] No doubt he writes from
experience when he describes the greater part of them as "appearing
like so many wolves and bears, when they see a foreigner--one part of
them, the artisans, shopkeepers, knowing you as some kind of foreigner,
screw their noses at you, call you dog! traitor! stranger! which is
with them a term of high abuse, and renders its object liable to all
the injuries in the world, no matter what manner of man he is, young
or old, in gown or in uniform, noble or gentleman. They will come upon
you with a rustic fury, careless of the who or why, where, or how, not
referring to one another, but every one, giving vent to the natural
hatred he has for the foreigner, will try with his own hand and his own
rod to take the measure of your doublet, and if you are not careful to
save yourself, of the hair of your head;--and when at length you think
you may be allowed to go to the barber's, and to rest your wearied,
ill-handled body, behold them so many executioners and tipstaffs;--if
they can pretend that you touched any one of them, you will have your
back and legs as sore as if you had the heels of Mercury, or were
mounted upon the Pegasean Horse, or bestrode the steed of Perseus, the
Hippogriff of Astolfo, the dromedary of Madian, or had trotting under
you one of the giraffes of the three Magicians: by force of blows they
will make you run, helping you forward with their heavy fists,--better
for you were they hoofs of ox, ass, or mule: and will not let you go
till they have you fast in a prison,--and there I take my leave of
you." In the second dialogue of the _Cena_, there occurs incidentally,
a characteristic account of the state of Elizabethan London. Fulke
Greville had agreed with Bruno to have a discussion in his house on the
Copernican theory, on the evening of Ash Wednesday. When the day came,
no further message arriving, Bruno concluded that the meeting had been
postponed, and after dinner went out to visit some Italian friends.
Returning after sunset, he found Florio and Guin (Gwynne), impatiently
awaiting him: a number of cavaliers, gentlemen, and doctors, had met to
hear the discussion, but the chief character of the play was awanting.
They hurried him off, in the dark, and thinking to shorten the road,
left the straight way and made for the Thames to get a boat to take
them to the Palace. "Arrived at the bridge of Lord Buckhurst's Palace,
we shouted and cried for 'oares'--'_id est Gondolieri_'--and wasted
as much time as would easily have sufficed to take us by land to our
destination, and to have done some business on the way. At last from
afar two boatmen replied, and slowly, slowly drew up to the shore;
after many interrogations and replies as to the whence, whither, why,
and how much, they rested the bow on the last step of the bridge. Then
one of the two, that appeared like the ancient boatman of the Tartarean
world, gave his hand to the Nolan, while the other, who I think was his
son, although his years were five and sixty or so, received the rest
of us. Although there was no Hercules or Aeneas or Rhadamanth, king of
Sarza, still
... Gemuit sub pondere cimba
Sutilis, et multam accepit limosa paludem....
"The sweet harmony (of its creaking and whistling) like love, invited
us to forget our misfortunes, the times and the seasons, and to
accompany the sounds with song. Florio (recalling his days of love)
sang _Dove senza me dolce mia vita_, and the Nolan replied with
_Saracin dolente_ or _Femenil ingegno_, and the like; and so little
by little we advanced as the barque permitted. Although worms and age
had reduced it to something like cork, it seemed from its _festina
lente_ all of lead, and the arms of the two ancients worn out. So with
much time we made little way, and before we had covered a third of
the distance--a little beyond the place they call the Temple--our old
fathers, instead of hurrying, ran their prow alongside the shore. To
the Nolan asking if they wished a little breathing time, they answered
that they were not going any further, for this was their stance. In
conclusion, they would not budge for us, and when we had paid them and
thanked them (there is nothing else to do when you suffer a wrong from
one of these _canaille_), they showed us the direct road for getting on
to the street. Now, oh for your help, Maphelina, muse of Merlin! That
was a road which commenced in a black mud, from which there was no
escape even by good luck. The Nolan, who had studied and practised in
the schools more than we, bade us follow him through a passage, that he
thought to see, filthy though it was. But he had not ceased speaking
when he was planted in the mire so firmly that he could not drag out
his limbs, and so with mutual help we went through the midst of it,
hoping that the purgatory would be of short duration; but by unjust and
hard fate he and we found ourselves engulfed in a slimy passage, that,
just as if it were the 'field of jealousy' or the 'garden of delights,'
was bounded on this side and on that by good walls, and because there
was no light to guide us we could not distinguish between the way we
had come and the way we ought to go, hoping at every step for the
end." ... "Higher up the street we found a lava which on one side left
a stony place where we could walk dry; step by step we stumbled like
drunk men--and not without danger of breaking a head or a leg. To make
a long story short at last the Elysian fields appeared, viz. the broad,
ordinary street--and then from the houses we discovered we were about
twenty steps from the place where we had set out to find the boatman,
and not far from the Nolan's rooms!" The temptation to give up the
expedition was overcome, and after sundry adventures with apprentices,
servitors, and bravos of the gentle class, they arrived safely at Fulke
Greville's, where supper was already in progress.
[Sidenote: Hostility in England.]
In the Italian dialogues the personal note of complaint sounds more
highly than in Bruno's other works, and we may imagine that Bruno
himself felt neglected in England more than in other countries, while
English hostility to his teaching was probably more contemptuous,
therefore more galling and more difficult to overcome. He might
repeat as he did, the bold saying that "to the true philosopher every
country is fatherland," or call himself with Socrates a citizen of the
world; but a touch of despair sounds through the words:--"a citizen
and servant of the world, son of Father Sol and Mother Earth; because
he loves the world too much, he must be hated, cursed, persecuted,
and rejected by it. Meanwhile let him not be idle, nor ill-occupied
while awaiting death, transmigration, change."[75] Elsewhere there is
almost a savage stoicism; he cries that he is attacked not by one but
by many, almost by all, and the reason is that he hates the people,
cares not for the multitude, adores one thing only:--"That through
which he in subjection is free, in pain content, in necessity rich, in
death living, and through which he envies not those who in freedom are
slaves, in pleasure pained, in riches poor, in life dead, because in
the body they have a chain that binds them, in the spirit an _inferno_
that depresses them, in the soul error that weakens them, and in the
mind lethargy that slays, etc."[76] Yet the climate of England seems to
have pleased Bruno: "there more than in any other region the climate is
temperate; for the excessive rigour of the snows is driven out by the
earth beneath, and the superfluous fervour of the sun blesses it with a
continuous, a perpetual spring, as is testified by the ever green and
flowery land."[77] From the _Spaccio_, it appears that he was struck
in England, _inter alia_, with the multitude of crows, the richness of
the sheep and the sleekness of the cattle, the stern game-laws, and the
land-hunger of the people.[78]
IX
[Sidenote: Return to France, October 1585.]
When Mauvissière was recalled, Bruno in all probability sailed with
him. It had been decided, unjustly, as Mauvissière thought, to recall
him to France in 1584; but owing to his wife's health and perhaps his
claims on the French treasury, he secured a postponement till the
following year, on condition he should do his best for Queen Mary and
her son with Elizabeth, "but not mix himself up with any of the plots
against Elizabeth." In October 2, 1585, he was still in London, for he
wrote to his friend Archibald Douglas, the Scottish Ambassador, from
London on that date; the following letter, however, was from Paris
(Nov. 3, 1585) and told a pathetic story.[79] On his way across (Bruno
with him, we may suppose) he had been "robbed of all he had in England,
down to his shirt, of the handsome presents given him by the Queen, and
of his silver plate: nothing was left, either to him or to his wife
and children, so that they resembled those exiled Irish who solicit
alms in England, with their children by their side." He had lent money
also to the Queen of Scots, and was in great trouble concerning it,
"for neither her officers nor her treasurer possessed a _sou_, nor
did they speak of repayment." The unfortunate ambassador had fallen
upon evil days: he was accused of having spoken ill of his successor,
Chateauneuf, and had to write, as the report went, to Elizabeth, to
unsay his insinuations. In December 1586, he wrote to Archibald Douglas
of his wife--the Maria de Bochetel, whom Bruno praises--having died
in childbirth. It would be interesting to know how Bruno fared in
the robbery of Mauvissière's goods. At least we may assume that he
arrived in Paris with very little worldly goods, but with part of the
manuscript of a great work on the Universe (the _De Immenso_) in his
possession, during the month of October 1585.
X
[Sidenote: Paris: Oct. 1585-June 1586.]
[Sidenote: The Church.]
[Sidenote: The 120 Theses.]
"In Paris I spent another year in the house of gentlemen of my
acquaintance, but at my own expense the greater part of the time:
because of the tumults I left Paris, and went from there to
Germany."[80] So Bruno told the tribunal at Venice; but the duration of
his second visit to Paris was from October 1585 to June 1586. One of
his first steps was to make further efforts towards reconciliation with
the Church: he presented himself for confession to a Jesuit father,
while consulting with the Bishop of Bergamo (the Papal Nuncio), but
they were unable to absolve him, as he was an apostate. What Bruno
wished was that he might be received into the Church without being
compelled to return again to the priesthood, and he begged the Nuncio
to write to the Pope Sixtus V. on his behalf. The Bishop, however, had
no hope of the favour being granted, and declined to write unless Bruno
agreed to return to his order. To the same effect was the advice of
the Jesuit father Alfonso Spagnolo to whom he was referred; to obtain
absolution from the Pope he must return to the order--to his bonds, in
other words; and without absolution he could not enjoy the privileges
either of mass or of the confessional.[81] This idea Bruno could by
no means entertain, and therefore he resigned himself to his position
as an alien to the Catholic Church. He had no intention of remaining
in Paris, where perhaps his Italian writings had made him no longer
acceptable, but he desired not to leave it without some recognition
of the favour shown him there in the past. The means he adopted was
a public disputation, to be held in the Royal Hall of the university
at Pentecost of the year 1586. These disputations of the learned were
a delight to the youth of the time, and drew audiences comparable in
our own time only to great football or cricket matches.[82] He drew
up one hundred and twenty theses against the Peripatetic Philosophy,
which still formed the substance of the teaching at the Sorbonne; and
his side was taken up by the rival, more modern, college of Cambray
(afterwards the College of France), of which he appears now to have
become an associate.[83] It was the custom of the real propounder of
the theses to preside at the debate, leaving it to another to act as
protagonist, and intervening only when the latter's discomfiture was
imminent. In this case Bruno chose a young Parisian nobleman of his own
following--John Hennequin, a Master of Arts--but we may well imagine
that he did not long keep silent himself. We have no knowledge of how
the debate went, but it cannot have been too favourable to Bruno, for
he left Paris immediately afterwards. Its date was the 25th of May;
Bruno, therefore, left Paris probably in early June 1586.
[Sidenote: Criticism of Peripatetic Theory.]
The articles, with a note of explanation attached to each, and an
introduction to the whole--(_Excubitor_, the Awakener)--being the
address of Hennequin at the beginning of the disputation, but written
by Bruno himself--were published in Paris and again at Wittenberg.[84]
They contain a temperate but powerful criticism of the Aristotelians,
by the words of Aristotle himself, and of Aristotle from the standpoint
of Bruno's own physical theory, which he believed to be that of the
Pythagoreans and Platonists. The right to criticise the "divine"
Aristotle, Bruno claimed on the same grounds as those on which
Aristotle himself enjoyed the right of criticising his predecessors:
we are to him as he to them: their truth, which to him seemed error,
may be right to us again, for opinion, like other history, moves in
cycles. And as to authority, the mass of which was against Bruno, "if
we are really sick, it helps us nought that public opinion thinks we
are really making for health."[85] "It is a poor mind that will think
with the multitude because it _is_ a multitude: truth is not altered
by the opinions of the vulgar or the confirmation of the many"--"it is
more blessed to be wise in truth in face of opinion than to be wise
in opinion in face of truth."[86] The new philosophy gives wings to
the mind, to carry it far from the prison cell in which it has been
detained by the old system, and from which it could look out upon the
orbs of the stars only through chinks and cracks:--to carry it out
into infinite space, to behold the innumerable worlds, sisters of the
earth, like it in heart and in will, living and life-producing; and
returning, to see within itself--"not without, apart, or far from us,
but in ourselves, and everywhere one, more intimate, more in the heart
of each of us, than we are to ourselves"[87]--the divine cause, source,
and centre of things. Aristotle and the sources of the scholastic
philosophy were occupying Bruno's leisure almost exclusively at this
time: he had begun the great Latin work, the _De Immenso_, which
was to see the light in Frankfort; and he published in this year a
commentary on the physics of Aristotle as well as an account of a
mathematical and cosmometric invention of one _Fabrizio Mordenti_,
which seems to be of much less value than Bruno supposed.[88]
XI
[Sidenote: 1586.]
[Sidenote: Mainz.]
[Sidenote: Marburg.]
[Sidenote: July 25, 1586.]
[Sidenote: Wittenberg.]
[Sidenote: Aug. 20, 1586.]
[Sidenote: Dedication of _De Lampade_.]
Leaving France for Germany, the Nolan made his first halt at "_Mez_,
or _Magonza_, which is an archiepiscopal city, and the first elector
of the Empire";[89] it is certainly Mayence. There he remained some
days; but not finding either there or at "_Vispure_, a place not far
from there," any means of livelihood such as he cared for, he went on
to Wittenberg in Saxony. "Vispure" has caused considerable exercise of
ingenuity among Bruno's biographers. The best explanation seems to be
that of Brunnhofer, that it represents Wiesbaden, which is not far from
Mayence, and is still popularly known as Wisbare or Wisbore; but there
may also be a telescoping of the words Wiesbaden and Marburg. Bruno
was certainly at the latter town, but it is of course a long distance
from Mayence. On the 1st of July 1586, Petrus Nigidius, Doctor of Law
and Professor of Moral Philosophy, was elected Rector of the university
at Marburg. In the roll of students matriculated under his rectorship
stands as eighth name that of "_Jordanus Nolanus_ of Naples, Doctor
of Roman Theology," with the date July 25, 1586, and the following
note by the rector:--"When the right of publicly teaching philosophy
was denied him by me, with the consent of the faculty of philosophy,
for weighty reasons, he blazed out, grossly insulting me in my own
house, protesting I was acting against the law of nations, the custom
of all the universities of Germany, and all the schools of humanity.
He refused then to become a member of the university,--his fee was
readily returned, and his name accordingly erased from the album of
the university by me." The name could still be read through the thick
line drawn across it, and some later rector, when Bruno had become
more famous, re-wrote the name above, and cancelled the words "with
the consent of the faculty of philosophy" in Nigidius' note.[90] The
"weighty reasons" for which Bruno was driven from Marburg may have been
merely his description of himself as a Doctor of "Roman Theology" at a
Protestant university; or perhaps an attack upon Ramus at a place where
the Ramian Logic had many adherents; or the Copernican system taught
by him, which was as firmly opposed by Protestants as by Catholics.
In any case "the Knight-Errant of Philosophy" departed sorrowfully
and came to Wittenberg, where he found, for the third time, a respite
from his journeyings. On the 20th August 1586 he matriculated at the
university,[91] and there remained for nearly two years. Then, as
now, the Protestant Church in Germany was divided into two parties,
the Lutheran and the Calvinist or Reformed Churches. Melanchthon's
attempt to unite the two--he himself belonged to the latter--brought
upon his head the "formula of concord," better known as the "formula
of discord," because of the disputes it caused. Among other things it
condemned the views of the Calvinists on the person of Christ, their
denial of his "Real Presence" in the bread and wine of the communion
table, and their doctrine of predestination. When Bruno arrived in
Wittenberg, Lutherans were still in power, as they had been under the
old Duke Augustus. His son Christian I., however, under the influence
of John Casimir, his brother-in-law, of the Palatinate, had gone
over to the Calvinist faction, and was trying with the aid of the
Chancellor, Krell, to supplant the reigning faith and authority. At
the university the philosophical faculty was, in the main, Calvinist,
the theological Lutheran; and among the latter party was an Italian
Alberico Gentile, the father of International Law, whom Bruno had
perhaps known in England as a professor at Oxford. Through him Bruno
found favour with the Lutheran party, and received permission to
lecture, on the condition that he taught nothing that was subversive
of their religion. For two years, accordingly, he lectured on the
_Organon_ of Aristotle, and other subjects of philosophy, including
the Lullian art, which he had for a time discarded. The excellent
terms on which he stood with his colleagues is shown by the dedication
of a Lullian work, _De Lampade Combinatoria_, to the senate of the
university. He speaks gratefully of their kind reception of himself,
the freedom of access and residence which was granted not only to
students but to professors from all parts of Europe. In his own case
"a man of no name, fame, or authority among you, escaped from the
tumults of France, supported by no princely commendation, with no
outward marks of distinction such as the public loves, neither approved
nor even questioned in the dogmas of your religion; but as showing no
hostility to man, rather a peaceful and general philanthropy, and my
only title the profession of philosophy, merely because I was a pupil
in the temple of the Muses, you thought me worthy of the kindliest
welcome, enrolled me in the album of your academy, and gave me a place
in a body of men so noble and learned that I could not fail to see
in you neither a private school nor an exclusive conventicle, but as
becomes the Athens of Germany, a true university." In this introduction
a large number of the professors are invoked by name, among them the
enlightened Grün, a professor of philosophy, who taught that theology
cannot be detached from philosophy--that they are necessary complements
one of the other.
[Sidenote: Works published.]
[Sidenote: _De Progressu_, 1587.]
In Wittenberg was published (1587), the _De Lampade Combinatoria
Lulliana_, the second of the commentaries on Lully's art, and
representing perhaps the _clavis magna_ of the _De Umbris_ and
other Parisian publications. It was dedicated to the senatus of the
University of Wittenberg. A reprint, however, appeared in Prague in the
following year with a new frontispiece, a dedication to William of St.
Clement, and the addition of a small treatise.[92] The chief purpose
of the work was to furnish the reader with means for "the discovery of
an indefinite number of propositions and middle terms for speaking and
arguing. It is also the sole key to the intelligence of all Lullian
works whatsoever," Bruno writes with his sublime confidence, "and
no less to a great number of the mysteries of the Pythagoreans and
Cabalists." As in the earlier work, so in this also, the root ideas
are that thought is a complex of elements, which are to it as the
letters of the alphabet are to a printed book; but thought and reality
or nature are not opposed to one another--they are essentially one.
The elements of thought when discovered will accordingly give us the
constitutive elements of nature and the connections in, and workings
of, nature will be understood from the different complications of these
simple elements of thought. In the same year appeared the _De Progressu
et Lampade Venatoriâ Logicorum_, "To enable one to dispute promptly and
copiously on any subject proposed." It was dedicated to the Chancellor
of the University of Wittenberg, and was mainly a commentary, without
special references, on the _Topics_ of Aristotle, and doubtless formed
part of the lectures on the _Organon_, given in Bruno's first year at
Wittenberg. The simile of the hunt--_i.e._ the idea that the solution
of a problem or the finding of a middle term is like a quarry that has
to be stalked and hunted down--is a favourite one with Bruno.
[Sidenote: 1588.]
[Sidenote: _Oratio Valedictoria._]
[Sidenote: Luther.]
