BRUNO, GIORDANO (c. 1548-1600), Italian philosopher, was born near Nola. In 1563 he became a Dominican at Naples, but later, on account of his views on transubstantiation and on the Immaculate Conception, he was forced to leave Italy. In 1579 he reached Geneva, the home of Calvinism. Finding himself out of harmony there he wandered on through Toulouse, where he lec tured on philosophy, arriving at Paris in 1581. There he delivered lectures on the logical system of Raymund Lully and wrote the De Umbris Idearum, Ars Memoriae, De compendiosa architectura et complemento artis Lullii, Cantus Circaeus and the satiric corn edy, Il Candelajo. In 1583 Bruno travelled to England where, in spite of his disgust with English manners and the pedantry of Oxford, he produced his best works: Cerra de la Ceneri (a criticism of English social life and an exposition of the Copernican theory), Della Causa, Principio ed Uno and Del' Infinito, Universo e Mondi (metaphysical works), Eroici Furori, Cabala del Cavallo Pegaseo and Spaccio della Bestia Trion f ante. The Spaccio is an allegory treating of moral philosophy and expressing his opposition to re ligion; it exalts truth, prudence, wisdom, law and judgment, and at the same time scoffs at the mysteries of faith and places the Jewish record on a level with Greek myths.
In 1585-86 Bruno returned to Paris but wandered on to Mar burg and Wittenberg, the headquarters of Lutheranism, where he wrote a number of logical treatises. The Calvinists proving too much for him, in 1588 he went to Prague, then to Helmstadt and Frankfurt, where in 1590 he published three important meta physical works : De Triplici Minimo et Mensura; De Monade, Numero, et Figura; De Immenso et Innumerabilibus. We find him next at Zurich, whence he accepted an invitation to Venice. This led to the emissaries of the Inquisition bringing him to Rome in 1593, where he was imprisoned for seven years before he was excommunicated and burnt at the stake on Feb. 17, 1600.
Apart from his disdainful, boasting nature and his attack on contemporary Christianity, the chief causes of Bruno's downfall were his rejection of the Aristotelian astronomy for that of Coper nicus, which allowed for the possibility of innumerable worlds, and his pantheistic tendencies. Inspired by the Stoics, the Neo platonists, and above all by Nicholas of Cusa, Bruno asserted that amid all the varying phenomena of the universe there is some thing which gives coherence and intelligibility to them and this something is God, the universal, unifying substance, from which all things come of necessity. As a manifestation of God, the uni verse must be infinite and animated, but being itself difficult to comprehend it gives no true knowledge of God, who is far re moved from His effects. As the unity in all things, God may be called the moms monadum, every other thing being a Monas or self-existent, living nature, a universe in itself. The human soul is a thinking monad whose highest function is the contemplation of the Divine unity and whose destiny is immortality as a por tion of the Divine life. In the later Latin treatises these pan theistic tendencies are moderated, the universe appearing as the realization of the Divine mind.
See also J. L. McIntyre, Giordano Bruno (19o3) ; W. Boulting, Giordano Bruno (1916) ; C. Bartholmess, J. Bruno (Paris, 1846-47) ; V. Spampanato, Vita di G. Bruno, 2 vols. (Messina, 1921) ; Berti, Giordano Bruno da Nola (2nd ed., 1889) ; H. Brunnhofer, Giordano Bruno Weltanschauung (Leipzig, 1883) ; F. J. Clemens, Giordano Bruno and Nicolaus von Cusa (Bonn, 1847) ; A. Riehl, G. Bruno (1900 ; Eng. trans. Agnes Fry, 1905) ; Atanassievitch, La doctrine metaphysique et geometrique de Bruno (Belgrade, 1923) ; E. Namer, Les Aspects de Dieu dans la Philosophie de Bruno (1926) ; J. R. Char bonnel, L'Ethique de G. Bruno (1919) ; R. Adamson, Development of Modern Philosophy (1903) ; G. Gentile, Giordano Bruno nella Storia della culture (1907).