BRÜNNOW, FRANZ FRIEDRICH ERNST (1821-1891), German astronomer, was born in Berlin on the 18th of November 1821. Between the ages of eight and eighteen he attended the Friedrich-Wilhelm gymnasium. In 1839 he entered the university of Berlin, where he studied mathematics, astronomy and physics, as well as chemistry, philosophy and philology. After graduating as Ph.D. in 1843, he took an active part in astronomical work at the Berlin observatory, under the direction of J. F. Encke, contributing numerous important papers on the orbits of comets and minor planets to the Astronomische Nachrichten. In 1847 he was appointed director of the Bilk observatory, near Düsseldorf, and in the following year published the well-known Mémoire sur la comète elliptique de De Vico, for which he received the gold medal of the Amsterdam Academy. In 1851 he succeeded J. G. Galle as first assistant at the Berlin observatory, and accepted in 1854 the post of director of the new observatory at Ann Arbor, Michigan, U.S.A. Here he published, 1858-1862, a journal entitled Astronomical Notices, while his tables of the minor planets Flora, Victoria and Iris were severally issued in 1857, 1859 and 1869. In 1860 he went, as associate director of the observatory, to Albany, N. Y.; but returned in 1861 to Michigan, and threw himself with vigour into the work of studying the astronomical and physical constants of the observatory and its instruments. In 1863 he resigned its direction and returned to Germany; then, on the death of Sir W. R. Hamilton in 1865, he accepted the post of Andrews professor of astronomy in the university of Dublin and astronomer-royal of Ireland. His first undertaking at the Dublin observatory was the erection of an equatorial telescope to carry the fine object-glass presented to the university by Sir James South; and on its completion he began an important series of researches on stellar parallax. The first, second and third parts of the Astronomical Observations and Researches made at Dunsink contain the results of these labours, and include discussions of the distances of the stars α Lyrae, σ Draconis, Groombridge 1830, 85 Pegasi, and Bradley 3077, and of the planetary nebula H. iv. 37. In 1873 the observatory, on Dr Brünnow's recommendation, was provided with a first-class transit-circle, which he proceeded to test as a preliminary to commencing an extended programme of work with it, but in the following year, in consequence of failing health and eyesight, he resigned the post and retired to Basel. In 1880 he removed to Vevey, and in 1889 to Heidelberg, where he died on the 20th of August 1891. The permanence of his reputation was secured by the merits of his Lehrbuch der sphärischen Astronomie, which were at once and widely appreciated. In 1860 part i. was translated into English by Robert Main, the Radcliffe observer at Oxford; Brünnow himself published an English version in 1865; it reached in the original a 5th edition in 1881, and was also translated into French, Russian, Italian and Spanish.
See Month. Notices Roy. Astr. Society, lii. 230; J. C. Poggendorff's Biog. Lit. Handwörterbuch, Bd. iii.; Nature, xliv. 449.
BRUNO, SAINT, founder of the Carthusians, was born in Cologne about 1030; he was educated there and afterwards at Reims and Tours, where he studied under Berengar. He was ordained at Cologne, and thence, in 1057, he was recalled to Reims to become scholasticus, or head of the cathedral school, and overseer of the schools of the diocese. He was made also canon and diocesan chancellor. Having protested against the misdoings of a new archbishop, he was deprived of all his offices and had to fly for safety (1076). On the deposition of the archbishop in 1080, Bruno was presented by the ecclesiastical authorities to the pope for the see, but Philip I. of France successfully opposed the appointment. After this Bruno left Reims and retired, with six companions, to a desert among the mountains near Grenoble, and there founded the Carthusian order (1084). After six years Urban II. called him to Rome and offered him the archbishopric of Reggio; but he refused it, and withdrew to a desert in Calabria, where he established two other monasteries, and died in 1101. He wrote Commentaries on the Psalms and the Pauline Epistles, to be found in Migne, Patr. Lat. clii. and cliii.; some works by namesakes have been attributed to him.
His Life will be found in the Bollandists' Acta Sanctorum (6th of October). The best study on St Bruno's life and works is Hermann Löbbel, Der Stifter des Karthäuser-Ordens, 1899 (vol. v. No. 1 of "Kirchengeschichtliche Studien," Münster).
(E. C. B.)
