GIORDANO BRUNO AND GALILEO GALILEI. 



117 



Macbiavelli's " Mandragola," the last scene of 

 which (the midnight soliloquy of a priestly pan- 

 der) is the keenest and bitterest satire ever 

 penned by the wit of man on sacerdotal hypocrisy, 

 or self-delusion, at its highest and most comic 

 pitch. All that was changed, however, as far, 

 at least, as appearances went, when the Church 

 had to set her house in order against Luther and 

 Calvin. 



" The anger of the elder Cato against the Greek 

 philosophers was even exceeded," says M. Bartol- 

 mess, " by the exasperation of the new censors 

 against free thought. The degree of independence, 

 which had been enjoyed by Cusa and Pomponatio, 

 was refused to Campanella and Vanini. Cosmo 

 III. of Florence prohibited the printing of the line 

 translation of Lucretius by Alexander Marchctti, 

 as an impure manual of Epicureanism. What sci- 

 ence demanded was to march unshackled, to live 

 and speak unconstrained. The Church, on the 

 other hand, dreading lest dogma should be sapped 

 by science, naturally strove to suppress it. Thus 

 arose a combat a outrance between two interests 

 alike dear to man, but equally exasperated against 

 each other. But for that fatal conflict, to what an 

 elevation might not Italian philosophy have at- 

 tained ! Accordingly, these two half-centuries 

 exhibit a complete contrast. In the career of Bru- 

 no that contrast manifests itself from the most 

 various sides. That imprudent speaker and writ- 

 er carried on to the close of the century those 

 traditions ot free utterance which had enjoyed tol- 

 erance, and even protection, at its commence- 

 ment." 



It must be admitted that Bruno used and 

 abused to the utmost a " liberty of prophesying," 

 the most moderate exercise of which had ceased 

 to be safe in Italy. What Voltaire wrote of Va- 

 nini was equally true of Bruno : " II voyagea 

 pour faire fortune et pour disputer ; mais mal- 

 heureusement la dispute est le chemin oppose a 

 la fortune ; on se fait autant d'ennemis irr6con- 

 ciliables qu'on trouve de savans ou de pedants 

 contre lesquels on argumente." ' 



But Bruno's crowning imprudence was his 

 habit of satire and invective on the Church to 

 which he still considered himself as in some 

 shape belonging, and which, unfortunately, still 

 considered him as belonging to it, at least for 

 penal animadversion. Bruno had not only been 

 baptized a Catholic, but ordained a priest ; and 

 he was thus doubly amenable to Church disci- 

 pline, when, in his comedy "II Candelaio," he 

 indulged his ribald humor on the most cherished 



1 "Dictionnaire Philosopbique," article "Athe- 

 isme," sect. iii. 



objects of Italian popular veneration, " Chi vuole 

 apmtsDei, chi vuol graneUi bcnedetti ? " etc., etc., 

 together with a burlesque catalogue of Catholic 

 relics of saints, which our Protestant decorum 

 forbids our reprinting. 



" Bruno," says M. Bartolmess, " at Wittemberg 

 could not but make his obeisance to the statue of 

 Luther. But did he forget that Catholic Ingolstadt 

 was but a few miles distant? His panegyric on 

 Luther was meant for publication, and, without 

 reflecting on the consequences, he seems to have 

 striven to surpass, in expressions of contempt and 

 hatred for the papacy, the most passionate and 

 the most unmeasured utterances of Luther himself. 

 ' Who is he,' demanded Bruno, ' whose name I 

 have hitherto passed in silence ? The vicar of the 

 tyrant of hell, at once fox and lion, armed with 

 keys and sword, with fraud and force, hypocrisy 

 and ferocity — infecting the universe with a super- 

 stitious worship, and an ignorance worse than 

 brutal? None dared oppose themselves to that 

 devouring beast, when a new Alcides arose to 

 restore this fallen age, this degraded Europe, to a 

 purer and happier state.' " 



And it was this same Bruno who, in the last 

 years of his life which he spent at liberty, pro- 

 posed to lay his revised and corrected works at 

 the feet of his Holiness Clement VIII., who, as 

 he says, he has heard loves li virtuosi : to lay be- 

 fore him his case, and seek to obtain absolution 

 at his hands for his past excesses, and permission 

 to resume his clerical habits, without returning 

 under regular religious discipline! 



It would be unjust to the memory of the un- 

 fortunate Nolan precursor of Galileo to leave the 

 impression on those who have not read his writ- 

 ings (and who in England has ?) of a mere itin* 

 erant, esurient, and irreverent, not to say scur- 

 rilous and blasphemous, sophist. Such injustice 

 (since Bayle) Giordano Bruno has not suffered 

 from Continental critics. Germany has given him 

 no undistinguished place in her voluminous his- 

 tories of philosophy, and German philosophy it- 

 self has owed some of its rapidly and incessantly 

 dissolving views to his writings. Bruno's distin- 

 guishing faculty, as a child of the southern Italian 

 sun, was imagination. That faculty, in the six- 

 teenth century, in Italy, had matter to work upon 

 unequaled in after-times ; but which, in Bruno's 

 time, proved perilous stuff for philosophic hand- 

 ling. And Bruno's imagination was rather that 

 of a poet than of a philosopher. He carried all 

 sail and no ballast : little wonder if he made ship- 

 wreck. His sympathetic but discriminating bi- 

 ographer, M. Bartolmess, draws his character in 

 very impartial traits as follows : 



