Renaissance in Italy Volume VI Part 40

These _novi homines_ of the later Renaissance, as Bacon called them, these _novatori_, as they were contemptuously styled in Italy, prepared the further emanc.i.p.ation of the intellect by science. They a.s.serted the liberty of thought and speech, proclaimed the paramount authority of that inner light or indwelling deity which man owns in his brain and breast, and rehabilitated nature from the stigma cast on it by Christianity. What the Bible was for Luther, that was the great Book of Nature for Telesio, Bruno, Campanella. The German reformer appealed to the reason of the individual as conscience; the school of southern Italy made a similar appeal to intelligence. In different ways Luther and these speculative thinkers maintained the direct illumination of the human soul by G.o.d, man's immediate dependence on his Maker, repudiating ecclesiastical intervention, and refusing to rely on any principle but earnest love of truth.

Had this new phase of the Italian Renaissance been permitted to evolve itself unhindered, there is no saying how much earlier Europe might have entered into the possession of that kingdom of unprejudiced research which is now secured for us. But it was just at the moment when Italy became aware of the arduous task before her, that the Catholic reaction set in with all its rigor. The still creative spirit of her children succ.u.mbed to the Inquisition, the Congregation of the Index, the decrees of Trent, the intellectual submission of the Jesuits, the physical force of Spanish tyranny, and Roman absolutism. Carnesecchi was burned alive; Paleario was burned alive; Bruno was burned alive: these three at Rome.

Vanini was burned at Toulouse. Valentino Gentile was executed by Calvinists at Berne. Campanella was cruelly tortured and imprisoned for twenty-seven years at Naples. Galileo was forced to humble himself before ignorant and arrogant monks, and to hide his head in a country villa. Sarpi felt the knife of an a.s.sa.s.sin, and would certainly have perished at the instigation of his Roman enemies but for the protection guaranteed him by the Signory of Venice. In this way did Italy--or rather, let us say, the Church which dominated Italy--devour her sons of light. It is my purpose in the present chapter to narrate the life of Bruno and to give some account of his philosophy, taking him as the most ill.u.s.trious example of the school exterminated by reactionary Rome.

Giordano Bruno was born in 1548 at Nola, an ancient Greek city close to Naples. He received the baptismal name of Filippo, which he exchanged for Giordano on a.s.suming the Dominican habit. His parents, though people of some condition, were poor; and this circ.u.mstance may perhaps be reckoned the chief reason why Bruno entered the convent of S. Dominic at Naples before he had completed his fifteenth year. It will be remembered that Sarpi joined the Servites at the age of thirteen, and Campanella the Dominicans at that of fourteen. In each of these memorable cases it is probable that poverty had something to do with deciding a vocation so premature. But there were other inducements, which rendered the monastic life not unattractive, to a young man seeking knowledge at a period and in a district where instruction was both costly and difficult to obtain. Campanella himself informs us that he was drawn to the order of S. Dominic by its reputation for learning and by the great names of S. Thomas Aquinas and Albertus Magnus. Bruno possibly felt a similar attraction; for there is nothing in the temper of his mind to make us believe that he inclined seriously to the religious life of the cloister.

During his novitiate he came into conflict with the superiors of his convent for the first time. It was proved against him that he had given away certain images of saints, keeping only the crucifix; also that he had told a comrade to lay aside a rhymed version of the Seven Joys of Mary, and to read the lives of the Fathers of the Church instead. On these two evidences of insufficient piety, an accusation was prepared against him which might have led to serious results. But the master of the novices preferred to destroy the doc.u.ment, retaining only a memorandum of the fact for future use in case of need.[84] Bruno, after this event, obeyed the cloistral discipline in quiet, and received priest's orders in 1572.

At this epoch of his life, when he had attained his twenty-fourth year, he visited several Dominican convents of the Neapolitan province, and entered with the want of prudence which was habitual to him into disputations on theology. Some remarks he let fall on transubstantiation and the Divinity of Christ, exposed him to a suspicion of Arianism, a heresy at that time rife in southern Italy. Bruno afterwards confessed that from an early age he had entertained speculative doubts upon the metaphysics of the Trinity, though he was always prepared to accept that dogma in faith as a good Catholic. The Inquisition took the matter up in earnest, and began to inst.i.tute proceedings of so grave a nature that the young priest felt himself in danger. He escaped in his monk's dress, and traveled to Rome, where he obtained admittance for a short while to the convent of the Minerva.

