PREFACE 



THIS volume attempts to do justice to a philosopher 

 who has hardly received in England the consideration 

 he deserves. Apart from the Life of Giordano Bruno, 

 by I. Frith (Mrs. Oppenheim), in the English and 

 Foreign Philosophical Library, 1887, there has been no 

 complete work in our language upon the poet, teacher, 

 and martyr of Nola, while his philosophy has been 

 treated only in occasional articles and reviews. Yet 

 he is recognised by the more liberal-minded among 

 Italians as the greatest and most daring thinker their 

 country has produced. The pathos of his life and 

 death has perhaps caused his image to stand out more 

 strongly in the minds of his countrymen than that of 

 any other of their leaders of thought. A movement of 

 popular enthusiasm, begun in 1876, resulted, on 9th 

 June 1889, in the unveiling of a statue in Rome in the 

 Campo dei Fiori, the place on which Bruno was burned. 

 Both in France and in Germany he has been recognised 

 as the prophet, if not as the actual founder, of modern 

 philosophy, and as one of the earliest apostles of free- 

 dom of thought and of speech in modern times. 



The first part of the present work the Life of 



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