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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



sumption he explicitly drew those heretical infer- 

 ences which were afterward fastened gratuitously 

 on Galileo. Neither Copernicus before him, nor 

 Galileo after him, hazarded any such speculations 

 as to the manner in which the other planets of 

 our system, or of other systems, might or might 

 not be peopled. But Bruno reveled in them, 

 and made them the main ground of his argu- 

 ment against the creed of Christendom and for 

 the necessity of a new religion, harmonizing with 

 the new astronomy. It was much as if Voltaire 

 had preceded Newton, and had so treated astro- 

 nomical questions as to create an inseparable 

 association in the clerical and common mind be- 

 tween a revolution in science and a revolution in 

 religion and morals. 



Galileo has been accused by all the apologists 

 of his ecclesiastical persecutors of having gratui- 

 tously mixed up questions of science with ques- 

 tions of religion ; and his imputed invasion of a 

 province which he had no legitimate motive to 

 meddle with has been described as having pro- 

 voked that papal crusade against modern astron- 

 omy which has damned Urban VIII. and his holy 

 office to everlasting fame. 



Not a word of all this is true of Galileo. 

 Every word of it is true of Giordano Bruno- 

 Unlike as were the characters and careers of 

 Bruno and Galileo — in every respect but irrepres- 

 sible intellectual activity, however differently di- 

 rected — it is difficult to avoid the impression that 

 the destinies of the former may have very consid- 

 erably and unhappily influenced those of the lat- 

 ter. The Roman Inquisition successively pounced 

 on both, though not, it must be admitted, with 

 equal excess of severity. It burned Bruno, and 

 never certainly had it lighted on human fuel more 

 manifestly predestined, in that age, to burning. 

 It only intimidated Galileo into solemn and delib- 

 erate perjury, into abjuration of truths he had 

 clearly demonstrated and continued to hold, 

 which his persecutors perfectly well knew that 

 he continued to hold, and therefore, by extorting 

 verbal abjuration of them from a harassed and 

 infirm old man, made themselves mainly respon- 

 sible for the hollow and hypocritical performance 

 of what can only be designated as a most impi- 

 ous and sacrilegious farce. 



Giordano Bruno's is one of those names which, 

 in the course of centuries, have gathered round 

 them a sort of darkened glory. If he had fallen 

 upon another age and another country — instead 

 of being burned at Rome, he might have shone 

 brightly, as a professor of philosophy, at Berlin 

 or Munich. He might have lectured, like Schel- 



ling, on " The Absolute," and " The Point of In- 

 difference between Extremes " — a position identi- \ 

 cal with the coincidentia oppositorum of Bruno — 

 or, like Hegel, on " The Unity of Existence and 

 Thought," and " The Perpetual Evolution of the 

 Idea." 



It is mentioned among the multifarious mental 

 occupations of the late Baron Bunsen, that he had 

 studied Giordano Bruno with peculiar interest and 

 with deep sympathy. " The work of Bartolmess 

 of Strasburg," he said, " gave me occasion of be- 

 coming more nearly acquainted with that strange, 

 erratic, comet-like spirit, marked by genius, but 

 a Neapolitan, whose life was but a fiery frag- 

 ment." 1 



A fiery fragment, literally consumed in fire at 

 last. Not the less characteristic of that unparal- 

 leled era of intellectual renascence in Italy, which 

 commenced in classicism, was closed by Jesuit- 

 ism ; which was cradled in the Platonic academy 

 founded at Florence by the first illustrious chiefs 

 of the Medicean line, and was entombed in the 

 Holy Office instituted at Rome by Pope Paul III. ; 

 which had for its first martyr of modern philos- 

 ophy Giordano Bruno, for its second confessor 

 Galileo. 



The character and career of Giordono Bruno 

 furnish the most signal example of all that was 

 irregular and anarchical in that immense intel- 

 lectual as well as aesthetic movement, the transi- 

 tory glory of the sixteenth century in Italy. The 

 character and career of Galileo exemplify all that 

 was genuinely scientific, and really religious, in 

 that movement. We should be disposed to re- 

 gard the unbridled license on all subjects, which 

 so singularly and strangely distinguished Bruno, 

 as a natural reaction, on the one hand, against 

 the complete self-prostration of intellect dog- 

 matically demanded by the Church of Rome, and, 

 on the other, as a natural product of the entire 

 emancipation of intellect practically encouraged 

 by the universities, in those free disputations de 

 omnibus rebus et quibusdam aliix, which were 

 thrown open by time-honored usage to all aca- 

 demic speakers and nil hearers. It was only on 

 submissive minds that monastic discipline pro- 

 duced its designed effects: the reaction therefrom, 

 in restless and inquisitive spirits like Bruno's, 

 could scarcely fail to drive them from implicit 

 acceptance of unreasoned rule to indiscriminate 

 revolt from all rule. What the Church had after- 

 ward to condemn she may seem to have herself 

 generated. Bruno was the natural child of Do- 

 minicanism, as Voltaire of Jesuitism. He may 

 1 "Memoirs of Baron Bunsen," vol. ii., p. 254. 



