Please note that some of the links referenced in this work are no longer active.
References to Bruno’s works cite the section of the work in which the passage is found rather than pages of a particular edition. Like most sixteenth-century works, Bruno’s are divided into small sections, so that tracing an individual reference is never difficult.
PROLOGUE: THE HOODED FRIAR
statue of a hooded friar: See Berggren, “Visual Image of Giordano Bruno.”
“It is not our place”: Angelo Cardinal Sodano, “Letter [Feb. 14, 2000] of the Cardinal Secretary of State … to the Principal of the Pontifical Theological Faculty of Southern Italy,” www.vatican.va/roman_curia/secretariat_state/documents/re_segst_doc_20000217_sodano-letter_it.html.
1: A MOST SOLEMN ACT OF JUSTICE
For a public execution: See Ricci, Giordano Bruno, pp. 542–57; Spampanato, Vita, pp. 579–98; Firpo, Il processo, pp. 87–104.
Protestant troublemakers: See also the Avvisi di Roma.
“Today we thought”: Avvisi di Roma.
the burning of a Scottish heretic: His name was Walter Merse, and his death is reported in a compilation of executions effected in Rome under various popes, including Clement VIII; Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Urb. Lat. 1645, 337r–340v. The passage cited is found on 340r.
2: THE NOLAN PHILOSOPHER
Bruno’s home: Spampanato, Vita, pp. 1–66; Ricci, Giordano Bruno, pp. 7–32.
discuss how to live wisely: Bruno, Heroic Frenzies, pt. 1, dialogue 2.
“Once, when I was a boy”: Bruno, On the Immense and the Numberless, 3.1.
as if he were still there: Bruno, Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast, pt. 3, dialogue 1.
3: “NAPOLI È TUTTO IL MONDO”
My special thanks to Eugenio Canone, Maria Ann Conelli, Mario Pereira, Livio Pestilli, Sebastian Schütze, and John Marino for information about all things Neapolitan.
umbrella pine: This is the description of Pliny the Younger, an eyewitness to the eruption of A.D. 79, Letters, 6.16; see also 6.20.
rivers of fire: In fact, a flood in 1504 had generated a Nolan proverb about fearing water more than fire; see Bruno, Candlemaker.
“It was almost as if”: Bruno, On the Immense and the Numberless, 3.1.
wine: Bruno specifically mentions the asprinio of Nola and the “greco” of Vesuvius in Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast, dialogue 3.
“benigno cielo”: The line comes from Ash Wednesday Supper, dialogue 4; see the epigraph to chap. 17.
Beneath that benign heaven: Spampanato, Vita, pp. 66–243; Ricci, Giordano Bruno, pp. 32–51; Nino Leone, La vita quotidiana a Napoli al tempo di Masaniello (Milan: Fabbri, 1998).
Naples’s sixteenth-century population: See Chase-Dunn and Willard, “Systems of Cities and World-Systems”: In 1550, “Ottoman Constantinople was once again the largest city with a population of 660,000. Cairo was now second with 360,000, down 40,000 since 1500. [Tabriz, with about 275,000, would have been third.] Paris was growing again with 210,000. Naples was in fifth place with 209,000.” By 1575, Cairo’s population had shrunk and that of Paris and Naples had grown.
Spanish Inquisition: Ricci, Giordano Bruno, pp. 47–48; Olga Casale, introduction to Giovanni Battista Pino, Ragionamento sovra del asino, ed. Olga Casale (Rome: Salerno Editrice, 1982).
“the influence”: Ricci, Giordano Bruno, p. 33.
“To whom shall I dedicate”: Bruno, Candlemaker, “To Signora Morgana B.”
4: “THE WORLD IS FINE AS IT IS”
“The comedy will have”: Bruno, Candlemaker, proprologue.
“Consider that, like virgins”: Ibid., act 2, scene 3.
“It is common opinion”: Ibid., act 5, scene 19.
“O gentle master”: Ibid., act 2, scene 1.
5: “I HAVE, IN EFFECT, HARBORED DOUBTS”
San Domenico Maggiore: Miele (who is himself a member of the congregation of San Domenico Maggiore), “L’organizzazione degli studi”; Miele, “Indagini sulla comunità conventuale”; Spampanato, Vita, pp. 147–93.
