Rebels and Reformers: Biographies for Young People

by Baron Arthur Ponsonby Ponsonby; Dorothea Ponsonby

In the Campo dei Fiori, the largest open space in Rome, a vast concourse of people assembled on February 17th in the year 1600. In the center of the place stood a huge pile of faggots: from the midst of its logs and branches there rose a stake. On many of the eager and expectant faces which crowded round might have been seen an expression of malignant triumph. The Church was taking revenge on a heretic who had refused to accept all the doctrines laid down by its authority, a heretic who actually taught that the earth moved round the sun.

Soldiers clear the way for the procession which advances solemnly to the spot. A small, thin man with a black beard, clothed in the garb of a condemned victim of the Inquisition—a sulphur-colored cloak painted with flames and devils—is led up to the pile. The priests even now, at the last moment, argue with him and attempt to make him acknowledge his error. With a look of melancholy but unconquerable determination he refuses to listen to them or to receive any consolation from them. A jeer rises from the multitude. He is taken and chained to the stake. Will he not at the last moment recant? Will he not utter the words that will save him from such cruel torture? Will he not pray for mercy? They wait a moment, but he remains silent, calm, and obdurate. The faggots are lit, the branches crackle; flames leap up; the victim writhes, but not a single cry escapes him. Amid frantic shouts from the crowd the smoke envelops him. In a few moments all that remains is a pile of ashes, which are scattered to the winds.... This was the end of Giordano Bruno, the Italian philosopher and poet, who refused to consent to what he thought was false and refused to deny what he thought was true.

It has been said that men resemble the earth which bears them. The volcanic slope of Mount Vesuvius was the birthplace of this fiery and unconquerable fighter. He was born in 1548 at Nola, and was the son of a soldier. Not only does he seem in his early youth to have had a great love of learning, but he was able to get the very best tuition in Naples, where he lodged with an uncle who was a weaver of velvet. His knowledge of science, mathematics, and the classics, as well as of poetry and music, was astonishing even when he was quite young. Besides Italian, he spoke Latin and Spanish fluently and knew something of Greek. In spite of his ardent nature, his first step was to shut himself up as a Dominican monk at the age of fourteen. He remained for thirteen years in monastic seclusion, and was duly promoted to holy orders and to the priesthood. He pursued his studies all this time with the greatest diligence. He laid in stores of learning which were the foundation of his independent views and writings in after-life. But it was impossible that a man of such fire and energy should tamely settle down to a quiet life of prayer and contemplation. The Church was in a pitiable state of ignorance and corruption. Young Giordano’s keen intelligence, strengthened by study and roused by his restless energy, soon drove him into conflict with his superiors. This was the first of a series of conflicts in which he combated the forces of authority wherever he went all his life through. He was accused of impiety because of the broad views he expressed about some of the principal doctrines of the Church. His position became intolerable, so he cast off his monkish robe and fled to Genoese territory, where he remained a few months supporting himself by teaching grammar to boys and occupying his leisure in reading astronomy. In this latter science he at once accepted the views of Copernicus. “The earth,” he said, “moves; it turns on its own axis and moves round the sun.” But what is now taught to every school child was thought then a dangerous doctrine, contrary to the teaching of Aristotle, which the Church supported. He also went further than any of his predecessors in suggesting that there were other worlds which were inhabited. The revival of learning which had been going on during the previous hundred years, while it had encouraged the more educated and cultured few to pursue their studies and think out new ideas, had also had the effect of making the many who mistrusted reform and were frightened of change much more particular and severe about the opinions and beliefs which men should be allowed to hold. The new ideas ultimately prevailed, but only after a desperate struggle. Had the school of thought which Bruno represented been allowed to develop without hindrance, the advance of enlightenment in Europe would have been far more rapid than was actually the case.

Giordano Bruno wandered over Europe alone like a knight-errant of truth. Persecuted in one country, he fled to another, everywhere stirring up dispute and controversy, urging men to think, and denouncing the fanatical and pretended beliefs which were making them thoughtless and cruel. Geneva, Lyons, Paris, London, Oxford, Wittenberg, Helmstedt, and Venice—these were some of the places he visited, the centers of the world’s active thought, where he could meet the leading men of the day.

Now, we cannot enter into the very difficult question of religious belief as it was understood in those days. Nor, indeed, would such a study be very profitable to any one. The wrangling of theologians has very little to do with true religion. Bruno knew this. While he was opposed to the Roman Catholic Church, of which he had been accepted as a member in his youth, he hated just as much at the other extreme the narrow intolerance of the followers of Calvin, the French Reformers, who also treated those who disagreed with them with great harshness and cruelty. Besides, there was almost as much stupid wrangling and brutal intolerance between Calvinists and Lutherans as there was between Catholics and Protestants. Bruno therefore did not stay long in Geneva, which was the headquarters of the Calvinists. Even in Wittenberg, where he was very well received, while admiring the attitude of the great Reformer Luther, who a few years before had been the foremost figure in the great struggle with the Roman Catholic Church, known as the Reformation, he by no means sympathized with the teaching of Protestantism. On the contrary, he referred to the German Reformers, when he was before the Inquisition in Venice, in the following way: “I regard them as more ignorant than I am; I despise them and their doctrine. They do not deserve the name of theologians but of pedants.”

