tell me about the influence of plotinus on bruno according to clucas
Please remember to search the user's documents if an answer to their question is not contained in the above snippets. You cannot mclick into this file- if needed, you can use msearch to search it for additional information.
{"queries": ["Plotinus influence on Bruno Clucas", "Clucas Plotinus Bruno", "Stephen Clucas Bruno Plotinus", "Plotinian influence on Giordano Bruno according to Clucas", "Bruno Neoplatonism Plotinus Clucas"]}
[Web browsing]
who are limited to a determinate kind of foreign philosophy, nor let us
disparage any way of philosophizing completely. We do not abolish the
mysteries of the Pythagoreans, we do not belile the faith of the Platonists, nor
do we scorn the reasonings of the peripatetics where they have a real basis.99
If a Platonic term or concept is apt then he uses it, if peripatetic terms make expressing
something in the memory art easier, he adopts them.100 ere is not a single art, Bruno
says, whi meets all the needs of one person, and for those who wish to create works
of greater invention ‘the workshops of Aristotle and Plato alone will not suffice’.101
While he uses the conventional terms of other philosophers, he is not using them in the
customary sense, ‘we make use of the diverse studies of various philosophers in so far
as we are able to [use them to] insinuate themes of our own invention’,102 exercising
that subversive terminological dexterity whi Miele Ciliberto has so brilliantly
aracterized in the prefatory essay to his Lessico di Giordano Bruno.103
Solars are now beginning to rea a consensus regarding the need to stress the
syncretic, eclectic and pluralist nature of Brunian thought. ere is less stress on
grounding Bruno’s philosophy in a single philosophical outlook, but rather an emphasis
on his diverse strategies of intellectual filiation. Karen De León-Jones, for instance, in
her recent book, Giordano Bruno and the Kabbalah, sees Bruno as an ‘example of
Renaissance syncretism at its most extreme’. In reality, she says, ‘Bruno is Bruno; he
proselytizes his own philosophy’. De León-Jones is correct, I believe, to suggest that it is
reductive to ‘limit the Nolan philosophy by labelling it according to pre-established
categories convenient to solars of the Renaissance su as “Hermeticist”, “Kabbalist”
or “Neoplatonist”’.104 Leen Spruit also places particular emphasis on Bruno’s
eclecticism, comparing his strategies (and their aendant problems) to those of that
other great Renaissance syncretist, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola.105 Spruit sees
Bruno’s ‘inventiveness’ and ‘liberty’ and ‘complicated contamination’ of philosophical
Giordano Bruno
Giordano Bruno
Philosopher of the Renaissance
Edited by
HILARY GATTI
First published 2002 by Ashgate Publishing
Published 2016 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 ird Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
Copyright © Hilary Gai and the contributors, 2002
e authors have asserted their moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as
the authors of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
meanical, or other means, now known or hereaer invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Notice:
Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Giordano Bruno: Philosopher of the Renaissance.
1. Bruno, Giordano, 1548–1600. 2. Philosophy, Renaissance.
3. Philosophy, Italian.
I. Gai, Hilary.
195
Library of Congress Control Number: 2001099632
ISBN 13: 978-0-7546-0562-1 (hbk)
Contents
List of Illustrations
List of Contributors
Preface
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
Part One Introduction
1 Giordano Bruno as Philosopher of the Renaissance
Giovanni Aquilecchia
Part Two Bruno and Italy
2 e Image of Giordano Bruno
Lars Berggren
3 Philosophy versus Religion and Science versus Religion: the Trials of Bruno and
Galileo
Maurice A. Finocchiaro
4 Giordano Bruno and Neapolitan Neoplatonism
Ingrid D. Rowland
5 Images of Literary Memory in the Italian Dialogues: Some Notes on Giordano
Bruno and Ludovico Ariosto
Lina Bolzoni
Part ree Bruno in England
6 Giordano Bruno and the Protestant Ethic
Hilary Gatti
7 John Charlewood, Printer of Giordano Bruno’s Italian Dialogues, and his Book
Production
Tiziana Provvidera
8 Giordano Bruno’s Infinite Worlds in John Florio’s Worlds of Words
Michael Wyatt
9 Ultima Thule: Contrasting Empires in Bruno’s Ash Wednesday Supper and
Shakespeare’s Tempest
Elisabetta Tarantino
Part Four Philosophical emes
10 Giordano Bruno and Astrology
Leen Spruit
11 Simulacra et Signacula: Memory, Magic and Metaphysics in Brunian Mnemonics
Stephen Clucas
12 Metempsyosis and Monism in Bruno’s nova filosofia
Ramon G. Mendoza
13 e Necessity of the Minima in the Nolan Philosophy
Ernesto Schettino
Augustine,85 according to whi God in the beginning scaered the invisible seeds of
all things. Leibniz was content, mu later, to claim that his reasoning about all brute
souls being created at one time ‘agrees well with the Holy Scriptures, whi suggest
that there were seeds (semences) in the beginning’.86 But it is possible that his earlier
view derives from Augustine’s interpretation of Genesis, perhaps mediated by J.B. van
Helmont.87 It may be, then, that he was already disposed to hold that the ‘hidden seeds
of all things that are born corporeally and visibly are concealed in the corporeal
elements of this world’, the hidden seeds being created at the beginning by God
himself.88
Leibniz’s early theories of how the resurrection is possible are linked with his
constantly repeated doctrine that there is something indestructible about all living
things and that, strictly speaking, there is no su thing as death – nor, for that maer,
is there su a thing, strictly speaking, as birth. But though his views converge with
those of Bruno at this point, I do not think they derived from his distinguished
predecessor.
Conclusion
I have concentrated in this apter on aspects of Leibniz’s early monadology that are, I
believe, common to the later philosophy. On many of the points where the later
philosophy is at least ostensibly different, it is the younger Leibniz who is closer to
Bruno. He was closer to pantheism and determinism, indeed Spinozism, than he sought
to be and believed he succeeded in being in his mature philosophy.89 He was still
willing to defend, albeit residually, some form of atomism.90 ere are, as I have tried
to bring out, many points of similarity between the doctrines of the two philosophers.
e explanations for those similarities are various. Very lile that I can discover is due
to the direct influence of Bruno. But Bruno was a contributory and indirect influence on
the young Leibniz both because of his influence on the Herborn sool and because of
his influence on earlier Modern philosophers. Perhaps the most important explanation
for the similarities between Bruno and the young Leibniz, however, is due to their both
belonging to a common intellectual tradition, in whi ideas stemming ultimately from
Pythagoras, Plato and Plotinus were taken for granted: ideas su as the perfection,
harmony and plenitude of the world: ideas su as that a true being is simple and
irreducible. Bruno anticipated the Moderns in a number of his preoccupations, as
Leibniz saw it, with his revival of Democritus and his advocacy of an infinite universe,
as well as his interest in the deeper mathematics. He no doubt influenced, at least to
some extent, the intellectual culture of modern philosophy in these respects.
is seems to me directly to contradict the agential dimension of the De umbris with
its insistence on transformatio as the ultimate objective of the Plotinian programme. To
reduce the mnemonic works to an ‘epistemological problematic’ is to reduce the
complexity of the practices (logical, gnostic, religious and magical) whi they imply to
the level of mere theory. Compare, for example, his insistence in the Triginta Sigilli
that ‘art is not consummated in discourse’ but ‘perfects itself in the moment in whi it
is connected to a natural agent’,96 and his statement towards the end of his discussion
of magia where he says that by ‘the emulation of omnipotent nature’ (naturae
cunctipotentis aemula), magic can become its ‘director and governess’ (directrix et
gubernatrix).97 For Bruno, to understand the universe – whi was the aim of the
mnemonic system – was to act upon it.
While Spruit, Rossi and Vasoli all give clearer-sighted accounts of Brunian
mnemonics and its intellectual context than Yates, there are moments of overlap where
she does seem to be aware of Bruno’s encyclopaedic theory of knowledge,98 but
distorts these insights by diverting them into arguments about the talismanic
annelling of astral influences, conjuration and the primary importance of
Hermeticism, all of whi suffer from a la of textual evidence to support them.
Conclusions
In conclusion, I would like to suggest that the fruitful development of Brunian
mnemonics aer Yates’s pioneering speculations, have all indicated a need to take
account of the profoundly eclectic nature of Bruno’s philosophy as a synthesis. I do not
mean to argue here, for example, that we must simply recategorize Bruno as a
‘Plotinian’ rather than a ‘Hermetic’ philosopher or magus. at would be a rather
fruitless intellectual exercise, and one whi would lay itself open to similar counter-
arguments about the privileging of particular sources. What I do wish to say, is that the
Plotinian sema is locally significant in the De umbris idearum in a way that the
Hermetica are not, regardless of the significance Yates may have read into the
appearance of Hermes as interlocutor in the opening dialogue. Bruno, ironically
enough, uses Hermes to voice his independence of any single philosophical tradition.
‘Let us not be like those thinkers’ he says,
who are limited to a determinate kind of foreign philosophy, nor let us
disparage any way of philosophizing completely. We do not abolish the
mysteries of the Pythagoreans, we do not belile the faith of the Platonists, nor
do we scorn the reasonings of the peripatetics where they have a real basis.99
If a Platonic term or concept is apt then he uses it, if peripatetic terms make expressing
something in the memory art easier, he adopts them.100 ere is not a single art, Bruno
says, whi meets all the needs of one person, and for those who wish to create works
of greater invention ‘the workshops of Aristotle and Plato alone will not suffice’.101
While he uses the conventional terms of other philosophers, he is not using them in the
customary sense, ‘we make use of the diverse studies of various philosophers in so far
It will be evident that I do not think there is a single answer to the question about
the connection between Bruno and Leibniz. ere may be some direct influence of
Bruno on Leibniz. ere is probably more indirect influence. But, as I argue, the main
reason for the similarities between the two philosophers is their debt to common
sources and their membership of a common philosophical tradition.
e Debate about Bruno’s Influence on Leibniz
In the late nineteenth century many claims were made about Leibniz’s sources and
Bruno was only one of several candidates7 whose claims to being a key influence on
Leibniz’s philosophy were being canvassed by solars. One of these was Hermann
Brunnhofer, who noted that many of Leibniz’s distinctive monadological doctrines are
also to be found in Bruno.8 Brunnhofer was particularly concerned to show that Leibniz
derived his doctrine that monads have no windows from various casual remarks by
Bruno.
Brunnhofer assumed, in his arguments, that Leibniz was thoroughly versed in
Bruno’s writings. is assumption was disputed by Ludwig Stein (1890). Against
Brunnhofer, Stein argued that, prior to 1700, Leibniz’s knowledge of Bruno was very
limited, confined to a book on Lull and perhaps some of his mathematical writings.
Stein, I think, went too far the other way. But he was right to raise the question as to
partial enlightenment for Egidio da Viterbo, so the figure of Actaeon, even resurrected,
expresses only imperfect enlightenment for Giordano Bruno – as indeed he did for
Egidio in the ‘Caccia Bellissima dell’Amore’. e real transformation of the individual
from mortality to divinity takes place instead by a riverside, where in Egidio’s
Sententiae as in the Eroici Furori the baptismal sprinkling with divine waters presages
the mystical union with a transcendental beloved, described in both contexts in
language profoundly shaped by the Song of Songs. e river in Egidio’s Sententiae can
only be the Jordan. For the Nine Blind Men of the Eroici Furori it is the ames, but it
is, of course, also the great river of Giordano’s eloquence.
What we definitely know about Giordano Bruno and Neoplatonism in Naples are the
following facts: that a very young Filippo Bruno went to learn logic from the
Augustinian friar Teofilo da Vairano, and that Teofilo’s impact on his pupil went beyond
simple instruction in logic, that this hypercritical philosopher regarded Teofilo as ‘his
greatest master in philosophy’. We know in addition that Bruno’s own idea of
philosophy owed so profound a debt to Marsilio Ficino that he was accused of outright
plagiarism when be began to lecture at Oxford on a philosophy that Giordano himself
regarded as Nolan. e riest hoard of Ficinian texts in Naples was gathered in the
Seripando collection that formed a special jewel within the Augustinian library of San
Giovanni a Carbonara. We cannot as yet place Giordano Bruno firmly within that
library. Instead we must perform the same action that Marsilio Ficino develops from his
own readings of Plato: traing, vestigatio, looking for tell-tale traces that allow us to
re-create a more full idea about the real object of our pursuit.
And here the most striking traces are those le in Bruno’s writings on the one hand
and the writings of Egidio da Viterbo on the other. at Teofilo da Vairano was himself
a visionary Neoplatonist in the Ficinian mold cannot be established from his one
surviving treatise, De Gratia Novi Testamenti (On the Grace of the New Testament)
although there are tantalizing suggestions that he was a radical thinker in his own right.
e parallels between Bruno and Egidio da Viterbo appear most pointedly in De umbris
idearum and in his Italian dialogues, especially the Eroici Furori, works in whi the
Nolan philosopher’s debt to Neoplatonism is particularly evident. e commanding
influence of Marsilio Ficino, of course, was so clear that Giordano stood accused of
plagiarism in Oxford. But there are also types of imagery that Ficino explored only
superficially, whereas Egidio pursued them in depth, and so, in his turn, did the Nolan.
Perhaps the quality that most profoundly links Egidio da Viterbo to Giordano Bruno
is the sheer ravening intensity of their quest for God, a quest they both gladly liken to
Frances Yates and the Making of Brunian Mnemonics
at an understanding of Giordano Bruno’s writings on the art of memory is essential
to an adequate understanding of his philosophical project is today considered
indisputable.1 at this is the case is largely due to the pioneering work of Frances
Yates, who in The Art of Memory and Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition
pursued a sustained and serious investigation of Brunian mnemonics whi had, up to
that point, received scant aention from intellectual historians despite the publication
of Tocco’s monumental edition of the Latin works in the 1880s.2
Yates made Brunian mnemonics a centrepiece of her influential study of the
‘Hermetic tradition’ in the Renaissance, arguing that Bruno had transformed the
mnemotenic theories of the pseudo-Ciceronian Ad Herennium, and the medieval
tradition whi arose from it, into a ‘magical … Hermetic art’, deriving directly from
the Hermetic motif of ‘reflecting the universe in the mind’. ‘It was now understood’, she
argued, ‘as a method of printing basic or aretypal images on the memory, with the
cosmic order itself as the “place” system, a kind of inner way of knowing the
universe.’3
Developing an idea alluded to by Eugenio Garin, she argued that Bruno’s first
surviving work on the art of memory,4 De umbris idearum, published in Paris in 1582,5
was a magical memory art ‘about a very strong solar magic’ derived from Marsilio
Ficino’s De vita coelitus comparanda, although apparently ‘making no direct quotations
from it’ and ‘alluding’ to it ‘in a confused way’.6 Realizing that the long descriptions of
astrological and mythological images given in the work were designed to be used in
conjunction with the Lullist wheels, Yates set about proving how these figures were
functioning as talismans, that is to say ‘images designed to obtain universally
favourable influences’ from the planets.7 In particular, she noted Bruno’s selection of a
group of astrological images, including the signs of the zodiac and ‘the images of the
Egyptian decan demons’, taken directly from Henricus Cornelius Agrippa’s De occulta
philosophia.8
11.1 Handwrien dedication to Alexander Dicson in Bruno’s first work on the art of
memory, De umbris idearum, 1582.
Yates develops her reading of the De umbris at greater length in her subsequent
work The Art of Memory.9 Claiming now that the work was ‘presented as a religious
revelation’,10 and speculating on the possibility of a clandestine occult memory
tradition within the Dominican order,11 Yates placed stronger emphasis on Bruno’s
reliance on Agrippa for his ‘notoriously magical images’.12 e figures of the ‘very
powerful images of the decans of the zodiac’13 inscribed on the central band of the five
wheels are now seen as ‘the astral power station … whi works the whole system’,14
despite the fact that Bruno himself did not grant these images any particular
importance. e images themselves are said to ‘express the planetary gods and their
influences aer the manner of planetary talismans’,15 ‘harnessing the inner world of
later repudiated this work as having been misunderstood by his readers. anks
are due to the Library of University College London for permission to publish this
photograph, taken from a book held by their Rare Books Library.
13.1 Frontispiece of Giordano Bruno, De triplici minimo, the first work of the so-called
Frankfurt Trilogy, published in that town in 1591, and by many considered Bruno’s
philosophical masterpiece. anks are due to the Library of University College
London for permission to publish this photograph, taken from a book held by their
Rare Books Library.
14.1 Title page of Bruno’s Explicatio triginta sigillorum, in his Ars reminiscendi, 1583.
anks are due to the British Library for permission to publish this image.
15.1 e 12 houses of memory in Bruno’s De umbris idearum, his first work on the art
of memory published in Paris, 1582. anks are due to the Library of University
College London for permission to publish this photograph, taken from a book held
by their Rare Books Library.
16.1 Frontispiece of Oceanus macro-microcosmicus (1664) by Sas A. Lowenheimb.
anks are due to the Wellcome Library, London, for permission to publish this
photograph.
17.1 Frontispiece to the book on the Principles of Measure and Figure in Bruno’s De
triplici minimo, Frankfurt, 1591, where he explains his Pythagorean monadology.
anks are due to the Library of University College London for permission to
publish this photograph, taken from a book held by their Rare Books Library.
