At the French embassy, Florio served as official tutor to Castelnau’s eight-year-old daughter, but Bruno’s own fondness for the little girl suggests that he may have taught her a thing or two himself, perhaps a bit of On the Sphere or tricks of memory. In some sense, Giordano Bruno seems to have felt before he left Paris for London that Elizabethan England was the best place for him to develop his Nolan philosophy. He ultimately hoped, however, to leave the ambassador’s patronage and return to a university.
His opportunity to “make [him]self known and show what [he] was about” at Oxford came in June, about a month after his arrival in England, when the Polish prince Albert Laski made a state visit, escorted by the university’s chancellor, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, and Dudley’s refined nephew, Sir Philip Sidney. The occasion demanded speeches and debates, from Oxford professors and from the visitors, and, perhaps through Castelnau’s intercession, Bruno obtained a place on the program, engaging in a staged debate with the theologian John Underhill, rector of Lincoln College. With his varied experience as a teacher and professor, he had every hope of success; he had, after all, taught the art of memory to Pope Pius V, won an open competition for the chair of philosophy at Toulouse, and, most recently, caught the attention of the court and the king of France. He must have expected a similar reception in Oxford when he debated on theology, the field in which he held formal qualifications from two of Europe’s most prestigious universities.
Yet nothing in all his travels had prepared him for the reaction he received. The English laughed at him. They made fun of his accent, his gestures, his passionate energy, and his tiny stature. They would have found his Latin difficult to understand; the dons pronounced the ancient language as if it were written in English, so that the blessing “benedicite” that began their opening prayers became “bene-dice-itee.” Bruno pronounced Latin as if it were Italian, and said “bene-dee-chee-tay.” His audience listened to how he spoke rather than to what he said, and smirked as they listened.
Any teacher looks out to see whether students understand; Bruno could not have missed the looks passing among the people he had most hoped to impress. His growing sense of bewilderment, and then humiliation, made him more frantic, more Italian, and still funnier to his audience. Elizabethan England was not a place that took much pity on suffering: one of London’s chief attractions on the south shore of the Thames, just down the road from the George Inn Theatre and the future site of the Globe, was a bear pit, where captive bears were chained to a stake and attacked by savage dogs. Bruno’s presentation at Oxford began to offer some of the same sadistic pleasures as watching a bear “at the stake,” and when, like the bears, he grew angry and agitated, he only added to the public’s glee. By the time he had finished, he was furious, and it is unlikely that anyone had listened to what he said except to imitate him later.
It was not a good time to be an Italian professor in England. In London, Queen Elizabeth and her court might speak and read Italian, Sir Philip Sidney and his friends might try their hand at combining Italian sonnet form with English iambic pentameter, and Italian bankers might dominate Lombard Street, but to a don tucked away at Oxford or Cambridge, teaching theology for future clerics in the Church of England, an Italian was a papist, stuffed full of wrong ideas and likely to be a subversive, and his strange-sounding Latin was a terrible effort to understand; needless to say, in England, English pronunciation, no matter how far removed it might be from the way the ancient Romans had spoken their own language, was by definition correct. Several other recent Italian and Spanish visitors to Oxford had been subjected to the same mockery as Bruno simply because of their nationality. The island nation could close in on itself with hermetic complacency as well as open out to the world.
Furthermore, English wit permitted (and still permits) a level of personal attack unthinkable in Spain or Italy. John Florio’s Worlde of Wordes describes how hearers would shout their disapproval “when one is about to tell a thing & knows not what it is”:
or that a scholer would faine read his lesson and cannot, and that we by some signe or voice will let him knowe that he is out, wide, and saies he wots not what. [In Italian] we use to say Boccata, as in English, yea in my other hose, or iump as Germins lips, you are as wise as Walthams calfe, and such other phrases.
The Italian insult boccata is studiously abstract; it means “a mouthful,” or—as may be most relevant here—a “breath” of fresh air. The English jibes, however, are all intimately personal, and “iump as Germins lips” shows that papists were not the only butts of English nationalist invective. After only a month in Britain, Bruno could not yet come back to his adversaries on the spot with a pungent “swive thou” or “beef-witted clotpole”; he could only store up his rancor—and retell the story of his experience at Oxford, when the time came, in his own magnificently abusive Italian.