Unfortunately for Bruno, the Duke's party in Wittenberg soon gained the
upper hand--only for a time, it is true[93]--and the party to which
Bruno himself belonged fell out of power. As a Copernican, Bruno must
in any case soon have fallen foul of the Calvinists, by whom the new
theory had been declared a heresy. He therefore left Wittenberg in the
beginning of 1588, after delivering on the 8th of March an eloquent
farewell address to the university (_Oratio Valedictoria_). By the
fable of Paris and the three Goddesses, he indicated his own choice of
Wisdom (Minerva) over riches or fame (Juno), and over worldly pleasure
or the delights of society (Venus):--"Wisdom is communicated neither so
readily nor so widely as riches or pleasure. There are not and there
never have been so many Philosophers as Emperors and Princes; nor to
so many has it been granted to see Minerva robed and armed, as to see
Venus and Juno even in naked simplicity. To see her is to become blind,
to be wise through her is to be foolish. They say Tiresias saw Minerva
naked, and was struck blind; who that had looked upon her, would not
despise the sight of other things?--'man shall not see me and live.'
... Wisdom, Sophia, Minerva, beautiful as the moon, great as the sun,
terrible as the marshalled ranks of armies; like the moon in her fair
gracefulness, like the sun in her lofty majesty, like armies in her
invincible courage.... The first-born before all creatures, sprung
from the head of Jove--for she is a breath from the virtue of God,
an emanation of omnipotent brightness, sincere and pure, clear and
inviolate, honourable, powerful, and kind beyond words, well pleasing
to God, incomparable:--pure, because nothing of defilement can touch
her; clear, because she is the brightness of eternal light; inviolate,
because she is the spotless mirror of the majesty of God; honourable,
because the image of goodness itself; powerful, because being one
she can do all things, being permanent in herself, she renews all
things; kind, because she visits the nations that are sacred to her
and makes men friends of God, and prophets; pleasing to God, because
God loves only him that dwells with wisdom; incomparable, for she is
more beautiful than the sun and brighter than the light of all the
stars. Her have I loved and sought from my youth, and desired for
my spouse, and have become a lover of her form--and I prayed that
she might be sent to abide with me, and work with me, that I might
know what I lacked, and what was acceptable to God: for she knew and
understood, and would guide me soberly in my work and would keep me
in her charge: ... But wisdom in the highest sense, in its essence as
the thought of God, is incommunicable, incomprehensible, apart from all
things. Wisdom has three phases or aspects or 'mansions'--first, the
mind of God the eternal, then the visible world itself which is the
first-born, and third, the mind of man which is the second-born of the
highest, the true wisdom unattainable by man. Here among men wisdom has
built herself a house of reason and of thought (which comes _after_
the world), in which we see the shadow of the first, the archetypal
and ideal house (which is _before_ the world), and the image of the
second, the sensible and natural house, which _is_ the world. The seven
columns of the house or temple are the seven Arts--Grammar, Rhetoric
(with poetry), Logic, Mathematics, Physics, Ethics, and Metaphysics,
and the temple was built first among the Egyptians and Assyrians, viz.
in the Chaldeans, then among the Persians, with the Magi and Zoroaster,
third the Indians with their Gymnosophists; ... seventhly, in our time,
among the Germans." So far has Bruno come from taking the Germans as
mere beer-bibbers, as he had written of them in England.[94] "Since the
empire (of wisdom) devolved upon you there have risen amongst you new
arts and great minds, the like of which no other nations can shew." In
the category of German temple-builders are Albertus Magnus, Nicolas of
Cusa, Copernicus, Palingenius, Paracelsus; "among humanists many, apt
imitators of the Attic and Ausonian muses, and among them one greater
than the rest who more than imitates, rather rivals, the ancient muses"
(Erasmus). It is not unnatural that, in his own Wittenberg, Luther
should be praised, as among the temple-builders or priests of truth:
but Bruno's words have a ring of sincerity, proving that his sympathy
was really aroused for the Lutherans. "When the world was infected by
that strong man armed with key and sword, fraud and force, cunning and
violence, hypocrisy and ferocity,--at once fox and lion, and vicar
of the tyrant of hell,--infected with a superstitious worship and an
ignorance more than brutal, under the name of divine wisdom and of a
God-pleasing simplicity; and there was no one to oppose or withstand
the voracious beast, or dispose an unworthy and abandoned generation
to better and happier state and condition,--what other part of Europe
or the world could have brought forth for us that Alcides, stronger
than Hercules himself, in that he did greater things with less effort
and with fewer instruments,--destroying a greater and far more deadly
monster than ever any of the past centuries had to suffer? Here in
Wittenberg he dragged up that three-headed Cerberus with its threefold
tiara from its pit of darkness: you saw it, and it the sun. Here
that dog of Styx was compelled to vomit forth its poison. Here your
Hercules, your country's Hercules, triumphed over the adamantine gates
of hell, over the city girt about with its threefold wall, and defended
by its nine windings of the Styx."
To this temple Bruno, eager in his pursuit of the ever-eluding Truth,
had come,--"a foreigner, an exile, a fugitive, the sport of fortune,
meagre in body, slender of means, destitute of favour, pursued by the
hatred of the multitude and the contempt of fools and the base," and
could on leaving say to its people that he had become an "occasion,
or matter, or subject in whom they unfolded and demonstrated to the
world the beauty and wealth of their virtues of moderation, urbanity,
and kindness of heart." It was the last, or nearly the last, spell of
happiness that life had in store for him.
XII
[Sidenote: Prague: 1588.]
[Sidenote: June 10, 1588.]
[Sidenote: January 13, 1589.]
[Sidenote: Helmstadt.]
The court of the Emperor Rudolph II. was at Prague, in Bohemia; from
there his fame as a Maecenas of the learned, and especially of those
who claimed power to read the heavens or to work magic, had spread to
many countries. Perhaps Sidney, who had visited him from Elizabeth
on the death of Maximilian, may have spoken of him to Bruno: while
two of Bruno's friends, the Spanish Ambassador St. Clement and the
mathematician Mordentius, were at Prague in 1588. Thither, accordingly,
he now turned in the hope of settled quarters, introducing himself,
as was his frequent habit, with a Lullian work, which he caused to
be printed soon after his arrival, and dedicated to the Spanish
Ambassador.[95] The introductory letter is dated from Prague, June
10, 1588, and is in praise of Lully, whose importance to philosophy
Bruno values much more highly than his successors have done: it
promised at the same time a future work, the _Lampas Cabalistica_, in
which the inner secrets of Lullism were to be more fully revealed.
This, so far as we know, never appeared, and Bruno tried to obtain
the Emperor's patronage by a mathematical work dedicated to him, of
somewhat revolutionary type--"One hundred and sixty articles against
the mathematicians and philosophers of the day." The Emperor, however,
had few funds to spare for any but the professed astrologists and
alchemists in whom lay his real interest--not at all scientific,
although Tycho Brahé and Kepler profited themselves and the world by
it. With three hundred dollars, which the Emperor gave in recognition
of his powers, Bruno left about the close of the year, and on January
13, 1589, matriculated in the Julian university of Brunswick at
Helmstadt. This, the youngest university in Germany at the time, of
only twelve years' standing, had been founded for the Protestant
cause by the reigning Duke Julius, a breezy and popular prince, who
loved theologians little, Catholics not at all, and founded a model
university on liberal principles. It was not, however, an unqualified
success. Bruno received some recognition from the university, or
from the Duke, and when the latter died in May 1589 he obtained
permission to give a funeral oration some days after the official
programme had been carried through (on the 1st of July)--the _Oratio
Consolatoria_.[96]
Bruno professes as his reason for wishing to speak that he must express
his gratitude to one who had made the university he founded free to all
lovers of the Muses, even to strangers such as Bruno himself was:--an
exile from his Italian fatherland for honourable reasons and zeal for
the truth, here he had received the freedom of the university: in
Italy he was exposed to the greedy maw of the Roman wolf--here he was
in safety: there he had been chained to a superstitious and absurd
cult--here he was exhorted to more reformed rites. What is remarkable
in this speech is the bitterness of Bruno's personal attack upon Rome,
and "the violent tyranny of the Tiberine beast." The constellations
are allegorically treated as symbols of the virtues of Julius, or of
the vices which he attacked and repressed: among them "the head of the
Gorgon, on which for hair there grow venomous snakes, representing
that monster of perverse Papal tyranny, which has tongues more numerous
than the hairs of the head, aiding and serving it, each and all
blasphemous against God, nature, and man, infecting the world with the
rankest poison of ignorance and vice." It was indeed strange that Bruno
should have thought of entering Italy after publishing words like these.
[Sidenote: Excommunication of Bruno in Helmstadt.]
[Sidenote: Oct. 6, 1589.]
[Sidenote: 1590.]
However, he was not to find the Protestants much more tolerant than
the Catholics. In the university archives there is extant a letter
from him to the prorector of the academy, appealing against a public
excommunication of himself by the first pastor and superintendent of
the church at Helmstadt, Boethius. According to this letter, Boethius
had made himself both judge and executioner, without giving the
Italian a hearing at all: and the letter appealed to the senate and
rector against the public execution of an unjust sentence, privately
passed; it demanded a hearing, so that if any legal derogation were
to be made from his rank and good name, he might at least feel it to
be justly made, and demanded that Boethius be summoned to show he
had not fulminated his bolt out of private malice, but in pursuance
of the duty of a good pastor on behalf of his sheep. The date of the
letter is October 6, 1589. No further records of the affair have been
found, so that the appeal was probably rejected. The meaning of the
excommunication is not quite clear: Bruno does not seem to have been
a full member of either the reformed or the Lutheran church, although
attending services; and in all probability the sentence was a formal
one, which, however, carried serious social inconveniences with it.
The prorector, Hofmann, was not one to sympathise either with Bruno
or with his philosophy; he was unhappy unless attacking some other
person's opinions: philosophy in general fell under his condemnation,
although he professed knowledge of it. A few years after he drove Bruno
from Helmstadt he himself was dethroned from his place of authority,
"ordered to stick to his last," and had to leave Helmstadt in the
end (1601). No doubt it is against him that the invectives in _De
Immenso_,[97] are directed:--"This scholarch, excelling director of the
school of Minerva: this Rhadamanthus of boys, without a shadow of an
idea even of ordinary philosophy, lauds to the skies the Peripatetic,
and dares to criticise the thoughts of diviner men (whose ashes are to
be preferred to the souls of such as these)." Later Boethius also had
to be suppressed by the consistory.[98] The young Duke, with whom no
doubt Bruno stood in favour, since he presented him with eighty _scudi_
after the funeral oration, was of the opposite party to Hofmann, but
even with this support the Italian could not struggle against his
enemies, and towards the middle of 1590 he left for Frankfort, "in
order to get two books printed."
XIII
[Sidenote: Frankfort.]
[Sidenote: Zürich, 1591.]
These were the great Latin works he had been writing, perhaps begun
in England itself;--the _De Minimo_, and the _De Immenso_, with the
_De Monade_ as a part of or introduction to the latter. The printing,
however, was not begun till the following year: the censor's permission
was obtained for the first of them only in March 1591, and it appeared
in the catalogue of the Spring bookmarket. He again sought and found
patronage with an old friend of Sir Philip Sidney, one of the Wechels,
famous printers of their day, in the house of another of whom (André)
Sidney had lived. In the protocol-book of the council of Frankfort,
under the date July 2, 1590, a petition of _Jordanus Brunus_ of
Nola is mentioned, in which he asks permission to stay in the house
of the printer Wechel. This, as the book of the Burgomaster under
the same date shows, was roughly refused:--"_Soll man ime sein pitt
abschlagen, und sagen, das er sein pfennig anderswo verzehre_"--"his
petition is to be refused and he is to be told go and spend his coin
elsewhere." In spite of this refusal, Wechel found Bruno lodging in
the Carmelite Monastery, where he stayed, working with his own hands
at the printing of his books, for some six months,--until December,
perhaps, of that year. Frankfort was the main centre of the book world
in those days; to its half-yearly book-marts printers and sellers
came from all parts of Europe to see the new books of the world, to
dispose of their goods, to stock their houses. Among others in this
year came the booksellers Ciotto and Bertano, who afterwards were
witnesses before the Inquisition, and who stayed in the monastery
probably in September of that year, where they met Bruno. In the
dedication of the _De Minimo_, of date February 13, 1591, Bruno's
publishers wrote that "he had only the last folium of the work to
correct, when by an unforeseen chance he was hurried away, and could
not put the finishing hand upon it, as he had done on the rest of the
work: he wrote accordingly asking us to supply in his name what by
chance it had been denied him to complete." The "unforeseen chance"
may, as Sigwart suggests, have been the final putting into effect of
the Council's refusal to allow him to stay in the town, which may till
then have remained a dead letter; or it may have been the summons to
Zurich. He had made the acquaintance of a young Swiss squire, Hainzel,
an Augsburger by birth, at whose castle of Elgg in Switzerland a gay
and open hospitality was extended to a number of the bizarre and the
learned spirits of the time: Hainzel had leanings towards the Black
Arts,--Alchemy and the rest,--but had interest to spare for any others
about which an air of mystery clung, such as Bruno's _Art_ of Memory
and of Knowledge. Bruno spent a few months with him near Zürich and
wrote for him the _De imaginum compositione_, etc.--as a handbook of
these arts. Another of the Frankfort pupils would also be in Zürich,
the brilliant but erratic Raphael Eglin, who published in 1609 at
Marburg (where he was professor of theology), a work Bruno had dictated
in Zürich,--the _Summa Terminorum Metaphysicorum_. Eglin suffered along
with his friend Hainzel from the trickery of the Alchemists, to whom
recourse was had in the hope of repairing the fortunes dissipated by
the Squire of Elgg's hospitality.[99] The _Summa_ is dedicated in a
letter of April 1595 (from Zürich) to _Frederic a Salices_, and in a
personal reminiscence Eglin remarks on Bruno's fluency of thought and
speech--"standing on one foot, he would both think and dictate as fast
as the pen could follow: so rapid was his mind, so forceful his spirit."
[Sidenote: March, 1591.]
In order perhaps to print the _De Imaginum Compositione_ for Hainzel,
or to complete the other works, Bruno returned to Frankfort about
the beginning of March, 1591, and on the 17th of that month obtained
permission to publish the _De Minimo_.[100] It is to this period
probably that he referred when he spoke of himself before the Venetian
tribunal, as having spent six months in Frankfort (Doc. 9). It was a
_second_ period of six months after his return from the Zürich visit,
of which he omitted all mention--no doubt he had good reason for
that.[101] At the autumn book-market his _De Monade_, _De Immenso_,
and _De Imag. Compositione_, were ready[102]--the last works that
he published. About the same time, on an evil day for himself, he
responded to the invitation of a young Venetian patrician, and crossed
over to his fatherland,--the last of his free journeyings.
[Sidenote: _De Minimo._]
[Sidenote: _De Monade._]
[Sidenote: _De Immenso._]
The Frankfort works are fully dealt with in the chapters on Bruno's
philosophy that follow: in their order they were (1) the _De triplici
Minimo et Mensura_:--"On the threefold minimum and measurement,
being the elements of three speculative and of many practical
sciences":--dedicated to Duke Henry of Brunswick. It is the first of
three Latin poems, written somewhat after the manner of Lucretius, but
with prose notes to each chapter or section. The style unfortunately
seldom approaches that of Lucretius, either in Latinity or in poetic
imagery, but the works are full of vigorous verse, and the force of
the ideas suffers little from the fact that they are pressed into
the Procrustean bed of rhyme and rhythm. The others were (2) the _De
Monade, Numero et Figura_:--"On the Monad, number and figure, being
the elements of a more esoteric (_secret_, or perhaps _inward_)
Physics, Mathematics, and Metaphysics"; and (3) the _De Immenso et
Innumerabilibus_:--"On the Immeasurable and the Innumerable, or on
the universe and the worlds." Both are dedicated to Duke Henry. The
three works together contain Bruno's finished philosophy of God and
of Nature, of the universe and of the worlds within it, as well as a
criticism of the prevailing and contrary doctrines of the time.
[Sidenote: _De Imag. Comp._]
In Frankfort appeared also, in 1591, (4) the _De Imaginum, Signorum,
et Idearum Compositione_:--"On the composition or arrangement, of
Images, Signs, and Ideas, for all kinds of inventions, dispositions,
and memory." It is dedicated to Hainzel, and is the last of the works
published by Bruno himself. It sums up all those published earlier
on the theory of knowledge and on the art of memory. It assumes an
identity between the Mind from which the universe sprang, or which is
expressed in the universe, and the mind of each individual by whom it
is known or approached. It follows that the ideas in our own minds
contain implicitly a knowledge of the inmost nature of reality. Here,
however, it is chiefly the mnemonic corollaries of this thought that
are developed--ideas are to be arranged or grouped about certain images
or pictures, in such a way that when any one occurs to the mind, it may
readily call up those others which are most closely associated with it,
_i.e._ which belong to the same [Greek: topos] or "place" in the mind.
XIV
[Sidenote: Venice.]
[Sidenote: Aug. 1591.]
During the second part of his stay in Frankfort, Bruno received an
invitation from a young patrician of Venice, Giovanni Mocenigo, to come
to him there and instruct him in the arts for which Bruno was famed.
To the surprise of all who knew the circumstances, Bruno accepted,
and re-entered, in August, the Italy which he had left some fourteen
years earlier as a refugee. It was through the bookseller Ciotto that
the negotiations were carried on. Mocenigo appeared in his shop one
day to buy a work of Bruno which Ciotto in his deposition called at
first the _Heroici Furori_, but this name was cancelled, and _De Minimo
magno et mensura_ written in its stead; in all probability it was
neither the _Furori_ nor any of the Latin poems to which the second
(erroneous) title might refer, but one of the Lullian works. Mocenigo
asked at the same time whether Ciotto knew Bruno, and where he was;
and on the reply that he was probably at Frankfort (they had found
lodging in the same monastery there), Mocenigo expressed a wish that
Bruno would come to Venice to teach him the secrets of Memory, and the
others he professed, as shown by the book that had just changed hands.
Ciotto believed Bruno would come if asked; and accordingly, after a few
days, Mocenigo brought a letter for Bruno, which Ciotto undertook to
deliver, and in which he was besought to come to Venice. The message
must have been delivered in the autumn of 1591, and Bruno seems to have
replied by immediate acceptance.[103] A previous letter, however, had
been written, probably before Mocenigo spoke with Ciotto, and sent by
another hand; it may have been the receipt of it which brought Bruno
from Zürich to Frankfort, to hasten the printing of his Latin works. In
both letters there were evidently specious promises of protection.[104]
[Sidenote: Bruno's reasons for returning.]
[Sidenote: March 3, 1592.]