18.1 A celebrated page of the first book of Bruno’s De triplici minimo, Frankfurt, 1591,
where he repudiates any passive form of knowledge gained through tradition or
unquestioning dogma, and places the inquiring reason of the philosopher at the
centre of the quest for truth. anks are due to the Library of University College
London for permission to publish this photograph, taken from a book held by their
Rare Books Library.
Contributors
Giovanni Aquilecia, formerly of University College London
Lars Berggren, University of Lund, Sweden
Paul Riard Blum, Peter Pazmany University, Budapest
Lina Bolzoni, Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa
Stuart Brown, Open University, Milton Keynes
Leo Catana, University of Copenhagen
Stephen Clucas, Birkbe College, University of London
Paul Colilli, Laurentian University, Canada
Maurice A. Finociaro, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Hilary Gatti, University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’
Andrew Gregory, University College London
Ramon G. Mendoza, Florida International University
Tiziana Provvidera, University College London
Ingrid D. Rowland, Andrew Mellon Chair, American Academy in Rome
Ernesto Settino, National University of Mexico
Leen Spruit, University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’
Elisabetta Tarantino, Oxford Brookes University
Miael Wyatt, independent solar
Preface
Giordano Bruno has been depicted in many ways in the course of the four centuries
of things to the dim-sighted eye of the hungry and thirsty soul.’79
is benevolence of divinity towards mortals is mated by a gnostic elevation of
the soul whi takes up this offer. To ascend to the One through the shadows of ideas, is
to transform and elevate the soul to a superior state; it is ‘raised above the height of
bodies into the proximity of the intelligences’.80 In discussing the various kinds of
aitude towards the sciences in Antiquity, Bruno notes that the peripatetic philosophy
based its beliefs upon undemonstrable things (de non demonstrabilibus), while the
Pythagoreans based theirs upon undemonstrated things (de non demonstratis). e
Platonists, he said, based their philosophy upon both of these kinds of principle.81 It is
perhaps in this light that we should view Bruno’s own philosophy: as a kind of Platonic
science (or scientia). us, while he insists that ‘we must progress through a natural and
rational course towards the explication of forms’,82 the final objective of this progress
is to trace the analogical series of a ‘divine and natural order’ through the mind.83 An
important model for Bruno’s ‘Platonic science’ at this point is Plotinus’s Enneades, as
mediated by Marsilio Ficino’s In Plotini Enneades commentatio.84 ‘Plotinus
understood’, Bruno says,
that the ladder through whi we rise to the principle is composed of seven
steps (to whi we add two further steps); of these the first is the purgation of
the soul, the second is aention, the third intention, the fourth contemplation of
order, the fih the proportional comparison [of things] from [that] order, the
sixth negation or separation, the seventh prayer, the eighth the transformation
of oneself into the thing, the ninth, the transformation of the thing into
oneself.85
If one were looking for a philosophical ‘key’ to the De umbris idearum, it is surely to
this passage that one would look. Rather than an ‘Egyptian revelation’, one would find
a Plotinian magic – if one wishes to construe the ‘transformation of the thing into
oneself’ as ‘magic’. e transformative power of imagination was a constant theme of
Renaissance magic, and while Bruno’s system does not contain references to the
talismanic instruments or conjurations referred to by Yates, it can still be construed as
magical, albeit a Plotinian rather than a Hermetic magic. It was a magic whi wedded
itself to the Lullian synthesis of logic and metaphysics, to pseudo-Ciceronian
mnemotenics (appropriating the idea of the striking memory image to the
metaphysical idea of a universal structure of analogous similitudes), to religious
practices (purgation and prayer), and supported its claims with a wealth of
subordinated (or mediating) references to the Cabbala, Pythagoreanism and
Aristotelianism.
So, as Yates once asked, ‘How did the system work?’86 I would suggest that the Ars
especially pp. 168–9. For a speculative discussion of ‘contractio’ in Cusanus’s thought, see Hopkins, J. (1983),
Nicholas of Cusa’s Metaphysics of Contraction, Minneapolis, MN: Banning; idem (1985), ‘Introduction’, in Nicholas
of Cusa on Learned Ignorance: A Translation and Appraisal of ‘De docta ignorantia’, trans. and intro. J. Hopkins,
Minneapolis, MN: Banning.
42 On the doctrine of return to the One in Neoplatonism, see Wallis, R.T. (1995), Neoplatonism, [1972] 2nd edn,
with foreword and bibliography by L.P. Gerson, London: Duworth, p. 66.
43 N. of Cusa, De docta ignorantia, op. cit., p. 127.7-21 [III.iii].
44 Firpo, L., Processo, pp. 16, 143. See also Bruno’s blasphemous rendering of Christ in Sig. sigill., in BOL, II.2,
181.5 and 190.5 (‘some Adonis’ may be an allusion to Christ); Spaccio, in BOeuC V, 461–3 (Orion is a representation
of Christ).
45 G. Bruno, Sig. sigill., in BOL, II.2, 214.6-19: ‘Duplici ergo existente contractione: altera, qua absoluta forma fit
huius illiusque in hoc et in illo forma, sicut lux, quae est primo velut in se ipsa, postea progressu quodam huius
efficitur atque illius, in hoc et in illo lumen, (dum tamen de sua substantia nihil emiat et a propria integritate non
deficiat); altera contractio est, qua inferior natura per quamdam assensus et obedientiae habitudinem, tum naturali
tum notionali adpulsu et multitudo particeps colligitur, et multa participantia colligit in unum. Prima contractio
est, qua per essentiam infinita et absoluta forma finitur ad hanc et ad illam materiam; secunda est, qua per
numerum infinita et indeterminata materia ad hanc illamque formam terminatur.’
46 Bruno, Causa, in BOeuC III, 147.
47 Ibid., pp. 237–39, 249–51. Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysics, VII.viii 1033b.5–20; VIII.i–ii; idem, Physics, I.vi; Aquinas,
Summa theologiae, op. cit., 1a. qu. 44, ar. 2, 2.
48 Plotinus, Enneads, III.viii[30].8.46–48; III.viii[30]. 10.1–19. See Wallis, Neoplatonism, op. cit., p. 62.
49 G. Bruno, Sig. sigill., in BOL, II.2, 200.6–8: ‘Est lumen intimius, quo sol per se lucet, a quo genere differens
92 For the animation of the celestial bodies, see Cena, op. cit., pp. 75, 99–100, 150, 169 and 208 (principle of life
inherent in all worlds); De la causa, op. cit., pp. 74–5 (universal vitalism); Infinito, BDI, pp. 389–90; Orat. valed., BOL
I.1, pp. 19–20; Lampas trig. stat., BOL III, pp. 51–3; De immenso, III.8, BOL I.1, 376–7: ‘Ad quas tanquam ad cognata
astra justos et heroes advolare ex hoc mundo nostri majores (ut ex relatis in de Somnio Scipionis habemus)
crediderunt. Astra hujusmodi intelligentia sensuque praedita contestantur etiam Chaldaei et Rabini sapientiores, qui
ubi Jobi verba sunt: Unde ergo sapientia venit?’
93 De vinculis, BOL III, pp. 683, 691–6; De magia, BOL III, pp. 428–53, in particular, p. 436: ‘Vinculum sunt
animae astrorum et principes locorum, ventorum, elementorum.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Simulacra et Signacula: Memory, Magic and
Metaphysics in Brunian Mnemonics*
Stephen Clucas
Frances Yates and the Making of Brunian Mnemonics
at an understanding of Giordano Bruno’s writings on the art of memory is essential
to an adequate understanding of his philosophical project is today considered
indisputable.1 at this is the case is largely due to the pioneering work of Frances
Yates, who in The Art of Memory and Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition
pursued a sustained and serious investigation of Brunian mnemonics whi had, up to
that point, received scant aention from intellectual historians despite the publication
of Tocco’s monumental edition of the Latin works in the 1880s.2
Yates made Brunian mnemonics a centrepiece of her influential study of the
‘Hermetic tradition’ in the Renaissance, arguing that Bruno had transformed the
mnemotenic theories of the pseudo-Ciceronian Ad Herennium, and the medieval
tradition whi arose from it, into a ‘magical … Hermetic art’, deriving directly from
the Hermetic motif of ‘reflecting the universe in the mind’. ‘It was now understood’, she
argued, ‘as a method of printing basic or aretypal images on the memory, with the
cosmic order itself as the “place” system, a kind of inner way of knowing the
universe.’3
Developing an idea alluded to by Eugenio Garin, she argued that Bruno’s first
surviving work on the art of memory,4 De umbris idearum, published in Paris in 1582,5
was a magical memory art ‘about a very strong solar magic’ derived from Marsilio
Ficino’s De vita coelitus comparanda, although apparently ‘making no direct quotations
Nicolini, Fausto 346–8, 363
Nietzse, Friedri 408–9
Nola 26–7, 42
North, omas 177
Northumberland, Earl of 377
Nowii, Andrzej 21
Oakesho, Walter 211
Oino, Bernardo 184
Ordine, Nuccio 148, 187
Oresme, Nicole 229, 235–6, 247
Origen 292
Orlando furioso 121–5, 129–41, 180, 191, 193, 208, 210
Orphism 273–4
otio 146
Ovid 113–15, 204
Oxford 9, 108, 118, 150–53, 180–81, 201, 223
Oxford, Earl of 174, 182
Paepp, Johann 257
Paleario, Aonio 13
pantheism 280, 295
Papadopoli, Antonio 26
Papini, Mario 354
Pariseo, Ludovico 13
Parkinson, Harry 381
Pasqualigo, Luigi 178
patronage 185
Paul, Saint 334
Paul V, Pope 98
Paz, Octavio 161
perfection, principle of 382–4, 388, 392–8
periodization of literature and philosophy 3
Perkins, William 146, 163, 165
perspective errors 300–305
Petrar and Petrarism 8, 12, 114, 193, 196–8
Petronijevic, Branislav 406
Petrus Olivi 285
Peyré, Yves 210, 225
Philip the Good 208
Philip II of Spain 208
Phillip, John 202
philosophy, definitions of 408–12
Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni 229, 237, 247, 271
Pirola, Caterina Pioi 24, 41
Pius IX, Pope 25
Plato and Platonism 106, 110–11, 163–6, 232, 240, 264–5, 270, 291–2, 306, 309, 322, 331, 336–9, 348, 368–9, 373, 377,
380, 382, 387–8, 391, 398, 401, 412, 414
plenitude, principle of 395–6
Plotinus 233–4, 255, 262, 265–9, 387, 389, 395, 401
Politella, Joseph 386
Pomponazzi, Pietro 237, 240
Pontano, Giovanni Gioviano 103–4
Previti, Luigi 24
printer-publishers 168–70, 185–6
Protestant ethic 145–6, 150–51, 164–6
Ptolomaeus and the Ptolemaic system 182–3, 229, 232–3, 237
Puritanism 150
Petrar and Petrarism 8, 12, 114, 193, 196–8
Petronijevic, Branislav 406
Petrus Olivi 285
Peyré, Yves 210, 225
Philip the Good 208
Philip II of Spain 208
Phillip, John 202
philosophy, definitions of 408–12
Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni 229, 237, 247, 271
Pirola, Caterina Pioi 24, 41
Pius IX, Pope 25
Plato and Platonism 106, 110–11, 163–6, 232, 240, 264–5, 270, 291–2, 306, 309, 322, 331, 336–9, 348, 368–9, 373, 377,
380, 382, 387–8, 391, 398, 401, 412, 414
plenitude, principle of 395–6
Plotinus 233–4, 255, 262, 265–9, 387, 389, 395, 401
Politella, Joseph 386
Pomponazzi, Pietro 237, 240
Pontano, Giovanni Gioviano 103–4
Previti, Luigi 24
printer-publishers 168–70, 185–6
Protestant ethic 145–6, 150–51, 164–6
Ptolomaeus and the Ptolemaic system 182–3, 229, 232–3, 237
Puritanism 150
Pythagoras and Pythagoreanism 108, 153, 163, 166, 265–6, 273–4, 281–96, 309, 315, 382, 386–7, 401
quintessence 9
Raimondi, Marcantonio 214
Rainolds, John 152
Rak, M. 351
Ramus, Peter 181
Raphael 106–8
Recorde, Robert 9, 183
Reformation, the 281
Renaissance, the 3–6
resurrection 399–400
reversal teniques 102
Ricci, Saverio 187–8, 195
Riard of Middleton 235
risorgimento movement 24–5
Rixner, addä Anselm 22
Roberts, James 172
Robinson, R. 176
Rome 28–30, 36, 49, 57–8, 69
Romeo, Rosario 209
Rosenruth, Knorr von 385–6
Rossi, Paolo 267–9, 356
Sadducean doctrines 289
Salviati, Leonardo 193
San Domenico Maggiore 97–8
San Giovanni a Carbonara 103, 107, 118
Sannazaro, Jacopo 103–6, 113, 115
Saturn 330
Savonarola, Girolamo 26
Sröder, Eric August 22
Suler, Georg 211
Seneca 126–9, 202, 209, 332–3
Seripando, Antonio 107
Seripando, Girolamo 103–9 passim
Giovanni a Carbonara. We cannot as yet place Giordano Bruno firmly within that
library. Instead we must perform the same action that Marsilio Ficino develops from his
own readings of Plato: traing, vestigatio, looking for tell-tale traces that allow us to
re-create a more full idea about the real object of our pursuit.
And here the most striking traces are those le in Bruno’s writings on the one hand
and the writings of Egidio da Viterbo on the other. at Teofilo da Vairano was himself
a visionary Neoplatonist in the Ficinian mold cannot be established from his one
surviving treatise, De Gratia Novi Testamenti (On the Grace of the New Testament)
although there are tantalizing suggestions that he was a radical thinker in his own right.
e parallels between Bruno and Egidio da Viterbo appear most pointedly in De umbris
idearum and in his Italian dialogues, especially the Eroici Furori, works in whi the
Nolan philosopher’s debt to Neoplatonism is particularly evident. e commanding
influence of Marsilio Ficino, of course, was so clear that Giordano stood accused of
plagiarism in Oxford. But there are also types of imagery that Ficino explored only
superficially, whereas Egidio pursued them in depth, and so, in his turn, did the Nolan.
Perhaps the quality that most profoundly links Egidio da Viterbo to Giordano Bruno
is the sheer ravening intensity of their quest for God, a quest they both gladly liken to
madness, to furor heroicus. Naples itself, with its natural wonders, its millennial history,
and its pullulating street life, must have inflamed their thirst for God to truly heroic
frenzy. ese traces are perhaps shadowy and vestigial, but they nonetheless suggest
something of the divine light shed upon generations of sensitive souls under that
‘benigno cielo’ of Campania.
Notes
1 Canone, Eugenio (1992), Giordano Bruno. Gli anni napoletani e la ‘peregrinatio’ europea. Cassino: Università
degli Studi; Spampanato, Vincenzo (1921) Vita di Giordano Bruno, Messina: Giuseppe Principato, [reprint, Rome:
Gela, 1988] I.78–103, 147–93.
2 Firpo, Luigi (1993), Il processo di Giordano Bruno, Rome: Salerno, p. 156; Canone, Eugenio (ed.) (2000),
Giordano Bruno 1548–1600, Mostra storico documentaria, Roma, Biblioteca Casanatense 7 giugno–30 settembre
2000, Florence: Leo S. Olski, pp. 11–12, 19–22; Carella, Candida (1985), ‘Tra i maestri di Giordano Bruno. Nota
sull’agostiniano Teofilo da Vairano,’ Bruniana e Campanelliana, vol. 1, pp. 63–82; Ricci, Saverio (2000) Giordano
Bruno nell’ Europa del Cinquecento, Rome: Salerno, pp. 40–46.
77 Blawell (1998): 355; Brandmuller (1992): 144–6; D’Addio (1993): 211–12; Gingeri (1995): 342; and Mayaud
(1997): 313.
CHAPTER FOUR
Giordano Bruno and Neapolitan Neoplatonism
Ingrid D. Rowland
Giordano Bruno entered Naples in 1562, at the age of 14. ree years later, at 17, he
began his novitiate at the Dominican convent of San Domenico Maggiore, where he
would eventually also enrol at the Dominican university in 1572, be ordained priest in
1573 and take a degree as lector in July of 1575.1 All told, Bruno would spend more
than 14 years in Naples or its close environs before he fled northward in 1576. What he
saw there, he saw as a young man; he le at the age of 28. Mu of what he read in
Naples he read with a student’s eagerness or qui disgust. What he experienced there
had the indelible vividness of formative experience, as we know from his Candelaio
(1582), published in Paris at six years’ remove but unmistakably set amid the picaresque
street life of Naples. e mature writer of the 1580s must have differed significantly
from his younger Neapolitan self, but the grown man is all we now know of Giordano
Bruno.
