Giordano Bruno

by J. Lewis McIntyre

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Return to France, October 1585.When Mauvissière was recalled, Bruno in all probability sailed with him. It had been decided, unjustly, as Mauvissière thought, to recall him to France in 1584; but owing to his wife’s health and perhaps his claims on the French treasury, he secured a postponement till the following year, on condition he should do his best for Queen Mary and her son with Elizabeth, “but not mix himself up with any of the plots against Elizabeth.” In October 2, 1585, he was still in London, for he wrote to his friend Archibald Douglas, the Scottish Ambassador, from London on that date; the following letter, however, was from Paris (Nov. 3, 1585) and told a pathetic story.[79] On his way across (Bruno with him, we may suppose) he had been “robbed of all he had in England, down to his shirt, of the handsome presents given him by the Queen, and of his silver plate: nothing was left, either to him or to his wife and children, so that they resembled those exiled Irish who solicit alms in England, with their children by their side.” He had lent money also to the Queen of Scots, and was in great trouble concerning it, “for neither her officers nor her treasurer possessed a sou, nor did they speak of repayment.” The unfortunate ambassador had fallen upon evil days: he was accused of having spoken ill of his successor, Chateauneuf, and had to write, as the report went, to Elizabeth, to unsay his insinuations. In December 1586, he wrote to Archibald Douglas of his wife—the Maria de Bochetel, whom Bruno praises—having died in childbirth. It would be interesting to know how Bruno fared in the robbery of Mauvissière’s goods. At least we may assume that he arrived in Paris with very little worldly goods, but with part of the manuscript of a great work on the Universe (the De Immenso) in his possession, during the month of October 1585.

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Paris: Oct. 1585-June 1586.“In Paris I spent another year in the house of gentlemen of my acquaintance, but at my own expense the greater part of the time: because of the tumults I left Paris, and went from there to Germany.”[80] So Bruno told the tribunal at Venice; but the duration of his second visit to Paris was from October 1585 to June 1586. The Church.One of his first steps was to make further efforts towards reconciliation with the Church: he presented himself for confession to a Jesuit father, while consulting with the Bishop of Bergamo (the Papal Nuncio), but they were unable to absolve him, as he was an apostate. What Bruno wished was that he might be received into the Church without being compelled to return again to the priesthood, and he begged the Nuncio to write to the Pope Sixtus V. on his behalf. The Bishop, however, had no hope of the favour being granted, and declined to write unless Bruno agreed to return to his order. To the same effect was the advice of the Jesuit father Alfonso Spagnolo to whom he was referred; to obtain absolution from the Pope he must return to the order—to his bonds, in other words; and without absolution he could not enjoy the privileges either of mass or of the confessional.[81] This idea Bruno could by no means entertain, and therefore he resigned himself to his position as an alien to the Catholic Church. He had no intention of remaining in Paris, where perhaps his Italian writings had made him no longer acceptable, but he desired not to leave it without some recognition of the favour shown him there in the past. The means he adopted was a public disputation, to be held in the Royal Hall of the university at Pentecost of the year 1586. These disputations of the learned were a delight to the youth of the time, and drew audiences comparable in our own time only to great football or cricket matches.[82] The 120 Theses.He drew up one hundred and twenty theses against the Peripatetic Philosophy, which still formed the substance of the teaching at the Sorbonne; and his side was taken up by the rival, more modern, college of Cambray (afterwards the College of France), of which he appears now to have become an associate.[83] It was the custom of the real propounder of the theses to preside at the debate, leaving it to another to act as protagonist, and intervening only when the latter’s discomfiture was imminent. In this case Bruno chose a young Parisian nobleman of his own following—John Hennequin, a Master of Arts—but we may well imagine that he did not long keep silent himself. We have no knowledge of how the debate went, but it cannot have been too favourable to Bruno, for he left Paris immediately afterwards. Its date was the 25th of May; Bruno, therefore, left Paris probably in early June 1586.