The motives of Mocenigo were more than questionable. He was of the
noblest blood of Venice, the Doge's Chair having been seven times
filled by members of his family, and among the patrician youth there
was a fashionable craze for Lullism and kindred much-promising arts
at this time.[105] _De Valeriis_, another Venetian noble, wrote, in
1589, an _Opus Aureum_, which was published at Strassburg along with
other Lullian works (including Bruno's) in 1609. Again, Bruno believed
in, and probably taught, a kind of "natural magic," the magic of
sympathetic influence from stars, animals, plants, and stones upon the
life of man. Mocenigo, as his conduct abundantly showed, was shallow,
mean, superstitious, weak-minded, and vain. He was just the type of man
to be attracted therefore by anything that savoured of the black art,
of which Bruno was popularly regarded as a devotee. His real aim may
have been to be initiated by Bruno into this, although he professed
the desire merely of having the Lullian mnemonics and art of invention
taught him. His disappointment, when he found Bruno had nothing new to
give him in that direction, might account, in a man of his character,
for the revenge he took. But there may have been worse behind: Mocenigo
had been one of the _Savii all' Eresia_--the assessors appointed by the
State to the Inquisition Board in Venice--and was therefore familiar
with the intrigues of that body. He was also under the influence of his
Father Confessor, by whose orders he denounced Bruno. The proceedings
make it extremely probable, therefore, that the Inquisition laid
a trap for Bruno, into which he unsuspectingly walked. It is more
difficult to understand how the latter so calmly entered the lion's
jaws. _Acidalius_ (Valens Havekenthal), writing to Michael Forgacz from
Bologna (January 21, 1592), expressed the general surprise. "Tell me
one thing more: Giordano Bruno, whom you knew at Wittenberg, the Nolan,
is said to be living just now among you at Padua. Is it really so?
What sort of man is this that he dares enter Italy, which he left an
exile, as he used himself to confess? I wonder, I wonder! I cannot yet
believe the rumour, although I have it on good authority. You shall
tell me whether it is true or false." But clearly ill rumours were
spreading, for on the third of March he wrote in a different tone, "I
no longer wonder about that other sophist, so diverse and incredible
are the tales I hear daily of him here."[106] Probably Bruno did not
understand what manner of reputation he had; he still regarded himself
as belonging to the Catholic Church. Ciotto deposed he had heard
nothing from Bruno's lips which might suggest a doubt of his being a
good Catholic and Christian. Venice was a free and powerful state,
Mocenigo the son of a powerful house, so that he may well have looked
for safety; and it was his beloved Italy, for which he had never ceased
to yearn since the day he had crossed the Alps.
To Venice, at any rate, he came, living for a time by himself, and
spending some three months also at Padua, the neighbouring university
town, where he gathered pupils about him, and wrote as constantly as
before. Some manuscripts that were bought in Paris a few years ago,
and which had belonged to Bruno, were partly written in the hand of
one of these pupils, Jerome Besler, whom Bruno had known in Helmstadt,
and who acted there as his copyist. Others of his German, and possibly
some English friends were met with at this renowned university.[107]
It was only a few months after he left that Galilei was invited to
teach in Padua--"the creator of modern science following in the steps
of its prophet."[108] The university was in a state of ferment at the
time Bruno arrived, one of the hottest disputes being that between
the students and certain professors, who read or dictated instead
of freely speaking their lectures--_Doctores chartacei_ they were
called--and a fine of twenty ducats was imposed by the senate on every
one who should be found guilty of this crime. Bruno's memory-art may
therefore, as Bartholmèss suggests, have "supplied a felt want."
[Sidenote: Bruno in Mocenigo's house.]
Early in 1592 Bruno took a fatal step, which showed how little he
realised his danger--he gave up his personal freedom and went to live
in Mocenigo's house. There the two opposite natures soon clashed, and
the young patrician began to show his real character. The teaching
did not satisfy him, did not give him the power over nature and man
which he no doubt expected. He approached Ciotto again before the
spring book-market, telling him how Giordano was living in his house
at his expense, "who promised to teach me much, and has had clothes
and money in plenty from me, but I cannot bring him to a point, and
fear he may not be quite honest"; and asking him to make inquiries in
Frankfort as to Bruno's character, and the likelihood of his fulfilling
his obligations. Ciotto returned with an unfavourable report: Bruno
was known to make profession of a memory-art, and of other _similar
secrets_, but had never been known to do any good with them, and all
who had gone to him for such things had remained unsatisfied; moreover,
it was not understood in Frankfort how he could stay in Venice, as
he was held for a man of no religion. To this Mocenigo replied, "I
too have my doubts of him, but I will see how much I can get of what
he promised me, so as not to lose entirely what I have paid him, and
then I will give him up to the judgment of the Holy Office"--the
Inquisition. This estimable frame of mind no doubt asserted itself in
the relations of pupil and master. Bruno had been introduced by Ciotto
to the house of Andrea Morosini, an enlightened patrician, whose open
hospitality a number of the most cultured men of the time enjoyed; they
formed an Academy after the manner of those of Cosenza, Naples, and
other places. "Several gentlemen meet there," said Morosini of these
gatherings, "prelates among them, for entertainment, discoursing of
literature, and principally of philosophy; thither Bruno came several
times, and talked of various things, as is the custom; but there was
never a sign that he held any opinions against the faith, and so far
as I (Morosini) am concerned, I have always thought him a Catholic,
and had I had the least suspicion of the contrary I should not have
permitted him to enter my house."[109] The last statement must, of
course, be taken _cum grano_. At this time Bruno was preparing a work
on "the Seven Liberal Arts, and on Seven other Inventive Arts,"[110]
which he hoped to be able to present to the Pope in order to obtain
from him absolution, and have the ban of excommunication removed,
without the compulsion of again entering the order. Many Neapolitan
fathers of the order came to Venice to a meeting of Chapter, and to
some of these Bruno spoke--to a Father Domenico especially:--he wished
to present himself at the feet of his Holiness with some "approved"
work, and his ultimate design, as he told Domenico, was to go to Rome
and live quietly a life of letters, perhaps obtaining some lecturing
in addition.[111] Among others he consulted Mocenigo, who promised to
assist him so far as he could.
XV
[Sidenote: May 22.]
[Sidenote: The Inquisition.]
[Sidenote: Second Denunciation.]
[Sidenote: The Venetian tribunal.]
Meantime Mocenigo was putting pressure on Bruno to obtain the secrets
he sought to know, while Bruno at last became aware of his danger. He
pretended he wished to go to Frankfort to have some books printed,
and on a certain Thursday in May he took leave of Mocenigo. The
latter, fearing his prey was about to escape, began to cajole him
into staying, but passed to complaint and finally to threats as Bruno
persisted. On the night of the following day (Friday), as Bruno had
already made preparations for leaving, Mocenigo came with his servitor
Bartolo and five or six men, whom Bruno recognised as gondoliers,
from the neighbouring stance, seized the philosopher and locked him
up in an attic-room. Mocenigo promised, if he would stay and teach
what was desired--viz. "the formulæ for memory and geometry"!--to set
him at liberty, otherwise something unpleasant would befal him. This
novel method of drawing instruction being foiled by the self-respect
of the prisoner, the latter was left for the night, transferred the
following day to a cellar under the ground, and during the night was
handed over to the servants of the Inquisition, who brought him to
their prison. On the 23rd of May, Mocenigo denounced him to the Holy
Office, with a hideous but cunning travesty of some of his opinions,
reporting him, for example, as saying that Christ's miracles were
only apparent, that He and the apostles were magicians, and that he
himself (Bruno) could do as much or more if he had a mind; that the
Catholic faith was full of blasphemies against God; that the Friars
ought to be prevented from preaching, and should be deprived of their
revenues, because the world was befouled by them--they were asses,
and the doctrines of the Church asses' beliefs, and so on. The arrest
was on the following night (Sunday night), and on the Monday a second
denunciation was entered by Mocenigo, than which there is no more
pitiful self-revelation of meanness and hypocrisy extant. He confesses
or rather boasts that, on locking up Bruno, he had recited the charges
he would make against him, "hoping to coerce him into revealing his
secrets," _i.e._ the Secret Arts. Bruno's only reply had been to ask
for his liberty, to say that he had not really intended to leave, but
was still ready to teach Mocenigo everything he knew, to work for him
("to be my slave," said Mocenigo), without any further recognition,
and to give him anything that he had in the house; only he asked to
have returned him a copy of a book of _conjurations_ that Mocenigo had
found among his written papers and had appropriated. To explain his
delay in accusing Bruno, Mocenigo professed not to have been able to
get enough against the latter until he had the philosopher in his own
house two months earlier (viz. in March), "and then I wished to get the
good of him, and by the steps I took I was able to assure myself that
he would not leave without telling me of it. _All the time I promised
myself to bring the matter before the censorship of the Holy Office._"
These denouncements were confirmed on oath by Mocenigo, whose age is
given at thirty-four years, so that the excuse of youth falls from
him. The following Tuesday the Holy Tribunal met to consider the case.
It consisted, in Venice, of the Papal Nuncio (Ludovico Taberna), the
Patriarch of Venice (Lorenzo Priuli),[112] the Father Inquisitor (John
Gabrielli of Saluzzo, _de Salutiis_),[113] along with three assessors
or representatives of the State (_Savii all' Eresia_), one of whom was
always present, with the right of suspending the meeting if he thought
proper: at the present time the three were Aloysius Fuscari, Sebastian
Barbadico, and Tomaso Morosini. On this day the evidence of Ciotto and
Bertano, the booksellers who had known Bruno at Frankfort as well as
at Venice (Bertano was also at Zürich), was taken; it was in the main
favourable, only Bertano recalled the prior of the Carmelite monastery
at Frankfort having said of Bruno that he spent most of his time in
writing, and went about dreaming dreams and meditating new things, that
he had a fine mind and knowledge of letters, and was a _universal_
man, but that he had no religion so far as the prior knew, and he
quoted a saying of Bruno's to the effect that the apostles did not
know everything, and that he had the mind, if he wished, to make all
the world of one religion; while Ciotto reported the common belief in
Frankfort that Bruno was a man of _no religion_.
[Sidenote: First examination of Bruno.]
The prisoner himself was then brought forward--"A man of ordinary
stature, with chestnut-brown beard, of the age and appearance of forty
years"; Ciotto, too, described him as a slender man of small stature,
with a small dark beard, about forty years of age. Bruno of his own
accord, before a question was put, professed his readiness to speak the
truth; he had several times had the threat made to him of being brought
before the Holy Office (viz. by Mocenigo), but had always treated it
as a jest, because he was quite ready to give an account of himself.
This he proceeded to do. The biographical part of his account has been
embodied in the preceding pages.
[Sidenote: Third deposition of Mocenigo.]
On the 29th Mocenigo made another deposition, the result of further
reflections, at the request of the Father Inquisitor, on the utterances
of Bruno against the Catholic faith. Bruno had said that the Catholics
did not act on the model of the apostles, who taught by example and
good deeds, converting through love, not force; that he preferred
the Catholic religion to others, but it also stood in great need of
reform; that he hoped great things from the King of Navarre; that it
was a mistake to allow the friars to remain so rich (in Venice): they
should do as in France, where the nobles enjoyed the revenues of the
monasteries, the friars living on soup, as befitted such "asses." This
was a powerful stroke of diplomacy on Mocenigo's part. It was also
hinted that Bruno's life was not pure, that he said the Church erred
in making a sin of what was of great service in nature, and of what he
(Bruno) regarded as a high merit.
[Sidenote: The twofold truth.]
[Sidenote: Fra Domenico.]
[Sidenote: Philosophical and theological truth.]
[Sidenote: Bruno's creed.]
Next day (Saturday) Bruno continued his account of his life, the first
note of defence being struck in an appeal to the famous doctrine of the
"twofold truth." "Some of the works composed by me and printed I do
not approve, because I spoke and discoursed too much as a philosopher
rather than as an 'honest'[114] man and good Christian, and in
particular I know that in some of these works I taught and believed on
philosophic grounds what ought to have been referred to the potency,
wisdom, and goodness of God, according to the Christian faith, basing
my doctrine on sense and reason, and not upon faith." On Tuesday,
June 2, a deposition was read from Fra Domenico da Nocera confirming
Bruno's appeal to him, and his desire for the favour of the Pope and
a reconciliation with the Church, so that he might be able to live
quietly in Rome. The prisoner was then cross-examined, and submitted
a list of his works, published and unpublished. In these he claimed
to have spoken always "philosophically, and according to the light of
nature, having no special regard to what ought to be believed according
to the faith: his intention had been not to impugn religion, but only
to exalt philosophy, although many impieties might have been uttered
on the strength of his natural light. Directly he had taught nothing
contrary to the Christian Catholic religion; thus in Paris he had been
allowed to vindicate the articles against the Peripatetics and others,
by natural principles, without prejudice to the truth according to the
light of the faith: indirectly, Aristotle's and Plato's works were as
contrary, indeed much more contrary, to the faith than the articles
philosophically propounded and defended by him." He proceeded to give
an admirable statement of his "philosophical" creed which might have
fired the hearts of his judges:--"I believe in an infinite universe,
the effect of the infinite divine potency, because it has seemed to me
unworthy of the divine goodness and power to create a finite world,
when able to produce besides it another and others infinite: so that
I have declared that there are endless particular worlds similar to
this of the Earth; with Pythagoras I regard it as a star, and similar
to it are the moon, the planets, and other stars, which are infinite,
and all these bodies are worlds, and without number, constituting the
infinite all (_università_) in an infinite space; while the latter
is called the infinite universe, in which are innumerable worlds; so
that there are two kinds of infinity, one in the magnitude of the
universe, the other in the multitude of worlds, by which indirectly
the truth according to the faith may be impugned. In this universe
I place a universal providence, in virtue of which everything lives,
grows, moves, and comes to and abides in its perfection. It is present
in two fashions: the one is that in which the spirit is present in
the body, wholly in the whole, and wholly in any part of the whole,
and that I call _nature_, the shadow, the footprint of divinity;
the other is the ineffable way in which God by essence, presence
and power, is in all and above all, not as part, not as spirit or
life, but in an inexplicable way. Then in the divinity, I regard all
attributes as being one and the same thing. With theologians and the
greatest philosophers I assume three attributes--_power_, _wisdom_,
and _goodness_, or _mind_, _understanding_, and _love_; through these,
things have, first, existence by reason of _mind_; then an ordered and
distinct existence by reason of _understanding_; third, concord and
symmetry by reason of _love_. Distinction in divinity is thus posited
by way of reason, not of substantial truth." God in Himself is one;
but three aspects of this unity may be distinguished, Mind (Will or
Force or Power), Understanding (Knowledge, the Word), and Love or Soul.
These three aspects correspond, of course, to the three Persons of the
Godhead, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit respectively. Bruno
confesses, however, to have doubted, from the philosophic point of
view, the becoming flesh of the Understanding or Word of God, although
he did not remember giving definite expression to this doubt; and as
to the Spirit, he did not think of it as a person, but rather as the
soul or life in the universe.[115] "From the Spirit, the life of the
universe, springs, in my philosophy, the life and soul of everything
that has soul and life; and I regard it as immortal, as also bodies
in substance are immortal, death being nothing but division and
congregation: as the Preacher says, 'The thing that hath been it is
that which shall be, and that which is done is that which shall be
done; and there is no new thing under the sun.'"
[Sidenote: Aquinas.]
Bruno confessed to have doubted the application of the word "persons"
to these distinctions within the Godhead, since his eighteenth year;
but he had read in St. Augustine that it was not an old term, but
new at that time. To none of his doubts as to the distinction of
persons or the Incarnation had he ever knowingly given expression,
except in quoting others, Arius, Gabellius, and the like.... On the
same day, in his prison-house, he was further examined, and repeated
that whatever he had written or said contrary to the Catholic faith
was not intended as direct impugnment of the faith, but was based on
philosophic grounds or on the authority of heretics; he made clearer
also his reason for doubting the applicability of the term "persons"
to the distinctions in the Godhead, quoting Augustine's words, "_Cum
formidine proferimus hoc nomen personae, quando loquimur de divinis, et
necessitate coacti utimur_." Especially as to the divinity of Christ
he had been unable to understand how there could be any such relation
between the infinite, divine substance, and the human, finite, as
between any other two things,--soul and body, for example,--which may
subsist together as one reality, but he had only hesitated as to the
ineffable manner of the Incarnation, and not as to the authority of
the Holy Scriptures which says "The Word was made flesh." Divinity
could not be held, theologically speaking, to be along with humanity
in any other fashion than by way of _assistentia_ (_i.e._ temporary
influence or presence), but he did not infer anything from this
contrary to the divinity of Christ, or of the supposed Divine Being
that is called Christ; the miracles of Christ he had always held to
be divine, true, and real--not apparent miracles; while the miracles
of others were only in virtue of Christ: as to the sacrifice of the
Holy Mass and the Transubstantiation of the flesh and blood of Christ
he had always held with the Church: he had not attended Mass because
of his excommunication, but had been to Vespers and to preachings in
the Churches: in his dealings with heretics, he had always treated
of matters philosophical, and had never allowed anything to escape
him that was contrary to the Catholic Doctrine, and for that reason
Calvinists and Lutherans had always thought of him as having no
religion, because he did not entangle himself with theirs, and had been
in many parts without having communicated, or accepted the religion
of any of them. Some of the grosser charges of Mocenigo were read
to him, which he strenuously denied,--and "as he spoke," says the
faithful record, "he grew exceedingly sorrowful," marvelling that such
things could be imputed to him. More strenuous grew his assertion of
his orthodoxy--as to the person of Christ, the Virgin Motherhood, the
Sacrament of Repentance; he spoke of his repeated efforts to obtain
absolution, how for his sins he had always asked pardon of God, and
would also willingly have confessed himself had he been able, because
he had never doubted of this sacrament (or of any of the others),
being firmly convinced that impenitent sinners were condemned and that
hell was their portion. Heretic theologians,--Melanchthon, Luther,
Calvin and others,--he condemned and despised, and had read their
books from curiosity merely, although there were others, as those of
Raymond Lully, which he had kept by him because they treated of matters
philosophical. Saint Thomas Aquinas, on the other hand, he had always
esteemed and loved as his own soul; had his writings always by him,
read, studied, and pondered over them; and had spoken of Aquinas in one
of his works as "The Honour and Light of all the race of theologians,
and of Peripatetics among philosophers."[116] When he had spoken
of good works as necessary for salvation, he had in his mind not
Catholicism, but the "_reformed_ religion, which is in fact _deformed_
in the extreme." One by one Mocenigo's charges were read, and denied,
except that as to his contrasting the apostles' method of spreading
the Gospel with that of the Catholic Church,--this charge he evaded.
When the grossest of all, however, was read, alleging him to have said
the apparent miracles of Christ and the apostles were due to the black
art, and that he himself could equally well do them all--he could not
restrain himself;--"raising both hands, and crying, 'What is this?
Who has invented these devilries? I never said such a thing, it never
entered my imagination; oh God! what is this? I would rather be dead
than that such a thing should have been uttered by me!'" His references
to women he admitted an error, but they had been spoken in lightness
amid company and during talk of things "otiose and mundane." Threatened
with extreme measures if he refused to confess his errors with respect
to the Church, Bruno promised to make a greater effort to recall all he
had said and done against the Christian and Catholic faith, protested
the sincerity of all he said, and was left in peace for a time. This
interview took place in the prison of the Inquisition.
On the following day in the same place the examination was
continued--his neglect of Holy Days and Fastings in England and
Germany; his attendance at heretic preachings (although he emphatically
denied that he ever partook of the communion in any Protestant church);
his doubts concerning the Incarnation, the Miracles, the Sacraments;
his familiarity with magical arts; his praise of heretics and heretic
Princes,--these were some of the many points of indictment which he had
to face. The _Book of Conjurations_, and others like it, he professed
to have had only out of curiosity, although he despised and discredited
sorcery; but he had wished to study the divining art, and especially
the divinatory (prophetic) side of astrology, merely out of scientific
interest, and therefore had such books by him. Heretics he had praised,
only for the moral virtues they had showed, or from convention (as in
the case of Queen Elizabeth). The course of his examination was making
clear to Bruno at last in how great danger he really stood; and on this
day he made, probably in hope of immediate release, a formal and solemn
abjuration of all the errors he had ever committed pertaining to the
Catholic life and profession, all the heresies he had believed and the
doubts he had permitted himself to hold about the Catholic Faith or the
decrees of the Church; and prayed that the Holy Tribunal would receive
him into the bosom of the Holy Church, provide him with remedies proper
to his salvation, and show mercy upon him.
