Hilary Gatti - Giordano Bruno - Philosopher of The Renaissance-Routledge (2002)

Giordano Bruno
Giordano Bruno
Philosopher of the Renaissance
Edited by
HILARY GATTI
First published 2002 by Ashgate Publishing
Published 2016 by Routledge

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Copyright © Hilary Gatti and the contributors, 2002
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Giordano Bruno: Philosopher of the Renaissance.

1. Bruno, Giordano, 1548–1600. 2. Philosophy, Renaissance.
3. Philosophy, Italian.
I. Gatti, Hilary.
195
Library of Congress Control Number: 2001099632
ISBN 13: 978-0-7546-0562-1 (hbk)

Contents
List of Illustrations vii

List of Contributors xiii
Preface xv
Acknowledgements xix
List of Abbreviations xxi
Part One Introduction
1 Giordano Bruno as Philosopher of the Renaissance 3

Giovanni Aquilecchia
Part Two Bruno and Italy
2 The Image of Giordano Bruno 17

Lars Berggren
3 Philosophy versus Religion and Science versus Religion:
the Trials of Bruno and Galileo 51
Maurice A. Finocchiaro
4 Giordano Bruno and Neapolitan Neoplatonism 97
Ingrid D. Rowland
5 Images of Literary Memory in the Italian Dialogues: Some
Notes on Giordano Bruno and Ludovico Ariosto 121
Lina Bolzoni
Part Three Bruno in England
6 Giordano Bruno and the Protestant Ethic 145

Hilary Gatti
7 John Charlewood, Printer of Giordano Bruno’s Italian
Dialogues, and his Book Production 167
Tiziana Provvidera
vi CONTENTS
8 Giordano Bruno’s Infinite Worlds in John Florio’s

Worlds of Words 187
Michael Wyatt
9 Ultima Thule: Contrasting Empires in Bruno’s Ash
Wednesday Supper and Shakespeare’s Tempest 201
Elisabetta Tarantino
Part Four Philosophical Themes
10 Giordano Bruno and Astrology 229

Leen Spruit
11 Simulacra et Signacula: Memory, Magic and Metaphysics
in Brunian Mnemonics 251
Stephen Clucas
12 Metempsychosis and Monism in Bruno’s nova filosofia 273
Ramon G. Mendoza
13 The Necessity of the Minima in the Nolan Philosophy 299
Ernesto Schettino
14 Meanings of ‘contractio’ in Giordano Bruno’s Sigillus
sigillorum 327
Leo Catana
Part Five Influence and Tradition
15 Giordano Bruno’s Mnemonics and Giambattista Vico’s

Recollective Philology 345
Paul Colilli
16 Macrocosm, Microcosm and the Circulation of the Blood:
Bruno and Harvey 365
Andrew Gregory
17 Monadology and the Reception of Bruno in the Young
Leibniz 381
Stuart Brown
18 Being a Modern Philosopher and Reading Giordano Bruno 405
Paul Richard Blum
Index 417
Illustrations
1.1 Frontispiece of Giordano Bruno, Camoeracensis

Acrotismus, Wittenberg, 1588, with a Latin dedication in
Bruno’s hand to M. Casperj Keglero Rostochiensi which
reads: Clarissimo Doctissimoque D. Dno. M. CASPERJ
KEGLERO ROSTOCHIENSI amico insigni atque optimé
merito in suj memoria et obsequij signu Jordanus
B[runus] Nolanus D D. D. Thanks are due to the Library
of University College London for permission to publish
this photograph, taken from a book held by their Rare
Books Library. 5
2.1 Anonymous painting (oil on canvas, 117 x 94 cm),
allegedly representing Giordano Bruno, Juleum,
Helmstedt. 39
2.2 Giordano Bruno, engraving by Raffaele (?) Morghen
after a design by Aniello d’Aloisi, in Biografia degli
uomini illustri del Regno di Napoli, Naples, 1813. 40
2.3 Galileo Galilei, engraving by Ottavio Leoni, 1624. 40
2.4 Giordano Bruno, engraving attributed to Johann Adam
Delsenbach, in Neue Bibliotecoder Nachricht und Urtheile von
neuen Büchern und allerhand zur Gelehrsamkeit dienenden
Sachen, no. 38, Frankfurt and Leipzig, 1715. 40
2.5 Giordano Bruno, lithograph by Carl Meyer, in Rixner
and Siber, Leben und Lehrmeinungen berühmter Physiker
am Ende des XVI. und am Anfang des XVII. Jahrhunderts,
als Beyträge zur Geschichte der Physiologie in engerer und
weiterer Bedeutung, V. Heft: ‘Jordanus Brunus’, Sulzbach,
1824. 40
2.6 Giordano Bruno, xylograph by Caterina Piotti Pirola, in
Iconografia italiana degli uomini e delle donne celebri
dall’epoca del risorgimento delle scienze e delle arti fino
ai nostri giorni, vol. 2, Milan, 1837. 41
2.7 Statue representing Giordano Bruno in prison, lithograph
by Michele Fanoli after an original executed in the 1840s
by Bartolomeo Ferrari. Published in Di sei statuette
viii ILLUSTRATIONS
d’illustri italiani fatte da Bartolomeo Ferrari al nob.

Antonio Papadopoli, Venice, 1862. 41
2.8 Giordano Bruno, marble statue by Raffaele da Crescenzo,
unveiled in Nola in 1867. 42
2.9 Giordano Bruno, marble statue by Pietro Masulli, in the
Cortile del Salvatore of the University in Naples, unveiled
in 1864. 42
2.10 The Dying Gaul, probably executed in Pergamon
c. 200 BC, in the Capitoline Museums, Rome. 42
2.11 Detail of Figure 2.9. 42
2.12 Giordano Bruno in the prison of the Venetian Inquisition,
lithograph by Gino de’ Bini, in Memorie inedite d’un
gesuita. Giordano Bruno. Scene storico-romantiche del
secolo XVI, Rome, 1889. 43
2.13 The cover of Giordano Bruno. Numero Unico a benefizio
del fondo per il monumento, Rome, 1885, design by
Ettore Ferrari. 44
2.14 Giordano Bruno, bozzetto for a monument in the Campo
de’ Fiori, by Riccardo Grifoni, 1879. 45
2.15 Giordano Bruno, model for a monument in the Campo
de’ Fiori, design by Ettore Ferrari, in Giordano Bruno.
Numero Unico a benefizio del fondo per il monumento,
Rome, 1885. 45
2.16 Giordano Bruno, first plaster model for the Campo de’
Fiori monument, Ettore Ferrari, 1886. 45
2.17 Giordano Bruno, watercolour representing a statue of
the same, by Ettore Ferrari, c. 1886–88. 46
2.18 Saint Bruno, marble statue in S. Maria degli Angeli, Rome,
by Jean Antoine Houdon, 1766. 47
2.19 Giordano Bruno, detail of the statue in Campo de’ Fiori,
Rome, by Ettore Ferrari, 1888. 48
2.20 Giordano Bruno, lithograph by Edoardo Matania, 1889. 49
2.21 The inauguration of the Bruno monument in Campo de’
Fiori, Rome, on 9 June 1889. 49
3.1 Frontispiece of Galileo Galilei, Dialogo sopra i due
massimi sistemi del mondo, Florence, 1632, which
develops many cosmological themes anticipated in Bruno’s
Cena de le Ceneri, London, 1584. Thanks are due to the
Library of University College London for permission to
publish this photograph, taken from a book held by their
Rare Books Library. 53
ILLUSTRATIONS ix
4.1 Frontispiece of Bruno’s Cantus Circaeus, Paris, 1582, a

work dedicated to the Duc d’Anjou, the illegitimate
brother of the French King, Henri III, whose court was
particularly receptive to Italian Neoplatonic influences.
Thanks are due to the Library of University College
London for permission to publish this photograph, taken
from a book held by their Rare Books Library. 99
5.1 A page of Ariosto’s Orlando furioso [1516], Venice,
1580, quoted by Bruno in his Cena de le Ceneri where
Bruno (the Nolan philosopher) and John Florio, during
a night-time journey by boat down the Thames, sing
passages from Ariosto’s celebrated text. Thanks are due
to the Library of University College London for permission
to publish this photograph, taken from a book held by
their Rare Books Library. 123
6.1 Illustration of an early post-Copernican astronomical
model attributed to Giordano Bruno, the Nolan, by
William Gilbert in his posthumous De mundo, London,
1651. Thanks are due to the Library of University College
7.1 A page of Robert Recorde, The Castle of Knowledge
[1551], London, 1596, a work containing the first public
debate on Copernicanism in England, published by John
Charlewood, who was also Bruno’s publisher in London.
8.1 A page from the dialogue between Torquato and Nolano
in John Florio’s language-teaching text The second frutes,
London, 1591. Torquato was the name of a character in
Bruno’s Cena de le Ceneri, said to have debated with
Bruno himself (the Nolan) in the house of Fulke Greville.
9.1 Frontispiece of Ovid, The XV bookes of P. Ovidius Naso,
entituled Metamorphosis, translated out of Latine into
English meter by Arthur Golding, London, 1567. Thanks
are due to the Library of University College London for
permission to publish this photograph, taken from a
book held by their Rare Books Library. 203
x ILLUSTRATIONS
9.2 Quentin Metsys the Younger, Elizabeth I (the ‘Siena

Sieve’ Portrait), 124.5 x 91.5 cm, oil on canvas, 1583,
Pinacoteca Nazionale di Siena. Reproduced by
permission of the Soprintendenza per i beni artistici e
storici di Siena. 212
10.1 Frontispiece of Marsilio Ficino’s De vita libri tres [1489],
Lyons, 1576, containing the De vita coelitus comparanda.
Bruno was accused at Oxford of plagiarizing from Ficino’s
book of astrological medicine. Thanks are due to the
publish this photograph, taken from a book held by
11.1 Frontispiece of Bruno’s first work on the art of memory,
De umbris idearum, Paris, 1582, with a dedication in
Bruno’s hand to Alexander Dicson, a friend of Bruno’s
during his London years who defended his art of memory.
The dedication reads: D(omino) Alexandro Dicsono /
Bonarum literarum optime mer(ito) / Iordanus Br(unus)
Nol(anus) in sui memo / riam, et amicitiae prototy(pon)
don(o) de(dit) manu propria. Thanks are due to the
publish this photograph, taken from a book held by
12.1 Frontispiece of Giordano Bruno, Cabala del cavallo
pegaseo, London, 1585, where Bruno develops some
startling fantasies based on the idea of metempsychosis.
He later repudiated this work as having been
misunderstood by his readers. Thanks are due to the
publish this photograph, taken from a book held by their
Rare Books Library. 275
13.1 Frontispiece of Giordano Bruno, De triplici minimo, the
first work of the so-called Frankfurt Trilogy, published in
that town in 1591, and by many considered Bruno’s
philosophical masterpiece. Thanks are due to the Library
of University College London for permission to publish
this photograph, taken from a book held by their Rare
Books Library. 301
14.1 Title page of Bruno’s Explicatio triginta sigillorum, in his
Ars reminiscendi, 1583. Thanks are due to the British
Library for permission to publish this image. 329
15.1 The 12 houses of memory in Bruno’s De umbris idearum,
ILLUSTRATIONS xi
his first work on the art of memory published in Paris,

1582. Thanks are due to the Library of University College
16.1 Frontispiece of Oceanus macro-microcosmicus (1664)
by Sachs A. Lowenheimb. Thanks are due to the
Wellcome Library, London, for permission to publish this
photograph. 367
17.1 Frontispiece to the book on the Principles of Measure
and Figure in Bruno’s De triplici minimo, Frankfurt,
1591, where he explains his Pythagorean monadology.
18.1 A celebrated page of the first book of Bruno’s De
triplici minimo, Frankfurt, 1591, where he repudiates
any passive form of knowledge gained through tradition
or unquestioning dogma, and places the inquiring reason
of the philosopher at the centre of the quest for truth.
London for permission to publish this photograph,
taken from a book held by their Rare Books Library. 407
Contributors
Giovanni Aquilecchia, formerly of University College London

Lars Berggren, University of Lund, Sweden
Paul Richard Blum, Peter Pazmany University, Budapest
Lina Bolzoni, Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa
Stuart Brown, Open University, Milton Keynes
Leo Catana, University of Copenhagen
Stephen Clucas, Birkbeck College, University of London
Paul Colilli, Laurentian University, Canada
Maurice A. Finocchiaro, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Hilary Gatti, University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’
Andrew Gregory, University College London
Ramon G. Mendoza, Florida International University
Tiziana Provvidera, University College London
Ingrid D. Rowland, Andrew Mellon Chair, American Academy in
Rome
Ernesto Schettino, National University of Mexico
Leen Spruit, University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’
Elisabetta Tarantino, Oxford Brookes University
Michael Wyatt, independent scholar
Preface
Giordano Bruno has been depicted in many ways in the course of the
four centuries which separate us from his tragic death, burnt as a heretic
in the Campo dei Fiori (The Field of Flowers) in Rome on 17 February
1600. For some he has been a prophet of the new science, who first
supported and then extended to infinity the still suspect Copernican,
heliocentric astronomy; for others a practitioner of a vividly symbolic
and imaginative version of the classical art of memory; an inspiring or
dangerous libertin érudit, according to the point of view being proposed;
or a metaphysician or mystic with a rich talent for expressing his vision
of God in complex and moving verse. More recently he has been
depicted as a Renaissance version of an ancient Egyptian or Hermetic
Magus, according to an influential reading proposed by the late Dame
Frances Yates.
Bruno, however, defined himself constantly and coherently as a
philosopher: a definition to which he repeatedly resorted during his
eight-year long trial at the hands of first the Venetian and then the
Roman Inquisition. For Bruno saw his trial as a struggle for the right of
the philosopher to follow a line of thought to its logical conclusion,
whatever objections might be put forward by the theologians.
Throughout his trial, he declared his respect for a religion in which he
had participated as a Dominican monk from 1565 to 1576, and then
abandoned when he was found reading forbidden books. For he was
even more resolute in his respect for the right of the enquiring,
individual mind to follow, unimpeded, its search for truth. His famous
last words in the public arena, warning his judges that they feared
pronouncing his sentence more than he feared receiving it, anticipate a
time when the rights of the philosopher and the rights of religion and
theology would have nothing to fear, one from the other. The British
Society for the History of Philosophy decided to commemorate
Giordano Bruno in its summer conference of June 2000, in memory also
of Bruno’s years in Elizabethan London, from 1583 to 1585, in which
he wrote and published his six Italian dialogues, considered by many his
philosophical masterpieces. The conference was held at University
College London.
xvi PREFACE
Renaissance philosophy was a less narrowly, or if one prefers a less

rigorously defined, discipline than present-day philosophy, particularly
of the Anglo-Saxon, analytic kind. For those such as Bruno, especially,
who tended to be hostile to Aristotelian categories and to favour
Neoplatonism, the boundaries of the discipline were thought of as open
and unguarded by disciplinary police. Bruno himself declared more than
once that the philosopher, the poet and the artist were all involved in the
same search for truth, and he would often resort to poetry in the attempt
to give expression to his most cherished and complex ideas. This
interdisciplinary bent of Bruno’s own work was respected in the
programme of the London conference, where professional philosophers
were invited to speak together with literary scholars, historians of
science and the arts, and intellectual historians or historians of ideas.
The results can now be judged in the various and varied contributions
to this volume, which offers a rich spectrum of approaches to multiple
aspects of Bruno’s thought, as well as to his historical figure and
reputation.
The papers published in this volume often differ considerably from
the texts read at the conference itself. The contributors have put to good
use the lively discussion of their subjects which developed both on the
public platform and during the social events held throughout the
conference. Both I and the British Society for the History of Philosophy
are grateful to contributors for this enduring interest in, and meditation
on, their chosen Brunian themes. We are grateful too for their
participation in the conference to those few speakers who, for various
personal reasons, have not presented their text for publication.
The conference itself also benefited from an exhibition of early
printed editions of works by Bruno and his contemporaries, drawn from
the Rare Books Library of University College London. Photographs
from a selection of these titles have been chosen to illustrate the papers
published here.
It is not the intention of this Preface to comment on the contributions
to this volume, which is presented to the attention of its readers in the
hope of making better known to an English-speaking public the work of
whom many in continental cultures consider the major philosopher of
the European Renaissance. But one exception must, sadly, be mentioned,
for it transforms the volume into a double commemoration, not only of
Giordano Bruno’s death, but also of the death, on 3 August 2001, of the
distinguished editor and commentator of his works, Professor Giovanni
Aquilecchia.
It was a privilege and pleasure for the Bruno conference of June 2000
to open with a special lecture by Giovanni Aquilecchia, delivered at the
PREFACE xvii
Italian Cultural Institute in London. We are moved and honoured to be

able to present as the first chapter in this volume the text he read on that
occasion. For many years a Professor of Italian at the University of
London, Giovanni Aquilecchia was also the Founder and President of
the Centro Internazionale di Studi Bruniani sponsored by the prestigious
Istituto Italiano di Studi Filosofici in Naples. His work on Bruno spans
the whole second half of the twentieth century, culminating in the texts
of the Italian dialogues published by Les Belles Lettres in Paris as part of
a French edition of Bruno’s Oeuvres complètes. The intellectual passion
and rigour, together with the philological precision of Aquilecchia’s
work on Bruno, as well as the generous and affectionate encouragement
of all those who approached him for information or advice, will make
his presence irreplaceable, and his absence a constant source of sadness
to those who were fortunate enough to have frequently talked with him
about the philosopher from Nola to whom he dedicated so many years
of his long and productive life.
This book is dedicated to his memory.
Hilary Gatti
University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’
Acknowledgements
The editor and the British Society for the History of Philosophy
gratefully acknowledge the help and encouragement for their initiative
received from the Italian Ambassador to the United Kingdom, His
Excellency Luigi Amaduzzi, the Minister Plenipotentiary of the Italian
Embassy, Dott. Antonio d’Andria, and the Directors of the Italian
Cultural Institute in London, Prof. Benedetta Bini and Dott. Mario
Fortunato. We express our thanks to University College London for
making available the Gustave Tuck Theatre for the conference
proceedings, and their elegant Flaxman Gallery for the exhibition of
Bruno’s works and related texts held by their Rare Books Library which
was mounted with the help of Susan Stead and Tiziana Provvidera. We
thank them, too, for permission to reproduce pages from a number of
these books in the present volume. Special thanks are due to the
Department of Science and Technology Studies and the Department of
Italian Studies of University College London for help and support in the
organization of the conference programme and proceedings.
The conference was made possible by funds gratefully received from
the MURST (The Italian Ministry of University Affairs and Research);
the University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’; the British Academy; the Italian
Cultural Institute, London; the Centro Internazionale di Studi Bruniani
and the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro. For support in aid of publication
we acknowledge the generous contribution made by the Compagnia di
San Paolo of Turin.
Abbreviations
Works by Giordano Bruno
Animadversiones Animadversiones circa lampadem Lullianam

Ars deform. Ars deformationum
Ars rem. Ars reminiscendi
Articuli adv. math. Articuli centum et sexaginta adversus huius
tempestatis mathematicos atque philosophos
Articuli adv. Perip. Centum et viginti articuli de natura et mundo
adversus Peripateticos
Artificium peror. Artificium perorandi
Cabala Cabala del cavallo pegaseo. Con l’aggiunta
dell’Asino cillenico
Camoer. acrot. Camoeracensis acrotismus
Candelaio Candelaio
Cantus Cantus Circaeus
Causa De la causa, principio et uno
Cena La cena de le Ceneri
De comp. architect. De compendiosa architectura et complemento
artis Lullii
De imag. comp. De imaginum, signorum et idearum
compositione
De immenso De innumerabilibus, immenso et infigurabili
De lamp. combin. De lampade combinatoria Lulliana
De magia De magia
De magia math. De magia mathematica
De minimo De triplici minimo et mensura
De monade De monade, numero et figura
De Mord. circ. De Mordentii circino
De progressu De progressu et lampade venatoria logicorum
De rerum princ. De rerum principiis, elementis et causis
De somn. int. De somnii interpretatione
De spec. scrutin. De specierum scrutinio et lampade
combinatoria Raymundi Lullii
De umbris De umbris idearum – Ars memoriae
xxii ABBREVIATIONS
De vinculis De vinculis in genere

Explicatio Explicatio triginta sigillorum
Figuratio Figuratio Aristotelici Physici auditus
Furori De gli eroici furori
Id. triumph. Idiota triumphans
Infinito De l’infinito, universo et mondi
Lampas trig. stat. Lampas triginta statuarum
Libri Phys. Aristot. Libri Physicorum Aristotelis explanati
Med. Lull. Medicina Lulliana
Mord. Mordentius
Orat. cons. Oratio consolatoria
Orat. valed. Oratio valedictoria
Praelect. geom. Praelectiones geometricae
Sig. sigill. Sigillus sigillorum
Spaccio Spaccio de la bestia trionfante
Summa term. met. Summa terminorum metaphysicorum
Thes. de magia Theses de magia
Other Abbreviations
BDD Due dialoghi sconosciuti e due dialoghi noti:

Idiota triumphans – De somnii interpretatione
– Mordentius – De Mordentii circino, edited
by G. Aquilecchia, Edizioni di Storia e
Letteratura, Rome, 1957
BDFI Dialoghi filosofici italiani, edited by
M. Ciliberto, Mondadori, Milan, 2000.
BDI Dialoghi italiani. Dialoghi metafisici e
dialoghi morali, nuovamente ristampati con
note da G. Gentile, 3° edited by G.
Aquilecchia, Sansoni, Florence, 1958 (3rd
reprint 1985)
BOeuC I Candelaio / Chandelier, introduction
philologique de G. Aquilecchia, texte établi
par G. Aquilecchia, préface et notes de G.
Bárberi Squarotti, traduction de Y. Hersant,
Les Belles Lettres, Paris, 1993 (‘Oeuvres
complètes de Giordano Bruno’, I)
BOeuC II La cena de le Ceneri / Le souper des Cendres,
texte établi par G. Aquilecchia, préface de A.
Ophir, notes de G. Aquilecchia, traduction de
ABBREVIATIONS xxiii
Y. Hersant, 1994 (‘Oeuvres complètes de

Giordano Bruno’, II)
BOeuC III De la causa, principio et uno / De la cause, du
principe et de l’un, texte établi par G.
Aquilecchia, introduction de M. Ciliberto,
notes de G. Aquilecchia, traduction de L.
Hersant, 1996 (‘Oeuvres complètes de
Giordano Bruno’, III)
BOeuC IV De l’infinito, universo et mondi / De l’infini,
de l’univers et des mondes, texte établi par G.
Aquilecchia, introduction de M. A. Granada,
notes de J. Seidengart, traduction de J.-P.
Cavaillé, 1995 (‘Oeuvres complètes de
Giordano Bruno’, IV)
BOeuC V Spaccio de la bestia trionfante / Expulsion de
la bête triomphante, texte établi par G.
Aquilecchia, introduction de N. Ordine, notes
de M. P. Ellero, traduction de J. Balsamo,
1999 (‘Oeuvres complètes de Giordano
Bruno’, V)
BOeuC VI Cabala del cavallo pegaseo / Cabale du cheval
pégaséen, texte établi par G. Aquilecchia,
préface et notes de N. Badaloni, traduction de
T. Dragon, 1994 (‘Oeuvres complètes de
Giordano Bruno’, VI)
BOeuC VII De gli eroici furori / Des fureurs héroïques,
texte établi par G. Aquilecchia, introduction
et notes de M. A. Granada, , traduction de
P.-H. Michel, revue par Y. Hersant, 1999
(‘Oeuvres complètes de Giordano Bruno’, VII)
BOI Opere italiane. Ristampa anastatica delle
cinquecentine, edited by E. Canone, Olschki,
Florence, 1999, 4 vols.
BOL Opera latine conscripta, publicis sumptibus
edita, recensebat F. Fiorentino [V. Imbriani, C.
M. Tallarigo, F. Tocco, G. Vitelli], Morano,
Neapoli 1879–86 [Le Monnier, Florentiae
1889–91], 3 vols in 8 tomi [anast, reprint.:
Frommann-Holzboog, Stuttgart-Bad
Cannstatt, 1961–62]
BPA Praelectiones geometricae – Ars
deformationum, edited by G. Aquilecchia,
xxiv ABBREVIATIONS
Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, Rome, 1964

BUI De umbris idearum, edited by R. Sturlese,
preface by E. Garin, Olschki, Florence, 1991
Documenti Documenti della vita di Giordano Bruno,
edited by V. Spampanato, Olschki, Florence,
1933
Firpo, Processo L. Firpo, Il processo di Giordano Bruno,
edited by D. Quaglioni, Salerno Editrice,
Rome, 1993
MMI Poemi filosofici latini: De triplici minimo et
mensura – De monade, numero et figura – De
innumerabilibus, immenso et infigurabili.
Ristampa anastatica delle cinquecentine,
edited by E. Canone, Agorà Edizioni, La
Spezia, 2000
Salvestrini, Bibliografia V. Salvestrini, Bibliografia di Giordano Bruno
(1582–1950), seconda edizione postuma,
edited by L. Firpo, Sansoni, Florence, 1958
Spampanato, Vita V. Spampanato, Vita di Giordano Bruno, con
documenti editi e inediti, Principato, Messina
1921, 2 vols
PART ONE
Introduction
CHAPTER ONE
Giordano Bruno as Philosopher of

the Renaissance
Giovanni Aquilecchia
While the title of my chapter – a title which to a large extent coincides

with that of the conference itself – might at first sight seem quite
unproblematic, on reflection it reveals itself quite questionable from
various angles. Unproblematic at first sight because the philosopher in
question does chronologically belong to a period of European cultural
history which since the nineteenth century has been included in a wider
period historiographically labelled as the Renaissance. Already at this
factual chronological and descriptive level, however, marginal doubt
could be raised. Although Giordano Bruno’s life started in 1548 and
ended in the year 1600, his extant works – the only ones on which we
can base our judgement – date from 1582; and men of my generation
cannot forget that in the 30s and early 40s of the last century, when
Italian historians were busy suggesting a periodization for the literary
and philosophical output of the past – not unlike their counterparts in
the field of the history of art, who had found an indeed easy solution by
adopting a periodization by centuries (the Trecento, the Quattrocento,
Cinquecento and so on) – for the literary and philosophical output as
well, the Italian historians, or some of them, adopted a similar
periodization. This is still generally accepted in the histories of literature,
albeit with some variations, by which, for example, the Cinquecento, or
sixteenth century, does not terminate at the end of the sixteenth century
but, for reasons not entirely evident to me, 20 years earlier, namely in
1580, while the Seicento, or seventeenth century, in its turn, does not
terminate at the end of the seventeenth century but in 1690, in
coincidence with the foundation of the Arcadia Academy. If this is the
case, Bruno’s extant production would not find a place within the
Renaissance Cinquecento, but rather in the following baroque and
scientific Seicento. But let us put aside or even forget altogether such
subtle questions of periodization. There is, on reflection, another more
recent difficulty inherent in the very concept of the Renaissance, a
concept which is becoming a historiographical notion in the process of
extinction. It was only last year that – partly in coincidence with what
4 GIORDANO BRUNO
the illustrious critic of English Literature, Frank Kermode, had to say in

his 1998 Presidential Address to the Modern Humanities Research
Association – I deplored such a process which seems to be due to the
misconceived persuasion that the term ‘Renaissance’ is not, to use a
current expression, politically correct. This is because it would seem to
imply the approval of a male-dominated society and culture, and also to
be partial, in its implicit exaltation of artistic and literary values, at the
expense of civil and social considerations. To this could be added that
the term itself is semantically conservative in that it implies the revival
of a culture belonging to the classical past. I deplore the recent tendency
of historians and critics – prevalently American (but which seems to
have extended to most European countries, including Britain and Italy)
– by which a new terminology is being applied to historical and cultural
notions: a change which, however, does not necessarily find
correspondence in an actual change of method. So, in our particular
case, it has happened that, in the English-speaking countries, the term
Renaissance used in an adjectival way has been substituted by the
compound adjective ‘Early Modern’ (for example, Early Modern
England, or Italy and so on). To the partialities mentioned earlier, new
ones have been substituted, which are implicit in the new expression.
Among the most obvious I would like to note the inversion of the
referential pole – classical antiquity has been substituted by modern
civilization; art and literature by science (also modern, if not altogether
contemporary), not to mention technology and so on. However, it is not
by changing terminology that the objective meaning of observed
phenomena can be altered. In fact, between the two poles – classical and
modern – the phenomena themselves continue to appear equidistant, as
was clearly formulated (long before the present preoccupation with
terminology took place) by that great student of humanism and the
Renaissance, Eugenio Garin. In a preliminary Note (Avvertenza) to the
first edition (dated 1970) of his collection of essays entitled Dal
Rinascimento all’Illuminismo (From the Renaissance to the
Enlightenment) Garin wrote with reference to the Italian humanism of
the early fifteenth century that: ‘Initially, the going back to the past and
the coming back of the past basically expressed a project fed by a myth
and which in its turn nourished that myth, namely the myth of classical
Graeco-Roman civilisation as a model to be imitated.’
Quite soon, however, continued Garin, another myth was emerging,
overlapping with the previous one, that of the very ancient origins of
‘truth’, of a prisca sapientia, or ancient wisdom, revealed throughout
time. Thus the contradiction of a radical renewal presented as a going
back to the past (a revolutio understood as a cyclical process) is
GIORDANO BRUNO AS PHILOSPHER OF THE RENAISSANCE 5
1.1 Frontispiece of Giordano Bruno, Camoeracensis Acrotismus, 1588, with

autograph dedication by Bruno.
6 GIORDANO BRUNO
complicated by the ambiguity of a rebirth which sometimes seems to

indicate simply the constancy of a rhythm, not, however, the identical
repetition of previous stages in an unavoidable necessity, but the
duration of categorical forms in a progressive ascension.
Garin himself, in that very Note, issued a warning against the abuse
of pseudo-categories and artificial schema such as a Christian
renaissance, a classical humanistic renaissance or the scientific
revolution, given the impossibility of accommodating single
personalities within any of them.
However, if – mainly by reference to sixteenth-century Italian
personalities – we take the term Renaissance to indicate a dynamic
period of cultural history which by looking back, through the classical
civilization, to the prisca philosophia, tries to develop (if only
intuitively) the data acquired by the so-called ‘new science’, then a
philosopher like Giordano Bruno can legitimately be considered not
only as a Renaissance philosopher, but as the Renaissance philosopher
par excellence – a consideration which remains valid even if we take the
notion of Renaissance as implying the versatility of some of the most
representative personalities of the period. On both counts I shall attempt
to show the validity of my statement by way of reference to his works,
which so intrinsically reflect the vicissitudes of his life, having in mind
at least three main components of the works themselves, that is, apart
from the philosophical proper, the other main expressions of his
thought, the dramatic and the poetic (not to mention the xylographic
component as shown by both his geometrical and his mnemotechnical
diagrams, which were engraved by himself for the first editions of his
works).
Bruno’s extant works were all produced within a decade of his life,
namely between the year 1582 – when the first of his mnemotechnical
works (the De umbris idearum) appeared in Paris – and the year 1591
when his three Latin poems appeared in Frankfurt on the Main: in order
of publication the De minimo and the De monade, followed by the De
immenso, although the latter preceded in order of composition. That
was Bruno’s last year of freedom. In May 1592 he would be arrested in
Venice, accused of heresy, and between Venice and Rome he would be
subjected to an inquisitional trial which would end with the burning at
the stake on 17 February 1600.
To go back to his production in print, if the De umbris idearum (The
Shadows of Ideas) reveals by its very title a Neoplatonic characteristic,
the tangible world being considered as a reflection of the Idea, and ‘to
know’ meaning to go through the shadow of the ideas in order to reach
a fragmented unity; on the other hand, as has recently been pointed out
by Yves Hersant (in Le Monde of 17 February 2000) though Bruno was

fascinated by diversity, by varietas – making it look as if he had
forgotten unity as his goal – in point of fact the question of the One and
the multiple was posed. As Hersant again points out, Bruno detached
himself from the Neoplatonic tradition, which puts Unity above and
diversity below, postulating a kind of ladder of being in which,
ontologically, the various was of an inferior quality compared with the
One. For this vertical axis Bruno substituted a horizontal one,
abolishing any hierarchical distinction. This was an anticipation, and
almost a conditio sine qua non, of his subsequent cosmological
conception, which found a parallel in his sociological and literary
conceptions. The initial year of the already mentioned decade saw also
the publication, again in Paris, of his only comedy: the Candelaio, which
is basically a satire of ill-directed human passions as exemplified by the
elderly Bonifacio’s infatuation for a courtesan, by the gold-obsessed
character Bartolomeo, and by Mamfurio’s grammarian pedantry not to
mention his paedophile tendencies. These three negative characters are
contrasted by the ‘positive’ character Gio. Bernardo (a name which not
by chance is paraphonic of the author’s): a character whose love for the
beautiful young wife of Bonifacio will be fulfilled and – albeit illicit –
implicitly condoned by the author, in view of its naturalness. This is not
unlike the conclusion of that other great Renaissance comedy,
Machiavelli’s Mandragola (produced in 1518), which condones the
adulterous relation of Callimaco and Lucrezia (not without expressing
an irony in her name) in view of the natural basis of their reciprocal
attachment. In the case of both Bruno and Machiavelli, it seems that the
theoretical naturalism of their times found a practical application to
human passions, irrespective of social and moral conventions.
As for Bruno’s natural philosophy, we have witnessed, particularly
during the last decade, a revaluation, certainly in Italy, in France and in
Spain, not quite to the same extent in Britain, and only marginally in
America, a reaction against the previous predominant interpretation of
Bruno’s thought as exclusively Hermetic magic. This interpretation
emphasized the cultural mediation of Ficino’s Neoplatonism and
originated, at least in such exclusive terms, in 1964, with the publication
in London of the well-known volume by the great Bruno scholar,
Frances Yates. The volume was entitled Giordano Bruno and the
Hermetic Tradition, and it conditioned for well over two decades the
field of Bruno studies in Europe and in America, although – if I may be
allowed a personal reference – soon after receiving the volume in 1964,
in a review of the same which appeared in the following year, I expressed
my reservations about a global magic-Hermetic interpretation of
8 GIORDANO BRUNO
Bruno’s work, while recognizing the great merit of Frances Yates in her
indication – not without some exaggeration – of recurrent traces of
Hermeticism in his works. Actually they appear to be prevalently
imbued with a materialistic naturalism of a kind which, at the last stage
of his production with the poetic trilogy published in Frankfurt, notably
in the De minimo, will reveal itself as a kind of universal atomism. This
is the last stage, indeed, in the development of a Renaissance natural
philosophy which, moving from fifteenth-century humanistic premises,
would yield its mature fruits in the first half of the seventeenth century
with Galileo’s major work, namely the Dialogo sui due massimi sistemi
del mondo, il tolemaico e il copernicano (1632), Galileo’s own
conception of matter not being alien to atomism.
After a brief season of mnemotechnical production between Paris and
London (1582–83) – a production which, although utilizing a
Neoplatonic terminology, nonetheless reveals some anticipation of his
successive astronomical and cosmological conception (including an
allusion to the movement of the earth) – Bruno proceeded, during his
London stay (1583–85), towards the elaboration and publication,
between 1584 and 1585, of his six philosophical dialogues written in the
Italian vernacular. Three of these were of a cosmological bearing and
three of a moral bearing (the first two of the latter group having a strong
satirical intent, while the third and last of the entire series reveals a
remarkable poetic inspiration). Already at this stage of Bruno’s activity
we can discern a characteristic of his personality which seems to
conform not only with the widespread conception of a Renaissance man
endowed with multifarious attitudes, but, more specifically, with a
Renaissance philosopher, in that his thought combines a renovation of
ancient tenets with an anticipation of what will historically follow,
notably in the field of cosmology. This characteristic of his personality
is also consistent with the rejection of the sterile grammarian humanism
of the late sixteenth century. Parallel to this, we find the repudiation of
the Petrarchan models relaunched by Pietro Bembo at the beginning of
the century, in spite of their reutilization at the level of poetic expression
in the last of Bruno’s Italian Dialogues, albeit in a semantic adaptation
by which the explicit love content of the Petrarchan models is implicitly
substituted – without any analogy with the so-called ‘spiritual’
Petrarchism in a Christian direction – by the frustrated attempt to reach
a transcendental divinity; an attempt followed by the satisfactory
realization of the immanency of the divinity in the infinite universe, as
well as in all living creatures. Here we have a conception by which the
humanistic notion of the ‘dignity of the human being’ is surpassed in the
passage from a dignity consisting in the intermediate position of humans
between brute animals and spiritual creatures towards a conception of

humans as participating in the divinity of the infinite universe.
In fact, as he revealed in his cosmological Dialogues, which move
from the premise of a Copernican heliocentricity, Bruno declared his
ultra-Copernican and anti-Aristotelian intuition of an infinite Universe
constituted by an unlimited number of celestial bodies (possibly
inhabited) grouped, or otherwise, in an equally unlimited number of
planetary systems, the substance of which does not differ from that of
the earth. Thus he eliminated the Aristotelian dualism of a corruptible
sub-lunar world and a celestial (still limited) extension formed of an
incorruptible substance, the so-called quintessence. Parallel to such a
cosmological perspective, another Aristotelian distinction was
eliminated, this time at the ontological level: that between passive matter
and the active form and, by extension, between the world and God. The
divinity is identified with Being, which is matter itself, producer of all
forms, as well as being recognizable in interiore hominis (inside man
himself).
Such a cosmological and ontological conception, in which there is no
room for metaphysical components, is expounded first of all in the
cosmological dialogues, the Cena de le Ceneri (The Ash-Wednesday
Supper), the De la causa, principio et Uno (Concerning the Cause, the
Principle and the One), De l’infinito, universo et mondi (Concerning the
Infinite, the Universe and the Worlds), of which the first reflects the
recent break on his part with the Oxonian Aristotelianism as well as
with the belatedly renewed grammarian and rhetorical humanism of the
same university. To this he opposes, in this first of his Dialogues, with
enthusiasm and exaltation, his already mentioned cosmological
conception; not without, at the same time and in the same work, taking
the opportunity to attack both the English academic trends and the
London society of the time in its various strata, with the exception of
the Elizabethan court. Between 1584 and 1585 he proceeded with the
publication of his subsequent three dialogues still in London and in the
same Italian vernacular – a linguistic choice which, as I suggested in an
essay of 1953 on Bruno’s adoption of the vernacular in his London
philosophical dialogues and only in those, may well be due not only to
the Italianate fashion predominant in the Elizabethan court, but also, by
analogy, to the fact that English scientists such as Robert Recorde,
Leonard Digges and his son Thomas, who had shown interest in the
Copernican heliocentricity, were expressing themselves, outside the
universities, in their own vernacular. These writers were publishing
under the patronage of those very Italianate courtiers who in their turn
favoured astronomical observations for their practical application to the
10 GIORDANO BRUNO
maritime expansionistic policy favoured by the queen herself. This could

indicate, by analogy, another aspect of Bruno’s pertinence to a
Renaissance trend: were it not for his strong (and exceptional at that
date, on the part of an Italian observer) opposition to the methods of the
European colonization of the New World.
In this respect, Bruno seems to accept, in the organization of human
society, a variety of civilizations: a variety which was unacceptable to the
European mentality of his own times (and, alas, of subsequent times),
conditioned as it was by a particular religious conception of life, in its
turn subdivided in a variety of differentiated interpretations which had
already led to bloody struggles within Europe itself and extreme
intolerance within its states. Paradoxically, Bruno’s own advocacy of
reciprocal tolerance between different Christian denominations often
assumed the tone of an extreme polemical attitude, which, however –
meant, as it was, not for the vulgus of the faithful, but for their leaders
– seemed to be prompted by what can be described as one of the typical
Renaissance conceptions of religion, namely the Machiavellian one,
which – not without an Averroistic inspiration – seemed to advocate
religion entirely for pragmatic purposes of a civil and social nature. Here
we can detect yet another characteristic of the Renaissance civilization
in its concern for life in this world, as distinguished from the prevalent
medieval concern for transcendency and mysticism.
But to proceed with a rapid survey of the philosopher’s extant
production in print – in order to point out (explicitly or implicitly) the
pertinence of his thought both in its external traits and in its inner
substance, to a line of production describable as rinascimentale – we
can note that in the three cosmological Dialogues (Cena, Causa and
Infinito) the main external structures correspond to those of the
Renaissance ‘regular’ comedy in the vernacular. The preliminary epistle
merges the prologue and argument of the latter; while the five dialogues
contained in each of the cosmological Dialogues correspond to the five
acts of the sixteenth-century comedies. In the three subsequent moral
Dialogues (Spaccio, Cabala and Furori) we find a differentiated
structure both in respect of the previous trilogy, and between the
Dialogues themselves of the new trilogy. The Spaccio, in its essence,
expounds a plan of moral reform which implies a criticism of Christian
ethics as professed by contemporary churches, the reformed ones not
less than the Catholic. The satirical tone can be ultimately traced to
Lucian’s Dialogues; while politically the dialogue is in line with the
conciliatory aspirations of the French monarchy between the Catholic
and Protestant extremes. To the optimistic vision of the Spaccio, Bruno
contrasts a negative vision expounded in the Cabala, where the
negative aspects of Christianity are revealed as still predominant. To the

Eroici Furori a Platonic or Neoplatonic label has been traditionally
attached – in fact the Ficinian terminology, derived on its turn from
Platonic texts as well as from Plotinus, Denys the Areopagite, Iamblicus
and Proclus, is here predominant – although, as has already been
observed, it is utilized by Bruno in a semantically differentiated
meaning from that of his sources. In the entire dialogical production,
we detect echoes not only from his own comedy, but also from the
sixteenth-century theatrical production, some of these echoes being
specifically identifiable. For example, the name of the pedant
(‘Prudenzio’) in the Cena de le Ceneri is the same as that of the pedant
in the comedy by Francesco Belo entitled Il Pedante, the earliest extant
edition of which is dated 1538; again, in the Cena, the name of the
character ‘Frulla’ is the same as that of the innkeeper in the comedy Gli
ingannati (1532) – which is, incidentally, the comedy of the twins
echoed, directly or indirectly, by William Shakespeare in both his
Comedy of Errors and his Twelfth Night. But it is the very presence of
the pedant in four out of the six philosophical Brunian dialogues which
constitutes a precise element derived from the vernacular Renaissance
drama. This element undergoes a semantic – so to speak – evolution,
from the satirical representation of the moral defects of the
schoolmaster or tutor, to the satire of rhetorical and grammarian
preoccupations at a time when the genuine humanistic activities were
over in Italy, giving way to a useless showing off of lexical and
grammarian knowledge, quite often paradoxically erroneous. If
Bruno’s pedants are satirized at both the moral (or rather immoral) and
pseudo-humanistic level, they embody also a kind of theological
pedantry by means of which Bruno reproached the Protestant reformers
(notably Luther and Calvin) who seemed to him to neglect the
humanitarian aspect of religion in favour of sterile biblical
interpretation. This anti-Reformism was essentially based on his
rejection of the Protestant justification by faith alone in the redemptive
sacrifice of Christ, and not by charitable works as well. Such a position
was unacceptable to Bruno in consideration of his already mentioned
conception of religion as useful in maintaining moral and social order
among the vulgus: philosophers having no need of it.
Other Renaissance theatrical components include the presence in his
dialogues of historical or contemporary characters in conformity with
the example given by Pietro Aretino in the two versions of his comedy
La Cortigiana (1525, 1534) and which will be adopted by the
anonymous author of La Venexiana (1536–37), after which such a
practice was stopped, at least within the Venetian Republic, by order of
12 GIORDANO BRUNO
the Signoria. I have indicated the persistence of this practice on the part
of Bruno in a contribution to the recent edition of the miscellany Teatri
Barocchi edited by Silvia Carandini.
These are details which nevertheless confirm the author’s pertinence
to a sphere of literary not less than philosophical sixteenth-century
culture, in spite of his striking overcoming of contemporary conventions
in both directions. This is revealed in all its significance, as far as his
vernacular production is concerned, in the Eroici Furori. In this work
both the Neoplatonic terminology of Bruno’s prose and the Petrarchan
poetic language used in the primary and secondary poems are in fact
semantically forced to express, respectively, the immanence rather than
the transcendence of the divine, and the awareness of the coincidence of
multiplicity with the One. Such themes repudiate the conventionality of
the pains and fulfilment of a personal love passion, in sharp contrast
with the contemporary manieristic utilization of Petrarchan clichés.
But it is with his return to the use of Latin, and more specifically with
the composition of his poetic trilogy published in Frankfurt in 1591,
that once again Bruno reveals his pertinence to a Renaissance cultural
context. This is true in spite of both his extremely original utilization of
a classical scientific model, namely Lucretius (in comparison with
previous conventional utilization of the same model), and his absolute
detachment from the philosophical and cosmological conclusions of his
predecessors in the same genre.
Between the nucleus of the Italian Dialogues and the Latin poetic
trilogy, the Brunian peregrinatio through continental Europe took place:
Paris again, with his polemic against the Salernitan Fabrizio Mordente
concerning the latter’s compasso differenziale, an anticipation of
Galileo’s compasso geometrico e militare, plus his final Parisian clash
with the Aristotelians. From Paris, Bruno goes to Wittenberg where we
find a recurrence of his criticism of Aristotelian physics, and the
production of the Lullian trilogy of the lampades. After Wittenberg,
Prague, where he produced further Lullian treatises; from Prague to
Helmsted, where he managed to be excommunicated by the Lutheran
Church: an excommunication which was added to the original Catholic
and subsequent Calvinist ones, giving further proof, if necessary, of the
incompatibility of his philosophy with the major tenets of the Christian
religion, of whatever denomination. This represents another aspect,
perhaps, of his pertinence to the core of Renaissance thought, having put
aside any attempt at philosophical-religious syncretism à la Ficino (he
will indeed make such an attempt in the course of his trial; however, in
the circumstances, it appears to be merely pragmatic).
But, as I have already said, it would be at Frankfurt, in 1591, that the
second great nucleus of his philosophical and poetic production would

see the light. The three long Latin poems intercalated by prose
annotations, as far as the genre to which they belong is concerned, are
in line with the sixteenth-century tradition of scientific poetry of
Lucretian inspiration – a genre cultivated, apart from Palingenius (that
is, Marcello Stellato [or Stellati], Napoletano) not to mention others,
also by Aonio Paleario, Ludovico Parisetto and Scipione Capece.
Bruno’s utilization of Lucretius’s De rerum natura was indeed already
well documented by his references and quotations contained in the
Italian Dialogues, as well as by an entry of the year 1586 in the diary of
the Parisian librarian of Saint-Victor.
In the first of his three poems to be published – the De triplici minimo
– we find above all definitions of the Brunian atom: pars ultima of
matter, rather than terminus deprived of dimensions. Brunian
terminology distinguishes ‘atom’ from ‘minimum’ and from ‘monad’:
‘atom’ indicating the ultimate indivisible element of matter; ‘minimum’
the minimal figure of a given kind and ‘monad’ the unit of a given genus,
although under the title of De triplici minimo are included the entire
triad of atom, minimum and monad. In the De monade different
qualities of tangible objects are considered as derived from the different
number and disposition of the elements by which they are constituted.
Such elements, however, are not moved by an external mover, but by an
intrinsic principle. Thus, in contrast with the Democritean atomism and
the Epicurean materialism, the atomism of the Frankfurt poems links up
with the animism of Bruno’s London dialogues. With the De immenso
et innumerabilibus he expounded his cosmology once again with
notable adherence to his Italian dialogues of the London period. In this
poem Bruno retraces the difficult elaboration of his thought, renewing
his polemic against the Aristotelian physics and reaffirming his
cosmological conception which implies the intuitive surpassing of the
closed heliocentric system as expounded by Copernicus. Thus he confers
on the universe an infinite dimension.
We may indeed consider Bruno to be a ‘Philosopher of the
Renaissance’ in that he occupies the middle position in a line which, if
towards the past it reaches back to classical and pre-classical positions
concerning natural philosophy and cosmological intuitions, as to the
future it would be impossible to deny that he anticipates positions which
are scientifically supported in our own days.
After his last publication, entitled De imaginum compositione (a
return to, and development of, his original mnemotechnical works) and
after his last mathematical teaching to German students in Padua in the
autumn of 1591, Bruno was denounced as a heretic to the Venetian
14 GIORDANO BRUNO
Inquisition and arrested in May 1592. Transferred to the prison of the

Roman Inquisition in 1593, then subjected to a trial which lasted
another seven years, on Thursday 17 February 1600 his tongue was
trapped on the way to the stake erected in Campo de’ Fiori, and the
most striking philosopher of the European Renaissance, stripped naked
and bound to a pole, was burnt alive.
PART TWO
Bruno and Italy

CHAPTER TWO
The Image of Giordano Bruno

Lars Berggren
Philosophers have rather seldom paid attention to the visual image of

Giordano Bruno. Given their professional concern with ideas, and a long
disciplinary tradition of focusing almost exclusively on the written word,
this is hardly surprising. When at all considered by scholars in the field,
images tend to be treated as written documents, that is, subjected to
investigations aiming at establishing the degree to which they may reflect
a lost original, in this case the historical Bruno’s physical appearance. In
this perspective only the oldest available likeness is likely to attract real
interest; subsequent portraits are automatically classified as either more or
less inadequate copies, or mere products of ‘imagination’, and as such of
little or no importance. The problem with this approach is, of course, that
it ignores the simple fact that all images are cultural constructions made
at a specific moment using time-specific visual codes for specific purposes;
in other words, they tell us virtually nothing about what Bruno actually
looked like but a great deal about how he was looked upon. It also
obscures the fact that this is precisely why visual images may be valuable
sources for historical research. It is indeed surprising that even today,
when the study of Bruno’s reception in different periods and contexts is
attracting so much attention, nobody has made serious use of the rich and
varied visual source material provided by prints, paintings and statues.
They have much to tell about the mental images, the conceptions and
inclinations that lay behind their creation and construction.
One excuse for not making use of the visual sources is the difficulty
in interpreting them. Before the historian can even try to make valid use
of an image, he has to know what he is looking for, when and for what
purpose it was made, in what circumstances, current visual conventions,
technical and other constraints.1 Thus, extracting information from
visual sources and combining it with literary evidence is a demanding
and time-consuming undertaking, but from studies like Peter Burke’s
The Fabrication of Louis XIV we have learnt that it is well worth the
effort.2 Admittedly, studies dealing with high-ranking official persons,
1 See for instance Haskell (1993).

2 Burke (1992).
18 GIORDANO BRUNO
such as kings and emperors, are comparatively easy to carry out since
images in those contexts may normally be regarded as visualizations of
a political programme. Here monuments, coins, frescos, prints, state
portraits and other kinds of images help us to complete, supplement and
widen the analysis of what is known from other sources. In the case of
less official figures the task is more difficult. Depending on a wide
variety of factors – for instance age, status, position and character and
the way artists and commissioners understand them – the same person
may be represented in many different ways already during his lifetime.
From a distance, and in the absence of official sources, these changes
often appear quite dramatic. If the person in question is frequently
portrayed over time, the scholar soon finds him or herself entangled in
a conundrum of interactions between various conventions, traditions,
prototypes and biases, especially if there is no canonical original to refer
to – as in the case of Giordano Bruno.
In what follows, I will try to sort out the complicated iconography of
Bruno by following the series of portraits of him through the centuries,
identifying the relevant contexts and the functions they were meant to
fulfil, and also attempting to throw some light on the way mental
conceptions and visual representations interact in the process of
construction and reconstruction of images in different historical and
ideological contexts. Nearly all these images were produced during the
nineteenth century, that is, in the century when scholars first started to
form more precise ideas of Bruno as a historic figure, when a demand
for his visual image was created, and a number of iconographic
conventions came into existence. I am not basing this chapter on
anything like a complete inventory of all existing images of Bruno, far
from it. As already noted, very little systematic research has been done
in the field, and this means that formerly unknown images are still
appearing, but they do not very often add anything that changes the
general picture of the iconographic developments as laid out in the
following pages. Apart from a few exceptional cases, the material falls
into three fairly distinct groups that correspond to three different views,
or mental images, of Bruno, each one produced in a special context and
dominating for a certain period of time. I will treat them in
chronological order.
The Philosopher
What may be the oldest known portrait of Giordano Bruno is a painting

in the former university library, Juleum, in Helmstedt, where he spent
THE IMAGE OF GIORDANO BRUNO 19
some months in 1589–90 (Figure 2.1). According to the local tradition

it is a portrait of Bruno, painted some time during the seventeenth
century, but unfortunately there is no evidence at all to prove the case:
no inscription, no signature, no documentation and not even a proper
examination of the painting’s anatomy.3 References to it start to occur
only at the end of the nineteenth century, and it would not surprise me
if it eventually turns out to have been made during that century.
Anyway, it is executed in seicento manner and shows us a typical
portrait of a venerable, middle-aged, scholarly man (Bruno was just past
40 when he sojourned in Helmstedt).
Whether this dark-haired, heavily bearded and moustached man with
eyes set wide apart and a rather impressive aquiline nose in any way
resembles the ‘real’ Bruno is impossible to say. His description certainly
does not match the ‘homo piccolo, scarmo, con un pocco di barba nera’
(a small, thin man, with a hint of black beard) of the Venetian trial very
well,4 but physical likeness was probably not a matter of great
importance when the painting was commissioned. For no matter when
this happened, its primary function was to represent a distinguished
member of the university’s academic staff; executed according to the
current conventions, it could serve this purpose just as well as all the
other imaginary countenances that filled so many similar portrait
collections.5 Bruno’s incorporation in the Juleum gallery implies that his
academic status was high at the time, but even though he enjoyed a
certain fame in northern Germany during the seventeenth century, it is
at least questionable that he qualified for a position like that before the
beginning of the nineteenth.6 All in all we end up with a probable
nineteenth-century work executed in seventeenth-century style or,
possibly, an authentic painting of an unknown man from the latter
century, who may or may not be Bruno.
About the next portrait, an engraving of uncommonly high quality
(Figure 2.2), we know for certain that it was produced as a
3 This according to Rolf Volkmann, director of the Ehemaligen Universitätsbibliothek
Helmstedt, April 2001.

4 In May 1592 a witness describes Bruno as ‘un homo piccolo, scarmo, con un pocco
di barba nera’ and the scribe styles him a ‘vir communis staturæ cum barba castanea’
(Canone, 2000, p. XLIX).
5 Cf. Haskell (1993), esp. pp. 52ff, 297ff.
6 Positive judgements of Bruno and his works appear rather frequently in books
written and printed in northern Germany from the seventeenth century onward. In a study
on Copernicus, published in 1690, Bruno is presented as his most prominent follower, and
the author recommends the Duke of Braunschweig to have De Immenso, which had been
published with a dedication to the duke’s predecessor in 1591, reprinted (Zimmerman,
1690).
20 GIORDANO BRUNO
representation of Giordano Bruno: his name and countenance are

engraved on the same plate, together with texts informing us that the
image was painted by the Neapolitan painter Aniello d’Aloisio and
engraved by a certain Morghen (probably the famous Raffaello). It was
published by Nicola Gervasi, in the first of the four volumes of his
Biografia degli uomini illustri del Regno di Napoli, which appeared in
1813.7 The context is similar to the one in Helmstedt in so far as Bruno
figures here too in a gathering of Great Men of local interest. In the text
he is not only praised for his philosophical and scientific conquests, but
also for his courage in the face of the inquisition, his defence of the truth
and his willingness to pay the terrible price for it; ‘gittatosi nelle fiamme
con imperturbabile animo morì’ (he threw himself into the flames, and
died with an unwavering spirit). It is no coincidence that this heroic tale
of a burnt heretic was printed in Naples during the short period of
French sovereignty which saw religious inquisition abolished and a
certain freedom of the press.
This portrait of Bruno, as far as I know the first one executed on
Italian soil, also shows us a man in mid-life, with strong features, a
prodigious forehead, large wide-set eyes and a full beard. His face,
garments and pose resemble those of the Helmstedt painting in a vague
and generic way, and it is obvious that they both belong in – or rather
imitate – the same seventeenth-century tradition of rendering great
scholars. In this particular case we can even single out the image which
served the artist as model: Ottavio Leoni’s famous portrait of Galileo
Galilei, engraved and published in Rome in 1624 (Figure 2.3). A quick
glance at the illustrations confirms that it is basically the same image,
only slightly changed and furnished with different labels. What the
Helmstedt and Naples portraits have in common is, consequently, that
they were both made to satisfy the demand from commissioners with a
decidedly positive view of Bruno, and who wanted him to appear as a
venerable great thinker. To satisfy this demand, in the absence of an
‘authentic’ or at least canonical likeness, the artists fell back on the old
iconographic formula for representing such men, and in the latter case
went as far as almost copying the well-known portrait of the most
famous scholar of the time – all in the interest of making their visual
images conform to what they expected was the intended public’s mental
image of Bruno. Still, both of them were taken over rather than
constructed and, although the fact that they were produced at all may
be interpreted as symptomatic of the growing respect for Bruno (and the
general decline in the influence of the church), they have but little to tell
7 Gervasi (1813). The author of the entry for Bruno is Giuseppe Boccanera da
Macerata (1794–1817).
us. Neither of the two proved successful, at least not in terms of

subsequent reproductions and imitations.8 Whether this was an effect of
their limited diffusion or a too generic character, they remained solitaires
without influence on the later developments in Bruno iconography.
Instead, the point of departure for the ‘standard portrait’ of the
nineteenth century was an image of a completely different character.
In 1715, Nicolaus Hieronymus Gundling had published an
anonymous engraving of Bruno in his Neue Bibliotec (Figure 2.4).9
The portrait presents us with a lean and haggard, middle-aged man
dressed in a cocolla, a garment worn by both clerics and laymen. His
half-long hair is fair and slightly wavy, and apart from a small
moustache he appears to be clean-shaven. The face is wrinkled, the
brow is high, the chin rather small and pointed, the mouth small with
pursed lips. The physiognomy is decidedly more German than South
Italian, and the portrait lacks the usual indications of scholarship and
academic status, whereas it answers quite well to the picture of Bruno
as tough rebel, atheist and libertine that is often met with in
philosophical texts from the end of the seventeenth century and the
beginning of the eighteenth.
The provenance of this rare print remained obscure for a long time.10
During the nineteenth century it was generally believed to have been
made during Bruno’s lifetime, and even Giovanni Gentile thought that it
might have appeared in one of his early works.11 In fact it was only in
1965 that Andrzej Nowicki finally managed to establish where it had
been published.12 A couple of years later, he also suggested the engraver
Johann Adam Delsenbach (1687–1765) as its probable author.13 There
is, however, still a possibility that Gundling only reused an older plate –
the quality of the print is low and there is really nothing in style and
technique that speaks against an earlier dating, though hardly as early
as the sixteenth century – and the attribution to Delsenbach is not much
8 This is not to say that they have not been reproduced several times, but the only
instance of their use to represent Bruno that I have so far encountered is an article in La
Ragione (organ of the Associazione Nazionale del Libero Pensiero ‘Giordano Bruno’),
published in connection with the commemoration of the ‘350th anniversario del martirio
di Giordano Bruno’ (La Ragione, 17 February 1950).
9 Neue Bibliotec (1715).
10 As it turns out, it is not so rare any longer. During 2001 the present author found
one copy in Uppsala University Library and another in the Royal Library of Stockholm.
11 Giovanni Gentile does not exclude the possibility that the portrait could have been
published in some of Bruno’s early works (Gentile, 1907, p. xii).

12 Nowicki (1970), p. 202. Luigi Firpo had already spotted the probable place of
publication and narrowed the plausible period of time to a couple of decades in his
L’iconografia di Tommaso Campanella (Firpo, 1964, p. 54).
13 Nowicki (1968), p. 39.
22 GIORDANO BRUNO
more than an informed guess. In any case the chances that the engraving
reproduces something of Bruno’s ‘real’ likeness are virtually nil.
When Rixner and Siber in 1824 published the fifth part of their
Leben und Lehrmeinungen berühmter Physiker, which is dedicated to
Giordano Bruno, they illustrated it with a new lithographic portrait
(Figure 2.5), executed by Carl Mayer, that was derived from the Neue
Bibliotec engraving.14 They had found a detached copy of the latter in a
private collection and, having no clue as to its original context and age,
rather optimistically guessed that ‘Vielleicht gehörte es als Titelkupfer zu
irgend einem der Werkchen des Bruno’. Even though nobody else was
able to (or cared to) locate the original, the essential truth of this
assumption was generally accepted during the rest of the century, and
not many seem to have doubted that Meyer’s lithograph really was a
faithful reproduction of its model.
In fact, Carl Meyer’s image of Bruno keeps pretty close to the
eighteenth-century ‘original’, at least in a general way: the dress, the
pose, the hair and the facial features are almost exactly the same. Yet
a series of minute modifications have transformed Bruno into a
completely different human being, younger, softer, romantic and
definitely more Italian. The hair is a little longer, wavier and darker,
the skin is smooth, the eyes large and dreamy, the mouth small with
full lips, the chin weak and almost receding, the moustache thin and
juvenile, and the shoulders narrow and sloping. To a certain extent the
difference between the two images can be explained by the different
media – a lithograph is always softer than an engraving – and by
changes in style and portrait conventions, but it is nevertheless much
too great not to indicate two radically different conceptions of Bruno.
During the more than a hundred years that passed between the
production of the two portraits, the mental image of Bruno had
changed. The focus was no longer on Bruno the heretic but on Bruno the
visionary and poet, who first of all men had fathomed the infinity and
fundamental unity of the universe. A good example of the way he was
now normally described in the philosophical literature is found in Eric
August Schröder’s Handbok i Philosophiens Historia, published
posthumously in Uppsala 1849:
Richly gifted, distinguished as much by an exuberant imagination
and mighty passions as by a burning zeal for research and a natural
acumen, he would devote his earliest youth to the art of poetry; he
abandoned this career early, however, yet without abandoning
poetic form for the creations of his spirit.15
14 Rixner and Siber (1824), frontispiece.

15 Schröder (1849), p. 58. Eric August Schröder (1796–1849) was Professor of Logic
The effeminate youth in Meyer’s portrait answers exceedingly well to

the romantic visionary described in this and many other contemporary
texts.
Carl Mayer’s Bruno soon acquired canonical status (and I will
henceforth refer to it as ‘the standard portrait’). This was largely due to
its alleged derivation from a likeness that had appeared in one of Bruno’s
own works, and of course its publication in highly respected and widely
distributed scholarly works. The most important of these was not
Rixner and Siber’s Leben und Lehrmeinungen but Gottleib Heinrich
Wagner’s Opere di Giordano Bruno Nolano which, also adorned with
Mayer’s lithograph, appeared in Leipzig in 1830 and then for many
decades remained the standard edition of Bruno’s Latin works.16
Authenticity, or at least the semblance of it, was important to the
small elite, mostly made up of academics, that produced, read and
discussed texts on and by Bruno. When the legitimacy of the standard
portrait had once been established it therefore changed but little over
time, at least not in this particular milieu. Another factor that helped to
stabilize it was the physical context in which the standard portrait
normally appears: books – mostly of scientific or historical character,
but also collections of illustrious men (and sometimes women). The
whole genre had in fact developed its conventions in answer to the
restrictions imposed on it by the limited format and the need to show as
much as possible of the head, that is, the part of the body where the
individual’s true nature was most clearly discernible and with which
thinkers after all serve humanity (as Schopenhauer claimed).17
A destabilizing factor was, on the other hand, that publishers and
printers until the last decades of the nineteenth century lacked the
technical means for photographic reproduction and thus normally
had to procure a new version of the standard portrait for each new
publication, images which therefore always differed more or less from
the model.18 These deviations are in part ascribable to the varying
competence of the artists, to different graphic techniques and to
changes in stylistic ideals, but very often there is also something that
can only be explained in terms of differences in ideological outlook.
and Metaphysics and Rector of Uppsala University. His view of Bruno is essentially the
same as the one presented by Rixner and Siber in their introduction (Rixner and Siber,
1824, pp. 5ff.).
16 Wagner (1830), frontispiece.
17 Schopenhauer (1978), p. 161.
18 The earliest photographic reproduction of the standard portrait I have so far
encountered is found in I. Frith’s [Isabella Oppenheim] Life of Giordano Bruno the Nolan,
published in London in 1887. In England the new techniques had been developing since
the 1860s.
24 GIORDANO BRUNO
A well-known example of early and on the whole remarkably accurate

copying, without any significant departures from the standard portrait, is
the image published by Christian Bartholmess in Paris in 1846.19 This
faithful imitation may of course be interpreted as testifying to a high
degree of technical skill or respect for the ‘original’, but it can also be
taken as indicative of a general compatibility between the standard
portrait and the current mental image of Bruno in the northern academic
world. In Italy things were different. Already the first known Italian
standard portrait version, Caterina Piotti Pirola’s engraving in
Iconografia italiana from 1837 (Figure 2.6), shows us a Bruno who has
clearly been adapted for domestic consumption: a few slight changes –
somewhat darker skin, rounder face, fuller lips and an arched nose – is
enough to make him fit the stereotype image of a southern Italian.20 This
portrait is in fact the first illustration of Bruno in what can be described
as an Italian nationalistic context. He was soon to get further involved in
the dramatic developments in risorgimento Italy and within a few
decades his image had become one of the most politically charged in the
country. In such circumstances one may expect dramatic changes in his
iconography, which also occurred, though mostly – as we shall see –
when Bruno started to be visualized in other contexts and other media.
In its natural habitat, the printed book, the standard portrait continued
to be reproduced rather faithfully, yet in the long run not unaffected by
the strong political polarization of his image. The engraving in Padre
Luigi Previti’s Giordano Bruno e i suoi tempi, published in 1887, is a
simplified standard portrait which, with its accentuation of the dark
shadows below the slightly bulging eyes, seems to have been adjusted to
fit the official Catholic view of Bruno as dissolute and depraved.21 A
contemporary standard portrait tuned to the liberal and anticlerical
conception is found in the printed version of Enrico Morselli’s speech at
the commemoration of Bruno in Rome in 1888;22 here Bruno’s
countenance is rendered more manly by a more angular jaw and a
stronger chin.
19
Bartholmess (1846), frontispiece.
20
Iconografia italiana (1837). For the interpretation of Bruno’s traits as
‘meredionalizzanti’, see also Canone (2000), p. XLVIII.
21 Previti (1887), frontispiece.
22 Morselli (1888), frontispiece.
The Anticlerical
In Italy the papal ban on Giordano Bruno had been more effective than
elsewhere. By and large he remained a rather obscure entity in his home
country until the 1830s, when the appearance of the German editions of
his works started to stir public attention. Now the interest grew rapidly,
and nationalists, especially, of various political denominations embraced
him with enthusiasm. The moderates honoured him mainly as a
philosopher of international standing and hence an ‘illustrazione
italiana’ (a model Italian), while radicals like Giuseppe Mazzini
combined his animated universe with ideas of an Italian national spirit,
and started to convert him into an early martyr for the Italian cause.23
When Pope Pius IX, during the years of insurrection 1848–49, finally
declared himself in the ‘national question’ and called in foreign troops
to crush the Roman Republic, the risorgimento movement found itself
provided not only with a new principal enemy,24 but also with a new
hero. Bruno was turned into a powerful symbol in what was referred to
as the eternal struggle between the religious obscurantism (of the
Catholic Church) and the scientific rationalism (on which the Italian
unitarian movement largely founded its claims). To the anticlericals of
the day, his horrible death at the stake on Campo de’ Fiori proved
beyond any reasonable doubt the fundamentally evil nature of the
enemy.25
Bruno’s enrolment in the risorgimento movement as the standard-
bearer of political anticlericalism led to an almost complete revision of
the way he was visualized. To understand the nature of this
transformation it is essential to grasp that his task was to represent and
personify one pole in an antithetical relationship. Since the Catholic
Church in the anticlerical discourse was construed as ‘oriental’ (in the
full sense of Edward Said’s term),26 that is, as corrupt, barbaric,
irrational, superstitious, cruel, fanatic, backward, not modern (and so
on) – it was of course Bruno’s business to appear as honest, civil,
rational, noble, modern (and so on) as possible. But just to provide a
positive counterpart to the enemy was not the name of the game; his
most important function was to visualize the revolt against this
23 On Mazzini and Bruno, see Gentile (1942), pp. 155f.

24 Up to that point Pius IX was not only generally believed to be in favour of a united
Italy but had also been regarded as one of its future leaders.
25 See Berggren (1991), ch. 1. The book deals with the history of the Roman Bruno
monument in a broad historical and art historical context. Parts of it have been translated
into Italian and inserted in Berggren and Sjöstedt (1996).
26 Said (1978).
26 GIORDANO BRUNO
formidably evil ‘other’. Consequently, Bruno is almost always

represented as interacting with visible or invisible representatives of the
‘other’.
The first image of Bruno we meet with in this new context shows us
a figure with the conventional features of the standard portrait, but also
the rest of his body hints at an ambience and a story (Figure 2.7). He is
sitting on a stone bench with an iron ring attached to its side, looking at
an imaginary discussion partner, with his left hand holding a book close
to his chest and his right hand raised in an argumentative gesture.
Obviously, the scene is a prison cell where Bruno is busy defending
himself against the accusations of the inquisitors. The lithograph does
not, however, give us this scene directly but a statue with this motive.
This in turn formed part of a group of originally seven statues
representing famous Italians, executed by the sculptor Bartolomeo
Ferrari during the 1840s for one of the celebrities of the period, Count
Antonio Papadopoli. In addition to Bruno, the group contains several
other persons of great anticlerical significance, such as Campanella,
Galilei and Machiavelli. From its composition it is clear that it belongs
to the kind of genealogies of the ‘Italian spirit’ that were frequently
produced from the end of the eighteenth century and in which heretics
began to figure prominently towards the middle of the nineteenth. The
statues were lithographed by Michele Fanoli and printed in Paris,
probably as early as the 1840s, but could be published in Italy only after
the nationalist movement had taken the first decisive step towards the
final unification with the proclamation of the Kingdom of Italy in
1861.27
The unification unleashed a wave of commemorative activities in all
the provinces: the event itself, the leading protagonists, and various
local martyrs who had perished in ‘patriotic battles’ were eternalized en
masse in bronze and marble. What this campaign, instigated and
largely financed by the new authorities, officially aimed at was to
convert the illiterate and politically ignorant population into good
Italian citizens. But there was also another purpose, namely, to prepare
public opinion for the next step in the unification process: the invasion
of the Papal States and of Rome. Thus the government not only
permitted but also actively supported a series of projects for the
erection of monuments to famous heretics all over the country. Among
the most important were those dedicated to Arnaldo da Brescia in
Brescia, to Girolamo Savonarola in Ferrara, and to Giordano Bruno in
Nola and Naples.
27 Di sei statuette (1862).

Of the two projects dedicated to Bruno the one in Nola, his native
town, seems to have started first. The commission for the statue went to
a sculptor named Raffaele da Crescenzo, evidently of some local fame,
and in 1867 the finished monument was inaugurated. It was surely no
masterpiece from the beginning, but its present state – badly damaged
by weathering and assaults, moved from its original site and the original
pedestal lost – makes it difficult to say anything about the finer
iconographic details (Figure 2.8). Still, the main lines are clear. Head and
face are largely modelled after the standard portrait, though the hair is
more agitated, the moustache more substantial, the eyes wide open and
the chin sturdier. The dress is profane. The defiant pose, together with
the staring eyes and the scroll of paper in his left hand, indicate the
situation. Bruno has just heard his sentence (symbolized by the paper)
read, rises up from his kneeling position and, with a fiery glance towards
the inquisitors, utters his famous sentence: ‘It may be that you fear more
to deliver judgement upon me than I fear in receiving it.’28 In anticlerical
contexts, these well-known words were read as a prophecy about what
was to befall the Papacy, or at least the Papal States, when a
reconstituted Italy finally decided to throw off the yoke of religious
superstition.
Bruno’s own fate was, however, already sealed, and he is in fact
represented as standing on a neat stack of firewood which is already set
on fire, the flames visibly licking his feet and a pile of books behind his
back. Thus, what we see, or are supposed to see, in the monument is the
martyr of free thought who, unbroken and unvanquished, for the last
time stands up against an evil power and announces its coming
downfall. Bruno’s whole appearance has been affected by this heroic
concept. The mental image is no longer that of a youthful poet and
visionary but that of a rational, strong and determined man of action.
Consequently, the effeminate character of the standard portrait has been
remodelled into a well-grown, broad-shouldered male with a decidedly
masculine face.
Meanwhile, the Naples monument, finished by the sculptor Pietro
Masulli in 1864, had been installed in the university’s Cortile del
Salvatore (Figures 2.9, 2.10). Here the scene is probably the same as
in Nola. Bruno is contemptuously crumpling the piece of paper
bearing the death sentence while staring menacingly at the judges
and pointing emphatically at an open book. It is a dramatic moment.
Trembling with indignation the herald of a new age pronounces his
sentence over an irrational and corrupt system. His whole body
28 In most translations these famous words are normally phrased as a sentence or a
direct threat.
28 GIORDANO BRUNO
expresses tension, anger and disgust: his hair stands on end, the veins
at his temples are swollen, jaw muscles tensed, lips pressed together,
and his eyes are staring hard under contracted eyebrows and a
furrowed brow. In this statue, the sculptor has completely
abandoned the standard portrait. The mental image of Bruno within
this political framework was simply no longer compatible with it; the
distance between the two had grown too great. Instead of the
otherworldly dreamer, we have a man decidedly of this world, a fact
that is also clearly announced by his habit. The face is bony, the jaw
firm, his shoulders broad – and so on – everything indicates strength,
courage and firmness. The small beard à la Dumas’s musketeers adds
a touch of the wandering knight – an image of Bruno that by now
had begun to be spread in plays and operas – but could of course also
be derived from the description of him in the protocols of the
Venetian trial.
There is, however, no doubt as to the main source of inspiration for
the modelling of Bruno’s head. The peculiar treatment of the hair and the
facial traits are almost copied from one of the most well-known statues
in the history of art: the famous ‘Dying Gaul’ in the Capitoline Museums
(Figure 2.11) – who had already served generations of artists as a model
for heroic males.29 In this particular case one may reasonably suspect that
Masulli had been attracted by the thematic similarity. The brave warrior
who took his own life (and that of his wife) rather than give up his
freedom was probably seen as an exceedingly apt parallel to Bruno.30
When Rome in 1870 had fallen and, together with the rest of the
Papal States, had been incorporated into the kingdom of Italy, the
question of a monument to Bruno in the new capital city was soon
brought up for discussion.31 In 1876, some radical students formed a
committee with the purpose of raising a monument in the Campo de’
Fiori, on the very spot where he was burnt. A public subscription was
launched and, according to the manifesto, the goal was not only to
commemorate one of the innumerable victims of religious fanaticism but
also, and more important, to show the world that ‘the obscurantist
system’ (that is, the Papacy) now lay crushed and impotent.32 The
29Haskell and Penny (1998), pp. 224–7.

30It could be noted that the ‘Dying Gaul’ had (comparatively) recently spent some
time as prisoner too. The statue had been taken to Paris by Napoleon’s troops and was
returned to Rome only in 1816.
31 In fact one of the first acts of the first City Council, in 1870, was to order a bust
of Bruno. It was modelled by a certain Forlivesi and installed in the public gardens at
Monte Pincio a couple of years later. It is best described as a three-dimensional version of
the standard portrait.
32 The manifesto is reproduced in Berggren (1991), pp. 261f.
anticlerical message also dominated the bozzetti that four different

sculptors some years later presented to the City Council for judgement.
None of them were realized, and what remains of these projects are only
a couple of sadly deteriorated small photographs and two brief verbal
descriptions.33 The details of Bruno’s face(s) therefore remain obscure,
even though it seems that all of them repeat the traits of the standard
portrait, at least in terms of haircut and moustache. It is quite clear,
however, that the theme was exactly the same as in the earlier
monuments: all the models exhibit a Bruno admonishing or even
threatening his judges. In several cases the end of the story is likewise
indicated by flames licking his feet (Figure 2.14).
But the monument committee was not in harmony with the times.
Neither the municipal nor the political authorities, nor the majority of
the intellectual bourgeoisie that had once turned Bruno into a symbol of
heroic anticlericalism, were prepared to support this kind of explicitly
anticlerical manifestation any longer. The project immediately met with
strong resistance from the Roman municipal administration itself, which
at the time was dominated by conservative Catholics and moderate
liberals with no intention of upsetting their relations with the Vatican by
allowing the eternalization of a heretic in the city centre. After almost
five long years of fruitless fighting with the authorities, during which it
received very little support from within the political establishment, the
committee gave up its project. This is not to say that anticlericalism was
dead; on the contrary, it proved very much alive during the next phase
of the monument project. But it was no longer part of the official liberal
programme and was brought out of the closet only in particular political
circumstances.
By this time, that is, in the middle of the 1880s, quite a number of
different mental and visual Brunos had made their appearance.
Although Bruno’s status as scientist and philosopher had changed
radically, it was still the standard portrait that illustrated learned books
and encyclopedias. The anticlerical hero and martyr continued his life in
political pamphlets produced by the radical left but was very seldom
visualized. A third image of Bruno, largely a by-product of the
anticlerical one, was that presented in plays, operas, novels and
romances.34 The first instances of this romantic and popularized Bruno
are met with in Germany during the 1840s, and thereafter products in
these genres multiplied rapidly. The principal character is nearly always
depicted as the wandering knight of philosophy, constantly the object of
vicious designs by Jesuits, and making narrow escapes from the cloak-
33 Berggren (1991), pp. 72ff.

34 See Salvestrini (1958).
30 GIORDANO BRUNO
and-dagger murderers sent out by the Curia. This literary Bruno is often
a beautiful and charming young man, sometimes with a small beard (as
in the Naples monument), who dressed as a cavaliere and knew how to
move in high society. A rare example of how he was visualized in this
context (Figure 2.12) shows us Bruno, imprisoned by the Venetian
inquisition, in secret conversation with a mysterious countess – his
mistress – who is staging a complicated and dramatic attempt to
escape.35
The Prophet
There was yet another mental image of Giordano Bruno, one that has
received even less attention from philosophers and historians than that
of the inconvenient anticlerical, namely, Bruno the prophet of a new
religion. To Bruno astronomy, geometry, mathematics and the art of
memory were only so many different ways of obtaining knowledge
about the true nature of the universe. Only by reason is the human
intellect able to acquire the successively higher and more perfect insights
that ultimately lead to a kind of catharsis, a blessed state of illumination,
consciousness and unity with the Supreme Being. There is little doubt
that Bruno regarded himself as in possession of such knowledge, and
that he saw himself as prophet of a new religion – or at least of a new
kind of religious insight.36 During the second part of the nineteenth
century, the interest in this aspect of Bruno’s life and works was
constantly growing among the multitude of religious and quasi-religious
movements that were filling out the spiritual void created by (especially)
the Catholic Church’s incapability of adapting to the requirements of
modern society. Nationalists, rationalists, theosophists, freemasons and
even freethinkers all found him a place in their respective pantheons, as
venerable thinker, illuminated spirit, saint of science, incarnation of a
supreme being or truth, divine messenger or prophet.
In 1884, a second monument committee was constituted in Rome. Its
declared objective was the same as that of its predecessor – erecting a
monument to Bruno in the Campo de’ Fiori – but the tenor of the
manifesto, published the following year, is very different. The
anticlerical battle cries have almost disappeared and Bruno is presented
35 Giordano Bruno (1889). Gino de’ Bini’s lithographs were also sold as separate
sheets.
36 Cf. Bruno’s own words in the dialogue De Immenso et Innumerabilibus: ‘Nam me
Deus altus / Vertentis secli melioris non mediocrem / Destinat, haud veluti media de plebe,
ministrum’ (BOL I: 1, p. 381).
in terms that clearly belong in a religious context.37 A ‘high god’ had

ordered him to ‘awaken the sleeping souls’, to spread the ‘truth’ and the
‘word’ around Europe, and to fulfil his ‘mission’ by dying at the stake in
Rome. The parallel with the life and death of Christ is evident and
spelled out explicitly in other texts by persons who in one way or
another were involved in the monument project: Bruno met his Judas
(Mocenigo), was imprisoned, interrogated, tortured and invited to
abjure, but stayed firm and paid for it with a horrible death on Campo
de’ Fiori (Golgotha) where his spirit was united with the supreme being.
And in the dying flames of the pyre, he reappears as ‘a deity on a white
pedestal’.38
This credo is visualized on the cover of the project publication (Figure
2.13): in the bottom right we find the instruments of torture and a dying
fire, in the centre Bruno’s likeness is carried towards heaven by the
winged genius of victory, and in the bottom left he has reappeared on his
pedestal. The publication also contains a more detailed image of the
planned monument (Figure 2.15). In the statue, a hooded Bruno lifts his
right hand towards heaven while holding in his left a book which is
opened in the direction of an imaginary audience, in other words exactly
the way holy men and prophets are conventionally rendered. The sacral
character is further underlined by the ecclesiastical habit and by the
symbols of martyrdom – laurel wreath and palm frond – on the pedestal.
Now the verbal and the visual images seem to agree perfectly. But was
the message they sent out meant to be taken seriously, that is, as
heretical in the full religious sense of the word, or was this just another
way of challenging the Vatican by dressing political anticlericalism in
clothes borrowed from the church’s own wardrobe? Probably both. The
reading of thousands of letters, official as well as of a more private
nature, between the members of the committee, in which Bruno and his
role in the new ‘religion of reason’ are taken extremely seriously, has
convinced me that we are definitely not dealing with empty rhetorical
formulae. Moreover, many of the numerous commemorations of Bruno
had the character of devotional gatherings, which in several cases
actually ended with the congregation falling down on their knees saying
a prayer to the supreme being – in front of Bruno’s image.39 And a closer
look at the composition of the international honorary committee and
the subcommittees which in the various countries organized the
collection of money for the monument, reveals a large number of
religious freethinkers, freemasons and, not least, theosophists.
37 Giordano Bruno (1885).

38 Levi (1884), p. 133.
39 Berggren (1991), pp. 161f.
32 GIORDANO BRUNO
The man behind both the cover and the model, the Roman sculptor
Ettore Ferrari, was not only one of the leaders of the left-wing radicals
in parliament and a fervent anticlerical, but also a freemason. When the
monument project started, he was member of the Italian freemasonry’s
High Council and would later become its Grand Master. To freemasons,
Bruno had a special significance. He was in fact regarded as one of the
founding fathers of modern freemasonry, one of the greatest illuminati
of all times, one who was capable of revealing to human kind the great
secrets of the Grande Architetto dell’Universo. And Ferrari, who had a
clear tendency to mysticism, soon developed a deeply personal relation
to Bruno and especially his more occult works (his first-born son was in
fact baptized Giordano Bruno).
Ferrari struggled long with the problem of how to visualize ‘his’
Bruno. The first attempt, on the cover of the project publication, shows
us a modified version of the standard portrait, with an older and tougher
Bruno, whose unruly hair probably betrays influence from the Naples
monument. It is a face that goes well with the anticlerical hero image but
hardly with the Messianic figure of the manifesto. Ferrari was not
content with it. For almost a year he had in fact been searching for
alternative images. One that he had particularly wanted to see was a
painting owned by Domenico Berti (Bruno’s Italian biographer).
However, Berti made difficulties and in the end, after a long
correspondence, Ferrari lost hope of ever gaining access to it and fell
back on the standard portrait. He was then forced to remodel the whole
statue completely. A heretic ostentatiously preaching his sermon simply
had no chance of surviving a vote in the city council, and the
iconography of the monument now became an object of political
negotiations. Ferrari produced a series of designs which were all turned
down, and it was only after lengthy consultations with the leaders of
several parliamentary groups – among them Domenico Berti, Silvio
Spaventa, Marco Minghetti and Ruggiero Bonghi – that a new model
was finally agreed upon in December 1886 (Figure 2.16). In it Bruno is
still wearing monastic dress with upturned hood, but his arms are now
folded over a closed book; the facial traits are coarse, with bushy
moustache and eyebrows, and deeply set, staring eyes. The active,
communicative orator has completely vanished and what remains, and
what was in the end to be realized, is – at least superficially – just the
figure of a passive, scholarly monk.
Probably some time during the process that produced this figure,
Ferrari painted a small picture showing a Bruno in approximately the
same pose and in the same attire (Figure 2.17). The face, however, is
quite different. His head is slightly inclined, the eyes are closed, and the
sharp, thin, almost translucent features are totally relaxed; the whole
apparition is one of inner concentration and peace. We have seen the
same expression many times before, in religious paintings representing
Christian martyrs calmly waiting to be torn to pieces by ferocious beasts
in the Coliseum, or in the faces of holy men or women lost in
contemplation. A particularly good sculptural parallel is, and was,
found just a few blocks from Ferrari’s studio, in the church of Santa
Maria degli Angeli. The statue in question (Figure 2.18), executed by
Jean Antoine Houdon in 1766, represents none other than Saint Bruno,
a mystic and ascetic of the twelfth century, most renowned as founder of
the order of Carthusians. Provided with the same hood, the saint and the
heretic would appear almost identical.
The raised hood was not merely a device that Ferrari used to place
Bruno in a religious context, it also carried at least two other symbolic
meanings worthy of notice. In Christianity, the uncovered head is a sign
of devotion and worship, while in the religions of the east, where
freemasons as well as theosophists found their spiritual inspiration, it is
the reverse. And in ancient Roman times one covered one’s head when
making a sacrifice,40 which is exactly what Bruno – as represented in the
statue – was about to do. The statue was in fact originally planned and
designed for a position on the western part of the Campo de’ Fiori, from
which it would have been looking eastwards (and not, as today, standing
in the middle of the square, looking west, that is, towards the Vatican).
In other words, it should have been standing on the spot where Bruno,
after having been led in procession from the prison in Tor di Nona,
entered the open square and beheld the place of the execution. His
reaction in this moment, as Ferrari visualized it in the painting, was not
one of horror and pain, but the peaceful, illuminated resignation of a
holy man fulfilling a divine mission.41
In the finished statue, however, we meet a worn-down, hollow-eyed
man of flesh and blood, unshaved and with rings under his eyes, filled
with apprehension rather than divine illumination (Figure 2.19). Still I
think this Bruno should also be thought of in terms of religious imagery.
If Ferrari’s first statue was modelled as a religious prophet, or perhaps
even as a resurrected, triumphant Christ, and if the painting presents us
with a contemplative saint, or an ‘Agnus Dei’, then it would appear
quite reasonable to argue that the final statue gives us a parallel to the
suffering but determined human being who dragged his cross up to
40 Freier (1963), ad indicem.

41 When, shortly before the inauguration, the siting and orientation of the monument
were changed, this carefully calculated relation (which also included the placing and
motifs of the bronze reliefs) was completely lost. See Berggren (1991), pp. 229ff.
34 GIORDANO BRUNO
Golgotha. The point I want to make by pursuing this line of reasoning

is that Ferrari’s mental image of Bruno was clearly that of an
otherworldly being, a true ‘messenger of the stars’, and that he
consistently used well-established Christian formulae to visualize it. The
two first images probably come close to what he had really wanted to
express, but then political realities forced him to retreat from this
position and to find an ‘iconographic compromise’ acceptable to a
whole range of political factions with divergent ideas of Bruno.
Surprisingly enough, he actually managed to mould all the different
images of Bruno – the philosophic, the anticlerical and the prophetic –
into one single heroic statue. It is an ‘open’ work of art in the sense that
every beholder can, and to a certain extent must, use his or her own keys
for the interpretation of it.
Nonetheless, it took years of complicated diplomatic manoeuvring
and intense political fighting before the Bruno monument could be
unveiled in Campo de’ Fiori, on 9 July 1889 (Figure 2.21). By then the
Vatican had used all possible means to try to stop the project. It was
declared a work of the satanic forces of social disintegration, promoted
by an international conspiracy of Protestants, Jews and freemasons,
with the ultimate goal of destroying the Papacy, and, in connection with
the inauguration, the rumour was spread that the enormous sacrilege
would force the Pope to quit Rome for good.42 The most significant
results of these efforts were, however, that the project became known all
over the world and that Bruno’s reputation not only grew but also
spread to new segments of society. Workmen’s unions, political clubs,
liberal schools and universities were named after the martyr of free
thought, quasi-religious societies and religious sects incorporated the
mystic in their genealogies and cults. During these years, the amount of
literature on Bruno grew almost exponentially and the Ferrarian image
was published in books, magazines and newspapers all over the globe.43
Ferrari’s statue was also spread in the form of small plaster replicas
and copied wholesale or in part, for display in homes, offices, social
premises and temples. For several decades, he regularly received orders
of busts and statues repeating the features of the monument statue in
more or less noble materials.44 Other artists also profited from the great
42See Berggren (1991), ch. 4.

43Cf. Salvestrini (1958). It should be noted, however, that this otherwise extremely
useful volume is far from complete when it comes to the wealth of more or less polemical
publications of the period in question.
44 See the correspondence of Ferrari in Archivio Centrale dello Stato, Rome: Archivio
Ettore Ferrari, B. 21–29. The municipality of Helmstedt had made a request in 1888, but
the initiative came to nothing due to the failure of a public subscription.
demand, producing images that followed Ferrari’s newly established

formula very closely. But sometimes we meet with interesting
amalgamations of old and new. One example is the Neapolitan artist
Edoardo Matania, who in 1888 had published an image of Bruno in
which he combined a ‘heroic’ version of the standard image with the
anticlerical pose of the Naples monument. In 1889, he ‘updated’ his
image to the new iconographic standard by providing it with a
raised hood (Figure 2.20). Especially during the years 1887–90, which
saw the fiercest political combat over the monument project, Bruno also
figured quite frequently in Italian satirical cartoons – in daily
newspapers as well as humorous periodicals – but without any
significant innovations being made. On the contrary, it was always
either the standard portrait or Ferrari’s hooded statue that commented
on the contemporary political situation. In some instances the
inspiration seems to derive from the Naples monument, but then always
in the anticlerical press – where the image of the Nolan was often
furnished with a halo indicating his status as the saint of Reason and
Science.
The success of the Campo de’ Fiori statue was due not only to
Ferrari’s skilful and clever design but also to a number of other, different
although interrelated, circumstances. The timing was right: among
liberals all over the western world there was a strong anticlerical current
that found one of its important expressions in the monument project.
More than 50 per cent of the total amount collected for the purpose
actually came from outside Italy, most of it from Great Britain and
America, but considerable sums were also delivered from countries like
Argentina, Germany and Sweden. That the monument was erected in
the Capital of Catholicism, and precisely at the scene of the ‘great
ecclesiastical crime’,45 gave it the character of a funerary shrine built for
veneration and cult – and it was often referred to as an anticlerical, or
civil, equivalent of St Peters. Thus, favourable ideological conjunctures,
strong symbolical charge and wide diffusion in the international press
rapidly turned Ferrari’s statue into an icon to which all subsequent
images of Bruno one way or another must relate.
Conclusion
During the course of the nineteenth century, no less than three different
iconographical schemes for the representation of Bruno were
45 Draper (1875), p. 181.

36 GIORDANO BRUNO
constructed, all of them answering to special needs and demands in

different ideological contexts. The following century, and especially its
last decades, certainly brought us some artistic variations on the themes
but no innovations that have gained any degree of general acceptance.
The great majority of Bruno images from this period, however, are either
straightforward or somewhat digitally doctored reproductions of
Mayer’s standard portrait (1824), Masulli’s monument in Naples (1864)
or Ferrari’s in Rome (1889). An interesting observation is that these
three continue to dominate the contexts for which they were originally
developed. The Mayer portrait is still the most common where at least
an illusion of ‘authenticity’ is desired, as in philosophical textbooks and
encyclopedias – although it should be noted that in Catholic
publications the rather unattractive engraving of 1715 seems to be
preferred. Anticlerical groups on the political left – communists,
autonomi and others – are still the main users of the Naples Bruno.
Ferrari’s statue also still bears the stamp of anticlericalism, particularly
in Italy, but it is nevertheless used and reproduced in a wide variety of
contexts. One aspect of the Roman monument that has recently come to
the fore, again, is that of a cult image. A regular visitor to the Campo
de’ Fiori on the anniversary of Bruno’s death at the stake cannot have
failed to notice the increasing participation of occultists, mystics and
various New Age movements among the habitual commemorators
(beside freethinkers, freemasons and hardcore anticlericals). Those of us
who were there on 17 February 2000, witnessing how people who had
flown in from all corners of the earth contemplated, kneeled and lit
candles in front of the statue, covered the pedestal with flowers and
attached ex-votos to it, may well wonder whether Ferrari and his fellows
of the monument committee would have approved of it or not.
Personally, I think Ferrari would at least have understood the way his
creation was viewed and used – after all, it was designed as a cult image.
The aim of this short and cursory excursion into Giordano Bruno’s
visual history has been to draw attention to the great potential of visual
images as sources of historical knowledge. Although they may fail to
add one single piece of information about the historical person or his
ideas, I believe that I have shown how careful and cautious examination
of images in their relevant contexts may yield otherwise unobtainable
information about circumstances, connections and relations untold or
never committed to writing, or perhaps too complex to verbalize.
Bibliography
Bartholmess, Christian (1846), Jordano Bruno, vol. 1, Paris, Ladrange.

Berggren, Lars (1991), Giordano Bruno på Campo dei Fiori. Ett
monumentprojekt i Rom 1876–1889, Lund, Artifex.
Berggren, Lars and Sjöstedt, Lennart (1996), L’Ombra dei Grandi.
Monumenti e ‘politica monumentale’ a Roma 1870–1895, Rome,
Artemide.
Burke, Peter (1992), The Fabrication of Louis XIV, New Haven, CT,
and London, Yale University Press.
Canone, Eugenio (2000), in Giordano Bruno 1548–1600. Mostra
storico documentaria, Rome, Biblioteca Casanatense, 7 giugno–30
settembre 2000, Florence, Olschki.
Di sei statuette d’illustri italiani fatte da Bartolomeo Ferrari al nob.
Antonio Papadopoli (1862), Venice, Antonelli.
Draper, John W. (1875), History of the Conflict between Religion and
Science, London, King & Co.
Firpo, Luigi (1964), L’iconografia di Tommaso Campanella, Florence,
Sansoni.
Freier, Heinrich (1964), ‘Caput Velare’, dissertation Eberhard-Karls-
Universität, Tübingen.
Frith, I. [Isabella Oppenheim] (1887), Life of Giordano Bruno the
Nolan, London, Trübner & Co.
Gentile, Giovanni (1907), Giordano Bruno: Opere italiane, I, Dialoghi
metafisici, Bari, Laterza.
Gentile, Giovanni (1942), Gino Capponi e la cultura italiana nel secolo
XIX, Florence, Sansoni.
Gervasi, Nicola (ed.) (1813), Biografia degli uomini illustri del Regno di
Napoli ornata de loro rispettivi ritratti, compilata da diversi letterati
nazionali. Pubblicato da Nicola Gervasi, calcografo, vol. 1, Naples.
Giordano Bruno. Numero unico a benefizio del fondo per il monumento
(1885), Rome, Tipografia Nazionale.
Giordano Bruno. Scene storico-romantiche del secolo XVI. Memorie
inedite d’un gesuita (1889), Rome, Perino.
Haskell, Francis (1993), History and its Images. Art and the Interpretation
of the Past, New Haven, CT, and London, Yale University Press.
Haskell, Francis and Penny, Nicholas (1998), Taste and The Antique.
The Lure of Classical Sculpture 1500–1900, New Haven, CT, and
London, Yale University Press.
Iconografia italiana degli uomini e delle donne celebri dall’epoca del
risorgimento delle scienze e delle arti fino ai nostri giorni (1837), vol.
2, Milan, Locatelli.
38 GIORDANO BRUNO
Levi, David (1884), Il Profeta o Roma il 20 Settembre 1870, vol. 2:

‘L’Occidente’, Torino, Unione Tipografico-Editrice.
Morselli, Enrico (1888), Giordano Bruno. Commemorazione
pronunziata nell’aula magna del Collegio Romano, 26 Febbraio
1888, Turin-Naples, Roux.
Neue Bibliotec oder Nachricht und Urtheile von neuen Büchern und
allerhand zur Gelehrsamkeit dienenden Sachen (1715), no. 38,
Frankfurt and Leipzig.
Nowicki, Andrzej (1970), Giulio Cesare Vanini (1585–1619). La sua
filosofia dell’uomo e delle opere umane, Wroclaw-Warszawa-
Krakow, Ossolineum.
Nowicki, Andrzej (1970), ‘Bruno nel Settecento’, Atti dell’Accademia di
scienze morali e politiche, 80, Naples, pp. 199–230.
Previti, Luigi (1887), Giordano Bruno e i suoi tempi, Prato, Tipografia
Giachetti.
Rixner, Thaddä Anselm and Siber, Thaddä (1824), Leben und
Lehrmeinungen berühmter Physiker am Ende des XVI. und am
Anfang des XVII. Jahrhunderts, als Beyträge zur Geschichte der
Physiologie in engerer und weiterer Bedeutung, V. Heft: ‘Jordanus
Brunus’, Sulzbach, Seidel Kunst-und Buchhandlung.
Said, Edward W. (1978), Orientalism, London, Routledge and Kegan
Paul.
Salvestrini, Virgilio (1958), Bibliografia di Giordano Bruno
(1582–1950), Florence, Sansoni Antiquariato.
Schopenhauer, Arthur (1978), Gesammelte Briefe, Bonn, Bouvier.
Schröder, Eric August (1849), Handbok i Philosophiens Historia,
Uppsala, Wahlström & Co.
Wagner, Gottlob Heinrich Adolph (1830), Opere di Giordano Bruno
Nolano, Leipzig, Weidmann.
Zimmerman von Wayhingen, Johann Jacob (1690), Scriptura sacra
Copernizans, seu potius astronomia Copernico, Hamburg-Altona.
2.1 Anonymous painting (oil on canvas, 117 x 94 cm), allegedly representing

Giordano Bruno.
40 GIORDANO BRUNO
2.2 Giordano Bruno, engraving by 2.3 Galileo Galilei, engraving by

Raffaele (?) Morghen after a Ottavio Leoni, 1624.
design by Aniello d’Aloisi,
1813.
2.4 Giordano Bruno, engraving 2.5 Giordano Bruno, lithograph by

attributed to Johann Adam Carl Meyer, 1824.
Delsenbach, 1715.
2.6 Giordano Bruno, xylograph by Caterina

Piotti Pirola, 1837.
2.7 Statue representing Giordano Bruno in prison,

lithograph by M. Fanoli.
42 GIORDANO BRUNO
2.8 Giordano Bruno, marble statue 2.9 Giordano Bruno, marble statue
in Nola by Raffaele da in Naples by Pietro Masulli,
Crescenzo, 1867. 1864.
2.10 Detail of Figure 2.9. 2.11 The Dying Gaul, probably

executed in Pergamon c. 200
BC.
2.12 Giordano Bruno in the prison of the Venetian Inquisition, lithograph by

Gino de’ Bini, 1889.
44 GIORDANO BRUNO
2.13 The cover of Giordano Bruno. Numero Unico a benefizio del fondo per
il monumento, 1885, design by Ettore Ferrari.
2.14 Giordano Bruno, bozzetto for 2.15 Giordano Bruno, model for a
a monument in the Campo de’ monument in the Campo de’
Fiori, by Riccardo Grifoni, Fiori, design by Ettore Ferrari,
1879. 1885.
2.16 Giordano Bruno, first plaster

model for the Campo de’ Fiori
monument, Ettore Ferrari, 1886.
46 GIORDANO BRUNO
2.17 Giordano Bruno, watercolour representing a statue of the same, by

Ettore Ferrari, c. 1886–88.
2.18 Saint Bruno, marble statue in S. Maria degli Angeli, Rome, by Jean
Antoine Houdon, 1766.
48 GIORDANO BRUNO
2.19 Giordano Bruno, detail of the statue in Campo de’ Fiori, Rome, by
Ettore Ferrari, 1888.
2.20 Giordano Bruno, lithograph by Edoardo

Matania, 1889.
2.21 The inauguration of the Bruno monument in Campo de’ Fiori,

Rome, on 9 June 1889.
CHAPTER THREE
Philosophy versus Religion and

Science versus Religion: the Trials
of Bruno and Galileo*
Maurice A. Finocchiaro
Introduction
The relationship between Bruno and Galileo can and has been studied
from many angles. An obvious one is the comparison and contrast of
Bruno’s Ash Wednesday Supper and Galileo’s Dialogue on the Two Chief
World Systems. If such an obvious topic is not the subject of the present
chapter, that is not because I have any doubts about its fruitfulness and
importance. On the contrary, I am convinced by Giovanni Aquilecchia’s
and Hilary Gatti’s recent articles1 that there is a significant historical and
philosophical connection between these two books. Indeed, I would go
further and claim that Bruno’s Supper is extremely helpful for
understanding Galileo’s Dialogue, and so deserves careful reading even if
one takes a Galilean vantage point and is primarily concerned with
understanding Galileo’s work. That is, the connection between the
Supper and the Dialogue is important not only for those who are
interested in Bruno’s influence, and not only for those concerned with
Galileo’s precursors, but also for those focused on Galileo per se.2
However, as stated, this is not the subject of my present investigation.
* I gratefully acknowledge that the research for this paper was supported in part by a
grant from the National Science Foundation, USA (no. SBR-9729117).
1 See Aquilecchia (1995a; 1995b) and Gatti (1997b). See also Aquilecchia (1955) and
Massa (1973).
2 An obvious example is that in the Dialogue Galileo expresses scepticism about
locating the sun at the centre of the universe, on the grounds that it is unclear that the
universe has a centre; but he is noncommittal about claiming that the universe is infinite,
presumably because he does not want to be associated with Bruno. A less obvious example
is that at the end of Day 1 of the Dialogue, Galileo describes and defends several
similarities between the earth and the moon, but goes on to clarify that these do not
include the existence of life on the moon because there is no water there; again, this is a
way of distancing himself from Bruno by making sure that the geokinetic thesis is not
equated with the claim of a plurality of (inhabited) worlds. Cf. Finocchiaro (1997): 89,
109–11 and 222.
52 GIORDANO BRUNO
Much work on the Bruno–Galileo connection could be classified as a

case study in the problem of the historical and philosophical relationship
between the scientific revolution and that cluster of movements that go
by such labels as Hermeticism, occultism, magic, astrology, alchemy and
the cabala. In such an approach, one takes Galileo as a paradigm figure
of science and Bruno as emblematic of Hermeticism and the like.3 I am
not saying, of course, that the Hermeticist interpretation of Bruno is
correct,4 but rather that even those works that criticize it may be viewed
as contributions to such a case study in the interaction of science and
Hermeticism, in so far as they would be reinforcing the thesis that the
examples of Bruno and Galileo show that Hermeticism did not have a
formative influence on modern science. Be that as it may, my point here
is that that is not what I plan to explore in this chapter.
Another fascinating and important topic is the role that Bruno’s trial
had in Galileo’s troubles with the Inquisition. Here again, although I can
appreciate the contributions of those who have written on the topic,5
and although I am convinced that a full explanation of Galileo’s trial
should take into account Bruno as a factor, there is nothing I can
contribute to this topic at the moment.
The Galileo–Bruno connection could also be studied from the point
of view of the similarities and differences in the aftermath of their
respective condemnations. We all know, of course, that each trial
generated a subsequent cause célèbre hinging on the documentation,
interpretation and evaluation of the original episode, and that each trial
came to be mythologized and symbolized from various perspectives
during the various cultural struggles of the last four centuries, especially
in the context of the faith versus reason controversy.6 But again, that is
beyond the scope of this chapter.
Instead, the aim of this chapter is a comparison and contrast of their
respective trials.7 This is a subject that interests me partly because it
3See for example, Feingold (1984), Westman (1977) and Yates (1964).
4For a plausible critique, see Gatti (1999).
5 See, for example, Garin (1975), pp. 255–81, Gosselin and Lerner (1975; 1977) and
Lerner and Gosselin (1986).

6 For some recent partial accounts, see Finocchiaro (1999) and Gatti (1997a); for a
classic source on Bruno’s case, see Gentile (1907); for what may be the first publication on
both, see Hinsdale (1829); other useful accounts are Barni (1862), Blind (1889), Brinton
and Davidson (1890), Fei (1935), Gallo (1932), Mondolfo (1947), Ricci (1990),
Spampanato (1907), Whitman (1890) and Wilson (1878).
7 A look at Salvestrini’s (1958) Bibliografia reveals that in the relatively short list of works
on the Bruno–Galileo connection (30 out of 1750 entries), those dealing with a critical
comparison of the two trials are surprisingly few (no more than half a dozen). Of course, in the
past half century since that bibliography was last updated, such critical comparisons have
become more common; see, for example, Blumenberg (1987), pp. 353–432 and Benitez (1999).
PHILOSOPHY VERSUS RELIGION AND SCIENCE VERSUS RELIGION 53
3.1 Frontispiece of Galileo Galilei, Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del
mondo, 1632.
54 GIORDANO BRUNO
represents the most striking and obvious point of contact between the
two figures, especially for someone like myself who approaches the
Bruno–Galileo connection from the side of Galileo. Another reason is
that some of the above mentioned subtopics presuppose this one, in the
sense that knowledge of the influence of Bruno’s trial on Galileo’s or of
the interaction of the two aftermaths depends on knowing what
happened in each trial in a way in which the latter knowledge does not
depend on the former. Moreover, knowledge of the trials is even relevant
to the science versus Hermeticism issue. For example, the case for
Bruno’s Hermeticism would be strengthened if it were true, as Yates
asserted, that ‘the legend that Bruno was prosecuted as a philosophical
thinker, was burned for his daring views on innumerable worlds or on
the movement of the earth, can no longer stand’,8 and that ‘it was
probably mainly as a magician that Bruno was burned, and as the
propagator throughout Europe of some mysterious magico-religious
movement [which] may have been in the nature of a secret Hermetic
sect, and may be connected with the origins of Rosicrucianism or of
Freemasonry’.9 However, Yates’s interpretation is not correct, as my
account of Bruno’s trial will try to show.
But, worthwhile as it may be to criticize a well-known and widely
accepted thesis by a great scholar, I want to place my account of the two
trials into the context of a larger issue. It is this. If the trial of Galileo
epitomizes the conflict between science and religion, then the trial of
Bruno may be said to epitomize the clash between philosophy and
religion. Similarly, just as many have criticized the science–religion
conflictual interpretation of Galileo’s trial as an oversimplification, so
one could regard as oversimplified the conflictual account of Bruno’s
trial in terms of philosophy versus religion. However, the time may be
ripe for pointing out that calling such conflictual interpretations
oversimplified may itself be an oversimplification.
My point would be that on the one hand we must admit that most
human actions and historical developments are complex phenomena
that have many defining aspects and a multiplicity of contributing
causes; on the other hand, it is useful to distinguish an oversimplification
from a simplification, and it would be wrong-headed to deny that
simplifications can be proper and can contribute considerably to
historical, philosophical and scientific understanding. Applied to our
case, this distinction implies that if we are willing to take as viable
simplifications rather than flawed oversimplifications the conflictual
accounts of the two trials, then their comparison and contrast should
8 Yates (1964): 355.

9 Yates (1973): 542; see also Yates (1967).
enable us to shed some light on the similarities and differences between

science and philosophy.
One final caveat. Some might feel twinges of anachronism about
speaking of science in the case of Galileo and point out that the proper
term would be natural philosophy. Now, I could be easily persuaded to
concede the linguistic, terminological point here, but I do not think that
this concession would affect the substance of the issue. For if one of the
proper relata in Galileo’s case is natural philosophy, then the
corresponding one in Bruno’s case would be metaphysical philosophy
and the potential contrast would remain. Then the instructive contrast
would be between natural philosophy and metaphysical philosophy,
namely between natural philosophy of the Galilean kind and
metaphysical philosophy of the Brunian kind, or in short between
science (in a restricted sense referring to natural science) and philosophy
(in a restricted sense referring to metaphysics or first philosophy).
With these clarifications in mind and these preliminaries out of the
way, we can now go on to compare and contrast the details of the two
trials to see whether any light can be shed on these issues. I shall begin
with an account of Bruno’s trial.10 Then I shall give a shorter account of
Galileo’s trial.11 I shall go on to briefly address questions of comparison
and contrast. And I shall conclude with a discussion of interpretive
issues, primarily whether and how the two trials can be construed in terms
of philosophy versus religion and science versus religion.
Bruno’s Trial
In 1591 while in Frankfurt, Bruno received a letter from Venetian

aristocrat Giovanni Mocenigo inviting him to go to Venice to teach the
nobleman the arts of memory and invention. Bruno accepted, and so in
October he moved to Italy. However, he did not immediately enter the
service of his new patron; instead he went to Padua for about two
months. Eventually, he moved to Mocenigo’s house and started tutoring
him. But their relationship quickly turned sour.
On 23 May 1592, Mocenigo filed a written complaint against Bruno
with the Venetian Inquisition. Bruno was arrested the same day. Two
days later Mocenigo filed a second complaint, and four days after that
a third one.
10 It should be obvious to any student of Bruno that my account relies heavily on Firpo
(1993); I have also taken into account Spruit (1998), Ricci (1999) and Quaglioni (2000).
11 It should be obvious to any student of Galileo that my account in this paper relies
heavily on Finocchiaro (1989).

56 GIORDANO BRUNO
Mocenigo’s charges may be summarized as follows.12 The nobleman

alleged (charge no. 1) that Bruno spoke ill of the Catholic faith, Church
and officials; (2) that he held erroneous opinions on the Trinity, the
divinity of Christ, and incarnation; (3) that he held erroneous opinions
about the facts of Jesus’ life and death; (4) that he held erroneous
opinions on transubstantiation and on the holy mass; (5) that he
maintained the existence of a plurality of worlds and their eternity; (6)
that he believed in metempsychosis and the transmigration of human
souls into animals; (7) that he approved of and practised the magical
arts; (8) that he denied the virginity of Mary, the mother of Jesus; (9)
that he condoned and indulged in sexual sins; (25) that he spoke ill of
the doctors of the Church; (26) that he denied that sins deserve
punishment; and (27) that he had a previous criminal record with the
Inquisition.
As a result of these accusations, the Inquisition immediately started
conducting interrogations of the defendant. Within a ten-day period at
the end of May and beginning of June there were six formal
examinations, and then a seventh one at the end of July. These
depositions are extremely complex, interesting and informative, and
they deserve extended analysis. Here suffice it to say the following.
Generally speaking, Bruno denied all charges except the two dealing
with the doctrine of the universe and the doctrine of the soul. In regard
to these, he explained his views and justified himself by saying that he
was speaking and reasoning as a philosopher. His rebuttals ranged from
flat denials to more or less qualified ones. For example, he adamantly
rejected the charge that he did not believe in the virginity of Mary.13 And
regarding the Trinity, he admitted having had doubts and having felt
difficulties in trying to make sense of the mystery of three persons in one
God, but he argued that these were internal private questionings which
did not amount to disbelief, public rejection or the holding of erroneous
beliefs.
At this stage of the proceedings, the Inquisition also conducted
interrogations of four witnesses. Three had been named by Mocenigo: a
12 See Firpo (1993: 16) for nos 1–8 and 25–27; and Firpo (1993: 21) for no. 9. My
numbering and formulation of the charges against Bruno follow rather closely the
numbering and formulation given by Firpo (1993), so much so that many of my
descriptions are simply translations of Firpo’s wording. However, he formally identifies
only 24 charges, whereas I have found it useful to expand the list to 40 by including a few
other incidental charges as well as the censures of Bruno’s books, which Firpo discusses
but does not treat as additional charges. Thus, what here I label charges nos 25–27 are
three of Mocenigo’s charges which Firpo (1993: 16) chooses not to denote with numbers
because Bruno was able to easily defend himself from them.
13 Cf. Firpo (1993): 175–6.
book dealer named Giambattista Ciotti, a second book dealer named

Jacobus Brictanus and the well-known Venetian aristocrat Andrea
Morosini; not one of them supported Mocenigo’s charges. By contrast,
the witness named by Bruno, Dominican friar Domenico da Nocera, did
testify in his favour.
Although Mocenigo’s accusations were thus generally denied by
Bruno and unsupported by other witnesses, two relatively damaging
things did emerge out of Bruno’s own depositions, besides his views on
the universe and on the soul, namely his life of apostasy (charge no. 10)
and his record of controversial author. From Bruno the Inquisition
indirectly learned such details of his biography as these: that he had once
been a Dominican friar in Naples and Rome, where he had had
problems with the Inquisition, and then he had left the order; that for
15 years he had wandered throughout Europe, abandoning the practice
of Catholicism and consorting with Protestants in such places as
Geneva, London and Wittenberg; and that he regularly read books
forbidden by the Index. And the Inquisition also learned that Bruno had
authored a considerable number of books; that his books dealt with
highly controversial topics; that they contained highly unorthodox
views; that they potentially had heretical implications; and that they had
often been published with falsified imprints (for example, Venice instead
of London).
Bruno must have realized that such admissions and revelations were
bound to lead to more serious trouble. Thus, several weeks after the
initial depositions, during the interrogation held on 30 July 1592 he
confessed some wrongdoing, expressed sorrow, showed a willingness to
undergo some punishment, begged forgiveness and promised to reform
himself.14 The practice of the Inquisition was such that this act of
submission ensured that his life would be spared.
However, the trial did not come to an end then because when the
central office of the Inquisition in Rome was informed about the case,
they thought it was important enough to want to handle it directly
themselves. They thus requested that Bruno be extradited to Rome.
Because of the independence of the Republic of Venice, such extradition
required the approval of the Venetian government and was usually
denied in accordance with Venetian law. On the other hand, the law
allowed exceptions. And so, eventually, the Venetian government yielded
to the Inquisition argument based on the fact that Bruno was not a
Venetian citizen and on the allegation that the Roman Inquisition had
started proceedings against Bruno a long time earlier. After about six
14 Cf. Firpo (1993): 198–9.

58 GIORDANO BRUNO
months of negotiations, Bruno was transferred to Rome in February

1593.
Nothing significant happened until the autumn when a new
complaint was filed against Bruno with the Venetian Inquisition. This
time the plaintiff was a Capuchin friar named Fra Celestino da Verona,
who had been a fellow prisoner of Bruno in Venice. Here it is important
to add that Celestino had already undergone a trial, condemnation and
abjuration with the Inquisition in Rome in 1587; that he found himself
in the Inquisition prison in Venice in 1592–93; and that he would later
be tried again in Rome 1599 and burned alive at the stake five months
before Bruno.15 We will see later that the Inquisition did take into
account the quality and reliability of its sources and informants, but for
now we will focus on this new development.
Celestino repeated some of the accusations that had been made by
Mocenigo but added several new ones. That is, the Capuchin friar also
charged16 (11) that Bruno maintained that Jesus had sinned; (12) that
Bruno held erroneous opinions about hell; (13) that he held erroneous
opinions about Cain and Abel; (14) that he had spoken ill of Moses; (15)
that he had spoken ill of the prophets; (16) that he had denied that the
Church’s dogmas are credible; (17) that he disapproved of praying to the
saints; (18) that he had spoken ill of the breviary; (19) that he had a
habit of uttering blasphemies and displaying blasphemous gestures; and
(20) that he planned to burn down the monastery and escape if he
should be forced to rejoin the Dominican order.
The plaintiff also named three witnesses who had been held in the
same prison as himself and Bruno: a Carmelite friar named Giulio da
Salò; a Neapolitan carpenter by the name of Francesco Vaia; and
someone named Matteo de Silvestris. One of these witnesses in turn
named a fourth fellow prisoner, whose name was Francesco Graziano.
These four witnesses were immediately interrogated by the Venetian
Inquisition, and they confirmed almost all of Celestino’s and many of
Mocenigo’s previous accusations. Two relatively new accusations were
also added: De Silvestris charged (21) that Bruno held in contempt holy
relics, while Graziano charged (22) that Bruno disapproved of the
veneration of sacred images. Having collected these four depositions, the
Venetian Inquisition sent them to Rome together with Celestino’s
complaint.
During the same period (autumn 1593), the Roman Inquisition began
its own examination of Bruno, subjecting him to seven distinct
interrogations. The first one, or the eighth one since his original arrest
15 Firpo (1993): 43–5.

16 Firpo (1993): 48.
in Venice, dealt with Mocenigo’s charges. The next five depositions

(ninth through to thirteenth) involved the new group of charges by
Celestino and the new witnesses. The fourteenth interrogation examined
once again the plurality of worlds and the infinity of the universe. The
fifteenth deposition dealt with the question of the magical arts.17
Generally speaking, Bruno denied all new charges except for the one
about blasphemy, in regard to which he confessed to some occasional
and minor transgressions. He continued to reject all the old charges
except for those dealing with the philosophical doctrines of the universe
and of the soul. And he also added various interesting nuances and
qualifications about the plurality of worlds18 and about the magical
arts.19
The proceedings so far ended what may be called the accusatory
phase of the trial and were followed by what may be called the re-
examination phase. In this next phase, first the Inquisition’s prosecuting
attorney, Marcello Filonardi, compiled a systematic list of charges
against Bruno based on the initial examination of all plaintiffs and
witnesses.20 Then Bruno was given a copy of Filonardi’s list of charges
(edited to delete names), and was required to compile a suggested
questionnaire for the re-examination of the witnesses.21 Next, in the first
three months of 1594, the Inquisition in Venice conducted re-
examinations of the plaintiffs and of all the significant witnesses who
were available: Mocenigo, Celestino, Graziano, de Silvestris and Ciotti.
The aim here was twofold, namely to try to determine whether a
particular testifier knew anything about charges which he had not
mentioned in the initial phase but had been mentioned by others, and to
check the consistency of his new deposition with his own earlier one.
Almost all of the charges were confirmed in the sense that they were
supported by more than one person. And one new accusation emerged
during Graziano’s re-examination when he charged (23) that Bruno
denied the truth of the story that three kings had paid homage to the
baby Jesus.
In the spring and summer of 1594 copies of the proceedings were
made. One of these was given to Bruno to use for his defence. He wrote
an 80-page memorandum for this purpose, and submitted it in December.
17 Firpo (1993): 60–61; Summary, 196–7. The latter is a reference to the numbered
paragraphs in the Summary of Bruno’s trial, as found in Mercati (1942): 55–119 and in
Firpo (1993): 247–304.
18 Summary, 93–7.
19 Summary, 122–3.
20 Summary, 238; Firpo (1993): 63.
21 Summary, 239; Firpo (1993): 63–4.
60 GIORDANO BRUNO
Another development of that year was that Mocenigo filed a fourth

complaint to the effect (24) that in his book Cantus Circaeus, Bruno had
insulted the pope by depicting him as a pig. Thus Bruno duly underwent
his sixteenth interrogation regarding this charge and the latest one by
Graziano regarding the adoration of the Magi. Bruno denied both
accusations.
The proceedings were now ripe for the next phase, namely the
evaluation of the evidence by the Congregation of the Holy Office and
its consultants. In January and February 1595, at several meetings of
this congregation presided by Pope Clement VIII, the proceedings of
Bruno’s trial were read. It soon became obvious that Bruno’s books were
an integral part of the trial, and so the Inquisition ordered that a formal
censure of them be produced by its consultants, so that the trial could
proceed further. However, the censure of Bruno’s books proved to be a
very difficult task. Part of the problem was their sheer number. Another
was the problem of obtaining copies of the books. The Inquisition never
did collect more than about half a dozen of them. A full year and a half
after the initial decision to censure the books, in September 1596 the
Inquisition decided to appoint three additional consultants to help its
regular consultants with the task.
In early 1597, about two years after being commissioned, the book
censures were apparently ready. These documents have not survived, but
we do know that they amounted to 16 pages. The plan was to give the
defendant a copy of the censures, but only after one more interrogation
(the seventeenth) conducted by the inquisitors with the benefit of the
censures. This deposition focused on the question of the Trinity and
incarnation, regarding which Mocenigo’s charge had not been
confirmed by any other witnesses, and on the question of the plurality
of worlds and infinity of the universe, regarding which Bruno had
admitted holding the doctrine.22 Bruno’s answers were the same as
before. After he was given the censures, for the greater part of 1597,
Bruno underwent a long series of interrogations in which he replied to
the censures of his books. These interrogations may be collectively called
his eighteenth deposition,23 and Bruno’s replies amounted to 60 pages of
the proceedings. Although the original documents of these replies have
also not survived, a summary of them has survived, and on the basis of
this summary we can reconstruct both the censures and the replies.24
The censures focused on 11 theses which can be gleaned from Bruno’s
22
Summary, 28, 29 and 92; Firpo (1993): 78–9.
23
Following Firpo (1993): 79.
24 As indicated in a previous note, this Summary is found in Mercati (1942): 55–119
and in Firpo (1993): 247–304.

books and were deemed objectionable by the Inquisition’s consultants.

