i WORKS PUBLISHED IN ENGLAND 37 



VII 



No fewer than seven works from Bruno's facile pen 

 were published in England ; the first of these was the 

 Thirty Seals, and the Seal of Seals (1583) Explicatio The Thirty 

 Trlginta Sigillorum^ quibus adjectus est Sigillus * Sigill- 

 orum. It was dedicated to Mauvissiere, but the 

 introductory epistle was addressed to the Vice- 

 Chancellor of Oxford. Bound along with it, in front, 

 was a Modern and Complete Art of Remembering 

 which is merely a reprint of the last part of the 

 Cantus Circ<eus. The work belongs to the mnemonic 

 and psychological writings of Bruno ; the thirty seals 

 are hints " for the acquiring, arranging, and recol- 

 lecting of all sciences and arts," the Seal of Seals 

 "for comparing and explaining all operations of the 

 mind. And it may be called Art of Arts; for here 

 you will easily find all that is theoretically enquired 

 into by logic, metaphysics, the cabala, natural magic, 

 arts great and small." (The part called Sigillus 

 Sigillorum was a volume of Bruno's Clavis Magna, 

 perhaps the only volume published.) It was followed 

 by an Italian dialogue, " the Ash Wednesday Supper," 

 La Cena de le Ceneri, also dedicated to Mauvissere. c en a de k 

 Written in praise of the Copernican theory, it goes Cenen ' 

 beyond Copernicus himself in its intuition of the 

 infinity of the universe, of the identity of matter in 

 the earth with the matter of the planets and stars, and 

 of the possibility that such living beings inhabit them 

 as inhabit the earth : earth and stars themselves are 

 also said to be living organisms : so there are not 

 seven planets or wandering stars only, but innumerable 



1 Sigillus is really a diminutive of " Signum " in Bruno's view j " Seal" therefore 

 means much the same as " Sign." 



