We come now to that perplexing question, “Why did he recant? How could
he, who was so evidently a freethinker and a rationalist, honestly
affirm his belief in the Roman Catholic dogmas?” His confession seems
to be straightforward and candid: had he wished to propitiate the
Inquisitors, he needed only not to mention his philosophical doubts
about the Incarnation and the Trinity; he needed only to admit that
there were in his writings errors which he no longer approved, and to
throw himself on the mercy of his tribunal. What, then, was the motive?
Was it physical fear? Did life and liberty seem too tempting to him who
loved both so intensely; preferable to death, no matter how great the
sacrifice of honor? Did he simply perjure himself? Or was he suddenly
overcome by a doubt that his opinions might be, after all, wrong, and
that the Church might be right? He testified, and others testified,
that before he had any thought of being brought to trial he had
determined to make his peace with the Pope, and to obtain leave, if he
could, to pass the remainder of his life in philosophical tranquillity.
Did the early religious associations and prejudices, which he supposed
had long ago ceased to influence him, unexpectedly spring up, to
reassert a temporary tyranny over his reason? Many men not in jeopardy
of their lives have had this experience of the tenacious vitality of
the doctrines taught to them before they could reason. Did it seem to
him a huge Aristophanic joke that a church which then had but little
real faith and less true religion in it should call any one to account
for any opinions, and that therefore the lips might well enough accept
her dogmas without binding the heart to them? Many men, who believed
themselves sincere, have subscribed in a “non-natural sense” to the
Thirty-nine Articles of Anglicanism; did Bruno subscribe to the
Catholic Articles under a similar mental reservation? Or, believing,
as he did, that every religion contains fragments of the truth, could
he not honestly say he believed in Catholicism, at the same time
holding that her symbols had a deeper significance than her theologians
perceived, and that the truth he apprehended was immeasurably
wider?--just as a mathematician might subscribe to the multiplication
table, knowing that it is not the final bound of mathematical truth,
but only the first step towards higher and unlimited investigations.
Throughout his examination Bruno was careful to make the distinction
between the province of faith and the province of speculation.
“Speaking after the manner of philosophy,” he confessed that he had
reached conclusions which, “speaking as a Catholic,” he ought not to
believe. This distinction, which we now think uncandid and casuistical,
was nevertheless admitted in his time. All through that century, men
had argued “philosophically” about the immortality of the soul; but
“theologically” such an argument was impossible, because the Church
pronounced the immortality of the soul to be an indisputable fact. But,
we ask, can a man honestly hold two antagonistic, mutually destroying
beliefs; saying, for instance, that his reason has disproved the
Incarnation, but that his faith accepts that doctrine? Or was Bruno
unaware of his contradictions? Of how many of your opinions concerning
the ultimate mysteries of life do you, reader, feel so sure that,
were you suddenly seized, imprisoned, brought face to face with a
pitiless tribunal, and confronted by torture and burning, you--one
man against the world--would boldly, without hesitation, publish and
maintain them? Galileo, one of mankind’s noblest, could not endure this
ordeal, although the evidence of his senses and the testimony of his
reason contradicted the denial which pain and dread wrung from him.
Savonarola, another great spirit, flinched likewise. These are points
we are bound to consider before we pronounce Bruno a hypocrite or a
coward.
The last news we have of him in Venice is when, “having been bidden
several times,” he rose from his knees, after confessing his penitence,
on that 30th of July, 1592. The authorities of the Inquisition at
Rome immediately opened negotiations for his extradition. The Doge
and Senate demurred; they hesitated before establishing the precedent
whereby Rome could reach over and punish Venetian culprits. Time was,
indeed, when Venice allowed no one, though he were the Pope, to meddle
in her administration; but, alas! the lion had died out in Venetian
souls. Finally, “wishing to give satisfaction to his Holiness,” Doge
and Senators consented to deliver Bruno up; the Pope expressed his
gratification, and said that he would never force upon the Republic
“bones hard to gnaw.” So Bruno was taken to Rome. In the “list of the
prisoners of the Holy Office, made Monday, April 5, 1599,” we find
that he was imprisoned on February 27, 1593. What happened during
almost seven years we can only surmise. We may be sure the Inquisitors
searched his books for further heretical doctrine. We hear that they
visited him in his cell from time to time, and exhorted him to recant,
but that he replied that he had nothing to abjure, and that they had
misinterpreted him. A memorial which he addressed to them they did
not read. Growing weary of their efforts to save his soul, they would
temporize no more; on a given day he must retract, or be handed over to
the secular arm. That day came: Giordano Bruno stood firm, though he
knew the penalty was death.
