BRUNO
17
BRUNO
his arrival he fled the eity and east off all allegiance
to his order. From this point on, his life-story is
the tale of his wanderings from one country to another
and of his failure to find peace anywhere. He tarried
awhile in several Italian cities, and in 1">79 went to
Geneva, where he seems to have adopted tin' Cal-
vinisl faith, although afterwards, before the ecclesi-
astical tribunal at Venice, he steadfastly denied
that he had ever joined the Reformed Church.
This much at least is certain; he was excommuni-
cated by the Calvinist Council on account of
his disrespectful attitude towards the heads of
that Church and was obliged to leave the city.
Thence he went to Toulouse, Lyons, and (in 15S1)
to Paris.
At Lyons he completed his "Clavis Magna, or "Great Key" to the art. of remembering. In Paris he published several works which further developed his art of memory-training and revealed the two- fold influence of Raymond Lully and the neo- Platonists. In 1582 he published a characteristic work, "II candelaio", or "The Torchbearer", a satire in which he exhibits in a marked degree the false taste then in vogue among the humanists, many of whom mistook obscenity for humour. While at Paris he lectured publicly on philosophy, under the auspices, as it seems, of the College of Cambrai, the forerunner of the College of France. In 1583 he crossed over to England, and, for a time at least, enjoyed the favour of Queen Elizabeth and the friendship of Sir Philip Sidney. To the latter he dedicated the most bitter of his attacks on the Catho- lic Church, "II spaccio della bestia trionfante", "The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast", pub- lished in 1584. He visited Oxford, and, on being refused the privilege of lecturing there, he published (1584) his "Cena delle ceneri", or "Ash-Wednesday Supper", in which he attacked the Oxford professors, saying that tiny knew more about beer than about tlrok. In 15S5 he returned to France, and during the year which he spent in Paris at this time made several attempts to become reconciled to the Catholic Church, all of which failed because of his refusal to accept the condition imposed, namely, that he should return to his order.
In Germany, whither he went in 1587, he showed i he same spirit of insolent self-assertion as at < Oxford. In Ib-lmstudt he was excommunicated by the Lutherans. After some time spent in literary ac- tivity at Frankfort, he went, in 1501, to Venice at the invitation of Mocenigo, who professed to be inter- ested in hia system of memory-training. Failing to obtain from Bruno the secret of his "natural magic", Mocenigo denounced him to the Inquisition. Bruno was arrested, and in his trial before the Vene- tian inquisitors first took refuge in the principle of "two-fold truth", saying that the errors imputed to him were held by him "as a philosopher, and not as hi honest Christian"; later, however, he solemnly abjured all his errors and doubts in the matter of Catholic doctrine and practice (Berti, Docum., XII. 2.' and XIII. 15). At this point the Roman Inqui- sition intervened and requested his extradition. After some hesitation the Venetian authorities agreed, and in February, 1593, Bruno was sent to Rome, and for six years was kept in the prison of the Inquisition. Historians have striven in vain to discover the explanation of this long delay on the i the Roman authorities. In the spring of 1599, the trial was begun before a commission of the Roman Inquisition, and, after the accused had been granted several terms of respite in which to ' his errors, he was finally condemned (January. 1600 . handed over to the secular power (8 February), and burned at the stake in the Campo dei Fiori in Rome (17 February). Bruno was not condemned for his defence of the Copernican system of astronomy,
m.— 2
nor for his doctrine of the plurality of inhabited
worlds, but for his theological errors, among which
were the following: that Christ was not God but
merely an unusually skilful magician, that the Holy
Ghost is the soul of the world, that the Devil will be
saved, etc.
To the works of Bruno already mentioned the following are to be added: "Delia causa, principio ed uno"; "Dell' infinito uni verso e dei mondi"; "De Compendiosa Architecture "; "De Triplici Minimo"; "De Monade, Numero et Figura ". In these "the Nolan" expounds a system of philosophy in which the principal elements are neo-Platomsm, material- istic monism, rational mysticism (after the manner of Raymond Lully), and the naturalistic concept of the unity of the material world (inspired by the Copernican astronomy). His attitude towards Aris- totle is best illustrated by his reiterated assertion that the natural philosophy of the Stagirite is viti- ated by the predominance of the dialectical over the mathematical mode of conceiving natural phe- nomena. Towards the Scholastics in general his feeling was one of undisguised contempt; he ex- cepted, however, Albert the Great and St. Thomas, for whom he always maintained a high degree of respect. He wished to reform the Aristotelean philosophy, and yet he was bitterly opposed to his contemporaries, Ramus and Patrizzi, whose efforts were directed towards the same object. He was acquainted, though only in a superficial way, with the wTitings of the pre-Socratic philosophers of Greece, and with the works of the neo-Platonists, especially with the books falsely attributed to Iamblichus and Plotinus. From the neo-Platonists he derived the tendency of his thought towards monism. From the pre-Socratic philosophers he borrowed the materialistic interpretation of the One. From the Copernican doctrine, which was attracting so much attention in the century in which he lived, he learned to identify the material One with the visible, infinite, heliocentric universe.
Thus, his system of thought is an incoherent ma- terialistic pantheism. God and the world arc one; matter and spirit, body and soul, arc two phases of the same substance; the universe is infinite; beyond the visible world there is an infinity of other worlds. each of which is inhabited: this terrestrial globe has a soul; in fact, each and even- part of it, mineral as well as plant and animal, is animated; all matter is made up of the same elements (no distinction between terrestrial and celestial matter); all souls are akin (transmigration is, therefore, not impo ible). This unitary point of view is Bruno's justification of "natural magic". No doubt, the attempt to estab- lish a scientific continuity among all the phenomena of nature is an important manifestation of the modi I n spirit, and interesting, especially on account of its appearance at the moment when the medieval point of view was being abandoned. And one can readily understand how Bruno's effort to establish a unitary concept of nature commanded the admiration of such men as Spinoza, Jacobi, and Hegel. < >n the other hand, the exaggerations, the limitations, and the positive errors of his scientific system; his intolerance of even those who were working for the reforms to which he was devoted; the false analogies, fantastic allegories, and sophistical reasonings into which his emotional fervour often betrayed him have justified. in the eyes of many. Bayle's characterization of him as "the knight-errant of philosophy". His attitude of mind towards religious truth was that of a ration- alist. Personally, lie failed to feel any of the vital significance of Christianity as a religious system. It was not a Roman Inquisitor, but a Prod divine, who said of him that he was "a man of great capacity, with infinite knowledge, but not a trace of religion".