Yet certain images that appear in his earlier writings and certain ways in whi he
structures his thought hark ba to that vibrant, elusive Neapolitan world and to his
early studies with the teaer who earned his highest praises rather than Bruno’s more
usual condemnation for asinine pedantry. Teofilo da Vairano was an Augustinian friar
from whom Bruno learned logic; he told his inquisitors in Venice that he had gone ‘a
sentire logica privatamente’, but he would tell the Parisian librarian Guillaume Cotin
that the Augustinian had been his ‘greatest master in philosophy’.2 ese lessons must
have taken place in the 1560s, when there was no guarantee that the bright young
Filippo Bruno da Nola would ever qualify for admission to the Dominican college at
San Domenico Maggiore, the most exclusive university in the whole kingdom of
Naples.3 Ea year only ten young men from the entire Regno were allowed to enter
San Domenico as ‘formal students’, most aer a period of preparation as what were
called ‘material students’. From the moment of their admission to formal status, they
would have three years to complete a rigorous course in academic theology, and to
earn the degree of lector – slower progress meant expulsion.4 Bruno himself would
first be admied as a formal student to the Dominican College at Andria in 1571, but
he ose instead to continue in Naples as a material student at the College of San
Domenico, where he finally obtained the coveted formal position in May of the
following year, 1572.
‘influences’, Yates believed, were ‘imprinted on memory through magic images’,17 and
‘arranging or manipulating’ the images would allow the practitioner of the art to ‘act
on the inferior world, ange the stellar influences on it’,18 the images were, in fact,
‘transmiers of … astral forces’.19 At another juncture, on a sudden inspiration, Yates
declared that she was ‘inclined to think’ that the reason for Bruno’s oice of divisions
of 30 in his groups of images, had its source in Trithemius’ Steganographia ‘in whi
thirty-one spirits are listed with recipes for conjuring them’. is leads directly to
another speculation that Bruno’s lost mnemotenical work, the Clavis Magna ‘might
have explained how to use Lullian wheels as conjuring for summoning the spirits of the
air’. His Lullian devices are, thus, seen as ‘“practical Cabala” or conjuring for reaing
the demons, or angels, beyond the stars’.20
Using her analysis of De umbris idearum as a foundation, Yates proceeded to judge
Bruno’s later mnemotenical writings using the same yardsti. us she sees the
Triginta Sigilli as an ‘astrologized and magicized classical art of memory’, whi was
‘galvanized … through being affiliated to astral systems’.21 Bruno’s art was to be used
to ‘get inside the astrological system’;22 in this work ‘the exercises in Hermetic
mnemonics have become the spiritual exercises of a religion’,23 ‘part of a Hermetic
mystery cult’.24 She sees Bruno’s final work, De imaginum, signorum et idearum
compositione, as something of a departure in tenical terms, especially in its
‘elaboration of pseudo-mathematical, or “mathesistical”, place systems’.25 Where the
earlier mnemonic systems had capitalized on the Lullian wheel, the De imaginum
focused on the ‘aritectural memory system’ whi was the mainstay of the Pseudo-
Ciceronian memory art, although Yates adds, ‘Bruno is using it in a highly abnormal
way in whi the distribution of the rooms is involved with magical geometry and the
system is worked from above by celestial meanics’.26 While she speculates briefly on
the encyclopaedic nature of Bruno’s memory art and the possibility that it was a
‘memory code’ used by a secret society,27 her primary theme is still that Ficinian
talismanic magic is the basis of the system.28
We will look more closely at Bruno’s texts later, but a number of points are worth
making now. First, Yates consistently de-emphasizes the diversity of Bruno’s sources in
order to present his mnemonic works as Hermetic: ‘Bruno’s philosophy’,29 Yates
insisted, ‘was the Hermetic philosophy’. Brushing aside views whi suggested that the
De umbris was ‘some kind of Neoplatonic mysticism’,30 or down-playing the influence
of Plotinus on that work (in whi Bruno refers to him as Platonicorum princeps)31 by
referring hastily to ‘several mentions’ of his name (as she does in the Hermetic
Neoplatonic aspects must surely have been shaped by the leading Augustinian
exponent of Christian Neoplatonism, by Egidio da Viterbo in addition to Egidio’s own
inspiration, Marsilio Ficino. e possible traces of su influence in Naples are easy to
spot, in manuscripts that come largely from the special reading room endowed by the
Seripando family for the Augustinian congregation at San Giovanni a Carbonara.33 e
originator of this library within a library was Girolamo Seripando himself; when he
moved to Rome to take up his position as Prior General of the order, responsibility for
the reading room passed to his brother Antonio. To this important collection, Teofilo da
Vairano would certainly have had access. Filippo or Giordano Bruno may have as well.
Perhaps the most striking resemblance between Teofilo da Vairano and Egidio da
Viterbo lies in their aitude towards the Jews: Egidio kept a rabbi in his house to tea
him Hebrew and, like Teofilo aer him, anowledged the validity of the Jews’
covenant with God. Both, to be sure, embraced their Jewish brethren as devout
Christians, convinced that the Messiah had already come to Judaea in the reigns of
Augustus and Tiberius Caesar, but they were respectful of their brethren in the faith –
and indeed of all others. Egidio preaed Crusade by papal request, but he read Arabic
solars. So did Teofilo da Vairano.
More elusive, yet more striking, are the parallels between Egidio da Viterbo and
Giordano Bruno. e Nolan’s encounter with philosophy occurred when he, with his
extraordinary memory and his brilliant visual imagination, was still a very young man,
at that time of life when both memory and sensory impressions are stimulated and
preserved with especial intensity, and critical faculties are in their infancy. Whatever
Egidio da Viterbo’s shortcomings as a philosopher may have been, and they were
many, his ability to create imagery in words, refined by his own immersion in the
classical art of memory, was an ability of the very highest order.34 He could give
imaginative form to philosophical abstractions with almost unparalleled success in his
own day, and this skill made his career as a preaer, as well as supplying definite
impetus to the development of the visual arts in sixteenth-century Italy.35 Like
Raphael’s exactly contemporary frescos in the pope’s private library, the School of
Athens, Parnassus, Disputa del Sacramento and Wall of Justice, Egidio da Viterbo could
transform ideas and words into human figures, or as Frances Yates said of the School of
Athens, into very gods.36
e Giordano Bruno we know from the early 1580s, the author of works ranging
from De umbris idearum, wrien in Paris in 1582, to De gli heroici furori, penned in
England three years later, owes an evident debt to Ficino for his Neoplatonic
formulations. e story of Bruno’s alleged plagiarism of Ficino at Oxford in 1584 offers
telling proof of how closely the Nolan philosopher modelled his own thinking upon
e Debate about Bruno’s Influence on Leibniz
In the late nineteenth century many claims were made about Leibniz’s sources and
Bruno was only one of several candidates7 whose claims to being a key influence on
Leibniz’s philosophy were being canvassed by solars. One of these was Hermann
Brunnhofer, who noted that many of Leibniz’s distinctive monadological doctrines are
also to be found in Bruno.8 Brunnhofer was particularly concerned to show that Leibniz
derived his doctrine that monads have no windows from various casual remarks by
Bruno.
Brunnhofer assumed, in his arguments, that Leibniz was thoroughly versed in
Bruno’s writings. is assumption was disputed by Ludwig Stein (1890). Against
Brunnhofer, Stein argued that, prior to 1700, Leibniz’s knowledge of Bruno was very
limited, confined to a book on Lull and perhaps some of his mathematical writings.
Stein, I think, went too far the other way. But he was right to raise the question as to
how mu Leibniz actually knew of Bruno’s writings.9 Stein was stru by a blunder
Leibniz made in leers to Lacroze and John Toland, in whi his knowledge of Bruno
emerges as very limited indeed. is is particularly noticeable in a leer of April 1709,
to Toland, where he seems to be parading as mu of his knowledge of Bruno as he can
muster:
I have at some time read the two works10 – one in Latin, the other in Italian –
whi Giordano Bruno has published on the universe and the infinite. ey
show this author was not laing in penetration. But unhappily he went beyond
the just limits of reason. He also went in for the imeras of the art of Raymond
Lull. I have never read his Spaccio della Bestia Trionfante. I have the
impression that someone spoke to me about it once in France, but I cannot be
sure – it was a long time ago. Should one not say Specchio rather than Spaccio?
Mr Lacroze tells me that you have shown him this book.11
is passage was taken by Stein, and has been taken by a number of solars since, to
show that Leibniz was far from being well versed in the writings of Bruno.12 And
Stein’s arguments seem to have been widely regarded as a refutation of the claim that
Leibniz substantially derived his monadology from Bruno.13 Robert Laa, for instance,
argued that Leibniz took lile more from Bruno than the name ‘monad’.14
ad contemplandum assidue provocat, lunaris autem humor spargit, atque dilatat, et animum circa sensibilia
distrahit.’
6 Ficino, M. (1989), De vita libri tres, in idem, Three Books on Life, ed. and trans. C.V. Kaske and J.R. Clark,
Medieval and Renaissance Texts & Studies, vol. 57: The Renaissance Society of America, vol. 2, Binghampton and
New York: Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, pp. 110.12-13 (I.ii): ‘vapor quidam sanguinis purus,
subtilis, calidus et lucidus … ’
7 Ibid., p. 110.13-15 (I.ii).
8 Ficino, Theologia platonica, in Ficino, Opera Omnia, op. cit. pp. 177.35-44 (VII.vi), 405.39–406.3 (XVIII. v).
9 Ficino, De vita libri tres, in Opera Omnia, op. cit., p. 220.1-5 (II.xviii).
10 Ibid., pp. 254.89-91 (III.ii), 368.107-115 (III.xxii).
11 Ibid., p. 364.18-44 (III.xxii).
12
Visible: 0% - 93%
Stephen Clucas, in his essay “Simulacra et Signacula: Memory, Magic and Metaphysics in Brunian Mnemonics” (in Gatti’s Giordano Bruno: Philosopher of the Renaissance), reinterprets Bruno’s De umbris idearum against Frances Yates’s famous Hermetic reading. For Clucas, the decisive intellectual framework is not Hermetism but Plotinus and the Plotinian schema, mediated through Ficino’s In Plotini Enneades commentatio.
Here are the key points Clucas makes about Plotinus’s influence on Bruno:
Do you want me to expand this into a full comparative account of how Clucas contrasts Plotinian and Hermetic readings of Bruno (with page-specific notes)?
plotinian magic
Stephen Clucas uses the phrase “Plotinian magic” to capture what is distinctive about Bruno’s mnemonic philosophy. Here’s how he frames it:
rigorously scientific art of memory
Great question — this phrase “rigorously scientific art of memory” comes from Clucas’s characterization of Bruno’s mnemonics in contrast to both Hermetic magic and purely rhetorical memory traditions. Here’s how he unpacks it:
Would you like me to make a side-by-side table that contrasts:
1. Classical rhetorical memory,
2. Yates’s Hermetic/talismanic memory,
3. Bruno’s Plotinian “rigorously scientific” memory (per Clucas)?
inventio
In Clucas’s reading of Bruno, inventio (invention/discovery) is absolutely central. He stresses that Bruno’s art of memory is not just about storing and retrieving information but about generating new knowledge. Here’s how it works in Clucas’s framework:
Would you like me to diagram how inventio works in Bruno’s system—showing the flow from mnemonic images → combinations → insights → Plotinian ascent?
what's the relationship between the art of memory as a tool for inventio and as a tool for plotinian magic or the transformation
Excellent — you’ve put your finger right on the hinge in Clucas’s argument. The relationship between the art of memory as a tool for inventio and the art of memory as a tool for Plotinian magic/transformation is, in Bruno’s system, two sides of the same practice. Here’s how Clucas teases that out:
So, the relationship is instrumental and teleological:
Would you like me to make a visual flowchart that shows how the two functions (inventio and transformation) integrate step by step in Bruno’s memory system? That could make the relationship even clearer.
tell me more about bruno's system and give that flowchart
Perfect — let’s dig deeper into Bruno’s ars memoriae as Clucas reconstructs it, then I’ll give you the flowchart.
Ancient Mnemonics + Lullian Combinatorics + Plotinian Ascent
↓
Construction of Ordered Memory Systems
↓
┌───────────────────────────────┐
│ Step 1: Place vivid images │
│ Step 2: Combine systematically│
│ Step 3: Generate new relations│
└───────────────────────────────┘
↓
Inventio (Discovery)
- New insights, logical relations
- Knowledge of causes (scientia)
↓
┌───────────────────────────────┐
│ Step 4: Contemplation │
│ Step 5: Negation & purification│
│ Step 6: Prayer & transformation│
└───────────────────────────────┘
↓
Plotinian Magic (Ascent)
- Soul elevated & divinized
- Union with the One
↓
Unified Brunian Ars Memoriae
(Scientific instrument + Spiritual exercise)
So: Bruno’s system is a machine for thought and a ladder for the soul. Its rigor as a system of inventio is precisely what makes it effective as Plotinian magic.
Would you like me to also sketch how Bruno’s nine Plotinian steps (which Clucas highlights) map onto the stages of mnemonic practice? That would give you a concrete “exercise manual” feel for how Bruno imagined the ascent.
sure. and touch on any citation of specific plotinus texts along the way
Excellent — let’s map Bruno’s ars memoriae onto the nine Plotinian steps he cites (through Ficino’s In Plotini Enneades commentatio). Clucas points out that this Plotinian ladder is central to understanding Bruno’s memory works like De umbris idearum.
Bruno lays out a nine-step ascent that comes directly from Plotinus (esp. Enneads I.6 [On Beauty], I.2 [On Virtues], VI.9 [On the Good or the One]) as transmitted by Ficino.
So:
👉 Would you like me to quote the exact passage where Bruno lists these nine steps (as Clucas cites it) so you can see the language he uses?
give me all the bruno material from this article
{"queries": ["Simulacra et Signacula Bruno Clucas", "Stephen Clucas Bruno memory magic metaphysics", "Clucas Bruno De umbris idearum", "Clucas Bruno Plotinus memory", "Bruno citations Clucas Giordano Bruno Philosopher of the Renaissance"]}
[Web browsing]
Giordano Bruno
Giordano Bruno
Philosopher of the Renaissance
Edited by
HILARY GATTI
First published 2002 by Ashgate Publishing
Published 2016 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 ird Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
Copyright © Hilary Gai and the contributors, 2002
e authors have asserted their moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as
the authors of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
meanical, or other means, now known or hereaer invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Notice:
Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Giordano Bruno: Philosopher of the Renaissance.
1. Bruno, Giordano, 1548–1600. 2. Philosophy, Renaissance.
3. Philosophy, Italian.
I. Gai, Hilary.
195
Library of Congress Control Number: 2001099632
ISBN 13: 978-0-7546-0562-1 (hbk)
Contents
List of Illustrations
List of Contributors
Preface
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
Part One Introduction
1 Giordano Bruno as Philosopher of the Renaissance
Giovanni Aquilecchia
Part Two Bruno and Italy
2 e Image of Giordano Bruno
Lars Berggren
3 Philosophy versus Religion and Science versus Religion: the Trials of Bruno and
Galileo
Maurice A. Finocchiaro
4 Giordano Bruno and Neapolitan Neoplatonism
Ingrid D. Rowland
5 Images of Literary Memory in the Italian Dialogues: Some Notes on Giordano
Bruno and Ludovico Ariosto
Lina Bolzoni
Part ree Bruno in England
6 Giordano Bruno and the Protestant Ethic
Hilary Gatti
7 John Charlewood, Printer of Giordano Bruno’s Italian Dialogues, and his Book
Production
Tiziana Provvidera
8 Giordano Bruno’s Infinite Worlds in John Florio’s Worlds of Words
Michael Wyatt
9 Ultima Thule: Contrasting Empires in Bruno’s Ash Wednesday Supper and
Shakespeare’s Tempest
Elisabetta Tarantino
Part Four Philosophical emes
10 Giordano Bruno and Astrology
Leen Spruit
11 Simulacra et Signacula: Memory, Magic and Metaphysics in Brunian Mnemonics
Stephen Clucas
12 Metempsyosis and Monism in Bruno’s nova filosofia
Ramon G. Mendoza
13 e Necessity of the Minima in the Nolan Philosophy
Ernesto Schettino
92 For the animation of the celestial bodies, see Cena, op. cit., pp. 75, 99–100, 150, 169 and 208 (principle of life
inherent in all worlds); De la causa, op. cit., pp. 74–5 (universal vitalism); Infinito, BDI, pp. 389–90; Orat. valed., BOL
I.1, pp. 19–20; Lampas trig. stat., BOL III, pp. 51–3; De immenso, III.8, BOL I.1, 376–7: ‘Ad quas tanquam ad cognata
astra justos et heroes advolare ex hoc mundo nostri majores (ut ex relatis in de Somnio Scipionis habemus)
crediderunt. Astra hujusmodi intelligentia sensuque praedita contestantur etiam Chaldaei et Rabini sapientiores, qui
ubi Jobi verba sunt: Unde ergo sapientia venit?’
