60 GIORDANO BRUNO PART 



world by it. With three hundred dollars, which the 

 Emperor gave in recognition of his powers, Bruno left 



January 1 3, about the close of the year, and on January 13, 1589, 

 matriculated in the Julian university of Brunswick 



Helmstadt. at Helmstadt. This, the youngest university in 

 Germany at the time, of only twelve years' standing, 

 had been founded for the Protestant cause by the 

 reigning Duke Julius, a breezy and popular prince, 

 who loved theologians little, Catholics not at all, and 

 founded a model university on liberal principles. 

 It was not, however, an unqualified success. Bruno 

 received some recognition from the university, or from 

 the Duke, and when the latter died in May 1589 he 

 obtained permission to give a funeral oration some days 

 after the official programme had been carried through 

 (on the ist of July) the Oratio Consolatoria. 1 



Bruno professes as his reason for wishing to speak 

 that he must express his gratitude to one who had made 

 the university he founded free to all lovers of the 

 Muses, even to strangers such as Bruno himself was : 

 an exile from his Italian fatherland for honourable 

 reasons and zeal for the truth, here he had received 

 the freedom of the university : in Italy he was 

 exposed to the greedy maw of the Roman wolf here 

 he was in safety : there he had been chained to a 

 superstitious and absurd cult here he was exhorted to 

 more reformed rites. What is remarkable in this 

 speech is the bitterness of Bruno's personal attack upon 

 Rome, and " the violent tyranny of the Tiberine beast." 

 The constellations are allegorically treated as symbols 

 of the virtues of Julius, or of the vices which he attacked 

 and repressed : among them " the head of the Gorgon, 

 on which for hair there grow venomous snakes, 



1 Published 1589, Helmstadt. 



