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1586.Leaving France for Germany, the Nolan made his first halt at “Mez, or Magonza, which is an archiepiscopal city, and the first elector of the Empire”;[89] it is certainly Mayence. Mainz.There he remained some days; but not finding either there or at “Vispure, a place not far from there,” any means of livelihood such as he cared for, he went on to Wittenberg in Saxony. Marburg.“Vispure” has caused considerable exercise of ingenuity among Bruno’s biographers. The best explanation seems to be that of Brunnhofer, that it represents Wiesbaden, which is not far from Mayence, and is still popularly known as Wisbare or Wisbore; but there may also be a telescoping of the words Wiesbaden and Marburg. Bruno was certainly at the latter town, but it is of course a long distance from Mayence. July 25, 1586.On the 1st of July 1586, Petrus Nigidius, Doctor of Law and Professor of Moral Philosophy, was elected Rector of the university at Marburg. In the roll of students matriculated under his rectorship stands as eighth name that of “Jordanus Nolanus of Naples, Doctor of Roman Theology,” with the date July 25, 1586, and the following note by the rector:—“When the right of publicly teaching philosophy was denied him by me, with the consent of the faculty of philosophy, for weighty reasons, he blazed out, grossly insulting me in my own house, protesting I was acting against the law of nations, the custom of all the universities of Germany, and all the schools of humanity. He refused then to become a member of the university—his fee was readily returned, and his name accordingly erased from the album of the university by me.” The name could still be read through the thick line drawn across it, and some later rector, when Bruno had become more famous, re-wrote the name above, and cancelled the words “with the consent of the faculty of philosophy” in Nigidius’ note.[90] The “weighty reasons” for which Bruno was driven from Marburg may have been merely his description of himself as a Doctor of “Roman Theology” at a Protestant university; or perhaps an attack upon Ramus at a place where the Ramian Logic had many adherents; or the Copernican system taught by him, which was as firmly opposed by Protestants as by Catholics. Wittenberg.In any case “the Knight-Errant of Philosophy” departed sorrowfully and came to Wittenberg, where he found, for the third time, a respite from his journeyings. Aug. 20, 1586.On the 20th August 1586 he matriculated at the university,[91] and there remained for nearly two years. Then, as now, the Protestant Church in Germany was divided into two parties, the Lutheran and the Calvinist or Reformed Churches. Melanchthon’s attempt to unite the two—he himself belonged to the latter—brought upon his head the “formula of concord,” better known as the “formula of discord,” because of the disputes it caused. Among other things it condemned the views of the Calvinists on the person of Christ, their denial of his “Real Presence” in the bread and wine of the communion table, and their doctrine of predestination. When Bruno arrived in Wittenberg, Lutherans were still in power, as they had been under the old Duke Augustus. His son Christian I., however, under the influence of John Casimir, his brother-in-law, of the Palatinate, had gone over to the Calvinist faction, and was trying with the aid of the Chancellor, Krell, to supplant the reigning faith and authority. At the university the philosophical faculty was, in the main, Calvinist, the theological Lutheran; and among the latter party was an Italian Alberico Gentile, the father of International Law, whom Bruno had perhaps known in England as a professor at Oxford. Through him Bruno found favour with the Lutheran party, and received permission to lecture, on the condition that he taught nothing that was subversive of their religion. For two years, accordingly, he lectured on the Organon of Aristotle, and other subjects of philosophy, including the Lullian art, which he had for a time discarded. Dedication of De Lampade.The excellent terms on which he stood with his colleagues is shown by the dedication of a Lullian work, De Lampade Combinatoria, to the senate of the university. He speaks gratefully of their kind reception of himself, the freedom of access and residence which was granted not only to students but to professors from all parts of Europe. In his own case “a man of no name, fame, or authority among you, escaped from the tumults of France, supported by no princely commendation, with no outward marks of distinction such as the public loves, neither approved nor even questioned in the dogmas of your religion; but as showing no hostility to man, rather a peaceful and general philanthropy, and my only title the profession of philosophy, merely because I was a pupil in the temple of the Muses, you thought me worthy of the kindliest welcome, enrolled me in the album of your academy, and gave me a place in a body of men so noble and learned that I could not fail to see in you neither a private school nor an exclusive conventicle, but as becomes the Athens of Germany, a true university.” In this introduction a large number of the professors are invoked by name, among them the enlightened Grün, a professor of philosophy, who taught that theology cannot be detached from philosophy—that they are necessary complements one of the other.

Works published.In Wittenberg was published (1587), the De Lampade Combinatoria Lulliana, the second of the commentaries on Lully’s art, and representing perhaps the clavis magna of the De Umbris and other Parisian publications. It was dedicated to the senatus of the University of Wittenberg. A reprint, however, appeared in Prague in the following year with a new frontispiece, a dedication to William of St. Clement, and the addition of a small treatise.[92] The chief purpose of the work was to furnish the reader with means for “the discovery of an indefinite number of propositions and middle terms for speaking and arguing. It is also the sole key to the intelligence of all Lullian works whatsoever,” Bruno writes with his sublime confidence, “and no less to a great number of the mysteries of the Pythagoreans and Cabalists.” As in the earlier work, so in this also, the root ideas are that thought is a complex of elements, which are to it as the letters of the alphabet are to a printed book; but thought and reality or nature are not opposed to one another—they are essentially one. The elements of thought when discovered will accordingly give us the constitutive elements of nature and the connections in, and workings of, nature will be understood from the different complications of these simple elements of thought. De Progressu, 1587.In the same year appeared the De Progressu et Lampade Venatoriâ Logicorum, “To enable one to dispute promptly and copiously on any subject proposed.” It was dedicated to the Chancellor of the University of Wittenberg, and was mainly a commentary, without special references, on the Topics of Aristotle, and doubtless formed part of the lectures on the Organon, given in Bruno’s first year at Wittenberg. The simile of the hunt—i.e. the idea that the solution of a problem or the finding of a middle term is like a quarry that has to be stalked and hunted down—is a favourite one with Bruno.