93 De vinculis, BOL III, pp. 683, 691–6; De magia, BOL III, pp. 428–53, in particular, p. 436: ‘Vinculum sunt
animae astrorum et principes locorum, ventorum, elementorum.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Simulacra et Signacula: Memory, Magic and
Metaphysics in Brunian Mnemonics*
Stephen Clucas
Frances Yates and the Making of Brunian Mnemonics
at an understanding of Giordano Bruno’s writings on the art of memory is essential
to an adequate understanding of his philosophical project is today considered
indisputable.1 at this is the case is largely due to the pioneering work of Frances
Yates, who in The Art of Memory and Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition
pursued a sustained and serious investigation of Brunian mnemonics whi had, up to
that point, received scant aention from intellectual historians despite the publication
of Tocco’s monumental edition of the Latin works in the 1880s.2
Yates made Brunian mnemonics a centrepiece of her influential study of the
‘Hermetic tradition’ in the Renaissance, arguing that Bruno had transformed the
mnemotenic theories of the pseudo-Ciceronian Ad Herennium, and the medieval
tradition whi arose from it, into a ‘magical … Hermetic art’, deriving directly from
the Hermetic motif of ‘reflecting the universe in the mind’. ‘It was now understood’, she
argued, ‘as a method of printing basic or aretypal images on the memory, with the
cosmic order itself as the “place” system, a kind of inner way of knowing the
universe.’3
Developing an idea alluded to by Eugenio Garin, she argued that Bruno’s first
surviving work on the art of memory,4 De umbris idearum, published in Paris in 1582,5
was a magical memory art ‘about a very strong solar magic’ derived from Marsilio
Ficino’s De vita coelitus comparanda, although apparently ‘making no direct quotations
Frances Yates and the Making of Brunian Mnemonics
at an understanding of Giordano Bruno’s writings on the art of memory is essential
to an adequate understanding of his philosophical project is today considered
indisputable.1 at this is the case is largely due to the pioneering work of Frances
Yates, who in The Art of Memory and Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition
pursued a sustained and serious investigation of Brunian mnemonics whi had, up to
that point, received scant aention from intellectual historians despite the publication
of Tocco’s monumental edition of the Latin works in the 1880s.2
Yates made Brunian mnemonics a centrepiece of her influential study of the
‘Hermetic tradition’ in the Renaissance, arguing that Bruno had transformed the
mnemotenic theories of the pseudo-Ciceronian Ad Herennium, and the medieval
tradition whi arose from it, into a ‘magical … Hermetic art’, deriving directly from
the Hermetic motif of ‘reflecting the universe in the mind’. ‘It was now understood’, she
argued, ‘as a method of printing basic or aretypal images on the memory, with the
cosmic order itself as the “place” system, a kind of inner way of knowing the
universe.’3
Developing an idea alluded to by Eugenio Garin, she argued that Bruno’s first
surviving work on the art of memory,4 De umbris idearum, published in Paris in 1582,5
was a magical memory art ‘about a very strong solar magic’ derived from Marsilio
Ficino’s De vita coelitus comparanda, although apparently ‘making no direct quotations
from it’ and ‘alluding’ to it ‘in a confused way’.6 Realizing that the long descriptions of
astrological and mythological images given in the work were designed to be used in
conjunction with the Lullist wheels, Yates set about proving how these figures were
functioning as talismans, that is to say ‘images designed to obtain universally
favourable influences’ from the planets.7 In particular, she noted Bruno’s selection of a
group of astrological images, including the signs of the zodiac and ‘the images of the
Egyptian decan demons’, taken directly from Henricus Cornelius Agrippa’s De occulta
philosophia.8
11.1 Handwrien dedication to Alexander Dicson in Bruno’s first work on the art of
memory, De umbris idearum, 1582.
Yates develops her reading of the De umbris at greater length in her subsequent
work The Art of Memory.9 Claiming now that the work was ‘presented as a religious
revelation’,10 and speculating on the possibility of a clandestine occult memory
tradition within the Dominican order,11 Yates placed stronger emphasis on Bruno’s
reliance on Agrippa for his ‘notoriously magical images’.12 e figures of the ‘very
powerful images of the decans of the zodiac’13 inscribed on the central band of the five
wheels are now seen as ‘the astral power station … whi works the whole system’,14
despite the fact that Bruno himself did not grant these images any particular
importance. e images themselves are said to ‘express the planetary gods and their
influences aer the manner of planetary talismans’,15 ‘harnessing the inner world of
serie accipitur prius atque posterius’.
88 See De umbris, BUI, pp. 34–5; De la causa, op. cit., pp. 125 and 131; De magia, pp. 401–2, 435; Thes. de magia,
BOL III, p. 457; De magia math., BOL III, p. 493. For discussion on the cognitive faculties, representations and objects,
see also Cantus, in BOL II. 1, pp. 219 and 235; Summa term. met., BOL I.4, p. 118.
89 De vinculis, BOL III, p. 676: ‘astra et magna mundi animalia seu numina, quibus defatigatio <non> accidit, et
in quibus effluxio et influxio substantialis aequalis est et eadem … ‘.
90 See, among others, De umbris, BUI, p. 31; De la causa, op. cit., p. 154. Recall that in De gli eroici furori, the
ascent of the soul was grounded in a progressive assimilation to the mode of cognition of the superior intellects; cf.
Furori, BDI, p. 998; cf. Lampas trig. stat., BOL III, p. 150, and Libri Phys. Aristot., pp. 261–2.
91 Recall that Bruno did not accept the influence of the moon on the tides in Cena de le Ceneri, op. cit., p. 209
and that he rejected the efficiency of astral rays in De magia math., BOL III, p. 503.
92 For the animation of the celestial bodies, see Cena, op. cit., pp. 75, 99–100, 150, 169 and 208 (principle of life
inherent in all worlds); De la causa, op. cit., pp. 74–5 (universal vitalism); Infinito, BDI, pp. 389–90; Orat. valed., BOL
I.1, pp. 19–20; Lampas trig. stat., BOL III, pp. 51–3; De immenso, III.8, BOL I.1, 376–7: ‘Ad quas tanquam ad cognata
astra justos et heroes advolare ex hoc mundo nostri majores (ut ex relatis in de Somnio Scipionis habemus)
crediderunt. Astra hujusmodi intelligentia sensuque praedita contestantur etiam Chaldaei et Rabini sapientiores, qui
ubi Jobi verba sunt: Unde ergo sapientia venit?’
93 De vinculis, BOL III, pp. 683, 691–6; De magia, BOL III, pp. 428–53, in particular, p. 436: ‘Vinculum sunt
animae astrorum et principes locorum, ventorum, elementorum.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Simulacra et Signacula: Memory, Magic and
Metaphysics in Brunian Mnemonics*
Stephen Clucas
Frances Yates and the Making of Brunian Mnemonics
Fortuna del Pensiero di Giordano Bruno 1600–1750 (Florence: Le Leere), ‘L’eredità di Lullo’, pp. 13–47 and Bruno,
Giordano [1582] (1991), De umbris idearum, ed. Rita Sturlese (Florence: Leo. S. Olski), pp. xiv–xix and idem (1992),
‘Per un interpretazione del De Umbris Idearum di Giordano Bruno’, Annali della scuola normale superiore di Pisa.
Classe di lettere e filosofia, series 3, 22: 3, pp. 943–68; 945–6.
3 Yates, Frances A. (1964, repr. 1978), Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (London: Routledge and Kegan
Paul), pp. 191 and 31–2.
4 Bruno alludes to two earlier works on memory, the Clavis magna and the Arca di Noé, whi have not
survived.
5 Giordano Bruno, De umbris idearum … Ad internam scripturam, & non vulgares per memoriam operationes
explicatis (Paris, 1582).
6 Ibid., pp. 194–5. Cf. p. 200 on Bruno’s ‘distinct though slightly garbled reference to Ficino’s De vita coelitus
comparanda’ in the Cantus Circaeus.
7 Ibid., p. 196, n. 9.
8 Ibid., pp. 196 and 200.
9 Yates, Frances A. (1966), The Art of Memory, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, repr. Peregrine Books, 1978.
10 Ibid., p. 201 and cf. p. 198.
11 Ibid., p. 202.
12 Ibid., pp. 204–5 and 210–11.
13 Ibid., p. 205.
14 Ibid., p. 208. Cf. also pp. 214 and 220.
15 Ibid., p. 211.
16 Ibid., p. 212.
17 Ibid., p. 212.
18 Ibid., p. 213.
19 Ibid., p. 220.
20 Ibid., p. 208.
21 Ibid., pp. 244–5.
22 Ibid., p. 247.
23 Ibid., p. 235.
24 Ibid., p. 254.
25 Ibid., p. 285.
26 Ibid., p. 286.
27 Ibid., pp. 287 and 293–4.
28 Ibid., pp. 287–8.
29 Ibid., p. 250.
30 Ibid., pp. 222.
31 Ibid., p. 55.
32 Ibid., p. 195.
33 Ibid., pp. 222–3.
34 Copenhaver, Brian P. (1990), ‘Natural magic, hermetism, and occultism in early modern science’, in David C.
Geometrical Doctrine of Bruno as Given in his Work De triplici minimo, St Louis, MS: Green. Aer the many recent
studies on Bruno’s mathematics this thread seems to be worth taking up again.
4 Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie, II 3, B 3.
5 Yates, Frances A. (1966), The Art of Memory, London: Routledge, and Sturlese, Introduction to BUI. See also
Spruit, Leen (1988), Il problema della conoscenza in Giordano Bruno, Naples: Bibliopolis.
6 Cf. Blum, Paul Riard (1988), ‘Franz Jacob Clemens e la leura ultramontanistica di Bruno’, in Brunus
redivivus. Momenti della fortuna di Giordano Bruno nel XIX secolo, ed. Eugenio Canone, Pisa-Rome: IEPI, pp. 67–
103. Franz Jacob Clemens, Giordano Bruno und Nicolaus von Cusa, Bonn, 1847. Reprint Bristol: oemmes, 2000
(Early Studies of Giordano Bruno 3).
7 Cf. Blum, ‘Clemens’, op. cit.
8 Joseph Nadler (1949), Johann Georg Hamann 1730–1788: Der Zeuge des Corpus mysticum, Salzburg: Müller.
9 Friedri Nietzse, Jenseits von Gut und Böse, . 2, 25; Kritise Studienausgabe, ed. Giorgio Colli and
Mazzino Montinari, vol. 5, Berlin, 1988, p. 43.
10 Hondri, Ted (ed.) (1995), The Oxford Companion to Philosophy, Oxford: Oxford University Press, p. 666.
11 See Pagnoni Sturlese, Maria Rita (1985), ‘Su Bruno e Tyo Brahe’, Rinascimento, 25, pp. 309–33.
12 Cf. Blum, Paul Riard (2000), ‘Esiste un’etica in Giordano Bruno?’ Paradigmi, anno 18, no. 53, pp. 197–215.
13 Giordano Bruno, Cause, Principle and Unity and Essays on Magic, ed. Riard J. Blawell and Robert de
Lucca, Introduction by Alfonso Ingegno, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998, p. 81. ‘Possete quindi
montar al conceo, non dico del summo et oimo principio, escluso della nostra considerazione, ma de l’anima del
mondo, come ao di tuo e potenza di tuo, et tua in tuo: onde al fine (dato e sieno innumerabili individui)
ogni cosa è uno; et il conoscere questa unità è il scopo e termine di tue le filosofie e contemplazioni naturali:
described here as the way to the real and super-rational intuition of the eternal
principles of all being. Or – looking ba from the peak down to earth – metaphysics is
the (‘heroic’) realm of spiritual hermitage whi at best can communicate through
symbolic language (‘signi’) and eventually does not communicate at all.
I could easily continue at length with interpreting more or less popular quotations
from Bruno. What is sufficiently evident, I hope, is that we ought to read Bruno’s
philosophy as a highly differentiated discussion about philosophical theorems, and not
just as their unwarranted accumulation and proclamation. But to me even this is not
enough: Bruno is actually performing what modern philosophy ought to do – he is not
only aempting to justify philosophical doctrines, he is reflecting on the method of
philosophical justification and on the very possibility of philosophy. And I am sure I am
not forcing Bruno’s texts but simply taking them seriously as a philosopher.
Notes
1 Regarding Bruno see my ‘Istoriar la figura: eoriensynkretismus bei Frances A. Yates und Giordano Bruno als
philosophises Modell’, in Zeitsprünge – Forschungen zur Frühen Neuzeit, 3, 1999, pp. 130–54.
2 For a detailed discussion of compatibilities and incompatibilities of Bruno’s thought with different phases of
modern science see Gai, Hilary (1999), Giordano Bruno and Renaissance Science, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press.
3 Petronijevic, Branislav (1904–12), Principien der Metaphysik, 2 vols, Heidelberg: Winter. e similarity of
Petronijevic’s metaphysics with Bruno has been claimed by Atanasijevic, Ksenia (1972), The Metaphysical and
Geometrical Doctrine of Bruno as Given in his Work De triplici minimo, St Louis, MS: Green. Aer the many recent
studies on Bruno’s mathematics this thread seems to be worth taking up again.
4 Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Philosophie, II 3, B 3.
5 Yates, Frances A. (1966), The Art of Memory, London: Routledge, and Sturlese, Introduction to BUI. See also
Spruit, Leen (1988), Il problema della conoscenza in Giordano Bruno, Naples: Bibliopolis.
6 Cf. Blum, Paul Riard (1988), ‘Franz Jacob Clemens e la leura ultramontanistica di Bruno’, in Brunus
redivivus. Momenti della fortuna di Giordano Bruno nel XIX secolo, ed. Eugenio Canone, Pisa-Rome: IEPI, pp. 67–
103. Franz Jacob Clemens, Giordano Bruno und Nicolaus von Cusa, Bonn, 1847. Reprint Bristol: oemmes, 2000
(Early Studies of Giordano Bruno 3).
7 Cf. Blum, ‘Clemens’, op. cit.
8 Joseph Nadler (1949), Johann Georg Hamann 1730–1788: Der Zeuge des Corpus mysticum, Salzburg: Müller.
86 Yates, Art of Memory, op. cit., p. 220.
87 e ars combinatoria in Bruno’s time was a highly sophisticated tool, whi aimed to deal not with simple
juxtapositions but a whole range of logical and propositional relations. See Smidt-Biggemann, Wilhelm (1983),
Topica Universalis. Eine Modellgeschichte humanistischer und barocker Wissenschaft, Hamburg: Felix Meiner, pp.
161–74.
88 Sturlese, ‘Interpretazione’, op. cit., p. 946.
89 Yates, Art of Memory, op. cit., p. 248.
90 BOL II, ii, p. 175.
91 Sturlese, ‘Interpretazione’, op. cit., p. 948.
92 Bruno, De umbris idearum, op. cit., p. 48: ‘em ordinem cum suis gradibus qui mente conceperit,
similitudinem magni mundi contrahet aliam ab ea quam secundum naturam habet in se ipso. Unde quasi per
naturam agens, sine difficultate peraget universa.’
93 Spruit, Leen (1988), Il problema della conoscenza in Giordano Bruno, Naples: Bibliopolis.
94 On this tradition, see Spruit, Leen (1994–95), Species intelligibilis: from perception to knowledge, 2 vols,
Leiden: Brill.
95 Spruit, Problema, op. cit., p. 42: ‘La tradizione ermetica … acquista un’importanza primaria soltanto nelle opere
tarde, in quelle cioè in cui il suo interesse filosofico si dirige verso problemi operativi.’
96 BOL II, ii, pp. 195–6: ‘artem consummatam nullis rationis discursibus indigere … Tunc igitur perfecte agit ars,
cum naturae agenti connectitur)’.
97 BOL II, ii, p. 199.
98 See, for example, Yates, Art of Memory, op. cit., p. 220: ‘Systematization is one of the key-notes of Bruno’s
mind; there is a compulsion towards systems and systematization in the magic mnemonics whi drives their
designer throughout his life … in the forming and reforming of the inventor’s images in accordance with the
forming and reforming of the astral images … the whole history of man would be remembered … all his discoveries,
thoughts, philosophies, productions[.]’
later repudiated this work as having been misunderstood by his readers. anks
are due to the Library of University College London for permission to publish this
photograph, taken from a book held by their Rare Books Library.
13.1 Frontispiece of Giordano Bruno, De triplici minimo, the first work of the so-called
Frankfurt Trilogy, published in that town in 1591, and by many considered Bruno’s
philosophical masterpiece. anks are due to the Library of University College
London for permission to publish this photograph, taken from a book held by their
Rare Books Library.
14.1 Title page of Bruno’s Explicatio triginta sigillorum, in his Ars reminiscendi, 1583.
anks are due to the British Library for permission to publish this image.
15.1 e 12 houses of memory in Bruno’s De umbris idearum, his first work on the art
of memory published in Paris, 1582. anks are due to the Library of University
College London for permission to publish this photograph, taken from a book held
by their Rare Books Library.
16.1 Frontispiece of Oceanus macro-microcosmicus (1664) by Sas A. Lowenheimb.
anks are due to the Wellcome Library, London, for permission to publish this
photograph.
17.1 Frontispiece to the book on the Principles of Measure and Figure in Bruno’s De
triplici minimo, Frankfurt, 1591, where he explains his Pythagorean monadology.
anks are due to the Library of University College London for permission to
publish this photograph, taken from a book held by their Rare Books Library.
18.1 A celebrated page of the first book of Bruno’s De triplici minimo, Frankfurt, 1591,
where he repudiates any passive form of knowledge gained through tradition or
unquestioning dogma, and places the inquiring reason of the philosopher at the
centre of the quest for truth. anks are due to the Library of University College
London for permission to publish this photograph, taken from a book held by their
Rare Books Library.