We cannot tell when he first resolved to dare and suffer all. Some time
during those seven years of solitude and torment, he awoke to the great
fact that
“’Tis man’s perdition to be safe,
When for the truth he ought to die.”
Mere existence he could purchase with the base coin of cowardice or
casuistry; but that would be, not life, but a living shame, and he
refused. Who can tell how hard instinct pleaded,--how the thoughts of
freedom, how the longings for companions, how the recollections of that
beautiful Neapolitan home which he loved and wished to revisit, how
the desire to explore yet more freely the beauties and the mysteries
of the divine universe, came to him with reasons and excuses to tempt
him from his resolution? But conscience supported him. He took Truth
by the hand, turned his back on the world and its joy and sunshine,
and followed whither she led into the silent, sunless unknown. Let us
dismiss the theory that he was impelled by the desire to escape in
this way from an imprisonment which threatened to be perpetual; let
us dismiss, and contemptuously dismiss, the insinuation of an English
writer, that Bruno’s purpose was, by a theatrical death, to startle the
world which had begun to forget him in his confinement. To impute a low
motive to a noble deed is surely as base as to extenuate a crime. Bruno
had no sentimental respect for martyrs; but on the day when he resolved
to die for his convictions, he proved his kinship with the noblest
martyrs and heroes of the race.
On February 8, 1600, he was brought before Cardinal Mandruzzi, the
Supreme Inquisitor. He was formally degraded from his order, sentence
of death was pronounced against him, and he was given up to the secular
authorities. During the reading, he remained tranquil, thoughtful. When
the Inquisitor ceased, he uttered those memorable words, which still,
judging from the recent alarm in the Vatican, resound ominously in the
ears of the Romish hierarchy: “Peradventure you pronounce this sentence
against me with greater fear than I receive it.” After nine days had
been allowed for his recantation, he was led forth, on February 17, to
the Campo di Fiora,--once an amphitheatre, built by Pompey, and now a
vegetable market. When he had been bound to the stake, he protested,
according to one witness, that he died willingly, and that his soul
would mount with the smoke into paradise. Another account says that he
was gagged, to prevent his uttering blasphemies. As the flames leaped
up, a crucifix was held before him, but he turned his head away. He
uttered no scream, nor sigh, nor murmur, as Hus and Servetus had done;
even that last mortal agony of the flesh could not overcome his spirit.
And when nothing remained of his body but ashes, these were gathered up
and tossed to the winds.
Berti, to whose indefatigable and enlightened researches, extending
over forty years, we owe our knowledge of Bruno’s career,[33] says
justly that Bruno bequeathed to his countrymen the example of an
Italian dying for an ideal,--a rare example in the sixteenth century,
but emulated by thousands of Italians in the nineteenth. To us and to
all men his death brings not only that lesson, but it also teaches
that no tribunal, whether religious or political, has a right to
coerce the conscience and inmost thoughts of any human being. Let a
man’s deeds, so far as they affect the community, be amenable to its
laws, but his opinions should be free and inviolable. We can grant
that the Torquemadas and Calvins and Loyolas were sincere, and that,
from their point of view, they were justified in persecuting men who
differed from them in religion; for the heretic, they believed, was
Satan’s emissary, and deserved no more mercy than a fever-infected rag;
but history admonishes us that their point of view was not only cruel,
but wrong. No man, no church, is infallible: therefore it may turn out
that the opinions which the orthodoxy of yesterday deemed pernicious
have infused new blood into the orthodoxy of to-day. Bruno declared
that the universe is infinite and its worlds are innumerable; the Roman
Inquisition, in its ignorance, knew better. Galileo declared that the
earth moves round the sun; the Inquisition, in its ignorance, said,
No. It burned Bruno, it harried Galileo; yet, after three centuries,
which do we believe? And if the Roman Church was fallible in matters
susceptible of easy proof, shall we believe that it, or any other
church, is infallible in matters immeasurably deeper and beyond the
scope of finite demonstration? Cardinal Bellarmine, an upright man, and
perhaps the ablest Jesuit of any age, was the foremost Inquisitor in
bringing Bruno to the stake, and in menacing Galileo with the rack; but
should a schoolboy of ten now uphold Bellarmine’s theory of the solar
system, he would be sent into the corner with a fool’s-cap on his head.
[33] See Berti’s work, _Giordano Bruno da Nola; Sua Vita e Sua
Dottrina_, 1889. This excellent biography deserves to be translated
into English.