Before we follow the wandering philosopher on his travels, let us try to understand a little of what he thought himself. He was not, as he was accused of being, just a blasphemous atheist who went about offending the religious feelings of all with whom he came in contact. He was not a rude, untutored sceptic or disbeliever who shocked people by laughing at their beliefs. He did not merely indulge in abuse and spiteful criticism. Though this is the view which was spread about him by many of his contemporaries and taught about him for many years after his death, nothing could be further from the truth. Giordano Bruno was extremely spiritual-minded. So far was he from being an atheist (which would have been just as narrow and dogmatic a point of view as that of any of the other extremes), he saw God everywhere and in everything, and his vision extended to the whole universe. He saw the essence of Divine perfection in man, but deplored the many causes which prevented it from showing itself. He wanted the mind of man to be free, and not fettered by all sorts of elaborate creeds and regulations. This freedom he demanded for himself, and he insisted that all questions should be considered as open. What he detested most were the disputes about religion of the various sects, the bitter and angry spirit they produced, and the ruthless persecutions carried on by religious bodies on all sides. Through freedom and enlightenment alone he saw that mankind could progress, and not through submission and ignorance. But all this was quite unintelligible to the vast majority, who took the narrow and bigoted views on religion which were common in those days. He was not a mere student of books, nor was he content with thoughts alone on the great problems of religion and philosophy: he taught, he wrote, he lectured, he spoke with such lively eloquence and striking persuasiveness, and sometimes with such violence of language, that it was impossible to ignore him. His views were fascinating by their novelty and boldness, but he entirely lacked caution and prudence. In these circumstances it is not surprising that he was excommunicated from the Church, expelled from universities, and driven out of the towns he visited.

For sixteen years he wandered about Europe at a time when to travel meant spending eight days on the road from Paris to Calais: he had to put up in inns with very rough fare and sometimes only a bed of straw. Books were now printed, but they still circulated very slowly, and the fame of a professor was made more by “disputation,” that is to say, lecture and debate, than by the publication of his writings. Nevertheless, the wandering Italian published several books in every town he visited. With the exception of a few that have been lost, most of his philosophical writings and poems have been collected together and preserved.

Bruno found France torn by internal quarrels between the Protestant Huguenots and the Roman Catholics, which had been going on for some years in the shape of a destructive civil war. Only eight years before, in 1572, there had been a wholesale massacre of Protestants in Paris on St. Bartholomew’s Eve, when Charles IX was king. All this served to show Bruno to what excesses men could be driven in religious strife. After a visit to Toulouse, where he taught astronomy and philosophy, he proceeded to Paris. Here, although he refused to attend Mass, he managed to become a professor, chiefly by the favor of King Henry III, who, however, required to be satisfied first of all that Bruno’s wonderful memory came “by knowledge and not by magic arts.” In gratitude for these favors the philosopher referred to the King in his writings with exaggerated praise. It was indeed one of the charges against him, when he came to his trial in Venice, that he had praised the heretic prince, the news of whose assassination in 1589 was received in Rome with a salute of cannon.

Bruno’s method of lecturing must have been very startling to those who were accustomed to the grave airs of the learned professors. He was enthusiastic and eloquent, and so eager that his hearers should grasp his meaning that he would adopt every sort of different manner of addressing them. Sometimes grave and prophet-like, at other times lively and gay: sometimes fierce and combative, and then, again, indulging in gross buffoonery. He was bent on attracting attention and rousing the indifference of his audiences. In his writings, too, he showed varying moods. The wit, the scoffer, the poet, the mystic, and the prophet all appear. Great as his learning was, he depended more on his intuitions; that is to say, the imaginative poet in him was stronger than the scientific scholar. But some of the wisest philosophers in after-years owed a great deal to his wonderfully far-reaching thoughts and ideas.

In 1583 he went to London with letters furnished by the King of France to his Ambassador. He found Queen Elizabeth very sympathetic. A friendly welcome was extended by her court to all foreigners, and she herself spoke Italian fluently. He was also fortunate in having a cultured and liberal-minded patron in the Ambassador, M. Castelnau de Mauvissière, who was endeavoring to negotiate a marriage between Queen Elizabeth and the Duke of Anjou. Bruno, who was excused from attending Mass in the Embassy chapel, was no doubt grateful for the considerate way in which he was treated, for several books produced by him during his stay in England were dedicated to the Ambassador. He also alludes to the Ambassador’s wife with respectful praise, and remarks enthusiastically about his little daughter: “Her perfected goodness makes one marvel whether she be flown from heaven or be a creature of this common earth.”