A Short History of Freethought Ancient and Modern, Volume 2 of 2: Third edition, Revised and Expanded, in two volumesRobertson, J. M. (John Mackinnon)
Religion
A Short History of Freethought Ancient and Modern, Volume 2 of 2: Third edition, Revised and Expanded, in two volumes
Robertson, J. M. (John Mackinnon)
Free thought -- History
For the second time a "process" was begun against him, and he
took flight to Rome (1576), presenting himself at a convent of his
Order. News speedily came from Naples of the process against him,
and of the discovery that he had possessed a volume of the works
of Chrysostom and Jerome with the scholia of Erasmus--a prohibited
thing. Only a few months before Bartolomeo Carranza, Bishop of Toledo,
who had won the praise of the Council of Trent for his index of
prohibited books, had been condemned to abjure for the doctrine that
"the worship of the relics of the saints is of human institution,"
and had died in the same year at the convent to which Bruno had
now gone. Thus doubly warned, he threw off his priestly habit, and
fled to the Genoese territory, [190] where, in the commune of Noli,
he taught grammar and astronomy. In 1578 he visited successively
Turin, Venice, Padua, Bergamo, and Milan, resuming at the last-named
town his monk's habit. Thereafter he again returned to Turin,
passing thence to Chambéry at the end of 1578, and thence to Geneva
early in 1579. [191] His wish, he said, was "to live in liberty and
security"; but for that he must first renounce his Dominican habit;
other Italian refugees, of whom there were many at Geneva, helping
him to a layman's suit. Becoming a corrector of the press, he seems
to have conformed externally to Calvinism; but after a stay of two
and a-half months he published a short diatribe against one Antonio
de La Faye, who professed philosophy at the Academy; and for this he
was arrested and sentenced to excommunication, while his bookseller
was subjected to one day's imprisonment and a fine. [192] After three
weeks the excommunication was raised; but he nevertheless left Geneva,
and afterwards spoke of Calvinism as the "deformed religion." After
a few weeks' sojourn at Lyons he went to Toulouse, the very centre
of inquisitional orthodoxy; and there, strangely enough, he was able
to stay for more than a year, [193] taking his degree as Master of
Arts and becoming professor of astronomy. But the civil wars made
Toulouse unsafe; and at length, probably in 1581 or 1582, he reached
Paris, where for a time he lectured as professor extraordinary. [194]
In 1583 he reached England, where he remained till 1585, lecturing,
debating at Oxford on the Copernican theory, and publishing a number
of his works, four of them dedicated to his patron Castelnau de
Mauvissière, the French ambassador. Oxford was then a stronghold
of bigoted Aristotelianism, where bachelors and masters deviating
from the master were fined, or, if openly hostile, expelled. [195]
In that camp Bruno was not welcome. But he had other shelter, at the
French Embassy in London, and there he had notable acquaintances. He
had met Sir Philip Sidney at Milan in 1578; and his dialogue, Cena de
le Ceneri, gives a vivid account of a discussion in which he took a
leading part at a banquet given by Sir Fulke Greville. His picture of
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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