CHAPTER II

MONASTIC LIFE AT NAPLES
Bruno was admitted, as a probationer, to the monastery of St. Domenico by the Prior, Ambrogio Pasqua.^ The vast building is perched on an eminence, and its silent cloisters and pleasant courts seem to invite to a life of quiet study and reflection. It is full of memories of the great Dominican, Aquinas, the " Angelic Doctor," who dwelt and taught there. According to monastic usage, Felipe was re-named Giordano. Possibly this name was given to him because of the promise he displayed; for it had been borne by the second general of the order. Hardly any one was called after the baptismal river in the sixteenth cen- tury; though in the sixth, when the Jordan figured as a river-god in more than one new baptistery,^ it was used in christening as a very appropriate appellation.*
After a year's discipline in religious exercises, Giordano proved sufficiently docile to be allowed to make his vows in company with a " convert." He passed from the society of probationers to that of the professed ; but remained under the same superior and was called a novice until he became a priest.* He would seem to reveal the secret of those years when he writes : " The authority of directors, barring worthier and higher matters, whereto he was
' Doc. vij.
' E.g. S. Maria in Cosmedin and S. Giovanni in Fonte at Ravenna. ' Hodgkin, T; Italy and her Invaders, 1892, v. I, pp. 24, 25. • Berti, D ; op. cit.,p. 39, n. 3.
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naturally impelled, putteth his mind into fetters, so that, from being free in manhood, he becometh a slave under a most vile and subtle hypocrisy." ^ The reverberations of independent thought still lingered in Southern Italy; nor, perhaps, did convent-walls wholly [shut them out. He frankly told his judges at Venice that he " began to doubt the doctrine of Three distinct Persons in the Trinity from the age of eighteen ; and, indeed, Augustine declared the term Person to be new in his time ; but I have never denied the dogma — only doubted." * His acute and vigorous intellect was already at work, framing a philosophy, trans- lating the Son as Intellect and the Holy Spirit as Love.' He was naturally of frank character, and his incautious honesty soon landed him in difficulties. " My master," he told the Inquisitors, " when I was a novice, in order to frighten me, drew up a process against me, for having given away the images of St. Catherine of Sienna and, possibly, St. Anthony, and retained a crucifix only ; whereby it was imputed to me that I despised the images of saints ; and also for having told a novice, who was reading the account, of the 'Seven Joys of the Madonna' in verse, that he should cast it aside and read some other book instead, such as the ' Lives of the Holy Fathers ' ; but my master tore this document up the same day," * The stricter dis- cipline ordered by the Council of Trent had not yet taken effect in the monastery ; and so little cause of offence did the fathers find in Bruno (who was a close student, and whose converse was probably chiefly with books) that he became subdeacon and deacon in due course and was admitted to the priesthood in 1572, he being then 24 years of age.^ Before he became a priest he had the confidence and
^ Eroici Furori, P.I, Dial. I., after 1st poem.
'^ Doc. xi. " Ibid. • Doc. xiii.
" Berti, D ; Vita di G. B., ed. o/i868,p. 72, n. 1.
MONASTIC LIFE AT NAPLES 1 3
boldness, not merely to write a satiric allegory, for which he chose the title of " Noah's Ark " (there being a work of devotional mysticism by Hugo de Sancte Victore bearing the same name),^ but to dedicate it to Pope Pius V, who then wore the tiara ; and he presented it to him,^ probably when he was summoned to Rome. For, the monks could not fail to talk about the brilliant man they had secured ; Bruno had devoted some attention to mnemonics, and his reputation reached the Papal Court. Later, an acquaintance in Paris entered in his diary : " Jordanus told me that Pope Pius V and Cardinal Rebiba summoned him from Naples, and he was brought to Rome in a coach to set forth his Artificial Memory. He recited the Psalm Fundamental in Hebrew, and taught something of this to Rebiba."*
"Noah's Ark," the first fruit of his genius, has dis- appeared. We know that he crowded the ark with all manner of creatures, each probably symbolizing some human virtue or folly. The animals struggled for the seat of honour — the poop — a current metaphor for the faculty of Reason ; the Gods granted the distinction to the ass ; but he ran some danger of losing it, because his was a case of hoofs, not horns.^ The gist of this early work may be preserved in two later books ; * but not even the temerity of Bruno could have submitted the audacities of one of these ' to the severe scrutiny of Michele Ghislieri.^ Berti and others think that Bruno's comedy " The Chandler " was
' Mclntyre; op.cif.,p. ii.
