62 GIORDANO BRUNO PART 



person's opinions : philosophy in general fell under his 

 condemnation, although he professed knowledge of it. A 

 few years after he drove Bruno from Helmstadt he him- 

 self was dethroned from his place of authority, " ordered 

 to stick to his last," and had to leave Helmstadt in the 

 end (1601). No doubt it is against him that the 

 invectives in De Immense? are directed : " This schol- 

 arch, excelling director of the school of Minerva : 

 this Rhadamanthus of boys, without a shadow of an 

 idea even of ordinary philosophy, lauds to the skies 

 the Peripatetic, and dares to criticise the thoughts of 

 diviner men (whose ashes are to be preferred to the 

 souls of such as these)." Later Boethius also had to 

 be suppressed by the consistory. 2 The young Duke, 

 with whom no doubt Bruno stood in favour, since he 

 presented him with eighty scudi after the funeral 

 oration, was of the opposite party to Hofmann, but 

 even with this support the Italian could not struggle 

 against his enemies, and towards the middle of 1590 

 1590- he left for Frankfort, " in order to get two books 

 printed." 



XIII 



Frankfort. These were the great Latin works he had been writ- 

 ing, perhaps begun in England itself ; the De Minimo, 

 and the De Immenso, with the De Monade as a part of 

 or introduction to the latter. The printing, however, 

 was not begun till the following year : the censor's 

 permission was obtained for the first of them only in 

 March 1591, and it appeared in the catalogue of the 

 Spring bookmarket. He again sought and found 

 patronage with an old friend of Sir Philip Sidney, one 



1 Bk. iv. ch. 10. 2 Cf. Frith's Bruno, p. 200. 



