XV

Meantime Mocenigo was putting pressure on Bruno to obtain the secrets he sought to know, while Bruno at last became aware of his danger. He pretended he wished to go to Frankfort to have some books printed, and on a certain Thursday in May he took leave of Mocenigo. The latter, fearing his prey was about to escape, began to cajole him into staying, but passed to complaint and finally to threats as Bruno persisted. On the night of the following day (Friday), as Bruno had already made preparations for leaving, Mocenigo came with his servitor Bartolo and five or six men, whom Bruno recognised as gondoliers, from the neighbouring stance, seized the philosopher and locked him up in an attic-room. Mocenigo promised, if he would stay and teach what was desired—viz. “the formulæ for memory and geometry”!—to set him at liberty, otherwise something unpleasant would befal him. This novel method of drawing instruction being foiled by the self-respect of the prisoner, the latter was left for the night, transferred the following day to a cellar under the ground, and during the night was handed over to the servants of the Inquisition, who brought him to their prison. On the 23rd of May, Mocenigo denounced him to the Holy Office, with a hideous but cunning travesty of some of his opinions, reporting him, for example, as saying that Christ’s miracles were only apparent, that He and the apostles were magicians, and that he himself (Bruno) could do as much or more if he had a mind; that the Catholic faith was full of blasphemies against God; that the Friars ought to be prevented from preaching, and should be deprived of their revenues, because the world was befouled by them—they were asses, and the doctrines of the Church asses’ beliefs, and so on. The arrest was on the following night (Sunday night), and on the Monday a second denunciation was entered by Mocenigo, than which there is no more pitiful self-revelation of meanness and hypocrisy extant. He confesses or rather boasts that, on locking up Bruno, he had recited the charges he would make against him, “hoping to coerce him into revealing his secrets,” i.e. the Secret Arts. Bruno’s only reply had been to ask for his liberty, to say that he had not really intended to leave, but was still ready to teach Mocenigo everything he knew, to work for him (“to be my slave,” said Mocenigo), without any further recognition, and to give him anything that he had in the house; only he asked to have returned him a copy of a book of conjurations that Mocenigo had found among his written papers and had appropriated. To explain his delay in accusing Bruno, Mocenigo professed not to have been able to get enough against the latter until he had the philosopher in his own house two months earlier (viz. in March), “and then I wished to get the good of him, and by the steps I took I was able to assure myself that he would not leave without telling me of it. All the time I promised myself to bring the matter before the censorship of the Holy Office.” These denouncements were confirmed on oath by Mocenigo, whose age is given at thirty-four years, so that the excuse of youth falls from him. The following Tuesday the Holy Tribunal met to consider the case. It consisted, in Venice, of the Papal Nuncio (Ludovico Taberna), the Patriarch of Venice (Lorenzo Priuli), the Father Inquisitor (John Gabrielli of Saluzzo, de Salutiis), along with three assessors or representatives of the State (Savii all’ Eresia), one of whom was always present, with the right of suspending the meeting if he thought proper: at the present time the three were Aloysius Fuscari, Sebastian Barbadico, and Tomaso Morosini. On this day the evidence of Ciotto and Bertano, the booksellers who had known Bruno at Frankfort as well as at Venice (Bertano was also at Zürich), was taken; it was in the main favourable, only Bertano recalled the prior of the Carmelite monastery at Frankfort having said of Bruno that he spent most of his time in writing, and went about dreaming dreams and meditating new things, that he had a fine mind and knowledge of letters, and was a universal man, but that he had no religion so far as the prior knew, and he quoted a saying of Bruno’s to the effect that the apostles did not know everything, and that he had the mind, if he wished, to make all the world of one religion; while Ciotto reported the common belief in Frankfort that Bruno was a man of no religion.

The prisoner himself was then brought forward—“A man of ordinary stature, with chestnut-brown beard, of the age and appearance of forty years”; Ciotto, too, described him as a slender man of small stature, with a small dark beard, about forty years of age. Bruno of his own accord, before a question was put, professed his readiness to speak the truth; he had several times had the threat made to him of being brought before the Holy Office (viz. by Mocenigo), but had always treated it as a jest, because he was quite ready to give an account of himself. This he proceeded to do. The biographical part of his account has been embodied in the preceding pages.

On the 29th Mocenigo made another deposition, the result of further reflections, at the request of the Father Inquisitor, on the utterances of Bruno against the Catholic faith. Bruno had said that the Catholics did not act on the model of the apostles, who taught by example and good deeds, converting through love, not force; that he preferred the Catholic religion to others, but it also stood in great need of reform; that he hoped great things from the King of Navarre; that it was a mistake to allow the friars to remain so rich (in Venice): they should do as in France, where the nobles enjoyed the revenues of the monasteries, the friars living on soup, as befitted such “asses.” This was a powerful stroke of diplomacy on Mocenigo’s part. It was also hinted that Bruno’s life was not pure, that he said the Church erred in making a sin of what was of great service in nature, and of what he (Bruno) regarded as a high merit.