The content and the likely location of these theses may be summarized
as follows:25 (30) the universe is eternal, or temporally infinite (De
triplici minimo et mensura, Frankfurt, 1591). (31) The universe is
spatially infinite (De l’infinito, universo e mondi, London, 1584); (32)
there exist an infinite plurality of worlds similar to ours in many ways,
such as having intelligent life (ibid.); (33) the individual immortality of
the human soul is a questionable proposition (Infinito and De la causa,
principio et uno, London, 1584); (34) substance can neither be created
nor destroyed, but only changed in its manifestations, that is, substance
is ‘conserved’ (Causa); (35) the earth moves with the several Copernican
motions (La cena de le Ceneri, London, 1584); (36) the stars are
animate, that is, possess rational souls (Cena); (37) the earth is animate,
that is, possesses a rational soul (Cena); (38) on the question of the
relationship of soul and body, the human soul is not the form of the
body but is a spiritual substance inhabiting the body in a manner
analogous to how a pilot guides a ship (Causa); (39) the Holy Spirit may
be identified with the soul of the universe (Causa); and (40) there is
evidence for the pre-Adamite thesis, that some human beings existed
prior to Adam and Eve (De innumerabilibus, immenso et infigurabili,
seu de universo et mundis, Frankfurt, 1591, and De monade, numero et
figura, Frankfurt, 1591).
By the end of 1597, the examination of Bruno about these theses and
the Inquisition’s censures of them had been concluded. In March of the
following year a summary of the proceedings was compiled, probably by
the Inquisition prosecutor; this is a document that has survived and
provides for us invaluable information about the trial. However, it was
also a useful document for the Inquisition because by then the full
proceedings amounted to about 600 pages (or 300 folios) and had thus
reached unmanageable proportions for the business of the Congregation
of the Holy Office. On the other hand, the summary of this bulk ran to
60 pages (or 30 folios). The rest of 1598 was devoid of proceedings
because the pope and the cardinal-inquisitors were away from Rome for
about nine months, to celebrate the reoccupation of Ferrara.
Before we go on to the next developments, it should be mentioned
that the Inquisition apparently judged that its case against Bruno was
legally weak because five of the six hostile witnesses were themselves
criminals, because Mocenigo’s charges had not been confirmed by any
respectable person and because Bruno himself had denied almost all the
charges. In such cases of inconclusive evidence, standard practice offered
25 Cf. Firpo (1993): 80–85; Summary, 252–61.

62 GIORDANO BRUNO
the option of torture, namely interrogating the defendant while he was

subjected to torture; guilt or innocence would then be established
depending on whether he confessed or denied the charges under these
conditions. This evaluation of the situation is clear and explicit from the
minutes of the Inquisition meeting of 9 September 1599.26
On the other hand, Bruno had already admitted some of the charges,
and the examination of his books (however incomplete and problematic)
had revealed some questionable theses. Thus in January 1599, the
Inquisition decided to explore a middle course: a list of unquestionably
heretical theses definitely held by Bruno would be submitted to him; he
would be requested to reflect on them and he would be asked to declare
himself ready to abjure them. The idea was to try to convict him on a short
list of charges with respect to which the case against him was strongest; if
he co-operated, that might essentially end the trial; if he did not, they
could always resort to torture for all the charges. Here it is important to
note that this proposal was devised by Robert Bellarmine, who at the time
was merely an Inquisition consultant, a position he had held for about two
years; he would be appointed cardinal and member of the Congregation
of the Holy Office two months thereafter (in March 1599).
Within a few days, Bellarmine and the commissary of the Inquisition
had selected eight propositions from Bruno’s books and from the trial
proceedings. These eight theses were not regarded as a complete list, and
the plan was to continue examining his books and depositions more
carefully to identify additional erroneous opinions.27 At its next meeting,
the full Congregation of cardinal-inquisitors presided over by the pope
approved the list for Bruno’s consideration and abjuration. A few days
after that, the defendant was presented with the list of eight theses and was
given six days to decide.
This list has not survived, but it probably corresponded to the list of
censured theses which had been the subject of the latest proceedings. As
we saw, those propositions deal with cosmological, metaphysical and
psychological questions (psychological in the sense of philosophical
psychology or doctrine of the soul). Another thesis included among the
eight probably dealt with the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, and
incarnation; this was the subject of Mocenigo’s second charge, and Bruno
had confessed doubts and difficulties, but had been careful to deny any
positive opinions and to disclaim any relevant writing.28
26Firpo (1993): 96–8 and 327–9.

27On this specific point, as on so many others, I am following Firpo (1993).
28 This is my interpretation of Bellarmine’s talk about the ‘Novatianist’ heresy, in his
report to the Inquisition at the meeting of 24 August 1599; cf. Firpo (1993): 94–6 and
323–5; also cf. note 33 below.
On 25 January 1599, in what may be regarded as Bruno’s nineteenth

deposition, he appeared before the Inquisition and stated that, if the Holy
See and His Holiness declared that the eight propositions were heretical,
he would be ready to retract them; at the same time, he presented a
memorandum in his defence.29
A week later, at a meeting of the Inquisition presided over by the pope,
it was decided to send three officials to Bruno: the general of the
Dominicans, the Inquisition commissary and Bellarmine. They were to tell
Bruno formally that the eight propositions were heretical, their
condemnation being not a recent development but going back to the most
ancient Fathers of the Church; further, that if he was ready to abjure them
as heretical, he would only have to do some penance but that, otherwise,
he would be issued an ultimatum of 40 days to change his mind or be
executed.30
Bruno appeared to submit. For on 15 February 1599, in what may be
regarded as his twentieth deposition, he declared himself ready to admit
that the eight propositions were heretical and to abjure them.31 Moreover,
on 5 April 1599, during the Easter visit to the Inquisition prisoners, the
cardinal-inquisitors received a memorandum from Bruno, in which he
seemed to have written down his retraction.32 In fact, at a subsequent
meeting of the Congregation of the Holy Office (24 August 1599),
Bellarmine reported that Bruno’s 5 April memorandum contained a clear
retraction of the eight theses, except for two points regarding which he
should explain himself better: an aspect of the first thesis involving the
‘Novationist’ heresy (which is probably a reference to the issue of the
Trinity33), and an aspect of the seventh thesis involving the question
whether the relation between body and soul is like that of a pilot and a
ship. The cardinals decided to bring the trial to a conclusion at the first
meeting to be presided over by the pope; they also granted Bruno’s
29 Firpo (1993): 93, 136, n. 21, and 340–41.

30 Firpo (1993): 93–4, 313–15 and 341.
31 Firpo (1993): 94, 136, n. 23, 316–17 and 341.
32 Firpo (1993): 94 and 317–23.
33 In saying this, I am following a suggestion of Mercati (1942: 37 n. 56) and
Mondolfo (1947: 30), as against Firpo (1993: 95 and 137, n. 27). Novatian was a third-
century Roman priest who led a schismatic movement. Bellarmine’s talk of the
‘Novatianist heresy’ probably refers to the unorthodox view of the relationship between
Father and Son advanced in Novatian’s De Trinitate; although this work had traditionally
been attributed to Tertullian, in 1579 Novatian had been shown to be its true author and
Bellarmine was aware of this discovery; moreover, although the term Novatianist heresy
commonly referred to a different error (namely, the denial of the Church’s authority to
forgive certain sins) which Novatian also committed, it is implausible to take the term in
this sense because Bruno did not question the Church’s authority on this point, whereas he
did admit having had puzzles about the Trinity.
64 GIORDANO BRUNO
request for eyeglasses, paper, pen and ink, but not for a knife and
compass.34
On 9 September 1599, at a meeting of the Inquisition presided over by
the pope, Bruno’s case was discussed at length. There was a consensus
among the experts and consultants that, except for Bruno’s own
admissions, confessions and statements, the legal argument against him
was so far insufficient and that torture was required to determine his guilt
or innocence for the unproved charges. After hearing all the opinions, the
pope decided that Bruno be ordered to retract the heretical opinions
which he had admitted, and that the various depositions be examined
more carefully for additional such opinions.35 The following day, in what
may be labelled Bruno’s twenty-first deposition, he declared he was ready
to admit his errors and do anything which the Church ordered. However,
he also presented a memorandum addressed to the pope.36
This memorandum reiterated and defended Bruno’s opinions and
thus belied the declarations he had been making since 15 February. It
seems that as the actual conclusion and sentencing were approaching, he
could not bring himself to abjure philosophical opinions which he felt
were not heretical and had never been formally declared to be heresies.
He was thus given the 40-day ultimatum to repent or die.37
Bruno did not waver from his latest refusal, despite repeated attempts
by the Inquisition to convince him to submit. For example, on 21
December, during the Christmas visit to the Inquisition prisoners by the
cardinal-inquisitors, in what may be labelled Bruno’s twenty-second and
last deposition, he told them that he had nothing to retract.38 And when
the general of the Dominicans and his deputy tried next, he told them
that his views were not heretical and had been misinterpreted by the
officials of the Holy Office.39
Thus, on 20 January 1600, at a meeting of the Inquisition presided by
the pope, after hearing the opinions of the expert consultants and of the
cardinals, the pope decided that a sentence of condemnation be issued
against Bruno and that he be handed over to the civil authorities for
execution. On 8 February, Bruno was brought from the Inquisition
prison to the house of cardinal Madruzzi, where the sentence was read
to him in the presence of the cardinal-inquisitors, other Inquisition
officials and the general public.
34 Firpo (1993): 94–6 and 323–5.

35 Firpo (1993): 96–8 and 327–9.
36 Firpo (1993): 98–101 and 138, n. 44.
37 Firpo (1993): 98–101 and 329–33.
38 Firpo (1993): 101–2 and 333–5.
39 Firpo (1993): 101–2 and 333–9.
Although the full text of the official sentence has not survived, from
the partial text that is available and other documents, it seems that
Bruno was condemned as an unrepentant, obstinate and treacherous
heretic.40 His heresies apparently included the eight theses of
Bellarmine’s list, concerning which there was no question that Bruno did
hold them, but only whether and when they had been formally declared
to be heretical. However, his heresies also included the many charges by
Mocenigo, Celestino and the other hostile witnesses, regarding which
the question was whether Bruno did really hold them, although there
was no question that they contradicted Catholic doctrine. Here the logic
of the Inquisition procedure was that his obstinacy in not retracting the
theses to which he had confessed rendered him guilty of the other
opinions of which he had been accused but which had not been
otherwise proved.
Finally, the end came on 17 February in Campo de’ Fiori: stripped
naked and with his tongue tied to prevent him from sputtering offensive
utterances, he was tied at the stake and burned alive. Among other
reasons, the idea was to execute such heretics without spilling blood and
to give them a last opportunity to repent.
Galileo’s Trial41
In 1543, Copernicus’s book entitled On the Revolution of the Heavenly

Spheres gave a new argument for an idea first advanced in ancient
Greece but generally rejected: that the earth turns daily on its axis and
yearly around the sun, and so does not stand still at the centre of the
universe. Its achievement was to demonstrate mathematically that the
known details about the heavenly bodies could be explained more
simply and coherently if the sun rather than the earth is placed at the
centre. This demonstration strengthened the idea, but did not
conclusively establish it; for it was a hypothetical argument and the
traditional counter-arguments remained unrefuted.
To summarize them, the earth’s motion seemed epistemologically
absurd because it contradicted direct sense experience. It seemed
astronomically false because it had consequences that could not be
observed, such as the similarity between terrestrial and heavenly bodies,
Venus’s phases and annual stellar parallax. It seemed mechanically
impossible because the available laws of motion implied that bodies on a
40 Firpo (1993): 102 and 342.

41 As previously mentioned, this account is adapted from Finocchiaro (1989); to a
lesser extent, it also relies on Finocchiaro (1980; 1997).
66 GIORDANO BRUNO
rotating earth would, for example, follow a slanted rather than vertical
path in free fall, and would be thrown off by centrifugal force. And it
seemed theologically heretical because it contradicted the words and the
traditional interpretations of the Bible. Copernicus was aware of these
objections and so delayed publication until the end of his life.
Galileo was born in 1564 in Pisa. Although his primary interest was
physics, as a mathematics professor, he also taught astronomy. But he
did not regard Copernicanism as sufficiently well established to teach it
in his courses; instead he covered traditional geostatic astronomy. Nor
did he directly pursue Copernicanism in his research, which consisted of
investigations into the laws of motion. This work was revolutionary, for
he was constructing a new science. He soon realized that his new physics
implied that the earth’s rotation was mechanically possible and so could
be used to strengthen Copernicanism by removing the mechanical
objections.
Still, Galileo was dissatisfied with the idea, especially because of its
observational astronomical difficulties. Only the invention of the
telescope changed that.
In 1609, Galileo managed to make significant improvements to it and
constructed an astronomically useful telescope that could not be
duplicated by others. With this instrument, he soon made several
startling discoveries, such as lunar mountains, Venus’s phases and
Jupiter’s satellites. Personally, these discoveries enabled him to resign his
professorship at Padua and accept the position of ‘Philosopher and
Chief Mathematician to the Grand Duke of Tuscany’ in Florence.
Scientifically, they led him to reassess Copernicanism, for they removed
most of the empirical-astronomical objections and added new
favourable evidence. Thus, he felt not only that the geokinetic theory
was simpler and more coherent (as Copernicus had demonstrated), and
that it was mechanically better (as his own new physics showed), but
also that it was empirically superior (as the telescope now revealed).
However, although he had published his telescopic discoveries, he had
not yet done so for his new physics.
Moreover, the theological objections had not yet been refuted. Galileo
must have also sensed their potentially explosive character. Thus, at first
he did not answer them despite the fact that many attacked his telescopic
observations on biblical grounds. However, in 1613 the Grand Duchess
Christina confronted one of his followers (named Benedetto Castelli)
with the biblical objection: Copernicanism must be wrong because many
biblical passages state or imply that the earth stands still. Castelli’s
answer satisfied the duchess as well as Galileo, when Castelli informed
him of the incident. In his letter, Castelli did not explain what his answer
had been but stated that it was such that Galileo would have been
proud; presumably, the two of them had discussed the topic before, and
so Castelli’s answer must have been along the lines of Galileo’s own
answer. The details of Galileo’s answer are contained in the letter which
he felt the need to write to Castelli. Galileo argued that the objection has
three fatal flaws: first, it attempts to prove a conclusion (the earth’s rest)
on the basis of a premise (the Bible’s commitment to the geostatic
system) which can only be ascertained with a knowledge of that
conclusion in the first place; second, the objection is a nonsequitur, since
the Bible is an authority only in matters of faith and morals, not in
scientific ones; and, third, it is questionable whether the earth’s motion
really contradicts the Bible, and an analysis of one of the most relevant
passages (Joshua 10:12–13) shows that it cannot be easily interpreted in
accordance with the geostatic theory, but that it accords better with the
geokinetic view.
Although unpublished, Galileo’s letter circulated widely. Thus, the
traditionalists soon passed to the counter-attack. In December 1614 in
Florence, a Dominican friar (named Tommaso Caccini) preached a
sermon against mathematicians in general and Galileo in particular. In
February 1615, another Dominican (named Niccolò Lorini) filed a
written complaint against Galileo with the Inquisition in Rome,
enclosing his letter to Castelli as incriminating evidence. Then in March,
Caccini made a personal appearance before the Roman Inquisition,
charging Galileo with heresy based on hearsay evidence.
The Inquisition conducted an investigation. The consultant who
examined Galileo’s letter to Castelli reported that it did not deviate from
Catholic doctrine. The cross-examination of witnesses exonerated
Galileo since the hearsay charges were found to be baseless. However,
the Inquisition also consulted its experts for an opinion on the status of
Copernicanism.
In February 1616, they reported unanimously that Copernicanism
was philosophically and scientifically untenable and theologically
heretical. But the Inquisition apparently had some misgivings about this
judgement, for it issued no formal condemnation. Instead two milder
consequences followed.
First, Galileo was warned to stop defending the truth of the earth’s
motion. The warning was conveyed privately and orally by Cardinal
Robert Bellarmine, with whom Galileo was on good terms, despite their
intellectual differences. Galileo was reported to have promised to obey.
However, the exact content, form and circumstances of this warning and
this promise are not known, and the documents allow different
interpretations.
68 GIORDANO BRUNO
Second, in March 1616 the Congregation of the Index issued a decree

containing three main points. It prohibited completely and condemned
a book (by a Carmelite father named Paolo Antonio Foscarini) claiming
to show that the earth’s motion is compatible with the Bible. It
temporarily suspended Copernicus’s book, pending correction and
revision (the so-called ‘corrections’ were published in 1620), and it
ordered analogous censures for analogous books. Galileo was not
mentioned at all.
This decree was vague, and the warning confusing. So Galileo
managed to obtain from Bellarmine a clear statement of what had
happened and how he was personally affected. Bellarmine’s certificate
declared that Galileo had been neither tried nor condemned but, rather,
personally notified of the decree and told that it meant that the truth of
the earth’s motion could not be defended.
For the next several years Galileo complied. Then in 1623 Cardinal
Maffeo Barberini was elected Pope Urban VIII. He was a well-educated
Florentine and a great admirer of Galileo. In 1616, he had been
instrumental in preventing the formal condemnation of Copernicanism,
and in 1620 he had written a poem praising Galileo. Thus, in 1624
Galileo went to Rome to pay his respects to the new pontiff; he was
warmly received by the pope, who granted him weekly audiences for six
weeks.
The details of these conversations are unknown. But Urban
apparently did not think that Copernicanism was heretical or a
forbidden topic of discussion, but that it was a dangerous doctrine
whose study required special care. His favourite objection was that it
could never be proved absolutely true because the earth’s motion is not
directly perceivable and all its supporting arguments must be
hypothetical, but any observed effects could always be produced by
other causes, a possibility that could not be excluded on pain of denying
God’s omnipotence.
Consequently, Galileo felt freer to re-examine the topic. After many
delays, in 1632 he published the Dialogue on the Two Chief World
Systems, Ptolemaic and Copernican. He had done many things to avoid
trouble. In the preface he included suggestions by the authorities,
claiming that the work was being published to prove that Catholics
knew all the scientific evidence, and thus the anti-Copernican decree of
1616 was motivated by religious reasons, not scientific ignorance. The
preface also stated explicitly that, although the scientific arguments
favored Copernicanism, they were inconclusive, and thus the earth’s
motion remained a hypothesis. He also agreed to end the book with a
statement of the pope’s favourite argument from divine omnipotence. To
make sure he would not be seen as defending the geokinetic thesis, he

wrote the book as a dialogue among a traditionalist, a Copernican and
a neutral interlocutor, and he filled the discussion with qualifications to
the effect that its purpose was to convey information, not to decide the
issue. Finally, he obtained imprimaturs from various official censors.
The book was well received in many circles, but complaints arose.
The most serious complaint involved a document found in the
Inquisition file of proceedings for 1615–16. It reads like a report of what
transpired when Bellarmine warned Galileo to abandon Copernicanism.
The cardinal had died in 1621 and so was no longer available. The
document states that in February 1616 Galileo had been prohibited not
only from defending the geokinetic thesis, but also from discussing it in
any way whatsoever. The just-published book clearly violated this
special injunction. The document does not bear Galileo’s signature and
so was of questionable legal validity. Under different circumstances this
technicality would have been decisive but, at the time, the politics of the
Thirty Years War had rendered the pope too vulnerable. (The
document’s origin is unknown; it is not exactly a forgery, but probably
the creation of an overzealous official.)
Another complaint claimed the book only paid lip-service to
conducting a hypothetical discussion, but really treated the earth’s
motion in an unconditional manner. Another charge alleged the work
was actually a defence of the earth’s motion because it criticized the anti-
Copernican arguments and presented favourably the pro-Copernican
ones.
The pope did not immediately bring in the Inquisition, but took the
unusual step of first appointing a special commission. When they
submitted their report, he felt he had no choice but to forward the case
to the Inquisition. So Galileo was summoned to Rome.
After many attempts to delay, on 20 January 1633 Galileo left
Florence for Rome. When he arrived, he was not imprisoned and was
allowed to lodge at the Tuscan embassy, but was ordered not to
socialize.
At the first hearing (on 12 April), Galileo was asked about the
Dialogue and the events of 1616. He admitted receiving from Bellarmine
the oral warning that the earth’s motion could not be defended, but only
discussed hypothetically. He denied receiving a special injunction not to
discuss the topic in any way whatsoever, and he introduced Bellarmine’s
certificate as evidence. He also claimed that the book did not defend the
earth’s motion, but rather showed that the favourable arguments were
inconclusive, and so did not violate Bellarmine’s certificate.
The special injunction surprised Galileo as much as Bellarmine’s
70 GIORDANO BRUNO
certificate surprised the inquisitors. Thus it took three weeks before they
decided on the next step. In the meantime Galileo was detained at the
Inquisition headquarters, but allowed to lodge in the chief prosecutor’s
apartment. The inquisitors opted for some out-of-court plea bargaining:
they would not press the most serious charge (violation of the special
injunction), but Galileo would have to plead guilty to a lesser charge
(unintentional transgression of the warning not to defend
Copernicanism). He requested a few days to devise a dignified way of
pleading guilty to the lesser charge. Thus, at the second hearing (30
April), he stated that the first deposition had prompted him to reread his
book; he was surprised to find that it gave readers the impression that
the author was defending the earth’s motion, even though this had not
been his intention. He attributed his error to wanting to appear clever
by making the weaker side look stronger. He was sorry and ready to
make amends.
After this deposition, Galileo was allowed to return to the Tuscan
embassy for lodging. A report was compiled for the pope, summarizing
the events from 1615 onward. Reading it did not resolve Urban’s doubts
about Galileo’s intention, and so he ordered an interrogation under the
verbal threat of torture.
On 21 June, Galileo underwent such a formal interrogation. The
result was favourable; that is, even when so threatened, he denied any
malicious intention and showed he would rather die than admit malice.
The next day, at the convent of Santa Maria sopra Minerva in Rome, he
was read the sentence and recited a formal abjuration.
The sentence found him guilty of a category of heresy intermediate
between the most and the least serious. The objectionable beliefs were
the cosmological thesis that the earth moves and the methodological
principle that the Bible is not a scientific authority. The book was
banned. And Galileo was condemned to house arrest until his death,
which occurred in 1642.
Similarities and Differences
The facts of the two trials invite many comparisons and contrasts, too
many to discuss them in any detail here. However, it is worthwhile to
briefly mention some before proceeding to an analysis of our main
theme (religion versus philosophy, and religion versus science).
One cannot help but being impressed by the Inquisition’s concern for
propriety and fair procedure. For example, Bruno was given a copy of
the charges and was allowed to suggest cross-examining questions when
his trial proceeded from the accusatory to the re-examination phase, and
he was given a copy of the full proceedings and allowed to write a
lengthy defence before the trial moved to the evaluation phase. In
Galileo’s case, one of the most striking things is that he was never held
in the Inquisition prison during the trial, and that even when he was
detained at its palace between his first and second deposition, he was
allowed to lodge in the prosecutor’s apartment.42
A striking parallel between the two trials is the Inquisition’s attempt
to reach a compromise by exploring the willingness of the defendants to
plead guilty to lesser charges, presumably in exchange for leniency in
punishment. In Bruno’s case, the compromise is represented by
Bellarmine’s suggestion to explore his willingness to abjure a short list of
theses which Bruno had admitted in his depositions or clearly held in his
books. This was a compromise in the sense that Bellarmine was realistic
enough to understand that it was hopeless to try to convict Bruno of all
charges, but also zealous enough to be determined not to let him go
unpunished. In the end this did not work, in the light of what might be
called Bruno’s own uncompromising attitude toward his own
philosophical beliefs, but Bellarmine’s compromise could have worked,
and for a while it looked like it would. In Galileo’s case the compromise
is represented by the Inquisition commissary’s out-of-court discussion
with Galileo after the first deposition when Galileo’s denial and the
evidence of Bellarmine’s certificate made it clear that the prosecution
had no case regarding the alleged violation of the special injunction; the
compromise worked in the sense that the defendant did plead guilty to
the charge that his Dialogue defended the earth’s motion.
It should be noted that, whereas Bruno was immediately arrested
when Mocenigo filed the first complaint against him and was never
released, Galileo was not arrested when Lorini filed his complaint in
February 1615; indeed Galileo was not arrested even when a second
plaintiff (Caccini) testified against him the following month. Later, of
course, when additional witnesses and the consultant’s report on
Galileo’s ‘Letter to Castelli’ exonerated Galileo, there was even less
reason to arrest him. This difference in the Inquisition’s response to
complaints may be partly due to the fact that Mocenigo’s charges were
more serious and more numerous than those of Lorini and Caccini. But
it is also probably a reflection of the social position of the parties
involved: in Bruno’s case, a nobleman was accusing someone who was
not only a commoner, but also a non-citizen and kind of a vagrant, a
42 It would be very instructive to compare and contrast this type of treatment received
by Galileo not only with that received by Bruno, but also with much of what went on in
the United States during the impeachment of President Clinton in 1998–99.
72 GIORDANO BRUNO
‘homeless’ person so to speak; in Galileo’s case, two common clergymen

were accusing someone who was under the protection of the Florentine
House of Medici, holding the position of Philosopher and Chief
Mathematician to the grand duke of Tuscany, and whose astronomical
discoveries had dazzled the world of learning and catapulted him into
celebrity status.
The issue of torture raises an interesting contrast. To begin with, it is
worth repeating that physical torture of defendants was for centuries a
standard part of judicial proceedings in both civil and religious courts of
almost all countries. It is thus beside the point to bemoan the fact that
our two defendants were running such a risk.43 The more revealing point
is to note when, how and why it was or was not authorized. We have
already seen that torture was prescribed in situations of inconclusive or
conflicting evidence. However, in Bruno’s case at the Inquisition meeting
of 9 September 1599, the pope decided against torture despite the
recommendations of the experts, but instead approved Bellarmine’s
plan. On the other hand, in Galileo’s case at the Inquisition meeting of
16 June 1633, pope Urban VIII decided in favour of torture to revolve
the issue of his intention. To be sure, I hasten to add that Urban’s
decision was worded in an ambiguous manner that left it unclear
whether actual torture or the verbal threat of torture was meant. This
ambiguity and other aspects of the case (such as Galileo’s old age)
ensured that when the formal interrogation was conducted (on 21 June
1633), it was carried out merely with the verbal threat of torture and not
under actual torture. A fuller study of this issue for Galileo’s case leads
us to appreciate and understand more fine distinctions. Having
distinguished actual torture from threatened torture, one must go on to
distinguish at least four stages of the former: (1) being taken to the
torture chamber and being merely shown the instruments; (2) being
undressed, as if one was going to be placed on the instrument, without
being actually placed there; (3) being placed on the instrument of
torture, without torture being applied; and (4) being placed on the
43 To say this is not to condone the Inquisition’s use of torture. It is rather to say that
it is irrelevant to lament the fact that Bruno and Galileo were at risk of being tortured –
irrelevant for the purpose of historical understanding. In other words, nowadays one can
indeed rightly bemoan such use of torture. But this is a moral evaluation: the judicial use
of torture in the twenty-first century is morally wrong. Now, if we transpose this
judgement to the sixteenth century, we get the proposition that the judicial use of torture
was morally wrong in the sixteenth century. I am not so much questioning the truth of this
latter proposition, but rather whether it conveys any information content, whether it has
any practical import and whether it enhances historical understanding. In so far as the
answer to the last three questions is negative, then one would also have to ask the
question, What is the point of making such a (true) statement?
instruments and having torture applied. I am sure that the relevant

manuals discussed such details in more excruciating and nauseating
detail. But even without engaging in such a reading, Bruno’s trial
suggests that actually applied torture was not a univocal concept. The
relevant document is, once again, the Inquisition minutes of 9 September
1599.44 I have already mentioned that there was a consensus in favour
of torture by the various consultants; now, if we examine their various
recommendations, we notice that of the six consultants three
recommended ‘ordinary’ torture, two ‘severe’ torture, and one ‘repeated’
torture. With three subtypes of actually applied torture, we now seem to
have seven procedures that could be subsumed under the notion of
torture; in increasing order of strictness, they ranged from the verbal
threat of torture to actually applied severe torture repeated more than
once. It is unclear why in Bruno’s case the pope did not approve torture;
whereas in Galileo’s case the reason may stem from the personal
animosity that Urban had developed in the light of the perceived
betrayal by his former protégé.
Aside from the behaviour of the Inquisition discussed so far, the
conduct of other parties deserves some comment, beginning with the
defendants.
The demeanour and attitude of Bruno and of Galileo present a stark
contrast. The end results, of course, provide a dramatic difference. But
their words and actions are also dramatically different. I would not want
to describe Bruno’s attitude as one of Socratic arrogance since we know
that on two occasions during the trial he gave external indications of
wanting to retract and submit; instead I would call his attitude
courageous, in the Aristotelian sense according to which courage does
not involve ignorance of danger or lack of fear but the overcoming of
fear in a situation of perceived danger. Regarding Galileo, I think it
would be going too far to call him a coward45 if for no other reason than
because, during his fourth interrogation under the verbal threat of
torture, he was firm in denying a malicious intention and was ready to
die rather than admit that; nevertheless, his attitude is generally one of
meekness. Here some of their words are memorable enough to be worth
quoting. Bruno’s last words with which he responded to the sentence
that was publicly read to him on 8 February 1600 are relatively well
known: ‘You pass your sentence on me with greater fear than I feel in
receiving it.’46 But equally revealing is his first utterance at his first
44 Firpo (1993): 96–7 and 327–9; cf. Mendoza (1995): 262–4.

45 As many have done; two of the most eloquent (but ultimately unfair) indictments,
see Brewster (1841) and Chasles (1862).
46 My translation; cf. Schoppe (1600): 351 and Mendoza (1995): 66.
74 GIORDANO BRUNO
interrogation in Venice on 26 May 1592, which is little known: ‘I will

tell the truth: more than once I have been threatened to be made to
appear before this Holy Office, and I have always taken it as a joke
because I am ready to give an account of myself.’47 The best illustration
of Galileo’s meekness is his second deposition in which he pleaded guilty
of having unintentionally defended the earth’s motion, confessed to the
base motive of literary vanity and ended with a promise to undo the
damage if allowed to rewrite his Dialogue. The deposition ends with the
words:
And for greater confirmation that I neither did hold nor do hold as
true the condemned opinion of the earth’s motion and sun’s
stability, if, as I desire, I am granted the possibility and the time to
prove it more clearly, I am ready to do so. The occasion for it is
readily available since in the book already published the speakers
agree that after a certain time they should meet again to discuss
various physical problems other than the subject already dealt with.
Hence, with this pretext to add one or two other Days, I promise to
reconsider the arguments already presented in favor of the said false
and condemned opinion, and to confute them in the most effective
way that the blessed God will enable me. So I beg this Holy Tribunal
to cooperate with me in this good resolution, by granting me the
permission to put it into practice.48
Also noteworthy is a difference regarding the persons whose charges got

the formal apparatus of the Inquisition started. Whereas the initial
plaintiff in Galileo’s case was a clergyman (Lorini), in Bruno’s case it was
a layman, indeed someone who was supposed to be his patron. This may
mean either that religion was more vigilant in Galileo’s case and felt
more threatened by his beliefs even though they focused on physical
questions, or that Bruno’s metaphysical theses and religious comments
were so radical and offensive that even a layman could see that they
undermined the religious establishment.
Hard to overlook is the figure of Bellarmine and the fact that he had
a role in both trials. Exactly what his role was, has been a long-standing
controversy. Certainly one cannot deny the emblematic and symbolic
connotations of this situation and the inflammatory potential that
Bellarmine’s involvement has for the cultural wars between reason and
faith. The anticlerical insinuation is that the fact that the man who
burned Bruno and silenced Galileo was made a saint (in 193049) speaks
for itself. However, the sobering fact is that his involvement in both
47
Firpo (1993): 154 [my translation].
48
Finocchiaro (1989): 278–9; cf. Galilei (1890–1909), vol. 19: 344.
49 ‘Bellarmine’, Columbia Encyclopedia (New York: Columbia University Press,
1975): 266.
trials was partial: as we have seen, it came at the end of Bruno’s trial
and it occurred only in the first phase of the Galileo affair in 1615–16,
since Bellarmine died in 1621 and had no role in Galileo’s actual trial in
1632–33. Moreover, as I have already argued, his role in the Bruno case
is best seen as the moderating one of conceiving and implementing a
middle course of action or compromise. On the other hand, his role in
the Galileo case was not that of a moderating force because in April
1633 the compromise was worked out by Vincenzo Maculano, the
Inquisition commissary (and not by Bellarmine who had died 12 years
earlier), and because in 1615–16 the moderating force who prevented
the formal condemnation of Copernicanism as heretical and limited its
censure to the indexing of Copernicus’s book, was Cardinal Maffeo
Barberini, the future Pope Urban VIII. Instead, in 1615–16 Bellarmine
was the leading exponent of the fundamentalist position that the earth’s
motion is false and can never be more than a useful fiction because it
contradicts the Bible, which is an authority on questions of science and
philosophy as well as faith and morals. Bellarmine’s biblical
fundamentalism is implicit in his famous letter to Foscarini, and has
recently been reinforced by newly published evidence that in his early
career in his lectures at the University of Louvain he argued in favour of
anti-Aristotelian propositions regarding the nature of the heavens, for he
did so on the basis of passages from the Bible. My own conclusion is
that Bellarmine ought not to be demonized, but that neither can his role
be idolized or idealized.50
One entity other than the Inquisition whose behaviour deserves some
discussion is the Republic of Venice. We have seen that in Bruno’s case,
after an initial refusal the Venetian government finally complied with the
Inquisition’s request to extradite him to Rome. My reading of the
relevant documents51 convinces me that the republic acted properly and
could not have legitimately denied the request, after the extradition was
justified by appeal to precedent and to the special circumstances of the
case. This is a point relevant to Galileo’s trial as well, not because Venice
was in any way involved in adding to his troubles with the Inquisition
but, rather, for another reason relating to his decision in 1610 to resign
his professorship at the University of Padua and move to Florence.
Galileo’s decision was criticized by some of his friends as a mistake in so
far as he was exchanging the freedom of the Venetian Republic for the
50 For some anti-Bellarmine detractors, see Berti (1868), Mondolfo (1930; 1947: 30),
Segre (1997) and Spampanato (1921: 548ff.); for some admiring accounts, see Duhem
(1908; 1969), Feyerabend (1985) and Baldini and Coyne (1984); for a balanced account,
see Firpo (1993: 91–3); see also Blackwell (1991) and Schettino (forthcoming).
51 Firpo (1993): 199–214.
76 GIORDANO BRUNO
financial and social privileges of patronage by the Medici in Florence.

This criticism has been echoed by many scholars,52 both admirers and
detractors, namely whether or not they include Galileo’s decision in the
list of items indicating his alleged recklessness. In the light of Bruno’s
experience, this criticism of Galileo needs to be re-evaluated. I am not
suggesting that Galileo could have been arrested by the Venetian
Inquisition as easily as Bruno was, or that he would have necessarily
been extradited to Rome like Bruno was, or that his protection by
Venice would have been as faint-hearted and ineffective as the Tuscan
grand duke’s was in 1632–33; nevertheless, his citizenship status in the
Venetian Republic was unclear, and so his freedom there may not have
been as secure as it is often portrayed when the matter is considered
without the benefit of Bruno’s case.
The extant documentation for the two trials raises another set of issues.
Here the tip of the iceberg is the fact that the proceedings of Galileo’s trial
have survived, whereas those of Bruno’s trial have not (except for the
documents of the Venetian stage of the trial and for the trial’s summary in
Rome). Bruno’s proceedings were presumably destroyed along with many
other Inquisition archives after Napoleon ordered them to be transferred
to Paris in 1810, as part of his plan to relocate there all Vatican archives.
The Galilean proceedings were also transferred, but they received special
handling, for they had already been collected into a special file kept in the
papal personal archives rather than in general Inquisition archives.
Moreover, as befitted the greater notoriety and importance of Galileo’s
trial, Napoleon planned to have the Galilean proceedings translated into
French and published, a plan that never came to fruition.
Regarding specific documents, the sentence of an Inquisition trial was
very important because it usually included not only a statement of the
penalty imposed on the convicted heretic, but also a description or
classification of the heresy in question, the reason for the conviction,
and indeed a chronological summary of the proceedings. For Bruno’s
case, the full text of the sentence has not survived, and we have only a
partial copy given to the governor of the city of Rome, who was the
civilian official responsible for overseeing Bruno’s execution.53 On the
other hand, for Galileo’s trial we do have the full text of the sentence.
The reason why Galileo’s sentence survived is that after his
condemnation, the Inquisition made an unprecedented and never
duplicated effort to publicize it by sending copies of it to all papal
nuncios and all inquisitors outside the papal states. Bruno’s sentence did
not survive because it must have been destroyed along with the rest of
52 For example, Gebler (1879): 31–2.

53 Firpo (1993): 339–44.
the proceedings during the Napoleonic captivity. In accordance with

Inquisition practice, the sentence that concluded a trial was jealously
regarded as a secret like the rest of the proceedings. Strangely enough,
however, for reasons that are unclear, no copy of Galileo’s sentence
survived within the file of trial proceedings.
Another crucial document is the so-called summary. This is the most
significant and the longest of the extant documents for Bruno’s trial. As
mentioned earlier, it amounts to about 60 pages (30 folios) and is a
digest of proceedings running to about ten times that bulk (600 pages,
or 300 folios); one of its invaluable features is that it contains folio
references to the proceedings for all points outlined in the summary. For
the Galileo case, the summary runs to ten pages (five folios) and refers
to about 200 pages (100 folios) of proceedings.54 Because the Galilean
summary is briefer, even relatively speaking (5 per cent as contrasted to
10 per cent), and because in this case we possess the rest of the 200
pages of proceedings, it is easier to overlook its existence and
significance. On the other hand, because the summary in the Bruno case
constitutes a greater part of the available documentation, the study of
Bruno’s trial enables us to appreciate the nature of such summaries. In
fact, they were summaries of the trial proceedings compiled by
Inquisition officials which provided the basis for judgement and
sentencing decided upon by the Congregation of cardinal-inquisitors
chaired by the pope. It should finally be mentioned that the Brunian
summary also attracts attention because of the lateness of its discovery
and of its publication: it was first discovered in 1886–87 in the Vatican
Secret Archives, but Pope Leo XIII ordered that the discovery be not
divulged, and the document not given to anyone; thus it had to be
rediscovered in 1940, and was published in 1942.55
And this brings us to the interpretive questions relating to religion
versus philosophy and religion versus science. For, when the Vatican
official who rediscovered the summary of Bruno’s trial published it for
the first time, he preceded it by an interpretive introduction in which he
was only too happy to declare that the summary reinforced the claim
that Bruno was condemned for his religious beliefs, that he deserved to
be condemned and that the blame lay with himself and not his judges.56
As the next section will argue, I believe that, appearances to the
contrary, this apologetic thesis is not correct, and that Bruno was
condemned for his philosophical ideas.
54 Galilei (1980–1909), vol. 19: 293–7; Finocchiaro (1989): 281–6; Pagano (1984):
63–8.
55 Blumenberg (1987): 371; Mercati (1942).
56 Mercati (1942): 8 and 12.
78 GIORDANO BRUNO
Religion Versus Philosophy and Religion versus Science
I begin the discussion of interpretive issues with a criticism of Yates’s

explanation of Bruno’s condemnation, namely the thesis that he was
condemned because he was a Hermeticist and a magician.57 The key
difficulty with this interpretation is that there is little trace of
Hermeticism and magic in the trial proceedings. The many charges
against Bruno can be subdivided into three groups involving respectively:
(a) religious and theological issues and topics, such as the Trinity, Christ,
Moses, Mary, etc., (b) questions of philosophy, be it natural philosophy
or metaphysics, such as the universe and the soul, and (c) sinful practices,
such as apostasy, blasphemy, and carnal indulgence.58 But the question of
Hermeticism and magic arises explicitly only in one charge (no. 7) and
indirectly in two others (nos. 3 and 14). Thus, from the perspective of
numbers, taking the whole heap of charges, Hermeticism and magic
seem to play an insignificant role at best.
Moreover, if we look at the details of these charges and Bruno’s
replies, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that he had effectively
refuted them. Mocenigo’s explicit charge that Bruno was a magician was
substantiated in his second deposition by referring to a book which he
had found among Bruno’s papers.59 In his depositions Bruno identified
the book in question as being one entitled De sigillis hermetis, Ptolomei
et Aliorum; and he clarified that this was not a book he had written but
rather a manuscript he had had copied by an amanuensis and had not
yet had the opportunity to read.60
More importantly, Bruno explained his views on the nature of the
magical arts. Regarding the art of conjuring, he dismissed it with
contempt.61 As regards the art of divination or judicial astrology, he
admitted the intellectual curiosity of wanting to learn about it to see if
it had any validity, but be bemoaned the fact that as yet he had not
found the time to study it.62 He also dismissed something which he
labelled ‘mathematical or superstitious magic’,63 without explaining
what he meant by this. Next he commented on magic per se, or natural
magic, understood as ‘knowledge of the secrets of nature together with
the ability to imitate nature in her operations and to do things which are
57 Yates (1964): 355; Yates (1967); and Yates (1973): 542.

58 Firpo (1993: 88–90) is clear about this tripartite subdivision.
59 Firpo (1993): 144 and 146.
60 Firpo (1993): 166, 193 and 286.
61 Fifth Deposition, Firpo (1993): 187.
62 Fifth Deposition, Firpo (1993): 188–9.
63 Tenth Deposition, Summary, 122, Firpo (1993): 275 [my translation].
popularly seen as wonders’.64 Quoting Saint Thomas Aquinas, Bruno

stated that all knowledge can be good or bad depending on whether it
is used by good or bad persons, and he went on to argue that therefore
there is nothing intrinsically evil in natural magic; that, in his own
eloquent words, ‘it is like a sword, which is bad in the hand of an
evildoer but can be good in the hand of someone who feels the fear of
God’.65 Finally, he clarified that even for natural magic, his interest in it
was theoretical rather than practical or pedagogical: ‘I have never had
the intention of preaching the said science … but only … that I should
be informed of the character and theory of the science, because I never
liked its practice.’66
The topic comes up again indirectly in connection with Mocenigo’s
charge that Bruno held erroneous opinions about the life and death of
Jesus. One of these allegedly erroneous opinions was that he thought
Jesus was a magician, who performed his miracles by magic. Bruno
adamantly denied this charge.67
The issue also arises implicitly in the context of Celestino’s charge
that Bruno had spoken ill of Moses. One of these alleged aspersions on
Moses was the claim that Moses was a most astute magician, and it was
the art of magic that enabled him to outperform Pharaoh’s magicians.
Bruno admitted having made such an assertion, but clarified that far
from disparaging Moses, the assertion represented high praise for him.
And to justify the praise, Bruno elaborated his conception of magic
stated above.68
In sum, there was not much talk of Hermeticism and magic in the
proceedings of Bruno’s trial, and whatever talk there was, Bruno’s
rebuttals to the relevant charges were such that Hermeticism and magic
cannot be plausibly said to have been a main reason for his
condemnation, let alone the root cause.
Now, if talk of magic is rare, it is equally obvious that discussions of
religious and theological topics abound. Only two out of the 28
complaints advanced by the plaintiffs were philosophical rather than
religious, namely the fifth and the sixth, dealing with the universe and
the soul. Such proportions remain essentially unchanged even if we take
into account the book censures (charge nos 30–40) because almost all
censures were illustrations or specifications of those two charges, and
the same proceedings make clear that most of the religious charges as we
64 Tenth Deposition, Summary, 122, Firpo (1993): 275 [my translation].

65 Fifteenth Deposition, Summary, 197, Firpo (1993): 287 [my translation].
66 Summary 197, Firpo (1993): 287 [my translation].
67 Fourth Deposition, Summary, 53, Firpo (1993): 174 and 262.
68 Summary, 117–23, Firpo (1993): 274–5.
80 GIORDANO BRUNO
have numbered them had several parts and so could be subdivided into
many more specifications. Are the apologists of the Inquisition right
then, when they claim that Bruno was condemned mostly on account of
religious and theological issues? Even if this claim were true, the
apologetic argument would hinge on the issue of the nature and limits
of religious freedom, as distinct from freedom of thought in general. But
this issue cannot be pursued here, for I want to focus instead on the
truth of the premise, on whether the apologists are right in claiming that
Bruno was condemned mostly for religious reasons.
The most authoritative, scholarly, eloquent, and acute of these
apologists was Angelo Mercati, the Vatican official who rediscovered
and first published the summary of Bruno’s trial. Mercati was the prefect
of the Vatican Secret Archives and searched for the summary ever since
being appointed to the post in 1926; he finally found it in 1940 and
published it in 1942 under the auspices of the Vatican Library. In
Mercati’s edition, the text of the summary is preceded by an
introduction in which he provides all kinds of useful information from
the point of view of scholarly erudition.
Even on some interpretive issues, his points are well taken. For
example, he shows signs of judiciousness and balance when he admits
that ‘there is no doubt that the question of the earth’s motion was also
a subject of scrutiny by the Roman Inquisition; like the great majority at
that time, this [institution] was opposed to it, for reasons that were not
so much pseudoscientific … but rather pseudotheological’.69 Moreover, I
believe he is correct when he says70 that by and large none of the charges
against Bruno involved strictly scientific issues, and that not even the
question of the earth’s motion is a scientific one in the context of Bruno’s
trial because his main reason for accepting it is not scientific but
philosophical. In fact, Bruno’s main argument was that the earth rotates
on its own axis in order to partake of the light and heat of the sun, and
that it revolves around the sun in order to partake of the seasons of the
year; and he seemed to regard this as a conclusive and apodictic
argument.71
By stressing this sort of thing, Mercati was undermining the
interpretation of Bruno’s trial in terms of a science versus religion
conflict.
Thus, Mercati felt justified in triumphantly concluding:
69
Mercati (1942): 8 [my translation].
70
Mercati (1942): 10.
71 See Bruno (1955): 192–3; Bruno (1977): 185; Fifth Deposition, in Firpo (1993):
188; and Summary, 256 and 258.

the Roman sentence against Bruno can be criticized only if it could

be shown to have been issued without legitimate reasons or against
reason; this is definitely excluded by the other facts of the trial, as
well as especially by the Summary; the latter makes us clearly
understand how the Roman Inquisition brought to a conclusion the
trial against Bruno only for legitimate reasons of [religious]
orthodoxy and for his actual transgressions deserving punishment.72
In reaching this conclusion Mercati is overlooking two crucially

important things. The first might be called the autonomy of philosophy,
that is the fact that the charges and censures against Bruno had a
philosophical aspect, philosophical in a sense distinct from both science
and religion. The second oversight regards the dynamics of the trial, a
dynamics which of course is invisible from the summary (which provides
a static time slice) and can only be appreciated from a chronological
account and reading of the documents, such as the one I have given
above, following in the footsteps of Luigi Firpo.
The dynamic aspects of the trial that need to be stressed are as
follows. Bruno was judged guilty of heresy and condemned to death
when his memorandum of 10 September 1599 made clear that he was
still questioning the heretical status of the short list of theses assembled
by Bellarmine and earlier tentatively retracted by himself. It is likely that
this list dealt primarily with Bruno’s infinitism and animism, that is,
with the questions of the temporal, spatial and plural infinity of the
universe, and with issues of the nature, immortality and individuality of
the soul and its relationship to the body, the world and material
substance. In regard to these propositions, Bruno had a legitimate point
in questioning when exactly such theses had been declared heretical, and
in suggesting that they had never been formally declared to be heresies.
He must have thought that they were not heretical, and that they did not
contradict Catholic doctrine.73 Let us also recall that as late as 9
72 Mercati (1942): 13 [my translation].

73 Bruno must have been thinking of the strict theological concept according to which
a heresy is the denial of a proposition (1a) explicitly (1b) revealed by God and (1c)
officially proclaimed by the Church in a declaration addressed to (1d) all who have been
(1e) baptized. On the other hand, the Inquisition usually operated with a concept which is
looser and broader, according to which a heresy includes the denial of propositions that
(2a) can be clearly deduced from divine revelations, and/or (2b) embody common Church
teachings, and/or (2c) are clearly contained in Scripture but have not been officially
proclaimed by the Church, and/or (2d) are declared articles of faith by lesser Church
organs (inquisitors, bishops, popes when not speaking ex cathedra, and so on), and/or (2e)
are applicable only to a particular person or group, and/or (2f) are held by persons who
have not been baptized. As Garzend (1912) has shown, the strict concept is the one
prevalent among theologians from the sixteenth century onwards, whereas the broader
concept is the one prevalent in Inquisition manuals and practice. Garzend elaborates the
82 GIORDANO BRUNO
September 1599, all the other charges were either not legally proved, or
in so far as they were, he had already expressed or was willing to express
the appropriate contrition and retraction. When he finally decided that
he did not want to retract the philosophical theses which he had spent
his whole life elaborating, this defiance made him in the eyes of the
inquisitors not only guilty of holding these theses, but also guilty of all
the other charges of which he had been accused but which had not been
previously judicially established. Thus, in the sentence the inquisitors
could indiscriminately list everything, religious or theological charges
and practical transgressions, as well as philosophical theses. But the root
cause of the condemnation was Bruno’s unwillingness to retract his
philosophy and the Inquisition’s unwillingness to tolerate it.
In other words, the Inquisition believed that there was a
contradiction between Catholic doctrine and Bruno’s philosophy, that
such a contradiction demanded action and that the appropriate action
was the elimination of the dissident. This is the sense in which Bruno’s
trial is an illustration of the philosophy versus religion conflict, at least
as a reasonable simplification and first approximation.
And this brings us to Galileo’s trial. In fact, if we replace ‘philosophy’
by ‘science’, there is an uncanny similarity between his trial and that of
Bruno. In the Galileo case, the scientific thesis is, of course, the earth’s
motion. This thesis was considered to contradict the Bible by the
inquisitors and by a segment of the Catholic Church that prevailed at the
time. Like Bruno, Galileo did not think there was a contradiction, nor did
a minority of less powerful segments of the Church. The reason why
Galileo did not think that the geokinetic thesis contradicted the Bible was
that he did not think the Bible was a scientific authority, but only an
authority on questions of faith and morals, and so geostatic assertions in
the Bible did not have to be interpreted literally. Correspondingly, the
reason why his inquisitors thought there was a contradiction was that they
considered the Bible to be a scientific authority, as well as an authority on
questions of faith and morals, and so they thought it was Copernicus’s
geokinetic assertions that should be interpreted non-literally, namely
instrumentalistically. Thus Galileo’s trial illustrates the clash between
science and religion in the sense that, according to the Inquisition, there
was a conflict between Galileo’s scientific theses and the Bible, and it was
able to impose its interpretation of the situation on Galileo.
distinction to provide an original apology of the condemnation of Galileo, by arguing that

although he was not a heretic from the strict theological point of view, he was one from
the point of view of the broader concept of heresy. However, the other side of Garzend’s
argument is that Galileo’s condemnation was theologically unjustified. I believe the same
applies, mutatis mutandis, to the case of Bruno.
In other words, what I am saying is that a key issue in Galileo’s trial

was the question of whether or not the Bible is a scientific authority. For
those (the traditionalists and the majority) who accepted the scientific
authority of the Bible, there was no way of also accepting the truth of
or the realistic interpretation of Copernicanism; for those (the
innovators and the minority) who restricted the authority of the Bible to
faith and morals, there was no difficulty, that is, no religious
impediment, to accepting the earth’s motion. The condemnation of
Galileo was in large measure the result of a disagreement over this
fundamental question, between the principle of separation of the Bible
and science on one side and the principle of biblical fundamentalism on
the other.
To support my interpretation, I would want to emphasize the
following points. In the first phase of Galileo’s trial, there is clear
evidence that Bellarmine was a fundamentalist. This occurs in his letter
to Foscarini, where he asserts, referring to everything the Bible says, that
if it is not a matter of faith ‘as regards the topic’, it is a matter of
faith ‘as regards the speaker’; and so it would be heretical to say
that Abraham did not have two children and Jacob twelve, as well
as to say that Christ was not born of a virgin, because both are said
by the Holy Spirit through the mouth of the prophets and the
apostles.74
Then I would want to emphasize that in both his Letter to Castelli and
his Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina, Galileo’s main aim is to
justify the methodological principle of separation, expressed in his own
words, adapted from Cardinal Baronio, with the memorable words ‘the
intention of the Holy Spirit is to teach us how one goes to heaven and
not how heaven goes’.75 And I would also want to emphasize the fact
that the final sentence in the trial specifies that Galileo is being
condemned for holding not only that the earth moves, but also ‘that one
may hold and defend as probable an opinion after it has been declared
and defined contrary to the Holy Scripture’,76 for the latter assertion is
merely a way of stating the principle of separation.
Besides such textual documentary evidence, I would want to support
my interpretation by criticizing a main alternative. To this I now turn.
74 Finocchiaro (1989): 68; cf. Galilei (1890–1909), vol. 12: 172. Bellarmine’s biblical
fundamentalism is also obvious from the lectures he gave at Louvain in his early career, in
which he supported anti-Aristotelian cosmological conclusions about the heavens on the
basis of biblical passages; cf. Baldini and Coyne (1984). And the same position can be
attributed to Bellarmine from his major work De Controversiis, as Baldini (1992: 323) has
argued.
75 Finocchiaro (1989): 96; cf. Galilei (1890–1909), vol. 5: 319.
76 Finocchiaro (1989): 291; cf. Galilei (1890–1909), vol. 19: 405.
84 GIORDANO BRUNO
Many scholars argue that Galileo was condemned not for heretical
beliefs but for disobedience; not for doctrinal but for disciplinary
heresy.77 His disciplinary infraction was to disobey, by publishing the
Dialogue in 1632, the personal special injunction issued to him in 1616.
This was the prohibition not to hold, defend or discuss the earth’s
motion in any way whatsoever, which he had promised to obey. This
prohibition has three clauses, involving respectively holding, defending
and discussing, and his Dialogue violated at least one and perhaps all
three clauses. Such an interpretation also overlooks the dynamics of the
trial.
Now, it is indeed true that one of the charges against Galileo in 1632
was violation of the special injunction, and that the text of the sentence
makes it sound as if this charge had been proved. But the trial
proceedings make clear that the validity of the special injunction came
into question after the discussion clause was denied by Galileo in his first
interrogation, after he produced Bellarmine’s certificate, which conflicts
with that same clause, and after the Inquisition officials reflected on the
fact that the special injunction document lacked Galileo’s signature. On
the other hand, the other two clauses (namely, not to hold and not to
defend) had been admitted by Galileo himself, and they were clearly
stipulated in Bellarmine’s certificate. But proving that in his book
Galileo held the earth’s motion was not easy, because of its dialogue
form, because of the various disclaimers contained in it and because of
the other precautions he had taken in writing and publishing the book.
By contrast, proving that the book was a defence of the earth’s motion
was relatively easier, but even this must have been seen as problematic
perhaps because of the point that Galileo could be viewed as presenting
and evaluating all the arguments for and against the earth’s motion, and
it was not his fault if the arguments in favour were stronger than those
against. Thus after the first deposition the Inquisition commissary tried
to convince Galileo to plead guilty to the charge of having defended the
geokinetic thesis. Since he did plead guilty to that, one of the things he
may be said to have been convicted of was disobedience in regard to
defending the earth’s motion.
However, this should not be the end of the analysis. Let us examine
more carefully the notion of disobedience or disciplinary heresy in this
particular case. Two comments are in order here. First, being forbidden
to defend an idea is not like being forbidden to commit some overt
practical act, but rather it amounts to being forbidden to think in a
certain way, or to defend a doctrine. Second, if one asks why Galileo was
77 Blackwell (1998): 355; Brandmuller (1992): 144–6; D’Addio (1993): 211–12;
Gingerich (1995): 342; and Mayaud (1997): 313.

forbidden to defend the earth’s motion, the answer is that the Inquisition
thought that the geokinetic thesis contradicts the Bible and that the Bible
is a scientific authority. But these reasons are doctrines; these doctrines
were disputed by Galileo, and so his disobedience reduces to a matter of
doctrine and, therefore, the sentence is condemning him for both
disciplinary and doctrinal heresy.
It thus remains true that, in the trials of both Bruno and Galileo, the
persons who did not think there was a conflict between religion and
reason were the victims, whereas the winners were those who thought
there was a conflict. The relevant aspects of religion were different in the
two cases: the authority of the Inquisition in Bruno’s case, and the
authority of the Bible in Galileo’s. The relevant aspects of reason were
also different: philosophical reason in the Bruno case, scientific reason
in the Galileo case.
This simplified interpretation of the two trials has to suffice here,
although I am aware that it would have to be refined in several ways.
For example, I have been using an unanalysed intuition of the distinction
between science and philosophy, and more would have to be said on this
topic. One would have to take into account the sense in which Galileo
was being a philosopher, specifically an epistemologist and
methodologist, when he discussed the relationship between scientific
inquiry and biblical interpretation, and articulated the principle of
separation. Conversely, one would have to explore the secondary
scientific aspects of Bruno’s thought, even while reiterating its primarily
philosophical or metaphysical character. This would point in the
direction of the idea that the things that interacted in Bruno’s trial were
not just philosophy and religion, and the relata in Galileo’s case were not
just science and religion. Moreover, the relationship which appears as
conflict at a first approximation may have to be complicated and
sophisticated in the direction of interaction. But the conflicts stressed
and demonstrated here would probably be part of such interactions.
86 GIORDANO BRUNO
Appendix One: Outline of the Lost File of Manuscript Proceedings of

Bruno’s Trial
The summary of Bruno’s trial contains references to the original file of

proceedings. That file has been lost, but from the summary it is possible
to reconstruct it as having the following content and structure. A
reconstruction is also possible from the various relevant comments and
information scattered in Firpo (1993). This has been done in the outline
given below, and so the references in square brackets are to pages in
Firpo’s book.
Folios Contents
1–8 Unknown; probably correspondence

between the Inquisition offices of
Rome and Venice. [F41].
9–11 Mocenigo’s first three complaints
[F41].
12–33 Unknown; probably the book
manuscript by Bruno attached by
Mocenigo to his first complaint [41].
34 Ciotti’s first deposition (Venice, 26
May 1592) [F42].
35r Brictanus’s deposition (Venice, 26
May 1592) [F41].
35v–57 Bruno’s seven depositions by the
Venetian Inquisition [F42].
58–83 Unknown; but probably the
depositions of Matteo d’Avanzo,
Domenico da Nocera and Andrea
Morosini, the second one of Ciotti,
and the extradition correspondence
[F42].
84–85r Celestino’s initial complaint (Venice,
autumn 1593) [F127, n.16].
85v–86v Giulio da Salò’s deposition (Venice,
autumn 1593) [F127, n.1].
87r Unknown [F127, n.1].
87v–88r Francesco Vaia’s deposition (Venice,
autumn 1593) [F128, n.7].
88v–89v Graziano’s first deposition (Venice,
autumn 1593) [F128, n.14].
90r–91r De Silvestris’s first deposition (Venice,

autumn 1593) [F128, n.9].
92–94 Unknown; but probably
correspondence between the Venetian
and Roman Inquisition relating to
sending the new depositions from
Venice to Rome [F54].
95v and probably 95r, 96 Bruno’s eighth deposition (Rome,
autumn 1593) [F128, n.18].
97-103 Bruno’s ninth deposition (Rome,
autumn 1593) [F129, n.21].
104–9 Bruno’s tenth deposition (Rome,
autumn 1593). [F129, n.22].
110–15 Bruno’s eleventh deposition (Rome,
autumn 1593) [F129, n.23].
116–20 Bruno’s twelfth deposition (Rome,
autumn 1593) [F129, n.25].
121 Unknown.
122-31 Bruno’s thirteenth deposition (Rome,
autumn 1593) [F129, n.27].
132–33 Unknown.
134–40 Bruno’s fourteenth deposition (Rome,
autumn 1593) [F129, n.27].
141 Bruno’s fifteenth deposition (Rome,
autumn 1593) [F129, n.29].
142 Unknown.
143–48 List of charges against Bruno
compiled from the initial examination
of all plaintiffs and witnesses by the
Inquisition’s prosecuting attorney
[F63].
149 Unknown [F129, n.2].
150–57 Bruno’s questionnaire for the re-
examination of plaintiffs and
witnesses, compiled from the
prosecutor’s list of charges [F63–64].
158–62 Unknown; but probably
correspondence between the Venetian
and the Roman Inquisition [F129, n.6].
163–68 Mocenigo’s deposition, under re-
examination (Venice, January–March
1594) [F64].
88 GIORDANO BRUNO
169–71 Ciotti’s third deposition, under re-

1594) [F64].
172–76 Graziano’s second deposition, under
re-examination (Venice,
January–March 1594) [F66].
177–80 De Silvestris’s second deposition,
under re-examination (Venice,
January–March 1594) [F67].
181–83 Celestino’s deposition, under re-
1594) [F68].
184–85 Unknown.
186 Brief memorandum by Bruno [F72].
187–88 Unknown.
189 Mocenigo’s fourth complaint (Venice,
June 1594) [F73].
190–91 Unknown.
192–94 Bruno’s sixteenth deposition (Rome,
summer 1594) [F73].
195–205 Unknown, but probably more of
Bruno’s sixteenth deposition and
Inquisition instructions to Bruno
about his defence [F73].
206–46 Bruno’s defence [F73].
247 Unknown [F133, n.11].
248–56 Censure of Bruno’s theses found in
his depositions as well as in his books
[F77–78].
257–61 Bruno’s seventeenth deposition
(Rome, Mar–Apr 1597) [F78–79].
262–65 Unknown [F133, n.16].
266–95 Bruno’s replies to the censures [F79,
133, n.17].
Appendix Two: Master Table of Bruno’s Trial
The following table gives a summary and quick overview of the charges
against Bruno, their sources, and his responses to them. The first column
(A) refers to the 24 charges as identified, numbered and formulated by
Firpo (1993), expanded to explicitly include the book censures and a
few other charges, in accordance with what I have done in my chapter.
The second column (B) refers to the topic with which the charge or book
censure deals; this is meant to be just a mnemonic device, and the full
description is found in the numbered charge in the body of my chapter.
The third column (C) refers to the page number in Firpo (1993) where
the charge or censure is first formulated. The fourth column (D) refers
to the sections (Roman numerals) or paragraphs (Arabic numerals) of
the Inquisition summary of the trial; here I am following Firpo (1993),
who added Roman numerals for the sections to the Arabic numerals that
Mercati (1942) had given to the paragraphs. The fifth column (E) refers
to the charges as identified, described and listed in Schoppe’s letter to
Rittershausen of 17 February 1600, as analysed by Firpo (1993, pp.
103–4). The sixth column (F) indicates the initial plaintiff whose
complaint contains the given charge, and in the case of the censures the
work involved. The seventh column (G) indicates the plaintiffs,
witnesses, or depositions that provide additional confirmations of the
given charge. In both columns F and G, I am abbreviating each person’s
name by using only the first three letters of the last name; the numeral
following the hyphen refers to the particular deposition of the several
generated by that person; thus, for example, Bru-22 refers to Bruno’s
twenty-second deposition (21 December 1599), and Moc-3 refers to
Mocenigo’s third complaint (29 May 1592). The last column (H)
indicates whether Bruno admitted (+) or denied (~) the given charge and
in which one of his many depositions this happened.
90 GIORDANO BRUNO
Master Table of Bruno’s Trial
A B C D E F G H
Chrg Topic Firpo Summary Schop Plntf Confirmations Bruno
[1] CathChurch F16 Sum-i Moc-1 DeS-1, DeS-2, Moc-d ~Bru-

4&9&
13
[2] Trinity F16 Sum-ii Moc-1 Cel-2, Moc-d ~Bru-
3&4
&8&
17
[3] Jesus F16 Sum-iii xiii Moc-1 Cel-1 & 2, DeS-2,
Gra-1 & 2, ~Bru
Gra-1 & 2, 4 & 10
Moc-d, Vai
[4] Transubst. F16 Sum-v i Moc-1 DeS-2, Gra-2, Moc-d ~Bru-
4&5
[5] Universe F16 Sum-vii v Moc-1 Cel-1 & 2, DeS-1 +Bru-
& ix & 2,Giu 3 & 12
Gra-1 & 2, & 14 &
Moc-d, Vai 17
[6] Soul F16 Sum-xxii vi Moc-1 Cel-1 & 2, DeS-1 +Bru-

& 2, Gra-2, 3&4&
Moc-d 5 & 11
[7] Magic F16 Sum-xxiii vii Moc-1 DeS-2, Gra-2, Moc-2, ~Bru-5
Moc-d & 15
[8] Virgin Mary F16 Sum-xviii ii Moc-1 Moc-d ~Bru-4
&5
[9] Sex F20 Sum-xxv Moc-3 DeS-2, Gra-2, Moc-d ~Bru-4
[10] Apostasy F21 xix, xxvii iii — Cel-2, Cio-3 +Bru-2
xxviii, xxix &4&
5
[25] Church Drs. F16 Sum-xiv Moc-1 Giu ~Bru-4
[26] PunishSin F16 Sum-xxiv Moc-1 DeS-2 ~Bru-4
[27] CrimRecord F16 Sum-xxx ~Bru-5
[11] SinJesus F48 Sum-iv Cel-1 Cel-2, DeS-1 & 2, ~Bru-9
Gra-2, Giu
[12] Hell F48 Sum-vi xi Cel-1 Cel-2, DeS-1 & 2, Giu ~Bru-9
Gra-1&2, Vai
[13] Cain & Abel F48 Sum-x Cel-1 Cel-2, Gra-1, Gra-2 ~Bru-12
[14] Moses F48 Sum-xi ix Cel-1 Cel-2, Gra-1, Gra-2 ~Bru-10
[15] Prophets F48 Sum-xii xiv Cel-1 Cel-2, Gra-1, Gra-2 ~Bru-10
[16] Credibility F48 Sum-xiii Cel-1 Gra-1 ~Bru-13

[17] Saints F48 Sum-xv Cel-1 Cel-2, DeS-1 & 2, ~Bru-
Gra-1 & 2, Sum-
Moc-d 143
& 144
[18] Breviary F48 Sum-xx Cel-1 Cel-2, DeS-2, Gra-1 ~Bru-13
Gra-2, Vai
[19] Blasphemy F48 Sum-xxi Cel-1 Cel-2, DeS-1 & 2,Giu +Bru-10
Gra-2, Moc-d, Vai
[20] FuturPlans F48 Sum-xxxi Cel-1 Cel-2, DeS-1 & 2, ~Bru-9
~Giu, Gra-1 & 2
[21] Holy Relics F52 Sum-xvi deS-1 Cel-2, deS-2, Gra-2 ~Bru-
Sum-
149
[22] Holy Images F54 Sum-xvii Gra-1 Gra-2, Moc-d ~Bru-12
[23] 3 Kings F67 Sum-viii Gra-2 (none) ~Bru-
Sum-99
[24] Pope F71 Sum-xxvi iv Moc-4 Ver ~Bru-16
[28] Atheism F101 Sum-16 DeS-2 Ver
[29] Scripture F103 — x
[30] Eternity F80 Sum-252 v De minimo (+Bru-3)
[31] Infinity F80 Sum-253 v Infinito (+Bru-3)
[32] Plurality F80 Sum-261 v Infinito (+Bru-3)
[33] ImmortSoul F80 254 & 255 Causa, Infinito
[34] ConserSubst F82 Sum-255 Causa
[35] EarthMotion F82 Sum-256 Cena
[36] StarsSouls F83 Sum-257 Cena (+Bru-3)
[37] Earth Soul F83 Sum-258 Cena, Causa, Infinito (+Bru-3)
[38] Body/Soul F84 Sum-259 vi Causa (+Bru-
11)
[39] Holy Spirit F84 — viii Causa (+Bru-3)
[40] Pre-Adam F84 — xii De monade
92 GIORDANO BRUNO
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96 GIORDANO BRUNO
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Biography, vol. 2: 539–44. New York: Scribner.
CHAPTER FOUR
Giordano Bruno and Neapolitan

Neoplatonism
Ingrid D. Rowland
Giordano Bruno entered Naples in 1562, at the age of 14. Three years
later, at 17, he began his novitiate at the Dominican convent of San
Domenico Maggiore, where he would eventually also enrol at the
Dominican university in 1572, be ordained priest in 1573 and take a
degree as lector in July of 1575.1 All told, Bruno would spend more than
14 years in Naples or its close environs before he fled northward in
1576. What he saw there, he saw as a young man; he left at the age of
28. Much of what he read in Naples he read with a student’s eagerness
or quick disgust. What he experienced there had the indelible vividness
of formative experience, as we know from his Candelaio (1582),
published in Paris at six years’ remove but unmistakably set amid the
picaresque street life of Naples. The mature writer of the 1580s must
have differed significantly from his younger Neapolitan self, but the
grown man is all we now know of Giordano Bruno.
Yet certain images that appear in his earlier writings and certain ways
in which he structures his thought hark back to that vibrant, elusive
Neapolitan world and to his early studies with the teacher who earned
his highest praises rather than Bruno’s more usual condemnation for
asinine pedantry. Teofilo da Vairano was an Augustinian friar from
whom Bruno learned logic; he told his inquisitors in Venice that he had
gone ‘a sentire logica privatamente’, but he would tell the Parisian
librarian Guillaume Cotin that the Augustinian had been his ‘greatest
master in philosophy’.2 These lessons must have taken place in the
1560s, when there was no guarantee that the bright young Filippo
1 Canone, Eugenio (1992), Giordano Bruno. Gli anni napoletani e la ‘peregrinatio’
europea. Cassino: Università degli Studi; Spampanato, Vincenzo (1921) Vita di Giordano
Bruno, Messina: Giuseppe Principato, [reprint, Rome: Gela, 1988] I.78–103, 147–93.
2 Firpo, Luigi (1993), Il processo di Giordano Bruno, Rome: Salerno, p. 156; Canone,
Eugenio (ed.) (2000), Giordano Bruno 1548–1600, Mostra storico documentaria, Roma,
Biblioteca Casanatense 7 giugno–30 settembre 2000, Florence: Leo S. Olschki, pp. 11–12,
19–22; Carella, Candida (1985), ‘Tra i maestri di Giordano Bruno. Nota sull’agostiniano
Teofilo da Vairano,’ Bruniana e Campanelliana, vol. 1, pp. 63–82; Ricci, Saverio (2000)
Giordano Bruno nell’ Europa del Cinquecento, Rome: Salerno, pp. 40–46.
98 GIORDANO BRUNO
Bruno da Nola would ever qualify for admission to the Dominican

college at San Domenico Maggiore, the most exclusive university in the
whole kingdom of Naples.3 Each year only ten young men from the
entire Regno were allowed to enter San Domenico as ‘formal students’,
most after a period of preparation as what were called ‘material
students’. From the moment of their admission to formal status, they
would have three years to complete a rigorous course in academic
theology, and to earn the degree of lector – slower progress meant
expulsion.4 Bruno himself would first be admitted as a formal student to
the Dominican College at Andria in 1571, but he chose instead to
continue in Naples as a material student at the College of San
Domenico, where he finally obtained the coveted formal position in
May of the following year, 1572.
Of Bruno’s teacher, Fra Teofilo da Vairano, not much is known. His
substantial manuscript treatise De Gratia Novi Testamenti (On Grace in
the New Testament) is preserved in the Vatican Library.5 Dedicated to
the Neapolitan Cardinal Antonio Carafa, De Gratia Novi Testamenti
was written in the spring and summer of 1570 in Rome ‘in Aedibus
Illustrissimi Domini Julii Vitelli’; Giulio Vitelli served as a mercenary
captain in the service of the Papal State.6 The dedicatee, Cardinal
Antonio Carafa, was himself a meticulous scholar whose annotated
edition of the Septuagint (Rome 1587) best displays his command of
ancient and patristic literature; he was also involved as cardinal with
Church reform, serving on the congregation charged with implementing
the decrees issued by the Council of Trent, which had finally ended in
1563. Carafa also became Cardinal Prefect of the Vatican Library. It
seems likely that the single extant manuscript copy of De Gratia Novi
Testamenti passed from Cardinal Carafa’s personal possession into the
Vatican Archive, where it was housed until 1920 among a collection of
books that served for reference when Popes Paul V and Clement VIII
ordered hearings on the subjects that most exacerbated the conflict
3 Miele, Michele (1995), ‘Indagini sulla comunità conventuale di Giordano Bruno
(1556–1576)’, Bruniana e Campanelliana, vol. 1, pp. 157–203; idem, ‘L’organizzazione

degli studi dei domenicani di Napoli al tempo di Giordano Bruno’, in Canone (ed), G.B.
Gli anni napoletani, pp. 49–50; Eugenio Canone, ‘Bruno nel Convento di San Domenico
Maggiore’, in Canone (ed.), Giordano Bruno 1548–1600, pp. 31–3.
4 Miele, ‘L’organizzazione degli studi,’, pp. 49–50.
5 MS Vat. Lat. 12056, Carella, op. cit.; Canone, Giordano Bruno 1548–1600, p. 22,
n. 38. In addition Dilwyn Knox has suggested (in a comment at the conference at which
this paper was read) that Teofilo’s commentary on Aristotle’s Metaphysics might lie among
the anonymous manuscripts of the Biblioteca Angelica in Rome.
6 In fact Vitelli may have taken over the Roman palazzo inhabited until 1568 by
Cardinal Vitellozzo Vitelli, who had been a close associate of the Carafa family.
GIORDANO BRUNO AND NEAPOLITAN NEOPLATONISM 99
4.1 Frontispiece of Bruno’s Cantus Circaeus, 1582.

100 GIORDANO BRUNO
between Catholics and Protestants at the turn from the sixteenth century
to the seventeenth: grace and free will. In any case, De Gratia was
written several years after its author’s encounters with the young Filippo
Bruno, and in a different city. It is, however, the only tangible clue we
now have to this influential teacher’s thinking.
The surviving manuscript of De Gratia Novi Testamenti, in several
hands, is touted on its title page as ‘Originale’. In fact, it is a collection
of 12 shorter ‘questions’ or ‘disputations’ on individual controversies,
all of them concerning the detailed implications of contemporary
discussions regarding divine grace, original sin and free will – Teofilo
wrote, after all, during the heated debates occasioned by the Protestant
Reformation and the aftermath of the Council of Trent.7 Marginal notes
and a brief dedication to Cardinal Carafa in his own hand confirm Fra
Teofilo’s own role in compiling these essays as a coherent larger work;
it is described, moreover, as only the ‘first part’.8
The material collected in De Gratia ranges from short questions and
answers to larger perorations, often in the form of a dialogue between
Teofilo himself and his various adversaries, who range from Late Antique
dissenters to the twelfth-century Peter Lombard to contemporaries like
Luther, Melanchthon, Erasmus and the Dominican theologian Tommaso
de Vio of Gaeta. In some ways the positions he espouses are radical indeed,
most notably, perhaps, in his strenuous arguments on behalf of the Jews.
Teofilo’s theological stance was Catholic in the most literal sense of
the word: one passage in De Gratia takes the original Greek adjective
katholikos and explains its meaning in pointed detail: the prefix kata-
7 These essays are: (1) Quaestio adversus sentientes homines et Angelos non esse
creatos in gratia gratum faciente (MS Vat. Lat. 12056, 4r–12v); (2) Quaestio de
transfusione peccati originalis formaliter in infantibus (13r–28r); (3) Disputatio de
operibus infidelium simpliciter damnabilibus (30r–62r); (4) Disputatio de necessitate
gratiae novi testatmenti (65r–112v); (5) Disputatio de inherentia in nobis charitatis
(114r–127v); (6) Disputatio de indifferentia gratiae gratum facientis à Charitate
(129r–142v); (7) Disputatio adversus Manicheos negantes patres qui Christum
precesserunt non pertinere ad gratiam novi testamenti ad mentem Augustini agitata
(144r–166r); (8) Disputatio adversus pelagianos quosdam modernos arbitrantes omnes
homines Christianos pertinere ad gratiam novi testamenti et adversus Lutheranos dicentes
eos qui habent fidem tamen determinatur qui electi, dilecti, praedestinati homines fidem
formatam (167r–180v); (9) Disputatio adversus … donatistas, et lutheranos asserentes dei
ecclesiam periisse, ac per eos restitutam, et non omnes pertinere ad gratiam novi testamenti
sed soli qui apud eos sane (181r–212v); (10) Disputatio de electorum Dei vera innocentia
et munditia (213r–243v); (11) Disputatio adversus pelagianos de imperfecta electorum Dei
justitia (245r–261v); (12) De Immobili et Eternae dilectione Dei erga pertinentes ad ipsam
gratiam Novi Testamenti et immobili odio erga reprobos (263r–272v).
8 MS Vat. Lat. 12056, 272v: ‘Haec sunt Cardinali Carrafa doctissime que in hac prima
parte, de gratia Novi Testameni scribere decrevi.’

‘down, through and through’ and the root holos ‘whole’ when taken
together meant more than whole, they meant whole through and
through. A truly Catholic Church, therefore, was bound to include all
humanity without exception: ‘all are elected by God’.9
To an age of vicious religious strife, Teofilo responded with an ardent
profession of love for God and for creation: ‘[When Jesus says,] “I came
into this world to light a fire: what should I want except that it burn?”
he thinks not of war but of flagrant charity.’ Rather than showing that
the Jews are not Christian, he insists strenuously that they are.
Let no one think that the people of God who wandered in the desert
as exiles from Egypt were not the Church of God.
I do not want you to be ignorant, brothers, of the fact that all of our
fathers were beneath the pillar of cloud, so that all could cross the
sea, and all were baptized by Moses in the cloud and in the sea, and
all of them ate the same spiritual food, and all drank the same
spiritual drink, for they drank from the spiritual rock that contained
them – for the rock was Christ, the very one.10
Likewise, he insists that Christians are Jews: ‘I ask you to show me a

single proof, by which you can prove that we are not of the Church, and
that you are.’11
He calls the New Testament the Old Covenant, and the Old
Testament the New Covenant.
Is it an Old Testament? No, because it is the Law of Moses, and
therefore new, and therefore before it there existed the covenant
that we call New.
All the children of the promise belong to the New Testament, from
Adam to the least man who is the son of the elect up to the day of
judgment will be regarded according to the New Testament.
All the chosen children of the promise belong to the grace of the
New Testament, and not to the Old Testament, because they were
children of the promise by virtue of having that same faith by which
Abraham was justified.12
9 Ibid., 158v: ‘Omnes à deo eligantur; si tamen non pertinent, ex defectu illorum est.’
10 Ibid., 144r–166r. See, for example, 145r: ‘Ne quis putaret dei populum in exitu de
aegipto in deserto non fuisse dei ecclesiam.’ 150r: ‘Nolo vos ignorare fratres, quoniam
patres nostri omnes sub nubi fuerunt, ut omnes mare transierunt, et omnes in Moise
baptizati sunt in nubi et in mari, et omnes eandem escam spiritualem manducaverunt, et
omnes eundem potum spiritualem biberunt, bibebant autem de spirituali continenti autem
eos petra. Petra autem erat Christus, hoc ille.’
11 Ibid., 194v: ‘Sed quaeso adducite aliqua, si quae habetis, quibus probetis, Nos non
esse de ecclesia, vosque esse.’

12 Ibid., 151r–v: ‘Quod Testamentum an vetus? Non, quia lex Moisi est, ergo novum,
ergo ante vetus [151v] testamentum fuit illud quod nos dicimus novum.’ 151v: ‘Omnes
ergo filii promissionis pertinent ad novum testamentum ab Adam usque ad minimum
102 GIORDANO BRUNO
Against the Scholastics, including his own fourteenth-century

Augustinian forerunner Egidio Colonna (Aegidius Romanus, Giles of
Rome), he marshalled the testimony of the earliest Church.13 It may not
be surprising that his theology went no further than his learned friend
Cardinal Carafa and the reference library of the Vatican’s theologians.
Deeply learned and unconventional in its broad embrace, it did not fit
the fearful climate of late sixteenth-century Catholicism in Italy or
anywhere else.
The verbal and theological sleight of hand by which Teofilo redefined
Old and New Testaments reflected a rhetorical technique, reversal, that
had become ubiquitous in sixteenth-century writing, but also in art.
Michelangelo allegedly turned architectural drawings upside down to
test his skills at design by challenging himself to adapt to seemingly
impossible conditions. The Neapolitan composer Don Carlo Gesualdo,
Prince of Venosa, performed analogous operations with music. And yet,
Teofilo’s clever manipulation of chronological and theological reversal
also seems to proceed in the same spirit as Giordano Bruno’s own
abilities at reversal, as when he transforms wordplay into a play of ideas
and chronologies in his Cena de le Ceneri:
If you truly understand what you say, you would see that from your
premises the opposite of what you think must be inferred: I mean to
say, that we are older and have more advanced age than our
predecessors … The judgement of Eudoxus, who lived shortly after
the rebirth of astronomy, could not be as mature as that of
Calippus, who lived 30 years after the death of Alexander the Great,
who, as he added year to year could also add observation to
observation … Mahomet of Arak ought to have seen still more …
Copernicus saw more … But if these others who have come more
recently have not for that reason been better informed … it is
because they lived their lives as if they were dead.14
hominem qui erit filius electionis usque ad diem iuditii extimabitur ad novum
testamentum.’ 152v: ‘Pertinent omnes filii promissionis electi ad gratiam novi testamenti,
et non ad vetus testamentum, quia filii promissionis erant habentes fidem quam Abraam
in qua iustificatus est.’ 153r: ‘Verum illud dicitur vetus, non quia antiquius, sed quia
promissiones continentur pertinentes ad hominem veterem, qui sapit terrena. At hoc
novum, quia promissiones continet, quae ad hominem novum qui secundum deum creatus
est.’
13 Ibid., 130r: (Disputatio adversus quorundam scholasticorum dicta de gratia à
charitate indifferentia): ‘Nobis autem visum est, aliquid de hoc scribere, pro ut ex sacris
litteris ex Augustini doctrina atque magni Dionysii Areopagite edocti sumus, ut veritas
magis ac magis elucescat. Et debilitare intendimus eorum dicta secundum nostrum posse.’
14 Cena de le Ceneri, Dialogue I: ‘Si voi intendreste bene quel che dite, vedreste che dal
vostro fondamento s’inferisce il contrario di quel che pensate: voglio dire che noi siamo
più vecchi ed abbiamo più lunga età che i nostri predecessori; intendo per quel che
As for Teofilo’s generously tolerant Catholicism, it built on a

tradition of some standing among his Augustinian order, as we can tell
from sources like the remains of the extensive library that was once
housed in the reformed Augustinian convent of San Giovanni a
Carbonara, many of its books now to be found in the Biblioteca
Nazionale of Naples.15 Indeed, San Giovanni a Carbonara played an
important and peculiar role in the intellectual life of Naples from the last
years of the fifteenth century into the first half of the sixteenth. These
were the years in which an eloquent Augustinian friar of reforming bent,
Egidio da Viterbo, brought his distinctive version of Christian
Neoplatonism to the attention and, more importantly, to the
imaginations of friends like Giovanni Gioviano Pontano and Jacopo
Sannazaro, the dominant voices of literary Naples, as well as a young
protégé, Girolamo Seripando, who like Egidio himself would become an
Augustinian friar, then Prior General of the Order, then its Cardinal
Protector, and like his master enmesh himself in the urgent project of
Church reform.16
Egidio da Viterbo’s reputation was never greater than in his own day,
when his artfully rhetorical preaching and his burning zeal for reform
brought him into close collaboration with Popes Julius II, Leo X, and
Clement VII.17 He was politically important enough to be considered
papabile at the conclave that elected Pope Clement VII in 1524. Under
Egidio da Viterbo’s persistent influence and the direct governance of that
of his protégés, Egidio’s close friend and immediate successor Gabriele
appartiene in certi giudizii, come in proposito. Non ha possuto essere sì maturo il giudicio
d’Eudosso che visse poco dopo la rinascente astronomia, se pur in esso non rinacque, come
quello di Callippo che visse trent’ anni dopo la morte d’Alessandro Magno: il quale come
giunse anni ad anni, possea giongere ancora osservanze ad osservanze … Più ne dovea
vedere Machometto Aracense mille ducento e dui anni dopo quella. Più n’ ha veduto il
Copernico quasi a’ nostri tempi … Ma che di questi alcuni che son stati appresso, … e che
la moltitudine di que’ che sono a nostri tempi non ha però più sale, questo accade per ciò
che quelli non vissero e questi non vivono gli anni altrui, e (quel che è peggio) vissero morti
quelli e questi ne gli anni proprii.’ BDFI 32–3.
15 An inventory of the library is preserved in the Biblioteca Corsiniana in Rome, MS
671 (34B15), 132–69, with an ‘extremely inaccurate’ copy in the Vatican Library, MS Vat.
Lat. 11310. See Giovanni Mercati, ‘Prolegomena de fatis Bibliothecae Monasterii Sancti
Columbani Bobiensis et de Codice ipso Vat. Lat. 5757’, in idem, Marci Tulli Ciceronis De
Re Publica Libri e codice rescripto Vaticano Latino 5757. Codices e Vaticanis Selecti, Vol.
23. Vatican City: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, 1934, pp. 120–23.
16 O’Malley, John W. (1968), Giles of Viterbo on Church and Reform, Leiden: Brill;
Martin, F.X. (1992) Friar, Reformer, and Renaissance Scholar: Life and Work of Giles of
Viterbo, 1469–1532, Villanova, PA: Augustinian Press.
17 O’Malley, op. cit, pp. 7–8; Rowland, I.D. (1987), ‘A summer outing in 1510:
religion and economics in the papal war with Ferrara’, Viator, vol. 18, pp. 347–59.
104 GIORDANO BRUNO
Della Volta of Venice, and the Neapolitan noble Fra Girolamo

Seripando, whom Egidio had personally groomed for an important
ecclesiastical career, Fra Teofilo da Vairano must have received his own
formation as an Augustinian philosopher.
From the last years of the fifteenth century, when he travelled the
length of Italy as an itinerant preacher, Egidio had also exerted a
commanding effect on the imaginative life of Naples, in person, in his
sermons and in his voluminous correspondence.18 Giovanni Gioviano
Pontano’s dialogue Aegidius is named after him.19 Under Egidio’s
persuasive spell, Jacopo Sannazaro penned not only his Christian epic
De partu Virginis, but also his classically inspired Piscatory Eclogues
and the widely popular allegorical love story in prose called Arcadia.20
Egidio also corresponded with the Neapolitan poets Benedetto Gareth
‘il Chariteo’ and Girolamo Borgia.21 He wrote poetry himself, notably
a vernacular allegory called ‘La Caccia Bellissima dell’Amore’, but
his most significant writings were a set of large theological
commentaries dedicated in succession to Popes Julius II, Leo X and
Clement VII.22
Three factors contributed to the eclipse of Egidio da Viterbo’s
reputation in the second half of the sixteenth century. The first of these
was a former Augustinian from Wittenberg named Martin Luther, whose
visit to Rome in the winter of 1510–11 unfortunately coincided with his
Prior General’s absence from the Eternal City. Egidio was a great
conciliator and a convincing defender of papal primacy; Luther was, of
course, neither. From the moment the German firebrand proclaimed his
ninety-five theses in 1517, discord would come to prevail over
conciliation in the western Church. As a result, reform itself became a
18 See the editions of Egidio’s official correspondence by Clare O’Reilly (ed) (1992),
Giles of Viterbo OSA: Letters as Augustinian General, 1506–1517, Rome: Institutum

Historicum Augustinianum, and his private correspondence by Anna Maria Voci Roth (ed)
(1990), Egidio da Viterbo OSA: lettere familiari, Rome: Institutum Historicum
Augustinianum, and Alberic De Meijer (ed) (1984; 1988), Aegidii Viterbiensis O.S.A.
Registrum generalatus, Rome: Institutum Historicum Augustinianum.
19 Fiorentino, Francesco (1884), ‘Egidio da Viterbo e i Pontaniani di Napoli,’ Archivio
storico per le province napoletane, 9, pp. 430-452; Mario Pereira, ‘Arcadia and
Parnassus,’ paper delivered at the annual meeting of the Sixteenth Century Studies
Conference, St. Louis, Mo, October, 1999.
20 Fiorentino, ‘Egidio da Viterbo e i Pontaniani di Napoli’, op. cit.
21 These letters are collected in Rome, Biblioteca Angelica, MS 1001, 25r (Sannazaro);
169v, 171r (Pontano); 219r, 246a r (Girolamo Borgia); 172r (Chariteo); 245r (Ficino), and
published in Voci Roth, Egidio da Viterbo OSA : lettere familiari.
22 Summarized in O’Malley, Giles of Viterbo, pp. 13–18. It should be said that the
plans to publish Egidio’s works that were announced for many years by the late Eugenio
Massa, and much anticipated in O’Malley’s book, never came to fruition.
polarized and intransigent process on every side.23 Like Luther’s theses,

the Council of Trent, where Cardinal Seripando was to become a crucial
negotiator, made short work of Egidio da Viterbo’s broadly tolerant
Catholicism and its sympathetic incorporation of classical and Judaic
wisdom traditions.24 Furthermore, Egidio himself, once an energetic and
optimistic reformer, began to lose his momentum in later life. As he grew
older and ever more entranced with cabbala, he exchanged his militant
public activity for private mystic raptures. He had begun his career as a
Christian Demosthenes, whose orations were pointed, militant, concise
and dramatically paced; his writing exhibited many of the same qualities.
His last treatise, on the other hand, the Taghin, a meditation on the
letters of the Hebrew alphabet, descends into nearly a thousand pages of
terrifying visionary incoherence, suddenly populated by Satan and hordes
of evil demons, dreadful creatures of fear and bigotry who had found no
place within the generous compass of his earlier thought.25
This is not to say, however, that the effect of Egidio’s earlier preaching
and writing was entirely vitiated by later events. One work, in particular,
left permanent traces of its presence among his contemporaries. Sometime
in 1506, inspired by Pope Julius II and the pontiff’s visions of an
aggressively active, universally catholic Church, Egidio da Viterbo,
already promoted to Vicar General of his order, began to recast the
western Church’s standard theological textbook, Peter Lombard’s twelfth-
century Sententiae, in a spirit compatible with contemporary thought.26
Departing from the dry precision of Peter’s Scholastic Latin, Egidio drew
upon metaphor and allegory to develop this new catechism as what he
termed ‘spiritual snacks’, delightful to read, to digest and to contemplate.27
23 O’Malley, John W. (1974), ‘Erasmus and Luther: continuity and discontinuity as
key to their conflict’, Sixteenth Century Journal, vol. 5, pp. 47–65.

24 Martin, Francis X. (1959), ‘The Problem of Giles of Viterbo: A historiographical
survey’, Augustiniana, vol. 9, pp. 357–9; vol. 10 (1960), pp. 43–60.

25 Rome, Biblioteca Angelica MS 1253.
26 Daniela Gionta (1987), ‘“Augustinus Dux meus”: la teologia poetica “ad mentem
Platonis” di Egidio da Viterbo OSA’, Atti del Congresso internazionale su S. Agostino nel
XVI centenario della conversione, Roma, 15–20 settembre 1986, Rome: Istituto Storico
Agostiniano, vol. 3, pp. 187–201; O’Malley, Giles of Viterbo, op. cit., pp. 15–16, 25, 197;
Pfeiffer, Heinrich (1975), Zur Ikonographie von Raffaels Disputa, Rome: Pontificia
Universitas Gregoriana.
27 Vat. Lat. 6325, 1r: ‘paranda est mensa animo, unde semper divinos sumat cibos,
intelligentiae, voluntasque comes divinissima fruatur voluptate: et ne labore, taediove

deterreatur idem agam, quod delicatis fieri solet conviviis, qui ad fastidium declinandum,
parum sibi ciborum apponi iubent, id vero et selectum et pretiosum; sententias ergo
divinas brevissimo compendio praestringam, ut presto semper mens habeat, quod sumat,
unde quantum postea placuerit, possit, et quae gustaverit ruminare; et quae maximè
delectaverint, meditari.’
106 GIORDANO BRUNO
Furthermore, ever since the latter years of the fifteenth century, he

had become a devoted follower of Marsilio Ficino’s Christian
Neoplatonism, and now took it as his chief task to show Pope Julius II
that the Aristotelian slant of Peter Lombard’s theology could be
harmonized with Italy’s most modern philosophical ideas, that Aristotle
could be reconciled with Plato, but that in every respect Plato was better.
In this last contention, Egidio had a powerful ally in St Augustine
himself, ‘Augustinus dux meus’, as the Augustinian friar was happy to
call his order’s putative founder.28
Egidio continued to work on his Sententiae ad mentem Platonis –
‘The Sentences [of Peter Lombard] according to the Mind of Plato’ –
until the pope’s death in 1513. Although the book was never finished
and never went to press, it was read in manuscript and copied
repeatedly.29 One of those copies, from the Seripando collection, is
preserved in the Biblioteca Nazionale in Naples, in a hand that dates
from the middle rather than the beginning of the sixteenth century; this
is in fact the case for all surviving manuscripts of the text.30 Egidio da
Viterbo’s Neoplatonic catechism therefore continued to reach readers
long after its first impact could be seen in the latter years of Julius’
pontificate, in the imagery of Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling and
in Raphael’s School of Athens, for example, or in the figures of speech
that suddenly appeared in contemporary oratory.31 Some of the same
ideas are already perceptible in Sannazaro’s Arcadia of 1504, for
Naples, and specifically Sannazaro’s Posillipo, feature repeatedly in
Egidio’s writings as one of the places where he could best contemplate
divine ideas. Naples played Arcadia to Rome’s Parnassus; they all said
so outright.32
Thus when Teofilo da Vairano began to teach logic in private to the
young Filippo Bruno, and to act as the youth’s ‘greatest master in
philosophy’, that philosophy’s Neoplatonic aspects must surely have
28 Augustine is also ‘parens meus’ in Vat. Lat. 6325, 35v, and frequently simply
‘meus’.
29 The version cited here is Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Vat. Lat. 6325, in a
series of different hands with different spellings.

30 Naples, Biblioteca Nazionale, MS VIII.F.8.
31 Pfeiffer, Heinrich (1975), Zur Ikonographie von Raffaels Disputa: Egidio da
Viterbo und die christlich-platonische Konzeption der Stanza della Segnatura, Rome:
Università Gregoriana Editrice; I.D. Rowland (1997), ‘The intellectual background of the
School of Athens: tracking divine wisdom in the Rome of Julius II’, in Marcia Hall (ed.),
Raphael’s School of Athens, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, pp.
131–70.
32 Mario Pereira first suggested this analogy in ‘Arcadia and Parnassus’, a paper
presented to the annual meeting of the Sixteenth Century Studies Conference, St Louis,
MO, October 1999.
been shaped by the leading Augustinian exponent of Christian

Neoplatonism, by Egidio da Viterbo in addition to Egidio’s own
inspiration, Marsilio Ficino. The possible traces of such influence in
Naples are easy to spot, in manuscripts that come largely from the
special reading room endowed by the Seripando family for the
Augustinian congregation at San Giovanni a Carbonara.33 The
originator of this library within a library was Girolamo Seripando
himself; when he moved to Rome to take up his position as Prior
General of the order, responsibility for the reading room passed to his
brother Antonio. To this important collection, Teofilo da Vairano would
certainly have had access. Filippo or Giordano Bruno may have as well.
Perhaps the most striking resemblance between Teofilo da Vairano
and Egidio da Viterbo lies in their attitude towards the Jews: Egidio kept
a rabbi in his house to teach him Hebrew and, like Teofilo after him,
acknowledged the validity of the Jews’ covenant with God. Both, to be
sure, embraced their Jewish brethren as devout Christians, convinced
that the Messiah had already come to Judaea in the reigns of Augustus
and Tiberius Caesar, but they were respectful of their brethren in the
faith – and indeed of all others. Egidio preached Crusade by papal
request, but he read Arabic scholars. So did Teofilo da Vairano.
More elusive, yet more striking, are the parallels between Egidio da
Viterbo and Giordano Bruno. The Nolan’s encounter with philosophy
occurred when he, with his extraordinary memory and his brilliant
visual imagination, was still a very young man, at that time of life when
both memory and sensory impressions are stimulated and preserved
with especial intensity, and critical faculties are in their infancy.
Whatever Egidio da Viterbo’s shortcomings as a philosopher may have
been, and they were many, his ability to create imagery in words, refined
by his own immersion in the classical art of memory, was an ability of
the very highest order.34 He could give imaginative form to philosophical
abstractions with almost unparalleled success in his own day, and this
skill made his career as a preacher, as well as supplying definite impetus
to the development of the visual arts in sixteenth-century Italy.35 Like
33 Mercati, ‘Prolegomena de fatis Bibliothecae Monasterii Sancti Columbani Bobiensis
et de Codice ipso Vat. Lat. 5757’, op. cit., p. 121.

34 Frances Yates already suggested a connection between Egidio da Viterbo and Giulio
Camillo, and also between Raphael’s School of Athens and the mnemonic arts, in Yates,
Francis (1966), The Art of Memory, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 149, 162,
although she did not connect the two.
35 This point was first made by Heinrich Pfeiffer, Zur Ikonographie von Raffaels
Disputa. See also Rowland, I.D. (1998), The Culture of the High Renaissance: Ancients
and Moderns in Sixteenth-Century Rome, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge
University Press, pp. 141–92.
108 GIORDANO BRUNO
Raphael’s exactly contemporary frescos in the pope’s private library, the

School of Athens, Parnassus, Disputa del Sacramento and Wall of
Justice, Egidio da Viterbo could transform ideas and words into human
figures, or as Frances Yates said of the School of Athens, into very
gods.36
The Giordano Bruno we know from the early 1580s, the author of
works ranging from De umbris idearum, written in Paris in 1582, to De
gli heroici furori, penned in England three years later, owes an evident
debt to Ficino for his Neoplatonic formulations. The story of Bruno’s
alleged plagiarism of Ficino at Oxford in 1584 offers telling proof of
how closely the Nolan philosopher modelled his own thinking upon that
of his Florentine predecessor.37 The debt to Egidio da Viterbo may also
be considerable, a debt acquired both through direct experience of
Egidio’s texts and through the mediating figure of Teofilo da Vairano.
This debt may consist more in a repertory of metaphors and images than
tenets of theology or systematic philosophy (or, for that matter,
cabbala). The fact that Bruno does not name Egidio da Viterbo as one
of his sources reflects, surely, the Augustinian’s limitations as a
systematic thinker and also the degree to which Bruno, even at the
earliest state of his own intellectual journey, diverged from standard
Catholic dogma, especially regarding the Trinity, the theological
conundrum that lies by contrast at the heart of Egidio’s thinking.38
Furthermore, Egidio da Viterbo was an explainer rather than an
innovative thinker, and like some of Raphael’s contemporary artistic
innovations, this highly important prelate’s explanations were so
incisive, so definitive as to seem only natural once he had invented them.
If Bruno absorbed them without noticing their source, he was one of
legions of sixteenth-century Italians who did likewise.
Philosophy, as Egidio presented it in his Sententiae ad mentem
Platonis, was the means by which God had prepared the world to
understand the Christian message when it came in the early days of the
Roman empire.39 As every Neoplatonist knew well, Pythagoras was said
to have coined the term philosophia, the love of wisdom, to describe his
own vocation. In Egidio da Viterbo’s generously syncretic thinking, this
love of wisdom had to be identical with the love generated by Christian
36 Yates, The Art of Memory, op. cit., p. 162.

37 Ricci, Giordano Bruno, op. cit., pp. 214–16.
38 O’Malley, Giles of Viterbo, op. cit., pp. 24–8 and passim.
39 See also Egidio’s orations, such as those published by O’Malley (1972), as ‘Man’s
dignity, God’s love, and the destiny of Rome. A text of Giles of Viterbo’, Viator, vol. 3, pp.
389–416; and idem (1969), ‘Fulfilment of the Christian Golden Age under Pope Julius II:
test of a discourse of Giles of Viterbo, 1507’, Traditio, vol. 25, pp. 265–338.
revelation, which in turn amounted to the same transcendental

knowledge towards which he believed that Solomon had striven literally
in writing the biblical books of Proverbs and Wisdom, and allegorically
in composing the erotic pursuits that animate the Song of Songs. The
Sententiae make a connection between Greek sophia, Hebrew hochmah
and Christian sapientia with insistent regularity, for Egidio was writing
his tractate not only for Pope Julius but also, quite specifically, for his
young pupil Girolamo Seripando; at the time of its writing, Seripando
was just about the same age as Filippo/Giordano Bruno when the latter
first came to learn logic from Fra Teofilo da Vairano.40 Egidio’s
Neoplatonic catechism, with characteristic professional skill, supplied
both clarity and a goodly dose of erotic suggestion to present philosophy
to his readers as the soul’s chief delight. Both Seripando and Bruno,
moreover, were convinced by the Christian Neoplatonists’ creed,
enlisted for life in the army of enlightenment.
The section of his Sententiae in which Egidio himself seems to have
taken particular pride is an extensive discussion about the nature of the
human soul and its proper activity in the world. He called this section,
virtually a complete essay in itself, De vestigio, ‘On the Divine
Footprint’.41 As a Neoplatonist, Egidio believed that the phenomenal
world was a base physical imitation of a more lofty, bodiless realm of
Ideas, a realm that itself merely imitated, and poorly, the divine essence
of God. Nonetheless, every part of God’s creation bore the impress of
the creator’s divinity. In the physical world, that divinity showed forth,
Egidio claimed, in order and harmony: ‘For when the beauty and order
of this world are seen, immediately it occurs [to us] that there must be
an author, either of all this world, or at least, certainly, of its order, who
is the parent of all things, or the rector and administrator of nature.’42
St Augustine himself had already used a passage from the Hebrew
book of Wisdom, verse 11:21, to ascribe order to God in his line-by-line
commentary on the book of Genesis, De Genesi ad litteram: ‘Thou hast
disposed everything in number, measure, and weight.’ Egidio himself,
like many of his contemporaries, quoted this same biblical passage over
and over again as signal proof of an orderly cosmos.43 To such
40 Giannini, Paolo (1982), ‘L’amore della solitudine del cardinale Egidio Antonini ed
il Convento della Santissima Trinità in Soriano’, Biblioteca e Società, vol. 4.1–2, pp.
39–40.
41 See for example, Vat. Lat, 6325, 36r: ‘quarum nomina in Vestigio interpretando
relinquimus’.
42 Vat. Lat. 6325, 25r: ‘Nam cum mundi huius pulcritudo, atque ordo videtur, statim
occurrit esse totius, vel mundi, vel certe ordinis auctorem, qui parens rerum sit, aut rector,
administratorque naturae.’
43 Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram, II.1.
110 GIORDANO BRUNO
quantitative traces of divine order, Augustine, following Plato, had

applied the word ‘footprint’, Latin vestigium for Greek ichnos.44 But it
was characteristic of Egidio da Viterbo to make Plato’s suggestive,
indefinite imagery plainly concrete over many pages of explication. He
asked rhetorically, how does a footprint differ from the person whose
foot created it? It is recognizable as human or animal; we know its kind.
It shares the same measurements as the sole of the foot that made it; we
know whether the maker is pygmy, giant or man. But the substance of
the footprint is an impress in soft material, whereas the person has not
only a whole, substantial foot, but also, presumably, other parts of the
body, an individual personality, an appearance, a history: he may be
Julius Caesar or Pompey or Hercules, but we will learn precious little
about these aspects of a person from a track in the dust or the mud.
What, then, do harmony and order reveal to us about God, except the
vaguest of impressions?45
Now a footprint and a shadow will not reveal to the mind of the
viewer only some indefinite type of animal; neither, however, will
they show forth, for example, either Caesar or Pompey, but rather
something in between, for whoever looks upon footprints or
shadows sees not whether it might be Caesar or Pompey, but on the
other hand will notice not simply that it is an animal, but rather that
it is a man. By exactly the same reasoning, we come to know
divinity by a kind of intermediate knowledge.46
Most striking of all for any reader of Giordano Bruno is Egidio’s further
explication of the divine vestigium as a shadow of the realm of ideas. He
writes: ‘If, on the other hand, a footprint is not an idea, but lies outside
idea, then it is something that lies outside idea, or is a shadow of idea,
and subject to form, or shadow.’47
44 Augustine, De Trinitate, 6.10.12; De Vera Religione, 55.113. Egidio also borrows
from the formulation of Peter Lombard, Sententiae, Book I, Distinctio III.1: ‘Quomodo in
creaturis apparet vestigium trinitatis’, and from the commentary on Lombard composed
in 1277 by the young Augustinian friar (and future Prior General) Egidio Colonna
(Aegidius Romanus, c. 1243–1316)), published in Egidio da Viterbo’s day as Primus
Egidii, Domini Egidii Romani Columnae fundamentarii doctor Theologorum princeps
Bituricensis archiepiscopi Suae Reverendae Eminentiae Cardinalis ordinis Eremitarum
Sancti Augustini Primus Sententiarum, Venice 1521, 26r (commentary on Sententiae,
1.3.2.)
45 Vat. Lat. 6325, 37v–38v.
46 Vat. Lat. 6325, 38r: ‘Nam vestigia atque umbra, non omnino confusum genus
animalis; neque prorsus Caesarem aut Pompeium, sed mediam speciem ostendit intuenti:
nam qui vestigia, aut umbras aspicit, non Caesar, ne, an Pompeius sit; neque rursus tantum
quod animal, sed et quod homo sit animadvertit. Eodem ferme pacto per divinum
vestigium, media quandam cognitione divina cognoscimus.’
47 Vat. Lat. 6325, 39v: ‘si vestigium idea non est, sed extra ideam iacet; quicquid
Vestigium … umbra ideae est. Egidio da Viterbo, with characteristic

reference to a whole range of ancient literature, calls this shadow of idea
a medium, both the mean between darkness and light, and the means by
which human thought leaves the Platonic cave, the Vergilian carcer
caecus of unknowing.48 The shadows of ideas to which Giordano Bruno
devotes his energies in De umbris idearum are likewise vestigia of light,
and there is a great similarity between some of Bruno’s phrases and
those of Egidio beyond their shared Platonic parentage. Bruno writes:
Shadow is not of darkness, but rather the footprint of darkness in
light, or the footprint of light in darkness, or participant in light and
darkness.
Nor does Nature suffer an immediate progression from one extreme
to the other, but only through mediating shadows …49
Bruno’s discussion of umbrae, vestigia, light and darkness reveals a far

more incisive philosophical mind than Egidio’s at work from the outset;
the Nolan philosopher takes apart the meaning of light and darkness
and the stages in between to forge his own doctrine of vicissitude, the
world’s oscillation between extremes in contrast to divinity’s
immanence. But like Egidio he does so with strikingly vivid visual
imagery; his light, dark and shadows seem to exist as definitely as
Egidio’s divine footprints.
Taking another of Plato’s images far beyond its metaphorical sense,
Egidio da Viterbo described the practice of philosophy as a process of
tracking, pursuing and hunting the traces of divine presence in the
material world, just as a hunter follows animal tracks in pursuit of prey.
Ficino used venatio ‘hunting’ himself as an evocative term for
intellectual endeavour; it appears almost casually in one of his letters as
autem extra ideam iacet, aut umbra ideae est, et formae, aut umbrae subiectum, ac
materia, quae et in Timaeo parens, ac proles, in Philebo, infinitum, et terminus nominantur
potestas, quare cum duo tantum sint, extra ideam duae tamen videbuntur partes esse.’
48 See, for example, Vat. Lat. 6325, 111v: ‘mens humana, quae quanquam clausa in
tenebris carcere caeco iaceat … ’61r. ‘Principium unde omnia formam sumunt, sola idea
est, ut Timeus, a quo et pulcrum, et forma proficiscitur; at idea et sol, et lux est, ex 6 reip.,
alia vero vel umbrae, vel tenebrae. Tenebrae materia, et sylva, ubi nihil est lucis umbrae
sunt formae, quae participata quamdam, et malignum, ut Maro ait, in silvis ferunt lucem,
quae materiae comparatae lux dicitur. Si ad ideas referantur, et tenebrae nominari possunt:
se vero quatenus extremi utriusque mediae sunt considerentur, non lux, non tenebras, sed
umbrae nominantur.’
49 Bruno, Giordano [1582] (1991), De umbris idearum, ed. Rita Sturlese, Florence:
Leo S. Olschki, p. 26 (Intentio Secunda. B.): ‘Non est umbra tenebrae, sed vel tenebrarum
vestigium in lumine, vel luminis vestigium in tenebris, vel particeps lucis et tenebrae … ’;
36 (Intentio XV. P): ‘Neque enim natura patitur immediatum progressum ab uno
extraemorum ad alterum, sed umbris mediantibus … ’.
112 GIORDANO BRUNO
if it were a habitual figure of speech: ‘That hunter is excessively

fortunate who will have applied himself to following, with all his
powers, step by step, the Sun of the sun. He shall have found what he
sought, inflamed by its heat, even before he seeks it.’50
Egidio da Viterbo developed the same image extensively in his
Sententiae. He had grown up on the margins of the famous Ciminian
Forest north of Rome, whose dense, dark woods struck fear into the
ancient Romans.51 There he learned la caccia early in life, like all of his
contemporaries, and continued as an avid huntsman throughout his
career.52 Hunting to him naturally evoked thoughts of the forest, and
when he adapted another philosophical term, the word for matter,
Greek hyle, Latin materia, to refer to the phenomenal world, he played
on the word’s other meaning in both languages: wood. Most
suggestively, moreover, a peculiar translation of hyle by the fourth-
century commentator on Plato’s Timaeus, Calcidius, substituted the
word silva, ‘woods’ or ‘forest’ for materia, and the term stuck to lasting
effect in the western philosophical tradition.53 Egidio, characteristically
and with great creative flair, took Calcidius at his word, and described
silva, the physical stuff of Creation, as a deep, thick forest. To what had
been an oddly strained figure of speech, therefore, the seasoned preacher
gave vivid metaphorical life. In Egidio da Viterbo’s silva of matter, the
philosopher-hunter and the dogs of thought searched restlessly for the
tracks, vestigia, of God.
Sometimes, however, [he wrote] the footprints are so hidden that
the power of human intelligence cannot reach them. For this reason
we seek help from another source, and bring in experienced dogs so
that with their help we may obtain our quarry. Now we are chasing
something about God out into the open from its hiding-places in
Nature, something that we could never succeed in capturing with
50 Marsilio Ficino and Giovanni Cavalcanti, Letter to Giorgio Antonio Vespucci, in
Ficino, Marsilio (1959), Opera Omnia, Turin: Bottega d’ Erasmo, vol. I.II., p. 631:
‘Fortunatus nimium venator, qui solis Solem passim sibi sectandum totis viribus
proposuerit. Nempe prius etiam quaerat, hunc facillime reperit, quem non nisi eiusdem
calore accensus quaesivit.’
51 See, for example, Livy, Ab Urbe Condita, IX.36: [36] ‘Silua erat Ciminia magis tum
inuia atque horrenda quam nuper fuere Germanici saltus, nulli ad eam diem ne
mercatorum quidem adita. Eam intrare haud fere quisquam praeter ducem ipsum [sc.
Quintus Fabius Maximus] audebat; aliis omnibus cladis Caudinae nondum memoria
aboleuerat.’
52 Giannini, ‘L’amore della solitudine’, op. cit., Voci, Anna Maria (1983), ‘Idea di
contemplazione ed eremetismo in Egidio da Viterbo’, Egidio da Viterbo, O.S.A. e il suo

tempo, Atti del V Convegno dell’Instituto Storico Agostiniano, Roma-Viterbo, 23 October
1962. Rome: Analecta Augustiniano, pp. 107–16.
53 See Van Winden, J.C.M. (1959), Calcidius on Matter: His Doctrine and Sources: A
Chapter in the History of Platonism, Leiden: Brill.

Nature alone as our guide, not unless we use the demonstrations of

dialectic as our dogs, and the study of philosophy as our nets. These
dogs cannot track hidden quarry except by means of footprints,
clear traces of the feet, or by odors. Thus in this Forest of Matter
divine footprints lie hidden, but when we take notice of them by
means of reason, and consider them well, then we hunt out the
hiding places of the divine light. Plato assents to this in the third
book of the Laws, when he teaches that one should track down
musical harmonies in the manner of experienced dogs.54
Egidio made the image still clearer: the soul, consistently denoted in
Hebrew, Greek, and Latin by feminine nouns, ruah, psychê, anima, was
a huntress, like the ancient goddess Diana, coursing through the forest
of Matter in search of her prey: ‘This is the hunt of Socrates, which he
calls “divine” in the [Protagoras], because when we inspect what is in
the forest and especially in Diana, the guardian of the forest, that is, the
human soul, we hunt divinity.’55 The prey itself, he insisted, could be
found in those traces of number, measure and weight that indicated the
creating hand of God’s art. ‘But God … created this external and
secondary world according to the divine Archetype, for which reason
the whole world itself is a footprint of God, and all the things contained
in it should be called divine footprints.’56 The Trinity, Egidio declared,
the most fundamental of all the numbers in Creation, was the reward for
hunting well: ‘we must track the parts of vestigium by which human
hunting brings back the Trinity as its prize’.57
Now Diana and her nymphs already had a long history in the Italian
imagination, from Ovid’s story of Actaeon spying on the goddess at her
bath, to Boccaccio’s Ninfale Fiesolana, to Sannazaro’s Arcadia, but only
Egidio da Viterbo invested Diana’s sylvan haunts with quite this degree
54 Vat. Lat. 6325, 37v: ‘Nonnunquam vero vestigia ita latitant, ut ad ea vestiganda
humani vis ingenii non attingat; quamobrem aliunde opera petimus, canesque sagaces
adducimus, ut eorum auxilio preda potiamur. Atqui quoddam de Deo venamur ex naturis
rerum, quae natura duce nunquam assequeremur, sed canes nonnisi per vestigia, certaque
inditia vel pedum, vel odoris latentem vestigant praedam; quare in hac sylva, et materia
vestigia divina, coelata sunt, quae cum rationibus animadvertamus, consideremusque,
divinae lucis latibula venamur. Hoc 3. De legibus volumine innuebat Plato, cum musicas
harmonias sagacium canum more vestigare oportere praeciperet.’
55 Vat. Lat. 6325, 14v: ‘Haec est vera venatio Socratis, quam in Pythagora [Egidio
actually means Ficino’s commentary on the Protagoras, Opera Omnia, 1297] divinam
appellitabat, cum ex his quae in haec sylva, et praecipue in Diana sylvarum custode, hoc
est humana anima, aspicimus, divina venamur.’
56 Vat. Lat. 6325, 37v-38r: ‘Deus … mundum hunc extrarium, et secundum
Archetypo divinoque similem condidit, quare et ipse totus Dei vestigium, et omnia quae
ab illo contenta sunt, vestigia divina appellanda sunt.’
57 Vat. Lat. 6325, 39r: ‘ne mali venatores habeamur, vestigii nobis vestigandae sunt
partes, per quae divinae Trinitatis praedam venatio reportet humana.’

114 GIORDANO BRUNO
of verbal literalness, every word and image a hoary commonplace of

classical philosophy. The effect on his readers and hearers was
spellbinding, even at second or third hand: a proliferation of Dianas
appeared in sixteenth-century painting, because they were now
unimpeachably edifying in Christian terms that nearly anyone could
understand.58
In the Sententiae the chief tracker in the Forest of Matter is Diana
herself, whereas a long literary tradition, extending back to Ovid
through Petrarch and Boccaccio, instead emphasized the male hunter,
Actaeon, who spied Diana bathing, was transformed into a stag and
devoured by his own hounds. (The myth already appeared with
apparent allegorical significance on Etruscan sarcophagi.59) It is not
surprising, therefore, to find Actaeon making his appearance in Diana’s
Forest of Matter, although he does not do so in Egidio’s Sententiae –
Ovid was neither Platonist nor Aristotelian, and entirely too casual for
a theological essay. The hounded hero does figure, however, and
prominently, in the Augustinian’s allegorical poem, ‘La Caccia Bellissima
dell’Amore’. There Actaeon, the hunter who becomes the hunted,
figures as the symbol of misguided human effort, love obstinately fixed
upon the Forest of Matter’s physical aspect rather than its divine traces,
until death focuses his attention and redeems him by stripping him of his
mortal shell. Egidio’s protagonist, by contrast, has been done to death
by his own hounds, but consigned to a living purgatory on earth:
I bear what I’ve become upon my brow
Depicted better than my pen can say
Awareness of my error’s been bestowed
By giving me to my own hounds as prey.
Torn and destroyed by my own weapons now
I taste the fruits of all that I assayed;
But worst of all the torments that I face,
I cannot see my way out of this place.
Now some would claim that mine’s a lesser grief
Than Actaeon’s, who turned into a stag;
Yet unlike my misfortune, his was brief
Despite the fact that he was torn to rags.
By suffering at last he gained relief;
Long as I live, my pain will never flag.
To my annoyance, Death’s rejected me,
And thus in living I die constantly.60
58 The most striking of these paintings are the frescoes painted c. 1518 by Correggio in
the Camera di San Paolo, Parma, and by Parmigianino in the 1520s in nearby Fontanellato.
59 Ovid, Metamorphoses, 3.138–252.
60 Egidio da Viterbo, ‘La Caccia Bellissima dell’ Amore’, cited from the Ravano
edition of Venice, 1535, D iii r–v:

An unmistakeably similar use of the myth occurs in the allegorical

verse drama Cecaria, ‘Blindness’, first published in 1525 by the
Neapolitan poet Marco Antonio Epicuro, who frequented the
Academy of Pontano, the company of Sannazaro, and must therefore
by extension have known Egidio da Viterbo himself.61 An attractive
sixteenth-century manuscript in the Biblioteca Nazionale in Naples,
XIII.D.43, formerly from the Seripando library, includes both of these
poems together with Bernardo Tasso’s tales from Ovid, as if these
poems all belonged together; and when we read them in the
manuscript, they work together to make a coherent Neoplatonic
interpretation of human involvement with sacred and profane love.62
In Egidio da Viterbo’s conciliatory spirit, ancient myth was never
without its point. It revealed, if only through a glass darkly, a truth
about death and resurrection that received full revelation in the person
of Jesus Christ.
Actaeon, of course, makes a vivid appearance in the Fourth Dialogue
of Part I of Giordano Bruno’s Heroici Furori, in terms once again
forcefully reminiscent of Egidio da Viterbo’s formulations in prose and
verse. Bruno’s character Tansillo reads a sonnet:
Quel che avvenne di me nel fronte io porto

Depinto meglio assai che anchor ne scribo
Che per più farme del mio fallo accorto
Dai proprii veltri mei fui fatto cibo.
E sol con l’ arme mie stracciato e morto
Questa merce del mio stentar delibo.
Ma del tormento mio questo è anchor peggio
Che mai uscir di qua la via non veggio.
Alcun dirà perché men duol me prema
Che a tal venne At[t]eon mutato in cervo
Ma l’altrui male il mio scaccie o scema
Ben che stracciato fusse a nervo a nervo
Ei gionse col patire alhora estrema
Io per patire in vita mi conservo
Che morte non mi vol per più mi noia
Acciò vivendo a tutte l’hore io moia.
61 For the connection to the Cecaria, see Giovanni Gentile (1985), Giordano Bruno,
Dialoghi Italiani, rev. Giovanni Aquilecchia, Florence: Sansoni, pp. 1100–1150.