[Sidenote: July 30.]
The earlier processes against him at Naples and at Rome were, however,
recalled to mind; and on the following day he was again questioned as
to his familiarity with the magic arts. Three weeks later Morosini was
examined and Ciotto re-examined; in both cases the evidence was wholly
in Bruno's favour. Then a long interval elapsed. It was not till the
30th of July that the case was again taken up.[117] Bruno had nothing
to add to his defence, except his constant desire to enter the Church,
if he could only do so without undergoing the bondage of monkhood
again. Worn out by anxiety, and possibly by torture, he humbled himself
before his judges: kneeling, he asked pardon of God and of his judges
for all the errors he had committed, and offered himself as prepared
for any penance they might lay upon him. He hoped his chastisement
might exceed rather in gravity than in publicity, whereby dishonour
might be cast upon the sacred habit of the Order which he had borne;
and if by the mercy of God and of "their illustrious lordships," his
life should be granted him, he promised to make amends for the scandal
he had created by equally great edification.
XVI
[Sidenote: Dec. 22.]
This closed the acts of the process so far as the Venetian tribunal was
concerned. The "Sacred Congregation of the Supreme Tribunal of the Holy
Office," at Rome, was eager to secure the distinguished heretic for
itself, and on the 12th of September the Cardinal San Severina wrote to
this effect; the Venetian tribunal, on the 17th, gave orders that Bruno
be sent as soon as possible to the Governor of Ancona, who would see
to his further custody to Rome. On the 28th this decision was reported
to the Doge and Council of Venice by the Vicar of the Patriarch (the
Father Inquisitor and Thomas Morosini being present), with an account
of the charges against Bruno, and he added, that they did not wish to
act without first informing the College (the Doge and Senators), so
that they might give what order they thought fit, and the tribunal
would wait to know what reply should be made to Rome; but he begged
for expedition, since there was at that very time an opportunity of
sending the prisoner in security; to all which the Senate promised to
give due consideration. On the same day the Father Inquisitor returned,
after dinner, to learn the decision of the Signors, adding that there
was a vessel at hand, ready to set out. The State was not so willing,
however, to allow the Church to have its way, and it was replied "that
the matter being of moment, and deserving consideration, and the
occupations of the State being many and weighty, they could not at that
time come to a decision, and his Reverence might for the present let
the vessel sail." On the 3rd of October they wrote to their ambassador
(Donato) at Rome, that the request had been refused, on the ground
that it meant an infringement of the rights of the Venetian tribunal
and a menace for the future to their subjects. Nearly three months
elapsed before any further steps were taken. On the 22nd December the
Papal Nuncio appeared before the College pressing them to deal with
the Friar Giordano Bruno, described as a publicly known Arch-heretic,
whom the Pope desired to have at Rome, in order to bring to an end
the process that was begun against him in the Holy Inquisition, and
their serenities were begged to permit his being carried to Rome, that
justice might be done. His Holiness, the Pope, had already, in the
interval, impressed his desire upon the minds of the ambassadors at
Rome. On the procurator, Donato, who had meanwhile returned from Rome,
pressing the unconstitutional nature of the act, the Nuncio pointed out
that Bruno was a Neapolitan, not a subject of the Venetian Republic
at all; that there were earlier unfinished processes against him both
in Naples and in Rome; and that in similar cases the accused had been
sent to the chief tribunal at Rome. The Senate agreed to consider the
matter, and expressed their desire to give every possible satisfaction
to his Holiness.
[Sidenote: January 7, 1593.]
On the 7th of January, their procurator, Contarini, reported on Bruno
to the College that "his faults were extremely grave in respect of
heresies, although in other respects one of the most excellent and
rarest natures, and of exquisite learning and knowledge"; _but_,
since the case was begun at Naples and Rome, was one of extraordinary
gravity, and Bruno a stranger, not a subject, he thought it might be
convenient to satisfy his Holiness, as had been done before at times
in similar cases. He also hinted that Bruno himself, on being informed
that his case was to be brought to a speedy conclusion, had said he
would send a writing in which he was to ask to be remitted to Rome,
but that this might have been intended merely to put off time. His
report he desired to have kept secret, both for public and for private
reasons.[118] It was successful in its aim, for on the 7th of January
it was decided that "to gratify the Pope, the said Giordano Bruno be
remitted to the Tribunal of the Inquisition at Rome, being consigned to
Monsignor the Nuncio that he may be sent in what custody and by what
means his Reverend Lordship thinks best; that the Nuncio be notified
of this, and that our ambassador at Rome be also advised thereof to
represent it to his Holiness as a mark of the continued readiness of
the Republic to do what is pleasing to him."[119] The ambassador,
Paruta, was informed of the decision, and asked to present it to the
Pope as proceeding, in the words of the letter, "from our reverend and
filial regard for his Holiness, with whom you should condole in our
name on his indisposition; and if on the arrival of these presents
he is in good health, as with the grace of God we hope, you shall
congratulate him thereupon." His Holiness, on Paruta's informing him
of the decision, was highly gratified, and replied with "courteous
and kindly words, saying how greatly he desired to remain always in
harmony with the Republic, and how he hoped it might not give him bones
that were very hard to gnaw, in case others should cast up to him
that he yielded overmuch to the affection he bore it."[120] Clearly
Venice had no desire to quarrel with the Papal Government just at
that time, and the unfortunate Bruno was made a political sacrifice.
The persistency of the Pope's representative at Venice in demanding
Bruno's transference to Rome, and the Pope's evident relief when Venice
yielded, show how important the death or complete recantation of Bruno
had come to be thought by the Catholic party.
On the 27th of February 1593 Bruno entered the prison of the
Inquisition at Rome.[121]
XVII
Bruno's behaviour before the Venetian tribunal has been regarded as a
signal blot upon his character. In the course of his cross-examination
he entirely changed his attitude, which was at first one of defiant
self-confidence, open confession of his (philosophic) differences from
the Church, and of indirect attacks upon the faith in his writings;
insistence upon his right to use "the natural light" of sense and
reason, so long as the doctrines of the Church were accepted by way of
faith. Later he passed from this attitude to one of anxious and angry
denial of all charges of heterodoxy, of trafficking with heretics,
and the like; and finally to one of almost cringing submission and
professed readiness to undergo any punishment for his misdeeds. It is
possible that he began by overrating the tolerance of the Venetian
Republic. In Morosini's circle, of which Fra Paolo Sarpi was afterwards
a member, he had heard enlightened talk and free criticism of the
Church, and especially of Rome. One of the reputed sayings of Morosini,
"we were born Venetians before we became Christians," makes one
hesitate to accept as quite honest his evidence before the tribunal.
But Bruno's trial occurred at a time when tolerance had given way
to diplomacy. Had Bruno been a Venetian or of another nationality
the result would have been different. They had adopted a policy of
friendship towards the Papal government, and in consequence dealt
during that period much more severely with heretical doctrine than with
looseness of life. Bruno may have discovered this in the course of his
trial, and changed his position in order to save his life. Sigwart
comes to the conclusion that "it is impossible to believe in his entire
genuineness and truthfulness; it is clear that he was now trying
to save himself and escape condemnation by submission." Numberless
quotations might be made from his writings which give the lie to his
denials before the tribunal, and his wonderful memory could not have
allowed them to slip from his mind. However, there is this to be said,
that Bruno had never regarded himself as anything but a Catholic;
that his criticisms of that Church were suggestions of reform from
within rather than attacks from without; that he had always retained
an instinctive dislike both of Calvinism and of Lutheranism, in spite
of his exaggerated but conventional praises of Luther at Wittenberg;
that he had never formally compared his philosophy with his traditional
faith, but rather laid that faith aside and worked as a philosopher
merely: hence his reputation in Germany as a man of no religion. When
he first became aware that he was in danger of losing life or at least
liberty, and his dream of a quiet retirement with freedom of work in
Italy began to fade, he must have lost his centre of judgment, and had
difficulty in estimating his own past doings and sayings from the new
standpoint. It would be unjust to say there was the smallest element of
hypocrisy in his submission, or of deceit in his denial of guilt. And
in any case, whatever errors he committed before the Venetian tribunal
were amply amended by his behaviour before the Roman.[122] One thing is
certain: he never either then or afterwards recanted or in any sense
withdrew a single proposition belonging to his philosophical creed.
To Rome there went with him, in all probability, copies of the
denunciations and evidence given at Venice, the works which Mocenigo
had marked, and lists of all his works, including that given by
himself, which would be valuable could it now be found. From January
16, 1593 to January 14, 1599 there is absolute silence concerning
Bruno, so far as discovered documents go. In 1849 an opportunity was
obtained of studying the archives of the Vatican, but the student did
not pass beyond November 1598 (beginning from February 1600), before
the opportunity was over.[123] The earliest of these records of Bruno
is, as stated above, of January 14, 1599. To the congregation (of the
Holy Office) "there were read eight heretical propositions, taken
from the works of Fra Giordano Bruno of Nola, apostate of the order
of Preaching Friars, imprisoned in the prison of the Holy Office, and
from the process against him, by the Reverend Fathers Commissario
and Bellarmino. It was decided that selected propositions be read to
him, in order to determine whether he was willing to abjure them as
heretical. Other heretical propositions are to be looked for in the
process and in the books."
What had happened all these years? Why was Bruno's life spared so long?
This unusual clemency on the part of the Inquisition points to a great
difference in their estimate of Bruno's importance from their view
of that of other heretics. In a list of twenty-one prisoners of the
Inquisition made on the 5th of April 1599, only one besides Bruno had
been for more than a year in their hands; the duration of imprisonment
for the others could be counted by months or days. As a general rule
they were not slow in striking. Among the reasons that have been
suggested is the time required to go over the four processes which had
already been drawn up against Bruno, if the documents were extant, and
to obtain and read his books and manuscripts. This may be dismissed at
once; Bruno's books could not be scarce _then_, although they became
so later, and it could not require six years to find enough material
to condemn him if that were desired. Another suggestion is that Bruno
was a Dominican, and the whole order was concerned in procuring his
recantation, rather than have the scandal which his death in apostasy
would cause. The historians of the order afterwards denied that Bruno,
if really put to death, had been one of their order--"Had he been one
of us he would have remained with us _et convictu et sensibus_."[124]
More probable is the idea that Pope Clement had some favour for Bruno,
who had intended to dedicate a book to him, and whose skilful pen and
biting tongue he hoped to win over to the side of the Church. The book
on the _Seven Liberal Arts_ may have been actually completed, and
may have presented a _modus vivendi_ between religious authority and
philosophic freedom, as Brunnhofer suggests. If the hope of winning him
over was really held, it is not likely that they refrained in his case,
any more than in Campanella's, from the use of torture.
Bellarmino, a Jesuit, to whom along with Commissario the study of
Bruno's works and of the processes had been entrusted, was one of the
most learned prelates of the day, a keen and ready controversialist,
in spite of his reputed love of peace, and a skilful writer of many
apologetic and polemical works. Beneath the surface of enlightenment
there lay hidden a nature of intense bigotry: it was he who decided
that Copernicanism was a heresy; he played a part later in the process
against Galilei, and in the attack upon Fra Paolo Sarpi; through his
agency the Platonist Patrizzi was induced to retract his heresies,
and his works were placed along with those of Telesius, the apostle of
Naturalism, upon the index.
[Sidenote: February 4, 1599.]
On the 4th of February the congregation again considered Bruno's
case, he having in the interval made some protest against the eight
propositions selected. His Holiness decreed that it should be intimated
to him by the Reverend Fathers Bellarmino and Commissario, "that
the propositions are heretical, and not only now or lately declared
heretical, but according to the most ancient Fathers of the Church
and the Apostolic See. If he shall admit them as such, it is well,
but if not, a term of forty days shall be set him." What were the
eight propositions? It is of course almost impossible to say, but
probably Tocco[125] is right in suggesting that they were neither any
of those already withdrawn in Venice (as held "philosophically," but
not theologically), nor any of the charges of Mocenigo which Bruno had
so vigorously denied, but actual admissions common to his works and to
the confessions he had made at Venice--for example, propositions as
to (1) the distinction of persons in God; (2) the Incarnation of the
Word; (3) the nature of the Holy Spirit; (4) the Divinity of Christ;
(5, 6, and 7) the necessity, eternity, and infinity of Nature; (8) the
Transmigration of Souls. It must have been in the last four of these,
or some similar propositions, that Bruno stood fast by his new faith.
XVIII
[Sidenote: December 21, 1599.]
He was granted more than forty days, however, or the period was
renewed, for it was not until the 21st of December of that year that
the patience or perseverance of the Inquisition began to be exhausted.
On that date--the next on which there is any record of Bruno--the
congregation again reopened the case. In a rough copy of the report
which has been found Bruno is quoted as saying, "that he neither
ought nor will recant, that he has nothing to recant, no matter for
recantation, does not know what he ought to recant." In the fair
copy the names of the members of the tribunal are given. At their
head was Cardinal Madruzzi, and among them were the fanatical San
Severin, embittered by his failure to secure the Papacy (he had gone
so far as to choose his name--Clement--when his rival was elected
in 1592, and became Clement VIII.), the man who figures in history
as having declared St. Bartholomew's "a glorious day, a day of joy
for Catholics"; the ascetic Sfondrati; the intolerant Borghese,
afterwards Pope Paul V.; and the learned Bellarmino. After hearing
Bruno on his defence, it was decided among them that Hippolyte Maria,
general of the Dominican order, and Paul of Mirandula, their vicar,
"should deal with Bruno, show him what had to be abjured, that he
might confess his errors, amend his ways, and agree to abjure; and
should try to bring him to the point as soon as possible." Bruno,
however, as they reported, stood firm, denying that he had made any
heretical statements, and insisting that he had been misunderstood by
the ministers of the Holy Office, and by his Holiness; and at the
same meeting (20th of January 1600) a memorial from Bruno to the Pope,
who was present, having been opened but not read, it was decreed
"that further measures be proceeded to, _servatis servandis_, that
sentence be passed, and that the said Friar Giordano be handed over
to the secular authority." On the 8th of February this decision was
carried into effect, and he was placed in the hands of the Governor
of Rome, with the usual recommendation that he be punished "with as
great clemency as possible, and without effusion of blood"--the formula
for burning at the stake. A witness of the passing of the sentence
was Gaspar Schopp, a youthful but none the less fanatical convert
from the reformed religion to Catholicism. It was a year of jubilee
in Rome. Pope Clement was possessed of great diplomatic gifts, he had
gained the submission of Henry IV. of France, had united France again
with Spain, and detached it from England, and had quieted or lulled
numerous disputes within the Church itself. Rome was therefore crowded
with visitors, more so than usual even in a year of jubilee. Of the
distinguished foreigners paying their homage to Clement, Gaspar Schopp
was one; facile of tongue as of pen, he quickly gained the Pope's
favour, was made a knight of St. Peter, and a count of the Sacred
Palace. This adept at coat-turning sent from Rome a letter to Conrad
Rittershausen, which was for long the sole authority for Bruno's death,
but was held by Catholic writers on Bruno to be a forgery. In the face
of the solid arguments and evidence forthcoming, Catholic reviewers
even at the present day deny that Bruno was put to death. It is quite
needless at this date to enter into the question of the authenticity of
the letter, its assertion of Bruno's punishment being the sole ground
on which that was ever doubted.[126] We learn from it that Bruno was
publicly reported in Rome to have been burned as _a Lutheran_; and
one of the aims of Schopp in writing--which he did on the very day
of Bruno's death--was to prove the falsity of this report. He had
heard the sentence pronounced, and its damnatory clauses he gives
as the following:--(1) Bruno's early doubts concerning and ultimate
denial of the Transubstantiation, and of the virgin conception; (2)
the publication in London of the Bestia Trionfanti, which was held
to mean the Pope; (3) the "horrible absurdities" taught in his Latin
writings, such as the infinite number of worlds, the transmigration of
souls, the lawfulness and utility of magic, the Holy Spirit described
as merely the soul of the world, the eternity of the world, Moses
spoken of as an Egyptian working his miracles by magic--in which he
excelled other Egyptians--and as having invented the decalogue, the
Holy Scriptures a fable, the salvation of the devil, the Hebrews alone
descended from Adam and Eve, other peoples from the men created the
previous day; Christ not God, but an illustrious magician, who deceived
men, and on that account was properly hanged (_impiccato_) and not
crucified; the prophets and apostles corrupt men, magicians, who were
for the most part hanged. "In fine, I should never have done were I to
pass in review all the monstrosities he has advanced, whether in his
books or by word of mouth. In one word, there is not an error of the
pagan philosophers or of our heretics, ancient or modern, that he did
not sustain." The delay at Rome, it is suggested, was due to Bruno's
constant promises to retract, but he was only putting off his judges,
and the duration of his imprisonment is given (officially?) at "about
two years." It is clear that on the occasion of the sentence being read
the denouncements of Mocenigo, as well as all later evidences dragged
from Bruno's own lips, or picked up from his books, were recited for
the benefit, presumably, of the visitors present. When the sentence
was pronounced Bruno was degraded, excommunicated, and handed over to
the secular magistrates, as we have seen. The whole letter is redeemed
by the reply of Bruno to his judges--"Greater perhaps is your fear in
pronouncing my sentence than mine in hearing it." These strong words
are almost the last we have of Bruno. At the stake he turned his eyes
angrily away from the crucifix held before him. And so, adds Schopp,
"he was burned and perished miserably, and is gone to tell, I suppose,
in those other worlds of his fancy, how the blasphemous and impious
are dealt with by the Romans!" It is pleasant to know that when Lord
Digby was English ambassador to Spain he caused Gaspard Schopp to be
horse-whipped.[127] For the degradation of Bruno, as we learn from the
Register of the Depository-General of the Pontificate, two _scudi_
of gold were paid to the Bishop of Sidonia. The memorable words he
uttered at the time were reported by another than Schopp, the Count
of Ventimiglia, who was a pupil of Bruno, and present at his death
(perhaps at the sentence also)--"You who sentence me are in greater
fear than I who am condemned"; and before his death Bruno recommended
Ventimiglia "to follow in his glorious footsteps, to avoid prejudices
and errors."[128]
In the _Avvisi_ and _Ritorni_ of Rome, which represented, however
meagrely, the newspapers of the time, two references to Bruno appeared,
with short garbled accounts of him. In one he was spoken of as a Friar
of S. Dominic, of Nola, burnt alive in the Campo di Fiori, an obstinate
heretic, _with his tongue tied_, owing to the brutish words he uttered,
refusing to listen to the comforters or others: in another he was
reported as saying that he died a martyr, and willingly, and that his
soul would ascend with the smoke to Paradise, "but now he knows whether
he spoke the truth!" The fullest account, however, of his death, and
one which should put to rest all doubts on the subject, is in the
reports of the Company of St. John the Beheaded. This company--called
also the Company of Mercy or Pity (_della misericordia_)--was
instituted for the purpose of accompanying condemned heretics to the
place of death, encouraging them to repent, to die with contrition for
their sins. The priests bore tablets painted with images, which were
presented to the condemned to kiss, from time to time, till the faggots
were lit. Even the executioner was called to their aid occasionally,
and the cruellest methods adopted to produce at least the appearance of
kissing, and so of repentance. In obstinate cases, on the other hand,
the tongue was tied, so that the heretic could not speak to the people.