[Footnote 84: The final case drawn up against Bruno as heresiarch makes it appear that his record included even these boyish errors. See the letter of Gaspar Schopp in Berti.]

We know very little what had been his occupations up to this date. It is only certain that he had already composed a comedy, _Il Candelajo_: which furnishes sufficient proof of his familiarity with mundane manners. It is, in fact, one of the freest and most frankly satirical compositions for the stage produced at that epoch, and reveals a previous study of Aretino. Nola, Bruno's birthplace, was famous for the license of its country folk. Since the day of its foundation by Chalkidian colonists, its inhabitants had preserved their h.e.l.lenic traditions intact. The vintage, for example, was celebrated with an extravagance of obscene banter, which scandalized Philip II.'s viceroy in the sixteenth century.[85] During the period of Bruno's novitiate, the ordinances of the Council of Trent for discipline in monasteries were not yet in operation; and it is probable that throughout the thirteen years of his conventual experience, he mixed freely with the people and shared the pleasures of youth in that voluptuous climate. He was never delicate in his choice of phrase, and made no secret of the admiration which the beauty of women excited in his nature. The accusations brought against him at Venice contained one article of indictment implying that he professed distinctly profligate opinions; and though there is nothing to prove that his private life was vicious, the tenor of his philosophy favors more liberty of manners than the Church allowed in theory to her ministers.[86]

[Footnote 85: See 'Vita di Don Pietro di Toledo'_ (Arch. Stov._ vol. ix.

p. 23)]

[Footnote 86: See the pa.s.sage on polygamy in the _s.p.a.ccio della Bestia_.

I may here remark that Campanella, though more orthodox than Bruno, published opinions upon the relations of the s.e.xes a.n.a.logous to those of Plato's Republic in his _Citta del Sole_. He even recommended the inst.i.tution of brothels as annexes to schools for boys, in order to avoid the worse evil of unnatural vice in youth.]

It is of some importance to dwell on this topic; for Bruno's character and temper, so markedly different from that of Sarpi, for example, affected in no small measure the form and quality of his philosophy. He was a poet, gifted with keen and lively sensibilities, open at all pores to the delightfulness of nature, recoiling from nothing that is human.

At no period of his life was he merely a solitary thinker or a student of books. When he came to philosophize, when the spiritual mistress, Sophia, absorbed all other pa.s.sions in his breast, his method of exposition retained a tincture of that earlier phase of his experience.

It must not be thought, however, that Bruno prosecuted no serious studies during this period. On the contrary, he seems to have ama.s.sed considerable erudition in various departments of learning: a fact which should make us cautious against condemning conventual education as of necessity narrow and pedantic. When he left Naples, he had acquired sufficient knowledge of Aristotle and the Schoolmen, among whom he paid particular attention to S. Thomas and to Raymond Lully. Plato, as expounded by Plotinus, had taken firm hold on his imagination. He was versed in the dialectics of the previous age, had mastered mediaeval cosmography and mathematics, and was probably already acquainted with Copernicus. The fragments of the Greek philosophers, especially of Pythagoras and Parmenides, whose metaphysics powerfully influenced his mind, had been a.s.similated. Perhaps the writings of Cardinal Cusa, the theologian who applied mathematics to philosophy, were also in his hands at the same period. Beside Italian, he possessed the Spanish language, could write and speak Latin with fluency, and knew something of Greek.

It is clear that he had practiced poetry in the vernacular under the immediate influence of Tansillo. Theological studies had not been wholly neglected; for he left behind him at Naples editions of Jerome and Chrysostom with commentaries of Erasmus. These were books which exposed their possessors to the interdiction of the Index.

It seems strange that a Dominican, escaping from his convent to avoid a trial for heresy, should have sought refuge at S. Maria Sopra Minerva, then the headquarters of the Roman Inquisition. We must, however, remember that much freedom of movement was allowed to monks, who found a temporary home in any monastery of their order. Without money, Bruno had no roof but that of a religious house to shelter him; and he probably reckoned on evading pursuit till the fatigues of his journey from Naples had been forgotten. At any rate, he made no lengthy stay in Rome. News soon reached him that the prosecution begun at Naples was being transferred to the metropolis. This implied so serious a danger that he determined to quit Rome in secret. Having flung his frock to the nettles, he journeyed--how, we do not know--to Genoa, and thence to Noli on the Riviera. The next time Bruno entered the Dominican convent of S.