62 By contrast, a collection assembled in 1535 by the Venetian printer Vettor Ravano,
Amore di Hieronymo Beniveni Fiorentino, allo Illustrissimo Signor Nicolo da Correggio,

Et una Caccia de amore bellissima de Egidio & cinque capituli sopra el Timore, Zelosia,
Speranza, Amore, & uno Triompho del Mondo Composti per il conte Matteo Maria
Boiardo et Altre Cose Diverse includes more earthbound amatory poems among allegories.
116 GIORDANO BRUNO
Into the woods young Actaeon unleashed

His mastiffs and his hounds, when fateful force
Set him upon the bold incautious course
Of following the track of woodland beasts.
Behold, the sylvan waters now display
The loveliest form that god or man might see;
All alabaster, pearl, and gold is she;
He saw her; and the hunter turned to prey.
The stag who sought to bend
His lightened step toward denser forest depths
His dogs devoured; they caught him in their trap.
The thoughts that I extend
Toward lofty prey recoil and deal me death,
Rending me in their fell and savage snap.63
Actaeon [Bruno’s Tansillo goes on to explain] signifies the intellect intent

on hunting divine wisdom, on apprehending divine beauty ‘… Into the
woods, wild and solitary places, visited and frequented by very few, and
for that reason places where the footprints of few men are impressed …’
along which he unleashes his hounds and mastiffs following the track of
woodland beasts which are the intelligible species of ideal concepts,
which are hidden, pursued by only a few, visited by fewer still, and
which do not offer themselves to everyone who seeks them.
All this headlong tracking, in the Heroici Furori as in Egidio da
Viterbo’s Sententiae, is designed to move the soul from pursuit to
contemplation, from contemplation to love; in short, from the forest of
Matter to the realm of Ideas. On occasion, Egidio says, Diana will pause
63 Giordano Bruno, De gli Heroici Furori, Part I, Fourth Dialogue, first sonnet, cited
from Michel, Paul-Henri (1954), Giordano Bruno. Des Fureurs Heroïques (De gl’ Heroici
Furori), Paris: Les Belles Lettres [the copy that belonged to Frances Yates, Getty Research
Institute, Los Angeles, California], p. 205. My own translation.
Alle selve i’ mastini, e i’ veltri slaccia

Il giovan’ Atteon, quand’ il destino
Gli drizz’ il dubio et incauto camino,
Di boscarecce fiere appo la traccia.
Ecco tra l’acqui il più bel busto et faccia,
Che veder poss’ il mortal et divino,
In ostro et alabastro et oro fino
Vedde, e’l gran cacciator dovenne caccia.
Il cervio ch’ á più folti
Luoghi drizzav’ i’ passi più leggieri,
Ratto voraro i’ suoi gran cani et molti
I’ allargo i’ miei pensieri
Ad altra preda, et essi a me rivolti
Morte mi dan con morsi crudi et fieri.
and see her face reflected in a pool of water, or observe the moon’s
reflection, and she will realize that there are higher things in this world
than her headlong hunt in the forest of Matter. ‘We have already entered
that Forest of human affairs, where, as we have now taught at length,
Diana devotes her energies to hunting … And Diana, when she spies
herself in glassy fountains, or in mirrors, collects something loftier than
footprints, namely, the lovely image of her parent.’64 Here the
Augustinian leaves off his discussion of vestigium and proceeds to an
explication of the realm of Ideas, Latin imagines, where Diana becomes
the Moon, a crystal sphere far above the Forest of Matter, but also
Endymion’s angelic lover, and not incidentally, the imago et similitudo
of Genesis – the image and likeness of God in which humankind was
made.65
Likewise, Bruno’s Tansillo uses the sylvan pool of water in which
Diana is found bathing to effect Actaeon’s transition from vestigio and
ombra to the Ideas:
Behold the sylvan waters, that is, in the mirror of likeness, in the
works through which the efficacy of the divine goodness and light
shines through …
Thus Actaeon with those thoughts, those dogs who sought
goodness, wisdom, beauty, the wild creatures, outside of
themselves, arrived into the presence of that prey, and enraptured
outside himself by such beauty, became prey himself, and saw
himself converted into that which he sought, and he no longer
needed to seek divinity outside himself; for all that he was a
common and ordinary man, he becomes rare and heroic, he has
uncommon actions and thoughts, and creates an extraordinary life.
Here his great and numerous dogs dealt him death; here his life
ceases according to the crazy, sensual, blind and fanciful world, and
he begins to live intellectually, he lives the life of the gods, and feeds
upon ambrosia and inebriates himself on nectar …66
64 Vat. Lat. 6325, 115v: ‘Ingrediamur iam humanorum sylvam, in qua uti dudum
docuimus, nostra Diana venationi dat operam … Eadem Diana cum seipsam, aut vitreis
fontibus, aut speculis aspicit, aliquid colligit vestigiis augustius, hoc est, formosum
parentis imaginem.’
65 Vat. Lat. 6325: 56v ‘Diana quidem virgo habita, quod silva, materiaque libera ex se
sit, silvis tamen sanctae gratia venationes addicta; luna eadem dicitur, mentes enim
coelestes naturam eamdem simplicem, et intelligendi potestatem habeat, ideo eadem non
numero, non species, sed genere dici solent: id genus mentium quod lunae nomine vocatum
est adeo imaginem habet nostra imagine praestantiorem, ut magnopere amant nostram
excedere, et limpidis radiis luci suae nostras silvarum tenebras illustrare. In monte La[t]mo
Endymionem adamasse dicta est, sopitumque nocte osculari consuevisse: quae fabula
ratione non caret.’
66 Giordano Bruno, De gli heroici furori, cited from Paul-Henri Michel, Giordano
Bruno. Des Fureurs Heroiques, p. 207: ‘Ecco tra l’ acqui, cioè nel specchio de le
similitudini, nell’ opre dove riluce l’ efficacia della bontade et splendor divino’, and 209:
118 GIORDANO BRUNO
Or, as Egidio da Viterbo put it in the Sententiae,

Those blessed souls drink deep, whom the King caresses like brides
with the kisses of his mouth, whom he inundates with the wine that
delights human hearts … and the brides, drunk on joyous
abundance, sing, as in the nuptial mysteries, ‘His kisses are sweeter
than wine, and more powerful by far’.67
However, just as Diana’s headlong charges through the Forest of Matter

represent only partial enlightenment for Egidio da Viterbo, so the figure
of Actaeon, even resurrected, expresses only imperfect enlightenment for
Giordano Bruno – as indeed he did for Egidio in the ‘Caccia Bellissima
dell’Amore’. The real transformation of the individual from mortality to
divinity takes place instead by a riverside, where in Egidio’s Sententiae
as in the Eroici Furori the baptismal sprinkling with divine waters
presages the mystical union with a transcendental beloved, described in
both contexts in language profoundly shaped by the Song of Songs. The
river in Egidio’s Sententiae can only be the Jordan. For the Nine Blind
Men of the Eroici Furori it is the Thames, but it is, of course, also the
great river of Giordano’s eloquence.
What we definitely know about Giordano Bruno and Neoplatonism
in Naples are the following facts: that a very young Filippo Bruno went
to learn logic from the Augustinian friar Teofilo da Vairano, and that
Teofilo’s impact on his pupil went beyond simple instruction in logic,
that this hypercritical philosopher regarded Teofilo as ‘his greatest
master in philosophy’. We know in addition that Bruno’s own idea of
philosophy owed so profound a debt to Marsilio Ficino that he was
accused of outright plagiarism when be began to lecture at Oxford on a
philosophy that Giordano himself regarded as Nolan. The richest hoard
of Ficinian texts in Naples was gathered in the Seripando collection that
formed a special jewel within the Augustinian library of San Giovanni a
Carbonara. We cannot as yet place Giordano Bruno firmly within that
‘Ecco dunque come l’ Atteone messo in preda de suoi cani, perseguitato da proprii pensieri,
corre et drizza i’ novi passi; é rinovato a procedere divinamente et più leggiermente, cioè
con maggior facilità et con una più efficace lena, á luoghi più folti, alli deserti, alla reggion
de cose incomprensibili; da quel ch’ era un’ huom volgare et commune, dovien raro et
heroico, há costumi et concetti rari, et fa estraordinaria vita. Qua gli dan morte i’ suoi gran
cani et molti: qua finisce la sua vita secondo il mondo pazzo, sensuale, cieco et
phantastico, et comincia á vivere intellettualmente, vive vita de dei, pascesi d’ ambrosia et
inebriasi di nettare.’
67 Vat. Lat. 6325, 155r–v: ‘illae foelices animae hauriunt, quas Rex ut sponsas osculo
oris sui dissuaviat, quas vino potat, unde laetatur cor hominum, quas in cellaria introducit
sua ut primo quidem nuptiis clam celebratis, aquas convertit in vinum [155v] ac sponsae
ebriae foelici ubertate … quae velut Epithalamii mysteria cantitant Vino suaviora sunt et
plane potiora.’
library. Instead we must perform the same action that Marsilio Ficino
develops from his own readings of Plato: tracking, vestigatio, looking
for tell-tale traces that allow us to re-create a more full idea about the
real object of our pursuit.
And here the most striking traces are those left in Bruno’s writings on
the one hand and the writings of Egidio da Viterbo on the other. That
Teofilo da Vairano was himself a visionary Neoplatonist in the Ficinian
mold cannot be established from his one surviving treatise, De Gratia
Novi Testamenti (On the Grace of the New Testament) although there
are tantalizing suggestions that he was a radical thinker in his own right.
The parallels between Bruno and Egidio da Viterbo appear most
pointedly in De umbris idearum and in his Italian dialogues, especially
the Eroici Furori, works in which the Nolan philosopher’s debt to
Neoplatonism is particularly evident. The commanding influence of
Marsilio Ficino, of course, was so clear that Giordano stood accused of
plagiarism in Oxford. But there are also types of imagery that Ficino
explored only superficially, whereas Egidio pursued them in depth, and
so, in his turn, did the Nolan.
Perhaps the quality that most profoundly links Egidio da Viterbo to
Giordano Bruno is the sheer ravening intensity of their quest for God, a
quest they both gladly liken to madness, to furor heroicus. Naples itself,
with its natural wonders, its millennial history, and its pullulating street
life, must have inflamed their thirst for God to truly heroic frenzy. These
traces are perhaps shadowy and vestigial, but they nonetheless suggest
something of the divine light shed upon generations of sensitive souls
under that ‘benigno cielo’ of Campania.
CHAPTER FIVE
Images of Literary Memory in the

Italian Dialogues: Some Notes on
Giordano Bruno and
Ludovico Ariosto
Lina Bolzoni
(translated from the Italian by Lisa Chien)
While a novitiate in Naples between the years 1565 and 1566 Giordano
Bruno took part in a popular game known as sorti or ‘drawing lots’.1 In
this game the players were required to open a book and point to a verse
at random (or draw verses written on slips of paper from a pool) and
then link this verse with one of the persons present, whose name was
also selected by chance. This game became a favourite pastime at court,
and was often included in the divertissements held on the eve of the
Epiphany. We know that on one occasion, by some happy fate, a poet
was called upon to join the name of Isabella d’Este to the Petrarchian
verse ‘Fior di virtù, fontana di beltade’ [flower of virtue, fountain of
beauty] (Rerum vulgarium fragmenta, 351, 7): a most auspicious lot
indeed for both the princess and the poet, who was no doubt inspired by
this to write one of his most felicitous sonnets or madrigals.2
For Giordano Bruno, however, things turned out quite differently.
The book which he and his companions chose for their game of sorti
was Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando furioso, and to Bruno fell the verse
‘d’ogni legge nimico e d’ogni fede’ which closes the octave describing the
anger of Rodomonte upon learning that the lovely Isabella has decided
to take the veil and become a nun: ‘Thus laughed the proud pagan who
refused to believe in God, sworn foe of every law and every faith’ (canto
XXVIII, 99, 7–8)3
1 See Mercati, Angelo (1942), Il sommario del processo di Giordano Bruno, Città del
Vaticano: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, p. 62, n. 21.

2 See Bertoni, G. (1919), L’ ‘Orlando Furioso’ e la Rinascenza a Ferrara, Modena, pp.
211–12; Le carte di corte. I tarocchi. Gioco e magia alla corte degli Estensi, G. Berti and
A. Vitali (eds), Bologna: Nuova Alfa Editoriale, 1987.
3 ‘Ride il pagano altier ch’in Dio non crede, / d’ogni legge nimico e d’ogni fede’ ( L.
Ariosto (1982), Orlando furioso, E. Bigi (ed.), Milan, Rusconi).

122 GIORDANO BRUNO
Bruno must have felt a strange stirring of recognition upon hearing

these words, for he interpreted them as a sign of his true character and
ultimate destiny. Many years later in Venice he recounted this episode to
his fellow prisoners, and one of them would eventually testify at his trial
that ‘in this he gloried, saying that to his lot had befallen the very verse
most concordant with his nature’.4
From this chance association, in which the names of Bruno and
Ariosto were so appositely linked, I will spin the principal thread of my
talk, proceeding firstly to an examination of how literary memory
functioned in Bruno’s Italian dialogues, and taking as my main example
the dialogue Cena de le Ceneri (The Ash Wednesday Supper, 1584).5 I
will then go on to discuss how Giordano Bruno’s profound knowledge
of the techniques of the art of memory contributed yet another
dimension to the complex intertextual play of his works. I will link these
reflections to the different lines of research pursued by scholars such as
Michael Baxandal, Harold Weinrich and Mary Carruthers, who in
recent years have focused their attention not so much on the tradition of
the art of memory itself as on the various influences which this tradition
had on many areas of European culture from the Middle Ages to the
Renaissance.6
4 ‘Di questo lui si gloriava assai dicendo che gl’era toccato il verso conforme alla sua
natura.’ Mercati, il sommario del processo, op. cit. pp. 59–60, n. 12.
5 Among the ample literature on the subject of literary memory, I refer the reader to
Conte, G. (1985), Memoria dei poeti e sistema letterario, Turin: Einaudi, and, for further
bibliographical references, to Polacco, M. (1998), L’intertestualità, Rome: Laterza. For
Bruno’s La Cena de le Ceneri, reference is made to the English translation The Ash
Wednesday Supper, ed. and trans. E.A. Gosselin and L.S. Lerner, New York: Archon
Books, 1977.
6 For example, both Carlo Ginzburg and Michael Baxandal have demonstrated how
the art of memory was intertwined with mystical and devotional practices during the
fifteenth century: see Ginzburg, Carlo (1972), Folklore, magia, religione, in Storia d’Italia,
Turin: Einaudi, I, pp. 603–76, 631–2; see also Baxandall, M. (1985), Painting and
Experience in Fifteenth Century Italy. A Primer in the Social History of Pictorial Style,
Oxford: Oxford University Press, (1st edn, 1972), p. 45ff.; Jonathan Spence has examined
the use which Matteo Ricci made of the art of memory during his period as a missionary
in China in Spence, J. (1983), The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci, New York: Viking
Penguin, 1; Michel Beaujour has shed fascinating light on the complex subject of the
literary self-portrait in his exploration of the contiguity of the art of memory with
meditation and spiritual practices in Beaujour, M. (1980), Miroirs d’encre. Rhétorique de
l’autoportrait, Paris: Editions du Seuil; Harold Weinrich has demonstrated
correspondences between certain structural elements in the Divina Commedia and those
used in the art of memory in Weinrich, H. (1994), La memoria di Dante, Florence:
Accademia della Crusca, and idem (1997), Lethe. Kunst und Kritik des Vergessens,
Munich: Beck; Mary Carruthers, in two works of great interest, The Book of Memory. A
Study of Memory in Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990)
IMAGES OF LITERARY MEMORY IN THE ITALIAN DIALOGUES 123
5.1 A Page of Ariosto’s Orlando furioso [1516], 1580.

124 GIORDANO BRUNO
But let us return now to Bruno and to the incident which I have taken
as my starting point. This game of sorti demonstrates how, during the
sixteenth century, important literary works were put to uses that to us
would be quite unthinkable: they could be condensed, fragmented and
recombined at will, individual words and phrases becoming objects (brevi)
that might be reassembled in new combinations and associated with
completely different persons or situations. Texts were ingeniously
reworked and reinterpreted, ransacked for lines suitable to the composition
of light-hearted divertissements or gallant homages of love, or anxiously
consulted for presages of the future and truthful ‘signs’ of one’s personal
fate. In order for the game to proceed, however, it was necessary that the
text in question be firmly lodged in the memory of the players so that they
could effortlessly produce the appropriate associations, and appreciate the
subtle analogies and contradictions contained in these conjunctions.
Orlando furioso lent itself admirably to a use of this kind, first,
because of the universality of its text – as Orazio Toscanella noted in his
commentary published in 1574, it represented ‘the mirror in which
dwelt the actions of both praiseworthy men and those of basest merit’7
– and, second, due to the immense success and popularity of the work,
which was read by an audience that extended well beyond traditional
literary circles.8 Indeed, in a famous passage from his Journal de voyage
Montaigne records his amazement at finding the lines of Ariosto being
recited even by shepherds.9 In the same vein, Bernardo Tasso wrote to
and The Craft of Thought. Meditation, Rhetoric, and the Making of Images, 400–1200
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), has thoroughly re-examined the actual
use of memory in the practices of meditation, in the reading of texts and in their
composition, demonstrating how authors ‘ruminated upon’ and remembered texts in order
to be able subsequently to translate them into new contexts in their own writings and their
own lives, this process becoming a distinctive element in a secular culture closely tied to
inventio and memoria. See also Bolzoni, L. (1995), La stanza della memoria. Modelli
letterari e iconografici nell’età della stampa, Turin: Einaudi.
7 ‘Lo specchio nel quale si veggono le attioni de gli huomini di laude o di biasmo
meritevoli’ (Toscanella, O. [1574], Bellezze del Furioso, Venice: Pietro Franceschi, p. 4).
8 See Melzi, G. and Tosi, A. (1838), Bibliografia dei romanzi di cavalleria in versi e in
prosa italiani, Milan: Daelli; Fumagalli, G. (1912), La fortuna dell’ ‘Orlando Furioso’ nel
secolo XVI, Ferrara: Zuffi; Beer, M. (1987), Romanzi di cavalleria. Il ‘Furioso’ e il
romanzo italiano del primo Cinquecento, Rome: Bulzoni, pp. 207–11, 237–9 and, with
reference to Bruno, Aquilecchia, G. (1955), Introduzione to G. Bruno, La cena de le
Ceneri, Turin: Einaudi, pp. 15–59, 35.
9 Montaigne, M. de (1946), Journal de voyage en Italie par la Suisse et l’Allemagne en
1580 et 1581, ed. C. Dédéyan, Paris: Les Belles Lettres, p. 349. Montaigne also describes
the case of an illiterate peasant whom he met in the province of Lucca who was able to
improvise verses with astonishing facility because when he was a boy ‘in the house of his
father there was an uncle who would read aloud to us from Ariosto and other poets’ (ibid.,
p. 307).
Varchi that singing strophes of Ariosto was ‘refreshment for the tired
pilgrim during his long journey, for they made the vexations of the heat
and the endless miles more bearable’.10
This popular use of the verses of Ariosto explains the scene in Cena
de le Ceneri in which Florio and Bruno, during their nocturnal journey
through London, seek to drown the sound of the sinister creaking of
their boat by engaging in a tenzone or singing competition, reciting
verses from Orlando furioso.11 Bruno and his friends clearly knew
Ariosto’s text by heart and here launch into an exchange of verses
spirited enough to make them forget for a time their fear and despair. I
will return later to this passage, but would like to note here that the lines
quoted by Bruno were drawn from verses recited by Rodomonte in
Ariosto’s poem.
What role did this intimate familiarity with the masterpiece of
Ariosto play in the writings of Giordano Bruno? In order to shed some
light on this question we will analyse the first two dialogues of Cena de
le Ceneri, a work in which the presence of Ariosto is particularly
accentuated, contributing elements that fit into a dense network of
literary memory.
In the first dialogue Theophilus delivers a long eulogy in praise of the
Nolan, as Bruno calls himself in this text, the purpose of which is to
explain the relationship between the Nolan’s philosophy and the
discoveries of Copernicus, based on a reference to the heroic figure of
Columbus. In this dialogue Theophilus (and the Nolan) represent the
alter ego of Giordano Bruno and the prologue to the eulogy brings into
play a favourite device of the dialogue – that of the multiplication of
identities.12 The dialogue also includes many references to the crucial
10 ‘Il ristoro che ha lo stanco peregrino nella lunga via, il qual il fastidio del caldo e
del lungo cammino cantandole rende minore.’ The letter to Varchi, dated 6 March 1559,
may be found in Tasso, B. (1733), Lettere, ed. A.F. Seghezzi, vol. II, Padua: Giuseppe
Comino, pp. 423–8; regarding the citation, cf. p. 425.
11 Bruno, Giordano (2000), La cena de le Ceneri, in BDFI, p. 44.
12 Ophir, A. (1994), Introduction to Giordano Bruno, Le souper des cendres, ed.
G. Aquilecchia, Paris, the Les Belles Lettres edition cited above, pp. I–LXVIII. Some
observations on the literary structure of the dialogue may also be found in the English
translation: G. Bruno (1977), The Ash Wednesday Supper, ed. E.A. Gosselin and L.S.
Lerner, Hamden, CT: M. Jeanneret has written two very stimulating papers on this topic:
(1987), Giordano Bruno: le banquet raté, in Des mets et des mots. Banquets et propos de
table à la Renaissance, Paris: José Corti, pp. 181–7, and (1991), La tête et l’estomac:
Giordano Bruno, les banquets et le détournement de la philosophie, in Philosophical
Fictions and the French Renaissance, ed. Neil Kenny, London: The Warburg Institute, pp.
91–100. Many perceptive observations on the relationship between literary structure and
philosophical and scientific content may be found in Gatti, H. (1999), G. Bruno and
Renaissance Science, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. The introduction and notes by
126 GIORDANO BRUNO
theme of perspective and of the necessary distance required to obtain a

true view of reality.
The structure of Teofilo’s eulogy is based upon the argumentation of
quanto magis; in other words, if the world extols Tiphys and Columbus
for their discoveries, which have also brought disorder and violence in
their wake, then there is all the more reason to sing the praises of a
philosopher such as the Nolan, who has liberated human thought and
opened the way for the exploration of an infinitude of worlds. Three sets
of Latin verses which appear at key points in the author’s argument are
of particular interest to us here, for they delineate a unified plot that
forms a tragic counterpoint to the central story. These verses were drawn
from the chorus which closes the first act of Seneca’s Medea. However,
Bruno removes the lines from their original context, recomposes them in
a different order, and gives them his own contemporary, and highly
personal, interpretation.
The first citation is used in a purely literal sense; in it the author
comments on the foolhardy audacity of the first navigator Tiphys, and
on the risks and excesses associated with his discoveries:13
Too daring the man who in a frail vessel
First ventured across the treacherous seas;
And viewing from behind the familiar shoreline,
Entrusted his soul to the fickle winds. (vv. 301–4)14
The second citation instead employs the text of Seneca in a prophetic

key:
G. Aquilecchia to the 1955 edition of La cena, op. cit., and the notes in the Belles Lettres
edition, cit., contain many observations on Bruno’s use of the Italian literary tradition. Cf.
also Aquilecchia, G. (1993), La ‘Cena de le Ceneri’ di G. Bruno, in Letteratura italiana.
Le opere, II, Turin: Einaudi, pp. 665–703.
13 Seneca’s condemnation of navigation, seen as one of the portents of the end of the
Golden Age, forms part of a long tradition: see the sources cited in Moretti, G. (1994), Gli
Antipodi. Avventure letterarie di un mito scientifico, Parma: Pratiche Editrice, pp. 57–9
and 149, n. 149; and the observations of Granada, M. (1990), ‘Giordano Bruno y
América. De la crítica de la colonizaciôn a la crítica del cristianismo’, GeoCrítica.
Quadernos Criticos de Geografia Humana, vol. 90, pp. 8–61: 16. On the chorus cited by
Bruno, see also Biondi, G.G. (1984), Il nephas argonautico. Mythos e logos nella Medea
di Seneca, Bologna: Patron, pp. 87-141 and Moretti, G. (1986), ‘Nec sit terris ultima
Thule: La profezia di Seneca sulla scoperta del Nuovo Mondo’, in Columbeis, I, Genoa,
pp. 95–106. The use of the motif of the ship of the Argonauts from antiquity to the Middle
Ages is partially reconstructed in Curtius, R. (1984), La nave degli Argonauti, in
Letteratura della letteratura, Bologna: Il Mulino, pp. 301–25.
14 ‘Audax nimium, qui freta primus / rate tam fragili perfida rupit; / terrasque suas
post terga videns, / animam levibus credidit auras.’

There will come an age

in the far-off years, when the Ocean
shall unloose the bonds of all things,
and a vast land shall emerge, while Tiphys
will disclose new realms, and Thule
shall no longer be the limit of dry land. (vv. 375–9)15
In this context Columbus is presented to us as a latter-day Tiphys, and

this citation from Seneca casts a tragic light on the hero and his voyage,
foretelling the shedding of blood and horrors without end. Thus, the
cruelty which accompanied the Spanish conquest of the New World
could be represented by paraphrasing the words of Seneca’s Medea and
extending their implications, which are already hinted at in Bruno’s use
of Tiphys’s name in the plural, or generic, form (‘gli Tifi’):
The helmsmen of explorations (that is ‘the Tiphi’) have discovered
how to disturb everybody else’s peace, how to violate the native
spirits of the diverse regions, how to mingle together that which
provident nature had kept separate; how by intercourse to redouble
defects and to add to old vices the new vices of other peoples, with
violence to propagate new follies and to plant unheard-of insanities
where they did not before exist, so that he who is strongest comes
to conclude that he is wisest. They showed new ways, instruments
and arts for tyrannizing and murdering each other. The time will
come when, in consequence of all this, those men, having learned at
their own expense (through the way things turn out), will know
how to and will be able to return to us similar and even worse fruits
of such pernicious inventions:
Our fathers lived in an age of innocence, devoid of falsehood. Each
of them, quietly enjoying his own shore, getting old in his father’s
field, rich in his poverty, knew no other riches than those produced
by the land. The Thessalian wood [the Argo] destroyed the wise
laws of the world and the judicious separation of its shores; the sea
suffered the scourge of oars and it, formerly separated from us,
became frightful to us.16
15 ‘Venient annis / secula seris, quibus Oceanus / vincula rerum laxet, et ingens / pateat
tellus, Typhisque novos / detegat orbes, nec sit terris / ultima Thule.’
16 See The Ash Wednesday Supper, ed. Edward A. Gosselin and Lawrence S. Lerner,
New York, Archon Books, 1977, pp. 88–9. ‘Gli Tifi han ritrovato il modo di perturbar la
pace altrui, violar i patrii genii de le reggioni, di confondere quel che la provida natura
distinse, per il commerzio radoppiar i diffetti e gionger vizii a vizii de l’una e l’altra
generazione, con violenza propagar nove follie e piantar l’inaudite pazzie ove non sono,
conchiudendosi al fin più saggio quel che è più forte; mostrar novi studi, instrumenti, et
arte de tirannizar e sassinar l’un l’altro: per mercè de quai gesti, tempo verrà ch’avendono
quelli a sue male spese imparato, per forza de la vicissitudine de le cose, sapranno e
potranno renderci simili e peggior frutti de sì perniciose invenzioni:
128 GIORDANO BRUNO
Thus, we can begin to grasp the function of the literary memory of

Seneca’s Medea, so clearly present even if never explicitly declared.
Bruno sets before us the analogy between Columbus’s daring enterprise
and its consequences – the Spanish rape of the New World – and the
discoveries of Tiphys which led to the tragedy of Medea. The drama of
the contemporary story of conquest simply presents in a fresh guise the
tragic nexus of the ancient story in which peace was destroyed by a
discovery which led to violence, terror and bloodshed. The reader is
invited, indeed almost constrained, to participate in an act of
‘recognition’ of the analogies between the two stories embedded in the
intertextual density of the work. As Giambiagio Conte has observed, the
use of literary memory creates a gap between that which is present in the
text and enunciated through its words, and ‘the image which the reader
must perceive beyond the letter of the words’.17 Thus in Bruno’s text we
must learn to recognize the image of Medea, who appears in our field of
perception through an interplay of associations and prophetic
correspondences.
Bruno is actually drawing upon a well-consolidated tradition when he
interprets Columbus’s enterprise as the realization of a prophecy already
contained in the works of antiquity. The texts which form this tradition
include the IV Ecloga of Virgil (‘Alter erit tum Tiphys, et altera quae
vehat Argo / delectos heroas’, vv. 34–5 [A second Tiphys will then arise,
and a second Argo to carry chosen heroes]) and, of course, the lines
quoted above from Seneca’s Medea. A traditional reading of Seneca’s
text, which today has been rejected, generally interpreted the original
Latin word as ‘Tiphysque’ (‘and Tiphys’) rather than ‘Tethisque’ (‘and
Candida nostri secula patres

videre procul fraude remota:
sua quisque piger littora tangens,
patrioque senex fructus in arvo
parvo dives, nisi quas tulerat
natale solum non norat opes.
Bene dissepti foedera mundi
traxit in unum thessala pinus,
iussitque pati verbera pontum,
partemque metus fieri nostri
mare sepositum.’
Bruno, Cena de le ceneri, op. cit., p. 27. The verses are from Medea, vv. 329–39. On
Bruno’s views concerning the new colonial experiences, see Ricci, S. (1990), ‘Infiniti mondi
e Mondo Nuovo. Conquista dell’America e critica della civiltà europea in Giordano
Bruno’, Giornale critico della filosofia italiana, X, pp. 204–21 and Granada, ‘Giordano
Bruno y América’, op. cit.
17 Conte, Memoria dei poeti, op. cit., p. 14; Nencioni, G. (1967), ‘Agnizioni di
lettura’, in Strumenti critici, II, 1967, pp. 191–8.

Thetis’, a sea-nymph) and it was this misreading that made it possible to

interpret Seneca’s lines in a prophetic vein. Significantly, the verses from
the Medea which Bruno quotes were also included in the Libro de las
Profecias which Columbus carried with him on his voyage. They became
one of the touchstones which Columbus, and a long series of apologists
after him, relied upon to interpret and justify the conquest of America.
Its invasion was thus read as the accomplishment of a divine plan which
included the creation of a universal empire and the conversion of all
peoples by means of the work of missionaries.18
In perfect consonance with this reading is the octave from Ariosto
which celebrates the discovery and conquest of the New World (can. XV,
18–36) using the device of the falsely prophetic excursus which would
later become an important element in the epic tradition from Tasso
(Gerusalemme liberata, XV, 24–32) to Marino (Adone, X, 42–6).19 In
canto XV of Orlando furioso Andronica, handmaiden to Logistilla, the
good sorceress who represents the force of reason, during a voyage
across the seas of Asia with Astolfo, explains to him that the
traditionally held concepts of geography are entirely mistaken. She then
makes this prophecy: ‘but with the passage of time I see new Argonauts,
new Tiphyses hailing from the lands which lie furthest to the West, who
shall open routes unknown to this day’ (XV, 21, 1–4).20
18 See, and for further bibliographic references, Moretti, Gli Antipodi, op. cit.;
Todorov, T. (1982), La conquête de l’Amérique. La question de l’autre, Paris; Prosperi, A.

(1976), ‘America e Apocalisse. Note sulla “conquista spirituale” del Nuovo Mondo’,
Critica storica, I, pp. 1–61.
19 A precedent – in this case a truly prophetic one – for the excursus may be found in
Pulci (Morgante, XXV, 229ff.); for some highly stimulating observations on the use and
meaning of the excursus in the verse narrative between the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, see Zatti, S. (1996), Nuove terre, nuova scienza, nuova poesia: la profezia epica
delle scoperte, in L’ombra del Tasso. Epica e romanzo nel Cinquecento, Milan: Bruno
Mondadori, pp. 146–207. See also Quint, David (1993), Epic and Empire. Politics and
Generic Form from Virgil to Milton, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Regarding
the presence of the myth of Ulysses, see Boitani, P. (1992), L’ombra di Ulisse. Figure di un
mito, Bologna: Il Mulino. On the excursus added by Ariosto to the final version of his
poem, see Casadei, A. (1988), ‘“Nuove terre e nuovo mondo”: le scoperte geografiche nel
c. XV’, 18–27, appendice I, in Strategia delle varianti. Le correzioni storiche del terzo
Furioso, Lucca: Pacini Fazzi, pp. 79–86 and Santoro, M. (1989), ‘La “addizione” delle
scoperte geografiche’, in Ariosto e il Rinascimento, Naples: Liguori. See in addition, for
the reconstruction of a topos interwoven with that of the New World, Cachey, T.J. (1995),
Le Isole Fortunate. Appunti di storia letteraria italiana, Rome: ‘L’Erma’ di Bretschneider.
On Tasso, see also Residori, M. (1992), ‘Colombo e il volo di Ulisse: una nota sul XV della
“Liberata”’, Annali della Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, XXII, pp. 931–42 and
Larivaille, P. (1994), ‘Il canto del “gran viaggio” (Gerusalemme liberata, XV)’, La
rassegna della letteratura italiana, I–II, pp. 20–34.
20 ‘Ma volgendosi gli anni, io veggio uscire / da l’estreme contrade di ponente / nuovi
130 GIORDANO BRUNO
The religious subjugation of the New World which followed, step by

step, the military occupation, was celebrated in analogous terms: ‘I see
the Holy Cross and the imperial standards set up on the verdant shore’
(XV, 23, 1–2). And everything was interpreted as the accomplishment of
God’s plan: ‘He wills that under this emperor there should be but one
fold, one shepherd’ (XV, 26, 7–8).21
In The Ash Wednesday Supper Giordano Bruno has therefore
embraced this hermeneutic tradition, but in giving it his own particular
connotation he has completely changed its meaning. To begin with, he
links the period’s geographical discoveries with its equally remarkable
astronomical discoveries, creating an analogy that would be widely
borrowed during the seventeenth century. Campanella and Marino, for
example, would incorporate this association in their eulogies of the
discoveries of Galileo.22 Bruno therefore assumes the role of a
protagonist – and at the same time a highly unusual position – in the
process of associations by which, as Sergio Zatti has written: ‘from the
Argonauts to Odysseus, from Aeneas to Dante’s Ulysses, from
Columbus to Galileo, the archetypical figures of a modern mythology
emerge’.23 Bruno enriches this tradition, and at the same time turns it
upon its head.
No other author in this period, I believe, ever attempted such a bold
reworking of Seneca’s text, extracting the verses from their dramatic
context and diverting the reading of the story in a completely new
direction – that of an overt condemnation of the Spanish conquista and,
even more radically, a complete rejection of the European philosophical
and religious tradition.24
This innovation had far-reaching consequences in terms of the
rhetorical structure used to construct Theophilo’s eulogy. The analogy
linking the discoveries of Tiphys and Columbus with those of Bruno in
fact contains within itself a contradiction – the similarity of the
beginning and the difference in the final outcome. To underscore this
discrepancy, immediately after the eulogy Bruno creates and inserts
Argonauti e nuovi Tifi, e aprire / la strada ignota infin al dì presente.’ See Ariosto, L.
(1983), Orlando Furioso, trans. Guido Waldman, Oxford: Oxford University Press (1st
edn, 1974).
21 ‘Veggio la santa croce, e veggio i segni / imperial nel verde lito eretti’ (XV, 23, 1–2);
‘vuol che sotto a questo imperatore / solo un ovile sia, solo un pastore’.
22 Costa, G. (1972), La leggenda dei secoli d’oro nella letteratura italiana, Bari:
Laterza, pp. 111–12.

23 Zatti, Nuove terre, op. cit., p. 150.
24 See Granada, ‘Giordano Bruno y América’, op. cit. On the reinterpretation of the
myth of the Argonauts for use in anti-Spanish propaganda in England, see Chapter 9 in
this volume by Elisabetta Tarantino.
other exemplary images of himself into the text, evoking figures to

whom he felt particularly tied by a series of associations. These
references enable us to follow Bruno in his elaboration of the second
level of his comparison: ‘if we praise Tiphys and Columbus, then there
is all the more reason to praise’
The Nolan, in order to cause completely opposite effects, has freed
the human mind and the knowledge which were shut up in the strait
prison of the turbulent air. Hardly could the mind gaze at the most
distant stars as if through some few peepholes, and its wings were
clipped so that it could not soar and pierce the veil of the clouds to
see what was actually there. It could not free itself from the
chimeras of those who, coming forth with manifold imposture from
the mire and pits of the earth (as if they were Mercuries and Apollos
descended from the skies), have filled the whole world with infinite
folly, nonsense and vice, disguised as so much virtue, divinity and
discipline. By approving and confirming the misty darkness of the
sophists and block-heads, they extinguished the light which made
the minds of our ancient fathers divine and heroic. Therefore
human reason, so long oppressed, now and again in a lucid interval
laments her base condition to the divine and provident Mind that
ever whispers in her inner ear, responding in suchlike measures:
Who will mount for me, O Madonna, to the sky,
And bring back thence my lost wisdom?
Now behold the man who has surmounted the air, penetrated the sky,
wandered among the stars, passed beyond the borders of the world,
effaced the imaginary walls of the first, eighth, ninth, tenth spheres,
and the many more you could add according to the tattlings of empty
mathematicians and the blind vision of vulgar philosophers.25
25 See Bruno, The Ash Wednesday Supper, op. cit., pp. 89–90. ‘Il Nolano, per
caggionar effetti al tutto contrarii, ha disciolto l’animo umano, e la cognizione, che era
rinchiusa ne l’artissimo carcere de l’aria turbulento, onde a pena come per certi buchi avea
facultà de remirar le lontanissime stelle, et gli erano mozze l’ali, a fin che non volasse ad
aprir il velame di queste nuvole, e veder quello che veramente là su si ritrovasse, e liberarse
da le chimere di quei che essendo usciti dal fango e caverne de la terra, quasi Mercuri et
Appollini discesi dal cielo, con moltiforme impostura han ripieno il mondo tutto d’infinite
pazzie, bestialità e vizii come di tante vertù divinità e discipline: smorzando quel lume che
rendea divini et eroichi gli animi di nostri antichi padri, approvando, et confirmando le
tenebre caliginose de sofisti et asini. Per il che già tanto tempo l’umana raggione oppressa,
tal volta nel suo lucido intervallo piangendo la sua sì bassa condizione, alla divina e
provida mente, che sempre ne l’interno orecchio li susurra, si rivolge con simili accenti:
Chi salirà per me, madonna, in cielo,
a riportarne il mio perduto ingegno?
Or ecco quello ch’ha varcato l’aria, penetrato il cielo, discorse le stelle, trapassati gli
margini del mondo, fatte svanir le fantastiche muraglia de le prime, ottave, none, decime,
et altre che ci s’avesser potute aggiongere sfere per relazione de vani matematici, et cieco
veder di filosofi volgari.’ Bruno, Cena de le Ceneri, op. cit., pp. 27–8.
132 GIORDANO BRUNO
This passage, like the rest of the eulogy, contains a particularly dense
network of literary and philosophical references. I would like to limit
myself here to a consideration of the singular way in which the author
reuses numerous passages drawn from Orlando furioso. There is, to
begin with, the citation of the first two lines from the proem of canto
XXXV: ‘Who will mount for me, O Madonna, to the sky, / And bring
back thence my lost wisdom?’, which appears in the middle of the lunar
episode. Bruno’s memory of Ariosto is often incipitaria, that is, linked to
the opening lines of his cantos, and thus the citation (given the content
of Ariosto’s proems) assumes the pithy force of a proverb.
Let us take a closer look at one of the conjunctions that Bruno creates
in this way. In The Ash Wednesday Supper, human reason deprived of
its divine inner light is made to correspond to Orlando ‘who for love
arrived in a fury and a madness, the man who was once esteemed for
being so wise’ (Orlando Furioso I, 2, 3–4), while Astolfo (and Bruno)
instead embody the force of reason which alone can liberate mankind
from the slavery of madness. An allusion to Orlando furioso, as
Aquilecchia has noted, also appears in the prose passage that precedes
the above quotation. The reference to the brief ‘lucid interval’ during
which human reason finds the strength to invoke its deliverer guides us
to yet another proem in Orlando furioso, that from canto XXIV
describing the inexorable web which binds love to madness. It may be
noted, however, that while the ‘lucid interval’ in The Ash Wednesday
Supper represents a citation from Ariosto, the literary memory of the
average sixteenth century reader would be more likely to associate the
idea of lucid intervals with another author – Lucretius who, as Saint
Jerome wrote, composed his poems ‘during brief intervals in his
madness’ (per intervalla insaniae). And in fact Bruno introduces a link
between the literary memory of Ariosto and that of Lucretius at one
point in Teofilo’s eulogy. The terms in which the author glorifies his
works as those of a liberating hero are greatly indebted to Lucretius’s
eulogy of Epicurus (De rerum natura, I, 63–8, 72–4):
When man’s life lay for all to see foully grovelling upon the ground,
crushed beneath the weight of Superstition, which displayed her
head from the regions of heaven, lowering on mortals with horrible
aspect, a man of Greece was the first that dared to uplift mortal eyes
against her, the first to make stand against her … so that he should
desire, first of all men, to shatter the confining bars of nature’s gates
… Therefore the lively power of his mind prevailed, and forth he
marched far beyond the flaming walls of the world, as he traversed
the immeasurable universe in thought and imagination.26
26 Lucretius, De rerum natura, with an English translation by W.H.D. Rouse,
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1975: ‘Humana ante oculos foede cum vita
Thus Bruno surrounds himself with exemplary figures and images that
represent reflections of himself in order to lend force to his own eulogy.
Tiphys and Columbus may be linked by superficial similarities, but
much more profound correspondences exist between Bruno and
Epicurus (through the literary memory of Lucretius) and Astolfo
(through the memory of Ariosto).
However, the contiguity of Bruno’s dialogue with such a pluricentred
and elusive text as Ariosto’s poem cannot but engender even further
ramifications and complications. The use of Astolfo’s journey to the
moon as an emblematic image of a hazardous undertaking successfully
accomplished would function perfectly well were it not for Bruno’s
citing of the verses ‘Who will ascend to heaven, mistress mine, to fetch
me back my lost wits?’ These lines will immediately raise feelings of
uncertainty in those readers who recall the lines that immediately
follow:
Who will ascend to heaven, mistress mine, to fetch me back my lost
wits? They have been ebbing away ever since my heart was
transfixed by the arrows shot from your fair eyes – not that I
complain of my misfortune so long as it grows no worse than it is
now: I fear that any further depletion of my wits shall reduce me to
the very condition I have described in Orlando.
I do not imagine, however, that there is any need for me to take
flight through the air to the orb of the moon or into paradise in
order to recover my wits. I don’t believe they inhabit those heights.
Their haunts are your beautiful eyes, your radiant face, your ivory
breasts, those alabaster hillocks; and I shall sip them up with my lips
if you decide that I shall have them again.27
Ariosto here not only declares once again his identification with
Orlando in his madness (a position which he assumes at the very outset
of the poem), but also disassociates himself with gentle irony from the
traditional contrapositioning of ‘high and low, heaven and earth’ that
the moon episode seems to be built upon. In this way Ariosto leads us
iaceret / in terris oppressa gravi sub religione / quae caput a caeli regionibus ostendebat /
horribili super aspectu mortalibus instans, / primum Graius homo mortalis tollere contra
/ est oculos ausus primusque obsistere contra / … et extra / processit longe flammantia
moenia mundi / atque omne immensum peragravit mente animoque.’
27 ‘Chi salirà per me, madonna, in cielo, / a riportarne il mio perduto ingegno? / che,
poi ch’uscì da’ bei vostri occhi il telo / che’l cor mi fisse, ognior perdendo vegno./ Né di
tanta iattura mi querelo, / pur che non cresca, ma stia a questo segno; / ch’io dubito, se più
si va sciemando, / di venir tal, qual ho descritto Orlando. / Per riaver l’ingegno mio m’è
aviso / che non bisogna che per l’aria io poggi / nel cerchio de la luna o in paradiso; / che’l
mio non credo che tanto alto alloggi. / Ne’ bei vostri occhi e nel sereno viso, / nel sen
d’avorio e alabastrini poggi / se ne va errando; et io con queste labbia / lo corrò, se vi par
ch’io lo riabbia.’ (Orlando Furioso, xxxv, 1–2)
134 GIORDANO BRUNO
to the audacious conclusion that recovery from the madness of love is

possible only through the realization of one’s heart’s desire. True
paradise lies in the body of the beloved, and the voyage to the moon
becomes the pretext for a new form of literary gallantry.
In a similar manner the quality of estrangement and the multiplicity
of perspectives that characterize the voyage to the moon in Ariosto’s text
are retained in Bruno’s rewriting of the episode. In Orlando furioso the
moon is at once an ‘other’ world and a mirror of our own terrestrial
world. It furnishes readers with a new perspective that, following in the
footsteps of Lucian and Leon Battista Alberti, should enable them to see
things from a different point of view.28 In this way the lunar voyage is
linked with the theme of perspective already introduced at the beginning
of the dialogue. And the fact that Bruno inserts his lunar theme just after
the section in which he expounds upon the positive consequences of his
philosophy and quotes once again from Ariosto, takes on a fresh
significance:
and he opens our eyes to see this deity, this our mother the earth
who feeds and nourishes us on her back after having conceived us
in her womb to which she always receives us again, and he leads us
not to think that beyond her there is a material universe without
souls, and life and even excrement among its corporeal substances.
In this way, we know that if we were on the moon or on other stars,
we would not be in a place very different from this … And we have
the knowledge not to search for divinity removed from us if we have
it near; it is within us more than we ourselves are.29
Thus the Nolan – the new Astolfo – shows us how limited and
relative our perspective is; after flying through the heavens to the moon
he has discovered, like Ariosto, that heaven is on earth and that the
divine dwells within each one of us.
I have shown how Bruno used literary memory to construct around
28 Here I limit myself to referring the reader to Segre, C. (1966), Leon Battista Alberti
e Ludovico Ariosto, in Esperienze ariostesche, Pisa: Nistri-Lischi, p. 85ff.; and Savarese,

G. (1984), Lo spazio dell’ ‘impostura’: il ‘Furioso’ e la luna, in Il ‘Furioso’ e la cultura del
Rinascimento, Rome: Bulzoni, pp. 71–90.
29 Bruno, The Ash Wednesday Supper, op. cit., pp. 90–1. ‘E n’apre gli occhii ad veder
questo nume, questa nostra madre, che nel suo dorso ne alimenta, e ne nutrisce, dopo
averne produtti dal suo grembo al qual di nuovo sempre ne riaccoglie; e non pensar oltre,
lei essere un corpo senza alma e vita, et anche feccia tra le sustanze corporali. A questo
modo sappiamo che si noi fussimo ne la luna, o in altre stelle, non sarreimo in loco molto
dissimile a questo … Et abbiamo dottrina di non cercar la divinità rimossa da noi: se
l’abbiamo appresso, anzi di dentro più che noi medesmi siamo dentro a noi. Non meno
che gli coltori de gli altri mondi non la denno cercare appresso di noi, l’avendo appresso
e dentro di sé. Atteso che non più la luna è cielo a noi, che noi alla luna [my italics].’
Bruno, Cena de le Ceneri, op. cit., pp. 28–9.
his own eulogy, and around the new epic and mythic literary model
which he was seeking to create, a gallery of figures that are linked to one
another by a complex series of associations and oppositions: Tiphys,
Medea and Columbus on the one side, and Astolfo and Epicurus on the
other. At this point we may ask ourselves whether, in this innovative and
highly unconventional use of literary tradition, we may not also find
elements linked to the art of memory. If we recall that, as traditionally
practised, the techniques of memory were closely concerned with
inventio, and that the ars memoriae in fact served as an interface
between the act of reading and the act of writing, we can imagine that
in his text Bruno was also creating a species of ‘retroactive’ mnemonic
framework. In other words, not only do the shades of towering figures
from antique and contemporary history crowd around the Nolan, the
hero of a new world but also if, after having read The Ash Wednesday
Supper, readers take up once again Orlando furioso, they will see
Astolfo and his voyage to the moon not only as Ariosto presents them,
but also from the new perspective provided by Bruno. The same process
will occur when they read Lucretius’s eulogy dedicated to Epicurus. In
other words, the readers will be compelled to remember the eulogy
which, like a bold manifesto, opens the first dialogue of the Supper.
The second dialogue of The Ash Wednesday Supper begins with the
description of a labyrinthian journey through the night streets of
London. The structure of this dialogue is in itself an incredible maze
characterized by obscure allusions and the diabolically ingenious use of
literary memory which many scholars, beginning with Frances Yates,
have sought to disentangle.30
I would like to concentrate on just one aspect of this nocturnal
journey. It may be said that the entire succession of events which befall
Bruno and his companions was conceived as a dark comedy played
under the double insignia of postponement and error. Bruno has
adopted here the literary model of the uncomfortable and incident-
plagued voyage, a favourite device in the burlesque tradition and also
present in the poems of Berni, as Aquilecchia has already noted.31 In
Bruno’s dialogue, however, the canons of this tradition are interwoven
with those of a much more exalted literary form, since the nocturnal
voyage is also suggestive of the descent into Hell with its many
Virgilian and Dantesque associations. The intertwining of these two
30 Yates, F. (1966), The Art of Memory, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, pp.
298–302. On Bruno’s ties with English culture, see (1997), Giordano Bruno 1583–1585:
The English Experience, ed. M. Ciliberto and N. Mann, Florence: Olschki.
31 See Longhi, S. (1983), Lusus. Il capitolo burlesco nel Cinquecento, Padua:
Antenore.
136 GIORDANO BRUNO
canons produces a satirical effect, a deliberate ‘lowering of the tone’ of

the dialogue; but I believe that this juxtaposition was introduced for
another purpose as well. Conventionally, the descent into Hell
represents the beginning of a difficult and painful journey, but one with
a definite purpose and a positive ending; therefore the idea of Hell
contains within itself the seeds of our expectation of Purgatory and
Paradise. This possibility is indeed alluded to by Bruno, but only in
order that it may be denied. In the end the nocturnal journey of our
heroes reveals itself to have been futile, for the descent into Inferno has
not led them to a different and higher world. Their deceptive,
labyrinthian path has instead brought them round full circle: ‘we found
ourselves twenty-two steps, more or less, from the spot which we had
left in search of the boatmen, and near the abode of the Nolan’.32 The
mode used to recount this journey turns out in the end to be a
composite but essentially burlesque one, and references to Virgil and
Dante are introduced only to be immediately negated, in this way
highlighting the fundamental incomparability of the different journeys.
The second dialogue also contains many references to Ariosto, and in
particular to Rodomonte, whose sorte or fate Bruno so closely identified
himself with. The boat upon which he embarked, we read, creaked ‘even
though there was no Hercules, no Aeneas, nor Rodomonte, the king of
Sarza’.33 As I noted earlier, in order to stifle their fears during their
voyage down the Thames, Florio and Bruno compete with each other in
singing verses from Ariosto. After Florio has sung the lament of
Orlando, just after he has lost his beloved Angelica (VIII, 76, 1–2):
‘Where without me, sweet my life’, Bruno responds with the
misogynistic words of Rodomonte, who has just been betrayed by
Doralice: ‘“The wretched Saracen, O feminine mind” and so forth’
(XXVII, 117).34 And, at the close of the second dialogue, when we finally
arrive at the house where the Ash Wednesday supper is being given,
there is yet another reference to Rodomonte: ‘When we went inside, we
found downstairs a great variety of people and servants who, without
stopping or bowing or showing the least sign of respect, showed their
contempt by their attitude, and did us the favour of pointing out the
door.’35
32 See Bruno, The Ash Wednesday Supper, op. cit., p. 115. Bruno, Cena de le Ceneri,
op. cit., p. 47.

33 Bruno The Ash Wednesday Supper, op. cit., p. 111. Bruno, Cena de la Ceneri, op.
cit., p. 43.
34 Bruno, The Ash Wednesday Supper, op. cit., p. 112. Bruno, Cena de la Ceneri, op.
cit., p. 44.
35 Bruno, The Ash Wednesday Supper, op. cit., p. 126. Bruno, Cena de la Ceneri, op.
cit., pp. 59–60.

This section is in fact an almost literal paraphrasing of the final canto

of Orlando furioso, where Rodomonte challenges Ruggero to the fateful
duel in which he would eventually be killed: ‘He did not dismount or
bow or make any gesture or respect: he displayed only contempt for
Charles and his paladins and the mighty lords here present’ (XLVI, 104
1–4).36 Adopting once again a burlesque tone, however, Bruno transfers
the proudly contemptuous attitude of the pagan knight to a pack of
servants, and the rudeness with which Bruno and Florio are received
foreshadows the discourtesy of their fellow guests at the dinner that
follows. Here, as in the first dialogue, Rodomonte functions as a
mnemonic image, a repository of situations and attitudes which could be
used and reused by the author.
The literary memory of Orlando furioso is also very much present in
other dialogues by Giordano Bruno. In two cases we find a more or less
traditional use of Ariosto’s text, similar to what may be encountered in
the emblems and figurative treatises of the period. In the Spaccio de la
bestia trionfante (The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast, 1584) Bruno
quotes two octaves on general themes from Ariosto’s proems, using
them as maxims or proverbs. For example, in dialogue I he borrows
lines from Orlando regarding the wheel of fortune, and associates them
with the law of mutations and the links that these may create between
opposites:
Sophia: So much the more then, by the grace of Fate, do I hope in
the future for better success, the worse I have found myself up to the
present.
Saul: ‘The more depressed is man / And the lower he is on the wheel,
/ The closer he is to ascending, / As with it round he turns. / A man
who but yesterday / To the world gave laws, / Now upon the block
/ Has placed his head.’37
36 ‘Senza smontar, senza chinar la testa, / e senza segno alcun di riverenzia, / mostra
Carlo sprezzar con la sua gesta, / e de tanti signor l’alta presenzia.’

37 ‘Sofia: Tanto più dumque spero nel futuro meglior successo per grazia del fato,
quanto sin al presente mi son trovato al peggio.

Saulino:
“Quanto più depresso,
quanto è più l’uom di questa ruota al fondo,
tanto a quel punto più si trova apresso
che da salir si de’ girar il tondo:
alcun sul ceppo quasi il capo ha messo,
che l’altro giorno ha dato legge al mondo”.’ (XLV, 2), BDFI 483
Barocchi, P. (1984), Fortuna dell’Ariosto nella trattatistica figurativa, in Studi vasariani,
Turin: Einaudi, pp. 53–67; Bolzoni, L. (1991), ‘L’allegoria, o la creazione dell’oscurità’,
L’Asino d’oro, II, pp. 53–69.
138 GIORDANO BRUNO
The first octave from canto IV of Orlando furioso is utilized in the same
way in the third part of dialogue II of Spaccio de la bestia trionfante, as
a motto on the principle of dissimulation:
Sophia: … because sometimes Prudence, in order to avoid envy,
criticism, and abuse, is accustomed in the garments of that one to
dissemble Truth.
Saul: It is well and good, oh Sophia. And not without spirit of
truth did the poet of Ferrara show that she is much more convenient
to men, even though sometimes she is not disagreeable to the gods.
Although dissimulation is most often reprehended
And gives proof of bad intention,
It is indeed found in many things,
And in many things to have produced benefits, numerous and
obvious,
And to have obviated injuries, blames, and death;
For in this mortal life, much more gloomy than serene,
Filled with envy throughout,
We do not always converse with friends. (Orlando furioso, IV, 1)38
In other cases Bruno applies his memory of Ariosto to create a much

more dense network of reciprocal citations and allusions, echoing those
already used by him in previous works. For example, in Spaccio de la
bestia trionfante we find once again the lucido intervallo borrowed from
the proem that opens canto XXIV of Orlando and is incorporated into
dialogue I of Cena de le Ceneri. Here the context is quite significant, for
Bruno slips his reference into the epistle in which he describes the most
propitious moment for seeking personal moral regeneration. This
moment is described by means of an allegory which, given the logical,
step-wise fashion in which it is developed, may also function as a
mnemonic image. One must act:
38 Bruno, (1964), The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast, ed. and trans. Arthur D.
Imerti, Lincoln, NE, and London: University of Nebraska Press, p. 186.

‘Sofia: perché talora per fuggir invidia, biasmo et oltraggio, con gli vestimenti di costei
la Prudenza suole occultar la Veritade.
Saulino: E’ vero e bene, o Sofia; e non senza spirto di veritade mostrò il Poeta ferrarese,
questa essere molto più conveniente a gli omini, se talvolta non è sconvenevole a Dei:
Quamtumque il simular sia le più volte
ripreso, e dia di mala mente indìci,
si trova pur in molte cose e molte
aver fatti evidenti benefìci;
e danni, e biasmi, e morte aver già tolte:
ché non conversiam sempre con gli amici
in questa assai più oscura che serena
vita mortal tutta d’invidia piena.
See BDFI 581.
not after supper and during the Night of Inconsideration, and

without the Sun of Intelligence and Light of Reason, not on an
empty stomach in the morning, that is to say, without fervour of
spirit, and without being well warmed by supernal ardor, but after
dinner, that is, after having tasted of the ambrosia of Virtuous
Zeal and imbibed of the nectar of Divine Love; around noon, or
at the point of noon, that is, when Hostile Error least outrages us
and Friendly Truth most favors us, during the period of a more
lucid interval. Then is expelled the triumphant beast, that is, the
vices which predominate and are wont to tread upon the divine
side.39
In dialogue II from the first part of De gli eroici furori [The Heroic
Frenzies], Cicada quotes Ariosto in support of his thesis that one must
guard oneself vigilantly against falling in love with an undeserving
object: ‘so as not to become impregnated with its undignified and
humiliating characteristics. On this subject, it is worth listening to the
advice of the Ferrarese poet: “He who puts his foot where the loved one
has placed the bait, should try to draw back and not damage his
wings” ’.40
These last two lines are also a quotation from the proem to canto
XXIV of Orlando furioso, the same proem from which Bruno drew his
allusion to the lucido intervallo. Echoes of this proem appear later in the
work De l’infinito, universo e mondi [On the Infinite, Universe and
Worlds, 1584], in dialogue V which is carried on between Philoteus and
Albertino. The latter, who is likened by the author to a patient with an
incurable illness, finds himself unable to accept the idea of an infinity of
worlds and justifies his view by quoting from the third octave of
Ariosto’s canto: ‘Neither Nature nor I can do anything if Evil has
penetrated as far as the bone.’41
39 Bruno, The Expulsion, op. cit., pp. 79–81. ‘non dopo cena, e ne la notte de
l’inconsiderazione, e senza sole d’intelligenza e lume di raggione; non a diggiuno stomaco

la mattina, cioè senza fervor di spirito, et esser bene iscaldato dal superno ardore: ma dopo
pranso, cioè dopo aver gustato ambrosia di virtuoso zelo, et esser imbibito del nettare del
divino amore; circa il mezogiorno o nel punto di quello, ciò è quando meno ne oltraggia
nemico errore, e più ne favorisce l’amica veritade, in termine di più lucido intervallo.
All’ora si dà spaccio a la bestia trionfante, cioè a gli vizii che predominano, e sogliono
conculcar la parte divina’, BDFI 470.
40 My translation. ‘a fin che non vegna a farsi partecipe della bassezza et indignità del
medesimo; in proposito de quale intendo il coneiglio del poeta ferrarese:

Chi mette il piè su l’amorosa pania,
cerchi ritrarlo, e non v’inveschi l’ali.’ BDFI, 804.
41 ‘Nol può far la natura, io far nol posso, s’il male è penetrato in sin a l’osso.’ See
Bruno, Dialoghi filosofici, op. cit., p. 428.

140 GIORDANO BRUNO
Thus it may be said that, through his use of literary memory in

various dialogues, Bruno achieves the effect of a diffraction of the words
of the proem from canto XXIV. The same logic governs the diffraction
of the misogynist octave which the Nolan recites in the second dialogue
of The Ash Wednesday Supper during his voyage down the Thames. We
hear distinct echoes of this octave in dialogue I from De la causa,
principio et uno [Concerning the Cause, Principle and One, 1584], in
which the following appeal is addressed to the pedant Poliinnio:
halt that slanderous rage and that criminal hatred you feel towards
the most noble female sex … Can there be a madness more
miserable than becoming, on account of sex, the enemy of nature
herself, like that barbarous king of Sarza who, having learned from
your kind, declared: ‘Nature can make nothing perfect, since she is
herself a woman.’42
This exhortation falls upon deaf ears, however, for just a little further
on, in dialogue IV, Poliinnio responds in a long tirade:
intractable, frail, capricious, cowardly, feeble, vile, ignoble, base,
despicable, slovenly, unworthy, deceitful, harmful, abusive, cold,
misshapen, barren, vain, confused, senseless, treacherous, lazy,
fetid, foul, ungrateful, truncated, mutilated, imperfect, unfinished,
deficient, insolent, amputated, diminished, stale, vermin, tares,
plague, sickness, death: ‘By nature and by God among us sent / As
a burden and heavy punishment.’43
The lines at the end of this section are paraphrased from the words of
Rodomonte in Orlando furioso (XXVII, 119, 1-3): ‘I believe that nature
42 Giordano Bruno, (1998), Cause, Principle and Unity, ed. Richard J. Blackwell and
Robert de Lucca with an introduction by Alfonso Ingegno, Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, p. 32: ‘te, severo, supercilioso e salvaticissimo maestro Polihimnio: che
dismettiate quella rabbia contumace, e quell’odio tanto criminale, contra il nobilissimo
sesso femenile … Qual pazzia può esser più abietta, che per raggion di sesso, esser nemico
all’istessa natura, come quel barbaro re di Sarza, che per aver imparato da voi, disse:
Natura non può far cosa perfetta, poi che natura femina viene detta.’ See Orlando furioso,
XXVII, 120, 7–8; and BDFI, p. 202.
43 See Bruno, Cause, Principle and Unity, op. cit., p. 72. ‘ritroso, fragile, inconstante,
molle, pusillo, infame, ignobile, vile, abietto, negletto, indegno, reprobo, sinistro,
vituperoso, frigido, deforme, vacuo, vano, indiscreto, insano, perfido, neghittoso, putido,
sozzo, ingrato, trunco, mutilo, imperfetto, incoato, insufficiente, preciso, amputato,
attenuato, rugine, eruca, zizania, peste, morbo, morte:
Messo tra noi da la natura e Dio,
per una soma e per un greve fio.
See BDFI, p. 257.
and God created you, oh wicked sex, as our millstone/ burden, for some
grave fault.’44
In the dialogues of Giordano Bruno, therefore, we can retrace the
dense, yet fluid nature of his literary memory, the same ‘viscosity’ that
has been noted in the poetic tradition. Thus, if in a text we happen to
recognize an image, a syntagma, or a phonic, rhyming figure whose
origin lies in another text, we may confidently expect to find, further
along in the work, other references to the same text.
The memory of Ariosto present in Bruno’s writings is a highly
selective and specialized one; in it we see reflected the author’s
fascination with the episode of Astolfo’s voyage to the moon and his
obsession with the figure of Rodomonte, whose words and acts run
through his dialogues like a line of counterpoint. This pagan hero, so
barbaric and so powerfully alive, functions in Bruno’s work as a
memory image of Ariosto’s poem in the same way that, in the game of
sorti played in Naples when Bruno was a young man, Rodomonte
constituted an emblem and a prophecy of the Nolan’s tragic destiny.
44 ‘Credo che t’abbia la Natura e Dio / produtto, o scelerato sesso, al mondo / per una
soma, per un grave fio.’

PART THREE
Bruno in England
CHAPTER SIX
Giordano Bruno and the

Protestant Ethic
Hilary Gatti
I feel the need to start this chapter by explaining the sense of its title. My
reference to Max Weber’s famous study of The Protestant Ethic and the
Spirit of Capitalism does not imply either that I am a specialist Weber
scholar or that I intend to get myself involved in the long and still lively
critical debate surrounding his theses.1 My purpose is simply to use some
of his ideas about the relationship between the Protestant ethic and the
development of a capitalist technological society in order to question the
prevailing conviction, particularly of recent commentators, that Bruno’s
attitude towards the Protestant Reformation in all its aspects and
characteristics was only and always negative.2
My argument will not include any claim that Bruno, in his mature
years as a philosopher, was attracted towards Protestant theology as
such, or that he made any but the most brief and inconstant attempts
to adhere to the Protestant religion.3 He did, however, live for many
years in some of the major Protestant centres of sixteenth-century
Europe, composing in them a large number of his philosophical
masterpieces. I believe this was not a coincidence. Several doctrines
1 Max Weber’s best known work was first published in 1904–05, and immediately
provoked a critical debate in which Weber himself took part. He republished his text in
1920 as the first study in the series Aufsätze zur Religionssoziologie. The standard English
translation by Talcott Parsons was first published in 1930. My references are to the 1976
edition edited by Anthony Giddens, London: George Allen and Unwin. The debate
concerning Weber’s historiographical theses continues today, and in recent years has been
particularly lively in the United States: see, for example, Weber’s Protestant Ethic: Origins,
Evidence, Contexts, ed. Hartmut Lehmann and Guenther Roth, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1993, and Scaff, Lawrence A. (1989), Fleeing the Iron Cage, Berkeley,
CA: University of California Press.
2 This conviction seems to have become a largely accepted one. It is particularly
evident in recent publications such as the French edition of Spaccio (see Nuccio Ordine’s
introduction to BOeuC V) and, passim, the new biography by Ricci, Saverio (2000),
Giordano Bruno nell’Europa del cinquecento, Rome: Salerno Editrice.
3 On Bruno’s brief stay in Geneva in June–July 1579, and his later difficulties with the
Protestant authorities in Helmstedt in 1589–90, see Ricci, Giordano Bruno, op. cit., pp.
125–37 and 431–2.
146 GIORDANO BRUNO
which were central to the Protestant critique of Catholicism became

central also to Bruno’s philosophy. These include: the repudiation of
monasticism and the purely contemplative life; the repudiation of all
forms of superstition, such as the worship of relics or images, as a
serious component of religious experience; the questioning of the
authority of tradition and the consequent emergence of the individual
intellect as the source of both philosophical and natural truths (a
doctrine which was often expressed in reformed thinkers in terms of an
‘inner light’ in a religious vocabulary which we find reflected in Bruno’s
philosophical concept of intellectual illumination); and above all the
dedication to work and activity in the world or, as Bruno would put it,
the search for the ‘sommo bene in terra’. It is precisely this last aspect
of the Protestant ethic which Weber sees as at the origin of the Spirit of
Capitalism. It is also the aspect of Bruno’s relationship to Protestantism
which seems to me to have been most seriously misunderstood by many
of his critics.
It is constantly claimed that Bruno’s critique of otio, or sloth, was
directed against only the Protestant culture; although this would seem
unlikely if it is remembered that the major exponents of English
Protestantism with whom Bruno was in direct personal contact during
his years in London from 1583 to 1585, such as the Earl of Leicester, Sir
Philip Sidney and Sir Fulke Greville, would have thought of otio as a
specifically Catholic failing, deriving from the ideal of a monastic and
contemplative spiritual life.4 Significantly in this context, the English
theologian, William Perkins, in his Treatise of the Vocations or Callings
of Men, published in 1597, placed not only monks and mendicant friars
but all Catholics (‘Papists in general’) in the category of idlers because
they added 52 saints’ days to the 52 sabbaths appointed by God, thus
spending ‘more than a quarter of a year in rest and idleness’.
The documents confirm that Bruno was well aware of this double-
edged nature of the sixteenth-century anti-sloth polemic. At times, when
talking to Catholic believers whose favour was of some importance to
him, such as Guillaume Cotin, the influential librarian of the Abbey of
St Victor in Paris, who noted down Bruno’s remarks to him after his
return to Paris in 1586, he would inveigh against the ‘heretics’ of France
and England who despised good works, living their faith entirely in the
4 Bruno’s English years have always been at the centre of critical attention. See in
particular the chapters XII and XIII (‘Giordano Bruno in England’) in Yates, Frances
(1964), Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul,
pp. 205–56; chapter II (‘L’esperienza inglese’) in Ciliberto, Michele (1990), Giordano
Bruno, Rome-Bari: Laterza, pp. 29–195, and Aquilecchia, Giovanni (1991), Le opere
italiane di Giordano Bruno, Naples: Bibliopolis, passim.
GIORDANO BRUNO AND THE PROTESTANT ETHIC 147
6.1 Illustration of an early post-Copernican astronomical model attributed to

Giordano Bruno by William Gilbert, 1651.
148 GIORDANO BRUNO
certainty of their justification in Christ.5 This did not stop him, in his
Latin masterpiece, the De immenso, published in the German town of
Frankfurt in 1591, from drawing a completely different picture, above
all of the major exponents of the English culture of the time. There, in
depicting a favourable portrait of the first British imperial conquests
with respect to the ‘impetuous’ Spanish who took with them ‘the terror
of a profound night’, Bruno praises the indefatigable zeal, the marine
expertise and the courageous activity of the British conquerers whose
civilizing intentions (‘they go to meet the natives with a friendly face’)
are underlined; even if the inherent injustice of the imperial enterprise as
such is destined, in Bruno’s opinion, to bring war and ruin in their wake
as well.6 But in spite of the strongly anti-imperial note which Bruno
strikes in this page, there is certainly no question of the British society
of the time being depicted as engaged only, or even primarily, with the
problem of personal salvation.
There can be no doubt about the violent diatribes against the
Protestant rejection of good works as necessary to salvation in the
dialogue entitled Spaccio de la bestia trionfante, which has been recently
at the centre of much critical attention. However, in the mythical
structure of this work, these objections are primarily voiced by Jupiter
and his ironically obsequious servant Momo; and the terms of Bruno’s
introductory letter to this dialogue, dedicated to none other than the
decidedly Protestant Sir Philip Sidney, make it less than certain that
Bruno himself (at least in his mature years) is to be identified with these
characters. For it is not, he tells his readers, an ‘assertive’ work, but
rather a dramatic one: and Momo is commonly recognized as the
Olympian god of satire. Nuccio Ordine’s innovative introduction to the
French edition of Spaccio (1999) has demonstrated convincingly the
French influence on Bruno’s rendering of the contemporary anti-
Protestant polemic concerning good works.7 It does not seem to me,
however, that this necessarily means that Bruno was identifying himself
with the Catholic position on the subject: the whole point of the
introductory letter to Spaccio appears to me to be the definition of a
personal position of indifference, outside and above the theological
disputes of the time.8
5 The full text of Cotin’s note of Bruno’s conversations with him was published in
1933 in Documenti della vita di Giordano Bruno, ed. Vincenzo Spampanato, Florence:
Sansoni, p. 40.
6 See MMI 868: ‘Sed qua - do hæc superare datŭ est, stat cura Brita-no, / Sollicitus labor,
& nimis imperterrita virtus’.
7 See BOeuC V.
8 For an attempt to read the Spaccio and its sequel, the Cabala, in this light, see my
‘L’idea di riforma nei dialoghi italiani di Giordano Bruno’, in Nouvelles de la république

Justification by faith through grace was of course, and has remained,

a fundamental doctrine of the Catholic Church as well.9 The first volume
of Alistair McGrath’s major study of the historical development of the
doctrine is concerned with its early Christian and medieval
foundations.10 He then traces the subsequent development of the
doctrine, particularly in its specific formulation by the reformed
theologians. In doing this, McGrath points out that there were many
different and at times conflicting views within the reformed churches as
to the place of works in the doctrine of justification by faith alone, and
that not all reformed theologians agreed with Luther as to the primary
place of this particular doctrine in the definition of reformed
Christianity itself. Dealing with ‘The Tridentine Decree on Justification’,
McGrath shows that the Catholic theologians at the Council of Trent
underrated both the diverging views within the reformed churches
themselves and, in general, the place of works with respect to the
reformed doctrine of justification.11
For Luther, works could never be the cause of salvation through
grace: nevertheless in his 1520 Sermo von den guten Werken, ‘Luther
does not, as he is frequently represented, reject the necessity of good
works in justification’.12 He is even prepared to concede that if no works
follow faith, it is certain that the faith in question is dead. Melanchthon,
in the opinion of McGrath, goes even further in his understanding of
justification as a new capacity to fulfil the law spontaneously: an
interpretation which will be pursued later by Calvin. For Calvin, indeed,
the question of justification by faith alone was only of relative
importance, in McGrath’s opinion, as it appertained to the larger
question of the union between the faithful and Christ, seen as a unio
mystica involving also sanctificatio.
In the English context, as Mc Grath points out, there was, from the
beginning of the Protestant movement, a particular concern not to exclude
works and activity in the world from salvation by faith. Already in 1534,
William Tyndale’s Covenant Theology had claimed: ‘For all the promises
throughout the whole scripture do include a covenant: that is, God
binding himself to fulfil that mercy unto thee only if thou wilt endeavour
des lettres, 2, 1996, now, in a modified form, in English, as chapter 12 of my Giordano

Bruno and Renaissance Science, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1999.
9 For a present-day discussion of the remaining divergencies between the Catholic and
the Protestant doctrines of justification, see Gherardini, Brunero (1997), Dal peccato alla
grazia, Florence: Le Lettere.
10 See McGrath, Alistair (1986), Iustitia dei, 2 vols, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press.
11 Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 54–86.
12 Ibid., p.16
150 GIORDANO BRUNO
thyself to keep his laws.’13 As for the major Anglican theologian of the
sixteenth century, Richard Hooker, who was educated at the Elizabethan
Oxford which Bruno visited (at which time he was at Corpus Christie
College and may have heard Bruno’s lectures), he interprets the phrase
‘justification by faith alone’ in these words: ‘We teach that faith alone
justifieth: whereas we by this speech never meant to exclude either hope
and charity from being always joined as inseparable mates with faith in
the man that is justified; or works being added as necessary duties,
required at the hands of every justified man.’14 It is true that the Puritan
idea of election would stress that man cannot turn to God of his own
volition: he requires God to take hold of him. Nevertheless, Calvin’s
influence on English Puritanism meant that the Puritans were always
aware of the importance of good works in obedience to the law as an
assurance and demonstration of the sanctificatio of the elect.15
Weber’s study strongly underlines this aspect of the Protestant ethic,
demonstrating how Luther’s, and even more rigorously Calvin’s doctrine
of justification by faith alone, and not by works, far from interfering
with worldly activity actually stimulated it to an at times obsessive
degree. ‘For if the saint’s everlasting rest is in the next world’, writes
Weber, ‘on earth man must, to be certain of his state of grace, “do the
works of him who sent him, as long as it is day”’ (this last phrase being
a quotation from Richard Baxter). ‘Not leisure and enjoyment’,
continues Weber, ‘but only activity serves to increase the glory of God,
according to the definite manifestations of his will.’16 Essential to the
Protestant idea of an ethics of activity within the world, as Weber again
showed, was the idea of a ‘calling’, or a particular worldly task to be
carried out with dedication by the believer. It is, of course, an equally
essential part of Weber’s thesis that with time the religious side of this
equation tended to fade out of the picture leaving only a very worldly
world in which to obey a ‘calling’ to investigate natural laws. It is
precisely in such newly secular and busy societies, according to Weber’s
thesis, that we find the rapid development of modern capitalism, based
on the development of the new science.
13 From William Tyndale’s Genesis prologue. Quoted in ibid. On Tyndale’s Covenant
Theology as giving more room to the law than Luther would have been prepared to
concede, see also Marc’hadour, G. (1990), ‘William Tyndale entre Erasme et Luther’, Actes
du Colloque International Erasme (Tours, 1986), Geneva: Librarie Droz, pp. 185–98, 194.
14 Hooker, Richard (1863), Works, Oxford, Clarendon Press, vol. 3, p. 530.
15 Attention to what is considered to have been Bruno’s particularly troubled relations
with the English Puritans can be found in Ciliberto, Michele (1998), ‘Fra filosofia e
teologia: Bruno e i Puritani’, in Rivista di Storia della filosofia, vol. 53, pp. 5–44.
16 Weber, The Protestant Ethic, op. cit., p. 157.
Coming back to a consideration of Giordano Bruno’s life and thought

in the light of these aspects of the Protestant ethic, let us start with the
Protestant stand against monasticism and religious superstition, which
was such an important part of the Reformation ethos from Luther
onwards. Was Bruno’s repudiation of his own monastic years as a
Dominican monk, which lasted from November 1565 until January 1576,
influenced by Luther’s example? It would seem that it was if, very early on
in his monastic career, between 1566 and 1567, we find Bruno scolding a
fellow novice for reading a popular version of the Sette Allegrezze in praise
of the Virgin Mary, and suggesting instead a serious study of the lives of
the early Church fathers. Even more oriented towards reformed practice
was his decision to give away his images of the favourite saints venerated
by the Dominican order, retaining only the crucifix as a valid Christian
icon. It is fashionable at present to interpret these beginnings of Bruno’s
revolt against his monastic experience as influenced by the so-called
Catholic reformation, or the early sixteenth-century Italian movement for
religious reform inspired more by the irenic piety of Erasmus of
Rotterdam than directly by Luther or Calvin, and which would have a
definite if short-lived influence in Italy before being firmly stamped out by
the Counter-Reformation.17 Nevertheless, it cannot be claimed that these
were manifestations of an early sympathy with some fundamental aspects
of the reformed religion which would disappear after first-hand
experience of the northern parts of Europe. For the trial documents clearly
indicate that in the last stage of his story, after his disastrous return to
Venice in 1591, Bruno was still being accused by the inquisitors of such
dangerous ‘reformed’ tendencies as denial of the cult of the saints, or
recital of the breviary, and a refusal to honour holy relics or to worship
holy images.18 Even the Avviso of his death at the stake, which appeared
in a Roman news-sheet on 19 February 1600, two days after the event,
places a special emphasis on his refusal of the Catholic faith, and in
particular of worship of the Virgin and the saints: expressions which seem
designed to suggest a condemnation for Protestantism rather than for
atheism, in spite of the fact that the main thrust of the trial had clearly
been a struggle between the rights of philosophy with respect to theology
rather than of Catholicism with respect to Protestantism.19
17 See, for example, Saverio Ricci, Giordano Bruno, op. cit., pp. 85–105. For the
many studies of this subject, see Tedeschi, John (2000), The Italian Reformation of the
Sixteenth Century and the Diffusion of Renaissance Culture: A Bibliography of the
Secondary Literature ca. 1750–1997, Modena: F.C. Panini.
18 See Firpo, Processo, pp. 48, 52 and 54 for the first occurrences of these charges
during the trial.

19 Firpo, Processo, p. 356. For an interpretation of Bruno’s trial as a conflict between
philosophy and theology, see Chapter 3 by Maurice Finocchiaro in this volume.

152 GIORDANO BRUNO
Bruno’s enthusiastic reading of Erasmus, which was the cause of his

final break with his monastery, can also be included among what
appears clearly to have been an early inclination towards the reformed
cultures; for the Catholic Church had already placed Erasmus’s
complete works on the index of forbidden books, whereas the Dutch
scholar’s influence remained strong in reformed countries in spite of his
opposition to Luther’s attack against the freedom of the will.20 That
there was on Bruno’s part something more than mere curiosity about
the new religious practices which were still struggling to entrench
themselves beyond the Alps is surely confirmed by his arrival in Geneva
as his first European port of call after fleeing from Italy. Indeed,
Alfonso Ingegno, in an important book on Bruno’s reading of Calvin,
has shown how he was clearly influenced by Calvin’s critique of the
Catholic Mass, although using it himself as a stage in his repudiation of
the whole idea of the divine incarnation of Christ which would
certainly have horrified Calvin and his followers.21 It is not surprising,
then, in the light of such a repudiation, that Bruno’s short stay in
Geneva from May until July 1579 was a disaster. It took him only a few
weeks to discover that the reformed religion (Calvin himself had been
directly responsible for the cruel burning of Servetus in 1553) was also
martyring Christians with fire, water and the sword, as Sébastian
Chateillon had long been denouncing from within the new faith. When
Bruno published a list of 20 errors detected in a lecture given by the
influential professor of philosophy, De la Faye, he was immediately
imprisoned and was lucky to leave the city a free man after agreeing to
make a public apology. His release was almost certainly due to the
protection of the reformed Gian Galeazzo Caracciolo, Marquis of Vico,
whom Bruno is known to have frequented in Geneva. Bruno’s disgust
at the intolerance of some of the most radical reformers, called by him
scornfully from then on ‘pedagogues’ and ‘pedants’, became deep and
entrenched, engendering a complex and ambivalent attitude towards
the Reformation and its proponents. Michele Ciliberto was probably
right to claim that it was the early English radical reformers, or
Puritans, such as John Rainolds, that Bruno was thinking of when he
claimed, in his furiously scurrilous letter to the vice-chancellor of the
20 Bruno informed his Venetian judges in the hearing of 3 June, 1592, that proceedings
against him initiated by the Dominican monastery in Naples had been reinforced after his
flight when some of his books were discovered including a copy of the life of St. Jerome
with a comment by Erasmus. See Firpo, Processo, p. 191. For the important presence of
Erasmus in reformed cultures see S.H. Gem (1896), Erasmus and the Reformation,
London, Skiffington and Son.
21 See Ingegno, Alfonso (1987), Regia pazzia: Bruno lettore di Calvino, Urbino:
Quattro Venti.
University of Oxford, that he feared the intransigence of some of the

professors like death.22
Nevertheless Bruno’s anti-monasticism remained a fundamental
starting point of his philosophical life and works. It finds powerful
expression in the Cabala del cavallo pegaseo, written and published in
London in 1584, which is full of vividly ironic memories of his monastic
years.23 In this work, the scholastically orientated monastic course of
studies is repudiated as sterile, and substituted by the Pythagorean
Academy whose door becomes visible as the work closes, with Lineam
ne pertransito written over it.24 Pythagoras stands here, clearly, for
Copernicus, whose new heliocentric astronomy, already celebrated by
Bruno in his earlier London dialogues, had been cautiously presented by
the Polish astronomer himself as more a modern rebirth of ancient
Pythagoreanism than as a dangerous novelty. Bruno, for his part, in The
Ash Wednesday Supper, had already extended the Copernican universe
to infinite dimensions, filling it with infinite worlds. The Pythagorean
door, then, should lead the reader once again into Bruno’s infinite
universe, but it fails to do so, immediately at least, because it too is being
guarded – this time, it would seem, by the Protestant version of the
negative (which for Bruno meant Christian) neo-Aristotelian Mercuries:
Bruno’s code word for priests.25 And in the 1580s they, as Bruno had
learnt at Oxford, still dominated in the reformed schools as well as in
the Catholic world.26
The rejection of monastic scholasticism, then, in the name of a search
in the Protestant world for a neo-Pythagorean, secular academy fails:
first in Geneva, then in Oxford and again in London. For the
cosmological discussion reported by Bruno in The Ash Wednesday
Supper clearly represents a temporary victory at least for the
Aristotelian-Ptolemaic Oxford dons invited by Fulke Greville to debate
with the Nolan at Whitehall; particularly if we remember that the Sidney
circle itself (although more elegant and civil in their debating habits than
the rude academics, as Bruno graciously recognizes) nevertheless
remained stubbornly anti-Copernican to the end.27 Even so, there were,
22 On Bruno in Geneva and on the importance for Bruno’s philosophical project of the
letter to the vice-chancellor of the University of Oxford, see the relevant pages in Michele
Ciliberto, Giordano Bruno, op. cit.
23 BOeuC VI, 117–19.
24 The Pythagorean Academy makes its appearance at the end of the brief epilogue
appended to this work entitled L’asino cillenico del Nolano. See BOeuC VI, 155.
25 BOeuC VI, 169.
26 On Bruno at Oxford see my paper (2000), ‘Tra magia e magnetismo: la cosmologia
di Giordano Bruno ad Oxford’ in Paradigmi, vol. 53, pp. 237–60.

27 See in particular BOI 438.
154 GIORDANO BRUNO
embedded in the new Protestantism, a number of doctrines which Bruno

could still refer to, transposing them from a theological level to a
philosophical level in his own works. The foremost of these was the
methodical questioning of the authority of traditional dogma and
wisdom.
When, in 1517, Luther pinned his 95 theses on the Castle church
door at Wittenberg (another European city which would later be
frequented by Bruno) he was not only opposing an ecclesiastical,
political and cultural authority which dominated the Europe of his time,
he was also opposing an authority which rested on more than 14
centuries of uninterrupted entrenchment. Luther’s chosen ground on
which to challenge this formidable Catholic tradition was that of
biblical interpretation; for it was the authority of the sacred book which
he substituted for that of the ecclesiastical word. Such a substitution
presupposed for the new Protestant believer the possibility of reading
the sacred book for himself, and interpreting it with the help of the new
pastoral authorities: a novelty which led to the widespread translation
and diffusion of biblical texts throughout the reformed parts of Europe.
The Catholic Church would react to this development by considering
the Bible itself a forbidden book, to be read and interpreted only at the
highest ecclesiastical levels and in strict accordance with established
tradition. Bruno is remaining to some extent faithful to his Catholic
background when, at the opening of the fourth dialogue of The Ash
Wednesday Supper, he notes ironically from London that all the world
now holds the Bible in their hands. The plurality of interpretations has
become such that the biblical stories can no longer be considered as
anything more than metaphors, to be construed as each reader thinks
fit.28 In spite of this note of irony, however, the principle of free
interpretation was recognized as essential by Bruno, not only in the
biblical sphere. When invited by Fulke Greville to explain the paradoxes
of his neo-Copernican philosophy, he replied proudly that he thought
neither with the brain of Copernicus nor with that of Ptolemy, but with
his own discernment and judgement.29 Later on, at the beginning of his
Latin trilogy published in Frankfurt in 1591, Bruno would propose a
methodical scepticism with respect to all established authorities,
whatever their merits or prestige. All philosophical questions should be
decided according to a doctrine which adheres to real things, and to a
28 For Bruno’s use of the Bible in his Italian dialogues see my paper (forthcoming), ‘La
Bibbia nelle opere italiane di Giordano Bruno’, in La filosofia di Giordano Bruno.

Problemi ermeneutici e storiografici, Atti del Convegno Internazionale di Roma, 23–24
ottobre, 1998, ed. E. Canone, Pisa-Roma: Istituti Editoriali e Poligrafici Internazionali.
29 BOI 342.
truth which can be comprehended by the light of reason.30 When the

victory of the radical Calvinist movement at Wittenberg in 1588 obliged
Bruno finally to leave the city where he had taught philosophy
undisturbed at the university for two years, he pronounced a Latin
oration in a plenary session of the academic body. It contained an
eloquent recognition of what Bruno considered the truly heroic aspect of
Luther’s achievement: that is, his use of words as a Herculean club with
which to question the so far uninterrupted dominion throughout Europe
of a religious authority which claimed to represent universal truth.31
It had been clear to the reformed cultures from the beginning that
Luther’s denial of the wisdom accumulated through the centuries by the
Roman Catholic ecclesiastical tradition required its substitution by some
alternative source of truth, not only in the biblical word but in the
human mind itself. The word of the Holy Scriptures could be claimed as
the streaming fountain of all truth, but the question remained: how, and
with what degree of certainty, could the Scriptures be interpreted and
understood? It was in reply to this question that the reformers developed
in radical terms the doctrine of Saint Augustine, which had both
Platonic and Pauline origins, of an inner light within the mind which
guides the believer towards the divine light of truth.32 Luther himself, in
his Freedom of a Christian of 1520, was already insisting on the
necessity of concentrating an increasing attention on the inner man:
‘First let us consider the inner man’, he wrote, ‘to see how a righteous,
free and pious Christian, that is a spiritual, new and inner man, becomes
what he is.’33 Recent work on Melanchthon has shown how Luther’s
doctrine of the inner light was incorporated at Wittenberg into natural
philosophy as well as theology and ethics. ‘To trace the Providential
design of god in nature – or tracing his “footprints” (vestigia) as
Melanchthon called it – similarly became one of the most prominent
themes running through the studies of nature pursued by Melanchthon’s
followers.’34 Some of the radical reformers, who were soon rebelling
30 This much quoted page is to be found in chapter 1 of Book I of the first work of
the trilogy, De minimo. See MMI 16.

31 See Orat. Valed in BOL. The Latin text with an Italian translation has been
published in Opere di Giordano Bruno e Tommaso Campanella, ed. A. Guzzo and R.

Amerio, Milan–Naples: Ricciardi, 1956, pp. 660–91.
32 For St Augustine’s doctrine of the inner light and its later development up to
Leibniz, see Jolley, Nicolas (1990), The Light of the Soul, Oxford: Oxford University
Press.
33 Quoted in Martin Luther: Selections from his Writings, ed. John Dillenberger, New
York, Anchor Books, 1961, pp. 53–4.

34 See Kusukawa, Sachiko (1999), ‘The natural philosophy of Melanchthon’, in
Sciences et religions da Copernic à Galilée: Actes du colloque international Rome 12–14

156 GIORDANO BRUNO
against the authority of Luther and his followers, took this doctrine of
innate ideas to its logical extreme by conceding the inner light definite
priority, as a source of truth, with respect to the word of the Bible itself.
One of them went as far as to write in 1526: ‘To the degree that one
possesses the law within, the written law has been abolished.’35
From there, it was a short step to the secularization of the inner light,
which, rather than being used to comprehend the divine word of a
transcendental God, or primary causes, could become the candle with
which to study His hidden truths within the natural world, or secondary
causes. The Protestant doctrine of the inner light, in this context, has
recently been discussed by Peter Barker with reference to the rapid
diffusion of the Copernican theory within the Protestant part of
sixteenth-century Europe.36 This is important also in the context of
Bruno’s astronomical inquiry, as the doctrine of the inner light was used
to justify astronomy as an a priori science as well as an a posteriori one.
As Peter Barker has written: ‘astronomical proofs could begin a priori,
with the knowledge of principles supplied by the natural light’.37
Although this was often the basis on which the Wittenberg School of
astronomers, inspired by the teaching of Melanchthon, justified their
hypothetical reading of the Copernican theory as a purely mathematical
doctrine to be confined to calculation, it also underlay, in Barker’s
opinion, what he considers the two earliest defences of Copernicanism
as a real picture of the universe: the Narratio prima of one of
Copernicus’s foremost admirers, Rheticus, published in 1540 as an
announcement of the Copernican theory itself (which would appear
only in 1543 in Copernicus’s own De revolutionibus) as well as Kepler’s
later Mysterium cosmographicum of 1596.38 Although Barker ignores
him, we may note here that it is as certain that Bruno had been reading
Rheticus as it is that Kepler had been reading Bruno.39 The defence of a
décembre 1996, Rome: Ecole française de Rome, pp. 443–53. Also Kusukawa, Sachiko
(1995), The Transformation of Natural Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
35 See The Radical Reformation, ed. Michael G. Baylor, Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1991, p. 151.

36 See Barker, Peter (2000), ‘The role of religion in the Lutheran response to
Copernicus’, in Osler, Margaret (ed.), Rethinking the Scientific Revolution, Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, pp. 59–88.
37 Ibid., p. 84.
38 On the Wittenberg Copernicans see Westman, Robert S. (1975), ‘The Melanchthon
circle, Rheticus and the Wittenberg interpretation of the Copernican theory’, Isis, no. 66,
pp. 165–93.
39 For Bruno’s reading of Rheticus, see Granada, M.A. (1990), ‘L’interpretazione
bruniana di Copernico e la Narratio prima di Rheticus’, Rinascimento, vol. 30, pp.

343–65. For Kepler’s reading of Bruno, see my Giordano Bruno and Renaissance Science,
op. cit., pp. 123–6.
realist reading of the Copernican theory in Bruno’s two major

cosmological dialogues, The Ash Wednesday Supper, published in
London in 1584 and the De immenso, published in Frankfurt in 1591
(both written and published, although not without difficulties, in the
Protestant part of contemporary Europe), was also based on a priori
reasoning rather than astronomical observations. Furthermore, in both
these dialogues Bruno makes frequent reference to a doctrine of inner
light, although justifying it in terms of a prisca theologia of Pythagorean
origin rather than in the Protestant/Christian terms of a Rheticus or a
Kepler.40
Francis Bacon would later develop a doctrine of inner light in his
Novum organum where he severely chides a science conceived of as a
‘mere groping as of men in the dark, who feel all around them for the
chance of finding their way, when they had much better wait for
daylight, or light a candle before taking a step’.41 Whether or not Bacon
had Bruno in mind when he wrote these words, it was in strict
connection with his English experience that Bruno himself gave full
development to his philosophical idea of intellectual illumination. The
pages which I shall be concerned with here close his final Italian
dialogue, the Heroici furori, written and published in London in 1585.42
This work is normally considered as pertaining to the mainstream of
Renaissance Neoplatonism, both thematically and stylistically. I shall be
claiming that this is in fact the case with a large part of this long and
beautifully articulated work. But I shall also be claiming that it is no
coincidence that Bruno places this dialogue firmly in the Italy of his
youth which he had already abandoned, filling it with speakers who all
belong to his early background in Nola, near Naples.43
40 It has recently been claimed that Bruno’s attention to the homo interior is developed
in the context of a Platonic concept of the universal spiritus which would later be pursued
in Christian terms both by St Paul and St Augustine. The paper fails, however, to mention
the Protestant emphasis on the inner man, which Bruno would have become familiar with
in London, where he wrote the philosophical dialogues which are used to illustrate this
thesis. See Canone, Eugenio (2000), ‘Il fanciullo e la fenice: L’eterna essenza umana e gli
innumerabili individui secondo Bruno’, Bruniana e campanelliana, VI/2, pp. 381–406,
397.
41 See Bacon, Francis (1858–68), Works, ed. J. Spedding, R.L. Ellis and D.D. Heath,
London and New York, vol. I, p. 189 and vol. IV, pp. 80–81. Quoted in Rossi, Paolo
(1984), “Ants, spiders, epistemologists” in Lessico Intellettuale Europeo: Bacon, Florence:
Olsehki, p. 251.
42 The following pages on the Furori were first delivered as a paper at the annual
conference of The Renaissance Society of America held in Chicago, 29–31 March, 2001.
43 Bruno was born in Nola in 1548 of a family of modest means, and entered the
monastery of St Dominic in Naples in 1565. He was christened Filippo and only became
Giordano on entering the monastery: he never abandoned his monastic name, even when
158 GIORDANO BRUNO
The arrival on the banks of the river Thames in the final pages of the
Furori is much more than a simple geographical change of scene. It
represents, in my opinion, the beginning of a new intellectual enquiry of
a radically different sort: the beginning of Bruno’s post-Copernican,
cosmological speculation which would occupy him in his English years
or rather, which already had occupied him; for this is the last work in
the series of his six Italian dialogues which mark his two and a half years
in London as a moment of remarkable scientific and philosophical
speculation.44 The Furori brings us back to the beginning of that
experience, narrating the passionate intellectual adventure which had
brought Bruno from a Catholic, Neoplatonist and then Counter-
Reformation Italy to a Protestant, pragmatic, Elizabethan England. The
nymph of the river Thames who gives the nine blind philosophers back
their sight also initiates them into a new vision of a natural universe
subject to rational, universal laws.
It is indicative of the recent refusal to consider of any special
importance Bruno’s years spent in the Protestant centres of European
culture that readings of the Furori have become almost exclusively
centred on earlier parts of the text which discuss his use of the myth of
Actaeon and Diana. For example, Michele Ciliberto, in his edition of the
Furori published by Laterza in 1995, brings his introduction to a
culminating point with a consideration of the sonnet which evokes the
vision of Diana on the part of Actaeon, who is then changed into a stag
and devoured by the hounds of his own thoughts.45 Bruno’s Diana,
writes Ciliberto, symbolizes ‘the unity of nature and by allowing
Actaeon to discover her gives him the maximum of joy which God is
disposed to give to man’.46 Ciliberto marks no essential difference
between this rendering of the Actaeon myth in Part 1, Dialogue 4, of
he fled from his monastery and his order in 1576, after being discovered reading forbidden
books.
44 Bruno arrived in London from Paris some time in the spring of 1583 carrying letters
for the French Ambassador, Michel de Castelnau. He took up his residence in the French
Embassy in London as a gentleman attendant on the Ambassador, who supported the
cause of the Catholic Mary, Queen of Scots. He left London in the autumn of 1585, in the
retinue of the Ambassador who was recalled by the French King, Henri III, when pressure
mounted on Elizabeth I in London to execute the already imprisoned Mary. In London
Bruno wrote, and published with the printer John Charlewood, the six philosophical
dialogues in Italian which contain the first ordered expression of his intellectual life and
his philosophy.
45 Bruno, Giordano (1585), Eroici furori, ed. Michele Ciliberto, Rome and Bari:
Laterza, 1995, pp. vii–xli.

46 Ibid., pp. xxxiv–xxxv: ‘vedendo Diana, e cogliendo l’unità della natura, con il
“disquarto” Atteone ottiene il massimo che il Dio facendosi “ritrovare” è disposto a

donare all’uomo’.
Bruno’s text, and the illumination of the nine blind philosophers in the
last dialogue of Part 2; while he has no time at all for the Nymph of the
River Thames who, in the final pages of the Furori, gives the blind
philosophers back their sight.
Ciliberto’s pupil, Nicoletta Tirinnanzi, in her edition of the Furori
published by Rizzoli in 1999, follows a similar itinerary. As Ciliberto
had done beforehand, she brings her introduction to an end with an
intense consideration of the Actaeon myth in the early parts of Bruno’s
text.47 Tirinnanzi’s reading of this aspect of the text is indeed of great
interest in so far as she proposes as Bruno’s principal model the biblical
book of The Song of Solomon. This proposal leads to an identification
of Bruno’s naked Diana with Solomon’s ‘white and ruddy’ spouse, thus
giving rise to an even more spiritual and metaphysical interpretation of
the moon-goddess than Ciliberto himself had suggested. The vision of
Diana now comes to represent not so much the moment of
comprehension of the divine as the moment of ‘being comprehended’,
bringing us clearly into the sphere of a mystical, spiritual rape into a
higher sphere of being. Suggestively, Tirinnanzi cites as another crucial
model for these pages of Bruno’s the De raptu Pauli in the 3˚ Tome of
Marsilio Ficino’s Theologia platonica.48 These spiritual raptures are
considered once again in a more immanent dimension in Miguel
Granada’s introduction to the French edition of the Furori, also
published in 1999 as the last volume of the Italian dialogues in the
Oeuvres complètes produced by Les Belles Lettres.49 But although
refusing a fully transcendental status to Bruno’s divine unity, Granada
goes even further in considering Bruno’s pages on Actaeon’s vision of
Diana as the culminating point not only of the Furori but of Bruno’s
entire philosophical project as it is developed in the six Italian works
written and published in London between 1584 and 1585.
I intend to question this reading of the Furori as culminating in
Bruno’s treatment of the myth of Diana and Actaeon: a reading which,
with only one or two dissenting voices, seems to have become canonical.
My first question is quite simply this: if Bruno brought the Furori to its
thematical and stylistic culmination with the Diana sonnet in Part 1,
Dialogue 4, what was he doing in Part 1, Dialogue 5, not to speak of all
five Dialogues of Part 2? Was he only repeating himself? Second, if the
vision of Diana on the part of Actaeon is to be considered as rapturous
47 Bruno, Giordano (1585), Gli eroici furori, ed. Nicoletta Tirinnanzi, Milano:
Rizzoli, 1999, pp. 5–50.

48 Ibid., p. 49, n. 67.
49 Bruno, Giordano (1999), Oeuvres complètes VII: Des Fureurs héroiques, ed. G.
Aquilecchia and Miguel Granada, Paris: Les Belles Lettres, pp. ix–cxl.
160 GIORDANO BRUNO
as these commentators claim, why does Part 1 end by bringing us not to

the doors of paradise but to those of hell, with the memorable Dantean
warning to the reader to ‘abandon all hope’ written over them? Third,
is the vision of Diana experienced by the youthful hunter Actaeon really
presented by Bruno as positively as these commentators claim?
I shall attempt to answer the last question first. If this is the
culminating moment of the Furori, Actaeon should represent the
philosopher in his full maturity. But Bruno not only places this myth
firmly in the Italy of his youth: he also repeatedly underlines Actaeon’s
immature and headlong rush into a region of desert and thorns.50
Furthermore this impetuous youthful choice of a hunt for sacred truth is
explicitly presented by Bruno (and here Tirinnanzi is certainly right) as
a choice for theology rather than philosophy, the sense of Actaeon’s
vision of Diana being illustrated with citations from St Paul’s Letters to
the Corinthians and the Philippians.51 It is a miraculous vision which
Actaeon is pursuing with his hounds, which represent his intellect (the
greyhounds) and his will (the mastiffs); and it is no coincidence in this
context – although none of the above commentators mentions the fact –
that Bruno’s Diana takes the form not of a full-length living goddess but
of an alabaster bust adorned with purple and gold.52 Her status is surely
that of a religious icon: an altar-piece. Not God himself but, according
to a theological point of view, a representation of the divine in human
form: not the sun itself, but its light reflected in the moon. In Christian
terms she is clearly a Madonna. In Ficino’s Neoplatonic terms she is an
angel according to his definition given in Book I, Chapter VI, of the
Theologia, where it is specified that God is above the angel because He
is a static unity, whereas the angel is an immobile multiplicity and the
human soul a mobile multiplicity.
The problem that these commentators forget to address is that Bruno,
when he wrote the Furori in London after several years of exile from the
50 ‘dove si vede più spinoso, inculto e deserto il destro et arduo camino’: see BDFI, p.
820. For an interesting comment on the role of the will in Bruno’s development of the
Actaeon myth, see Bassi, Simonetta (1997), ‘De gli eroici furori: alcuni problemi di critica
testuale’, in Giordano Bruno 1583–1585: The English Experience, ed. Michele Ciliberto
and Nicholas Mann, Florence: Olschki, pp. 93–7.
51 Bruno, Dialoghi filosofici italiani, op. cit., p. 835. See II Corinthians, 12:1–4, and
Philippians, 3:2–3.
52 ‘ in ostro et alabastro et oro fino’. Bruno, Dialoghi filosofici, op. cit., p. 819. For
a commentary which does recognize the importance of these characteristics of Bruno’s

Diana see Sabbadino, Pasquale (1993), Giordano Bruno e la ‘mutazione’ del rinascimento,
Florence: Olschki, p. 150, where the gold, purple and alabaster are considered as the three
colours of religion and associated with the three persons of the Trinity.
Counter-Reformation in Italy, had long ago repudiated his own youthful

religious choice, and had declared himself a disciple of philosophy rather
than theology: furthermore, a disciple of a philosophy which repudiates
the Platonic sphere of transcendental ideas. So what does that make of
Diana? One prestigious commentator at least, Octavio Paz, has few
doubts on that score. He thinks it makes Diana into a non-vision, an
illusion, a handful of powdered alabaster or paint.53
That might be too drastic a conclusion. The reason for Bruno’s early
religious ardour is clearly stated in the fifth dialogue of Part 1, that is,
the dialogue immediately following the narration of the Diana/Actaeon
myth. Here the final sonnet develops two dramatic images: one of a
snake painfully struggling for survival after being thrown into the snow,
and the other of a nude, young boy burning in the flames of a fire.
Bruno’s brief explication of his own sonnet tells us that both are
suffering from the ineluctable human fate of having to exist in a universe
of contraries and difference. All living things desire a vision of Diana’s
static unity and perfection. The problem is that achieving it only
consumes them in a hopeless awareness of their own carnality and
impotence. Instead of leading to paradise, the search for the divinity
(which in Bruno’s mental universe exists but lies outside the powers of
human understanding) has only led to the doors of hell. It is entirely
appropriate that Dante should be cited at this point.54
Part 2 of the Furori, however, leads towards a rather different
paradise from Dante’s one. It is also far from repeating the plot of Part
1. Rather, after an introductory exhortation to fortify the mind, it
returns once again, in the second dialogue, to the traumatic vision of
Diana by Actaeon, which is now further explicated both in poetry and
prose. Bruno, however, does not stop there, but goes on to lead his
reader firmly if reluctantly back into the mobile multiplicity of the world
of nature. Here the feminine figures who populate the final dialogue of
the text become essential to the plot, for, unlike the earlier Diana, they
are human and alive. They lose the iconic status of statuary to assume
53 See the pages entitled *Water writes always in * plural in Octavia Paz’s Aparencia
desnuda (1996), a study of the works of Marcel Duchamp. Paz considers Bruno’s
rendering of the Actaeon myth as one of Duchamp’s major sources for his art-work
entitled The Bride rendered naked by her admirers, also … These pages have been the
subject of an interesting comment by Ciliberto, Michele (1994), ‘Bruno, Duchamp, Paz’ in
Rivista di storia della filosofia, fasc. 2, pp. 303–21.
54 The importance of Dante behind Bruno’s Heroici furori has been underlined in
particular by Nelson, John Charles (1955), Renaissance Theory of Love, New York:
Columbia University Press, pp. 163–233. Rather than the references to the Divina
comedia, Nelson is interested in the thematic and formal similarities with the Vita nuova
and the Convivium.
162 GIORDANO BRUNO
that of women. They become a part of the philosopher’s worldly life.

Giulia and Laodemia, who oversee and protect the nine philosophers in
their journey from Campania (Bruno’s home region) to the banks of the
river Thames (where he is writing his work) have been identified by
Bruno’s indefatigable biographer, Spampanato, as two female cousins on
his mother’s side.55 Laodemia slyly lets on to the reader that the
philosophers (and presumably here we should reduce them to a
singularity, and identify them with Bruno himself) had loved Giulia in
early youth, only to be repudiated with scorn. But Giulia need not feel
guilty, Laodemia assures her, as it was precisely her coldness which lit
the burning fire of frenzy for divine truth, starting off the intellectual
adventure narrated in the text.
Bruno’s Circe, who lives on Mount Circaeus near Rome, and who
blinds the nine philosophers on their journey north from the region of
Vesuvius, has been identified by Giovanni Gentile as an image of the
Catholic Church.56 If he is right, she must represent the Church in its
material or temporal power, in contrast to the spirituality represented by
the alabaster Diana, as Circe explicitly justifies her action by telling the
philosophers that they have dedicated too much of their attention ‘to
that which lies above’. In order to regain their sight, they must find a
power sufficient to open the phial of healing waters which she gives
them as she waves them off on a further journey. It is difficult to judge
to what extent the opening of the sealed phial by the chief nymph of the
Thames, who is clearly Queen Elizabeth I, is to be interpreted as a
passage of Bruno’s loyalty from the Catholic Church of the Counter-
Reformation to the moderate Protestantism of the Anglican settlement.
Certainly the chief nymph of the Thames appears to possess some kind
of miraculous power which Circe herself has at this point lost; as the
vase of healing waters, which Circe herself was powerless to open,
springs open ‘spontaneously’ in the English nymph’s hands. But all this
may be by way of a compliment to the Anglican Sir Philip Sidney, to
whom the Furori is dedicated, rather than a declaration of Anglican
faith on Bruno’s part. Such, at least, is the opinion of the major British
historians of religion who have addressed the question of Bruno’s
relations to the Anglican Church. ‘Bruno aligned himself with the
55 See Spampanato, Vincenzo (1921), Vita di Giordano Bruno con documenti editi ed
inediti, Messina: Principato, p. 64, n.3.

56 See Giordano Bruno, Dialoghi italiani II, Dialoghi morali, nuovamente ristampati
con note da Giovanni Gentile, 3˚ edizione a cura di Giovanni Aquilecchia, Florence:

Sansoni, 1958, pp. 1168–9, n. 4. Sabbadino, Giordano Bruno, op. cit., p. 177, speaks of
a ‘Circe dimezzata’ with respect to the rendering of her figure in Ovid, but without picking
up Gentile’s acute suggestion.
Protestant policy of Leicester and Sir Francis Walsingham’, writes

Patrick Collinson, ‘“while stamping on the protestant theology in which
their supporters believed”. And perhaps that was Sidney’s position
too.’57
The aspect of the illumination carried into effect by the English
nymphs which Bruno appears concerned to underline is actually the two
shining lights of the chief nymph’s eyes. Previous play with eyes had
established that they represent the double virtue of goodness and beauty,
which are clearly also at play here. But it is rather the intellectual aspect
of this illumination which Bruno is concerned to stress. The chief
English nymph derives directly from an original unity, which Bruno
identifies with the unseen source of the river Thames, briefly mentioning
Diana again at this point. This principle of unity, associated with the
underground source of the Thames, however, is clearly of a rather
different nature from an absolute ‘other’, or transcendental unity, such
as the previous statue of Diana had appeared to reflect. In his earlier
Italian dialogue, Of the Cause, Principle and Unity, Bruno had explored
this difference as one between Plato’s transcendental version of a
unifying principle and Pythagoras’s version, preferring the more
immanent Pythagorean version as being ‘more easily accommodated to
universal being’.58 This original Pythagorean unity gives sense and order
to the English nymphs’ plurality, even when this becomes, in the ecstatic
vision of the newly illuminated philosophers, symbolic of the eternal
vicissitude and mutability of a now infinite world.
The anointing of the philosophers’ eyes and their consequent
illumination in the final pages of the Heroici furori carries clearly
biblical resonances. These would be later underlined, in a very different
spirit, by the reformed theologian William Perkins of Cambridge, who
had earlier opposed the Brunian art of memory of Alexander Dicson. In
a tract published in Cambridge in 1608, entitled A case of Conscience,
the Greatest that ever was: how a man may know whether he be the
childe of God or no, Perkins quotes from the first Epistle of John 2:20,
which reads: ‘But ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know
all things.’ Perkins, of course, is concerned to protect his flock from the
Antichrists ‘of which even now there are many’, as John himself had
warned in his Epistle.59 Bruno, although not mentioned by Perkins, is
57 See Collinson, Patrick (1997), ‘The religion of Elizabethan England and of its
queen’, in Giordano Bruno 1583–1585: The English Experience, op. cit., pp. 3–22. The
citation in Collinson’s text is a quotation from John Bossy.
58 For this discussion, see the chapter ‘The Pythagorean School and our own’ in my
Giordano Bruno and Renaissance Science, op. cit., pp. 13–28, 24.
59 I am assuming the identity of the W.P. of Cambridge of the polemic with Dicson
164 GIORDANO BRUNO
possibly to be counted among those Antichrists when he gives a

thoroughly natural meaning to the unction which heals the blindness of
his nine philosophers. For theirs, as he writes in the final page of the
Furori, is a search for the ‘sommo bene in terra’, or the highest good on
earth, sponsored together by Circe (who gives the bottle of ointment to
the blind men but is unable to open it herself) and one of nature’s own
nymphs. The double illumination which the philosophers receive from
the two eyes of this nymph on the banks of the river Thames sets them
off on a new enquiry into the multiplicity of the natural world,
celebrated in their final choral Song. Their search will now be directed
towards discovering those eternal laws which link the sphere of the
oceans to that of the highest stars. Thus Bruno celebrates once again his
newly infinite universe, which is unified and homogeneous, and
therefore subject to a newly rational enquiry into natural things.
It would clearly be a mistake to think that Bruno’s emphasis on the
moment of heroic frenzy throughout this text is totally divorced from a
modern idea of the scientific endeavour. Once again it is useful to refer
to Max Weber who, in 1919, delivered a remarkable lecture entitled
Science as a Vocation which has recently been at the centre of
considerable attention. The Protestant idea of science as a quasi-
religious calling had already been considered by Weber in The
Protestant Ethic as central to the work ethos of the modern capitalistic
society. In his later lecture he is concerned to emphasize how the rapid
technological development of such societies has not rendered
superfluous the inventive individual genius. On the contrary, Weber
claims, a modern mathematician, for example, will not come to
scientifically valuable results by simply sitting in front of his ever more
sophisticated mechanical devices. ‘In terms of disposition and results’,
writes Weber, ‘the mathematical imagination depends on the same
psychological processes as the artistic imagination. Both have in
common frenzy (in the sense of Plato’s “mania”) and inspiration.’60
Later on in his lecture, however, Weber pointed out that empirical
scientific practice, or what he called ‘the everyday life of science’,
inevitably brings it down to a more mundane, practical plane. Weber’s
lecture, then, seems to say that both the Platonic ‘mania’ and the
everyday empirical practice are an essential part of the scientific
with the Cambridge theologian William Perkins: an identity postulated by Frances Yates
in her Art of Memory, and now much reinforced by the work of Emanuela Ruisi (1998),
Note sulla disputa tra Alexander Dicson e William Perkins, Nouvelles de la république des
lettres, vol. 2, pp. 109–38.
60 See Weber, Max [1919] (1989), Science as a Vocation, ed. Peter Lassman, Irving
Velody and Herminio Martins, London: Routledge, pp. 10–11.

endeavour or vocation. Bruno appears to have been already thinking

along remarkably similar lines when in his mathematical treatise, De
triplici minimo, the first work of his Frankfurt trilogy of 1591, he
writes: ‘For to the fathers of human wisdom, above all the perfection of
the mind appears desirable, and if one adds this to empirical practice,
such a light is irradiated from the mind to the senses that they are able
to ascend the steps that lead to the highest places, thus moving beyond
the middle regions.’61
The Protestant idea of the vocation, or calling, was defined by
William Perkins of Cambridge (once again) in his Treatise of the
Vocations or Callings of Men, published in 1603. For Perkins, a
vocation, or calling, is ‘a manner or order of leading our lives in this
world’: a manner which requires particular industry and diligence; for
good works are not the cause of salvation but a note or sign of a
salvation worked by God.62 It is precisely such a search for the highest
good in this world (il sommo bene in terra) that the nine enlightened
philosophers, at the close of Bruno’s Heroici furori, agree to accept as
their chosen task: aided not by a Christian God (as in Perkins) but by
the illumination which comes to them through the good services of the
nymph of the river Thames. And it is clearly important that the nine
philosophers constitute a group: the new natural philosophy, for Bruno
as later for Francis Bacon in The New Atlantis, would obtain results
only where a number of minds work in harmony together. It could even
be claimed that in the final pages of Bruno’s Heroici furori, a Royal
Society devoted to natural enquiry is already contemplated as a future
intellectual agenda.
The repudiation of the monastic ideal of contemplation of the divine
had led Bruno through a divided and warring Europe to this conclusion
of his English experience. It may not have involved anything more than
rhetorical praise of the English version of Protestant Christianity; for
Bruno’s nymphs of the Thames are the multiple representatives of the
divine harmony implicit in nature’s hills and dales, and it is by no means
clear in his philosophy what, if anything, lies beyond the infinite natural
world. Such a conclusion is combined with a deep distrust and a forceful
refusal of the ideological intolerance of the most radical exponents of
61 MMI, 27. De minimo, bk I, cap. V: ‘Nam patribus Sophiæ humanæ perfectio mentis
/ Præcipué appetitur, cui si praxis quoque testis / Accedat: tanto est lumen pote se magis
extrà, / Fundere, ut ad sensus … per schalas alta subire / Limina per mediæ rationis
compita surgens.’
62 The importance of Perkins as a precursor of Weber in this text has been underlined
by Paul Munch, ‘The thesis before Weber: an archeology’, in Weber’s Protestant Ethic, op.
cit, pp. 51–71.
166 GIORDANO BRUNO
Protestant religious doctrines that Bruno had met with in his

wanderings. Nevertheless, the nucleus of ideas which Weber brought
together under the heading of The Protestant Ethic can be found again
and again in key passages of Bruno’s philosophical texts. They were
essential to him in the definition of his philosophy of science. And it was
through an energetic dedication to the new science, combining, for
Bruno as for Weber, both a Platonic moment of imaginative inspiration
and an empirical or practical outcome in terms of a communal
endeavour to attain the sommo bene on earth, that, for better or for
worse, the doorway of the Pythagorean Academy would eventually
open, leading into the modern world.
CHAPTER SEVEN
John Charlewood, Printer of

Giordano Bruno’s Italian
Dialogues, and his Book
Production
Tiziana Provvidera
Bruno’s relationship with John Charlewood (d. 1593), the London

printer of the Latin and Italian works published by the philosopher
while in England from spring 1583 to autumn 1585, was first
investigated by Giovanni Aquilecchia 40 years ago.1 Since then,
however, it has been neglected by Bruno scholars. According to the
principles of textual bibliography, the identification of the printer of a
text, as well as the investigation of his working habits and general
culture, are important for establishing, wherever possible, the degree of
fidelity between the author’s manuscript (if it survives) and the various
printed versions.2 Aquilecchia’s recovery of an unknown version of
Bruno’s Cena de le Ceneri bearing authorial variations (or partial
versions) occurring on sheet D, provides evidence of developments in his
contacts with the Elizabethan court during the printing of the work.3 If
these revisions, as Aquilecchia has argued, fit into a consistent pattern,4
then we are perhaps justified in assuming that Charlewood was not only
aware that Bruno favoured the champions of the Puritan cause at court
against the moderate Protestantism espoused by Cecil – a shift in
1 Aquilecchia, G. (1993), ‘Lo stampatore londinese di Giordano Bruno e altre note per
l’edizione della Cena’ [1960], in Schede bruniane (1950–1991), Manziana (Roma):

Vecchiarelli, pp. 157–207.
2 Aquilecchia, G. (1986), ‘Trilemma of textual criticism (author’s alterations, different
versions, autonomous works). An Italian view’, in A.L. Lepschy, J. Took, and E. Rhodes,
(eds), Book Production and Letters in the Western European Renaissance, London: The
Modern Humanities Research Association, pp. 1–6.
3 Aquilecchia, G. (1993), ‘La lezione definitiva della Cena de le Ceneri di Giordano
Bruno’ [1950], in Schede bruniane, op. cit., pp. 1–39; see also Le opere italiane di
Giordano Bruno: Critica testuale e oltre, Naples: Bibliopolis, 1991.
4 Aquilecchia, G. (1996), ‘I dialoghi italiani (varietà di varianti)’, Fondazione Luigi
Firpo, Centro di Studi sul pensiero politico, Quaderni, I: Giordano Bruno: note filologiche
e storiografiche (I giornata Luigi Firpo, 3 marzo 1994), Florence: Olschki, pp. 25–35.
168 GIORDANO BRUNO
alliances which led to the very expensive reprint of the whole sheet D –
but that the printer was also familiar with the main lines of the books
he was about to publish. In this chapter I shall further suggest that
Bruno and Charlewood had shared interests which might reflect a
certain consistency between the substance of the former’s thinking and
the latter’s list of publications. Indeed, their ‘business relationship’ might
even have influenced Charlewood’s book production, since his
commitment to Italian or ‘Italianate’ literature seems to have grown
stronger from 1585 onwards.
It has been said that printers, publishers and booksellers ‘are but a
microcosm of a much larger group who participated in the drives of the
century and helped mould its particular structure’.5 In the dim
background of this rich and fertile period, the bookseller-printer-
publisher has long remained a rather shadowy and insubstantial figure,
of whom little is known, and who does not arouse much interest.6 The
main reason is the evident difficulty of gathering and assessing the huge
amount of relevant sources scattered around archives, record offices and
libraries. Yet we must study these figures if we wish to gain a more
detailed insight into the publishing activities of the sixteenth century. As
with the great majority of printers of the time, details of the professional
life of John Charlewood, stationer and printer, are scarce, and so are
documents that would enable us to place him within the context of
Elizabethan culture.7
Charlewood’s date of birth is unknown. He may have come from
Surrey, since Charlewood is a Surrey parish and the surname is quite
popular in that county.8 He seems to have started printing ‘so early as
5 Rostenberg, L. (1965), Literary, Political, Scientific, Religious & Legal Publishing,
Printing & Bookselling in England, 1551–1700: Twelve Studies, 2 vols, New York: Burt
Franklin, p. 2.
6 At the very beginning of the book trade, these groups must be considered together
because of their close relations: the printer was at the same time an editor, publisher and
bookseller. He chose the manuscripts he wished to print and edited them; he determined
the number of copies to be printed and he sold them to his customers. This situation
gradually changed on account of the difficulty of combining all these functions, and the
printer concentrated on one or the other aspect of the business. See Steinberg, S.H. (1996),
Five Hundred Years of Printing [1955], new edn revised by J. Trevitt, London: Oak Knoll
Press, pp. 59–62.
7 John Charlewood’s printing output has not previously been studied in detail. The
only accounts of him can be found in L. Stephen and S. Lee (eds) (1885–1900), Dictionary
of National Biography, 63 vols, London: Smith, Elder & Co., (hereafter DNB), X: 120
and in Duff, E.G. (1905), A Century of the English Book Trade, London: Bibliographical
Society, p. 26.
8 Arber, E. (1875–94), A Transcript of the Registers of the Company of Stationers of
London 1554–1640, 5 vols, London and Birmingham: privately printed, (hereafter SR), II: 173.
JOHN CHARLEWOOD: GIORDANO BRUNO’S PRINTER 169
7.1 The Copernican debate in Robert Recorde, The Castle of Knowledge

[1551], 1596.
170 GIORDANO BRUNO
Queen Mary’s reign’ in a temporary partnership with John Tysdall (or

Tysdale) in Holborn, ‘nere to the Cundite at the signe of the Sarsins
head’.9 His first two imprints, dating to around 1555, were shared with
Tysdale and issued at that sign. Charlewood had been in the printing
business, first, as a bookseller from, possibly, 1557 to about 1574, and
thereafter until his death in 1593 as a printer.10 He officially remained a
member of the Grocers’ Company until about 1574, when he joined the
Stationers’ Company.11 His career as a ‘disorderly’ printer dates from as
early as 1559, when he and two apprentices were summoned before the
city chamberlain, apparently for printing some unlicensed works.12 The
first recorded entry under his name is a ballad dated 1562–63.13 By that
time, Charlewood had definitely set up his own shop in the Barbican,
where he worked from 1578 to 1586 at the sign of the Half-Eagle and
Key.14 During those years he became one of the most prolific printer-
publishers of Elizabethan England, so that at the time of Bruno’s stay in
London, he had already set his name to about a hundred works.
Several salient episodes marked Charlewood’s career as a printer and
a member of the Stationers’ Company. During the years 1578–80 he was
constantly fined for printing unlicensed or even unregistered works, in
defiance of the Stationers’ rules. Not long afterwards he, together with
John Wolfe and Roger Ward, began to print books belonging by right to
the patentees. In 1582 he was reported by the Wardens of the Stationers’
9 Ames, J. (1810–1819), Typographical Antiquities, or the history of printing in
England, Scotland and Ireland: containing memoirs of our ancient printers, and a register
of the books printed by them. Begun by Joseph Ames, considerably augmented by William
Herbert, and now greatly enlarged, with copious notes and illustrated [by T.F. Dibdn],
London: William Miller, (hereafter TA), IV: 345.
10 A.W. Pollard and G.R. Redgrave (eds) (1976–86), A Short-Title Catalogue of Books
Printed in England, Scotland & Ireland and of English Books Printed Abroad 1485–1640,
2nd edn, begun by W.A. Jackson and F.S. Ferguson, completed by K. Pantzer, vols 1–2,
London: The Bibliographical Society; and Indexes, 1991 (hereafter STC), III: 40.
11 SR, II: 85.
12 ‘Payd to WILLIAM of the Chambre of London for the warnynge of Charlewod and
his ij prentisse[s] to come before ye chamberlayne’ (SR, I: 106). This is the earliest record
in the Registers of the Stationers’ Company of Charlewood as a printer. It appeared in the
list of payments between 1558 and 1559.
13 ‘Recevyd of Cherlewod for his lycense for pryntinge of a ballett intituled A diolige
of the rufull burr[n]ynge of Powles’. The ballad is not extant. SR, I: 202.
14 SR,V: 103. Charlewood might have obtained the device representing the Half-Eagle
and Key from Richard Serle in 1566, when the latter was working at that sign in Fleet
Lane. After 1586, Charlewood may either have ceased to use the sign or else have leased
the house to someone else, for thereafter none of his imprints bears the sign. See
McKerrow, R.B. (1913), Printers’ and Publishers’ Devices in England and Scotland
(1485–1640), London: Bibliographical Society at the Chiswick Press, (hereafter PPD):181
and 168.
Company as one of the leaders of the struggle against the privileged

publishers.15 According to the Stationers, the insurgents vowed ‘to
withstand her majesty’s grants wholly’, and collected funds and held
meetings in the Exchange and at the church of St Thomas of Acres in
furtherance of their cause. They are depicted as an organized movement,
with a small group of working printers and their associates at the centre,
who acted as organizers and fund-raisers, and a larger following drawn
from the 100 to 200 journeymen and apprentice printers, as well as the
poorer members of other trades throughout the city.16 It is highly
probable that at that time Charlewood played more than a subordinate
role in the protest. There is little doubt, too, that the struggle against
patents had an anti-authoritarian dimension.17 It does not seem,
however, that Charlewood’s participation in the protest affected his
career as a printer in any way. In fact, in 1582, he is reported to possess
two presses. And in 1587 he held ‘the onelye ympryntinge of all manner
of Billes for players’, that is, the exclusive right, or monopoly, to print
playbills.18 His integrity as a printer nevertheless remains in doubt,
since at the end of his life he was involved in the printing of
unauthorized works.19 On 29 January 1593 Charlewood licensed his last
15 The opposing factions in the Company were the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’: the
‘haves’ were ‘the original patentees and the growing commercial interest in the trade – the
copyright-owners and the wholesale distributors’; the ‘have nots’ were mainly ‘the
craftsmen – the journeymen printers and the bookbinders – who opposed the commercial
oligarchy in their Company and who could be persuaded to rally against a monopoly’:
Blagden, C. (1955), ‘The English stock of the Stationers’ Company’, The Library, 5th
series, 10: 163–4. The obvious unfairness of the situation inevitably culminated in the
open revolt of the poorer printers and publishers against the established patentees in the
years 1582–84, as well as in their undertaking of unlicensed, surreptitious and pirated
printing. According to the SR, II: 777–9, the leaders of the insurgents were: ‘John Wolfe,
John Charlewood, and Roger Ward printers: Henry Bamford compositor: Franck Adams
a maker of writing Tables, William Lobley a Bookebinder: Abraham Kidson, Thomas
Butter, and [William] Wright booksellers / who are greatly animated by one Master Robert
Neak a lawyer’. The other confederates were: Robert Waldegrave, Thomas East, Thomas
Purfoote, Thomas Dawson, Richard Jones, John Hunter, Henry Spooner, Abraham
Newman, John Preston, Bartholomew Celle, Anthony Hill, Edward White, Henry Jackson
and Henry Kirkham.
16 SR, II: 780–82.
17 See Loewenstein, J. (1988), ‘For a history of literary property: John Wolfe’s
reformation’, English Literary Renaissance, 18, pp. 389–412.

