Rebels and Reformers: Biographies for Young People

by Baron Arthur Ponsonby Ponsonby; Dorothea Ponsonby

London had only a hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants in those days, and was not such an important place as Paris or even Lisbon. Foreign visitors were not well received as a rule by the people, and English students seldom traveled abroad. Though the Queen prided herself on her learning, very little education and no freedom of discussion were allowed among her humbler subjects. Printers were only licensed in London, Oxford, and Cambridge, and every publication was rigorously examined. Without his introduction to the court, Bruno would probably have been silenced after a very short time. As it was, in England no more than elsewhere could the philosopher take things quietly, though he very much appreciated the comparative liberty of thought and speech he was allowed. He had no sooner arrived in London than he sent to Oxford University a challenge which he appropriately called “The Awakener.” With a loud flourish of trumpets, he described himself as:

a doctor in perfected theology; a professor of pure and blameless wisdom; a philosopher known, approved, and honorifically acknowledged by the foremost academies of Europe; to none a stranger except to the barbarians and the vulgar; a waker of slumbering souls; a breaker of presumptuous and stubborn ignorance.

Both to the Sorbonne in Paris and the Wittenberg University he addressed himself in much more dignified and modest language. He evidently did not take Oxford very seriously, and indeed there was very little intellectual life in that University, which was under the rule of the Queen’s favorite, Lord Leicester. The professors were court nominees, and Bruno describes them as “men arrayed in long robes of velvet, with hands most precious for the multitude of costly rings on their fingers, golden chains about their necks, and with manners as void of courtesy as cowherds.” He also thought they knew a good deal more of beer than of Greek. The students were very young, ignorant, and boorish, occupied in drinking, dueling, and toasting in ale-houses and country inns. However, he had a very high opinion of the University as a whole, and consented to deliver a series of lectures and also held a public disputation before the Chancellor and an illustrious foreign visitor. He appears to have aroused the pedagogues to fury, and, by his own account, fifteen times he worsted his chief adversary, who could only reply by abuse. He stood up in the assembly a small man, “rough hewn,” with disheveled hair, wearing an old coat with several buttons wanting, while the Oxford doctors, whose opposition he describes as based on “ignorance, presumption, and rustic rudeness,” wore “twelve rings on two fingers and two chains of shining gold.” While they were attempting to defend the old teaching of Aristotle from the attacks of a man they regarded as an eccentric charlatan, he explained his new ideas, which were to them startling and highly objectionable.

Small wonder that after three months his public lectures were brought to an end and he returned to London. Here he made several friends, among them Sir Philip Sidney, the poet-soldier, of whom he had already heard in Italy, for Sidney had studied at Padua. Fulk Greville, who described himself on his epitaph as “Servant to Queen Elizabeth, Councilor to King James, and friend to Sir Philip Sidney,” also became intimate with him, and at his house Bruno held a second disputation, at which he again seems to have aggravated his hearers. He had a sincere admiration for Sidney and dedicated a book of sonnets to him. The protection given to him by Queen Elizabeth he repaid by referring to her in his poems in terms of the highest flattery, which no doubt she appreciated. But this praise of a Protestant Queen, who herself was excommunicated, was eventually brought against him by his judges. He was greatly impressed by the beauty and bearing of English women and by “the Briton’s terrible energy, who, regardless of the stormy deep and the towering mountains, goes down to the sea in ships mightily exceeding Argonautic art.” After two years in England he returned to Paris with the French Ambassador, who, he says, “saved him from the Oxford pedants and from hunger.” But he did not stay long in Paris, “because of the tumults,” and proceeded on his wanderings into Germany.

At Marburg, the rector of the University refused Bruno permission to hold public disputations on philosophy, at which, the rector himself says, “he fell into a passion of anger and he insulted me in my house.” No doubt he made it very unpleasant for any one who attempted to thwart him, for he was headstrong and impetuous. At Wittenberg he was permitted to enter his name on the lists of the University, and also to give private lectures. The professors of Toulouse, Paris, and Oxford, he declared, received him “with grimaces, upturned noses, puffed cheeks, and with loud blows on the desk,” but the learned men of Wittenberg showed him courtesy and left him in peace. In fact, he was able to remain there working for two years, until, owing to the feud between the Lutherans and the Calvinists, in which the latter got the upper hand, he found himself compelled to quit the city. On his departure he pronounced a great oration in praise of wisdom, which malicious public opinion described as a speech in favor of the devil.