Strange is it that mankind, who have the most urgent need for truth,
should have been in all ages so hostile to receiving it. Starving men
do not kill their rescuers who bring them bread; whereas history is
little more than the chronicle of the persecution and slaughter of
those who have brought food for the soul. Doubtless the first savage
who suggested that reindeer-meat would taste better cooked than raw was
slain by his companions as a dangerous innovator. Ever since that time,
the messengers of truth have been stoned, and burned, and ganched,
and crucified; yet their message has been delivered, and has at last
prevailed. This is, indeed, the best encouragement we derive from
history, and the fairest presage of the perfectibility of mankind.
The study of the works of Giordano Bruno, which has been revived
and extended during this century, is one evidence of a more general
toleration, and of a healthy desire to know the opinions of all kinds
of thinkers. One reason why Bruno has attracted modern investigators is
because so many of his doctrines are in tune with recent metaphysical
and scientific theories; and it seems probable that, for a while
at least, the interest awakened in him will increase rather than
diminish, until, after the republication and examination of all his
writings, a just estimate of his speculations shall have been made.
Much will undoubtedly have to be thrown out as obsolete or fanciful;
much as flippant and inconsistent; much as vitiated by the cumbrous
methods of scholasticism, and the tedious fashion of expounding
philosophy by means of allegory and satire. But, after all the chaff
has been sifted and all the excrescences have been lopped off,
something precious will remain.
The very diversity of opinions about the upshot and value of
his teaching insures for him the attention of scholars for some
time to come. Those thinkers who can be quickly classified and
easily understood are as quickly forgotten; only those who elude
classification, and constantly surprise us by turning a new facet
towards us, and provoke debate, are sure of a longer consideration.
And see how conflicting are the verdicts passed upon Bruno. Sir Philip
Sidney and that fine group of men who just preceded the Shakespearean
company were his friends, and listened eagerly to his speculations.
Hegel says: “His inconstancy has no other motive than his great-hearted
enthusiasm. The vulgar, the little, the finite, satisfied him not; he
soared to the sublime idea of the Universal Substance.” The French
_philosophes_ of the eighteenth century debated whether he were an
atheist; the critics of the nineteenth century declare him to be a
pantheist. Hallam thought that, at the most, he was but a “meteor of
philosophy.” Berti ranks him above all the Italian philosophers of his
epoch, and above all who have since lived in Italy except Rosmini, and
perhaps Gioberti. Some have called him a charlatan; some, a prophet.
Finally, Leo XIII, in an allocution which was read from every Romish
pulpit in Christendom, asserted that “his writings prove him an
adept in pantheism and in shameful materialism, imbued with coarse
errors, and often inconsistent with himself;” and that “his talents
were to feign, to lie, to be devoted wholly to himself, not to bear
contradiction, to be of a base mind and wicked heart.” As we read these
sentences of Leo XIII, and his further denunciation of those who, like
Bruno, ally themselves to the Devil by using their reason, we reflect
that, were popes as powerful now as they were three centuries ago,
they would have found reason enough to burn Mill and Darwin, and many
another modern benefactor.
Bruno’s character, like his philosophy, offers so many points
for dispute that it cannot soon cease to interest men. He is so
human--neither demigod nor demon, but a creature of perplexities and
contradictions--that he is far more fascinating than those men of a
single faculty, those monotones whom we soon estimate and tire of. His
vitality, his daring, his surprises, stimulate us. In an age when the
growing bulk of rationalism casts a pessimistic shadow over so many
hopes, it is encouraging to know that the rationalist Bruno saw no
reason for despair; and when some persons are seriously asking whether
life be worth living, it is inspiring to point to a man to whom the
boon of life was so precious and its delights seemed so inexhaustible.
At any period, when many minds, after exploring all the avenues of
science, report that they perceive only dead matter everywhere, it
must help some of them to learn that Bruno beheld throughout the whole
creation and in every creature the presence of an infinite Unity, of
a Soul of the World, whose attributes are power, wisdom, and love. He
was indeed “a God-intoxicated man.” Aristotle, Ptolemy, and Aquinas
spun their cobwebs round the border of the narrow circle in which, they
asserted, all truth, mundane and celestial, was comprehended; Bruno’s
restless spirit broke through the cobwebs, and discovered limitless
spaces, innumerable worlds, beyond. To his enraptured eyes, all things
were parts of the One, the Ineffable. “The Inquisition and the stake,”
says Mr. Symonds, “put an end abruptly to his dream. But the dream was
so golden, so divine, that it was worth the pangs of martyrdom. Can
we say the same for Hegel’s system, or for Schopenhauer’s, or for the
encyclopædic ingenuity of Herbert Spencer?” By his death Bruno did not
prove that his convictions are true, but he proved beyond peradventure
that he was a true man; and by such from the beginning has human nature
been raised towards that ideal nature which we believe divine.