18 SR, II: 477. The formula ‘prouided yet yf any trouble aryse hereby then Charlwood
to beare the charges’ at the end of the entry fully reflects the distress felt by the printers
during those years.
19 These were John Nashe’s Pierce penilesse, his supplication to the diuell (STC 18371,
1592) and the pseudo-Platonic Axiochus with the Sweet speech or the Oration spoken at
the Tryumphe at White-hall before her Maiestie, by the Page to the right noble Earle of
172 GIORDANO BRUNO
work.20 He was dead a few weeks later, for in March of that year three
books were entered in the Registers by ‘the widdowe Charlewood’.21 She
soon transferred the presses to James Roberts, who, on 9 September
1593 became her husband and took over the business in the Barbican,
which was finally transferred to William Jaggard at some time before the
end of 1606.22
Charlewood’s output covered a wide range of subjects including
religion, history, philosophy, ballads and pamphlets, as well as various
maritime, military and legal manuals, and several English translations of
classical works. In the light of the data I have gathered up to now, it
seems reasonable to identify various phases in his career as a printer:
Charlewood was predominantly committed to Puritanism and to the
anti-papal cause from the beginning of his career through to the late
1580s. This initial phase was interrupted, however, in the years
1581–84, when he printed books for the Catholic Howard family,23 as
well as one book dedicated to Philip Howard, the Earl of Arundel.24
Afterwards, Charlewood’s press was again involved in the production of
books of a Protestant and anti-Roman Catholic nature, at least up to
1587, when for the two years 1587–88 he apparently printed certain
Catholic books.25 In the final phase of his career, he reverted to
Oxenforde, which is annexed to it (STC 19974.6, 1592). Although the title-page indicates
Edward Spenser as the translator, both the translation from Greek and the speech have
been attributed to Anthony Munday: see Swan, M.W. (1944), ‘The sweet speech and
Spenser’s (?) Axiochus’, Journal of English Literary History, 11, pp. 161–81.
20 SR, II: 625.
21 Ibid.: 630. Charlewood was buried at St Giles without Cripplegate on 31 March
1593.
22 R.B. McKerrow, A Dictionary of Printers and Booksellers in England, Scotland and
Ireland, and of Foreign Printers of English Books 1557–1640, London, the

Bibliographical Society, 1910 (hereafter DPB):229. Interestingly enough, both Roberts
and Jaggard were connected with the printing of Shakespeare’s quartos.
23 J. Nichols, The oration and sermons made at Rome by commaundement of the
foure Cardinalles (STC 18535, 1581); Henry Howard, A defensatiue against the poyson
of supposed prophesies (STC 13858, 1583). These works bear in their imprint ‘Iohn
Charlewood, seruant to the right Honourable, Earle of Arundell’ and ‘Iohn Charlewood,
Printer to the right Honourable Earle of Arundell’ respectively. The broadside entitled
Callophisus, being brought by the greatest perfection … (STC 13868.5, [1581]),
honouring Philip Howard, Earl of Arundel (Callophisus, or Noble Nature, a fictitious
name used by the Earl of Arundel) was also issued by Charlewood’s press.
24 R. Greene, Morando, the tritameron of loue (STC 12276, 1584). Charlewood
appears to have printed only folio A4.

25 Two anonymous works, An epistle of comfort, to the reuerend priestes, and to the
laye sort restrayned in durance (STC 22946, 1587–88), attributed to the Jesuit Robert
Southwell, and A consolatory letter to all the afflicted catholickes in England (STC 1032,
1588), have been both conjecturally ascribed to Charlewood’s press at ‘Arundel House’on
the basis of their ornaments, although they bear the false imprints ‘Imprinted at Paris’ and
Protestant publications, including works against the Puritan Martin

Marprelate in defence of the Established Church of England.26 During
the last decade of his printing activity, Charlewood increasingly
produced popular literature, such as romances, tales, books of wonders,
narratives describing the practices of witches, almanacs, treatises on
health, ballads and journalistic pamphlets. Although he is not
mentioned in Shaaber’s study of publishers who specialized in the
publication of news,27 Charlewood certainly took up this popular genre
widely. Between 1580 and 1590 about 30 titles ranging from local news
to accounts of battles in Ireland, Spain and The Netherlands, reports of
strange events and miracles, records of calamities and translations of
foreign news are listed among his entries or publications. Seen in this
perspective, the issuing in 1584–85 of Bruno’s six dialogues in Italian
dealing with philosophical, cosmological and ethical matters has been
considered by most scholars to be inconsistent with the bulk of
Charlewood’s publications. Furthermore, for Charlewood to bring out
works in Italian was most unusual: apart from Giordano Bruno’s six
philosophical dialogues, which were printed either anonymously or
surreptitiously, he did not issue any other Italian publications. Likewise,
he was never involved in publishing any complete works in Latin apart
from his shared role in the printing of Bruno’s Explicatio triginta
sigillorum (1583).28 By comparison, John Wolfe, the most prolific printer
of Italian titles in sixteenth-century England, published 23 works in
Italian from his printing press in London between 1580 and 1591. All
the most prominent Italian exiles in London, such as Petruccio Ubaldini,
‘Imprinted at Roan in Normandy’ respectively. A contemporary account of John

Charlewood as ‘the Earl of Arundels man’, printing ‘Popery’ in a place called
Charterhouse in London, can be found in one of the Martin Marprelate pamphlets. See W.
Pierce, (ed.) (1911), The Marprelate Tracts 1588, 1589, London: Clarke, p. 54.
26 The three tracts that Charlewood printed in response to the Church’s call for
writings to defeat Martin Marprelate are: A countercuffe giuen to Martin Junior (STC
19450, 1589); The returne of the renowned caualiero Pasquill of England (STC 19456,
1589) and The firste parte of Pasquils Apologie (STC 19457, 1590).
27 Shaaber, M.A. (1929), Some Forerunners of the Newspaper in England,
1476–1622, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania.

28 The six works in Italian which Bruno published during the two and a half years of
his stay in England were preceded by a book in Latin on the art of memory, the Ars
reminiscendi, which must have been written soon after his arrival in 1583. The volume is
bound as follows: cc. A1r-B8v: Recens et completa Ars reminiscendi; A1r–C8v:
frontispiece of the Explicatio triginta sigillorum, poem, dedicatory letter to Castelnau,
letter to the vice-chancellor of Oxford University, Triginta sigilli; A1r–G8v: Explicatio
triginta sigillorum and Sigillus Sigillorum. See G. Aquilecchia, ‘Lo stampatore londinese’,
op. cit., p. 174, n. 59, and Bassi, S. (1997), ‘Editoria e filosofia nella seconda metà del
‘500: Giordano Bruno e i tipografi londinesi’, Rinascimento, 37, pp. 455–6.
174 GIORDANO BRUNO
Giacomo Castelvetro, Alberico Gentili and Gian Battista Castiglione,

had their works printed at his press. The reasons why Bruno did not
arrange to have his Italian dialogues published by Wolfe are not clear,
nor are the circumstances in which he became acquainted with
Charlewood.
All this gives rise to three related questions, which may be
summarized as follows: (1) why it was that Bruno turned his London
dialogues over to Charlewood and not to Wolfe, the obvious printer for
any Italian who wanted his writings published in London;29 (2) whether
or not Charlewood had any typographical experience with Italian texts
at the time of his printing of Bruno’s works; (3) whether or not Bruno’s
dialogues were in line with Charlewood’s book production, and, even
more significantly, whether or not Charlewood had any specific reasons
or aims for printing such books.
As far as the first question is concerned, I can offer some tentative
suggestions. Giordano Bruno arrived in England in April 1583, with
letters of recommendation from the French King, Henri III, to the
French ambassador in London, Michel de Castelnau. During the two
years he spent in London, Bruno lodged at the French embassy, where
he made the acquaintance of many prominent figures in the Elizabethan
court.30 Among these were not only Sir Philip Sidney and Robert Dudley,
the Earl of Leicester, but also several members of the Catholic party,
such as the Howards and the Earl of Oxford, whom he would have met
via Castelnau. Most probably it was through one of these figures that
Bruno was brought into contact with Charlewood, who had direct
connections with the Catholic nobility and perhaps also with Leicester
or his entourage.31 Although Frances Yates’s theory that Bruno was on a
religious and political ‘mission’ in England on behalf of Henri III, with
the aim of forming a ‘politique’ group in England – corresponding to the
politiques of France32 – now appears to be a somewhat inadequate
29 See Bellorini, M.G. (1971), ‘Le pubblicazioni italiane dell’editore londinese John
Wolfe (1580–91)’, Miscellanea I, Udine, pp. 17–65, 29 and 49.

30 On the similarities between some passages in Bruno’s works and Castelnau’s
considerations upon the disastrous effects of religious wars and religious intolerance, see
BOeuC V, ix–ccvi.
31 Charlewood’s loyalty to the cause of Protestantism constitutes the main argument
in support of this hypothesis. It has also to be noted that a prayer ‘for the preseruation of
the Earle of Leicester, and all his well-wyllers and followers’, from 1585, has been
conjecturally attributed to Charlewood’s press on behalf of William Mantel (STC 7289).
Furthermore, an epitaph upon the death of the Earl of Leicester is entered to Charlewood
on 10 December 1589 (SR, II: 536). To the same press the STC ascribes the first quarto of
Sidney’s Astrophel and Stella, 1591 (STC 22536).
32 Yates, F.A. (1939–40), ‘The religious policy of Giordano Bruno’, Journal of
Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 3, pp. 181–207, 190-91.

explanation for the Italian philosopher’s position and role in London,

Charlewood’s connections with both religious camps would nevertheless
fit well with Bruno’s alleged policy of conciliation between Protestants
and Catholics.33 If Bruno did indeed seek, as Yates claimed, to ‘reach’
both the crypto-Catholics and the moderate Protestants among English
intellectuals, then Charlewood’s links with both these groups might have
seemed, in Bruno’s eyes, perfectly consistent with his own programme.
The fact that Bruno lived in the household of Michel de Castelnau, who
had fought in person on behalf of Henri III against Protestants and
Catholics alike in the French Wars of Religion (1562–98), seems to
provide further evidence in support of Yates’s arguments. Finally, given
what Byrne has said about the accuracy of Charlewood’s books,34 which
implies that the compositor adhered closely to the manuscript, Bruno,
who was probably the editor of his own works,35 would have been able
to avoid any substantial interference or errors in the printing of his
writings. Another possibility is that Bruno encountered Charlewood at
the Royal Exchange, near St Paul’s, one of the favourite meeting points
not only for Italians in London but also, during 1582–84, for dissident
printers.36 It also seems feasible that it was John Wolfe who
recommended to Bruno that he should ask Charlewood to print his
books. During those years, Wolfe’s press was kept busy printing editions
of Machiavelli and Aretino, and he may have had no time for other
works.37
Of course, this outline of events is purely conjectural. What is certain,
33 Although he does not regard the entire corpus of Bruno’s dialogues as primarily
political and religious in scope, Aquilecchia in his 1973 introduction to De la Causa (in
Schede bruniane, op. cit., pp. 253–78: 274–5) has written that ‘non è da escludere che la
sua [i.e. di Bruno] posizione filosofica potesse risultare confacente alle istanze politico-
religiose dei politiques francesi e della stessa monarchia’.
34 St Clare Byrne, M. (1923), ‘Anthony Munday’s spelling as a literary clue’, The
Library, 4th series, 4, pp. 9–23.

35 The suggestion that Bruno may have been directly involved in the editing of his own
books is based on the fact that in 1578/79, while in Geneva, he acquired some
typographical experience as a proof-corrector and editor. See G. Aquilecchia (1997),
‘Giordano Bruno’, in E. Malato (ed.), Storia della letteratura italiana, vol. V (La fine del
Cinquecento e il Seicento), Rome: Salerno editrice, sez. VII, cap. V, pp. 325–68.
36 John Florio in his Second Fruites mentions that Italians in London customarily met
at the Exchange. The distance from the French Embassy, Bruno’s dwelling during his stay
in London, to the Exchange was a short walk, whether it was located in Butcher Row or
at Salisbury Court.
37 The first and second part of Aretino’s Ragionamenti have imprints: 21 October
1584 and January 1584 respectively; the double volume containing Machiavelli’s I
Discorsi and Il Principe has 28 January 1584; which is old style and should be understood
as 1584/5. See Woodfield, D.B. (1973), Surreptitious Printing in England (1550–1640),
New York: Bibliographical Society of America, 10.
176 GIORDANO BRUNO
however, is Charlewood’s acquaintance with Wolfe. They were both

‘dissenters’ in the protest against the patentees in the years 1582–84,
they both pioneered the use of false imprints for foreign propaganda
and both their printing enterprises (though not always strictly legal)
were among the busiest in London. In addition, there are several pieces
of evidence that the two printers established a business relationship.
Wolfe’s first entry in the Stationers’ Registers was a Latin book licensed
to him on condition that he had it printed by Charlewood;38 and it seems
that this condition was carried out.39 From that time onwards, Wolfe
and Charlewood worked in harmony on several occasions. In 1582,
Wolfe printed Archdeaconry,40 a book which was later entered to
Charlewood.41 The 1583 Protestant text, A declaration made by the
archbishop of Collen, that is, Gebhardt Truchsess von Waldburg,
translated into English from German,42 has Charlewood as the printer
and Wolfe as the publisher; and likewise the Deposition of D.
Piementelli concerning the Armada was printed in 1588 by Charlewood
for Wolfe.43 Starting from that date, the collaboration between the two
printers seems to have become closer. In 1589 Charlewood printed for
Wolfe an anonymous work on the history of Catherine Cooper,44 the
unlucky daughter of a Protestant who was visited by the devil. Similarly,
an English translation of Bartolome Felippe’s Tractado del conseio
appears to have been printed in partnership, Wolfe being responsible for
only the first quire.45 Two years later, A proceeding in the harmonie of
King Davids harpe, a Latin work by Strigelius translated into English by
R. Robinson, was the last book issued under the two printers’ names.46
The fact that Wolfe, now the Stationers’ watchdog, did not proceed
against Charlewood’s pirating of Le masque de la ligue et de l’Hispagnol
decouuert, which Anthony Munday had translated for Wolfe in 1589,
also seems to support the hypothesis of a friendship between the two
38 SR, II: 353.

39 STC 2761. Sapientissimi Regis Salomonis Concio … in Latinam linguam ab A.
Corrano versa. [J. Charlewood f.] per J. Wolfium expensis ipsius Authoris, 1579. This is
the first book published by Wolfe. As Charlewood’s name does not appear in any of the
extant copies of the work, the attribution to his press has been made by comparing the set
of ornaments in light of what the Registers record.
40 STC 10275.
41 SR, II: 465.
42 STC 11693.
43 STC 19935.
44 STC 5678.
45 STC 10753. This is the English version of the Spanish original which was
fictitiously printed by Wolfe in the same year. See Woodfield, Surreptitious Printing, op.
cit., p. 15.
46 STC 23359.
printers.47 In September 1593, six months after Charlewood’s death, his

widow Alice printed the anonymous Remonstrance to the Duke de
Mayne on behalf of Wolfe.48 It is also worth noting that after 1583 Wolfe
passed on some of his types to Charlewood (certain of which were, in
any case, similar to Charlewood’s).49 All this is of great importance as
proof of the closeness between the two printers, especially since during
those years pirating books was a very common practice and the
protection of the rights of the printers was inadequate.
But it is Charlewood’s acquaintance with Anthony Munday
(1560–1633), a writer and translator from both French and Italian, that
perhaps provides a solution to the crucial problem of the printer’s lack
of experience with texts in Italian. I have already suggested in a previous
contribution the possibility of a collaboration between Munday and
Charlewood.50 At any rate, although in linguistic terms Charlewood’s
dealings with Latin and with English translations from the Italian
provide only meagre evidence of his typographical ability to handle
Latin and Italian texts, as Aquilecchia showed nearly 40 years ago,51
nevertheless they might reveal the printer’s interest in Italian culture.
In 1576, Charlewood’s press, on behalf of Thomas Butter, was involved
in the printing of a work translated into English from Italian by Thomas
Achelley.52 This was a novella by another Italian Dominican friar, Matteo
Bandello. Charlewood’s printing of translations from Italian went on
through the end of the 1570s and the beginning of the 1580s. In 1579 The
morall philosophie of Doni, ‘englished out of Italian’ by Thomas North, is
found in the Register of the Stationers’ Company among the assignments
from Henry Denham to Charlewood and Richard Jones.53 North’s
connection with the ‘Italianate’ coterie through Leicester, to whom the work
is dedicated, and Castelvetro has already been pointed out by scholars.54
47 STC 7.
48 STC 5012.
49 See Hoppe, H.R. (1933), ‘John Wolfe printer and publisher’, The Library, 4th
series, 14, June, pp. 241–88: 274–8.

50 Provvidera, T. (1996), ‘On the printer of Giordano Bruno’s London works’,
Bruniana & Campanelliana, 1–2, pp. 361–7.

51 Aquilecchia, ‘Lo stampatore londinese’, op. cit., pp. 157–207.
52 STC 1356.4.
53 STC 3053. Anton Francesco Doni (1513–1574) was a Florentine man of letters and
a rather unsuccessful publisher. His book on moral philosophy, printed at Venice in 1552,
contains a selection of Oriental tales translated from the original work of Bidpai. The first
edition of North’s translation into English was printed in London by Henry Denham in
1570. See Dizionario biografico italiano, XLI: 158–67.
54 See Bellorini, M.G. (1967), ‘Tracce di cultura italiana nella formazione di Thomas
North’, Aevum, 41, pp. 333–8: also Rosenberg, E. (1955), Leicester, Patron of Letters,
New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 160–63.
178 GIORDANO BRUNO
One year later, the same press issued Zelauto, a novel by Munday, which is
set near Naples;55 while the English version of Peter Martyr Vermigli’s
treatise on the abuse of dancing, also printed by Charlewood,56 provides
evidence of how an Italian author helped to influence the course of the
English Reformation, as well as supporting the hypothesis of an interest on
the part of the printer in Italian evangelicals. Again in 1580, a work entitled
The true and naturall proportion of a monstrous cilde borne in Chieri in
Piemonte is found in the Registers under Charlewood’s name.57
Furthermore, it is after the issuing of Bruno’s books that
Charlewood’s book-production seems to concentrate more on literary
genres borrowed from the Italian tradition. In fact, looking at the titles
of Charlewood’s publications, one might be inclined to believe in the
possibility that Bruno’s works influenced the printer’s selection of books.
In 1585 an English version ‘out of Italian’ of the play Fedele and
Fortunio, the deceites in loue issued from Charlewood’s shop on behalf
of Thomas Hacket, who had entered the copy in the Registers one year
earlier. The translation, adapted from an Italian play entitled Il Fedele
by Luigi Pasqualigo, has been attributed to Munday after some
controversy. It contains around 155 words in Latin or Italian, which are
taken over directly from the original edition.58 At that time, Charlewood
was also printing at least three of Bruno’s works. The following year, A
letter lately written from Rome, by an Italian gentleman, concerning the
election of the new pope following the death of Gregory XIII, was
printed by his press.59 The letter appears to be translated from Italian by
John Florio, who was Bruno’s intimate friend and who, at the time, was
sheltering at the French embassy with him. The Italian philosopher may
have well acted as a link between the printer and the linguist.
During the years 1587–88 Charlewood’s commitment to Italian
literature becomes more evident. Boccaccio’s Amorous Fiammetta
(1587), translated by Bartholomew Young,60 and two issues of Tasso’s
The householders philosophie, printed in 1588, bear Charlewood’s
mark.61 In the same year, echoes of Tasso found their way into English
55 Munday, A., Zelauto. The fountaine of fame (STC 18283, 1580).

56 Vermigli, P.M., A briefe treatise, concerning the vse and abuse of dauncing.
Collected out of P. Martyr, by R. Massonius, and translated into English by I. K. (STC
24664, 1580?).
57 SR, II: 383 and 472. The work is not extant.
58 SR, II: 437. For the attribution of the play to Charlewood’s press, see M. St. Clare
Byrne, Anthony Munday’s Spelling, op. cit., p. 17 and STC 19447.

59 STC 21292.
60 STC 3179.
61 STC 23702.5 and 23703. This is Tasso’s Il padre di famiglia, probably translated
by Thomas Kyd as The Householders philosophie.

through Charlewood’s printing of Thomas Watson’s edition of his Latin

pastoral Amyntas.62 Munday’s poetic anthology, A banquet of daintie
conceyts,63 also printed by Charlewood in 1588, is nearly all lyrical and
harks back to Italian ballate and madrigali. The collaboration with
Munday is probably also responsible for the series of romances of
chivalry – an edition, not known to have survived, of Two parts of
Palmerin of England, entered to Charlewood on 13 February 1581,64 as
well as an edition of the first part of Palmerin d’Oliva – printed in 1588
by Charlewood for William Wright.65 Another edition of Palmendos of
Greece is entered in 1589 to Charlewood, but it appears to have been
printed in the same year by John Danter for Cuthbert Burby.66 Although
Palmerin d’Oliva and Palmendos are based on the French version,67
there is some evidence of the circulation of the Italian versions of the
romances at the time.68
With the beginning of the new decade, Charlewood’s press
increasingly served the group of English scholars, men of letters and
translators who followed the Italianate fashion and who gravitated
around the Earl of Leicester. In 1591, he printed for Thomas Newman
the sonnet sequence Astrophel and Stella by Sir Philip Sidney,69 to
62 STC 25118.5. According to STC, this was another edition ‘newelie corrected’ of
that printed in 1587 at Wolfe’s press.

63 STC 18260.
64 SR, II: 388.
65 STC 19157. Although no copy of the edition of Part II is known to exist, there is
evidence that it was issued in 1589 from the same press. See Hayes, G.R. (1925), ‘Anthony
Munday’s romances of chivalry’, Transactions of the Bibliographical Society, 6, pp. 57–81,
60.
66 SR, II: 513.
67 Munday separated the first 33 chapters of the French version of the book of
Primaleon, which followed Palmerin d’Oliva, and issued them under the title of
Palmendos, that being the name of the knight with whose adventures this section deals.
68 The library catalogue of Sir Edward Coke (1634) includes among its titles: Palmerin
de Oliva (a) L’historia tradotto dal Spagnuolo, Venice 1575; (b) La historia del’invitto
cavaliero, Venice 1585: see W.O. Hassall 1950:90. Italian versions of Amadis, Primaleon
and Palmerin d’Oliva are also listed among the books in the vernacular belonging to the
‘the library of John, Lord Lumley’ (1606). They are entered in the Catalogue as follows:
972 Amadis de Gaule tria volumine Italice; 1405 Primaleonis valorosi gesti, historia
fabulosa. Italice; 1409 Palmerino d’Oliva histoia fabulosa, vel Romanze. Italice. The
collection, which began as the library of Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, and
in Mary’s reign belonged to Henry Fitzalan, twelfth Earl of Arundel, was augmented by
Lord Lumley, who catalogued it in 1596 at the very peak of its development. On his death
in 1609 the catalogue, with subsequent additions, was recopied. It seems extremely
unlikely to me that the Italian versions of the romances were brought into England only
after 1602, the date of Munday’s issuing of the third part of Palmerin of England. Instead,
Munday might have secured the Italian original during his travels in Italy.
69 STC 22536.
180 GIORDANO BRUNO
whom two of Bruno’s ‘moral dialogues’ are dedicated. Although it is

possible that Charlewood met the English poet six years earlier during
the printing of the Italian philosopher’s books, the only evidence we
have of Bruno’s acquaintance with Sidney and his literary circle comes
from what he himself says in his London dialogues.70 The following
year, Charlewood entered a French version of the Histoire de Roland,71
which had been the original source for Matteo Boiardo’s Orlando
Innamorato and Ariosto’s Orlando furioso. The English translation
was not, however, printed until six years later, most probably due to
Charlewood’s unexpected death in March 1593. The first English
version of Francesco Colonna’s Hypnerotomachia Poliphili, which
appeared first in Venice in 1499, was printed by Charlewood, Jeffes
and Eliot’s Court Press and published by Waterson in 1592.72 The
book, originally written in an Italian vernacular ‘delightfully latinized
in its vocabulary and syntax’,73 is concerned, as the title indicates, with
the strife of love in a dream, that is, with the endless struggle between
knowledge and love in their pursuit of divinity or the infinite.74 Some
sections of Colonna’s work bring to mind passages in the Eroici furori
where Bruno describes the soul’s progression to God in the dualistic
terms of intellect, ‘or the cognitive power in general’, and will, ‘or
appetitive power in general’.75 Again, in 1592, Henry Constable’s
Diana and Samuel Daniel’s collection of sonnets, Delia, both of them
belonging to the Petrarchan tradition, were printed by Charlewood for
Smith and Waterson respectively.76 In this regard, it is worth
mentioning Daniel’s likely presence at Oxford during Bruno’s visits, as
well as the letter from N.W. to the poet, which constitutes one of the
few pieces of documentary evidence of Bruno’s lectures at that
70 BOeuC II, 101 and BOeuC V, 5. An interesting English document recording Bruno’s
death in Rome and belonging to Robert Devereux, second Earl of Essex, a figure of great
importance in Elizabethan literary and political circles, might throw new light on Bruno’s
relations with the English court; see Provvidera, T. (1998), ‘Essex e Bruno. Una nuova
testimonianza del soggiorno inglese del filosofo nolano’, Bruniana & Campanelliana, 2,
pp. 437–48.
71 SR, II: 614.
72 STC 5577.
73 Giuliani, A. (1999), ‘Polifilo erotico sognatore’, La Repubblica, 10 gennaio, 35.
74 The battle between Reason and Love, a commonplace in every age, was particularly
popular in the Elizabethan period, from Spenser to Shakespeare. In 1581 Munday’s A

courtly controuersie, betweene looue and learning. Passed in disputation betweene a Ladie
and a Gentleman of Scienna (STC 18268) was printed by Charlewood on behalf of Henry
Car. This seems to strengthen the hypothesis of the printer’s interest in this topic and his
concern with things Italian.
75 BOeuC VII, 35.
76 STC 5637 and 6243.2.
university.77 The collaboration between Charlewood and Waterson,

who was also the publisher of the 1585 edition of the work by Daniel
in which this letter appeared,78 might be, once again, the result of some
link between these figures.
During these years, Charlewood also printed the works of the
pamphleteers Robert Greene (1560?–92) and Thomas Nashe
(1567–1601), and of dramatists such as George Gascoigne (1542–77)
and John Lyly (1553?–1606), all of whom were familiar with the
language and literature of Italy. The tendency of Greene and Nashe to
intersperse Italian words and expressions into English is well known.
Although most of the pamphlets they wrote belong to the popular genre,
a large number of them display degrees of literary sophistication which
presuppose an audience capable of recognizing parody, burlesque and
the use of rhetorical figures, as well as being familiar with Aristotle and
Peter Ramus, and appreciating, even if they could not necessarily
understand, quotations in Latin and French, exempla and marginal
references to classical authorities. Above all, these were authors who
engaged with Italian culture.79
Nashe’s The Anatomie of absurditie and Pierce penilesse were issued
from Charlewood’s printing house in 1589 and 1592 respectively.80 They
were commissioned by two publishers who collaborated with the printer
quite often: Thomas Hackett and Richard Jones. Nashe’s attack on
contemporary prose-writers, his contempt for bombastic playwrights
and pedantic grammarians, as well as the violence of his satire and his
anti-Calvinist feelings, seem to echo certain passages of Bruno’s Italian
works as well as those of Aretino’s.81 Four publications by Nashe’s
friend, Robert Greene, have also been attributed to Charlewood’s press:
the first edition, in 1584, of Morando, the tritameron of loue, dedicated
to the Earl of Arundel;82 the 1587 reprint of Gwydonius, dedicated to
77 Aquilecchia, G. (1995), ‘Giordano Bruno in Inghilterra (1583–85). Documenti e
testimonianze’, Bruniana & Campanelliana, 1–2, pp. 21–42, doc. 3.

78 Ibid. The letter constitutes part of the introduction to The Worthy tract of Paulus
Iouius, contayning a Discourse of rare inuentions, both Militarie and Amorous called
Imprese. By Samuel Daniell late Student in Oxenforde. At London, printed for Simon
Waterson, 1585. The letter is dated 20 November 1584.
79 It is worth noting that such authors as Spenser, Munday, Churchyard, Gascoigne
and various others are praised in Webbe’s A discourse of English poetry, printed by
Charlewood in 1586.
80 STC 18364 and 18371. The Anatomy of absurdity is an open attack on Philip
Stubbes’s Puritan work, Anatomie of abuses, which appeared in 1583.

81 It might be relevant to underline that in the last decade of the 1580s Thomas Nashe
engaged in a fierce diatribe against both Gabriel Harvey, a proponent of the Ramist
method, and the Puritans.
82 STC 12276.
182 GIORDANO BRUNO
the Earl of Oxford;83 the 1589 edition of Arbasto, the anatomie of

fortune;84 and the 1590 English translation of Rinaldi’s Dottrina delle
virtù, entitled The Royal Exchange.85 Greene’s novels were all modelled
on the Italian and were very popular. Rinaldi’s booklet is a sort of
summa of moral advice, a direct descendant of medieval treatises on
‘morality’ and ‘virtues’, consisting of 236 aphorisms and proverbs
grouped under 154 alphabetically arranged categories.
Lylys’ Endimion (1591) and Gallathea (1592) were printed by
Charlewood ‘for the widdowe Broome’.86 The sources and the
references, as well as the style of a large part of these plays, undoubtedly
resemble the conventions of the Italian Renaissance comedy and novella.
Lyly was, moreover, the secretary of the Earl of Oxford, who in turn had
been an early patron of Munday. Lyly entered his service in March 1580
and remained with him until 1588. Endimion, as some scholars have
suggested, may have been an allegory written as an apology for the Earl
of Oxford following his fall into disgrace in 1581.87 The printing of
Lyly’s Endimion reminds us of the connection between Charlewood and
Munday and clearly tends to define it once more in terms of a mutual
interest in things Italian.
Charlewood’s engagement with scientific literature can also be
demonstrated. His earlier partnership with John Tysdall, the printer of
the 1560 English version of Palingenius’ Latin poem Zodiacus Vitae (c.
1531), is no doubt too coincidental to have any significance in relation
to Bruno’s criticism of the poet’s theory of the infinite – a theory upon
which Thomas Digges seems to have drawn in his writings.88 Although
the Zodiacus is merely a survey, ignoring Copernicus, its significance in
preparing the way for the rejection of the authority of Aristotle and
ultimately of the whole Ptolemaic system should not be underestimated.
In 1578, Richard Jones published an anonymous cosmological tract on
83 STC 12262.5.
84 STC 12219.
85 STC 12307. Rinaldi’s original work, which is very rare, was apparently printed only
once, in 1585, in Padua by Giovanni Cantoni. See Speroni, C. (1962), ‘Un’ignota fonte
italiana di Robert Greene’, Comparative Literature, 14, pp. 366–76.
86 STC 17050 and 17080. Lyly may not have been involved in the actual printing of
Endimion, as the note provided by ‘The Printer to the Reader’ speaks of ‘certain comedies’
that have come ‘by chance’ into the printer’s hands, with Endimion as the first of these to
be published and others to follow if this one can ‘pass with good liking’. Charlewood then
proceeded to publish Gallathea, which had been already entered in the Registers in 1585.
87 Bennett, J.W. (1952), ‘Oxford and Endimion’, Publications of the Modern
Language Association, 57, pp. 354–69.

88 On Bruno and Palingenio, see Granada, M.A. (1992), ‘Bruno, Digges, Palingenio:
omogeneità ed eterogeneità nella concezione dell’universo infinito’, Rivista di storia della

filosofia, 47, pp. 47–73.
the effects of comets, which belongs to the genre of news pamphlets. The
book, most likely by Thomas Twyne, has been attributed to
Charlewood’s shop.89 Two years later, his press was kept busy printing
Pedro Mexia’s Dialogue concerning Phisick and Phisition.90 But the
work which deserves most attention in this context is The Castle of
Knowledge by Robert Recorde (c. 1510–58), who taught rhetoric,
arithmetic, astrology and cosmography in the first half of the sixteenth
century in England. This work is found in the Registers of the Stationers’
Company among the 1582 assignments from Awdeleys to Charlewood.91
Recorde was one of the first Englishmen to mention publicly the
Copernican system, which had been presented merely as a scientific
hypothesis in 1543.92 The Castle of Knowledge, first printed in 1556, is
an elementary textbook of astronomy, in which Recorde explains solar
and lunar eclipses and gives a general description of the main theories
concerning the universe, including that of Copernicus. It also contains
many well designed illustrations and geometrical diagrams. In the
passage dealing with the question of the earth’s rotation, Recorde clearly
considers the Aristotelian and Ptolemaic arguments against the earth’s
rotation to be fallacious. His promise to explain the Copernican system
more fully, above all in relation to planetary motions, was not kept,
apparently due to his unhappy death in 1558.93 Finally, Charlewood’s
commitment to scientific works chimed in with Bruno’s critical attitude
towards astrological-eschatological literature.94 In this respect, Henry
Howard’s book against the superstition of astrology, interest in which
had grown on account of the ‘great coniunction’ of the two planets
Saturn and Jupiter in 1583, was printed by Charlewood in the same
year, and seems to coincide with Bruno’s rejection of the doctrine of
celestial influences and extreme astral determinism.95
89 STC 24413.
90 STC 17848.
91 STC 20797.
92 The interpretation of the Copernican model as a mere simplification of
astronomical calculations was proposed in the unsigned foreword to De revolutionibus

orbium coelestium as the view of Copernicus himself. Bruno may have been the first to
claim that the preface must have been written by someone other than Copernicus. The
foreword was in fact inserted by Andreas Osiander, a Lutheran theologian who completed
the overseeing of the publication of the book at Nuremberg and sent it to the press.
93 DNB, XLVII: 367-69.
94 See, for instance, BOeuC II, 241–3; BOeuC IV, 43–5; BOeuC V, 65; BOeuC VII, 13.
95 In 1578 a book entitled De segni de’ tempi appeared in Venice under Bruno’s name.
As the title suggests, in this work, now lost, Bruno might have intended to take a stance
concerning the appearance of certain celestial phenomena and their possible influence on
terrestrial events. In the Italian dialogues, however, Bruno is not just alluding to this
debate; by drawing attention to celestial phenomena which call into question Aristotle’s
184 GIORDANO BRUNO
Wolfe’s acquaintance with the Italian Protestant refugees in England

and his contribution to the circulation of their texts has already been
touched on by scholars. What has so far escaped attention, however, are
Charlewood’s connections with sixteenth-century Italian evangelicals.
Italian evangelical books provoked considerable interest in England
from the late 1540s onwards, reflecting the presence in the country
during the brief reign of Edward VI, of two important Italian
churchmen: Peter Martyr Vermigli, who had been the reformer of the
Augustinian Order, and Bernardo Ochino, ex-General of the Capuchins
and the most sought after Lenten preacher in Italy. Undoubtedly, the
martyrology of John Foxe, the continuing contacts of the returning
English Marian exiles with Italian evangelicals on the Continent, and the
arrival in England of new religious expatriates sustained an interest in
the Italian Reformation, even after most traces of Protestant currents
had disappeared in Italy itself. Italians translated Calvin, Beza and
Philippe du Plessis Mornay; moreover, they produced Italian versions of
the Scriptures and defended Calvinism against the attacks of their even
more radical compatriots. Charlewood’s book production, especially
during the years 1570–80, displays many of the same tendencies.
Dedications to Leicester, one of the leaders in the cause of religious
reform in favour of a more rigorous discipline than that of the Anglican
Church, are found in some of the texts printed by Charlewood; in
addition, there is evidence of Protestant and anti-papal themes in a good
proportion of his book production. This may suggest a connection
between Charlewood and the Italian exiles in England, the majority of
whom fled their country because of their religious beliefs. Furthermore,
in 1579, Charlewood printed on behalf of Wolfe an edition of
Ecclesiastes with a commentary by Antonio de Corro (1527–91), a
Spanish evangelical preacher suspected of Socinianism, who became a
member of London’s Italian Church and who was notorious for his
ultraconciliatory position on religious issues.96 The following example is,
however, the most convincing proof of a link between Charlewood and
the Italian evangelical movement.
doctrine of the changeless heavens, he also intends to prove the falsity of the Greek
philosopher’s physical theories and of scholastic cosmology in general. On Bruno and
astrology see Ingegno, A. (1978), Cosmologia e filosofia nel pensiero di Giordano Bruno,
Florence: La Nuova Italia, pp. 15–63, and Chapter 10 by Leen Spruit in this volume.
96 See, for instance, Hauben, P.J. (1967), Three Spanish Heretics of the Reformation:
Antonio del Corro, Casiodoro de Reina, Cipriano de Valera, Geneva: John Wiley & Sons,
pp. 3–81; Firpo, L. (1959), ‘La chiesa italiana di Londra nel cinquecento e i suoi rapporti
con Ginevra’, in Ginevra e l’Italia, Florence: Sansoni, pp. 343–55; Gordon Kinder A.
(1988), ‘Religious literature as an offensive weapon’, Sixteenth Century Journal, 19, pp.
223–35.
Francisco Spiera was a timorous evangelical lawyer from Padua who

abjured before the Inquisition in 1548 and died shortly thereafter in the
grip of agonizing fits and convulsions. Calvin interpreted the event as a
warning to backsliders; and accounts of Spiera’s death began to appear
in several European languages as early as 1549 and in England the
following year. In the Stationers’ Register we find the following entry for
15 June 1587: ‘John Charlewood. Receaued of him for printinge a
ballad of master FFRAUNCIS, an Italian, a Doctor of Lawe who denied
the lord JESUS &c.’97
There is one final question we need to address. On 2 June 1592, during
his interrogation by the Venetian Inquisition, Bruno made a statement
which is the only extant account of the motive for using a fictitious
imprint in foreign vernacular publications in England at that time. Bruno’s
assertion makes clear that a fictitious continental imprint helped the sales
of foreign language books in England.98 For this reason, according to most
scholars, the only explanation for Charlewood’s ‘venture’ into the field of
Italian printing was a ‘profitable commercial practice’.99 Instead, I am
convinced that the question is related to patronage, one of the most
important factors affecting printing in Elizabethan times. Rather than
being merely a one-way system of perpetual praise, patronage in the
English Renaissance was premised on a system of exchange, in which the
personal motives of writers, printers and publishers should not be
overlooked. In this respect, the patron’s desire to be praised in order to
enhance his or her social standing is balanced both by the author’s
expectation of acknowledgement and reward, and by the printer’s concern
with preserving and protecting his own economic interests. In terms of
religion, this meant that writers and printers would take account of the
particular circumstances and sometimes leave aside their own beliefs. As a
consequence, patronage produced competing and often contradictory
interests and practices. This mutuality of interest, which is endemic to
Elizabethan patronage, pervades Charlewood’s book production. Thus,
Arundel’s connection with Charlewood’s press does not necessary imply
that the printer subscribed to his patron’s religious agenda. Similarly, to
explain the ambiguity of the printer’s religious beliefs merely in terms of
‘opportunism’ is too restrictive. To describe Charlewood as someone who
was ‘indifferent to divergent religious issues [and] only sought profit from
his profession’100 is to forget that ambiguity of religious belief, both
97 SR, II: 219. The book is not extant.

98 Firpo, Processo, p. 166.
99 Woodfield, Surreptitious Printing, op. cit., p. 20.
100 Rostenberg, L. (1971), The Minority Press & the English Crown: A Study in
Repression 1558–1625, Nieuwkop: De Graaf, p. 57.

186 GIORDANO BRUNO
political and religious, is a striking feature of the Tudor age. This state of
affairs is all the more understandable if we recall that England was a
country in which, in less than half a century, four sovereigns had reformed
the State and religion according to four religious creeds, and to which the
formula cuius regio, eius et religio had applied absolutely.101 The shifting
religious priorities throughout the century, which eventually culminated in
the legislation that has come to be known as the Elizabethan Settlement,
made any kind of consistency in the rapidly emerging printing and
publishing trade impossible. As one of the leading Elizabethan historians
of religion has recently suggested, it is at least as difficult to decipher the
innermost faith of several of the most celebrated Elizabethans as it is to
define Queen Elizabeth’s religion itself.102 This is true for such figures as
Edmund Spenser, Robert Dudley, Sir Philip Sidney and William
Shakespeare. In addition, no publisher or printer was in business for
disinterested love of knowledge, especially in the Elizabethan years, where
living standards were far from high. Thus, it is conceivable that their main
concern was market demand in relation to monetary considerations. As a
practical printer, Charlewood was a typical businessman of his day,
attempting to accommodate his religious views to the varying tides of
fortune. In this respect, his practices and habits were no different from
those of his contemporaries in the printing trade.
101 The principle that the territorial ruler could determine whether his lands were to
be Lutheran or Catholic was one of the main consequences of the 1555 Peace of Augsburg,
which temporarily ended the religious wars in Europe.
102 Collinson, P. (1997), ‘The Religion of Elizabethan England and of its Queen’, in
M. Ciliberto and N. Mann, (eds), Giordano Bruno 1583–85. The English Experience,
l’esperienza inglese: atti del Convegno, Londra, 3–4 giugno 1994, Florence: Olschki, pp.
18–19.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Giordano Bruno’s Infinite Worlds

in John Florio’s Worlds of Words
Michael Wyatt
Bruno’s presence in England in the mid-1580s has been extensively

studied, most recently and comprehensively by Saverio Ricci in his
intellectual biography of the Nolano; in the proceedings of the
conference organized in 1994 at the Warburg Institute by Nicholas
Mann and Michele Ciliberto; in Hilary Gatti’s The Renaissance Drama
of Knowledge and Nuccio Ordine’s La cabala del asino; the important
scholarship of Frances Yates; and, of course, the foundational curatorial
work of Giovanni Aquilecchia, Giovanni Gentile, and Vincenzo
Spampanato.1 This scholarly filone has examined both Bruno’s
controversial and contested activities in England, most importantly the
vernacular literary/philosophical/scientific work that he produced in an
explosion of writing and publishing during his few years there. All of
these scholars have noted Bruno’s relationship to the Italo-Anglo
language merchant John Florio, and several of them have mapped out in
detail the personal and linguistic character of their friendship. The
subject of this chapter draws on the preceding tradition of Bruno
scholarship in order to examine the impact Florio’s encounter with
Bruno had on the subsequent elaboration of the two editions of his
Italian-English dictionary, A World of Words (1598) and Queen Anna’s
New World of Words (1611).
At first appearances, Bruno and Florio would seem to be unlikely
intellectual companions. John Florio was born in England in the mid-
1550s, the son of an Italian Protestant exile, Michelangelo, whose
theological perspective had been formed in Italy under the influence of
1 See Ricci, Saverio (2000), Giordano Bruno nell’Europa del Cinquecento, Rome:
Salerno Editrice; Ciliberto, Michele and Mann, Nicholas (eds) (1997), Giordano Bruno:
1583–1585. The English Experience/ l’esperienza inglese, atti del convegno di Londra, 3–4
giugno, 1994, Florence: Olschki; Gatti, Hilary (1989), The Renaissance Drama of
Knowledge, London: Routledge; Ordine, Nuccio (1987), La cabala dell’asino, asinità e
conoscenza in Giordano Bruno, Naples: Liguori; Yates, Frances (1934), John Florio, The
Life of an Italian in Shakespeare’s England, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. For
the bibliography of the work of Aquilecchia, Gentile and Spampanato, see Ricci, Giordano
Bruno nell’Europa del Cinquecento, op. cit., pp. 618–29.
188 GIORDANO BRUNO
elements sympathetic to the reformed thinking of Juan Valdes towards

which Bruno had, as Ricci has demonstrated, developed such a decided
antipathy during his formative years in Naples.2 Raised in Switzerland
and having only returned to England in the preceding decade, John
Florio was still finding his bearings in London in the early 1580s when
he met Bruno for the first time and must have seemed to the slightly
elder Nolano to be little different from any number of intelligent,
ambitious young men he had known in his peregrinations throughout
Europe, particularly at the Parisian court of Henri III. While the initial
distaste for English culture that Florio registers in many passages of First
Fruits, his 1578 language-learning dialogue book, would appear to jibe
with Bruno’s sentiments on the subject, Florio was already by the early
1580s squarely aspiring to the assimilated status of the proto-bourgeois
Englishman (though one with a fashionably Italianate inflection), a goal
Bruno would never have entertained himself, even if the dedications of
his Italian dialogues published in England in 1584 and 1585 suggest his
ambitions for a longer (perhaps permanent) English sojourn under the
patronage of some one of the Elizabethan elite he judged to be worthy
of such a relationship. Another notable difference between the two men
is registered in the anti-humanist rhetoric of so much of Bruno’s work,
beginning with the savage send-up of humanist pretensions in his one
comedy, Il candelaio. Florio would, at least initially, appear to have
represented precisely the sort of humanist pedantry Bruno railed against
throughout his career.
Whatever their differences in background, formation and
professional orientation, the one thing that Bruno and Florio
unquestionably shared was a passion for words, and the cultural-
political space of London in the 1580s was a context particularly
amenable to the linguistic experimentation that resulted in Bruno’s
vernacular philosophical dialogues and Florio’s early work on his
dictionary. Aquilecchia is certainly correct in noting that the diffusion of
the Italian language in sixteenth-century England has been greatly
exaggerated, though it is also important in this regard to recognize both
the small but significant presence of Italians in England from the first
third of the fifteenth century onwards and the disproportionate
influence that they wielded there, as well as the valorization of the
Italian language and its literary culture exercised by an equally restricted
cadre of the Elizabethan elite.3 I argue elsewhere at greater length, that
Italians and their culture functioned within the Tudor world to provide
2 See Ricci, Giordano Bruno nell’Europa del Cinquecento, op. cit., pp. 44, 47, 83–5.
3 Aquilecchia, Giovanni (1993), ‘L’adozione del volgare nei dialoghi londinesi di
Giordano Bruno,’ in Schede bruniane 1950–1991, Rome: Vecchiarelli, p. 42.
GIORDANO BRUNO’S INFINITE WORLDS 189
8.1 A page from the dialogue between Torquato and Nolano in John Florio’s
language-teaching text The second frutes, 1591.
190 GIORDANO BRUNO
a space of experimentation crucial to the formation of England’s own

increasingly vigorous vernacular politics.4 Bruno’s aim in writing his
philosophical dialogues in Italian was surely not to contribute narrowly
to this process of cultural assimilation (as it was, from a certain
perspective, for Florio in his advocacy of Italian in England), and
Aquilecchia argues compellingly that Bruno’s use of Italian in his
philosophical speculation must be understood within the wider
framework of the concurrent use of other European vernaculars for
similar purposes.5 But through his relationship with Florio, Bruno
provided a living link to a linguistic tradition that in learned Elizabethan
England was largely known through the mediation of book culture.
One index of the receptivity to Italian literary culture in England in
the 1580s is the fact that not only were language merchants like Florio
and Claudius Holyband successfully trading on their knowledge of
Italian as language teachers and authors of language-learning dialogue
books, but Italian books were being printed there, most notably by John
Wolfe’s press.6 Following an initial apprenticeship in London, Wolfe had
spent several years working in Florence in the 1570s, where he gained
some experience with the printing of Italian books before returning to
England.7 Wolfe’s career as a printer in London began in association
with the band of renegade printers who were publishing books licensed
to other printers in the late 1570s and early 1580s, but during the
successive decade as he turned the tables on his former colleagues by
joining the Stationers’ Company, exposing their presses and putting
them out of business, he simultaneously turned to the production of a
series of fine editions of Italian books, a number of them then prohibited
from publication in Catholic territories by the Index of Forbidden
Books. Wolfe’s own Italian experience and the editorial assistance he
had from two Italians resident in London at the time, Petruccio Ubaldini
and Jacopo Castelvetro, distinguished his Italian books from the
4 See my The Cultural Politics of Translation: John Florio and the Italian Encounter
with Early Modern England, forthcoming from Cambridge University Press.

5 Aquilecchia, ‘L’adozione del volgare’, op. cit., pp. 46–51.
6 Holyband was also known as Claude de Sainliens, author of The French
Schoolmaster (1565) and The French Littleton (1566) which were, by the standards of the
time, runaway bestsellers, the latter running to ten editions before 1630. In direct
competition with Florio in the Italian language market, Holyband also issued the Campo
di Fior (1583), and the Italian Schoolmaster (1597). Frances Yates notes that the dedicatee
of the Italian Schoolmaster, ‘Maister Ihon Smith … has been suggested as the original of
Bruno’s “Smitho”’ (in the Cena); see her John Florio, op. cit., p. 144.
7 On the material evidence of Wolfe’s presence in Florence, see Bertoli, Gustavo
(1995), ‘Nuovi documenti sull’attività di John Wolfe a Firenze (1576–77), con alcune
considerazioni sul fenomeno delle stampe popolari’, Archivio storico italiano, 153: 3, pp.
577–89.
editions of Bruno’s philosophical dialogues published by John

Charlewood in 1584 and 1585, the story of which is recounted
elsewhere is this volume by Tiziana Provvidera. Her suggestion that
Bruno turned to Charlewood – who evidently at the time had had no
prior experience with the printing of books in Italian and did not enjoy
the expert editorial control that Wolfe had in Ubaldini and Castelvetro
– because Wolfe was at the time busy with his editions of Machiavelli
and Aretino, seems the most plausible explanation for an otherwise
curious choice of publisher, and one that Bruno evidently came to
regret.8
In the first redaction of La cena de le Ceneri, Bruno identifies Florio
as one of the two escorts sent to accompany his representative in the
dialogue, Teofilo, on what turns out to be a phantasmagoric parody of
a chivalric quest – the interlocutors volleying back and forth verses from
the Orlando furioso – for the house of Fulke-Greville, where the debate
that constitutes the dialogue’s core is to take place. Florio’s presence in
the Cena is an elusive one; his name is actually erased from the account
of the journey in Bruno’s final version of the dialogue, and he sits silently
through the ensuing cosmological disputation. But if Florio’s agency in
Bruno’s dialogue is limited, he was clearly not a passive observer of the
events to which his friendship with Bruno afforded him access.
Florio himself first registers his experience with Bruno in the first
dialogue of his second language-learning book, Second Frutes (1591), in
this exchange between Nolano (as he calls Bruno) and Torquato, the
former eager to force his late-sleeping friend out of bed:
N: Voi mi fate sentire una della doglie da morire col tanto
aspettarvi.
You make me feel one of the deadly griefs, staying so long for you.
T: Quali son le doglie da morire?
What be those deadly griefes?
N: Aspettar e non venire. Star in letto e non dormire. Ben servir e
non gradire. Haver cavallo che non vuol’ire. E servitor che non
vuol’ubidire. Esser’ in prigione e non poter fuggire. Et ammalato e
non poter guarire. Smarrar la strada, quand un vuol gire. Star alla
porta quand’ un non vuol aprire. Et haver un amico che ti vuol
tradire: sono dieci doglie da morire.
To long for that which comes not. To lye a bed and sleepe not. To
serve well and please not. To have a horse that goes not. To keepe a
man obeyes not. To lye in iayle and hope not. To bee sick and
8 For another perspective on Bruno’s relationship with London print culture, see Bassi,
Simonetta (1997), ‘Editoria e folosofia nella seconda metà del ‘500: Giordano Bruno e i
tipografi londinesi’, Rinascimento – Rivista dell’Istituto Nazionale di Studi sul
Rinascimento, seconda serie, XXVII, pp. 437–58. I would like to thank Armando Petrucci
for bringing this article to my attention.
192 GIORDANO BRUNO
recover not. To loose ones way and knowe not. To waite at doore
and enter not. And to have a friend we trust not: are ten such spites
as hell hath not.
T: Queste son doglie ch’io ho patito & patisco sovvente volte.
They be the spites as I have felt, and oftentimes doo feele.
N: La prima di esse io patisco adesso.
The first of them I feele now.
T: Ma non la patirete molto, perche io ho bel’ e fatto.
But you shall not feele it long, for I have done.9
As Yates suggests, the central figures in this first dialogue in Second

Frutes are named Nolano and Torquato in clear homage to Bruno and
to his Cena in which Torquato is one of the two absurdly pedantic
Oxford dons parodied there who spar pathetically with the superior
intelligence of Bruno’s alter ego Teofilo, Florio restaging here that
unevenly balanced battle of wits. This citation of the Cena is both a
means to keep its polemical argument in the public eye and for Florio to
register his own presence at the events described in Bruno’s dialogue.
Spampanato identifies the proverb utilized here as derived from Bruno’s
Il candelaio IV.i, where Signora Vittoria opens her monologue by saying,
‘Aspettare e non venire è cosa da morire’.10 Proverbial usage is one of the
keys to the range of Florio’s lexical scope, and here we have an example
of Bruno’s agency in supplying him with proverbs for his linguistic
salesmanship. Besides the use to which Florio puts proverbial wisdom
here, he would follow Bruno’s lead in employing proverbs throughout
his career to establish one of the most distinctive aspects of his advocacy
of the Italian language, the significance of its local, demotic registers for
a wider appreciation of the varieties of linguistic usage and the ways in
which language serves to delineate place.
It is in A World of Words (1598) and Queen Anna’s New World of
Words (1611) that Florio’s debt to Bruno is inscribed most emphatically.
Not only the first Italian/English dictionaries, Florio’s vocabularies
extend the gamut of Italian lexicography in many directions it was not
taking in Italy itself at the end of the sixteenth century, providing a
singular response to the ongoing debate over la questione della lingua
(the language question) unrealizable within the framework of post-
Tridentine Italian cultural politics dominated in the linguistic sphere by
the Accademia della Crusca. This debate first gained momentum in the
closing decades of the fifteenth century, when the new medium of the
9 Yates, John Florio, op. cit., pp. 102 and 117, consistently cites only the English side
of these Italian/English dialogues, a lopsided practice that prevents her readers from
evaluating the form of Italian that Florio utilizes here and elsewhere in his work.
10 Spampanato, Vincenzo (1924), ‘Giovanni Florio. Un amico del Bruno in
Inghilterra’, La critica, XXII, p. 118.

printed book made for the necessity of grammatical and lexical norms
in establishing editorial standards hitherto unknown in the fluidity of a
manuscript culture. Pietro Bembo, the Venetian aristocratic writer and
adviser to Popes Leo X and Clement VII, proposed in his Prose della
volgar lingua (1525) that the vernacular Tuscan language utilized by
Petrarch and Boccaccio – to a considerably lesser extent that of Dante –
in the fourteenth century should be adopted as the touchstone for
writing in Italian. While Bembo’s argument is simply that these tre
corone (three crowning glories) represent the language at what he
considers to be its apex and consequently provide paradigms for
imitation, he neglects to note that fourteenth-century Tuscan was also in
an early (albeit fecund) stage of its development. But though there were
notable dissenters to Bembo’s position, among whom were Castiglione,
Machiavelli, Aretino and Trissino, the Prose had an enormous impact
on literary writing in sixteenth-century Italy, its influence as clearly
discernible in Ariosto’s third redaction of the Orlando furioso (1532) as
it is in Tasso’s Gerusalemme liberata (1581). The Accademia della
Crusca was founded in Florence in 1583 in the immediate wake of
Leonardo Salviati’s 1582 expurgated edition of the Decameron, work
that had been authorized by Grand Duke Cosimo himself in an effort to
salvage Boccaccio’s collection of stories from the papal Index of
Forbidden Books inaugurated in 1559.11 The Cruscati then set out to
organize the first comprehensive and authoritative dictionary of Tuscan
usage, issuing their Vocabolario in 1612 (the year following Queen
Anna’s New Worlds of Words). This dictionary tries its best to limit the
range of the Italian language to catalogues of words found in the tre
corone, the chronicler Giovanni Villani, and later authors or translators
from Latin only insofar as they conform to the earlier authoritative
Florentine standard (though, as several scholars have noted recently,
encroachments from the actual spoken language of the sixteenth century
found their way into the Crusca’s definitions, if not their entries).
Though the political implications of la questione della lingua (the
language question) were never very far from the surface of the debate as
it was articulated over the course of the sixteenth century, nowhere is the
strict identification of fourteenth-century Florentine with the Italian
language as explicit as it is in the 1612 Vocabolario, which deliberately
limits the scope of the Italian lexicon with the aim of ‘unifying’ Italy
linguistically. The Cruscati go so far in the prefatory explanation of their
11 For an excellent summary of the circumstances of the Salviati edition of the
Decameron, as well as its 1573 predecessor edited by Borghini, see Richardson, Brian
(1994), Print Culture in Renaissance Italy, the Editor and the Vernacular Text 1470–1600,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 161–5 and 168–73.
194 GIORDANO BRUNO
work as to claim that writers who express themselves in anything other

than ‘il più bel fior (‘the lovliest flowers’, referring to ‘classical’ Italian
usage) … forestieri più tosto sembrano, che nostrali’ (‘seem to be
foreigners rather than home-grown’), a strikingly insular position, but
one that in its exclusionary strategy ironically points to the entirely
diverse standards utilized by Florio in the elaboration of his very
different kind of dictionary, produced over the two decades preceding its
first edition in 1598 (a period that roughly corresponds to the Crusca’s
activity of dictionary-making).
Citing the Baucis and Philemon episode in Anguillara’s Italian
translation of Ovid’s great poem of transformations in the dedicatory
epistle to A World of Words, Florio signals an axiomatic principle of the
philological imagination that sets his approach to Italian lexicography
apart from that of his Italian contemporaries: the capacity of language
to metamorphose through adapting to changes in time and place, noting
as he does in his ‘Address to the Reader’ that ‘daily both new words are
invented and books still found that make a new supply of old’.12 The
first edition of Florio’s dictionary encompasses some 46 000 entries, the
second over 74 000 (compare these figures to the 1612 Crusca’s roughly
28 000), with 70 texts cited as sources in the prefatory material to A
World of Words and 262 noted in Queen Anna’s New World of Words.
Among these texts are earlier mono-, bi- and multi-lingual word-books,
vocabularies, and dictionaries in Italian, Latin, Spanish, French and
English; Italian literature and historiography, including but by no means
limited to the tre corone, are represented by all of the significant figures
of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and in all genres; and there are
treatises on philosophy, theology, fencing and other arms, gardening,
falconing, medicine, cooking, horsemanship, spectacle and the natural
sciences. Florio’s aim was to provide as extensive a survey of both past
and contemporary Italian usage as his reading and experience could
afford him (an experience which, as Yates argues and I have found no
reason to challenge, probably did not extend to the Italian peninsula).
This was a method that in spite of its limitations – notably its almost
exclusive reliance on printed books – provided Florio’s readers with a
close approximation of the heterogeneity of several centuries of Italian
linguistic practice; and, importantly for the focus of this chapter, he
recognized the necessity of supplementing Florentine usage through the
incorporation of Venetian, Roman, Lombard and Neopolitan voices.
Spampanato has shown in detail the range of Neapolitanisms in
Florio’s dictionaries, many of them undoubtedly culled from the
12 Florio, John (1611), Queen Anna’s New World of Words (London: printed by
Melch. Bradwood, for Edw. Blount and William Barret), preface unpaginated.
Neapolitan writers whose books Florio consulted: Sannazaro, Tasso,

Mannarino, Franco, Rao and di Costanzo.13 But Florio’s personal
encounter with Bruno in London added a dimension to his
appropriation of a linguistic tradition diverse from his own that seems
to have been entirely unique in the process of compiling his dictionaries,
for of the other living Italian writers present in London during those
years he notes only Alessandro Citolini by way of citing the title of his
Tipocosmia in the lists of books that preface both A World of Words
and Queen Anna’s New World of Words.
The strong sense of place that links Bruno’s thinking and his
character, and which Ricci has described so cogently in the opening
pages of his recent biography, provided Florio with one of the numerous
‘worlds’ evoked in the titles of his dictionaries – a ‘virtual’ Italian born
in London but raised in a remote corner of the Swiss Alps, there was for
Florio himself no linguistic or cultural center of gravity equivalent to
Bruno’s Nola. Indeed, Bruno identified the particular language of his
childhood with his capacity, in Gatti’s formulation, to ‘describe things
and persons “as they are”’, a sentiment that echoes Dante’s distinction
in the De vulgari eloquentia between the language that ‘infants acquire
from those around them when they first begin to distinguish sounds …
[the language that] we learn without any formal instruction, by
imitating our nurses’ and those other languages acquired through
grammatica.14 Bruno, of course, also wrote extensively in Latin both
before and after the production of Il candelaio and the Dialoghi italiani,
and, as far removed from the simple speech of children as his Italian
usually is, Bruno’s vernacular usage expresses his belief that Italian can
reproduce the nature of things and persons by being skilfully employed
both to expose the falsity he sees as undermining the human community
(in social and religious terms) and catalogue the cosmos. Such a position
renders his relationship with Florio especially significant, for besides
finding in Bruno a tangible link to one of contemporary Italy’s livliest
dialects, the Nolano provided his Italo-Anglo friend with a theoretical
framework for the Italian cultural arbitration he would practise in early
modern England.
The proper use of language is an issue that Bruno signals at the very
opening of the Cena in the exchange between Teofilo – Bruno’s stand-in
and a noun that Florio defines in Queen Anna’s New World of Words
13 Spampanato, ‘Giovanni Florio’, op. cit. pp. 61, 116–22.

14 See Gatti, Hilary, The Renaissance Drama of Knowledge, op. cit., p. 127. For the
Dante quotation, see Dante Alighieri (1996), De vulgari eloquentia, ed. and trans. Stephen
Botterill, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 3.
196 GIORDANO BRUNO
as ‘loving god’15 – Smitho, and Prudenzio. Here at the outset of Bruno’s

dialogue the three exchange these words:
SMITHO: Mostravano saper di greco? (Did they show themselves
to know Greek?)
TEOFILO: Et di birra eziamdio (And also beer).
PRUDENZIO: Togli via quell’ ‘eziamdio’ poscia è una absoleta et
antiquata diczione (Away with that eziamdio for it is a thoroughly
antiquated expression).16
Aquilecchia notes that Teofilo’s saper di birra plays on the double

entendre of sapere, registered in Queen Anna’s New World of Words as
‘to know by the minde, to wot, to wisse, to ken, to understand and
perceive well. Also to taste of, to smacke of, to smell of’ (p. 463), and
he also cites the dedicatory epistle to Second Frutes, where Florio writes,
‘if the pallate of some ale or beere mouths be out of taste that they
cannot taste them, let them spout no spue … ’.17 Florio also notes in
Queen Anna’s New World of Words the significance of etiando, a term
that Prudenzio (a pedante) criticizes as old-fashioned: ‘also, moreover,
eftsoone, and also, besides, furthermore, yea also’ (p. 176). Brief as the
exchange is, it introduces an onslaught of erudition in which the
pedantic pretension of grammarians is lambasted, and it is through such
wordplay that Bruno enlists language in the service of his grand
programme to rewrite both the histories of science and of human
relations. In the ‘Epistola explicatoria’ of the Spaccio, he explains that
he chooses the medium of Italian to communicate many of his most
important ideas: ‘Giordano speaks in the vernacular, names things freely,
gives its proper name to that which nature gives its proper being.’18
Bruno was merciless with language employed speciously, and the
attack on the tradition of Petrarchism in poetry that opens the
argomento of the Eroici furori provides a further telling link between
Bruno’s linguistic praxis and Florio’s own solution to the language
question. What might at first appear to be an incongruous misogynistic
tirade – entirely out of keeping with the elevated pursuit elsewhere in the
dialogue of a spiritualized love tied inextricably to the beauty of the
human body – turns out to be a forceful critique of the fetishized
15 Florio, Queen Anna’s New World of Words, op. cit., p. 562, where the term is
found under theophilo (all further citation of Florio’s dictionary entries will be in brackets
in the text).
16 BOeuC II, 29.
17 Florio, John (1977), Second Frutes, ed. R.C. Simonini, Delmar, NY: Scholars’
Facsimiles & Reprints, preface unpaginated.

18 ‘Giordano parla per volgare, nomina liberamente, dona il proprio nome a chi la
natura dona il proprio essere’: BOeuC, V 11.

language of a love poetry that transforms women into abusive and

unobtainable objects of masochistic desire. Bruno here employs
Petrarchan tropes to then obliterate them. What acts, he asks, in this
theatre of the world are more laughable than the thoughts,
contemplations, constancies and adulations of lovers so entirely
dedicated to their own destruction?19 What a waste of insignia, emblems,
mottos, sonnets, epigrams, books, prolix scartafazzi – defined in Queen
Anna’s New World of Words as ‘any scroule or waste paper. Also an odd
corner to throw writing paper in’ (p. 472, as scartabello). And what
useless ruminations over eyes, cheeks, busts, these white and those ruby
lips, tongues, teeth, foreheads, dresses, cloaks, gloves, shoes, this
pianella – in Florio, ‘a woman’s pantofle’ (p. 378). All of this leads to
that martello defined by Florio as ‘a hammer, a sledge, a carpenter’s
mallet. Also jealousy or suspition in love, panting or throbbing of the
heart, an earnest desiring of things absent. Sonare le campane a martello
to ring the bels backward as in times of warre, of danger or of fire’ (p.
302). Thus far, he uses a faithfully Petrarchan vocabulary, but suddenly
Bruno shifts registers, introducing a cruder, more forcefully mimetic
language derived at least in part from Anton Francesco Doni:
Schifo coy, quaint, nice, skittish, fond, peevish, puling, awkwarde or
froward. Also queasie, nastie, lothsome, odious, to be shunned,
eschewed or avoided, disdainfull [475].
Cesso yeelded, resigned. Also a privy or close stoole. Also a scroule
of paper [95].
Mestruo (menstruo in Florio) a womans monthly termes, issues,
fluxes, sheddings, or flowers. Also quicksilver among Alchimistes
[309].
Fantasma a ghost, a hag, a spirit, a hobgoblin, a robin-good-fellow.
Also the night-mare or riding-hag [179].
Orinale a urinall, a pisse-pot [345].
Piva any kind of pipe or bag-pipe. Also a Piot, a Pie or Iay. Also a
Butterflie. Also used of a mans privy members [385].
Fava a beane. Also used for the prepuse or top of a mans yard [184].
Nimfa any kind of Nimph, Elfe, or Faerie. Also a Bride, or new
maried wife. Also a thicke-ruffe-bande, as women or effeminate
fellows weare about their necks. Also the void space or hollownesse
in the neather lip. Also the cup of any flowre gaping and opening
itselfe. Also a little piece of flesh rising up in the midst of a womans
privities, which closeth the mouth of the necke, and driveth cold
from it. Also the water-rose. Also young Bees before they can fly
[352].
19 This famous passage, from which the following selection of parole is taken, is in
BOeuC VII, 5–21.

198 GIORDANO BRUNO
The most obvious characteristic of Florio’s lexical practice is copia, a

layering on of definitions that function to provide as full a sense of a
particular word’s meanings as possible. One clear consequence of such a
linguistic perspective is an opening up of the potential of language to
represent a multitude, perhaps we could say an infinity, of possible
significations, a further indication of Florio’s relationship to the
decentred parameters of la filosofia nolana. Bruno’s anti-Petrarchist
rhetoric here at the outset of the Eroici furori serves as a model for
Florio, one among many to be sure, for an alternative to the conservative
linguistic politics of Bembo and his successors on the cultural
battleground of sixteenth-century Italy; a critique that functions not
only as an attack on the character of Petrarchan love but also as a
frontal assault on the very language in which that love is imagined,
bringing Bruno’s personal linguistic revolution initiated with Il
candelaio full circle and providing Florio with a flexible paradigm for
the response to the language question that his dictionaries represent.20
In striking contrast to the parody of feminine virtue represented by
Petrarchism is Bruno’s consideration of the merits of the English queen.
Of the several passages of praise for Elizabeth that Bruno included in his
Dialoghi italiani, the one in the second dialogue of the Cena presents an
image of the queen that is interesting in a number of respects.21 She is
represented as illuminating the entire world with her giudicio, defined
by Florio as ‘a judgement, a sentence, a doome. Also a place or seat of
judgement. Also wit, discretion, learning, or skill. Also opinion,
deeming, supposing, or estimation’ (p. 212). She exercises sagezza –
‘wisdom, sagenesse, vigilancie’ (p. 458) – consiglio – ‘counsel, advice,
direction. Also a place or chamber of counsel’ (p. 118) – and governo –
‘government, rule, sway. Also moderation, administration or care, and
looking unto’ (p. 216). Practised in the arts and sciences, Elizabeth is
evoked throughout the passage in scientific terms, one of them referring
to the arctico parallelo – arcturo in Florio, ‘a star by the taile of Ursa
Minor’ (p. 37). Her distinguishing glory for Bruno was the queen’s
accomplishment in language learning, for Elizabeth’s ability to converse
20 See Nuccio Ordine’s rich discussion of the ‘infinite’ possibilities of Bruno’s lexical
and syntactical innovations in La cabala dell’asino, asinità e conoscenza in Giordano

Bruno, Naples: Liguori, 1987, pp. 138–49. I take issue, however, with Ordine’s assertion
of the ‘outdated’ nature of Bruno’s anti-Petrarchism (p. 138) – while the Petrarchist vogue
had played itself out in Italy by the late sixteenth century, it was just coming into its own
in England in this period and would continue to exercise a hold on the English poetic
imagination well into the early decades of the seventeenth century; Bruno’s attack on
Petrarchism is certainly directed as much to his English readers as it is to a potential Italian
audience, and the Eroici furori is (after all!) dedicated to the poet Philip Sidney.
21 BOeuC II, 97–9.
in a myriad of languages could be judged by both high and low alike,

almost anywhere in the world known to Europeans of the time. Given
the titles of both of Florio’s dictionaries (and particularly the second), it
is both fitting and troublesome that Bruno should close this paean to the
polyglot queen on a global note, for it was on her watch that colonialism
– a tendency Bruno fiercely opposed – first began significantly to rear its
head in England. For this reason, it seems that a wider ambit of meaning
should be posited for the ‘worlds’ of Florio’s linguistic universe, one so
importantly signed by Bruno’s presence, ‘worlds’ that encompass the
copious range of words contained in both A World of Words and Queen
Anna’s New Worlds of Words, which in turn entail the political and
cultural spaces of Italy and England, the demotic specificity of Bruno’s
Nola and the unbounded parameters of the cosmos he sought to
delineate.
CHAPTER NINE
Ultima Thule: Contrasting Empires

in Bruno’s Ash Wednesday Supper
and Shakespeare’s Tempest
Elisabetta Tarantino
When he arrived in England in 1583 to join the household of the French

ambassador, Michel de Castelnau, Seigneur de Mauvissière, Bruno
entertained an ambitious programme indeed: to win the rigidly
Aristotelian and theologically dominated academic community of
Oxford over to his new Copernican, pro-scientific philosophy; and to
enlist the help of the English ruling class, above and beyond the political
divisions within the latter, ‘in his efforts to end what Bruno saw as the
vain and intolerant struggles between Catholic and Protestant’.1
Not surprisingly, the first of the six Italian dialogues written in
England, the Cena de le Ceneri (The Ash Wednesday Supper), already
registers defeat on the first of these counts. The Cena, in which Bruno’s
persona, ‘il Nolano’, is seen to triumph, through the exposition of his
cosmological theories, over two pedantic Oxonian doctors, Nundinio
and Torquato, enacts Bruno’s revenge for the way in which he had
been made to give up a course of lectures at Oxford – on the ground
of what George Abbot, future archbishop of Canterbury, would
mockingly describe 20 years later as Bruno’s attempted plagiarism of
Marsilio Ficino. In all probability the second project, too, would have
had very little success even without Bruno’s tendency to trust more in
the perceived strength of the truth he was propounding than in the
subtle knowledge and effective exploitation of his addressees’ political
stance.
Bruno’s sometimes baffling diplomatic strategy in his Italian works,
culminating, by the time he was writing his fifth dialogue, the Cabala del
cavallo pegaseo, in ‘a profound sense of isolation, of impotence, and of
the utter impossibility of getting through to the English ruling
establishment in any of its forms (whether political, religious, or
philosophical)’ has been commented upon, among others, by Andrew
1 Weiner, A.D. (1981), ‘Expelling the beast: Bruno’s adventures in England’, Modern
Philology, May, p. 2.
202 GIORDANO BRUNO
Weiner and Michele Ciliberto.2 And by all accounts the Cena itself, with
its extremely unfavourable depiction of uncouth ‘Englishness’, played no
small part in Bruno’s loss of favour with the very elite he was trying to
woo.
However, aspects of this first dialogue do seem briefly to converge
with contemporary English propaganda discourse, particularly in the
interesting adoption of a negative view of the myth of the Argonauts.
Nothwithstanding the deeper resonances that the Senecan portrayal of
the Golden Fleece venture certainly had within Bruno’s more general
philosophical and political outlook, we should not ignore the way in
which this myth and the parallel and in many ways more complex
empire-building quest of Aeneas had been and were being used in the
political discourse of Bruno’s host country.
Bruno arrived in England in the spring of 1583, just over a year after
the departure of Francis, Duke d’Anjou and d’Alençon, for his Spanish
wars in the Netherlands had marked the definitive conclusion of the
latter’s courtship of the English Queen. The abandoning of the Anjou
marriage negotiations marked the end of more than 20 years of
speculations and polemics over the desirability of the Queen marrying
one of a series of foreign (that is, Catholic) suitors.
The idea of a Catholic marriage had, in fact, been vigorously opposed
by a large portion of her subjects, not least via that most successful of
the mass media of the day, the production of plays. John Phillip’s Patient
Grissell (early 1560s) is generally recognized as an invitation to the
Queen to marry one of her own subjects. The less straightforward
contribution to the debate on the part of other plays, in particular
Gismond of Salerne (c. 1567, revised and published in 1591–92 as
Tancred and Gismund by Robert Wilmot) and the anonymous The Rare
Triumphs of Love and Fortune (printed in 1589, probably performed at
court in December 1582) is less widely recognized, though both plays
contain mythological allusions of a warning character which become
decidedly significant in the light of the examples examined below.3 In
fact, Jason’s disastrous association with Medea and Aeneas’s betrayal of
Dido provided ready-made warning material against falling for a suitor
coming from beyond the sea. Soon, however, the imperial as well as the
sexual implications of both myths began to play a part in the debate.
2 Cf. ibid., and Ciliberto, M. (1992), Giordano Bruno, Roma-Bari: Laterza, ch. 2
(L’esperienza inglese). The quotation is from Ciliberto, p. 168 (my translation).

3 Romanticized versions of the ‘lowly native vs. exalted foreign paramour’ dilemma
will continue to thrive on the English stage for another two decades (see below the
reference to the Merchant of Venice, where a similar contrast is enacted).
CONTRASTING EMPIRES IN BRUNO AND SHAKESPEARE 203
9.1 Frontispiece of Ovid, The XV bookes of P. Ovidius Naso, entituled

Metamorphosis, translated out of Latine into English meter by Arthur
Golding, 1567.
204 GIORDANO BRUNO
In this sense, the cultural artefact that most resembles Bruno’s Cena
in not simply referring to the Golden Fleece myth, but also setting it up
against an opposite, positive view would be produced some 25 years
later, with The Tempest, where by drawing on and alluding to the 1580s
debate, Shakespeare would be able to underline similarities and
differences with the issue of the royal matrimonial alliances as it had
again arisen in the 1610s.4
The Medea–Dido Relationship in The Tempest
The individual presence of Dido and Medea in The Tempest has long
been recognized. Articles and books have been written on the
relationship between the Aeneid and The Tempest,5 while since the
eighteenth century critics have discussed the connection between
Prospero’s renunciation of magic in 5.1.33–51 and Medea’s description
of her powers in Book VII of Ovid’s Metamorphoses (ll. 192–209), both
in the Latin original and in Arthur Golding’s 1567 translation.6 Rather
than as separate influences, however, these are to be seen as interplaying
myths, at different levels.
The most important and direct signal of a three-way connection is the
intertextual pedigree of Prospero’s renunciation speech, which goes far
beyond the Ovidian passage in Metamorphoses Book VII. In fact, the
latter is itself modelled on a speech by Dido in Aeneid Book IV (ll.
480–91), which in turn looks back to Apollonius of Rhodes’s tale of the
Argonauts. This is part of an intertextual phenomenon well known to
classical scholars: Ovid’s rewriting of Virgil, and particularly his project
of exposing Virgil’s use of the Apollonius of Rhodes’s tale of the
Argonauts in composing the Aeneid. In linking Dido and Medea in The
Tempest Shakespeare was simply exploiting a connection which already
existed between his Ovidian and Virgilian sources.
There are, I believe, other examples of this ‘Ovid-imitates-Virgil-and-
Shakespeare-knows-about-it’ complex, and in each case we are dealing
4 The present discussion of The Tempest is based on my doctoral thesis, ‘“Fulvae
harenae”: il macrotesto classico della Tempesta’, Università degli Studi di Roma ‘La
Sapienza’, 1998.
5 Most recently and importantly, see Hamilton, D.B. (1990), Virgil and The Tempest.
The Politics of Imitation, Columbus, OH: Ohio State University Press, which proposes a
view of Shakespeare’s relationship with Virgil’s text diverging from the one expressed in
this chapter.
6 All references to Shakespeare’s plays are to The Complete Works, ed. S. Wells,
G. Taylor, J. Jowett and W. Montgomery, Oxford: Clarendon, 1988. References to

classical works are to the relevant Loeb edition.
with famous passages from much quoted and much imitated classics.
Interestingly, some of these passages also surface at different points in
Bruno’s own work: Medea’s magical invocation from Metamorphoses
Book VII is alluded to in Candelaio 1.2,7 while two classical set pieces,
from Aeneid IV and Metamorphoses XI, whose combined influence may
be detected in Ariel’s ‘yellow sands’ song (in Tempest 1.2) appear in the
Cena de le Ceneri and in the Spaccio de la bestia trionfante respectively.8
This is a useful indication of the existence of a common classical
background that Bruno and Shakespeare would indeed have shared with
every educated person in the Renaissance. This makes Shakespeare’s
expectations that his courtly audience would in fact be able to recognize
and interpret his sophisticated intertextual game all the more realistic,
especially since this direct intertextual relationship was by no means his
only, or even his main, way of signalling the connection between the two
main classical presences in The Tempest.
Two scenes are crucial in this respect, and in each case an awareness
of the combined classical context greatly enhances our understanding of
the drift and purpose of the Shakespearean text.
The first of these occurs early in the play, at the beginning of the
second act, as the king’s party make their first appearance on the island,
and show an inclination towards squabbling and bickering only
frustrated by Gonzalo’s good-natured forbearance:
ADRIAN Tunis was never graced before with such a paragon to
their queen.
GONZALO Not since widow Dido’s time.
ANTONIO (to Sebastian) Widow? A pox o’that! How came that
‘widow’ in? Widow Dido!
SEBASTIAN What if he had said ‘widower Aeneas’ too? Good
Lord, how you take it!
ADRIAN (to Gonzalo) ‘Widow Dido’ said you? You make me study
of that: she was of Carthage, not of Tunis.
GONZALO This Tunis, sir, was Carthage.
ADRIAN Carthage?
GONZALO I assure you, Carthage.
ANTONIO (to Sebastian) His word is more than the miraculous
harp.
SEBASTIAN He hath raised the wall, and houses too.
ANTONIO What impossible matter will he make easy next?
SEBASTIAN I think he will carry this island home in his pocket,
and give it his son for an apple.
ANTONIO And sowing the kernels of it in the sea, bring forth
more islands.9
7 BOeuC I, 59.
8 BDI, 142 and 735–38.
9 The Tempest, 2.1.79–98.
206 GIORDANO BRUNO
In this dialogue Shakespeare is, in the words of one critic, ‘vigorously

waving a flag marked Aeneid’.10 A reference to the myth of Amphion
raising the walls of Thebes has also been widely recognized in this piece
of dialogue, but what is particularly significant is the common
denominator in the jokes Antonio and his compère are cracking at the
expense of Gonzalo. This is, as the dialogue itself points out, that of
‘impossible matters made easy’. It is, then, possible to detect allusions to
two more classical myths: namely, to one of the tasks Jason had to
accomplish in order to obtain the Golden Fleece (that is, the sowing of a
serpent’s teeth from which sprang an army he had to fight against), and
to Hercules ‘carrying home’ an apple from the garden of the Hesperides.
We have here, therefore, an allusion to the Argonauts’ myth within a
dialogue that is commonly accepted as a clear signal pointing towards
the Aeneid.11 The impression that this is in fact an ‘encoded’ reference to
the myth of the Golden Fleece, meant to be read in parallel with the
evocation of Dido, is further strengthened by the reflection that, though
in a less than straightforward way (but impressing on the audience the
need to decipher is certainly part of the purpose here), Antonio and
Sebastian’s half-joking, half-nonsensical references can all be linked
back to the Argonauts’ enterprise. In fact, Herakles was himself one of
the Argonauts – and so was Orpheus, who could easily stand in for
Amphion in any situation requiring ownership and adept use of a
magical harp, or lyre.12 The function of this peculiar and in many ways
baffling passage in The Tempest is then specifically that of alerting the
audience to the existence of an interplay of myths, and particularly of an
interplay between the stories of Medea and Jason on the one hand and
of Dido and Aeneas on the other.
Having gained this insight, the audience are subsequently asked to
put this to use in order to interpret a scene which, although physically,
as well as metaphorically, central within the play, has again often
appeared to critics as rather puzzling. I am referring to the beginning of
The Tempest’s third act, where Ferdinand is made by Prospero to carry
logs – a rather odd way of testing a young man’s suitability for marrying
one’s daughter.
10 Bate, J. (1993), Shakespeare and Ovid, Oxford: Clarendon, p. 243.

11 Besides Jonathan Bate’s comment quoted above, see Kott, J. (1976), ‘The Aeneid
and The Tempest’, Arion, n.s. 3, p. 424: ‘The insistent allusions to “widow Dido” seem to
be what Roman Jakobson would call a “metalingual” sign, supplying the receiver with the
code in which a message is to be encoded. Shakespeare is telling us: “Remember the
Aeneid”.’
12 The similarity between the two figures is underlined by their being mentioned one
after the other in Golding’s prefatory Epistle to his translation of the Metamorphoses, vv.
511–26.
In fact, it is the combined references to the negative examples offered

by the Medea and the Dido myths that give this scene the necessary
added weight: Ferdinand does not take advantage of the help offered, in
disobedience to her father’s express orders, by a ‘mistress’ who, we are
told with a striking choice of compliment, ‘quickens what’s dead’;13 he
does not accept a dishonourable relief that would see Miranda labouring
to build before the eyes of the audience a pyre whose very presence on
stage, even apart from the repetition in the dialogue of keywords like
‘logs’, ‘pile’ and ‘burn’, would have been reminiscent of the most
famously tragic scene in the Aeneid.14 In short, Ferdinand rejects here
both the example of Jason and that of Aeneas.
Having established a similarity between the two myths it is then
necessary to distinguish between them. After all, subsequent developments
of the story of Jason and Medea will hold nothing but savagery and
tragedy, so much so that, as we find, among other places, in Bruno’s Cena
de le Ceneri, the Argonauts’ enterprise, and navigation in general, will
become associated with disaster on a cosmic level: the onset of the Iron
Age, that is, our own era of strife and plunder, the furthest from the
mythical Golden Age. Aeneas, on the other hand, would go on to found
an empire which to Renaissance eyes was the epitome of political Good.
As far as Ferdinand is concerned, therefore, Jason’s example is rejected
without appeal, while that of Aeneas is rather amended. Prospero
renounces Medean magic, while, on a different plane, the Golden Fleece
enterprise is parodically re-enacted, with a rather less heroic outcome, in
Stephano and Trinculo’s theft of ‘glistening apparel’ hanging from a tree.
At the same time, a reference to the Virgilian saga once again helps us
make sense of a controversial passage in The Tempest, if we are willing to
see in the much quoted chess-game scene in Act V, where Miranda
accepts the raison d’état as a good enough reason for ‘playing false’,15
13 Being able to raise the dead was one of the most horrifically distinctive
characteristics of Medea, and one which, carried over into Prospero’s description of his
own magic in The Tempest 5.1, lends the latter a strong overtone of darkness.
14 This is where the influence of Tancred and Gismund may also be relevant. In this
play, in fact, as in its Boccaccian source, an encounter of the two lovers is witnessed by the
woman’s father, as it is here by Prospero (though in this case not inadvertently). This
would strengthen the Dido connection, as another recognized source of Wilmot’s play is
Lodovico Dolce’s Didone.
15 Cf. The Tempest, 5.1.174–8:
MIRANDA Sweet lord, you play me false.

FERDINAND No, my dearest love,
I would not for the world.
MIRANDA Yes, for a score of kingdoms you should wrangle,
An[d] I would call it fair play.
208 GIORDANO BRUNO
the correction of what went tragically wrong in the Dido–Aeneas

relationship.
The Political Subtext of References to Medea
All the above brings us to the political context of these intertextual

references, a context which will be as relevant to specific passages of the
Cena de le Ceneri as it is to The Tempest.
The order of the Golden Fleece, instituted by Philip the Good, Duke
of Burgundy, in 1430, had passed on to the house of Habsburg and is
still in existence today.16 Philip II of Spain, Mary Tudor’s widower and
one-time suitor to his sister-in-law Elizabeth, is seen wearing the order
in portraits now in the Museo del Prado and in the National Portrait
Gallery, London. This Spanish connection had already been registered in
Elizabethan drama, as is shown by an anonymous play entered in the
Stationers’ Register in 1592, Soliman and Perseda, where the Spanish
knight is made to invoke the Golden Fleece as part of his distinctively
national war cry:
The golden Fleece is that we cry upon,
And Jaques, Jaques, is the Spaniards choise.17
The association had also found, of course, new grounds for application
in the extension of the Spanish empire to the gold-rich Americas.
In the intention of the Spanish monarchy the Argonauts’ enterprise
was then to be seen as an admirable deed, the ultimate symbol of
audacity and determination. As such it is celebrated, with an explicit
link to the feats accomplished by Charles V, in Ariosto’s Orlando furioso
(canto xv). Not surprisingly, however, in regions outside and even
politically opposed to the Spanish area of influence, the myth could
16 www.chivalricorders.org/orders/other/goldflee.htm (23 January 2001): ‘The most
renowned of all Collar Orders, the Golden Fleece is now divided into two separate and
distinct institutions, albeit both using similar regalia. The senior, given by the King of
Spain, has at least in part the features of a State Order but is nonetheless the successor of
the original Burgundian foundation. Today it is the highest ranking and most prestigious
of the Chivalric Orders of the Crown of Spain. The later Austrian or, more properly,
Habsburg Order, given by the Archduke Otto … has retained much of its original
character as a Noble, Monarchical, Confraternity but may be more properly regarded as
a purely Dynastic Order of early eighteenth-century origin.’ The latter is also specified as
‘an exclusively Catholic institution’ (www.chivalricorders.org/royalty/habsburg/austria/
ausgdfl.htm).
17 Soliman and Perseda, 1.3.45–6, p. 169 in The Works of Thomas Kyd, ed. F.S. Boas,
Oxford: Clarendon, 1901. (In quotations, I have modernized throughout the use of u/v,
i/j.)
much more easily be interpreted as a tale of shameless plunder, leading,

as I have already mentioned, to universal disaster.
Of course, anyone inclined to throw a negative light on the myth of
the Argonauts would have found a ready-made indictment of Jason and
friends in Seneca’s Medea. It is, as we know, from Seneca that Bruno
quotes in the passage of the Cena de le Ceneri in which he refers to the
myth in question, when he wishes to set his own achievements above
those of Jason’s helmsman Tiphys and of his modern counterpart,
Christopher Columbus.18
However, this adherence to a negative view of the myth on the part
of Bruno cannot fail to raise some fundamental questions. Bruno is here
measuring his own enterprise against that of the Argonauts: then, surely,
it would have been more expedient to have simply taken, say, Ariosto’s
praise of Jason and of his modern imitators at face value – after all, one
would expect Bruno to be in favour of any show of individual audacity
which entailed breaking the accepted boundaries – and then to have
claimed the superiority of his own position. His recourse to the Senecan
view must then correspond to a specific agenda – an agenda which may
have been strictly related to the contemporary English use of the myth
as signifying the political ‘other’.
Giovanni Aquilecchia had already pointed in this direction in 1955 in
discussing Rosario Romeo’s study on the perception of the American
conquests among Italian men of letters.19 In his note, Aquilecchia accepts
as correct Romeo’s thesis, which indicates in the philohispanic
conformism of the Italian cultural climate the reason why the myth of
the Golden Age was not generally transmuted, in Cinquecento Italy, into
a glorification of the noble savage, and even less in the condemnation of
the methods employed in the conquest of the Americas. However, in
reminding us of the exception represented by the Argonauts passage in
the first dialogue of the Cena de le Ceneri, Aquilecchia also points out
that Bruno’s stance is all the more notable as it appears to go beyond the
‘abstract ideological-political dilemma’ inspired by the American
enterprise, to express a judgement ultimately driven by historical and
political, rather than simply moral, considerations.
The term of confrontation, both with respect to the dominant Italian
attitude and the Brunian one, is specifically identified here in the
reflections of Michel de Montaigne. We are thus immediately drawn
into a sphere of thought which is relevant to The Tempest. It has often
been pointed out that Shakespeare’s play recalls the French author’s
18 BDI, 30 ff.
19 Aquilecchia’s note is reprinted as ‘Bruno e il “Nuovo Mondo”’, pp. 97–9 in Schede
bruniane (1950–1991), Rome: Vecchiarelli, 1993.
210 GIORDANO BRUNO
essay Des cannibales in Gonzalo’s well-meaning description of the

commonwealth with ‘no sovereignty’ which he would set up on the
island, were he ‘the king on’t’.20 And even the way in which Shakespeare
lets Antonio and Sebastian expose Gonzalo’s hapless political logic may
perhaps be set beside the contrast highlighted by Aquilecchia between
Montaigne’s abstract, relativistic meditations and Bruno’s very realistic
depiction of colonisation as a school of political evil.
Even more importantly for us, Aquilecchia insists, in his brief note on
Bruno and the New World, on the need to investigate this Brunian
passage in relation to the political climate of Elizabethan England,
where it physically originated.
In this respect valuable information, deriving from a specifically
literary context, is contained in Yves Peyré’s brief survey of Renaissance
references to Jason’s enterprise in his essay on ‘Marlowe’s Argonauts’.
Although Peyré makes no attempt to sort the different types of
references according to a possible political affiliation, most of the time
it is not difficult to see what prompts an author to speak up against too
positive a view of the Golden Fleece enterprise. As when Sir John
Harington, translator of the Orlando furioso, reacts to Ariosto’s praise
of Charles V by informing his readers that ‘for the Indian voyages we
need not so much admyre the captaines of forren nations, having two of
our owne nation in that both as forwardly adventured, and as fortunatly
performed them, namely sir Francis Drake … and young master
Candish’21 or when, in his commentary to the Metamorphoses, Georg
20 The Tempest, 2.1.149–74.

21 Ludovico Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso translated into English heroical verse by Sir
John Harington (1591), ed. R. McNulty, Oxford, Clarendon, 1972, p. 174. This passage
is referred to in Y. Peyré, ‘Marlowe’s Argonauts’, pp. 106–23 in Maquerlot, J.-P. and
Williams, M. (eds) (1996), Travel and Drama in Shakespeare’s Time, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, p. 107. I wish, for the sake of my present argument, that I
could accept Peyré’s diagnosis that ‘Sir John Harington felt that he had to qualify this
[Ariosto’s] eulogy by condemning the Emperor’s overreaching ambition’, but this appears
to be based on a misinterpretation of Harington’s marginal note to the verses he translates
as ‘God meanes to graunt him all this earthly Ile, / And under this wise Prince his deare
annointed, / One shepheard and one flock he hath appointed’ (cf. Ariosto’s stanza XXVI
– ‘e vuol che sotto a questo imperatore / solo un ovile sia, solo un pastore’). The note reads:
‘It was thought that Charles ment to conquer all the world and then to enter into religion
and become Pope and Emperor both, to which this verse seemes to tend, but [here the
word ‘but’ is erroneously repeated] it was but a vaine conceit of some idle head’
(Harington, p. 166). It is obvious, then, that the ‘vaine conceit’ refers to the thought that
the Emperor might ever have harboured such a fantastic scheme, not to the scheme itself.
Contrary to Peyré’s assumption, Harington’s position in this canto is remarkably
equanimous, his main concern being that of a scholar investigating the facts as they are.
Just before the passage quoted in our main text, he refers to the authority of ‘Jovius,
Guycciardin, Ulloa, Syrius, and Sleydan himself (though his enemy)’ as testifying to
Schuler (alias Georgius Sabinus), having started his survey of the

significance of the myth with a positive evaluation of its capacity to
inspire great deeds, which led to the creation of the order of the Golden
Fleece by Charles of Burgundy, concludes by associating it with the
Spanish greed for gold: ‘It is then certain that Jason either used war to
retrieve treasures to which he was heir; or that he brought war to
Colchos because of the gold – thus in our time the Spaniards, who for
this cause travelled to India, i.e. to bring gold from thence.’22
If the truth be told, what really rankled the British was not so much
that a plunder reminiscent of the Golden Fleece enterprise was taking
place, but that they had been allocated no share in it. They were
especially angry at the decision of the Spanish-born23 Pope, Alexander
VI, in 1493, to divide the New World between Portugal and Spain – so
much so that, in the opinion of Walter Oakeshott, it is this fact which is
being alluded to in an official portrait of Queen Elizabeth, now in the
Pinacoteca di Siena (see Figure 9.2).24 We do not know how this
Charles V’s ‘great conquests, his happy discovery of th’Indies, his notable captains, and the
great felicite of his whole life’. The remark on Drake and Cavendish then serves to show
that establishing historical truth does not mean being unpatriotic.
22 ‘Quare non dubium est, Iasonem aut bello repetivisse thesauros, quorum ipse erat
haeres; vel auri gratia intulisse bellum Colchis, quemadmodum nostro tempore Hispani,
qui eadem de causa in Indiam navigarunt, ut videlicet aurum inde auferrent.’ Georg
Schuler (Sabinus), Metamorphosis seu fabulae poetica, 1555 (1589) (facsimile reprint,
New York and London, Garland, 1976), p. 224. [My translation]. Again the reader must
be cautioned against Peyré’s use of his quotations, this time in support of the clear-cut
assertion that, in Schuler’s opinion, ‘the myth illustrated nothing more than “greed for
gold”’ (Peyré, p. 110). In fact, in reporting the quotation which I have here supplied in full,
Peyré inserts an ellipsis in place of the phrase ‘quorum ipse erat haeres’ (‘to which he was
heir’), thus arbitrarily obfuscating the possibility, left open by Schuler, of seeing Jason’s
enterprise as legitimate (something which is also adumbrated in the first of the
interpretations listed by Schuler, and duly quoted by Peyré as ‘The Argonauts’ expedition
to Cholcos incites noble-hearted men to seek out and achieve glory by means of great and
memorable feats’ – Schuler, p. 223: ‘Argonautarum expeditio in Cholcos admonet
generosos animos, ut ad gloriam excitentur, eamque magnis et illustribus rebus gerendis
quaerant’). This does not weaken my point here: if anything, it underlines the way in
which Sabinus sees no such redeeming possibilities as applicable to the Spaniards, who are
linked to the second, negative reading of the Argonauts’ motives.
23 I am grateful to the gentleman who, during the discussion of this paper, answered a
query by another member of the audience by reminding us of this important bit of information.
24 Cf. Oakeshott, W. and Jordan, [Constance] A. (1986), ‘The Siena Portrait of Queen
Elizabeth I’, Apollo, October, pp. 306–9. In a more interpretative or ‘theoretical’ essay
Constance Jordan will later explain how she had played a very small part indeed in the
production of this article. See Jordan, C. (1990), ‘Representing political androgyny: more
on the Siena Portrait of Queen Elizabeth I’, pp. 157–76 in A.M. Haselkorn and B.S.
Travitsky (eds), The Renaissance Englishwoman in Print: Counterbalancing the Canon,
Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press.
212 GIORDANO BRUNO
9.2 Quentin Metsys the Younger, Elizabeth I (the ‘Siena Sieve’ Portrait), 124.5
x 91.5 cm, oil on canvas, 1583, Pinacoteca Nazionale di Siena.
painting, generally referred to as the ‘Siena Sieve’ Portrait, actually made

its way to Tuscany, but we do know, since its restoration in 1988, that
it was painted by a Flemish artist, Quentin Metsys the Younger, and that
it is dated 1583 – the year of Bruno’s arrival in England. One possible
interpretation of the portrait is that it was a piece of official propaganda,
meant to send a clear message as to the fact that the Queen had no
intention of marrying a Catholic prince, and that England would pursue
its imperial destiny by means of its own strength only.25 In this context,
the Italian motto ‘Tutto vedo et mo[lto mancha]’ (‘I see all and much is
lacking’) inscribed under the image of the globe has been taken to refer
precisely to the absence of an English share in the subdivision of
America operated by the pope.
The Political Subtext of References to Dido
In other respects, too, the ‘Siena Sieve’ Portrait provides a useful visual
representation of a complex of motifs relevant to our discussion.
Apart from the globe, this painting contains three more obviously
symbolic elements. The scene in the right-hand corner has proved to be
the most elusive, beyond the fact that it apparently features Christopher
Hatton, who was one of the prime intriguers in the matter of the
Queen’s matrimonial policy, and was strongly opposed to the idea of a
foreign marriage. In this Hatton would have been the arch-enemy of
Bruno’s host in London, and dedicatee of the Cena de le Ceneri, the
French ambassador M. de Mauvissière, who would have been involved
25 For an interesting variation on this interpretation, see Adler, D. (1979), ‘The riddle
of the sieve: The Siena Sieve Portrait of Queen Elizabeth’, in A.L. Denlef and M.T. Hester
(eds), Renaissance Papers 1978, Raleigh, NC: The Southeastern Renaissance Conference,
pp. 1–10. Adler suggests that it is not only Elizabeth’s imperial mission which is being
alluded to here, and that the portrait, which was likely to have at some stage belonged to
the Medici, that is to the maternal relations of Elizabeth’s last suitor, the Duc d’Alençon,
‘was perhaps done specifically for the French court as a graceful allegorical explanation of
Elizabeth’s decision not to wed, a decision explained by Alençon’s imperial destiny [i.e. his
involvement in the Netherlands’ struggle against Spanish rule] rather than Elizabeth’s
reluctance’ (p. 7). However, two caveats need to be issued here: Adler’s further mention of
a painting being commented on in the French court in 1582 is, of course, invalidated by
the later discovery of the 1583 date on the ‘Siena Sieve’ Portrait; and, although she is
justified in taking up issue with Frances Yates as to Britain being the only country
appearing as illuminated on the globe in the painting, she is herself overlooking that Spain
seems to be within the circle of light too! As for the direction of the ships, they could even
be seen to be going from England to Africa. Perhaps it is wiser, until new evidence turns
up to help us in the interpretation of the painting as a whole, to suspend our reading of
these two specific elements.
214 GIORDANO BRUNO
in the failed attempts to arrange a match between Queen Elizabeth and

the Duc d’Alençon.
As for the sieve the Queen is holding in her hand, this is meant to
establish a parallel between the sovereign and the Roman vestal Tuccia,
who, wrongly accused of having been unchaste, proved her innocence by
carrying water from the Tiber in a sieve. The Queen herself had been
open to similar accusations throughout her career, particularly due to
her association with Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, but also probably
because of her political use of flirtation at an international level.
It is, however, the element which in the portrait is situated
symmetrically opposite to the globe and the mysterious court scene that
brings us back to the myth that is compared and contrasted to the
Medea story in The Tempest. The gold insets in this column, in fact,
represent moments of the story of Dido and Aeneas, some of them being
closely modelled on engravings created by Marcantonio Raimondi in the
1560s.26
If Jason could be easily linked to the Spanish monarchy, an
improbable but widely accepted connection had been established
between the British and Aeneas: the latter’s descendant, Brutus, was
supposed to have given origin to the race of the ancient Britons. This
affiliation would be brought to the foreground by the celebration of
Britain’s Arthurian and chivalric past that characterized the latter years
of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, and then again was to be associated with
James I’s son – the young prince Henry round whom rallied the English
Protestants, mistrustful of what could be seen as James’s Catholic
leanings.
It is, in fact, in the context of James I’s marriage policy for his two
children that The Tempest’s political message seems to be most directly
applicable. James had meant to marry his daughter Elizabeth to a
Protestant prince – as it turned out, to Frederick V, the head of the
German Protestant League, and it is concurrently with this couple’s
betrothal celebrations that the second recorded performance of The
Tempest occurred, during the 1612–13 Christmas season (the first
26 This portrait has attracted much attention in recent years, being often mentioned,
for instance, in connection with Spenser’s representation of Queen Elizabeth in the Faerie
Queene. Virtually all we know about it and its symbolism, however, is due to Frances
Yates and Roy Strong. See Yates, F.A. (1975), ‘The triumph of chastity’, in Astraea: The
Imperial Theme in the Sixteenth Century, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul; Strong, R.C.
(1963), Portraits of Queen Elizabeth I, Oxford: Clarendon, and Gloriana: The Portraits
of Queen Elizabeth I, n.p.: Thames and Hudson, 1987. For updated accounts, following
the discovery of the date and signature on the portrait, see Torriti, P. (1990), La Pinacoteca
Nazionale di Siena, Genoa: Sagep Editrice and Hearn K. (ed.) (1995), Dynasties. Painting
in Tudor and Jacobean England 1530–1630, London: Tate Publishing, 1995.
recorded performance having taken place also at court in 1611). On the

other hand, in order to ensure political balance, James’s son Henry
would have been made to marry a Catholic princess, this half of the plan
being frustrated by the premature death of the prince. In this light, the
system of mythological allegories within The Tempest would point to a
reading of the Jason complex as representing a Catholic foreign power,
while the Aeneas complex could be made to allude to a ‘more congenial’
choice in foreign (matrimonial) politics.
Once again, in doing this Shakespeare would not be inventing
anything new. Beside and beyond the national associations of the myths
of Jason and Aeneas respectively, he only needed to look back to the
time of the Stuart princess’s great namesake to find a similar allegorical
use of the figures of Medea and, above all, Dido.
As far as the former is concerned, a topical allusion of this kind,
though appearing rather late in the day, may be seen in Shakespeare’s
own Merchant of Venice (c. 1597), where Portia is compared to the
Golden Fleece in her effortless success in attracting suitors:
For the four winds blow in from every coast
Renownèd suitors, and her sunny locks
Hang on her temples like a golden fleece,
Which makes her seat of Belmont Colchis’ strand,
And many Jasons come in quest of her.27
Closer to the time of Bruno’s visit to London we find an example of

undoubted application of the myth of the Golden Fleece to Elizabeth
and her foreign suitors in the 1581 Tilt-yard show of the Foster Children
of Desire. Here four knights besiege the fortress of Perfect Beauty,
‘venturing to win the golden fleece without Medeas helpe’,28 but are
forced to withdraw, acknowledging ‘the least determination of vertue
(which stands for guard of this Fortresse) to be to strong for the
strongest Desire’.29 The off-putting message was, of course, directed
towards Alençon’s ambassadors, for whose benefit the entertainment
was created.
Even more interesting is the cautionary function served by the myth
of Dido. One example of this is particularly worth mentioning here as
its attendant circumstances link it closely with Bruno’s experience in
England. Bruno himself claims in Dialogue Four of the Cena that he had
held public disputations with an Oxford scholar ‘in the presence of
Prince Albert Laski the Pole and representatives of the English
27 The Merchant of Venice, 1.1.168–72.

28 Cf. Wilson, Jean (1980), Entertainments for Elizabeth I, Woodbridge: Brewer, p. 79
(referred to in Peyré, ‘Marlowe’s Argonants’, op. cit., p. 108).
29 Wilson, Entertainments for Elizabeth I, op. cit., p. 84.
216 GIORDANO BRUNO
nobility’.30 Among the entertainments offered to the foreign aristocrat

on the occasion of his visit to the university town, which took place in
June 1583, was also a Latin play of Dido which bears all the marks of
having been especially commissioned of the Oxonian scholar William
Gager in order to put a double message across. First, like Aeneas, the
Queen had been perfectly justified in, perhaps, misleading a foreign
suitor or two for the greater good of her nation:
We must heed the god’s admonitions, and any delay in doing so,
even a brief one, is too great. Pliable women are moved by tears, but
the strong one must stop her ears. If the favors done you stand in
the way of greater goods, no matter what they were, they oblige
nobody.31
Second, Elizabeth (whose identification with Dido was all the more
readily achieved through the use of the latter’s original name, Elissa)
would and should never be so foolish as to follow Dido’s wretched
example:
Foreign marriages rarely turn out well. Love’s power is great. A
greater fire affects women, a lighter one kindles men. But our times
have produced few Didos, and I imagine our women have grown
more prudent. I doubt any woman will die of a broken heart.
But, Dido, one woman surpasses you by far: our virgin queen. In
her piety, how many reversals has she endured! What kingdoms has
she founded! To what foreigners has she plighted her trust! But she
has not condescended to marry any Sychaeus, and may no Aeneas
sway her affections!32
30 Giordano Bruno, The Ash Wednesday Supper, ed. and trans. by Gosselin, E.A. and
Lerner, L.S. (1995), Toronto: Toronto University Press, (hereafter Supper), p. 187. Cf. BDI,
133. This is Bruno’s first brush with the English academe, and constitutes a separate, and
in Bruno’s account at least, more successful episode than the later attempt to hold a course
of lectures.
31 decet obsequentes esse praemonitis deum,
omnisque nimia est, sit licet brevior, mora.

molles moveri faeminae lachrymis solent,
sed fortis aures obstruere debet suas.
promerita si maiora detineant bona
quacunque fuerint, neminem vinctum tenent.
(W. Gager, Dido, ‘Epilogus’, ll. 1229–34, pp. 342–3 in The Complete Works, ed. with
transl. and commentary by D.F. Sutton, vol. I – The Earlier Plays, New York and London:
Garland, 1994.)
32 externa raro connubia cedunt bene.
vis magna amoris: faeminis gravior solet

corripere flamma, sevior accendit viros.
sed vita paucas nostra Didones videt,
prudentiores faem[i]nas factas reor,
amore nullam credo morituram gravi.
The very way in which Gager exploits every possible facet of his topic,
bringing up the possibility of equating the Queen alternately with
Aeneas, with a chaste Dido (faithful to the memory of her husband
Sychaeus), and, only as an impossibility to be immediately rejected, with
the abandoned lovelorn Dido described by Virgil, reflects the different
modes in which the myth was made to serve in the contemporary
political debate. Dating from the same year as Gager’s play, the Siena
portrait also echoes these three modes: respectively, in the imperial
crown at the bottom of the pillar with the scenes from the Aeneid; in the
strong allusions to Petrarch’s Trionfi, where most famously was to be
found the figure of an anti-Virgilian chaste Dido;33 and in the
representation of what had come to be the traditional version of the
story in the medallions on the column.
The terms of the 1580s debate over the possibility of the Queen
marrying a foreign prince could then have provided Shakespeare not
only with a precedent for the political use of the myths of Jason and
Dido, but also with an awareness of the latter’s capacity of supporting
alternative readings – something which he may well be signalling in The
Tempest through the insistent appellation of ‘widow Dido’.34
sed una longe, Elisa, te superat tamen.

regina virgo quot tulit casus pia!
quae regna statuit! quam dat externis fidem!
dignata nullo coniuge Sychaeo tamen,
animumque nullus flectat Aeneas suum. (Ibid. ll. 1235-45)
33 In Petrarch’s Triumph of Chastity, generally considered the source for the allusion
to the virgin Tuccia (or Tuzia) and her sieve in this portrait, the poet twice insists on
vindicating Dido’s faithfulness to Sychaeus against erroneous public opinion (Trionfo della
Pudicizia, ll. 10–12 and 154–59). The allusion to this set of poems in the portrait is
strengthened by the motto ‘Stancho riposo & riposato affanno’ (‘weary rest and rested
agitation’), a quotation from the Triumph of Love, situated underneath the column. For
an interesting discussion of how the dialectics of the two versions of Dido contribute here
to the construction of a meta-portrait, see Gallagher, L. (1991), Medusa’s Gaze: Casuistry
and Conscience in the Renaissance, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, pp. 126–40.
34 A need to distinguish even within the myth of Jason (as well as a healthy reminder,
to us, of the fluid currency of such myths) would be implicit in the fact that, as Elector of
the Holy Roman Empire, the bridegroom of James I’s daughter – not only a Protestant,
but a staunch Calvinist – was himself a member of the Order of the Golden Fleece. This
fact is duly recalled in the festivities held at Heidelberg following the return of the royal
couple, where Frederick appeared in a pageant as Jason, with the golden fleece dangling
from a tree. But that, as Christopher Marlowe’s Jew would have said, was in another
country, and the London official firework display focussed on the prince’s recent accession
to the very English Order of the Garter. See Yates, F.A. (1972), The Rosicrucian
Enlightenment, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, ch. I; the Garter also appears in the
Heidelberg pageant together with the Golden Fleece.
218 GIORDANO BRUNO
Contrasting Myths and Empires
Shakespeare could then have easily appropriated for The Tempest a

series of emblematic meanings that had been established in previous
circumstances, making one alteration to suit the present purposes. By
establishing a contrast between Jason’s and Aeneas’ example, the
matrimonial policy of the great Elizabeth could be recalled while
suggesting an alteration in its eventual outcome in line with the new
possibilities offered by the choice for the new Elizabeth, daughter of
James I, of a foreign suitor who was also a Protestant.
And of course, this juxtaposition of myths also provided an
economical means of commenting on the rise of the British empire: by
rejecting Jason and adopting Aeneas the play would be effectively
upholding the superiority and greater legitimacy of such an empire over
a Spanish one. The play’s mythological alphabet spells out the
appropriate, expected message for its contemporary audience – a
message in tune with that conveyed by George Chapman’s Memorable
Masque (of the Middle Temple, and Lincoln’s Inn), specifically written
and produced as part of the royal wedding festivities in 1613:
The ‘invention’ of having the masquers Princes of Virginia … was a
thoughtful one on Chapman’s part; it was expected that the
masquers should appear in strange and exotic costume, and this
visitation of foreign worthies to do honour to British royalty recalls
Jonson’s Masque of Blackness … Nor was the choice of Virginia
gratuitous: that colony was named after Queen Elizabeth, as was
the Princess whose marriage the masque celebrated, while its capital
– only founded in 1607 – was called Jamestown in honour of the
present King (who, like many of his courtiers, had direct financial
investments there). The conversion of the Virginian Indians to
Protestant Christianity (as opposed to the Catholic conversions of
Central and Southern America) was clearly a fitting theme to grace
a marriage that aimed to unite the Protestant forces of Northern
Europe.35
Writing in England at the time when the mythological concepts later

exploited in The Tempest were finding their most explicit expression,
Giordano Bruno had set up a similar kind of opposition.
In the first dialogue of the Cena de le Ceneri, Colombus’s enterprise
is not so much saluted as ominously introduced with the Senecan
prophecy of more Tiphys to come, that would wrench open the confines
of the known world, going beyond the no longer ‘Ultima Thule’. As
already mentioned, Bruno at this point cannot content himself with
35 R. Dutton (ed.), Jacobean and Caroline Masques, Nottingham Drama Texts, n.d.,
vol. 2, p. 17 (Dutton’s emphasis).

asserting the superiority of his own enterprise: he simply has to point out
that the problem with these modern Tiphys is that they violate the peace
and rightful ownership of faraway lands, introducing the natives to all
kinds of vice and violent practice, until evil generates evil, and we shall
become the victims of that horrendous violence in which the oppressed
will have been so thoroughly schooled by the oppressor.36
Then, as the argument progresses, with a switch all but disguised by
Bruno’s vehement prose, the author is no longer the genius who simply
imitates and transcends Columbus’s enterprise, but becomes the
strenuous opponent of oppression now perpetrated on a spiritual and
cultural level, and of ‘those’ who have extinguished that light of the soul
that made our forefathers heroic and even divine, allowing or even
causing the world to be shrouded in intellectual darkness. What is
happening in the New World becomes, then, the figure of a grander
oppression, which affects the whole of the intellectual world: whereas
‘[t]he helmsmen of explorations have discovered how to disturb
everybody else’s peace … and to add to old vices the new vices of other
peoples, with violence to propagate new follies and to plant unheard-of
insanities where they did not before exist’,37 those who, though being
themselves the scum of the earth, have dared present themselves as
creatures of godlike intelligence ‘with manifold imposture … have filled
the whole world with infinite folly, nonsense and vice’.38 To this
pernicious imposition of an evil regime Bruno opposes his own brand of
liberating colonization:
The Nolan, in order to cause completely opposite effects, has freed
the human mind and the knowledge which were shut up in the strait
prison of the turbulent air. Hardly could the mind gaze at the most
distant stars as if through some few peepholes, and its wings were
clipped so that it could not soar and pierce the veil of the clouds to
see what was actually there.39
This same kind of switch from the political to the spiritual is precisely
what can redeem an allegorical reading of The Tempest from the taint
36 BDI, 30ff.; Supper, 88ff.