Criticism of Peripatetic Theory.The articles, with a note of explanation attached to each, and an introduction to the whole—(Excubitor, the Awakener)—being the address of Hennequin at the beginning of the disputation, but written by Bruno himself—were published in Paris and again at Wittenberg.[84] They contain a temperate but powerful criticism of the Aristotelians, by the words of Aristotle himself, and of Aristotle from the standpoint of Bruno’s own physical theory, which he believed to be that of the Pythagoreans and Platonists. The right to criticise the “divine” Aristotle, Bruno claimed on the same grounds as those on which Aristotle himself enjoyed the right of criticising his predecessors: we are to him as he to them: their truth, which to him seemed error, may be right to us again, for opinion, like other history, moves in cycles. And as to authority, the mass of which was against Bruno, “if we are really sick, it helps us nought that public opinion thinks we are really making for health.”[85] “It is a poor mind that will think with the multitude because it is a multitude: truth is not altered by the opinions of the vulgar or the confirmation of the many”—“it is more blessed to be wise in truth in face of opinion than to be wise in opinion in face of truth.”[86] The new philosophy gives wings to the mind, to carry it far from the prison cell in which it has been detained by the old system, and from which it could look out upon the orbs of the stars only through chinks and cracks:—to carry it out into infinite space, to behold the innumerable worlds, sisters of the earth, like it in heart and in will, living and life-producing; and returning, to see within itself—“not without, apart, or far from us, but in ourselves, and everywhere one, more intimate, more in the heart of each of us, than we are to ourselves”[87]—the divine cause, source, and centre of things. Aristotle and the sources of the scholastic philosophy were occupying Bruno’s leisure almost exclusively at this time: he had begun the great Latin work, the De Immenso, which was to see the light in Frankfort; and he published in this year a commentary on the physics of Aristotle as well as an account of a mathematical and cosmometric invention of one Fabrizio Mordenti, which seems to be of much less value than Bruno supposed.[88]

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1586.Leaving France for Germany, the Nolan made his first halt at “Mez, or Magonza, which is an archiepiscopal city, and the first elector of the Empire”;[89] it is certainly Mayence. Mainz.There he remained some days; but not finding either there or at “Vispure, a place not far from there,” any means of livelihood such as he cared for, he went on to Wittenberg in Saxony. Marburg.“Vispure” has caused considerable exercise of ingenuity among Bruno’s biographers. The best explanation seems to be that of Brunnhofer, that it represents Wiesbaden, which is not far from Mayence, and is still popularly known as Wisbare or Wisbore; but there may also be a telescoping of the words Wiesbaden and Marburg. Bruno was certainly at the latter town, but it is of course a long distance from Mayence. July 25, 1586.On the 1st of July 1586, Petrus Nigidius, Doctor of Law and Professor of Moral Philosophy, was elected Rector of the university at Marburg. In the roll of students matriculated under his rectorship stands as eighth name that of “Jordanus Nolanus of Naples, Doctor of Roman Theology,” with the date July 25, 1586, and the following note by the rector:—“When the right of publicly teaching philosophy was denied him by me, with the consent of the faculty of philosophy, for weighty reasons, he blazed out, grossly insulting me in my own house, protesting I was acting against the law of nations, the custom of all the universities of Germany, and all the schools of humanity. He refused then to become a member of the university,—his fee was readily returned, and his name accordingly erased from the album of the university by me.” The name could still be read through the thick line drawn across it, and some later rector, when Bruno had become more famous, re-wrote the name above, and cancelled the words “with the consent of the faculty of philosophy” in Nigidius’ note.[90] The “weighty reasons” for which Bruno was driven from Marburg may have been merely his description of himself as a Doctor of “Roman Theology” at a Protestant university; or perhaps an attack upon Ramus at a place where the Ramian Logic had many adherents; or the Copernican system taught by him, which was as firmly opposed by Protestants as by Catholics. Wittenberg.In any case “the Knight-Errant of Philosophy” departed sorrowfully and came to Wittenberg, where he found, for the third time, a respite from his journeyings. Aug. 20, 1586.On the 20th August 1586 he matriculated at the university,[91] and there remained for nearly two years. Then, as now, the Protestant Church in Germany was divided into two parties, the Lutheran and the Calvinist or Reformed Churches. Melanchthon’s attempt to unite the two—he himself belonged to the latter—brought upon his head the “formula of concord,” better known as the “formula of discord,” because of the disputes it caused. Among other things it condemned the views of the Calvinists on the person of Christ, their denial of his “Real Presence” in the bread and wine of the communion table, and their doctrine of predestination. When Bruno arrived in Wittenberg, Lutherans were still in power, as they had been under the old Duke Augustus. His son Christian I., however, under the influence of John Casimir, his brother-in-law, of the Palatinate, had gone over to the Calvinist faction, and was trying with the aid of the Chancellor, Krell, to supplant the reigning faith and authority. At the university the philosophical faculty was, in the main, Calvinist, the theological Lutheran; and among the latter party was an Italian Alberico Gentile, the father of International Law, whom Bruno had perhaps known in England as a professor at Oxford. Through him Bruno found favour with the Lutheran party, and received permission to lecture, on the condition that he taught nothing that was subversive of their religion. For two years, accordingly, he lectured on the Organon of Aristotle, and other subjects of philosophy, including the Lullian art, which he had for a time discarded. Dedication of De Lampade.The excellent terms on which he stood with his colleagues is shown by the dedication of a Lullian work, De Lampade Combinatoria, to the senate of the university. He speaks gratefully of their kind reception of himself, the freedom of access and residence which was granted not only to students but to professors from all parts of Europe. In his own case “a man of no name, fame, or authority among you, escaped from the tumults of France, supported by no princely commendation, with no outward marks of distinction such as the public loves, neither approved nor even questioned in the dogmas of your religion; but as showing no hostility to man, rather a peaceful and general philanthropy, and my only title the profession of philosophy, merely because I was a pupil in the temple of the Muses, you thought me worthy of the kindliest welcome, enrolled me in the album of your academy, and gave me a place in a body of men so noble and learned that I could not fail to see in you neither a private school nor an exclusive conventicle, but as becomes the Athens of Germany, a true university.” In this introduction a large number of the professors are invoked by name, among them the enlightened Grün, a professor of philosophy, who taught that theology cannot be detached from philosophy—that they are necessary complements one of the other.