One onlooker, George Abbot, compared him as he spoke to an industrious little waterbird, the little grebe, dabchick, or didapper (Tachybaptus ruficollis), which bobs up and down on English ponds and rivers in search of fish:
When that Italian Didapper, who intituled himselfe Philotheus Iordanus Brunus Nolanus, magis elaboratae Theologiae Doctor etc. with a name longer than his body, had in the traine of Alasco the Polish Duke, seene our University in the yeare 1583, his hart was on fire, to make himselfe by some worthy exploite to become famous in that celebrious place.
As Abbot makes clear, “our University,” “that celebrious place,” swiftly closed ranks against the little man with “his hart … on fire.”
Shortly thereafter, Bruno petitioned the rector for a teaching position, in terms that fit in perfectly with Neapolitan street rhetoric and less well, perhaps, with British academic etiquette:
Philotheus Jordanus Brunus Nolanus, doctor of a more sophisticated theology, professor of a more pure and innocent wisdom, known to the best academies of Europe, a proven and honored philosopher, a stranger only among barbarians and knaves, the awakener of sleeping spirits, the tamer of presumptuous and stubborn ignorance, who professes a general love of humanity in all his actions, who prefers as company neither Briton nor Italian, male nor female, bishop nor king, robe nor armor, friar nor layman, but only those whose conversation is more peaceable, more civil, more faithful, and more valuable, who respects not the anointed head, the signed forehead, the washed hands, or the circumcised penis, but rather the spirit and culture of mind (which can be read in the face of a real person); whom the propagators of stupidity and the small-time hypocrites detest, whom the sober and studious love, and whom the most noble minds acclaim, to the most excellent and illustrious vice-chancellor of the University of Oxford, many greetings.
The letter ended no less graphically:
In the meantime, I would not want it to come to pass, as in the days of the Flood, when the asses’ dung said to the golden apples, “We [road] apples can swim too,” that now, too, any stupid ass might obtrude upon our station, here or anywhere else, or in any other way; but if there be anyone whose claims to stature and qualification will not be held for any reason as unworthy of our company, and to whom we can respond without any detriment to our condition, he shall find me a man prompt and prepared, for whom it may be worthwhile to try the weight of my mettle. Farewell.
Yet the letter achieved its purpose. Bruno arrived in Oxford again in August, lecturing this time on the cosmos, aiming to show his audience how the Copernican system provided more effective reinforcement for Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic theology than the traditional Earth-centered universe. His choice of subject should have harmonized well with Oxford’s emphasis on modern humanistic studies, for which Ficino’s philosophy had played a fundamental role. In Oxford, moreover, Bruno could openly share his admiration for Erasmus rather than hide the great man’s works in the latrine for fear of the Inquisition. Unfortunately, for once in his life he took the term “lecture” too literally; his citations from Ficino’s On Living the Heavenly Life were so exact (thanks to Bruno’s we
ll-trained memory) that one of the dons suspected him of plagiarism. Again, George Abbot was there:
Not long after returning againe, when he had more boldly than wisely, got up into the highest place of our best and most renowned schoole, stripping up his sleeves like some Iugler, and telling us much of chentrum and chirculus and cirumferenchia (after the pronunciation of his Country language) he undertooke among very many other matters to set on foote the opinion of Copernicus, that the earth did goe round, and the heavens did stand still; whereas in truth it was his owne head which rather did run round, and his braines did not stand stil.
When he had read his first Lecture, a grave man, and both then and now of good place in that University, seemed to himselfe, some where to have read those things which the Doctor propounded; but silencing his conceit till he heard him the second time, remembered himselfe then, and repayring to his study, found both the former and later Lecture, taken almost verbatim out of the worke of Marsilius Ficinus. Wherewith when he had acquainted that rare and excellent Ornament of our land, the Reverend Bishop of Durham that now is, but then Deane of Christs-Church, it was at the first thought fit, to notifie to the Illustrious Reader, so much as they had discovered. But afterward hee who gave the first light, did most wisely intreate, that once more they might make trial of him; and if he persevered to abuse himselfe, and that Auditory the thirde time, they shoulde then do their pleasure. After which, Iordanus continuing to be idem [the same] Iordanus, thay caused some to make knowne unto him their former patience, and the paines which he had taken with them, and so with great honesty of the little man’s part, there was an end of that matter.
