“to show me a single proof”: Ibid., 194v.
charity should guide religion: Ibid., 130r.
“To get to the individual”: Ibid., p. 168.
“As for the second person”: Ibid., p. 170.
the certainties of dogma: The fact that Bruno was encouraged in his opinion by Saint Augustine may suggest, once again, the influence of the Augustinian Teofilo da Vairano. The conclusion that Bruno drew from Augustine, however, that God does not consist in the separate person of Jesus of Nazareth, is evidently his own: Teofilo’s one surviving work, On the Grace of the New Testament, is, as its name suggests, a devotedly Christian tractate, as were the works of Teofilo’s Augustinian forebears Egidio da Viterbo and Girolamo Seripando.
Ecclesiastes: Bruno habitually adapts Ecclesiastes 1:9, whose full text states: “The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.”
freethinking Catholics: I owe this information to Peter Mazur.
“Do not infer”: Bruno, Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast, dialogue 3.
It is tempting: See, for example, Giovanni Gentile’s note to this passage in Giovanni Aquilecchia’s edition of Bruno’s Italian dialogues, p. 722 n. 2, referring to the Nolan’s “hatred for the Jews.” (It may be worth noting that although Gentile was Mussolini’s minister of education, he protected the Jewish scholar Paul Oskar Kristeller until the latter could escape to the United States; his reading of this passage should be imputed not to personal anti-Semitism but rather to the resonant name of Sophia.)
“He said that God”: Firpo, Il processo, p. 268.
“He rides upon a cloud”: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Vat. Lat. 5198, 247r.
9: ART AND ASTRONOMY
Remembering would become: Yates, Art of Memory; Carruthers, Book of Memory; Bolzoni, Gallery of Memory; Rossi, Clavis universalis.
Thomas Aquinas: Carruthers, Book of Memory, pp. 2–7, 201–4, and passim.
perform feats of recall: Ricci, Giordano Bruno, pp. 90–97.
The basic principle: Yates, Art of Memory, pp. 1–49.
Ramon Llull: Ibid., pp. 173–98; Rossi, Clavis universalis; Ricci, Giordano Bruno, pp. 150–65.
“We created this Art”: Llull, Ars compendiosa Dei, p. 1308.
San Domenico Maggiore: Canone, Magia dei contrari, pp. 95–118.
On the Sphere: Canone, “Variazioni Bruniane.”
Copernicus: Michel, Cosmology of Giordano Bruno; Gatti, Giordano Bruno and Renaissance Science; Blackwell, Galileo, Bellarmine, and the Bible; Granada, “Digges, Bruno, e il copernicanesimo in Inghilterra.”
Telesio had been living: The palazzo of the Duke of Nocera on the Via Medina was destroyed by the urban renewal program of risanamento in the late nineteenth century; see Alisio, Napoli e il risanamento, p. 133.
two mechanical forces, heat and cold: Spruit, “Telesio’s Reform.”
Another view of astronomy: Lattis, Between Copernicus and Galileo.
Clavius: Ibid.; Baldini, Legem impone subactis; Baldini, Christoph Clavius e l’attività scientifica dei Gesuiti nell’ età di Galileo.
commentary on Sacrobosco’s On the Sphere: Clavius, Bambergensis (1570).
10: TROUBLE AGAIN
For his own ordination: Spampanato, Vita, pp. 162–64, 697.
series of theses: Ibid., p. 180.
And then, early in 1576: Ricci, Giordano Bruno, pp. 100–105, 173–74.
As he later told his Venetian inquisitors: Firpo, Il processo, p. 157.
Bruno moved to Rome: Ricci, Giordano Bruno, pp. 104–15.
to defend Arius: Firpo, Il processo, pp. 170–71.
“never made a public denial”: Ibid., pp. 167, 170.
(as a papal bull put it in 1451): Netanyahu, Origins of the Inquisition, p. 1011.
obeyed the Spanish crown: Indeed, popes like Sixtus IV and Julius II protested vigorously against the excesses of the Spanish inquisitors; ibid., pp. 1027–40.
Roman branch of the Inquisition: Ricci, Giordano Bruno, p. 47.
attempt to impose the Spanish Inquisition: Ibid., pp. 33, 47–61.
But a search of the latrine: Ibid.
interconnecting cisterns: The cisterns of Naples can be seen on excellent guided tours, departing from the Spanish Quarter, and underneath the church of San Paolo Maggiore.
“He told me”: Ricci, Giordano Bruno, p. 144.
exactly ten years: Even so, Bruno was formally degraded (that is, ritually stripped of his friar’s habit and expelled from the priesthood) at his execution.
