6 GIORDANO BRUNO PART 



to-day, you know them " ; and Don Paulino would 

 reply, " Son, thou knowest the absolution of a year ago 

 to-day go in peace and sin no more ! " 



One incident of Bruno's childhood, which has been 

 thought a promise of extraordinary powers, he himself 

 relates in the Sigillus Sigillorum. Describing the 

 different causes of " concentration," 1 (Contractio), he 

 instances fear among them : " I myself, when still in 

 swaddling clothes, was once left alone, and saw a great 

 and aged serpent, which had come out of a hole in the 

 wall of the house ; I called my father, who was in the 

 next room ; he ran with others of the household, 

 sought for a stick, growled at the presence of the 

 serpent, uttering words of vehement anger, while the 

 others expressed their fear for me, and I understood 

 their words no less clearly, I believe, than I should 

 understand them now. After several years, waking up 

 as if from a dream, I recalled all this to their memory, 

 nothing being further from the minds of my parents ; 

 they were greatly astonished." 2 As well they might 

 be! It is hardly right, however, to see in the story 

 evidence of marvellous faculty showing itself in infancy, 

 beyond that of an impressionable and tenacious mind. 

 No doubt the drama had been repeated many times by 

 the parents for behoof of visitors. 3 



Superstitious beliefs abounded among Bruno's fellow- 

 countrymen ; many of them clung to him through life, 

 were moulded by him into a place in his philosophy, 

 and bore fruit in his later teaching and practice of 

 natural magic. Thus we are told how the spirits of the 

 earth and of the waters may at times, when the air is 



1 i.e. Heightening of normal powers. 2 Op. Lot. ii. 2. 184. 



3 On Bruno's family v. Fiorentino, in the Giornale de la Domenica (Naples), 

 for Jan, 29, 1882. 