When the sufferers repented before death the Company took note of their
last wishes, and they were buried in the tombs of the Cloister donated
for that purpose by Innocent VIII., but if they were impenitent no will
was allowed, and the ashes were abandoned to the winds of heaven. This
must have happened in Bruno's case, for there is no mention of will or
of burial in the report. Its date is Thursday, 16th February (an error
for 17th), and it reads thus:[129]--"At the second hour of the night
it was intimated to the Company that an impenitent was to be executed
in the morning; so at the sixth hour the comforters and the chaplain
met at St. Ursula, and went to the prison of the Tower of Nona. After
the customary prayers in the chapel there was consigned to them the
under-mentioned condemned to death, viz. Giordano, son of the late
Giovanni Bruno, an Apostate Friar of Nola in the Kingdom, an impenitent
heretic. With all charity our brethren exhorted him to repent, and
there were called two Fathers of St. Dominic, two of the Society of
Jesus, two of the new Church, and one of St. Jerome, who, with all
affection and much learning, showed him his error, but he remained to
the end in his accursed obstinacy, his brain and intellect seething
with a thousand errors and vanities. So, persevering in his obstinacy,
he was led by the servants of justice to the Campo dei Fiori, there
stripped, bound to a stake, and burnt alive, attended always by our
Company chanting the litanies, the comforters exhorting him up to the
last point to abandon his obstinacy, but in it finally he ended his
miserable, unhappy life."
So Bruno passed away; his ashes were scattered, his name almost
forgotten. His death was the merest incident amid the great doings
of the year of Jubilee. None of the many bishops and cardinals and
distinguished visitors in Rome, with the single exception of Gaspard
Schopp, makes any mention of the occurrence or of the man; and Schopp
did so only because he wished to point a moral from the case. During
his seven years' imprisonment, Bruno had almost passed out of the
short-lived memory of his fellowmen. Burnings of heretics were not
infrequent spectacles, and required no special notice. Three years
later (August 7, 1603) all his works were placed upon the Index, and
consequently became rare. They were classed with other dangerous works
on the black arts, and Bruno's name became one to avoid.
This was the death which in happier days he had foreseen for himself
should he ever enter Italy:--"Torches, fifty or a hundred, will not
fail him, even though the march be at mid-day, should it be his fate
to die in Roman Catholic country." What were the real grounds on which
his condemnation and sentence were founded? The alleged grounds we have
already seen, but they cannot have formed the actual motive of the Pope
and the Inquisition. Neither at Venice nor in Rome can much weight have
been laid upon the evidence of the weakling Mocenigo. The Cardinals
cannot have imagined that Bruno would ever open his heart or even speak
freely to so shallow a nature so utterly different in all things from
himself. The mere fact of his having left his order was not enough, nor
his refusal to return to it, nor were his heretical opinions--defended
as they might be, and as Aristotle's own teaching had to be defended in
the Church, by the subterfuge of the twofold truth. Had his chief fault
been, as some have thought, his praises of Elizabeth, Henry III., Henry
of Navarre, Luther, Duke Julius, and other enemies, real or supposed,
of the Church, he would not so long have occupied the prisons of the
Inquisition. Probably his earliest biographer, Bartholmèss, was right
in suggesting that Bruno was regarded as a heresiarch--he is several
times so described in the documents--the founder of a new sect, the
leader of an incipient but dangerous crusade against the Church. It
was as the apostle of a new religion, founded on a new intuition,
a new conception of the universe, and of its relation to God, that
Bruno died. Had he been won over to the side of the Church, his mind
conquered and his spirit crushed by the long years of waiting, and
possibly the days and nights of physical torture, it would have been
a signal triumph for the papacy. But the heart which had trembled at
the beginning, when the sudden gulf yawned before it, grew more and
more steadfast as its trials increased. We can only re-echo Carrière's
words, that in the soul of such a man, who after eight years'
confinement in the prisons of the Inquisition remained so firm, "the
governing motives must have been an eternal and inviolable impulse
towards Truth, an unbending sense of right, an irrepressible and free
enthusiasm." That for which he died was not any special cult or any
special interpretation of Scripture or history, but a broad freedom of
thought with the right of free interpretation of history and of nature,
which in his own case was founded upon a philosophy, one of the noblest
that has been thought out by man.
The fear of death was no part of this philosophy; what we call
death, it teaches, is a mere change of state, of "accidents"--no
real substance, such as the human spirit is, can ever die. One of
the highest values of his philosophy he thought to be this, that it
freed man from the fear of death, "which is worse than death itself."
Strikingly apposite to his own fate is a passage from Ovid[130] that he
quotes--
O' genus attonitum gelidae formidine mortis,
Quid Styga, quid tenebras, et nomina vana timetis,
Materiam vatum, falsique pericula mundi?
Corpora sive rogus flamma, seu tabe vetustas
Abstulerit, mala posse pati non ulla putetis;
Morte carent animae domibus habitantque receptae.
Bruno himself lived within the sphere of which he writes in the
_Spaccio_, "surrounded by the impregnable wall of true philosophic
contemplation, where the peacefulness of life stands fortified and on
high, where truth is open, where the necessity of the Eternity of all
substantial things is clear, where nought is to be feared but to be
deprived of human perfection and justice." His finest epitaph is to
be found in his own words, "I have fought: that is much--victory is
in the hands of fate. Be that as it may with me, this at least future
ages will not deny of me, be the victor who may,--that I did not fear
to die, yielded to none of my fellows in constancy, and preferred a
spirited death to a cowardly life."
No end in history is more tragic, when looked at in all its
circumstances, than that of Giordano Bruno. First a life of endless,
unresting struggle, striving through years of wandering, in many lands,
to overcome prejudice and outworn authority, to proclaim and urge on
unwilling minds the splendid gospel which inspired himself, and by
which for a brief time he may have thought to supplant the old; now
admired of kings, and sought after by the highest in the land, at
another time a hunted pedlar of literary wares; then eight years in
darkness from the world, with shame or death to choose for release.
The choice made for the nobler end, the mockeries of religion he had
detested and reviled pursued him to the end to--the very stake; and the
funeral pyre of this martyr for liberty of thought, for the new light
of science, became a spectacle for the gay and thoughtless sight-seers
of the Roman Jubilee year, to all of whom, one sad disciple excepted,
it was but another "damnable and obstinate heretic" who was on this
earth, for that brief spell, foretasting his eternal doom.
XIX
It is not easy to characterise so complex a personality as Bruno
undoubtedly was. The fiery passionate blood of the south ran in his
veins, the joy of a strong-flowing life was in his heart and brain. A
child of Nature, he was almost from the first, "cribbed, cabined, and
confined" by the stone walls of the cloister, as his mind was hampered
by the laws and dogmas of the Church.[131] From Nature herself he drew
his first lessons. While his fellows taught that Nature was a thing
of evil, he learnt to love her, and to turn to her rather than to the
authority of man for instruction. He believed also, as very few of his
age did, in the power of human thought to penetrate the secret nature
of things, to reach even to the deepest and highest reality, so far as
that can be known by another than itself. Trusting to his own mind, to
sense and reason, for his theory of the world, he found himself opposed
in all essentials to the general thought of the time.
His purpose from the first was to use his own eyes, to discover truth
for himself, and to hold fast whatever seemed to be right, irrespective
of the opinions of others. "From the beginning I was convinced of the
vanity of the cry which summons us to close or lower the eyes that
were given to us open and upward-looking. Seeing I do not pretend
not to see, nor fear to profess it openly; and as there is continual
war between light and darkness, knowledge and ignorance, everywhere
have I met with hatred, abuse, clamour, insult (ay, not without risk
to my life) from the brute and stupid multitude; but guided by the
hand of truth and the divine light, I have overcome it." Not that he
really formed his theory by induction from sense-data, or by deductive
reasoning; it was rather an inspiration, or an intuition, springing
from his temperament, to which optimism was as necessary as pessimism
repellent; and there were numerous suggestions of it both in Bruno's
immediate predecessors, Copernicus and the rest, and in earlier
thinkers. Bruno himself found it, as he thought, in the more ancient
pre-Aristotelian philosophies. But, however obtained, this philosophy
satisfied even _his_ boundless enthusiasm, and it became the chief
motive of his life to convince others of its truth, inspire them with
the same enthusiasm, and endow them with the joyous freedom of life
of which it seemed to him to be the source. His philosophy, in other
words, became his religion, his inward religion,--Catholicism remaining
a mere habit, a set of formulae to which he was indifferent, to most of
which he was willing to subscribe because he had not questioned them.
[Sidenote: Authority.]
His perfect self-confidence, and belief in the power of human reason
(especially his own reason) to penetrate the mysteries of things, was
accompanied by contempt for the argument from authority in philosophy,
contempt for humility, submission, obedience in the speculative life.
To believe with the many because they were many was the mark of a
slave. Bruno, before Bacon, before Descartes, insisted on the need of
first of all clearing the mind from all prejudices, all traditional
beliefs that rested on authority alone, before attempting the pursuit
of truth. They were impediments--burdens that delayed or prevented the
attainment of the goal. The whole of the _Cabala_ is a satire on the
quietistic attitude, the standpoint of ignorant and ignoring faith,
which regards sense and reason as alike misleading and unnecessary
guides, for which science and philosophy are mere troublings of the
still waters of life. "Oh, holy asinity"! one of the sonnets begins,
"oh, holy ignorance, holy folly and pious devotion, which alone makest
souls so good that human wit and zeal can no further go; strenuous
watchfulness, in whatsoever art, or invention, or contemplation of the
wise, arrives not to the heaven wherein thou buildest thy mansion. Of
what avail is your study, ye curious ones, your desire to know how
nature works, whether the stars are earth, or fire or sea? Holy asinity
for that cares not, but with folded hands and bended knees awaits from
God its fate."[132]
Having already that touch of vanity in his character which the
possession of a quick mind among sluggards or dullards almost
inevitably entails, he was thrown, by his attitude towards nature
and the Church, more and more back upon himself. At every step he
met with a leaden, uncomprehending, but dogged opposition, until he
seemed to himself the one seeing man in a world of the blind. At
times this belief was expressed only too emphatically; the reader of
Bruno must expect to find a passage in almost every work pointing out
that that work is the best of its kind, and dispenses with all others
on the subject; while his opponents in any theory are bedaubed with
epithets to which the amenities of modern party strife are politeness
itself.[133] Boundless was his confidence in himself, in his power
of discerning truth, and in his ability to overcome all difficulties
in the way of its discovery. "Difficulty," he writes in the _Cena_,
"is ordained to check poltroons. Things ordinary and easy are for the
vulgar, for ordinary people. But rare, heroic, divine men pass along
this way of difficulty, that necessity may be constrained to yield them
the palm of immortality. Although it may not be possible to come so far
as to gain the prize, run your race nevertheless, do your hardest in
what is of so great importance, strive to your last breath. It is not
only he who arrives at the goal that is praised, but also whoever dies
no coward's or poltroon's death; he casts the fault of his loss and of
his death upon the back of fate, and shows the world that he has come
to such an end by no defect of himself, but by error of fortune."[134]
His outward fortunes left Bruno indifferent; it was the opposition
to his philosophy that embittered him, and excited the magnificent
invectives scattered everywhere through his works. Of his own mission
Bruno had the highest conception: "The Nolan has set free the
human mind, and its knowledge, that was shut up within the narrow
prison-house of the atmosphere (the troubled air), whence it could
only with difficulty, as through chinks, see the far distant stars;
its wings were clipped, that it might not fly and pass through the
veil of clouds, and see that which is really to be found there.... But
he in the eye of sense and reason, with the key of unwearied inquiry,
has opened those prison-doors of the truth which man might open, laid
bare nature that was covered over and veiled from sight, given eyes to
the moles, enlightened the blind ... loosened the tongue of the mute,
that could not and dared not express their inmost feelings."[135] It
was not to the many that he spoke, however; there was little in his
heart of that love for his fellowman that was so charming a trait in
Spinoza, with all the latter's desire for solitude, and under all his
persecutions. Bruno, whether a son of the people or not, had never the
slightest respect for that body. We have already seen what opinion
he formed of the English populace, and he held a similar view of the
_plebs_ in general--"_Rogatus tumet, Pulsatus rogat, Pugnis concisus
adorat_," he quotes (or misquotes)[136] concerning it. Distrust of
the natural man he had imbibed along with the teaching of the Church,
and doubt as to his capacity for receiving or understanding the
truth. Those who have acquired the truth that he has to teach need
not, he writes, communicate it to all, "unless they will see what
swine can do with pearls, and will gather those fruits of their zeal
and labour which usually spring from rash and foolish ignorance,
together with presumption and incivility, its constant and trusty
companions."[137] Speaking of the doctrine of the necessity of all
human events, as determined and foreseen by God, and its coincidence
with true liberty, he shows how theologians and philosophers have held
it, but have refrained from communicating it to the vulgar, by whom
it could not be understood, who would use it as an excuse for giving
rein to their passions. "Faith is required for the instruction of the
_plebs_, that must be governed; demonstration (truth) for the wise, the
contemplative, that know how to govern themselves and others."[138]
So speculation as to the future life must be kept from them, for it
is "with the greatest difficulty that they can be restrained from
vice and impelled to virtuous acts through their faith in eternal
punishment: what would become of them if they were persuaded of some
lighter condition regulating the rewards of heroic and humane deeds,
the punishment of wickedness and sin?"[139] He was an "aristocrat of
learning,"--only the wise should have the government of the world; the
people were unfit to judge either of truth or of men.
[Sidenote: Pedantry.]
Along with this distrust of the vulgar went a far more intense dislike
of the kind of learning they admired, and of the type of scholar,
the pedant, that most appealed to them. The minds of the vulgar, it
seemed to him, were more readily turned by sophisms, by the appearances
on the surface of things, than by the truth that is hidden in their
substance, and is indeed their substance itself;[140] and the man--too
frequent in the Italian, and generally in the learned world of those
days--most apt to veil a real ignorance by a pretended knowledge, by a
show of externals, by appeal to authorities with whom he had himself
no acquaintance, was _the pedant_. Bruno himself was not without
that touch of vanity which led him, like others, to mass together
quotations and phrases from Latin and even from Greek writers; to
point an argument by forced analogies from classical mythology; to
heap up references, in support of his theories, to the Neoplatonists,
to the mystics, to the Cabbalah, to the older Greek philosophers:
these adornments were quite in the fashion of his time, and looked
at in that light they add to, rather than detract from, the peculiar
charm and spirit of his writings. The true pedant--such as Polihimnio
in the _Causa_ (who has been thought to have suggested Polonius in
_Hamlet_), Mamphurio in the _Candelaio_, Prudentio in the _Cena_--is
one that for style loves long words, learned phrases, irrespective of
their context; who, under pretence of accuracy, delights in trifling,
subtle distinctions, sows broadcast mythological or classical allusions
without a hint of relevancy. His favourite hunting-ground is, however,
philosophy, and it is to philosophy, according to Bruno, that the
pedant has done greatest injury. One of the most vigorous descriptions
of him which Bruno gives is in the _Causa_,[141] where, no doubt,
some of the actual writers of the time are satirised. Curiously,
Ramus and Patrizzi, both reformers of philosophy, are mentioned as
"arch-pedants"; but men have always criticised most bitterly those who
stood nearest to themselves.
Bruno regarded words as the servants of his pen, claimed, and indeed
exercised almost too freely, the right of inventing new words for new
things. Use and wont, he knew, determined the fate of words as of other
things; some which had fallen into decay would rise again, others now
honoured would lapse from use. For the teaching of the philosophers of
old their own old words were the clearest mirror, but for new theories
new words might be sought from the readiest source:--"grammarians are
the servants of words, words are our servants; it is for them to study
the use to which we put our words."[142]
XX
For such coinage, as for illustrations to his theories, references to
old authorities, material for his satire on pedants, as well as for
more doubtful purposes,--mystical or magical formulæ, or "proofs,"--his
prodigious memory never left Bruno at a loss. But if this memory, in
its tenacity, supplied him with powerful and ready arguments against
his opponents in their appeal to the authority of antiquity, it
was also, in its fertility, the source of the chief defects of his
writing, and perhaps also of his speaking. His imagination runs riot
in the pursuit of allegories, metaphors, similes from mythology.
Tiraboschi, the historian of Italian literature, defies "the most acute
intelligence to penetrate into his system, the most patient of men to
endure the reading of it."
So far was this enormous mass of material from blocking up the spring
of originality in his mind, however, that the ideas in which he may be
said to have "anticipated" modern thought are innumerable. No doubt,
in many cases, they came from the earlier Greek philosophers whom he
chiefly studied; but Bruno invariably gives them a connection with his
own theory, such as precludes us from taking his restoration of them
for a happy chance. Such ideas, for example, are those of the evolution
or gradual transformation of lower organisms into higher (_De Umbris_,
Int. 7), of the part played by _the hand_ in the evolution of the human
race (_Cabala_, L. 586. 35), of the gradual changes brought about on
the surface of the earth, its seas, its islands, the configuration of
the land, the climate of different countries, by the constant, if
imperceptible, operation of natural causes (_Cena_, L. 190 ff.): of
the true nature of mountains, which are only excrescences as compared
with the real mountains, the larger continents that slope upwards
from the sea (_e.g._ France): of the true nature of comets, so far at
least as that they are perfectly natural bodies allied to planets[143]
(_Infinit._ L. 372; _De Imm._ iv. 9. 51); of the identity of the
matter of heavenly bodies with that of the earth, the universality of
movement (even the fixed stars move, cf. _Infinit._, L. 350, 351, 400),
the possibility (he said rather the _certainty_) of other worlds than
our own being inhabited by beings similar to or more highly developed
than ourselves (L. 360. 27). He "anticipated" also the idea of Lessing
that myths may contain foreshadowings of truth, and that they should
be interpreted not by their letter, as matters of fact, but by their
spirit, as indications of higher "truths of reason." The Bible should
be interpreted in the same way: as Spinoza afterwards taught, so Bruno
held, that the Scriptures inculcated moral and practical truths, to
which their seemingly historical statements were entirely subordinate.
Add to this fermenting thought, power of memory, keenness and sureness
of glance, and imaginative force, the fact that Bruno had a deeply
poetic nature, fiery, vivid, passionate in defence of what seemed to
him true, equally passionate in hatred of what seemed to him false,
and the sources of his strength and weakness alike become clear. The
Italian writings remain, in spite of their occasional obscurity, the
most brilliant of philosophical works in that language, while the Latin
works are a monument of learning (too often misapplied or useless), of
acute reasoning, and of poetic enthusiasm.
XXI
[Sidenote: Religion.]