11: HOLY ASININITY
“I myself saw the friars”: Spampanato, Vita, also citing Bruno’s Candlemaker (act 1, scene 1) and Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast, dialogue 3. In the name of the blessed donkey’s tail that the Genoese venerate: Candlemaker, act 1, scene 1.
display the bone of a dog: Firpo, Il processo, pp. 278–79.
“A mixture of desperate souls”: Bruno, Ash Wednesday Supper, dialogue 2.
Asinità: Ordine, La cabala dell’asino.
“The Donkey’s Testament”: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Vat. Lat. 3370, 264v–265r.
“Blest asininity”: Bruno, Kabbalah of the Horse Pegasus, letter of dedication.
Jews: De León-Jones, Giordano Bruno and the Kabbalah, pp. 109–36.
“Learned Jews explain”: Digression in Praise of the Ass, cited by Gentile in Aquilecchia’s edition of Bruno’s Dialoghi italiani, pp. 838–39.
Discourse on the Ass: Pino, Ragionamento sovra del asino; see also Ordine, La cabala dell’asino, pp. 114–21.
Lazarillo de Tormes: Maiorino, Picaresque; Bjornson, Picaresque Hero in European Fiction; Parker, Literature and the Delinquent; see also Eisenberg, “Does the Picaresque Exist?”
Don Giovanni: Rowland, “What Communion Hath Light with Darkness?”
Wheel of Fortune: Ciliberto, La ruota del tempo.
seashells in the soil of Monte Cicala: Bruno, Ash Wednesday Supper, dialogue 5.
“Once upon a time”: Bruno, Candlemaker, act 2, scene 4.
12: THE SIGNS OF THE TIMES
“I stayed in Noli”: Firpo, Il processo, pp. 157, 159.
Mauro Fiorentino: Canone, “Variazioni Bruniane.”
Juan de Ortega: Rowland, “Abacus and Humanism.”
Clavius: Vetere and Ippoliti, Il Collegio romano; Clavius, Bambergensis (1581).
“Many absurd and erroneous things”: Clavius, Bambergensis (1570), p. 437, cited in Canone, Giordano Bruno, 1548–1600, p. 63.
softened his stance on Copernicus: Baldini, Legem impone subactis, pp. 127–53.
“Father Malaperti and Father Clavius”: Kircher’s statement is found in a letter from the French scholar Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc to the French royal astronomer, Pierre Gassendi, Aug. 27, 1633, Peiresc, Lettres.
“There I stayed for a month and a half”: Firpo, Il processo, p. 159.
On the Signs of the Times: Ricci, Giordano Bruno, pp. 116–19.
Sebastian Brant’s illustrated page: Rowland, “Contemporary Account of the Ensisheim Meteorite.”
Gerolamo Cardano’s cheap pamphlet: Grafton, Cardano’s Cosmos.
“Above the clouds”: Bruno, Heroic Frenzies, pt. 1, dialogue 5, emblem 3.
Lucretius’s great Latin poem: Although written in 1930, George Hadzsits’s Lucretius and His Influence remains unsurpassed.
Hubertus Grifanius: Spampanato, Vita, p. 650.
Fra Remigio Nannini: Ibid., p. 275.
sins of the flesh: Firpo, Il processo, pp. 288–89.
“We painters take the same license”: Archivio di Stato, Venice, Sant’Uffizio 33, July 18, 1573.
13: A LONELY SPARROW
“When I left here”: Firpo, Il processo, p. 160.
“Once I arrived there”: Ibid.
Gian Galeazzo Caracciolo: Spampanato, Vita, pp. 281–84.
attended Calvinist services: Firpo, Il processo, pp. 160–61.
“the Word of
God”: Article 24 of the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion: “It is a thing plainly repugnant to the Word of God, and the custom of the Primitive Church to have public Prayer in the Church, or to minister the Sacraments, in a tongue not understanded of the people.”
enrolled in the University of Geneva: Spampanato, Vita, p. 286.
Antoine de La Faye: Ibid., pp. 290–93.
“turn away … from the opinions of Aristotle”: Ibid., p. 294.
“treating exclusively questions of knowledge”: Ibid., p. 295.
“My lonely sparrow”: Heroic Frenzies, pt. 1, dialogue 4.
14: THIRTY
“I went to Lyon”: Firpo, Il processo, p. 161.
France … was a battleground: Ricci, Giordano Bruno, pp. 142–50.
The list of courses: Firpo, Il processo, p. 161.
Fibonacci: Rowland, “Abacus and Humanism.”
“No human investigation”: Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Urb. Lat. 1270, 1v.
“Philosophy is written”: Galilei, Il saggiatore, p. 24.
“Have it as you like”: Bruno, Ash Wednesday Supper, dialogue 1.
Aristarchus: Michel, Cosmology of Giordano Bruno.