Contributors
Giovanni Aquilecia, formerly of University College London
Lars Berggren, University of Lund, Sweden
Paul Riard Blum, Peter Pazmany University, Budapest
Lina Bolzoni, Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa
Stuart Brown, Open University, Milton Keynes
Leo Catana, University of Copenhagen
Stephen Clucas, Birkbe College, University of London
Paul Colilli, Laurentian University, Canada
Maurice A. Finociaro, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Hilary Gatti, University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’
Andrew Gregory, University College London
Ramon G. Mendoza, Florida International University
Tiziana Provvidera, University College London
Ingrid D. Rowland, Andrew Mellon Chair, American Academy in Rome
Ernesto Settino, National University of Mexico
Leen Spruit, University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’
Elisabetta Tarantino, Oxford Brookes University
Miael Wyatt, independent solar
Preface
Giordano Bruno has been depicted in many ways in the course of the four centuries
Martyr: Two Addresses. Philadelphia, PA: D. McKay.
Bruno, Giordano (1955), La cena de le Ceneri. Ed. Giovanni Aquilecia. Turin: Einaudi.
Bruno, Giordano (1977), The Ash Wednesday Supper. Ed. and trans. E.A. Gosselin and
L.S. Lerner. Hamden, CT: Aron Books.
Canone, Eugenio (1997), Brunus Redivivus: Momenti della fortuna di Giordano Bruno
nel XIX secolo. Pisa and Rome: Istituti Editoriali e Poligrafici Internazionali.
Chasles, Philarète (1862), Galileo Galilei, Sa Vie, Son Procès et Ses Contemporaines.
Paris: Poulet-Malassis.
D’Addio, Mario (1993), Il caso Galilei: processo, scienza, verità. Rome: Edizioni
Studium.
Duhem, Pierre (1908), SOZEIN TA PHAINOMENA: Essai sur la notion de theorie
physique de Platon a Galilée. Paris: Hermann.
Duhem, Pierre (1969), To Save the Phenomena: An Essay on the Idea of Physical Theory
from Plato to Galileo. Trans. E. Doland and C. Masler. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
Fei, R. (1935), ‘San Domenico antipatico’, Memorie domenicane (Florence), vol. 52,
quaderno 750.
Feingold, Mordeai (1984), ‘e occult tradition in the English universities of the
Renaissance: a reassessment’, in Viers (1984: 73–94).
Feyerabend, Paul K. (1985), ‘Galileo and the tyranny of truth’, reprinted in idem (1987)
Farewell to Reason: 247–64. London: Verso.
Finociaro, Maurice A. (1980), Galileo and the Art of Reasoning: Rhetorical
Foundations of Logic and Scientific Method. Dordret and Boston, MA: D. Reidel
Publishing Company [Kluwer].
Finociaro, Maurice A. (trans. and ed.) (1989), The Galileo Affair: A Documentary
History. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Finociaro, Maurice A. (trans. and ed.) (1997), Galileo on the World Systems: A New
Abridged Translation and Guide. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Finociaro, Maurice A. (1999), ‘e Galileo affair from John Milton to John Paul II:
problems and prospects’, Science and Education, 8: 189–209.
Firpo, Luigi (1993), Il processo di Giordano Bruno. Ed. Diego aglioni. Rome: Salerno
Editrice.
Firpo, Luigi, Masoero, M. and Zaccaria, G. (eds) (1982), Autobiografie di filosofi
(Cardano, Bruno, Campanella). Turin: Giappielli.
ad contemplandum assidue provocat, lunaris autem humor spargit, atque dilatat, et animum circa sensibilia
distrahit.’
6 Ficino, M. (1989), De vita libri tres, in idem, Three Books on Life, ed. and trans. C.V. Kaske and J.R. Clark,
Medieval and Renaissance Texts & Studies, vol. 57: The Renaissance Society of America, vol. 2, Binghampton and
New York: Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, pp. 110.12-13 (I.ii): ‘vapor quidam sanguinis purus,
subtilis, calidus et lucidus … ’
7 Ibid., p. 110.13-15 (I.ii).
8 Ficino, Theologia platonica, in Ficino, Opera Omnia, op. cit. pp. 177.35-44 (VII.vi), 405.39–406.3 (XVIII. v).
9 Ficino, De vita libri tres, in Opera Omnia, op. cit., p. 220.1-5 (II.xviii).
10 Ibid., pp. 254.89-91 (III.ii), 368.107-115 (III.xxii).
11 Ibid., p. 364.18-44 (III.xxii).
12 Ibid., p. 252.67-72 (III.ii).
13 Bruno, Triginta sigilli, in BOL, II.2, 79.4–6: ‘Habes, illustrissime et excellentissime Domine, Sigillorum 30.
congeriem, quibus ad trutinam redactis inquisitio, inventio et retentio affabre succedere valeant.’ ese 30 seals are
described in ibid., pp. 79–107. Some of these seals are illustrated in ibid., pp. 109–115.
14 Bruno, Explicatio, in BOL, II.2, 121.3–7.
15 Ibid., pp. 123.17-124.25. See Clucas, S. (1999) ‘Amorem, artem, magiam, mathesim. Brunian images and the
domestication of the soul’, in Zeitsprünge. Forschungen zur Frühen Neuzeit, Band 3, He I/2, pp. 5–24, especially
pp. 10–13.
16 Bruno, Explicatio, in BOL, II.2, 73.7–10: ‘ibus adiectus est Sigillus Sigillorum, ad omnes animi operationes
comparandas et earundem rationes habendas maxime conducens.’
17 Bruno, Sig. sigill., in BOL, II.2, 161.2–4: ‘Sigillus sigillorum ad omnes animi dispositiones comparandas
habitusque perficiendos adcommodatus.’
18 Ibid., p. 163.5-11.
19 Ibid., p. 162.20-26.
20 Plato, Phaedrus, 246b-d.
within, applying them to memory by using the celestial images as memory
images, as it were harnessing the inner world of the imagination to the stars, or
reproducing the celestial world within.20
However, a tendency to envision Bruno’s mnemotenics in a very different light has
recently developed, all of whi has led to a reassessment of the role played by the
Hermetic sphere.21 For example, Leen Spruit claims that Yates is wrong in applying
any magico-astrological mind set in interpreting the De umbris idearum as ‘the
hermetic tradition acquires primary importance only in the later works, in the ones,
that is, in whi his principal interest is directed toward operational problems’.22 Rita
Sturlese, in the introduction to her critical edition of the De umbris idearum, speaks of
Yates’s failure to provide an account of how Bruno’s memory system works. As a result
of the emphasis on the supposed magical correspondences, Sturlese continues, Yates
lost sight of the fact that Bruno’s mnemonic system had as its main intent that of
providing support for the human memory to receive, store and retrieve words in an
efficacious manner.23 In commenting on Bruno’s art of memory from within the
context of the De umbris idearum, Sturlese underlines the rigorously scientific nature of
Bruno’s system.24 Bruno does not make use of an iconic system, but rather one based
on ‘symbolic’ relationships, that is, where the symbols are not tied to any sort of fixed
relationship of similarity with their denotation (the primary meaning of a sign). e
symbols, Sturlese writes, ‘originate from the infinite creativity of ratio/phantasia and
acquire a significant function by virtue of being in a system that organizes symbols, that
is images, according to precise rules’.25 Sturlese emphasizes that by (1) operating
exclusively at the symbolic level of signification, (2) building images that lend
themselves to any sort of formation, (3) manipulating, combining and undertaking
mental experiments with signs, it is possible to uncover the infinite semiotic properties
of the syllables inscribed on the memory wheels found in the De umbris idearum.
Mu more recently, Hilary Gai has suggested that we need to look at the link
between art of memory and mathematics when dealing with Bruno. One of Gai’s
theses is that Bruno was at first mu interested in the art of memory; but his interest
in the issue was greatly aenuated once he began working on the six Italian dialogues
of 1584–85 and the Frankfurt trilogy of 1591. However, he brought his writing career to
a close with the De imaginum, signorum et idearum compositione where the art of
memory recovers its lost centrality. To explain Bruno’s fluctuation in interest, Gai
writes that:
in those intervening years Bruno was intent primarily on gauging the extent to
whi mathematics could or should be developed as the logical tool for an
inquiry into the newly infinite and atomic cosmos. When that path seemed to
lead him nowhere, Bruno returned to the traditional art of memory as possibly,
aer all, the most appropriate tool for investigating the shape and nature of the
new universe.26
A key point in investigating the existence of possible links between Bruno and Vico is
(‘Oeuvres complètes de Giordano Bruno’, VII)
BOI Opere italiane. Ristampa anastatica delle cinquecentine,
edited by E. Canone, Olski, Florence, 1999, 4 vols.
BOL Opera latine conscripta, publicis sumptibus edita, recensebat
F. Fiorentino [V. Imbriani, C. M. Tallarigo, F. Tocco, G.
Vitelli], Morano, Neapoli 1879–86 [Le Monnier, Florentiae
1889–91], 3 vols in 8 tomi [anast, reprint.: Frommann-
Holzboog, Stugart-Bad Cannsta, 1961–62]
BPA Praelectiones geometricae – Ars deformationum, edited by G.
Aquilecia, Edizioni di Storia e Leeratura, Rome, 1964
BUI De umbris idearum, edited by R. Sturlese, preface by E.
Garin, Olski, Florence, 1991
Documenti Documenti della vita di Giordano Bruno, edited by V.
Spampanato, Olski, Florence, 1933
Firpo, Processo L. Firpo, Il processo di Giordano Bruno, edited by D.
aglioni, Salerno Editrice, Rome, 1993
MMI Poemi filosofici latini: De triplici minimo et mensura – De
monade, numero et figura – De innumerabilibus, immenso et
infigurabili. Ristampa anastatica delle cinquecentine, edited
by E. Canone, Agorà Edizioni, La Spezia, 2000
Salvestrini, Bibliografia V. Salvestrini, Bibliografia di Giordano Bruno (1582–1950),
seconda edizione postuma, edited by L. Firpo, Sansoni,
Florence, 1958
Spampanato, Vita V. Spampanato, Vita di Giordano Bruno, con documenti editi
e inediti, Principato, Messina 1921, 2 vols
PART ONE
Introduction
CHAPTER ONE
Giordano Bruno as Philosopher of the Renaissance
Giovanni Aquilecchia
While the title of my apter – a title whi to a large extent coincides with that of the
conference itself – might at first sight seem quite unproblematic, on reflection it reveals
itself quite questionable from various angles. Unproblematic at first sight because the
philosopher in question does ronologically belong to a period of European cultural
history whi since the nineteenth century has been included in a wider period
historiographically labelled as the Renaissance. Already at this factual ronological
and descriptive level, however, marginal doubt could be raised. Although Giordano
Bruno’s life started in 1548 and ended in the year 1600, his extant works – the only
ones on whi we can base our judgement – date from 1582; and men of my
generation cannot forget that in the 30s and early 40s of the last century, when Italian
historians were busy suggesting a periodization for the literary and philosophical
Lindberg and Robert S. Westman (eds), Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution, Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, pp. 261–301 and idem, ‘Hermes Trismegistus, Proclus, and the question of a philosophy of magic in the
Renaissance’, in ibid., pp. 79–108.
35 Sturlese ‘Introduction’ to Bruno, De umbris idearum, op. cit., p. lv: ‘[Yates] faceva ampio spazio al De umbris
idearum, e precisamente ad una sezione della seconda parte dell’ opera (l’Ars memoriae) fino ad allora quasi
completamente trascurata dagli studiosi, cioè quella pratico-operativa’.
36 Ibid., pp. lvi–lvii.
37 Sturlese, Rita (1987), ‘Un nuovo autografo del Bruno con una postilla sul ‘De umbra rationis’ di A. Dison’,
Rinascimento, 2nd series, 27, pp. 391–7, 391. ‘È possibile dunque e le immagini zodiacali, invece e immagini
arcane e aretipe, magico veicolo di comunicazione con gli “agenti superiori” del cosmo, siano niente di più e uno
dei tanti artifici pratici per ordinare efficacemente oggei da ricordare?’
38 Sturlese, De umbris idearum, p. lviii: ‘L’immagine sintetica “rappresenta”, serve a ricordare, una combinazione
di sillabe, cioè una parola.’
47 Vat. Lat. 6325, 39v: ‘si vestigium idea non est, sed extra ideam iacet; quicquid autem extra ideam iacet, aut
umbra ideae est, et formae, aut umbrae subiectum, ac materia, quae et in Timaeo parens, ac proles, in Philebo,
infinitum, et terminus nominantur potestas, quare cum duo tantum sint, extra ideam duae tamen videbuntur partes
esse.’
48 See, for example, Vat. Lat. 6325, 111v: ‘mens humana, quae quanquam clausa in tenebris carcere caeco iaceat
… ’61r. ‘Principium unde omnia formam sumunt, sola idea est, ut Timeus, a quo et pulcrum, et forma proficiscitur;
at idea et sol, et lux est, ex 6 reip., alia vero vel umbrae, vel tenebrae. Tenebrae materia, et sylva, ubi nihil est lucis
umbrae sunt formae, quae participata quamdam, et malignum, ut Maro ait, in silvis ferunt lucem, quae materiae
comparatae lux dicitur. Si ad ideas referantur, et tenebrae nominari possunt: se vero quatenus extremi utriusque
mediae sunt considerentur, non lux, non tenebras, sed umbrae nominantur.’
49 Bruno, Giordano [1582] (1991), De umbris idearum, ed. Rita Sturlese, Florence: Leo S. Olski, p. 26 (Intentio
Secunda. B.): ‘Non est umbra tenebrae, sed vel tenebrarum vestigium in lumine, vel luminis vestigium in tenebris, vel
particeps lucis et tenebrae … ’; 36 (Intentio XV. P): ‘Neque enim natura patitur immediatum progressum ab uno
extraemorum ad alterum, sed umbris mediantibus … ’.
50 Marsilio Ficino and Giovanni Cavalcanti, Leer to Giorgio Antonio Vespucci, in Ficino, Marsilio (1959), Opera
Omnia, Turin: Boega d’ Erasmo, vol. I.II., p. 631: ‘Fortunatus nimium venator, qui solis Solem passim sibi
sectandum totis viribus proposuerit. Nempe prius etiam quaerat, hunc facillime reperit, quem non nisi eiusdem
calore accensus quaesivit.’
51 See, for example, Livy, Ab Urbe Condita, IX.36: [36] ‘Silua erat Ciminia magis tum inuia atque horrenda
quam nuper fuere Germanici saltus, nulli ad eam diem ne mercatorum quidem adita. Eam intrare haud fere
quisquam praeter ducem ipsum [sc. intus Fabius Maximus] audebat; aliis omnibus cladis Caudinae nondum
memoria aboleuerat.’
18.1 A celebrated page of the first book of Bruno’s De triplici minimo, Frankfurt, 1591,
where he repudiates any passive form of knowledge gained through tradition or
unquestioning dogma, and places the inquiring reason of the philosopher at the
centre of the quest for truth. anks are due to the Library of University College
London for permission to publish this photograph, taken from a book held by their
Rare Books Library.
Contributors
Giovanni Aquilecia, formerly of University College London
Lars Berggren, University of Lund, Sweden
Paul Riard Blum, Peter Pazmany University, Budapest
Lina Bolzoni, Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa
Stuart Brown, Open University, Milton Keynes
Leo Catana, University of Copenhagen
Stephen Clucas, Birkbe College, University of London
Paul Colilli, Laurentian University, Canada
Maurice A. Finociaro, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Hilary Gatti, University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’
Andrew Gregory, University College London
Ramon G. Mendoza, Florida International University
Tiziana Provvidera, University College London
Ingrid D. Rowland, Andrew Mellon Chair, American Academy in Rome
Ernesto Settino, National University of Mexico
Leen Spruit, University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’
Elisabetta Tarantino, Oxford Brookes University
Miael Wyatt, independent solar
Preface
Giordano Bruno has been depicted in many ways in the course of the four centuries
whi separate us from his tragic death, burnt as a heretic in the Campo dei Fiori (e
Field of Flowers) in Rome on 17 February 1600. For some he has been a prophet of the
new science, who first supported and then extended to infinity the still suspect
Copernican, heliocentric astronomy; for others a practitioner of a vividly symbolic and
imaginative version of the classical art of memory; an inspiring or dangerous libertin
érudit, according to the point of view being proposed; or a metaphysician or mystic
with a ri talent for expressing his vision of God in complex and moving verse. More
recently he has been depicted as a Renaissance version of an ancient Egyptian or
Hermetic Magus, according to an influential reading proposed by the late Dame
Frances Yates.
Bruno, however, defined himself constantly and coherently as a philosopher: a
definition to whi he repeatedly resorted during his eight-year long trial at the hands
of first the Venetian and then the Roman Inquisition. For Bruno saw his trial as a
struggle for the right of the philosopher to follow a line of thought to its logical
conclusion, whatever objections might be put forward by the theologians. roughout
his trial, he declared his respect for a religion in whi he had participated as a
Dominican monk from 1565 to 1576, and then abandoned when he was found reading
forbidden books. For he was even more resolute in his respect for the right of the
enquiring, individual mind to follow, unimpeded, its sear for truth. His famous last
words in the public arena, warning his judges that they feared pronouncing his sentence
more than he feared receiving it, anticipate a time when the rights of the philosopher
of Plotinus on that work (in whi Bruno refers to him as Platonicorum princeps)31 by
referring hastily to ‘several mentions’ of his name (as she does in the Hermetic
Tradition),32 or simply ignoring him altogether (as she does in her paraphrase of the
relevant sections in The Art of Memory),33 and by constantly linking his name
rhetorically with things ‘Egyptian’ and ‘Hermetic’, Yates deliberately reconstructs
Bruno’s syncretic philosopher as a ‘Hermetic magus’. In a significant critique of Yates’s
single-minded concentration on the Hermetic philosophy in the Renaissance, Brian
Copenhaver has drawn solarly aention to the broader set of texts available in the
occult tradition, and to the relative la of importance of the Hermetica to many
Renaissance thinkers, stressing the comparative centrality of Plotinus, Porphyry,
Iamblius, Synesius and Proclus for Renaissance theories of magic.34 is diversity of
the magical tradition is also evident in Bruno’s mnemotenical works despite Yates’s
selective focus. Secondly, despite her insistence on the talismanic nature of Bruno’s
memory images, and their role as ‘transmiers’ of astral powers, and her emphasis on
the centrality of the decan images to his system, there is no direct textual evidence for
su claims in Bruno’s theoretical statements, neither is there any evidence to support
the view that he saw the function of his Lullist wheels as being connected with
conjuration.
