Mocenigo’s accusations in the main yield evidences of sincerity.  They are exactly what we should expect from the distortion of Bruno’s doctrines by a mind incapable of comprehending them.  In short, they are as veracious as the image of a face reflected on a spoon.  Certain gross details (the charges, for example, of having called Christ a tristo who was deservedly hung, and of having sneered at the virginity of Mary) may possibly have emanated from the delator’s own imagination.[107]

[Footnote 107:  They remind us of the blasphemies imputed to Christopher Marlowe.]

Bruno emphatically repudiated these; though some passages in his philosophical poems, published at Frankfort, contain the substance of their blasphemies.  A man of Mocenigo’s stamp probably thought that he was faithfully representing the heretic’s views, while in reality he was drawing his own gross conclusions from skeptical utterances about the origin of Christianity which he obscurely understood.  It does not seem incredible, however, that Bruno, who was never nice in his choice of language, and who certainly despised historical Christianity, let fall crude witticisms upon such and other points in Mocenigo’s presence.

Bruno appeared before the Venetian Inquisition on May 29.  His examination was continued at intervals from this date till July 30.  His depositions consist for the most part of an autobiographical statement which he volunteered, and of a frank elucidation of his philosophical doctrines in their relation to orthodox belief.  While reading the lengthy pages of his trial, we seem to overhear a man conversing confidentially with judges from whom he expected liberal sympathy.  Over and over again, he relies for his defense upon the old distinction between philosophy and faith, claiming to have advocated views as a thinker which he does not hold as a Christian.  ’In all my books I have used philosophical methods of definition according to the principles and light of nature, not taking chief regard of that which ought to be held in faith; and I believe they do not contain anything which can support the accusation that I have professedly impugned religion rather than that I have sought to exalt philosophy; though I may have expounded many impieties based upon my natural light.’[108] In another place he uses the antithesis, ’speaking like a Christian and according to theology’—­’speaking after the manner of philosophy.’[109] The same antithesis is employed to justify his doctrine of metempsychosis:  ’Speaking as a Catholic, souls do not pass from one body into another, but go to paradise or purgatory or hell; yet, following philosophical reasonings, I have argued that, the soul being inexistent without the body and inexistent in the body, it can be indifferently in one or in another body, and can pass from one into another, which, if it be not true, seems at any rate probable according to the opinion of Pythagoras.’[110]

[Footnote 108:  Op. cit. p. 352.]