' Cena, Dial. II; Cabala, Epist. Dedic.
' Psalm Ixxxvj.
* Auvray, L ; Opus cit., sub Dec. 21.
5 Cena, Dial. ij.
° Cantus Circeeus; Cabala del Cavallo Pegaseo.
' Cabala con raggiunta de Pasino cillenico.
' Pius V died 1572, the year in which Bruno became a priest.
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written, although not revised and finished, during this monastic period.
Bruno says : " Being at the time at a monastery of my order, called St. Bartholomew, in the city of Campagna, some distance from Naples, but in the Kingdom, I chanted my first mass there ; and I continued to wear the Dominican habit, celebrating mass and the divine offices under obedience to my superiors and the Priors of monasteries, wherever I was, up to the year 1 576." Doubtless he diligently searched through the library of every religious house of which he was a temporary inmate. He could have found but little in common with his monkish associates, except that some of them would possess a tincture of that learning on which the "Angelic Doctor," who cast distinction on their order, had set his seal.
Even candid, courageous Sarpi tells us that he found himself compelled to wear a mask.-' Bruno's was a very penetrable disguise. The habit concealed a fierce intel- lectual flame : it had burst forth once ; it could not but show itself again; "the cowl does not make the monk." Here was a man of vast spiritual energy, of singularly open character, one not to be scared by legend or suppressed by authority, resolute to know at first hand, strong-headed if not headstrong, and brave to rashness. Soon the monks of St. Dominic had a taste of the " essence " of their young priest. Now that he was in full orders, and therefore less under direction, he indulged in a frankness of speech which speedily brought him into serious peril. At this time Arianism had found foothold in the South, and many had departed from "the fixed highway to the Infinite and Eternal." Bruno told the Inquisitors : " One day, during a discussion with Montalcino, one of our order, in the com- pany of other fathers, he said that heretics were ignorant ' Sarpi, Fra Paolo ; Lett. /, p. 237.
MONASTIC LTFE AT NAPLES 1 5
folk and used no scholastic terms ; whereto I replied that indeed they did not set forth their conclusions in the scholastic manner ; but they came to the point, as did the fathers of the Church " ; and then Bruno proceeded to show, as an example, that Arius was not without some kind of support from St. Augustine.^ " I shewed the view of Arius to be less dangerous than it was commonly taken to be ; for it was generally understood that Arius meant to teach that the Word was the first creation of the Father ; and I explained that Arius said the Word was neither Creator nor Created, but intermediary between the Creator and the creature, just as the spoken word is an intermediary between the speaker and the meaning he sets forth ; and that, for this reason, it is called the First-born before all creatures ; through which, and not out of which all things are ; not to which, but through which all things return to their final end, which is the Father."^ It is unfortunate that the Founder of Christianity and His Apostles were as silent about such high matters as if they had been agnostics, while the Fathers gave vague and contradictory answers to those important questions which the Roman Church had by this time definitely and precisely answered with one theologic scheme, the Eastern Church with another, those unsuccessful disturbers of Christian peace, the earlier heretics, with more, and the Protestants with several new ones. Bruno, who had read the Christian fathers and the Schoolmen carefully, was in the right; and Montalcino appears to have reported the conversation at head-quarters. This was not the sole count against Bruno. " The Pro- vincial drew up a process against me on certain charges of which I remain wholly ignorant ; but I was told that he was proceeding against me for fresh heresy, and was reviving the aifair of my novitiate; and I misdoubted I ' Doc. xiij. " Doc. xi.
1 6 GIORDANO BRUNO
should find myself in prison." '^ Bruno was no longer in the hands of the Director of Novitiates, but, as priest, answerable to the Provincial Father. A charge of heresy, therefore, might be fraught with very serious consequences. The Papal States, which adjoined the Kingdom, were the only possible refuge. " So," he continues, " I left Naples and went to Rome " ; thus commencing a life of turmoil and ceaseless wandering through Europe, which was to endure for sixteen years, to be followed by nearly eight years of imprisonment, and to end at the stake.
* Doc. xiij.