8 GIORDANO BRUNO PART 



everywhere the same, that distance alters the look but 

 never the nature or substance of things, that the earth 

 is everywhere full of life, and beyond the earth the 

 whole universe, he inferred, must be the same. 1 



II 



Naples. When about eleven years of age, Bruno passed from 



Nola to Naples in order to receive the higher education 

 of the day Humanity, Logic, and Dialectic, attend- 

 ing both public and private courses ; and in his fifteenth 



1563. year (1562 or 1563) he took the habit of St. Dominic, 

 and entered the monastery of that order in Naples. Of 

 his earlier teachers he mentions only two, " il Sarnese," 

 who is probably Vincenzo Colle da Sarno, a writer of 

 repute, and Fra Theophilo da Vairano, a favourite 

 exponent of Aristotle, who was afterwards called to 

 lecture in Rome. Much ingenuity has been exercised 

 in attempting to find a reason for Bruno's choice of a 

 religious life ; but the Church was almost the only 

 career open to a clever and studious boy, whose parents 



The DO- were neither rich nor powerful. The Dominican Order 

 into which he was taken, although the narrowest, and 

 the most bigoted, 2 was all-powerful in the kingdom, 

 and directed the machinery of the Inquisition. Naples 

 was governed by Spain with a firm hand, and the 

 Dominican was the chosen order of Spain. Just at this 

 time there were riots against the Inquisition, to which 

 an end was put by the beheading and burning of two 

 of the ringleaders. 3 The Waldensian persecution was 

 then fiercer and more brutal than it had ever been ; on 

 a day of 1561 eighty-eight victims were butchered with 



1 De Immense, Hi. (i. I. 313). 



2 Ct. the punning line "Domini canes evangel 'mm latrantur per tctum crbem." 

 3 Berti, p. 50. 