Oziosi: I am indebted to Mario Pereira, “The Accademia degli Oziosi” (master’s thesis, University of Chicago, 1997).
weapons: Spampanato, Vita, pp. 196–212, 619–25.
Fra Teofilo Caracciolo: Ibid., pp. 200–201.
Gregory XIII: Cited in ibid., p. 200.
less accommodating: Canone, Giordano Bruno, 1548–1600, p. 37.
Council of Trent: O’Malley, Trent and All That; Gleason, Gasparo Contarini.
“I have, in effect, harbored doubts”: Firpo, Il processo, p. 170.
Fra Giordano Crispo: Spampanato, Vita, p. 125.
expulsion: Miele, “L’organizzazione degli studi,” pp. 49–50.
project he must have: An excellent account is in O’Malley, Praise and Blame in Renaissance Rome.
“Is it nothing to you”: The sorrows of Don Carlo Gesualdo, always a strange, aloof man, finally took him to the verge of madness; he would shock the residents of Piazza San Domenico one morning in 1590 when he opened his palazzo’s huge wooden door and laid out the naked, ravaged bodies of his earthy young wife, Maria d’Avalos, and her dashing lover, Fabrizio Carafa, whom he had stabbed the night before when he discovered them in bed together, as well as the body of the young daughter he now suspected might have been Fabrizio’s child rather than his own.
6: “I CAME INTO THIS WORLD TO LIGHT A FIRE”
Bernardino of Siena: Iris Origo, The World of San Bernardino (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1962); Bolzoni, Web of Images.
Mariano da Genazzano: O’Malley, Praise and Blame in Renaissance Rome.
Giles of Viterbo: O’Malley, Giles of Viterbo; Martin, Friar, Reformer, and Renaissance Scholar.
Fra Teofilo da Vairano: Giovanni Mercati, Prolegomena, pp. 121–23; Carella, “Tra i maestri”; Ricci, Giordano Bruno, pp. 40–46.
“what we have been taught”: Teofilo da Vairano, De gratia Novi Testamenti, c. 130r.
As it survives today: Probably about half the text of De gratia Novi Testamenti has been preserved.
“God is love”: Pope Benedict XVI, God Is Love (Deus caritas est) (Fort Collins, Colo.: Ignatius Press, 2006).
7: FOOTPRINTS IN THE FOREST
Marsilio Ficino: James Hankins, Plato in the Italian Renaissance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994); Allen, Marsilio Ficino and the Phaedran Charioteer.
Bruno’s work: For Bruno’s relationship to the Augustinians of San Giovanni a Carbonara, see Rowland, “Giordano Bruno and Neapolitan Neoplatonism.” For Platonic influence on Bruno, see also Bönker-Vallon, “Unità nascosta.”
In one manuscript from the Seripando library: Now Naples, Biblioteca Nazionale, MS 13.D.43.
“girded in chestnut”: Bruno, On the Immense and the Numberless, 3.1; see chaps. 2 and 3.
Calcidius: Van Winden, Calcidius on Matter.
“That hunter”: Marsilio Ficino and Giovanni Cavalcanti to Giorgio Antonio Vespucci, in Ficino, Opera omnia, vol. 1.2.631.
Seripando’s own copy: Naples, Biblioteca Nazionale, MS 8.F.8.
The “Sentences” According to the Mind of Plato: Sententiae ad mentem Platonis. See Gionta, “‘Augustinus Dux meus’”; O’Malley, Giles of Viterbo, pp. 15–16, 25, 197; Pfeiffer, Zur Ikonographie von Raffaels Disputa; Rowland, “Intellectual Background of the School of Athens.”
“Sometimes, however”: Giles of Viterbo, Sententiae, 37v.
a specific sum: Ibid., 37v–38r.
“God … created”: Ibid., 39r.
“Those blessed souls”: Ibid., 155r–v.
“I bear what I’ve become”: Giles of Viterbo, “La caccia bellissima dell’amore,” D iiir–v.
8: A THOUSAND WORLDS
For this chapter, I am indebted to Brian Copenhaver, Peter Mazur, and James Nelson Novoa.
all Jews: The Italian periodical Zakhor, issued annually, has articles on Jewish life in Italy; see also Cooperman and Garvin, Jews of Italy.
de Monte’s learning and eloquence: Spampanato, Vita, pp. 188–89.
