Giordano Bruno

til the 21st of December of that year that the patience or perseverance of the Inquisition began to be exhau

on of Henry IV. of France, had united France again with Spain, and detached it from England, and had quieted or lulled numerous disputes within the Church itself. Rome was therefore crowded with visitors, more so than usual even in a year of jubilee. Of the distinguished foreigners paying their homage to Clement, Gaspar Schopp was one; facile of tongue as of pen, he quickly gained the Pope's favour, was made a knight of St. Peter, and a count of the Sacred Palace. This adept at coat-turning sent from Rome a letter to Conrad Rittershausen, which was for long the sole authority for Bruno's death, but was held by Catholic writers on Bruno to be a forgery. In the face of the solid arguments and evidence forthcoming, Catholic reviewers even at the present day deny that Bruno was put to death. It is quite needless at this date to enter into the question of the authenticity of the letter, its assertion of Bruno's punishment being the sole ground on which that was ever doubted.[126] We learn from it that Bruno was publicly reported in Rome to have been burned as a Lutheran; and one of the aims of Schopp in writing-which he did on the very day of Bruno's death-was to prove the falsity of this report. He had heard the sentence pronounced, and its damnatory clauses he gives as the following:-(1) Bruno's early doubts concerning and ultimate denial of the Transubstantiation, and of the virgin conception; (2) the publication in London of the Bestia Trionfanti, which was held to mean the Pope; (3) the "horrible absurdities" taught in his Latin writings, such as the infinite number of worlds, the transmigration of souls, the lawfulness and utility of magic, the Holy Spirit described as merely the soul of the world, the eternity of the world, Moses spoken of as an Egyptian working his miracles by magic-in which he excelled other Egyptians-and as having invented the decalogue, the Holy Scriptures a fable, the salvation of the devil, the Hebrews alone descended from Adam and Eve, other peoples from the men created the previous day; Christ not God, but an illustrious magician, who deceived men, and on that account w

d with images, which were presented to the condemned to kiss, from time to time, till the faggots were lit. Even the executioner was called to their aid occasionally, and the cruellest methods adopted to produce at least the appearance of kissing, and so of repentance. In obstinate cases, on the other hand, the tongue was tied, so that the heretic could not speak to the people. When the sufferers repented before death the Company took note of their last wishes, and they were buried in the tombs of the Cloister donated for that purpose by Innocent VIII., but if they were impenitent no will was allowed, and the ashes were abandoned to the winds of heaven. This must have happened in Bruno's case, for there is no mention of will or of burial in the report. Its date is Thursday, 16th February (an error for 17th), and it reads thus:[129]-"At the second hour of the night it was intimated to the Company that an impenitent was to be executed in the morning; so at the sixth hour the comforters an

Schopp, makes any mention of the occurrence or of the man; and Schopp did so only because he wished to point a moral from the case. During his seven years' imprisonment, Bruno had almost passed out of the short-lived memory of his fellowmen. Burnings of heretics were

s Aristotle's own teaching had to be defended in the Church, by the subterfuge of the twofold truth. Had his chief fault been, as some have thought, his praises of Elizabeth, Henry III., Henry of Navarre, Luther, Duke Julius, and other enemies, real or supposed, of the Church, he would not so long have occupied the prisons of the Inquisition. Probably his earliest biographer, Bartholmèss, was right in suggesting that Bruno was regarded as a heresiarch-he is several times so described in the documents-the founder of a new sect, the leader of an incipient but dangerous crusade against the Church. It was as the apostle of a new religion, founded on a new intuition, a new conception of the universe, and of its relation to God, that Bruno died. Had he been won over to the side of the Church, his mind conquered and his spirit crushed by the long years of waitin

tance, such as the human spirit is, can ever die. One of the highest values of his philosophy he thought to be this, that it freed man f

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tenebras, et no

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a posse pati no

mae domibus habi

cessity of the Eternity of all substantial things is clear, where nought is to be feared but to be deprived of human perfection and justice." His finest epitaph is to be found in his own words, "I have fought: that is much-victory is in t

e may have thought to supplant the old; now admired of kings, and sought after by the highest in the land, at another time a hunted pedlar of literary wares; then eight years in darkness from the world, with shame or death to choose for release. The choice made for the nobler end, the mockeries of religion he had detested and reviled pursued him to the end to