The Arab astronomers: Ibid.
Nicolaus Cusanus: Ricci, Giordano Bruno, pp. 283–91.
On the None Other: Nicolaus Cusanus, De non aliud, 1.1: “Non aliud non est aliud quam non aliud.”
On Learned Ignorance: Gatti, Giordano Bruno and Renaissance Science.
Song of Songs: An excellent account of the allegorical interpretations of the Song can be found in the Anchor Bible edition: Marvin H. Pope, ed., Song of Songs: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1980).
“Against Love’s blows”: Bruno, Heroic Frenzies, pt. 2, dialogue 1, emblem 9.
Francisco Sánchez: Canone, Giordano Bruno, 1548–1600, pp. lxxxv, 79–83.
In the secrecy of a confessional: Firpo, Il processo, pp. 174, 176.
without involving the Inquisition: Ricci, Giordano Bruno, p. 382. Pope Sixtus V revoked this privilege in 1587.
Fra Domenico Vita: Firpo, Il processo, p. 163.
“he despised … all the philosophy”: Spampanato, Vita, p. 652, from the journal of Guillaume Cotin, Dec. 11, 1585.
imprisoned emissaries: Spampanato, Vita, pp. 303–6.
15: THE GIFTS OF THE MAGI
“If you knew the Author”: Bruno, Candlemaker, antiprologue.
As a child in Nola: On Natural Magic, par. 50, cited from Opere magiche, p. 234.
“Certainly in the interior regions”: Bruno, On the Immense and the Numberless, 4.11.
read the future: Bonnici, “Superstitions in Malta.”
Sorcerers and magicians: Stephens, Demon Lovers.
“A Greek who healed spleens”: Bonnici, “Superstitions in Malta,” p. 13 n. 54, from Archivium Inquisitionis Melitensis, Processi, MS 61 n. 209, May 20, 1649, f. 1048r–v.
“fascination”: Onians, Origins of European Thought.
“I gave a course”: Firpo, Il processo, pp. 161–62.
Johann von Nostitz: Canone, Giordano Bruno, 1548–1600, pp. 85–86.
These three works: See Sturlese, De umbris idearum, p. ix. Bruno also published his play The Candlemaker in the same year. The order of publication can be established by the fact that The Song of Circe mentions On the Shadows of Ideas, and On the Compendious Architecture mentions The Song of Circe; see Sturlese, De umbris idearum, p. ix.
“Just as painting”: Bruno, On the Shadows of Ideas, par. 101.
corrections in Bruno’s own hand: See Sturlese, De umbris idearum, pp. xii–xiv, xxvi–liv.
“clever application of thought”: Bruno, On the Shadows of Ideas, par. 119.
“a distilled and developed order”: Ibid.
He describes one system: Rita Sturlese presents this ingenious reconstruction in De umbris idearum, pp. liv–lxxiii.
“Pharfacon, Doctor of Civil and Canon Law”: Bruno, On the Shadows of Ideas, par. 11.
“a habit of the reasoning soul”: “Habitus quidam ratiocinantis animae,” in ibid., par. 87.
“A technical extension”: Ibid., par. 105.
“Just as a hand joined to an arm”: Ibid., par. 68.
“This art can be called nothing else”: Ibid., par. 17.
“A footprint is not an idea”: Vat. Lat. 6325, 39v.
Giles goes on: Vat. Lat. 6325, 111v, 61r.
“Shadow is not of darkness”: Sturlese, De umbris idearum, p. 26.
“Nor does Nature suffer”: Ibid., p 36.
“A clearer soul”: Ibid., p. 103.
“The light … contains all species”: Bruno, On the Shadows of Ideas, par. 65.
“We decided that this art”: Ibid., par. 86.
“Time takes away all”: Bruno, Candlemaker, “To Signora Morgana B.”
“O you who suckle”: Bruno, Candlemaker, “The Book, to the Drinkers from the Spring of Pegasus.”
“You, cultivator of the field”: Bruno, Candlemaker, “To Signora Morgana B.”
when they are acted out: A superb example was The Drinking Party, a version of Plato’s Symposium produced for BBC television in 1965, written by Leo Aylen, directed by Jonathan Miller, with Leo McKern as Socrates, and Barry Justice, Michael Gough, Alan Bennett, Roddy Maude-Roxby, John Fortune, Robert Gillespie, Julian Jebb, and Darroll Richards as the symposiasts.
Bruno’s philosophical drama: The director Luca Ronconi’s 2002 production of The Candlemaker for the Teatro Piccolo in Milan, apparently successful in that setting, was much less compelling at the Teatro India in Rome, where a deep stage made much of the dialogue unintelligible. Under such conditions, the absence of proper sustenance at the theater bar made dinner an altogether more tempting proposition than seeing the play through to the end.