37 Supper, 88 (BDI, 31: ‘Gli Tifi han ritrovato il modo di perturbar la pace altrui … e
gionger vizii a vizii de l’una e l’altra generazione, con violenza propagar nove follie e
piantar l’inaudite pazzie ove non sono.’)
38 Supper, 89 (BDI, 32: ‘con moltiforme impostura han ripieno il mondo tutto
d’infinite pazzie, bestialità e vizii’); my emphasis.

39 Ibid.: ‘Il Nolano, per caggionar effetti al tutto contrarii, ha disciolto l’animo umano
e la cognizione, che era rinchiusa ne l’artissimo carcere de l’aria turbulento; onde a pena,
come per certi buchi, aveva facultà de remirar le lontanissime stelle, e gli erano mozze l’ali,
a fin che non volasse ad aprir il velame di queste nuvole e veder quello che veramente là
su si ritrovasse …’
220 GIORDANO BRUNO
of schematicism, and it is even possible to read certain aspects of the

play directly in Brunian terms. The account of the presumably higher,
certainly more powerful, civilization as the bearer of a moral cancer that
is passed on to the uncivilized, and the turning of the offence against the
offender are both enacted in the descent of the Neapolitan party upon
the island: in the introduction, that is, of the previously formidable
Caliban to intoxication, conspiracy and abject subjection, or in the
suggestion (through Sebastian and Antonio’s attempt to murder Alonso)
that he who instigates usurpation shall easily suffer the same fate at the
hands of those he persuaded to such an act. In the same way, we may
like to recall Bruno’s celebration of his own contrasting, liberating
action when we hear Prospero remind Ariel, with just as much furious
emphasis, of how he had freed the spirit from inside the tree where the
evil witch Sycorax had confined him.
The underlying complexity in Bruno’s negative reference to the
Argonauts’ enterprise, which may also be a reflection of the
philosopher’s mistrust for the possible consequences of an unregulated
brave new science,40 also has a suggestive affinity with certain modern
readings of Shakespeare’s play, such as that proposed by Jan Kott:
In The Tempest there is, doubtless, something of the atmosphere of
long sea-voyages, mysterious desert islands; but there is also the
anxiety and daring of the conclusions reached by Giordano Bruno.
In any event, The Tempest is a long way removed from the naïve
enthusiasm and childish pride of the first witnesses of geographical
discoveries. The questions raised by The Tempest are philosophical
and bitter.41
Ultimately, questions are raised, in Bruno as in The Tempest, on the

nature of the colonial or imperial enterprise itself. But it is important to
keep a sense of historical perspective. Among the functions of the
mythological shorthand employed in The Tempest there may be a
reminder of the fundamental similarity of all such enterprises. As
mentioned above, it was not with colonialism as such that the British had
a problem, but with the particular Hispanic brand of pope-aided
40 I am grateful to Lina Bolzoni and Hilary Gatti for raising this problem in the
discussion of this chapter.

41 Kott, J. [1965] (1991), Shakespeare our Contemporary, London: Routledge, pp.
249–50; for Kott’s reading see specifically pp. 262ff. For this aspect of Bruno’s attitude to
science, see Gatti, H. (1999), Giordano Bruno and Renaissance Science, Ithaca, NY, and
London: Cornell University Press, in particular, pp. 21–3, on the discussion between
Smitho and Teofilo in the Cena de le Ceneri concerning the respective dangers of elitism
and democratism in the diffusion of knowledge, and pp. 51–3, on Bruno’s conception of
the philosopher of science as interpreter and, presumably, as ultimate recipient of a truth
into which the scientists themselves can only ever attain partial insight.
appropriation of the Americas. Accordingly, in comparing Sir Francis

Drake with Jason in his Choice of Emblemes (1586), Geoffrey Whitney
had declared in no uncertain terms the superiority of the Englishman:
after all, Medea had made things ridiculously (and unfairly) easy for
Jason, while Drake, relying solely on the power of God, ‘Did bringe away
his goulden fleece, when thousand eies did wake’.42 But this heroically
Protestant opposition could hardly be expected to endure as the Britons
became more and more successful at cutting out for themselves a share of
the mythical fleece. There is therefore the possibility that The Tempest’s
mythological allusions may be a double-edged weapon, and that the
discourse based on distinctions may be undermined by a counter-
discourse of basic logical premisses: that for distinctions to exist at all,
there must be a common ground to begin with (Prospero’s renunciation
of Medea’s magic necessarily presupposes his appropriation of it).
With Bruno, it may simply be a case of a fundamentally anti-
imperialistic attitude being temporarily harnessed to serve a more specific
political project. It has, in fact, been suggested that Bruno’s denunciation
of the Spanish atrocities should not be related to a utopian view of other
specific national entities, being rather an aspect of the philosopher’s
wider indictement of a Europe characterized, as a whole, by religious
strife, cultural obtuseness and financial greed.43 This view is supported by
the terms in which the national dichotomy we are exploring with regard
to the Cena resurfaces in the De immenso VII.xvi, where it is both more
explicit (the British conqueror is presented in a more favourable light
than the Spaniard) and irremediably blurred (whatever the relative worth
of his intentions, the Briton too, as a representative of a sick world, will
inevitably bring ruin to the new lands). This is, of course, a work written
once Bruno had left England, and no longer had the English ruling class
and culturally progressive elite as his immediate intended audience. But
even in his ‘English’ works this pessimistic view of imperialism as such,
regardless of its specific national matrix, would not be kept in check for
long. The coupling in the Spaccio de la bestia trionfante (The Expulsion
of the Triumphant Beast) of the ‘curious and avaricious Briton’ with the
‘solicitous Portuguese’ and the ‘tenacious and stingy Spaniard’ testifies to
the widening of the gap after an attempted convergence of discoursive
strategies.44
42 Whitney, G. [1586], A Choice of Emblemes, Aldershot: Scolar Press, p. 203.
Quoted in Peyré, op. cit., p. 107.

43 Cf. Ricci, S. (1990), ‘Infiniti mondi e mondo nuovo. Conquista dell’America e
critica della civiltà europea in Giordano Bruno’, Giornale critico della filosofia italiana,
LXIX (LXXXI), 2, maggio-agosto, pp. 204–21.
44 Bruno, G. (1964), The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast, trans. and ed. A.D.
Imerti, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. Cf. BDI, 815.
222 GIORDANO BRUNO
Bruno’s use of the Argonauts’ myth as an image of archetypal

dystopia in the first dialogue of the Cena de le Ceneri is the first
movement in this brief moment of convergence. The second will be the
depiction of a positive view of empire.
The famous praise of Queen Elizabeth in the second dialogue of the
Cena advocates the institution of a universal monarchy under the rule of
the English sovereign in terms that we could, once again, find suggestive
in relation to The Tempest. Here, in fact, in all but explicit contrast to
the vision of general corruption and the triumph of brute force and
ignorance conjured up in the first dialogue, Elizabeth’s light, reflected
through her counsellors, is seen to conquer universal darkness. In a
stilnovistic image, the ‘warmth’ of their ‘loving courtesy’ is declared
capable of refining and purging the natural uncouthness of ‘Scythians,
Arabs, Tartars, cannibals and anthropofagi’ – let alone the Britons.45
It may be worth noting Bruno’s use here of the classical topos of the
vessel requiring a pilot as symbol of the necessity for strong political
rule, a topos that, I would argue (against current interpretations), could
also be applied to the opening scene of The Tempest. In the Supper,
Bruno casts Elizabeth in the role that the celebrated helmsman Tiphys
had in the Argonauts enterprise, here, though, with the undoubtedly
legitimate, as well as heroic, purpose of preserving her country in the
midst of a tumultuous tempest.46 From the point of view of the
relationship of the Cena with contemporary topicality, however, the so-
called ‘A’ variant of this passage is rather more interesting. This is a less
metaphorical, less imaginative piece of writing in which, with what may
seem like incredibly tactless temerity, the Queen’s name is to all intents
and purposes paired with that of Robert Dudley:
There is no occasion here to speak of the generous humanity of my
most illustrious Lord, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester etc., which
is well known all over the world and spoken of together with the
fame of the reign, and of the Queen of England, in the surrounding
kingdoms; and which is so extolled from the hearts of generous
Italian spirits, whom he (together with his Lady) has always treated
with favour and kindness.47
In the ‘B’ version, in fact, Dudley is only mentioned very briefly, and
45 BDI, 69; Supper, 120.

46 BDI, 68–9; Supper, 119.
47 My translation. Cf. BDI 68n.: ‘Non te si offre occasione di parlar de la
generosissima umanità dell’illustrissimo monsig[nor] conte Roberto Dudleo, conte di

Licestra etc. tanto conosciuta dal mondo, nominata insieme con la fama del regno, et la
regina d’Inghilterra ne’ circostanti regni; tanto predicata da i cuori di generosi spirti
italiani quali specialmente da lui con particolar favore (accompagnando quello de la sua
signora) son stati, et son sempre accarezzati.’
only after interposing an allusion to William Cecil between the Earl’s

name and that of the Queen, so that it is both these men’s fame, and not
just Dudley’s, that is said to be ‘well known the world over, and …
widely praised and spoken of together with the fame of their Queen and
her reign’.48
Also intriguing is Bruno’s rejection, in the ‘A’ version, of the
possibility of comparing Elizabeth with any queen of antiquity, in a
passage immediately preceding and syntactically parallel to the one
quoted above, as if the author was here painting a diptych of the Queen
and of the man who had long been reputed to be her lover:
There is no room here to speak of her, whom to compare to any
queen of ancient times would be to profane the dignity of her being
singular and alone; because she is far above all of them: greater than
some in authority, greater than others in the persistence of her long,
entire and continuing rule; greater than all in her sobriety, chastity,
wit, and knowledge. Greater than all in the hospitality and courtesy
with which she welcomes every foreigner who does not show
himself completely undeserving of grace and favour.49
It is as though Bruno might be reacting to the contemporary assimilation

of Elizabeth and Dido, maybe even specifically recalling William Gager’s
play, which, as we have seen, he would have witnessed in Oxford when
he had himself, like Gager’s dramatic skills, been called upon to provide
entertainment for the count Lasky.
Having detected in the Cena de le Ceneri a mark of the topical use of
myths like Medea and Dido for purposes of political propaganda, the
question remains whether this could amount to a coherent and
conscious strategy on Bruno’s part.
Bruno’s intent in the Cena is to attack the old reactionary order,
which, for obvious historical reasons, not least linked to Bruno’s own
Neapolitan provenance, would be readily identified with Spain. To this
the philosopher opposes a strongly idealized view of British liberty and
enlightenment, directly related to his well-known hopes of finding a
political patron in his fight against obscurantism in either Henri III of
France (to whose praise he will revert in the Spaccio) or Elizabeth of
England, or ideally in both.
Bruno’s use of myths allows him to identify a common ground and to
48 Supper, 120; BDI, 69: ‘nominata insieme con la fama della Regina e regno’.
49 My translation. Cf. BDI, 68n.: ‘Non hai qua materia di far discorso di colei, la quale
se volessi assomigliar a regina di memoria di passati tempi: profanareste la dignità del suo
essere singolare et sola; perché di gran lunga avanza tutte: altre in grandezza de l’autorità,
altre ne la perseveranza del lungo, intiero, et non ancora abbreviato governo; tutte poi ne
la sobrietà, pudicizia, ingegno, et cognizione. Tutte ne l’ospitalità et cortesia, co la quale
accoglie ogni sorte di forastiero, che non si rende al tutto incapace di grazia et favore.’
224 GIORDANO BRUNO
interact with the propagandistic language of his intended audience, the

British ruling class, in order to present his project of universal cultural
reform as directly allied with their own interests and plans. Bruno does
this both directly, with his praise of Elizabeth, and, which is more
interesting, indirectly, by using the ‘Golden Fleece’ label, that is, the
official badge of Britain’s Spanish antagonist, in such a way as to suggest
the identification of a common enemy.
This view is rather amusingly borne out by another mention of the
Golden Fleece in the Cena, when Bruno calls the intellectually sterile
Oxonian Doctor Torquato a big ugly sheep of the golden order (‘gran
pecoraccia auratis ordinis’), even taking care of having Frulla explain
that this refers to ‘il tosone’, that is, to the Order of the Golden Fleece.50
Of course, this may simply be a characteristically exuberant expression
of scorn, but it will be worth recalling here the view, pionieristically
propounded by Giovanni Aquilecchia, of the connection between
Bruno’s Italian dialogues and the support given by the British court (and
in particular by the Earl of Leicester) to a more scientific and popular
approach to learning, in contrast with the pedantic grammaticism of the
universities.51 Once again, Bruno’s enemies would seem to be the
‘enemies’ of the British court. Once again, that enemy is characterized,
on one level, by cultural obscurantism, on the other, by a reference to
the Golden Fleece.52
Although this chapter has concentrated on the similarity between the use
of certain classical-political allusions in the Cena de le Ceneri and in The
Tempest, we should also appreciate how much more tentative and
difficult Bruno’s position is here compared to Shakespeare’s. Bruno’s
intervention in the debate could also in part be seen as an attempt to
counteract an established propagandistic view by means of subtle
distinctions. A summary identification, like that accepted and exploited
in The Tempest, of the ‘Jason party’ as the Catholic side tout court, not
50 BDI, 130; Supper, 184.

51 This view is supported, in Aquilecchia’s opinion, both by the use of the vernacular
rather than Latin in the dialogues, and by his interpretation of the ‘A’ version of the Cena
(which Aquilecchia identifies as the final version) as showing Bruno’s adherence to Robert
Dudley’s faction. See, in Schede bruniane, op. cit., Scheda I – ‘La lezione definitiva della
Cena de le Ceneri di Giordano Bruno’ (1950), pp. 1–40, and Scheda II – ‘L’adozione del
volgare nei dialoghi londinesi di Giordano Bruno’ (1953), pp. 41–63.
52 Which makes it a nice instance of historical irony that the late seventeenth/early
eighteenth-century binding of the fundamental copy of the Cena de le Ceneri in the

Biblioteca Nazionale in Rome should be graced by the insignia of the toison d’or (as
reported in Aquilecchia, Schede bruniane, op. cit., p. 10).
necessarily as the Spaniards, would signify the end of Bruno’s hopes in

an Anglo-French alliance providing a more breathable political
environment. On the other hand, the terms in which two images of
empire are compared and contrasted in the Cena de le Ceneri are
consistent with an attempt by the author to distance himself, and the
French party to which he was de facto allied, from any identification
with the modern Argonauts, while at the same time opposing too
restrictively nationalistic a view of the alternative ‘universal monarchy’
that was to have saved the world.
This is certainly a very minor aspect within the context of Bruno’s
struggle against cultural and political obscurantism. But it does, I think,
dispose one to read some of the pathos of wasted effort, and of the
failure of subtle distinctions ever to hold sway, in yet another of the
references collected by Peyré; where, as we are told, ‘after the Queen’s
death a laudatory poem chuckled over the failure of “That brave French
Monsieur who did hope to carry / The Golden Fleece, and faire Eliza
marry”’.53
53 Peyré, ‘Marlowe’s Argonauts’, op. cit., p. 108.

PART FOUR
Philosophical Themes
CHAPTER TEN
Giordano Bruno and Astrology

Leen Spruit
Bruno’s attitude towards astrology was multifaceted. In his early as well

as in his later works, he levelled various attacks against astrology.1 Yet
one of his first works, the lost De segni de’ tempi, was probably an
astrological treatise.2 Moreover, in Spaccio de la bestia trionfante and
other works, he endorsed the horoscope of religions,3 and in Libri
Aristotelis physicorum explanati, composed in the late 1580s, he
explained generation and corruption drawing on clearly astrological
concepts.4 Also in his magical works he endorsed astrological concepts.
And at the very moment of his arrest in Venice, he was in possession of
a manuscript entitled De sigillis Hermetis, Ptolomaei et aliorum, copied
in Padua by his pupil Besler.5 These apparently conflicting attitudes are
to be understood in the light of the specific cultural context of Bruno’s
intellectual formation and activity.
Between 1300 and 1700 astrology was deemed to be neither obscure
nor implausible. It was an integrated part of European life and culture.
Astrological ideas and practices were vitally involved in philosophy, the
arts and sciences. Astrology’s appeal lay in the fact that it offered
allegedly useful information, sometimes inaccessible by any other
means, while it looked and operated like a science. It was accepted by
outstanding scientists and philosophers, such as Ptolomeus, Thomas
Aquinas, Cardano and Johannes Kepler. During the Renaissance it was
even taught in many universities as an academic discipline. It was not an
uncontroversial discipline, however. Since its introduction in the western
world it had been attacked by a host of opponents, including Cicero,
Sextus Empiricus, Avicenna, Nicole Oresme and Giovanni Pico della
Mirandola. It was condemned by various Catholic councils and, during
1 Cf. Infinito, BDI, p. 429; De rerum princ., BOL III, pp. 539–41.
2 Giordano Bruno. Gli anni napolitani e la ‘perigrinatio’ europea, ed. E. Canone,
1992, Cassino: Università degli Studi, p. 83; cf. Ricci, S. (2000), Giordano Bruno
nell’Europa del Cinquecento, Rome: Salerno Editrice, pp. 115–18.
3 This view is discussed by Ingegno, A. (1967), ‘Ermetismo e oroscopo delle religioni
nello Spaccio bruniano’, in Rinascimento, 18, pp. 157–74.

4 Cf. Libri Phys. Aristot., BOL III, pp. 366–8.
5 Firpo, Processo, pp. 166, 187, 193 and 286–87; see also pp. 22, 32, and 60–61.
230 GIORDANO BRUNO
the Renaissance, by Protestant theologians, including Luther and

Calvin.6 By contrast, Melanchthon defended astrology,7 and exponents
of the Roman Catholic hierarchy, including several popes, had their
personal astrologers.8 Moreover, many early modern scientists and
philosophers dissociated themselves from astrological ideas, while
covertly courting them. It was only in about 1700 that astrology lost its
footing in elite and educated European culture.
The very term ‘astrology’, like science or religion, conceals a
challenging multiplicity of ideas and activities. ‘Astronomy’ and
‘astrology’ were often used interchangeably.9 Moreover, Ptolemaic
technical horoscopic astrology is not to be confused with Arabic
astrology, dominated by the conception of the great conjunctions. And
the use of astrology in medicine, agriculture and navigation is essentially
different from the astrological background of the various forms of
divination during the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. Therefore, a
brief survey of the development of astrology and of arguments pro and
contra is surely helpful to assess Bruno’s views on astrology. Critical
studies on Bruno, taking into account the impact of astrology, have
dwelt on the use of astrological images in his mnemotechnical works or
else on the specific cultural context of his cosmology and its political and
ethical implications.10 This chapter proposes a more encompassing
classification of Bruno’s most significant texts on astrology, and an
analysis of the possible relationships between astrology and Bruno’s
6 Calvin, J. (1985), Advertissement contre l’astrologie judiciaire, ed. O. Millet,
Génève: Droz.
7 See Caroti, S. (1986), ‘Melanchthon’s astrology’, in ‘Astrologi hallucinati’. Stars and
the End of the World in Luther’s Time, ed. P. Zambelli, Berlin and New York: Walter de
Gruyter editori, pp. 109–121; and Bellucci, D. (1988), ‘Mélanchthon et la défense de
l’astrologie’, in Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et de la Renaissance, 50, pp. 587–622.
8 Caroti, S. (1983), L’astrologia in Italia. Profezie, oroscopi e segreti celesti, dagli
zodiaci romani alla tradizione islamica, dalle corti rinascimentali alle scuole moderne:
storia, documenti, personaggi, Rome: Newton Compton editori, pp. 231–46.
9 Cf. Cassiodorus, Institutiones, II.iii, 6; Isidore of Seville, Etymologiae, II.27; Hugo
of Saint-Victor, Didascalion, II.10. For discussion, see Lejbowicz, M. (1988), ‘Le choc des
traductions arabo-latines du XIIe siècle et ses conséquences dans la spécialisation
sémantique d’astrologia et d’astronomia: Dominic Gundissalinus et la sciencia iudicandi’,
in Transfert de vocabulaire dans les sciences, eds. M. Groult, P. Louis and J. Roger, Paris:
CNRS, pp. 213–76.
10 Cf. Ingegno, A. (1978), ‘Ermetismo e oroscopo delle religioni nello Spaccio
bruniano’, cit., and idem, Cosmologia e filosofia nel pensiero di Giordano Bruno,
Florence: La Nuova Italia editrice, ch. 1–2; Garin, E. (1982), Lo zodiaco della vita. La
polemica sull’astrologia dal Trecento al Cinquecento, Rome-Bari: Laterza, (first edition:
1976), p. 124f; and recently Pompeo Faracovi, O., (1966), Scritto negli astri. L’astrologia
nella cultura dell’Occidente, Venezia: Marsilio, pp. 255–9. See also M.A. Granada’s
introduction to Furori, BOeuC VII, pp. xviii–xxxix.
GIORDANO BRUNO AND ASTROLOGY 231
10.1 Frontispiece of Ficino’s De vita libri tres, containing De vita coelitus

comparanda, [1489], 1576.
232 GIORDANO BRUNO
broader philosophical views, taking into account also such views as the
animation of celestial bodies and celestial influence on the terrestrial
world in general.
Astrology: A Historical Survey
Greece became acquainted with Babylonian astrology in the early third

century BC. The Greeks did not simply take over Babylonian astrology.
Mesopotamic divination had mostly concerned public welfare and the
life of rulers. By contrast, the Greeks were interested in the individual
horoscope, which was developed in the second century BC with the aid
of theoretical astronomy. Although the idea of celestial influence was
widely accepted in the ancient world, most philosophical schools were
hostile to astrology, especially the Epicureans and the Sceptics.11 Yet,
complex interrelations developed between Platonic and Stoic
philosophy, and in virtue of the assumption of causal links between
celestial bodies and metals, plants, stones and parts of the (human) body
also with contemporary scientific disciplines, most notably mineralogy,
botanics, alchemy, zoology, physiology and medicine.
The Stoic conceptions of universal sympathy and determinism
became important axioms in Greek and Roman astrology.12 Later
astrological theories were also underpinned by Platonic astral theology.
Most ancient astrologers did not reflect upon the philosophical
assumptions and implications of their discipline, however. An important
exception is Ptolomaeus, who regarded astrology as a rational technique
with its own logic, grounded on astronomical observations and on views
derived from Stoic and Aristotelian philosophy. According to
Ptolomaeus, the ether emanates a power which causes changes in the
sublunar world. According to their position and specific powers, the
effluences of moon, sun and planets have their own effects. The task of
astrology is to calculate these effects. His synthesis, which postulated
11 It should be remembered that the Epicureans were among the targets of
Melanchthon’s condemnation of the critics of astrology; cf. Caroti, ‘Melanchthon’s

astrology’, op. cit., p. 116.
12 The influence of astrology upon Stoicism is difficult to assess. Astrology was at
most a subordinate feature of the earlier Stoic interest in divination and also in later
authors, such as, Panetius, there is no interest for ‘hard’ astrology. See Long, A. (1982),
‘Astrology: arguments pro and contra’, in J. Barnes and J. Brunschwig (eds), Science and
Speculation. Studies in Hellenistic Theory and Practice, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, pp. 165–92, on pp. 167–71. Cf. also Ioppolo, A.M. (1984), ‘L’astrologia nello
stoicismo antico’, in G. Giannantoni and M. Vegetti (eds), La scienza ellenistica, Naples:
Bibliopolis, pp. 73–91, on pp. 89–90.
that the celestial and terrestrial orders are correlated but not to be
identified, was crucial for many later developments. Ptolomaeus
endorsed Aristotelian philosophy, but as an astrologer he could not
entertain a physical theory which undermines the unity of the cosmos.
Indeed, in his Tetrabiblos, which was centred around the idea that
heavenly influences were entirely physical, he attributed earthly qualities
to the planets. Thus, he demythologized astrology and related diurnal
and seasonal changes to the elemental effects of sun, moon and planets.13
He held that celestial causes of general effects are always more powerful
than those which affect individuals in isolation, and therefore
horoscopic astrology was not a science, but should rather be seen as a
conjectural technique.14
The ancient polemics against astrology started with Cicero. His
arguments (different fates of twins, astronomical distances and relativity
of earthly locations15) were accepted also by later critics of astrology,
such as Geminus and Plotinus. At the time of Sextus Empiricus and
Plotinus, astrology was too powerful to be dismissed as ‘unconceivable
madness’, however.16 Indeed, Sextus attempted to demolish astrology by
attacking its methodological principles, thus acknowledging astrology as
a form of knowledge. He avoided rhetorical arguments and formulated
precise objections, such as the difficulty of determining the precise
moment of birth and the need for a vast casuistry.17 Plotinus’ attitude
towards astrology is more complex. As a Platonist, he defended the
organic unity of the physical universe and was quite willing to grant the
celestial bodies causal influence on human affairs.18 He was a strong
13 Subsequently, medieval schoolmen discussed the thorny question of how planets,
though being eternal and unchangeable, could possess elemental properties. Albert the
Great, for example, formulated the following solution: planets have properties, not
inasmuch as they are fashioned by them, but inasmuch as they produce them in matter
which is susceptible to contrariety. This allows planets to ‘have’ qualities and yet remain
themselves made of quintessence. See Barker Price, B. (1980), ‘The physical astronomy and
astrology of Albertus Magnus’, in J.A. Weisheipl (ed.), Albertus Magnus and the Sciences,
Toronto: Toronto University Press, pp. 155-185, on p. 176.
14 See Long, ‘Astrology: arguments pro and contra’, op. cit., pp. 178–83; Faracovi,
Scritto negli astri, op. cit., pp. 107–41

15 Cicero, De divinatione, ed. W. Armistead Falconer, London: Heinemann;
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996 (1st edn 1923), II.88–99, pp. 470–82.
16 De divinatione, II.89, op. cit., p. 472. For a critical discussion of Cicero’s
arguments, see Faracovi, Scritto negli astri, op. cit., pp. 53–79.
17 Sextus Empiricus, Adversus mathematicos, ed. R.G. Bury, London: Heinemann;
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987 (1st edn 1949), V; for discussion, see
Faracovi, Scritto negli astri, op. cit., pp. 150–53.
18 Enneads, II.3.2. For discussion of the concept of celestial influence, see: North, J.D.
(1986), ‘Celestial influence. The major premiss of astrology’, in Zambelli, Astrologi

234 GIORDANO BRUNO
opponent of orthodox claims, however, and he seemed to sympathize

with a ‘soft’ version of astrology: astral influence is restricted to the
body.19
Neoplatonic philosophy provided an overall theory for the effects of
a wide range of phenomena due to the mutual sympathy between the
various realms of reality. Therefore, later Neoplatonists associated
astrology with prayer, magic and theurgy.20 In their view, the human soul
was split up in a garden variety of distinct faculties and modes of being.
Celestial influence was presumed to touch only the inferior soul, or at
most the pneumatic body of the soul.21 They stuck to their view that the
stars are only signs, not causes. Finally, in Hermetic philosophy, the
planets mediated between the One and the sublunar world. The
heavenly bodies are animated with a rational soul and responsible for
the variety of terrestrial life.22
The hostility of the Church and the decay of learning account for the
decline of astrology after the downfall of the western Roman empire.
After the rise of Islam, however, it became rapidly an integrated element
of the Arabic culture. The Arabs collected Greek, Persian, Syrian and
Indian materials, and integrated astrology in an elaborate universal
philosophy of emanation. Thus, new conceptions developed, such as the
theory of the great conjunctions. Arabic physicians made ample use of
astrology for the benefit of therapy. Noticeably, astrology was
recognized as a science, while medicine, because of its missing link to
philosophy, was held as an art.23 Through Arab mediation and the flood
of Greek and Arabic translations, astrology found its way into Latin
Europe. The symbolic interpretation of astrological references in the
texts of Macrobius and Calcidius was crucial in the revival of twelfth-
century natural philosophy,24 and soon astrology conquered not only the
hallucinati, pp. 45–100; Grant, E. (1987), ‘Medieval and Renaissance scholastic

conceptions of the influence of the celestial region on the terrestrial’, Journal of Medieval
and Renaissance Studies, 17, pp. 1–23.
19 Enneads, III.1.5–6; cf. Long, ‘Astrology: arguments pro and contra’, op. cit., n. 19;
Gandillac, M. (1960), ‘Astres, anges et genies chez Marsile Ficin’, in E. Castelli (ed.),
Umanesimo et esoterismo, Padua: CEDAM, pp. 85–109, on pp. 90–91.
20 Astrological techniques as ‘interrogationes’ and ‘electiones’ were developed in this
cultural milieu. For discussion, see Faracovi, Scritto negli astri, op. cit., p. 81f.
21 For this conception in the Renaissance, see Walker, D.P. (1958), ‘The astral body in
Renaissance medicine’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 21, pp. 119–33.
22 North, J. (1987), ‘Medieval aspects of celestial influence. A survey’, in P. Curry
(ed.), Astrology, Science and Society, Woolbridge and Wolfeboro: The Boydell Press, pp.
5–17.
23 Klein-Franke, F. (1984), Iatromathematics in Islam. A Study on Yuhanna Ibn as-Sat’s
Book on Astrological Medicine, Zurich: Hildesheim and New York: Georg Olms, pp. 1–8.
24 Gregory, T. (1975), ‘La nouvelle idée de nature et de savoir au XIIe siècle’, in R. S.
universities,25 but also the imperial court of Frederick II.26 The

resurgence of medical astrology led to therapeutic applications of the
mathematical arts of the quadrivium. These made necessary careful
planetary observation and time measurement, which in turn was a
stimulus for instrument design.27
During the Middle Ages, the existence of celestial influence was
widely accepted. In general, it was seen as fit and proper that what is
more noble and more perfect should influence and guide what is less
noble and less perfect. Yet, the issue was not uncontroversial. While
Thomas Aquinas, John of Jandun and Robert Anglicus endorsed a total
dominance over terrestrial bodies, Hervaeus Natalis, Richard of
Middleton, and Nicole Oresme, thought that if the heavens were at rest,
change and growth would still exist.28
After the thirteenth century, the astrologizing reading of Aristotelian
natural philosophy became a topos of scholastic commentary and
teaching. Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas referred to Aristotelian
texts on the causality of the celestial bodies within the sublunar world
as a philosophical basis for astrology.29 Albert regarded astrology as a
valid and useful science.30 Yet, although he was convinced that celestial
influence was an important cause of change in the sublunar world, he
held that it was a concause. In his view, the soul undergoes ‘per accidens’
the powers imprinted on the body by the motion of the heavens, that is,
Cohen and M.W. Wartofsky (eds), The Cultural Context of Medieval Learning,
Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, pp. 193–218; see also idem (1988), ‘Forme di
conoscenza e ideali di sapere nella cultura medievale’, Giornale critico della filosofia
italiana, 67, pp. 1–62.
25 See R. Lemay, ‘The true place of astrology in medieval science and philosophy:
towards a definition’, in Astrology, Science and Society, op. cit., pp. 57–73.
26 Michael Scotus regarded astrology as the most important science after theology; cf.
Caroti, S. (1994), ‘L’astrologia’, in Federico II e le scienze, Palermo, pp. 138–51, on pp.

139, 142; cf. idem (1994), ‘L’astrologia nell’età di Federico II’, in Le scienze alla corte di
Federico II, Brepols.
27 See White, L. (1975), ‘Medical astrologers and late medieval technology’, Viator, 6,
pp. 295–308.
28 For discussion, see Grant, E. (1987), ‘Medieval and Renaissance scholastic
conceptions of the influence of the celestial region on the terrestrial’, Journal of Medieval
and Renaissance Studies, 17, pp. 1–23.
29 Aristotelian exegesis current in the thirteenth century compiled the doctrines of De
caelo, Metereologics and De generatione et corruptione together with astrological themes.

A crucial text is On Generation and Corruption, II.10; cfr. also: De caelo, I.2-3,
Metereologics, I.2, 339a21–3, II.2, 354b24–33; Physics, II.2, 194b13–14, VII.1, 242a13f,
VIII.9, 265b35f.
30 For discussion, see Speculum astronomiae, ed. Zambelli, P. and S. Caroti, Pisa:
Domus Gialileana, 1977; and Zambelli, P. (ed.), The Speculum astronomiae and its
Enigma, Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1992.
236 GIORDANO BRUNO
only inasmuch as it is ‘actus corporis’.31 Crucial in Thomas Aquinas’s

defence was the view that the stars ‘inclined’ but did not ‘necessitate’. As
celestial influence regarded only the body, it did not represent a serious
menace for the intellectual soul, free will or divine providence.32
Thomas’s solution became the standard defence of astrology in the later
Middle Ages. That the stars had only an indirect influence on human
behaviour answered charges of astrological determinism as well as the
criticism that astrological predictions were often inaccurate. Moreover,
granting the stars power over bodies rescued astrological medicine.
Other scholastics went much further: Pierre d’Ailly regarded astrology
as the highest science, capable of assisting theology, and proposed
astrological interpretations of biblical miracles.
On the whole, the relationships between astrology and Christianity
were rather intricate. Ecclesiastical condemnations were generally
inspired by theological and ethical motives, rather than being justified
by epistemological and scientific reasons. Many Fathers attacked
astrology for its demonic origin and associated it with idolatry and
magic.33 In late Antiquity, however, Isidore of Seville draw a distinction
between a natural and a superstitious part of astrology.34 And after the
twelfth century, astrology became an integrated part of western science
and philosophy. A certain amount of clerical opposition remained also
during the Middle Ages.35 And in the fourteenth century, Nicole Oresme
stressed the high degree of vagueness and uncertainty characterizing
astrology.36 However, ecclesiastical condemnations and various
scholarly attacks did not eliminate astrology from cultural life.37
31 P. Zambelli, The Speculum astronomiae and its Enigma, op. cit., p. 69.
32 Litt, T. (1963), Les corps célestes dans l’univers de saint Thomas d’Aquin, Louvain:
Publications Universitaires Paris: Beatrice-Nauwelaerts discovered over 130 passages in
Thomas’s writings devoted to celestial influence and astrology.
33 Baldini, U. (2001), ‘The Roman Inquisition’s condemnation of astrology:
antecedents, reasons and consequences’, G. Fragnito (ed.), Church, Censorship and

Culture in Early Modern Italy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 79–110.
34 Ackermann Smoller, L. (1994), History, Prophecy, and the Stars. The Christian
Astrology of Pierre d’Ailly, 1350–1420, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, p. 27.
See also the studies by Lejbowitz mentioned above.
35 See S. Caroti, L’astrologia in Italia, op. cit., pp. 171–3, for a discussion of the
articles of the 1277 condemnation regarding astrology.

36 See Nicole Oresme, (1977), Quaestio contra divinatores horoscopios, ed. S. Caroti,
in Archives d’histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Age, 43, pp. 201–310. Among the
opponents also Gilles of Rome and Henry of Langenstein are to be mentioned. See
Ackermann Smoler, History, Prophecy, and the Stars, pp. 32–6.
37 The condemnations of Pietro D’Abano and Cecco D’Ascoli were not reducible to
their astrological interests alone. See G. Federici Vescovini, ‘Peter of Abano and astrology’,
in Astrology, Science, and Society, op.cit., pp. 19–39.
During the Renaissance astrology developed according to different

strands, without being universally accepted. By the early fifteenth
century, a tradition of secular Aristotelianism had established in the
northern Italian universities a pattern of education in which astrology
had a prominent place in natural philosophy. Marsilio Ficino attacked
judicial astrology in his Disputatio contra iudicium astrologorum
(1477), while in De vita (1489) he endorsed fundamental issues of
horoscopic astrology in order to sustain his quite peculiar idea of a
medicine of body and soul.38 The rediscovery of Ptolomaeus’
Tetrabiblos marked a return to technical horoscopic astrology as ‘ars
conjecturalis’ in Cardano.39 In Pietro Pomponazzi, by contrast,
celestial influence was interpreted in deterministic, fatalistic wordings.
The more the astrological system became refined, the more sagacity
and intellectual effort were required for its refutation. Indeed, Pico’s
well argued attack in Disputationes, did not succeed in displacing
astrology from the university curricula. After Pico, astrology was
defended by professional astrologers, including Bellanti, Pontano,
Gaurico and Giuntini, and by humanist scholars, such as
Melanchthon, who never doubted its scientific accuracy.40 Also
contemporary professional astronomers, among whom were
Regiomontanus, Peurbach and Bianchini, continued to practise
astrology. And once the Copernican scheme was shown to be
astronomically practicable, it became inevitable that it should be
adapted to astrological needs. Thus, Copernican astronomy did not
constitute an obstacle, but rather a stimulus for Schöner, Gemma
Frisius and Rheinhold to develop a more precise astrology.41 At the
turn of the century, Kepler attempted seriously to reform astrology on
38 Pompeo Faracovi, O. (1999), ‘Introduzione’, in Marsilio Ficino, Scritti
sull’astrologia, Milan: Biblioteca Universale Rizzoli, 1999, pp. 5–36, rightly argued
that Ficino’s apparently changing attitude towards astrology should not be accounted
for by biographical or psychological explanations, but rather by his clearly distinct
appraisal of fatalistic and conjectural strands of this discipline. See also Walker, D.P.
(1986), ‘Ficino and astrology’, in G.C. Garfagnini (ed.), Marsilio Ficino e il ritorno di
Platone, Florence: L.S. Olschki, vol. II, pp. 341–9; Kaske, C.V. (1986), ‘Ficino’s shifting
attitude towards astrology’, in ibid., vol. II, pp. 371–81.
39 See Grafton A. (1999), Cardano’s Cosmos. The Worlds and Works of a Renaissance
Astrologer, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; Pompeo Faracovi, Scritto negli
astri, op. cit., p. 240f. Also other Renaissance authors, including Melanchthon, thought of
Arabic astrology as almost worthless in comparison with Ptolemy’s.
40 See Garin, Lo zodiaco della vita, op. cit., pp. 95–106.
41 See North, J.D. (1989), ‘The reluctant revolutionaries: astronomy after
Copernicus’, in The Universal Frame. Historical Essays in Astronomy, Natural Philosophy

and Scientific Method, London: Hambledon Press, pp. 17–32.
238 GIORDANO BRUNO
a renewed basis.42 And even Galileo reflected on and practised

astrology.43
Bruno on Astrology
Although Bruno did not have a profound knowledge of astrology in its

various aspects,44 he was acquainted with its basic ideas45 and
techniques,46 and with some astrological treatises.47 His use and view of
astrology depended upon the specific topic under discussion, and
changed according to the various astrological theories and practices he
took into account. It has become a commonplace to mention that on
several occasions he referred to the theory of the great conjunctions.
Similarly, in his mnemotechnical treatises, he used astrological images48
42 See Kepler, J. (1941), De fundamentis astrologiae certioribus, in Gesammelte
Werke, vol. IV, ed. M. Caspar and F. Hamme, München: C.H. Beck’sche
Verlagsbuchhandlung. For discussion, see Simon, G. (1975), ‘Kepler’s astrology: the
direction of a reform’, in A. Beer and P. Beer (eds), Kepler. Four Hundred Years, Oxford:
Pergamon Press, pp. 439–48; Field, J.V. ‘Astrology in Kepler’s cosmology’, in Astrology,
Science, and Society, op. cit., pp. 143–70.
43 During his stay in Padua, Galileo was denounced to the Inquisition for casting
horoscopes; see the document published in Poppi, A. (1993), Cremonini, Galilei e gli
inquisitori del Santo a Padova, Padua: Centro Studi Antoniani, pp. 51–4. For discussion
of Galilei’s Astrologica nonnulla, preserved in the National Library in Florence, see
Faracovi, Scritto negli astri, op. cit., pp. 250–52.
44 Notice that Bruno’s references to astrological views and practices are quite vague
and do not permit us to establish precise sources for either the views he accepted or the
targets of his polemics and scorn.
45 Cf. Tocco, F. (1892), ‘Le fonti più recenti della filosofia del Bruno’, in Rendiconti
della Reale Accademia dei Lincei, Classe di scienze morali, storiche e filologiche, serie V,
vol. I, pp. 503–38, 585–622, cap. VII; Sturlese, R. (1985), ‘Su Bruno e Tycho Brahe’,
Rinascimento, 25, pp. 309–33; Ingegno, ‘Ermetismo e oroscopo delle religioni nello
Spaccio bruniano’, op. cit.; idem, Cosmologia e filosofia nel pensiero di Giordano Bruno,
op. cit., cap. I–II; Faracovi, Scritto negli astri, pp. 255–9; Granada, ‘Introduction’, in
Furori, BOeuC VII, pp. xvii–xxxix.
46 De monade, BOL I.2, pp. 400–401. See also De imag. comp., BOL II.3, p. 103:
‘Accedunt caelestium effectus potentissimi considerandi, qui in cardinalibus orientis,

occidentis et meridiei virtutem, principium et perfectionem concipere censentur. Hinc ea
quae de solstitialibus, aequinoctialibus, mediae diei mediaeque noctis punctis, in quibus se
circuli maiores intersecant, astrologi et omnis generis divini summopere commendant.’
47 For example, R. Sturlese has shown that Bruno read Olaus Cimber, Diarium
astrologicum et meteorologicum (1586); see her ‘Bruno & Brahe’, op. cit., on pp. 324–25.
Cf. also Magia math., BOL III, pp. 501–3.
48 Notably, those by Teucer the Babylonian in De umbris, BUI, p. 35; cf. Explicatio,
in BOL II.2, p. 123. In Spaccio de la bestia trionfante, Bruno used images drawn from
Hyginus, Poetica astronomica, to represent the expulsion of the vices and their
replacement by the virtues. For discussion, see Clucas, S. (1999), ‘Amorem, artem,
and reflected on the position and role of the heavens in earthly matters.
In his cosmological works, by contrast, he attacked mathematical
astrology and astrological interpretations of extraordinary celestial
phenomena, such as comets and novae. Now, while astrological views
were endorsed in his expositions of Aristotle’s physics and in his magical
works, astrology was also severely attacked in the latter, most noticeably
in De rerum principiis. Finally, when arrested Bruno was in possession
of an astrological treatise, and during his trial he openly defended
astrology as a useful science.49 It is quite natural, in the light of these
various positions and attitudes, to classify Bruno’s reflections on
astrology according to distinct categories.
Astrology and Astronomy
Like many predecessors and contemporary authors, Bruno did not

clearly distinguish between astrology and technical astronomy.
Sometimes, he used both terms interchangeably,50 while in his
expositions of Aristotle’s physics, he took ‘astrology’ as a synonym for
‘astronomy’.51 Thus, his well-known polemics with (mathematical)
astronomy explains the fierce attack against astrology in De l’infinito:
But he believed that no other corporeal entities existed beyond the
eighth sphere, above which the astrologers of his time did not
magiam, mathesim. Brunian images and the domestication of the soul’, Zeitsprünge.
Forschungen zur Frühen Neuzeit, 3, pp. 5–24, who cites on p. 11: Catana, L. (1997),
‘Narrative structure and imagery in Giordano Bruno’s Lo spaccio de la bestia trionfante’,
Warburg Institute, MA dissertation, esp. pp. 21–7; idem (2000), ‘Bruno’s Spaccio and
Hyginus Poetica astronomica’, in Bruniana & Campanelliana, 6, pp. 57–77.
49 L. Firpo, Processo, pp. 187, 193 and 287.
50 Camoer. acrot., BOL I.1, p. 106.
51 Figuratio, BOL I.4, p. 156: ‘Mathematicus autem … qui non purus est, determinat
quidem formam ad materiam, sed non ad sensibilem, quatenus essentiale rei constitutivum
principium existit, ut patet in perspectiva, musica et astrologia … ‘; Libri Phys. Aristot.,
BOL III, p. 321: ‘Inter has est etiam astrologia, quae propius accedit ad physicam, non
tamen est physica, quia etsi de globis et circulis caelestibus considerat, non accipit haec sub
ratione naturae, sed sub ordine fati vel fortunae seu signorum.’ The background is in
Aristotle, Physica, II, textus 20, in BOL cum Averrois commentariis, 11 vols, Venetiis
1562–74, vol. IV, f. 55va: ‘Demonstrant autem & quae ex Mathematicis magis Physica
sunt, ut Perspectiva, & Harmonica, & Astrologia.’ Cf. De monade, BOL I.2, pp. 389–90:
‘Quid est eclypsis praeter umbram? Multarum tamen rerum illam causam atque
impedimentum esse comprehendunt Physici et Astrologi’; De immenso, III.7, BOL I.1, p.
370: ‘Naturam errare putatis Astrologi; grave corpus enim e medio esse remotum efficitis
vel suspensum contro Stagyraei invictos canones, sapiens quibus ille putavit undique
librato circumlabi aethera tractu.’ See also De rerum princ., BOL III, p. 538, where Bruno
used the term ‘astronomi’ for astrologers.
240 GIORDANO BRUNO
conceive another heaven … Astrological suppositions and

phantasies already reject this doctrine, which is the more so
condemned by those who develop more penetrating insights …
because the reason for their equidistance depends only on the
utterly false supposition of an immobile earth, against which all
nature protests, and every reason has come to claim and every
orderly and well-informed intellect asserts.52
Neither astrology nor its basic idea, that is, celestial influence, are
condemned here: Ptolemaic astronomy and, by consequence,
Aristotelian cosmology are Bruno’s targets. Bruno argued for the
unification of terrestrial and celestial physics. In his view, this unification
entailed that the motions of the celestial bodies are not perfectly regular,
and thus cannot be captured by mathematical astronomy. By
consequence, astrological forecasting lacks a theoretical foundation, and
therefore is essentially uncertain. For the same reason, Bruno rejected in
De immenso the Platonic view of the ‘great year’.53
Great Conjunctions
From the ninth century onwards, Jewish and Arab astrologers, notably
Abu Ma’shar and Mesha’allah, had constructed the technique of the
Great Conjunctions. This view, which is not to be found in Ptolemy,
involved structuring time according to the aspects between the slower-
moving planets – Saturn, Jupiter and Mars – through the zodiacal signs.
This provided a chronological framework on a scale appropriate to the
history of religions and nations. A similar use of astrology in a political
and religious context became quite common also among Renaissance
authors. Pomponazzi and Cardano endorsed the horoscope of religions
and provided astrological explanations for miracles.54 Jean Bodin
formulated a sort of political astrology: nature moved according to
mathematical laws and planetary circles. He believed that if these
fundamental principles were recognized, especially by ruling
52 Infinito, BDI, p. 429: ‘e però lui, si fermò a non credere altro corpo, che l’ottava
sfera, oltre la quale gli astrologi di suoi tempi non aveano compreso altro cielo … In tanto
che le astrologiche supposizioni e fantasie condannano questa sentenza, viene assai più
condannata da quei che meglio intendono … perché la raggione della loro equidistanza
depende solo dal falsissimo supposito della fission de la terra; contra il quale crida tutta la
natura, e proclama ogni raggione, e sentenzia ogni regolato e ben informato intelletto al
fine.’
53 De immenso, III.7, BOL I.1, pp. 367–72. Recall that Bruno only apparently
accepted this doctrine in Spaccio, BDI, pp. 577–8.

54 Pomponazzi Pietro (1567), De incantationibus, Basilaea, pp. 286–7.
politicians, the latter would be in a position to maintain political

stability.55
In Spaccio de la bestia trionfante and other works, Bruno referred
explicitly to the horoscope of religions,56 and in later mnemotechnical
works he presented astrological explanations for religious phenomena,
such as the biblical story of Moses and the copper serpent.57 Notice,
however, that in Spaccio Bruno made a purely instrumental use of
traditional astrological motives and views, such as the horoscope of
religions, without endorsing the cosmological connotations of
traditional astrology.58 Indeed, unlike contemporary authors, such as
Tycho Brahe, Röslin and Cornelius Gemma,59 Bruno attempted to
detach the explanation of extraordinary cosmic events, such as comets
and novae, or new stars, from their traditional astrological context.60 In
Spaccio and other works, he argued for the immanence of divinity and
rejected the hierarchical view of reality, underlying most traditional
astrology. Indeed, the physical homogeneity of the universe ruled out the
view of the sublunar world as just a reflection of the divine world and
dominated by planets.
55 Cf. Campion, N. (1994), The Great Year. Astrology, Millenarianism and History in
the Western Tradition, London: Arkana Penguin Books, p. 396.

56 See BDI, pp. 577–8; De monade, BOL I.2, pp. 400–401; De magia math., BOL III,
p. 501; De rerum princ., pp. 540–41. For discussion see Ingegno, ‘Ermetismo e oroscopo
delle religioni nello Spaccio bruniano’, op. cit.
57 De imag. comp., BOL II.3, p. 102: ‘Unum tamen in memoria revocari volo, quod
planetae similes facies in rebus subiectis et informandis Magorum consilio atque ipsa praxi
exquirere videntur. Idem Cabalistarum doctrina confirmat et exemplum Mosis, qui
interdum, veluti necessitate quadam coactus, ad Cereris atque Iovis favorem
comparandum, vitellum aureum erexit, ad Martis item temperandum simul atque Saturni
violentiam, aëneum serpentem adorandum obiecit; et multa alia videre est, quae occulta
atque velata in eius tum operibus tum dictis esse perhibentur … propter nescio quam
superiorum formarum cum inferiori materia compertam expertam simul atque occultam
analogiam; unde imaginibus et similitudinibus quibusdam veluti illecta descendunt seseque
communicant.’
58 Spaccio, BDI, p. 560: ‘Questo mondo, tolto secondo l’imaginazion de stolti
matematici, ed accettato da non più saggi fisici, tra quali gli Peripatetici son più vani, non
senza frutto presente: prima diviso come in tante sfere, e poi distinto in circa quarant’otto
imagini (nelle quali intendono primamente partito un cielo ottavo, stellifero, detto da’
volgari firmamento), viene ad essere principio e suggetto del nostro lavoro.’
59 Tycho Brahe, (1573), De nova et nullius aevi memoria prius visa Stella, iam pridem
Anno a nato Christo 1572. Mense Novembri primum conspecta, Hauniae, in Opera
omnia, vol. I, ed. I.L.E. Dreyer, Hauniae, 1913, pp. 1–72; C. Gemma, De prodigiosa
specie, naturaque cometae, qui nobis effulsit altior lunae sedibus, Antverpiae, 1578.
60 De immenso, BOL I.2, p. 28: comets are parts of the natural course of events; cf.
idem, IV.13, BOL I.2, p. 70. On ‘novae’, see: idem, IV.9, BOL I.2, p. 51; idem, VI.20, BOL
I.2, pp. 223, 227–8. For discussion, see Ingegno, ‘Ermetismo e oroscopo delle religioni
nello Spaccio bruniano’, op. cit.
242 GIORDANO BRUNO
Ideas and the Celestial World
The use of Teucer’s astrological images in Bruno’s mnemotechnics is well

known and has been extensively discussed.61 More interesting for
present purposes are Bruno’s views on the heavens in these works:
The forms of things are in the ideas, they are in a certain way in
themselves; they are in heaven, in the period of heaven, in the
seminal and efficient causes; they are singularly in the effect, they
are in the light, in the external and internal senses in their own
ways.62
The ideas pervade reality at all levels, thus laying the groundwork for
various types of perception, cognition and, in Bruno’s later works,
action. Bruno integrated the heavens and its periodum in the dynamics
of the formal structure of reality. As in traditional philosophy, the
heavens mediate between the realm of ideas and the material world. In
another passage, Bruno confirmed that the heavens contain the forms of
the terrestrial world on a superior level, distinguishing between the
celestial world and the intellectual heavens.63 Thus, Bruno’s
mnemotechnical works reveal that the heavens represent the ‘corpus
idearum’ on a precise level of the schala naturae, in between the physical
and the intelligible world.
The Heavens and the Sublunar World
It was probably not before the end of the 1580s that Bruno started to
develop a more precise and explicit interest in astrology. His later works
contain numerous references to the issue of celestial influence and the
61 See, for example, De umbris, BUI, pp. 34–5, with a reference to Manilius,
Astronomica, II.227, and De umbris, p. 150; Spaccio, BDI, p. 560. For discussion, see
Garin, E. (1960), ‘Le “elezioni” e il problema dell’astrologia’, in Castelli, Umanesimo e
esoterismo, op. cit., pp. 17–37, on p. 37; Rossi, P. (1960), Clavis universalis. Arti della
memoria e logica combinatoria da Lullo a Leibniz, Milano and Napoli: Riccardo Ricciardi
Editore, cap. IV; Yates, F. (1964), Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, London:
Routledge and Kegan Paul, ch. XI; idem (1978), The Art of Memory, London: Penguin
Books, (1st edn 1966), pp. 197ff; Faracovi Scritto negli astri, op. cit., pp. 174–5, 255.
62 De umbris, BUI, pp. 49–50: ‘Rerum formae sunt in ideis, sunt quodammodo in se
ipsis; sunt in coelo; sunt in periodo caeli, sunt in causis proximis seminalibus; sunt in
causis proximis efficientibus, sunt in individualiter in effectu, sunt in lumine, sunt in
extrinseco sensu, sunt in intrinseco, modo suo.’
63 De umbris, BUI, p. 54: ‘Cum deveneris ad rationem qua conformabere coelo
corpori, quod animalium inferiorum etiam vilium ratione non vili formas continet, pedem
ne figito, sed nitaris ad intellectualis caeli conformitatem, quod totius mundi formas
praestantiori modo possidet, quam coelesti.’
impact of the heavenly bodies on terrestrial events, most notably their

role in grounding magical operations. This specific interest is
demonstrated by the fact that at the moment of his arrest he possessed
the manuscript De sigillis Hermetis, Ptolomaei et aliorum and
confirmed by his defence of astrology during the trial.64
Dwelling on the issue ‘Quomodo generatio et corruptio
perpetuentur’, in his exposition of the fourth book of Aristotle’s
Meteorology, Bruno acknowledged that celestial motions exerted a real
influence on natural processes.65 Also in his magical works, Bruno
showed an interest in astrology, attributing to the heavens a central
position in the line of universal influxus,66 and associating psychological
phenomena, such as fury and melancholy, with distinct planets.67
For an adequate comprehension of Bruno’s later views on astrology
an analysis of his De rerum principiis is crucial. First, it is undoubtedly
Bruno’s most ‘astrological’ work, since the theoretical assumptions
underlying this treatise are inspired by the fundamental correspondence
between celestial and terrestrial realms and vicissitudes, mediated by a
universal spirit, serving as a channel for the transmission of celestial
influence. Second, Bruno formulated here more explicit objections
against (some forms of) astrology than in earlier works, rejecting the
possibility of astrological forecasting. In Bruno’s view, there are
infinitely many possible combinations of astral motions. And this
conviction fuelled his harsh polemics against the deterministic strands of
(horoscopic) astrology.
In De rerum principiis Bruno distinguished three types of
correspondence between celestial motion and terrestrial events. The first
category regards circumstances and fortunes, that is, events which
develop during a relatively long period. The second and third types
concern the seasonal changes of generation and corruption, and the
daily changes, respectively. Discussing the dominion of the planets,
Bruno referred to the traditional principles ruling the distinctions
between the zodiacal signs, and between the various celestial qualities
and virtues. Consequently, he endorsed the view that celestial influence
is transmitted according to astrological principles developed and
generally accepted since the Chaldeans.68 Then a historical survey
64 See ‘Medicine’ section below.

65 See the astrological excursus in his comment on De generatione & corruptione, II,
te. 56, in Libri Phys. Aristot., BOL III, pp. 366–8. See already Spaccio, BDI, p. 781.
66 Thes. de magia, BOL III, p. 457: the ‘ordo influxus’ includes ‘Deus, astra,
daemones, elementa, mixta’; cf. De magia math., BOL III, p. 493.

67 De magia, BOL III, p. 478.
68 De rerum princ., BOL III, p. 540: ‘de quorum effectibus et potestatibis cognoscendis
244 GIORDANO BRUNO
follows regarding various opinions on the dominion of the planets,

among which those of the Greeks, Pietro d’Abano and Trithemius. The
order of planetary influence is obvious to all of them, so Bruno affirmed,
at least in so far as its effects are considered. As regards its cause,
however, this order is known to the wise only, who are capable of
calculating astral motions. Denomination and order of the seven planets
is not only ‘valde rei et rationi consona’ (undoubtedly consonant with
the things and with reason) but also confirmed by observation.69
Quite surprisingly, while accepting the view that human daily life
depends upon planetary influences and acknowledging its ancient
origin, Bruno apparently rejected in its entirety any technical astrology
based on observation and calculation of celestial aspects and
configurations of the planets, since they ‘neque aliquid causant, neque
significant’ (are neither things which cause nor which signify).70 As on
other occasions, Bruno’s polemics against (technical) astrology flows
from his rejection of mathematical approaches in astronomy and in
natural philosophy in general.71 Indeed, he did not reject astrology as
such, but more precisely what he called the ‘superstitious manipulations’
of astrological techniques.72 Astrological treatises contain ‘fragments of
truth’, even though ‘mingled with numerous vanities’.73 Bruno did not
specify explicitly what these fragments consisted of, but the context of
remitto te ad astrologos principes, penes quos haec pars intemerata videtur et ea in

integritate vel prope illam integritatem consistens, ut virtutes septem principum a
Chaldaeis olim fuerunt annotatae.’
69 De rerum princ., BOL III, p. 542.
70 De rerum princ., BOL III, p. 544: ‘Quod attinet autem ad theoriam et
considerationem planetarum et dispositionem eorundem in illis orbibus cum illis

aspectuum variis differentiis et facierum, omnino videntur et sunt inutilis considerationis;
ipsae enim stellae, quod ad particularia attinet, neque aliquid causant neque significant, et
isti planetae, de quibus nunc dicimus, cum istis nihil habent commune nisi nomen; quae
communio forte fuit evertendae scientiae causa et deviniendi ad illas fictiones, ut quod
dictum fuit et intellectum ab antiquis in annis istis diurnis et circuitibus, fortasse ad
confundendum et occultandum verum data opera et ad multiplicandum studia inutilia et
vana fuit relatum ab aliquo deceptore ad ordines illorum planetarum, hoc est stellarum;
qua persuasione semel ab uno recepta facile fuit hanc ignorantiam usque adeo propagare
quo propagata est.’
71 Cena de le Ceneri, ed. G. Aquilecchia, Torino, 1955, p. 148: ‘Senza cognizione il
saper computare … è un passatempo da pazzi’; Camoer. Acrot., BOL I.1, p. 155: physical
bodies are not to be identified with ‘vanae mathematicorum species’. Cf. the attack on idle
sophist algebra and computation in Sig. sigill., BOL II.2, p. 214. For the contrast between
mathematical and physical approaches in science and philosophy, see also De la causa,
principio e uno, ed. G. Aquilecchia, Torino, 1973, p. 19, Infinito, BDI, p. 479, and De
immenso, III.3, BOL I.1, p. 340; idem, V.5, BOL I.2, p. 138.
his reasoning reveals that the broader conception of celestial influence is

involved.74 Indeed, magical operations presuppose correspondence and
interaction between various realms of reality, and thus also between the
heavens and the sublunar world.
Medicine
Ever since late Antiquity, astrology had been condemned and prohibited
frequently by the Catholic Church. However, ecclesiastical censures
were not aimed at astrology as such, but rather at astrological
conceptions presenting a real threat to Christian faith and theology, in
particular those doctrines regarding individual free will and events of
sacred or universal history. Large sections of (natural) astrology were
tolerated, and by the beginning of the sixteenth century astrology had
penetrated the courts of popes and cardinals. The delicate balance
between prohibition and tolerance was seriously perturbed by Sixtus V’s
restrictive bull Coeli et terrae (1586). This bull was far from being
universally accepted, and during the years 1590 various distinguished
members of the Roman Catholic clergy argued for less restrictive
measures against astrology.75 Considering this context, it should not
come as a surprise that both the Venetian and the Roman inquisitors
dwelt on Bruno’s possessing a work of judicial astrology. To his Venetian
judges, who asked for elucidations about De sigillis Hermetis, Ptolomei
et aliorum, Bruno answered that the book was not written by him, but
copied from a manuscript by his student Besler.76 And in later
interrogations, Bruno motivated his interest in this work with scientific
curiosity,77 and by reference to Albert the Great’s positive comments on
it.78 The interrogations reported in the summary of Bruno’s trial furnish
other information on his specific interest in this work:
And [astrology] could be well handled by a God-fearing man, who
is able to judge from which principles proceed the right and
forbidden effects, and in which guise they are implemented by virtue
of the forces of the celestial dispositions and the efficacy of images
74 See also De rerum princ., BOL III, pp. 552–3.

75 See U. Baldini, ‘Inquisizione romana e astrologia nel secolo XVI: antecedenti,
ragioni e conseguenze di una condanna’, forthcoming.
76 Firpo, Processo, p. 166: ‘non è mia dottrina; ma io l’ho fatto trascrivere da un altro
libro scritto a mano’. To the best of my knowledge, this work has not been traced yet. It
consisted probably of a compilation comparable to De magia mathematica.
77 Firpo, Processo, p. 187: ‘quella che è dalla astrologia giuditiaria, ho detto et havuto
ancora proposito di studiarla per vedere se haveva verità o conformità alcuna.’

78 Firpo, Processo, p. 193: ‘perché Alberto Magno nel suo libro De mineralibus ne fa
mentione, et lo loda nel loco dove tratta De imaginibus lapidum … .’

246 GIORDANO BRUNO
and characters, and to judge whether they are executed by wise men
or by demons, who do not differ as to the effecting of marvellous
works by respecting signs and hours and treating the inferior matter
with ceremony, that is, works that either damage or benefit
mankind. I never had any intention of propagating that science,
since I did not like that practice, except for that part pertaining to
medicine, which this science greatly contributes to, as claimed on
several occasions by Hippocrates and Galenus.79
The belief in causal links between celestial bodies and metals, plants,
stones and parts of the (human) body had given rise, since Antiquity, to
complex interrelations between astrology and medicine. As a
consequence, Arabic and Western physicians made ample use of
astrology for the purpose of medical diagnosis and therapy. The remarks
quoted above, although probably expressed under pressure, mark once
more Bruno’s changing attitude towards astrology during the last active
years of his philosophical career, emphasizing its practical use in
medicine. Also in his ‘medical’ treatise, the Medicina lulliana, he argued
for the usefulness of specific astrological notions, most notably the
positions and aspects of the heavenly bodies80 in the analysis and cure of
diseases.81 In this same work, Bruno even provided an astrological
diagram for physicians without an astrological background.82
Celestial Influence: Planets and Souls
Astrological culture was an ensemble of theories and practices that

developed and evolved together, including attacks and defences of all
sorts. Renaissance astrology was not a sharply defined body of
79 Firpo, Processo, p. 287: ‘e potrebbe stare ben in mano d’un huomo timorato di Dio,
e ch’ha da giudicare gl’effetti leciti et illeciti da che principi procedono, e con che forma si
mettono in essecutione con la virtù delle celesti dispositioni et opere dell’imagini e
caratteri, o si faccino da huomini sapienti o da demonii, quali tutti convengono in questo,
che con l’osservanza dei segni e dei tempi e trattar cereminiosamente la materia inferiore,
effettuano cose maravigliose in danno et in utilità degl’huomini. Non ho mai havuto
intentione di propagare detta scientia … perché la prattica mai mi piacque, eccetto
secondo quella parte ch’appartiene alla medicina, alla quale potissimamente conferisce
questa scientia, come Ipocrate e Galeno più volte gridano.’ As regards Galen arguing for
astrology as indispensable for medicine, see Ficino, M. (1576), De vita, III.10, in Opera
omnia, Basileae: Bottega di Erasmo (reprint Torino, 1983), p. 542.
80 In Med. lull., BOL III, p. 592-93, Bruno refers explicitly to his astrological
exposition in De rerum principiis. See also Med. lull., BOL III, pp. 580–81, and p. 593 for
the ‘virtutes domorum, aspectuum, planetarum, signorum’.
81 Med. lull., BOL III, pp. 574–5.
82 Med. lull., BOL III, p. 578: ‘Medicus etsi in astrologia non sit peritus, habebit ex
hac figura rationem investigatam causarum, mediorum et effectuum propositi.’

conceptions and techniques. Its philosophical assumptions consisted of

an instable mixture of Aristotelian, Stoic and Neoplatonic ideas,
regarding, respectively, the order of celestial bodies, determinism and the
view of universal sympathy and antipathy. Some views, such as that of
celestial influence, were universally accepted, while others, such as those
inherited from the Arabs, were not. Some techniques, such as horoscopic
astrology, required a mathematical preparation not mastered by all
practitioners.
Between his early and later works, Bruno’s view of astrology
developed from instrumental use and ironic scorn to a critical appraisal.
In general, he deplored the credulity of his time and criticized the
arbitrary nature of prediction and divination. His criticism of astrology
was also inspired by his rejection of Aristotelian cosmology as well as of
mathematical approaches in natural philosophy. By contrast, Bruno’s
subsequent interest in astrology was connected to the more operational
strand of his research during the last years of his activity. Also in his later
works, however, he remained critical of specific sections of astrology. He
refused to attribute particular significance to eclipses and comets, and
held that the celestial bodies qua bodies can at most be signs of
terrestrial events.83
Bruno’s criticisms can be traced in some of his ‘predecessors’. Nicole
Oresme, for example, thought that man was unable to know with
precision the motions of celestial bodies. Therefore, he regarded
astrology as vague and inherently uncertain, and astrological forecasting
as utterly impossible. In his Disputationes adversus astrologiam
divinatricem, Pico argued that admitting a general celestial influence on
terrestrial phenomena did not entail that this influence can be resolved
into discernible relations between particular heavenly causes and
corresponding earthly effects. Also Bruno held that the causal
relationships between the celestial and terrestrial worlds cannot be
exactly traced, since the motions of the celestial bodies are not perfectly
regular, and therefore are not to be captured by systematic mathematical
relations. Thus, lacking a theoretical foundation, astrological
forecasting is essentially uncertain.
In his later works, Bruno could not bring himself to condemn astrology
completely and radically as a total error. Undoubtedly his cosmology
removed one of the bases of medical astrology, namely belief in the
superiority of the heavens over the sublunar regions. Yet, he took it for
certain that heavenly bodies exercised influences and determined
tendencies, regarding both meteorological phenomena as well as the
83 De immenso, BOL I.2, pp. 264–5.

248 GIORDANO BRUNO
temper and disposition of bodies. Thus, he granted the efficiency of

celestial bodies in meteorology, magic and medicine. Notice, however, that
Bruno did not endorse any strong version of astral determinism. First,
man’s soul is not subjected to the motion of the celestial bodies,84 and
second, there exist infinite possibilities for the individuation of favourable
or unfavourable moments to undertake a determinate action.85
Bruno’s interest in astrology concerned two issues, namely (1) the
correspondence between public welfare and celestial events, and (2) its
possible application in magic and medicine. His rejection of horoscopic
astrology, together with his acceptance of the theory of the great
conjunctions, and a possible use of astrology in operational disciplines
must be interpreted from the broader perspectives afforded by his
philosophy. Bruno endorsed two views, namely, the animation of the
celestial bodies and the fundamental unity of natural reality, which
constitute an ideal frame for astrology. However, while he took the basic
fact of astrology – the existence of celestial influence – for granted,
Bruno attempted to explain it on a different theoretical basis.
Things in the universe are ordered in such a way that they make up
a co-ordination, and through a certain continuous flow they admit
a progression from all things to all things. Accordingly, the celestial
divinities by concession of things and in virtue of some indivisible
media, that is by their influences, subdue the inferior and lowest
things.86
Bruno’s ontology is inspired by the idea of a ‘schala naturae’ which

entails that the ontological, cognitive and operational orders are
intimately linked87 and hierarchically structured.88 Indeed, the physical
84 Cf. De vinculis, BOL III, p. 644: ‘Coeli astra, viridia prata, cantus etc. movent,
alliciunt, inclinant, non rapiunt.’

86 De vinculis, BOL III, pp. 691–2: ‘Res in universo ita sunt ordinatae, ut in una
quadam coordinatione consistant, ita ut continuo quodam quasi fluxu ab omnibus

progressio fieri possit ad omnia … Itaque numina, per rerum elargitionem et mediorum
quorundam impertibilium favorem, inferiora et infima tandem sibi devinciunt influendo.’
87 De la causa, op. cit, p. 151: ‘Prima dumque voglio che notiate essere una e
medesima scala, per la quale la natura descende alla produzzion del le cose, e l’intelletto
ascende alla cognizion di quelle; e che l’uno e l’altra da unità procede all’unità, passando
per la moltitudine di mezzi.’ Cf. Summa term. met., BOL I.4, p. 115: ‘quibus eadem serie
res cognoscuntur qua et constituuntur et configurantur’; idem, p. 116: ‘Hoc ordine res et
fiunt et cognosci existimantur a caussis superioribus, nobis vero, qui a sensibilibus
ascendimus ad intelligibilia, contrario ordine atque serie accipitur prius atque posterius’.
88 See De umbris, BUI, pp. 34–5; De la causa, op. cit., pp. 125 and 131; De magia,
pp. 401–2, 435; Thes. de magia, BOL III, p. 457; De magia math., BOL III, p. 493. For
discussion on the cognitive faculties, representations and objects, see also Cantus, in BOL
II.1, pp. 219 and 235; Summa term. met., BOL I.4, p. 118.
homogeneity of the universe and the existence of all types of connection,

correspondence and interrelation between the various levels and realms
of reality did not rule out a relative superiority of the heavens89 and a
hierarchy of superior intellects.90 Now, in Bruno’s ontology, efficient
causality was attributed to soul or intellect, and not to (moving) bodies.
Thus, he did not have a purely physical view of the workings of the
planets.91 Their activity and influence are grounded in their soul.92 And
since their souls may be superior to human souls, they are granted
influence on terrestrial and human affairs. Consequently, celestial
influence is not to be calculated, but captured and manipulated in other
fashions, as is suggested in Bruno’s magical works, especially by his
theory of ‘vinculi’.93 In Bruno’s view, magic, and in general all human
action, is based on the doctrine of matter and its infinite vitality, rather
than on the doctrine of analogy between heavens and Earth. The latter
is seen as an aspect of the more global phenomenon of universal
interaction between all levels of reality.
89 De vinculis, BOL III, p. 676: ‘astra et magna mundi animalia seu numina, quibus
defatigatio <non> accidit, et in quibus effluxio et influxio substantialis aequalis est et

eadem … ‘.
90 See, among others, De umbris, BUI, p. 31; De la causa, op. cit., p. 154. Recall that
in De gli eroici furori, the ascent of the soul was grounded in a progressive assimilation to
the mode of cognition of the superior intellects; cf. Furori, BDI, p. 998; cf. Lampas trig.
stat., BOL III, p. 150, and Libri Phys. Aristot., pp. 261–2.
91 Recall that Bruno did not accept the influence of the moon on the tides in Cena de
le Ceneri, op. cit., p. 209 and that he rejected the efficiency of astral rays in De magia
math., BOL III, p. 503.
92 For the animation of the celestial bodies, see Cena, op. cit., pp. 75, 99–100, 150,
169 and 208 (principle of life inherent in all worlds); De la causa, op. cit., pp. 74–5
(universal vitalism); Infinito, BDI, pp. 389–90; Orat. valed., BOL I.1, pp. 19–20; Lampas
trig. stat., BOL III, pp. 51–3; De immenso, III.8, BOL I.1, 376–7: ‘Ad quas tanquam ad
cognata astra justos et heroes advolare ex hoc mundo nostri majores (ut ex relatis in de
Somnio Scipionis habemus) crediderunt. Astra hujusmodi intelligentia sensuque praedita
contestantur etiam Chaldaei et Rabini sapientiores, qui ubi Jobi verba sunt: Unde ergo
sapientia venit?’
93 De vinculis, BOL III, pp. 683, 691–6; De magia, BOL III, pp. 428–53, in particular,
p. 436: ‘Vinculum sunt animae astrorum et principes locorum, ventorum, elementorum.’

CHAPTER ELEVEN
Simulacra et Signacula: Memory,

Magic and Metaphysics in Brunian
Mnemonics*
Stephen Clucas
Frances Yates and the Making of Brunian Mnemonics
That an understanding of Giordano Bruno’s writings on the art of

memory is essential to an adequate understanding of his philosophical
project is today considered indisputable.1 That this is the case is largely
due to the pioneering work of Frances Yates, who in The Art of Memory
and Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition pursued a sustained
and serious investigation of Brunian mnemonics which had, up to that
point, received scant attention from intellectual historians despite the
publication of Tocco’s monumental edition of the Latin works in the
1880s.2
Yates made Brunian mnemonics a centrepiece of her influential study
of the ‘Hermetic tradition’ in the Renaissance, arguing that Bruno had
transformed the mnemotechnic theories of the pseudo-Ciceronian Ad
Herennium, and the medieval tradition which arose from it, into a
‘magical … Hermetic art’, deriving directly from the Hermetic motif of
‘reflecting the universe in the mind’. ‘It was now understood’, she
argued, ‘as a method of printing basic or archetypal images on the
* An earlier version of this paper was delivered at a conference held at the

Einsteinforum, Potsdam, in March 1998: Frances A. Yates: Ihr Werk im Kontext der
Renaissance- und Erinnerungsforschung. I would like to thank Peter J. Forshaw and Leo
Catana who read early drafts and made helpful suggestions.
1 See for example, Spruit, Leen (1988), Il problema della conoscenza in Giordano
Bruno (Naples: Bibliopolis), p. 39, and Ciliberto, Michele (1986), La ruota del tempo
(Rome: Editori Riuniti), p. 66.
2 On the reception of Brunian mnemonics in the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries,
see Ricci, Saverio (1990), La Fortuna del Pensiero di Giordano Bruno 1600–1750
(Florence: Le Lettere), ‘L’eredità di Lullo’, pp. 13–47 and Bruno, Giordano [1582] (1991),
De umbris idearum, ed. Rita Sturlese (Florence: Leo. S. Olschki), pp. xiv–xix and idem
(1992), ‘Per un interpretazione del De Umbris Idearum di Giordano Bruno’, Annali della
scuola normale superiore di Pisa. Classe di lettere e filosofia, series 3, 22: 3, pp. 943–68;
945–6.
252 GIORDANO BRUNO
memory, with the cosmic order itself as the “place” system, a kind of
inner way of knowing the universe.’3
Developing an idea alluded to by Eugenio Garin, she argued that
Bruno’s first surviving work on the art of memory,4 De umbris idearum,
published in Paris in 1582,5 was a magical memory art ‘about a very
strong solar magic’ derived from Marsilio Ficino’s De vita coelitus
comparanda, although apparently ‘making no direct quotations from it’
and ‘alluding’ to it ‘in a confused way’.6 Realizing that the long
descriptions of astrological and mythological images given in the work
were designed to be used in conjunction with the Lullist wheels, Yates
set about proving how these figures were functioning as talismans, that
is to say ‘images designed to obtain universally favourable influences’
from the planets.7 In particular, she noted Bruno’s selection of a group
of astrological images, including the signs of the zodiac and ‘the images
of the Egyptian decan demons’, taken directly from Henricus Cornelius
Agrippa’s De occulta philosophia.8
Yates develops her reading of the De umbris at greater length in her
subsequent work The Art of Memory.9 Claiming now that the work was
‘presented as a religious revelation’,10 and speculating on the possibility of a
clandestine occult memory tradition within the Dominican order,11 Yates
placed stronger emphasis on Bruno’s reliance on Agrippa for his ‘notoriously
magical images’.12 The figures of the ‘very powerful images of the decans of
the zodiac’13 inscribed on the central band of the five wheels are now seen as
‘the astral power station … which works the whole system’,14 despite the fact
that Bruno himself did not grant these images any particular importance. The
images themselves are said to ‘express the planetary gods and their influences
3 Yates, Frances A. (1964, repr. 1978), Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition
(London: Routledge and Kegan Paul), pp. 191 and 31–2.

4 Bruno alludes to two earlier works on memory, the Clavis magna and the Arca di
Noé, which have not survived.

5 Giordano Bruno, De umbris idearum … Ad internam scripturam, & non vulgares
per memoriam operationes explicatis (Paris, 1582).

6 Ibid., pp. 194–5. Cf. p. 200 on Bruno’s ‘distinct though slightly garbled reference to
Ficino’s De vita coelitus comparanda’ in the Cantus Circaeus.

7 Ibid., p. 196, n. 9.
8 Ibid., pp. 196 and 200.
9 Yates, Frances A. (1966), The Art of Memory, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul,
repr. Peregrine Books, 1978.

10 Ibid., p. 201 and cf. p. 198.
11 Ibid., p. 202.
12 Ibid., pp. 204–5 and 210–11.
13 Ibid., p. 205.
14 Ibid., p. 208. Cf. also pp. 214 and 220.
253
11.1 Handwritten dedication to Alexander Dicson in Bruno’s first work on the art of memory, De umbris idearum, 1582.
254 GIORDANO BRUNO
after the manner of planetary talismans’,15 ‘harnessing the inner world of the
imagination to the stars, or reproducing the celestial world within’.16 The
planetary ‘influences’, Yates believed, were ‘imprinted on memory through
magic images’,17 and ‘arranging or manipulating’ the images would allow the
practitioner of the art to ‘act on the inferior world, change the stellar influences
on it’,18 the images were, in fact, ‘transmitters of … astral forces’.19 At another
juncture, on a sudden inspiration, Yates declared that she was ‘inclined to
think’ that the reason for Bruno’s choice of divisions of 30 in his groups of
images, had its source in Trithemius’ Steganographia ‘in which thirty-one
spirits are listed with recipes for conjuring them’. This leads directly to another
speculation that Bruno’s lost mnemotechnical work, the Clavis Magna ‘might
have explained how to use Lullian wheels as conjuring for summoning the
spirits of the air’. His Lullian devices are, thus, seen as ‘“practical Cabala” or
conjuring for reaching the demons, or angels, beyond the stars’.20
Using her analysis of De umbris idearum as a foundation, Yates
proceeded to judge Bruno’s later mnemotechnical writings using the
same yardstick. Thus she sees the Triginta Sigilli as an ‘astrologized and
magicized classical art of memory’, which was ‘galvanized … through
being affiliated to astral systems’.21 Bruno’s art was to be used to ‘get
inside the astrological system’;22 in this work ‘the exercises in Hermetic
mnemonics have become the spiritual exercises of a religion’,23 ‘part of a
Hermetic mystery cult’.24 She sees Bruno’s final work, De imaginum,
signorum et idearum compositione, as something of a departure in
technical terms, especially in its ‘elaboration of pseudo-mathematical, or
“mathesistical”, place systems’.25 Where the earlier mnemonic systems
had capitalized on the Lullian wheel, the De imaginum focused on the
‘architectural memory system’ which was the mainstay of the Pseudo-
Ciceronian memory art, although Yates adds, ‘Bruno is using it in a
highly abnormal way in which the distribution of the rooms is involved
with magical geometry and the system is worked from above by celestial
mechanics’.26 While she speculates briefly on the encyclopaedic nature of
15 Ibid., p. 211.
16 Ibid., p. 212.
17 Ibid., p. 212.
18 Ibid., p. 213.
19 Ibid., p. 220.
20 Ibid., p. 208.
21 Ibid., pp. 244–5.
22 Ibid., p. 247.
23 Ibid., p. 235.
24 Ibid., p. 254.
25 Ibid., p. 285.
26 Ibid., p. 286.
SIMULACRA ET SIGNACULA 255
Bruno’s memory art and the possibility that it was a ‘memory code’ used
by a secret society,27 her primary theme is still that Ficinian talismanic
magic is the basis of the system.28
We will look more closely at Bruno’s texts later, but a number of
points are worth making now. First, Yates consistently de-emphasizes
the diversity of Bruno’s sources in order to present his mnemonic works
as Hermetic: ‘Bruno’s philosophy’,29 Yates insisted, ‘was the Hermetic
philosophy’. Brushing aside views which suggested that the De umbris
was ‘some kind of Neoplatonic mysticism’,30 or down-playing the
influence of Plotinus on that work (in which Bruno refers to him as
Platonicorum princeps)31 by referring hastily to ‘several mentions’ of his
name (as she does in the Hermetic Tradition),32 or simply ignoring him
altogether (as she does in her paraphrase of the relevant sections in The
Art of Memory),33 and by constantly linking his name rhetorically with
things ‘Egyptian’ and ‘Hermetic’, Yates deliberately reconstructs Bruno’s
syncretic philosopher as a ‘Hermetic magus’. In a significant critique of
Yates’s single-minded concentration on the Hermetic philosophy in the
Renaissance, Brian Copenhaver has drawn scholarly attention to the
broader set of texts available in the occult tradition, and to the relative
lack of importance of the Hermetica to many Renaissance thinkers,
stressing the comparative centrality of Plotinus, Porphyry, Iamblichus,
Synesius and Proclus for Renaissance theories of magic.34 This diversity
of the magical tradition is also evident in Bruno’s mnemotechnical
works despite Yates’s selective focus. Secondly, despite her insistence on
the talismanic nature of Bruno’s memory images, and their role as
‘transmitters’ of astral powers, and her emphasis on the centrality of the
decan images to his system, there is no direct textual evidence for such
claims in Bruno’s theoretical statements, neither is there any evidence to
support the view that he saw the function of his Lullist wheels as being
connected with conjuration.
27 Ibid., pp. 287 and 293–4.

28 Ibid., pp. 287–8.
29 Ibid., p. 250.
30 Ibid., pp. 222.
31 Ibid., p. 55.
32 Ibid., p. 195.
33 Ibid., pp. 222–3.
34 Copenhaver, Brian P. (1990), ‘Natural magic, hermetism, and occultism in early
modern science’, in David C. Lindberg and Robert S. Westman (eds), Reappraisals of the
Scientific Revolution, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 261–301 and idem,
‘Hermes Trismegistus, Proclus, and the question of a philosophy of magic in the
Renaissance’, in ibid., pp. 79–108.
256 GIORDANO BRUNO
Rita Sturlese and the Undoing of Yates
It is precisely Yates’s desire to present Bruno’s mnemonics as the vehicle

of a talismanic or magical Hermetic philosophy that became the focus
of one of her most significant critics, Rita Sturlese. In a series of articles
in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and in the introduction to her 1991
edition of the De umbris idearum, Sturlese argued that Yates had
presented a seriously distorted view of Bruno’s mnemotechnical
practices. While she applauded Yates for having given serious attention
to reconstructing the ‘practico-operative’ parts of the Brunian memory
art which had been ignored by previous scholars,35 Sturlese believes that
Yates’s fundamental conception of the system and of its practical
functioning is completely erroneous.
Stressing the social usefulness of the ars memorativa in Bruno’s time,
and the ways in which it developed to meet the exigencies of
professional and scientific developments (especially the need to learn
extensive technical vocabularies in areas such as medicine, natural
history, and civil and canon law),36 Sturlese argues persuasively that
Bruno’s memory art, rather than serving occult philosophical purposes,
was developed for the purely practical purpose of memorizing words
(memoria verborum). ‘Is it possible’, Sturlese asked, ‘that the zodiacal
images, rather than being arcane and archetypal images, a magical
vehicle for communicating with the “superior agents” of the cosmos, are
nothing other than one of the many artificial practices for effectively
ordering objects for memorization?’37
The complex ‘synthetic images’ which arise by combining the
memory images encoded by the letters on the five rotating wheels,
according to Sturlese, represent chains of syllables, that is, words,38
rather than talismanic images of stellar demons, and are a concrete,
practical solution to a technical problem in the Classical mnemonic
tradition: how to remember vast numbers of words without having
35 Sturlese ‘Introduction’ to Bruno, De umbris idearum, op. cit., p. lv: ‘[Yates] faceva
ampio spazio al De umbris idearum, e precisamente ad una sezione della seconda parte
dell’ opera (l’Ars memoriae) fino ad allora quasi completamente trascurata dagli studiosi,
cioè quella pratico-operativa’.
36 Ibid., pp. lvi–lvii.
37 Sturlese, Rita (1987), ‘Un nuovo autografo del Bruno con una postilla sul ‘De
umbra rationis’ di A. Dickson’, Rinascimento, 2nd series, 27, pp. 391–7, 391. ‘È possibile
dunque che le immagini zodiacali, invece che immagini arcane e archetipe, magico veicolo
di comunicazione con gli “agenti superiori” del cosmo, siano niente di più che uno dei
tanti artifici pratici per ordinare efficacemente oggetti da ricordare?’
38 Sturlese, De umbris idearum, p. lviii: ‘L’immagine sintetica “rappresenta”, serve a
ricordare, una combinazione di sillabe, cioè una parola.’

resort to an unwieldy number of images, or using the same images to

signify different words at different times.39 In a series of worked
examples, Sturlese demonstrates how Bruno’s five wheels could be used
to memorize items of vocabulary and in fact possessed significant
‘technical advantages’ (vantaggi tecnici) in this respect, over rival
systems.40 If Bruno’s systems had any claim to originality, it was (in
Sturlese’s view) to be found in their innovative development of a
mnemonic system which was ‘more functional and more balanced’ than
either the Pseudo-Ciceronian memory art or the more recent, derivative
systems of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It was this functionality,
she argues, which made his system so attractive to seventeenth-century
practitioners like Johann Alsted and Johann Paepp.41 Sturlese focuses on
what she calls the ‘rigorous and scientific character’ of Bruno’s system;42
his mnemonic instruments are thus seen as ‘a sort of semiotic system,
characterized by precise and rigorous cryptological laws’.43 She stresses
also that Bruno’s mnemonic images function not iconically – as Yates
had suggested in her speculative iconographical analyses – but as
symbols in an almost mathematical sense – ‘arbitrary signs … which
have no relation of similarity with the thing denoted’ – and acquire a
signifying function only through being part of a ‘system which organizes
symbols, or the individual images, according to precise rules’.44 Thus she
says, the striking images of the ‘black man with flashing eyes’ and the
‘girl crowned with flowers’ found on the first of the five wheels of the
mnemonic wheel in De umbris
do not represent respectively the first decan of the first and sixth
sign of the zodiac, Aries and Virgo as such icons do in … sixteenth-
century astrological literature inspired by Albumasar’s Flores
astrologiae and Introductionum in astronomiam. In the Brunian
mnemonic system [they] … represent the dual combinations ‘AA’
and ‘DA’ occuring as the fifth syllable of a word. This, nothing more
and nothing less [niente di più e niente di meno].45
This tendency towards arbitrary denotation is, Sturlese argues,
39 Ibid., pp. lxv–lxvi. Cf. Sturlese, ‘Interpretazione’, op. cit., p. 955–6: ‘il sistema delle
cinque ruote serve primariamente a ricordare parole’.

40 Ibid., lxiv–lxvii. Cf. ‘Interpretazione’, p. 960: ‘la possibilità delle combinazioni delle
immagini rappresenta un originale ed importante ampliamento del primitivo strumentario

che il Nolano assunse dalla tradizione mnemotecnica classica’.
41 Ibid., p. lxxii.
42 Ibid., p. lxx: ‘il carattere rigoroso e scientifico del sistema esposto dal Bruno’.
43 Ibid., p. lxvi: ‘una sorta di sistema semiotico, caratterizzato da leggi di cifratura
combinatoria precise e rigorose’.

44 Ibid., p. lxxi.
45 Ibid., p. lxx.
258 GIORDANO BRUNO
continued through his successive mnemonic works, the Cantus Circaeus,

the Triginta Sigilli and right through to his last mnemonic work the De
imaginum et idearum compositione, which ‘expresses in a very clear way
the completely symbolic and arbitrary relation’ between Bruno’s images
and the words which they represent. Sturlese proposes, then, not just a
rereading of De umbris idearum, but a complete ‘redefinition of the role
of Bruno’s mnemonic images, and thus his art of memory’.46
There are, however, some problems with Sturlese’s approach,
however rhetorically compelling her reconstructive account may be.
Even if we put aside some of the problematic anachronisms of her
characterization of Bruno’s work as ‘rigorous and scientific’ (in a period
in which ‘science’ in the modern sense of the word did not yet exist, and
‘rigour’ did not yet have its twentieth-century meaning), there is still an
uncomfortable gap in Sturlese’s argument. While she criticizes earlier
Bruno scholars such as Antonio Corsano, Hélène Védrine and Nicola
Badaloni for having neglected the practico-operative part of Bruno’s
mnemonic system in favour of the theoretical introductory section of the
work,47 she herself makes virtually the same mistake in reverse. Giving
us a clear exposition of how she believes the mnemonic wheel
functioned, and emphasizing (perhaps rather single-mindedly) Bruno’s
statements about memoria verborum, Sturlese makes no attempt to
suggest how Bruno’s mnemotechnical practice relates to his elaborate
prefatory theoretical statements. If Bruno’s images represent syllables of
words – niente di più e niente di meno – how does this square with his
discussion of mnemonic images in the opening sections of the book?
To do justice to Sturlese’s position, having made a fairly unequivocal
case for viewing Bruno’s arts as purely practical and functional, she does
shift her focus slightly, even in her 1991 introduction. Bruno himself
insisted that ‘this art does not simply contribute to the art of memory,
but also opens the way for, and introduces, the inventions of many
faculties’,48 and Sturlese makes some attempt to accommodate this
statement. Bruno’s Lullian wheel is ‘not just a psycho-technical
instrument’ she concedes, Bruno also attributed an ‘inventive and
interpretative function’ to his art.49 However, while she makes
statements about how the art involves ‘invention’ and a ‘method of
research’, she does not give a clear or satisfactory explanation of how
the system as she describes it can fulfil this expanded brief. She also
46 Ibid., p. lxx.
47 Ibid., p. liv.
48 Ibid., p. 21: ‘Ars ista non simplicem ad memoriae artem confert, sed et ad multarum
facultatum inventionem viam aperit et introducit.’

49 Ibid., p. lxxii.
contrasts the Lullian system ‘which operates with principles that are
simultaneously logical and metaphysical’ to the Brunian system which
she sees as ‘realized only by virtue of the fact that it operates with
manipulable signs’.50 However, when we look at Bruno’s theoretical
statements, it would appear that his conception of the function of his
mnemonic images is much closer to the Lullian synthesis of the logical
and metaphysical, than to a ‘modern’ or ‘contemporary’ intuition of a
science of nature based on arbitrary symbols.51 Sturlese herself has
retreated from the more reductive conclusions of her introductory essay
and her 1987 article in subsequent essays, and has begun to formulate a
metaphysical framework within which Bruno’s mnemonics could be
seen as meaningful. In her 1992 article ‘Per un’ interpretazione del De
umbris idearum di Giordano Bruno’, for example, while she still
maintains that ‘the system of the five wheels is primarily used for the
remembering of words’,52 and vehemently opposes Yates’s belief that the
images of the system ‘constituted a representation of the universe in its
totality’,53 Sturlese goes on to engage with some of the metaphysical
orientations which were omitted from her earlier accounts of the system.
She discusses, for instance, what she calls the ‘Cusan paradigm’ (il
paradigma cusaniano) of Bruno’s work,54 which she sees as more
relevant to Bruno’s system than the influence of Ficino’s De vita coelitus
comparanda, suggested by Garin and later developed by Yates.55 The
Cusan idea of the coincidentia oppositorum, she suggests, is the
foundation of a ‘simple and universal system capable of representing, or
unifying, infinite real possibilities’, a ‘method, albeit rudimentary, for
50 Ibid., p. lxxiii.
51 Sturlese, ‘Interpretazione’, p. 964: ‘[C]redo si possa parlare di una modernità e anche
contemporaneità di Bruno, che consiste nell’aver intuito che una scienza della natura non
può prescindere da un sistema di simboli. Il suo limite è nell’ aver concepito questi simboli
sotto forma di immagini: e in tal modo si sbarrò la strada ad una costruzione matematico-
scientifica della natura.’ The arbitrariness of signs in Bruno’s system, however, is not
arbitrary in the modern sense of ‘indifferent denotation’, but arbitrary out of a sense of the
metaphysical interconnectedness of the universe. If everything can change into everything
else, than anything can stand for anything else. It is an arbitrary symbolism based on a
metaphysical premise: that of the immanent unity of the three worlds, not on any sense of
the symbol as an indifferent algebraic operator. The signs, as Bruno keeps suggesting, are
adapted to their purpose, that is, there is a link (a similitude, or analogy, perhaps) between
the image and the thing signified, which makes it effective. This link would doubtless
become more important in the ‘higher and more general’ form of the art.
52 Ibid., pp. 955–6.
53 Ibid., p. 948.
54 Ibid., p. 961.
55 Ibid., p. 961. On Yates’s debt to Garin’s scholarship, see Yates, Hermetic Tradition,
op. cit., p. 199, n. 3.

260 GIORDANO BRUNO
structuring a science of nature’.56 The art of memory, she says, ‘is the
only possible method by which one could represent the serial movement
of possible modifications of an empirical situation’,57 and she suggests
that there is a parallel between Bruno’s ontology of nature and his
theory of knowledge.58 It is not at all clear how this correlates with her
insistence elsewhere that the system is a practical system for memorizing
words, although she goes on to suggest that the Brunian system provides
material for ‘mental experiments’ (esperimenti mentali), acting as a
‘mechanism for experimenting with new words and linguistic
possibilities’.59 She concludes by emphasizing that the art of memory is
‘not just a [method] … of natural and physical research, but also of
lexical research, and research into rhetorical and poetic images’,60
although it is not clear from Sturlese’s analysis how the system which she
has reconstructed can fulfil both of these briefs. While Sturlese’s critique
of Yates’s reconstruction of Bruno’s mnemonic system is unquestionably
correct in terms of the practico-operative functioning of the mnemonic
instrument, and in its questioning of the talismanic function of the
memory images, her account of Bruno’s theoretical understanding of his
mnemotechnical practice (at least in its earlier formulations) is
somewhat limited. These limitations become more pronounced when we
look at Bruno’s mnemotechnical texts themselves, and the theoretical
statements by which Bruno validated his memory arts.
Theory and Practice: The Metaphysical Substrate of Brunian

Mnemonics
How do Bruno’s own statements regarding the purpose and function of

his memory arts compare with those attributed to them by Yates and
Sturlese? Is Bruno’s system a ‘rigorous and scientific’ semiotic system of
arbitrary signs, or a talismanic instrument for the manipulation or
conjuration of astral spirits? The answer would seem to be, neither –
although there are moments in both Yates’s and Sturlese’s arguments
which seem to accord with different moments in Bruno’s theoretical
expositions.
While Bruno stresses in the Dialogus praelibatorius apologeticus
which forms part of the theoretical introduction to the De umbris, that
56 Sturlese, ‘Interpretazione’, op. cit., pp. 962–3.

57 Ibid., p. 963.
58 Ibid., p. 963 and fn. 43.
59 Ibid., pp. 964–5.
60 Ibid., p. 966.
his memory art is easier and simpler than other mnemotechnical

manuals, he also suggests that it works on different levels. It is designed
both for the rude and untutored and for the learned who are versed in
the ‘metaphysics and doctrines of the Platonists’ (in metaphysicis et
doctrinis Platonicorum).61 He also suggests that the art has an ‘interior’
(interiora) aspect which will be visible to practitioners according to their
abilities (pro meritorum capacitatisque facultate).62 At the end of the
dialogue he is quite explicit:
We deal with this art in a twofold form and method, of which one
is higher and general, both for ordering all the operations of the
soul and indeed is the origin of many methods, by which as with
various organs one can explore (or discover) artificial memory. This
first method consists of the thirty intentions of the shadows. The
second consists of the thirty concepts of ideas, and the third consists
of manifold complexions which can be made from intentions and
conceptions through the industrious modification of elements of the
first wheel with elements of the second. The other method which
follows is more restricted in scope, and involves a reliable kind of
memory by means of the art of combination.63
The second art is presumably that which is contained in the section

entitled ‘Ars alia brevis ad verborum rerumque memoriam’, part of the
‘practico-operative’ part of Bruno’s work which Sturlese has deemed to
be so important to our understanding of Bruno’s mnemonic art – the art
which is ‘primarily concerned with memorizing words’. Unfortunately
Sturlese’s analysis seems to confine itself to the ‘more restricted’
(contractior) form and method of the art, ignoring the ‘higher and more
general’ form, which surely constitutes the most important and
significant aspect of Bruno’s system.
The Dialogus praelibatorius apologeticus is followed by the two
sections of the higher and more general art, the ‘Thirty intentions of the
shadows’ (Triginta intentiones umbrarum) and the ‘Of the thirty
61 Bruno, De umbris idearum, op. cit., p. 21: ‘Istam eruditorum pauci intelligant,
intelligentibus autem omnibus usuveniat, sitque quam omnes sive rudes, sive eruditi, facile
scire, et exercere possint, quamque sine doctore, tantum in metaphysicis et doctrinis
Platonicorum bene versati possint intelligere.’
62 Ibid., p. 22.
63 Ibid., pp. 23–4: ‘Artem istam sub duplici forma tractamus, atque via: quarum altera
est altior et generalis tum ad omnes animi operationes ordinandas, tum etiam est caput
multarum methodorum, quibus tamquam diversis organis artificiosa potest pertentari et
inveniri memoria. Et consistit ipsa primo in triginta intentionibus umbrarum. Secundo in
triginta conceptibus idearum. Tertio in pluribus complexionibus, quae fieri possunt ex
intentionibus et conceptibus per industriosam adaptationem elementorum primae rotae ad
elementa secundae. Altera quae sequitur, est contractior ad certum memoriae per
artificium comparandae genus.’
262 GIORDANO BRUNO
concepts of ideas’ (De Triginta Idearum Conceptibus), which are both

statements of the theoretical underpinning of the art, and also an
integral part of the art – in the sense that each of the 30 concepts and
the 30 intentions are linked to the 30 ciphers of the Lullist wheel (23
alphabetic characters, plus four Greek and three Hebrew characters),64
and are thus intended to be the denoted contents of the first and second
wheels in the higher form of the art. The ‘thirty intentions of the
shadows’ outlines what is basically a Neoplatonic theory of knowledge
derived from Plotinus. Essentially, Bruno argues, the universe is One:
‘suppose the body, order, governance, beginning and end, the first and
the last of all the existence of the universe to be One,’ and there is,
according to the Platonists, a constant movement from the Light
towards the darkness [of matter].65 As the ‘Light’ descends it diversifies,
‘progressively descending from supersubstantial unity by way of
increasing multiplicity into infinite multiplicity,’ to use the language of
the Pythagoreans.66 The forms descend from the One to the many by
means of an analogical series of similitudes. There is an ‘order and
connection in all things such that inferior bodies follow intermediate
bodies, and intermediate bodies follow superior bodies’.67 This
analogous series, the ‘ladder of nature’68 or ‘golden chain’69 of
resemblances, extends ‘from the superessential itself to the essences,
from the essences to those things which exist, from those to their
vestiges, images, simulacra and shadows’70 which can be found in matter
(which bears ‘the final vestige of it from the light which is called the First
Act’,)71 and in the human mind, where the shadows exist in a superior
form, because ‘something is better apprehended by means of the species
which is in the intellect than by means of the species which is in the
physical subject, since it is more immaterial’.72 By reascending along the
64 That is, the alphabetic characters A–Z (excluding ‘J’, ‘U’ and ‘W’), the Greek letters
Ψ, Φ, Ω and Θ, and the Hebrew characters, [, x and ç.

65 Bruno, De umbris idearum, p. 30: ‘unum sit universi entis corpus, unus ordo, una
gubernatio, unum principium, unus finis, unum primum, unum extraemum; cumque – ut
non ignoraverunt Platonicorum principes – demigratio detur continua a luce ad tenebras’.
66 Ibid., p. 28: ‘sensim ab unitate illa supersubstantiali decendentia, per crescentem
multitudinem, in infinitam multitudinem – ut Pythagoreorum more loquar.’

67 Ibid., p. 29: ‘Cum vero in rebus omnibus ordo sit atque connexio, ut inferiora
mediis et media superioribus succedant corporibus.’

68 Ibid., p. 31.
69 Ibid., p. 34.
70 Ibid., pp. 28–9: ‘ab ipso superessentiali ad essentias, ab essentiis ad ipsa quae sunt,
ab iis ad eorum vestigia, imagines, simulachra, et umbras excursus’.

71 Ibid., p. 27: ‘ultimum eius vestigium a luce quae primus actus dicitur’.
72 Ibid., p. 59: ‘Per speciem quae est in intellectu, melius aliquid apprehenditur, quam
per speciem quae est in physico subiecto, quia est immaterialior.’ Cf. p. 55: ‘Formatio
chain of intermediaries, the soul can raise itself towards superior things:
‘to the sound of Apollo’s harp inferior things are gradually recalled to
superior things, and inferior things acquire the nature of superior things
through intermediary things’.73 ‘Let us resolutely aim for that [goal],’
says Bruno, ‘like those who, through remarkable operations of the soul,
have the ladder of nature before their eyes, let us always strive to
proceed from motion and multiplicity, through inward operations,
towards stasis and unity.’74
It is the cultivation of these ‘inward operations’ which is the primary
purpose of Bruno’s memory art. It is an instrument designed to help the
mind trace the multitudinous species of the universe back towards the
unity of the superessential form. As a technique which involves a
movement from species to genera, Bruno’s method is a form of logic.
‘Antiquity knew and taught how the discourse of man progresses from
many individual things to species, ascending from many species to a
single genus,’ Bruno says, but ‘if they knew how the memory progresses
from many memorable species to a single species … they did not teach
it.’75 The ‘universal logic’ (universalia logica) of the scholastics failed in
this respect, because rather than taking the path from ‘confused plurality
to distinct unity’, it took ‘confused intermediaries from distinct inferior
species, and from these even more confused superior species’.76 Bruno’s
method is superior because it recognizes the true connectivity between
inferior species and the superior species which lead back to unity and the
One. But if Bruno’s art is a logic, it is also a metaphysics, as it involves
the reascent toward the superessential:
metaphysics, physics and logic, or the praeternatural, the natural
and the rational admit a certain analogy, that is, the True, the Image
and the Shadow. On the other hand the idea in the divine mind
exists in the complete and single act simultaneously. The ideas are
in the intelligences as discrete acts. In the heavens, they are manifold
quippe corporei mundi forma inferior est, ex ipsius enim vestigio, et deformitate
componitur.’
73 Ibid., p. 30: ‘ad sonum cytharae universalis Apollinis ad superna gradatim
revocentur inferna, et inferiora per media superiorum subeant naturam’.

74 Ibid., p. 31: ‘illud obnixe nobis est intentandum, ut pro egregiis animi operationibus
naturae schalam ante oculos habentes, semper a motu, et multitudine, ad statum et

unitatem per intrinsecas operationes tendere contendamus’.
75 Ibid., p. 31: ‘Novit quidem et docuit antiquitas quomodo proficiat discursus
hominis a multis individuis ad speciem, a multis speciebus ad unum genus ascendens …

Porro si antiquitas novit quomodo proficiat memoria, a multis speciebus memorabilibus
ad unam multorum memorabilium speciem se promovendo, ipsum certe non docuit.’
76 Ibid., p. 54: ‘cum a confusa pluralitate, ad distinctam unitatem per te fiat accessio.
Id enim non est universalia logica conflare, quae ex distinctis infimis speciebus, confusas
medias, exque iis confusiores supraemas captant’.
264 GIORDANO BRUNO
and successive in active power. In nature, by means of the vestiges,

as if by impression, and in the intention and reason they are present
by means of the shadow.77
If the process of tracing species back to their originating ideas by means

of their intermediary shadows is both logical and metaphysical, it is also
religious. In discussing the gradatim progression of the mind through the
hierarchy of similitudes in the universe, Bruno notes that this method is
made necessary because of the nature of divinity. Comparing the
intermediary shadows to Cabbalistic interpretations of the veil which
Moses wore after having spoken to God in Exodus 33:34, which
protected his people’s eyes from the damaging light of divinity, Bruno
says that man cannot move suddenly from the darkness of the material
world to the light of the One, because ‘Nature will not allow immediate
progress from one extreme to the other, but only through intermediary
shadows’. The shadow ‘prepares the sight for light’ and ‘tempers’ it.78
The shadow is, in fact, an act of benevolence, or solicitude on the part
of the Divinity: ‘By means of the Shadow the Divinity tempers and offers
the nuncial species of things to the dim-sighted eye of the hungry and
thirsty soul.’79
This benevolence of divinity towards mortals is matched by a gnostic
elevation of the soul which takes up this offer. To ascend to the One
through the shadows of ideas, is to transform and elevate the soul to a
superior state; it is ‘raised above the height of bodies into the proximity
of the intelligences’.80 In discussing the various kinds of attitude towards
the sciences in Antiquity, Bruno notes that the peripatetic philosophy
based its beliefs upon undemonstrable things (de non demonstrabilibus),
while the Pythagoreans based theirs upon undemonstrated things (de
non demonstratis). The Platonists, he said, based their philosophy upon
both of these kinds of principle.81 It is perhaps in this light that we
77 Ibid., pp. 43–4: ‘Analogiam enim quandam admittunt methaphysica, physica, et
logica seu ante naturalia, naturalia, et rationalia, sicut verum, imago, et umbra. Caeterum
idea in mente divina est in actu toto simul, et unico. In intelligentiis sunt ideae discretis
actibus. In coelo, in potentia activa multiplici et successive. In natura per vestigii modum
quasi per impressionem. In intentione, et ratione per umbrae modum.’
78 Ibid., p. 36: ‘Neque enim natura patitur inmediatum progressum ab uno
extraemorum ad alterum, sed umbris mediantibus … Umbra igitur visum preparat ad

lucem. Umbra lucem temperat.’
79 Ibid., pp. 36–7: ‘Per umbram divinitas oculo esurientis, sitientisque animae caliganti
nuncias rerum species temperat, atque propinat.’

80 Ibid., p. 36: ‘elevatur super corporum altitudinem in confinio intelligentiarum’.
81 Ibid., p. 37: ‘quae fides apud Pythagoricos erat de non demonstratis, apud
Peripateticos de non demonstrabilibus, apud Platonicos de utrisque – aucupandas esse

scientias’.
should view Bruno’s own philosophy: as a kind of Platonic science (or

scientia). Thus, while he insists that ‘we must progress through a natural
and rational course towards the explication of forms’,82 the final
objective of this progress is to trace the analogical series of a ‘divine and
natural order’ through the mind.83 An important model for Bruno’s
‘Platonic science’ at this point is Plotinus’s Enneades, as mediated by
Marsilio Ficino’s In Plotini Enneades commentatio.84 ‘Plotinus
understood’, Bruno says,
that the ladder through which we rise to the principle is composed
of seven steps (to which we add two further steps); of these the first
is the purgation of the soul, the second is attention, the third
intention, the fourth contemplation of order, the fifth the
proportional comparison [of things] from [that] order, the sixth
negation or separation, the seventh prayer, the eighth the
transformation of oneself into the thing, the ninth, the
transformation of the thing into oneself.85
If one were looking for a philosophical ‘key’ to the De umbris idearum,

it is surely to this passage that one would look. Rather than an ‘Egyptian
revelation’, one would find a Plotinian magic – if one wishes to construe
82 Ibid., p. 37: ‘ad formarum explicationem, et per naturalem, et rationalem cursum
nobis est progrediendum’.

83 Ibid., p. 37: ‘divinum, et naturalem ordinem’.
84 Ibid., p. 56, fn. 72.
85 Ibid., p. 56: ‘Septem gradibus – quibus duos addimus – constare intellexit Plotinus
schalam qua ascenditur ad principium. Quorum primus est animi purgatio, secundus
attentio, tertius intentio, quartus ordinis contemplatio, quintus proportionalis ex ordine
collatio, sextus negatio, seu separatio, septimus votum, octavus transformatio sui in rem,
nonus transformatio rei in se ipsum.’ Cf. Ficino, Marsilio (1559), ‘In Plotini Enneades
commentatio’, VI, vii, cap. xxxvi, in Plotini Diuini illius è Platonica familia Philosophi De
rebus Philosophicis libri LIIII. In Enneades sex distributi à Marsilio Ficino Florentino è
Gaeca Lingua in latinam uersi, & ab eodem doctissimis commentarijs illustrati, omnibus
cum Graeco exemplari collatis & diligenter castigatis, Basel, p. 345 verso: ‘Scala per quam
ascenditur ad principium, septem gradus habet: primus est purgatio animi: secundus,
cognitio operum diuninorum [sic diuinorum] singulatim comparata; tertius, contemplatio
ordinis, quo opera inferiora reducuntur ad superiora gradatim; quartus, comparatio
quaedam proportionalis ex ordine huiusmodi ad diuinum ordinem sese conferens: quintus,
negatio per quam cuncta quae concipis separes à principio: sextus, supplex ad Deum
oratio, ut ipse intellectualis mundi pater te reddat mundum intellectualem actu: ens enim
potentia mundus hic ab initio: septimus, ut quum ipse intellectualis mundus euaseris,
ulterius amore boni concitus ex statu intellectuali transformeris in bonum superius
intellectu.’ The corresponding passage in Plotinus’s Enneades is far less schematic and
talks in more general terms of approaching knowledge of the Good through ‘comparisons
and negations’ (αναλογιαι … και αφαιρεσεις), and ‘methods of ascent by degrees’
(αναβασµοι). See Plotinus with an English Translation, 7 vols, London: William
Heinemann and Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966–88, VII, pp. 198–201.
266 GIORDANO BRUNO
the ‘transformation of the thing into oneself’ as ‘magic’. The

transformative power of imagination was a constant theme of
Renaissance magic, and while Bruno’s system does not contain
references to the talismanic instruments or conjurations referred to by
Yates, it can still be construed as magical, albeit a Plotinian rather than
a Hermetic magic. It was a magic which wedded itself to the Lullian
synthesis of logic and metaphysics, to pseudo-Ciceronian
mnemotechnics (appropriating the idea of the striking memory image to
the metaphysical idea of a universal structure of analogous similitudes),
to religious practices (purgation and prayer), and supported its claims
with a wealth of subordinated (or mediating) references to the Cabbala,
Pythagoreanism and Aristotelianism.
So, as Yates once asked, ‘How did the system work?’86 I would
suggest that the Ars memoriae (in so far as it concerns the memoria
verborum) was intended as a simple example of how the system works,
a ‘restricted’ version of the art which shows how the images and wheels
function together through the application of images on one wheel to
images on the next. The example of the connected syllables of a word is
an instructive one, but need not necessarily be the only kind of
combination for which the art was designed.87 The ‘higher and more
general’ art, which was designed for ‘ordering the operations of the soul’
and acted as ‘the centre of many methods’, would use the combinatorial
mechanism of the Ars memoriae for higher ends – as a means of
generating propositions or cases represented in visual form. This I
believe is connected to the Plotinian ‘ladder’, and to what Sturlese calls
‘the theoretical part’ of the work – the two sets of 30 theses – which she
distinguishes sharply from the ‘concrete’ explanations of the Ars
memoriae.88 If the two sets of 30 theses are so distinct from the practice
of the art, why, one might be forgiven for asking, are the theses linked
to the ciphers of the Lullian instrument? Also I would draw the reader’s
attention once again to the third step of Plotinus’s ladder, ‘intention’. Is
it a coincidence that the first set of theses also concerns ‘intentions’? The
first two steps of Plotinus’s ladder – purgation of the soul and attention
– are presumably preparative. This would make the first practical step
of the process intention (intentio). According to Bruno, the purpose of
86 Yates, Art of Memory, op. cit., p. 220.

87 The ars combinatoria in Bruno’s time was a highly sophisticated tool, which aimed
to deal not with simple juxtapositions but a whole range of logical and propositional
relations. See Schmidt-Biggemann, Wilhelm (1983), Topica Universalis. Eine
Modellgeschichte humanistischer und barocker Wissenschaft, Hamburg: Felix Meiner, pp.
161–74.
88 Sturlese, ‘Interpretazione’, op. cit., p. 946.
the wheeled instrument is that we apply the contents of the first wheel
to those of the second: ‘the conclusions which can be developed from
theses and demonstrations derived by means of the industrious
application of elements of the first wheel to those of the second’.
Presumably, then, the ‘contemplation of order’ which represents the
fourth step of Plotinus’s ladder would arise out of the logical conclusions
derived from following the chain of logical combinations of theses
encoded in the images of the various wheels. The wheels would
presumably be encoded in such a way that the practitioner could follow
his combinatory application through the wheel, from individual species
through higher genera towards superessential unity. This, for me, is the
difficult part. How does one ‘apply’ the images on the wheels? Again I
can only speculate, but I would suggest that the images on each wheel
would be combinable as an analagous series, like the ‘golden chain’
which Bruno claims unites the threefold world. Bruno believed that his
‘imaginative logic’ (as Paolo Rossi calls it) surpassed Aristotelian logic
by virtue of its ability to follow the sequence of reflective analogies in
the universe. He argued, placing a rather different meaning on a familiar
trope from Aristotle’s De anima, that ‘to understand is to speculate with
images’,89 and that there was an analogical progression (analogica
progressione)90 between the various parts of the cognitive process. The
logical connection of the images, would then presumably be a relation
of similitude between them.
The final objective of the mnemonic art was, I believe, the re-creation
of the universal order in the mind of the practitioner, which was what
Bruno understood by Plotinus’s eighth step, ‘the transformation of
oneself into the thing’ (the ‘thing’ in this case, being the universal order),
closely followed by the transformation of the thing into oneself. Quite
what Bruno understood by this last part – whether it was operation
upon the ‘internalized’ thing, or operation on physical reality, or simply
an ethical ordering of the soul – I cannot say. But the re-creation of the
inner world which it involves is not as Yates understood it, that is, the
product of talismanic intervention, or the attraction and infusion of
astral powers into the soul. Neither does it appear to be simply a
practical rhetorical-memorative technique, as Sturlese has suggested.
Despite the fact that Sturlese insists that Bruno’s memory art has nothing
to do with a ‘representation of the universe in its totality’,91 Bruno states
quite clearly that: ‘One who conceives this order, with its various levels
in his mind will have a similitude of the great world different from that
89 Yates, Art of Memory, op. cit., p. 248.

90 BOL II, ii, p. 175.
91 Sturlese, ‘Interpretazione’, op. cit., p. 948.
268 GIORDANO BRUNO
which he has in himself by nature. Thus as if acting through nature, he

can describe the universals without difficulty.’92
For Bruno there is a unified cosmic structure, which is repeated at the
level of the superessential Unity, in the physical universe, and in the
mind of man. These three structures are interconnected, and man is able
to pass back and forth between them by grasping the principles of their
interconnectedness. His theory of knowledge and cognition is thus also
a theory of physics and metaphysics. This unified structure of reality,
and the theory of knowledge which it is predicated upon, has been
amply treated by Brunian scholars, beginning with Cesare Vasoli and
Paolo Rossi in the late 1950s and early 1960s, who situated Bruno’s
mnemotechnics meaningfully in the context of the logico-encyclopaedic
tradition of the sixteenth century, and more latterly by Leen Spruit in Il
problema della conoscenza in Giordano Bruno,93 which is probably the
most sophisticated and balanced philosophical account of Bruno’s
theories of knowledge to date. One of the particular strengths of Spruit’s
account is its attempt to set Bruno’s mnemonic theories of cognition in
the broadest possible context, and his work on Bruno’s debt to medieval
and Renaissance philosophical ideas concerning the intelligible species is
especially illuminating.94 Where I differ from Spruit is in his suggestion,
fuelled by his desire to reject the Yatesian Hermetic-talismanic
interpretation of these works, that there is no operative dimension to
Bruno’s mnemonic works. ‘The Hermetic tradition’, he says, ‘acquired a
primary importance only in the later works, in those works, that is to
say, in which he directed his philosophical interests towards operative
problems … An interpretative framework … within which the
epistemological problematic can be posited in operative terms, is not
applicable to the De umbris idearum.’95
This seems to me directly to contradict the agential dimension of the
De umbris with its insistence on transformatio as the ultimate objective
of the Plotinian programme. To reduce the mnemonic works to an
‘epistemological problematic’ is to reduce the complexity of the
practices (logical, gnostic, religious and magical) which they imply to the
92 Bruno, De umbris idearum, op. cit., p. 48: ‘Quem ordinem cum suis gradibus qui
mente conceperit, similitudinem magni mundi contrahet aliam ab ea quam secundum

naturam habet in se ipso. Unde quasi per naturam agens, sine difficultate peraget universa.’
93 Spruit, Leen (1988), Il problema della conoscenza in Giordano Bruno, Naples:
Bibliopolis.
94 On this tradition, see Spruit, Leen (1994–95), Species intelligibilis: from perception
to knowledge, 2 vols, Leiden: Brill.