Next day (Saturday) Bruno continued his account of his life, the first note of defence being struck in an appeal to the famous doctrine of the “twofold truth.” “Some of the works composed by me and printed I do not approve, because I spoke and discoursed too much as a philosopher rather than as an ‘honest’ man and good Christian, and in particular I know that in some of these works I taught and believed on philosophic grounds what ought to have been referred to the potency, wisdom, and goodness of God, according to the Christian faith, basing my doctrine on sense and reason, and not upon faith.” On Tuesday, June 2, a deposition was read from Fra Domenico da Nocera confirming Bruno’s appeal to him, and his desire for the favour of the Pope and a reconciliation with the Church, so that he might be able to live quietly in Rome. The prisoner was then cross-examined, and submitted a list of his works, published and unpublished. In these he claimed to have spoken always “philosophically, and according to the light of nature, having no special regard to what ought to be believed according to the faith: his intention had been not to impugn religion, but only to exalt philosophy, although many impieties might have been uttered on the strength of his natural light. Directly he had taught nothing contrary to the Christian Catholic religion; thus in Paris he had been allowed to vindicate the articles against the Peripatetics and others, by natural principles, without prejudice to the truth according to the light of the faith: indirectly, Aristotle’s and Plato’s works were as contrary, indeed much more contrary, to the faith than the articles philosophically propounded and defended by him.” He proceeded to give an admirable statement of his “philosophical” creed which might have fired the hearts of his judges:—“I believe in an infinite universe, the effect of the infinite divine potency, because it has seemed to me unworthy of the divine goodness and power to create a finite world, when able to produce besides it another and others infinite: so that I have declared that there are endless particular worlds similar to this of the Earth; with Pythagoras I regard it as a star, and similar to it are the moon, the planets, and other stars, which are infinite, and all these bodies are worlds, and without number, constituting the infinite all (università) in an infinite space; while the latter is called the infinite universe, in which are innumerable worlds; so that there are two kinds of infinity, one in the magnitude of the universe, the other in the multitude of worlds, by which indirectly the truth according to the faith may be impugned. In this universe I place a universal providence, in virtue of which everything lives, grows, moves, and comes to and abides in its perfection. It is present in two fashions: the one is that in which the spirit is present in the body, wholly in the whole, and wholly in any part of the whole, and that I call nature, the shadow, the footprint of divinity; the other is the ineffable way in which God by essence, presence and power, is in all and above all, not as part, not as spirit or life, but in an inexplicable way. Then in the divinity, I regard all attributes as being one and the same thing. With theologians and the greatest philosophers I assume three attributes—power, wisdom, and goodness, or mind, understanding, and love; through these, things have, first, existence by reason of mind; then an ordered and distinct existence by reason of understanding; third, concord and symmetry by reason of love. Distinction in divinity is thus posited by way of reason, not of substantial truth.” God in Himself is one; but three aspects of this unity may be distinguished, Mind (Will or Force or Power), Understanding (Knowledge, the Word), and Love or Soul. These three aspects correspond, of course, to the three Persons of the Godhead, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit respectively. Bruno confesses, however, to have doubted, from the philosophic point of view, the becoming flesh of the Understanding or Word of God, although he did not remember giving definite expression to this doubt; and as to the Spirit, he did not think of it as a person, but rather as the soul or life in the universe. “From the Spirit, the life of the universe, springs, in my philosophy, the life and soul of everything that has soul and life; and I regard it as immortal, as also bodies in substance are immortal, death being nothing but division and congregation: as the Preacher says, ‘The thing that hath been it is that which shall be, and that which is done is that which shall be done; and there is no new thing under the sun.’”