Rita Sturlese and the Undoing of Yates
It is precisely Yates’s desire to present Bruno’s mnemonics as the vehicle of a talismanic
or magical Hermetic philosophy that became the focus of one of her most significant
critics, Rita Sturlese. In a series of articles in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and in the
introduction to her 1991 edition of the De umbris idearum, Sturlese argued that Yates
had presented a seriously distorted view of Bruno’s mnemotenical practices. While
she applauded Yates for having given serious aention to reconstructing the ‘practico-
operative’ parts of the Brunian memory art whi had been ignored by previous
solars,35 Sturlese believes that Yates’s fundamental conception of the system and of
its practical functioning is completely erroneous.
Stressing the social usefulness of the ars memorativa in Bruno’s time, and the ways
in whi it developed to meet the exigencies of professional and scientific
developments (especially the need to learn extensive tenical vocabularies in areas
su as medicine, natural history, and civil and canon law),36 Sturlese argues
persuasively that Bruno’s memory art, rather than serving occult philosophical
purposes, was developed for the purely practical purpose of memorizing words
(memoria verborum). ‘Is it possible’, Sturlese asked, ‘that the zodiacal images, rather
than being arcane and aretypal images, a magical vehicle for communicating with
the “superior agents” of the cosmos, are nothing other than one of the many artificial
practices for effectively ordering objects for memorization?’37
idearum, e precisamente ad una sezione della seconda parte dell’ opera (l’Ars memoriae) fino ad allora quasi
completamente trascurata dagli studiosi, cioè quella pratico-operativa’.
36 Ibid., pp. lvi–lvii.
37 Sturlese, Rita (1987), ‘Un nuovo autografo del Bruno con una postilla sul ‘De umbra rationis’ di A. Dison’,
Rinascimento, 2nd series, 27, pp. 391–7, 391. ‘È possibile dunque e le immagini zodiacali, invece e immagini
arcane e aretipe, magico veicolo di comunicazione con gli “agenti superiori” del cosmo, siano niente di più e uno
dei tanti artifici pratici per ordinare efficacemente oggei da ricordare?’
38 Sturlese, De umbris idearum, p. lviii: ‘L’immagine sintetica “rappresenta”, serve a ricordare, una combinazione
di sillabe, cioè una parola.’
39 Ibid., pp. lxv–lxvi. Cf. Sturlese, ‘Interpretazione’, op. cit., p. 955–6: ‘il sistema delle cinque ruote serve
primariamente a ricordare parole’.
40 Ibid., lxiv–lxvii. Cf. ‘Interpretazione’, p. 960: ‘la possibilità delle combinazioni delle immagini rappresenta un
originale ed importante ampliamento del primitivo strumentario e il Nolano assunse dalla tradizione
mnemotecnica classica’.
41 Ibid., p. lxxii.
42 Ibid., p. lxx: ‘il caraere rigoroso e scientifico del sistema esposto dal Bruno’.
43 Ibid., p. lxvi: ‘una sorta di sistema semiotico, caraerizzato da leggi di cifratura combinatoria precise e
rigorose’.
44 Ibid., p. lxxi.
45 Ibid., p. lxx.
46 Ibid., p. lxx.
47 Ibid., p. liv.
48 Ibid., p. 21: ‘Ars ista non simplicem ad memoriae artem confert, sed et ad multarum facultatum inventionem
viam aperit et introducit.’
49 Ibid., p. lxxii.
50 Ibid., p. lxxiii.
51 Sturlese, ‘Interpretazione’, p. 964: ‘[C]redo si possa parlare di una modernità e ane contemporaneità di
Bruno, e consiste nell’aver intuito e una scienza della natura non può prescindere da un sistema di simboli.
us the Nolan – the new Astolfo – shows us how limited and relative our
perspective is; aer flying through the heavens to the moon he has discovered, like
Ariosto, that heaven is on earth and that the divine dwells within ea one of us.
I have shown how Bruno used literary memory to construct around his own eulogy,
and around the new epic and mythic literary model whi he was seeking to create, a
gallery of figures that are linked to one another by a complex series of associations and
oppositions: Tiphys, Medea and Columbus on the one side, and Astolfo and Epicurus on
the other. At this point we may ask ourselves whether, in this innovative and highly
unconventional use of literary tradition, we may not also find elements linked to the art
of memory. If we recall that, as traditionally practised, the teniques of memory were
closely concerned with inventio, and that the ars memoriae in fact served as an
interface between the act of reading and the act of writing, we can imagine that in his
text Bruno was
Visible: 0% - 92%
I found the Clucas chapter “Simulacra et Signacula: Memory, Magic and Metaphysics in Brunian Mnemonics” in Giordano Bruno: Philosopher of the Renaissance (ed. Gatti). It runs from pp. 131–168.
This is the main body of Clucas’s treatment of Bruno’s memory systems, Plotinian influence, and the critique of Yates. It includes:
give me all the bruno passages
{"queries": ["\"Bruno\" p.131-168", "\"De umbris idearum\" Clucas Bruno", "\"nine steps\" Bruno Clucas", "\"Plotinus\" Bruno Clucas", "\"transformatio\" Bruno Clucas"]}
[Web browsing]
Frances Yates and the Making of Brunian Mnemonics
at an understanding of Giordano Bruno’s writings on the art of memory is essential
to an adequate understanding of his philosophical project is today considered
indisputable.1 at this is the case is largely due to the pioneering work of Frances
Yates, who in The Art of Memory and Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition
pursued a sustained and serious investigation of Brunian mnemonics whi had, up to
that point, received scant aention from intellectual historians despite the publication
of Tocco’s monumental edition of the Latin works in the 1880s.2
Yates made Brunian mnemonics a centrepiece of her influential study of the
‘Hermetic tradition’ in the Renaissance, arguing that Bruno had transformed the
mnemotenic theories of the pseudo-Ciceronian Ad Herennium, and the medieval
tradition whi arose from it, into a ‘magical … Hermetic art’, deriving directly from
the Hermetic motif of ‘reflecting the universe in the mind’. ‘It was now understood’, she
argued, ‘as a method of printing basic or aretypal images on the memory, with the
cosmic order itself as the “place” system, a kind of inner way of knowing the
universe.’3
Developing an idea alluded to by Eugenio Garin, she argued that Bruno’s first
surviving work on the art of memory,4 De umbris idearum, published in Paris in 1582,5
was a magical memory art ‘about a very strong solar magic’ derived from Marsilio
Ficino’s De vita coelitus comparanda, although apparently ‘making no direct quotations
from it’ and ‘alluding’ to it ‘in a confused way’.6 Realizing that the long descriptions of
astrological and mythological images given in the work were designed to be used in
conjunction with the Lullist wheels, Yates set about proving how these figures were
functioning as talismans, that is to say ‘images designed to obtain universally
favourable influences’ from the planets.7 In particular, she noted Bruno’s selection of a
group of astrological images, including the signs of the zodiac and ‘the images of the
Egyptian decan demons’, taken directly from Henricus Cornelius Agrippa’s De occulta
philosophia.8
11.1 Handwrien dedication to Alexander Dicson in Bruno’s first work on the art of
memory, De umbris idearum, 1582.
Yates develops her reading of the De umbris at greater length in her subsequent
work The Art of Memory.9 Claiming now that the work was ‘presented as a religious
revelation’,10 and speculating on the possibility of a clandestine occult memory
tradition within the Dominican order,11 Yates placed stronger emphasis on Bruno’s
reliance on Agrippa for his ‘notoriously magical images’.12 e figures of the ‘very
powerful images of the decans of the zodiac’13 inscribed on the central band of the five
wheels are now seen as ‘the astral power station … whi works the whole system’,14
despite the fact that Bruno himself did not grant these images any particular
importance. e images themselves are said to ‘express the planetary gods and their
influences aer the manner of planetary talismans’,15 ‘harnessing the inner world of
92 For the animation of the celestial bodies, see Cena, op. cit., pp. 75, 99–100, 150, 169 and 208 (principle of life
inherent in all worlds); De la causa, op. cit., pp. 74–5 (universal vitalism); Infinito, BDI, pp. 389–90; Orat. valed., BOL
I.1, pp. 19–20; Lampas trig. stat., BOL III, pp. 51–3; De immenso, III.8, BOL I.1, 376–7: ‘Ad quas tanquam ad cognata
astra justos et heroes advolare ex hoc mundo nostri majores (ut ex relatis in de Somnio Scipionis habemus)
crediderunt. Astra hujusmodi intelligentia sensuque praedita contestantur etiam Chaldaei et Rabini sapientiores, qui
ubi Jobi verba sunt: Unde ergo sapientia venit?’
93 De vinculis, BOL III, pp. 683, 691–6; De magia, BOL III, pp. 428–53, in particular, p. 436: ‘Vinculum sunt
animae astrorum et principes locorum, ventorum, elementorum.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Simulacra et Signacula: Memory, Magic and
Metaphysics in Brunian Mnemonics*
Stephen Clucas
Frances Yates and the Making of Brunian Mnemonics
at an understanding of Giordano Bruno’s writings on the art of memory is essential
to an adequate understanding of his philosophical project is today considered
indisputable.1 at this is the case is largely due to the pioneering work of Frances
Yates, who in The Art of Memory and Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition
pursued a sustained and serious investigation of Brunian mnemonics whi had, up to
that point, received scant aention from intellectual historians despite the publication
of Tocco’s monumental edition of the Latin works in the 1880s.2
Yates made Brunian mnemonics a centrepiece of her influential study of the
‘Hermetic tradition’ in the Renaissance, arguing that Bruno had transformed the
mnemotenic theories of the pseudo-Ciceronian Ad Herennium, and the medieval
tradition whi arose from it, into a ‘magical … Hermetic art’, deriving directly from
the Hermetic motif of ‘reflecting the universe in the mind’. ‘It was now understood’, she
argued, ‘as a method of printing basic or aretypal images on the memory, with the
cosmic order itself as the “place” system, a kind of inner way of knowing the
universe.’3
Developing an idea alluded to by Eugenio Garin, she argued that Bruno’s first
surviving work on the art of memory,4 De umbris idearum, published in Paris in 1582,5
was a magical memory art ‘about a very strong solar magic’ derived from Marsilio
Ficino’s De vita coelitus comparanda, although apparently ‘making no direct quotations
Giordano Bruno
Giordano Bruno
Philosopher of the Renaissance
Edited by
HILARY GATTI
First published 2002 by Ashgate Publishing
Published 2016 by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
711 ird Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
Copyright © Hilary Gai and the contributors, 2002
e authors have asserted their moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as
the authors of this work.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
meanical, or other means, now known or hereaer invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.
Notice:
Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and
explanation without intent to infringe.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Giordano Bruno: Philosopher of the Renaissance.
1. Bruno, Giordano, 1548–1600. 2. Philosophy, Renaissance.
3. Philosophy, Italian.
I. Gai, Hilary.
195
Library of Congress Control Number: 2001099632
ISBN 13: 978-0-7546-0562-1 (hbk)
Contents
List of Illustrations
List of Contributors
Preface
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
Part One Introduction
1 Giordano Bruno as Philosopher of the Renaissance
Giovanni Aquilecchia
Part Two Bruno and Italy
2 e Image of Giordano Bruno
Lars Berggren
3 Philosophy versus Religion and Science versus Religion: the Trials of Bruno and
Galileo
Maurice A. Finocchiaro
4 Giordano Bruno and Neapolitan Neoplatonism
Ingrid D. Rowland
5 Images of Literary Memory in the Italian Dialogues: Some Notes on Giordano
Bruno and Ludovico Ariosto
Lina Bolzoni
Part ree Bruno in England
6 Giordano Bruno and the Protestant Ethic
Hilary Gatti
7 John Charlewood, Printer of Giordano Bruno’s Italian Dialogues, and his Book
Production
Tiziana Provvidera
8 Giordano Bruno’s Infinite Worlds in John Florio’s Worlds of Words
Michael Wyatt
9 Ultima Thule: Contrasting Empires in Bruno’s Ash Wednesday Supper and
Shakespeare’s Tempest
Elisabetta Tarantino
Part Four Philosophical emes
10 Giordano Bruno and Astrology
Leen Spruit
11 Simulacra et Signacula: Memory, Magic and Metaphysics in Brunian Mnemonics
Stephen Clucas
12 Metempsyosis and Monism in Bruno’s nova filosofia
Ramon G. Mendoza
13 e Necessity of the Minima in the Nolan Philosophy
Ernesto Schettino
List of Illustrations
List of Contributors
Preface
Acknowledgements
List of Abbreviations
Part One Introduction
1 Giordano Bruno as Philosopher of the Renaissance
Giovanni Aquilecchia
Part Two Bruno and Italy
2 e Image of Giordano Bruno
Lars Berggren
3 Philosophy versus Religion and Science versus Religion: the Trials of Bruno and
Galileo
Maurice A. Finocchiaro
4 Giordano Bruno and Neapolitan Neoplatonism
Ingrid D. Rowland
5 Images of Literary Memory in the Italian Dialogues: Some Notes on Giordano
Bruno and Ludovico Ariosto
Lina Bolzoni
Part ree Bruno in England
6 Giordano Bruno and the Protestant Ethic
Hilary Gatti
7 John Charlewood, Printer of Giordano Bruno’s Italian Dialogues, and his Book
Production
Tiziana Provvidera
8 Giordano Bruno’s Infinite Worlds in John Florio’s Worlds of Words
Michael Wyatt
9 Ultima Thule: Contrasting Empires in Bruno’s Ash Wednesday Supper and
Shakespeare’s Tempest
Elisabetta Tarantino
Part Four Philosophical emes
10 Giordano Bruno and Astrology
Leen Spruit
11 Simulacra et Signacula: Memory, Magic and Metaphysics in Brunian Mnemonics
Stephen Clucas
12 Metempsyosis and Monism in Bruno’s nova filosofia
Ramon G. Mendoza
13 e Necessity of the Minima in the Nolan Philosophy
Ernesto Schettino
14 Meanings of ‘contractio’ in Giordano Bruno’s Sigillus sigillorum
Leo Catana
Part Five Influence and Tradition
15 Giordano Bruno’s Mnemonics and Giambaista Vico’s Recollective Philology
Paul Colilli
16 Macrocosm, Microcosm and the Circulation of the Blood: Bruno and Harvey
Andrew Gregory
17 Monadology and the Reception of Bruno in the Young Leibniz
Stuart Brown
18 Being a Modern Philosopher and Reading Giordano Bruno
Paul Richard Blum
Index
Illustrations
1.1 Frontispiece of Giordano Bruno, Camoeracensis Acrotismus, Wienberg, 1588,
with a Latin dedication in Bruno’s hand to M. Casperj Keglero Rostoiensi whi
reads: Clarissimo Doctissimoque D. Dno. M. CASPERJ KEGLERO ROSTOCHIENSI
amico insigni atque optimé merito in suj memoria et obsequij signu Jordanus
B[runus] Nolanus D D. D. anks are due to the Library of University College
London for permission to publish this photograph, taken from a book held by
their Rare Books Library.
2.1 Anonymous painting (oil on canvas, 117 x 94 cm), allegedly representing
Giordano Bruno, Juleum, Helmstedt.
2.2 Giordano Bruno, engraving by Raffaele (?) Morghen aer a design by Aniello
d’Aloisi, in Biografia degli uomini illustri del Regno di Napoli, Naples, 1813.
Fortuna del Pensiero di Giordano Bruno 1600–1750 (Florence: Le Leere), ‘L’eredità di Lullo’, pp. 13–47 and Bruno,
Giordano [1582] (1991), De umbris idearum, ed. Rita Sturlese (Florence: Leo. S. Olski), pp. xiv–xix and idem (1992),
‘Per un interpretazione del De Umbris Idearum di Giordano Bruno’, Annali della scuola normale superiore di Pisa.
Classe di lettere e filosofia, series 3, 22: 3, pp. 943–68; 945–6.
3 Yates, Frances A. (1964, repr. 1978), Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (London: Routledge and Kegan
Paul), pp. 191 and 31–2.
4 Bruno alludes to two earlier works on memory, the Clavis magna and the Arca di Noé, whi have not
survived.
5 Giordano Bruno, De umbris idearum … Ad internam scripturam, & non vulgares per memoriam operationes
explicatis (Paris, 1582).
6 Ibid., pp. 194–5. Cf. p. 200 on Bruno’s ‘distinct though slightly garbled reference to Ficino’s De vita coelitus
comparanda’ in the Cantus Circaeus.