Bruno was far from being what we should now call a Rationalist; he felt
that cold reason, mere human logic alone, could not fathom the deepest
nature of things, which was God, but that this deepest nature of things
was apart from conditions of time and space. Whatever occurred under
these conditions,--whatever fell within the actual world,--he claimed
for sense and reason, _i.e._ as a subject of natural explanation,
as accessible in all its aspects to human knowledge. There are thus
two very distinct sides to Bruno's philosophical character: on the
one side he is a forerunner of modern science, in his love of nature
as a whole, in his desire to understand it, in his application of
purely "empirical" methods to its analysis. To this side belong his
rejection of the orthodox dogmas concerning the Trinity, the Immaculate
Conception, and the rest, his theory of an evolution of man, his idea
of a natural history of religions, his entire rejection of authority
however high as an argument for or against a theory or view of nature.
His own religious creed was simple, and he believed it to be the
essence of what was true in all the jarring sects that had separated
man from man, nation from nation, and race from race--"the law of
love--which springs not from the evil genius of any one race, but from
God the father of all, and is in harmony with universal nature, which
teaches a general love of man, that we should love our enemies even,
should not remain like brutes or barbarians, but be transformed into
the likeness of Him who makes His sun to rise upon the good and the
bad, and pours the rain of His mercies upon the just and the unjust.
This is the religion above controversy or dispute, which I observe
from the belief of my own mind, and from the custom of my fatherland
and my race."[144] On the other side, he had inherited the mysticism
of the Neoplatonist school, or at least it called out a responsive
echo from his mind so soon as he came under its influence. He was
full of enthusiasm, as we shall find, for the divine--in things, in
us, in the world, in the universe--a "God-intoxicated man" far more
strikingly than the impassive Spinoza. It was because the Copernican
theory fitted into his mystical thought of the One, as an identity of
the infinitely small, the point, and the infinitely great, the broad,
deep, immeasurable universe, that it appeared to him an inspiration
of genius. Therefore he defended it, extended it further than its
originator dared extend it, and finally died for it and for all that
it meant to him. His belief in natural magic belongs again to this
side, or rather to the influence of the one side of his nature upon
the other; owing to their essential unity in God, natural things have
sympathies with one another and with human life, so that a change in
one thing--a stone, a tree--may indirectly cause a corresponding change
in another, a human being. It was characteristic of him that he sought
to give to these beliefs--which, be it remembered, were universal in
his time--a rational basis, a connection with his thought-system as a
whole.
The two sides or standpoints are never far apart in Bruno: it is
often impossible to say to which a given theory or mood should
be attributed, but in his earlier life the mystical, in his later
the naturalistic, or rationalist standpoint may be said to have
predominated. It is with the more metaphysical attitude that a certain
vein of optimism in Bruno's philosophy is connected, the familiar
conception of evil, natural or moral, as necessary for the good of
the whole, like the discords by which a harmony is heightened. No
absolute evil, for the consistent Neoplatonist, can possibly exist in a
world which flows from the divine and is an outpouring of His nature.
But Bruno had little or nothing of the practical optimist in his own
character; whatever he thought to be evil, he fought against with all
his might; a victim of intolerance, he had himself no toleration for
some points of view--those, namely, which he felt might weaken the
bonds of civil society and of human brotherhood. "Such evil teachers,"
he writes in the _Sigillus_ (ii. 2. 182), "succeeding time, and a
world wise overlate in its own ill condition, will exterminate as the
tares, canker-worms, locust plagues of their age--nay, as scorpions and
vipers." Bruno saw only too clearly the evils of the world, and of his
age, from the greatest of which--tyranny over the soul, and suppression
of mental liberty--he suffered in his own person; and his life, as
we have seen, was spent in a ceaseless, and for the time unavailing,
struggle against them. But he never lost his faith in the ultimate
victory of his own philosophy, based as it was upon his faith in the
_essential_ goodness, justice, and truth of the eternal source of
things. As all things flow from, so all things tend to return to God.
Philosophy goes further than to teach merely that pain and evil are not
absolute facts, not grounded in the nature of things; it also frees
the believer from the burden they impose:--"the practical test of a
perfect philosophy is, when one by the height of his speculation is so
far withdrawn from bodily things as hardly to feel pain. And there is
greater virtue, as we believe, in one who has come to such a point as
not to feel pain at all than in another who feels it but resists. He
who is more deeply moved by the thought of some other thing does not
feel the pangs of death."[145]
WORKS OF BRUNO PUBLISHED AFTER 1592[146]
1. _Summa terminorum metaphysicorum ad capessendum Logicae et
Philosophiae studium, ex Jordani Bruni Nolani Entis descensu manusc.
excerpta; nunc primum luci commissa; a Raphaele Eglino Iconio,
Tigurino_: Zurich, 1595. Reprinted in 1609:--_Summa Terminorum
Metaphysicorum, Jordani Bruni Nolani. Accessit eiusdem Praxis Descensus
seu Multiplicatio Entis ex Manuscripto per Raphaelum Eglinum Iconium
Tigurinum in Acad. Marpurg. Profess. Theolog. cum supplemento Rodolphi
Goclenii Senioris_, Marburg, 1609.[147]
Described by the editor, Eglin, who was with Bruno at Zurich, and
afterwards became Professor of Theology at Marburg, as Bruno's
"Metaphysical remains." It represents the fruit of the lectures
given by Bruno at Zurich in 1591,[148] and is one of the earliest
philosophical dictionaries extant. It is on the model of the Fifth
Book of Aristotle's _Metaphysics_, now known to have been intended by
Aristotle as a separate work, but differs in its choice and arrangement
of the terms of philosophy which are discussed. The first part of the
work, which was published by itself in Zurich, may best be described
as a handbook to philosophy generally, the main reference being to
Aristotle's system, as was natural: with it Bruno writes for the most
part in agreement. The _second part_, however, which was not published
until the Marburg Edition (p. 73 ff. of the State Edition), is an
"application" of the several terms already defined to the Neoplatonist
philosophy: in its first section (_De Deo seu Mente_) they are applied
and illustrated by reference to God as the source of the world, of whom
all things are emanations, in a graduated scale of being; in the second
(_Intellectus seu Idea_) to the world of Ideas--God in the world, the
soul in all things and in everything; and a third section (_Amor seu
pulchritudo_) should have followed, dealing with God as the end and
goal of things, but is awanting.[149] The document on the Predicates
of God which Mocenigo presented to the Court at Venice was probably
the second part of the _Summa_, or perhaps only its first section
(Brunnhofer, p. 106).
2. _Artificium perorandi traditum a Jordano Bruno Nolano Italo,
communicatum a Johan. Henrico Alstedio. In gratiam eorum qui
eloquentiae vim et rationem cognoscere cupiunt._ Frankfort, 1612. (Also
in Gfrörer, and State Edition, vol. ii. pt. 3, No. 3).--A summary
of, or a commentary on, the spurious Rhetoric of Aristotle (_ad
Alexandrum_), with the addition of a second part by Bruno, on which he
himself lays no great stress, on elocution or adornment; he refers his
readers, however, to the orators themselves for complete instruction.
It contains chiefly lists of heads of arguments and of synonyms for
rhetorical use. Apparently the work is printed from notes of Bruno's
lectures in Wittenberg (1587), which came into the hands of the editor,
Alsted, in 1610.
3. _Lampas Triginta Statuarum._--First published in the State Edition,
vol. iii. pp. 1-258, from MSS. of the Noroff collection at Moscow. This
is in the hand of Besler, Bruno's pupil and copyist, and was done at
Padua in the autumn of 1591, although Besler had received the original,
which he copied, in April 1590 at Helmstadt. Another MS. is in the
Augustan Library, and is both more obviously correct and of earlier
date than the copy of Besler (1587); in all probability the work was
dictated by Bruno at Wittenberg, and is that referred to as _Lampas
Cabalistica_ in the letter of dedication prefixed to the _De Specierum
Scrutinio_ (Prague, 1588), and as shortly to be published.[150]
It contains a finished study of philosophy from Bruno's standpoint,
arranged under thirty and more headings, "Types," "Statues and
Images," "Fields," etc. Under each heading are thirty "articles,"
"conditions," "descriptions," "contemplations." For example, we have
first the two triads--Chaos, Orcus, Nox; and Pater, Intellectus Primus,
Lux--typifying the lowest and the highest principles of things: the
first three are Vacuum, Potency in Appetite, and Matter; the second
three Mind or Reason, Understanding or Soul, and Love or Spirit. At
the close of the _Statuae_ there follows the practical application of
them to the scale of Nature--the outflow of the highest towards the
lowest, the gradual transition from lowest to highest; an account of
the thirty predicates of Substance and of "Nature" in the universal
sense; and a logical or methodological illustration of the uses of the
Art under the headings of Definition, Verification, Demonstration. The
general purpose of the whole is to give an instrument for discovery
("_Invention_") of truth, after the model of the Lullian Art, just
as some of the earlier works (e.g. _De Umbris_) contain a similar
instrument for _remembering_ knowledge acquired.[151] Unfortunately the
work is entirely marred by the artificial distinctions drawn, and the
tying down (or expansion) of the ideas treated therein to the thirty
fundamental notions and thirty applications of each. Thus subjects and
predicates are thirty in number each, and the modes of predication
are in classes of fifteen. It is impossible not to agree with Tocco's
verdict, that "However fine the analysis employed in distinguishing
the subtlest shades of concepts, however great the number of elevated
philosophical thoughts scattered throughout, expounded with vigour
and felicity of imagery, the tractate as a whole has little value,
just as the _ars inventiva_ itself has little--more fit to blunt than
to sharpen the inventive powers."[152] One gladly re-echoes Bruno's
words at the close: "_Itaque gratias deo agentes, Artem Inventivam per
triginta statuas perfecimus._"
4. _Animadversiones circa Lampaaem Lullianam_ (State Edition, vol. ii.
pt. 2).--From the Augustan MSS., dated 13th March 1587. Notes dictated
in Wittenberg, on the Lullian art as a universal instrument for the
discovery of truth.
5. _Libri Physicorum Aristotelis, a clariss. Dn. D. Jordano Bruno
Nolano explanati._--From two codices in the Erlangen Library, the
second of which is in the hand of Besler, and was written, presumably,
at Helmstadt. The earlier MS. in a German handwriting points to
the commentaries having been dictated by Bruno during his stay
at Wittenberg.[153] The books of Aristotle treated are the five
books of the _Physica_, the _De generatione et corruptione_, the
_Meteorologica_, Book IV. There is an introduction on the methods
of the sciences, and other matters, by Bruno himself; the remainder
follows closely the text of Aristotle, except in the fourth and fifth
books, where Bruno is much less exact.
6. _De Magia_, et _Theses de Magia_.--The MS. of this work is in the
Erlangen Codex, by Besler, and also in the Moscow (Noroff) collection,
by the same hand; the former is a copy of the latter, which was
dictated by Bruno in the early part of 1590 at Helmstadt.
It deals with one of the three divisions of Magic, viz. Natural or
Physical Magic (the others being Divine, Metaphysical or Supernatural,
and Mathematical--that of symbols, numbers, etc.). Physical magic is
shown to be a natural consequence, first, of the fact that the same
soul, the soul of the world, is in all things, of which the individual
finite soul of each thing is a temporary mode or phase; hence all
things are linked one with another, through their spiritual identity,
in a bond of sympathy; secondly, of the hierarchy of beings--the
principle that all finite things are emanations, in increasing degree
of imperfection, from the Divine. The Theses represent a summary of
the _De Magia_, and in the latter the headings of the former are
referred to throughout, except in two episodes or excursus not strictly
connected with natural magic (on spirit-charms and spirit-analogies):
the work is referred to in the _De Minimo_, i. 3. 210 (_re_ the magical
influences of bodies newly dead; "the soul everywhere recognises the
matter of its own body, as we have shown in the book on physical
magic").
7. _De Magia Mathematica._--Merely a collection of excerpts from
writers on Magic--Tritemius, Agrippa, Pietro Di Abano, the (Pseudo-)
Albertus Magnus. (Noroff MSS. The title is that of the Italian editors.)
8. _De Rerum Principiis et Elementis et Causis._--(Noroff MSS. The
writing was begun on the 16th of March 1590, in Helmstadt, by Besler,
to Bruno's dictation.)
It contains the theory of the natural and material elements or
principles of things--light and fire, wind or air, water or vapour
or darkness, and earth or the dry, with their "forms," time and
place--leaving the metaphysical and the immaterial principles (spirit
and soul) for consideration elsewhere. It is not of great scientific
value. Bruno makes use of abstract terms even more readily than
Aristotle (e.g. "_lux seminaliter est ubique, et in tenebris_,"
p. 514). The chief aim of the work is to illustrate the magical
applications of the different elements[154] (cf. pp. 516, 525, etc.).
Its value mainly lies in the light it throws on Bruno's atomic theory,
and on one or two other minor points of his philosophy--the harmony,
co-ordination, and sympathy between all natural things, the doctrines
of liberty and necessity, etc.
9. _De Medicina Lulliana, partim ex mathematicis, partim ex physicis
principiis educta._--Written immediately after the above (_de rerum
principiis_), to which it occasionally refers: merely a collection of
abstracts from works of Lully on medicine, as a practical application
of the system of magic contained in the three previous writings. It is
accordingly of the astrological type of mediæval medicine.
10. _De Vinculis in genere._ Noroff MSS.--A first sketch in Bruno's
own hand, dating probably from Frankfort; and a later, much more
detailed, in Besler's, copied at Padua. It in a sense completes the
tractates on Magic, by dealing with "attraction" in general, of which
the attractions and sympathies of natural and mathematical magic are
special cases. As it stands, however (for neither sketch is finished:
Bruno's covers wider ground than Besler's, the latter breaks off
abruptly before the natural end is reached), it is a psychological
essay on the human passions, and more especially on human love, from
a purely objective, matter-of-fact standpoint. In it the most grossly
material and the highest spiritual sources of love are placed side by
side; and to love, including self-love, are reduced all passions, all
effects, even _hate_, which is an outcome, a reversion of love.
PART II
PHILOSOPHY OF BRUNO
CHAPTER I
THE SOURCES OF THE PHILOSOPHY
[Sidenote: Aristotle's rejection of mathematical method.]
[Sidenote: His treatment of the earlier Greeks.]
In the school and the monastery at Naples Bruno passed as a matter of
course through a training in the Scholastic Philosophy. Before entering
the monastery of St. Dominic at fifteen years of age he had studied
"humane letters, logic, and dialectic,"[155] and had attended, among
other lectures, a private course by Theophilus of Varrano, an Augustine
monk and distinguished Aristotelian. From him, probably, Bruno received
an impetus towards the study of Aristotle in the original works, if not
also in the original tongue, which stood him in admirable stead when he
came later to attack the foundations of the vulgar philosophy. He was
familiar at first hand with all the main writings of Aristotle.[156] He
had read, too, and cites, most of the earlier commentators--Adrastus
and Alexander of Aphrodisias, Porphyry, Themistius, Simplicius, and
"Philoponus"[157]--as well as the later, the Arabians and other
Schoolmen. He had accordingly a more thorough acquaintance with the
mind of Aristotle than any of the latter's staunchest supporters in
his time: the lack of the historic sense prevented him, however,
from taking a just view of the system as a whole: it was not the
Aristotle of Greek philosophy whom he rejected, and against whom he
wielded the powerful weapons of his armoury, but the Aristotle of his
own day,--a living force with which no one could avoid a reckoning,
the influence of which was no longer for good, but which formed, as
Bruno felt, a barrier against the progressive thought and spirit of
the time. In the introductory letter to the _Figuratio Arist. Phys.
Auditus_, Bruno gave three reasons for undertaking the work:[158]--(1)
"that he might not appear, like so many others, to be taking up the
office of censor without a sufficient knowledge of his subject; (2)
that he might present to his opponents the philosophy of Aristotle
as it really was, for the majority of the Aristotelians admired it
rather from their faith in the man Aristotle than from discriminate
judgment concerning the principles of the philosophy; (3) that he might
seem not an audacious caviller against thoughts that were beyond his
depth, but a genuine and legitimate disputant on doctrines that were
clear to himself."[159] The name of Aristotle was a charm; his opinion
final not in matters of pure philosophy alone, but equally in natural
theory; his natural philosophy had been harmonised with scriptural
authority, and was the accepted doctrine of the Church. The cry which
his critic heard had weight behind it: "You against Aristotle--against
so many authorities, so great names? I would rather be in error along
with them, than find truth with you!"[160] The danger lay not so much
in the error of Aristotle's theory of nature, or of his metaphysical
theories, as in his authority; "many of the Peripatetics," Bruno says
in the _Cena_, "grow angry, and flush and quarrel about Aristotle, yet
do not understand even the meanings of the titles of his books."[161]
It was the influence of this authority that Bruno, in the interests
of true philosophy and science, set to work to undermine. The charge
which he brought against Aristotle was the same as that which Bacon
afterwards brought--that he attempted to explain nature by logical
categories. "It is not strange that from impossible, logical, and
imaginary distinctions quite discordant with the truth of things, he
infers an infinite number of other untruths" (_inconvenientia_).[162]
"Matter is formless only to logical abstraction, as with Aristotle,
who is constantly dividing by reason what is indivisible according
to nature and truth:"[163] "a logical intention (or concept) is made
into a principle (or element) of nature."[164] However unfair and
indeed absurd the charge must appear when Aristotle is considered in
his actual place within the development of philosophy and science, and
however far Bruno or Bacon or any of the nature-philosophers of the
Renaissance was from avoiding the use in explanation of similar purely
logical or metaphysical conceptions, it was still a great and necessary
step to call attention to the need of observation and experiment upon
nature, and to the value of mathematics as a method of calculating and
correlating the phenomena observed. This was a second objection to
Aristotle, that he despised mathematics, "being too much of a logician
(and stronger in criticism than in argument)," yet, Bruno adds, "when
he sought to explain any of the more profound facts of nature, he was
often driven by necessity to the repudiated mathematics." Many of
Bruno's own mathematical applications savour rather of Neopythagorean
mysticism than of the spirit of modern science, and his geometry was
far from Euclidean, but he at least made a serious attempt to account
for the building-up of bodies and of the universe on mathematical
principles. A third objection, which again we find in Bacon, is as to
Aristotle's treatment of his predecessors. His depreciation of them
is condemned in the _Causa_:--"Of all philosophers I do not know one
who founds more upon imagination, or is further removed from nature
than he: and if sometimes what he says is excellent, we know that it
does not spring from his own principles, but is always a proposition
taken from other philosophers."[165] In another passage he is described
as a "dry sophist, aiming with malicious explanations and frivolous
arguments to pervert the opinions of the ancients, and to oppose the
truth, not so much perhaps through imbecility of intelligence as
through the influence of envy and ambition."[166] So Bacon speaks of
him as imposing "innumerable fictions upon the nature of things at his
own will: being everywhere more anxious as to how one should extricate
oneself by an answer, and how some positive reply in words should be
made, than as to the internal truth of things."[167] In particular
it was argued that Aristotle confused the various meanings of the
same name with one another:--"He takes the word _vacuum_ in a sense
in which no one has ever understood it, building castles in the air,
and then pulling down his 'vacuum,' but not that of any other who has
spoken of a vacuum or made use of the name. So he acts in all other
cases,--those for example of 'motion,' 'infinite,' 'matter,' 'form,'
'demonstration,' 'being,' always building on the faith of his own
definition, which gives the name a new sense."[168]
[Sidenote: The Pre-Aristotelians.]