Bruno confessed to have doubted the application of the word “persons” to these distinctions within the Godhead, since his eighteenth year; but he had read in St. Augustine that it was not an old term, but new at that time. To none of his doubts as to the distinction of persons or the Incarnation had he ever knowingly given expression, except in quoting others, Arius, Gabellius, and the like.... On the same day, in his prison-house, he was further examined, and repeated that whatever he had written or said contrary to the Catholic faith was not intended as direct impugnment of the faith, but was based on philosophic grounds or on the authority of heretics; he made clearer also his reason for doubting the applicability of the term “persons” to the distinctions in the Godhead, quoting Augustine’s words, “Cum formidine proferimus hoc nomen personae, quando loquimur de divinis, et necessitate coacti utimur.” Especially as to the divinity of Christ he had been unable to understand how there could be any such relation between the infinite, divine substance, and the human, finite, as between any other two things,—soul and body, for example,—which may subsist together as one reality, but he had only hesitated as to the ineffable manner of the Incarnation, and not as to the authority of the Holy Scriptures which says “The Word was made flesh.” Divinity could not be held, theologically speaking, to be along with humanity in any other fashion than by way of assistentia (i.e. temporary influence or presence), but he did not infer anything from this contrary to the divinity of Christ, or of the supposed Divine Being that is called Christ; the miracles of Christ he had always held to be divine, true, and real—not apparent miracles; while the miracles of others were only in virtue of Christ: as to the sacrifice of the Holy Mass and the Transubstantiation of the flesh and blood of Christ he had always held with the Church: he had not attended Mass because of his excommunication, but had been to Vespers and to preachings in the Churches: in his dealings with heretics, he had always treated of matters philosophical, and had never allowed anything to escape him that was contrary to the Catholic Doctrine, and for that reason Calvinists and Lutherans had always thought of him as having no religion, because he did not entangle himself with theirs, and had been in many parts without having communicated, or accepted the religion of any of them. Some of the grosser charges of Mocenigo were read to him, which he strenuously denied,—and “as he spoke,” says the faithful record, “he grew exceedingly sorrowful,” marvelling that such things could be imputed to him. More strenuous grew his assertion of his orthodoxy—as to the person of Christ, the Virgin Motherhood, the Sacrament of Repentance; he spoke of his repeated efforts to obtain absolution, how for his sins he had always asked pardon of God, and would also willingly have confessed himself had he been able, because he had never doubted of this sacrament (or of any of the others), being firmly convinced that impenitent sinners were condemned and that hell was their portion. Heretic theologians,—Melanchthon, Luther, Calvin and others,—he condemned and despised, and had read their books from curiosity merely, although there were others, as those of Raymond Lully, which he had kept by him because they treated of matters philosophical. Saint Thomas Aquinas, on the other hand, he had always esteemed and loved as his own soul; had his writings always by him, read, studied, and pondered over them; and had spoken of Aquinas in one of his works as “The Honour and Light of all the race of theologians, and of Peripatetics among philosophers.” When he had spoken of good works as necessary for salvation, he had in his mind not Catholicism, but the “reformed religion, which is in fact deformed in the extreme.” One by one Mocenigo’s charges were read, and denied, except that as to his contrasting the apostles’ method of spreading the Gospel with that of the Catholic Church,—this charge he evaded. When the grossest of all, however, was read, alleging him to have said the apparent miracles of Christ and the apostles were due to the black art, and that he himself could equally well do them all—he could not restrain himself;—“raising both hands, and crying, ‘What is this? Who has invented these devilries? I never said such a thing, it never entered my imagination; oh God! what is this? I would rather be dead than that such a thing should have been uttered by me!’” His references to women he admitted an error, but they had been spoken in lightness amid company and during talk of things “otiose and mundane.” Threatened with extreme measures if he refused to confess his errors with respect to the Church, Bruno promised to make a greater effort to recall all he had said and done against the Christian and Catholic faith, protested the sincerity of all he said, and was left in peace for a time. This interview took place in the prison of the Inquisition.

On the following day in the same place the examination was continued—his neglect of Holy Days and Fastings in England and Germany; his attendance at heretic preachings (although he emphatically denied that he ever partook of the communion in any Protestant church); his doubts concerning the Incarnation, the Miracles, the Sacraments; his familiarity with magical arts; his praise of heretics and heretic Princes,—these were some of the many points of indictment which he had to face. The Book of Conjurations, and others like it, he professed to have had only out of curiosity, although he despised and discredited sorcery; but he had wished to study the divining art, and especially the divinatory (prophetic) side of astrology, merely out of scientific interest, and therefore had such books by him. Heretics he had praised, only for the moral virtues they had showed, or from convention (as in the case of Queen Elizabeth). The course of his examination was making clear to Bruno at last in how great danger he really stood; and on this day he made, probably in hope of immediate release, a formal and solemn abjuration of all the errors he had ever committed pertaining to the Catholic life and profession, all the heresies he had believed and the doubts he had permitted himself to hold about the Catholic Faith or the decrees of the Church; and prayed that the Holy Tribunal would receive him into the bosom of the Holy Church, provide him with remedies proper to his salvation, and show mercy upon him.

The earlier processes against him at Naples and at Rome were, however, recalled to mind; and on the following day he was again questioned as to his familiarity with the magic arts. Three weeks later Morosini was examined and Ciotto re-examined; in both cases the evidence was wholly in Bruno’s favour. Then a long interval elapsed. It was not till the 30th of July that the case was again taken up. Bruno had nothing to add to his defence, except his constant desire to enter the Church, if he could only do so without undergoing the bondage of monkhood again. Worn out by anxiety, and possibly by torture, he humbled himself before his judges: kneeling, he asked pardon of God and of his judges for all the errors he had committed, and offered himself as prepared for any penance they might lay upon him. He hoped his chastisement might exceed rather in gravity than in publicity, whereby dishonour might be cast upon the sacred habit of the Order which he had borne; and if by the mercy of God and of “their illustrious lordships,” his life should be granted him, he promised to make amends for the scandal he had created by equally great edification.