95 Spruit, Problema, op. cit., p. 42: ‘La tradizione ermetica … acquista un’importanza
primaria soltanto nelle opere tarde, in quelle cioè in cui il suo interesse filosofico si dirige
verso problemi operativi.’
level of mere theory. Compare, for example, his insistence in the Triginta
Sigilli that ‘art is not consummated in discourse’ but ‘perfects itself in the
moment in which it is connected to a natural agent’,96 and his statement
towards the end of his discussion of magia where he says that by ‘the
emulation of omnipotent nature’ (naturae cunctipotentis aemula), magic
can become its ‘director and governess’ (directrix et gubernatrix).97 For
Bruno, to understand the universe – which was the aim of the mnemonic
system – was to act upon it.
While Spruit, Rossi and Vasoli all give clearer-sighted accounts of
Brunian mnemonics and its intellectual context than Yates, there are
moments of overlap where she does seem to be aware of Bruno’s
encyclopaedic theory of knowledge,98 but distorts these insights by
diverting them into arguments about the talismanic channelling of astral
influences, conjuration and the primary importance of Hermeticism, all
of which suffer from a lack of textual evidence to support them.
Conclusions
In conclusion, I would like to suggest that the fruitful development of

Brunian mnemonics after Yates’s pioneering speculations, have all
indicated a need to take account of the profoundly eclectic nature of
Bruno’s philosophy as a synthesis. I do not mean to argue here, for
example, that we must simply recategorize Bruno as a ‘Plotinian’ rather
than a ‘Hermetic’ philosopher or magus. That would be a rather fruitless
intellectual exercise, and one which would lay itself open to similar
counter-arguments about the privileging of particular sources. What I do
wish to say, is that the Plotinian schema is locally significant in the De
umbris idearum in a way that the Hermetica are not, regardless of the
significance Yates may have read into the appearance of Hermes as
interlocutor in the opening dialogue. Bruno, ironically enough, uses
Hermes to voice his independence of any single philosophical tradition.
‘Let us not be like those thinkers’ he says,
96 BOL II, ii, pp. 195–6: ‘artem consummatam nullis rationis discursibus indigere …
Tunc igitur perfecte agit ars, cum naturae agenti connectitur)’.

97 BOL II, ii, p. 199.
98 See, for example, Yates, Art of Memory, op. cit., p. 220: ‘Systematization is one of
the key-notes of Bruno’s mind; there is a compulsion towards systems and systematization
in the magic mnemonics which drives their designer throughout his life … in the forming
and reforming of the inventor’s images in accordance with the forming and reforming of
the astral images … the whole history of man would be remembered … all his discoveries,
thoughts, philosophies, productions[.]’
270 GIORDANO BRUNO
who are limited to a determinate kind of foreign philosophy, nor let

us disparage any way of philosophizing completely. We do not
abolish the mysteries of the Pythagoreans, we do not belittle the
faith of the Platonists, nor do we scorn the reasonings of the
peripatetics where they have a real basis.99
If a Platonic term or concept is apt then he uses it, if peripatetic terms

make expressing something in the memory art easier, he adopts them.100
There is not a single art, Bruno says, which meets all the needs of one
person, and for those who wish to create works of greater invention ‘the
workshops of Aristotle and Plato alone will not suffice’.101 While he uses
the conventional terms of other philosophers, he is not using them in the
customary sense, ‘we make use of the diverse studies of various
philosophers in so far as we are able to [use them to] insinuate themes
of our own invention’,102 exercising that subversive terminological
dexterity which Michele Ciliberto has so brilliantly characterized in the
prefatory essay to his Lessico di Giordano Bruno.103
Scholars are now beginning to reach a consensus regarding the need
to stress the syncretic, eclectic and pluralist nature of Brunian thought.
There is less stress on grounding Bruno’s philosophy in a single
philosophical outlook, but rather an emphasis on his diverse strategies
of intellectual filiation. Karen De León-Jones, for instance, in her recent
book, Giordano Bruno and the Kabbalah, sees Bruno as an ‘example of
Renaissance syncretism at its most extreme’. In reality, she says, ‘Bruno
is Bruno; he proselytizes his own philosophy’. De León-Jones is correct,
99 Bruno, De umbris idearum, op. cit., p. 22: ‘nos eius non esse ingenii, ut determinato
alienae philosophiae generi simus adstricti, neque ut per universum quamcumque

philosophandi viam contemnamus … Non abolemus Pythagoricorum mysteria. Non
parvifacimus Platonicorum fides, et quatenus reale sunt nacta fundamentum,
Peripateticorum ratiocinia non despicimus’.
100 Ibid., p. 23: ‘si commodus Platonicus terminus et intentio commoda, accepatur. Si
quoque Peripeteticae intentiones ad maiorem rei in hac arte faciunt expressionem, fideliter
admittuntur’. On Bruno’s appropriation and redefinition of Aristotelian terms and
concepts, see Blum, Paul Richard (1980), Aristotles bei Giordano Bruno, München: Fink;
and Spruit, Leen (1989), ‘Motivi peripatetici nella gnoseologia bruniana dei dialoghi
italiani’, Verifiche, 18, pp. 376–99.
101 Bruno, De umbris idearum, op. cit., p. 23: ‘Non enim reperimus unum artificem
qui omnia uni necessaria proferat … Ita maiora, aliarum inventionum tentantibus opera
non solius Aristotelis Platonisque solius officina sufficiet.’
102 Ibid., p. 23: ‘Quandoque etiam … si non consuetis uti videbimur terminis, illud
ideo est quia non consuetas per eos explicare cupimus intentiones. Per universum autem
diversis variorum philosophorum studiis utimur, quatenus melius propositum inventionis
nostrae insinuemus.’
103 Ciliberto, Michele (1979), Lessico di Giordano Bruno, 2 vols, Rome: Edizioni
dell’Ateneo & Bizzarri, ‘Introduzione’, I, pp. ix–xlv.

I believe, to suggest that it is reductive to ‘limit the Nolan philosophy by

labelling it according to pre-established categories convenient to
scholars of the Renaissance such as “Hermeticist”, “Kabbalist” or
“Neoplatonist”’.104 Leen Spruit also places particular emphasis on
Bruno’s eclecticism, comparing his strategies (and their attendant
problems) to those of that other great Renaissance syncretist, Giovanni
Pico della Mirandola.105 Spruit sees Bruno’s ‘inventiveness’ and ‘liberty’
and ‘complicated contamination’ of philosophical traditions106 as a
double-edged sword: ‘The fact that Bruno is not always consistent in his
definitions of his metaphysical framework, or that he does not delimit it
in a clear and precise way, obviously makes his thought complex, but at
the same time it leaves him with a great deal of room for manoeuvre.’107
It is precisely perhaps this ‘room for manoeuvre’ which troubles
modern commentators, anxious to find an Ariadne’s thread which will
guide them through the synthetic labyrinth of the appropriations,
borrowings and subtle reorientations of Renaissance philosophies. In the
face of such pluralism, there is a tendency to complain of incoherence or
confusion.108 However, Spruit suggests,
The recognition of his pluralism in metaphysicis does not mean that
we think that Bruno is not able, or does know how to express and
configure what he has to say in a systematic way. Bruno knows
perfectly well what he wants to do: that is, he wants to emphasize
the fact that the relation between intellectual processes and reality
is problematic, and cannot be otherwise.109
As De León-Jones has said, ‘Bruno constantly reformulates his approach

to the Divine in every work’,110 and it is in the reformulations, and the
exigencies of such reformulations, that we find the substance of his
philosophy. It is not enough to ground the works of Renaissance
104 De Léon Jones, Karen Silvia (1997), Giordano Bruno and the Kabbalah: Prophets,
Magicians and Rabbis, New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, p. 181.
105 Spruit, Problema, op. cit., p. 54.
106 Ibid., pp. 43, 54.
107 Ibid., pp. 323–4: ‘Il fatto che Bruno non sia sempre uniforme nelle sue definizioni del
quadro metafisico o che non sempre lo delimiti in modo chiaro e netto, rende senza dubbio
complesso il suo pensiero ma nello stesso tempo gli lascia un notevole spazio di manovra.’
108 See, for example, Yates, Hermetic Tradition, op. cit., p. 335, where she accuses
Bruno of having ‘fail[ed] to realise how totally opposite are the Aristotelian and the
Synesian defences of the imagination’.
109 Spruit, Problema, op. cit., p. 324: ‘Il riconoscimento del suo pluralismo in
metaphysicis non significa … che noi siamo del parere che Bruno non sia in grado o non
sappia come esprimere e configurare sistematicamente ciò che ha da dire. Bruno sa
perfettamente a che cosa vuole giungere: a indicare cioè e a porre l’accento sul fatto che la
relazione fra l’intelletto conoscente e la realtà è, e non può non essere, che problematica.’
110 De Léon Jones, Giordano Bruno and the Kabbalah, op. cit., p. 52.
272 GIORDANO BRUNO
philosophers in particular sets of derivations and sources – we should

see the selection and ‘contamination’ of sources as a self-inventive and
constitutive act, and this need is particularly pronounced in Bruno’s
mnemotechnical works which draw so heavily upon a tradition which
was itself rich in syntheses.
There can be no doubt that we are indebted to Yates for having
opened up these kinds of inquiry. But we should also acknowledge the
spirit in which her work was written. She made no special claims for the
authority of her interpretations, but rather constantly stressed the
provisional and speculative nature of her findings. In her book on the
Hermetic tradition, for example, in broaching a point about the Cantus
Circaeus, she stated frankly: ‘I am not sure whether this is the right
explanation of the unexplained connection between the incantations and
the following Art of Memory, but it is a possible one.’111 If on occasions
possibilities got the better of her, and she left us far behind as she blazed
across the speculative firmament, trailing a comet’s tail of ‘maybes’ and
‘perhapses’ behind her, Yates certainly helped stimulate further research
into largely uncharted areas of Renaissance intellectual culture, and I
would like to end by reiterating Brian Copenhaver’s judgement on
Yates’s legacy. ‘[H]istorians of science’, Copenhaver wrote, ‘ought to
pursue the broader implications of the work of Frances Yates, especially
her catholic and imaginative desire to explore areas of thought and
culture hitherto considered insignificant or inappropriate to serious
historical discourse.’112
There is still considerable resistance in the historical community to
studying some of the more unfamiliar and recondite intellectual and
cultural formations of the Renaissance in terms of their own categories
and frames of reference. Yates’s work, while it may fairly be criticized
for shortcomings of various kinds, still stands as a significant testimony
to the intellectual imagination required for such tasks.
111 Yates, Hermetic Tradition, op. cit., p. 201.

112 Lindberg and Westman, Reappraisals, op. cit., p. 290.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Metempsychosis and Monism in

Bruno’s nova filosofia
Ramon G. Mendoza
The Problem: Is the Monism of Bruno’s Philosophy Compatible with

the Pythagorean Metempsychosis?
On two occasions – in the introductory letter to Sir Philip Sidney in

Spaccio de la bestia trionfante,1 and in front of the Venetian inquisitors
– Bruno distanced himself from the doctrine of metempsychosis,2
declaring that he personally did not hold transmigration to be true, but
only possible and worthy of consideration exclusively from a
philosophical point of view. Nonetheless, some of the most authoritative
Bruno scholars consider metempsychosis an essential part of the
philosophy of the Nolan and, accordingly, dismiss Bruno’s denial of his
belief in transmigration as opportunistic dissimulation.3
Despite the remarkable increase in publications on Bruno in recent
years, to my knowledge this subject has not yet been submitted directly
to the thorough critical examination it deserves, particularly in view of
the possible incompatibility between metempsychosis and monism
which, as numerous Bruno scholars have pointed out, is the very essence
of the Nolan’s nova filosofia.
Although metempsychosis per se does not necessarily imply a
dualistic conception of the universe, as the Buddhist belief in rebirth
(samsara) illustrates, the Pythagorean metempsychosis certainly does,
since it ascribes to souls an essential difference and independence from
matter indispensable for their mobility from body to body. Pythagorean
doctrine considers souls as stable, permanent substances, and postulates
a transcendent realm inhabited by gods, which Buddhism rejects. It is no
surprise that the Pythagorean tradition attributed to its founder the
belief in gods, and particularly the belief and worship of the god Apollo.
Most importantly, salvation meant for Orphism and its offspring the
1 BOeuC V.
3 Ibid. Thus Firpo, among numerous other Brunists, contends that metempsychosis is
‘uno dei motivi centrali della filosofia del Nolano’.

274 GIORDANO BRUNO
emancipation of the soul from its physical prison or tomb and its return
to its ethereal abode, and explained the incarnation of souls in bodies in
terms that imply the essential baseness of matter. Where such views of
human nature were held, salvation could only mean the attainment of
the eternal bliss of a disembodied soul. Such extreme devaluation of
matter clashed with Buddhism’s nirvana as well as with Bruno’s rejection
of gnosticism and his deification of matter, which would render an
unreserved and unqualified endorsement of the Pythagorean
metempsychosis most inconsequential and illogical.
What makes it particularly difficult to ascertain Bruno’s real stance
with regard to metempsychosis is the fact that there are numerous
passages in Bruno’s works in which his views about the relationship
between body and soul, as well as between soul and God are strikingly
dualistic. Most disconcerting, however, are Bruno’s not infrequent
deferential references to metempsychosis all across the gamut of his
numerous works.
I do not presume to provide in this chapter a conclusive answer to this
question. Bruno’s frequent ambiguities, hesitations and apparent
contradictions on this subject make such a task almost impossible to
accomplish. However, in view of the many unchallenged recent opinions
maintaining Bruno’s full endorsement of metempsychosis, I would like
to make the strongest possible case for the opposite view, based on a
rigorous exegesis of precisely those passages in Bruno’s works where he
most clearly seems to have endorsed this doctrine.
I contend that Bruno succeeded in developing a totally original view
of metempsychosis, considerably more sophisticated than the traditional
Pythagorean one and altogether congruous with the rest of his
philosophy, particularly with monism.4
4 Hilary Gatti has called my attention to the fact that it was the biographies of
Neoplatonists such as Iamblicus that presented Pythagoras as a precursor of

Neoplatonism. Bruno in the Renaissance found himself placed in front of a divergent
interpretative tradition with respect to this idea of metempsychosis as a transitory phase
of the individual soul which finally leaves the sphere of matter altogether to attain the
sphere of the ideas. This reading of Pythagorean philosophy has been powerfully
reproposed in our century by Burkert, and by many is simply silently accepted as the ‘true’
reading (see, for example, the references to Pythagoras by Frances Yates). Bruno, however,
seems to be accepting the alternative, more immanentist reading proposed by Aristotle
(and today accepted, for example, by Carl Huffman) which makes Pythagoras’s
metempsychosis into an eternal process of transmigration. This already links it more
closely to the eternal processes of matter, although still not eliminating the idea of an
individual soul as rigorously as Bruno finishes up by doing. Hilary Gatti discusses this
issue (although not specifically in relation to metempsychosis) in the first chapter ‘Bruno
and the Philosopher from Samos’ of her book Giordano Bruno and Renaissance Science,
Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press, 1999, pp. 13–28.
METEMPSYCHOSIS AND MONISM IN BRUNO’S NOVA FILOSOFIA 275
12.1 Frontispiece of Giordano Bruno, Cabala del cavallo pegaseo, 1585.

276 GIORDANO BRUNO
Basic Concepts of the Nolan’s nova filosofia Relevant to the Doctrine

of Metempsychosis
Materia
Corporeal Matter
Corporeal matter consists of the atoms of the four traditional
Empedoclean elements – earth, water, air and fire – which in different
proportions constitute all the bodies of the universe. Bruno also regards
the aether as part of corporeal matter.5
Incorporeal Matter
Besides corporeal matter, there is, according to Bruno, incorporeal
matter.6 The soul of the world (l’anima del mondo) and the universal
intellect (intelletto universale) as well as all individual souls, despite
being incorporeal, are essentially material.
With regard to the individual human souls, the Nolan conceived
them, as Luigi Firpo accurately points out, to be ‘an operation of the
universal soul’.7
The universal intellect, the principal faculty of the soul of the world,
directs, governs and transforms matter in its endless vicissitudes.8 As ‘the
most fecund of seeds, or rather, inseminator’ (fecondissimo de semi, o
pur seminatore) it sows in matter all forms, corporeal and incorporeal,
and brings forth the numberless individual beings in the universe.9
Reviewing the evolution of Bruno’s thoughts from Sigillus sigillorum
to De la causa, principio et uno, M. Ciliberto confirms H. Védrine’s
statement concerning Bruno’s doctrine of the soul of the world, the
universal intellect and Mater-materia. He states that ‘in the sweep and
5 At least the element earth is unquestionably made up of discrete atoms, but
corporeal matter also comprises ether, a most subtle, continuous, non-atomic fluid – very
similar to the Stoic pneuma – that fills the entire space. (Air is probably ether polluted by
particles of earth and water, therefore it is also continuous, although it is not clear whether
water, like earth, has an atomic structure.)
6 BDFI, 264ff.
8 Giordano Bruno, De la causa principio et uno, ed. G. Aquilecchia, Turin: Einaudi,
1973, p. 67: ‘L’ intelletto universale … è la prima e principal facultà de l’anima del mondo,
la quale è forma universale di quello … L’intelletto universale è l’intima più reale e propria
facultà e parte potenziale de l’anima del mondo.’
9 Granada, M.A. ‘Giordano Bruno y la dignitas hominis’ in El umbral de la
modernidad, Barcelona: Herder, 2000. p. 192. Granada pointedly observes that Bruno
conceives the universal intellect, rather than the Word (second person of the Trinity), as
the immanent creator of the world, thereby ‘abandoning the transcendent and personal
conception of the [universal] Intellect’.
general direction of the destruction of all the traditional hierarchies,

Bruno advances towards the unification and identification of matter and
form’.10
Because the universal intellect brings forth from the womb (grembo)
of Mater-materia everything that exists, it is manifest that it is also the
agent that activates and directs both corporeal and incorporeal matter
into becoming every distinct and qualitatively different being in the
universe. The Nolan explains: ‘According to the diversity of dispositions
of matter and according to the capability of the active and passive
material principles, [the universal intellect] manages to produce diverse
configurations and to bring about diverse capabilities, showing
sometimes living beings without sensation some other times living and
sentient beings without intelligence …’11
However, in De magia Bruno gives a puzzling explanation of how the
soul of the world creates individual subjects and operations. He writes:
Thus the soul of the world in the entire world, wherever it acquires
a certain kind of matter, produces there a certain kind of subject and
from it a certain kind of operation. Consequently, although it is the
same everywhere, it does not act everywhere the same way, because
the matter apportioned to it is not disposed the same way
everywhere.12
Thus it seems that the soul of the world, rather than prompting matter
to bring forth all the forms of the universe, adapts itself to the
disposition it finds in matter. Yet how does matter acquire such a
disposition?
In the following passage of De l’infinito Bruno explains: ‘Matter,
tired of the old appearance [specie], lies in wait, yearning for the new
one, for it desires to become everything and, according to its own forces,
to be similar to every being.’13 ‘Agguato’, ‘bramosa’, ‘desidera’, with
these words Bruno strongly anthropomorphizes the reason for the
emergence of a particular form from matter. It gets tired of its former
looks, lies in wait, yearns for new ones. Bruno concludes: ‘We are
10 Ciliberto, M. (1990), Giordano Bruno, Roma-Bari: Laterza, p. 39.

11 My translation of BOeuC III: ‘Secondo la diversità delle disposizioni della materia
e secondo la facultà de’ principii materiali attivi e passivi, viene a produr diverse
figurazioni, ed effettuar diverse facultadi, alle volte mostrando effetto di vita senza senso,
talvolta di vita e senso senza intelletto.’
12 Bruno Giordano (1986), De magia. De vinculis in genere, a cura di Albano Biondi,
Pordenone: Edizioni Biblioteca dell’Immagine, p. 20: ‘ita et anima mundi in toto mundo,
ubicunque talem est adepta materiam, ibi tale producit subiectum et inde tales edit
operationes. Quamvis ergo aequaliter sit ubique, non aequaliter ubique agit, quia non
aequaliter disposita ubique illi materia administratur’.
13 BDI, 492.
278 GIORDANO BRUNO
therefore authorized without doubt to admit the flow of atoms in the

universe, through which the fortuitous kinds of beings alternate with
each other.’14
Thus, the emergence of a particular form from matter depends on the
disposition of matter to receive it – a disposition which Bruno compares
to a desire and yearning that only a rational flux of atoms can fulfil. We
know that Bruno postulated an immanent rational principle in matter to
prompt and direct the movement of the atoms in order to counteract the
randomness of Epicurean atomism. Thus, the universal intellect gathers,
assembles, and directs the atoms to adopt the specific configuration of a
concrete being.
Monism and Pantheism

On 2 June 1592, Bruno acknowledged before the Venetian inquisitors
that he considered the soul and life of every living being to derive from
the soul of the world. These are his words:
Thus from this [Holy] Spirit which is called the soul of the universe
– as I understand in my philosophy – comes the life and the soul to
every being that has life and soul. However, I consider it [the soul
of the universe] to be immortal; just as the bodies regarding their
substance are also all immortal, since death is nothing but division
and assemblage.15
Thus, although the bodies themselves are perishable, they must be

considered immortal because the matter that constitutes them is
immortal. Similarly, the individual souls owe their immortality to the
immortality of the soul of the universe.
It is possible to formulate the comparison that Bruno establishes
between the relationship of bodies to matter and that of souls to the soul
of the world in terms of the following analogy of proportionality: bodies
are to matter as souls are to the soul of the world. This analogy is
important because it clarifies Bruno’s notion of the anima mundi. We
know from the passage we just quoted that the soul of the world imparts
life and soul to everything that is alive as well as to the other innumerable
lifeless bodies in the universe. For this reason the soul that animates each
and every single being in the universe, and consequently all matter, is
called universal. The principle that guides and directs the movement of
atoms can be no other than the universal intellect. Although Bruno
considers it a faculty of the soul of the world, it may be more accurate to
say that the soul of the world is the universal intellect itself in its capacity
14 Ibid.: ‘Siamo dunque autorizzati ad ammettere, senza dubbio, nell’universo il flusso
degli atomi per cui si alternano le sorti stabilite …’

15 Spampanato, Vita, doc. vn. xi.
of sowing life and soul in the universe, as ‘fecondissimo de semi o pur

seminatore’.16 In the light of this, the relationship between the soul of the
world and the individual souls is analogous to that between matter and
bodies. Just as bodies are in essence matter, so are the individual souls
essentially the soul of the world. Both matter and the soul of the world
are one, immutable and imperishable, whereas bodies and souls are
numerous, mutable and perishable. The only difference is that both the
soul of the world and the individual souls are incorporeal matter, whereas
matter and bodies are corporeal matter. In De la causa Bruno states that
‘l’efficiente può esser anco indistinto da lei secondo l’essere’ (the efficient
cause can even be undifferentiated from matter according to the laws of
being). The universal intellect coincides with the material principle, it is
one with matter. This conception constitutes a total reversal of the
Aristotelian notion of matter.
Indeed, in opposition to Platonic, Aristotelian and late medieval
Scholastic ontological, cosmological and anthropological dualism,
Bruno’s nova filosofia is thoroughly monistic. Thus H. Védrine refers to
‘this physical and metaphysical monism towards which all Bruno’s
philosophy tends’,17 and insists that the principal merit, in this sense, of
the Nolan philosophy is to have thus defeated all tendencies towards
dualism.
Let us now briefly summarize and correlate the main characteristics
of Mater-materia, the anima mundi and the intellectus universalis, since
they are the key concepts for understanding Bruno’s monism and
consequently also his concept of metempsychosis.
There is nothing in the world except matter. Matter is the origin and
source of all forms, some of which are corporeal and others incorporeal.
The corporeal forms are all the bodies and the atoms that constitute
them, whereas the incorporeal forms are the souls of all living
organisms. Matter can bring forth the complex organization of forms
only if it has in itself, as an intrinsic essential attribute, a ‘mind’ or
intelligent principle of its own This principle is the universal intellect
which, because it has the potency to bring forth life and souls, that is, to
animate the world, takes the name of soul of the world. Thus matter, the
universal intellect, and the soul of the world are one and the same thing.
The individual souls are the material incorporeal forms that issue from
the womb of Mater-materia after being inseminated by the great
seminator, the intellectus universalis. This is the graphic metaphor that
16 BDFI, 211.
17 ‘ce monisme physique et metaphysique auquel tend toute la philosophie de Bruno’.
See Védrine, H. (1967), La conception de la nature chez Giordano Bruno, Paris: Librairie
philosophique J. Brin, p. 290.
280 GIORDANO BRUNO
Bruno uses to condense in one single image the essence of his monistic
and pantheistic view of the world.
It is clear from the following passage of De vinculis in genere that
Bruno conceives of Mater-materia as divine: ‘Thus matter is something
divine, just as form is considered divine, which is either nothing [at all]
or is something of [belonging to] matter. Outside and without matter
there is nothing [at all].’18 Indeed, because it is eternal, immutable,
omnipotent, creative and intelligent, Mater-materia must be considered
divine. Nothing exists outside and without it. These passages contain the
clearest formulation of Bruno’s monism and pantheism.
Justice and Metempsychosis
Justice, one of the principal subjects in the Nolan’s moral dialogues, is

crucial for understanding his friendly disposition to metempsychosis.
Considering that there are neither rewards for merits nor punishments
for crimes in the supernatural world Bruno so resolutely rejected, he
needed to find a way justice could be done in this one. A universal
judgement had to take place within the ordinary course of nature, so
that every human being would receive the retribution its actions
deserved. Thus Bruno discusses in Spaccio the ‘universal judgement
through which everyone in the world shall be rewarded and punished
according to the measure of merits and transgressions’. As Miguel Angel
Granada points out in his Introduction to the Eroici furori, this is ‘a
fundamental point of Spaccio and Eroici furori; a point that expresses,
upon abandoning Christian eschatology, the displacement of the
transcendental perspective (which is tied to the cosmological conception
of an infinite universe) towards a decidedly conscious immanence in the
infinite nature’.19
Spaccio de la bestia trionfante reveals the initial stages of Bruno’s
rapidly maturing moral philosophy, whose central problem and most
pressing task is to find a natural alternative to Christian eschatological
justice. Spaccio is the Nolan’s first attempt to analyse in depth the
complex problems posed by a firmly established unnatural and decadent
18 BOL III, 695f. ‘Et divinum ergo quoddam est materia, sicut et divinum quoddam
existimatur esse forma, quae aut nihil est aut materiae quiddam est. Extra et sine materia
nihil.’
19 BOeuC VII, XL: ‘un point fondamental du Spaccio et des Eroici Furori; un point
qui exprime, avec l’abandon de l’eschatologie chrétienne, le déplacement de la perspective

transcendante (liée à la conception cosmologique d’un univers fini) vers une immanence
consciente et décidée dans la nature infinie.’
moral order. Because the Nolan realized the urgent need to overturn it
and replace its values, virtues and vices with opposite ones, he initially
turned to the Pythagorean doctrine of metempsychosis in search for an
answer – albeit hesitantly, shunning full agreement – until he came up
with a more satisfactory solution of his own to the problem of justice.
However, Bruno became increasingly aware of the incompatibility of
metempsychosis with the basic tenets of the ontology and cosmology he
had previously developed in the Italian dialogues.20 Nevertheless, an
alternative solution of the problem of justice was difficult to come by,
since Bruno first had to harmonize his moral philosophy with his
cosmology and ontology.
Bruno’s resolve to safeguard justice in the world was kindled
particularly by his heated controversy with the Reformation regarding
its fundamental doctrine of justification by faith alone. The paradox was
that faith itself – the necessary and sufficient condition for justification
according to the Reformers – could never be earned by meritorious
deeds. As gratia gratis data it was a totally undeserved gratuitous gift
from God.
By severing the link between behaviour and proportional retribution
the Reformers believed they had restored the true Christian morality
corrupted by Roman Catholicism. Bruno, on the other hand, did not see
the Protestant doctrine as a step towards the complete liberation of man,
but rather as an incentive to idleness and inaction, which ultimately
would lead to even greater deterioration of morality.
The Nolan who, besides being an eminent philosopher was also an
accomplished theologian, must have found it difficult to reconcile true
justice with Christian justification. Christian theodicy – the doctrine that
vindicates divine justice in the presence of evil in the world – must have
appeared to him highly inconsistent, if not contradictory. On the one
hand, theodicy argues that, since it is obvious that justice cannot be done
in this world, it has to prevail in a supernatural afterlife. On the other
hand, Christian theology firmly holds that man cannot be just unless
God justifies him. The consequence is clear: since human justice is
impossible in this world, divine justification is needed for justice to
triumph in the other. This means that human beings cannot be rewarded
for their good deeds, for nothing can be done without the help of God,
neither can divine help be deserved either, for it is an utterly gratuitous
gift of God (gratia gratis data). Conversely, human beings deserve and
receive the maximum punishment for whatever serious crime they may
commit unless they repent, irrespective of all the good deeds they did in
20 Spaccio. BOeuC V 149: ‘giudizio universale, per cui nel mondo ogniuno vegna
premiato e castigato secondo la misura de gli meriti e delitti’.

282 GIORDANO BRUNO
their lives. But again true contrition cannot be achieved unless God
gratuitously grants it to the sinner. In sum: justification is not a reward
for human justice but an award from divine liberality; all merit is denied
to human beings for their good deeds, and all blame is put on them for
having done what is considered worthless. The most a human being can
do to be justified is to believe in the unbelievable and to recognize the
reality of the absurd. Unfortunately even this belief is undeserved
because it is a gratuitous gift of God as well. In addition, the divine
Judge found it just to punish man by decreeing that he is unjust merely
for the fact of being born. To top it all – and this could not fail to appear
to the philosopher as the height of injustice – man is by nature and birth
unjust because somebody else sinned for him. In the face of these beliefs,
shared by both Catholics and Protestants, it is not unreasonable to
suppose that a great philosopher and an expert theologian like Bruno
regarded a doctrine that looks so much like a travesty of justice as a
dismal misconception.
If Bruno could not accept the solution to the problem of justice
propounded by Christian theodicy and dogma, neither could he agree with
the Pythagorean doctrine because it failed to explain why every human soul
departing from a body should find and inhabit precisely the pre-existing
animal or human body it justly deserved for its misdeeds. It is true that the
Pythagorean doctrine had the considerable advantage over the Christian
one in that at least it acknowledged the merit of virtuous human behaviour
and, most importantly, it indicated a way to achieve immortality different
from the one proposed by Christian doctrine. In the face of this, Bruno
searched for a solution to the problem of justice in this world that would
respect merit in virtue and at the same time uphold the immortality of the
soul without the handicaps of the Pythagorean solution.
Bruno’s last Italian moral dialogue Eroici furori gives us a clue to the
reasoning that in all probability guided him to arrive at his own solution
of the problem of justice in the world. In order to explain how human
beings can be justified on the basis of their meritorious deeds it was
essential to consider what human beings must do in order to attain
happiness for themselves and for the society in which they live. The
Nolan firmly believed that human beings, because they have a soul
united to the divinity in virtue of its intellectual capacities which
‘transforms itself in god as if itself were god’,21 needed to strive for the
highest worth and dignity (dignitas) achievable by them.22 Thus human
21 BOL I, i, 206: ‘homo, qui in deum transeat quasi ipse sit deus’.
22 In order to better understand the nature, implications, and relevance of the concept
of dignitas in Bruno, see Miguel Angel Granada’s article ‘Giordano Bruno et la dignitas
hominis’, op. cit., pp. 85–208.
dignity would depend on the distance an individual was capable and

willing to go in order to reach the goal of human existence.
Consequently, the supreme privilege and duty specific of human beings
consists in moving decidedly towards their goal in life. This can be
achieved only by those who transcend themselves. However, this
transcendence can only be achieved by a frenzied drive towards the true,
the good and the beautiful, in short, by contemplation and love.23 Just is
the person who indefatigably pursues the true, the good and the
beautiful, and unjust whoever neglects striving for that noble end. Just
is the frenzied hero, the Acteon in search of the divine Diana, and unjust
the bestial man. Consequently, man does not need a transcendent
Justifier, he justifies himself through his own actualized transcendence.
With this insight Bruno had gone a long way in his effort to solve the
central problem of his revolutionary morality. However, the most
important issue still remained unsolved, how could the human soul
receive just remuneration for its heroic frenzy? Nothing but immortality
seemed to be a fair reward. But how could the human soul attain
immortality? Again the Christian and the Pythagorean solutions failed
to convince the Nolan, the former because immortality was to be gained
only in the other world, and merit was not accredited to human
behaviour, the latter because, even if both merit and immortality were to
a certain extent safeguarded, it failed to do full justice to the dignity of
man.
Thus, in his last moral dialogue, De gli eroici furori, Bruno succeeded
in breaking loose from the clutches of both doctrines of justice, the
Christian as well as the Pythagorean. The Nolan circumvented both
doctrines by making retribution dependent exclusively on the Oedipal-
Faustian frenzied quest for the deepest understanding of man and
infinite nature.
Thus the great Brunian moral revolution came to fruition in his last
Italian dialogue, according to which the greatest merit of a human being
consists in a relentless heroic quest to reach what Miguel Angel Granada
calls ‘the true paradise, heaven or glory accessible to man’, and the
23 I perceive in this dialogue strong resonances of Bruno’s indebtedness to Renaissance
Neoplatonism. For this reason I cannot agree with M.A. Granada’s opinion that this
dialogue represents a conscious climactic development of Bruno’s nova filosofia along the
closely knit series of his six Italian dialogues toward its culmination, rather than a revisit
to certain Neoplatonic grounds he had formerly frequented before composing his Italian
dialogues. Granada admits that ‘Bruno acknowledges [in his last work, De immenso] “his
intellectual indebtedness” to Florentine Neoplatonism’: see ‘Giordano Bruno B. et la
dignitas hominis’, op. cit., p. 193. It is not improbable that a similar if not stronger
indebtedness to Neoplatonism affected his earlier work Eroici furori. For the exposition
of Granada’s thesis see his Introduction to the Eroici furori in BOeuC VII.
284 GIORDANO BRUNO
supreme reward of the furioso eroico is the awareness of his identity

with Diana, the infinite universe, the divine Mater-materia.24 Conversely,
the ultimate punishment for bestial or just indolent human beings – the
inevitable consequence of their refusal to engage in the pursuit of dignity
– is the blindness of the cave-dwellers to the infinity and divinity of the
universe and the dignity of man, about death and immortality.25
The Pythagorean Metempsychosis: Bruno’s Argument ad hominem

against the Church’s Dogmas Concerning the Fate of the Soul after
Death
As is well known, Epicurus’s highest aspiration was to free humanity

from its irrational fears, the most dreadful of which undoubtedly is that
of an afterlife of everlasting torment. Although Bruno shared Epicurus’s
sentiment he could not accept the philosopher’s denial of the soul’s
immortality. Bruno did believe in immortality, but he did not find
compelling the arguments orthodox Christian theology advanced to
uphold it. It seemed to him that the doctrine of the Pythagoreans was
just as reasonable, if not more so, than the only one the Church alleged
to be true.
When at his Venetian trial Bruno referred to metempsychosis as being
worthy of consideration, he was simply suggesting from a strictly
philosophical point of view that, since the immortality of the soul had
by all means to be safeguarded, there were other ways of defending it
besides postulating the migration of souls after death to otherworldly
places, and metempsychosis undeniably was one of them. Let us recall
Bruno’s words in front of the Venetian judges:
I have reasoned well, following philosophical considerations that,
although the soul cannot subsist without the body but exists in the
body, the very same way it is in one body it could be in another, or
pass from one body into another. Even if this is not true,
Pythagoras’s opinion at least seems to be likely.26
Bruno had held the same opinion in Spaccio where, referring to the
24 BOeuC VII, lv.

25 This is why dumb asses (asinitas), lewd and grubby pigs (porcini), and frightened
hares are Bruno’s favourite images for this condition. Only by virtue of such natural
rewards and punishments is earthly justice secured.
26 Spampanato, Vita, p. 720: ‘Io ho ben raggionato, e seguendo le raggioni filosofiche,
che essendo l’anima subsistente senza il corpo ed inexistente nel corpo, possa col medesmo
modo che è in un corpo essere in un altro, passar da un corpo in un altro. Il che, si non è
vero, par almeno verisimile l’opinione di Pittagora.’
opinion of many excellent philosophers about transmigration, he wrote:

‘if it is not to be believed, it deserves very much to be considered’ (se non
è da esser creduto, è molto da esser considerato).27
Bruno’s words before the Venetian inquisitors are important because
they explicitly and clearly indicate the reason why he thought
metempsychosis was a matter worthy of consideration. Since according
to Catholic orthodoxy the soul can exist independently from the body,
it could just as well migrate into another body. The astute philosopher
was wielding here a powerful argument ad hominem against the
Catholic theologians without incriminating himself, for the Church had
declared the doctrine of metempsychosis heretical and incompatible
with Christian faith.
However, in the Council of Vienne (France) of 1311, the Church had
declared a dogma of faith the doctrine asserting that the intellectual
human soul is the form of the body and, consequently, that it remains
linked forever to the body it once animated. The inconsistency of this
pronouncement is evident. On the one hand, it is a fundamental doctrine
of the Church that each individual intellectual human soul continues to
exist after separation from the body and migrates into an otherworldly
‘place’ – Heaven, Purgatory or Hell – where it must remain until its
definitive reunion with its original body at the Final Judgement. On the
other hand, the Church contends that this is possible only because each
and every human soul is metaphysically bound to one and the same
body for all eternity, due to the fact that it is the form of the body and,
as Aristotle asserted, form is inseparable from matter. This is indeed a
shocking dogmatic pronouncement by the XV Ecumenical Council
against the errors of Petrus Olivi, who had rejected the idea that ‘the
substance of the intellectual human soul is the form of the body’.28 Thus,
not only did a supposedly infallible ecumenical Council indirectly give
its endorsement to Aristotle’s doctrine of matter and form, but it raised
a purely philosophical doctrine to a dogma of faith, a pronouncement
that Pope Clement V promptly confirmed.29 By alluding to the
27 BOeuC V, 27.
28 These are the words of the condemnation of the errors of Petrus Joannis Olivi by Pope
Clement V, in accordance with the approval of the Council of Vienne: ‘forma, velut erroneam
ac veritati catholicae inimicam fidei, paedicto sacro approbante Concilio reprobamus:
definientes, ut cunctis nota sit fidei sincerae veritas ac praecludatur universis erroribus aditus,
ne subintrent, quod quisquis deinceps asserere, defendere seu temere pertinaciter
praesumpserit, quod anima rationalis seu intellectiva non sit forma corporis humani per se
et essentialiter, tamquam hereticus sit censendus’. These last words make it clear that the
intention of the Council was to raise this pronouncement to the category of a dogma of faith.
29 Denzinger, Henricus (1957), Enchiridium symbolorum, Barcelona-Freiburg-
Briesgau-Rome: Herder, 222f, n. 481.

286 GIORDANO BRUNO
inconsistency of the Church’s doctrine as well as by insisting on his

strictly philosophical approach, Bruno tried to justify his repeated
sympathetic references to Pythagoras’s doctrine in his writings. Let us
now examine some of the most important ones.
Bruno’s References to Metempsychosis in the Italian Dialogues
Spaccio della bestia trionfante
This dialogue is frequently cited as the work in which Bruno most

explicitly and clearly states his belief in Pythagorean transmigration.
There are certain passages in the ‘Explanatory Epistle’ to Sir Philip
Sydney that seem to indicate that Bruno did indeed endorse
metempsychosis. First, there is Bruno’s remark about his own future
transmigration in the following poignant, almost prophetic passage:
This man, as a citizen and servant of the world, a child of Father
Sun and Mother Earth, because he loves the world too much, must
be hated, censured, persecuted, and extinguished by it. But, in the
mean time, may he not be idle or badly employed while awaiting his
death, his transmigration, his change.30
There are other passages in the ‘Explanatory Epistle’ in which Bruno

refers to transmigration in less ambiguous terms. He writes:
since we see in the faces of many in the human species, expression,
voices, gestures, affects, and inclinations, some equine, others
porcine, asinine, aquiline or bovine, so we are to believe that in
them there is a vital principle through which, by virtue of the
proximate past or future mutations of bodies, they have been or are
about to be pigs, horses, asses, eagles or whatever else they indicate,
unless by habit of continence, of study, of contemplation and of
other virtues or vices they change and dispose themselves
otherwise.31
30 BOeuC V, 11: ‘questo, come cittadino e domestico del mondo, figlio del padre Sole
e de la Terra madre, perché ama troppo il mondo, veggiamo come debba essere odiato,
biasimato, perseguitato e spinto da quello. Ma in questo mentre non stia ocioso, né mal
occupato su l’aspettar de la sua morte, della sua transmigrazione, del suo cangiamento.’
31 BOeuC V, 27: ‘Però, come nell’umana specie veggiamo de molti in viso, volto, voci,
gesti, affetti et inclinazioni: altri cavallini, altri porcini, asinini, aquilini, buovini; cossì è da
credere che in essi sia un principio vitale, per cui in potenza di prossima passata o di
prossima futura mutazion di corpo, sono stati o sono per esser porci, cavalli, asini, aquile,
o altro che mostrano; se per abito di continenza, de studii, di contemplazione et altre
virtudi o vizii non si cangiano e non si disponeno altrimente.’
Undoubtedly this passage strikes us as depicting the Pythagorean

transmigration in the crudest terms. Bruno is here assuming a strict
identity between man and animal. However, it is significant that the
agent of the mutation is not an individual human soul searching for a
new abode, but a ‘vital principle’ through which the change takes place.
Bruno points out that this principle is the ‘soul’ under whose ‘dominion,
power, and virtue’ corporeal matter is placed.32 Bruno specifies further:
Jove considers this principle to be that substance which is truly man,
and not an accident which is derived from the composition. This
[principle] is the divinity, the hero, the demon. The particular god,
the intelligence, in which, by which, and through which, just as
diverse complexions and bodies are formed and form themselves,
likewise beings come forth, diverse in species, of diverse names, of
diverse forms. This is so because that [principle] which, as regards
the rational acts and appetites moves and governs the body
according to reason, is superior to it and cannot be necessitated and
constrained by it.33
It is significant that Bruno does not mention in any of these passages a

transmigration of separable souls from bodies, but rather of whole
natures changing and mutating. Thus, in reference to Jove, Bruno
explains:
Thus we have here a Jove … regarded as something variable, subject
to the fate of mutation … Because of this, just as he, from one who
at first was not Jove subsequently was made Jove, so he, from one
who at present is Jove in the end will be other than Jove.34
Bruno explicitly indicates a change of identity in Jove. A metamorphosis

has taken place rather than a metempsychosis.35 The infinite entity and
substance remains the same, whereas the innumerable particular natures
change by participating in it. Although in essence they remain one, they
are subject to quantity for they are transformed ‘by reason of the
number through which they pass’.36 Thus the individuation of both
32 BOeuC V, 25.
33 Ibid.: ‘Questo principio dumque stima Giove esser quella sustanza che è veramente
l’uomo, e non accidente che deriva dalla composizione. Questo è il nume, l’eroe, il
demonio, il dio particulare, l’intelligenza : in cui, da cui, e per cui, come vegnono formate
e si formano diverse complessioni e corpi, cossì viene a subintrare diverso essere in specie,
diversi nomi, diverse fortune. Questo per esser quello che quanto a gli atti razionali et
appetiti, secondo la raggione muove e governa il corpo, è superiore a quello, e non può
essere da lui necessitato e costretto.’
34 Ibid., 19, 21: ‘Abbiamo dumque qua un Giove … ben tolto qual cosa variable,
suggetta al fato de la mutazione … per cui come da quel che prima non era Giove,
appresso fu fatto Giove, cossì da quel ch’al presente è Giove, al fine sarà altro che Giove.
35 BOeuC V in final pages in reference to the ‘ruota della metamorfosi’.
36 Ibid., 19.
288 GIORDANO BRUNO
corporeal and incorporeal matter into quantified particular natures and

accordingly their incessant change depend on the power of the efficient
principle, the universal intellect, to impel and direct the movement and
arrangement of atoms.
Cabala del cavallo pegaseo
There is one passage in the second dialogue of Cabala del cavallo

pegaseo where Onorio, the main protagonist and Bruno’s mouthpiece,
explicitly admits, speaking from experience, that he considers to be true
‘the opinion of the Pythagoreans, Druids, Saducees and others like them
… regarding the continuous metamfisicosi [sic]’.37
Bruno reveals in this passage his own views about metempsychosis. The
change that takes place in beings after death is in physis, that is, in the
nature of things, rather than in psyche, the souls of beings. This is precisely
why he calls this change metamfisicosi rather than metempsicosi. The
neologism is no doubt intentional, but what led Bruno to change the
traditional name of metempsychosis into that of metamfisicosi?
Presumably because he wanted to signify by the change of name a change
of concept as well. Metempsychosis is a compound of meta (trans) and
empsychosis (animation), which, in turn, is a compound of en (in) and
psyche (soul). Thus metempsychosis suggests a change of animation,
whereas metam-fisicosi indicates a change of nature (physis), as Bruno
himself clarifies: ‘cioé transformazione o transcorporazone de tutte
l’anime’ (that is, a transformation or change of body on the part of all
souls). There is indeed a substantial difference between transformation
and transcorporation of souls. The latter implies the passage of one soul
into different bodies, whereas the former indicates a metamorphosis of the
souls themselves. The term metamfisicosi is certainly more appropriate to
Bruno’s concept of metempsychosis than to that of the Pythagoreans. It
indicates that Bruno understood metempsychosis as a metamorphosis of
matter brought about by its immanent universal intellect – the faculty of
the soul of the world – considering that the individual souls are nothing
but the ‘subject and operation’ of the anima mundi in matter.
Notwithstanding, the Nolan agreed with the belief of Pythagoreans and
Sadducees that an immortal soul is present in different bodies, only that
for Bruno this is the soul of the world. Indeed, according to him the only
immortal soul present in bodies is the anima mundi, whereas for the
Pythagoreans the same individual soul can pass from one body to another
whereby it achieves immortality.
37 BOeuC VI, 93.

The fictional Onorio’s views about the Sadducean and Pythagorean

doctrines are not a projection of Bruno’s views. The Nolan referred to
the Pythagorean and Sadducean doctrines only because he needed as
many authorities as he could muster to buttress his own. He found
the most imposing one in Pythagoras, doubtless one of the most
reputable philosophers of Antiquity, whose doctrine coincided with
his own in what for him was most important, namely in attributing
to the soul an immortality of the here and now rather than in some
otherworldly place, a natural immortality that could be achieved in
this world.
However, Bruno’s sharp disagreement with Pythagoras becomes
evident in the following passage of the second dialogue of Cabala del
cavallo pegaseo:
[the specific essence of man] is identical with that of flies, marine
oysters and plants, and any other thing that is animated or has a
soul, as there is no body that does not have a more or less vivacious
and perfect communication of spirit in itself. Now, this spirit,
according to fate or providence, order or fortune, unites now to one
species of body, now to another and, because of the diversity of
compositions and parts, it achieves diverse degrees and perfections
of intelligence and operations.38
The importance of this passage is extraordinary in many respects.39 First,

Bruno does not shy away from equating man’s soul to that of flies,
spiders, marine oysters and plants. Consequently, if man’s soul is
identical with that of those living beings, there must be only one soul in
all of them, which can be no other than the unique and singular soul of
the world. Significantly, the Nolan deliberately selects those species most
alien and remote from the human in organization, mobility and
intelligence, in order to indicate the presence of one and the same soul
in all of those organisms, despite the sharp anatomical differences
between them. Because Bruno makes this observation precisely in the
context of his discussion of transmigration, it offers a graphic
illustration of the more sophisticated form of metempsychosis he
advocates, namely, the manifestation of the soul of the world in all
forms of life, from the lowest to the highest.
The definitive confirmation of our interpretation comes from Bruno
himself. Thus in the Epistola dedicatoria of the Cabala he writes: ‘In
conclusion it seems to me that it (the ass) is the self-same soul of the
world, all of it in all and all in whichever part of it. So now you see what
and how great is the importance of this venerable subject about which
38 Ibid., 95.
39 Cf. Granada, ‘G. Bruno et la dignitas hominis’, op. cit., pp. 85ff.
290 GIORDANO BRUNO
we are making the present discourse and dialogues.’40 Thus the Cabala
gives us the most authoritative interpretation of Onorio’s myth and at
the same time the most ironical recapitulation of Bruno’s entire
ontology: the ass is the supreme symbol of Bruno’s pantheistic monism!
A most venerable subject indeed!
De gli eroici furori
Towards the end of the fourth dialogue of the first part of Eroici furori we
find one of the most relevant metempsychosis-related passages. It contains
abundant and most elucidating information about the soul of the world,
individual souls and metempsychosis. It is introduced by Cicada’s question
to Tansillo, ‘But please tell me briefly what do you understand of the soul
of the world since she can neither ascend nor descend?’41 Tansillo answers
that he must first distinguish between the meanings of ‘mondo’. Mondo,
he explains, can signify either the universe as a whole – and this is the
vulgar interpretation – or any celestial globe, like the sun and the earth,
which is how the true philosophers understand it. In the first sense of the
term it is obvious that there can be no soul of the world, for the universe
is infinite, immobile, formless and, hence, inanimate. The heavenly bodies,
on the other hand, do indeed have souls, but these neither ascend nor
descend, but turn in circles inside them. Each one of the individual souls
of every celestial globe, Bruno explains,
is composed of superior and inferior powers [potenze]. By virtue of
the superior ones it abides [versa circa] with the divinity, whereas
with the inferior ones it abides with the corporeal mass, which it
vivifies and sustains between the tropics of the generation and
corruption of things living in those worlds, eternally keeping its
own life, for the act of divine providence conserves them in their
ordinary and identical being by virtue of the divine heat and light,
always with the same measure and order.
The individual souls, including the human, in spite of being simple, have
different powers that enable them to abide with the deity as well as with
the corporeal mass. However, only the soul of the world can give such
opposing powers to all individual souls, since it is both corporeal and
incorporeal, material and divine, and constitutes the very essence of each
one of them.
40 BOeuC VI, 17. My translation of: ‘In conclusione … mi par che sia l’istessa anima
del mondo, tutto in tutto, e tutto in qualsivoglia parte. Or vedete dumque quale e quanta
sia la importanza di questo venerabile suggetto, circa il quale noi facciamo il presente
discorso e dialogi…’
41 ‘Ma di grazia dimmi brevemente quel che intendi de l’anima del mondo se ella
ancora non può ascendere nè descendere?’ BOeuC VII.

This passage is crucial for understanding Bruno’s interpretation of

metempsychosis. Precisely because the individual souls of worlds
eternally retain their own lives by virtue of the divine heat and light, they
do not migrate from one celestial globe to the other. Similarly, the
individual souls of humans do not pass from body to body either. What
happens is that in both cases Mater-materia delivers from its womb all
the bodies that exist in the universe, both human and celestial, none of
which exists as a compositum of soul and body, but as one simple entity
which is both matter and soul in a sort of hypostatic union. The
circulation of an individual soul in every celestial globe, as well as in
every individual human being, constitutes the cyclical vicissitude of their
generation and corruption. This is why the celestial globes, which were
considered divine, eternally immutable and imperishable by the
Pythagorean-Platonic tradition are, according to Bruno, just as
perishable as human beings. Thus the Pythagorean metempsychosis is
transformed by Bruno into the wheel of the metamorphosis of the soul
of the world – the mutation and cycle of the vicissitude. However, and
this is the crucial point, whereas the vicissitude in Eroici furori is
understood by Bruno more platonico, as a vertical movement of ascent
and descent of the soul of the frenzied hero, the universal vicissitude
takes the form of an unstoppable metamorphosis of Mater-materia in all
directions along the eternally rotating spokes of the wheel of time. In
sum, the Pythagorean metempsychosis represents a cruder, more
popular, and undeveloped anticipation of the more elaborate, refined
and esoteric Brunian conception.
Bruno’s Stance with Regard to Metempsychosis in his Late Frankfurt

Poems
De triplici minimo et mensura
By far the most disconcerting passage with regard to Bruno’s stance

concerning metempsychosis is the one that at first sight places him
squarely in the camp of the Pythagoreans. We find it in chapter III of
Book One of De triplici minimo et mensura. The great importance of
this chapter lies in the fact that it recapitulates Bruno’s definitive
doctrine on metempsychosis, since De triplici minimo is one of the
poems he published immediately before being incarcerated by the
Venetian Inquisition. The passage reads:
According to the way the soul behaved in one body it disposes itself
to leave it, as Pythagoras, the Saducees, Origen and many other
Platonists assert. Consequently, that change of dwelling is not
292 GIORDANO BRUNO
fortuitous, as between the parts that make up a corporeal mass.

This is the reason why some [souls] travel along human bodies,
others are taken into the bodies of heroes, while others are cast into
baser ones. This is the opinion of those who think that everything is
driven by some sort of eternal revolution, except one thing.42
Bruno speaks in this passage about ‘some souls,’ in the plural,

incarnating either in common human beings or in heroes or in degraded
forms. This is a clear reference to the common Pythagorean doctrine of
metempsychosis, which Bruno does not consider to be exclusively
Pythagorean, but rather equally held by Sadducees, Origen and many
Platonists. At the end of this passage, however, the Nolan points out that
everything changes, except the One – ‘praeter unum’. This ‘one’
obviously can be no other than the immutable single soul of the world.
Bruno makes this clear in a passage that strongly supports our
interpretation:
Since the substance of things is not dissoluble, death needs not to be
feared, but, as Pythagoras affirms, rather awaited as a moment of
passage; this, in fact, implies complete dissolution for the
composite, but not for the substance …
… he [Pythagoras] derives a very valid argument in confirmation
of our immortality from the principle according to which the
indivisible substance which originates, assembles, breaks up, orders,
enlivens, moves, interweaves and like an admirable craftsman is put
in charge of such great labour – by no means should be (as an
accident, or entelechy, energy, harmony or mixture, according to the
stupid definition of Aristotle and Galen) of a condition inferior to
the corporeal entities that are assembled, broken up, ordered,
moved by and depend on it as their eternal foundation.43
Bruno explicitly states, first, that the eternal foundation of all changes in
corporeal entities is exclusively the one, indivisible substance and,
second, that our immortality depends on this and on this alone. The
question arises then, how is it possible that after the death of a human
being the unique eternal substance which by definition determines every
change in all corporeal entities should be predisposed by its previous
‘contraction’ into the body of another human being, to originate,
assemble, order, enliven and interweave a body with physical properties
congruous and in harmony not specifically with those of the bodies it
previously informed but, rather, with those of the ‘soul’ that was in
them? Should this be the case, the supreme autonomy of the indivisible
substance to deliver corporeal forms would be severely curtailed. It is
more reasonable to assume that the one, eternal, indivisible substance
42 MMI, 21.
43 Ibid.
creates innumerable other bodies with all sorts of physiognomic

features. Bruno could not possibly have attributed a particular
physiognomy to the fact that the indivisible substance had previously
contracted into a particular body with specific psychological features of
temperament, character and behaviour, if he stood firmly by his belief in
the supreme autonomy to the eternal individual substance.
The Pythagorean metempsychosis presupposes that the behaviour of
an individual can influence the physical traits of another. A causal link
is thereby established between behaviour and physiognomy, between the
ethical and the physical. Bruno was certainly aware of the frequent
physiognomic similarities between parents and their offspring. It is
improbable that a man as perspicacious as Bruno would attribute the
physiognomy of one individual to the behaviour of another not related
to him by the bonds of heredity.
The following paragraph discloses Bruno’s main motive for
conceiving a ‘metempsychosis’ very different from the crude
Pythagorean:
Since the substance of things is absolutely indissoluble, one need not
fear death, but, as Pythagoras affirms, wait for it as a form of
passage. Death, in fact, implies for compound things a complete
dissolution, but not for the substance. Death concerns only the
events. Otherwise we would confuse the substance with its singular
accidents, since the influxes affecting our body and the effluxes that
go out of it are continuous. To summarize: only in virtue of the
indivisible substance of the soul are we that which we are to be,
around which, as surrounding a centre, the assemblage and
dissolution of atoms takes place.44
There is nothing in this text that suggests a migration of individual

souls from body to body. The immortality Bruno is here referring to is
clearly the immortality of the one eternal indivisible soul of the world
immanent in matter (insita rebus). Consequently it is not death
absolutely speaking that must be feared, but only a death resulting from
the dissolution of the compositum between the body and a separable,
immortal soul.
De innumerabilibus, immenso et infigurabili
In the first paragraph of the final chapter of his last Frankfurt poem, the
Nolan expounds in detail his mature, and what we may regard as the
definitive, doctrine of matter, soul and God. These are Bruno’s words:
Behold! Look where nature and God are, which are the cause of
44 Ibid.
294 GIORDANO BRUNO
things, the potency of the principles, the fate of the elements, the
seeds of the things that shall be generated, the archetypal forms, the
active potency generatrix of everything, honoured with the name of
first principle. Which is also matter, passive potency, subsistent,
existent, present and which almost always manifests itself in the
unity. There does not exist an artificer who presides from above and
who, from the exterior, predisposes and configures.45
First, with regard to matter, it is here where Bruno categorically and

unambiguously establishes its absolute and unrestricted power and
creativity. The Nolan thereby identifies Nature with God, for he
considers Her the unique universal cause of all things. Additionally,
Bruno explicitly and clearly denies the existence of a transcendent
principle that beyond and apart from nature would control and regulate
everything. This is already an unambiguous affirmation of the
immanence of God in matter, indeed of their identity. He declares:
Matter lets every thing gush out [scaturisce] from its own womb; its
own intimate nature is adept artificer, living art, admirable potency
endowed with mind, which confers actuality to its own matter, not
to a different one, without tarrying and without proceeding
discursively meditates and easily accomplishes everything from
inside, as fire shines and burns, as light spreads everywhere, without
effort, and advances without breaking up, but remaining constant,
one, and immobile, controls, joins, arranges and distributes. For
then it is an ignorant writer who is thinking, or a novice cittern
player. Nature eternally creates, without augmenting or diminishing
its capacity.46
This is a crucial text for revealing Bruno’s views about

transmigration. In fact, it illuminates the vast expanse as well as the
deepest recesses of his nova filosofia. Matter, in Bruno’s words ‘shine[s]
and burn[s], as light spreads everywhere, without effort, and advances
without breaking up’. These words are the farewell song of the man
about to depart from the world he loved so much. In it he proclaims, at
last without fear, diplomacy or dissimulation, his deep conviction of the
divinity of nature and, anticipating Nietzsche, the death of a
transcendent Creator-God. All the initiative, all the creativity with
regard to the production of forms is attributed to matter.
Bruno’s doctrine regarding the individual human soul and its
relationship to matter becomes perfectly clear in the following passage
in De immenso et innumerabilibus, seu de universo et mundis. He states:
The soul is to each one the intimate moulding force, and itself, as
matter, determines itself from inside, as the snail by its own impulse
45 MMI, 901.
46 Ibid., my translation.
stretches out, collects itself into a compact mass, so as not to offer

any image of itself, but immediately shoots out the little horns on its
forehead, sticks out its head, becomes visible and takes the shape of
a worm, after having stretched out the body, as if ungluing it from
the centre.47
This is probably the most radical and graphic materialistic description

of the soul that has ever been given. Bruno chose as the most adequate
image for the soul the most earthy, viscous and amorphous of creatures.
Like the snail, the soul determines itself from inside, Bruno specifies, as
matter. It receives all its power of determination from its material
nature, since matter is the mother of forms. Thus Bruno identifies soul
with the creative power of matter and it thereby becomes an attribute of
matter. Indeed, hardly can any other Brunian text be found that more
emphatically underscores the utter immanence of the soul of the world.
This text manifestly shows that Bruno is neither an animist, nor a
pantheistic dualist, but a monistic and materialistic pantheist:
materialistic because there is nothing in the universe but matter – both
corporeal and incorporeal – in a thoroughly homogeneous universe;
monistic because matter and the soul of the world are one; and, finally
pantheistic because Mater-materia is divine. Bruno explicitly affirms this
in the following passage: ‘And while the exterior aspect of things
changes on the surface, the principle of Being, source of all the species,
mind, God, Being, Unity, Truth, Fate, Reason, Order, works more
intimately in every thing than the things themselves in themselves.’48
Bruno specifies further the active, internal and autonomous potency of
matter: ‘Thus the spirit, the artificer of the seed, which moves from the
deep centre, the efficient nature, the artificer of (all) matter present, that
drags, models, orders, are nothing but the intimate motor.’49
All the forms that spring forth from matter must be attributed totally
and exclusively to the intimate motor in the heart of matter, namely its
very essence, the soul of the world. And to proclaim his complete
autonomy and to renounce any former allegiance to Platonism and
Neoplatonism he asks:
To what avail, then, are those bizarre techniques of Plato’s, those
tricks, those archetypes, ideas, images, those statues, those chariots
of fantasy, those vessels full to the brim with trifles, all of them
placed outside the corporeal world? If you imagine this world to be
finite, to what avail do you put the species apart? Certainly not
because things remain constant, since the principles and the
elements remain constant, subjected to an eternal order and
47 MMI, 902.
48 MMI, 903.
49 MMI, 902.
296 GIORDANO BRUNO
realizing themselves by fulfilling their own course, from which they

can never deviate.50
The final chapter of De immenso not only contains Bruno’s final word
about metempsychosis, it also reveals the sum and substance of his nova
filosofia – his final will and testament.
Bruno’s Sublimation of the Pythagorean Concept of Metempsychosis
I have contended in this chapter that Bruno transformed the

Pythagorean doctrine of metempsychosis into an original conception in
harmony with his nova filosofia, whose basic tenets had already been
formulated and firmly established in his Italian cosmological dialogues
and were subsequently developed and brought to their definitive form in
his Frankfurt poems.
Understandably, it was impracticable for Bruno under the
circumstances of the Venetian trial to explain more in detail his doctrine
to the judges of the Inquisition, not only because of its complexity and
subtlety, but because it implied a monistic, materialistic and pantheistic
world view, which is even more radically opposed to the doctrine and
spirit of Christianity than the Pythagorean doctrine of transmigration.
Furthermore, Bruno’s radical monism posed the supreme threat to the
entire edifice of Christian beliefs and theology by denying that the soul
is a distinct entity with a supernatural destiny. In Firpo’s words: ‘It seems
evident that in those strictures Bruno would mask his true thoughts
regarding the individual soul which he rejected as a distinct entity in
order to discern in every being an operation of the common universal
soul.’51
The Nolan responded to the Pythagorean doctrine of transmigration
in the same way in which he had always received the numerous other
philosophical doctrines of his predecessors who inspired him in the
elaboration of several essential points of his nova filosofia. Regarding
metempsychosis, we recognize in Bruno’s conception once more an
original elaboration and reinterpretation of the Pythagorean doctrine,
rather than a wholesale uncritical appropriation thereof. As Michele
Ciliberto points out: ‘the ‘novelty’ and ‘originality’ of the positions that
the Nolan gradually works out are characterized by the ‘variations’ with
50 Ibid.
51 Firpo, Processo, p. 28: ‘Ma pare evidente che in quelle strettoie il Bruno
mascherasse il suo schietto pensiero intorno all’anima individuale, ch’egli teneva a negare
come entità distinta per ravvisare in ogni essere una operazione della commune anima
universale.’
which he organizes texts and authors which, considered in themselves,

could even give the totally deceptive impression of being stationary and
fixed’.52 Ciliberto’s observation is particularly accurate in characterizing
the way Bruno gradually elaborated the variations with which he
organized the Pythagorean doctrine and transformed it into an original
one. This gradual elaboration of his own conception is typical of the
‘absolute liberty with which he used his sources’.
Conclusion
Had Bruno espoused the Pythagorean doctrine of metempsychosis, he

would have undermined the basic tenets of his nova filosofia. The Nolan
could not have accepted as an integral part or a central point of his
philosophy a doctrine so blatantly incompatible with its very
foundations.
To fully understand Bruno’s stance with regard to metempsychosis we
must keep in mind what Michele Ciliberto points out: ‘Radically,
Bruno’s thought necessarily tends towards unity through a complex,
intricate elimination of elements traditionally “dualistic” whatever their
source and inspiration.’53 Monism is the ultimate consequence of Bruno’s
total rejection of every hierarchical order in the universe. Indeed,
Bruno’s fundamental and most original insight, the one that underlies
and runs like a connective thread throughout his entire nova filosofia, is
his discovery of the homogeneity and isotropy of the infinite universe.
This is the fundamental insight that articulates all the chapters of his last
monumental opus, De immenso.
This is the reason why the doctrine of the philosopher of Samos
stating that after death the souls remain in this world rather than enter
an otherworldly realm greatly appealed to the Nolan. On the other
hand, the omnipotence and boundless fecundity of matter with its
immanent mind – the soul of the world – made Pythagoras’s
transmigration obsolete. There is no need for souls to transmigrate in
order to attain immortality. They are already essentially immortal as the
endless metamorphoses of Mater-materia.
52 Ciliberto, M. (1999), Introduzione a Bruno, 3rd edn, Bari-Roma: Laterza, p. 17.

53 Ciliberto, Giordano Bruno, op. cit., p. 77: ‘Alla radice il pensiero bruniano tende
necessariamente all’unità, attraverso una complessa, intricata, eliminazione di elementi
tradizionalmente “dualistici” qualunque ne sia la fonte e l’inspirazione.’
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The Necessity of the Minima in the

Nolan Philosophy
Ernesto Schettino
But you deceive yourself, Sophia, if you believe that minimum

matters are not of so much concern to us as important ones,
inasmuch as very great and important things do not have worth
without insignificant and most abject things. Everything, then, no
matter how minimal is under infinitely great Providence; all
minutiae, no matter how very lowly, in the order of the whole and
of the universe, are most important; for great things are composed
of little ones, and little things of the smallest, and the latter, of
individuals and of minima. I am of the same opinion concerning
great substances as concerning great efficacies and great effects.
This text from Spaccio de la bestia trionfante (The Expulsion of The

Triumphant Beast),1 which ends a long passage about the divine
providence disguised under the mask of humour,2 synthesizes one of the
Nolan’s most profound and revolutionary theses, which would
eventually reach its most advanced form in the Frankfurt poems,
especially in De triplici minimo. We could summarize it as follows:
reconsidering the necessity for the existence of the minima as opposed
to the Aristotelian conception of the divisibility of matter to infinity, a
step is taken towards the substantiation of absolute minima as necessary
beings and, from there, to a radical pantheistic proposal about
rationality and the intrinsic value of all existing things as a divine
manifestation and as an expression of God’s identity both in act and
power, of liberty and necessity, of unity and multiplicity and, in general,
of the coincidentia oppositorum: an identity in which not only is the
1 Bruno, G. (1964), The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast, trans. Arthur D. Imerti,
New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, p. 137: ‘Ma te inganni, Sophia, se pensi,
che non ne sieno [i dei] a cura cossí le cose minime come le principali, talmente sicome le
cose grandissime et principalissime non costano senza le minime et abiettissime. Tutto
dunque, quantunque minimo, è sotto infinitamente grande providenza; ogni
quantosivoglia vilissima minuzzaria in ordine del tutto ed universo è importantissima;
perché le cose grandi son composte de le picciole, e le picciole de le picciolissime, e queste
de gl’individui et minimi. Cossí intendo de le grande sustanze, come de le grande efficacie
e grandi effetti.’ Spaccio, BDI, 643.
2 The passage is from Dialogue 1 and starts on BDI, 633.
300 GIORDANO BRUNO
necessity and rationality of the minima guaranteed, but these are

presented as well as the substantial basis of existence and of rationality
itself, in which providence and natural law are unified.
Faced with a conception of reality such as the one proposed by
Giordano Bruno, in which, on one hand, he intends to capture the
infinite wealth of its determinations and relations and, on the other, the
idea of absolute unity is substantiated, which could be regarded as
radical monism, at once pantheistic and materialistic,3 it is inevitable
that different readings and interpretations arise.4 There also arises what
in the lack of a more suitable term we could call ‘dialectical circularities’,
that is, explanations which due to diverse relations and contradictions
return to themselves under different modes.
In this intricate network of thought, the question of the necessity of
the minima presents itself as a significant and determinant aspect of the
Nolan philosophy, since it contains solutions to (a) his theory about
matter, (b) the problem of the relation between matter and God, (c)
several issues about physics, as well as (d) the topic of the rationality of
existing things.
In order to achieve a more thorough understanding of these matters
which at first seem paradoxical, it is necessary to begin with some
corrections in errors of perspective.
Perspective Errors
An important part of the theoretical revolution proposed by Bruno lies

in a radical revision of the false appearances which lead to conceptual
errors. Beginning with La Cena de le Ceneri (The Ash Wednesday
Supper),5 Bruno utilizes as a part of his method the critique of errors in
perspective which lead to a false interpretation of phenomena.
3 ‘En insistant sur l’unité de l’univers il jette les bases d’un monisme qui, suivant la
manière dont on la considère, peut être interprété comme un spiritualisme absolu mais plus
souvent comme l’esquisse d’un matérialisme conséquent.’ See Védrine, H. (1967), La
conception de la nature chez Giordano Bruno, Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, p.
295.
4 Bruno’s philosophy is above all a search for ways to approach reality, informed
always by a profoundly critical attitude: ‘Qui philosophari concupiscit, de omnibus

principio dubitans, non prius de altera contradictionis parte definiat, quam altercantes
audierit, et rationibus bene perspectis atque collatis non ex auditu, fama, multitudine,
longaevitate, titulis et ornatu, sed de constantis sibi atque rebus doctrinae vigore, sed de
rationis lumine veritate inspicua iudicet et definiat.’ De minimo, I, 1, BOL V.I, P. III, 137.
5 For instance, the Third Dialogue, where he explains grave cosmological errors based
on a misinterpretation of the observation of celestial phenomena.

THE NECESSITY OF THE MINIMA IN THE NOLAN PHILOSOPHY 301
13.1 Frontispiece of Giordano Bruno, De triplici minimo, 1591.

302 GIORDANO BRUNO
And the first thing to be confronted is the selfsame assumption of

exclusive possession of the absolute truth, particularly as represented by
Aristotelian dogmatism: ‘For it is a sign of an ambitious, presumptuous,
envious and vain mind to wish to persuade others that there is only one
way to investigate and to attain knowledge of nature.’6
There are several prejudices and errors with respect to the idea of the
minimum, which must be fought, starting with the wrong and
preconceived opinion of not giving it its due importance, of neglecting
it, disregarding the fact that both ontologically as well as
gnoseologically the suppression of the minimum leads to the elimination
and neglect of the whole: ‘2. If the minimum cannot subsist, then
nothing can subsist. 3. If the minimum cannot be known under a
determinate way of reason, then, to that extent it is impossible to know
anything.’7
A grave confusion consists in assimilating the minimum, which lies at
a foundation level and, for that reason, is an important good in itself, to
the ‘infimum’, which is tantamount to a negative manifestation of value,
generally superficial: that is, tantamount to thinking that the minimum
is the lowest, the least valuable aspect of reality. This attitude represents
in itself a subjective stance and an additional problem of perspective.
Another form of error is the confusion between the absolute
minimum and the part, which gives an undue privilege to the
composite,8 since, indeed, this expresses limitation, temporality,
vicissitude, insufficiency, evil, ‘death’; whereas the minimum analysed in
depth represents the opposite. The absolute minimum has no parts, but
only ends (‘termini’), that must not be identified with parts, because
from this assimilation the Aristotelian mistake partly proceeds.9 The
6 Bruno, G. (1988), Cause, Principle and Unity, trans. Robert de Lucca, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, p. 62. ‘Perché è cosa da ambizioso e cervello presuntuoso,

vano e invidioso voler persuadere ad altri, che non sia che una sola via di investigare e
venire alla cognizione della natura.’ BDI, 275. See also the preceding and following
comments.
7 My translation. ‘2. Si minimum non subsistit, nihil subsistat oportet. 3. Si minimum
certa ratione non cognoscatur, quantum nullum cognoscatur oportet’. Articuli adv. math.,
BOL, V.I, P. III, 21–2.
8 ‘Cossí, mutando questa forma sedie e vicissitudine, è impossibile che se annulle,
perché non è meno subsistente la sustanza spirituale che la materiale. Dunque le formi
esteriori sole si cangiano e si annullano ancora, perché non sono cose ma de le cose, non
sono sustanze, ma de le sustanze sono accidenti e circostanze.’ Causa, Dialogo secondo,
BDI, 245 (and following in this Dialogue).
9 ‘Errorum hic cumulus nimirum depluit inde / Quod minimum a signo non dixtinxere
priores, / Finem qui nulla, a minimo qui prima tomorum est, / Mox quod et innumeras
nullis de partibus edunt; / Nam, velut est dictum, non est pars terminus ulla / Quam
scindas.’ De minimo, I, 8, BOL V.I, P. III, 164.
only thing that can be admitted in this respect is the minimum as

primary part, as foundation, as first matter, but that means precisely the
ontological superiority of the minimum, particularly as atom, which, by
definition, does not have any parts.10
The next perspective error is to mistake the minimum in a strict sense
for other species derived from, or secondary to, the minimum; for
whereas the minimum constitutes a radical and definitive principle, the
latter are related to results or ‘complexes’, starting with the sensible
minimum, which represents only what one can perceive with any one of
the senses.
To avoid this confusion, Bruno singles out, above all, the absolute
minima in their three planes:11 mathematical (geometrical), which is the
point; physical which is the atom; and metaphysical, which is the
monad. All three are related and imply each other in some manner, but
they correspond to different planes of existence. And precisely the
physical minimum, the atom, presents itself as the crucial one. On one
hand it refers to the substance, and therefore the understanding of
nature and the universe depend on it. On the other, it is the most
questioned, both because in spite of being a corporeal entity the atom
has a nature that is not directly perceptible or empirical,12 and also
because of the Aristotelian tradition which supported the thesis of
divisibility of matter to infinity. Hence the need to emphasize its
exposition as opposed to that of the monad and the point.
The physical minimum, the atom, should not be mistaken for the
sensible minimum. In fact, in principle the atom is beyond any direct
perception possible, as is the maximum, which corresponds physically to
the infinite universe. What we perceive of them through our senses are
but effects; in the former case, the products of their lumping together, of
their ‘complexion’; in the latter, limited aspects of infinity, ‘vestiges’ of the
‘vestige’, which are in function of aggregates of the former (infinity
implies in its constitution the infinitude of atoms, so that whereas one
maybe cannot talk about parts of infinity, one must conceive parts in it).13
10 ‘Est minimum cuius pars nulla est, prima quod est pars.’ De minimo, IV, 7, BOL,
V.I, P. III, 284. Throughout De triplici minimo Bruno will constantly insist that the
absolute minimum has no parts but only ends. In relation to this matter, Aquilecchia points
out: ‘Euclid’s first definition in book I of his Elementa (“Punctum est, cuius pars nulla est”)
provided Bruno with the basis for his atomistic theory …’. See ‘Bruno’s mathematical
dilemma in his poem De minimo’, in Renaissance Studies, 5, no. 3, 1991, p. 326.
11 Precisely this is the reason for the title of his mastepiece: De triplici minimo et
mensura.
12 We can only conceive the real physical minimum from its products, that is, from the
composites, from agglomerations of atoms whose dimensions allow them to be perceived.

13 ‘Volete che per essere lo ente indivisibile e semplicissimo, perché è infinito e atto
304 GIORDANO BRUNO
One additional confusion, derived from the erroneous identification

of the minimum as ‘infimum’, is the false idea that the minimum is on
the most limited end of the scale of being, if we consider it under the
perspective of the degree of realization. Because of prejudice, it would
seem logical to think, for instance, that the scale goes from God to the
atom and that all intermediates are the composites. In fact, in the
referred sense, the composites are on the edge of the scale and not in the
middle. On the physical plane, atoms are principal, from the standpoint
of substance; they are in the middle, if taken in the genetic sense of the
production of all composites or as the relative centre of infinity; and at
the end, if one thinks from the perspective of the concretion of existing
things.14 It all depends on the perspective we take relative to the scale of
being or the scale of nature, because if it is taken as being based on the
absolute principle and end, then one is talking about the minimum as the
ultimate foundation of the physical world, and, at the other extreme,
that of the infinite universe, as the maximum. Such a perspective will
have profound consequences, especially because in both cases we are
dealing with divine manifestations, God as Alpha and Omega.15
In a stronger sense of the scale of being, that of the substance, the
atoms are above the composites, since they are not subject to the
manifestations of limitation, being eternal and immutable. They contain
a greater number of possibilites, with the relative exception of
dimension,16 being less determined (‘indeterminate’ in the sense of
tutto in tutto e tutto in ogni parte (in modo che diciamo parte nello infinito, non parte
dello infinito), non possiamo pensar in modo alcuno che la terra sia parte dello ente, il sole
parte della sustanza, essendo quella impartibile; ma si bene è lecito dire sustanza della
parte o pur, meglio, sustanza nella parte …’ Causa, Dialogo quinto, BDI, 328.
14 It is worth pointing out that God and Nature are conceived by the Nolan justly like
the principle, middle and end of all existing things: ‘Sed ubi natura est ipsa universalis
rerum substantia, et ipsum quod est, in diversis sane contrariisque habitis suppositis,
diversas contrariasque adsumit denominationes et habitudines … Ita una est contrariorum
natura, subjectumque prorsusque eadem substantia illis subjicitur. Idem igitur principium,
medium, finisque naturalium omnium natura est: …’ Camoer. Acrot., BOL, V.I, P. I,
109–10.
15 Articuli adv. math., BOL, V.I, P. III, 25–6.
16 Relative, because the absolute minimum, specially as monad, represents the
foundation for dimension itself and, in general, for the numbers: ‘monas est substantia rei,
numerus est qualitas interna, seu differentia specifica; figura est accidens exterius et
signum … Monas est enim individua rei substantia, numerus est substantiae quaedam
explicatio …’ De immenso, Epistola dedicatoria et clavis, BOL, V.I, P. I, 197. ‘figura
quippe numerus sensibilis est.’ De monade, I, BOL, V.I, P. II, 334. ‘sicut unitas, quae est
principium et substantia numeri, non est numerus.’ Ibid., VI, ‘Scalae pentadis’, p. 407;
‘monas est rerum cunctarum essentia tota …’ Ibid., c. III, p. 349. Moreover, ‘In termino
nulla est dimensio. In minimo dimensio est originaliter indifferens.’ De minimo, I, 13,
BOL, V.I, P. III, 181.
Anaximandro’s apeiron,17 containing within it indiscriminately all

determinations) and being on the contrary the basis for the integration
of all the composites, even the contraries and the universe itself.18 It is
our false perspective that makes us think of them ontologically as lesser
beings, or a lesser degree of being, inferior to us and the rest of
‘complexionate’ beings, as inane, as poor. This happens with respect to
matter as a whole in creationist conceptions where matter is
characterized as pure passive potentiality, especially in Aristotelianism,
while in fact it is superior to all composites since it holds them in itself
and contains them.19
As for the absolute physical monads (be it in the complicatio or the
explicatio, in the minimum or the maximum), they preserve their
characteristic of being one and indivisible, and as such they are never a
composite, since in both cases they hold all the potentialities, that is,
they are an indivisible whole, even if they are so in different ways in each
case: in the minimum as a physical complicatio, containing indistinctly
all properties (mathematical, physical or metaphysical); in the maximum
(or if one prefers as maximum), being universe, in its quality of
explicatio, having all the determinations and relations displayed (which
implies the realization of all possibilities contained in space, time and all
the transient and vicissitudinal forms, or all possible complexions). But
in both cases the limitation is the human perspective, as a form of finite
knowledge, that conceives of separation as autonomy. This is the error
that Bruno points out in the Aristotelian theses about substantial
forms.20
From the physical perspective what is implied is precisely a
revaluation and a radical restructuring of the concept of matter,21 which
17 ‘cossi la materia, di cui parliamo, da per sé e in sua natura non ha forma alcuna
naturale, ma tutte le può aver per operazione dell’agente attivo principio di natura.’ Causa,
BDI, 265.
18 ‘come ne li doi estremi, che si dicono nell’estremità de la scala della natura, non è
più da contemplare doi principii che uno, doi enti che uno, doi contrarii e diversi, che uno
concordante e medesimo. Ivi l’altezza è profondità, l’abisso è luce inaccessa, la tenebra è
chiarezza, il magno è parvo, il confuso è distinto, la lite è amicizia, il dividuo è individuo,
l’atomo è immenso; e per il contrario.’ Causa, Proemiale epistola, argomento del quinto
dialogo, BDI, 186.
19 ‘che gli aristotelici, platonici e altri sofisti, non han conosciuta la sustanza de le cose;
e si mostra chiaro che ne le cose naturali quanto chiamano sustanza, oltre la materia, tutto
è purissimo accidente … ’. Causa, Proemiale epistola, argomento del secondo dialogo,
BDI, 179.
20 Cf. supra, note 8.
21 We must say in this respect that the idea of matter in Bruno is not simple and
univocal. And that is true not only because it has important developments during his work,
but also and especially because it responds to the conception of the existence of several
306 GIORDANO BRUNO
is the task undertaken by the Nolan, especially in De la causa, principio

et uno (Cause, Principle and Unity), the turning point in his ontological
revolution. As opposed to the Aristotelians and Platonists who neglect
matter, he proceeds to its rescue and understanding as the authentic
substance, and thereby an aspect of God:
It is therefore not a prope nihil, an almost nothing, a pure and
naked potency, since all forms are contained in it, produced by it,
and brought forth by virtue of the efficient cause (which, from the
point of view of being, can even be indistinguishable from matter);
they have no mode of actual existence in sensible and intelligible
being other than through accidental existence, granted that all that
which appears and is made manifest through the accidents founded
on dimensions is pure accident, even if substance is always
indivisible and always coincides with undivided matter.22
The Necessity of the Minima
It was previously emphasized that it is necessary to single out the

physical minimum in the explanation, since, among other aspects,
without it the point becomes a mere meaningless abstraction and the
monad cannot operate, given that it is the atom, as a material minimum,
that constitutes substance.23
The revaluation of matter as such, as the authentic substance that
contains in itself all the forms, leads necessarily to a radical
confrontation with the predominant currents of thought, particularly
with Aristotelianism, on many crucial points. One of these, already
pointed out by Tocco,24 lies precisely in the determination of both the
degrees of matter in the scale of being, of the complicatio-explicatio. Cf. Schettino, E.

(1988), ‘La significación histórica del concepto de materia en Giordano Bruno’, Muestra,
revista de la Escuela Nacional Preparatoria, México, no. 3, enero–marzo, pp. 20–28 and
no. 4, abril–junio, pp. 32–40.
22 Cause, trans. de Lucca, op. cit., p. 9. ‘Laonde non è un prope nihil, un quasi nulla,
una potenza nuda e pura, se tutte le forme son come contenute da quella, e dalla medesima
per virtù dell’efficiente (il qual può esser anco indistinto da lei secondo l’essere) prodotte
e parturite; e che non hanno minor raggione di attualità nell’essere sensibile ed esplicato,
se non secondo sussistenza accidentale, essendo che tutto il che si vede e fassi aperto per
gli accidenti fondati su le dimensioni, è puro accidente; rimanendo pur sempre la sustanza
individua e coincidente con la individua materia.’ Causa, Proemiale epistola, argomento
del quarto dialogo, BDI, 183–4. There are other passages in the same sense.
23 ‘Minimum ergo est prima rerum materia et substantia, quod sane ita implicat
maximum, ut ab, in, cum, ex ipso, item per, in, ad ipsum sit omnis tum physica tum
geometrica magnitudo.’ Articuli adv. math. BOL, V.I, P. III, 24.
24 Tocco, F. (1889), Le opere latine di Giordano Bruno esposte e confrontate con le
italiane, Florence, p. 141ff.

physical maximum and the physical minimum: of the universe, as a

totality (indissoluble unity, inseparable from the real, that is, as monad),
and of the atom. Aristotelianism conceived of the universe as finite and
of matter as divisible to infinity. Bruno points out the incongruence of
both stances: what could set limits on matter, on the universe? What
prevents really (physically or metaphysically) the existence of infinite
matter and space? What prevents the aggregation to infinity? What is
left of reality if it can be divided to infinity? What holds the universe and
its manifestations together if there is no absolute limit to division? What
is left of the universe if it does not have an ultimate, irreducible material
foundation? What would reality be made of? What would be the
substrate (hipokeimenon)? On what would the essence (ousia) be based?
As the Nolan says through Dicson in De la causa: ‘Certainly, if
something of the substances were annihilated, the world would be
emptied.’25
In this way, Bruno at once denounces as an unsustainable prejudice,
as a radical error of Aristotle, the negation of the universe as infinity in
act, which apart from being absolutely necessary,26 is so eternally; and at
the same time he enforces recognition of the absolute necessity of the
physical minimum, of a prime body of the authentically substantial
form, equally time independent, which is the atom, absolutely simple
and indivisible.27 We insist: both are excluded a priori from perception.
That does not imply their physical inexistence, but only a limitation of
the sensory faculties of human knowledge.28
As far as the physical minimum is concerned, an inevitable logical
consequence appears: there must be, for it is necessary that there exists
25 Cause, trans. de Lucca, op. cit., p. 46. ‘Certo, se de le sustanze s’annullasse qualche
cosa, verrebe ad evacuarse il mondo’ Causa, Dialogo secondo, BDI, 245. Or, as Védrine
emphasizes: ‘la grandeur perdrait toute signification si elle n’était fait d’éléments ultimes,
d’autre part, l’univers extensivement infini perdrait tout base solide s’il reposait sur une
sorte de néant.’ See La conception de la nature, op. cit., p. 180.
26 ‘Tanto più che se è raggione che sia un buono finito, un perfetto terminato;
improporzionalmente è raggione che sia un buono infinito; perché dove il finito bene è per
convenienza e raggione, l’infinito è per absoluta necessità’. Infinito, BOeuC IV, 75.
27 ‘Primo ex parte naturae resolventis, quae neque actu neque potentia finitum
continuum dividendo debet infinite vagari, sed ea tum demum stare in eo ultra quod
nunquam divisit exiguo, et in cuius potentia non est pars.’ De minimo, I, 7, BOL, V.I, P.
III, 158.
28 As Bruno himself points out decisively in a remarkable passage from the first
Dialogue of Infinito, BOeuC IV, 59: ‘Non è senso che vegga l’infinito, non è senso da cui
si richieda questa conchiusione: per che l’infinito non può essere oggetto del senso; e però
chi dimanda di conoscere questo per via di senso, è simile a colui che volesse veder con gli
occhi la sustanza e l’essenza: e chi negasse per questo la cosa, per che non è sensibile o
visibile, verebe a negar la propria sustanza et essere.’
308 GIORDANO BRUNO
a radical minimum that is not divisible; that is, it is necessary that the
atom exists at a substantial level, since by definition all that can be
divided is a composite and not the basis of the existent. Conversely,
absolute minima are required for the composite to exist, from which it
can be integrated, ‘complexionated’. Since it is evident that composites
exist and that our forms of division do not reach their ultimate parts,
instead of assuming the erroneous division to infinity, we have to arrive
at the conclusion that the atom is not subject to the senses.
The fact that neither the atom nor the infinitude of the universe are
objects of perception, and that the limited perspective of our senses leads
to error, does not mean that we cannot arrive, through adequate use of
our intellect (not by intuition, but as a product of philosophical
speculation, through logical arguments and controlled experiences, as is
constantly emphasized by Bruno himself) at the opposite result. The
Aristotelian hypotheses of a finite universe and the division of matter to
infinity are but inconsistent prejudices that do not withstand logical
analysis.
So, what then is the atom, the absolute physical minimum? It is the
prime body, which has no parts and which all things have as their basic
part: ‘The atom is really the minimum or first part, or minimum body
and the first matter which has not any part.’29 ‘The atom is the minimum
among the bodies in length, breadth and depth, and it can be itself part
and end.’30
The atom is indivisible by definition31 and if it is a body that can no
longer be divided, then it must exist necessarily; it must be a substance,
regardless of the fact that we cannot perceive it. We are faced with some
sort of reverse of St Anselm’s ontological proof, directed towards the
minimum: we must think of a being, of a body, smaller than anything
one can think of, which must necessarily exist.
For his conception of the atoms, Bruno recovers many aspects of
ancient atomism. However, following his method of taking the theories
he recovers to structures of congruency and to their final consequences,
he cannot admit some of the ideas of ancient atomism, especially those
dealing with the multiplicity of forms, size and weight attributed to
atoms, as well as that concerning the origin of their movement.
29 My translation. ‘Est autem atomus minima pars seu prima, seu minimum corpus et
prima materia cuius nulla ponitur pars’. Articuli adv. math., BOL, V.I, P. III, 33.
30 My translation. ‘Est atomus minimum longum latum atque profundum/ Corporis,
et potis est pars esse ac terminus ipsa.’ De minimo, IV, 7, BOL, V.I, P. III, 285.
31 Our present concept of the atom is certainly inadequate with respect to its
etymology; the nearest to its original sense could be the elementary particles, the bosons
and photons, if they really are indivisible.
The thesis of the multiplicity of forms is unacceptable for the Nolan

because it implies the existence of sides and parts, and therefore they
would cease to be, in principle, an absolute minimum and they would
contain the possibility of division, that is, they would no longer be atoms.
Brunian atoms, according to their concept and definition, must
necessarily be spherical since, as a physical minimum, their shape has to
correspond to a geometrical manifestation that absolutely lacks sides.
The only geometrical manifestation that accords to this criteria is a
sphere in which the centre identifies with the surface, being therefore its
minimal extension, the minimal body. For the atom to be such, it needs
to be an absolute minimum, and for that it needs to be a minimal sphere
which is the only geometrical form that does not require to unfold itself
to establish its geometrical minimum. The geometrical form that follows
is the triangle, implying three minima for its generation and, as a body,
the tetrahedron that requires four triangles to acquire its minimal
structure.32 This is the reason why Bruno does not accept the atomistic
theory of the elements proposed by Plato in the Timeus,33 even though
he reuses it to some extent regarding the minimal interstices of empty
space which he thinks of as ‘pyramids’ formed with curved triangles.
The idea is really new,34 since in ancient atomism the atoms are
conceived as capable of an infinity of forms,35 and the spherical form is
limited to the atoms of souls or of noumena.
Paul-Henri Michel maintains, concerning this idea expressed in the
De Minimo (‘Figura minimi plani circulus est, minimi solidi globus’): ‘In
support of that idea, he [Bruno] adduces the classical arguments from
the most ancient Pythagoreanism: the perfection of the sphere, the
equality in its three dimensions, the simplicity and oneness of this
shape.’36 To which one should add the lack of sides, since the existence
32 ‘Pyramis et triquetrum sunt queis planum atque globosum / Primum composta …’
De minimo, I, 12 BOL, V.I, P. III, 177ff.

33 Timeo, 53 c and ff.
34 With respect to this, Lüthy says: ‘One of the most remarkable ingredients of the
defeat of Aristotelian hylemorphism and the victory of corpuscularian models of matter in

the seventeenth century was the invention and successful popularization of that abtruse
entity, the spherical atom.’ See Lüthy, (1988), ‘Bruno’s Area Democriti and the origins of
atomist imagery’, in Bruniana & Campanelliana, Anno IV/I, p. 78.
35 For example: ‘He [Democritus] thinks that they are so small as to elude our senses,
but they have all sorts of forms and shapes and differences in size …’ Aristotle, On
Democritus ap. Simplicium de caelo 295, I [DK 68 A 37]. Trans. in Kirk, G.S. and Raven,
J.E. (1969), The Presocratic Philosophers, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
36 My translation. ‘A l’appui de cette opinion, il [Bruno] allègue les arguments
classiques du plus ancien pythagorisme: perfection de la sphère, égalité de ses trois

dimensions, simplicité et unité de cette figure.’ Michel, P.H. (1960), ‘L’atomisme de
Giordano Bruno’, in La science au seizième siècle, Paris: Hermann, p. 260.
310 GIORDANO BRUNO
of these implies parts and the possibility, if only theoretical, of division,

which does not happen in the case of the minimal sphere.
Size should be homogeneous, that is, the minimum, for the aforesaid
reason.37 Weight also lacks sense; furthermore, the Nolan maintained,
from La Cena onwards, the relativity of gravity with respect to each
centre, particularly referring to the celestial bodies, even though the
centres of the universe are each and every one of the atoms. Ancient
atomists38 proposed weight as the cause of the eternal movement of the
atoms, producing thus a mechanistic physics that did not require a
motor (which, by the way, becomes the most solid foundation for a
mechanistic atheism) but following, at the same time, a conception of an
infinite space with direction. In effect, atoms would have as their
primary motion that of fall, and as their secondary one that of collisions,
for which a difference both in size and weight is required, conceived of
also as the basis of the difference in their speeds.
For Bruno the idea of direction in the infinite, in which each point
(atom) is the centre and there does not exist a periphery, is an absurdity;
furthermore, the difference in size represents a difference regarding the
minimum, with the already described consequences of the possibility of
division and, with it, the cancellation of the atom and the substance.
Ancient atomism required multiple forms to explain perceptible
bodies, the conglomeration of which demanded adjustable sides or
faces.39 The idea was that, in order for the composites to maintain
themselves, a sort of fit was needed between the atoms, and the more
consistent and durable ones would be those with the more adjustable
sides.
Bruno, on the contrary, conceived against this mechanistic idea a
thesis that combined animism and magnetism, with which it could be
possible to explain the formation of different composites, beginning
37 ‘De plus il est toujours, en fait, minimum in genere, puisque tous les atomes sont de
même grandeur, et minimum matériel absolu.’ Ibid, p. 258.

38 Basically Epicurus, since there is no evidence that Leucippus or Democritus had
sustained this thesis. The assertion that the whirl or vortex movement is primary is
attributed to Democritus, but Aristotle criticizes him for not explaining its cause.
39 ‘As they (sc. the atoms) move they collide and become entangled in such a way as
to cling in close contact to one another, but not so as to form one substance of them in
reality of any kind whatever; for it is very simple-minded to suppose that two or more
could ever become one. The reason he [Democritus] gives for atoms staying together for a
while is the interwining and mutual hold of the primary bodies; for some of them are
angular, some hooked, some concave, some convex, and indeed with countless other
differences; so he thinks they cling to each other and stay together until such time as some
stronger necessity comes from the surrounding and shakes and scatters them apart.’
Aristotle, On Democritus, ap. Simplicium de caelo, 295, II [DK 68 A 37], in Kirk and
Raven, The Presocratic Philosophers, op. cit., pp. 418–19.
with the simplest conglomeration of atoms forming minimal bodies that

have been identified as the antecedent of the idea of the molecule,40
without the difficulties and incongruencies that plagued the old atomism
and that Aristotle himself had already criticized.
Such a thesis would seem to bear more resemblance to the idea of
elementary interactions in modern particle physics than to the ancient
atomism; and perhaps its most interesting expression is the one that
appears in De magia (On Magic):
There is another type of attraction which is not perceived by the
senses. This is the case of a magnet attracting iron. The cause of
this cannot be attributed to a vacuum or to any such thing, but
only to the outflow of atoms or parts, which occurs in all bodies.
For when atoms of one type move towards and mutually
encounter other atoms of similar type or of a congenial and
compatible nature, the bodies develop such an attraction and
impulse for each other that the overpowered body moves
towards the whole of the stronger body. For since all the parts
experience this attraction, then so must the whole body also be
attracted.41
Nonetheless, I consider Bruno’s most important development regarding

the atomist conception to lie in the idea of the especially active potency42
of the atom. The most radical difference with respect to ancient atomism
does not lie only in the question of the shapes, size and weight of the
atoms, but in what these intend to explain: the cause, form and
consequences of their motion.43
As Gatti correctly points out: ‘Avoiding this casual materialism [that
40 With regard to this idea, see Lüthy’s interesting article ‘Bruno’s Area Democratii’,
op. cit.
41 On Magic, trans. Richard J. Blackwell in Cause, Principle and Unity. And Essays
on Magic, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998, p. 120. ‘Est et alia attractionis
species insensibilis, qua magnes trahit ferrum, cuius rationem non possumus referre ad
vacuum vel huiusmodi, sed tantum ad effluxionem partium ab universis corporibus seu
atomorum. Evenit enim ut ubi atomi unius generis ad atomos similis vel affinis congenei,
vel genitabilis speciei, pervenerint mutuoque occurrerint, tunc accendatur appetitus et
appulsus unius corporis ad alterum, ut subinde totum quod fuerit devictum ad potentius
totum moveatur … ’ (he has spoken before about attraction ex consensu, which happens
when the parts move towards their whole, and sine consensu, when an opposite attracts
its opposite). De magia, BOL, V. III, 421.
42 ‘Distinguentibus igitur naturam, in eam ex qua fit omne, et eam quae facit omne: et
quatenus ipsa est omnia, ut actus potensque formare et omnia possibilitate et potens
omnia fieri … ’ Camoer. acrot, BOL, V:I, P. I, 109.
43 ‘However, unlike Classical Greek atomism, Bruno maintained that the elementary
particles were automotive and self-steering, rather than minute, utterly compact, dented
pellets haphazardly colliding with each other and sticking together once a viable form was
reached.’ See Mendoza, R.G. (1995), The Acentric Labyrinth. Giordano Bruno’s Prelude
to Contemporary Cosmology, Shaftesbury: Element, pp. 82–3.
312 GIORDANO BRUNO
of the ancient atomists], Bruno introduces the idea of power or energy

into his indivisible atoms.’44
A constant throughout the Nolan’s philosophy is his conception of
the internal efficiency of matter, of the intrinsic motor, which is the main
axis of his pantheism,45 and it necessarily follows from that idea that his
conception of the atom contains the concept of it as a source of power,
force, energy, self motion, life. It is efficient:46
The minimum is the most powerful of all things, since it indeed
encloses all motion, number, magnitude and force. It is a property
of it to compose, increase, form, as well as being composed, formed
and increased to the maximum: as we more clearly expressed in
another place, they both coincide.47
Mere mechanical motion never convinced Bruno, in spite of (or perhaps

due to) its simplicity, which might seem at first glance as more coherent
with the idea of the atom. A reason for this refusal resides in his thesis
of the homogeneity of matter, which necessary leads to the idea of living
matter deriving from its primary forms (that is to say, from the atom
44 Gatti, H. (1999), Bruno and Renaissance Science, Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell
University Press, p. 134.

45 ‘Da noi si chiama artefice interno, perché forma la materia e la figura da dentro,
come da dentro del seme o radice manda ed esplica il stipe; da dentro il stipe caccia i rami;
da dentro i rami le formate brance; da dentro queste ispiega le gemme; da dentro forma,
figura, intesse, come di nervi, le frondi, gli fiori, gli frutti; e da dentro, a certi tempi,
richiama gli suoi umori da le frondi e frutti alle brance, da le brance agli rami, dagli rami
al stipe, dal stipe alla radice.’ Causa, Dialogo secondo, BDI, 233.
46 Take as examples: ‘Quibus vero atomi sunt substantia omnium, ut et spiritus ipse
et lux ipsa et quidlibet ex partibus minimarum dimensionum maxime ab omni sensu

remotarum consistunt, omnis vis ad atomos refertur’, De rerum princ., BOL, V.III, 535;
‘26. Omnium corporum vis est in sphaera, omnis sphaerae vis est in circulo, omnis circuli
vis in centro, vis omnis visibilium est in invisibili. Minimum quantitate est virtute
maximum, sicut potentia totius ignis in virtute scintillae ignis sita est. In minimo ergo,
quod est absconditum ab oculis omnium, etiam sapientum et fortasse Deorum, vis omnis
est; ideo ipsum est maximum omnium’, Articuli adv. math., BOL, V.I, P. III, 24; ‘in omni
/ Omneque compositum in minimum revocabitur, ut sit; / Quandoquidem minimum
naturae, quamlibet ampli / Sensibilis claudit vires atque explicat alte. / Nam minimum
substans praecellit robore mire / Concursu molem quodcumque increvit in amplam. /
Nimirum virtus subiectum corpus adaugens, / Confirmans, parteisque quod eius nectit in
unum, / Seque ipsum et circum sese isthaec omnia servat, / Est minimum, aut nulla
consistens mole profecto. / Simpliciter tandem monadum monas una reperta est, / Quae
multum et magnum complectitur omneque in ista / Integranda means, dans entibus esse,
Deusque est / Extans totum, infinitum, verum, omne, bonum, unum’, De minimo, I, 4,
BOL, V.I, P. III, 144.
47 My translation. ‘Minimum potentissimum est omnium, quippe quod omne
momentum, numerum, magnitudinem claudit atque virtutem. Eius est componere, augere,
formare, et tandem esse compositum, formatum atque magnum usque ad maximum, quod
cum eodem coincidere alibi planius expressimus.’ De minimo, I, 4, in BOL, V.I, P. III, 146.
itself in a strict sense48) to the most complex, since if it were something

extrinsic to matter, it would not be able to sustain and produce life. This
is because it is only possible to generate something when it in some way
already potentially exists: things that have no motion cannot produce
motion; things that have no life cannot produce it. For this reason,
Bruno relates atoms to semen, or seeds.
The Minimum as a Necessary Being par excellence
‘Without the minimum and the individual, that is to say the atom and
the point, I don’t understand how anything can really exist.’49
The necessary conclusion is that God, the intellect and the soul of the
world, are intrinsically contained in the minima, which evidently gives us
a pantheistic manifestation: that of the internal efficient in matter as a
principle of motion, life, order, measure, determination and so on. Thus,
when Bruno refers to the atoms, after having proposed explicitly that
God is immersed in all things, he says: ‘the soul is superior to the whole
synod that is in the universe; God is supreme, the soul of souls, the only
spirit that fills all things, orderer above and beyond all order.’ Then the
Nolan concludes referring to the physical minimum: ‘It has a certain
nature belonging and intrinsic to the eternals, immortals, uncomposables,
to indissoluble beings, souls, gods, God.’50 The divine power, especially in
its creative capacity, its absolute power, lies precisely in the minimum; the
maximum is his manifestation, his vestige, his theophany.
Gatti summarizes: ‘For the central characteristic of Bruno’s atomism
is the idea that every atom contains all the power and virtue of divine
infinity. The atom is thus the ultimate receptacle throughout the infinite
universe of the potentia absoluta of God.’51
48 ‘L’atome est un centre de vie, un point où s’insère l’âme du monde.’ Michel, P-H.
(1962), La cosmologie de Giordano Bruno, Paris: Hermann, p. 158. ‘[The atom] C’est
donc en definitive comme une centre d’énergie qu’il apparaît au “physicien”.’ Ibid., p. 282.
49 My translation. ‘Praeter minimum et individuum, seu atomum et punctum, nihil
esse vere intelligo.’ Articuli adv. math., BOL, V.I, P. III, 23.
50 My translation. ‘superior est anima synodi totius, quae est in universo; suprema est
animus animorum Deus, spiritus unus omnia replens totus, ordinator supra et extra
omnem ordinem … ’ De minimo, BOL, II, 6; V.I, P. III, 210; ‘Quaedam vero proprie
intrinsecaque natura aeterna, immortalia, incomponibilia, indissolubilia, animae, Dii,
Deus … ’ Ibid., p. 211.
51 Gatti, Bruno and Renaissance Science, op. cit., p. 113. A broader analysis of the
concept of absolute power in Giordano Bruno can be found in Granada, Miguel A. (1994),
‘Il rifiuto della distinzione fra “potentia absoluta” e “potentia ordinata” di Dio e
l’affermazione dell’ universo infinito in Giordano Bruno’, Rivista di Storia della filosofia,
pp. 495–532.
314 GIORDANO BRUNO
It must be mentioned, though, that this relation between the material

atoms and the divinity never means an irreverent, atheist or negative attitude
at all on Bruno’s part; on the contrary, he considers that his philosophy is
the one that agrees best with true religion.52 As Symonds says in The
Renaissance in Italy, Bruno deified nature, never by degrading divinity but
by elevating matter to the point of participating in the divine existence. He
does not lower God to matter but rather he raises matter to God.53
This concept explains why Bruno assumes, although with a different
approach and for different reasons, the troublesome Cusanian idea of
God as a minimum. The attribute of maximum for the universe, for God,
seems to us more or less obvious, natural, to the point that it is the basis
of St Anselm’s ontological proof as well as of the whole of positive
theology (in the pseudo-Areopagite sense), not forgetting to mention also
that almost the whole catalogue of divine epithets are in function of
superlatives: omni-, super- and so on. The idea of the minimum as
applied to God is surprising, despite the fact that nowadays it is relatively
easier to understand and even to accept after the discovery of atomic
power,54 nuclear fusion and nuclear energy. The extent to which, on the
plane of the literary imagination, and particularly of science fiction, we
have come to accept the expresion of degenerative manifestations of
religiousness is related to the power of nuclear explosions.
Consequently, the atom is the authentic substance,55 since composites
imply a necessary accidentality: ‘In the vicissitude of things, the only
thing which is effectively invariable is the substance of things, the nature
of atoms.’56
52 ‘Avete al principio del quarto dialogo mezzo per rispondere a tutte ragioni ed
inconvenienti teologali; e per mostrar questa filosofia esser conforme alla vera teologia e
degna d’esser faurita da le vere religioni.’ Cena, proemiale epistola; BDI, 12. Also:
‘trovarranno che questa filosofia non solo contiene la verità, ma ancora favorisce la
religione più che qualsivoglia altra sorte de filosofia …’ Cena, Dialogo quarto, BDI, 126.
53 Symonds, J.A. [1886] (1957), El Renacimiento en Italia, trans. Wenceslao Roces,
México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, T. II, p. 864.

54 ‘all the variety of structures observed in nature derives from the combination of
some atoms of a few different types.’ ‘According to the current theory of elements, the
electron – as well as other members of the family of the leptons, to which it belongs – and
the quarks are the fundamental basis of matter: all matter, throughout the entire universe
is made out of quarks and leptons. The types of quarks and leptons are limited in number.’
See Cohen-Tannoudji, G. and Spiro, M. (1988), La materia-espacio-tiempo, Madrid:
Espasa-Calpe, p. 23. My translation.
55 ‘Nam si fixa foret rota temporis, omnia in ipsum / Vertisset. Talis certe est
substantia rerum, / Utpote quae sola est constans, natura atomorum.’ De immenso, VI, 18,
BOL, V.I, P. II, 218.
56 ‘Nella vicissitudo, l’unica cosa effettivamente invariabile è la sostanza delle cose, la
natura degli atomi.’ Ciliberto, M. (1990), Giordano Bruno. Roma-Bari: Editori Laterza,
p. 234.
The absolute physical minima, as they are the authentic substance57

with their attributes of simplicity, indivisibility, homogeneity, eternity,
immutability, potentiality and divinity, guarantee the existence and
subsistence of composites and complexionates,58 including in a certain
way the existence and subsistence of the universe itself. As well as the
homogeneity of matter and the universe: ‘rather everything is in
everything; the potency that the atoms or first bodies have, is really
everywhere in the infinite space’.59 They are the basis and the
determinant key to the scale of being, since they are the foundation for
the understanding of the transitions between the complicatio and the
explicatio, of their permanent expansion and contraction; they are the
foundation in the passage from unity to multiplicity and vice versa60 and,
in general, of the diverse manifestations of the coincidentia
oppositorum.
All of which must be related to the Pythagorean idea of monads
unfolding in multiplicity (from monad to decade, representing
symbolically the diverse and contradictory aspects of reality), equal to
themselves, eternal, immutable, full and so on, but forming the units of
opposites: even and odd, finite and infinite, one and multiple:61 ‘In the
minimum, simple, in the monad, all the opposites identify with
themselves: the even and the odd, the many and the few, the finite and
the infinite; for that is the reason that the minimum is at the same time
the maximum and all the intermediates.’62
Absolute minima are principles par excellence in many of the senses
that Aristotle assigns to the word ‘principle’ in the fifth book of the
57 Minimum esse tum numerorum, tum magnitudinum, tum omnium utlibet
elementatorum substantiam, that is the headline of the significant chapter II, book I, of De
triplici minimo (BOL, V.I, P. III, 138ff.).
58 In this respect see chapter V, book I of De immenso (BOL, V.I, P. I, 272ff.) and
chapter four, second book of De minimo (BOL, V.I, P. III, above all p. 200).
59 My translation. ‘quinimmo omnia sunt in omnibus; atomis vero seu primis
corporibus potentia est ad omnia loca per infinitum spacium.’ De immenso, VII, 9, BOL,
V.I, P. II, 263.
60 Calcagno, A. (1998), Giordano Bruno and the Logic of Coincidence, New York:
Peter Lang, develops an analysis of various important arguments of the coincidentia

oppositorum in Brunian philosophy emphasizing the impossibility of conceiving one of the
determinations without its opposite. Thus in this case he writes: ‘Unity and multiplicity are
always considered together in a relational fashion. One cannot speak of one without the
other. Unity implies multiplicity and multiplicity implies unity’ (p. 112).
61 Remarkably in De monade where Bruno will pick up and develop a lot of these
theses from the ancient Pythagoreanism or what was assumed to be such.

62 My translation. ‘In minimo, simplici, monade opposita omnia sunt idem, par et
impar, multa et pauca, finita et infinita; ideo quod minimum est, idem est maximum, et
quidquid inter haec.’ De minimo, I, 4, BOL, V.I, P. III. 147.
316 GIORDANO BRUNO
Metaphysics, especially the third and fourth significations as grounds or

foundations and as something based on which one can do something.63
In that sense atoms are, they are not made, which is taken by the Nolan
as the main attribute of God. Thus: ‘Nevertheless, in support of a
broader analysis of the matter, in order to point out that nature works
in all things, and not one without the other; in the same way that the
substances of all things are one, which does not come to be, but is’64 –
which is an expression of necessary being, of being in itself and by itself,
which also is regarded by the Nolan as the main attribute of God.65
Material unity is therefore the unity of the entire universe. It depends
on the atoms, each one of them functioning in the physical plane in the
same manner as the Pythagorean monads:66 that is, it depends on the
substantial homogeneity of the atoms (it is matter before becoming part
of any form of the composites and even of the elements). Which is
guaranteed precisely by the indivisible unity of matter.67
Both of them, the minimum and the maximum – physically, the atom
and the universe – must exist necessarily, and necessarily they are eternal
63 Met., D,1013 a 3–9.

64 My translation. ‘Sed pro ampliore quaesiti resolutione notandum, naturam agere
omnia, et non unum sine alia: omnia item unam esse substantiam, quae non fit, sed est.’
Camoer. acrot , BOL, V.I, P. I, 108.
65 In some passages he will even hold as an acceptable approach to a definition of God
the biblical phrase that identifies Him with Being, in particular that from Ecclesiastes I:
9–10, quoted by Bruno in his own manner in La Cena (Dialogo secondo, BDI, 246–7). Cf.
also the footnote of Gentile in that respect: ‘Quid est quod est? Ipsum quod fuit. Quid est
quod fuit? Ipsum quod est. Nihil sub sole novum.’ Also, with another sense: ‘quod non est
unum, nihil est; ergo unum est ens, unum est verum, multitudo vero relinquitur ut
accidens, ut vanitas, ut non ens: ita intelliges ubi monadis vocem audies SUM QUOD EST.’
Articuli adv. math., BOL, V.I, P. III, 26. See also the paragraph ‘XXXIX. Per se’ in Summa
term. met., BOL, V.I, P. IV, 92. Based on Exodus 3:13–14. St Thomas defends a similar
idea (cf. Summa theologica I, q. 13, a. 11: ‘Utrum hoc nomen “Qui est” sit maxime nomen
Dei proprium’.
66 It is not in vain to point out that Pythagoreanism is at the basis of ancient atomism.
Cf. Burkert, W. (1972), Lore and Science in Ancient Pythagoreanism, Cambridge MA:
Harvard University Press.
67 ‘Bruno replies by ignoring Aristotle’s distinctions between actuality and potentiality,
and insisting on a related actual existence of the minimum in its three forms. First, it is a
monad, the first number, the basis of every principle of quantity. Second, it is atom, the
physical minimum, the life-giving centre of energy at the basis of matter and all its
vicissitudes. Third, it is point, the basis of every principle of measure. Through this
threefold definition, Bruno established the minimum as the fundamental element of all
existence. Without it there is nothing, but at the same time, developing an insight of
Nicolas Cusanus, the ultimate minimum, in so far as it represents the first principle of all
existence, coincides with the ultimate maximum, the all-embracing one.’ See Gatti, H.
(1985), ‘Minimum and maximum, finite and infinite. Bruno and the Northumberland
circle’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 48, p. 152–3.
and they are one.68 The minimum is infinite in number, the maximum is
absolutely infinite; the one is present in the infinite, this is the infinite
presence; the minimum has an existence in act in the infinite, the
maximum is the infinite existence in act itself.69 But one implies
necessarily the other: the minimum contains complicately the maximum
as the monad comprises the decade70 and the maximum contains the
minima explicately. In other words:
unity is in infinite number, and that infinite number is in unity; and
besides, unity is an implicit infinite, and the infinite is explicit unity.
Therefore, where there is no unity, there is no number, either finite
or infinite; and wherever there is number, either finite or infinite,
there, necessarily, is unity. The latter, therefore, is the substance of
the former … 71
Without the minimum there is no maximum;72 a maximum without a

minimum is a mere abstract entity or an absurd thing. Without atoms
there is no universe. Neither is there one without the middles; but
whereas these are necessary only for the whole set, they are not
themselves necessary for the existence of the minima. What guarantees
the necessary existence of the maximum is the impossibility of
annihilation of the minimum. The universe is made possible by, but is
also eternal thanks to, the minimum. The possibility of composites is
contained in the minima as absolute potency. All the composites there,
68 ‘Maximum tamen atque minimum ita in unam possunt coire rationem, ut inde
etiam maximum ubique esse cognoscamus, quandoquidem per ea quae dicta sunt
maximum in minimo et minimum in maximo consistere constat, quemadmodum in
multitudine monas, in monade multitudo. Quamvis potius ratio et natura possit absolvere
minimum a maximo, quam maximum a minimo.’ De minimo, I, 6, BOL, V.I, P. III, 153–4.
69 ‘immensum corpus atomus; immensum planum punctus; immensum spacium
puncti vel atomi receptaculum. Alia enim capiuntur ubi atomus capitur, et non atomus ubi
alia; ideo proprie individuum dicitur esse ubique … atomum dicitur esse omnia.’ Ibid.,
p. 154.
70 In a certain way, the recreation of these theses of Pythagorean origin are the main
teaching of the De monade.

71 The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast, trans. Imerti, op. cit., pp. 135–6. ‘che
l’unità è nel numero infinito, et il numero infinito nell’unità; oltre che l’unità è uno infinito
implicito, et l’infinito è l’unità explicita: appresso che dove non è unità, non è numero, né
finito, né infinito; et dovunque è numero o finito o infinito, ivi necessariamente è l’unità.
Questa dunque è la sustanza di quello …’ Spaccio, Dialogo primo, BDI, 641.
72 ‘MINIMUM substantia rerum est; / Atque id idem tandem opperies super omnia
magnum. / Hinc monas, hinc atomus, totusque hinc undique fusus / Spiritus, in nulla
consistens mole, suisque / Omnia constituens signis, essentia tota, / Si res inspicias, hoc
tandem est, est materiesque. / Quandoquidem minimum sic integrat omnia, ut ipsum / Ni
substernatur, reliquorum non siet hilum.’ De minimo, I, 2, BOL, V.I, P. III, 138–9. ‘quia
maxima quaeque / Ex minimo, in minimo, ad minimum sunt, per minimumque.’ Ibid.,
p. 139.
318 GIORDANO BRUNO
are nothing but a development (explicatio) and structuring (complexio)

of the atom73 (‘number’, Bruno would also say: ‘The number is a
monad’s accident, and the monad is the number’s essence; in the same
way that composition results from the atom and the atom is the essence
of the composite’74).
Matter is, then, divine.75 And the atom is the most radical and
complete expression of matter; therefore the atom is of course divine.76
That which is eternal, immutable, necessary, not engendered,
indestructible, a principle of being and so on, cannot be but God
himself, and matter has these divine attributes, especially at the atomic
level. Therefore it cannot be but a divine manifestation, or the very idea
of God would be shattered.
The weak spot in Bruno’s atomistic theses, once he has established the
necessity for the minimum and the minimum as a necessary being par
excellence, lies in what, at least at first sight, could appear to be an
inconsistency with respect to the unity of his radical monism: the presence
of infinite minima, of innumerable discontinuous atoms, which not only
implies the necessity of another physical nature as an infinite medium in
which they can move, but which also has to be thought of as an
agglomerating agent or agglutinin:77 water or moist being considered
sometimes as such a thing. At other times it was ether; at others again it
was the spirit or even the universal soul. This role was occasionally played
even by space itself, or at least the thing that fills it, in spite of the fact that
Bruno declared that space is neither a substance nor an accident.78
73 ‘Est, inquam, materia seu elementum, efficiens, finis et totum, punctum in
magnitudine unius et duarum dimensionum, atomus privative in corporibus quae sunt

primae partes, atomus negative in iisce quae sunt tota in toto atque singulis, ut in voce,
anima et huiusmodi genus, monas rationaliter in numeris, essentialiter in omnibus. Inde
maximum nihil est aliud quam minimum. Tolle undique minimum, ubique nihil erit. Aufer
undique monadem, nusquam erit numerus, nihil erit numerabile, nullus numerator. Hinc
optimus, maximus, substantiarum substantia, et entitas, qua entia sunt, monadis nomine
celebratur.’ De minimo, I, 2 BOL, V.I, P. III, 139–40.
74 My translation. ‘Numerus est accidens monadis, et monas est essentia numeri; sic
compositio accidit atomo, et atomus est essentia compositi.’ De minimo, I, 2, BOL, V.I, P.
III, 140.
75 ‘Tutti dunque per modo di separazione vogliono le cose essere da la materia, e non
per modo di apposizione e recepzione. Dunque si de’ più tosto dire che contiene le forme
e che le includa, che pensare, che ne sia vota e le escluda. Quella, dunque, che esplica lo
che tiene implicato, deve essere chiamata cosa divina e ottima parente, genetrice e madre
di cose naturali, anzi la natura tutta in sustanza.’ Causa, BDI, 311–12.
76 ‘Ergo atomam tantum naturam dixeris esse / Perpetuo, cuius nulla aut propria una
figura est. / Ergo natura est animi divina reperta’, De minimo, II, 6, BOL, V.I, P. III, 208.
77 ‘nobis vero vacuum simpliciter cum atomis non sufficit, certam quippe oportet esse
materiam qua conglutinentur.’ De minimo, I, 2, BOL, V.I, P. III, 140.

