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England, 1583.England under Elizabeth was renowned for its tolerance; all manner of religious refugees found there a place of safety: to Italians its welcome was particularly cordial, their language was the favoured one of the court, and Elizabeth herself eagerly saw and spoke with them in their own tongue. Florio—an Italian in spite of having had London for his birthplace, the friend of Shakespeare, of Spenser and Ben Jonson—was constantly at court; two of Elizabeth’s physicians were Italian, as were several of the teachers of the universities. Perhaps the happiest days of Bruno’s troubled life were spent here; he had access to the most brilliant literary society of the time; he was able to speak, write, and publish in his own tongue, and in consequence gave all the most polished and brilliant of his works to the world during this period.

Oxford, 1583.In April, May, and June of 1583 Bruno was in Oxford, although the university and college records make no mention of his name. The University and Aristotle.He must have known it as a stronghold of Aristotelianism; on its statutes stood “that Bachelors and Masters who did not follow Aristotle faithfully were liable to a fine of five shillings for every point of divergence, and for every fault committed against the Logic of the Organon”; and that this was no dead law had been proved a few years before when one Barebones was degraded and expelled because of an attack on Aristotle from the standpoint of Ramus. The only living subject of teaching was theology, there was no real science, and no real scholarship. This peaceful school was not likely to be gratified by the letter which Bruno wrote asking permission to lecture at Oxford; it is printed in the Explicatio Triginta Sigillorum:[39] “To the most excellent the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford, its most famous Doctors and celebrated Masters—Salutation from Philotheus Jordanus Brunus of Nola, Doctor of a more scientific theology, professor of a purer and less harmful learning, known in the chief universities of Europe, a philosopher approved and honourably received, a stranger with none but the uncivilised and ignoble, a wakener of sleeping minds, tamer of presumptuous and obstinate ignorance, who in all respects professes a general love of man, and cares not for the Italian more than for the Briton, male more than female, the mitre more than the crown, the toga more than the coat of mail, the cowled more than the uncowled; but loves him who in intercourse is the more peaceable, polite, friendly and useful—(Brunus) whom only propagators of folly and hypocrites detest, whom the honourable and studious love, whom noble minds applaud.” The epistle which so begins is the preface to a work on the art of discovering, arranging, and remembering facts of knowledge, by which Bruno hoped to commend himself to the English, as he had succeeded in commending himself to the French universities. He attempted to disarm prejudice by sheltering under the twofold truth—“if this writing appears to conflict with the common and approved faith, understand that it is put forward by me not as absolutely true, but as more consonant with our senses and our reason, or at least less dissonant than the other side of the antithesis. And remember, that we are not so much eager to show our own knowledge, as moved by the desire of showing the weakness of the common philosophy, which thrusts forward what is mere opinion as if demonstratively proved, and of making it clear by our discussion (if the gods grant it) how much in harmony with regulated sense, in consonance with the truth of the substance of things, is that which the garrulous multitude of plebeian philosophers ridicule as foreign to sense.”

He was coldly received, however; in common-sense England his new art could evoke no enthusiasm, and his real and vital doctrines met with nothing but opposition at the old university—“the widow of true science,” Bruno calls it. Alasco of Poland.From the 10th to the 13th June the Polish prince, Alasco, was in Oxford, and disputations were held in his honour as well as banquets. Among others, Bruno disputed publicly in presence of the prince and some of the English nobility.[40] Alasco appears to have caused some excitement to the Elizabethan court. According to Mr. Faunt (of the secretary’s office) he had been General in more than forty fought battles, spoke Latin and Italian well, and was of great revenues. Mauvissière grumbled in a letter to the French king, that the Palatine Lasque and a Scottish ambassador seemed to be governing the court.[41] The real object of the visit was apparently political, to prevent the traffic in arms between England and Muscovy.[42] Whether Alasco succeeded in this design or not, he seems to have found life in England too fast for his purse—“A learned man of graceful figure, with a very long beard, in decorous and beautiful attire, who was received kindly by the Queen, with great honour and praise by the nobles, by the university of Oxford with erudite delectations (oblectationibus) and varied spectacles; but after four months, being harassed for debt, he withdrew secretly.”[43] The arrival of this tragic-comic figure in Oxford appears to have gratified the city and university; he was most hospitably received, and put up at Christ Church. On the following day there was a dinner at All Souls, at which “he was solemnlie satisfied with scholarlie exercises and courtlie fare.” That evening was performed a “pleasant comedie,” the Rivales, and on the following night a “statelie tragedie,” Dido,[44] and there were in the intervals shows, disputations in philosophy, physics, and divinity, in all of which, we are glad to know, “these learned opponents, respondents, and moderators, acquitted themselves like themselves, sharplie and soundlie.” The disputation.Let us hope that Bruno too, who took part in one of these disputations, made this impression. According to his own account the protagonist put forward by the university could not reply to one of his arguments, and was left fifteen times by as many syllogisms, “like a hen in the stubble,” resorting accordingly to incivility and abuse, in face of the patience and humanity of the Neapolitan “reared under a kinder sky.” The result was unfortunate for Bruno; it put an end to the public lectures, which he was giving at the time, on the Immortality of the Soul and on the “Five-fold Sphere.” The Cena.The same month he returned to London, and shortly after published the Cena (Ash-Wednesday Supper), in which he ridiculed the Oxford Doctors. Inter alia, he thought they knew a good deal more of beer than of Greek.[45] The Causa.The impression this attack produced in his London circle was apparently not that which he desired, for in the following dialogue, the Causa, he was much more judicious.[46] He admitted much in the university that was well instituted from the beginning: “the fine arrangement of studies, the gravity of the ceremonies, careful ordering of the exercises, seemliness of the habits worn, and many other circumstances that made for the requirements and adornment of a university; without doubt every one must admit it to be the first in Europe, and consequently in all the world—nay, more, in gentleness of spirit and acuteness of mind, such as are naturally brought out in both parts of Britain, it equals perhaps the most excellent of the universities. Nor is it to be forgotten that before speculative philosophy was taught in any other part of Europe it flourished here, and through its princes in metaphysics (although barbarians in speech and of the profession of the cowl) the splendour of one of the noblest and rarest spheres of philosophy, in our times almost extinct, was diffused to all other academies in civilised countries.” What Bruno condemned in Oxford was the undue attention it gave to language and words, to the ability to speak in Ciceronian Latin and in eloquent-phrase, neglecting the realities of which the words were signs. As for the knowledge of Aristotle and of philosophy generally that was demanded for the degree of Master or Doctor, Bruno suggests an evasion that probably had its origin in the undergraduate wit of the time. The statute read “nisi potaverit e fonte Aristotelis,” but there were three springs in the town, the Fons Aristotelis, Fons Pythagorae, Fons Platonis, and “as the water for the beer and cider was taken from these springs, one could not be three days in Oxford without imbibing not merely of the spring of Aristotle, but of those of Pythagoras and of Plato as well.” Doctors were easily created and doctorates easily bought. There were of course exceptions, men renowned for eloquence and doctrine like Tobias Matthew[47] and Culpepper,[48] but as a rule the nobility and best men generally refused to avail themselves of the “honour,” and preferred the substance of learning to its shadow.