Between Frankfort and Italy literary communications were kept open through the medium of the great fair, which took place every year at Michael mas.[101] Books formed one of the principal commodities, and the Italian bibliopoles traveled across the Alps to transact business on these important occasions. It happened by such means that a work of Bruno's, perhaps the De Monude, found its way to Venice.[102] Exposed on the counter of Giambattista Ciotto, then plying the trade of bookseller in that city, this treatise met the eyes of a Venetian gentleman called Giovanni Mocenigo. He belonged to one of the most illustrious of the still surviving noble families in Venice. The long line of their palaces upon the Grand Canal has impressed the mind of every tourist. One of these houses, it may be remarked, was occupied by Lord Byron, who, had he known of Bruno's connection with the Mocenighi, would undoubtedly have given to the world a poem or a drama on the fate of our philosopher. Giovanni Mocenigo was a man verging on middle life, superstitious, acknowledging the dominion of his priest, but alive in a furtive way to perilous ideas. Morally, he stands before us as a twofold traitor: a traitor to his Church, so long as he hoped to gain illicit power by magic arts; a traitor to his guest, so soon as he discovered that his soul's risk brought himself no profit.[103] He seems to have imagined that Bruno might teach him occult science or direct him on a royal way to knowledge without strenuous study. Subsequent events proved that, though he had no solid culture, he was fascinated by the expectation of discovering some great secret. It was the vice of the age to confound science with sorcery, and Bruno had lent himself to this delusion by his whimsical style. Perhaps the booksellers, who then played a part scarcely less prominent than that of the barbers in diffusing gossip, inflamed Mocenigo's curiosity by painting the author of the puzzling volume in seductive colors. Any how this man sent two letters, one through Ciotto, and one direct to Bruno, praying him to visit Venice, professing his desire for instruction, and offering him an honorable place of residence.
In an evil hour Bruno accepted this invitation. No doubt he longed to see Italy again after so many years of exile. Certainly he had the right to believe that he would find hospitality and a safe refuge in Venice. Had not a Venetian noble pledged his word for the former? Was not the latter a privilege which S. Mark extended to all suppliants? The Republic professed to shield even the outlaws of the Inquisition, if they claimed her jurisdiction. There was therefore no palpable imprudence in the step which Bruno now took. Yet he took it under circumstances which would have made a cautious man mistrustful. Of Mocenigo he knew merely nothing. But he did know that writs from the Holy Office had been out against himself in Italy for many years, during which he had spent his time in conversing with heretics and printing works of more than questionable orthodoxy.[104] Nothing proves the force of the vagrant's impulse which possessed Bruno, more than his light and ready consent to Giovanni Mocenigo's proposal.
He set off at once from Frankfort, leaving the MS. of one of his metaphysical poems in Wechel's hands to print, and found himself at the end of 1591 a guest of his unknown patron. I have already described what Mocenigo hoped to gain from Bruno—the arts of memory and invention, together with glimpses into occult science.[105] We know how little Bruno was able to satisfy an in satiable curiosity in such matters. One of his main weaknesses was a habit of boasting and exaggerating his own powers, which at first imposed upon a vulgar audience and then left them under the impression that he was a charlatan. The bookseller Ciotto learned from students who had conversed with him at Frankfort, that 'he professed an art of memory and other secrets in the sciences, but that all the persons who had dealt with him in such matters, had left him discontinued.'[106]
Another weakness in his character was extraordinary want of caution. Having lived about the world so long, and changed from town to town, supporting himself as he best could, he had acquired the custom of attracting notice by startling paradoxes. Nor does he seem to have cared to whom he made the dangerous confidence of his esoteric beliefs. His public writings, presumably composed with a certain circumspection—since everybody knows the proverb litera scripta manet—contain such perilous stuff that—when we consider what their author may have let fall in unguarded conversation—we are prepared to credit the charges brought against him by Mocenigo. For it must now be said that this man, 'induced by the obligation of his conscience and by order of his confessor,' denounced Bruno to the Inquisition on May 23, 1592.
