The slander of inquisitors

Giordano Bruno - described as an Italian Dominican friar, philosopher, mathematician, poet, cosmological theorist, and Hermetic occultist - died all of 420 years ago today. It was very early days for diarists in Europe, and Bruno himself was not one. However, he was in the habit of visiting the Abbey of Saint Victor near Paris, to consult books in its library, and the librarian there, Guillaume Cotin, was a diarist. Indeed, Cotin’s diary entries are an important first hand source of information about Bruno.

Bruno was born in 1548, in Nola (then in the Kingdom of Naples), the son of a professional soldier. From 1562, he studied at an Augustinian monastery in Naples, and aged 17 he entered the Dominican Order at the monastery of San Domenico Maggiore in Naples, taking the name Giordano. He developed a particular expertise in the art of memory, which brought him to the attention of patrons, as well as an invitation to Rome to demonstrate his abilities to the Pope. He was ordained a priest in 1572, and, subsequently, began to study theology formally, obtaining his doctorate in 1575.

By then, however, Bruno had developed various heretical views and become a target of the Inquisition in Naples. He fled the city and religious life, becoming a fugitive from his order, an excommunicate, and spent the next 14 years travelling through Europe - France, England, Germany. The works he wrote and published (in Latin and Italian) during this period are those that survive to this day. He is mainly remembered today for his cosmological theories, that the universe was infinite with numberless solar systems. 

Wherever he went, Bruno’s passionate outpourings led to opposition. He worked when he could, teaching sometimes, and lived off the munificence of patrons, though he invariably tried their patience. In 1591 he accepted an invitation to live in Venice. But, once there, he was arrested by the Inquisition and tried. He recanted, but was sent to Rome, in 1592, for another trial. He was kept imprisoned for eight years, and interrogated periodically. But, ultimately, he refused to recant enough, and was declared a heretic. He was burned at the stake on 17 February 1600. Further information is available at Wikipedia, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy or The Galileo Project. All of Bruno’s extant published words are available online thanks to The Warburg Institute.

In the mid-1580s, Bruno found himself in Paris, and took to visiting the Abbey of Saint Victor to consult books housed in the library there. The librarian at the time, Guillaume Cotin, was an early diarist (as were his predecessors at the abbey), and mentioned Bruno several times in his journal. Some details about Cotin’s diary (and about the long-standing tradition at the abbey for brothers to keep journals) can be found in A Companion to the Abbey of Saint Victor in Paris edited by Hugh Feiss and Juliet Mousseau (Brill, 2017) - see Googlebooks.

‘Bruno visited Saint Victor to consult certain texts in the abbey’s library,’ the book explains, ‘and Cotin evidently enjoyed several long conversations with him. He learned where Bruno was living in Paris, what he was writing, what he was reading, and some of his ‘theses’. Cotin noted that Bruno fled from Italy to avoid the inquisitors and to elude authorities seeking him on charges that he had murdered a fellow monk. He also described Bruno’s celebrated debate over certain ‘errors of Aristotle’ with royal lecturers at the College of Cambrai.’

Actual quotations from Cotin’s diary can be found embedded in Squaring the Circle, Paris, 1585-1586 one of the chapters in Ingrid D. Rowland’s biography Giordano Bruno - Philosopher/Heretic (University of Chicago Press, 2008).

7 December 1585
‘Jordanus [Bruno] came back again. He told me that the cathedral of Nola is dedicated to Saint Felix. He was born in 1548; he is thirty-seven years old. He has been a fugitive from Italy for eight years, both for a murder committed by one of his [Dominican] brothers, for which he is hated and fears for his life, and to avoid the slander of the inquisitors, who are ignorant, and if they understood his philosophy, would condemn it as heretical. He said that in an hour he knows how to demonstrate the artificial memory . . . and he can make a child understand it. He says that his principal master in philosophy was [Fra Teofilo da Vairano], an Augustinian, who is deceased. He is a doctor of theology, received in Rome . . . He prizes Saint Thomas . . . he condemns the subtleties of the Scholastics, the sacraments, and also the Eucharist, which he says Saint Peter and Saint Paul knew nothing about; all they knew was “This is my body.” He says that all the troubles about religion will be removed when these debates are removed, and he says that he expects the end to come soon. But most of all he detests the heretics of France and England, because they disdain good works and prefer the certainty of their own faith and their justification [by it]. He disdains Cajetan and Pico della Mirandola, and all the philosophy of the Jesuits, which is nothing but debates about the text and intelligence of Aristotle.’

2 February 1586
‘Jordanus told me that Fabrizio Mordente is here in Paris, sixty years old, the god of geometers, and in that field he surpasses everyone who has gone before and everyone today, even though he knows no Latin; Jordanus will have his works printed in Latin.’