BRUNO, or Brun (925-965), archbishop of Cologne, third son of the German king, Henry I., the Fowler, by his second wife Matilda, was educated for the church at Utrecht, where he
distinguished himself by his studious zeal. In 940 his brother, King Otto, afterwards the emperor Otto the Great, appointed him chancellor, and some years later arch-chaplain, and under his leadership the chancery was reformed and became a training ground for capable administrators. He rendered valuable assistance to his brother Otto in his efforts to suppress the risings which marked the earlier part of his reign, services which were rewarded in 953 when Bruno was made archbishop of Cologne, and about the same time duke of Lorraine. Bruno is chiefly renowned as a scholar and a patron of learning. He consorted eagerly with learned foreigners, tried to secure a better education for the clergy, and was mainly instrumental in making his brother's court a centre of intellectual life. He built many churches, and, aided by the tendency of the time, sought to purify monastic life. He died at Reims on the 11th of October 965, and was buried in the church of St Pantaleon at Cologne.
See Ruotger, "Vita Brunonis archiepiscopi Coloniensis," in the Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptures, Band iv. (Hanover and Berlin, 1826-1892); E. Meyer, De Brunone I. Archiepiscopo Coloniensi (Berlin, 1867); J.P. Pfeiffer, Historisch-Kritische Beitrage zur Geschichte Bruns I. (Cologne, 1870); K. Martin, Beitrage zur Geschichte Brunos I. von Koln (Jena, 1878).
BRUNO, GIORDANO (c. 1548-1600), Italian philosopher of the Renaissance, was born near Nola in the village of Cicala. Little is known of his life. He was christened Filippo, and took the name Giordano only on entering a religious order. In his fifteenth year he entered the order of the Dominicans at Naples, and is said to have composed a treatise on the ark of Noah. Why he submitted to a discipline palpably unsuited to his fiery spirit we cannot tell. In consequence of his views on transubstantiation and the immaculate conception he was accused of impiety, and after enduring persecution for some years, he fled from Rome about 1576, and wandered through various cities, reaching Geneva in 1579. The home of Calvinism was no resting-place for him (T. Dufour, Giordano Bruno à Genève, Geneva, 1884), and he travelled on through Lyons, Toulouse and Montpellier, arriving at Paris in 1581. Everywhere he bent his energies to the exposition of the new thoughts which were beginning to effect a revolution in the thinking world. He had drunk deeply of the spirit of the Renaissance, the determination to see for himself the noble universe, unclouded by the mists of authoritative philosophy and church tradition. The discoveries of Copernicus were eagerly accepted by him, and he used them as the lever by which to push aside the antiquated system that had come down from Aristotle, for whom, indeed, he had a perfect hatred. Like Bacon and Telesio he preferred the older Greek philosophers, who had looked at nature for themselves, and whose speculations had more of reality in them. He had read widely and deeply, and in his own writings we come across many expressions familiar to us in earlier systems. Yet his philosophy is no eclecticism. He owed something to Lucretius, something to the Stoic nature-pantheism, something to Anaxagoras, to Heraclitus, to the Pythagoreans, and to the Neoplatonists, who were partially known to him; above all, he was a profound student of Nicolas of Cusa, who was indeed a speculative Copernicus. But his own system has a distinct unity and originality; it breathes throughout the fiery spirit of Bruno himself.
Bruno had been well received at Toulouse, where he had lectured on astronomy; even better fortune awaited him at Paris, especially at the hands of Henry III. He was offered a chair of philosophy, provided he would receive the Mass. He at once refused, but was permitted to deliver lectures. These seem to have been altogether devoted to expositions of a certain logical system which Bruno had taken up with great eagerness, the Ars Magna of Raimon Lull. With the exception of a satiric comedy, Il Candelajo, all the works of this period are devoted to this logic—De Umbris Idearum, Ars Memoriae, De compendiosa architectura et complemento artis Lullii, and Cantus Circaeus. To many it has seemed a curious freak of Bruno's that he should have so eagerly adopted a view of thought like that of Lull, but in reality it is in strict accordance with the principles of his philosophy. Like the Arabian logicians, and some of the scholastics, who held that ideas existed in a threefold form—ante res, in rebus and post res—he laid down the principle that the archetypal ideas existed metaphysically in the ultimate unity or intelligence, physically in the world of things, and logically in signs, symbols or notions. These notions were shadows of the ideas, and the Ars Magna furnished him with a general scheme, according to which their relations and correspondences should be exhibited. It supplied not only a memoria technica, but an organon, or method by which the genesis of all ideas from unity might be represented intelligibly and easily. It provided also a substitute for either the Aristotelian or the Ramist logic, which was an additional element in its favour.