Maria sopra Minerva, it was as a culprit condemned to death by the Inquisition.

At Noli Bruno gained a living for about five months by teaching grammar to boys and lecturing in private to some gentlefolk upon the Sphere. The doctrine of the Sphere formed a somewhat miscellaneous branch of mediaeval science. It embraced the exposition of Ptolemaic astronomy, together with speculations on the locality of heaven, the motive principle of the world, and the operation of angelical intelligences.

Bruno, who professed this subject at various times throughout his wanderings, began now to use it as a vehicle for disseminating Copernican opinions. It is certain that cosmography formed the basis of his philosophy, and this may be ascribed to his early occupation with the sphere. But his restless spirit would not suffer him to linger in those regions where olive and orange and palm flourish almost more luxuriantly than in his native Nola. The gust of travel was upon him. A new philosophy occupied his brain, vertiginously big with incoherent births of modern thought. What Carlyle called 'the fire in the belly'

burned and irritated his young blood. Unsettled, cast adrift from convent moorings, attainted for heresy, out of sympathy with resurgent Catholicism, he became a Vagus Quidam--a wandering student, like the Goliardi of the Middle Ages. From Noli he pa.s.sed to Savona; from Savona to Turin; from Turin to Venice. There his feet might perhaps have found rest; for Venice was the harbor of all vagrant spirits in that age. But the city was laid waste with plague. Bruno wrote a little book, now lost, on 'The Signs of the Times,' and lived upon the sale of it for some two months. Then he removed to Padua. Here friends persuaded him to rea.s.sume the cowl. There were more than 40,000 monks abroad in Italy, beyond the limits of their convent. Why should not he avail himself of house-roof in his travels, a privilege which was always open to friars?

From Padua he journeyed rapidly again through Brescia, Bergamo and Milan to Turin, crossed Mont Cenis, tarried at Chambery, and finally betook himself to Geneva.

Geneva was no fit resting-place for Bruno. He felt an even fiercer antipathy for dissenting than for orthodox bigotry. The despotism of a belligerent and persecuting sectarian seemed to him more intolerable, because less excusable, than the Catholic despotism from which he was escaping. Galeazzo Caracciolo, Marquis of Vico, who then presided over the Italian refugees in Geneva, came to visit him. At the suggestion of this man Bruno once more laid aside his Dominican attire, and began to earn his bread by working as a reader for the press--a common resort of needy men of learning in those times. But he soon perceived that the Calvinistic stronghold offered no freedom, no security of life even, to one whose mind was bent on new developments of thought. After two months' residence on the sh.o.r.es of Lake Leman he departed for Toulouse, which he entered early in 1577.

We cannot help wondering why Bruno chose that city for his refuge.

Toulouse, the only town in France where the Inquisition took firm root and flourished, Toulouse so perilous to Muret, so mortal to Dolet and Vanini, ought, one might have fancied, to have been avoided by an innovator flying from a charge of heresy.[87] Still it must be remembered that Toulouse was French. Italian influence did not reach so far. Nor had Bruno committed himself even in thought to open rupture with Catholicism. He held the opinion, so common at that epoch, so inexplicable to us now, that the same man could countermine dogmatic theology as a philosopher, while he maintained it as a Christian. This was the paradox on which Pomponazzo based his apology, which kept Campanella within the pale of the Church, and to which Bruno appealed for his justification when afterwards arraigned before the Inquisitors at Venice.

[Footnote 87: On the city, university and Inquisition of Toulouse in the sixteenth century see Christie's _Etiennne Dolet_--a work of sterling merit and sound scholarship.]