The close study of Aristotle himself, which was one of the greatest
results of the Humanist movement, had the effect of bringing into
greater prominence the earlier Greek philosophers, whose doctrines
Aristotle states and criticises in many of his works--notably the
_Physics_ and _Metaphysics_. The rediscovery of antiquity included
that of ancient philosophy; and Bruno's dissatisfaction with Aristotle
led him into greater sympathy with the nature-philosophers whom
Aristotle decried. Towards these earlier Greeks, as towards other
philosophers, his attitude is wholly that of an Eclectic: he does
not attempt to appreciate their relative value, nor to discover any
evolution of thought through the successive systems. From each he
takes that which agrees or appears to agree with his own philosophy,
and treats it as an anticipation of, or as an authority for, the
latter. The "universal intelligence," for example, as the universal
efficient cause in nature, is a doctrine ascribed in the _Causa_
indiscriminately to the Pythagoreans, the Platonists, the Magi,
Orpheus, Empedocles, and Plotinus.[169] The belief in an infinite ether
(Heraclitus' Fire) surrounding the earth, and containing innumerable
worlds within it, in the _Cena_ is attributed, equally without
discrimination, to Heraclitus, Democritus, Epicurus, Pythagoras,
Parmenides, and Melissus.[170] Xenophanes represented for Bruno the
static aspect of Pantheism--the Absolute One as in itself, apart from
all reference to the finite;[171] Heraclitus its dynamic aspect--the
Absolute as unfolding, revealing itself, "appearing" in and through
the finite.[172] Anaxagoras expressed the relation between the
finite individual and the One,--"All things are in all things," for
"omnipotent, all-producing divinity pervades the whole, therefore
nothing is so small but that divinity lies concealed in it."[173]
"Everything is in everything, because spirit or soul is in all things,
and therefore out of anything may be produced anything else."[174]
To Anaxagoras, as to Bruno, nature was divine.[175] No special
distinction was made by Bruno between the teaching of Anaxagoras and
that of Empedocles: in one passage he attributes to the former the
theory of effluxes and influxes of atoms through the pores of bodies,
which really belongs to the latter,[176] and in another suggests that
Empedocles only put in a more "abstract" way what Anaxagoras had shown
"concretely," that all things are in all.[177]
[Sidenote: Democritus]
[Sidenote: Lucretius]
With Leucippus and Democritus Bruno might have been expected to claim
affinity, through their common atomism and naturalism: with two
cardinal features of the traditional Epicureanism he was however in
entire disagreement. The one was its admission of the void or vacuum:
it explained the constitution of diverse bodies out of atoms which
were all of the same spherical form, by the different positions and
order in which the void and solid parts respectively were arranged,
whereas Bruno could not imagine the corporeal atoms holding together
without a material substance, extending continuously throughout the
universe.[178] The other point of contrast was its denial that
anything but corporeal matter exists, with the corollary that forms
are merely accidental dispositions of matter: Bruno confesses to have
been at one time of the same opinion, but he had been unable wholly to
reduce forms to matter, and therefore was compelled to admit two kinds
of substance, forms or ideas, and matter or body, although these again
were modes of a still higher unity, the One.[179] "The deep thought of
the learned Lucretius"[180] early fascinated Bruno, and Lucretius gave
the trend not only to much of his philosophy but also to the style of
his writing. The Latin poems were suggested by Lucretius' _De rerum
natura_, to which they are far inferior, certainly, in literary charm;
the philosophical system of the later writer however is not only bolder
and grander in itself, but far more thoroughly worked out into the
detail of exposition and of criticism. In the Italian dialogues also
Lucretius is constantly quoted,--frequently from memory, as one may
judge from the errors made.
[Sidenote: Neoplatonism]
[Sidenote: Egyptian theosophy.]
[Sidenote: Hebrew Cabala.]
But in the first reaction against the now barren Peripatetic
philosophy, the school to which Bruno turned, with so many of his
fellow-countrymen, was that which nominally derived from Aristotle's
immediate predecessor. The revival of Platonism in its secondary
form of Neoplatonism was one of the most marked traits of the time.
In connection with the attempt to unite the Greek and Latin Churches
in 1438, a Greek scholar came from Constantinople,--one _Georgius
Gemistus_ (Gemistus Plethon),--to the court at Florence, and there
opened the minds of the Italians to the beauty of the Platonic
philosophy. Its mystical world of ideas charmed all who were embued
with the new spirit--romantic, adventurous, hopeful, self-confident.
The Ideas, it is true, were materialised and personified in the
transition through Neoplatonism, and it was as spirits of the stars
and worlds, demons of the earth and sea, the living souls of plants
and stones, that they appealed to minds fed on the grosser fare of
mediæval superstition. Plethon's lectures, uncritical as they were,
ensured the spread of Platonism in Italy. Bessarion of Trebizond,
Marsilio Ficino, who became head of the Platonist Academy at Florence,
and Pico of Mirandula followed in his steps. Both Ficino and Pico
are mentioned by Bruno, and his knowledge of Plato, as of Plotinus,
Porphyry, and other Neoplatonists, was derived, almost certainly, from
Ficino's translations. The teaching of Plato was interpreted in the
light of, and confused by admixture with, the mystical ideas of Philo
and Plotinus, of Porphyry and Iamblichus, of the Jewish Cabala, and the
mythical sayings of Egyptian, Chaldean, Indian, and Persian sages. The
new world was struggling for light, and it rushed towards every gleam
of brightness, however feeble. Thus in the address to the senate at
Wittenberg before leaving the university, Bruno named the foremost of
those whom he regarded as Builders of the Temple of Wisdom: the list
begins with the Chaldeans among the Egyptians and Assyrians; there
follow Zoroaster and the Magi among the Persians, the Gymnosophists of
India, Orpheus and Atlas among Thracians and Libyans, Thales and other
wise men among the Greeks,--and so down to Paracelsus in Bruno's own
century. The fantastic grouping is characteristic of the uncritical
syncretism of this last phase of Neoplatonism: Plethon had conjoined
the dogmas of Plato with those of Zoroaster, and had confirmed both by
illustrations from Greek mythology. Among the most widely read works
were those of Iamblichus the Platonist, who died early in the fourth
century,--the _Life of Pythagoras_, and especially the _Mysteries of
the Egyptians_.[181] Another work, in many books, which has not come
down to us, but which penetrated into the literature of the middle
ages, was on the _Perfect Theology of the Chaldaeans_. To Iamblichus,
as to Plotinus, the Ideal world was a hierarchy of Gods, from the
ineffable, unsearchable One, down, tier upon tier, through successive
emanations, to the Gods that are immanent in the world we know and the
things of the world. In the scheme not only do the Ideas of Plato, the
Numbers of Pythagoras, the Forms of Aristotle, find a place, but also
all the Gods of the Greek mythology, of the Egyptian religion, of the
Babylonian and Hebrew esoteric cults. The same character is to be found
in the writings of the so-called Hermes or Mercurius Trismegistus, to
whom Bruno constantly appeals.[182] It was partly for their cosmology,
more in accord with modern thought than that of the Peripatetics and
the Church, that they were read; but still more for the support their
belief in demonic spirits, governing the movements of the worlds and of
all individual things, gave to magical and theurgical practices, which
through the slackening of the rule of the Church were now universal.
"All stars are called fires by the Chaldaeans," writes Bruno, "animals
of fire, ministers of fire, innumerable gods, divine oracles."[183]
"The Chaldaeans and the wise Rabbis endowed the stars with intelligence
and feeling."[184] "There are some who are by no means thought worthy
of a hearing among philosophers,--the Chaldaeans and Hebrew sages, who
attribute body to the omnipotent God, calling him 'a consuming fire'":
below Him were innumerable Gods, flames of fire, and spirits of air,
which were subtle, active, mobile bodies: souls too were spirits--that
is, subtle bodies; and Bruno adds, "We do not pursue this mode of
philosophising, but are far from despising it, nor have ever thought
that a wise man should think it contemptible."[185] The theology or
theosophy of the Egyptians is praised in the _Spaccio_,[186]--"The
magical and divine cult of the Egyptians, who saw divinity in all
things, and in all actions (each manifesting divinity in its own
special way); and knew by means of its forms in the bosom of nature
how to secure the benefits they derived from it--as out of the sea
and rivers it gives fish, out of the deserts wild beasts, and out of
mines metals, out of trees fruits, and out of certain parts of nature,
certain animals, certain brutes, certain plants, are gifted certain
fates, virtues, fortunes, or impressions. Divinity in the sea was
called Neptune, in the sun Apollo, in the earth Ceres, in the deserts
Diana, and diversely in each of the other species of things: as divine
ideas, they were diverse deities in Nature, and all were referred to
one deity of deities, one source of Ideas above Nature." The passage
shows clearly the connection between the revived enthusiasm for the old
pagan cults and the new but dark beginnings of independent study of
nature, in Magic, Divination, Alchemy, and Astrology: equally close was
the connection of both with the revival of Pantheism, the conception
of nature as a single whole throbbing with one life, springing from
one single source. So of the Hebrew Cabala, Bruno writes, "its wisdom
(whatever it be in its kind) derives from the Egyptians, among whom
Moses was brought up." "In the first place it attributes to the first
principle a name ineffable, from which proceed, in the second place,
four names, afterwards resolved into twelve, these into seventy-two,
these into one hundred and forty-four, etc., etc. By each name they
name a god, an angel, an intelligence, a power that presides over
a species of things,--so the whole of divinity is reduced back to
one source, as all light is brought back to the first, self-shining
light; and the images in the diverse, innumerable mirrors,--particular
existences,--are referred to one formal,[187] ideal source."[188]
As might be expected, Plato himself was best known to the school
through one of the least characteristic of his works, the _Timaeus_,
with its fantastic cosmology and demonology, alongside of which
was placed the work of (the Pseudo-) Timaeus of Locris, a later
writing, based upon that of Plato, although professing to belong to
an earlier date: next to these in importance came the _Republic_,
with the theory of Ideas. It was from the Chaldaeans, Egyptians, and
Pythagoreans that Plato was supposed to have derived his cosmology.
It is, however, with the system of Plotinus that Bruno's earlier
theory has the closest affinity: he passed far beyond that system,
as the following chapters may show, but many of the ideas that had
come down from the master remained throughout part of the basis of
Bruno's thought: such are, for example, the idea of the Universal
Intelligence,--distinct from the One, the Highest and Unknowable
Being, or God,--as the soul of the world and the source of the forms
of material things;[189] the _rationes_ or ideas which are contained
in it mould and form all things from the seed onwards: the seed is a
miniature world containing _implicitly_, _i.e._ in its _ratio_, form
or soul, the perfect thing.[190] The conception again of the lower,
sensible world, as an imitation of the higher, the intelligible,
is derived from Plotinus, as is that of the seven grades or steps
of emanation from the First Principle to the material world, which
correspond to the seven grades by which the human mind rises from the
knowledge of sensible things to that of the Highest, the Good.[191]
The order of knowledge corresponds step for step with the order of
emanation--of creation. Most significant of all for the development
of Bruno's philosophy was Plotinus' conception of an "intelligible
matter," which is common to all the different beings and species,
in the intelligible world, just as brute matter is that which is
common to all kinds of corporeal objects.[192] Again from Plotinus
derives the distinction that the matter underlying the intelligible
world _is_ all things and all together: having in it (implicitly) all
forms, there is nothing into which it may change: whereas the matter
of the sensible world _becomes_ all by change in its parts, becomes
at successive moments this and that, is therefore at all times in
diversity, change, movement. Matter of either kind is never without
form, but all forms are in them in different ways--in the one in the
instant of eternity, in the other in the instants of time; in the one
all at once, in the other successively, in the one _complicitly_, in
the other _explicitly_.[193] The same idea is attributed in the _De
Immenso_ (Book V.) to the Platonists,--"that God has imbued celestial
matter with all forms at once, but gives them to elemental matter in
single moments, just as he has poured into the nature of the Gods
all ideas once for all, but instils them into animal nature day by
day. And as in the order of minds there is an ultimate principle
which is incorruptible, so in the order of bodies. For the order
of bodies follows that of intelligences as a footmark follows the
foot, as a shadow follows the body; hence whatever order is proved
to hold of minds, the same will be found to hold of "bodies."[194]
It only remained to identify the two kinds of matter, the divine and
the "elemental," the spiritual and the corporeal, to obtain the pure
Pantheistic naturalism of the middle period of Bruno's philosophy:
at that stage he was no longer in sympathy with the Neoplatonist
psychology, and denied the doctrine of a _separate_ intelligence or
understanding in man, an intelligence, that is, of different origin
from sense, and therefore of different kind; he rejected also their
view that the imagination which is the source of instinct in animals,
differs from human imagination, and their assertion of a difference
in kind between reason and intellect in man. For Bruno, as the order
of nature was throughout the same in kind, constituted of similar
elements, so the order of thought or knowledge was one in kind, from
its lowest phase in sense, to its highest in the divine ecstasy. In the
_Heroici Furori_ (as again in the posthumous _De Vinculis in genere_)
the Platonic doctrine of the ascent to the ecstatic vision and love
of divine beauty, from sense-perception and the material feeling for
sensible beauty, is the essential topic throughout: and in both Bruno
is largely indebted for his symbolism to the Neoplatonist mystics.
[Sidenote: Averroes:--Ibn Roschd (1126-1198).]
The renewed passion for physical science brought another school of
philosophy into prominence--the Arabian.[195] The chief commentaries of
this school on Aristotle, as well as many of their original writings,
were translated and published before the middle of the sixteenth
century. Their interest being directed rather towards the physical
and metaphysical writings of the master, than towards the logical,
they helped to satisfy and to foster the growing spirit of inquiry,
and at the same time to spread abroad a more exact knowledge of the
real Aristotle than was to be derived from the Christian commentators,
whose philosophy was much less in sympathy with Aristotle's than was
imagined. The general trend of the Arabian school in metaphysics was
towards a modified Aristotelianism, leavened by the Neoplatonist
conception of the essential unity of all being and all thought,
particular things and particular ideas being a free outflow from the
One, into which they of necessity return again without affecting
its fundamental nature. Bruno was familiar with _Avicenna_,[196]
_Avempace_,[197] _Avicebron_,[198] _Algazel_,[199] and above all
_Averroes_. Avicebron or Avencebrol was the author of the famous
_Fons Vitae_, "the Source of Life," which gained a quite undeserved
notoriety for its supposed materialism. Bruno did not know it at first
hand, but through quotations in the translated Arabian writings,[200]
and criticisms in the Scholastics. Accordingly his idea of it is by no
means accurate.[201] He knew that Avicebron had spoken of matter as
divine, that he had reduced even the "substantial forms" of Aristotle
to transitory phases of matter--"the stable, the eternal, progenetrix,
mother of all things,"[202] and had shown the logical necessity of
assuming a matter, or ground, out of which corporeal nature on the one
hand, incorporeal or spiritual on the other, are differentiated.[203]
It is clear that this underlying matter was not material in the
ordinary sense, but a unity which in itself was neither corporeal nor
spiritual, yet in its different aspects was both at once. That is a
conception which formed one of the main theses in Bruno's philosophy.
Directly or indirectly, he drew from the _Fons Vitae_ the thought of
a common something which runs through all differences, which is their
basis, and gives them reality, which stands to them in the relation of
Aristotle's matter to forms: under the differences of bodily objects
there lies one common matter, under the differences of spiritual
beings another, and under the differences of these two secondary
"matters" lies a primary matter in which both are one. So too the
progress of thought is from the most complex, or composite, material
bodies,--through the less complex, the spiritual,--to the highest
and simplest, the One.[204] Of Algazel's _Makacid_--a resumé of the
chief philosophical systems, which were criticised in a second part of
the work--a translation was published in 1506. Although an orthodox
theologian, he taught Bruno that the Sacred Books had as their end not
so much truth or knowledge about reality "as goodness of custom, the
advantage of the civil body, harmonious living together of peoples,
and practice for the benefit of human intercourse, maintenance of
peace, increase of republics";[205] in other words, that the Bible
claimed no authority in regard to matters of historical fact or of
natural science, but contained a revelation of moral or practical
rather than of speculative or theoretical truth.[206] For Averroes,
Bruno has the highest respect:[207] he constantly speaks of him as
"the most subtle and weighty of the Peripatetics"; "Averroes, though
an Arab and ignorant of Greek (!), is more at home in the Peripatetic
doctrine than any Greek I have read: and he would have understood
it better, had he not been so devoted to his deity Aristotle."[208]
This blind faith in Aristotle was the weak spot in Averroes' armour,
and the cause of many of his subtleties. "He could not believe that
Aristotle, whose knowledge was co-extensive with creation, could have
erred; rather than deny Aristotle, he refused to believe his own
senses."[209] In philosophical theory there were at least two points
of contact between Bruno and the great Arabian--one was the doctrine
that forms, _i.e._ individual particular objects, are sent out from and
therefore originally contained in matter, or, in modern phrase, that
the evolution of natural objects is from within outwards, not imposed
upon nature by an alien and separate creator:[210] the other was the
theory of a universal intelligence pervading and illuminating all human
minds, yet remaining one and the same in all, itself an emanation from
the Divine, and the lowest in the order of intelligences.[211] Bruno
did not, however, speak of it as separate from the finite minds, but as
immanent in them: nor did he regard it as the only immortal element in
man.
[Sidenote: _Albertus Magnus._]
Of the Scholastics proper, from whom much at least of Bruno's
terminology is derived, two seem to have influenced him most
strongly:--Albert the Great, whose interest in natural science entitled
him to a place in the temple of wisdom: "He had no equal in his time,
and was far superior to Aristotle, whose school, in which he ranked
according to the conditions of his age, was unworthy of him";[212]
and Thomas Aquinas, the angelic doctor, "honour and glory of all and
every race of theologians and of Peripatetic philosophers."[213]
Generally speaking, however, the Scholastic is to Bruno the pedant,
the dabbler in words, as contrasted with the student of nature or
of reality.[214] Under this condemnation fell two of the greatest
innovators upon the Aristotelian philosophy of his own time,--Ramus,
and Patrizzi. The great logician was merely "a French arch-pedant, who
has written _The School upon the Liberal Arts_, and the _Animadversions
against Aristotle_. We may admit that he understood Aristotle, but he
understood him badly; and had he understood him well, he would perhaps
have been minded to make honourable war upon him, as the judicious
Telesio has done."[215] The fashionable philosopher and Platonist is
"_un altro sterco di pedanti_, an Italian who has soiled so many quires
with his _Discussiones Peripateticae_; we cannot say he understood
Aristotle, either well or ill, but he has read and re-read, stitched
and unstitched, and compared with a thousand other Greek authors,
friendly and unfriendly to Aristotle, and in the end has undergone
great labour, not only without any profit, but also with very great
disprofit, so that he who would see into what presumptuous folly and
vanity the pedantic habit may plunge a man, let him look at that book,
before the memory of it is lost." Tocco has laid his finger upon the
reason for Bruno's dislike of these moderns, and it explains his
objection to the Scholastics generally:--it was that they attempted to
remodel and reform the Logic and Rhetoric of Aristotle, the very parts
of his work which Bruno regarded as the most perfect,--and neglected
the physical works, the theory of which had so powerful an authority
to back it, and therefore all the more required the energies of the
stronger minds of the time to be directed upon it.[216]
[Sidenote: Lully, 1235-1305.]