“Back when we could still touch hands”: Bruno, Candlemaker, “To Signora Morgana B.”
16: THE SONG OF CIRCE
“Off-the-cuff”: Raphael Eglin, preface to Giordano Bruno, Summa terminorum metaphysicorum, A2r.
“There is only one difficulty”: Bruno, The Song of Circe, ed. Imbriani and Tallarigo, p. 216.
“This art requires much less work”: Ibid., p. 182.
San Felice Circeo: See the description of Circe’s promontory in Bruno, Heroic Frenzies, pt. 2, dialogue 5.
“Sun, who alone”: Bruno, Song of Circe, p. 188.
“What will you reply”: Bruno, On the Shadows of Ideas, par. 10.
Cicero had noted: Cicero, De oratore, 1.42.187–89.
Henri had signed a truce: Spampanato, Vita, pp. 328–29.
“If her Highness endure”: Aquilecchia, “Giordano Bruno in Inghilterra,” pp. 23–24.
17: “GO UP TO OXFORD”
This chapter owes a particular debt to Mordechai Feingold.
Henry Cobham: Aquilecchia, “Giordano Bruno in Inghilterra,” pp. 23–24.
a spy installed in the French embassy: This spy was not Giordano Bruno himself. John Bossy’s attempt to propose such a theory in Giordano Bruno and the Embassy Affair is as baseless as it is transparently sectarian (for his putative Bruno is not only a spy but also a sadistic torturer of Catholics). The real spy’s stream of letters, clearly dated, written in a French rather than an Italian hand, begins in April 1583, that is, before Bruno arrived in England.
ambassador maintained his residence: In Giordano Bruno and the Embassy Affair, John Bossy has proposed that the embassy was located in Salisbury Court rather than Butcher Row. Ricci, with admirable objectivity, notes that the speciousness of Bossy’s major argument (namely, that Bruno was a spy) should not detract from the more genuine results of his research; see Giordano Bruno, pp. 580–81 n. 8.
John Florio: Wyatt, Italian Encounter with Tudor England; Gatti, Renaissance Drama of Knowledge.
“As for critiks”: Florio, Second Frutes, A2.
His opportunity to “make [him]self known”: The following discussion owes a great debt to Feingold, “Bruno in England Revisited.” My
thanks to Mordechai Feingold for sending me this article, among others.
It was not a good time: This is brought out by Feingold, ibid.
“or that a scholer would faine read his lesson”: Florio, Worlde of Wordes s.v. boccata.
“When that Italian Didapper”: Cited in Aquilecchia, “Giordano Bruno in Inghilterra,” pp. 33–34.
“Philotheus Jordanus Brunus Nolanus”: Bruno, Explication of Thirty Seals, pp. 76–78.
“Not long after returning againe”: Aquilecchia, “Giordano Bruno in Inghilterra,” p. 34.
“Be circumspect how you offend schollers”: Florio, Second Frutes, p. 97.
“To the Malcontent”: Bruno, Ash Wednesday Supper, immediately following the title page.
18: DOWN RISKY STREETS
John Charlewood: Provvidera, “On the Printer.”
“Did they speak good Latin?”: Bruno, Ash Wednesday Supper, dialogue 1.
Fulke Greville: Ibid.
“Next Wednesday”: Ibid.
“But, I pray you”: Ibid.
“Up to now”: Ibid.
“England can brag”: Ibid.
sharing a goblet: Ibid., dialogue 2.
the Nolan’s ability to shed light: See Gatti, Giordano Bruno and Renaissance Science, pp. 49–78.
“Now, what shall I say of the Nolan?”: Bruno, Ash Wednesday Supper, dialogue 1.
“Now, in order”: Ibid.
“blind visions of vulgar philosophers”: Some historians of science have taken Bruno’s denunciation in this passage of “vain astronomers [mathematici]” and “vulgar philosophers” as a statement of contempt for mathematicians, compounded, then, by his misinterpretation of a passage from Copernicus later in The Ash Wednesday Supper, to build up a picture of Bruno as unscientific or antiscientific. But he is not saying that all mathematici are vain, any more than the Nolan philosopher, of all people, is saying in this same passage that all philosophers are vulgar. He is saying that it is useless for astronomers to have concentrated their attention on one star and its planets in the face of plain empirical evidence that the stars are infinite in number. The statement may not be courteous, but it certainly shows competence in, rather than hostility to, natural philosophy.
He called it a banquet: In the letter of dedication, and, of course, in his very choice of title, The Ash Wednesday Supper.
“Spread your wings, Teofilo”: Bruno, Ash Wednesday Supper, dialogue 2.
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