“Judaizing”: This is the subject of a Ph.D. thesis by Peter Mazur, forthcoming from Northwestern University.
his readings in Kabbalah: See de León-Jones, Giordano Bruno and the Kabbalah; Idel, Kabbalah; Secret, Hermétisme et Kabbale.
Giles of Viterbo: O’Malley, Giles of Viterbo; Martin, Friar, Reformer, and Renaissance Scholar.
“all are elected by God”: Teofilo da Vairano, De gratia Novi Testamenti, 158v.
“Let no one think”: Ibid., 144r–166r, esp. 145r, 150r.
“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.
“Now what customs have I named”: Bruno, Cause, Principle, and Unity, dialogue 1.
Alexander Dicson: Clucas, “In Campo Fantastico.”
“As I was studying”: Bruno, Cause, Principle, and Unity, dialogue 2.
“You humanists”: Ibid.
19: THE ART OF MAGIC
“the Academic of no Academy”: The self-identification comes from the Candlemaker’s act 1, scene 2. We do not know the source of the poem.
“The point on which we should fix”: Bruno, Ash Wednesday Supper, dialogue 2.
These Hermetic books: Festugière, La révélation d’Hermès Trismégiste; Fowden, Egyptian Hermes; Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition; Gentile, Marsilio Ficino e il ritorno di Ermete Trismegisto.
“Do you not know”: Bruno, Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast, dialogue 3.
“And the devil that deceived them”: Revelation 20:10, 21:1.
This is not to say: In Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, Frances Yates argued that Bruno was trying to resurrect a kind of Egyptian religion, whereas most contemporary Bruno scholars regard the Nolan philosopher as a philosopher rather than a religious reformer.
“The stupid, insensitive idolaters”: Bruno, Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast, dialogue 3.
“You can see, then, how a simple divinity”: Ibid.
Elizabeth fought back: Elizabeth wrote in Spanish, French, Italian, Greek, and Latin as well as English; see Mueller and Marcus, Elizabeth I.
“How can my Muse”: William Shakespeare, Sonnet 38.
“Here Giordano speaks”: Bruno, Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast, dedication.
20: CANTICLES
“It is truly, O most generous Sir”: Bruno, Heroic Frenzies, dedication.
Penelope Devereux: Spampanato, Vita, pp. 385, 386.
“I mean for the world”: Bruno, Heroic Frenzies, dedication.
Tansillo: Rubino, Tansilliana; Erasmo Pércopo, introduction to Canzoniere, by Tansillo.
“With pretty blazes”: Bruno, Heroic Frenzies, pt. 1, dialogue 3.
“Felonious child of Love and Rivalry”: Ibid., dialogue 1.
“Finally, I mean to say”: Ibid., dedication.
“In this poetry, however”: Ibid.
“because two women are introduced”: Ibid., dedication.
“These are the lesser mysteries”: Plato, Symposium, 210A.
Marcantonio Epicuro’s poem: Gentile, in Bruno, Dialoghi italiani, p. 973 and passim.
Seripando’s library: 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, pp. 120–23.
The fact that there are two eyes: Canone, “Le ‘due luci.’”
“But here contemplate”: Bruno, Heroic Frenzies, dedication.
“As day and night”: Ibid., pt. 2, dialogue 5.
“‘O Jove, I envy not your firmament’”: Ibid., “Song of the Illuminati.”
“like those Irish exiles”: Spampanato, Vita, p. 387.
21: SQUARING THE CIRCLE
a menacing, unstable place: Ricci, Giordano Bruno, pp. 373–76.
“[I presented myself to a confessor]”: Firpo, Il processo, pp. 176, 196–97.
Sixtus V: Fagiolo and Madonna, Sisto V.
Jacopo Corbinelli: Ricci, Giordano Bruno, pp. 382–97.
“December 7: Jordanus came back again”: Spampanato, Vita, pp. 650–51.
Harold Urey: As a high school student, I heard Urey make this statement in the question period following a lecture at the University of California, Irvine, in the late 1960s.
Mordente came originally: Aquilecchia, Due dialoghi sconosciuti, pp. vii–xxiii; Ricci, Giordano Bruno, pp. 380–90.
his friendship with John Florio: Wyatt, Italian Encounter with Tudor England.
