i BELLARMINO 89 



scripts. This may be dismissed at once ; Bruno's 

 books could not be scarce then, although they became 

 so later, and it could not require six years to find 

 enough material to condemn him if that were desired. 

 Another suggestion is that Bruno was a Dominican, and 

 the whole order was concerned in procuring his 

 recantation, rather than have the scandal which his 

 death in apostasy would cause. The historians of the 

 order afterwards denied that Bruno, if really put to death, 

 had been one of their order " Had he been one of us he 

 would have remained with us et convictu et sensibus" 

 More probable is the idea that Pope Clement had some 

 favour for Bruno, who had intended to dedicate a book 

 to him, and whose skilful pen and biting tongue he 

 hoped to win over to the side of the Church. The book 

 on the Seven Liberal Arts may have been actually com- 

 pleted, and may have presented a modus vivendi between 

 religious authority and philosophic freedom, as Brunn- 

 hofer suggests. If the hope of winning him over was 

 really held, it is not likely that they refrained in his 

 case, any more than in Campanella's, from the use of 

 torture. 



Bellarmino, a Jesuit, to whom along with Com- 

 missario the study of Bruno's works and of the processes 

 had been entrusted, was one of the most learned pre- r 

 lates of the day, a keen and ready controversialist, in 

 spite of his reputed love of peace, and a skilful writer 

 of many apologetic and polemical works. Beneath the 

 surface of enlightenment there lay hidden a nature of 

 intense bigotry : it was he who decided that Coper- 

 nicanism was a heresy ; he played a part later in the 

 process against Galilei, and in the attack upon Fra Paolo 

 Sarpi ; through his agency the Platonist Patrizzi was 



1 Wagner's introduction to Bruno's Opere Italiane, p. 7. 



