GIORDANO BRUNO
(1548-1600)
illippo Bruno, known as Giordano Bruno, was born at Nola, near Naples, in 1548. This was eight years after the death of Copernicus, whose system he eagerly espoused, and ten years before the birth of Bacon, with whom he associated in England. Of an ardent, poetic temperament, he entered the Dominican order in Naples at the early age of sixteen, doubtless attracted to conventual life by the opportunities of study it offered to an eager intellect. Bruno had been in the monastery nearly thirteen years when he was accused of heresy in attacking some of the dogmas of the Church. He fled first to Rome and then to Northern Italy, where he wandered about for three seasons from city to city, teaching and writing. In 1579 he arrived at Geneva, then the stronghold of the Calvinists. Coming into conflict with the authorities there on account of his religious opinions, he was thrown into prison. He escaped and went to Toulouse, at that time the literary centre of Southern France, where he lectured for a year on Aristotle. His restless spirit, however, drove him on to Paris. Here he was made professor extraordinary at the Sorbonne.
Although his teachings were almost directly opposed to the philosophic tenets of the time, attacking the current dogmas, and Aristotle, the idol of the schoolmen, yet such was the power of Bruno's eloquence and the charm of his manner that crowds flocked to his lecture-room, and he became one of the most popular foreign teachers the university had known. Under pretense of expounding the writings of Thomas Aquinas, he set forth his own philosophy. He also spoke much on the art of memory, amplifying the writings of Raymond Lully; and these principles, formulated by the monk of the thirteenth century and taken up again by the free-thinkers of the sixteenth, are the basis of all the present-day mnemonics.
But Bruno went even further. He attracted the attention of King Henry III. of France, who in 1583 introduced him to the French ambassador to England, Castelnuovo di Manvissière. Going to London, he spent three years in the family of this nobleman, more as friend than dependent. They were the happiest, or at least the most restful years of his stormy life. England was just then entering on the glorious epoch of her Elizabethan literature. Bruno came into the brilliant court circles, meeting even the Queen, who cordially welcomed all men of culture, especially the Italians. The astute monk reciprocated her good-will by paying her the customary tribute of flattery. He won the friendship of Sir Philip Sidney, to whom he dedicated two of his books, and enjoyed the acquaintance of Spenser, Sir Fulke Greville, Dyer, Harvey, Sir William Temple, Bacon, and other wits and poets of the day.
At that time--somewhere about 1580--Shakespeare was still serving his apprenticeship as playwright, and had perhaps less claim on the notice of the observant foreigner than his elder contemporaries. London was still a small town, where the news of the day spread rapidly, and where, no doubt, strangers were as eagerly discussed as they are now within narrow town limits. Bruno's daring speculations could not remain the exclusive property of his own coterie. And as Shakespeare had the faculty of absorbing all new ideas afloat in the air, he would hardly have escaped the influence of the teacher who proclaimed in proud self-confidence that he was come to arouse men out of their theological stagnation. His influence on Bacon is more evident, because of their friendly associations. Bruno lectured at Oxford, but the English university found less favor in his eyes than English court life. Pedantry had indeed set its fatal mark on scholarship, not only on the Continent but in England. Aristotle was still the god of the pedants of that age, and dissent from his teaching was heavily punished, for the dry dust of learning blinded the eyes of the scholastics to new truths.
Bruno, the knight-errant of these truths, devoted all his life to scourging pedantry, and dissented in toto from the idol of the schools. No wonder he and Oxford did not agree together. He wittily calls her "the widow of sound learning," and again, "a constellation of pedantic, obstinate ignorance and presumption, mixed with a clownish incivility that would tax the patience of Job." He lashed the shortcomings of English learning in 'La Cena delle Ceneri' (Ash Wednesday Conversation). But Bruno's roving spirit, and perhaps also his heterodox tendencies, drove him at last from England, and for the next five years he roamed about Germany, leading the life of the wandering scholars of the time, always involved in conflicts and controversies with the authorities, always antagonistic to public opinion. Flying in the face of the most cherished traditions, he underwent the common experience of all prophets: the minds he was bent on awakening refused to be aroused.