132 



mU'NSWlCK. 



the publication of some works, liul It-It tins city. aUo. 

 in 1592, and .returned (it is not known tor what pur- 

 pose) to Italy, lit- remained (or .some time ;iL Padua 

 in tranquillity, until tin- iixmiMtion of Venice ariv-ird 

 him, in 1;V.)S, and transferred him to Koine. Atur 

 an imprisonment of two years, that ho might have. 

 opportunity to retract his doctrines, he was burned, !' l>. 

 Kitli, l(i!X), for apostasy, heresy, mul violation of his 

 monastic vows. II,- MitTered deaUi, which he might 

 have averted, even eight days before, by a recantation, 

 with I'ortitiuU . \VliiUt his violent attacks on the pre- 

 Nailing doctrines of tin- Aristotelian i>liilosophy, ami 

 on the narrow-minded Aristotelians themselves, every- 

 where created him enemies, his rashness and pride 

 threw him into the hands of his executioners. His 

 philosophical writings, which have become very rare, 

 display a classical cultivation of mind, a deep insight 

 into the spirit of ancient philosophy, wit, and satire, us 

 well as a profound knowledge of mathematics and 

 natural philosophy. Most of them were published 

 between 1584 and 1591, as appears from the enume- 

 ration of the oldest editions in the Bibliographical 

 Lexicon of Ebert (Lps., 1821, quarto, vol. i. p. 238, 

 et seq.). In 1584 appeared, at Paris, his famous 

 Spaccio ilflla Bestia trionfante (a moral allegory, with 

 many satirical strokes on his own times), also his work 

 De la Catua, Principio et Uno (Venice and London, 

 1584), besides De r Infinite, Universo, etMondi. The 

 former contains the foundation, the latter the applica- 

 tion, of metaphysics to the natural world. The doc- 

 trine is a pure Pantheism, connected with truly digni- 

 fied notions of God a more complete Pantheistical 

 system than had been previously exhibited, and which, 

 since his time, Spinoza only, who, like Descartes, 

 borrowed his ideas, lias carried to a greater perfection. 

 The notion that God is the soul of the universe, and 

 the world endowed with organization and life, might 

 have been forgiven by his contemporaries ; but his in- 

 ference that the world is infinite and immeasurable, 

 and his doctrine of the plurality of worlds at the mo- 

 ment when the new system of Copernicus was attack- 

 ed from all quarters, could not but be looked upon as 

 a crime. His writings are mostly in the form of dia- 

 logues, without any methodical order. His language 

 is a strange mixture of Italian and Latin. His style 

 is violent and fiery. The originality and loftiness of 

 his ideas take a powerful hold on those who can un- 

 derstand him. His logical writings, in which he 

 boldly and skilfully applies Raymond Lully's art of 

 topical memory, are more obscure and less interesting. 

 His belief in magic and astrology, notwithstanding his 

 enlightened views of the nature of things, is to be at- 

 tributed to the spirit of his age. He has also written 

 poems, Heroici Furori, and, among others, a comedy, 

 11 Candelajo. The most eminent philosophers since 

 his time have borrowed much from him. Among re- 

 cent writers, Schelling resembles him the most in his 

 metaphysics and his philosophical views of nature, and 

 has given his name to one of his philosophical writ- 

 ings, (Bruno, oder uber das gottliche und naturliche 

 Princip der Dinge, Berl., 1802). On Bruno and his 

 writings, see Sieber's and Thanner's Lehrmeinungen 

 bervhinter Physiker, (5 vols., Sulzb., 1824.) 



BRUNSWICK, FAMILY OF. The true founder of this 

 ancient house was Azo II., marquis of Tuscany, who, 

 in the llth century, married Cunigunda, heiress of 

 the counts of Altorf, and thus united the two houses 

 of Este and Guelph. The previous history of the Este 

 family, is uncertain. Guelph, the son of Azo, was 

 crrated duke of Bavaria in 1071. He married Judith 

 of Flanders, who was descended from Alfred the Great 

 of England. His posterity acquired Brunswick and 

 Luneburg, and William, or his son Otho (1235), was 

 the first who bore the title of duke of B. John, eld- 

 est son of Otho founded the house of Luneburg. 



