Fillippo Bruno, known as Giordano Bruno, was born at Nola, near Naples, in 1548.  This was eight years after the death of Copernicus, whose system he eagerly espoused, and ten years before the birth of Bacon, with whom he associated in England.  Of an ardent, poetic temperament, he entered the Dominican order in Naples at the early age of sixteen, doubtless attracted to conventual life by the opportunities of study it offered to an eager intellect.  Bruno had been in the monastery nearly thirteen years when he was accused of heresy in attacking some of the dogmas of the Church.  He fled first to Rome and then to Northern Italy, where he wandered about for three seasons from city to city, teaching and writing.  In 1579 he arrived at Geneva, then the stronghold of the Calvinists.  Coming into conflict with the authorities there on account of his religious opinions, he was thrown into prison.  He escaped and went to Toulouse, at that time the literary centre of Southern France, where he lectured for a year on Aristotle.  His restless spirit, however, drove him on to Paris.  Here he was made professor extraordinary at the Sorbonne.

Although his teachings were almost directly opposed to the philosophic tenets of the time, attacking the current dogmas, and Aristotle, the idol of the schoolmen, yet such was the power of Bruno’s eloquence and the charm of his manner that crowds flocked to his lecture-room, and he became one of the most popular foreign teachers the university had known.  Under pretense of expounding the writings of Thomas Aquinas, he set forth his own philosophy.  He also spoke much on the art of memory, amplifying the writings of Raymond Lully; and these principles, formulated by the monk of the thirteenth century and taken up again by the free-thinkers of the sixteenth, are the basis of all the present-day mnemonics.

But Bruno went even further.  He attracted the attention of King Henry III. of France, who in 1583 introduced him to the French ambassador to England, Castelnuovo di Manvissiere.  Going to London, he spent three years in the family of this nobleman, more as friend than dependent.  They were the happiest, or at least the most restful years of his stormy life.  England was just then entering on the glorious epoch of her Elizabethan literature.  Bruno came into the brilliant court circles, meeting even the Queen, who cordially welcomed all men of culture, especially the Italians.  The astute monk reciprocated her good-will by paying her the customary tribute of flattery.  He won the friendship of Sir Philip Sidney, to whom he dedicated two of his books, and enjoyed the acquaintance of Spenser, Sir Fulke Greville, Dyer, Harvey, Sir William Temple, Bacon, and other wits and poets of the day.