i GROUNDS FOR HIS DEATH 97 



he wished to point a moral from the case. During 

 his seven years' imprisonment, Bruno had almost passed 

 out of the short-lived memory of his fellowmen. 

 Burnings of heretics were not infrequent spectacles, 

 and required no special notice. u Three years later 

 (August 7, 1603) all his works were placed upon the 

 Index, and consequently became rare. They were 

 classed with other dangerous works on the black arts, 

 and Bruno's name became one to avoid. 



This was the death which in happier days he had 

 foreseen for himself should he ever enter Italy : 

 u Torches, fifty or a hundred, will not fail him, even 

 though the march be at mid-day, should it be his fate 

 to die in Roman Catholic country." What were the 

 real grounds on which his condemnation and sentence 

 were founded ? . The alleged grounds we have already 

 seen, but they cannot have formed the actual motive 

 of the Pope and the Inquisition. Neither at Venice 

 nor in Rome can much weight have been laid upon the 

 evidence of the weakling Mocenigo. The Cardinals 

 cannot have imagined that Bruno would ever open his 

 heart or even speak freely to so shallow a nature so 

 utterly different in all things from himself. The mere 

 fact of his having left his order was not enough, nor 

 his refusal to return to it, nor were his heretical 

 opinions defended as they might be, and as Aristotle's 

 own teaching had to be defended in the Church, by 

 the subterfuge of the twofold truth. Had his chief 

 fault been, as some have thought, his praises of Elizabeth, 

 Henry III., Henry of Navarre, Luther, Duke Julius, 

 and other enemies, real or supposed, of the Church, 

 he would not so long have occupied the prisons of 

 the Inquisition. Probably his earliest biographer, 

 Bartholmess, was right in suggesting that Bruno was 



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