“I’d gladly have them translated”: Bruno, Cause, Principle, and Unity, dialogue 1.
“Is it not then possible”: “A Dream,” cited from Aquilecchia, Due dialoghi sconosciuti, p. 57.
Giovanni Botero: Spampanato, Vita, pp. 328–29.
“Why don’t you think it right”: Bruno, The Triumphant Idiot, cited from Aquilecchia, Due dialoghi sconosciuti, p. 5.
“This man who mentions”: Ibid., p. 16.
The reports of that debate: Ricci, Giordano Bruno, pp. 390–97.
Marburg: Spampanato, Vita, pp. 411–14, 663, 664.
University of Wittenberg: Ibid., pp. 414–22.
22: CONSOLATION AND VALEDICTION
Alberico Gentili: Feingold, “Bruno in England Revisited,” p. 332.
“I happen to have heard”: Spampanato, Vita, p. 419.
Paracelsus: Ricci, Giordano Bruno, pp. 406–8.
“On behalf of such a university”: Bruno, The Llullian Combinatory Lamp, ed. Tocco and Vitelli, p. 230.
The Lamp of Thirty Statues: This work was finally published in Florence in 1891.
Polycarp Leyser: Ricci, Giordano Bruno, 403–4.
Nicodemus Frischlin: Canone, Giordano Bruno, 1548–1600, p. 145.
Rudolf II: Ricci, Giordano Bruno, pp. 410–15.
“Venus, third heaven’s goddess”: Bruno, Heroic Frenzies, pt. 1, dialogue 5, emblem 11.
“Hear Solomon”: Wisdom 7:8–10. Douai-Rheims version.
“Her have I loved”: Ibid. 8:2.
“I came myself”: Bruno, Valedictory Oration, pp. 21–22.
Saint Vitus: Ianneci, Il Libro di San Vito.
John Dee: French, John Dee; Woolley, Queen’s Conjuror.
Don Guillén de Haro de San Clemente: Ricci, Giordano Bruno, pp. 417, 419.
“It happens that, against every reason”: Bruno, One Hundred and Twenty Articles Against Mathematicians and Philosophers, ed. Tocco and Vitelli, p. 4.
“As for the liberal arts”: Ibid.
“On November 21”: Ricci, Giordano Bruno, p. 411.
Hieronymus Besler: Ibid., p. 410 and passim thereafter.
National Library of Moscow: MS Noroff 36. The texts contained in the manuscript have been transcribed and edited twice: by Tocco and Vitelli in 1891, and recently by Simonetta Bassi, Elisabetta Scapparone, and Nicoletta Tirinnanzi. A full study of the manuscript still needs to be undertaken.
“God flows into the angels”: Bruno, On Mathematical Magic, par. 1, cited from Opere magiche, p. 4.
“I, for the exaltation of my goal”: Bruno, Heroic Frenzies, pt. 1, dialogue 3.
“Whoever comes across this book”: The notes were discovered by Paul Richard Blum in the Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel. T 1066 Helmst. 2.o, a copy of Paracelsus, Astronomia magna; oder, Die ganze Philosophia sagax der grossen und kleinen Welt (Frankfurt: Sigismundus Feyerabend, 1571). My thanks to Paul Richard Blum for pointing them out.
“The things that seem appropriate”: Bruno, On Mathematical Magic, par. 22, cited from Opere magiche, p. 72.
“This supreme concern”: Preface to Bruno, De Lampade combinatoria Lulliana et specierum scrutinio, ed. F. Tocco and H. Vitelli, Jordani Bruni Nolani Opera Latina, Vol. 2.3 (Florence: Le Monnier, 1890), p. 229 (a2r).
“That severed head of the Gorgon”: Ibid., (a2v).
23: INFINITIES
On the Immense and the Numberless: Published in Frankfurt in 1591 as De Innumerabilibus, immenso, et infigurabilis, sen, De Universo et mundis, the poem was republished in 1879 by Francesco Fiorentino as De Immenso et Innumerabilibus, which is now the usual short title for the work.
On the Immense traced a biography: Gatti, Giordano Bruno and Renaissance Science, pp. 29–37, 61–89, 100–117.
Atoms were the last piece … to fall into place: Ibid., pp. 128–42.
“I write for other than the crowd”: Bruno, On the Immense and the Numberless, 5.1.
