io GIORDANO BRUNO PART 



reading The Seven Delights of the Madonna to throw 

 it aside and take rather The Lives of the Fathers or 

 some such book. But the writing was merely intended 

 to terrify him, and the same day was torn up by the 



1576. Prior. 1 In 1576, however, the suspicions of his 

 superiors took a more active turn, and a process was 

 instituted in which the matter of the noviciate was 

 supported by charges of later date, of which Bruno 

 never learned the details. He believed the chief count 

 was an apology for the Arian heresy made by him in 

 the course of a private conversation, and rather on the 

 ground of its scholastically correct form than on that of 

 its truth. 2 In any case Bruno left Naples while the 



Rome. process was pending, and came to Rome, where he put 

 up in the cloister of Minerva. His accusers did not 

 leave him in peace, however : a third process was 

 threatened at Rome with 130 articles ; 3 and, on learn- 

 ing from a friendly source that some works of St. 

 Chrysostom and St. Hieronymus, with a commentary 

 of the arch-heretic Erasmus, had been discovered he 

 had, as he supposed, safely disposed of them before 

 leaving Naples, Bruno yielded to discretion, abandoned 

 his monkly habit, and escaped from Rome. From this 

 time began a life of restless wandering throughout 

 Europe which ended only after sixteen years, when he 

 fell into the power of the Inquisition at Venice. 



Ill 



Bruno, who resumed for the time his baptismal 



name of Filippo, journeyed first to the picturesque little 



Noii. town of Noli, in the Gulf of Genoa, whither a more 



famous exile, Dante, had also come. There he lived for 



1 Docs. 8 and 13. 2 Vide additional note. 3 Doc. I (Berti, p. 378). 



