i HELMSTADT 61 



representing that monster of perverse Papal tyranny, 

 which has tongues more numerous than the hairs of the 

 head, aiding and serving it, each and all blasphemous 

 against God, nature, and man, infecting the world with 

 the rankest poison of ignorance and vice." It was 

 indeed strange that Bruno should have thought of 

 entering Italy after publishing words like these. 



However, he was not to find the Protestants much 



. ^ . . . T . . . municaton 



more tolerant than the Catholics. In the university O f Bruno in 

 archives there is extant a letter from him to the Helmstadt - 

 prorector of the academy, appealing against a public 

 excommunication of himself by the first pastor and 

 superintendent of the church at Helmstadt, Boethius. 

 According to this letter, Boethius had made himself both 

 judge and executioner, without giving the Italian a 

 hearing at all : and the letter appealed to the senate and 

 rector against the public execution of an unjust sentence, 

 privately passed ; it demanded a hearing, so that if any 

 legal derogation were to be made from his rank and 

 good name, he might at least feel it to be justly made, 

 and demanded that Boethius be summoned to show he 

 had not fulminated his bolt out of private malice, but 

 in pursuance of the duty of a good pastor on behalf of 

 his sheep. The date of the letter is October 6, 1589. Oct. 6, 

 No further records of the affair have been found, so I589- 

 that the appeal was probably rejected. The meaning 

 of the excommunication is not quite clear : Bruno does 

 not seem to have been a full member of either the 

 reformed or the Lutheran church, although attending 

 services ; and in all probability the sentence was a formal 

 one, which, however, carried serious social incon- 

 veniences with it. The prorector, Hofmann, was 

 not one to sympathise either with Bruno or with his 

 philosophy ; he was unhappy unless attacking some other 