It appears from his own autobiographical confessions that Bruno spent some six months at Toulouse, lecturing in private on the peripatetic psychology; after which time he obtained the degree of Doctor in Philosophy, and was admitted to a Readership in the university. This post he occupied two years. It was a matter of some moment to him that professors at Toulouse were not obliged to attend Ma.s.s. In his dubious position, as an escaped friar and disguised priest, to partake of the Sacrament would have been dangerous. Yet he now appears to have contemplated the possibility of reconciling himself to the Church, and resuming his vows in the Dominican order. He went so far as to open his mind upon this subject to a Jesuit; and afterwards at Paris he again resorted to Jesuit advice. But these conferences led to nothing. It may be presumed that the trial begun at Naples and removed to Rome, combined with the circ.u.mstances of his flight and recusant behavior, rendered the case too grave for compromise. No one but the Pope in Rome could decide it.

There is no apparent reason why Bruno left Toulouse, except the restlessness which had become a marked feature in his character. We find him at Paris in 1579, where he at once began to lecture at the Sorbonne.

It seems to have been his practice now in every town he visited, to combine private instruction with public disputation. His manners were agreeable; his conversation was eloquent and witty. He found no difficulty in gaining access to good society, especially in a city like Paris, which was then thronged with Italian exiles and courtiers.

Meanwhile his public lectures met with less success than his private teaching. In conversation with men of birth and liberal culture he was able to expound views fascinating by their novelty and boldness. Before an academical audience it behoved him to be circ.u.mspect; nor could he transgress the formal methods of scholastic argumentation.

Two princ.i.p.al subjects seem to have formed the groundwork of his teaching at this period. The first was the doctrine of the Thirty Divine Attributes, based on S. Thomas of Aquino. The second was Lully's Art of Memory and Cla.s.sification of the Sciences. This twofold material he worked up into a single treatise, called _De Umbris Idearum_, which he published in 1582 at Paris, and which contains the germ of all his leading speculations. Bruno's metaphysics attracted less attention than his professed Art of Memory. In an age credulous of occult science, when men believed that power over nature was being won by alchemy and magic, there was no difficulty in persuading people that knowledge might be communicated in its essence, and that the faculties of the mind could be indefinitely extended, without a toilsome course of study. Whether Bruno lent himself wittingly to any imposture in his exposition of mnemonics, cannot be a.s.serted. But it is certain that the public were led to expect from his method more than it could give.

The fame of his Art of Memory reached the king's ears; and Henri III.

sent for him. 'The king, says Bruno, 'had me called one day, being desirous to know whether the memory I possessed and professed, was natural or the result of magic art. I gave him satisfaction; by my explanations and by demonstrations to his own experience, convincing him that it was not an affair of magic but of science.' Henri, who might have been disappointed by this result, was taken with his teacher, and appointed him Reader Extraordinary--a post that did not oblige Bruno to hear Ma.s.s. The Ordinary Readers at Paris had to conform to the usages of the Catholic Church. On his side, Bruno appears to have conceived high admiration for the king's ability. In the _Cena della Ceneri_ and the _s.p.a.ccio della Bestia Trionfante,_ composed and published after he had left France, he paid him compliments in terms of hyperbolical laudation.

It would be vain to comment on these facts. No one conversant with French society at that epoch could have been ignorant of Henri's character and vicious life. No one could have pretended that his employment of the kingdom's wealth to enrich unworthy favorites was anything but dishonorable, or have maintained that his flagrant effeminacy was beneficial to society. The fantastic superst.i.tion which the king indulged alternately with sensual extravagances, must have been odious to one whose spiritual mistress was divine Sophia, and whose religion was an adoration of the intellect for the One Cause. But Henri had one quality which seemed of supreme excellence to Bruno. He appreciated speculation and encouraged men of learning. A man so enthusiastic as our philosopher may have thought that his own teaching could expel that Beast Triumphant of the vices from a royal heart tainted by bad education in a corrupt Court. Bruno, moreover, it must be remembered, remained curiously inappreciative of the revolution effected in humanity by Christian morals. Much that is repulsive to us in the manners of the Valois, may have been indifferent to him.

Bruno had just pa.s.sed his thirtieth year. He was a man of middling height, spare figure, and olive complexion, wearing a short chestnut-colored beard. He spoke with vivacity and copious rhetoric, aiming rather at force than at purity of diction, indulging in trenchant metaphors to adumbrate recondite thoughts, pa.s.sing from grotesque images to impa.s.sioned flights of declamation, blending acute arguments and pungent satires with grave mystical discourses. The impression of originality produced by his familiar conversation rendered him agreeable to princes. There was nothing of the pedant in his nature, nothing about him of the doctor but his t.i.tle.