1588.Unfortunately for Bruno, the Duke’s party in Wittenberg soon gained the upper hand—only for a time, it is true[93]—and the party to which Bruno himself belonged fell out of power. As a Copernican, Bruno must in any case soon have fallen foul of the Calvinists, by whom the new theory had been declared a heresy. He therefore left Wittenberg in the beginning of 1588, after delivering on the 8th of March an eloquent farewell address to the university Oratio Valedictoria. (Oratio Valedictoria). By the fable of Paris and the three Goddesses, he indicated his own choice of Wisdom (Minerva) over riches or fame (Juno), and over worldly pleasure or the delights of society (Venus):—“Wisdom is communicated neither so readily nor so widely as riches or pleasure. There are not and there never have been so many Philosophers as Emperors and Princes; nor to so many has it been granted to see Minerva robed and armed, as to see Venus and Juno even in naked simplicity. To see her is to become blind, to be wise through her is to be foolish. They say Tiresias saw Minerva naked, and was struck blind; who that had looked upon her, would not despise the sight of other things?—‘man shall not see me and live.’ … Wisdom, Sophia, Minerva, beautiful as the moon, great as the sun, terrible as the marshalled ranks of armies; like the moon in her fair gracefulness, like the sun in her lofty majesty, like armies in her invincible courage. … The first-born before all creatures, sprung from the head of Jove—for she is a breath from the virtue of God, an emanation of omnipotent brightness, sincere and pure, clear and inviolate, honourable, powerful, and kind beyond words, well pleasing to God, incomparable:—pure, because nothing of defilement can touch her; clear, because she is the brightness of eternal light; inviolate, because she is the spotless mirror of the majesty of God; honourable, because the image of goodness itself; powerful, because being one she can do all things, being permanent in herself, she renews all things; kind, because she visits the nations that are sacred to her and makes men friends of God, and prophets; pleasing to God, because God loves only him that dwells with wisdom; incomparable, for she is more beautiful than the sun and brighter than the light of all the stars. Her have I loved and sought from my youth, and desired for my spouse, and have become a lover of her form—and I prayed that she might be sent to abide with me, and work with me, that I might know what I lacked, and what was acceptable to God: for she knew and understood, and would guide me soberly in my work and would keep me in her charge: … But wisdom in the highest sense, in its essence as the thought of God, is incommunicable, incomprehensible, apart from all things. Wisdom has three phases or aspects or ‘mansions’—first, the mind of God the eternal, then the visible world itself which is the first-born, and third, the mind of man which is the second-born of the highest, the true wisdom unattainable by man. Here among men wisdom has built herself a house of reason and of thought (which comes after the world), in which we see the shadow of the first, the archetypal and ideal house (which is before the world), and the image of the second, the sensible and natural house, which is the world. The seven columns of the house or temple are the seven Arts—Grammar, Rhetoric (with poetry), Logic, Mathematics, Physics, Ethics, and Metaphysics, and the temple was built first among the Egyptians and Assyrians, viz. in the Chaldeans, then among the Persians, with the Magi and Zoroaster, third the Indians with their Gymnosophists; … seventhly, in our time, among the Germans.” So far has Bruno come from taking the Germans as mere beer-bibbers, as he had written of them in England.[94] “Since the empire (of wisdom) devolved upon you there have risen amongst you new arts and great minds, the like of which no other nations can shew.” In the category of German temple-builders are Albertus Magnus, Nicolas of Cusa, Copernicus, Palingenius, Paracelsus; “among humanists many, apt imitators of the Attic and Ausonian muses, and among them one greater than the rest who more than imitates, rather rivals, the ancient muses” (Erasmus). Luther.It is not unnatural that, in his own Wittenberg, Luther should be praised, as among the temple-builders or priests of truth: but Bruno’s words have a ring of sincerity, proving that his sympathy was really aroused for the Lutherans. “When the world was infected by that strong man armed with key and sword, fraud and force, cunning and violence, hypocrisy and ferocity—at once fox and lion, and vicar of the tyrant of hell—infected with a superstitious worship and an ignorance more than brutal, under the name of divine wisdom and of a God-pleasing simplicity; and there was no one to oppose or withstand the voracious beast, or dispose an unworthy and abandoned generation to better and happier state and condition—what other part of Europe or the world could have brought forth for us that Alcides, stronger than Hercules himself, in that he did greater things with less effort and with fewer instruments—destroying a greater and far more deadly monster than ever any of the past centuries had to suffer? Here in Wittenberg he dragged up that three-headed Cerberus with its threefold tiara from its pit of darkness: you saw it, and it the sun. Here that dog of Styx was compelled to vomit forth its poison. Here your Hercules, your country’s Hercules, triumphed over the adamantine gates of hell, over the city girt about with its threefold wall, and defended by its nine windings of the Styx.”

To this temple Bruno, eager in his pursuit of the ever-eluding Truth, had come—“a foreigner, an exile, a fugitive, the sport of fortune, meagre in body, slender of means, destitute of favour, pursued by the hatred of the multitude and the contempt of fools and the base,” and could on leaving say to its people that he had become an “occasion, or matter, or subject in whom they unfolded and demonstrated to the world the beauty and wealth of their virtues of moderation, urbanity, and kindness of heart.” It was the last, or nearly the last, spell of happiness that life had in store for him.