BRITNO, brZwi'n4, Fittrro GIORDANO (154S 1600). An Italian philosopher. He was born at Nola (hence often called 'the Nolan'), in the Kingdom of Naples. and entered at an early age the order of Dominicans: but later, when he expressed doubts in regard to some Church doe trines, lie was obliged to flee from his convent (1576). Henceforth his life was unsettled by reason of the theological and philosophical hos tility he aroused wherever he stayed. lie first went to Geneva. where he spent two years, then to Venice, Padua. Brescia. Milan. Genoa. Tou louse. Paris. London. Oxford. Marburg, Witten berg, Prague. Helmstedt. Frankfort-on-the-Main, Zurich. Padua, and back to Venice. In many of these places he occupied professorial chairs or delivered courses of lectures, as in Toulouse, Paris, Oxford. Wittenberg. and Helmstedt. It was in England. under the protection of the French Ambassador, and in the enjoyment of the friend ship of Sir Philip Sidney. that lie composed his most important work. (1583-85). In Venice, in 1592. be was arrested by officers of the Inquisi tion, and conveyed to Rome in 1503. He was now subjected for seven years to persecution and im prisonment, in the vain hope that he would recant; but when all the endeavors of his ene mies proved ineffectual, he was given over to the civil authorities for final correction, with the request that he "be punished as lightly as possi ble. and without bloodshed.” He told his judges that probably they feared the sentence they pro nounced more than he. He died at the stake, February 17. 1600. In 1SS9. under Papal protest, a monument was erected on the spot where he had met his death. His published writings, of which the most valuable are composed in Italian, dis play throughout a strong. courageous soul. sus ceptible of deep enthusiasm, and laboring to attain to the truth. La Celia delle ceneri, or, "Evening Conversations on Ash Wednesday," is an apology for the Copernican astronomy; the xpareio della bcstia trtonfantc. or. "Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast" I Paris, 1584). is a satir ical allegory in the style of the times.
His greatest works are metaphysical, such as the Della eausa principio ed uno ("On the One First ('ause") and Dr universo r MOM ("On the Infinity of the Universe and of Worlds"). The doctrine enunciated in these is pantheistic.,
and was perhaps inspired by that of Nicolas of Cusa lq.v.), who was himself decidedly Neo-Pla tonistie. Bruno held that there is no form with out matter, and as spirit or soul is form, it can exist only in material embodiment. There is an all-life, animating the whole universe. whh•li is thus one living being with life in all its members. This all-life is God, also called natura autumns, who manifests himself in the visible world. or natura naturftta. In God all the seeming incon sistencies of the sensible world are harmonized coincidentia oppositorunt). This thought of the oneness of the universe led Bruno to expand the Copernican view of astronomy, which in its founder's thought regarded only the solar sys tem, and to make it take in all creation, which is thus regarded as a system of innumerable worlds, each with its own sun. each having developed out of a primitive indefiniteness to its present form, and each destined to decay and dissolve. Every hart of this universe is instinct with the life of the whole. The ultimate irreducible parts are called monads. which are eternal, both spiritual and corporeal; and they are atoms, subject to mathematical laws on the corporeal side.
In logic Bruno was an opponent of the Aristo telian theory, as interpreted by the scholastics, and was an ardent champion of 'the Lu!Han art' (see IlmtoND), which he greatly im proved. He rejected the syllogism as yielding no new truth, and emphasized the necessity of studying things rather than analyzing concep tions.
Bruno's: philosophy had a great influence on subsequent thinkers. Descartes. Spinoza, Leib nitz, Bdhme, Hegel, and many others were much indebted to him. Original editions of Bruno's works are very rare. His writings in Italian were published by Wagner (Leipzig, 1329). All his Latin writings were published in Naples and Florence ( ISS0-891. Consult : Ba rtholontess, Jordan() Bruno (Paris, 1846) Frith, Life of Bruno the Nolan (London, 1887) ; Berti, Docu ment/ interim a Giordano Bruno di Nola (Borne, 1880) ; Sigwart, Die Lcbensgcschichte Giordano Brunos (Tiihingen. 18S0) ; Mariano, Giordano Bruno: 1,a vita c l'uomo (Rome. I881) ; Brun hofer, Giordano Bruno's nod Vcrhiingnis (Leipzig. 1882) ; and a luminous treatment in Pater, Gaston de Latour (London, 1896 ) .