Bruno's 

 reasons for 

 returning. 



68 GIORDANO BRUNO PART 



noble, wrote, in 1589, an Opus Aureum, which was 

 published at Strassburg along with other Lullian works 

 (including Bruno's) in 1609. Again, Bruno believed in, 

 and probably taught, a kind of " natural magic," the 

 magic of sympathetic influence from stars, animals, 

 plants, and stones upon the life of man. Mocenigo, 

 as his conduct abundantly showed, was shallow, mean, 

 superstitious, weak-minded, and vain. He was just the 

 type of man to be attracted therefore by anything that 

 savoured of the black art, of which Bruno was popularly 

 regarded as a devotee. His real aim may have been to 

 be initiated by Bruno into this, although he professed 

 the desire merely of having the Lullian mnemonics and 

 art of invention taught him. His disappointment, when 

 he found Bruno had nothing jnew to give him in that 

 direction, might account, in a man of his character, for 

 the revenge he took. But there may have been worse 

 behind : Mocenigo had been one of the Savii air Eresia 

 the assessors appointed by the State to the Inquisition 

 Board in Venice and was therefore familiar with the 

 intrigues of that body. He was also under the influence 

 of his Father Confessor, by whose orders he denounced 

 Bruno. The proceedings make it extremely probable, 

 therefore, that the Inquisition laid a trap for Bruno, into 

 which he unsuspectingly walked. It is more difficult 

 to understand how the latter so calmly entered the lion's 

 jaws, jicidalius (Valeria Havekenthal), writing to Michael 

 Forgacz from Bologna (January 21, 1592), expressed the 

 general surprise. " Tell me one thing more : Giordano 

 Bruno, whom you knew at Wittenberg, the Nolan, is 

 said to be living just now among you at Padua. Is it 

 really so ? What sort of man is this that he dares enter 

 Italy, which he left an exile, as he used himself to 

 confess ? I wonder, I wonder ! I cannot yet believe 



