Had this new phase of the Italian Renaissance been permitted to evolve itself unhindered, there is no saying how much earlier Europe might have entered into the possession of that kingdom of unprejudiced research which is now secured for us.  But it was just at the moment when Italy became aware of the arduous task before her, that the Catholic reaction set in with all its rigor.  The still creative spirit of her children succumbed to the Inquisition, the Congregation of the Index, the decrees of Trent, the intellectual submission of the Jesuits, the physical force of Spanish tyranny, and Roman absolutism.  Carnesecchi was burned alive; Paleario was burned alive; Bruno was burned alive:  these three at Rome.  Vanini was burned at Toulouse.  Valentino Gentile was executed by Calvinists at Berne.  Campanella was cruelly tortured and imprisoned for twenty-seven years at Naples.  Galileo was forced to humble himself before ignorant and arrogant monks, and to hide his head in a country villa.  Sarpi felt the knife of an assassin, and would certainly have perished at the instigation of his Roman enemies but for the protection guaranteed him by the Signory of Venice.  In this way did Italy—­or rather, let us say, the Church which dominated Italy—­devour her sons of light.  It is my purpose in the present chapter to narrate the life of Bruno and to give some account of his philosophy, taking him as the most illustrious example of the school exterminated by reactionary Rome.

Giordano Bruno was born in 1548 at Nola, an ancient Greek city close to Naples.  He received the baptismal name of Filippo, which he exchanged for Giordano on assuming the Dominican habit.  His parents, though people of some condition, were poor; and this circumstance may perhaps be reckoned the chief reason why Bruno entered the convent of S. Dominic at Naples before he had completed his fifteenth year.  It will be remembered that Sarpi joined the Servites at the age of thirteen, and Campanella the Dominicans at that of fourteen.  In each of these memorable cases it is probable that poverty had something to do with deciding a vocation so premature.  But there were other inducements, which rendered the monastic life not unattractive, to a young man seeking knowledge at a period and in a district where instruction was both costly and difficult to obtain.  Campanella himself informs us that he was drawn to the order of S. Dominic by its reputation for learning and by the great names of S. Thomas Aquinas and Albertus Magnus.  Bruno possibly felt a similar attraction; for there is nothing in the temper of his mind to make us believe that he inclined seriously to the religious life of the cloister.

During his novitiate he came into conflict with the superiors of his convent for the first time.  It was proved against him that he had given away certain images of saints, keeping only the crucifix; also that he had told a comrade to lay aside a rhymed version of the Seven Joys of Mary, and to read the lives of the Fathers of the Church instead.  On these two evidences of insufficient piety, an accusation was prepared against him which might have led to serious results.  But the master of the novices preferred to destroy the document, retaining only a memorandum of the fact for future use in case of need.[84] Bruno, after this event, obeyed the cloistral discipline in quiet, and received priest’s orders in 1572.