78 De immenso, I, 8, BOL, V.I, P.I, 233: ‘Nobis vero interim quiddam extra genus
How to reconcile then the existence of these physical infinite minima,

which would each become an absolute in itself,79 with the unity of the
maximum? Only with the supreme Unity, which is conceived as the
absolute par excellence, as God, that unifies radically these physical
absolute minima among themselves and with space, identified in some
texts as the agglutinin, and because of which it is in fact another type or
manifestation of matter, continuous and infinite, be it called ether, spirit
or ultimately soul of the world, whose dominant properties are absolute
receptibility80 as well as absolute homogeneity and absolute continuity.
Even though Bruno avoids, or attempts to avoid, this pitfall of a
dualistic (or rather ‘pluralistic’) implication, real or apparent, through
the absolute unification of both in God, since the corporeal matter of
atoms and the incorporeal matter of space-spirit would be their
explications, aspects or primary manifestations,81 many issues
nevertheless remain unresolved. Even conceiving God in his pantheistic
extreme as a super Unity (or ‘suprasubstantial’ substance) of matter-soul
of the world-nature-universe- and so on, a certain feeling of mystery
remains, unbecoming to the rationality proposed by the Nolan, even in
the most radical and critically dialectical moments of his philosophy.
One might, however, imagine or try to come up with some solution
to the dilemma, such as the expansion82 or self-unfolding on the part of
intelligendum est: sicut unitas et terminus, neque ad substantiam pertinent, neque ad

accidens, nisi secundo, quodam cum relatione ad quantitatem discretam vel continuam
respectu: sed iis spacium multo magis ad necessitatem existentiae rerum naturalium
concurrit, pro quo locum atque materiam unum idemque Plato esse voluit … ’
79 This clearly evokes the later Leibnizian idea in the Monadology of ‘monads without
windows’. For the relation between Bruno and Leibniz’s monadology, see Chapter 17 by
Stuart Brown in this volume.
80 Space is an indispensable condition for the existence of all physical beings and
phenomena, described by Bruno as praenaturale and antenaturale, and it is therefore a

necessary being and principle. The Nolan said specifically that space is ‘impenetrable’
because it is a continuous quantity and infinite; nevertheless, because of the fact that it is
the absolute and indifferent receptacle for all the bodies, we can say that space has the
absolute power to penetrate all of them, because although it cannot be contained by any
physical body, it has the power to occupy [aequet] them as happens with diaphanous light
in crystals. For a detailed exposition of this idea Cf. De immenso, I, 8, BOL, V.I., P. I,
230–38.
81 A particularly strong idea in De la causa and in De immenso.
82 ‘Una materia, una forma, unum efficiens. In omni serie, scala, analogia ab uno
proficiscitur, in uno consistit et ad unum refertur multitudo; quod primum subiectum,

primum exemplar et primum agens sit existimandum. In hoc ubi sumus genere,
magnitudine despicabile, modicum, minimum est virtute maximum, magnum, totum;
veluti scintilla urentis ignis, si materia subiiciatur et operatio non interturbetur, in
infinitum se propagare valet, nihilo (quidquid sit de actu) eiusdem impediente potentiam.’
De minimo, II, 1, BOL, V.I, P. III, 187–8.
320 GIORDANO BRUNO
the atom83 as chapter IV of De minimo may seem to suggest; or, which

would be but a variation of the same theme, that the maximum or
multiplicity is but the same divine atom, filling infinity with an infinite
motion (which would mean unlimited speed) tantamount to immobility.
So there would only really be a single minimum which would manifest
itself at once as maximum: a reading which could arise from the idea
that the line is nothing but the motion of the point, the surface is the
motion of the line, and the body is the motion of the surface.84 But this
interpretation, apart from the fact that it would contradict many other
passages in Bruno´s works, and that the text mentioned could be purely
incidental and indirect, would not modify the fact that space would
continue to present itself as a relatively different entity. And this
notwithstanding the fact that Bruno maintains throughout his work the
necessity for the awareness of our finitude and gnoseological limitations
with respect to God’s infinity.85
Anyhow, the dualistic or pluralistic risk only attenuates but does not
annul the necessary characteristic of matter in general or of atoms in
particular as a prime corporeal substance of being:
He [Jove] knows that of the eternal corporeal substance (which is
not producible ex nihilo, nor reducible ad nihilum, but rarefiable,
condensable, formable, arrangeable, and ‘fashionable’) the
composition is dissolved, the complexion is changed, the figure is
modified, the being is altered, the fortune is varied, only the
elements remaining what they are in substance, that same principle
persevering which was always the one material principle, which is
the true substance of things, eternal, ingenerable, and
incorruptible.86
83 Some sort of a ‘big bang’, eternal and instantaneous, with a corresponding ‘great
implosion’. Or in Hegel’s fashion of the ‘self development of the idea’, who, by the way,
faces, under a different perspective, a similar problem, risking dualism.
84 ‘Ergo linea nihil est nisi punctus motus, superficies nisi linea mota, corpus nisi
superficies mota, et consequenter punctus mobilis est substantia omnium et punctus

manens est totum. Idem iudicium de atomo, idem primo et praecipuo modo de monade.
unde tandem minimum seu monas est omnia, seu maxima et totum’. De minimo, I, 4,
BOL, V.I, P. III, 148–9. Mention should be made that the context of the chapter enables a
reading in the sense mentioned above.
85 ‘procede dalla improporzionalità delli mezzi de nostra cognizione al cognoscibile;
essendo che, per contemplar le cose divine, bisogna aprir gl’occhi per mezzo di figure,
similitudini, et altre raggioni … etc.’ Furori, Parte seconda, Dialogo quarto, BDI, V.II,
1158.
86 ‘Conosce che dell’eterna sustanza corporea (la quale non è denichilabile, né
adnichilabile, ma rarefabile, inspessabile, formabile, ordinabile, figurabile) la

composizione si dissolve, si cangia la complessione, si muta la figura, si altera l’essere, si
varia la fortuna; rimanendo sempre quel che sono in sustanza gli elementi; e quell’istesso,
che fu sempre, perseverando l’uno principio materiale, che è vera sustanza de le cose,
eterna, ingenerabile, incorrottibile … ‘ etc. Spaccio, Epistola esplicatoria, BDI, 556.
Minima and Providence
‘Given that in nature there is nothing without providence or without a

final cause … ’87
Once it is established that minima necessarily exist, that they
constitute one absolute necessary being, and since without them neither
middles nor the maximum, nor movement, nor anything else can exist,
the next thing to do is to determine the nature of generation and
corruption, to explain how, beginning with the minima, mediated by the
elements and the specific minima, the composites will be produced, the
‘great animals’ (that is to say, suns, earths and synods formed by them)
as well as the more limited things or infima as composites contained in
them;88 all of which are subjects of natural philosophy.
Nevertheless, an ontological corollary that we must emphasize here is
the refusal of a merely casual and fortuitous relation in all these
processes; that is, the necessity for the existence of an intrinsic and
absolute rational structure that allows for the transits between minima
and maximum, a rationality that must be determined beginning from the
minima, because – as we said before – they are its foundation.
Contingency is a relative term, a form of immediate manifestation of
reality related to the level of capacity and action of finite and composite
beings. At the same time it is an expression of our own ignorance about
the ultimate and profound concatenation between things and with the
necessary beings. But this is meaningless as such from a divine
perspective, for to God as Providence all things have order, cause and
end: ‘for, sometimes, by Fortune we mean only an uncertain turn of
events, which uncertainty in the eyes of Providence is nothing, although
it is of the greatest importance in the eyes of mortals’.89
Furthermore, it is incongruous to think that nature, the universe,
could be a product of a chaotic or fortuitous agent: ‘In nature
fortuitously nothing can exist.’90 This is another domain in which Bruno
87 Bruno, G. (1995), The Ash Wednesday Supper, trans. Edward Gosselin and
Lawrence Lerner, Toronto/Buffalo: University of Toronto Press, p. 212. ‘Essendo che nella
natura non è cosa senza providenza e senza causa finale … ’ Cena, BDI, 154.
88 Idea in some way extant still in the Intentio XII del De umbris, BOL, V.II, P. I, 27.
89 The Expulsion, trans. Imerti, op. cit., p. 169. ‘perché tal volta per la Fortuna non è
altro che uno incerto evento de le cose; la quale incertezza a l’occhio de la providenza è nulla,
benché sia massima a l’occhio de mortali.’ Spaccio, Dialogo secondo, BDI, 687. In the same
sense: ‘Et nimirum nihil absolutum es fortuitum, porro fortuna et casus sunt nomina
incertorum eventuum, qui collati ad nostram cognitionem sunt huiusmodi, ad eum vero qui
particularia omnia ut sunt disposita sub causis universalibus intelligit, de singularibus et
individuis exactissimam habet rationem … ’ De rerum princ., BOL, V:III, 564.
90 My translation. ‘Natura fortuitum nihil esse potest.’ Camoer. acrot., Art. XIV, BOL,
322 GIORDANO BRUNO
separates himself radically from ancient atomism. It is true that he does

not accept that perfect forms and absolute regularity are possible in the
sensible world, but neither does he find acceptable that the order,
structure, ends, life, beauty, truth and goodness observable in the
universe, the ‘Great simulacrum’, can be supported by randomness and
chaos.
Law, rationality, ceases to be conceived of as something strange, and
imposed on the minima (and perhaps through them, on finite
composites, as the lowest part of the scale of being). Rationality is
intrinsic to atoms, to the absolute minima, specially under the form of
natural law, which is equivalent to divine providence acting in the
physical world. Basing his argument on Paul-Henri Michel’s analysis,
Minois concludes correctly in this respect: ‘The atoms are worked from
within, they do not coalesce among each other in random nor disorderly
ways, but in accordance with an organizing will-power aimed at
developing ever more complex and perfect structures.’91 It is a
providential idea related to the minima that in a certain way is already
present in Plato’s Timeus.92
Due to all this, Bruno rejects mechanism from its roots (that is to say,
even before its development, in the seventeenth century): that
mechanism which would become in fact the basis for the authentic
atheism proclaimed by various materialists in the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries, in the same way that it was for the atomists in
Antiquity.
On the contrary, beginning with the De umbris idearum, but more
clearly in La Cena and in De la causa, the Nolan will also be against the
prevalent conception of an external efficient cause. Self-motion, life, as
we said previously, exists for Bruno intrinsically in matter, ‘as the pilot
in the ship’93 and it is based on the absolute minima that unfold into
V.I, P. I, 108. Cf. also the corresponding ratio, where Bruno presents another important
consideration concerning this point.
91 My translation. ‘Les atomes travaillés du dedans, ne se combinent ni par hasard ni
de façon désordonnée, mais selon une volonté organisatrice, allant vers des structures de
plus en plus complexes et de plus en plus parfaites.’ Minois, G. (1998), Histoire de
l’athéisme, Paris: Librairie Arthème Fayard, see also BOL, V. III, p. 421.
92 ‘Now one must conceive all these to be so small that none of them, when taken singly
each in its several kind, is seen by us, but when many are collected together their masses are
seen. And moreover, as regards the numerical proportions which govern their masses and
motions and their qualities, we must conceive that God realized these everywhere with
exactness, in so far as the nature of Necessity submitted voluntarily or under persuasion,
and thus ordered all in harmonious proportion.’ Timaeus, 56 b and c. (trans. Bury R.G.
(1929), London: William Heinemann, Loeb Classical Library, p. 137).
93 ‘come il nocchiero nella nave’. Cf Causa, Dialogo secondo, BDI, 236; Spaccio,
Epistola esplicatoria, BDI, 557.

composites, and into the middles, and that rejoin again a supreme unity
in the maximum.
Furthermore, if we consider that physical reality and its phenomena
are necessarily founded on matter and space, on the atoms and on the
soul of the world, that both are basic manifestations or aspects of God
and that God is in all,94 then it turns out that all existing things must be
based on absolute rationality, even if we ignore it or are unable to
understand it, basically because its applicability is very limited in us. The
coincidence of that which in our finite perspective we call ‘good’ and
‘evil’ is the hardest to conceive, and the worst to accept, because of a
prejudiced and wrong identity between that which for us appears as the
‘good’ (which by and large is actually that which allows the species to
survive, that is, in our case, the particular, specific, human kind of good),
and that which we think is God. This idea is firmly rooted in us, and is
a kind of support of our consciousness, our activity and our schemes of
moral practice.
Thus, what we humans believe to be defective, unfair, negative,
chaotic, evil, imperfect, irrational, mortal and so on, particularly when
we substantivize these attributes and raise them to the category of
absolutes, actually turn out to be the result of our own partial and
insufficient perspective, resulting from our finite being, knowing and
operating; that is, those characteristics are such only for and because of
the species affected by their own actual and potential limitations.95
94 Summa term. met. ‘XLV. Vbi’, BOL, V.I, P. IV, 66–67: ‘sicut Deus dicitur esse
ubique, anima in toto corpore. Unde sequitur distinctio, qua aliquid alicubi esse dicitur vel
definitive, sicut anima est in corpore, intellectus in animo, vox in sensu auditus; alio pacto
infinite, sicut Deus est ubique super omnia, infra omnia, ut omnibus providet, omnibus dat
esse, omnia continet et omnia fundat … ’
95 ‘non enim contrariari videmus in elementis naturae quippiam, nisi quod cum altero
in eiusdem subiecti convenit appetitu, vel saltem in sui ipsius conservandi appetitu. Hinc
contraria omnia propter communen utriusque materiam in eodem genere consistere, etiam
vulgo philosophantum est manifestum. Nihil item in universo adeo est exiguum, quod ad
eximii integritatem atque perfectionem non conducat. Nihil item malum est quibusdam et
alicubi, quod et quibusdam et alibi non sit bonum et optimum. Hinc ad universum
respicienti nihil occurret turpe, malum, incongruum; neque etenim varietas atque
contrarietas efficit quominus omnia sint optima, prout videlicet a natura gubernantur,
quae veluti phonascus contrarias voces extremas atque medias ad unam omni (quam
possimus imaginari) optimam symphoniam dirigit et perducit.’ De minimo, IV, 1, BOL,
V.I, P. III, 272. This is an idea that has roots in the Heraclitean dialectics: ‘For god all
things are fair and good and just, but men have taken some things as unjust, others as just.’
Heraclitus [D. 102, M.91], Scholia Graeca in Homeri, Iliadem; On Iliad, IV.4 (Porphyry,
Quaestiones Homericae), trans. C.H. Kahn (1979) in The Art and Thought of Heraclitus,
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 61; that, in another context, we can think of
as an anticipation of the Hegelian thesis that everything real is rational and everything
rational is real.
324 GIORDANO BRUNO
It is at this level of finitude that the type of, and specific need for
human freedom is explained; and it has free will as a sequel. Free will is
admitted, proposed and required by Bruno, but it is in function of the
limitations and possibilities of human beings (or if one prefers, of every
finite subject capable of deliberating and choosing, in the Aristotelian
sense). And by the same token, every other specific mode of knowledge
and action that is produced in any other position on the scale of being
will be a function of that particular finite situation: the more determined
and limited (which is tantamount to saying the more contingent,
accidental and vicissitudinary) a being is, paradoxically the more it will
be subject to contingence, impotence and subordination. And on the
contrary, the more substantial and necessary, the closer it will be to the
identity between freedom and necessity, as between act and power and
so on, until complete unity is reached in the perfect coincidentia
oppositorum, that is, God.
It also happens that, according to the scale of being, one finds levels
of necessity. Bruno makes a distinction between the divine and natural
planes, between the necessity of the divine and the natural, since in the
latter there exists a certain limitation regarding the explicatio.96 This is
an argument which leads to the idea that God structures the world as it
is, necessarily and according to laws: an idea that would be revived
constantly to deliver science from religious harassment in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.97
Additionally, by definition, not only is there no contingency in God
but neither arbitrariness, vicissitude, nor any accidents,98 for He is an
96 ‘Differt autem necessitas naturae a necessitate fati seu divina, quia natura necessario
facit unum, sed non ex necessitate semper. Necessitas enim est penes voluntatem et
cognitionem infallibilem, sed non penes effectum, quia potest impediri et averti; divina
vero necessitas est penes omnia.’ Summa term. met., BOL, V.I, P. IV, 122. Also the De
immenso says: ‘Infinita virtus si neque a seipsa finitur, nec ab alio, tunc necessitate suae
naturae agit: non agit necessitate naturae alia a se et sua voluntate, in eorum morem quae
necessitati subsunt; sed ipsa est (ut saepe dicimus) necessitas. Agit ergo necessitate, quae
neque ab intrinseco et per se, neque ab extrinseco et per aliud frustrari potest. Non primo,
quia non potest aliud esse atque aliud: non secundo, quia ista necessitas, reliquorum
omnium lex est.’ De immenso, I, 12, BOL, V.I, P. I, 246.
97 Descartes and Newton are exemplary cases in this respect.
98 ‘Teofilo. Cossí; ma non vorei che v’imaginaste ch’ io intenda in Dio essere accidenti,
o che possa esser conosciuto come per suoi accidenti. Dicsono. Non vi attribuisco sì duro
ingegno; e so che altro è dire essere accidenti, altro essere suoi accidenti, altro essere come
suoi accidenti ogni cosa che è estranea dalla natura divina. Nell’ ultimo modo di dire credo
che intendete essere gli effetti della divina operazione; li quali, quantunque siano la
sustanza de le cose, anzi e l’istesse sustanze naturali, tuttavolta sono come accidenti
remotissimi, per farne toccare la cognizione appreensiva della divina soprannaturale
essenza.’ Causa, Dialogo secondo, BDI, 227. ‘En Dieu, il ne peut y avoir de contingence:
d’une cause déterminée dépende un effet déterminé et immuable.’ Namer, E. (1926), Les
absolutely rational being, eternal and necessary par excellence. True

rationality implies the necessary identity between freedom and necessity
in God.99 If there are no accidents in God, there is no casualness or blind
fate: these are but appearances, a new illusion, or if one prefers, a finite
manifestation within the finites, resulting from human knowledge and
practices.
Divine providence, then, is for Bruno absolute rationality, as it is for
St Thomas;100 although in Bruno the thesis is more radical and dialectic,
as it occurs in a theology that is strictly philosophical and that
consciously avoids the limitations and particularities of religious dogma.
What is represented as contingence in composites, in the finites, becomes
a necessity in the context of the whole, not in itself or by itself, but in
function of God himself, the instant and infinite motion of God. Hence
the identity in God, in the universe, in the Whole, in the One, of
necessity and contingency, of freedom and necessity, of essence and
existence, of power and act.101 ‘In conclusion, he who wishes to know
the greatest secrets of nature should observe and examine the minima
and maxima of contraries and opposites. There is a profound magic in
knowing how to extract the contrary from the contrary, after having
discovered their point of union.’102
aspects de Dieu dans la philosophie de Giordano Bruno, Paris: Librairie Félix Alcan,
p. 139.
99 In section ‘XLIII. Necessitas’ from the Summa term. met. (BOL, V.I, P. IV, 95),
speaking about the unity of necessity and freedom in God, Bruno establishes: ‘Eius
voluntas est ipsa necessitas et necessitas est ipsa divina voluntas, in qua necessitate non
praeiudicatur libertati, quandoquidem necessitas et libertas unum sunt … quin potius ipsa
libertas, voluntas, necessitas sunt unum et idem.’ Moreover, it is convenient to remember
the points called by Bruno Common Principles [Principia communia] in chapter XI from
the first book of the De immenso (BOL, V.I, P. I, 242ff), in particular the point IX:
‘Necessitas et libertas sunt unum, unde non est formidandum quod, cum agat necessitate
naturae, non libere agat: sed potius immo omnino non libere ageret, aliter agendo, quam
necessitas et natura, imo naturae necessitas requirit.’
100 ‘Ipsa igitur ratio ordinis rerum in finem, providentia in Deo nominatur.’ Summa
Theologica, I, q. 22, a.1, r.; ‘Deus inmediate omnibus providet. Quia in suo intellectu habet
rationem omnium, etiam minimorum … ’, Ibid., I, q. 22, a.3, r. Santo Tomás de Aquino
(1964), Suma Teológica, Texto latino de la edición crítica Leonina, Madrid: Bibliotheca de
Autores Cristianos, pp. 765 and 773.
101 ‘La providenza, dunque, se dice nelle cose superiori, ed è compagna della verità, e
non è senza quella, ed è la medesima libertà e la medesima necessità; di maniera che la

verità, la providenza, la libertà e necessità, la unità, la verità, la essenzia, la entità, tutte
sono uno absolutissimo … ’ Spaccio, Dialogo secondo, BDI, 648.
102 Causa, trans. de Lucca, op. cit., p. 100: ‘In conclusione, chi vuol sapere massimi
secreti di natura, riguardi e contemple circa gli minimi e massimi de gli contrarii e oppositi.
Profonda magia è saper trar il contrario dopo aver trovato il punto de l’unione.’ Causa,
Dialogo quinto, BDI, 340.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Meanings of ‘contractio’ in
Giordano Bruno’s Sigillus
sigillorum*
Leo Catana
In the Sigillus sigillorum (The Seal of Seals), Bruno develops two

parallel lines of thought, one on ontology and one on epistemology.
Within the first line of thought he delineates the metaphysical
structure of the universe and its process of individuation, called
descension; the epistemological line of thought explains how it is
possible for man to ascend within that structure. Bruno insists that
these two topics, descension and ascension, must exist in conformity,
and, accordingly, that they must be conceived of in a uniform manner.
As he maintains in the Sigillus, ascension is a reversed descension.1 In
this chapter I shall focus on one particular notion in the Sigillus which
is essential to both of these two parallel lines of thought, namely the
notion ‘contractio’, a Latin term whose basic meaning is a process of
drawing together. The aim of this article is rather preliminary and
negative, to question the assumption that Bruno’s idea of ‘contractio’
in the Sigillus is substantially influenced by Marsilio Ficino. Bruno was
undoubtedly inspired by Ficino in many respects, also in the Sigillus,
as has been demonstrated convincingly.2 But, as I intend to argue, in
regard to the use of the notion ‘contractio’, Bruno’s interpretation
marks out a differentiation from Ficino, ontologically and
epistemologically. I hope to be able to publish a positive and more
elaborate analysis of the concept of ‘contractio’ in Bruno’s thought in
the future.
Alfonso Ingegno has asserted that it was Ficino’s idea of ascension
which inspired the Sigillus and in particular the notion of ‘contractio’ in
* I should like to thank Dilwyn Knox for reading a draft of this chapter and for his
observations and suggestions.
1 Sig. sigill., in BOL, II.2, 202.19–203.14, 213.14–214.19.
2 Sturlese, R. (1994), ‘Le fonti del Sigillus sigillorum di Bruno, ossia: il confronto con
Ficino a Oxford sull’anima umana’, in Nouvelles de la Republique des Lettres, II, pp.
89–167.
328 GIORDANO BRUNO
the Sigillus.3 On the basis of Bruno’s own statement about the unified
nature of descension and ascension, and some observations regarding
the history of the term ‘contractio’, I shall question this interpretation.
Ingegno’s claim was that the psychological notion of ‘contractio’ in the
Sigillus was inspired by Ficino’s Theologia platonica (Platonic
Theology), published in 1482, and he refers to the following passage in
this work of Ficino. When discussing ascension, Ficino examines various
ways in which the mind can free itself from the body in order to ascend.
Ficino asserts about one of them that it ‘derives from the contraction of
melancholic humours, which removes the soul from external affairs, so
that the soul is just as absent in a man who is awake, as it normally is
in a man when he is asleep’.4 Now if Bruno’s psychological notion of
‘contractio’ were positively affected by this Ficinian doctrine of
melancholic humours, then, given Bruno’s claim of a unified nature of
descension and ascension, one should also expect Bruno to rely on those
elements of Ficino’s ontology on which Ficino’s theory of ascension is
based. But does Bruno do so in the Sigillus?
First, what was the context of Ficino’s theory of melancholic
humours? In his Theologia platonica Ficino returns to the conjunction
of contraction and melancholy on several occasions. In one important
instance he claims that such an act of contraction may be caused by the
celestial influence from Saturn, initiating a process of ascension.5 He
3 Ingegno, A. (1987), Regia pazzia. Bruno lettore di Calvino, Urbino: Quattro Venti,
pp. 133–6, especially p. 133, n. 71: ‘Il testo capitale per il concetto di contractio in Bruno,
in Opera latine conscripta, II.II (that is, BOL II.2), pp. 213–14. I diversi tipi di contractio
trattati nel Sigillus sigillorum e ripresi nelle Theses de magia, sono ispirati a Theologia
platonica, XIII, 2. Cf. M. Ficini Opera omnia, Basilea, 1576, in part. la sezione Septem
vacationis genera, pp. 292–5’. This was also the position in Ingegno’s earlier work, La
sommersa nave della religione, Naples: Bibliopolis, 1985, pp. 90–93, especially p. 91, n.
6. This interpretation is affirmed in Mancini, S. (2000), La sfera infinita, Milan: Mimesis,
p. 67, n. 152.
4 Ficino, M. (1576), Theologia platonica, in idem, Opera omnia, Basle: Henricpetrina.
(Anastatic reprint: 2 vols, ed. S. Toussaint. Paris: Phénix, 2000), p. 294.26-28 (XIII.ii):
‘Tertius vacationis modus fit ex melancholici humoris contractione, animam ab externis
negotiis se vocantis, ut anima, tam vacet homine vigilante, quam solet dormiente
quandoque vacare.’
5 Ibid., pp. 405.46–406.3 (XVIII.v): ‘Qua parte coeli descendunt? Cancro praecipue,
ut aiunt Platonici, vicissimque per Capricornum, Cancro oppositum, ascendere putant

[that is, the ‘Platonists’]. Atque hinc illam hominum, hanc deorum portam appellant.
Nemo vero adeo falli debet, ut descensum ascensum ve hic accipiat secundum situm: sed
quia Luna Cancri domina, generationi proxima est. Saturnus vero dominus Capricorni
remotissimus, ideo per Cancrum, id est, lunarem, vegetalemque instinctum descendere
animas dicunt: per Capricornum vero, id est, per Saturnum intellectualemque instinctum
ascendere. Saturnum enim prisci mentem vocant, qua sola superiora petuntur. Accedit ad
haec, quod Capricorni Saturnique sicca virtus, dum spiritus ad intima contrahit, atque
MEANINGS OF ‘CONTRACTIO’ 329
14.1 Title page of Bruno’s Explicatio triginta sigillorum, in his Ars

reminiscendi, 1583
330 GIORDANO BRUNO
gave an evocative and original treatment of melancholy in another

work, De vita libri tres (Three Books on Life), finished for publication
in 1489, seven years after Theologia platonica was published. De vita
was one of the most popular of Ficino’s works: in the fifteenth and
sixteenth centuries it was printed five times in Italy, four times in
Germany and twice in France. The theme of melancholy is treated in the
first book (most importantly in chapters 2–6); its celestial procurator,
Saturn, is described in the third book.
In the first book of De vita, Ficino sets out by defining ‘spirit’ as the
instrument of learned people’s intellectual labour. Spirit is defined
physiologically as ‘a vapour of blood – pure, subtle, hot and clear’.6
Through the blood, the spirit is distributed to the entire body, also the
brain, and it is used by the soul in the exercise of interior as well as
exterior senses.7 Spirit is the link between soul and body. In the
Theologia platonica, Ficino similarly uses the term ‘contraction’ when
describing the gathering of spirit of the soul.8 Corporeal humours, Ficino
continues in De vita, can become such spirits, for example, melancholic
spirits.9 Bruno refers to such an idea in the twelfth contraction of the
Sigillus, to which I shall return at the end of this chapter.
Ficino connects this spirit of the individual with the spirit of the
cosmos; the latter affects the former through celestial influence, or more
precisely through rays of the stars;10 the rays of Saturn thus call forth a
contemplative intellect.11 Moreover, the spirit of a human being can also
become exposed to the influence of certain stars by pursuing deeds
which are governed by those stars – for example, come under the
influence of Saturn through contemplation.12 Now this powerful theory
of melancholy was entwined with Ficino’s solution to the Neoplatonic
question of the relation between the ‘one’ and the ‘many’, especially his
notion of ascension towards unity, where the Saturnine influence
became of vital significance.
colligit, ad contemplandum assidue provocat, lunaris autem humor spargit, atque dilatat,
et animum circa sensibilia distrahit.’
6 Ficino, M. (1989), De vita libri tres, in idem, Three Books on Life, ed. and trans.
C.V. Kaske and J.R. Clark, Medieval and Renaissance Texts & Studies, vol. 57: The
Renaissance Society of America, vol. 2, Binghampton and New York: Center for Medieval
and Early Renaissance Studies, pp. 110.12-13 (I.ii): ‘vapor quidam sanguinis purus,
subtilis, calidus et lucidus … ’
7 Ibid., p. 110.13-15 (I.ii).
8 Ficino, Theologia platonica, in Ficino, Opera Omnia, op. cit. pp. 177.35-44 (VII.vi),
405.39–406.3 (XVIII.v).
9 Ficino, De vita libri tres, in Opera Omnia, op. cit., p. 220.1-5 (II.xviii).
10 Ibid., pp. 254.89-91 (III.ii), 368.107-115 (III.xxii).
11 Ibid., p. 364.18-44 (III.xxii).
12 Ibid., p. 252.67-72 (III.ii).
So much for Ficino’s notion of melancholic humours. Bruno’s Sigillus

sigillorum is the third and last part of Ars reminiscendi (Art of Memory),
published in London in 1583. Here the Sigillus is preceded by Triginta
sigilli (Thirty Seals) and Triginta sigillorum explicatio (Explanation of the
Thirty Seals). The titles indicate the relation between these three parts. In
the Triginta sigilli Bruno presents thirty symbols to be imprinted in
memory for the purpose of ‘ordering and retaining’ material in memory.13
The 30 seals set forth in the Triginta sigilli are ‘unfolded’ (explicati) in the
Triginta sigillorum explicatio, that is, their symbolic content is explained
philosophically.14 The third seal, the chain, thus refers explicitly to the
idea of a metaphysical continuum.15 The Sigillus follows the two
preceding sections thematically: on the front page to the Explicatio (also
covering the Triginta sigilli), it is stated that ‘Sigillus sigillorum is added,
being highly conducive to preparing all the operations of the soul and to
having knowledge of their causes’.16 And this is what is promised in the
subtitle of the Sigillus too, ‘which is aimed at guiding the dispositions of
the soul and the perfection of its habits’.17 The object of this work is thus
‘the ordering of every operation of the soul’.
The Sigillus starts out with an allegorical exhortation to ‘spread out
the wings’18 and fly up and participate in the ‘celestial life’.19 This, of
course, is an allusion to Plato’s Phaedrus.20 Bruno addresses the reader
with these words on the first page, appealing to a Neoplatonic return to
the origin, God: ‘You who are hesitant but are wholly inflamed by the
theme, should first make sure that you worship what you are first and
foremost stirred by outwardly, and inspired by within as God, that you
praise it as the lord, invoke it as the godhead and look upon it as the
light.’21 These initial remarks suggest that the ‘ordering of the operations
13 Bruno, Triginta sigilli, in BOL, II.2, 79.4–6: ‘Habes, illustrissime et excellentissime
Domine, Sigillorum 30. congeriem, quibus ad trutinam redactis inquisitio, inventio et

retentio affabre succedere valeant.’ These 30 seals are described in ibid., pp. 79–107. Some
of these seals are illustrated in ibid., pp. 109–115.
14 Bruno, Explicatio, in BOL, II.2, 121.3–7.
15 Ibid., pp. 123.17-124.25. See Clucas, S. (1999) ‘Amorem, artem, magiam,
mathesim. Brunian images and the domestication of the soul’, in Zeitsprünge.

Forschungen zur Frühen Neuzeit, Band 3, Heft I/2, pp. 5–24, especially pp. 10–13.
16 Bruno, Explicatio, in BOL, II.2, 73.7–10: ‘Quibus adiectus est Sigillus Sigillorum,
ad omnes animi operationes comparandas et earundem rationes habendas maxime

conducens.’
17 Bruno, Sig. sigill., in BOL, II.2, 161.2–4: ‘Sigillus sigillorum ad omnes animi
dispositiones comparandas habitusque perficiendos adcommodatus.’

18 Ibid., p. 163.5-11.
19 Ibid., p. 162.20-26.
20 Plato, Phaedrus, 246b-d.
21 Bruno, Triginta sigilli, in BOL, II.2, 161.5–11: ‘Haesitanti tibi et ad rem ipsam
332 GIORDANO BRUNO
of the soul’, which Bruno mentions on the front page of Ars

reminiscendi, do not include all operations of the soul, but only those
related to the Neoplatonic process of ascension. The Sigillus offers a
theoretical clarification of the use of the mnemonic images in Ars
reminiscendi within this Neoplatonic agenda. So much for the
framework of the various meanings of ‘contractio’ in the Sigillus.
There are actually three meanings of ‘contractio’ in the Sigillus. First,
there is a physiological one. Organic material and parts of bodies can
draw themselves together, ‘contract’, when exposed to heat from fire.22
This sense of ‘contractio’ is unimportant in the Sigillus. Second, Bruno
presents a psychological meaning of the term, which is related to the
process of ascension: the human mind withdraws from the empirical and
social world, turns inwardly, and seeks to ascend to higher realms – it
‘contracts’ into itself. This psychological meaning is vital to understand
the epistemological aspect of the treatise. The 15 contractions in the
Sigillus, containing praise as well as criticism of techniques of ascension,
are to be understood as forms of psychological contraction.23
Apart from the physiological and psychological sense of ‘contractio’
in the Sigillus, there is an ontological sense too, by which Bruno explains
emanation. The Neoplatonic One, or ‘absolute form’ (forma absoluta)
as he calls it, ‘contracts’ itself, he says, into the universe, generating and
sustaining the existence of particulars. ‘Contractio’ in this sense thus
explains the origin of the universe, and the individuation of and
subsistence of things. It is this ontological doctrine with which ascension
must be in conformity, according to Bruno.24 I shall return to this and
the psychological meaning of ‘contractio’, but first I will focus on the
history of the term ‘contractio’.
With regard to classical Latin the picture is fairly clear. Here, the term
was primarily defined as a medical one, comprising a physiological and
a psychological meaning. A physical cramp, or contraction, of a body
was often described as a contractio.25 This meaning corresponds to the
physiological sense, which we have seen in the Sigillus. The
psychological meaning of ‘contractio’, still in classical Latin, designates
a mental depression. Cicero and Seneca thus used expressions such as
penitus inflammanti, illud principio intentandum, ut ipsum a quo excitaris exterius et

incitaris interius primum proximumque Deum colas, principem magnifices, numen invoces
et lumen adspicias.’
22 Bruno, Sig. sigill., in BOL, II.2, 194.2–8.
23 Ibid., pp. 180.19–193.26. See also pp. 197.25–199.17, 212.15–215.20.
24 Ibid., pp. 202.19–203.14, 212.14–215.20.
25 Cicero, Pro Sestio, 19; idem, De natura deorum, 2.150; idem, De officiis, 1.146;
Vitruvius, De architectura, 4.3.2.; Quintilian, Institutio oratoria, 11.3.83; Seneca,

Epistulae, 66.43; Plinius secundus, Naturalis historia, 7.76, 20.191, 22.105.
contractio animi, depression of the soul.26 The notion was used in this
sense, though in various adaptations, by different medieval authors. One
example is Augustine (354–430), who advised the preacher to rid
himself of gloomy moods in order to appear joyful to the audience.27
Later on, in Thomas Aquinas (1225–74) and his discussion of fear, the
psychological and physiological aspects of corporeal contraction are
analysed on the basis of a medical theory of humours; these humours,
that is, bodily fluids, are subjected to movements, ‘contractions’, in the
body, when emotions such as rage occur, Aquinas observes calmly.28
Ficino also used the notion, as we have seen, within his theory of
melancholic humours and their role in ascension, and he built on this
classical and medieval medical tradition.29
Contrary to ‘contractio’ in the physiological and the psychological
meanings, ‘contractio’ in the ontological sense seems not to have a
classical base, but is apparently of medieval origin, and it seems to be a
German invention. It has a fascinating and as yet unexplored history
concerned with philosophical and religious ideas about the origin and
nature of the universe, in particular the relation between God and the
creation. Of course, this theme was widely debated, and so was the
interpretation of ontological ‘contractio’.
The earliest reference I have found, derives from the thirteenth
century. The German theologian Albert the Great (1193–1280) used the
term in his metaphysical treatise finished around 1265, De causis et
processu universitatis a prima causa (On the Causes and Procession of
the Universe from the First Cause). In it, the notion takes up a
prominent position in his formulation of emanation. In this book, Albert
the Great synthesizes – more or less consistently – Christian, Platonic,
Neoplatonic and Aristotelian viewpoints. He adheres to the Aristotelian
notion of God as a first, unmoved mover.30 But he also maintains –
following the Platonists and Neoplatonists rather than Aristotle – that
God emanates through the universal intellect, passing through a
26 Cicero, Tusculanae disputationes, 1.90 and 4.14; Seneca, Dialogi, 6.7.1.

27 In De catechizandis rudibus, Augustine advises the preacher to rid himself from
gloomy moods: Augustine, De catechizandis rudibus, 10.14, in Patrologiae cursus
completus, Series latina prima, ed. J.P. Migne, 221 vols (Paris, 1844–64), vol. 40, col. 324.
28 Aquinas, T. (1963–75), Summa theologiae, ed. M. Browne and A. Fernandez, 59
vols, London and New York: Blackfriars, 1a2æ, qu. 44, ar. 1 and ar. 3, contra.
29 On Ficino’s use of the medical theory of melancholy, see Klibansky, R., Panofsky, E.
and Saxl, F. (1964), Saturn and Melancholy. Studies in the History of Natural Philosophy,
Religion and Art, London: Nelson, pp. 3-16, 254–74.
30 Albert the Great, (1987–), De causis et processu universitatis a prima causa, I.3, in
idem, Opera omnia, vol. 1–, ed. W. Fauser, Aschendorff: Monastry of Westfalen, vol. 17.2,
pp. 35–42.
334 GIORDANO BRUNO
hierarchy of intelligences, ultimately leading to the creation of the earth,

created within its own sphere, and governed by its respective
intelligence.31 In this process of emanation, the universal forms of higher
intelligences are ‘contracted’ into the particular forms of lower
ingelligences. The universal forms thus exist in a ‘contracted manner’ in
the particular forms.32 Elsewhere in this work he declares explicitly that
the universal intellect is ‘contracted’ in all beings.33 So, in Albert the
Great, the notion is adapted to explain the origin and existence of the
universe.34
Aquinas, a pupil of Albert the Great, used the term and its
grammatical derivations exuberantly and with a variety of meanings. I
shall only look at some of the relevant philosophical ones. Aquinas does
not use the term ‘contractio’ to denote a process of emanation, or part
of it. This is hardly surprising, since Aquinas thwarted the Neoplatonic
idea of emanation, which tended to lead to an identification of God and
the universe – a pantheistic thought which was at loggerheads with St
Paul’s important distinction between the creator and creation.35 Instead,
Aquinas interpreted ‘emanation’ within a Christian account of
creation.36 When Aquinas uses contractio in a more strict philosophical
and ontological sense, he adapts it to an Aristotelian scheme of
individuation. In the Summa theologiae he thus states: ‘It should be
noticed that matter is contracted (contrahitur) into a determinate kind
of thing through form, just as a substance of a species is shaped
(contrahitur) to a certain way of being through the accidence proper to
it, as a human being is defined (contrahitur) by being white.’37
At least two other German theologians from the fourteenth and
fifteenth centuries followed the adaptation of ‘contractio’ of Albert the
Great, namely Dietrich of Freiberg (1250–1318/20) and Nicholas of
31 Ibid., I.4.1, pp. 42.31–44.3. On the Platonic component, see De Libera, A. (1992),
‘Albert le Grand et le Platonisme. De la doctrine des idées à la theorie des trois états de
l’universel’, in On Proclus and his Influence in Medieval Philosophy, ed. E.P. Bos and P.A.
Meijer, Leiden: Brill, pp. 90–94, 115–19.
32 A. the Great, in De causis, op. cit., II.2.22, p. 116.4–34.
33 Ibid., I.3.6, p. 41.38-42: ‘Similiter si dicatur ens, non illo intellectu dicitur ens quo
ens vocatur, quod est universale ens. Hoc enim contrahitur in omni eo quod est, et
determinatur et nullum esse habet extra ipsum secundum actum.’
34 See Nardi, B. (1960), ‘La dottrina di Alberto Magno su incohatio formae’, in idem,
Studi di filosofia medievale, Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, pp. 69–101.

35 Romans 1:25. See Aquinas, T. (1967), Summa contra gentiles, 2 vols, ed. L.R.
Carcedo and A.R. Sierra, Madrid: La editorial catolica, I.12.

36 Aquinas, Summa theologiae, op. cit., 1a. qu. 45, ar. 1–8.
37 Ibid., 1a. qu. 44, ar. 2, contra: ‘Sed considerandum est quod materia per formam
contrahitur ad determinatam speciem, sicut substantia alicujus speciei per accidens ei

adveniens contrahitur ad determinatum modum essendi; ut homo contrahitur per album.’
Cusa (1401–64).38 The ontological meaning of ‘contractio’ in the Sigillus

could have been inspired by one or more of these medieval theologians,
or indeed by other intermediary Renaissance philosophers. However,
already in his De umbris idearum (On the Shadows of Ideas) dating
from 1582, and in his metaphysical dialogues of 1584 and 1585, Bruno
referred extensively to Cusanus, especially to his major work, De docta
ignorantia (On Learned Ignorance).39 This circumstance calls for a
comparison between Cusanus’s use of the notion ‘contractio’ in De
docta ignorantia and Bruno’s use of the notion in his Sigillus. I shall not
attempt such a comparison here, since that would involve an analysis of
conceptual complexities – in Cusanus’s as well as in Bruno’s philosophy
– which exceed the limits of this chapter. Instead, I shall confine myself
to presenting two adaptations of ontological ‘contractio’ in Cusanus’s
and Bruno’s respective writings.
Cusanus’s De docta ignorantia was finished around 1440 and
reprinted in all three versions of his collected works, which came out in
1490, 1514 and 1565 respectively. The work is divided into three books.
The first book treats of God in his absolute and incomprehensible
nature. The second book explains how the creation and existence of the
universe takes place through a ‘contraction’ from God, effectuating a
causal series of contractions and terminating in particulars. The third
book presents Christ as the mediator between God and man. The second
book is of particular interest to our examination, especially the
following passage, in which Cusanus explains the role of ontological
‘contractio’:
38 Dietrich of Freiberg, De visione beatifica, 4.3.1, § 4, ed. B. Mojsisch, in D. of
Freiberg, Opera omnia, 4 vols (1977–85), ed. L. Sturlese et al., Hamburg: Felix Meiner,
vol. 1, p. 112: ‘Ad quod ulterius considerandum, quod in dispositione et ordine causali
essentiali formarum ad invicem duo attenduntur: unum videlicet, quod illud, quod est
formalius et simplicius et nobilius in superiore forma, contracte et magis determinate et
minus perfecte invenitur in inferiore, sicut in exemplo Libri de causis [proposition 1]
accipere possumus de ente, vivo, rationali, sicut etiam se habent intellectivum,
cogitativum, imaginativum, sensitivum.’ See also idem, De animatione caeli, 4, § 3, ed. L.
Sturlese, in D. of Freiberg, Opera omnia, 4 vols, op. cit., vol. 3, pp. 15–16: ‘Est et alius
ordo essentialis dependentiae, qui attenditur in unoquoque genere causae secundum se,
inquantum videlicet causalitas alicuius primi in quocumque genere causae determinatur in
secundum, et causalitas secundi contrahitur et determinatur in tertium et sic deinceps
secundum gradum et ordinem causalis processus a primo usque ad extremum, ubi est
status.’
39 It has been argued that Bruno’s De umbris idearum was influenced by Cusanus in
Sturlese, R. (1992), ‘Niccolò Cusano e gli inizi della speculazione del Bruno’, in Historia
Philosophiae Medii Aevi. Studien zur Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters.
Festschrift für K. Flasch, ed. B. Mojsisch and O. Pluta, Amsterdam: Spur, pp. 953–66.
Bruno refers explicitly to Cusanus’s De docta ignorantia in Bruno, G., Cena, in BOeuC II,
133; Infinito, in BOeuC IV, 195, 197; De immenso, in BOL, I.1, 381.
336 GIORDANO BRUNO
And in this way we discover that there are three universal unities
gradually descending to the particular in which they are contracted,
so that they may be the particular in act. The first absolute unity
enfolds all in an absolute manner, the first contracted unity enfolds
everything in a contracted manner. Their order entails, however,
that the absolute unity may be regarded as enfolding, as it were, the
first contracted unity, and, by means of the latter, everything else;
that the first contracted unity may be regarded as enfolding the
second contracted unity and, by means of the latter, the third
contracted unity; that the second contracted unity may be regarded
as enfolding the third contracted unity, which is the last universal
unity, and the fourth unity contracted from the first, so that, by
means of the third contraction, the first unity becomes the
particular. And so we see how the totality of things is contracted
into individual particulars.40
Generally speaking, Cusanus uses the term ‘contractio’ to give a

Christian account of the relation between the One and the many. He is
in particular intent to show a distinction between the creator and the
creation. Hence, in the above quotation, Cusanus uses the notion of
‘contractio’ to describe a separation between God, called absolute unity,
and creation, or the particulars.41 Moreover, in this quotation, and in the
rest of De docta ignorantia, these contractions are described without the
Neoplatonic idea of reversion towards the One, opening up the
possibility for human beings to ascend towards the One in a personal
and direct manner.42 To Cusanus, as to medieval Platonism in general,
emanation in the Neoplatonic sense (that is, being, procession and
40 Nicholas of Cusa (1932–), De docta ignorantia, in idem, Opera omnia, ed. E.
Hoffmann and R. Klibansky et al., vol. 1–, Leipzig-Hamburg, vol. I, p. 79.19-28 (II.vi):
‘Et ita reperimus tres universales unitates gradualiter descendentes ad particulare, in quo
contrahuntur, ut sint actu ipsum. Prima absoluta unitas omnia complicat absolute, prima
contracta omnia contracte. Sed ordo habet, ut absoluta unitas videatur quasi primam
contractam complicare, ut per eius medium alia omnia; et contracta prima videatur
secundam contractam complicare, et eius medio tertiam contractam; et secunda contracta
tertiam contractam, quae est ultima universalis unitas et quarta a prima, ut eius medio in
particulare deveniat. Et sic videmus, quomodo universum per gradus tres in quolibet
particulari contrahitur.’
41 On the separation between God and creation articulated in Cusanus’s interpretation
of ‘contractio’, see Beierwaltes, W. (1992), ‘Primum est dives per se’, in On Proclus and
his Influence in Medieval Philosophy, op. cit., especially pp. 168–9. For a speculative
discussion of ‘contractio’ in Cusanus’s thought, see Hopkins, J. (1983), Nicholas of Cusa’s
Metaphysics of Contraction, Minneapolis, MN: Banning; idem (1985), ‘Introduction’, in
Nicholas of Cusa on Learned Ignorance: A Translation and Appraisal of ‘De docta
ignorantia’, trans. and intro. J. Hopkins, Minneapolis, MN: Banning.
42 On the doctrine of return to the One in Neoplatonism, see Wallis, R.T. (1995),
Neoplatonism, [1972] 2nd edn, with foreword and bibliography by L.P. Gerson, London:
Duckworth, p. 66.
return) did not have any significant meaning; emanation was primarily
conceived of as procession from a first principle, that is, through the
hierarchy of being. Only Christ, Cusanus proclaims elsewhere in De
docta ignorantia, can mediate the chasm between God and creation.43
Bruno rejects this Christology.44
Now let us turn to Bruno’s use of ‘contractio’ in the ontological sense.
He states in the Sigillus that there is a ‘double contraction’:
There is then a double contraction. The first is that by which
absolute form becomes form of this or that in this or that being, just
like light [lux], which is, as it were, first in itself and then, at a
posterior ontological level [postea], by a process of the this or that,
brightness [lumen] is produced (without, however, giving out
anything of its substance and without diminishing its integrity). The
second contraction is that by which inferior nature and multiplicity,
through some habit of agreement and obedience, is collected
together and by which it is rendered participant, either by a natural
or a conceptual impulse, and which gathers many participants into
one. The first contraction is that by which the infinite and absolute
form, through its essence, is made finite in this or that matter; the
second is that by which infinite and indeterminate matter, through
number, is determined to this or that form.45
The complex scheme of individuation suggested at the end of the

quotation involves not only matter being determined into forms through
one contraction, but also absolute form being determined and embodied
into matter through another contraction. In Bruno’s De la causa this
theory of a ‘double contraction’ is repeated and elaborated
considerably.46 In this dialogue he assigns to matter active potentiality, in
stark contrast with the Aristotelian and Scholastic conception of matter
as passive potentiality.47 By stressing the interdependence between
43 N. of Cusa, De docta ignorantia, op. cit., p. 127.7-21 [III.iii].

44 Firpo, L., Processo, pp. 16, 143. See also Bruno’s blasphemous rendering of Christ
in Sig. sigill., in BOL, II.2, 181.5 and 190.5 (‘some Adonis’ may be an allusion to Christ);
Spaccio, in BOeuC V, 461–3 (Orion is a representation of Christ).
45 G. Bruno, Sig. sigill., in BOL, II.2, 214.6-19: ‘Duplici ergo existente contractione:
altera, qua absoluta forma fit huius illiusque in hoc et in illo forma, sicut lux, quae est
primo velut in se ipsa, postea progressu quodam huius efficitur atque illius, in hoc et in illo
lumen, (dum tamen de sua substantia nihil emittat et a propria integritate non deficiat);
altera contractio est, qua inferior natura per quamdam assensus et obedientiae
habitudinem, tum naturali tum notionali adpulsu et multitudo particeps colligitur, et multa
participantia colligit in unum. Prima contractio est, qua per essentiam infinita et absoluta
forma finitur ad hanc et ad illam materiam; secunda est, qua per numerum infinita et
indeterminata materia ad hanc illamque formam terminatur.’
46 Bruno, Causa, in BOeuC III, 147.
47 Ibid., pp. 237–39, 249–51. Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysics, VII.viii 1033b.5–20;
VIII.i–ii; idem, Physics, I.vi; Aquinas, Summa theologiae, op. cit., 1a. qu. 44, ar. 2, 2.
338 GIORDANO BRUNO
absolute form and matter in the Sigillus, Bruno makes individuation

from a first principle, absolute form, dependent upon the intrinsic and
natural processes of the universe. Even though Bruno was influenced by
several of Cusanus’s ideas which are related to Cusanus’s notion of
‘contractio’ – such as complicatio/explicatio and coincidentia
oppositorum – Bruno differs from Cusanus in his use of ‘contractio’,
since Cusanus declined to identify the first principle, God, with the
universe itself.
The metaphor of the first ‘contractio’ – light (lux) remaining
undiminished during its radiance (lumen) – is not one Cusanus offers in
the central passages on contractio in De docta ignorantia (II.6). It is,
instead, derived from a Neoplatonic idea, namely that the One, from
which emanation originates, is not reduced during its ‘flowing out’, its
emanation. This is the Neoplatonic doctrine of undiminished giving.48
Bruno mentions this idea elsewhere in the Sigillus, stating that this is the
light which ‘effuses through everything as the image of the sun’, a typical
Neoplatonic ‘illusionistic’ explanation of the relationship between lower
and higher hypostasis.49
In the two quotations both Cusanus and Bruno apply the notion
‘contractio’ in their explanations of the origin and subsistence of the
universe, though differently. The philosophical implications of a possible
influence from Cusanus in the Sigillus, in regard to ‘contractio’ and to
other concepts used by Cusanus, are vast and complex, and I shall not
pursue the idea any further here. Nor, indeed, shall I claim that the
quoted passage of Cusanus is the only and direct source of the passage
quoted from the Sigillus. Rather, my intention is simply to point out that
there was a scholastic tradition related to the notion of ‘contractio’ in
the Middle Ages, a tradition which may provide an alternative
explanation of the sources for the Sigillus to the medical tradition
transmitted by Ficino. If we are to believe Bruno’s statement about the
unified nature of descension and ascension, and if this medieval Platonic
tradition of ‘contractio’ did influence Bruno’s ontology in the Sigillus,
then we should expect Bruno to adhere to a theory of ascension which
is in conformity with this medieval tradition. On this background I shall
return to the polemical point of this chapter, namely to question
Ingegno’s assertion that Ficino’s psychological notion of ‘contractio’ is a
key to understanding the idea of ‘contractio’ in the Sigillus.
48 Plotinus, Enneads, III.viii[30].8.46–48; III.viii[30].10.1–19. See Wallis,
Neoplatonism, op. cit., p. 62.

49 G. Bruno, Sig. sigill., in BOL, II.2, 200.6–8: ‘Est lumen intimius, quo sol per se
lucet, a quo genere differens habetur lumen, quod inde velut imago solis per omnia manat’.
For this metaphor, see Plotinus, Enneads, V.i[10].6.28–30.
As already pointed out, Bruno holds that ascension is a reversed

descension. Accordingly, if it were the case, as Ingegno claims, that
Bruno’s idea of psychological ‘contractio’ is influenced by Ficino’s
Theologia platonica, then one would also expect Bruno to apply Ficino’s
idea of descension in his Sigillus. It would be of particular interest to
know whether Ficino applies the term ‘contractio’ in an ontological
meaning which can explain Bruno’s double contraction, presented in the
quotation above. In the Theologia platonica, Ficino does actually speak
of contraction from a first cause, that is, in the Platonic and Neoplatonic
manner. But Ficino adapts the notion to his own astrological-
metaphysical philosophy. He thus speaks of the power of the World Soul
to elicit, to ‘contract’, the rational principles, the ‘instincts’, in the
elements of the sublunary world.50 Bruno’s non-hierarchical cosmology
led him to reject Ficino’s idea of instincts from the superlunary region
being implanted on the sublunary region.51 This astrological adaptation
of ‘contractio’ by Ficino is similarly distinct from the one in Bruno’s
Sigillus.
Now let us turn to Ingegno’s claim that Ficino’s psychological notion
of ‘contractio’ played an absolutely central role in the 15 contractions in
the Sigillus. As I see it, Ingegno fails to notice that here Bruno does not
address the specific Ficinian doctrine on melancholy, but possibly some
adaptations of it in various religious techniques of ascension. Ingegno
also ignores that in those instances Bruno is fiercely critical in his
criticism of the ecstasy generated by such self-inflicted melancholy.
Actually Bruno shows himself very contentious in these 15 contractions,
and the label ‘cultural criticism’ would be very apt in a description of his
aim. In veiled terms he seems to mock, among others, the Jesuits and the
Franciscans.52 He thus scorns the self-inflicted, mental fits which are
often aided by melancholy – mental fits, which these religious persons
hold to be forms of ascension, brought about by meditation, but which
Bruno claims are nothing but vain self-suggestion.
The twelfth kind of contraction in the Sigillus provides an excellent
50 Ficino, Theologia platonica, op. cit., p. 123.3–4 (IV.i): ‘Faciet, inquam, talia in
materia, sic prius aut sic ab anima ipsa disposita, dum ad eam disponendam sic aut sic
contrahit mundanos instinctus.’ See also ibid., p. 122.44–47 (IV.i).
51 Bruno, Cena, in BOeuC II, pp. 243–5.
52 Bruno may allude to the Franciscans in Sig. sigill., in BOL, II.2, 190.14-18: ‘Quem
quidem phantasiae turbatae impetum eousque in quibusdam invaluisse novimus, ut

confossorum numinum, quorum speciem intensius animo contraxerant, ardentioris
phantasiae fervore cicatrices in proprio corpore inustas comperirent.’ The identification
with the Franciscans has been made by Clemens, F.J. (1847), in Giordano Bruno und
Nicolaus von Cusa. Eine Philosophische Abhandlung, Bonn: Wittmann, pp. 175–6.
Flagellation may, however, have been practised by many others too.
340 GIORDANO BRUNO
example of this. In it, Bruno criticizes a technique of meditation,

apparently used by an unnamed group of religious people, possibly the
Jesuits. They, he sneers, ‘our not very ingenious apostles’, who are
‘afflicted with a foul kind of melancholy’, and who posses a ‘thinness
and Saturnine complexion’, ‘hit themselves delicately with whips’, in
order to intensify the ‘melancholic spirit’ in themselves. In this manner,
Bruno continues, they are ‘guiding the cognition of the soul towards the
death of some Adonis’.53 The last expression may be an allusion to
Christ on the Cross, whilst the expressions ‘melancholy’, ‘melancholic
spirit’ and ‘Saturnine complexion’ may derive from Ficino’s popular
book, De vita, and from his Theologia platonica. The criticism of this
twelfth contraction may be directed towards the practice of the Jesuits,
as it was prescribed by Ignatius Loyola in his Exercitia spiritualia
(Spiritual Exercises), published in 1541 – possibly conflated with
Ficino’s theory of melancholy. In this work Loyola recommends that
during meditation on hell one should eat less and torment one’s body
with pain, for example, by self-flogging.54 Moreover, Loyola’s
meditations were arranged around the life and death of Christ, possibly
what Bruno alludes to with the words ‘the death of some Adonis’. The
meditations of the first week were dedicated to sins; the second to the
life of Christ; the third to the passion of Christ; and the fourth to the
resurrection and ascension of Christ.
A few years later, Bruno turned to the poets with the same warning
against being too melancholic, namely in his Eroici furori (Heroic
Frenzies). The reason being, he states explicitly, that the contemplative
53 G. Bruno, Sig. sigill., in BOL, II.2, 189.16–190.14: ‘Iam ad non magis ingeniosos
apocalypticos nostros respiciamus, qui cum eiusdem pessime olentis melancholiae specie
laborent, fine tamen per libidinis diversitatem differunt; hoc maxime detestamur,
quandoquidem interim stulti non propriam modo, sed et aliorum ignorantum et asinorum
(quibus prophetae atque revelatores pietatis apparent) turpissimam stultitiam enutriunt.
Hi mage naturale nutrimentum contemnentes postquam in maciem et vitiose Saturniam
complexionem fuerint adacti, quibusdam (ad phantasiam perturbandam) aptissimis
praeviis (quas pias credunt) meditationibus ipsi faventem noctis umbram potiti, tristitiam
quandam subeunt, ubi flagris lenius caedendo sese, ab internis calorem ad partes exteriores
evocant, ut hoc interius mage remisso amplius in spiritu melancholicus tepor intendatur,
et ut nulla ad extasim contrectandam desit occasio, animi excogitationem ad alicuius
Adonidis mortem adpellentes, tristitiaeque suavem quamdam addentes tristitiam (haud
enim et lacrimis suam deesse libidinem comperimus) alterius generis horripilationem
subeunt, interimque virtute perturbati sensus facile proprii spiritus adpulsu alicui de
immundis iisdemque irrisoribus spiritibus intelligentiae copulantur, cum demum nescio in
quem miserorum tristiumque numinum apertum intuitum et affatum adeo promoti
credantur, ut ea audiant atque percipiant, quae numquam in eorum cogitationem cadere
potuissent.’
54 I. Loyola (1923), Exercitia spiritualia, in idem, The Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius
Loyola, ed. and trans. J. Rickaby, 2nd edn, London: Burns Oates and Washbourne, p. 48.
state of mind reached through melancholy does not depend on the

authenticity of the individual’s experience, but on physiologically
generated self-suggestion.55 However, even though he distances himself
from the Ficinian conception of ascension through melancholy, Bruno
still accepted the fundamental idea of ascension introduced into the
Renaissance through Ficino’s full-blown Neoplatonism. The question is
to what extent, and how, Bruno followed Ficino’s interpretation of this
fundamental Neoplatonic idea.
In conclusion, Bruno distances himself from Ficino’s adaptation of
‘contractio’ as an ontological and an epistemological term. Instead, he
seems to draw on the scholastic meaning of ontological contractio,
possibly the one favoured by Cusanus, although in a modified form. But
even if Cusanus’s De docta ignorantia did provide an important source
for the ontological meaning of ‘contractio’ in the Sigillus – a contention
which I have not proved, nor intended to prove in this chapter – we are
still confronted with the question which Ingegno proposed a solution
for, namely how to understand the epistemological meaning of
‘contractio’ in Bruno’s text. Bruno rejected Cusanus’s orthodox
Christology, hence also the idea of Christ as a mediator between man
and the divine. Consequently, Bruno was forced to come up with some
other idea about ascension, or epistemological ‘contractio’. And, if I am
right, this idea had to be in conformity with his notion of ontological
‘contractio’. Hence two questions arise: first, how did Bruno interpret
the notion of ontological contraction on a more specific level, and,
second, how did Bruno conceive of ascension within that ontology?
55 G. Bruno, Furori, in BDI, 986–8, ‘atra bile’ or black bile (p. 988) being synonymous
with melancholic humour.

PART FIVE
Influence and Tradition

CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Giordano Bruno’s Mnemomics and

Giambattista Vico’s Recollective
Philology
Paul Colilli
[T]he roots of the two philosophies, the Brunian and the Vichian,
touch and intersect with each other.
Giovanni Gentile 1
The history of the scholarship that perceives a substantial link between

Giordano Bruno and Giambattista Vico is characterized by powerful
insights as well as notable reticence. The object of this study is to lend a
voice on behalf of an important aspect of the Bruno–Vico link upon
which critics have remained silent – namely, whether or not there are
any connections regarding how the two philosophers understood and
made use of the art of memory. However, before attempting such an
undertaking, a review of the research that deals with the Bruno–Vico
relationship is in order. As early as 1836 we find scholars meditating
upon the important affinity between Bruno and Vico,2 but it was
Francesco De Sanctis who played the key role in establishing the
philosophical parameters for any discussion involving the Nolan and the
Neapolitan. In the Storia della letteratura italiana De Sanctis contends
that the art of memory becomes in Bruno a true art of thinking, a logic
which is at one with ontology. De Sanctis goes to the extent of stating
that the De umbris idearum is recommended reading for all
1 Gentile, Giovanni (1968), Studi vichiani, 3a edizione riveduta e accresciuta a cura di
Vito A. Bellezza, Florence: Sansoni, p. 34n. My translation.

2 See, for example, Giacinto Tobolini’s review of Vico, G.B. (1835), Opere per la
prima volta compiutamente riunite con introduzioni e commenti di Francesco Predari,

Milano: S. Bravetta, in Il Poligrafo, Verona, II, 1836, pp. 37–42; Ferrari, Giuseppe (1837),
La mente di G.B. Vico, Milan: Tip. de’ classici italiani; Vera, Auguste (1862), Mélanges
philosophiques, Paris, pp. 113–14; Molineri, Giulio Cesare (1889), Vincenzo Gioberti e
Giordano Bruno. Due lettere inedite di Gioberti a Luigi Ornato, Torino: L. Roux. In the
letter of 7 January 1833, there is a parallel between Bruno and Vico; Spaventa, Bertrando
(1908), La filosofia italiana nelle sue relazioni con la filosofia europea, ed., Giovanni
Gentile, Bari: Laterza; lesson number six illustrates how Bruno was a precursor of Vico.
346 GIORDANO BRUNO
philosophers ‘because here there is the seed of that new world,

fermenting in his brain’.3
De Sanctis then proceeds to claim that in the De umbris a concept of
capital importance is developed. That is to say:
the series of the intellectual world correspond to the series of the
natural world, because the principle of the spirit and nature is one,
just as it is for thinking and being. Therefore thinking is figuring
within that which nature represents on the outside, copying within
oneself the writing of nature. Thinking is seeing, and its organ is the
inner eye, which is denied to the inept. For this reason logic is not
argumentation, but contemplation, an intellectual intuition not of
ideas, which are in God, a substance outside of cognition, but of the
shadows or reflections of the ideas in the senses and in reason.4
Later on De Sanctis also states that in Vico ‘there breathes the same
spirit as in Bruno and Campanella’, and that Vico shares in Bruno’s
tendency to ‘sing providence and narrate man’.5 However, for the
purpose of the present investigation into the question of mnemonics, De
Sanctis identifies the central link between Bruno and Vico when he
stresses that for the Nolan ‘thinking is seeing’. As we will see, Vico’s
‘recollective philology’ as expounded in the New Science pivots both on
the fact that ‘the search for the certain is an act of recollection’, to use
Patrick H. Hutton’s words (in Journal of the History of Ideas, 48, no. 3,
1987, page 378), and on the ability to establish an epistemological
balance between visualizing and thinking.
In his monumental commentary on the New Science, Fausto Nicolini
3 De Sanctis, Francesco [1870] (1971), Storia della letteratura italiana, ed. N. Gallo,
introduced by N. Sapegno, Torino: Einaudi, II, p. 750. My translation.

4 Ibid., II, p. 750. De Sanctis appears to have Hegel’s interpretation of Bruno in mind
when he asserts that a central idea in the Nolan is the correspondence between signs in the
intellectual world and the concrete signs of the external world. Hegel was very conscious
of the role that Bruno played in the history of philosophy. According to Hegel: ‘There is
then in Bruno a great beginning at thinking the concrete, absolute unity. The other great
thing is his attempt to grasp and exhibit the universe in its development, in the system of
its progressive determination, to show how the outward realm is a sign of the ideas. These
are the two aspects that were grasped by Bruno’. (G.W.F. Hegel, (1990), Lectures on the
History of Philosophy 1825–26, trans. R.F. Brown and J.M. Stewart, Berkeley, CA:
University of California Press, p. 78). In his evaluation of the philosophical martyr, Hegel
is encouraging us to read Bruno semiotically, by insisting on the notion of an external
world of signs which has a relationship of correspondence with ideas. In Bruno’s works,
the mnemonic writings in particular, a theoretical interest in the sign structure of reality is
inescapable to the reader.
5 De Sanctis, Storia della letteratura italiana, op. cit., II, pp. 830, 832. My translation.
In 1878 Sebastiano Maturi published a work on Giordano Bruno, La filosofia di Giordano

Bruno, Avellino, 1878, in which he claimed that the source of Vico’s notion of ‘ideal
eternal history’ is Bruno’s metaphysics.
GIORDANO BRUNO’S MNEMOMICS 347
15.1 The 12 houses of memory in Bruno’s De umbris idearum, 1582.

348 GIORDANO BRUNO
indicates several passages of Vico’s magnum opus where Bruno’s

thought is concretely present.6 For example, Nicolini claims that the
Aristotelean citation, ‘There is nothing in the intellect was was not first
in the senses’ (Nihil est in intellectu quin prius fuerit in sensu), found in
paragraph 363 of the New Science is a paraphrase rather than a direct
textual reference of the passage in the De Anima.7 Nicolini’s point is that
the idea reached Vico through the mediation of Bruno’s Theses de magia
(XLII). Moreover, Nicolini continues,8 what Vico affirms in paragraph
807 of the New Science, namely that Homer was the most sublime of all
sublime poets, finds its precursor in Bruno’s polemic, in the Eroici
furori, against ‘certain followers of rules of poetry’ of his age. The ‘true
beasts’, Bruno states, are those who forget that ‘Homer, in his genius,
was not a poet who followed rules, but was the cause of rules’, and that,
in general, ‘poetry is not born of rules, if not by mere coincidence, but
rules derive from poems’.9
In The Philosophy of the Renaissance, E. Bloch asserts that the spirit
of Bruno has a strong presence in Vico, while Emile Namer is convinced
that Vico’s philosophical project consists in integrating the elements of
history and philology into Bruno’s idea of the infinite universe. If the
New Science is a philosophy of history, Namer tells us, it is as the result
of being from the beginning a metaphysics of reality that is spiritually
conceived. Vico’s work continues and enriches Bruno’s philosophy.
Although Vico does not speak about infinite worlds that express divine
reality, the idea is as implicit in his philosophy as it is explicit in
Bruno’s.10
But one of the first philosopher-critics to explain the importance of
the link between Bruno and Vico in a sustained and comprehensive
manner was Giovanni Gentile. The Platonism which Vico embraced in
the most overt manner possible, as his Autobiography attests, was the
same as the Platonism theorized by Bruno in the De la causa. According
to Gentile, the critique of Aristotle’s and Zeno’s opposition to the
division of the infinite discussed in Vico’s On the Wisdom of Ancient
Italians (ch. 4/2) is equivalent to Bruno’s critique of the same issue in De
triplici minimo (I, 6–8), where ‘just as in Vico, the atom is transformed
into conatus, or the operation of the soul of the world’.11 But the
6 Nicolini, Fausto (1978), Commento storico alla seconda Scienza nuova, Rome:
Edizioni di storia e letteratura.

7 Ibid., I, 122–3.
8 Ibid., II, 24.
9 BDI, II, pp. 958–9. My translation.
10 Namer, Emile (1977), ‘G.B. Vico et Giordano Bruno’, Archives de Philosophie, 40,
110.
11 Gentile, Studi vichiani, op. cit., p. 34n. My translation.
analogies and similarities that Gentile claims to have uncovered are

many: Vico’s philosophy inhabited a world ‘in which God is everything,
and he lived this thought with profound feeling, which links him directly
to Bruno, his unknown precursor. Both call this heroic mind or heroic
spirit. In this world Vico will find the principle of the New Science, the
concept of providence that is realized in history’.12
Yet with all this scholarly meditation on Vico’s purported debt to
Bruno, we find no mention whatsoever of the Nolan’s name in Vico’s
writings. This is due, in the most general sense, to issues of censorship
with which Vico had to deal throughout his intellectual career.13 For
example, in a letter addressed to Father Edoardo Vitry and dated 20
January 1726, Giambattista Vico speaks about having been given the
task of appraising the personal library of a deceased close acquaintance
named Giuseppe Valletta. The Fondo Vallettiano, as the library
collection came to be known, was sold to what today is known as the
Biblioteca Oratoriana dei Gerolamini in Naples, and apparently
contained, among other titles, a copy of Giordano Bruno’s De l’infinito
universo e mondi. Valletta himself wrote a work, Sul procedimento del
Sant’Uffizio, which offers an unambiguous assessment of Bruno’s
philosophy. In this work Valletta makes reference to the Jesuit Nicolas
Caussin who ‘audaciously says … that we should not condemn the
opinion of other philosophers on the plurality of worlds, almost
repugnant to the Sacred Scriptures, because if one were to seek, he says,
to look at them closer and more naturally, many certainties would
probably be found there’. Valletta is very incensed by Father Caussin’s
sympathies for what turns out to be a philo-Brunian cosmological vision
and writes that ‘the doctrine of Bruno, had it pleased the heavens,
should have been reduced to ashes in the most just flames in which the
author burned and no longer be alive in his abominable book written on
the plurality of the worlds’.14
The severe condemnation of Brunian thought present in this passage
from Vico’s friend, which was not uncommon at the time, illustrates in
a concise manner the reasons for which Vico was absolutely reticent to
speak about Giordano Bruno. The Nolan was an undesirable person in
12 Ibid., pp. 47–8. My translation.

13 With the reopening of the archives of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith in
Rome, researchers have begun to unearth ecclesiastical censures of Vico’s publications. For
example, De Miranda, Girolamo (1998–99), ‘“Nihil decisum fuit”. Il Sant’Ufficio e la
Scienza nuova di Vico. Un’irrealizzata edizione patavina tra l’Imprimatur del 1725 e quello
del 1730’, Bollettino del centro di studi vichiani, XXVIII–XXIX, 5–69, documents how
Vico’s attempt to publish a second edition of the Scienza nuova (1725) in Padua in
1728–29 caught the suspecting eye of the Inquisition.
14 Cited in Gentile, Studi vichiani, op. cit., pp. 50–51n. My translation.
350 GIORDANO BRUNO
the eyes of the censors who would have read Vico’s works, and so it is
no surprise if his name is absent from Vico’s opera omnia.15 But we also
need to recall that Vico had flirted, at least according to some of his
critics, with theological heterodoxy, thus forcing him to hide from his
readers significant portions of his vast erudition. The review of On the
Wisdom of the Ancient Italians published in the Giornale de’ letterati
referred to Vico’s theses as being absurd. In a letter dated 12 October
1720 and addressed to Father Bernardo Maria Giacco, Vico complains
about accusations of a religious nature levelled at him as a result of his
Sinopsi del Diritto unversale. Moreover, we need to recall that Giacinto
de Cristoforo, whom Vico numbers amongst his close friends in the
dedication to the On the Wisdom of the Ancient Italians, was in his
youth included among the Neapolitan atheists and held for a period of
time in the prisons of the Sant’Ufficio. Nicola Galizia, an acquaintance
mentioned beside de Cristoforo in On the Wisdom of the Ancient
Italians was also in his youth persecuted by the Sant’Ufficio with the
charge of ‘atheism’. Gentile, together with other scholars, is absolutely
convinced of the fact that Vico knew Bruno’s writings, but ‘was forced
to pretend not to be aware of them as a result of the censorship that
was in place’.16 One just has to think of, for example, Nicolò Toppi who
in the Biblioteca Napoletana talks about ‘Giordano Bruno of Nola, a
distinguished philosopher of great ingenuity’ but who is to be avoided
because of a prohibition from the Sacred Congregation of the Index.17
It is equally true that towards the end of the 1600s and the beginning
of the following century there was a resurgence of interest in Bruno in
Naples. For example, Giuseppe Valletta was apparently of two minds
when it came to Bruno. While Valletta attacked Bruno’s audacity he
also saw the Nolan as a symbol for the libertas philosophandi struggle.
Benedetto Croce states that we should not assume Valletta actually
rejected Bruno since the period in which Valletta and Vico lived was
one of persecution and threats to free thinking. In such a situation,
Croce argues, one is forced to hide or mask what one really
15 It is well worth citing an actual edict of censorship that would have discouraged
anyone from taking Bruno seriously enough even to mention his name or the titles of his
works. For example, in the ‘Editto del Maestro del Sacro Palazzo Giovanni Maria
Guanzelli’, Rome, 7 August 1603, the order is given that ‘any book that has been
prohibited or suspended not be printed or held in possession’ and among these censored
works we find ‘Iordani Bruni Nolani libri et scripta omnino prohibentur’. Quoted in Firpo,
Processo, p. 357. My translation.
16 Gentile, Studi vichiani, op. cit., p. 414. See also his Studi sul Rinascimento, 2a
edizione riveduta e accresciuta, Florence: Sansoni, 1936 for a similar assessment.

17 Toppi, Nicolò (1678), Biblioteca Napoletana, Naples, p. 151. My translation.
thinks.18 In the age in which Vico lived, Bruno was one of those figures
which, in M. Rak’s words, was surrounded ‘by the usual rhetoric of
refusal but who were never refused and that is never discussed and
completely silenced’.19
With the great quantity of scholarship that is convinced of the links
between Bruno and Vico, there is a dimension of the purported
relationship which has never been explored, as indicated at the outset of
this study, namely the possible connection between Brunian
mnemotechincs and Vico’s interpretative strategies. The intent of what
follows is to contribute to the tradition of scholarship that sees the
presence of a link between Bruno and Vico: we will consider whether or
not there exists another aspect of the relationship based on the
epistemological role played by images and their mnemonic retrieval.
As is very well known, Frances Yates, in Giordano Bruno and the
Hermetic Tradition and The Art of Memory, produced ground-breaking
work on the then relatively obscure component of Bruno’s work,
namely, the ars memoria. Yates understood Bruno’s writings on memory
as a series of magico-occultist strategies that were to assist the adeptus
in the attempt to come into contact with the forces of the universe. Such
a reading of Bruno led Yates to conclude that the heretic philosopher
was a great Renaissance magus. In her interpretation of Bruno’s
mnemonic science, Yates privileged, above and beyond the
combinatorial structures, the iconic elements and the mimetic properties
of the images. In her view, Bruno’s memory system pivoted on magical
thought:
One of the chief ways of operating … with the celestial world is
through the magic of talismanic images of the stars. Bruno is
transferring such operations within, applying them to memory by
using the celestial images as memory images, as it were harnessing
the inner world of the imagination to the stars, or reproducing the
celestial world within.20
However, a tendency to envision Bruno’s mnemotechnics in a very

different light has recently developed, all of which has led to a
reassessment of the role played by the Hermetic sphere.21 For example,
18 Croce, Benedetto (1949), Letteratura italiana del Settecento, note critiche, Bari:
Laterza, p. 212. See also Ricci, Saverio (1990), La fortuna del pensiero di G. Bruno
(1600–1750), Florence: Le Lettere, p. 219.
19 Rak, M. (1975), Opere filosofiche di Giuseppe Valletta, Florence: Olschki, p. 512.
My translation.
20 Yates, Frances (1966), The Art of Memory, Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
p. 214.
21 Giovanni Aquilecchia, in a review of Giordano and the Hermetic Tradition which
appeared in Italian Studies, XX (1965), 121–4 but which was later included in his Schede
352 GIORDANO BRUNO
Leen Spruit claims that Yates is wrong in applying any magico-

astrological mind set in interpreting the De umbris idearum as ‘the
hermetic tradition acquires primary importance only in the later works,
in the ones, that is, in which his principal interest is directed toward
operational problems’.22 Rita Sturlese, in the introduction to her critical
edition of the De umbris idearum, speaks of Yates’s failure to provide an
account of how Bruno’s memory system works. As a result of the
emphasis on the supposed magical correspondences, Sturlese continues,
Yates lost sight of the fact that Bruno’s mnemonic system had as its main
intent that of providing support for the human memory to receive, store
and retrieve words in an efficacious manner.23 In commenting on Bruno’s
art of memory from within the context of the De umbris idearum,
Sturlese underlines the rigorously scientific nature of Bruno’s system.24
Bruno does not make use of an iconic system, but rather one based on
‘symbolic’ relationships, that is, where the symbols are not tied to any
sort of fixed relationship of similarity with their denotation (the primary
meaning of a sign). The symbols, Sturlese writes, ‘originate from the
infinite creativity of ratio/phantasia and acquire a significant function by
virtue of being in a system that organizes symbols, that is images,
according to precise rules’.25 Sturlese emphasizes that by (1) operating
exclusively at the symbolic level of signification, (2) building images that
lend themselves to any sort of formation, (3) manipulating, combining
and undertaking mental experiments with signs, it is possible to uncover
the infinite semiotic properties of the syllables inscribed on the memory
wheels found in the De umbris idearum.
Much more recently, Hilary Gatti has suggested that we need to look
at the link between art of memory and mathematics when dealing with
Bruno. One of Gatti’s theses is that Bruno was at first much interested
in the art of memory; but his interest in the issue was greatly attenuated
once he began working on the six Italian dialogues of 1584–85 and the
Frankfurt trilogy of 1591. However, he brought his writing career to a
close with the De imaginum, signorum et idearum compositione where
the art of memory recovers its lost centrality. To explain Bruno’s
fluctuation in interest, Gatti writes that:
bruniane, Rome: Giovanni Aquilecchia, 1993, expressed a number of critical concerns

about Yates’s reading of Bruno.
22 Spruit, Leen (1988), Il problema della conoscenza in Giordano Bruno, Naples:
Bibliopolis, p. 42. My translation.

23 Bruno, Giordano [1582] (1991), De umbris idearum, a cura di Rita Sturlese,
introduced by Eugenio Garin, Florence: Olschki, pp. LXIII–LXIV.

24 Ibid., p. LXX.
25 Ibid., p. LXXI. My translation.
in those intervening years Bruno was intent primarily on gauging

the extent to which mathematics could or should be developed as
the logical tool for an inquiry into the newly infinite and atomic
cosmos. When that path seemed to lead him nowhere, Bruno
returned to the traditional art of memory as possibly, after all, the
most appropriate tool for investigating the shape and nature of the
new universe.26
A key point in investigating the existence of possible links between

Bruno and Vico is Gatti’s assertion that the Nolan’s theory of images and
memory, which reaches it apex with the De imaginum, signorum et
idearum compositione, could be understood as a strategy to provide ‘a
scientific treatment of the mental image in terms of the complex
functioning of the mind in time and space’. Bruno’s theory differs ‘from
the renaissance emblem books, which supply dictionary definitions of
the various images and their traditional meanings’.27 While we are not
dealing with an historical understanding of the alterations of mind
typical of what we find in Vico’s writings, nonetheless, Bruno
emphasizes that the picture of the entire cosmos which the mind
constructs through images is ‘necessarily compressed, fragmentary, and
incomplete’28 and subject to the contingencies of change. As we will see,
the scientific dimension of Bruno’s art of memory becomes the lost
poetic memory Vico seeks to retrieve in his New Science.
There is a passage in Vico’s On the Study Methods of Our Time
(1708–9) where the author offers his justification for affording to
memory an important role in the development of human intellectual
capability:
whereas truth is one, probabilities are many, and falsehoods
numberless. Each procedure, then has its defects. The specialists in
topics fall in with falsehood; philosophical critics disdain any traffic
with probability. To avoid both defects, I think, young men should
be taught the totality of sciences and arts, and their intellectual
powers should be developed to the full; thus they will become
familiar with the art of argument, drawn from the ars topica. At the
very outset, their common sense should be strengthened so that they
can grow in prudence and eloquence. Let their imagination and
memory be fortified so that they may be effective in those arts in
which fantasy and mnenomic faculty are predominant. At a later
stage let them learn criticism so that they can apply the fullness of
their personal judgement to what they have been taught.29
26 Gatti, Hilary (1999), Giordano Bruno and Renaissance Science, Ithaca, NY and
London: Cornell University Press, p. 177.

27 Ibid., p. 195.
28 Ibid., p. 192.
29 Vico, G. (1990), On the Study Methods of Our Time, trans. Elio Gianturco, Ithaca,
NY and London: Cornell University Press, 1990, p. 19.

354 GIORDANO BRUNO
As scholars have already observed, Vico here is critiquing the analytical

logic of Antoine Arnauld and the Logique de Port-Royal. In another
passage from On the Study Methods of Our Time,30 Vico critiques the
failure to cogitare et videre (to think and to see), that is, an approach
which concentrates on the ability to create the mental pictures that are
part of thinking. Cogitare must be at one with videre in order to attempt
an overcoming of the dichotomy between seeing and knowing. Pure
cogitare leaves the mind lost in mechanical logical calculation, thus
distancing it from videre which is the final essence of metaphysics. The
ability to reach significant philosophical heights is made possible by the
visualization that inheres in memory.
On the Study Methods of Our Time is temporally distant from the
1744 version of the New Science. To be sure, a number of factors will
undergo a critical transformation. After all it will no longer be a
question of cultivating rhetoric as an approach to be preferred over
analysis and the geometrical method. The preparatory work for the final
New Science will pivot instead on cultivating a loftier metaphysical
criticism rooted on the verum ipsum factum as it relates to humans.
However, Mario Papini is justified in noting that On the Study Methods
of Our Time provides the programme of study with which:
Vico intends to strengthen the human mind: it is not through the use
of logico-analytic techniques that the intellect can assume to
discover truth in the highest sense, but by displacing the various
‘ascertained’ mental contents of the mind and by deepening our
understanding of the totality of the reciprocal relations, so as to
obtain orders of signification that are progressively more complex.
By placing an A, a B, a C and so on in our mind, that are
reciprocally fixed in order and figure, it then becomes a question of
going over them with thought and to meditate ‘as idea’ the totality
of their relationships (AB, AC, and so on) until we reach that vision
or complex structure that unites them all, thus verifying and
bringing to culmination the signifying plots and the potential.31
Donald P. Verene was one of the first scholars to provide a detailed

illustration of Vico’s connection with Renaissance mnemonics. Verene’s
original claim is that ‘the New Science is a theatre of memory in which
humanity originates and confronts itself’. In Verene’s view, Vico’s work
bears a strong resemblance to Giulio Camillo’s memory theatre;
moreover, the New Science could be seen as belonging to the genre of
mnemotechnical works whose authors include Giordano Bruno, Robert
Fludd and others. In Camillo’s memory theatre, Verene states:
30 Ibid., pp. 29–30.

31 Papini, M. (1984), Il geroglifico della storia, Bologna: Cappelli editore, p. 131. My
translation.
The scholar is spectator, but a spectator whose position is reversed

to assume the perspective of the actor. The memory images or mute
language of the real are a waiting audience that faces whoever
enters. On entering the theatre of Camillo, as on opening Vico’s
New Science, the scholar is placed in a world of fundamental images
he cannot understand.
More specifically. Verene contnues, Vico’s mnemonic system is a

medium of remembering for everything that relates to the human
experience: ‘it is a system of cultural memory that can be used by the
individual to remember the human’.32
Patrick Hutton, following along within the path carved out by
Verene’s insights, is correct in asserting that Vico’s art of memory is a
retrospective search for the connection between our present
conceptions and the lost poetic images out of which they were born.
In the logic of Vichian poetics, the new art of memory is a
reconstruction of the imaginative process by which the poets of
antiquity gave shape to their perception of the world.33
Indeed the archaeological metaphor is very much alive in the New

Science: for example, the temporal obscurity that conceals ‘the earliest
antiquity, so remote from ourselves’ (New Science, paragraph 331), the
surviving ruins and fragments of antiquity ‘hitherto useless to science
because they lay begrimed, broken, and scattered’ but which, however,
‘shed great light when cleaned, pieced together, and restored’ (New
Science, paragraph 357). The main objective of using the archaeological
metaphor was to underline that fact that we must uncover something
with the aim of understanding its primordial significance.
The New Science presents itself, from the very outset, as a ‘theatro
della sapientia’ (a theatre of wisdom), to quote the title of the ur-text of
Giulio Camillo’s Idea del theatro: the frontispiece serves to help the
reader, Vico tells us, to ‘form an idea’ of the New Science. ‘And after
32 Verene, Donald P. (1981), Vico’s Science of Imagination, Ithaca, NY and London:
Cornell University Press, pp. 98, 188, 190. We have proof that Vico was definitely aware
of Camillo’s writings. In ‘Filosofia e Eloquenza’ (Philosophy and Eloquence) from 1737,
Vico judges Camillo’s rhetorical philosophy as being exemplary. To be sure, in 1730, in
‘Poesia e oratoria’ (Poetry and Oratory), Vico had singled out Camillo as being one of only
two individuals able to compose poetry and orations of equal excellence. But we also
know that Vico had available to him not only Camillo’s printed works but also some very
rare unpublished manuscripts. For example, the Biblioteca di S. Efrem ‘Nuovo’, belonging
to the Capuchin order, held during Vico’s life time a rare copy of Giulio Camillo’s
unpublished manuscript entitled ‘Theatro della sapientia’, while the Biblioteca Oratoriana
dei Gerolamini has in its collection equally rare manuscript versions of Camillo’s ‘De
transmutatione’ and ‘Interpretazione dell’arco del patto’.
33 Patrick, H. (1987), ‘The art of memory reconceived: from rhetoric to
psychoanalysis’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 48, 3, p. 378.

356 GIORDANO BRUNO
reading it, you will find that this tableau aids your imagination in
retaining my work in your memory’ (New Science, paragraph 1). The
presence of the ‘frontispiece’ and the ‘Idea of the Work’ at the beginning
of the New Science led Paolo Rossi to acknowledge that the use of
images and drawings in order to strengthen the memory is tied to the
‘artificial memory’ treatises that were in great vogue during the
Renaissance.34 Andrea Battistini confirms this notion when he states that
the New Science is rooted in a structure that lends itself to the
interpretative paradigms of the mnemonic sciences.35
In an attempt to gauge critically Vico’s link to Bruno’s mnemonics we
will seek to answer the following question: what similarities and/or
dissimilarities are there between how the two philosophers present and
interpret images and their combinations in mnemonic processes? To
answer this question we will consider the frontispiece and ‘Idea of the
Work’ that open Vico’s New Science in relation to Bruno’s De imagnum,
signorum et idearum compositione (On the Composition of Images,
Signs and Ideas)36 and undertake a comparison as far as the issue of
image composition and mnemonic retrieval and interpretation are
concerned.
The function of the frontispiece at the opening of Vico’s New Science
is that of being the eidetic medium through which the work is to be
thought. The visual logic serves as an alternative, or, for that matter, as
a complement to the discursive logic of the work to which it is the
frontispiece. Vico states that each ‘hieroglyph’, as he calls the figurative
components of the frontispiece, have a specific meaning. Each object or
image in the frontispiece is an ‘idea’, which exists ‘ecstatically’, that is,
outside of itself and outside of human time. The hieroglyphs are an
eternal vision of what occurs in history, and their function, as Vico says
in the initial paragraph of the New Science, is mnemonic in that they are
‘ideas’ to be remembered. The locus of the frontispiece is not an atrium,
34 Vico, Giambattista (1977), La scienza nuova, introduction and notes by Paolo
Rossi, Milano: Rizzoli, pp. 85–6n.

35 Battistini, Andrea (1993), ‘Principî di scienza nuova di Giambattista Vico’, in
Letteratura italiana. Le opere. Vol II. Dal Cinquecento al Settecento, ed. Alberto Asor
Rosa, Turin: Einaudi, p. 1075. Margherita Fraenkel, reflecting the insights of the scholars
who both preceded and followed her, is convinced that the frontispiece is a reminder of the
fact that Vico followed the Hermetic tendency of the Renaissance authors, including Bruno,
who attributed mystical powers to images that were perceived as being mirrors of the world
and guides for total knowledge. See Frankel, Margherita (1981), ‘The “Dipintura” and the
structure of Vico’s New Science as mirror of the world’, in Vico: Past and Present, ed.
Giorgio Tagliacozzo, Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, pp. 43–51.
36 All translations from and references to the De imag. comp. follow Bruno, G.
(1991), On the Composition of Images, Signs and Ideas, trans. C. Doria, ed. and ann. D.
Higgins, New York: Willis, Locker and Owens.
room or edifice such as we might fight in treatises of ars memorativa

such as Bruno’s. Instead, we have a collection of objects and images
placed in a clearing at the edge of a forest. This setting calls to mind the
‘seal’ of the farmer, which is the ninth seal found in book three, chapter
10 of the De imaginum, signorum et idearum compositione. ‘The seal of
the farmer’, Bruno writes, ‘makes it possible that, when the words have
been numbered, the means of arguments and whatsoever catalogue you
like, in whatever tongue it resounds, can easily be read in tablets
numbered accordingly.’ The farmer, and this is of particular relevance to
Vico the philosopher rhetorician, is the seal which can offer the most
assistance to the rhetorician, as we read in book three, chapter 14, seal
27 (‘The rhetorician’).
But Bruno then makes a statement which underlines the element that
differentiates him from Vico. ‘The fifteen tablets’, Bruno writes, ‘that
you have serve as the two guards of the field, all the way up to the
number thirty: if there are six in the middle of the field or on the right,
or another form with two two-fold elements, they may be grasped by
reason and made accounted.’ As we will soon see, while Vico interprets
the meaning and significance for each of the hieroglyphs, thus mediating
between the reader and the image, Bruno offers images that are to be
perceived and understood without the mediation or ‘interference’ of the
person who is writing. Bruno allows the images to be ‘grasped by reason
and made accounted for’, that is with direct intuition and without the
weight of exegesis. What separates Bruno from Vico is that the latter
imposes historical limits on the interpretation of the images, which the
former severs from any historical contingency. Vico essentially
historicizes the Renaissance memory systems that were transmitted to
him. Vico, after all, roots his interpretative strategies in a philological,
and not only philosophical, mind set,37 being acutely sensitive to the
transformations of the mind within the context of the limits of historical
time. This same conscious intellectual vision is absent in Bruno who died
68 years before Vico was born.
Is it fair to suggest that Vico is actually mimicking the
mnemotechnical treatises of the Renaissance such as Bruno’s by placing
the frontispiece at the beginning of the New Science? In other words, is
Vico lapsing into a sixteenth-century mind set with the frontispiece, after
he had gone to great lengths in the New Science to firmly establish the
distinction between his new art of criticism and the ‘previous
philosophers’ (read Ficino and the Neoplatonic tradition)? Vico is not
37 ‘By philology, I mean the science of everything that depends on human volition: for
example, all histories of the languages, customs, and deeds of various peoples in both war
and peace’ (New Science, paragraph 7).
358 GIORDANO BRUNO
attempting to be a Renaissance ‘trattatista’ (treatise-writer); however, he

wants to underline the fact that his book has as a predecessor the science
of visual thinking, which is far from being inconsistent with his new art
of criticism. Within the textual economy of the New Science, something
like Bruno’s mnemonic philosophy strongly resembles the sort of
integrated architectural relic we see in buildings that are constructed on
the ruins of previous edifices.
What occurs when we isolate this ‘integrated architectural relic’? A
methodology for such an undertaking is supplied by Vico, who, in his
attempt to discover the original principles, peels away the layers of
surface and substrata accumulated over time. We need to distinguish
between, on the one hand, the ‘previous philosophers’, whose ‘sapienza
riposta’ (recondite wisdom) Vico critiques and from whom he takes his
distance in the New Science phase of his philosophical career, and, on
the other hand, their structures and tools which he employs, albeit for
different principles, and which are present in his most important work.
We thus need to undertake a textual archaeology of the New Science
which entails removing the historical layers from what Vico has thought
and written. By scraping away the historicizing commentary, logic and
frame from Vico’s book we find the relic of Bruno’s memory system.
As a first observation, let us say again that Vico structures his
thinking following the logic whereby he states that the hieroglyph
‘signifies, means, represents, symbolizes’, and then provides the
interpretation and exegesis within the thematic context of what we
find in the New Science. In Bruno, however, the image or seal is subject
to a purely descriptive, non-hermeneutic formula. The ‘Idea of the
Work’ in Vico’s New Science is a critical interpretation of what the
hieroglyphs in the frontispiece signify. It is not solely a description, it
also explains the meaning of the objects from within a
philosophical/philological framework. Vico limits the meaning of each
hieroglyph by explaining how they relate directly to what is contained
in the New Science.
Bruno, however, does not interpret his images and seals. He theorizes
their composition at great lengths and then composes them, but leaves it
up to the reader to ‘manipulate’ them, to use Sturlese’s expression, for
the appropriate purpose. For example, in works such as the De umbris
idearum and the Cantus Circaeus and others, the emphasis is on how to
represent and orchestrate images or sigilli. In the De imaginum,
signorum et idearum compositione Bruno writes that we construct
images that constitute the basis for organizing a system of mnemonic
storage and retrieval by (a) allowing the species of images to remain
diverse orders of the same genus, and by (b) taking from their places the
parts of the form which are more accommodating.38 In terms of the

application of this process, Bruno offers a variety of examples:
1) … we construct ART; then from the altar’s parts, when at the east
corner’s right and the north corner’s right, and at the east side’s
right, the bust which coalesces as fire consumes it is washed in the
basin at the west side’s left by the water flowing down from the
prison. Then, from the prison’s parts, where there will be a hand
clasping a psaltery on the right, on the left a parrot grips in its beak
an eye plucked from an old woman. Then, from the crown’s parts,
a camel carrying treasure will go to the pool from the inferno, and
then from the inferno towards the hot springs.
2) … by wandering through the diverse orders of the same genus, as
from altar to the basilica, fountain or mirror, or even by proceeding
from any one of these towards other images and towards those
suitable for image composition, when the vowel precedes the
consonant, as in altar equuleus (colt), icon, ovile (sheepfold) then
the images are expressed according to their absolute condition. But
when the consonant precedes the vowel and does so imply, as when
a figure consists of two elements, then the image of the atrium alone
is sufficient since it may be referred to a fivefold relationship in the
sky’s different regions, sited according to stature, seat, apodiation,
inclination and prostration, or by binding it to what surrounds the
middle or centre, as when a sheepfold will be present in the centre
of the house’s atrium, or an altar or anything like that added.39
It would, however, be erroneous to believe that Bruno’s approach is cold

and dispassionate as the emotions recite an important role in his theory.
In the Sigillus sigillorum, paragraph 21, he speaks about the importance
of elements that ‘excite’ the mnemotechnical process; for excitation is a
psychological disposition that is of great relevance to memory and
cognition.40 Moreover, we should emphasize the role of the process of
transforming complex psychic realities into anthropomorphic and
mythological divinities. For Bruno, mythology, the hieroglyph of ancient
Egypt, the figures of the Hermetic tradition are catalogues of statues,
concrete manifestations of the philosophical wisdom to be interpreted
and symbols to be brought back to life. But while Bruno wants to
spontaneously and intuitively revivify these ‘statues’, Vico wants to
understand their remote and lost strangeness. In order to achieve such
an objective, Bruno theorizes about the contractiones, the contractions
38 De imag. comp., I.ii,xvi.

39 Ibid., I, ii, xvi.
40 The sigilli consist of figures which are abstract, and that do not originate from the
senses. The signa are semi-geometric figures, diagrams, drawings, formal notations,
gathering of mental graphs which Bruno calls sigilli, whose central meaning is mnemonic
in function.
360 GIORDANO BRUNO
of the spirit: that is, the states of mental alteration, violent oscillations
of the psycho-physical equilibrium, brought about by an exceptional
power of the imagination. In the De monade Bruno compares the
contractiones to a burning glass, which concentrates the rays of the sun
(namely, the mental powers) onto one point, thus creating only one ray
of exceptional power. In the Sigillus sigillorum Bruno provides a list of
15 situations of mental alterations produced by the manipulation of the
imagination.
Bruno does with images and seals what Theodore Adorno accused
Walter Benjamin of doing with citations; that is, presenting words,
sentences and so on without the mediation of an interpretation that
contextualizes and explains their referential meaning. While for Vico the
interpretative moment is the glue that holds the hieroglyph together with
the rest of the work, in Bruno there is the direct intuitive understanding
of what the image signifies. The hermeneutic moment is bypassed. In
Vico we have:
HIEROGLYPH + VERB THAT ANTICIPATES A MEANING,
EXPLANATION (‘IS’, ‘REPRESENTS’, ‘SYMBOLIZES’, ‘MEANS’
AND SO ON) + EXPLANATION.
In Bruno, instead, we have:
IMAGE + VERB THAT ANTICIPATES A GRAPHIC DESCRIPTION +
DESCRIPTION.
We cannot lose sight of the fact that Bruno’s theoretical works explicitly
focus on the act of composing images and the mnemonic process. They
deal with what we today term the properties and process of
signification. Vico, on the other hand, is concerned with formulating a
‘rational civil theology of divine providence’ (New Science, paragraph
2). However, in our attempt to isolate the Renaissance relic integrated
into the architecture of the New Science, we peel away the
philosophical/philological layers of meaning Vico inculcates into the
‘Idea of the Work’. We become witnesses to what I would suggest is a
Brunian or para-Brunian structure and we are able to perceive a
transformation, or rather a devolution of the Vichian text. What follows
are selected passages from the ‘Idea of the Work’ that serve as examples.
In order to isolate the eidetic ruin the approach is that of, first,
presenting the passage as it appears in Vico and, second, of expunging
(here done by underlining) the part of the quotation that constitutes
Vico’s philological-philosophical and temporal delimitation of the
hieroglyph’s meaning:
The woman with winged temples who stands on the celestial globe,
meaning the world of nature, is Metaphysics (New Science,

paragraph 1)
The radiant triangle with the seeing eye is God, shown in his
manifestation as providence. (New Science, paragraph 1)
The figure of Leo means that the principles of my New Science
begin by contemplating Hercules who is the archetype of the
founder celebrated by every pagan nation of antiquity. And it
contemplates him as he performs his greatest labour, the slaying of
the Nemean lion. (New Science paragraph 3)
The fire on the altar passed into the neighbouring house of Leo,
which you see in the picture. The sign symbolizes the Nemean forest
which Hercules burned off to place the land under cultivation.
(New Science paragraph 4)
On top of the altar and to the left, there first appears a lituus, which
is the divining wand that Roman augurs used in taking auguries and
observing omens. It symbolizes divination. (New Science paragraph
9)
To the left of the altar we see a rudder, which signifies that the
migration of peoples originated with seafaring. (New Science
paragraph 17)
The tablet lies quite close to the plough and rather far from the
rudder. This represents the origins of native languages… (New
Science paragraph 22).
We could list a great variety of examples, but the point is that by

isolating the images from their historicizing explanation we have
brought Vico back to his Renaissance roots and have him speaking like
the Renaissance writers he so admired. These are, however,
archaeological relics embedded in Vico’s last work and they mean
nothing without the verbal structures and elements we have scraped
away from the text. Semiotic fossils that point to an obscure past, but
which are unable to speak to the present without the aid of philological
mediation. Once we remove the ‘new’ lexical-syntactic elements from
the ‘Idea of the Work’, similar to an excavation or removal of a crust or
layer, we are left with linguistic entities that are consistent with what we
find in Bruno, as in the case of the image of Mars from book two,
chapter 5 of De imagnum, signorum et idearum compositione:
A man strong in appearance rises up, with choleric and brazen
complexion, horrible to look at, shrewd, stern, gleaming-eyed, fire
in his eyes and grinning like a gaping-jawed lion, ears like a dog’s or
wolf’s, the great-hearted glory of his forehead ringed by hair that
stands straight up, whence short, apparently very solid horns
project, sharpened like those of a bull from Apulia. On the top of
his helmet he wears the head of a chimera that is spitting flame. He
is sinewy, full-chested, strong-armed, broad-shouldered, of
362 GIORDANO BRUNO
moderate stature, his hands and feet hairy, properly broad and well-
formed but too long (though not without a very great energy).
What is of great significance in all of this is that there are examples of

Vico’s writings that resemble both the textual relics of the ‘Idea of the
Work’ as well as the images found in Bruno. For example, there is a
passage from the first Inaugural Oration from 1699 which graphically
depicts thinking through images by means of the figures of Mars and
Bacchus:
Each of you sees Bacchus and Mars, and next, the cup and the
shield. Then you see Mars and the shield and Bacchus and the cup.
This is followed by Mars armed with the shield and Bacchus and the
cup. This is followed by Mars armed with the shield and Bacchus
holding the cup. Then you place each of the four in its proper
sphere, Mars and Bacchus in the heavens, the shield and the cup
here below. After having considered all possible uses of the two
objects, you determine their proper use. The shield defends against
the enemy as the cup does against thirst. And, continuing the
analogy, Mars uses the shield to conquer the enemy as Bacchus uses
the cup to conquer thirst. Afterward, the sides are exchanged and
both objects are seen as members of the class of round things. The
four elements are then combined in diametrical opposition. At the
right there is Bacchus with the shield and at the left Mars with the
cup. Finally, you conclude that the shield is the cup of Mars and the
cup is the shield of Bacchus.41
If we consider the context of this retro-Renaissance passage, Vico’s

attachment to what could be called Brunian or para-Brunian
mnemotechnics becomes all the more apparent. To be more specific, the
above description of Mars and Bacchus constitutes an example Vico
offers concerning the powers of the human imagination which is the
power that fashions the images of things … at the same time that it
originates and produces new forms, reveals and confirms its own
divine origin … it was this that imagined the heroes; it is this that
now differentiates the forms of things, sometimes separating them,
at other times mixing them together.42
What Vico says here, before the discovery of his new science, resembles
passages in the New Science which deal with how the ancients read and
understood the world around them, a way of interpreting reality from
which Vico distances himself because of the chronological abyss that
separates his age from the past. However, in the case of the above
quoted passage from the Inaugural Orations, Vico does not distance
41 Vico, G. (1993), On Humanistic Education (Six Inaugural Orations, 1699–1707),
trans. G.A. Pinton and A.W. Shippe, Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, p. 44.
42 Ibid., p. 42.
himself from the ‘ancient’ mind set: in fact, it is as relevant to him in the
most unmediated way possible as it was to Bruno. It would be no
exaggeration to suggest that this passage from 1699, specifically as far
as its thematic content is concerned, appears as it could have been
written by Bruno. This notion is given more credibility if we consider
what Vico states just before the Mars and Bacchus description: ‘It is
phantasy that makes present to our eyes lands that are very far away,
that unites those things that are separated, that overcomes the
inaccessible, that discloses what is hidden and builds roads through
trackless places. And it does all this with unbelievable swiftness!’43
Vico is encouraging the students listening to his lecture to retrieve,
manipulate, combine and store images in their minds with the objective
of seeing, that is, discovering what was previously unnoticed. In the
passages cited from the 1699 ‘Inaugural Oration’ we can say, as Gentile
does many times in a work such as Studi vichiani, or as Fausto Nicolini
does in the commentary to the New Science, that ‘par di leggere Bruno’
(one seems to be reading Bruno). The power ‘by which the human
compares things together or distinguishes them one from another’, Vico
continues in the ‘Inaugural Oration’ of 1699, ‘is so great that neither the
most eloquent orator nor I would ever be able to express its dexterity
and skillfulness’. But the dynamics of the imagination are conditioned
by mnemotechnics, states Vico who admires ‘memory even more than
phantasy. What, indeed, is there more admirable and more divine than
the most copious treasure chest of words and ideas of things in the
human mind?’44 Vico stresses for his audience the centrality of the mind,
the imagination and memory in achieving the highest philosophical
principle, ‘To know thyself’:
O listeners, the mind is to you your own god. Divine is the faculty
that sees; divine that which hears; divine that which conceives ideas;
divine that which perceives; divine that which judges; divine that
which reasons; divine that which remembers. To see, to hear, to
discover, to compare, to infer, to recollect are divine.45
The ability to visualize and think, to remember and reorganize or

reinterpret the elements or contents of the ‘reminiscing’, which Vico
inherited in a revised form from Bruno and the mnemonic tradition
rooted in Renaissance Neoplatonism, offered the Neapolitan
philosopher the instruments necessary to see and understand the
relationship between human temporality and the transcendent eternal.
The core of historical being, that is the human as creator or maker of
43 Ibid., p. 43.
44 Ibid., p. 47.
45 Ibid., p. 48.
364 GIORDANO BRUNO
works in consonance with a universal law, rests in the present, that is,
the eternal contemporaneity of history. What this means is that in being
the eternal presence of the human (who contains the past and the
future), the transcendental is an understanding of history. As a
consequence, the human is a synthesis of temporality and eternity. For
Vico, the act of thinking the transcendental involves thinking history
according to spatio-temporal intuitions, and the performance of any act
in history is in relation to those intuitions.46
46 Paci, Enzo (1994), Ingens sylva, Milan: Bompiani, p. 145.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Macrocosm, Microcosm and the

Circulation of the Blood: Bruno
and Harvey
Andrew Gregory
Giordano Bruno consistently asserted that the blood flows rapidly in a

circle. Being generous to Bruno, we might see these remarks as the first
clear statement of the rapid circulation of the blood. As Bruno made
them well before the work of Harvey, we might give him at least some
of the credit for the discovery of the circulation. However, being less
generous to Bruno, we might see his comments as nothing more than
speculation employing a macrocosm–microcosm analogy, with little to
do with Harvey’s scientific discovery. As we shall see, matters are not as
clear cut as these positions might suggest, and the aim of this chapter is
to steer a course between these two extremes. One thing Bruno and
Harvey have in common is a strong reliance on a
macrocosm–microcosm analogy between the human body and the
earth’s weather cycle to support their views on the circulation.
Galen on the Heart and the Blood
First, some background on the blood system in humans. The generally

accepted view in the sixteenth century was that of Galen. There were
two separate blood systems and the blood did not circulate, but was
gradually consumed by the body. One system was based on the liver,
where ‘nutritive’ blood was generated. This blood was then carried
slowly through the veins to the rest of the body, some (but not all)
passing through the right side of the heart to the lungs. This blood was
consumed by the body, and did not return to the liver or pass through
the lungs. The second system, based on the heart and the lungs, carried
‘vivified’ blood from the lungs via the arteries and the left side of the
heart to the body.1 Effectively, these were two separate systems carrying
1 For Galen the veins are those vessels which carry nutritive blood and the arteries are
those which carry vivified blood (whether they carry blood to or from the heart). So he
366 GIORDANO BRUNO
different types of blood in different vessels. Some nutritive blood was

believed to seep through small pores in the septum, the muscular wall
separating the right and left sides of the heart, in order to replenish the
vivified blood consumed by the body, but this was the only significant
connection between the two systems.
It is by no means obvious that the blood circulates rapidly around the
body in a single system. There are two different types of blood
(oxygenated and deoxygenated) which have noticeably different colours
(bright red and purple). There are significant differences between
arteries and veins (artery walls are much thicker, and the arteries carry
a pulse). It is not clear given the technology of the sixteenth century how
arteries and veins are linked together (capillaries being observable only
under a microscope). These facts might well lead one to believe there to
be two separate blood systems. There are three considerable problems in
arguing for a unitary circulation against this background. First, how can
it be that there are two types of blood within the one system? There
needs to be a means by which one type of blood can be converted into
the other and vice versa, and this needs to be happening continually.
Second, how does blood get from the arteries to the veins? Third, how
does blood pass through the lungs, which now take the full flow of the
blood? If one argues that the circulation of the blood is rapid, then these
problems become more acute. Substantial amounts of blood must pass
swiftly through the link between arteries and veins and through the
lungs. The process of the interconversion of the two blood types also has
to be highly efficient and continual.
One significant advance made during the Renaissance, which it is
quite likely that Bruno was aware of, was the postulation of what is
known as the lesser circulation by Colombo.2 Here blood is thought to
pass from the right side of the heart through the pulmonary artery to the
lungs, and then return via the pulmonary vein to the left side of the
heart. Blood is still thought to be produced by the liver and consumed
by the body, so here we have one open ended system instead of Galen’s
terms our pulmonary artery (which carries blood from the heart to the lungs) the artery-
like vein and our pulmonary vein (which carries blood from the lungs to the heart) the
vein-like artery. See Galen, On the Functions of Parts of the Human Body, book VI, and
On the Natural Faculties, book III.
2 The lesser circulation was also proposed by Ibn al-Nafis in the thirteenth century and
Servetus in the sixteenth, though Servetus’s work was suppressed by the Church. It is
thought that the three discoveries were independent. Colombo’s work was reasonably well
known and debated. See Ibn al-Nafis, (1964), A Thirteenth-Century Manuscript on Blood,
in Graubard, M. (1964), Circulation and Respiration, The Evolution of an Idea, New
York: Harcourt; Servetus, Michael (1555), Christianismi Restitutio, Vienna, book V and
Colombo, Realdo (1559), De Re Anatomica, Venice, book VII.
BRUNO AND HARVEY 367
16.1 Frontispiece of Oceanus macro-microcosmicus by Sachs A. Lowenheimb,

1664.
368 GIORDANO BRUNO
two, or the single closed system of the full circulation. While this idea
was suggested in the Renaissance, it was far from being universally
accepted.
Bruno on the Circulation of the Blood
What does Bruno have to say on the circulation of the blood ? Without
doubt the most encouraging comment is the following, from De rerum
principiis: ‘The blood and other humours are in continuous and most
rapid circulation.’3 So, too, we are told that the blood from the heart:
‘Goes out to the whole of the body and comes back from the latter to
the heart, as from the centre to the circumference and from the
circumference to the centre, proceeding so as to make a sphere’.4
Furthermore we are told of: ‘The blood which in the animal body moves
in a circle’.5
In De immenso et innumerabilibus, Bruno also tells us that: ‘In our
bodies, the blood and other humours in virtue of spirit run around and
run back,6 as with the whole world, with stars and with the earth.’7
Bruno quite specifically asks why the blood moves continually in this
manner.8 His answer comes by way of a macrocosm–microcosm
analogy. What explains the ebb and flow of tides, winds, rain, springs
coming from and going into the earth?9 According to Bruno, who rejects
several other answers as unsatisfactory,10 it is what Plato called soul and
is defined as the number which moves itself in a circle.11 Similarly with
the human body, it is the natural circular motion of soul which is the
reason for the circulation of the blood. In De monade, numero et figura,
Bruno is keen to emphasize the heart as centre of the microcosm, from
which the vital spirits go out to the whole of the body.12 The Platonic and
Neoplatonic ideas of soul, world soul and the perfection of circular
motion, I take to be reasonably well known. As soul is intelligent it will
3 Bruno, De rerum princ., BOL, 521.28 ff. (my translation). Cf. 524.7 ff. esp. 9–10
and 524.22-25.
4 Ibid., 524.7-10 (my translation).
6 Runs around in a circle, perhaps ? The Latin is circumcursant et recursant.
7 De immenso, 6/VIII, BOL, 185 (my translation).
8 See De rerum princ., 522.11-12.
9 Ibid., 522.13 ff.
10 Ibid., 522.13 ff.
11 Ibid., 523.4-5.
12 See De monade, BOL, 347. For other comments in Bruno, see Pagel, W. (1967),
William Harvey’s Biological Ideas, New York: Karger, pp. 106–8.

always act for the best, and so will execute the best sort of motion as
well as it can.13 The origins of macrocosm–microcosm analogies also go
back to Plato. In the Timaeus especially, we find the foundation of much
Neoplatonic thinking on this matter. The cosmos, having been brought
into being by a well meaning craftsman with only the best in mind,14 is
a living, intelligent, ensouled entity. The heavenly bodies, which
similarly are alive, intelligent and ensouled and execute (combinations
of) regular circular motion, are the visible manifestation of the
intelligent life of the cosmos. Just as the cosmos has mental revolutions,
so do human beings, and the Timaeus tells us that:
God devised and gave to us vision in order that we might observe
the rational revolutions of the heavens and use them against the
revolutions of thought that are in us, which are like them, though
those are clear and ours confused, and by learning thoroughly and
partaking in calculations correct according to nature, by imitation
of the entirely unwandering revolutions of God we might stabilize
the wandering revolutions in ourselves.15
Bound up in this is the standard Platonic moral injunction that we strive

to become as much like god as possible. Humans should also imitate the
cosmos to maintain good health. The Timaeus tells us that the cosmos
has a rocking motion, and as the cosmos keeps itself in motion in order
to sustain its own good order, so should humans take a moderate
amount of exercise in order to sustain their good order (which equates
with their good health).16 Indeed, we can also find in Plato a
macrocosm–microcosm analogy directly to do with the blood. Just as
the cosmos confines and agitates the particles within it, so does the
human body confine and agitate the blood.17 There is little doubt that
Bruno goes beyond what Plato says. Plato does not specifically mention
the circulation of the blood or the speed of its circulation, and it would
be hard to extract such ideas from the Timaeus, even though many of
the ingredients are there.18
The macrocosm–microcosm analogy also became more refined and
was common in many types of thought in the Renaissance. The lesser
13 On these matters see Laws, 893b–899d.

14 See Timaeus, 28a-29d. Note that the cosmos for Plato is organized from a chaos,
not created ex nihilo.
15 See ibid., 47a ff. (my translation).
16 See ibid., 88de.
17 See ibid., 81ab.
18 It is important to note though that Plato, unlike Bruno and indeed Harvey, does not
associate the blood with soul, and in the Phaedo quite specifically denies that we think
with the blood (or air or fire), possibly in reply to some presocratic speculation (see
Phaedo, 96b).
370 GIORDANO BRUNO
world was thought to be structured in a similar way, or to function in a

similar way to the greater world. Typically there was harmony and/or
sympathy between the greater and lesser worlds, and spirit might
operate as a mediating factor between the world soul and matter.
Bruno’s use of the macrocosm–microcosm analogy employs these ideas
and is more sophisticated than anything to be found directly in Plato’s
Timaeus.
Bruno and Harvey: Similarities
While Bruno may make a clear statement of the idea that the blood
circulates and does so rapidly, there would immediately appear to be
several lines of criticism. This idea would appear to be the result of
speculation, using the macrocosm/microcosm analogy and Neoplatonic
ideas about soul, rather than the product of observation and
experiment. Certainly there is nothing here in the way of the quantified
observation and argument, which is supposed to mark out Harvey’s
work. Bruno also seems to believe that the blood is in some way alive,
or imbued with soul, and makes no use of the mechanical analogy of the
heart as a pump which is supposedly of so much importance for Harvey.
As we saw in the last section, while Bruno certainly develops ideas to be
found in Plato’s Timaeus, equally he does not go beyond the general
rubric of Platonic and Neoplatonic ideas.
There are though some important similarities between Harvey
and Bruno. Harvey too makes considerable use of the
macrocosm–microcosm analogy, with the heart at the centre of the
microcosm and the circulation of the blood likened to the earth’s
weather cycle.19 The motion of the blood, he says:
we may call circular, after the same manner that Aristotle sayes that
the rain and the air do imitate the motion of the superior bodies.
For the earth being wet, evaporates by the heat of the Sun, and the
vapours being rais’d aloft are condens’d and descend in showers,
and wet the ground, and by this means here are generated, likewise,
tempests, and the beginnings of meteors, from the circular motion
of the Sun, and his approach and removal … So the heart is the
beginning of life, the Sun of the Microcosm, as proportionably the
Sun deserves to be call’d the heart of the world, by whose vertue,
and pulsation, the blood is mov’d, perfected, made vegetable, and is
defended from corruption and mattering; and this familiar
19 Harvey also considered the hen’s egg to be a microcosm, see Disputations Touching
the Generation of Animals, trans. G. Whitteridge, Oxford: Blackwell Scientific, 1981

(hereafter DGA), p. 51.
household-god doth his duty to the whole body, by nourishing,

cherishing, and vegetating, being the foundation of life, and author
of all.20
While Harvey makes use of Aristotle on the weather cycle, it is

important to note that Aristotle himself did not make use of the
macrocosm–microcosm analogy here or elsewhere. Harvey also uses the
analogy of the circle and its central point in relation to the heart. In his
lectures on anatomy he says that: ‘The heart … is the principle part [of
the body] for it occupies the principle place as at the centre of a circle.’21
Harvey, it has been held, broke with Aristotle in his use of
quantitative experiment and mechanical analogies. However, Harvey’s
argument that more blood is transmitted by the heart in a short time
than the blood vessels can contain or the ingested food can supply is
supported by (and only in fact requires) some very rough estimates.22 So
we find a series of estimates for the volume of the ventricle and the pulse
rate in humans and some other mammals, and the proportion of this
volume expelled per pulse.23 There is nothing here that Aristotle would
object to, and nothing to suggest that Harvey would follow Galileo in
saying that the book of nature is written in the language of geometry or
mathematics (indeed Bruno in the Neoplatonist tradition may be
stronger on this idea than Harvey). Moreover, there is an interesting
passage in the Meteorology where Aristotle argues against the idea that
the rivers are supplied with water by great underground reservoirs
which fill up in the winter and then gradually deplete during the
summer. He then argues that:
It is clear that, if anyone should wish to make the calculation of the
amount of water flowing in a day and picture the reservoir, he will
see that it would have to be as great as the size of the earth or not
fall far short of it to receive all the water flowing in a year.24
20 The anatomical exercises of Dr. William Harvey: De motu cordis 1628, London: The
Nonesuch Press, 1928 (hereafter, DMC), ch. 8. See Aristotle, De Generatione et

Corruptione, II/10, De Anima, 415b3–8, De Mundo, 399a20–35 for the Aristotelian
background here. For Aristotle it is the sun that is the cause of the weather cycle – this is in
the very strong Aristotelian sense of being both efficient and final cause – see Meteorology,
346b20 ff. In the Preface to the King which precedes DMC, he also brings the king into the
analogy: ‘The Heart of creature is the foundation of life, the Prince of all, the Sun of their
Microcosm, on which all vegetation does depend, from whence all vigor and strength does
flow. Likewise, the King is the foundation of his Kingdoms, and Sun of his Microcosm, the
Heart of his commonwealth, from whence all power and mercy precedes.’
21 Harvey, W. (1964), Anatomical lectures: Prelectiones anatomie universalis, ed. and
trans. G. Whitteridge, London: E. & S. Livingstone (hereafter Lectures), pp. 244–5.