Works published.In Wittenberg was published (1587), the De Lampade Combinatoria Lulliana, the second of the commentaries on Lully’s art, and representing perhaps the clavis magna of the De Umbris and other Parisian publications. It was dedicated to the senatus of the University of Wittenberg. A reprint, however, appeared in Prague in the following year with a new frontispiece, a dedication to William of St. Clement, and the addition of a small treatise.[92] The chief purpose of the work was to furnish the reader with means for “the discovery of an indefinite number of propositions and middle terms for speaking and arguing. It is also the sole key to the intelligence of all Lullian works whatsoever,” Bruno writes with his sublime confidence, “and no less to a great number of the mysteries of the Pythagoreans and Cabalists.” As in the earlier work, so in this also, the root ideas are that thought is a complex of elements, which are to it as the letters of the alphabet are to a printed book; but thought and reality or nature are not opposed to one another—they are essentially one. The elements of thought when discovered will accordingly give us the constitutive elements of nature and the connections in, and workings of, nature will be understood from the different complications of these simple elements of thought. De Progressu, 1587.In the same year appeared the De Progressu et Lampade Venatoriâ Logicorum, “To enable one to dispute promptly and copiously on any subject proposed.” It was dedicated to the Chancellor of the University of Wittenberg, and was mainly a commentary, without special references, on the Topics of Aristotle, and doubtless formed part of the lectures on the Organon, given in Bruno’s first year at Wittenberg. The simile of the hunt—i.e. the idea that the solution of a problem or the finding of a middle term is like a quarry that has to be stalked and hunted down—is a favourite one with Bruno.

