III. The Lullian Architecture

In the same year appeared a third book, the " Brief Architecture Of The Art of LuUy With Its Completion." ^ It was published by Gorbin and was little more than a repro- duction of Lully's " Great Art." But Bruno thought that art a key to the structure of the universe and the ready way to a complete philosophy, proceeding from foundations of all knowledge ; he conceived of it as a demonstration of unity, the shortest of roads for thought and memory, and a useful symbolic logic. Of the value of Inference in extending knowledge, Bruno had little more notion than had Lully. For, although Lully worked outside scholasticism and ex- hibited much of that spontaneous originality which we find in Scotus Erigena before scholasticism began, mediaeval thought was harnessed in the syllogism and employed itself in ceaseless rotation, like a donkey round a grinding mill, but mostly grinding philosophic chaff. In Bruno's time Lully captured many able minds and had a great vogue. Before Kant, it was not possible to work from other than dogmatic premises ; certain concepts were posited as fundamental and ultimate ; there was no notion of sub- mitting them to criticism. For Bruno, the art of Lully was alive; for us, it has become dead and valueless.
Lully tried to prove the dogmas of the Church by human reason.^ Bruno, in this work, denies that they are reason- able: any attempt to prove their truth "ig'a blunder; for Christianity is irrational, contrary to philosophy and in disagreement with other religions. We only accept it by faith and through revelation. As a Neo-Platonist and syncretist he relies on and quotes pagan authority as freely as Christian.
' De Compendiosa Architectura et Complemento Artis Lulii. * Lully, R ; De Articulis Fidei.
74 GIORDANO BRUNO
Berti thinks that at some time before Bruno left France he wrote a book, never published, of which all we know is that, two years later, he promised to send his English friend Smith his " ' Purgatory of Hell,' wherein you shall see the fruit of redemption."^ One judges from the context that the redemption was from scientific and philosophic error.