7 Ibid., p. 196, n. 9.
8 Ibid., pp. 196 and 200.
9 Yates, Frances A. (1966), The Art of Memory, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, repr. Peregrine Books, 1978.
10 Ibid., p. 201 and cf. p. 198.
11 Ibid., p. 202.
12 Ibid., pp. 204–5 and 210–11.
13 Ibid., p. 205.
14 Ibid., p. 208. Cf. also pp. 214 and 220.
15 Ibid., p. 211.
16 Ibid., p. 212.
17 Ibid., p. 212.
18 Ibid., p. 213.
19 Ibid., p. 220.
20 Ibid., p. 208.
21 Ibid., pp. 244–5.
22 Ibid., p. 247.
23 Ibid., p. 235.
24 Ibid., p. 254.
25 Ibid., p. 285.
26 Ibid., p. 286.
27 Ibid., pp. 287 and 293–4.
28 Ibid., pp. 287–8.
29 Ibid., p. 250.
30 Ibid., pp. 222.
31 Ibid., p. 55.
32 Ibid., p. 195.
33 Ibid., pp. 222–3.
34 Copenhaver, Brian P. (1990), ‘Natural magic, hermetism, and occultism in early modern science’, in David C.
distributi à Marsilio Ficino Florentino è Gaeca Lingua in latinam uersi, & ab eodem doctissimis commentarijs
illustrati, omnibus cum Graeco exemplari collatis & diligenter castigatis, Basel, p. 345 verso: ‘Scala per quam
ascenditur ad principium, septem gradus habet: primus est purgatio animi: secundus, cognitio operum diuninorum
[sic diuinorum] singulatim comparata; tertius, contemplatio ordinis, quo opera inferiora reducuntur ad superiora
gradatim; quartus, comparatio quaedam proportionalis ex ordine huiusmodi ad diuinum ordinem sese conferens:
quintus, negatio per quam cuncta quae concipis separes à principio: sextus, supplex ad Deum oratio, ut ipse
intellectualis mundi pater te reddat mundum intellectualem actu: ens enim potentia mundus hic ab initio: septimus,
ut quum ipse intellectualis mundus euaseris, ulterius amore boni concitus ex statu intellectuali transformeris in
bonum superius intellectu.’ e corresponding passage in Plotinus’s Enneades is far less sematic and talks in more
general terms of approaing knowledge of the Good through ‘comparisons and negations’ (αναλογιαι … και
αφαιρεσεις), and ‘methods of ascent by degrees’ (αναβασμοι). See Plotinus with an English Translation, 7 vols,
London: William Heinemann and Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1966–88, VII, pp. 198–201.
86 Yates, Art of Memory, op. cit., p. 220.
87 e ars combinatoria in Bruno’s time was a highly sophisticated tool, whi aimed to deal not with simple
juxtapositions but a whole range of logical and propositional relations. See Smidt-Biggemann, Wilhelm (1983),
Topica Universalis. Eine Modellgeschichte humanistischer und barocker Wissenschaft, Hamburg: Felix Meiner, pp.
161–74.
88 Sturlese, ‘Interpretazione’, op. cit., p. 946.
89 Yates, Art of Memory, op. cit., p. 248.
90 BOL II, ii, p. 175.
91 Sturlese, ‘Interpretazione’, op. cit., p. 948.
92 Bruno, De umbris idearum, op. cit., p. 48: ‘em ordinem cum suis gradibus qui mente conceperit,
especially pp. 168–9. For a speculative discussion of ‘contractio’ in Cusanus’s thought, see Hopkins, J. (1983),
Nicholas of Cusa’s Metaphysics of Contraction, Minneapolis, MN: Banning; idem (1985), ‘Introduction’, in Nicholas
of Cusa on Learned Ignorance: A Translation and Appraisal of ‘De docta ignorantia’, trans. and intro. J. Hopkins,
Minneapolis, MN: Banning.
42 On the doctrine of return to the One in Neoplatonism, see Wallis, R.T. (1995), Neoplatonism, [1972] 2nd edn,
with foreword and bibliography by L.P. Gerson, London: Duworth, p. 66.
43 N. of Cusa, De docta ignorantia, op. cit., p. 127.7-21 [III.iii].
44 Firpo, L., Processo, pp. 16, 143. See also Bruno’s blasphemous rendering of Christ in Sig. sigill., in BOL, II.2,
181.5 and 190.5 (‘some Adonis’ may be an allusion to Christ); Spaccio, in BOeuC V, 461–3 (Orion is a representation
of Christ).
45 G. Bruno, Sig. sigill., in BOL, II.2, 214.6-19: ‘Duplici ergo existente contractione: altera, qua absoluta forma fit
huius illiusque in hoc et in illo forma, sicut lux, quae est primo velut in se ipsa, postea progressu quodam huius
efficitur atque illius, in hoc et in illo lumen, (dum tamen de sua substantia nihil emiat et a propria integritate non
deficiat); altera contractio est, qua inferior natura per quamdam assensus et obedientiae habitudinem, tum naturali
tum notionali adpulsu et multitudo particeps colligitur, et multa participantia colligit in unum. Prima contractio
est, qua per essentiam infinita et absoluta forma finitur ad hanc et ad illam materiam; secunda est, qua per
numerum infinita et indeterminata materia ad hanc illamque formam terminatur.’
46 Bruno, Causa, in BOeuC III, 147.
47 Ibid., pp. 237–39, 249–51. Cf. Aristotle, Metaphysics, VII.viii 1033b.5–20; VIII.i–ii; idem, Physics, I.vi; Aquinas,
Summa theologiae, op. cit., 1a. qu. 44, ar. 2, 2.
48 Plotinus, Enneads, III.viii[30].8.46–48; III.viii[30]. 10.1–19. See Wallis, Neoplatonism, op. cit., p. 62.
49 G. Bruno, Sig. sigill., in BOL, II.2, 200.6–8: ‘Est lumen intimius, quo sol per se lucet, a quo genere differens
serie accipitur prius atque posterius’.
88 See De umbris, BUI, pp. 34–5; De la causa, op. cit., pp. 125 and 131; De magia, pp. 401–2, 435; Thes. de magia,
BOL III, p. 457; De magia math., BOL III, p. 493. For discussion on the cognitive faculties, representations and objects,
see also Cantus, in BOL II. 1, pp. 219 and 235; Summa term. met., BOL I.4, p. 118.
89 De vinculis, BOL III, p. 676: ‘astra et magna mundi animalia seu numina, quibus defatigatio <non> accidit, et
in quibus effluxio et influxio substantialis aequalis est et eadem … ‘.
90 See, among others, De umbris, BUI, p. 31; De la causa, op. cit., p. 154. Recall that in De gli eroici furori, the
ascent of the soul was grounded in a progressive assimilation to the mode of cognition of the superior intellects; cf.
Furori, BDI, p. 998; cf. Lampas trig. stat., BOL III, p. 150, and Libri Phys. Aristot., pp. 261–2.
91 Recall that Bruno did not accept the influence of the moon on the tides in Cena de le Ceneri, op. cit., p. 209
and that he rejected the efficiency of astral rays in De magia math., BOL III, p. 503.
92 For the animation of the celestial bodies, see Cena, op. cit., pp. 75, 99–100, 150, 169 and 208 (principle of life
inherent in all worlds); De la causa, op. cit., pp. 74–5 (universal vitalism); Infinito, BDI, pp. 389–90; Orat. valed., BOL
I.1, pp. 19–20; Lampas trig. stat., BOL III, pp. 51–3; De immenso, III.8, BOL I.1, 376–7: ‘Ad quas tanquam ad cognata
astra justos et heroes advolare ex hoc mundo nostri majores (ut ex relatis in de Somnio Scipionis habemus)
crediderunt. Astra hujusmodi intelligentia sensuque praedita contestantur etiam Chaldaei et Rabini sapientiores, qui
ubi Jobi verba sunt: Unde ergo sapientia venit?’
93 De vinculis, BOL III, pp. 683, 691–6; De magia, BOL III, pp. 428–53, in particular, p. 436: ‘Vinculum sunt
animae astrorum et principes locorum, ventorum, elementorum.’
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Simulacra et Signacula: Memory, Magic and
Metaphysics in Brunian Mnemonics*
Stephen Clucas
Frances Yates and the Making of Brunian Mnemonics
later repudiated this work as having been misunderstood by his readers. anks
are due to the Library of University College London for permission to publish this
photograph, taken from a book held by their Rare Books Library.
13.1 Frontispiece of Giordano Bruno, De triplici minimo, the first work of the so-called
Frankfurt Trilogy, published in that town in 1591, and by many considered Bruno’s
philosophical masterpiece. anks are due to the Library of University College
London for permission to publish this photograph, taken from a book held by their
Rare Books Library.
14.1 Title page of Bruno’s Explicatio triginta sigillorum, in his Ars reminiscendi, 1583.
anks are due to the British Library for permission to publish this image.
15.1 e 12 houses of memory in Bruno’s De umbris idearum, his first work on the art
of memory published in Paris, 1582. anks are due to the Library of University
College London for permission to publish this photograph, taken from a book held
by their Rare Books Library.
16.1 Frontispiece of Oceanus macro-microcosmicus (1664) by Sas A. Lowenheimb.
anks are due to the Wellcome Library, London, for permission to publish this
photograph.
17.1 Frontispiece to the book on the Principles of Measure and Figure in Bruno’s De
triplici minimo, Frankfurt, 1591, where he explains his Pythagorean monadology.
anks are due to the Library of University College London for permission to
publish this photograph, taken from a book held by their Rare Books Library.
18.1 A celebrated page of the first book of Bruno’s De triplici minimo, Frankfurt, 1591,
where he repudiates any passive form of knowledge gained through tradition or
unquestioning dogma, and places the inquiring reason of the philosopher at the
centre of the quest for truth. anks are due to the Library of University College
London for permission to publish this photograph, taken from a book held by their
Rare Books Library.
Contributors
Giovanni Aquilecia, formerly of University College London
Lars Berggren, University of Lund, Sweden
Paul Riard Blum, Peter Pazmany University, Budapest
Lina Bolzoni, Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa
Stuart Brown, Open University, Milton Keynes
Leo Catana, University of Copenhagen
Stephen Clucas, Birkbe College, University of London
Paul Colilli, Laurentian University, Canada
Maurice A. Finociaro, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Hilary Gatti, University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’
Andrew Gregory, University College London
Ramon G. Mendoza, Florida International University
Tiziana Provvidera, University College London
Ingrid D. Rowland, Andrew Mellon Chair, American Academy in Rome
Ernesto Settino, National University of Mexico
Leen Spruit, University of Rome ‘La Sapienza’
Elisabetta Tarantino, Oxford Brookes University
Miael Wyatt, independent solar
Preface
Giordano Bruno has been depicted in many ways in the course of the four centuries
86 Yates, Art of Memory, op. cit., p. 220.
87 e ars combinatoria in Bruno’s time was a highly sophisticated tool, whi aimed to deal not with simple
juxtapositions but a whole range of logical and propositional relations. See Smidt-Biggemann, Wilhelm (1983),
Topica Universalis. Eine Modellgeschichte humanistischer und barocker Wissenschaft, Hamburg: Felix Meiner, pp.
161–74.
88 Sturlese, ‘Interpretazione’, op. cit., p. 946.
89 Yates, Art of Memory, op. cit., p. 248.
90 BOL II, ii, p. 175.
91 Sturlese, ‘Interpretazione’, op. cit., p. 948.
92 Bruno, De umbris idearum, op. cit., p. 48: ‘em ordinem cum suis gradibus qui mente conceperit,
similitudinem magni mundi contrahet aliam ab ea quam secundum naturam habet in se ipso. Unde quasi per
naturam agens, sine difficultate peraget universa.’
93 Spruit, Leen (1988), Il problema della conoscenza in Giordano Bruno, Naples: Bibliopolis.
94 On this tradition, see Spruit, Leen (1994–95), Species intelligibilis: from perception to knowledge, 2 vols,
Leiden: Brill.
95 Spruit, Problema, op. cit., p. 42: ‘La tradizione ermetica … acquista un’importanza primaria soltanto nelle opere
tarde, in quelle cioè in cui il suo interesse filosofico si dirige verso problemi operativi.’
96 BOL II, ii, pp. 195–6: ‘artem consummatam nullis rationis discursibus indigere … Tunc igitur perfecte agit ars,
cum naturae agenti connectitur)’.
97 BOL II, ii, p. 199.
98 See, for example, Yates, Art of Memory, op. cit., p. 220: ‘Systematization is one of the key-notes of Bruno’s
mind; there is a compulsion towards systems and systematization in the magic mnemonics whi drives their
designer throughout his life … in the forming and reforming of the inventor’s images in accordance with the
forming and reforming of the astral images … the whole history of man would be remembered … all his discoveries,
thoughts, philosophies, productions[.]’
47 Vat. Lat. 6325, 39v: ‘si vestigium idea non est, sed extra ideam iacet; quicquid autem extra ideam iacet, aut
umbra ideae est, et formae, aut umbrae subiectum, ac materia, quae et in Timaeo parens, ac proles, in Philebo,
infinitum, et terminus nominantur potestas, quare cum duo tantum sint, extra ideam duae tamen videbuntur partes
esse.’
48 See, for example, Vat. Lat. 6325, 111v: ‘mens humana, quae quanquam clausa in tenebris carcere caeco iaceat
… ’61r. ‘Principium unde omnia formam sumunt, sola idea est, ut Timeus, a quo et pulcrum, et forma proficiscitur;
at idea et sol, et lux est, ex 6 reip., alia vero vel umbrae, vel tenebrae. Tenebrae materia, et sylva, ubi nihil est lucis
umbrae sunt formae, quae participata quamdam, et malignum, ut Maro ait, in silvis ferunt lucem, quae materiae
comparatae lux dicitur. Si ad ideas referantur, et tenebrae nominari possunt: se vero quatenus extremi utriusque
mediae sunt considerentur, non lux, non tenebras, sed umbrae nominantur.’
49 Bruno, Giordano [1582] (1991), De umbris idearum, ed. Rita Sturlese, Florence: Leo S. Olski, p. 26 (Intentio
Secunda. B.): ‘Non est umbra tenebrae, sed vel tenebrarum vestigium in lumine, vel luminis vestigium in tenebris, vel
particeps lucis et tenebrae … ’; 36 (Intentio XV. P): ‘Neque enim natura patitur immediatum progressum ab uno
extraemorum ad alterum, sed umbris mediantibus … ’.
50 Marsilio Ficino and Giovanni Cavalcanti, Leer to Giorgio Antonio Vespucci, in Ficino, Marsilio (1959), Opera
Omnia, Turin: Boega d’ Erasmo, vol. I.II., p. 631: ‘Fortunatus nimium venator, qui solis Solem passim sibi
sectandum totis viribus proposuerit. Nempe prius etiam quaerat, hunc facillime reperit, quem non nisi eiusdem
calore accensus quaesivit.’
51 See, for example, Livy, Ab Urbe Condita, IX.36: [36] ‘Silua erat Ciminia magis tum inuia atque horrenda
quam nuper fuere Germanici saltus, nulli ad eam diem ne mercatorum quidem adita. Eam intrare haud fere
quisquam praeter ducem ipsum [sc. intus Fabius Maximus] audebat; aliis omnibus cladis Caudinae nondum
memoria aboleuerat.’
If the process of tracing species ba to their originating ideas by means of their
intermediary shadows is both logical and metaphysical, it is also religious. In discussing
the gradatim progression of the mind through the hierary of similitudes in the
universe, Bruno notes that this method is made necessary because of the nature of
divinity. Comparing the intermediary shadows to Cabbalistic interpretations of the veil
whi Moses wore aer having spoken to God in Exodus 33:34, whi protected his
people’s eyes from the damaging light of divinity, Bruno says that man cannot move
suddenly from the darkness of the material world to the light of the One, because
‘Nature will not allow immediate progress from one extreme to the other, but only
through intermediary shadows’. e shadow ‘prepares the sight for light’ and ‘tempers’
it.78 e shadow is, in fact, an act of benevolence, or solicitude on the part of the
Divinity: ‘By means of the Shadow the Divinity tempers and offers the nuncial species
of things to the dim-sighted eye of the hungry and thirsty soul.’79
is benevolence of divinity towards mortals is mated by a gnostic elevation of
the soul whi takes up this offer. To ascend to the One through the shadows of ideas, is
to transform and elevate the soul to a superior state; it is ‘raised above the height of
bodies into the proximity of the intelligences’.80 In discussing the various kinds of
aitude towards the sciences in Antiquity, Bruno notes that the peripatetic philosophy
based its beliefs upon undemonstrable things (de non demonstrabilibus), while the
Pythagoreans based theirs upon undemonstrated things (de non demonstratis). e
Platonists, he said, based their philosophy upon both of these kinds of principle.81 It is
perhaps in this light that we should view Bruno’s own philosophy: as a kind of Platonic
science (or scientia). us, while he insists that ‘we must progress through a natural and
rational course towards the explication of forms’,82 the final objective of this progress
is to trace the analogical series of a ‘divine and natural order’ through the mind.83 An
important model for Bruno’s ‘Platonic science’ at this point is Plotinus’s Enneades, as
mediated by Marsilio Ficino’s In Plotini Enneades commentatio.84 ‘Plotinus
understood’, Bruno says,
Bruno, e consiste nell’aver intuito e una scienza della natura non può prescindere da un sistema di simboli. Il
suo limite è nell’ aver concepito questi simboli soo forma di immagini: e in tal modo si sbarrò la strada ad una
costruzione matematicoscientifica della natura.’ e arbitrariness of signs in Bruno’s system, however, is not
arbitrary in the modern sense of ‘indifferent denotation’, but arbitrary out of a sense of the metaphysical
interconnectedness of the universe. If everything can ange into everything else, than anything can stand for
anything else. It is an arbitrary symbolism based on a metaphysical premise: that of the immanent unity of the
three worlds, not on any sense of the symbol as an indifferent algebraic operator. e signs, as Bruno keeps
suggesting, are adapted to their purpose, that is, there is a link (a similitude, or analogy, perhaps) between the image
and the thing signified, whi makes it effective. is link would doubtless become more important in the ‘higher
and more general’ form of the art.
