Bruno offered to debate the question publicly with the Bishop of Paris. That worthy was no match for Bruno in point of oratory, but when we can not answer a man's reasons, all is not lost, for we can at least call him vile names, and this is often quite as effectual as logic.
The Bishop launched a fusillade of theological lyddite at Bruno, declaring that any Churchman who would so much as hold converse with such a wretch was disgraced forever, and that the propositions Bruno wished to argue were unthinkable to a self-respecting man. He declared that it was only the mercy of God that kept the lightning from striking Bruno dead as he wrote his heresies.
Matters were getting strained, and the authorities, fearing insurrection, acted upon the advice of the good Bishop and expelled Bruno from France. He went to Wittenberg, in his innocence, intending to tack on the church-door there his theses. But Wittenberg had no use for Bruno—he believed too much, or too little, Luther could not tell which.
The University of Zurich now offered to let the exile come there and teach what he wished. Thither he journeyed and there his restless mind seemed for the first time to find a home. His writings were slowly making head, and around him there clustered a goodly group of students who believed in him and loved him.
In the midst of this oasis in a troubled life, word came from some of the old-time friends he had known in Rome. They were now in Venice, and wished to have him come there and lecture. Bruno thought that his little leaven was leavening the whole lump—he was not without ambition—he was flattered by the invitation. He accepted it and went to Venice.
It was simply a ruse to get the man within striking distance. Very soon after his arrival in Venice he was arrested by agents of the Inquisition and secretly taken to Rome. He was lodged in a dungeon of the Castle Saint Angelo. Just what his experience was there we can not say—the horrors of it all are not ours, for no friend of Bruno's was allowed to approach, and what he there wrote was destroyed.
We do know, however, that he was asked to recant, and we know he refused. We also know that he repeated his heresies and hurled back into the teeth of his accusers the invective they heaped upon him.
Bribery, persuasion, threat and torture were tried in turn, but all in vain, for Bruno would not swerve. Unlike Savonarola his quivering flesh could not wring from his heart an apology.
He scorned the rack and thumbscrew, declaring they could not reach his soul. He knew that death would be the end; he prayed for it, and even thought to hasten it by an aggravating manner and harshness of speech toward his captors, seemingly quite unnecessary.
For seven long years he was in prison. He was burned alive on the Seventh of February, Sixteen Hundred, aged fifty-two.