It is a great beginning, to have the thought of unity; and the other point is this attempt to grasp the universe in its development, in the system of its determinations, and to show how the outward appearance is a symbol of ideas. These are the two aspects of Bruno’s teaching which had to be taken into consideration. 4. VANINI. Julius Cæsar Vanini has also to be mentioned as belonging to this period; his first name was really Lucilius. He has many points of similarity with Bruno, and, like him, he suffered as a martyr on account of philosophy; for he shared Bruno’s fate, which was to be burned at the stake. He was born in 1586 at Taurozano in the province of Naples. He wandered from country to country; we find him in Geneva, and then in Lyons, whence he fled to England in order to save himself from the Inquisition. After two years he returned to Italy. In Genoa he taught Natural Philosophy on the system of Averroës, but did not bring himself into favour. In his travels he met with all manner of strange adventures, and engaged in many and various disputations on philosophy and theology. He became more and more an object of suspicion, and fled from Paris; he was summoned before the tribunal on a charge of impiety, not of heresy. Franconus, his accuser, stated on oath that Vanini had uttered blasphemies. Vanini protested that he had remained faithful to the Catholic Church, and to his belief in the Trinity; and in answer to the charge of atheism he took up a straw from the ground in the presence of his judges, and said that even this straw would convince him of the existence of God. But it was of no avail; in 1619 at Toulouse in France he was condemned to the stake, and before the carrying out of this sentence his tongue was torn out by the executioner. How the case was proved against him is not, however, clear; the proceedings seem to have been in great part due to personal enmity, and to the zeal for persecution which filled the clergy in Toulouse.[92] Vanini derived his chief stimulus from the originality of Cardanus. In him we see reason and philosophy taking a direction hostile to theology, while Scholastic philosophy went hand in hand with theology, and theology was supposed to be confirmed thereby. Art developed in the Catholic Church, but free thought broke off from, and remained alien to it. In Bruno and Vanini the Church took her revenge for this; she renounced science, and took up a position of hostility to it.