When the two men, so entirely opposite in their natures, first came together, Bruno began to instruct his patron in the famous art of memory and mathematics. At the same time he discoursed freely and copiously, according to his wont, upon his own philosophy. Mocenigo took no interest in metaphysics, and was terrified by the audacity of Bruno's speculations. It enraged him to find how meager was Bruno's vaunted method for acquiring and retaining knowledge without pains. In his secret heart he believed that the teacher whom he had maintained at a considerable cost, was withholding the occult knowledge he so much coveted. Bruno, meanwhile, attended Andrea Morosini's receptions in the palace at S. Luca, and frequented those of Bernardo Secchini at the sign of the Golden Ship in the Merceria. He made friends with scholars and men of fashion; absented himself for weeks together at Padua; showed that he was tired of Mocenigo; and ended by rousing that man's suspicious jealousy. Mocenigo felt that he had been deceived by an impostor, who, instead of furnishing the wares for which he bargained, put him off with declamations on the nature of the universe. What was even more terrible, he became convinced that this charlatan was an obstinate heretic.
Whether Bruno perceived the gathering of the storm above his head, whether he was only wearied with the importunities of his host, or whether, as he told the Inquisitors, he wished to superintend the publication of some books at Frankfort, does not greatly signify. At any rate, he begged Mocenigo to excuse him from further attendance, since he meant to leave Venice. This happened on Thursday, May 21. Next day, Mocenigo sent his bodyservant together with five or six gondoliers into Bruno's apartment, seized him, and had him locked up in a ground-floor room of the palace. At the same time he laid hands on all Bruno's effects, including the MS. of one important treatise On the Seven Liberal Arts, which was about to be dedicated to Pope Clement VIII. This, together with other unpublished works, exists probably in the Vatican Archives, having been sent with the papers referring to Bruno's trial from Venice when he was transported to Rome. The following day, which was a Saturday, Mocenigo caused Bruno to be carried to one of those cellars (magazzeni terreni) which are used in Venice for storing wood, merchandise or implements belonging to gondolas. In the evening, a Captain of the Council of Ten removed him to the dungeons of the Inquisition. On the same day, May 23, Mocenigo lodged his denunciation with the Holy Office.
The heads of this accusation, extracted from the first report and from two subsequent additions made by the delator, amount to these. Though Bruno was adverse to religions altogether, he preferred the Catholic to any other; but he believed it to stand in need of thorough reform. The doctrines of the Trinity, the miraculous birth of Christ, and transubstantiation, were insults to the Divine Being. Christ had seduced the people by working apparent miracles. So also had the Apostles. To develop a new philosophy which should supersede religions, and to prove his superiority in knowledge over S. Thomas and all the theologians, was Bruno's cherished scheme. He did not believe in the punishment of sins; but held a doctrine of the transmigration of souls, and of the generation of the human soul from refuse. The world he thought to be eternal. He maintained that there were infinite worlds, all made by God, who wills to do what he can do, and therefore produces infinity. The religious orders of Catholicism defile the earth by evil life, hypocrisy, and avarice. All friars are only asses. Indulgence in carnal pleasures ought not to be reckoned sinful. The man confessed to having freely satisfied his passions to the utmost of his opportunities.
On being questioned before the Inquisitors, Mocenigo supported these charges. He added that when he had threatened Bruno with delation, Bruno replied, first, that he did not believe he would betray his confidence by making private conversation the groundwork of criminal charges; secondly, that the utmost the Inquisition could do, would be to inflict some penance and force him to resume the cowl. These, which are important assertions, bearing the mark of truth, throw light on his want of caution in dealing with Mocenigo, and explain the attitude he afterwards assumed before the Holy Office.
Mocenigo's accusations in the main yield evidences of sincerity. They are exactly what we should expect from the distortion of Bruno's doctrines by a mind incapable of comprehending them. In short, they are as veracious as the image of a face reflected on a spoon. Certain gross details (the charges, for example, of having called Christ a tristo who was deservedly hung, and of having sneered at the virginity of Mary) may possibly have emanated from the delator's own imagination.[107]
Bruno emphatically repudiated these; though some passages in his philosophical poems, published at Frankfort, contain the substance of their blasphemies. A man of Mocenigo's stamp probably thought that he was faithfully representing the heretic's views, while in reality he was drawing his own gross conclusions from skeptical utterances about the origin of Christianity which he obscurely understood. It does not seem incredible, however, that Bruno, who was never nice in his choice of language, and who certainly despised historical Christianity, let fall crude witticisms upon such and other points in Mocenigo's presence.