The Heroic Enthusiasts | Page 2

He
always regarded Nola with patriotic pride, and he received his first
instruction in his father's house and in the public schools. Of a sad
disposition, and gifted with a most lively imagination, he was from his
earliest years given to meditation and to poetry. The early years of
Bruno's life were times of agitation and misfortune, and not propitious
to study. The Neapolitan provinces were disturbed by constant
earthquakes, and devastated by pestilence and famine. The Turks
fought, and ravaged the country, and made slaves of the inhabitants; the
neighbouring provinces were still more harassed by hordes of bandits
and outlaws, who invested Calabria, led by a terrible chief called
Marcone. The Inquisition stood prepared to light its fires and slaughter
the heretic. The Waldensians, who had lately been driven out of
Piedmont, and had sought a shelter in the Calabrian territory, were
hunted down and given over to the executioner.
The convent was the only refuge from violence, and Bruno, either from
religious enthusiasm, or in order to be able to devote himself to study,
became a friar at the age of fifteen. There, in the quiet cloister of the
convent of St. Dominic at Naples, his mind was nourished and his
intellect developed; the cloistral and monkish education failed to
enslave his thought, and he emerged from this tutelage the boldest and
least fettered of philosophers. Everything about this church and this
convent, famous as having been the abode of Thomas Aquinas, was
calculated to fire the enthusiasm of Bruno's soul; the leisure and quiet,
far from inducing habits of indolence, or the sterile practices of
asceticism, were stimulants to austere study, and to the fervour of
mystical speculations. Here he passed nearly thirteen years of early
manhood, until his intellect strengthened by study he began to long for
independence of thought, and becoming, as he said himself, solicitous
about the food of the soul and the culture of the mind, he found it
irksome to go through automatically the daily vulgar routine of the
convent; the pure flame of an elevated religious feeling being kindled
in his soul, he tried to evade the vain exercises of the monks, the

puerile gymnastics, and the adoration of so-called relics. His character
was frank and open, and he was unable to hide his convictions; he put
some of his doubts before his companions, and these hastened to refer
them to the superiors; and thus was material found to institute a cause
against him. It became known, that he had praised the methods used by
the Arians or Unitarians in expounding their doctrines, adding that they
refer all things to the ultimate cause, which is the Father: this, with
other heretical propositions, being brought to the notice of the Holy
Office, Bruno found himself in the position of being first observed and
then threatened. He was warned of the danger that hung over him by
some friends, and decided to quit Naples. He fled from the convent, and
took the road to Rome, and was there received in the monastery of the
Minerva. A few days after his arrival in Rome he learned that
instructions for his arrest had been forwarded from Naples; he tarried
not, but got away secretly, throwing aside the monk's habiliments by
the way. He wandered for some days about the Roman Campagna, his
destitute condition proving a safeguard against the bands of brigands
that infested those lands, until arriving near Civita Vecchia, he was
taken on board a Genoese vessel, and carried to the Ligurian port,
where he hoped to find a refuge from his enemies; but the city of
Geneva was devastated by pestilence and civil war, and after a sojourn
of a few days he pursued once more the road of exile. Seeking for a
place wherein he might settle for a short time and hide from his
pursuers, he stayed his steps at Noli, situated at a short distance from
Savona, on the Riviera: this town, nestled in a little bay surrounded by
high hills crowned by feudal castles and towers, was only accessible on
the shore side, and offered a grateful retreat to our philosopher. At Noli,
Bruno obtained permission of the magistracy to teach grammar to
children, and thus secured the means of subsistence by the small
remuneration he received; but this modest employment did not occupy
him sufficiently, and he gathered round him a few gentlemen of the
district, to whom he taught the science of the Sphere. Bruno also wrote
a book upon the Sphere, which was lost. He expounded the system of
Copernicus, and talked to his pupils with enthusiasm about the
movement of the earth and of the plurality of worlds.
As in that same Liguria Columbus first divined another hemisphere

outside the Pillars of Hercules, so Bruno