His next halt was at Prague, where he was received by the Emperor Rudolph II, the patron of Tycho Brahe and Kepler, and a student of philosophy and astronomy as well as of magic and astrology. The Italian philosopher addressed a small work to His Majesty, in which he repeats that his mission is to free the souls of men and to triumph over ignorance: he laments the hateful quarreling of different creeds, and proclaims charity and love to be the only true religion. As he did not meet with sympathy or support in Prague, he passed on to Helmstedt, where the Duke of Brunswick charged him with the education of his son. But here again he got at cross-purposes with the authorities, and this brought down on him a sentence of excommunication. He justified himself, and wrote a scathing attack on the pastor and rector of the University, who were his chief enemies. But it was not possible for him to remain, so he turned his steps toward Frankfort. This town was the center of the German book trade: fairs were held at Easter and Michaelmas, and people came from other countries to try and exchange books, which were still very rare. Bruno published several books here, and one might think he would have been left to pursue his studies without interference. But the burgomaster, or mayor, sternly refused to allow him to lodge with his printer. A convent of Carmelites therefore gave him shelter, and there he is said to have been “busied with writing for the most part all day long, or in going to and fro indulging in subtle inquiries, wrapt in thought and filled with fantastic meditations upon new things.”

It is very curious that Giordano Bruno should ever have been persuaded to return to Italy. But he seems not to have thought it impossible that he could become reconciled to the Church while retaining for himself a certain freedom of thought. No doubt he was also tempted to return by his love of his native land. Yet he must have had a foreboding of the danger he was running when he wrote, on leaving Frankfort: “The wise man fears not death; nay, even there are times when he sets forth to meet it bravely.”

Bruno now made the acquaintance of the traitor by whose falseness he was eventually to be handed over to a cruel fate. Giovanni Mocenigo was a member of one of the foremost Venetian families. But the wisdom of his ancestors, seven of whom had been Doges—that is, chief magistrates—of Venice, had degenerated in him into cunning. He came across Bruno’s books, and out of curiosity, believing that there was something occult and supernatural about Bruno’s teaching, he invited him to come and stay with him in Venice. The philosopher innocently accepted the invitation. His reputation as a man of lively conversation preceded him, and he found himself cordially received in Venetian literary society. But very soon Mocenigo began to grow discontented with his master. He was quite unable to understand his teaching or to profit in the smallest degree by the Art of Memory, which was one of Bruno’s favorite principles of instruction. In fact, the two were completely out of sympathy, and the patron began to insist that he got no return for his generous hospitality. Bruno at first tried to reason with him, but finding him hopelessly dense and narrow-minded, became exasperated and begged he might be set at liberty to return to Frankfort. Mocenigo then determined to betray him because of his religious opinions. He consulted his confessor, and then denounced his unfortunate guest to the Father Inquisitor at Venice as a wicked and irreligious man. Accompanied by his servant and five or six gondoliers, he burst in upon Bruno while he was in bed and dragged him to a garret, where he locked him up. The trial took place in 1592. The charges brought against Giordano Bruno were that he had criticized the methods of the Church, desired and foretold its reform, disputed its doctrines, consorted with heretics, and taught principles which were repugnant to Catholics. The culprit gave a complete account of his life; he said he was sorry if he had done what was wrong or taught what was false, and was ready to atone for any scandal he had given in the past, but he did not retract a single one of his convictions.

It may be well here just to say a word about the Inquisition, which has been so often mentioned and figures so prominently in the history of these times.

The Holy Office, as it was first called, was instituted early in the thirteenth century. Its practical founder was a Spanish monk, Domenigo de Guzman, who afterwards was known as St. Dominic. The Popes at first regarded the institution with disapproval, as it was set up as a quite independent body, and bishops even were not allowed to interfere with its proceedings. Towards the end of the fifteenth century it was re-established on a far more active basis under the Grand Inquisitor Torquemada, who organized the most fiendish cruelties for which any human being has ever been responsible. The object of the Inquisition was to suppress heresy, that is to say, either force people into the Romish Church or, should they refuse, kill them or make their lives intolerable. The mildest form of punishment was called public penitence, which meant being made an outcast in society, closely watched by the ecclesiastical authorities, and heavily fined. Tortures of indescribable kinds were used; people were imprisoned for life or burned alive, though sometimes as a favor they might be strangled before they were burned. The burning of a heretic was a great public function which attracted crowds of spectators. In order to make the pageant more ghastly, grotesque dolls and corpses which had been dug up out of their graves were carried in the procession and made to dance round the flames.