Montaigne was born at Bordeaux 1533, died 1592. Louis Blanc says of his words, "Et ce ne sont pas simples discours d'un philosophe à des philosophes. Montaigne s'addresse à tous." Montaigne's words were not those of a philosopher talking only to his own order, he addressed himself to mankind at large, and he wrote in language the majority could easily comprehend. Voltaire points out that Montaigne as a philosopher was the exception in France to his class; he having succeeded in escaping that persecution which fell so heavily on others. Montaigne's thoughts were like sharp instruments scattered broadcast, and intended for the destruction of many of the old social and conventional bonds; he was the advocate of individualism, and placed each man as above society, rather than society as more important than each man. Montaigne mocked the reasoners who contradicted each other, and derided that fallibility of mind which regarded the opinion of the moment as infallibly true, and which was yet always temporarily changed by an attack of fever or a draught of strong drink, and often permanently modified by some new discovery. Less fortunate than Montaigne, Godfrey a Valle was burned for heresy in Paris in 1572, his chief offence having been that of issuing a work entitled "De Arte Nihil Credendi."
Heresy thus championed in France, Germany, and England, had in Italy its sixteenth century soldiers in Pomponatius of Mantua, Giordano Bruno, and Telesio, both of Naples, and in Campanella of Calabria, a gallant band, who were nearly all met with the cry of "Atheist," and were either answered with exile, the prison, or the faggot.
Pomponatius, who was born 1486 and died 1525, wrote a treatise on the Soul, which was so much deemed an attack on the doctrine of immortality despite a profession of reverence for the dogmas of the Church, that the work was publicly burned at Venice, a special bull of Leo X. being directed against the doctrine.
Bernard Telesio was born at Naples in 1508, and founded there a school in which mathematics and philosophy were given the first place. During his lifetime he had the good fortune to escape persecution, but sites his death his works were proscribed by the Church; Telesio was chiefly useful in educating the minds of some of the Neapolitans for more advanced thinking than his own.
This was well illustrated in the case of Thomas Campanella, born 1568, who, attracted by the teachings of Telesio, wrote vigorously against the old schoolmen and in favor of the new philosophy. Despite an affected reverence for the Church of Rome, Campanella spent twenty-seven years of his life in prison. Campanella has been, as is usually the case with eminent writers, charged with atheism, but there seems to be no fair foundation for the charges He was a true heretic, for he not only opposed Aristotle; but even his own teacher Telesio. None of these men, however, yet strove to reach the people, they wrote to and of one another, not to or of the masses. It is said that Campanella was fifty times arrested and seven times tortured for his heresy.
One Andrew de Bena, a profound scholar and eminent preacher of the Church of Rome, carried away by the spirit of the time, came out into the reformed party; but his mind once set free from the old trammels, found no rest in Luther's narrow church, and a poetic Pantheism was the result.
Jerome Cardan, a mathematician of considerable ability, born at Pavia 1601, has been fiercely accused of atheism. His chief offence seems to have been rather in an opposite direction; astrology was with him a favourite subject. While the strange views put forward in some of his works served good purpose by provoking inquiry, we can hardly class Cardan otherwise than as a man whose undoubted genius and erudition were more than counterbalanced by his excessively superstitious folly.
Giordano Bruno was born near Naples about 1550. He was burned at Rome for heresy on the 17th February, 1600. Bruno was burned for alleged atheism, but appears rather, to have been a Pantheist. His most prominent avowal of heresy was the disbelief in eternal torment and rejection, of the common orthodox ideas of the devil. He wrote chiefly in Italian, his vulgar tongue, and thus effectively aided the grand march of heresy by familiarising the eyes of the people with newer and truer forms of thought. Bruno used the tongue as fluently as the pen. He spoke in Italy until he had roused an opposition rendering flight the only possibly escape from death. At Geneva he found no resting place, the fierce spirit of Zuingle and Calvin was there too mighty; at Paris he might have found favour, with the King, and at the Sorbonne, but he refused to attend mass, and delivered a series of popular lectures, which won many admirers; from Paris he went to England, where we find him publicly debating at Oxford and lecturing on theology, until he excited an antagonism which induced his return to Paris, where he actually publicly discussed for three days some of the grand problems of existence. Paris orthodoxy could not permit his onslaughts on established opinions, and this time it was to Germany Bruno turned for hospitality; where, after visiting many of the different states, lecturing freely but with general success, he drew upon himself a sentence of excommunication at Helmstadt. At last he returned to Italy and spoke at Padua, but had at once to fly thence from the Inquisition; at Venice he found a resting place in prison, whence after six years of dungeon, and after the tender mercy of the rack, he was led out to receive the final refutation of the faggot. There is a grand heroism in the manner in which he received his sentence and bore his fiery punishment. No cry of despair, no prayer for escape, no flinching at the moment of death. Bruno's martyrdom may favourably contrast with the highest example Christianity gives us.
It was in the latter half of the sixteenth century, that Unitarianism or Socinianism assumed a front rank position in Europe, having its chief strength in Poland, with considerable force in Holland and England. In 1524, one Lewis Hetzer had been publicly burned at Constance, for denying the divinity of Jesus; but Hetzer was more connected with the Anabaptists than with the Unitarians. About the same time a man named Claudius openly argued amongst the Swiss people, against the doctrine of the trinity, and one John Campanus contended at Wittemberg, and other places, against the usually inculcated doctrines of the Church, as to the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
In 1566, Valentine Gentilis, a Neapolitan, was put to death at Rome, for teaching the superiority of God the Father, over the Son and the Holy Ghost. Modern Unitarianism appears to have had as its founders or chief promoters, Lælius Socinus, and his nephew Faustus Socinus; the first having the better brain and higher genius, but marred by a timid and irresolute character; the second having a more active nature and bolder temperament. From Cracow and Racow, during the latter half of this century, the Unitarians (who drew into their ranks many men of advanced minds.) issued a large number of books and pamphlets, which were circulated amongst the people with considerable zeal and industry. Unitarianism was carried from Poland into Transylvania by a physician, George Blandrata, and a preacher Francis David, or Davides, who obtained the support and countenance of the then ruler of the country. Davides, unfortunately for himself, became too unitarian for the Unitarians; he adopted the extreme views of one Simon Budnffius, who, in Lithuania, entirely repudiated any sort, of religious worship in reference to Jesus. Budnæus was excommunicated by the Unitarians themselves, and Davides was imprisoned for the rest of his life. As the Unitarians were persecuted by the old Romish and new Lutheran Churches, so they in turn persecuted seceders from and opposers of their own movement. Each man's history involved the widening out of public thought; each act of persecution illustrated a vain endeavour to check the progress of heresy; each new sect marked a step towards the destruction of the old obstructive faiths.