Albert the (ireal, a younger son of Otho, conquered 

 Wolfenbuttel, and, on his death (1278), his three sons 

 divided his dominions. Henry founded the house of 

 (irulwnhagen ; Albert became duke of Brunswick, 

 and William duke of Brunswick Wolfenbuttel. Henry 

 Julius, of this last branch, inherited Grubenha(ii 

 (1596). Ernest of Zell, of the second branch, who 

 succeeded (1532), conquered the territories of Wolfen- 

 buttel, and left two sons, by whom the family wns 

 divided into the two branches -of Brunswick- Wolfen- 

 buttel (II.) and Brunswick-Hanover; from the latter 

 of which comes the present royal family of Britain. 

 The former is the German family, now in possession 

 of tlie duchy of Brunswick-Wolfenbuttel (q. v). 

 Charles William married Augusta, sister of George 

 III. of England (1764). His descendants -are pre- 

 sumptive heirs to the throne of Great Britain in case 

 of a failure of the direct line. Ernest Augustus, of 

 the Brunswick-Hanover house, was created elector of 

 Hanover in 1092. He married Sophia, daughter of 

 Elizabeth, the daughter of James I. of England. 

 George Louis, son of Ernest Augustus and Sophi;., 

 succeeded his father, as elector of Hanover, in 1608, 

 and was called to the throne of Great Britain in 1714, 

 by act of parliament, passed in the reign of queen 

 Anne, which vested the succession in the Protestant 

 line of James I. George IV. was the twenty-third of 

 the family of Brunswick by lineal descent from Azo ; 

 the fifty-third king of England from Egbert, and v.as 

 descended from Woden, the head of the ancient Saxon 

 family, from which so many sovereigns of Europe h;;\ < 

 sprung, by fifty-two generations. See the articles 

 George, Hanover, England, &c. 



BRUNSWICK ; the duchy of Brunswick- Wolfenbuttel 

 in Germany, situated in the former circle of Lower 

 Saxony, and bordering upon Luneburg on the north, 

 and Westphalia on the west. The duke holds the. 

 12th rank among the members of the German confe- 

 deration. The duchy comprises 1500 square miles, 

 and 232,000 inhabitants. It is divided into six dis- 

 tricts, besides the two cities of Brunswick and Wolfen- 

 buttel, which are also considered as districts. The 

 family of B. is one of the most ancient in Europe. In 

 1806", the duchy was annexed, by Napoleon, to the 

 kingdom of Westphalia, but its native prince, Frederic 

 William, was restored by the peace of Leipsic, 1813. 

 Duke Charles, born Oct. 30th, 1804, succeeded to the 

 government in 1824. George IV. had been the guar- 

 dian of the minority of the duke of Brunswick ; and, 

 while exercising that office, it had become necessary 

 to make the institutions of the duchy conform to the 

 change in the circumstances of Germany. To the 

 abolition of the patrimonial jurisdictions, as well as to 

 many arrangements personal to himself, the young 

 duke, on coming of age, objected; and, not content 

 with repudiating the acts of his guardian, he published 

 the most abusive manifestoes against George IV. and 

 count Munster, the Hanoverian minister of state, by 

 whom the king's German affairs were principally ma- 

 naged. His royal highness even condescended to send, 

 through the celebrated horse-dealer, Tattersall, a 

 challenge to count Munster, to meet him in single 

 combat. The proceedings of the duke of Brunswick 

 were brought to the notice of the diet by the king of 

 England, in his character of ling of Hanover ; and, 

 as the former prince, refused the mediation of Austria 

 and Prussia, and, though only the sovereign of 200,000 

 subjects, declared that he would rather try the fortune 

 of war than submit to any reconciliation, the assem- 

 bly of the confederacy had no ground for refusing its 

 interposition. In 1829, every point in controversy 

 was decided against the duke : and he, having de- 

 clined making an apology, withdrawing his offensive 

 publications, or doing any thing else that was required 

 of him, the diet took, in the following year (1830), 