After a residence of rather less than four years in Paris, he resolved upon a journey to England. Henri supplied him with letters of introduction to the French amba.s.sador in London, Michel de Castelnau de la Mauvissiere. This excellent man, who was then attempting to negotiate the marriage of Elizabeth with the Duke of Anjou, received Bruno into his own family as one of the gentlemen of his suite. Under his roof the wandering scholar enjoyed a quiet home during the two years which he pa.s.sed in England--years that were undoubtedly the happiest, as they were the most industrious, of his checkered life. It is somewhat strange that Bruno left no trace of his English visit in contemporary literature. Seven of his most important works were printed in London, though they bore the impress of Paris and Venice--for the very characteristic reason that English people only cared for foreign publications. Four of these, on purely metaphysical topics, were dedicated to Michel de Castelnau; two, treating of moral and psychological questions, the famous _s.p.a.ccio della Bestia_ and _Gli eroici Furori_, were inscribed to Sidney. The _Cena delle Ceneri_ describes a supper party at the house of Fulke Greville; and it is clear from numerous allusions scattered up and down these writings, that their author was admitted on terms of familiarity to the best English society.

Yet no one mentions him. Fulke Greville in his Life of Sidney pa.s.ses him by in silence; nor am I aware that any one of Sidney's panegyrists, the name of whom is legion, alludes to the homage paid him by the Italian philosopher.

On his side, Bruno has bequeathed to us animated pictures of his life in London, portraying the English of that period as they impressed a sensitive Italian.[88] His descriptions are valuable, since they dwell on slight particulars unnoticed by amba.s.sadors in their dispatches. He was much struck with the filth and unkempt desolation of the streets adjacent to the Thames, the rudeness of the watermen who plied their craft upon the river, and the stalwart beef-eating brutality of prentices and porters. The population of London displayed its antipathy to foreigners by loud remarks, hustled them in narrow lanes, and played at rough-and-tumble with them after the manners of a bear-garden. But there is no hint that these big fellows shouldering through the crowd were treacherous or ready with their knives. The servants of great houses seemed to Bruno discourteous and savage; yet he says nothing about such subtlety and vice as rendered the retainers of Italian n.o.bles perilous to order. He paints the broad portrait of a muscular and insolently insular people, untainted by the evils of corrupt civilization. Mounting higher in the social scale, Bruno renders deserved homage to the graceful and unaffected manners of young English n.o.blemen, from whom he singles Sidney out as the star of cultivated chivalry.[89]

[Footnote 88: The 'Cena delle Ceneri,' _Op. It._ vol. i. pp. 137-151].

[Footnote 89: Signor Berti conjectures that Bruno may have met Sidney first at Milan. But Bruno informs us that he did not become acquainted with him till he came to London: 'Tra' quali e tanto conosciuto, per fama prima quanbo eravamo in Milano et in Francia, e poi per experienza or che siamo ne la sua patria' (_Op. It._ vol. i. p. 145).]

What he says about the well-born youth of England, shows that the flower of our gentlefolk delighted Southern observers by their mixture of simplicity and sweetness with good breeding and sound sense. For the ladies of England he cannot find words fair enough to extol the beauties of their persons and the purity of their affections. Elizabeth herself he calls a G.o.ddess, _diva_, using phrases which were afterwards recited in the terms of his indictment before the Inquisition. What pleased him most in England, was the liberty of speech and thought he there enjoyed.[90] Society was so urbane, government was so unsuspicious, that a man could venture to call things by their proper names and speak his heart out without reserve. That Bruno's panegyric was not prompted by any wish to flatter national vanity, is proved by the hard truths he spoke about the grossness of the people, and by his sarcasms on Oxford pedants. He also ventured to condemn in no unmeasured terms some customs which surprised him in domestic intercourse. He drew, for instance, a really gruesome picture of the loving-cup, as it pa.s.sed round the table, tasted by a mixed a.s.semblage.[91]

A visit paid by Bruno to Oxford forms a curious episode in his English experiences. He found that university possessed by pedants and ignorant professors of the old learning. 'Men of choice,' he calls them, 'trailing their long velvet gowns, this one arrayed with two bright chains of gold around his neck, that one, good heavens! with such a valuable hand--twelve rings upon two fingers, giving him the look of some rich jeweler.'[92] These excellent dons, blest in the possession of fat fellowships, felt no sympathy for an eccentric interloper of Bruno's stamp. They allowed him to lecture on the Soul and the Sphere.

