[171] Opere, vol. vi. p. 145.
[172] Fulgenzio's Life, p. 98.
[173] Ibid. p. 105.
[174] Ibid.
[175] Letter of the Superior to the Venetian Senate, printed in the Lettere, vol. ii. pp. 450-453. It is worth meditating on the contrast between Sarpi's and Bruno's deaths. Sarpi died with the consolations of religion on his bed in the convent which had been his life-long home. Bruno was burned alive, with eyes averted from the crucifix in bitter scorn, after seven and a half years spent in the prisons of the Inquisition. Sarpi exhaled his last breath amid sympathizing friends, in the service of a grateful country. Bruno panted his death-pangs of suffocation and combustion out, surrounded by menacing Dominicans, in the midst of hostile Rome celebrating her triumphant jubilee. Sarpi's last thoughts were given to the God of Christendom and the Republic. Bruno had no country; the God in whom he trusted at that grim hour, was the God within his soul, unrealized, detached by his own reason from every Church and every creed.
[176] See Renaissance in Italy, vol. ii. pp. 299, 300.
[177] Lettere del Guarini, Venezia, 1596, p. 2.
[178] Alberi, Relazioni, series 2, vol. ii. pp. 423-425.
[179] Lettere, p. 195.
[180] In this year it was published with the author's revision by Ciotto at Venice. It had been represented at Turin in 1585, and first printed at Venice in 1590.