“I hate the profane crowd and shun it”: Horace, Odes 3.1.1: “Odi profanum vulgus et arceo.”
“seeds of things”: See also Horowitz, Seeds of Virtue and Knowledge.
“Principle of existence”: Bruno, On the Immense and the Numberless, 6.5.
“Never shall you see the face”: Ibid., 1.7.
“Sun and Earth are the primal animals”: Ibid., 4.9.
“Isn’t it the mother of all follies”: Ibid., 3.3.
“Now, if you please, ask me”: Ibid., 3.1.
“Past time or present”: Ibid., 1.12.
“Bacchus and Ceres are thus”: Ibid., 6.5.
“Hence, as I make my journey”: Ibid., 19–24.
24: RETURN TO ITALY
Padua: Grendler, Universities of the Italian Renaissance, pp. 3–40, 366–71, 408–19.
Elena Lucrezia Cornaro Piscopia: Maschietto, Elena Lucrezia Cornaro Piscopia; Guernsey, Lady Cornaro.
Giovanni Vincenzo Pinelli: Ricci, Giordano Bruno, pp. 383–85.
Readings on Geometry and The Art of Deformations: Aquilecchia, Praelectiones geometricae, e Ars deformationum.
Giovanni Mocenigo: Ricci, Giordano Bruno, pp. 480–88.
Andrea Morosini: Ibid., pp. 478–80.
he began to hear Mass: Firpo, Il processo, p. 174.
Fra Domenico da Nocera: Ibid., pp. 21, 164–65.
“I was going to go to Frankfurt”: Ibid., p. 163.
“It seems to me that I had done enough”: Ibid., p. 155.
“I, Zuane Mocenigo”: Venice, Archivio di Stato, Sant’Uffizio 69, Case 19, May 23, 1592, 1r–3r; Firpo, Il processo, pp. 143–45.
“On that day, when I kept Iordano Bruno”: Il processo, p. 145.
New Prisons: The Dominican convent of San Domenico a Castello, which contained the inquisitorial prison, was demolished by Napoleon, along with forty-seven other parish churches.
“I was born and brought up among heretics”: Deposition of Marcantonio Pestalozzi, Venice, Archivio di Stato, Sant’Uffizio 68, Case 59, July 11, 1591.
“In this book I have found the following”: Deposition of the Reverend Father Sebastiano Taiapetra, professor of Hebrew, Venice, Archivio di Stato, Sant’Uffizio 69, Case 25, June 9, 1592.
“Traitor! Take that”: Firpo, Il processo, pp. 282–83.
Fra Celestino Arrigoni: Firpo, Il processo, pp. 42–49.
Giovanni Battista Ciotti: Ciotti would also publish the third edition of Christoph Clavius’s commentary on Euclid (with a false Cologne imprint), Euclidis Elementorum libri XV.
“I know this Giordano Bruni”: Firpo, Il processo, pp. 149, 151.
“Said Giordano … in Frankfurt”: Ibid., pp. 152–53.
“Matteo Silvestri”: Ibid., pp. 263–64.
“When the prisoners who were friars”: Ibid., p. 281.
“He replied”: Ibid., pp. 198–99.
25: THE WITNESS
“Ut essent duo testes”: “So that there would be two witnesses.”
Lepanto lay nearly a generation in the past: Ricci, Giordano Bruno, pp. 480–88.
On February 20, 1593: Firpo, Il processo, p. 40.
A later report criticizes those cells: Ibid. Visits to the cells are recorded in ibid., pp. 217–346.
Bruno was issued a warm mantle: Ibid., p. 217.
Fra Celestino … wrote a letter to the Roman Inquisition: Ibid., pp. 42–47.
“He [Fra Celestino] says that he deposes”: Ibid., pp. 47–48.
“he gave the finger”: The usual Italian gesture, the fica (vulva), is made by inserting the thumb between index and middle finger. In this case, the inquisitors literally call the act digitum ostendere, “showing the finger,” a gesture that was already known in ancient Rome; see Suetonius, Life of Augustus, 45.4.
“When Giordano was discussing”: Firpo, Il processo, p. 263.
no idea what he had written, nor how much: Canone, “L’editto di proibizione,” p. 57.
in possession of their souls: See Onians, Origins of European Thought.