[Footnote 90: Preface to 'Lo s.p.a.ccio della Bestia' (_Op. It._ vol. ii.

p. 108).]

[Footnote 91: _Op. It._ vol. i. p. 150.]

[Footnote 92: _Op. It._ vol. i. p. 123.]

They even condescended to dispute with him. Yet they made Oxford so unpleasant a place of residence that after three months he returned to London. The treatment he experienced rankled in his memory. 'Look where you like at the present moment, you will find but doctors in grammar here; for in this happy realm there reigns a constellation of pedantic stubborn ignorance and presumption mixed with a rustic incivility that would disturb Job's patience. If you do not believe it, go to Oxford, and ask to hear what happened to the Nolan, when he disputed publicly with those doctors of theology in the presence of the Polish Prince Alasco.[93] Make them tell you how they answered to his syllogisms; how the pitiful professor, whom they put before them on that grave occasion as the Corypheus of their university, bungled fifteen times with fifteen syllogisms, like a chicken in the stubble. Make them tell you with what rudeness and discourtesy that pig behaved; what patience and humanity he met from his opponent, who, in truth, proclaimed himself a Neapolitan, born and brought up beneath more genial heavens. Then learn after what fashion they brought his public lectures to an end, those on the Immortality of the Soul and those on the Quintuple Sphere.'[94] The Soul and the Sphere were Bruno's favorite themes. He handled both at this period of life with startling audacity.

[Footnote 93: See Wood, _Ath. Oxon._ p. 300.]

[Footnote 94: _Op. It._ vol. i. p. 179.]

They had become for him the means of ventilating speculations on terrestrial movement, on the multiplicity of habitable worlds, on the principle of the universe, and on the infinite modes of psychical metamorphosis. Such topics were not calculated to endear him to people of importance on the banks of Isis. That he did not humor their prejudices, appears from a Latin epistle which he sent before him by way of introduction to the Vice Chancellor.[95] It contains these pompous phrases: 'Philotheus Jorda.n.u.s Brunus Nola.n.u.s magis laboratae theologiae doctor, purioris et innocuae sapientiae professor. In praecipuis Europae academiis notus, probatus et honorifice exceptus philosophus. Nullibi praeterquam apud barbaros et ign.o.biles peregrinus. Dormitantium animarum excubitor. Praesuntuosae et recalcitrantis ignorantiae domitor. Qui in actibus universis generalem philantropiam protestatur. Qui non magis Italum quam Britannum, marem quam foeminam, mitratum quam coronatum, togatum quam armatum, cucullatum hominem quam sine cucullo virum: sed ilium cujus pacatior, civilior, fidelior et utilior est conversatio diligit.' Which may thus be Englished: 'Giordano Bruno of Nola, the G.o.d-loving, of the more highly-wrought theology doctor, of the purer and harmless wisdom professor. In the chief universities of Europe known, approved, and honorably received as philosopher. Nowhere save among barbarians and the ign.o.ble a stranger. The awakener of sleeping souls.

The trampler upon presuming and recalcitrant ignorance. Who in all his acts proclaims a universal benevolence toward man. Who loveth not Italian more than Briton, male than female, mitred than crowned head, gowned than armed, frocked than frockless; but seeketh after him whose conversation is the more peaceful, more civil, more loyal, and more profitable.' This manifesto, in the style of a mountebank, must have sounded like a trumpet-blast to set the humdrum English doctors with sleepy brains and moldy science on their guard against a man whom they naturally regarded as an Italian charlatan. What, indeed, was this more highly-wrought theology, this purer wisdom? What call had this self-panegyrist to stir souls from comfortable slumbers? What right had he to style the knowledge of his brethren ignorance? Probably he was but some pestilent fellow, preaching unsound doctrine on the Trinity, like Peter Martyr Vermigli, who had been properly hissed out of Oxford a quarter of a century earlier. When Bruno arrived and lectured, their worst prognostications were fulfilled. Did he not maintain a theory of the universe which even that perilous speculator and political schemer, Francis Bacon, sneered at as nugatory?