22 See DMC ch. 9.
23 See ibid., ch. 9.
24 Aristotle, Meteorology, 349b16ff (my translation).
372 GIORDANO BRUNO
Structurally this argument is similar to Harvey’s, and Harvey would

have been well acquainted with the Meteorology as it is here that
Aristotle discusses the circular nature of the weather cycle. Harvey also
refers to the Vena Cava as the ‘headspring, the cellar and cistern of the
blood’ in De Motu Cordis (DMC) V, and in general argues that if there
were not a circulation, the veins would rapidly empty.
It has also been held that Harvey broke with Aristotle and was in tune
with the positive developments of the seventeenth century in his use
of mechanical analogies when discussing the heart and the
circulation. However, Harvey gives greater prominence to the
macrocosm–microcosm analogy, and did not in fact liken the heart to a
pump, but to a pair of water bellows, and did so only in his lecture
notes. He says that: ‘From the structure of the heart it is clear that the
blood is constantly carried through the lungs in to the aorta as by two
clacks of a water bellows to raise water.’25 A water bellows has
significant differences from an orthodox pump and is significantly less
of a mechanical analogy than might be suggested by a direct analogy
with a pump. Is there anything which breaks with Aristotle here?
Aristotle likens not only the lungs but also the heart to a pair of forge
bellows: ‘It is necessary to regard the structure of this organ [the lung]
as very similar to the sort of bellows used in a forge, for both lung and
heart take this form.’26 Harvey also believed the blood to be in some way
alive. We can find him saying that:
Seeing therefore that blood acts above the powers of the elements
and is endowed with such notable virtues and is also the instrument
of the omnipotent Creator, no man can sufficiently extol its
admirable and divine faculties. In it the soul first and principally
resides, and that not the vegetative soul only, but the sensitive and
the motive also.27
That Harvey was heavily influenced by Aristotle is well known, as is

much of the evidence for this view. The early Aristotelian influence in
Padua,28 the idea of the heart as the key organ, the approach to
embryology, the centrality of the heart in research, the comparisons with
other animals, and the dispute with Descartes over mechanism have all
been seen as evidence of Harvey the Aristotelian. Harvey, like Bruno,
25 Harvey, Lectures, p. 272.

26 Aristotle, De Respiratione, 480a20–23, cf. 478a10 (my translation). Galen also
frequently likens the heart to a forge bellows.
27 Harvey, DGA, p. 250, cf. DMC, p. 6, Lectures, p. 295, p. 319.
28 Harvey would have been exposed to Aristotelian ideas in his time as an
undergraduate at Cambridge as well; see French, R. (1994), William Harvey’s Natural

Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p. 51.
does not make a radical break with ancient ideas. Rather, both make use
of and develop ancient ideas. There are several issues, then, where we
find that if we are to be critical of Bruno, then we must also be critical
of Harvey.
Bruno and Harvey: The Cause and Purpose of Circulation
Both Bruno and Harvey seek a purpose for the circulation of the blood,
and neither find mechanical causation an adequate explanation for the
circulation.29 After his comment that the blood moves rapidly in a circle,
Bruno goes on to say that the motion of the blood continually preserves
life.30 The peripatetics, he says, put forward confused reasons and indeed
no explanation at all when they say these things happen ‘by nature’. The
circulation cannot be explained either in terms of natural instinct,
necessity of fate, providence of God, nature of the living or condition of
the soul.31 What, then, does keep the blood in motion? Bruno says that:
Now we must consider in particular what in the greater world
ascends and recedes, what is it that makes the sea flow and flow
back, springs bubble up, to emerge from the bowels of the earth and
disappear again, what makes warm things freely ascend, moist and
solid ones descend, and winds flare up from all regions?32
He goes on by saying: ‘It is not possible to explain this in terms of

vapours, humours and the like, which move these things, for what
moves these humours and vapours?’33
Instead of these sorts of explanations, what we must look for to
explain these things, both in the body and in the world, is what: ‘Plato
in truth called … soul, and defined as number which moves itself in a
circle’.34
The life force in the body flows out from the heart to the whole of the
body and back again. Blood in the body and water in the weather cycle
do not move by themselves, but move because of spirit.35 If we separate
blood from the body, then: ‘The blood, which in the bodies of animals
moves in a circle … outside the body is immobile, torpid and liable to
29 In Bruno see, for example, De rerum princ., 525.4 ff., in Harvey see, for example,
DMC, ch. 8.
30 See Bruno, De rerum princ., 521.28–522.5.
31 See ibid., 522.5-12.
34 Ibid., 523.4 (my translation), cf. 521.25.
35 See ibid., 524.6 ff.
374 GIORDANO BRUNO
putrefy, and ought no longer to be called blood.’36 Similarly, ‘Water

outside of its proper place, outside springs and rivers, putrefies, and
plants torn from the earth cease to flourish, and die, as do limbs severed
from bodies.’37
For Bruno, then, any materialist or mechanistic explanation of either
the weather cycle or the circulation of the blood will be inadequate, as
will any ‘peripatetic’ explanation. After comments on the
macrocosm–microcosm relation and the perfection of the blood quoted
above, Harvey famously says: ‘But we shall speak more conveniently of
these in the speculation of the final cause of this motion.’38
Harvey is also scathing about materialism and mechanistic
explanations in physiology in De Generatione:
They that argue thus, assigning only a material cause, deducing the
cause of natural things from an involuntary and causal occurrence
of the elements, or from the several dispositions or contriving of
atoms, do not reach that which is chiefly concerned in the
operations of nature, and in the generation and nutrition of
animals, namely the divine agent, and God of nature, whose
operations are guided with the highest artifice, providence, and
wisdom, and do all tend to some certain end, and are all produced,
for some certain good.39
It is notable here that Harvey is willing to accept a generally Aristotelian

explanation of the circulation of the blood and the weather cycle, albeit
with a Christian God in the key teleological role. Bruno is quite specific
in rejecting ‘peripatetic’ explanations of the motion of the blood and of
water in the weather cycle, preferring a more immanent spirit in both the
macrocosm and the microcosm to produce the circular motions of blood
and water.
Bruno and Harvey: Differences
Having looked at the considerable similarities between Bruno and

Harvey, we must now turn to the dissimilarities. Although we may
rightly be sceptical about how far Harvey’s experiments on flow rates
represent a radical new departure on the question of quantification,
Harvey does produce a wealth of empirical support for the circulation
thesis in addition to the flow rate experiments. There are experiments to
36 Ibid., 524.22–25 (my translation).

37 Ibid., 524.25–30 (my translation).
38 DMC, ch. 8.
39 DGA, pp. 51–2.
show the impermeability of the septum, experiments with ligatures to

demonstrate the direction of blood flow in arteries and veins, and to
demonstrate that there must be some connection between arteries and
veins. There is also important work on the exact nature of the heart
beat, and comparative work on other species.
Equally importantly though, Harvey is concerned with making the
circulation hypothesis work in detail. Here we come back to the three
problems for the circulation thesis mentioned in the first section, about
the links between the arteries and the veins, the interconversion of the
two types of blood within one system, problems which are intensified
if the blood is thought to circulate rapidly. Harvey makes important use
of the macrocosm–microcosm analogy in relation to the weather cycle
and the circulation. He recognizes that there are two types of blood,
venous and arterial: ‘This contains blood rawish, unprofitable, and
now made unfit for nutrition, the other blood digested, perfect and
alimentative.’40
The weather cycle for Aristotle has the qualitative and cyclical
changes of water into air by evaporation and air into water by
condensation. Harvey specifically links this to the functions of the
circulation of the blood, and this forms the main body of the critical
chapter 8 of DMC. He develops the comparison between heart and sun
by saying that:
So in all likelihood it comes to pass in the body, that all the parts
are nourished, cherished, and quickened with blood, which is
warm, perfect, vaporous, full of spirit, and, that I may so say,
alimentative; in the parts the blood is refrigerated, coagulated, and
made as it were barren, from thence it returns to the heart, as to the
fountain or dwelling house of the body, to recover its perfection,
and there again by naturall heat, powerfull and vehement, it is
melted and is dispens’d again through the body from thence, being
fraught with spirits, as with balsam, and that all the things do
depend upon the motional pulsation of the heart.41
As the sun provides heat for the macrocosm, so does the heart for the
microcosm. That is significant, as the sun’s heat generates the key
change in the weather cycle: the evaporation of water. In terms of
Aristotle’s element theory that is the change from cold, wet water to hot,
wet air. The heart similarly creates the key change in the circulation in
converting one type of blood into the other, and does so by its ‘powerfull
and vehement’ natural heat. With the weather cycle the contrary
conversion is a cooling, and the heart ‘melts’ the blood while the parts
40 DMC, ch. 8.
41 Ibid., ch. 8.
376 GIORDANO BRUNO
coagulate it. Finally, the sun is the cause of all change in the terrestrial
realm.42 For Harvey all things depend on the motion of the heart.43
There is also the question of what happens between arteries and veins
in the absence of direct evidence of the capillaries, and a problem about
the passage of blood through the lungs, each problem being made acute
by Harvey’s estimation of the quantity of blood flowing through the
heart. The weather cycle presents an analogous difficulty, in that while
rivers, evaporation and rainfall may be evident, it is less clear how the
rainfall becomes rivers. Aristotle hypothesizes that the mountains act
like a sponge, and that gradually water collects together and emerges as
rivulets which then form the rivers.44 In DMC chapter 7, where Harvey
is talking of the passage of the blood through the ‘streyner of the lungs’,
his leading example is that: ‘It is well enough known that this may be,
and that there is nothing which can hinder, if we consider which way the
water, passing through the substance of the earth doth procreate
Rivulets and Fountains.’45 Only after this does Harvey give the examples
of sweat passing through the skin and urine through the kidneys. The
latter are weaker examples as they will not support a great enough
volume of liquid passing.
It is also important that Harvey has an account of the heart and
arteries which will allow for the rapid circulation of the blood. Galen
believed the expansion of the heart to be its active stroke, such that it
attracted blood into itself. The compressive stroke was a relaxation, so
that blood was not expelled from the heart with any great force. As the
active stroke of the heart and the pulse occurred at different times, Galen
believed that the pulse was due to the arteries rather than the heart, and
that the arteries attracted blood into themselves. Galen’s account of the
heart and arteries will thus support the slow movement of the blood
required by his conception of the blood systems. Harvey worked hard to
come to an account of the heart with compression/expulsion as its active
phase which would support a rapid motion of the blood which would
suit the circulation thesis.
Harvey, then, is concerned to ensure that the circulation hypothesis
works at a detailed and practical level. The fundamental difference
between Bruno and Harvey, from which many of the above differences
flow, might be expressed like this. Bruno was a Neoplatonist
philosopher, whose primary interest in these matters was with soul and
the macrocosm/microcosm relation between the human soul and the
42 See for example, Meteorology, I/2, 393a20 ff.

43 Cf. The Preface to the King, in DMC.
44 See Meteorologica, I/XIII, 349a28 ff.
45 DMC, ch. 7.
world soul. It is sufficient for him to relate the soul to the blood and
have both executing some form of circular motion. Harvey on the other
hand was a neo-Aristotelian interested in completing a programme of
research in anatomy and physiology which he felt only the subjects of
the heart and the blood were left to complete.46 So while Bruno is
concerned with the blood and the other humours47 in relation to the
soul, Harvey is more concerned with the detailed structure of the heart
and blood vessels and the question of the flow of the blood. While both
reject materialist and mechanical explanations of the circulation, Bruno
rejects some specifically Aristotelian explanations,48 where Harvey does
not. Bruno also has a more Platonic notion of teleology, good behaviour
and good structure being imposed on nature by soul, where Harvey has
the more Aristotelian notion of good behaviour and structure being
inherent in nature. It is interesting to note that, contrary to the views of
some commentators, neither the rapid circulation of the blood nor the
circulation of the blood conceived as a microcosm of a macrocosmic
weather system are specifically Aristotelian ideas but could also be
formulated within the Neoplatonic tradition.
A Link between Bruno and Harvey?
Is it possible that there was some link between Bruno and Harvey, such
that Bruno’s views may have influenced Harvey? Harvey never mentions
or alludes to Bruno, although it must be said we have only a small
proportion of Harvey’s papers and little idea of the contents of his
library as his house was ransacked by Parliamentarian troops. One
possible route for influence may have been the group of scholars
associated with the Ninth Earl of Northumberland, who were known to
have been acquainted with the works of Bruno, and Walter Warner in
particular.49 The evidence here is fairly thin and unreliable though, and
at most would indicate that if Warner had arrived at the idea of the
circulation independently and prior to Harvey, the contact between
them was fairly minimal with no direct discussion of Bruno’s ideas.50
46 See DMC, ch. 1.

47 See De rerum princ., 521.28 and De immenso. 6/VIII, p. 185.
48 See, for example, See Bruno, De rerum princ., 522.5-12. I would agree with Pagel,
William Harvey’s Biological Ideas, op. cit., p. 104: ‘Bruno’s primary concern in these
passages is not the blood, but the spirit of life.’
49 See J. Jacquot (1974), Harriot, Hill, Warner and the New Philosophy, in J.W.
Shirley (ed.), Thomas Harriot: Renaissance Scientist, Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp.
107–28.
50 See ibid.
378 GIORDANO BRUNO
Another possible route may have been through Harvey’s association

with Robert Fludd. It is now recognized that the reason for the
acceptance of Harvey’s work in some quarters was that it fitted well
with certain ideas from the magical tradition prevalent at the time. I
would agree with French that there is a great temptation to believe that
because Harvey made so momentous a discovery he had a superior, and
perhaps scientific, method.51 This, in my view, has led to an
overestimation of the role of quantification and mechanical analogy for
Harvey, and, in the past, an underestimation of the role of Aristotelian
ideas. It has also, I suggest, led to an underestimation of the possible role
of the magical tradition in the formulation of Harvey’s circulation thesis.
Fludd argues for a circular motion of the earth’s weather system, a
circular motion of the blood and a macrocosm–microcosm relation
between the two. He then says that:
This seems to confirm exactly the sentiments and opinions of that
most learned man William Harvey, a most skilful doctor of
medicine, most clear in matters of anatomy, and indeed most well
versed in the profound mysteries of philosophy, a most cherished
friend of mine and most faithful to the college.52
It is notable that Fludd continues by saying that Harvey argued for the
circulation: ‘With reasons produced from the treasury of philosophy as
well as many experimental demonstrations’.53
Fludd is explicit about both the circulation of the blood and an
alchemical interpretation of the circulation. The process of heating,
cooling and perfecting is seen as an alchemical process similar to that of
the distillations of the alchemists, and Fludd is keen on a broad
interpretation of alchemy as something involving far more than the
transmutation of lead into gold. If we look, then, to Harvey, it is
interesting to examine the language in which the circulation thesis is
expressed. The blood is heated and in general perfected and made useful,
alimentative and fit for nutrition by the heart while in the body it is
cooled, refrigerated, coagulated and made barren, and the distinction
between the two types of blood is that venous blood is rawish,
unprofitable, and unfit for nutrition, while arterial blood is digested and
perfect. The word that Harvey uses in the Latin version of De Motu
Cordis for the circulation, circulatio, is commonly used by alchemists
for the process of distillation. Certainly the alchemical interpretation of
51 See French, P. (1630–31), William Harvey’s Natural Philosophy, op. cit., p. 92 and
note 41.
52 Fludd, R. (1630–31), Pulsus seu nova et arcana pulsuum historia, e sacro fonte
radicaliter extracta, nec non medicorum ethnicorum dictis & authoritae comprobata,
Frankfurt, p. 93 (my translation).
53 Ibid., p. 93 (my translation).
Harvey was significant in the acceptance of the circulation thesis in some

quarters. Waleus tells us that:
Blood circulates for the sake of its perfection. By virtue of its
continuous movement it is attenuated. It warms up and becomes
rarefied in the heart, and subsequently condensed and as it were
more concentrated in the outer parts of the body. For none of its
parts is warmer than the heart and none cooler than the surface.
Hence a kind of circulation operates, not unlike that by means of
which chemists utterly refine and perfect their spirits.54
It is also interesting to note that in his lectures on anatomy, Harvey

compares the functioning of the lung to that of the alembic, a favourite
piece of apparatus among alchemists.55 Fludd was often present at
Harvey’s dissections,56 so it is quite possible that Fludd had some
influence on Harvey.57
Whether Bruno was influential in the formation of Fludd’s views is
another matter though. Fludd does not refer to Bruno in relation to these
matters, and it is highly unlikely that he would have seen Bruno’s De
rerum principiis. Bruno’s work may have contributed to a culture where
ideas like the circulation of the blood as a microcosm in relation to the
circulation of the weather cycle as a macrocosm could be formulated, but
we have no direct evidence of an influence on either Harvey or Fludd.
Conclusion
It would be wrong to draw a sharp and watertight distinction between

the supposed speculation of Bruno and the supposed new science of
Harvey.58 The situation is considerably more complex, and there are
54 Waleus (1655), De Motu Chyli et Sanguinus, in Anatomia ad sanguis circulationem
reformata, Hagae-Comitis, p. 790, Pagel’s translation.

55 See Pagel, William Harvey’s Biological Ideas, op. cit. p. 192.
56 Huffman, W.H. (1988), Robert Fludd and the End of the Renaissance, London:
Routledge, p. 22.
57 I would agree with Pagel that: ‘The former [Fludd] was not without a possible
sensitising influence on Harvey’s discovery.’ Cf. Huffman, W.H. (1992), Robert Fludd:
Essential Readings, London: Aquarian Press, p. 20. Debus thinks such an influence
unlikely, but draws a much sharper distinction between the ‘speculation’ of Fludd and the
‘experimental observation’ of Harvey than I argue for here – Harvey too makes
considerable and significant use of the macrocosm–microcosm analogy. See Debus, A.G.
(1961), ‘Robert Fludd and the circulation of the blood’, Journal of the History of
Medicine, XVI, pp. 374–93, esp. pp. 382–4 and 393, and idem (1977), The Synthesis of
Robert Fludd ch. 4, vol. I, The Chemical Philosophy, New York: Science History
Publications, esp. pp. 271–6.
58 So too the ‘speculation’ of others such as Fludd and Harvey.
380 GIORDANO BRUNO
many significant similarities between them on key issues. As I have

attempted to show, both make important use of the
macrocosm–microcosm analogy. So, too, both seek a purpose of the
circulation, both are disparaging about certain types of causation, both
consider the blood to be in some sense alive or ensouled and both are
influenced by the natural magic tradition. Neither break with ancient
thinking, rather developing the thought of Plato and Aristotle
respectively, and neither formulate mechanical models of the body, both
believing mechanical explanation to be inappropriate for both the
circulation of the blood and the weather cycle.
Having said that, there are also some important dissimilarities. The
most fundamental is that while Bruno was a Neoplatonist, and sought a
correspondence between the nature of soul in the macrocosm and soul
in the microcosm, Harvey was a neo-Aristotelian more interested in the
detailed functioning of the heart and the circulation of the blood.
Harvey produced the empirical evidence and used the macrocosm–
microcosm analogy to solve problems with the circulation thesis that
Bruno seems to have been unaware of. From wherever the idea for the
circulation emanated, effectively it is Harvey who made the circulation
thesis into a viable proposition.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Monadology and the Reception of

Bruno in the Young Leibniz
Stuart Brown
Introduction
The existence of striking similarities between the philosophies of Bruno

and Leibniz has long been noticed. Indeed, it was one of Leibniz’s own
acquaintances who first accused him of having ‘drawn his whole system’
from one of Bruno’s books.1 Many commentators since have agreed that
Leibniz was at least partially indebted for his monadology to Bruno’s
system.2 They have mostly assumed, however, that this debt was
incurred in the 1690s, when Leibniz began to use the word ‘monad’
rather than ‘substance’ as the name for the fundamental entities of his
metaphysical system. I argue here that this assumption is wrong and that
the search for the origins of Leibniz’s monadology and of the extent of
Bruno’s influence on it needs to be redirected to the young Leibniz of 20
or even 30 years earlier.
One reason for the comparative neglect of Leibniz’s early philosophy
is that his writings of the period 1663–76 were not well represented in
the editions previously available. But these early philosophical writings
are now published in the Akademie edition.3 This has stimulated a
greater interest amongst scholars to do more work on the young Leibniz
and on his intellectual development.4 One leading scholar, Harry
Parkinson, has convincingly argued that Leibniz was already in
possession of a philosophical system as early as 1676, when he
1 Maturin Lacroze claimed, in a letter of 1737, that the book was De maximo. The
letter was published in Theauri epistolici la Croziani, Leipzig, 1746. It is referred to by

Stein (1890).
2 I discuss Hermann Brunnhofer and Georges Friedmann in the second section and
Dorothea Singer in the seventh section below. Some of the earlier supporters of the view
that Bruno directly influenced Leibniz are referred to in McIntyre (1903): 345n. Amongst
those who have subsequently allowed some direct influence of Bruno on Leibniz is Émile
Bréhier. See Bréhier (1966): 242.
3 Series VI (Philosophische Schriften) has now reached 1690 with the publication, in
1999, of the three-volume band iv.

4 Some of this work is reflected in Brown (1999). See also Mercer, 2002.
382 GIORDANO BRUNO
composed a set of metaphysical notes once known as his ‘Paris writings’

but now known collectively as the De summa rerum. In these writings,
Parkinson claims, we find ‘a system, far from immature, which contains
many of the doctrines for which Leibniz is best known’.5 Parkinson has
made good these claims by identifying a number of important elements
of the later philosophy which were already established by 1676.
Building on Parkinson’s work, I have argued elsewhere that Leibniz’s
De summa rerum of 1676 already contains a monadology, similar
though not identical to the one stated in the work of 1714 to which the
name Monadology was first given. Here I go further and suggest that he
accepted what can be called a monadology as early as 1663. His system
was, to be sure, further articulated, amended and developed in the years
that followed and was still being refined 50 years later. And some of the
later developments are important.6 Nonetheless, most of the important
elements of Leibniz’s later monadology are already present by 1676, the
year in which he reached his thirtieth birthday. That is why it is pertinent
to explore the connection between Bruno and the young Leibniz.
In the next section, I offer a brief review of some of the debates about
Bruno and Leibniz. I then go on to consider the simple Pythagorean
monadology Leibniz probably held as early as 1663, before any known
connection to Bruno. In the fourth section, I consider Leibniz’s earliest
known encounters with Bruno’s ideas and, in particular, his association
of Bruno with Raymond Lull. Bruno and Lull, as well as Cusanus, were
mediated to Leibniz as part of a particular Platonist tradition carried
forward by a group known as the Herborn encyclopaedists. Some of the
striking similarities between Bruno and Leibniz are, I try to show, due to
the fact that they belonged to this same tradition and therefore not only
shared some very important presuppositions but also drew some of the
same conclusions from them. I consider, in particular, two assumptions
that are important for both Bruno and Leibniz, as well as others in this
tradition: first, that the universe, being the work of a perfect Creator, is
itself perfect; and, second, that the world is composed fundamentally of
indivisibles which are therefore indestructible. The first of these
assumptions, which I refer to as ‘the principle of perfection’, is full of
implications for the nature of the world. In the fifth section I look at the
way in which Leibniz developed the implications of the principle for the
harmony of the universe, making comparisons with both Bruno and
5 Parkinson (1992): xii. See also Parkinson (1986).

6 For instance, as I have argued elsewhere, there is a new and very important feature
that completed Leibniz’s system of 1686 – the hypothesis that all of a substance’s
phenomena originate within its own nature ‘spontaneously’. But most of the other features
were already established by 1676. See Brown (1999): 283–6
MONADOLOGY AND THE RECEPTION OF BRUNO 383
17.1 Frontispiece to the book on the Principles of Measure and Figure in

Bruno’s De triplici minimo, 1591.
384 GIORDANO BRUNO
Cusanus. In the sixth section I consider the inferences Bruno and Leibniz
drew from the Principle of Perfection for their views on plenitude and
the infinite. Finally, I look at some of the characteristics of their monads,
in particular their view that there are fundamental entities which
underlie the transient world and which endure despite the constant
changes material things undergo.
It will be evident that I do not think there is a single answer to the
question about the connection between Bruno and Leibniz. There may
be some direct influence of Bruno on Leibniz. There is probably more
indirect influence. But, as I argue, the main reason for the similarities
between the two philosophers is their debt to common sources and their
membership of a common philosophical tradition.
The Debate about Bruno’s Influence on Leibniz
In the late nineteenth century many claims were made about Leibniz’s
sources and Bruno was only one of several candidates7 whose claims to
being a key influence on Leibniz’s philosophy were being canvassed by
scholars. One of these was Hermann Brunnhofer, who noted that many
of Leibniz’s distinctive monadological doctrines are also to be found in
Bruno.8 Brunnhofer was particularly concerned to show that Leibniz
derived his doctrine that monads have no windows from various casual
remarks by Bruno.
Brunnhofer assumed, in his arguments, that Leibniz was thoroughly
versed in Bruno’s writings. This assumption was disputed by Ludwig
Stein (1890). Against Brunnhofer, Stein argued that, prior to 1700,
Leibniz’s knowledge of Bruno was very limited, confined to a book on
Lull and perhaps some of his mathematical writings. Stein, I think, went
too far the other way. But he was right to raise the question as to how
much Leibniz actually knew of Bruno’s writings.9 Stein was struck by a
blunder Leibniz made in letters to Lacroze and John Toland, in which
his knowledge of Bruno emerges as very limited indeed. This is
7 Other candidates included Spinoza. Some scholars, for example, Pollock (1877),
have seen Spinoza as a transitional link between Bruno and Leibniz, though this does not
relate to the monadology.
8 In Brunnhofer (1882) and (1890). Among the common doctrines identified by
Brunnhofer are: that monads are fulgurations of the divinity; that monads are living
mirrors of the universe; that God is the highest monad; that the future is contained in the
present; the pre-established harmony and the phenomenalistic account of the objects of
sense.
9 Among the important monadological works he did not know was Bruno’s De la
causa.
particularly noticeable in a letter of April 1709, to Toland, where he

seems to be parading as much of his knowledge of Bruno as he can
muster:
I have at some time read the two works10 – one in Latin, the other
in Italian – which Giordano Bruno has published on the universe
and the infinite. They show this author was not lacking in
penetration. But unhappily he went beyond the just limits of reason.
He also went in for the chimeras of the art of Raymond Lull. I have
never read his Spaccio della Bestia Trionfante. I have the impression
that someone spoke to me about it once in France, but I cannot be
sure – it was a long time ago. Should one not say Specchio rather
than Spaccio? Mr Lacroze tells me that you have shown him this
book.11
This passage was taken by Stein, and has been taken by a number of
scholars since, to show that Leibniz was far from being well versed in
the writings of Bruno.12 And Stein’s arguments seem to have been widely
regarded as a refutation of the claim that Leibniz substantially derived
his monadology from Bruno.13 Robert Latta, for instance, argued that
Leibniz took little more from Bruno than the name ‘monad’.14
But even that much was not conceded by Stein, who claimed that
Leibniz had in fact derived the term from his friend, Francis Mercury
van Helmont, who had made an extended visit to Hanover in 1694, not
long before Leibniz was supposed to have started to use the term
‘monad’. It was for some time agreed by scholars that it was September,
1696, when Leibniz first used the word ‘monad’ in one of his writings.
Georges Friedmann discovered, however, that Leibniz had been giving
attention to Bruno’s De monade only a month before. He claimed: ‘The
influence of Bruno on Leibniz is certain. As far as concerns the use of the
word “monad”, its appearance in the pen of Leibniz (for the first time
in the letter to Fardella of 13 September, 1696) coincides with the
reading of De monade, numero et figura.’15 Friedmann did not imply, as
Lacroze and some earlier scholars did, that Bruno was the only
significant influence on the formation of Leibniz’s monadology or even
on his choice of the word ‘monad’. He conceded that van Helmont and
10 These are, respectively, De immenso et innumerabilibus and De l’infinito, universo
et mondi. Leibniz acquired them in 1679. See below.

11 Klopp (1864–84), IX : 309.
12 See Stein (1890): 204.
13 McIntyre (1903: 346) refers to it as a ‘legend’ and claims that Stein delivered it the
‘coup de grâce’. Politella (1938) echoes this view: 6.

14 Latta (1898): 34.
15 Friedmann (1946): 34. Friedmann relies on notes by Leibniz’s secretary, which
indicate that Leibniz had been reading the Bruno book on 14 August of that year.
386 GIORDANO BRUNO
Knorr von Rosenruth had contributed to the development of his thought

in the direction of a monadology. But he nonetheless thought that
Bruno’s influence was direct and decisive.
Unfortunately this modest and interesting claim falls to the ground if
it turns out that Leibniz had already used the term ‘monad’ in a relevant
way before this recorded attention to Bruno’s book. And, though this
may be the first use of the French noun ‘monade’ in Leibniz’s surviving
writings, it turns out that there are earlier uses by him of the word in
Greek and Latin. For instance, a letter from Leibniz to the Marquis de
l’Hôpital, dated July 1695, shortly after the publication of the New
System in the Journal des Savants and more than a year before the
recorded reading of Bruno’s De monade. This letter concludes: ‘The key
to my teaching on this subject [that is, the nature and communication of
substances] consists in the recognition of what is properly a real unity.
Monas.’16 The introduction of the Greek word monas in this context
suggests that Leibniz wanted a technical term that connoted the kind of
real unity that was sought in metaphysics. He sometimes explained his
introduction of the term ‘monad’ by saying that it was a Greek term
signifying unity or that which is one.17 There is evidence that he
associated the word monas with Greek philosophers, in particular with
the Pythagoreans. Some notes from 1687 refer, in Greek, to the
Pythagorean monads.18 And in this connection it should be mentioned
that one of the contributors to earlier debates about the Bruno–Leibniz
connection, Joseph Politella, suggested that Bruno and Leibniz both
derived the term ‘monad’ from this common source.19 Politella may have
been right about this. At all events, the influence of Pythagorean ideas
on both of them is considerable. Both had Pythagorean projects.
Leibniz’s Earliest Monadology
Leibniz’s writings, like those of Bruno, are full of praise for Pythagoras.20
Like Bruno, he was attracted to Pythagorean number mysticism. For
instance, in a writing of 1679, he remarked with approval: ‘Men have
been convinced ever since Pythagoras that the deepest mysteries lie in
16 Gerhardt (1849–55), I: 295.

17 For instance, in Principles of Nature and of Grace, § 1.
18 See, for instance, Deutsche Akademie (1923–), VI, iv (B): 1946. The notes are on
Cudworth’s The True intellectual system of the Universe (1678).

19 Politella (1938): 7.
20 In a late letter he wrote: ‘I have the highest opinion of Pythagoras’ (Gerhardt,
1875–90, V: 370).
numbers.’21 Leibniz’s enthusiasm for Pythagoras and the deeper

mathematics went back to his days as an undergraduate. In 1663, he
elected to spend a semester at Jena, in order to study mathematics with
Erhardt Weigel. Weigel was an eclectic philosopher, who combined a
modern philosophy with borrowings from Plato and Aristotle, as well as
Pythagoras. Weigel made a considerable impression on Leibniz, who
was particularly struck by one argument his teacher used in order to
demonstrate the existence of God.
Weigel offered a mathematical analogy for the creation of the world
out of 1 and 0. Only God is truly one. The world is created out of
nothing. Created things were also unities since God created them in His
likeness. But by themselves they were liable to lapse again into nothing
and so a continuous creation was required in order to conserve them.22
The idea is that everything comes out of God and nothingness just as, in
arithmetic, everything comes from unity and zero. Leibniz endorsed this
analogy explicitly in his ‘On the true theologia mystica’: ‘All creatures
are derived from God and nothingness [Nichts] … (Numbers too show
this in a wonderful way, and the essences of things are like numbers.)’23
This remark is illustrated by a diagram24 produced by Leibniz himself to
show the analogy between the creation of things out of the One and out
of nothing and the generation of the system of numbers out of unity and
zero. The diagram has at the bottom the words ‘IMAGO CREATIONIS’
and the invention is credited to Leibniz (‘G. G. L.’), dated 1697. At the
top are written the words: ‘One is enough to draw everything out of
nothing’, which are of course intended to apply to the creation of the
universe as well as the generation of the system of numbers.
Acceptance of the proposition that the universe consists of unities
that stem from the One and reflect the unity of the One constitutes
acceptance of a very simple form of monadology. I do not have direct
proof that Leibniz accepted Weigel’s analogy and its monadological
implications in 1663. But it seems more likely that he was persuaded of
the analogy in 1663 than that he merely noted it then and came round
to accepting it later. Though he never uses the phrase Monas Monadum,
Leibniz’s God is indeed the Monad of monads.25 The Monas Monadum
belongs to a tradition that derives from Pythagoras or Plotinus or both.
21 Deutsche Akademie (1923–), VI, iv (A): 263: Loemker (1969): 221.

22 Leibniz reports this in Theodicy, § 384. He also discussed it in his remarks on
Weigel.
23 Loemker (1969): 368: Guhrauer (1838–40), I: 411. See also Gerhardt (1849–55),
VII: 238–40.
24 The design was for a medal. See Aiton (1985): 206f.
25 It is interesting to note the suggestion that Bruno’s universe also might be
represented as a system of binary numbers. See Gatti (1999): 151.

388 GIORDANO BRUNO
I have said that, in representing created things as unities that derive

from the One, Weigel offered a very simple monadology. But it is clear
from his writings that Weigel was in fact committed to a richer
monadology. He thought of Platonic ideas as divine attributes that are
the ingredients out of which the world is formed. These attributes of
God ‘flow’ into creatures and constitute the essences of created things.
God multiplies himself, in a sense, in creating the world. Hence God’s
perfection is ‘most immanent in everything’.26 Leibniz accepted this line
of thinking and the same principle of perfection was a cardinal one in
his own philosophy. It was, as I seek to show in the fifth and sixth
sections, a principle from which both he and Bruno drew important
conclusions about the nature of the world.
The Lullism of Bruno and the Young Leibniz
I have said that Leibniz earlier took a much more positive view of Bruno
than he did many years later in his 1709 letter to Toland. The 1709 letter
is particularly scathing about Bruno’s enthusiasm for Lull’s ideas. And
yet the art of Raymond Lull had been very important for Leibniz himself
as a student in 1666, when he wrote his De arte combinatoria on the
Lull-inspired art of combinations.27 Interestingly, Leibniz seems to have
derived the phrase ‘ars combinatoria’ from Bruno, some of whose Lullist
writings he studied in the period 1663–66, whilst preparing his
dissertation. The dissertation itself refers to a volume that included two
of Bruno’s Lullist books, his De Lulliano specierum scrutinio and his De
lampade combinatoria Raymundi Lullii. This reference credits Bruno
with having called Lully’s art ‘combinatorial’. And Leibniz’s choice of
the same phrase for the title of his dissertation suggests that he may have
acquired more than a favoured phrase from Bruno at this stage. At all
events there are a number of references to Bruno in Leibniz’s writings in
which he is associated particularly with Lull.
But Leibniz did not only associate Bruno with Lull. In the mid-1660s,
perhaps at the instigation of Weigel, Leibniz read some of the writings
of the group known as the Herborn encyclopaedists. Through them he
became imbued with a Platonistic metaphysics which was much
influenced by Lull and to which Bruno had contributed. The leading
figure of this group was John Henry Alsted, whose project for an
26 Weigel (1658): 183 and 177. I am indebted to Christia Mercer for this account of
Weigel. See her contribution to Brown (ed.) (1999): 35.

27 For further accounts of Leibniz’s early Lullism see Hübener (1983) and Wilson
(1989).
encyclopaedia Leibniz wanted to take up and develop in his own way.

But it was Alsted’s pupil, John Henry Bisterfeld, whose writings
particularly influenced Leibniz in the mid-1660s, especially his notion of
universal harmony. The tradition represented by the Herborn
encyclopaedists, as Leroy Loemker has suggested, is important for
understanding the similarities that have been pointed out between
Leibniz’s thought and that of a number of other philosophers, including
Plotinus, Nicholas of Cusa and Bruno.28 In the next section I pursue this
suggestion by looking at some of the metaphysical principles that
Leibniz may in part have derived from the Herborn School and
comparing them with principles accepted also by Cusanus and Bruno.
But first I should try to explain very briefly what significance the art
of Lull had for Leibniz. On his own account, Leibniz had dreamed, since
he was a young student, of producing what he called ‘an alphabet of
human thoughts’. This ‘alphabet’ would consist of the simplest terms,
which cannot be further defined and by means of which all other terms
are produced. These are the fundamental realities of the universe from
which, if we could know them, all the others could be deduced. Leibniz
used the Lullian title ‘Ars Magna’ of thinking for one of the writings in
which this dream is articulated. And the choice of title is appropriate
since Lull’s art also had for its object the discovery of truth. Leibniz
suggests that ‘infinite things can be compounded out of the combination
of a few’ and adds: ‘The alphabet of human thoughts is a catalogue of
those things that are conceived through themselves, and by whose
combination the rest of our ideas arise.’29 This was the project of
Leibniz’s dissertation De arte combinatoria. The art was, for him, deeply
mathematical. The art of combinations is a kind of mathematics, as
Leibniz explains. For Leibniz, moreover, doing mathematics in a broad
sense, and doing it rigorously, is crucial to the development of human
knowledge. Lull is given the credit for doing it, only he was not rigorous
enough:
Raymond Lull also did mathematics and in a way discovered the art
of combinations. Lull’s art would certainly be something wonderful
were it not for his fundamental terms, Goodness, Magnitude,
Duration, Power, Wisdom, Will, Virtue, Glory, being so vague. They
are the means of expressing but not of discovering the truth.30
Leibniz was always critical of Lull, as he was of all other

philosophers, with the possible exception of Plato and Aristotle. But he
accorded Lull a place of honour as a precursor of the Moderns (such as
28 See Loemker (1961).

29 Parkinson (1973) 2 and 240: Deutsche Akademie (1923–), VI, iv (A): 158 and note.
30 ‘The Art of Discovery’, W 53, C 177.
390 GIORDANO BRUNO
Galileo, Kepler and Descartes) in the profitable use he made of

mathematics.31
Similarly, the young Leibniz was much more positive about Bruno
than one might expect from his later accusation that Bruno had fallen
for the ‘chimeras’ of Lull. The truth is that the Leibniz of the early 1700s
was slightly ashamed, especially when moving in very Modern circles, of
some of the enthusiasms he himself had been carried away with when he
was younger. His Lullism is only one example. His youthful enthusiasm
for alchemy and his later attempt to cover it up are both well
documented.32 Leibniz was less than entirely honest in criticizing Bruno
at this point given his silence about his own previous commitment to the
ars combinatoria.
The young Leibniz thought well of Bruno not in spite of, but precisely
because he associated him with Lull. In an outline for one of his never-
to-be-completed encyclopaedic works Leibniz jotted down names of
people he would treat together. Alsted, Lull and Bruno are grouped
together with Lull’s commentator, Bernard Lavinheta.33 In another list
put together in the mid-1670s, Bruno is grouped with these three
together with a number of others, including Athanasius Kircher, who
wrote a book on the art of combinations that used Bruno’s and Leibniz’s
title but, Leibniz complained, took things no further than Lull.34
It should be noted that Bruno also features in one of the young Leibniz’s
lists as a metaphysician, in company with the likes of Fonseca and Vives. It
seems that, at the time of producing this list (1672), Leibniz had become
acquainted with another of Bruno’s books, his Summa terminorum
metaphysicorum of 1595. But the Lullism and the metaphysics were, for
Bruno and the young Leibniz, but two sides of the same coin.
Cusanus, Bruno and Leibniz: A Common Tradition
I have claimed that in 1663 the young Leibniz already possessed at least
a rudimentary monadology. But, in the Platonic context in which Weigel
31 In a letter of July 1714, Leibniz is more positive about Lull than in his 1709 letter
to Toland: ‘I have found something valuable, too, in the art of Lully and in the Digestum
sapientiae of the Capuchin, Father Ives, which pleased me greatly because he found a way
to apply Lully’s generalities to useful particular problems’ (Gerhardt, 1875–90, II: 618ff.;
Loemker, 1969: 657).
32 See G. MacDonald Ross, ‘Leibniz and the Nuremburg Alchemical Society’, Studia
Leibnitiana, 6 (1974): 222–48 and ‘Leibniz and chemistry’, Studia Leibnitiana Sonderheft,
7 (1978): 166–77.
33 And also with Schenkel and Becker (Deutsche Akademie [1923–], VI, iv A: 683).
34 Deutsche Akademie (1923–), VI, iii: 203.
presented it, a much richer monadology is already implied. For instance,

if the created monads possess in their measure the attributes of the
Creator, then this is so not only for unity but also for the other
attributes. Indeed, taking things a step backwards, those who accept this
way of thinking are committed to holding that, since God created it, the
universe is perfect. And from this fundamental principle many
conclusions can be derived, depending on which of God’s attributes are
emphasized.
It is not clear how far Leibniz had himself developed his monadology
before he encountered the writings of Bisterfeld. But it seems likely that
Bisterfeld helped him to articulate it. In the period 1663–66, whilst
preparing his dissertation On the Art of Combinations, Leibniz read and
made notes on two of Bisterfeld’s books.35 In the dissertation itself,
Leibniz writes with enthusiasm about ‘the most sound John Henry
Bisterfeld’, in particular of his principles of immeatio and perichoresis,
which are, as he glosses them, the principles that all things are in all
things and that any thing is both similar to and dissimilar from
everything else.36 Massimo Mugnai has rightly drawn attention to the
fact that Leibniz had a conception of universal harmony even at this
early stage – a conception that remained essentially unchanged
throughout the later development of his thought.37 This vision, as one
might call it, of the harmonious unity of the world was inspired by the
Herborn encyclopaedists and by Bisterfeld’s writings in particular.
Leibniz seems already in 1666 to have accepted that the principle of
harmonious unity has consequences for the nature of the basic entities,
whatever they are, that comprise the universe. To mention three: first,
they are all fundamentally alike. Second, no two are exactly the same.
Third, they are all connected with one another. These are principles on
which Bruno and Leibniz both agree. Their agreement is, however, likely
to be due not to a direct influence of Bruno on Leibniz but to their
common debt to a Platonic tradition, mediated to Leibniz by the
Herborn encyclopaedists, in which Cusanus played an important part.38
As Leibniz later articulated these subsidiary principles, monads are
fundamentally alike because they are imitations of their Creator and
because they all express the same universe. However no two monads are
35 Deutsche Akademie (1923–), VI, i: 151–61. The two books were the Philosophiae
primae Seminarium and the Elementorum Logicorum. He seems also to have read the
Phosphorus Catholicus, to which he refers in De arte combinatoria, § 85.
36 De arte combinatoria, § 85, Deutsche Akademie (1923–), VI, i: 199.
37 See Mugnai (1973).
38 Cusanus was an important source for Bruno but not, at least directly, for Leibniz,
who rarely mentions him.

392 GIORDANO BRUNO
exactly the same because each expresses the universe in a different way.
Every monad is connected with every other monad because each
expresses everything that happens in the universe, from its own point of
view, and therefore each expresses what happens to every other monad.
These principles were already endorsed by the young Leibniz and show
the influence of the Herborn School. They show that he already
belonged to the same philosophical tradition as Cusanus and Bruno,
who accepted similar principles and thought along similar lines.
Monads as Imitations of the Deity and Microcosms of the Universe
The existence of similarities between the philosophies of Leibniz and

those of Bruno and Cusanus has long been apparent. Indeed one
historian of philosophy, Richard Falckenberg, was so struck by these
similarities that he proposed that both Bruno and Leibniz derived some
of the key elements of their philosophies from Cusanus, with Bruno
acting as ‘the transition link’.39 Falckenberg thought they agreed that all
created individuals are microcosms of the universe and that humans, at
least, are imitations of the deity. Summarizing Cusanus, he wrote:
Even the individual is infinite in a certain sense; for, in its own way,
it bears in itself all that is, it mirrors the whole universe from its
limited point of view, is an abridged, compressed representation of
the universe … each thing is connected with each, different from it
and yet in harmony with it, so each contains all the others and is
contained by them. All is in all, for all is in the universe and in God,
as the universe and God is in all. In a still higher degree man is a
microcosm (parvus mundus), a mirror of the All … Here we have
the germ of the philosophy of Bruno and of Leibnitz.40
It hardly needs argument that the later Leibniz did indeed hold that
every created thing was a microcosm and ‘living mirror’ of the
universe.41 In the De summa rerum of 1676, Leibniz had already arrived
at this conclusion by developing the implications of the principle of
perfection. He begins by reflecting that a perfect being will maximize
unity and variety. For this reason, Leibniz argues, God must be a mind:
‘A most perfect being is that which contains the most. Such a being is
capable of ideas and thoughts, for this multiplies the varieties of things,
like a mirror.’42
39 Falckenberg (1895): 35.

40 Ibid.: 24.
41 See, for instance, Monadology, § 56. In his edition, R. Latta, perhaps following
Falckenberg, noted several points of common doctrine between Leibniz and Cusanus. See,
on these topics, Latta (1898): 248, note 88.
42 Parkinson (1992): 29; Deutsche Akademie (1923–), VI, iii: 475.
One reason why God should create minds will have to do with his
desire to create things in his likeness or, what comes to the same thing,
to create a universe that is as perfect as possible. This seems to have been
what Leibniz had in mind in saying: ‘Particular minds exist … simply
because the supreme being judges it harmonious that there should exist
somewhere that which understands, or, is a kind of intellectual mirror or
replica of the world.’43 Created things are, because of their capacity to
represent it, microcosms of the universe. Minds are everywhere,
according to the De summa rerum, and always implanted in bodies.
Moreover, every part of matter contains an infinity of creatures.
Leibniz added that it is a world.44 Each little world, furthermore, has a
mind in which the macrocosm is represented. Each mind is also said to
be a little world.45 Leibniz stretches the word ‘mind’ in the De summa
rerum so that he can say in a vitalistic way that minds are dispersed
throughout matter: ‘There are innumerable minds everywhere; there are
minds in the ovum even before conception, nor do they perish, even if
conception never follows …’46 Each mind or monad perceives what
happens in the entire world. This is one way in which each mind imitates
the deity.47 Leibniz holds that ‘every mind is omniscient’. He argues that
‘there is no body that is too small to sense all other things’. And so, he
says, ‘it is not surprising that any mind should perceive what is done in
the entire world’.48
Although Leibniz uses the word ‘mind’ here it is clear that he is using
it in a very extended sense, to mean something like what he later called
a ‘monad’.49 But though each mind perceives what is done in the entire
world it does not perceive the same as every other mind. According to
Leibniz: ‘there are as many different relations of things as there are
minds, just as when the same town is seen from various places’.50 Here
we have an early version of the doctrine that each substance expresses
the entire universe from a particular point of view.51 Thus, though every
43 Parkinson (1992): 25: Deutsche Akademie (1923–), VI, iii: 474.

44 Parkinson (1992): 25: Deutsche Akademie (1923–), VI, iii 474.
46 ‘On the secrets of the sublime’, Parkinson (1992): 31: Deutsche Akademie (1923–),
VI, iii: 476f.

47 Leibniz later uses the phrase ‘little gods’ of human minds, for example, in a letter
to Arnauld of 1687 (Gerhardt, 1875–90, II: 136). This phrase originates with Cusanus.
49 Though he has not yet developed the far-reaching view of space that characterized
his later monadology. Here his assumption is that minds are in some sense in space and
through being in different parts of space had different perspectives on the universe.
51 I suggest the differences between the earlier and later doctrines in Brown (1999):
274f.
394 GIORDANO BRUNO
one is fundamentally the same, each is also different from any other. As
Leibniz put it in the De summa rerum: ‘two things are always
different’.52
The Identity of Indiscernibles
The principle of the identity of indiscernibles is one of the strongest

points of connection between Leibniz’s philosophy and that of
Cusanus.53 To quote Cusanus: ‘All things must of necessity differ from
one another. Among several individuals of the same species there is
necessarily a diversity of the degrees of perfection. There is nothing in
the universe that does not enjoy a certain singularity, which is to be
found in no other thing.’54
The doctrine is also to be found in Bruno, who devotes a chapter of
his De minimo to it.55 It is noteworthy that when Cusanus argues that
‘there cannot be several things exactly the same’ he goes on to conclude
that ‘all things both agree and differ from one another’.56 It is likely that
it is Cusanus who was indirectly, through Bisterfeld’s books, the
inspiration for Leibniz’s early acceptance of the doctrine of the
similitude and dissimilitude of all things. And it is possible too that
Cusanus directly influenced Bruno at this same point. For Bruno was a
great admirer of Cusanus, whom he thought would have been not only
equal but superior in genius to Pythagoras had it not been for his being
a priest.57 Thus here, too, the similarities between Leibniz’s doctrines and
those of Bruno may be due to their debts to a common source.
‘All Things Are in All Things’
The doctrine that all things are in all things is one that Falckenberg
claimed was common to Cusanus, Bruno and Leibniz. And in a broad
sense this is true, even of the young Leibniz, whom Falckenberg did not
consider. But the Leibniz of the De summa rerum wanted to understand
it in a different way from some other philosophers and, whether
intentionally or not, departed from the sense of the dictum ‘all things are
in all things’ as endorsed by Bruno.

53 Robert Latta conjectured that Cusanus was the first to state the principle. See Latta
(1898): 222n.
54 De docta ignorantia, iii 1. Quoted from Latta (1898): 222n.
55 In De minimo, book I, ch. 5, Bruno claims that matter is incapable of producing
two figures or lines exactly alike.

56 De venatione sapientiae, 23. Quoted from Latta (1898): 222n.
57 See McIntyre (1903): 141 n.
Leibniz arrives at the dictum as a consequence of the view that every

mind is a microcosm of the universe. Because, according to Leibniz, I am
able to perceive the whole world, every change in the world I perceive
brings about a change in me. So it is true that ‘all things are … contained
in all things’.58 At least it is true ‘in a way’.
He makes this qualification because he wants to dissociate himself
from the doctrine that ‘all things are in all things’ as sometimes
understood. For he goes on to say that all things are contained in all
things in a quite different way from the way in which they are contained
in God. God is the creator and sustainer of all things. Each created
thing, however, only contains every other thing as a representation.59
It is not certain that Leibniz had anyone in particular in mind in
distinguishing his interpretation of the doctrine that ‘all things are in all
things’ from another possible interpretation. Nonetheless it is worth
noting that Bruno does offer an interpretation of the other kind, in
which things themselves and not merely their representations are in
other things: ‘Everything is in everything, because spirit or soul is in all
things, and therefore out of anything can be produced anything else.’60
This remark, if I understand it aright, smacks of a Renaissance
Neoplatonic metaphysic that would support natural magic. I do not
know whether, in 1666, Leibniz accepted that all things are in all things
in any such sense. But he seems to have dissociated himself from it in his
Paris writings of ten years later.
Plenitude and Infinity in Bruno and the Young Leibniz
Leibniz, like Bruno, took the principle of perfection to give rise to

another characteristically Platonic principle, namely, the principle of
plenitude. According to Plotinus,61 all beings ‘send forth as much of
themselves as they can’. Since God is a perfect and unlimited being, it
follows that the world is as full as it can be: as Plotinus put it, ‘the whole
earth is full of a diversity of living things, mortal and immortal, and
replete with them up to the very heavens’.62 As Arthur Lovejoy pointed
out, the principle of plenitude implicitly commits those who hold it to
the infinity of the universe. But there is one reason why they may not
58 Parkinson (1992): 85: Deutsche Akademie (1923–), VI iii: 523.

59 Here Leibniz already anticipates his later denial of extrinsic denominations, though
he has apparently not yet worked out its connections with other doctrines.
60 From Cena. Quoted from McIntyre (1903): 126.
61 Enneads, V 4, 1. Quoted from Lovejoy (1936): 62.
62 Quoted from Lovejoy (1936): 64.
396 GIORDANO BRUNO
accept such a commitment. For, though God’s attributes are, to this way
of thinking, emanated into the universe, the creatures do not possess
them to the highest degree. They are only finitely good, for example,
where God is infinitely good. That is one reason for objecting, as
Bruno’s orthodox critics did, to talking about the universe as infinite.
Bruno, however, took the principle of perfection to imply that the
world is infinite: ‘Why should the infinite capacity be frustrated, the
possibility of infinite worlds be cheated, the perfection of the divine
image be impaired – that image which ought to be reflected back in a
mirror as immeasurable as itself … ?’63
For Leibniz too, the principle of ‘the harmony of things’ implies
plenitude. Indeed, it appears in one place as virtually equivalent. He
began his paper On the Secrets of the Sublime: ‘After due consideration
I accept the principle of the harmony of things: that is, that the greatest
amount of essence that can exist, does exist.’64 Leibniz, like Bruno, was
led by the principle of plenitude to belief in an infinite universe. Leibniz,
however, was specially concerned with the infinitely small. The
acceptance of plenitude led him to believe that every material thing was
subdivisible in infinitum. In his paper ‘On the Secrets of the Sublime … ’,
he remarks:
If it is true that any part of matter, however small, contains an
infinity of creatures, i.e. is a world, it follows also that matter is
actually divided into an infinity of points. But this is true, provided
it is possible, for it increases the multitude of existents and the
harmony of things.65
As far as I know, this is the first occurrence in Leibniz’s writings of the

very striking doctrine that every particle of matter contains an infinite
number of living creatures, a doctrine that is often repeated in his later
writings and is very characteristic of his monadology. In his later writings
he tended to cite microscopists such as Swammerdam and van
Leeuwenhoek in support of this doctrine.66 And it is possible that the
wonders of the microscope already inspired in the young Leibniz the
thought of worlds of submicroscopic creatures that our eyes and our
equipment were not sufficiently refined to see. But it was not till the end
of 1676 that Leibniz made his visit to van Leeuwenhoek in Delft. And, in
any case, the argument in the De summa rerum is a purely a priori one.
63 From Infinito. Quoted from Lovejoy (1936): 118.

64 Deutsche Akademie (1923–), VI, iii: 472.
66 The first time he did so, to my knowledge, was in a letter to Arnauld of October,
1687, where he refers to the experiments of Leewenhoeck to show that ‘there is an infinity
of small animals in the least drop of water’ (Gerhardt, 1875–90, II: 122).
Is it possible that Bruno may have had some part in inspiring

Leibniz’s preoccupation with the infinite? It is possible, but it seems
unlikely. Leibniz’s knowledge of Bruno’s writings was always patchy and
it seems that, in the period up to 1676 (which I am treating as the period
of the ‘young’ Leibniz) he was still not familiar with some of Bruno’s
main works. In 1679 he acquired three further Bruno books, including
the two books on infinity67 which he kept reminding later
correspondents were different.68 It seems clear that reading these books
added a whole new dimension to Leibniz’s appreciation of Bruno. In the
1680s his references to Bruno make less and less of his books on Lull
and increasingly represent him as a stage between Leucippus and
Democritus and the Moderns.69 He is credited with having clearly
expounded vortices in his De immenso and innumerabilis and to have
been one of the influences on Descartes’ theory of vortices.70 But it is
Bruno’s vision of an infinite universe that is what Leibniz most valued
about his philosophy in the writings of his mature period. In his
projected work On the Religion of Great Men, dated 1687, Leibniz puts
Bruno under the heading ‘Physics and Mathematics’. He proposed to
discuss Bruno and Descartes on the question, ‘whether the world is
infinite or indefinite’.71 Alas, we do not know what he proposed to say.
But, though Leibniz was preoccupied by the infinitely small where
Bruno had been concerned with the infinitely large, the two agree in
attaching importance to the idea of innumerable worlds. This is clearly
something Leibniz valued in Bruno and he was evidently pleased to be
the possessor of copies of both Bruno’s books on infinity.
Indeed he was anxious to stress that Bruno was not burned because
of those books but for other ideas.72 I doubt, however, if he was right
about this. If we accept Emile Namer’s reconstruction of the eight
heretical propositions of which Bruno was accused, the doctrine of the
infinite universe and innumerable worlds was one of the heretical
propositions.73 Namer implies that belief in an infinite universe was
67 Referred to in a letter of 1679 (Deutsche Akademie [1923–], VI, ii: 723).

68 He pointed out to Lacroze in a letter of 1708 that copies of both these books were
in his possession (Dutens, 1768, V: 492) and informed Toland around the same time that
he had read them (Klopp, 1864–84, IX: 309).
69 See, for instance, Deutsche Akademie (1923–), VI, iv (C): 2059.
70 See Deutsche Akademie (1923–), VI, iv (B): 1486 and Deutsche Akademie (1923–),
VI, iv (C ): 2120 respectively.

71 See Deutsche Akademie (1923–), VI, iv (C): 2463.
72 In a letter to Bierling, dated July 1711 (Gerhardt, 1875–90, V: 369).
73 Namer (1966): 28. Maurice Finocchiaro, in his contribution to this volume, offers
an account of Bruno’s trials which confirms the importance attached by his inquisitors to
Bruno’s failure to recant his philosophical propositions.
398 GIORDANO BRUNO
thought heretical because it involved denial of creation in time. But,

heresy or not, the view that time itself is part of the creation was shared
by many Christian Platonists, including Leibniz.
Monads as Indestructible and as the Foundations of the World
I have discussed at some length the Platonic principle of perfection and

the implications Bruno and Leibniz drew from it. I turn now to the
second of the two principles I have claimed were transmitted in the
Platonic tradition which Bruno and Leibniz both inherited – the
principle that the universe consists ultimately of entities that, because
they are irreducible, are ‘naturally indestructible’. This principle takes us
to the heart of what a monadology is, as generally understood. In a
useful article on ‘Monad and monadology’,74 Leroy Loemker
characterized a ‘monad’ as ‘a simple, irreducible, self-determining entity
whose activity is the source of all composite beings’. ‘A monadology [he
added] is a metaphysical system that interprets the world as a
harmonious unity encompassing a plurality of such self-determining
simple entities.’ I am not going to discuss the ‘self-determining’ aspect
here because it is, on a strict interpretation, missing from the
monadology of the young Leibniz and, as I have argued elsewhere,
seems to have been introduced by him first in his Discourse on
Metaphysics of 1686.75 I will, however, conclude by discussing the other
key features of monads as defined by Loemker: being simple, irreducible
and being the basis of other things. Their irreducibility is, on the second
principle shared by Bruno,76 Leibniz and others in the same Platonic
tradition, a reason for supposing them to be naturally indestructible.
This second principle underlies one of the Platonic arguments for
immortality,77 which is taken up by both Bruno and Leibniz. Bruno used
the argument in his De minimo78 and Leibniz used an elaborate version
74 See Loemker (1967).

75 The idea that everything that is true of a substance is in some way contained in its
nature and therefore in its full concept is a key part of Leibniz’s mature system of pre-
established harmony. The early philosophy has, as I remarked in the fifth section, a strong
emphasis on a thoroughly harmonious universe. And, of course, Leibniz believed that
nothing happened without God’s foreknowledge and concurrence. But that is not enough
to constitute the much sharper doctrine of his later years. So there are important
developments in Leibniz’s philosophy which lie outside the scope of my paper.
76 Bruno held that the distinctive character of the soul is unity, indivisibility, and, as a
consequence, incorruptibility (De minimo, book I, ch. 6).

77 Phaedo, 78B–80C. Leibniz produced a Latin abridgement of the Phaedo in 1676
Deutsche Akademie (1923–), VI, ii: 284–97.

78 De minimo, book 1, ch. 3.
of it in his Confession of Nature against Atheists of 1669.79 But neither

Bruno nor Leibniz pleads a special dispensation for the human soul on
the basis of this argument. Leibniz, for his part, came to recognize that
the argument from the indivisibility to the indestructibility of the soul,
though he accepted it, fell well short of being an argument for
immortality proper, since that would require memory and personal
identity.80 As it stands, the argument does not establish any quality of
continuing existence for souls and holds quite generally for the most
humble monad. In both Bruno and Leibniz it underpins their views
about the indestructibility of living things.
Dorothea Singer, in her book on Bruno, gives an interesting account
of what she calls Bruno’s ‘cosmic metabolism’. She brings out Bruno’s
debt to Lucretius and to certain Renaissance Lucretians. The world
consists fundamentally of minima, which Bruno calls the ‘prime
indivisible bodies from which the whole universe was originally
composed’81 and which remain the same while the bodies which they
enter into are constantly changing. What seems like the death of
something is only a stage in the history of the minima. They are like the
semina of Fracastoro in that everything grows from them. This is the
account of the cycle of life and death given in De immenso: ‘As Semina
are aggregated around bodies, atoms are added to adjacent parts, so the
body with its members takes its rise; but as these parts are expelled from
the centre, so the bodies, however well knit, are gradually dissolved.’82
Singer claims that Bruno’s minima may have been a ‘suggestion to
Leibnitz for his Monads’.83 And certainly Leibniz held views that are
strikingly similar in certain respects.
In 1671 Leibniz produced a memorandum intended to show that the
resurrection of the same body is not contrary to the nature of things. He
wrote:
I am almost of the opinion that all bodies, as well those of men as
those of beasts, vegetables and minerals, have a seminal principle
(Kern) of substance … This seminal principle is so subtle, that it
remains even in the ashes of the substance when consumed by fire,
and has the power, as it were, of collecting itself in an invisible
centre … 84
79 See Loemker (1969): 113: Deutsche Akademie (1923–), VI, i: 493.

80 For a fuller discussion of Leibniz’s views on this topic, see my ‘Soul, body and
natural immortality’, in The Monist, 81 (1998) (special issue on Rethinking Leibniz):
573–90.
81 Infinito, Dialogue II (Gentile, 1907, I: 323–4).
82 De immenso, II ch. 5, BOL, I I: 273.
83 Singer (1950): 72.
84 Deutsche Akademie (1923–), II, I: 108.
400 GIORDANO BRUNO
The Kern or seminal principle not only underwrites continuity of the

same bodily being throughout the most destructive of natural calamities,
according to Leibniz. Its ability to do this is based on its capacity both
to contract to ‘an invisible centre’ and to provide the basis for
subsequent regrowth.
Leibniz’s sources here have been the subject of speculation. Bruno is
an unlikely source since Leibniz was not familiar with the relevant
works as early as 1671. His use of the term ‘Kern’ in the writings on the
resurrection of the body of 1671 has been linked with the
monadological doctrine of J.B. van Helmont and indirectly with that of
Augustine,85 according to which God in the beginning scattered the
invisible seeds of all things. Leibniz was content, much later, to claim
that his reasoning about all brute souls being created at one time ‘agrees
well with the Holy Scriptures, which suggest that there were seeds
(semences) in the beginning’.86 But it is possible that his earlier view
derives from Augustine’s interpretation of Genesis, perhaps mediated by
J.B. van Helmont.87 It may be, then, that he was already disposed to hold
that the ‘hidden seeds of all things that are born corporeally and visibly
are concealed in the corporeal elements of this world’, the hidden seeds
being created at the beginning by God himself.88
Leibniz’s early theories of how the resurrection is possible are linked
with his constantly repeated doctrine that there is something
indestructible about all living things and that, strictly speaking, there is
no such thing as death – nor, for that matter, is there such a thing, strictly
speaking, as birth. But though his views converge with those of Bruno
at this point, I do not think they derived from his distinguished
predecessor.
Conclusion
I have concentrated in this chapter on aspects of Leibniz’s early

monadology that are, I believe, common to the later philosophy. On
many of the points where the later philosophy is at least ostensibly
different, it is the younger Leibniz who is closer to Bruno. He was
85 See On the Trinity, III, 8.13, Literal Commentary on Genesis, IX, 17.32. Cf. The
Essential Augustine, ed. V.J. Bourke, 2nd edn (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett, 1974): 102–3.
86 Loemker (1969): 557; Gerhardt, 1875–90, VI: 534. In a letter to Arnauld he
alludes, in a similar context, to ‘the fertility of seeds mentioned in Genesis’ (Gerhardt,

1875–90, II: 75).
87 See Pagel, Walter, Religious and Philosophical Aspects of Helmont’s Science and
Medicine (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1944).

88 De trinitate, III viii, 13. Quoted from The Essential Augustine, ed. Bourke, p. 102.
closer to pantheism and determinism, indeed Spinozism, than he

sought to be and believed he succeeded in being in his mature
philosophy.89 He was still willing to defend, albeit residually, some
form of atomism.90 There are, as I have tried to bring out, many points
of similarity between the doctrines of the two philosophers. The
explanations for those similarities are various. Very little that I can
discover is due to the direct influence of Bruno. But Bruno was a
contributory and indirect influence on the young Leibniz both because
of his influence on the Herborn school and because of his influence on
earlier Modern philosophers. Perhaps the most important explanation
for the similarities between Bruno and the young Leibniz, however, is
due to their both belonging to a common intellectual tradition, in
which ideas stemming ultimately from Pythagoras, Plato and Plotinus
were taken for granted: ideas such as the perfection, harmony and
plenitude of the world: ideas such as that a true being is simple and
irreducible. Bruno anticipated the Moderns in a number of his
preoccupations, as Leibniz saw it, with his revival of Democritus and
his advocacy of an infinite universe, as well as his interest in the deeper
mathematics. He no doubt influenced, at least to some extent, the
intellectual culture of modern philosophy in these respects. Leibniz
saw himself as a modern and so it is no coincidence that he shared
such preoccupations and valued Bruno for his contribution to making
them more widespread.
Select Bibliography
Primary Literature
Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften (auspices) (1923– ), G. W.

Leibniz: Sämtliche Schriften und Briefe. Berlin: Akademie Verlag.
(Referred to by series and band number as well as, in the case of series
VI, band iv, a letter indicating the volume.)
Dutens, L. (ed.) (1768), Leibniz: Opera Omnia, 6 vols. Geneva.
89 See, for instance, the papers by Mark Kulstad and Catherine Wilson in Brown
(1999). See Brown (1999): 270ff.

90 He himself admitted to his early atomism in his New System and the evidence of it
is to be found in, for instance, his De summa rerum. Leibniz’s atomism seems to have been
directly derived from Gassendi and other modern philosophers. But, if Mendoza (1995) is
correct in claiming that Bruno was the father of modern atomism, he may have been in
this way an important indirect influence on Leibniz. Leibniz’s later perception of Bruno as
anticipating the moderns with his revival of Leucippus and Democritus fits well with this
interpretation.
402 GIORDANO BRUNO
Fiorentino, F. et al. (eds) (1879–91), Giordano Bruno: opera latine

conscripta, 3 vols, in 8 parts. Naples and Florence.
Gentile, G. (ed.) (1907), Opere italiane di Giordano Bruno, 2 vols. Bari:
G. Laterza & Figli.
Gerhardt, C.I. (ed.) (1849–55). Leibnizens Mathematischen Schriften, 7
vols. Berlin: Asher & Halle: Schmidt. Reprinted Hildesheim: Olms,
1962.
Gerhardt, C.I. (ed.) (1875–90). Die Philosophische Schriften von Leibniz,
7 vols. Berlin: Weidmann. Reprinted Hildesheim: Olms, 1965.
Guhrauer, G.E. (ed.) (1838–40). Leibnitz’s deutsche schriften, 2 vols.
Berlin.
Klopp, Otto (ed.) (1864–84), Die Werke von Leibniz, 11 vols. Hanover.
Loemker, L.E. (ed.) (1969), G. W. Leibniz: Philosophical Papers and
Letters, 2nd edn. Dordrecht: Reidel.
Parkinson, G.H.R. (ed.) (1973), Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz:
Philosophical Writings. London: Dent (Everyman).
Parkinson, G.H.R. (ed. and trans.) (1992), G.W. Leibniz: De Summa
Rerum: Metaphysical Papers 1675–76. New Haven, CT and London:
Yale University Press.
Secondary Literature
Aiton, E.J. (1985), Leibniz: A Biography. Bristol and Boston: Hilger.

Bréhier, Emile (1966), History of Philosophy, trans. Wade Bakin, 7 vols.
Chicago and London: Chicago University Press.
Brown, Stuart (1999), ‘The proto-monadology of the De summa rerum’,
in S. Brown (ed.) The Young Leibniz and his Philosophy. Dordrecht:
Kluwer (International Archives for the History of Ideas), pp. 263–87.
Brunnhofer, Hermann (1882), Giordano Bruno’s Weltanshauung und
Verhängniss. Leipzig: Fues.
Brunnhofer, Hermann (1890), Giordano Bruno’s Lehre vom Kleinsten
als Quelle der präestabilirten Harmonie des Leibniz. Leipzig: Rauert
& Rocco.
Falckenberg, R. (trans. A.C. Armstrong) (1895), History of Modern
Philosophy from Nicolas of Cusa to the present time, London: G.
Bell.
Friedmann, Georges (1946), Leibniz et Spinoza. Paris: Gallimard. 2nd
edn, 1962.
Gatti, Hilary (1999), Giordano Bruno and Renaissance Science. Ithaca,
NY and London: Cornell University Press.
Hübener, W. (1983), ‘Leibniz und der Renaissance-Lullismus’, Studia
Leibnitiana Supplementa, 23: 103–12.
Latta, Robert (1898), Leibniz: the Monadology and other Philosophical

Writings. London: Oxford University Press.
Loemker, Leroy E. (1961), ‘Leibniz and the Herborn encyclopedists’,
Journal of the History of Ideas, 22, 3: 323–38.
Loemker, Leroy E. (1967), ‘Monad and monadology’, in The
Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Paul Edwards, vol. V, p. 361f. New
York: Macmillan.
Lovejoy, A.O. (1936), The Great Chain of Being. Cambridge, MA:
Harvard University Press.
McIntyre, James Lewis (1903), Giordano Bruno. London: Macmillan.
Mendoza, Ramon G. (1995), The Acentric Labyrinth: Giordano
Bruno’s Prelude to Contemporary Cosmology. Shaftesbury-
Rockport-Brisbane: Element Books.
Mercer, Christia (2002), Leibniz’s Metaphysics: Its Origins and
Development. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Michel, Henri (1957), ‘L’atomisme de Giordano Bruno’, in La science au
siezième siècle (Colloque internationale de Royaumont).
Mugnai, M. (1973), ‘Der Begriff der Harmonie als metaphysische
Grundlage der Logik und Kombinatorik bei Johann Heinrich
Bisterfeld und Leibniz’, Studia Leibnitiana, 5: 43–73.
Namer, Emile (1966), Giordano Bruno, ou l’Universe infini comme
fondement de la philosophie moderne. Paris: Editions Seghers.
Parkinson, G.H.R. (1986), ‘Leibniz’s De summa rerum: a systematic
approach’, Studia Leibnitiana, 18: 132–51.
Politella, Joseph (1938), Platonism, Aristotelianism and Cabbalism in
the Philosophy of Leibniz. Philadelphia, PA: University of
Pennsylvania Press.
Pollock, Frederick (1877), ‘Spinoza’, Proceedings of the Royal
Institution of Great Britain, 8: 373–77.
Singer, Dorothea (1950), Giordano Bruno: His Life and Thought, with
annotated translation of his work On the Infinite Universe and
Worlds. New York: Henry Schuman.
Stein, Ludwig (1890), Leibniz and Spinoza. Berlin: Reimer.
Védrine, Hélène (1967), La conception de la nature chez Giordano
Bruno. Paris.
Wilson, Catherine (1989), Leibniz’s Metaphysics: A Historical and
Comparative Study. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Yates, Frances (1966), The Art of Memory. London: Routledge &
Kegan Paul.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Being a Modern Philosopher and

Reading Giordano Bruno
Paul Richard Blum
Being a philosopher and reading Giordano Bruno – this seems to be both

an impossible and a natural combination. Who else if not philosophers
should appreciate the Nolan? But also, is there anything he can tell a
philosopher? And I am not referring to the philosophers of his days who
actually did not care much about him, but to philosophers of four
centuries after his death. Sure, historians of philosophy do read Bruno and
to great results. But, supposing there is a difference between historians and
philosophers: do the latter like him? My aim is not to defend history of
philosophy as a part of philosophy – I have done so on other occasions,
and my main argument has been that doing philosophy historically is
philosophizing in the proper sense, that is, with respect to the thought of
the other.1 In this chapter I want to address the problem from a different
point of view: can a philosopher nowadays read Bruno with any profit?
This question has apparently two sides: is there any philosophy in
Bruno which is helpful to the present-day philosopher? And does the
present-day philosopher feel akin to the Renaissance author?
Supposing that philosophy means a set of teachings which is typical
for that particular philosopher, we are really at a loss with the Nolan, if
we want to give him a place in the modern world. Of course he taught
the infinity of the world, but he evidently overslept the big bang. He
taught the movement of the earth around the sun, and even the existence
of infinite systems of suns. But this infinity according to modern
astrophysics is only a virtual one and, above all, wherever from and
however he had come upon that theory, the scientific evidence has been
provided by others. Whatever portion of Bruno’s teaching proved to be
true, the proofs thereof depended on methods alien to him.2 Modern
1 Regarding Bruno see my ‘Istoriar la figura: Theoriensynkretismus bei Frances A.
Yates und Giordano Bruno als philosophisches Modell’, in Zeitsprünge – Forschungen zur
Frühen Neuzeit, 3, 1999, pp. 130–54.
2 For a detailed discussion of compatibilities and incompatibilities of Bruno’s thought
with different phases of modern science see Gatti, Hilary (1999), Giordano Bruno and
Renaissance Science, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
406 GIORDANO BRUNO
philosophy of science is that of mathematical method and theory of

knowledge. Bruno does have quite an original philosophy of
mathematics which certainly foreshadows the theories of Branislav
Petronijevic, but who is speaking about Petronijevic today?3 Bruno also
taught the convergence of form and matter, and in doing so he was in
line with the abolishment of that metaphysical distinction ever since
René Descartes. But that is exactly why, for many philosophers, early
modern philosophy begins only after Bruno, who from the historian’s
point of view happens to be interesting but not decisive.
It took the historians of philosophy quite some time to find out that
Bruno did have a theory of knowledge. Actually it seems that Georg
Friedrich Wilhelm Hegel was the first to acknowledge this fact in
interpreting Bruno’s thought as ‘eine schöne Begeisterung eines
Selbstbewußtseins’ (an aesthetic enthusiasm of self consciousness) and
in recognizing in his art of memory a ‘System von
Gedankenbestimmungen’ (a system of intellectual concepts). The De
umbris idearum is presented by him as ‘Versuch, das logische System des
inneren Künstlers, des produzierenden Gedankens so darzustellen, daß
ihm die Gestaltungen der äußeren Natur entsprechen’ (an attempt at
presenting the logical system of the internal artisan, the productive
thought, so that it conforms to the formation of external nature).4
Hegel’s compliments to Bruno end up in a sympathetic feeling, as he
apparently foreshadows Hegelian thought, but also in criticism, as he
mixed it all up with his unintelligible pictorial mnemonics. We had to
wait for Frances Yates’s mythologizing interpretation of the art of
memory and the consequent clarifications by Rita Sturlese before we
could make any sense out of it.5 But, in the long run, Hegel’s results are
still valid: Bruno is the forerunner of anybody else who either did better
or else is now forgotten.
An indication of the ambivalence between recognition and
underestimation of Bruno the philosopher is also the history of the
various interpretations of Bruno’s philosophy since the attempt at
scholarly research began in the nineteenth century. Franz Jacob Clemens
saw in Bruno the forerunner of modern subjectivism, but he himself
3 Petronijevic, Branislav (1904–12), Principien der Metaphysik, 2 vols, Heidelberg:
Winter. The similarity of Petronijevic’s metaphysics with Bruno has been claimed by
Atanasijevic, Ksenia (1972), The Metaphysical and Geometrical Doctrine of Bruno as
Given in his Work De triplici minimo, St Louis, MS: Green. After the many recent studies
on Bruno’s mathematics this thread seems to be worth taking up again.
4 Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie, II 3, B 3.
5 Yates, Frances A. (1966), The Art of Memory, London: Routledge, and Sturlese,
Introduction to BUI. See also Spruit, Leen (1988), Il problema della conoscenza in
Giordano Bruno, Naples: Bibliopolis.
BEING A MODERN PHILOSOPHER 407
18.1 A celebrated page of the first book of Bruno’s De triplici minimo, 1591.
408 GIORDANO BRUNO
disliked it, considering it as the decay of true perennial metaphysics.6

The Hegelian Moriz Carrière linked Bruno to Jakob Boehme, thus
establishing the image of Bruno as on the dead end of modern thought.7
Johann Georg Hamann, labelling himself the Magician of the North,
suspected the Nolan to be a real alternative to Kant, but only in what
Bruno inherited from Cusanus.8 Nietzsche was sympathetic with Bruno’s
solitude, because he identified himself with him and with Spinoza. But
at the same time he warned against the ‘charlatan’ implicit in any
missionary or martyr.9
Honestly speaking, this means: Bruno is interesting, but only before
the threshold of present-day philosophy – the present day of the
nineteenth century, of the twentieth century and of now. The only way
to recover him as a philosopher seems to be, indeed, either the
forerunner strategy, or the ‘forgotten alternative’ strategy, or the strictly
historicist approach. The third way admits that philosophy is what
philosophers did at their remote time, but it implies that this, by its own
historic nature, must be different from what philosophers do today and
what they ought to do. The first two approaches presuppose some
contemporary concept of philosophy, and they implicitly deny the unity
of philosophy past and present. The forerunner strategy is eclectic in
taking from the old ones whatever sounds reasonable, discarding the
rest, while the alternativist approach construes an apparent option to
present-day philosophy by the help of some forgotten author. In doing
so, it admits that the alternative is no real choice, since present-day
philosophy is what philosophers are actually doing. There seems to be
no bridge between the two alternatives.
But what is today’s philosophy? Looking at a recent dictionary of
philosophy we are confronted with the following definitions of
philosophy itself:
1. ‘Most definitions of philosophy are fairly controversial, particularly

if they aim to be at all interesting or profound.’
2. ‘Philosophy is thinking about thinking.’
6 Cf. Blum, Paul Richard (1988), ‘Franz Jacob Clemens e la lettura ultramontanistica
di Bruno’, in Brunus redivivus. Momenti della fortuna di Giordano Bruno nel XIX secolo,
ed. Eugenio Canone, Pisa-Rome: IEPI, pp. 67–103. Franz Jacob Clemens, Giordano Bruno
und Nicolaus von Cusa, Bonn, 1847. Reprint Bristol: Thoemmes, 2000 (Early Studies of
Giordano Bruno 3).
7 Cf. Blum, ‘Clemens’, op. cit.
8 Joseph Nadler (1949), Johann Georg Hamann 1730–1788: Der Zeuge des Corpus
mysticum, Salzburg: Müller.

9 Friedrich Nietzsche, Jenseits von Gut und Böse, ch. 2, 25; Kritische Studienausgabe,
ed. Giorgio Colli and Mazzino Montinari, vol. 5, Berlin, 1988, p. 43.
3. ‘Philosophy is rationally critical thinking, of a more or less

systematic kind about the general nature of the world … the
justification of belief … and the conduct of life … ’10
If we start with the third version, there can be no doubt that Bruno had
a word to say. He was concerned with the general nature of the world,
with the justification of what one takes for true, and also with the
conduct of life. I am of course not exposing the whole of Bruno’s
philosophy, now. The only question I want to raise is: why, then, is Bruno
actually not recognizable as a philosopher? On the surface, many if not
most or all of his teachings about the world are outright wrong. As I said,
his concept of infinity in extension and infinity in numbers of the world
is factually as unreal as Nietzsche’s doctrine of the ‘eternal return’. Some
of his particular astronomical theories earned him derision – even by his
contemporaries – as ‘Nullanus, nullus et nihil’.11 The difference between
Tycho Brahe, who wrote this pun on his copy of Bruno’s Camoeracensis
Acrotismus, and Bruno was that the successful astronomer believed in the
measurement of the world while Bruno expressly denied the quantitative
exactness of any empirical body and called for a metaphysical foundation
of any understanding of the cosmos.
The Brunian art of memory took a long time to be viewed as at least
some kind of epistemology, but then only in the ‘lost alternative’ sense
with no hope that any Quine or Kripke would start teaching it to
undergraduate students as the state of the art. And as for Bruno’s theory
of moral conduct – if there is any such12 – who is going to preach the
hero of the twenty-first century?
My serious agenda in this mockery – in a volume dedicated to
commemorate the anniversary of his martyrdom – is this: since we
cannot change our present-day philosophy and science we ought to
change our look at Bruno’s thought, if we want to recognize Bruno the
philosopher and still want to remain philosophers of our own times. The
problem in the kind of presentation to which I alluded is that Buno’s
teachings are taken on their surface. Even when we state that Bruno’s
philosophy is based upon or proposes a close link between the spirit of
the world and human thought, which is certainly a very general and
philosophically recognizable doctrine, we are confronted with a theory
10 Hondrich, Ted (ed.) (1995), The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, Oxford:
Oxford University Press, p. 666.

11 See Pagnoni Sturlese, Maria Rita (1985), ‘Su Bruno e Tycho Brahe’, Rinascimento,
25, pp. 309–33.

12 Cf. Blum, Paul Richard (2000), ‘Esiste un’etica in Giordano Bruno?’ Paradigmi,
anno 18, no. 53, pp. 197–215.

410 GIORDANO BRUNO
which fails to hold water when faced by critical thinking. For, if some
one naively asks, ‘So, is that true?’, we are embarrassed, because no
modern scientist or philosopher admits the existence of any world soul,
and even less any link between it and the mind.
In terms of present-day philosophy these propositions are palpable
only if taken in the sense of the second definition of philosophy:
‘Thinking about thinking’. There is no doubt that Bruno was doing
exactly this, but we have to find out, how. As an example let us take the
world soul theory again. In dialogue 4 of De la causa, talking about the
possible identity of principles, Bruno says:
You can henceforth rise to the concept, I do not say of the supreme
and most excellent principle, which has been excluded from our
inquiry, but to the concept of the world soul, insofar as it is the act
of everything and the potency of everything, and in so far as it is
present in its entirety in everything whence it follows that (even if
there exist innumerable individuals) all things are one, and the
knowledge of that unity is the object and term of all philosophies
and all meditation on natural things leaving in its domain the
highest speculation of all, that which, surpassing nature, is
impossible and vain for the unbeliever.13
The world soul is being described as that principle which is accessible to

human thought. Its characteristics are marked as functions or modes of
being: potentiality and reality. As such it has to have the extension to
pervade all particular things, to the effect that everything is one. At this
point follows the functional definition of philosophy, namely, knowing the
unity. The whole proposition is bracketed by the statement that there
might be an even more general knowledge of an even more universal
principle which however is, by definition, not accessible by human
rational thought. It is obvious that Bruno’s statement about the world soul
is at the same time more and less pretentious than any factual doctrine. He
does not say simply: there is a world soul (take it or leave it). What he is
saying is: if we strive towards a general principle of nature it has to have
such and such ontological features which are necessitated by its
philosophical function, namely to be cognitive principles of the knowledge
13 Giordano Bruno, Cause, Principle and Unity and Essays on Magic, ed. Richard J.
Blackwell and Robert de Lucca, Introduction by Alfonso Ingegno, Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1998, p. 81. ‘Possete quindi montar al concetto, non dico del summo et
ottimo principio, escluso della nostra considerazione, ma de l’anima del mondo, come atto
di tutto e potenza di tutto, et tutta in tutto: onde al fine (dato che sieno innumerabili
individui) ogni cosa è uno; et il conoscere questa unità è il scopo e termine di tutte le
filosofie e contemplazioni naturali: lasciando ne’ sua termini la più alta contemplazione,
che ascende sopra la natura, la quale a chi non crede, è impossibile e nulla’ (BOeuC III,
253).
of nature. Bruno admits that there is a danger in such a principle, namely,

that it overwrites the particularity of the things to which it extends: ‘that
in the end – given that there exist individuals of such a number that they
cannot be counted – everything is one’. The reason for this effect is the
ambiguity deriving from the fact that the cognitive principles are to be
taken as ontological (‘natural’ in Bruno’s terminology). And the whole
reasoning is questioned by the statement that there is or might be the very
principle, God, which is beyond the reach of philosophy. This is what I
should call: ‘Thinking about thinking’. In making an ontological claim
Bruno raises fundamental epistemological questions.
Every reader of Bruno’s works knows that he is extremely critical
concerning what goes as ‘philosophy’. By the help of a CD-ROM14 I
counted 17 occurrences of ‘philosophia vulgaris’ and similar expressions
in the Latin works, which usually denote the standard Aristotelian
scholasticism. Now, we know that most of his criticism is directed
against the mere speculative ontology of late medieval thought and
against that kind of mathematics which separates quantities from things
quantified. But this does not mean that Bruno wants to have ‘the real
thing’ and to disregard philosophical principles. He wants them both:
principles, including numbers, ought to be real in being principles. And
the whole of Bruno’s argumentation from De umbris down to his
Paduan lectures on geometry is fighting with this antinomy, which is and
has remained the philosophical antinomy ever since.
So the factual teaching about orbs and stars, matter and form, powers
and principles etc. which was common in Bruno’s time is being
criticized. But Bruno’s dissent does not protest against lack of empirical
evidence (as Francis Bacon would claim) but against proposing
epistemic principles as being natural without reflecting critically on how
they come to be, namely, by thought. Bruno’s enemies teach speculations
as natural facts, while Bruno demands that natural facts have to be
thought. I think this complies with the third definition of philosophy:
‘rationally critical thinking … about the general nature of the world …
[and] the justification of belief’.
Philosophers of our age might profit from Bruno if they took the
pains to read ‘through’ his text in search of reflections on how
philosophy works or should work. Let me quote one more example of
how Bruno characterizes the aim of philosophy:
14 Giordano Bruno, (1999), Opere, a cura di Ordine, Nuccio, Rome: Lexis Progetti
editoriali (Classici del Pensiero Europeo).

412 GIORDANO BRUNO
In any philosophy (even though not all thinkers have expressed it or

cared about it, such as those who were more concerned with
practical matters or with a specific rather than the universal
principle of thought) the substance and matter of things is
something different from what is efficient, controlling and ordering
everything.15
I paraphrase this statement as follows: in philosophizing we have to

distinguish subject matter and principles. If we think of some ongoing
discussions about God, atoms, energy or time, this seems to be good
advice. Bruno is well aware that not all thinkers do respect this rule of
distinguishing the object of a science and its principles, and he justifies
their approach as being due to their practical aims or to the local validity
of their theory. In other words, neither physicists nor technicians are
obliged to think about God all the time. But they should not arrogate to
offer a surrogate for metaphysics and theology.
The rule of identity of theoretical principle and factual (objective)
object is also stated in De minimo: ‘Whoever intends to philosophize …
has to judge and determine about the validity of the doctrine, … which
has to be coherent with itself and with things, as well as with the
evident truth understood by the light of reason.’16 Please note in the
Latin text the complex hyperbata: ‘de constantis … doctrinae vigore’
and ‘de … veritate’. Philosophy can only be vigorous if it encompasses
coherence in theory with respect to the philosophical system and to the
object to which the theory extends. And only in this sense truth can be
or has been accomplished. Truth, then, is not only but is also
theoretical coherence; it is not only but is also justified belief, because
it is in the first place the internal link between facts and their principles
as they work in reality and are scientifically understood. It is along the
same lines that one should interpret Bruno’s repeated definition of
philosophy as physics, mathematics and metaphysics. From the
historian’s point of view he is repeating and permutating the Platonic
division of intellectual realms. He might also be mixing it up with some
Scholastic teaching about the differentiation of sciences, but in his
characteristic serial permutation he is actually drawing our attention
15 Acrotismus camoeracensis, Articulus 6, BOL, I, i, 100: ‘In omni tamen
philosophandi genere, (licet ipsum non omnes expresserint vel curarint, utpote qui magis
ad aliquam praxim, vel ad definitam quandam potius, quam ad universam contemplandi
rationem adspirarunt) alterum intelligimus quod rerum est substantia atque materia,
alterumque quod omnium sit efficiens, director, et ordinator’ – all translations from Latin
are mine.
16 De minimi existentia, BOL, I, iii, 137: ‘Qui philosophari concupiscit … de
constantis sibi atque rebus doctrinae vigore … de rationis lumine veritate inspicua iudicet
et definiat.’
away from the textbook definition towards the consideration of the

operational validity of scientific thought. For example, in his Figuratio
physici auditus he says:
Theoretical philosophy is divided into three parts: physics,
mathematics and metaphysics.
(1) The first is about natural, the second about middle, the third
about divine things.
(2) The first is about what comes to be and is among us, the second
about their number, measure and dynamics, the third about their
causes.
(3) The first is about what is and has to be thought with matter, the
second about what is with matter but is being thought without it,
the third about what is and has to be thought without matter.
(4) The first is about what subsists, the second about what is
inherent, the third about what persists.
(5) The first is about what is by its nature most concrete, the second
about what is rationally abstract, the third about what is by itself
separate.
(6) The first is in the first place about what is many, the second
about what is in many, the third about what is before the many.
(7) The first leads to moral, the second to rational, the third to
heroic life.
(8) The first is like reflecting on the uneven, the second on the
straight, the third on the intellect.
(9) In the first the demonstration of the cause is easier, in the second
almost always the perfect demonstration (that is, of both cause and
sign), in the third the demonstration of sign.17
In this exposition which is at the same time quite scholastic and typical
of Bruno’s serial argumentation, the modern philosopher is being told
17 BOL, I, iv, 140: ‘In tres partes contemplativa dividitur philosophia, physicam,
mathematicam, metaphysicam. (1) Prima est de rebus naturalibus, secunda de mediis,

tertia de divinis. (2) Prima est de iis quae apud nos fiunt atque sunt, secunda de eorum
numero et mensura atque momento, tertia de eorumdem causis. (3) Prima est de iis quae
cum materia sunt atque considerantur, secunda de iis quae cum ipsa sunt sed non cum ipsa
considerantur, tertia de iis quae sine illa tum sunt tum considerantur.
(4) Prima de subsistentibus, secunda de inexistentibus, tertia de persistentibus. (5)
Prima de natura concretis maxime, secunda de ratione abstractis, tertia de per se separatis.
(6) Prima de iis praesertim quae multa sunt, secunda de iis quae in multis, tertia de iis quae
ante multa.
(7) Prima ad moralem praesertim vitam confert, secunda ad rationalem, tertia ad
heroicam. (8) Primae consideratio est veluti de simo, secundae veluti de rectitudine, tertiae
veluti de intellectu. (9) In prima facilius exercetur demonstratio causae, in secunda fere
semper demonstratio simpliciter, puta quae causae pariter est atque signi, in tertia
demonstratio signi.’ NB: Paragraphs and their numbering are mine. I have quoted the text
at length in order to show how Bruno’s concept of metaphysics is embedded in a serial
presentation of philosophy as a whole. In what follows I will select only the references to
metaphysics (‘tertia’).
414 GIORDANO BRUNO
that metaphysics is implicitly theological (1) in that it deals with the

causes of natural science (2) leaving aside, however, the material aspect
of its objects (3). In doing so, the subject matter of metaphysics is not a
substance as a compound of certain features, but persistence (4),
supposing there is such a thing in reality. This persistence, though, is not
a temporal qualifier but an ontological one – in scholastic terms,
something separate (5). Multitude, on the other hand, has not only
physical connotations (6), but moral, too (7). Therefore metaphysics is
metaphorically speaking something heroic, or in plain words: not such
an easy job.18 It is finally the discipline of intellect (8), that is, of
understanding and of spirit. Spirit thus becomes qualified by previous
statements as an immaterial and permanent agent of real things that
come to be and exist. And the metaphysical method of demonstrating
real causes is, indeed, not causal in the empirical sense, but – due to the
immaterial nature of its subject matter – metaphorical or of signs (9). It
should be noted that at this point Bruno is playing with a standard
qualification of scientific demonstrations: demonstrations in the realm
of physics are from effect to cause. A demonstratio simpliciter would be
one which shows both the cause and its efficiency in the effect, as is
possible in mathematics where the cause can be perfectly known from
the effect and the necessity of the effect from cause is evident. Now,
demonstrations from effect to cause are usually also known as
demonstratio signi, that is, the effect is perceived as a ‘sign’ for the
effectiveness of the cause. But here in this text, which is a
mnemotechnical processing of Aristotle’s Physics, Bruno deviates from
the standard terminology and assigns the signum to metaphysics. This is
in line with his combinatorics and theory of images and figures, because
for him everything that exists is a figuration or a sign for the existence
and presence of the metaphysical One.
Of course, to any skilled metaphysician a whole bunch of debatable
assumptions is included in this statement, but even this might be
sufficient evidence for the fact that Bruno is actually doing metaphysics.
In order to make things more complicated, let us ask: ‘So, according to
Bruno, is metaphysics possible or not?’ Two answers are possible, which
may be labelled as Platonic and as rationalist. Either, metaphysics is
being described here as the way to the real and super-rational intuition
of the eternal principles of all being. Or – looking back from the peak
down to earth – metaphysics is the (‘heroic’) realm of spiritual hermitage
which at best can communicate through symbolic language (‘signi’) and
eventually does not communicate at all.
18 For the sake of completeness I may refer to Degli eroici furori.

I could easily continue at length with interpreting more or less

popular quotations from Bruno. What is sufficiently evident, I hope, is
that we ought to read Bruno’s philosophy as a highly differentiated
discussion about philosophical theorems, and not just as their
unwarranted accumulation and proclamation. But to me even this is not
enough: Bruno is actually performing what modern philosophy ought to
do – he is not only attempting to justify philosophical doctrines, he is
reflecting on the method of philosophical justification and on the very
possibility of philosophy. And I am sure I am not forcing Bruno’s texts
but simply taking them seriously as a philosopher.
Index
Note: Page references in italics relate to illustrations
Abano, Pietro d’ 244 Aristotle and Aristotelianism 9, 13,

Abbot, George 201 106, 182, 233–9, 243, 247,
absolute minima 302–4, 308–9, 266–7, 270, 279, 285, 302–8,
315–16, 322–3 311, 315–16, 333, 337, 348,
absolute rationality 323, 325 371–6, 380, 387, 414
Abu Ma’shar 240 Arnauld, Antoine 354
Accademia della Crusca 192–4 Arundel, Earl of 172, 181, 185
Achelley, Thomas 177 astrology 229–49
Actaeon myth 114–18, 158–61, 283 atheism 322, 350
Adorno, Theodore 360 atomism 308–13, 318, 321–2, 401
Aeneid, the 204–7 Augustine, Saint 106, 109–10, 155,
Agrippa, Henricus Cornelius 252 333, 400
Ailly, Pierre d’ 236 Averroës 10
Albert the Great 235, 245, 333–4 Avicenna 229
alchemy 378–9, 390
Alençon, Francis, Duke of 202, Bacon, Francis 157, 165, 411
214–15 Badaloni, Nicola 258
Alexander VI, Pope 211 Bandello, Matteo 177
‘all things are in all things’, doctrine Barberini, Maffeo 68, 75
of 394–5 Barker, Peter 156
Aloisio, Aniello d’ 20, 40 Baronio, Cardinal 83
Alsted, John Henry 257, 388–90 Bartholmess, Christian 24
America 10, 127–30, 208–13, Battistini, Andrea 356
219–21 Baxendal, Michael 122
Anglicus, Robert 235 Baxter, Richard 150
animism 81 Bellarmine, Robert 62–3, 67–75,
Anselm, Saint 308, 314 83–4
anticlericalism 25–6, 29, 31–2, 35–6, Belo, Francesco 11
74 Bembo, Pietro 8, 193, 198
Aquilecchia, Giovanni 51, 132, 135, Benjamin, Walter 360
167, 177, 187–90, 209–10, 224 Berti, Domenico 32
Aquinas, St Thomas 79, 229, 235–6, Biblical authority 66–70, 75, 82–5
325, 333–4 Biblical interpretation 154–6
Arab scholarship 234, 246–7 Bisterfeld, John Henry 389, 391, 394
Aretino, Pietro 11, 175, 181, 191, Bloch, E. 348
193 blood, circulation of 365–80
Ariosto, Ludovico 121–5, 129, Boccaccio, Giovanni 113–14, 178,
132–41, 180, 193, 208–9 193
418 INDEX
Bodin, Jean 240–41 and Vico 345–63

Boehme, Jakob 408 visual and mental images of 17–49
Boiardo, Matteo 180 works
Bonghi, Ruggiero 32 Cabala 10–11, 153, 201,
Borgia, Girolamo 104 288–90
Brahe, Tycho 241, 409 Camoeracensis acrotismus 409
Brictanus, Jacobus 57 Candelaio 7, 97, 188, 195,
Brunnhofer, Hermann 384 192, 198, 205
Bruno, Giordano Cantus Circaeus 60, 258, 272,
anti-Reformism of 11 358
and the art of memory 251–70, Causa 9–10, 61, 140, 163, 276,
345, 351–8, 406, 409 306–7, 322, 337, 348, 410
and astrology 229–32, 238–49 La cena de le Ceneri 9–10, 51,
and Charlewood 167–8, 173–4 61, 102, 122–40, 153–4,
on the circulation of blood 365, 157, 167, 191–2, 195–8,
368–70 201–25, 300, 310, 322
conception of the Universe 9, 13, De imaginum 13, 254, 258,
61, 81, 153, 262, 268–9, 352–3, 356–8, 361
396–8, 401 De immenso 6, 13, 61, 148,
cosmology of 7–10, 13, 158, 239, 157, 221, 240, 294–7,
247 368, 397, 399
eclecticism of 270–71 De lampade combinatoria 388
excommunication of 12 De magia 277, 311
execution of 14, 25, 27, 33, 65 De minimo 6, 61, 165, 291, 299,
and Florio 187–92, 195–8 309, 348, 394, 398, 412
and Galileo 51–4, 70–85 De monade 6, 13, 61, 360,
in Geneva 152 368, 385
and Harvey 365, 370–80 De rerum principiis 239, 243,
and Hermeticism 7–8, 52, 54, 368, 379
78–9, 251, 254–6, 268–9, De umbris 6, 108, 111,
351–2 252–60, 265, 268–70,
and Leibniz 381–401 322, 335, 345–6, 352,
and literary memory 134–7, 140–41 358, 406
and magic 78–9, 243, 249, 266, De vinculis 280
351–2 Explicatio 173, 331
and metempsychosis 273–4, Figuratio 413
279–97 Furori 10–12, 108, 115–18,
and monadology 381–400 139, 157–65, 180, 196–8,
and monasticsm 151–3 280, 282–4, 290–1, 340,
in Naples 121–2 348
and Petrarchism 196–8 Infinito 9–10, 61, 139, 239–40,
and present-day philosophy 277, 349
405–15 Libri Physicorum Aristotelis
as prophet of a new religion 229
30–31 Medicina Lulliana 246
and the Protestant Reformation Sigillus sigillorum 276, 327–41,
145–66 359–60
‘standard portrait’ of 23–4, 29, Spaccio 10, 137–8, 148, 196,
32, 35 205, 221, 223, 229, 241,
trial of 14, 52–65, 70–77, 80–82, 273, 280, 284–6, 299,
85, 278, 284–5, 296 385
INDEX 419
Summa terminorum Constable, Henry 180

metaphysicorum 390 Conte, Giambiagio 128
Theses de magia 348 ‘contractio’, meanings of 327–41
Bruno, Saint 33, 47 Cooper, Catherine 176
Buddhism 273–4 Copenhaver, Brian 255, 272
Burby, Cuthbert 179 Copernicanism 13, 65–9, 75, 82–3,
Burke, Peter 17 125, 153, 156–7, 183, 237
Butter, Thomas 177 corporeal and incorporeal matter
Byrne, M. St Clare 175 276–9
Corro, Antonio de 184
Caccini, Tommaso 67, 71 Corsana, Antonio 258
Calcidius 112, 234 cosmos, the 360
Calvin, John 11, 149–52, 185, 230 Cotin, Guillaume 97, 146
Camillo, Giulio 354–5 Council of Trent 98, 100, 105, 149
Capece, Scipione 13 Council of Vienne 285
Caracciolo, Gian Galeazzo 152 Cristoforo, Giacinto de 350
Carafa, Antonio 98, 100, 102 Croce, Benedetto 350
Carrière, Moriz 408 Cusanus 335–8, 341, 382–4, 389–94,
Carruthers, Mary 122 408
Castelli, Benedetto 66–7, 83
Castelnau, Michel de 174–5, 201 da Brescia, Arnaldo 26
Castelvetro, Giacomo 173–4, 177 da Crescenzo, Raffaele 27, 42
Castelvetro, Jacopo 190 da Nocera, Domenico 57
Castiglione, Gian Battista 173–4, da Salò, Giulio 57
193 Daniel, Samuel 180–81
Caussin, Nicolas 349 Dante 130, 135–6, 193
Cecil, William 167, 222–3 Danter, John 179
Celestino da Verona 58–9, 65, 79 De León-Jones, Karen 270–71
censorship 349–50 De Sanctis, Francesco 345
Chapman, George 218 Della Volta, Gabriele 104
Charles of Burgundy 211 Delsenbach, Johann Adam 21–2, 40
Charles V, Emperor 208, 210 Democritus 401
Charlewood, Alice 177 demonstratio simpliciter and
Charlewood, John 167–86, 191 demonstratio signi 414
Chateillon, Sébastian 152 Denham, Henry 177
Christina, Grand Duchess of Tuscany Descartes, René 372, 389–90, 397,
66, 83 406
Cicero 233, 332–3 descension 327–8, 338–9
Ciliberto, Michele 152, 158, 187, Diana the huntress 113–18, 158–63,
201–2, 270, 276–7, 296–7 283–4
Ciotti, Giambattista 57, 59 Dicson, Alexander 163, 307
Citolini, Alessandro 195 Dietrich of Freiberg 334
Clemens, Franz Jacob 406–8 Digges, Leonard 9
Clement V, Pope 285 Digges, Thomas 9, 182
Clement VII, Pope 103–4 Doni, Anton Francesco 197
Clement VIII, Pope 60, 63, 98 Drake, Sir Francis 210, 221
Collinson, Patrick 162–3 Dudley, Robert see Leicester, Earl of
Colombo, Realdo 366 ‘Dying Gaul’ statue 28, 42
Colonna, Francesco 180
Columbus, Christopher 125–35 ecclesiastical tradition 155
passim, 209, 218–19 Egidio da Viterbo 102–18
420 INDEX
Elizabeth I, Queen of England 9–10, Germinus 233

162, 198–9, 202, 211–18, 222–4 Gervasi, Nicola 20
Elizabeth, Princess (daughter of James Gesualdo, Carlo 102
I of England) 214, 218 Giacco, Bernardo Maria 350
emanation 333–4, 337–8 gnosticism 274
emblem books 353 God 313–14, 318–20, 324–5, 333–6,
Epicuro, Marco Antonio 115 387–8, 392–6, 411
Epicurus 284 Golden Fleece, the, Order of 208,
Erasmus of Rotterdam 100, 151–2 211, 224
Este, Isabella d’ 121 Golding, Arthur 204
good works 148–50, 281–2
faith, justification by 149–50, 281 Granada, Miguel Angel 159, 280,
Falckenberg, Richard 392, 394 283
Fanoli, Michele 26, 41 Graziano, Francesco 58–60
Felippe, Bartolome 176 Great Conjunctions 240, 248
Ferrari, Bartolomeo 26 Greene, Robert 181–2
Ferrari, Ettore 32–6, 44–6, 48 Greville, Sir Fulke 146, 153–4, 191
Ficino, Marsilio 7, 106–8, 111–12, Gundling, Nicolaus Hieronymus 21
118, 160, 201, 237, 252, 259,
265, 327–33, 338–41 Hackett, Thomas 178, 181
Filonardi, Marcello 59 Hamann, Johann Georg 408
Firpo, Luigi 81, 276, 296 Harington, Sir John 210
Florence 75–6, 193 Harvey, William 365–80
Florio, John 178, 187–99 Hatton, Christopher 213
Fludd, Robert 354, 378–9 Hegel, Georg Friedrich Wilhelm 406
Foscarini, Paolo Antonio 68 Helmstedt 18–20
Foxe, John 184 Henri III of France 174, 223
Frederick II, Emperor 234–5 Henry, Prince (son of James I of
free will 324 England) 214–15
Freemasonry 32, 34, 54 Herborn encyclopaedists 382,
French, R. 378 388–92, 401
Friedmann, Georges 385 heresy 62–70, 76, 81–5, 397–8
frontispieces 356–8 Hermeticism 7–8, 234, 251, 254–6,
fundamentalism, religious 83 268–9, 351–2
Hersant, Yves 6–7
Gager, William 216–17, 223 Holy Spirit 61
Galen 365–8, 376 Holyband, Claudius 190
Galileo 8, 20, 26, 40, 51–5, 65–77, Homer 348, 355
82–5, 130, 238, 371, 389–90 Hooker, Richard 150
Galizia, Nicola 350 horoscopes 232–3, 237, 247–8
Gareth, Benedetto 104 Houdon, Jean Antoine 33, 47
Garin, Eugenio 4, 6, 252, 259 Howard, Henry 183
Gascoigne, George 181 Howard, Philip see Arundel, Earl of
Gatti, Hilary 51, 187, 311–13, 352–3 Hutton, Patrick H. 346
Gemma, Cornelius 241
Geneva 152 identity of indiscernibles 394
Gentile, Giovanni 21, 162, 187, 345, immortality 284, 292–3, 398–9
348–50, 363 imperialism 148, 218–21
Gentili, Alberico 173–4 infinitism 81
geostatic and geokinetic theories Ingegno, Alfonso 152, 327–8,
65–9, 82–5 338–41
INDEX 421
inner light, the, doctrine of 156–7 macrocosm-microcosm analogy

Inquisition, the 55–85, 278, 285, 296 368–72, 375–80
Isidore of Seville 236 Maculano, Vincenzo 75
magic 78–9, 243, 249, 266, 351–2
Jaggard, William 172 Mann, Nicholas 187
Jerome, Saint 132 Mary Tudor, Queen 208
Jesuits 340 Masulli, Pietro 27–8, 36, 42
Jews, attitudes to 100–101, 107 Matania, Edoardo 35, 49
John of Jandun 235 mathematics 389–90, 401, 405–6,
Jones, Richard 177, 181–3 414
Julius II, Pope 103–6, 109 Mauvissière, M. de 213–14
justice 280–82 Mayer, Carl 22–3, 36, 40
justification by faith, doctrine of Mazzini, Giuseppe 25
149–50, 281 medical knowledge 234–5, 245–7
meditation 340
Kant, Immanuel 408 melancholic humours, theory of
Kepler, Johannes 156, 229, 237–8, 328–33, 339–41
389–90 Melanchthon, Philipp 100, 149,
Kermode, Frank 3–4 155–6, 230, 237
Kircher, Athanasius 390 Mercati, Angelo 80–81
Kott, Jan 220 Mesha’allah 240
metaphysics 414
language question (la questione della metempsychosis 273–4, 279–97
lingua) 192–3, 198 Metsys, Quentin the Younger 213
Laski, Prince Albert 215 Mexia, Pedro 183
Latta, Robert 385 Michel, Paul-Henri 309, 322
Lavinheta, Bernard 390 Michelangelo 102, 106
Leibniz, Gottfried 381–401 Minghetti, Marco 32
Leicester, Earl of 146, 162–3, 174, minima 299–320, 399
177, 179, 184, 186, 214, 222–4 Minois, G. 322
Leo X, Pope 103–4 mnemonics 251, 254–7, 268–9, 346,
Leo XIII, Pope 77 355–8, 363
Leoni, Ottavio 20 Mocenigo, Giovanni 55–61, 65, 71,
Loemker, Leroy 389, 398 78–9
logic 263 monadology 381–400
Lombard, Peter 100, 105–6 monasticism 151–3
Lorini, Niccolò 67, 71, 74 monism 273–4, 279–80, 290, 295–7,
Lovejoy, Arthur 395 300, 318
Loyola, Ignatius 340 Montaigne, Michel de 124, 209–10
Lucretius 132–5, 399 Mordente, Fabrizio 12
Lull, Raymond 382, 388–90, 397 Morghen, Raffaello 20, 40
Lullist wheels 252–5, 258–9, 262, Morosini, Andrea 57
267 Morselli, Enrico 24
Luther, Martin 11, 100, 104, 149, Moses 79, 241, 264
151, 154–6, 230 Mugnai, Massimo 391
Lyly, John 181–2 Munday, Anthony 176–9, 182
McGrath, Alistair 149 Namer, Emile 348, 397–8

Machiavelli, Niccolò 7, 10, 26, 175, Naples 27, 42, 97, 103, 121
191, 193 Napoleon 76
Macrobius 234 Nashe, Thomas 181
422 INDEX
Natalis, Hervaeus 235 Philip the Good 208

natural philosophy 55, 234, 244, Philip II of Spain 208
247, 321 Phillip, John 202
Neoplatonism 7–8, 103, 106–9, 118, philosophy, definitions of 408–12
234, 262, 330–34, 338–41, Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni 229,
363, 368–71, 376–7, 380, 395 237, 247, 271
Newman, Thomas 179 Pirola, Caterina Piotti 24, 41
Nicolini, Fausto 346–8, 363 Pius IX, Pope 25
Nietzsche, Friedrich 408–9 Plato and Platonism 106, 110–11,
Nola 26–7, 42 163–6, 232, 240, 264–5, 270,
North, Thomas 177 291–2, 306, 309, 322, 331,
Northumberland, Earl of 377 336–9, 348, 368–9, 373, 377,
Nowicki, Andrzej 21 380, 382, 387–8, 391, 398,
401, 412, 414
Oakeshott, Walter 211 plenitude, principle of 395–6
Ochino, Bernardo 184 Plotinus 233–4, 255, 262, 265–9,
Ordine, Nuccio 148, 187 387, 389, 395, 401
Oresme, Nicole 229, 235–6, 247 Politella, Joseph 386
Origen 292 Pomponazzi, Pietro 237, 240
Orlando furioso 121–5, 129–41, 180, Pontano, Giovanni Gioviano 103–4
191, 193, 208, 210 Previti, Luigi 24
Orphism 273–4 printer-publishers 168–70, 185–6
otio 146 Protestant ethic 145–6, 150–51,
Ovid 113–15, 204 164–6
Oxford 9, 108, 118, 150–53, Ptolomaeus and the Ptolemaic system
180–81, 201, 223 182–3, 229, 232–3, 237
Oxford, Earl of 174, 182 Puritanism 150
Pythagoras and Pythagoreanism 108,
Paepp, Johann 257 153, 163, 166, 265–6, 273–4,
Paleario, Aonio 13 281–96, 309, 315, 382, 386–7,
pantheism 280, 295 401
Papadopoli, Antonio 26
Papini, Mario 354 quintessence 9
Parisetto, Ludovico 13
Parkinson, Harry 381 Raimondi, Marcantonio 214
Pasqualigo, Luigi 178 Rainolds, John 152
patronage 185 Rak, M. 351
Paul, Saint 334 Ramus, Peter 181
Paul V, Pope 98 Raphael 106–8
Paz, Octavio 161 Recorde, Robert 9, 183
perfection, principle of 382–4, 388, Reformation, the 281
392–8 Renaissance, the 3–6
periodization of literature and resurrection 399–400
philosophy 3 reversal techniques 102
Perkins, William 146, 163, 165 Ricci, Saverio 187–8, 195
perspective errors 300–305 Richard of Middleton 235
Petrarch and Petrarchism 8, 12, 114, risorgimento movement 24–5
193, 196–8 Rixner, Thaddä Anselm 22
Petronijevic, Branislav 406 Roberts, James 172
Petrus Olivi 285 Robinson, R. 176
Peyré, Yves 210, 225 Rome 28–30, 36, 49, 57–8, 69
INDEX 423
Romeo, Rosario 209 Stoic philosophy 232

Rosenruth, Knorr von 385–6 Sturlese, Rita 256–61, 266–7, 352,
Rossi, Paolo 267–9, 356 358, 406
Symonds, J.A. 314
Sadducean doctrines 289
Salviati, Leonardo 193 Tansillo, Bruno 116–17
San Domenico Maggiore 97–8 Tasso, Bernardo 115, 124–5, 129,
San Giovanni a Carbonara 103, 107, 178–9, 193
118 telescopes, use of 66
Sannazaro, Jacopo 103–6, 113, 115 theodicy 281
Saturn 330 Teofilo, Vairano da 97–8
Savonarola, Girolamo 26 Tiphys 126–35 passim, 209, 218–19,
Schröder, Eric August 22 222
Schuler, Georg 211 Tirinnanzi, Nicoletta 159–60
Seneca 126–9, 202, 209, 332–3 Tocco, F. 306
Seripando, Antonio 107 Toland, John 384
Seripando, Girolamo 103–9 passim Toppi, Nicolò 350
Sextus Empiricus 229, 233 torture, use of 61–4, 70–73
Shakespeare, William 11, 186 Toscanella, Orazio 124
The Merchant of Venice 215 transmigration of souls 284–7, 294,
The Tempest 204–10, 214–24 297
Siber, Thaddä 22 Trithemius 244
Sidney, Sir Philip 146, 148, 153, Tuscany, Grand Duke of 66, 72, 76
162–3, 174, 179–80, 186, 273, Twyne, Thomas 183
286 Tyndale, William 149
signification 360 Tysdall, John 170, 182
Silvestris, Matteo de 58–9
Singer, Dorothea 399 Ubaldini, Petruccio 173, 190
Sixtus V, Pope 245 universal harmony 391
sloth 146 universal intellect 279, 287–8
Socrates 113 Urban VIII, Pope 68–75 passim
Solomon 109
Song of Songs 109, 118 Vaia, Francesco 58
sorti 121, 124, 141 Valdes, Juan 188
soul of the world (l’anima del Valletta, Giuseppe 349–50
mondo) 276–9, 288–97, 319, van Helmont, Francis Mercury
376–7, 410 385–6, 400
souls, human 61, 263–4, 273–9, Vasoli, Cesare 268–9
283–5, 289–95, 368–9, 373, Védrine, Hélène 258, 276, 279
376–7, 380, 399; see also Venice 55–9, 75
transmigration Verene, Donald P. 354–5
Spampanato, Vincenzo 162, 187, Vermigli, Peter Martyr 178, 184
192, 195 Vico, Giambattista 345–64
Spaventa, Silvio 32 Villani, Giovanni 193
Spenser, Edmund 186 Vio, Tommaso de 100
Spiera, Francisco 185 Virgil 128, 135–6, 204
Spinoza and Spinozism 400–401, 408 Vitelli, Giulio 98
Spruit, Leen 268–71, 352
Stationers’ Company 170–71, 176 Wagner, Gottleib Heinrich 23
Stein, Ludwig 384–5 Waldburg, Gebhardt Truchsess von
Stellato, Marcello 13 176
424 INDEX
Waleus 379 Wolfe, John 170, 173–7, 184,

Walsingham, Sir Francis 162–3 190–91
Ward, Roger 170 Wright, William 179
Warner, Walter 377
Watson, Thomas 179 Yates, Frances 7–8, 54, 78, 108, 135,
weather cycle 371–9 174–5, 187, 192, 194, 251–60,
Weber, Max 145, 150, 164, 166 266–72, 351–2, 406
Weigel, Erhardt 387–91 Young, Bartholomew 178
Weiner, Andrew 201–2
Weinrich, Harold 122 Zatti, Sergio 130
Whitney, Geoffrey 221 Zeno 348
Wilmot, Robert 202 zodiac, the 243, 252, 256
Wittenberg 154–6

Hilary Gatti - Giordano Bruno - Philosopher of The Renaissance-Routledge (2002)

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Giordano Bruno

Published 2016 by Routledge

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

Copyright © Hilary Gatti and the contributors, 2002

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Giordano Bruno: Philosopher of the Renaissance.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2001099632

ISBN 13: 978-0-7546-0562-1 (hbk)

List of Illustrations vii

Part One Introduction

1 Giordano Bruno as Philosopher of the Renaissance 3

Part Two Bruno and Italy

2 The Image of Giordano Bruno 17

Part Three Bruno in England

6 Giordano Bruno and the Protestant Ethic 145

8 Giordano Bruno’s Infinite Worlds in John Florio’s

Part Four Philosophical Themes

10 Giordano Bruno and Astrology 229

Part Five Influence and Tradition

15 Giordano Bruno’s Mnemonics and Giambattista Vico’s

1.1 Frontispiece of Giordano Bruno, Camoeracensis

d’illustri italiani fatte da Bartolomeo Ferrari al nob.

4.1 Frontispiece of Bruno’s Cantus Circaeus, Paris, 1582, a

9.2 Quentin Metsys the Younger, Elizabeth I (the ‘Siena

his first work on the art of memory published in Paris,

Giovanni Aquilecchia, formerly of University College London

Renaissance philosophy was a less narrowly, or if one prefers a less

Italian Cultural Institute in London. We are moved and honoured to be

Works by Giordano Bruno

Animadversiones Animadversiones circa lampadem Lullianam

De vinculis De vinculis in genere

BDD Due dialoghi sconosciuti e due dialoghi noti:

Y. Hersant, 1994 (‘Oeuvres complètes de

Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, Rome, 1964

Giordano Bruno as Philosopher of

While the title of my chapter – a title which to a large extent coincides

the illustrious critic of English Literature, Frank Kermode, had to say in

1.1 Frontispiece of Giordano Bruno, Camoeracensis Acrotismus, 1588, with

complicated by the ambiguity of a rebirth which sometimes seems to

by Yves Hersant (in Le Monde of 17 February 2000) though Bruno was

between brute animals and spiritual creatures towards a conception of

maritime expansionistic policy favoured by the queen herself. This could

negative aspects of Christianity are revealed as still predominant. To the

second great nucleus of his philosophical and poetic production would

Inquisition and arrested in May 1592. Transferred to the prison of the

Bruno and Italy

The Image of Giordano Bruno

Philosophers have rather seldom paid attention to the visual image of

1 See for instance Haskell (1993).

What may be the oldest known portrait of Giordano Bruno is a painting

some months in 1589–90 (Figure 2.1). According to the local tradition

3 This according to Rolf Volkmann, director of the Ehemaligen Universitätsbibliothek

Helmstedt, April 2001.

representation of Giordano Bruno: his name and countenance are

us. Neither of the two proved successful, at least not in terms of

published in some of Bruno’s early works (Gentile, 1907, p. xii).

14 Rixner and Siber (1824), frontispiece.

The effeminate youth in Meyer’s portrait answers exceedingly well to

A well-known example of early and on the whole remarkably accurate

23 On Mazzini and Bruno, see Gentile (1942), pp. 155f.

formidably evil ‘other’. Consequently, Bruno is almost always

27 Di sei statuette (1862).