One of the mediæval writers Bruno associated so closely with himself,
that his indebtedness might easily be exaggerated: this was Raymond
Lully, whose grim figure stands out from the shadowy thirteenth
century,--the author of the celebrated _Art of Reasoning_.[217]
The object of the Art was to tabulate the primary forms or elements
of thought, and their modes of combination, from which data, it was
believed, any process of reasoning, however complex, might be carried
out, without greater expenditure of energy than in performing an
arithmetical operation with any of the first nine numbers. There was no
question of a possible divorce between thought and reality. The result
of any such process of rational calculus properly carried out was
truth. Bruno thought with Lully that the ultimate ideas within reach of
human thought were at the same time substantial elements in reality and
that the completest knowledge of reality--short of the Absolute--was
within the power of human reason to achieve. Lully included in this
rational sphere the dogmas of Christian theology: faith was for the
many, who must be _driven_ to believe; reason for the few, the wise.
Lully's method attracted, and his teaching influenced nearly all the
greater minds of the later middle ages, and of the Renaissance. They
became a source of as bitter contention as the doctrines of Aristotle
himself. Bruno speaks of Lully as "almost divine"; Agrippa, after being
an ardent follower, came to see the vanity of the system, and Bacon
called it a method of imposture. At different times Bruno expounded,
criticised, and expanded the Art. He claims[218] to have "embellished
the method of him whom the best leaders among philosophers admire,
follow, imitate." Duns Scotus ("Scotigena"), Nicholas of Cusa,
Paracelsus, Agrippa, are named, unjustly, as having drawn their chief
doctrines from this source: Lefevre and Bouillé[219] cited among his
most recent followers. The art was taught "by some divine genius to a
rude uncultured hermit, and although it seems to issue from one too
dense and stupid, yet it excels the teaching of any famous Attic orator
in this kind, as a crop of wheat excels one of barley. It seemed to
us unfitting that this work, struggling upwards to the light, against
the envy of oppressing darkness, should be suffered to perish and be
lost."[220] Yet Bruno by no means thought Lully's exposition perfect.
Of his own Lullian work, the _De Compendiosa Architectura_,[221]
he says that it "suffices for the understanding, estimating, and
prosecuting of the art of Lully, by those who are skilled in the vulgar
philosophy. For in it is expressed in one whole, all that is in Lully's
many 'Arts,' in which he always seems to be saying the same thing; you
have there all that is in the _Ars Brevis_, the _Ars Magna_, and other
books bearing the name of _Arbor Scientiae_, _Inventionis_, _Artes
demonstrativae_, _mixtionis principiorum_, _Auditus cabalistici_, or
any other of that kind, in which the poor fellow strove always to
express the same thing."
It was the dream of universal knowledge that attracted Bruno and
others to Lullism, just as the dream of universal power over nature
attracted the greater minds of the Renaissance to the pseudo-science
of Alchemy. The same idea is at the root of both. All things are in
all things, _i.e._ the one fundamental nature is in each and every
individual thing, therefore out of any one may be produced any
other. So in the idea of any one thing, the knowledge of all and
any others is necessarily contained, requiring only a proper method
for its extraction, as out of the seed may be brought the great
tree. Therefore, to Bruno, the hermit Lully seemed "omniscient and
almost divine," his method an inspiration from above.[222] There is
little, however, to connect Bruno with the substantive teaching of
Lully, apart from the method. He explicitly rejects, for example, the
main contention of Lully, that the Christian dogmas are capable of
demonstration by reason.--"Those relations (_i.e._ between God and
man), which have been revealed to the worshippers of Christ alone, are
contrary to all reasoning, philosophy, other faiths and superstitions,
and allow of no demonstration but of faith only, in spite of what Lully
in his madness (_delirando_) attempted to do, in face of the opinion of
the great theologians."[223]
[Sidenote: _Nicolaus Cusanus._]
Foremost of all, however, of the influences which directed Bruno's
thought was that of the Cardinal Nicolaus of Cusa (Nicholas Chrypffs).
A "pre-reformation reformer," he stands both in theology and philosophy
between the old and the new eras, summing up in his own theory the
purest theology and the most refined philosophy of the Middle Ages,
yet inevitably pointing forwards to a scientific and religious reform
which should transcend both. "Where," cried Bruno in his oration at
Wittenberg, "will you find his equal? and the greater he is the fewer
are they to whom he is accessible. Had not the robe of the priest
infected his genius it would have been not merely equal to but far
superior to that of Pythagoras."[224] "He knew and discerned much,
and is truly one of the most gifted natures that have ever breathed
the air of heaven; but as to the apprehension of truth, he was like a
swimmer in tempestuous waters, cast now high now low, he did not see
the light continuously, openly, clearly; did not swim as in calm and
quiet waters, but interruptedly, at intervals, for he had not cast
off all the false principles which he had received from the common
doctrine--his starting-point."[225]
A sketch of the philosophy of the Cusan will show in how close a
relation Bruno stands to him, yet how great is the difference in
outcome between the two philosophies. Clemens, whose sympathies are
with the orthodox theologian, does not hesitate to say that this is
"the real and direct source from which Bruno drew with both hands,
the philosophy to which he owes many of the main principles of his
nature-philosophy, and which he has to thank for all the essentials of
teaching said to be peculiar to himself"; and Falckenberg is equally
inclined to underrate the originality of the Italian in preference to
the German philosopher. The outset of Cusanus' philosophy is from a
theory of knowledge which he held from Platonist traditions:--Knowledge
is posterior both in time and in value to Being, or Reality, of which
it is at best a copy or a sign, hence Reality can never be wholly
comprehended by it. Every human assertion is at best a "conjecture," a
hypothesis or approach to truth, but never the absolute truth itself.
Only in the Divine spirit are thought and reality one; the Divine
thought is at the same time creative, human only reflective, imitative,
thus the Ultimate Being is and must remain incomprehensible for human
minds. So Bruno also taught. The Cusan did not, however, reject on
this account all human knowledge. On the contrary, reason approximates
ever more and more closely to the Divine mind, as a polygon approaches
more and more to the form of a circle when the number of its sides is
increased; as it never becomes an actual circle, so the Divine reason
may be known ever more and more truly through human reason, but never
quite truly. It is the knowledge of this our essential _ignorance_ of
the Divine that brings us nearest to it.[226] Thus although from one
point of view all that is best in human experience may be attributed to
the Divine nature in a higher form (_positive theology_), from another
every predicate, even the highest, may be denied of it (_negative
theology_), or from still a third standpoint (_mystical theology_),
contrary predicates equally hold or do not hold of the Divine. This
"coincidence of contraries," suggested perhaps by the tradition of
Heraclitus and Empedocles, was in the Cusan a principle of knowledge
merely. The Divine was at once the greatest and the least; _greatest_
because we could not imagine it added to, for it was the all; _least_
because, being truly existent, we could not imagine anything taken away
from it. It is owing to the limits of human thought, therefore, that
God is at once greatest and least, equal and unequal, many and one; God
Himself is free from all contradiction, the apparent contraries of our
understanding are in Him one and the same. So, to our imagination, the
infinite circle coincides with the infinite straight line, and a top
spinning with its fastest movement appears to stand still.
Bruno extols the greatness of this discovery--"Considering it
physically, mathematically, morally, one sees that the philosopher who
saw into the coincidence of contraries made a discovery of the highest
importance, and that the magician who knows to seek it where it is
is no feeble practician."[227] Yet, although he made use of the same
geometrical illustrations, and believed himself to be substantially
following Cusanus, his theory was widely different. The coincidence
springs in Bruno, not from the limitations of the human mind, but from
the fulness of the Divine nature. It is not in God as the transcendent
unknowable Being that the coincidence inheres, but in the infinite
universe as one with God, which is in itself at once the greatest and
the least, the maximum and the minimum. Since nature is permeated by
God, in everything, in the least of things, is God the greatest; the
least _is_ the greatest, has in it the nature of the whole, and so,
too, the greatest is the least. In Bruno it is a _pantheistic_, in
the Cusan a _theistic_, doctrine. The same conception occurs again in
its different meanings, when both compare God to an infinite circle
in which centre and circumference are one; in Cusanus it is to our
knowledge that He so appears, in Bruno He really _is_ infinite, and is
with His whole nature at any point or centre, as well as in the whole,
the circumference.
[Sidenote: The Trinity.]
With the Cusan the threefold nature of the Highest Being is deduced as
a necessity of Reason: it is (1) _unity_ eternal; (2) _sameness_ or
_equality_ eternal; and (3) the _union_ of unity and equality. As there
cannot be three eternal and highest beings, these three are necessarily
one--the Unity (the Father) produces or begets from itself the _same_
(the Son), and out of both springs their union (the Holy Ghost), yet
each of these in the One is one and the same.[228] In the universe,
the created world, there is also a Trinity, since it is a copy or
reflection of the Divine. (1) _Possibility_ or _Matter_, the unlimited,
indeterminate, but capable of being limited and determined, corresponds
to the unity of the eternal; (2) _Actuality_, or _Form_, the limiting
or determining something, that which limits, corresponds to the
sameness or equality of the Eternal; and (3) the unifying _movement_ by
which the possible receives actuality, matter receives form, implying a
spirit of union, of Love, corresponds to the Absolute Union, the Holy
Ghost.[229] At a later stage of his philosophy, however, the Cusan
gave a second deduction of the Trinity.[230] God is both Absolute
Possibility, Absolute Power or Potency (the Creative Word, the Son),
and the union of both in Absolute Reality; yet these are merely
different aspects or points of view of the Eternal Being. Again, God
is the identity of knowing, or intellect, the knowable or intelligible
(the Word), and love, as the inter-relation of each with each, the
striving of the knowing after the knowable, its highest good.[231]
Bruno also adopts the Trinity of Possibility or Matter, Potency or
Form, and Reality, but it is applied at once to God and to Nature as
two sides of the same thing. As the Divine potency is infinite, so
is nature, its expression, infinite; matter and form do not in their
origin stand opposed to one another, as if separated from one another,
any more than _power_ and _possibility_ are separate in God; all that
can be is realised; matter has in itself all possible forms, and
produces these out of itself in the successive moments of time; the
universe is eternal, therefore, in order that the infinite power may
in it be realised. In all these respects Bruno transforms the orthodox
Cusanus' conception of a created and finite world; although nowhere
perhaps has the idea of a creation been more skilfully woven into a
profound philosophical system than in the Cardinal's quaint dialogues.
The Cusan does not attempt the impossible, to account for the fact of
creation--"God comprehends (or contains) all things, for all things are
in Him, and He unfolds all things out of Himself, for in all things He
lives"; but the essence and the process of the comprehension and the
unfolding are unknowable by us, just as we can never understand how
_chance_ comes to be united with _necessity_ (creation) in the world.
It is to this incomprehensible partnership that the imperfections of
created things are attributed. In its reality the universe is finite,
limited; in its possibility (_i.e._ its _idea_) it is infinite, but
only _privatively_ infinite--that is, God could still call a more
perfect universe into existence than it has actually pleased Him to do.
Only He, as the Absolute Greatest, is infinite in the full _negative_
sense, _i.e._ that which can neither be nor be thought greater than it
is. Here Bruno's theory is in complete contrast with that of the Cusan.
There are, however, many consequences that both alike have drawn, as
that no two things in the universe are wholly and in all respects
alike (the _identity of indiscernibles_); each thing expresses the
nature of the whole in a special way, but all things may be arranged
in graduated scales from the lowest to the highest, or from any one to
any other, _i.e._ there are no absolute differences, only differences
of degree. Nor are there absolute centres in the universe, or in any
of the worlds, nor perfect figures--thus there are no perfect circles
described, _e.g._ by the planets, in nature. A further corollary was
that the whole is mirrored in each of the parts, as each particular
thing partakes of the soul or creative force of all; each does not,
however, mirror or reflect the Divine nature with the same adequacy as
every other; some do so more perfectly than others, man most perfectly
of all.[232] Cusanus did not definitely accept the suggestion of a
soul of the universe, analogous in its relation to the world to the
soul of man in the body; still less did he identify it with God, as
Bruno tended more and more to do. Hence he escaped the fantastical
consequences of the belief in Universal Animism, which were drawn
without reserve by the Renaissance writers--the consequence, _e.g._
that if one soul, one nature, pervades all things, and is the life of
all things, then out of each may be produced any other--out of lead,
gold, etc. On the other hand, the four elements at least were different
forms of the same fundamental being, and might be produced each out of
the other; and, in common with Bruno, Cusanus held the pre-Aristotelian
belief in Atomism:--there cannot be division of anything, cube or
surface, or line--_ad infinitum_; ultimately there must in each kind
be a minimum,[233] an atom, beyond which we cannot _in fact_ go,
although to _thought_ it may be still further divisible; so there is
in every figure, in every kind of thing, a definite _number_ of atoms.
It was partly this thought, partly also the mystical value from time
immemorial given to the different numbers and geometrical figures, that
led both Cusanus and Bruno to look to mathematics and geometry for
the true method or organon of natural science. "Number is the natural
and fruitful principle of the understanding's activity; irrational
beings do not number. But number is nothing but the unfolding of the
understanding. Without it the understanding would have none of the
results to which it attains.... Nothing can exist before number, for
all that goes beyond the simplest unity is in its fashion a composite,
and, therefore, without number is unthinkable, for multitude,
difference, and relation of parts arise from number."[234] In both
again human knowledge proceeds inversely as creation (or emanation)
from number, the many, back through successive grades of simplicity to
the one highest, most simple, God, in whom are all things complicitly
(without number). "What appears to us as after another, successive, is
by no means after in Thy Thought, which is eternity itself. The single
thought, which is Thy word, embraces (_complicat_) all and each in
itself, Thy single word cannot be manifold, opposite, changeable....
In the eternity in which Thou thinkest, coincides all the _after
another_ of time, with the _now_ of eternity. There is, therefore, no
past nor future where future and past coincide with the present."[235]
The merely logical understanding, that which is based upon sense and
requires sense-images for its material, is inadequate to this highest
knowledge, gives approximation merely, and we are thrown back upon
mystical intuition on the one hand, reasoned faith on the other, for
our insight into the true nature of the One and the All.[236]
[Sidenote: Agrippa of Nettesheim.]
Other influences which gave direction to Bruno's genius belong rather
to physical science and pseudo-science than to philosophical theory.
Cornelius Agrippa of Nettesheim (1487-1535), the scholarly adventurer,
the Faust who acquired all the knowledge and most of the arts of
his time, wrote a compendium and justification (from Neoplatonist
philosophy) of magical practices,[237] and at the close of his life
the great declamation "on the uncertainty and vanity of all sciences
and arts,"[238]--a plea for the simple life and the simple gospel. The
_De occulta philosophia_ is the chief source from which Bruno drew the
fantastical lore of the _De Monade_.[239] The satires upon Asinity, as
the chief human virtue, in the _Spaccio_ and the _Cabala_, directed
as they are against blind faith without works or wisdom, found their
occasion at least in Agrippa's praise of the Ass (in the _De Vanitate_)
as the mouthpiece of God in the story of Balaam, and the bearer of
Christ in the New Testament history.
[Sidenote: Paracelsus.]
[Sidenote: Cardanus.]
[Sidenote: Telesio.]
_Paracelsus_[240] proposed a reform of medicine on Neoplatonist
principles, attacking the Galenian doctrine of the Four Humours, which
was based on the four elements of the Aristotelians (the warm and the
cold, the moist and the dry). His own more "natural" theory made salt,
sulphur, and mercury the (chemical) elements of all things--those
which in living organisms were vivified and directed by an inner
spirit (_e.g._ the _Archaeus_ in man), a direct emanation from the
soul of the universe. Through their common constitution, and the
spirit that infused all things alike, there was a subtle, mysterious
sympathy between the microcosm and the macrocosm, the individual body
and the universe, and it was by the study of the relations (magical,
astrological, and the rest) between the stars and the things of earth,
between the different metals and the body of man, that Paracelsus
proposed to reform the art of medicine. Bruno, in the _Causa_,[241]
praises Paracelsus for his "philosophical" treatment of medicine,
that he did not rest content with the three chemical principles alone
for explanation of the different vital phenomena, but sought the true
principle of life everywhere in a spirit or soul. He is one of the
builders of the temple of wisdom,--_ad miraculum medicus_.[242] In his
magical writings and in the _De Monade_, Bruno is largely indebted
for materials to Paracelsus. The same general tendency, the desire
for a return to nature and to sense-observation as opposed to the
authority of Aristotle, and to the cult of logical or grammatical
subtleties, is found also in Cardan.[243] In his work there is the
same mixture of mathematics and physical science with theology, magic,
and Neoplatonism, and to him Bruno owes many of his superstitions.
The more profound Telesio also (who before Bruno "made honourable war
upon Aristotle")[244] attempted, independently of all authority, from
sense-knowledge and induction alone, to penetrate the mysteries of
nature.
[Sidenote: Copernicus.]
Only one name remains with which that of Bruno is indelibly
associated--that of Copernicus, whose _De orbium coelestium
Revolutionibus_ was published in 1543. It was his theory of the
solar system, coinciding as it seemed with that of the most ancient
philosophers, that gave the decisive trend to Bruno's thought, holding
him fast to the one all-important fact that the earth is not the centre
of the universe but one of its humblest members. Without the solid
arguments of Copernicus, Bruno's superb conception of the cosmic system
would have remained a dream, an intuition of genius, rather than a
well-grounded forecast of modern scientific discovery. "There is more
understanding," said Bruno, "in two of his chapters than in the whole
philosophy of nature of Aristotle and all the Peripatetics.[245] Grave,
thoughtful, careful, and mature in mind, not inferior to any of the
astronomers that went before him--in natural judgment far superior
to Ptolemy, Hipparch, Eudoxus, and all the others that have walked
in their footsteps--a height he attained by freeing himself from the
prejudices, not to say blindness, of the vulgar philosophy. Yet he did
not get beyond it; being more a student of mathematics than of nature,
he was unable wholly to uproot all unfitting, vain principles, to solve
all contrary difficulties, liberate both himself and others from so
many vain inquiries, and fix their contemplation on things abiding and
sure. With all that, who can sufficiently appraise the greatness of
this German, who paid little heed to the foolish multitude, and stood
solid against the torrent of opposing belief. Although almost destitute
of living reasons for weapons, he took up those cast-off and rusty
fragments that he could get to his hand from antiquity; repolished
them, brought the pieces together, mended them, so that through his
arguments--mathematical rather than physical though they were--he made
a cause that had been ridiculed, despised, neglected, to be honoured
and prized, to seem more probable than its contrary, and certainly
more suitable and expeditious for calculation."[246] Copernicus had put
forward the theory as a hypothesis merely, and had shown how much more
simply the different positions of the sun and planets as seen from the
earth could be explained by it, and how much more accurately they could
be calculated. In the Epistle prefixed to his work (said by Bruno not
to be by Copernicus himself), the reader was warned of the folly of
taking this hypothesis as true. To Bruno the contrary of the hypothesis
was absurd. Bruno did not appreciate the mathematical proofs of
Copernicus, and constantly spoke of him as too much of a mathematician,
too little of a physicist: his own mathematical demonstrations were,
however, much less successful than those of his predecessor.[247]