[Footnote 95: Printed in the _Explicatio triginta Sigillarum_.]

In spite of academical opposition, Bruno enjoyed fair weather, halcyon months, in England. His description of the Ash Wednesday Supper at Fulke Greville's, shows that a niche had been carved out for him in London, where he occupied a pedestal of some importance. Those gentlemen of Elizabeth's Court did not certainly exaggerate the value of their Italian guest. In Italy, most of them had met with spirits of Bruno's stamp, whom they had not time or opportunity to prove. He was one among a hundred interesting foreigners; and his martyrdom had not as yet set the crown of glory or of shame upon his forehead. They probably accepted him as London society of the present day accepts a theosophist from Simla or Thibet. But his real home at this epoch, the only home, so far as I can see, that Bruno ever had, after he left his mother at the age of thirteen for a convent, was the house of Castelnau. The truest chords in the Italian's voice vibrate when he speaks of that sound Frenchman.

To Mme. de Castelnau he alludes with respectful sincerity, paying her the moderate and well-weighed homage which, for a n.o.ble woman, is the finest praise. There is no rhetoric in the words he uses to express his sense of obligation to her kindness. They are delicate, inspired with a tact which makes us trust the writer's sense of fitness.[96] But Bruno indulges in softer phrases, drawn from the heart, and eminently characteristic of his predominant enthusiastic mood, when he comes to talk of the little girl, Marie, who brightened the home of the Castelnaus. 'What shall I say of their n.o.ble-natured daughter? She has gazed upon the sun barely one l.u.s.ter and one year; but so far as language goes, I know not how to judge whether she springs from Italy or France or England! From her hand, touching the instruments of music, no man could reckon if she be of corporate or incorporeal substance. Her perfected goodness makes one marvel whether she be flown from heaven, or be a creature of this common earth. It is at least evident to every man that for the shaping of so fair a body the blood of both her parents has contributed, while for the tissue of her rare spirit the virtues of their heroic souls have been combined.'[97]

[Footnote 96: _Op. It._ vol. i. p. 267.]

[Footnote 97: _Loc. cit._ p. 267.]

It was time to leave these excellent and hospitable friends. 'Forth from the tranquil to the trembling air' Bruno's unquiet impulse drove him. He returned to Paris at the end of 1585, disputed before the Sorbonne with some success of scandal, and then, disquieted by the disorders of the realm, set out for Germany. We find him at Marburg in the following year, ill-received by the University, but welcomed by the Prince. Thence we follow him to Mainz, and afterwards to Wittenberg, where he spent two years. Here he conceived a high opinion of the Germans. He foresaw that when they turned their attention from theology to science and pure speculation, great results might be expected from their solid intellectual capacity. He seems in fact to have taken a pretty accurate measure of the race as it has subsequently shown itself. Wittenberg he called the German Athens. Luther, he recognized as a hero of humanity, who, like himself, defied authority in the defense of truth. Yet he felt no sympathy for the German reformers. When asked by the Inquisitors at Venice what he thought about these men, he replied: 'I regard them as more ignorant than I am. I despise them and their doctrines. They do not deserve the name of theologians, but of pedants.' That this reply was sincere, is abundantly proved by pa.s.sages in the least orthodox of Bruno's writings. It was the weakness of a philosopher's position at that moment that he derived no support from either of the camps into which Christendom was then divided. Catholics and Protestants of every shade regarded him with mistrust.

A change in the religious policy of Saxony, introduced after the death of the Elector Augustus, caused Bruno to leave Wittenberg for Prague in 1588. From Prague he pa.s.sed to Helmstadt, where the Duke Heinrich Julius of Brunswick-Wolfenb.u.t.tel received him with distinction, and bestowed on him a purse of eighty dollars.[98] Here he conceived two of his most important works, the _De Monade_ and _De Triplici Minimo_, both written in Latin hexameters.[99] Why he adopted this new form of exposition is not manifest. Possibly he was tired of dialogues, through which he had expressed his thought so freely in England. Possibly a German public would have been indifferent to Italian. Possibly he was emulous of his old masters, Parmenides and Lucretius.

[Footnote 98: It is a curious fact that the single copy of Campanella's poems on which Orelli based his edition of 1834, came from Wolfenb.u.t.tel.]