1588.Unfortunately for Bruno, the Duke’s party in Wittenberg soon gained the upper hand—only for a time, it is true[93]—and the party to which Bruno himself belonged fell out of power. As a Copernican, Bruno must in any case soon have fallen foul of the Calvinists, by whom the new theory had been declared a heresy. He therefore left Wittenberg in the beginning of 1588, after delivering on the 8th of March an eloquent farewell address to the university Oratio Valedictoria. (Oratio Valedictoria). By the fable of Paris and the three Goddesses, he indicated his own choice of Wisdom (Minerva) over riches or fame (Juno), and over worldly pleasure or the delights of society (Venus):—“Wisdom is communicated neither so readily nor so widely as riches or pleasure. There are not and there never have been so many Philosophers as Emperors and Princes; nor to so many has it been granted to see Minerva robed and armed, as to see Venus and Juno even in naked simplicity. To see her is to become blind, to be wise through her is to be foolish. They say Tiresias saw Minerva naked, and was struck blind; who that had looked upon her, would not despise the sight of other things?—‘man shall not see me and live.’ ... Wisdom, Sophia, Minerva, beautiful as the moon, great as the sun, terrible as the marshalled ranks of armies; like the moon in her fair gracefulness, like the sun in her lofty majesty, like armies in her invincible courage.... The first-born before all creatures, sprung from the head of Jove—for she is a breath from the virtue of God, an emanation of omnipotent brightness, sincere and pure, clear and inviolate, honourable, powerful, and kind beyond words, well pleasing to God, incomparable:—pure, because nothing of defilement can touch her; clear, because she is the brightness of eternal light; inviolate, because she is the spotless mirror of the majesty of God; honourable, because the image of goodness itself; powerful, because being one she can do all things, being permanent in herself, she renews all things; kind, because she visits the nations that are sacred to her and makes men friends of God, and prophets; pleasing to God, because God loves only him that dwells with wisdom; incomparable, for she is more beautiful than the sun and brighter than the light of all the stars. Her have I loved and sought from my youth, and desired for my spouse, and have become a lover of her form—and I prayed that she might be sent to abide with me, and work with me, that I might know what I lacked, and what was acceptable to God: for she knew and understood, and would guide me soberly in my work and would keep me in her charge: ... But wisdom in the highest sense, in its essence as the thought of God, is incommunicable, incomprehensible, apart from all things. Wisdom has three phases or aspects or ‘mansions’—first, the mind of God the eternal, then the visible world itself which is the first-born, and third, the mind of man which is the second-born of the highest, the true wisdom unattainable by man. Here among men wisdom has built herself a house of reason and of thought (which comes after the world), in which we see the shadow of the first, the archetypal and ideal house (which is before the world), and the image of the second, the sensible and natural house, which is the world. The seven columns of the house or temple are the seven Arts—Grammar, Rhetoric (with poetry), Logic, Mathematics, Physics, Ethics, and Metaphysics, and the temple was built first among the Egyptians and Assyrians, viz. in the Chaldeans, then among the Persians, with the Magi and Zoroaster, third the Indians with their Gymnosophists; ... seventhly, in our time, among the Germans.” So far has Bruno come from taking the Germans as mere beer-bibbers, as he had written of them in England.[94] “Since the empire (of wisdom) devolved upon you there have risen amongst you new arts and great minds, the like of which no other nations can shew.” In the category of German temple-builders are Albertus Magnus, Nicolas of Cusa, Copernicus, Palingenius, Paracelsus; “among humanists many, apt imitators of the Attic and Ausonian muses, and among them one greater than the rest who more than imitates, rather rivals, the ancient muses” (Erasmus). Luther.It is not unnatural that, in his own Wittenberg, Luther should be praised, as among the temple-builders or priests of truth: but Bruno’s words have a ring of sincerity, proving that his sympathy was really aroused for the Lutherans. “When the world was infected by that strong man armed with key and sword, fraud and force, cunning and violence, hypocrisy and ferocity,—at once fox and lion, and vicar of the tyrant of hell,—infected with a superstitious worship and an ignorance more than brutal, under the name of divine wisdom and of a God-pleasing simplicity; and there was no one to oppose or withstand the voracious beast, or dispose an unworthy and abandoned generation to better and happier state and condition,—what other part of Europe or the world could have brought forth for us that Alcides, stronger than Hercules himself, in that he did greater things with less effort and with fewer instruments,—destroying a greater and far more deadly monster than ever any of the past centuries had to suffer? Here in Wittenberg he dragged up that three-headed Cerberus with its threefold tiara from its pit of darkness: you saw it, and it the sun. Here that dog of Styx was compelled to vomit forth its poison. Here your Hercules, your country’s Hercules, triumphed over the adamantine gates of hell, over the city girt about with its threefold wall, and defended by its nine windings of the Styx.”