Additional Notes

1. To p. 5 and p. 27, Bruno’s upbringing.—In the Infinito, Lag. 362. 34, Burchio, the Aristotelian pedant of the dialogue, addresses Fracastorio in the following polite terms:—“You would be more learned than Aristotle—you, a beast, a poor devil, a beggar, a wretch, fed on bread of millet, perishing of hunger, begotten of a tailor, born of a washer-woman, nephew to Cecco the cobbler, figol di Momo, postiglion de le puttane, brother to Lazarus that makes shoes for asses!” It is almost incredible that any one should have taken these words as biographical or rather auto-biographical. They are in the mouth of a pedant and enemy: they are addressed not to the Bruno-character of the dialogue (“Philotheo”), but to Fracastorio, who temporarily takes his place as a well-trained disciple. Yet Lagarde, that amazing editor, gravely wonders whether the Dominicans did not know that their novice had been “postiglion de le puttane,” or whether they were glad to forget it when they saw the pure and attractive young face! (v. Lagarde’s edition of the Italian works, pp. 789, 798).

2. To p. 10. The Arian heresy.—Before the Venetian tribunal Bruno explained his position with regard to the Arian heresy thus:—“I showed the opinion of Arius to be less dangerous than it was generally held to be, because generally it is understood that Arius meant to say that the Word was the first creation of the Father, and I declared that Arius said the Word was neither Creator nor Creation, but intermediary between the Creator and the Creation, as the word is intermediary between the speaker and what is spoken, and therefore it is said to be first-born before all creatures; through it, not out of it, have all things been created....” (Doc. xi. Bert. i. p. 403).

3. To p. 33. Sidney and Greville.—Greville had been a schoolmate of Sidney at Shrewsbury, but proceeded to Jesus College, Cambridge, while Sidney went to Christ Church at Oxford; afterwards they were constant friends at Court. When Sidney went to Heidelberg in 1577, the Queen would not allow the handsome Greville to accompany him, nor would she let either go with Drake to the West Indies in 1585, and Greville was kept at home from Leicester’s Expedition to the Low Countries, in which poor Sidney met with a heroic death (Oct. 17, 1586). In a letter of 1586, Greville describes Sidney as “that prince of gentlemen”: writing to Douglas after Sidney’s death, he says that the name of Sidney’s friendship has carried him above his own worth. The epitaph Greville wrote for himself is familiar, but will bear repetition:—“Fulke Greville, Servant to Queen Elizabeth, Councillor to King James, and friend to Sir Philip Sidney. Trophaeum Peccati.”

4. To p. 35. Vautrollier and Bruno.—Vautrollier traded in Scotland as early as 1580 as a bookseller: he had already enjoyed the patronage of King James, and was even encouraged to return with a printing press, which he did in 1584. Thereafter he published in both London and Edinburgh till 1587. On the other hand some of Bruno’s works were printed in 1585, so that the theory of Vautrollier’s flight to Scotland owing to his being the printer of Bruno’s works, falls through. The business in London was carried on during his absence by his wife, and the “troubles” out of which Mr. Randolph helped him were quite unconnected with Bruno, and may have arisen from his printing of John Knox’s History of the Reformation in Scotland, which Archbishop Whitgift suppressed. The letter to Mr. Randolph is in L’Espine’s Treatise of Apostasy, 1587 (Vautrollier: London).

5. To p. 51. Mordentius.—Fabrizio Mordente of Salerno was a mathematician of the sixteenth century, of whom only two works are known to have existed,—one published in 1597, the other written in conjunction with his brother Gaspar in 1591. He was the inventor of an eight-point compasses of which Bruno writes in the second of the Mordentius dialogues, and on which he bestows apparently extravagant praise. The peculiarity of the invention, as far as one can discover, consisted in the introduction of four “runners,” two on either limb of the compasses, and secured by screws; but there seems to have been no gradation of the compasses, and it is difficult to perceive any great value in the novelty, without that essential addition. The first of the two dialogues suggests a possible origin for some of Bruno’s ideas on atomic geometry, as we find, attributed to Mordentius, two ideas that were applied to some purpose in Bruno’s own mathematical works. They are (1) that of the measurement of inappreciable subdivisions of continuous quantities by integration, and (2) that of the impossibility of infinite division, the continuous being composed of discrete minima, beyond which no division can go, and the minima (like the maxima) being relative, differing in different subjects, so that, for example, what in astronomy is a minimal quantity may in geodesy be greater than the diameter of the earth.