[Jordani Bruni Nolani de Monade, Numero et Figura ... item de Innumerabilibus, Immenso, et Infigurabili ... Frankfort, 1591, 8vo.[65]
I cannot imagine how I came to omit a writer whom I have known so many years, unless the following story will explain it. The officer reproved the boatswain for perpetual swearing; the boatswain answered that he heard the officers swear. "Only in an emergency," said the officer. "That's just it," replied the other; "a boatswain's life is a life of 'mergency." Giordano Bruno was all paradox; and my mind was not alive to his paradoxes, just as my ears might have become dead to the boatswain's oaths. He was, as has been said, a vorticist before Descartes,[66] an optimist before Leibnitz, a Copernican before Galileo. It would be easy to collect a hundred strange opinions of his. He was born about 1550, and was roasted alive at Rome, February 17, 1600, for the maintenance and defence of the holy Church, and the rights and liberties of the same. These last words are from the writ of our own good James I, under which Leggatt[67] was roasted at Smithfield, in March 1612; and if I had a copy of the instrument under which Wightman[68] was roasted at Lichfield, a month afterwards, I daresay I should {60} find something quite as edifying. I extract an account which I gave of Bruno in the _Comp. Alm._ for 1855:
"He was first a Dominican priest, then a Calvinist; and was roasted alive at Rome, in 1600, for as many heresies of opinion, religious and philosophical, as ever lit one fire. Some defenders of the papal cause have at least worded their accusations so to be understood as imputing to him villainous actions. But it is positively certain that his death was due to opinions alone, and that retractation, even after sentence, would have saved him. There exists a remarkable letter, written from Rome on the very day of the murder, by Scioppius[69] (the celebrated scholar, a waspish convert from Lutheranism, known by his hatred to Protestants and Jesuits) to Rittershusius,[70] a well-known Lutheran writer on civil and canon law, whose works are in the index of prohibited books. This letter has been reprinted by Libri (vol. iv. p. 407). The writer informs his friend (whom he wished to convince that even a Lutheran would have burnt Bruno) that all Rome would tell him that Bruno died for Lutheranism; but this is because the Italians do not know the difference between one heresy and another, in which simplicity (says the writer) may God preserve them. That is to say, they knew the difference between a live heretic and a roasted one by actual inspection, but had no idea of the difference between a Lutheran and a Calvinist. The countrymen of Boccaccio would have smiled at the idea which the German scholar entertained of them. They said Bruno was burnt for Lutheranism, a name under which they classed all Protestants: and they are better witnesses than Schopp, or Scioppius. He then proceeds to describe to his Protestant friend (to whom he would certainly not have omitted any act which both their churches would have condemned) the mass of opinions with which Bruno was charged; as that there {61} are innumerable worlds, that souls migrate, that Moses was a magician, that the Scriptures are a dream, that only the Hebrews descended from Adam and Eve, that the devils would be saved, that Christ was a magician and deservedly put to death, etc. In fact, says he, Bruno has advanced all that was ever brought forward by all heathen philosophers, and by all heretics, ancient and modern. A time for retractation was given, both before sentence and after, which should be noted, as well for the wretched palliation which it may afford, as for the additional proof it gives that opinions, and opinions only, brought him to the stake. In this medley of charges the Scriptures are a dream, while Adam, Eve, devils, and salvation are truths, and the Saviour a deceiver. We have examined no work of Bruno except the _De Monade_, etc., mentioned in the text. A strong though strange _theism_ runs through the whole, and Moses, Christ, the Fathers, etc., are cited in a manner which excites no remark either way. Among the versions of the cause of Bruno's death is _atheism_: but this word was very often used to denote rejection of revelation, not merely in the common course of dispute, but by such writers, for instance, as Brucker[71] and Morhof.[72] Thus Morhof says of the _De Monade, etc._, that it exhibits no manifest signs of atheism. What he means by the word is clear enough, when he thus speaks of a work which acknowledges God in hundreds of places, and rejects opinions as blasphemous in several. The work of Bruno in which his astronomical opinions are contained is _De Monade, etc._ (Frankfort, 1591, 8vo). He is the most thorough-going Copernican possible, and throws out almost every opinion, true or false, which has ever been discussed by astronomers, from the theory of innumerable inhabited worlds and systems to that {62} of the planetary nature of comets. Libri (vol. iv)[73] has reprinted the most striking part of his expressions of Copernican opinion."