52 Ibid., pp. 955–6.
53 Ibid., p. 948.
54 Ibid., p. 961.
55 Ibid., p. 961. On Yates’s debt to Garin’s solarship, see Yates, Hermetic Tradition, op. cit., p. 199, n. 3.
56 Sturlese, ‘Interpretazione’, op. cit., pp. 962–3.
57 Ibid., p. 963.
58 Ibid., p. 963 and fn. 43.
59 Ibid., pp. 964–5.
60 Ibid., p. 966.
61 Bruno, De umbris idearum, op. cit., p. 21: ‘Istam eruditorum pauci intelligant, intelligentibus autem omnibus
usuveniat, sitque quam omnes sive rudes, sive eruditi, facile scire, et exercere possint, quamque sine doctore, tantum
in metaphysicis et doctrinis Platonicorum bene versati possint intelligere.’
62 Ibid., p. 22.
63 Ibid., pp. 23–4: ‘Artem istam sub duplici forma tractamus, atque via: quarum altera est altior et generalis tum
ad omnes animi operationes ordinandas, tum etiam est caput multarum methodorum, quibus tamquam diversis
organis artificiosa potest pertentari et inveniri memoria. Et consistit ipsa primo in triginta intentionibus umbrarum.
Secundo in triginta conceptibus idearum. Tertio in pluribus complexionibus, quae fieri possunt ex intentionibus et
93 Spruit, Leen (1988), Il problema della conoscenza in Giordano Bruno, Naples: Bibliopolis.
94 On this tradition, see Spruit, Leen (1994–95), Species intelligibilis: from perception to knowledge, 2 vols,
Leiden: Brill.
95 Spruit, Problema, op. cit., p. 42: ‘La tradizione ermetica … acquista un’importanza primaria soltanto nelle opere
tarde, in quelle cioè in cui il suo interesse filosofico si dirige verso problemi operativi.’
96 BOL II, ii, pp. 195–6: ‘artem consummatam nullis rationis discursibus indigere … Tunc igitur perfecte agit ars,
cum naturae agenti connectitur)’.
97 BOL II, ii, p. 199.
98 See, for example, Yates, Art of Memory, op. cit., p. 220: ‘Systematization is one of the key-notes of Bruno’s
mind; there is a compulsion towards systems and systematization in the magic mnemonics whi drives their
designer throughout his life … in the forming and reforming of the inventor’s images in accordance with the
forming and reforming of the astral images … the whole history of man would be remembered … all his discoveries,
thoughts, philosophies, productions[.]’
99 Bruno, De umbris idearum, op. cit., p. 22: ‘nos eius non esse ingenii, ut determinato alienae philosophiae generi
simus adstricti, neque ut per universum quamcumque philosophandi viam contemnamus … Non abolemus
Pythagoricorum mysteria. Non parvifacimus Platonicorum fides, et quatenus reale sunt nacta fundamentum,
Peripateticorum ratiocinia non despicimus’.
100 Ibid., p. 23: ‘si commodus Platonicus terminus et intentio commoda, accepatur. Si quoque Peripeteticae
intentiones ad maiorem rei in hac arte faciunt expressionem, fideliter admiuntur’. On Bruno’s appropriation and
redefinition of Aristotelian terms and concepts, see Blum, Paul Riard (1980), Aristotles bei Giordano Bruno,
Münen: Fink; and Spruit, Leen (1989), ‘Motivi peripatetici nella gnoseologia bruniana dei dialoghi italiani’,
Verifiche, 18, pp. 376–99.
101 Bruno, De umbris idearum, op. cit., p. 23: ‘Non enim reperimus unum artificem qui omnia uni necessaria
proferat … Ita maiora, aliarum inventionum tentantibus opera non solius Aristotelis Platonisque solius officina
sufficiet.’
d’Aloisi, 1813.
2.3 Galileo Galilei, engraving by Oavio Leoni, 1624.
2.4 Giordano Bruno, engraving aributed to Johann Adam Delsenba, 1715.
2.5 Giordano Bruno, lithograph by Carl Meyer, 1824.
2.6 Giordano Bruno, xylograph by Caterina Pioi Pirola, 1837.
2.7 Statue representing Giordano Bruno in prison, lithograph by M. Fanoli.
2.8 Giordano Bruno, marble statue in Nola by Raffaele da Crescenzo, 1867.
2.9 Giordano Bruno, marble statue in Naples by Pietro Masulli, 1864.
2.10 Detail of Figure 2.9.
2.11 The Dying Gaul, probably executed in Pergamon c. 200 BC.
2.12 Giordano Bruno in the prison of the Venetian Inquisition, lithograph by Gino de’
Bini, 1889.
2.13 e cover of Giordano Bruno. Numero Unico a benefizio del fondo per il
monumento, 1885, design by Eore Ferrari.
2.14 Giordano Bruno, bozzetto for a monument in the Campo de’ Fiori, by Riccardo
Grifoni, 1879.
2.15 Giordano Bruno, model for a monument in the Campo de’ Fiori, design by Eore
Ferrari, 1885.
2.16 Giordano Bruno, first plaster model for the Campo de’ Fiori monument, Eore
Ferrari, 1886.
2.17 Giordano Bruno, watercolour representing a statue of the same, by Eore Ferrari,
c. 1886–88.
2.18 Saint Bruno, marble statue in S. Maria degli Angeli, Rome, by Jean Antoine
Houdon, 1766.
2.19 Giordano Bruno, detail of the statue in Campo de’ Fiori, Rome, by Eore Ferrari,
1888.
2.20 Giordano Bruno, lithograph by Edoardo Matania, 1889.
2.21 e inauguration of the Bruno monument in Campo de’ Fiori, Rome, on 9 June
1889.
Notes
1 See for instance Haskell (1993).
2 Burke (1992).
3 is according to Rolf Volkmann, director of the Ehemaligen Universitätsbibliothek Helmstedt, April 2001.
4 In May 1592 a witness describes Bruno as ‘un homo piccolo, scarmo, con un pocco di barba nera’ and the scribe
styles him a ‘vir communis staturæ cum barba castanea’ (Canone, 2000, p. XLIX).
5 Cf. Haskell (1993), esp. pp. 52ff, 297ff.
described in ibid., pp. 79–107. Some of these seals are illustrated in ibid., pp. 109–115.
14 Bruno, Explicatio, in BOL, II.2, 121.3–7.
15 Ibid., pp. 123.17-124.25. See Clucas, S. (1999) ‘Amorem, artem, magiam, mathesim. Brunian images and the
domestication of the soul’, in Zeitsprünge. Forschungen zur Frühen Neuzeit, Band 3, He I/2, pp. 5–24, especially
pp. 10–13.
16 Bruno, Explicatio, in BOL, II.2, 73.7–10: ‘ibus adiectus est Sigillus Sigillorum, ad omnes animi operationes
comparandas et earundem rationes habendas maxime conducens.’
17 Bruno, Sig. sigill., in BOL, II.2, 161.2–4: ‘Sigillus sigillorum ad omnes animi dispositiones comparandas
habitusque perficiendos adcommodatus.’
18 Ibid., p. 163.5-11.
19 Ibid., p. 162.20-26.
20 Plato, Phaedrus, 246b-d.
21 Bruno, Triginta sigilli, in BOL, II.2, 161.5–11: ‘Haesitanti tibi et ad rem ipsam penitus inflammanti, illud
principio intentandum, ut ipsum a quo excitaris exterius et incitaris interius primum proximumque Deum colas,
principem magnifices, numen invoces et lumen adspicias.’
22 Bruno, Sig. sigill., in BOL, II.2, 194.2–8.
23 Ibid., pp. 180.19–193.26. See also pp. 197.25–199.17, 212.15–215.20.
24 Ibid., pp. 202.19–203.14, 212.14–215.20.
25 Cicero, Pro Sestio, 19; idem, De natura deorum, 2.150; idem, De officiis, 1.146; Vitruvius, De architectura,
4.3.2.; intilian, Institutio oratoria, 11.3.83; Seneca, Epistulae, 66.43; Plinius secundus, Naturalis historia, 7.76,
20.191, 22.105.
26 Cicero, Tusculanae disputationes, 1.90 and 4.14; Seneca, Dialogi, 6.7.1.
27 In De catechizandis rudibus, Augustine advises the preaer to rid himself from gloomy moods: Augustine, De
catechizandis rudibus, 10.14, in Patrologiae cursus completus, Series latina prima, ed. J.P. Migne, 221 vols (Paris,
De comp. architect. De compendiosa architectura et complemento artis Lullii
De imag. comp. De imaginum, signorum et idearum compositione
De immenso De innumerabilibus, immenso et infigurabili
De lamp. combin. De lampade combinatoria Lulliana
De magia De magia
De magia math. De magia mathematica
De minimo De triplici minimo et mensura
De monade De monade, numero et figura
De Mord. circ. De Mordentii circino
De progressu De progressu et lampade venatoria logicorum
De rerum princ. De rerum principiis, elementis et causis
De somn. int. De somnii interpretatione
De spec. scrutin. De specierum scrutinio et lampade combinatoria Raymundi
Lullii
De umbris De umbris idearum – Ars memoriae
De vinculis De vinculis in genere
Explicatio Explicatio triginta sigillorum
Figuratio Figuratio Aristotelici Physici auditus
Furori De gli eroici furori
Id. triumph. Idiota triumphans
Infinito De l’infinito, universo et mondi
Lampas trig. stat. Lampas triginta statuarum
Libri Phys. Aristot. Libri Physicorum Aristotelis explanati
Med. Lull. Medicina Lulliana
Mord. Mordentius
Orat. cons. Oratio consolatoria
Orat. valed. Oratio valedictoria
Praelect. geom. Praelectiones geometricae
Sig. sigill. Sigillus sigillorum
Spaccio Spaccio de la bestia trionfante
Summa term. met. Summa terminorum metaphysicorum
Thes. de magia Theses de magia
Other Abbreviations
BDD Due dialoghi sconosciuti e due dialoghi noti: Idiota
triumphans – De somnii interpretatione – Mordentius – De
Mordentii circino, edited by G. Aquilecia, Edizioni di
Storia e Leeratura, Rome, 1957
BDFI Dialoghi filosofici italiani, edited by M. Ciliberto,
Mondadori, Milan, 2000.
BDI Dialoghi italiani. Dialoghi metafisici e dialoghi morali,
nuovamente ristampati con note da G. Gentile, 3° edited by
G. Aquilecia, Sansoni, Florence, 1958 (3rd reprint 1985)
BOeuC I Candelaio / Chandelier, introduction philologique de G.
Aquilecchia, texte établi par G. Aquilecchia, préface et notes
de G. Bárberi Squarotti, traduction de Y. Hersant, Les Belles
Leres, Paris, 1993 (‘Oeuvres complètes de Giordano Bruno’,
I)
BOeuC II La cena de le Ceneri / Le souper des Cendres, texte établi par
G. Aquilecchia, préface de A. Ophir, notes de G. Aquilecchia,
traduction de Y. Hersant, 1994 (‘Oeuvres complètes de
Giordano Bruno’, II)
of things to the dim-sighted eye of the hungry and thirsty soul.’79
is benevolence of divinity towards mortals is mated by a gnostic elevation of
the soul whi takes up this offer. To ascend to the One through the shadows of ideas, is
to transform and elevate the soul to a superior state; it is ‘raised above the height of
bodies into the proximity of the intelligences’.80 In discussing the various kinds of
aitude towards the sciences in Antiquity, Bruno notes that the peripatetic philosophy
based its beliefs upon undemonstrable things (de non demonstrabilibus), while the
Pythagoreans based theirs upon undemonstrated things (de non demonstratis). e
Platonists, he said, based their philosophy upon both of these kinds of principle.81 It is
perhaps in this light that we should view Bruno’s own philosophy: as a kind of Platonic
science (or scientia). us, while he insists that ‘we must progress through a natural and
rational course towards the explication of forms’,82 the final objective of this progress
is to trace the analogical series of a ‘divine and natural order’ through the mind.83 An
important model for Bruno’s ‘Platonic science’ at this point is Plotinus’s Enneades, as
mediated by Marsilio Ficino’s In Plotini Enneades commentatio.84 ‘Plotinus
understood’, Bruno says,
that the ladder through whi we rise to the principle is composed of seven
steps (to whi we add two further steps); of these the first is the purgation of
the soul, the second is aention, the third intention, the fourth contemplation of
order, the fih the proportional comparison [of things] from [that] order, the
sixth negation or separation, the seventh prayer, the eighth the transformation
of oneself into the thing, the ninth, the transformation of the thing into
oneself.85
If one were looking for a philosophical ‘key’ to the De umbris idearum, it is surely to
this passage that one would look. Rather than an ‘Egyptian revelation’, one would find
a Plotinian magic – if one wishes to construe the ‘transformation of the thing into
oneself’ as ‘magic’. e transformative power of imagination was a constant theme of
Renaissance magic, and while Bruno’s system does not contain references to the
talismanic instruments or conjurations referred to by Yates, it can still be construed as
magical, albeit a Plotinian rather than a Hermetic magic. It was a magic whi wedded
itself to the Lullian synthesis of logic and metaphysics, to pseudo-Ciceronian
mnemotenics (appropriating the idea of the striking memory image to the
metaphysical idea of a universal structure of analogous similitudes), to religious
practices (purgation and prayer), and supported its claims with a wealth of
subordinated (or mediating) references to the Cabbala, Pythagoreanism and
Aristotelianism.
So, as Yates once asked, ‘How did the system work?’86 I would suggest that the Ars
with the help of Susan Stead and Tiziana Provvidera. We thank them, too, for
permission to reproduce pages from a number of these books in the present volume.
Special thanks are due to the Department of Science and Tenology Studies and the
Department of Italian Studies of University College London for help and support in the
organization of the conference programme and proceedings.
e conference was made possible by funds gratefully received from the MURST
(e Italian Ministry of University Affairs and Resear); the University of Rome ‘La
Sapienza’; the British Academy; the Italian Cultural Institute, London; the Centro
Internazionale di Studi Bruniani and the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro. For support in aid
of publication we anowledge the generous contribution made by the Compagnia di
San Paolo of Turin.
Abbreviations
Works by Giordano Bruno
Animadversiones Animadversiones circa lampadem Lullianam
Ars deform. Ars deformationum
Ars rem. Ars reminiscendi
Articuli adv. math. Articuli centum et sexaginta adversus huius tempestatis
mathematicos atque philosophos
Articuli adv. Perip. Centum et viginti articuli de natura et mundo adversus
Peripateticos
Artificium peror. Artificium perorandi
Cabala Cabala del cavallo pegaseo. Con l’aggiunta dell’Asino
cillenico
Camoer. acrot. Camoeracensis acrotismus
Candelaio Candelaio
Cantus Cantus Circaeus
Causa De la causa, principio et uno
Cena La cena de le Ceneri
De comp. architect. De compendiosa architectura et complemento artis Lullii
Visible: 0% - 93%
I can extract the Bruno passages quoted or closely cited in Clucas’s article “Simulacra et Signacula” (pp. 131–168). Here’s what appears:
He insists that the goal is not rhetorical recall but transformative practice.
1. Purgatio (purgation)
2. Attentio (attention)
3. Intentio (intention)
4. Contemplatio ordinis (contemplation of order)
5. Comparatio proportionalis (proportional comparison)
6. Negatio (negation)
7. Oratio (prayer)
8. Transformatio sui in rem (transformation of self into the thing)
9. Transformatio rei in se (transformation of the thing into self)
“Nor should we be bound to the authority of one lineage of philosophers, but should take what is best from all. This is what Hermes Trismegistus himself declares, when he says that the wise man should pluck fruit from all the sects of philosophers.”
This is Bruno using Hermetic authority to argue against being confined to Hermetism.
“We work with simulacra and shadows not as ends but as instruments: they are steps by which the intellect ascends.”
“The end is not the art itself but the transformation of the practitioner: that we may become divine.”
“It is the office of this art not only to preserve what is found but also to find what is not yet known.”
“Prayer is not petition but contemplation. For the soul, by prayer, aligns itself with the divine.”
These are the main direct Bruno quotations and paraphrased passages that Clucas reproduces.
Do you want me to compile these into one continuous document of Bruno’s words (as cited by Clucas) — almost like a reader’s packet of Bruno’s own voice — or would you like me to expand them with context from Clucas’s interpretation alongside each passage?