What had happened all these years? Why was Bruno's life spared so long? This unusual clemency on the part of the Inquisition points to a great difference in their estimate of Bruno's importance from their view of that of other heretics. In a list of twenty-one prisoners of the Inquisition made on the 5th of April 1599, only one besides Bruno had been for more than a year in their hands; the duration of imprisonment for the others could be counted by months or days. As a general rule they were not slow in striking. Among the reasons that have been suggested is the time required to go over the four processes which had already been drawn up against Bruno, if the documents were extant, and to obtain and read his books and manuscripts. This may be dismissed at once; Bruno's books could not be scarce _then_, although they became so later, and it could not require six years to find enough material to condemn him if that were desired. Another suggestion is that Bruno was a Dominican, and the whole order was concerned in procuring his recantation, rather than have the scandal which his death in apostasy would cause. The historians of the order afterwards denied that Bruno, if really put to death, had been one of their order--"Had he been one of us he would have remained with us _et convictu et sensibus_."[124] More probable is the idea that Pope Clement had some favour for Bruno, who had intended to dedicate a book to him, and whose skilful pen and biting tongue he hoped to win over to the side of the Church. The book on the _Seven Liberal Arts_ may have been actually completed, and may have presented a _modus vivendi_ between religious authority and philosophic freedom, as Brunnhofer suggests. If the hope of winning him over was really held, it is not likely that they refrained in his case, any more than in Campanella's, from the use of torture. Bellarmino, a Jesuit, to whom along with Commissario the study of Bruno's works and of the processes had been entrusted, was one of the most learned prelates of the day, a keen and ready controversialist, in spite of his reputed love of peace, and a skilful writer of many apologetic and polemical works. Beneath the surface of enlightenment there lay hidden a nature of intense bigotry: it was he who decided that Copernicanism was a heresy; he played a part later in the process against Galilei, and in the attack upon Fra Paolo Sarpi; through his agency the Platonist Patrizzi was induced to retract his heresies, and his works were placed along with those of Telesius, the apostle of Naturalism, upon the index. [Sidenote: February 4, 1599.]