26: THE ADVERSARY
Cardinal Santori: Ricci, “Giovinezza di un inquisitore.”
Robert Bellarmine: Godman, Saint as Censor; Galeota, Roberto Bellarmino arcivescovo di Capua; Baldini, Legem impone subactis, pp. 285–346.
Those first Jesuits: O’Malley, First Jesuits.
great personal modesty: The shrewd seventeenth-century cardinal Decio Azzolini would say that Bellarmine’s autobiography “has many signs of vanity”—“hà molta apparenza di vanità.” See Godman, Saint as Censor, p. 50 n. 8, where he cites Voto del Cardinale Decio Azzolini … nella Causa Romana di beatificazione e canonizzazione del Roberto Cardinale Bellarmino (Rome, 1749), pp. 54, 65.
“The censor is wrong to say”: The text is quoted in Godman, Saint as Censor, p. 301.
Bellarmine’s liquid space: A concise summary of Bellarmine’s cosmological views is provided in Blackwell, Galileo, Bellarmine, and the Bible, pp. 40–45.
the first Jesuit inquisitor: The prohibition on Jesuits joining the Inquisition was lifted in 1587, in order to appoint Bellarmine; see Godman, Saint as Censor, p. 74.
Giovanni Marsilio’s Defense: Difesa di Giovanni Marsilio, 3r–4r ff.: “Dell’Arti usate dal Signor Cardinale.”
“He was asked if he had ever argued”: Firpo, Il processo, p. 175.
2 (Summary heading 3). “About Christ”: Ibid., p. 259.
3 (Summary heading 2). “About the Trinity, divinity, and incarnation”: Ibid., p. 253.
4 (Summary heading 7). “That there are multiple worlds”: Ibid., p. 267.
5 (Summary heading 22). “About the souls of men and beasts”: Ibid., p. 283.
6 (Summary heading 1). “That Brother Giordano has bad feelings”: Ibid., p. 247.
7 (Summary heading 24). “That sins are not to be punished”: Ibid., p. 287.
8 (Summary heading 23). “About the art of divination”: Ibid., p. 286.
“You replied that if the Holy See”: Ibid., pp. 340–41.
the final insult: Muir, Mad Blood Stirring, p. 257.
27: GETHSEMANE
“Giovanni Mocenigo, accuser”: Firpo, Il processo, p. 259.
“Francesco Graziani, cellmate in Venice”: Ibid., p. 263.
“Matteo Silvestri, cellmate”: Ibid.
Corn Market: Foxe, Acts and Monuments, bk. 11, p. 1770. Hugh Latimer’s famous remark to Nicholas Ridley at the stake does not appear in the first edition (1563) of Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, but only from 1570 onward; hence, like Galileo’s “Eppur si muove,” it may be apocryphal.
28: HELL’S PURGATORY
discussed … torture: Firpo, Il processo, pp. 78–79.
“[Eight] propositions”: Ibid., pp. 82–104.
“Francesco Graziano, fellow prisoner in Venice”: Firpo, Il processo, p. 266.
29: THE SENTENCE
“Jesus said”: Matthew 18:20.
“We proclaim in these documents”: The text of Bruno’s sentence is printed in Firpo, Il processo, pp. 339–44.
the noble Cenci family: Brigante Colonna and Chiorandi, Il processo Cenci.
30: THE FIELD OF FLOWERS
“Thursday morning”: Avvisi di Roma, 110r–v; Firpo, Il processo, p. 356.
“Hence as I make my journey”: Bruno, On the Immense and the Numberless, 1.19–24:
Quapropter dum tutus iter sic carpo, beata
Conditione satis studio sublimis avito
Reddor Dux, Lex, Lux, Vates, Pater, Author, Iterque:
Adque alios mundo ex isto dum adsurgo nitentes,
Aethereum campumque ex omni parte pererro,
Attonitis mirum et distans post terga relinquo.
EPILOGUE: THE FOUR RIVERS
“In the first place”: Kepler, Dissertatio cum nuncio sidereo, 9v.
“For the glory of this world’s Architect”: Ibid., 10r.
“Perhaps [my adversary]”: Galilei, Il saggiatore, p. 24.
the idea that mathematics underpinned philosophy: Leonardo da Vinci, Note sulla pittura, 1r. See also Napolitano Valditara, Le idee, i numeri, l’ordine.