The “end of that matter” also meant the end of Bruno’s hopes for an academic career in England. He returned to London, where he would have found a sympathetic listener in John Florio, who, despite his English birth and with impeccable Protestant credentials, had also found it difficult to adjust to England after growing up in Switzerland. It was Florio who would later warn:
Be circumspect how you offend schollers, for knowe,
A serpents tooth bites not so ill,
As dooth a schollers angrie quill.
With his tongue virtually stopped, Giordano Bruno took up his “angrie quill” to prove that the Nolan philosophy was anything but plagiarized Ficino. He began by continuing his aborted lectures on Ficino and cosmology, but now he gave up Latin for his native Neapolitan vernacular, explicitly addressing his work not to English academe but to members of the English court.
His first words on the matter were an invective addressed “To the Malcontent”:
If you’ve been worried in a cynic’s bite,
You brought it on yourself, you barbarous cur,
In showing me your weaponry you err
Unless you’re careful not to rouse my spite.
The frontal charge you made was hardly right;
I’ll shred your hide and pull out all your fur,
And if I hit the ground, you’ll still concur:
Like diamond, I repel the taunts you write.
Don’t rob a hive of honey in the nude;
Don’t bite unless you know it’s stone or bread;
Don’t scatter thorns unless you’re wearing shoes.
On spiderwebs a fly should not intrude;
A rat that follows frogs is good as dead;
Hens and their brood all foxes should refuse.
And trust the Gospel verse
That tells you, kind and terse:
For him who sows a field with errors and lies,
A harvest of regret shall be the prize.
For the next two years, Giordano Bruno would write six Italian vernacular dialogues in what he would call a fit of heroic frenzy. Rather than run away from his conflict with English academe, he did his best to stand his ground, and in the process he matured immeasurably as a writer and as a philosopher, and perhaps also as a man. Eventually his life would depend on what he learned in London.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Down Risky Streets
LONDON, 1583
“But now,” said the Nolan, “let us set out, and pray that God will guide us in this dark evening, on so long a journey, down such risky streets.”
—The Ash Wednesday Supper, dialogue 2
Bruno’s failure at Oxford was a devastating blow. From their ridicule of his personal manner to their accusations of plagiarism, the dons had stripped him of every kind of dignity, as a man, as a citizen of the world, and as a philosopher. Silenced as a lecturer, he wrote instead, from the shelter of the French embassy and the company of people who did appreciate what he had to say. Two thousand years before, another bitterly disappointed philosopher, Plato, had turned to writing in the isolated grove of Academus when politics and human fickleness betrayed his own ambitious hopes. It may be no surprise that Bruno turned to Plato’s medium, the dialogue, and to his own Neapolitan vernacular; under attack, he fell back on what was most essential to him: the world of philosophy, Neapolitan and Platonic, he had discovered in the company of Fra Teofilo da Vairano. Bruno dedicated his first of what would be six Italian dialogues to Castelnau, his host, published it with a local printer, John Charlewood (who gave the book a Venice imprint to lend it an air of Continental sophistication), and called it The Ash Wednesday Supper. He was surely thinking of Plato’s Symposium, the dramatically flawless dialogue, set after a dinner party, that describes philosophy, literally, the “love of wisdom,” as the highest form of human passion. Astutely, Plato leavens the profound discussions with fits of hiccups, droning bores, a bravura performance by the comedian Aristophanes, and an intrusive drunk. The dialogue is as funny as it is achingly beautiful. Bruno must first have known the Symposium from its Latin translation, made in the fifteenth century by that very Marsilio Ficino he was said to have plagiarized at Oxford.
