Читать книгу Giordano Bruno - J. Lewis McIntyre - Страница 7

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Naples.When about eleven years of age, Bruno passed from Nola to Naples in order to receive the higher education of the day—Humanity, Logic, and Dialectic—attending both public and private courses; and in his fifteenth year 1563.(1562 or 1563) he took the habit of St. Dominic, and entered the monastery of that order in Naples. Of his earlier teachers he mentions only two—“il Sarnese,” who is probably Vincenzo Colle da Sarno, a writer of repute, and Fra Theophilo da Vairano, a favourite exponent of Aristotle, who was afterwards called to lecture in Rome. Much ingenuity has been exercised in attempting to find a reason for Bruno’s choice of a religious life; but the Church was almost the only career open to a clever and studious boy, whose parents were neither rich nor powerful. The Dominicans.The Dominican Order into which he was taken, although the narrowest, and the most bigoted,[14] was all-powerful in the kingdom, and directed the machinery of the Inquisition. Naples was governed by Spain with a firm hand, and the Dominican was the chosen order of Spain. Just at this time there were riots against the Inquisition, to which an end was put by the beheading and burning of two of the ringleaders.[15] The Waldensian persecution was then fiercer and more brutal than it had ever been; on a day of 1561 eighty-eight victims were butchered with the same knife, their bodies quartered, and distributed along the road to Calabria.[16] Plague, famine, earthquake, the Turks, and the Brigands, under “King” Marconi, swelled the wave of disaster that had come upon the kingdom of Naples. Little wonder then that one whose aim was a life of learning should seek it under the mantle of the strong Dominican order.

The Cloister.The cloister stood above Naples, amidst beautiful gardens, and had been the home of St. Thomas Aquinas, whose gentle spirit still breathed within its walls. In its church, amid the masterpieces of Giovanni Merliano of Nola, “the Buonarotti of Naples,” stood the image of Christ which had spoken with the Angelic Doctor, and had approved his works. Long afterwards, at his trial, Bruno spoke of having the works of St. Thomas always by him, “continually reading, studying and re-studying them, and holding them dear.” On his entry into the order, Bruno laid down, as was customary, the name Filippo, and took that of Giordano, by which, except for a short period, he was thenceforth known. 1572.After his year’s probation he took the vows before Ambrosio Pasqua, the Prior, and in due course, probably about 1572, became priest, his first mass being said in Campagna.[17]

Processes for heresy.It was the age of the counter-reformation which had been inaugurated by Loyola, its course set by the decision of the Council of Trent “to erase with fire and sword the least traces of heresy,” and Bruno early began to feel his fetters, and to suffer from their weight. During his noviciate even, a writing had been drawn up against him, because he had given away some images of the saints, retaining for himself only a crucifix, and again because he had advised a fellow-novice, who was reading The Seven Delights of the Madonna to throw it aside and take rather The Lives of the Fathers or some such book. But the writing was merely intended to terrify him, and the same day was torn up by the Prior.[18] 1576.In 1576, however, the suspicions of his superiors took a more active turn, and a process was instituted in which the matter of the noviciate was supported by charges of later date, of which Bruno never learned the details. He believed the chief count was an apology for the Arian heresy made by him in the course of a private conversation, and rather on the ground of its scholastically correct form than on that of its truth.[19] Rome.In any case Bruno left Naples while the process was pending, and came to Rome, where he put up in the cloister of Minerva. His accusers did not leave him in peace, however: a third process was threatened at Rome with 130 articles;[20] and, on learning from a friendly source that some works of St. Chrysostom and St. Hieronymus, with a commentary of the arch-heretic Erasmus, had been discovered—he had, as he supposed, safely disposed of them before leaving Naples—Bruno yielded to discretion, abandoned his monkly habit, and escaped from Rome. From this time began a life of restless wandering throughout Europe which ended only after sixteen years, when he fell into the power of the Inquisition at Venice.