GIORDANO BRUNO AND GALILEO GALILEI. 



113 



be said to have anticipated the most " advanced " 

 solutions of all questions which he chose to con- 

 sider open. And he chose to consider all ques- 

 tions open. He may be looked upon as the last 

 of those stray philosophers, in quest of fame and 

 of bread, who had formed, in the middle ages, a 

 sort of international republic of letters, whereof 

 all the universities of Europe were recognized as 

 component parts, graduation in one of which 

 opened all the rest to lectures and disputations 

 de omni re scibili by their itinerant members. 



But let us begin at the beginning of the way- 

 ward and erratic career of the first of those rep- 

 resentatives of the nascent modern mind in Italy, 

 whom M. Berti has made the subjects of his suc- 

 cessive studies. 



Whether Giordano Bruno, who was born about 

 1550 and baptized by the name of Philip — but, 

 on entering a religious order, followed the usual 

 ecclesiastical etiquette of giving himself a new 

 name — was of high or low descent (he himself 

 claimed the former), seems not very clearly ascer- 

 tained. So much, however, is clear, that he was 

 of rather poor parentage, and, during the whole 

 course of his errant exercise of philosophy, he 

 had to live upon his wits — on the money contrib- 

 uted by the auditors attracted to his disputations 

 ,and lectures. He had donned the religious dress 

 at the age of fifteen, in the Dominican convent at 

 Naples, and before the expiration of his novitiate 

 he had expressed himself slightingly to a fellow- 

 novice about a mystical manual, which he found 

 him reading, on the subject of the seven beatitudes 

 of the Virgin. " What ! " he asked, " would you 

 not find the reading of the lives of the Holy 

 Fathers more edifying ? " Young Bruno had, 

 moreover, cleared out his cell, by giving away all 

 the images it contained of saints, male and female, 

 keeping only a crucifix. Upon these indications 

 the " master of the novices " commenced formal 

 proceedings against the boy heretic, but had the 

 good sense or good feeling to drop them. Bruno's 

 next outbreaking, however, in the like direction, 

 was followed by more serious consequences. Be- 

 fore he was eighteen, says his biographer, he had 

 begun to doubt of the principal dogmas which 

 the Church imposes on the belief of the faithful. 

 Finally, after taking orders, at twenty-three, he 

 gave still fuller and more unbridled scope to his 

 heterodox opinions. Thus, at each successive 

 stage of outwakd ecclesiastical progression, he 

 developed and disclosed an inward state of mind 

 at variance with it. Proceedings were again taken 

 against the young Giordano — this time by higher 

 authority ; and there could be no doubt about 



80 



the peril of the position in which he had placed 

 himself. He took flight from Naples, and found 

 a temporary halting-place at the Dominican con- 

 vent of the Minerva at Rome ; but soon, finding 

 that the charges brought against him at Naples 

 had been duly forwarded to Rome, he took flight 

 thence also, throwing off his monastic habit, and 

 went forth into the world, as the fairy talcs say, 

 to seek his fortune. 



On escaping from Rome, our philosopher-er- 

 rant had resumed his baptismal name of Philip, 

 and, as we have already stated, had cast off his 

 garb of Dominican monk. With his usual incon- 

 sistency of conduct, he very soon resumed that 

 garb, but without any further attempt to reenter 

 the order. In those times this was nothing new 

 or unusual. Botta, the historian of Italy, states 

 there were then some forty thousand Italian 

 monks living outside the walls and rules of their 

 convents. On his arrival at Geneva, after experi- 

 ments of living in Italy, which seemed to have 

 all failed, Bruno was counseled by a distinguished 

 Italian refugee once more to divest himself of his 

 monastic habits, these being quite out of fashion 

 in the city of Calvin. Accordingly, he converted 

 portions of them into hose, and his Italian fellow- 

 refugees gave him a hat and cloak. Those refu- 

 gees had, some years previously, espoused the 

 creed of the Evangelical Church ; and their recog- 

 nized leader, who had first accosted Bruno on his 

 arrival at Geneva, bore one of the highest patri- 

 cian names of Naples. This was Galeazzo Carac- 

 ciolo, Marquis of Vico, and nephew of Pope Paul 

 IV., who, to the deep disgust of his family, had 

 embraced the creed of Calvin. 



But Bruno had shot far past Calvin and Beza 

 in his views of a new theology. And, as he 

 avowed afterward, in his examinations before the 

 Inquisitions of Venice and Rome, he could neither 

 adopt a religion, the basis of which was faith with- 

 out works, nor reconcile to his mind a scheme of 

 church-government which empowered the state to 

 punish with the sword all who dared to avow dis- 

 sent from its doctrines. Formularies and confes- 

 sions of faith were then the prevailing fashion, 

 whether at Rome or Geneva. The Italian refugees 

 had been compelled (much against their philosoph- 

 ical conscience, their leanings having been com- 

 monly Arian) to subscribe a rigidly Calvinistic 

 confession. There was no rest or place for relig- 

 ious revolters from Rome, who would not restrict 

 themselves within the rigid bounds of the theol- 

 ogy of Geneva; and revolters, like Bruno, from 

 one theocracy could not bring themselves to ac- 

 quiesce in another. " Lutheranism," observes our 