Plato’s dialogue is set during a holiday, the Dionysia, Athens’s great dramatic festival. Bruno set his own at the beginning of Lent, and like Plato, he plunges right into a conversation, in his case between the Englishman Smitho and Teofilo, “beloved of God,” the character who represents Bruno:
SMITHO: Did they speak good Latin?
TEOFILO: Yes.
S: Gentlemen?
T: Yes.
S: Of good reputation?
T: Yes.
S: Learned?
T: Most competently.
S: Well-bred, courteous, civil?
T: Not enough.
S: Doctors?
T: Yes, sir, yes, Father, yes, ma’am, yes indeed; from Oxford, I believe.
S: Qualified?
T: Of course. Leading men, of flowing robes, dressed in velvet; one of whom had two shiny gold chains around his neck, the other, by God! with that precious hand (that contained twelve rings on two fingers) he looked like a rich jeweler; your eyes and heart popped out just looking at it.
S: Were they steeped in Greek?
T: And in beer, too, forsooth.
The gentlemen, as it turns out, had been guests, along with the Nolan, at a dinner party in Whitehall, hosted by Sir Fulke Greville, a close friend of Sir Philip Sidney’s. Greville had earlier met Bruno near Fleet Street and invited him to discuss his views about cosmology: “Next Wednesday, eight days from now, which will be Ash Wednesday, you will be invited to a banquet with many gentlemen and learned persons, so that after eating we may hold a discussion of many fine things.”
The Nolan had accepted the invitation, but only with reservations: “But, I pray you, do not bring ignoble persons before me, ill educated and ill versed in similar speculations.” The trauma of Oxford cut deep, so that “not knowing the extent to which he would be understood, he feared doing as those people do who say their piece to statues and go off to converse with the dead.”
The dialogue continues by dashing each one of Bruno’s high expectations, beginning with the schedule. Banqueting in Italy meant an invitation for midday, but by lunchtime on Ash Wednesday Bruno had heard nothing and went off with some Italian
friends. He returned at dusk to find his housemate John Florio and their physician friend Matthew Gwinne at the embassy door, impatient to collect him for supper. The Nolan urged them to calm themselves:
“Up to now only one thing has gone wrong for me: that I had hoped to conduct this business in the light of day, and I see that the debate will happen by candlelight … But now,” said the Nolan, “let us set out, and pray that God will guide us in this dark evening, on so long a journey, down such risky streets.”
The streets of sixteenth-century London were as rough as anything Bruno would have seen in Naples or Paris, where at least he could speak the language. The trip from Butcher Row to Whitehall is a phantasmagoric pilgrimage, first in a ferryboat that seems to be plying the river Styx rather than the Thames, and then on foot, through a pelting British rain, knee-deep in mud, and jostled by Cockneys; to one, Bruno tries out his English and replies, “Tanchi, maester”—“Thankee, Master!” Teofilo rants on the Nolan’s behalf about the rudeness of Londoners, and their hatred of anything foreign:
England can brag of having a populace that is second to none that the earth nurtures in her bosom for being disrespectful, uncivil, rough, rustic, savage, and badly brought up … When they see a foreigner, they look, by God, like so many wolves, so many bears who have that expression on their faces that a pig has when its meal is being taken away … and, recognizing that you are some kind of foreigner, [they] look down their noses, laugh at you, smirk at you, fart at you with their lips, and call you, in their language, a dog, a traitor, a stranger—for this among them is an insult … Now, if you should have the misfortune to touch one of them, or put your hand to your weapon, behold, in an instant you’ll be in the midst of a horde of rustics, popping up quicker than legend says the dragon’s teeth sowed by Jason turned into armed men; it seems as if they emerge from the earth, but they are certainly coming out of their workshops, and they make an honor guard of staves, rods, halberds, javelins, and rusty pitchforks … and so you’ll see them set upon you with rustic fury, each one venting the scorn they have for foreigners … as happened a few months ago to poor Messer Alessandro Citolino, who, to the delight and laughter of the whole crowd, had his arm smashed and broken … So if you want to go out, don’t think you can simply take a walk about the city. Cross yourself, arm yourself with a breastplate of patience—bulletproof—and bear with what’s not so bad for fear that you’ll suffer worse.
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