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Lyons.After a short stay in Lyons, where “he could not make enough to keep him alive,” Toulouse.Bruno passed to Toulouse, which boasted then of one of the most flourishing universities in the world. In his account of his life before the Venetian tribunal, he gives two years and a half to Toulouse, 1579–81but he must have left it before the end of 1581, so that his actual stay was only two years. While he was holding private classes on the Sphere, and other philosophical subjects, a chair at the University fell vacant. Bruno was persuaded to become a candidate; to that end he took a Doctorate (in Theology), and was allowed to compete. By the free election of the students, as the custom was, he was chosen for the chair, and thereafter for two sessions lectured on Aristotle’s De Anima and on other matters. Part of these lectures is perhaps given to us in the works published afterwards at Paris. It was fortunate that the University did not require of its ordinary professors that they should attend mass, as was the case, for example, at the Sorbonne. Bruno could not have done so owing to his excommunication, but that he was unconscious of any want of sympathy towards the Catholic Church is shown by his visit in Toulouse to the confessional of a Jesuit.

The city was not generally favourable to heretics, and in 1616 Lucilio Vanini was burnt there for his opinions. A cancelled phrase in the evidence suggests that Bruno’s departure from Toulouse was owing to disputes and difficulties regarding his doctrine, but his alleged reason was the civil war that was then raging in the south of France, with Henry of Navarre in the field. While at Toulouse, Bruno seems to have completed a work in more than one volume, the Clavis Magna, or “Great Key,” a general, and as Bruno thought, a final textbook on the art of memory:—“All the ideas of the older writers on this subject (so far as we are able to make out from the books that have come to our hands), their doctrines and methods, have their fitting place in our invention, which is a superlatively pregnant one, and has appropriated to it the book of the Great Key.”[32] One volume only, it appears, was published by Bruno, and that in England, the Sigillus Sigillorum.

To Paris Bruno came about the close of 1581, and almost at once sprang into fame. A course of thirty lectures on “The thirty divine attributes” (as given by Thomas Aquinas) brought him the offer of an ordinary professorship, but this he could not take, being unable to attend mass. However, his fame reached the ears of the king, Henry the Third, who summoned him to his presence, to know among other things “whether the memory Bruno had, and the art of memory he professed, were natural or due to magic.” Bruno proved to him that a powerful memory was a natural product, and dedicated to him a book on the Art of Memory. Henry III. was the son of an Italian mother, and had a keen, if uncritical and dilettante, love of learning. At the time Bruno arrived in Paris philosophy was one of the king’s chief hobbies, and the fact had a great influence on Bruno’s future. Works published in Paris.During his stay in Paris Bruno published several works, of which the first perhaps was the “Shadows of Ideas” De Umbris.(De Umbris Idearum), 1582, dedicated to Henry III., along with which, but without a separate frontispiece, was the Art of Memory Ars Memoriæ.(Ars Memoriæ Jordani Bruni); there followed “The Incantation of Circe” Cantus Circæus.(Cantus Circæus), 1582, dedicated to Prince Henry of Angoulême, and edited by Regnault. The De Umbris gives the metaphysical basis of the art of memory, the Ars Memoriæ a psychological analysis of the faculty, and an account of the theory of the art itself, while the Cantus Circæus offers first a practical application, and secondly a more elementary account of the theory and practice of the system. Obscurity was, in those days of pedantry, one of the safest ways of securing a hearing: there is nothing of value in Bruno’s art except the philosophy by which he sought to support it—a renovated Neoplatonism. It has been pointed out, however, “that the art was a convenient means of introducing Bruno to strange universities, gaining him favour with the great, or helping him out of pressing money troubles. It was his exoteric philosophy with which he could carefully drape his philosophy of religion hostile to the Church, and ride as a hobby horse in his unfruitful humours.”[33] There can be no question of Bruno’s own belief in it; it was not, for example, a cipher language by which he covered his real thoughts: the Copernican theory is not, as Berti says, absent from the Parisian writings, rather it is forced obtrusively into them.[34]

De Compendiosâ Architecturâ, etc. In Paris was published also the “Compendious Architecture” (De Compendiosâ Architecturâ et Complemento Artis Lullii), 1582, dedicated to Giovanni Moro, the Venetian Ambassador in Paris. It is the earliest of the Lullian works in which Bruno expounds or comments upon the art of Raymond Lully, a logical calculus and mnemonic scheme in one, that attracted many imitators up to and after Bruno’s time. Il Candelaio.In the same year appeared a work of a very different stamp, Il Candelaio, or “The Torchbearer,” “a comedy by Bruno of Nola, Academico di nulla academia, detto il fastidito: In tristitia hilaris, hilaritate tristis.” It is a satire upon some of the chief vices of the age—in the forefront pedantry, superstition, and sordid love. Without great dramatic power—the characters are personified types, not individuals—it has been judged to be second to none of the comedies of the time, in spirit, wit, and pert comedy. It certainly excels in many respects the Cortegiana of Aretino, to which it is similar in character. It is equally realistic in the sense that it “calls a spade a spade,” and does not shrink from representing vice as speaking in its own language. Bruno is not, however, to be blamed for an obscenity which was de rigueur in the literature of the time. But although the humour is broad and occasionally amusing, there is no grace, no lighter touch; the picture is all dark. The attack upon the pedant, however, strikes a keynote of Bruno’s life; in him he saw the greatest enemy his teaching had to face, and therefore he struck at him whenever the opportunity offered.

The University.Owing perhaps to some of these works, Bruno was granted an Extraordinary Readership at the university. There were, however, two universities in Paris, and it is uncertain at which Bruno taught: they were the Sorbonne, catholic and conservative, the censorship of which must have passed his Parisian works, and the College of France—following the liberal policy of its founder, Francis II., declaring war against pedantry in general, and the Jesuit Society in particular.[35] As has been said, Bruno was at this time eager to be taken back into the fold of the Church, and turned to the Jesuits for assistance, so that the latter college could hardly have been his habitation; on the other hand, his revolutionary teaching could not fail in the end to excite the indignation of the Sorbonne pupils: Aristotle was, here as elsewhere, “divine.” Yet when Bruno returned to Paris in 1585, and when he was on the eve of a second departure, he recalled with pleasure the humanity and kindness shown to him by rectors and professors on his first visit. They had honoured him by “the continued presence of the more learned at his lectures both public and private, so that any title rather than that of stranger was befitting him with this kindly parent of letters.”[36] And Nostitz, one of Bruno’s pupils, remembered with admiration, thirty-three years later, the skill and versatility of his teacher: “He was able to discourse impromptu on any subject suggested, to speak without preparation extensively and eloquently, and he attracted many pupils and admirers in Paris.”[37]

But Bruno’s evil genius would not allow him rest; whether on account, as he himself says, of “tumults,”—which may mean either the civil war[38] or an active resistance to his own teaching on the part of the youth of Paris—or because of the attraction of a less bigoted country, he was drawn in 1583 to exchange Paris for London.