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Giordano Bruno was burnt at the stake in Rome in 1600, accused of heresy by the Inquisition. His life took him from Italy to Northern Europe and England, and finally to Venice, where he was arrested. His six dialogues in Italian, which today are considered a turning point towards the philosophy and science of the modern world, were written during his visit to Elizabethan London, as a gentleman attendant to the French Ambassador, Michel de Castelnau. He died refusing to recant views which he defined as philosophical rather than theological, and for which he claimed liberty of expression. The papers in this volume derive from a conference held in London to commemorate the 400th anniversary of Bruno's death. A number focus specifically on his experience in England, while others look at the Italian context of his thought and his impact upon others. Together they constitute a major new survey of the range of Bruno's philosophical activity, as well as evaluating his use of earlier cultural traditions and his influence on both contemporary and more modern themes and trends. Contents: Preface; Introduction; Giordano Bruno as philosopher of the Renaissance, Giovanni Aquilecchia; Bruno and Italy: The image of Giordano Bruno, Lars Berggren; Philosophy versus religion and science versus religion: the trials of Bruno and Galileo, Maurice Finocchiaro; Giordano Bruno and Neapolitan neoplatonism, Ingrid D. Rowland; Images of literary memory in the Italian dialogues: some notes on Giordano Bruno and Ludovico Ariosto, Lina Bolzoni; Bruno in England: Giordano Bruno and the Protestant ethic, Hilary Gatti; John Charlewood, printer of Giordano Bruno’s Italian dialogues, and his book production, Tiziana Provvidera; Giordano Bruno’s infinite worlds in John Florio’s Worlds of Words, Michael Wyatt; Ultima Thule: contrasting empires in Bruno’s Ash Wednesday Supper and Shakespeare’s Tempest, Elisabetta Tarantino; Philosophical Themes: Giordano Bruno and astrology, Leen Spruit; Simulacra e Signacula: memory, magic and metaphysics in Brunian mnemonics, Stephen Clucas; Metempsychosis and monism in Bruno’s nova filosofia, Ramon G. Mendoza; The necessity of the minima in the Nolan philosophy, Ernesto Schettino; Meanings of ’contractio’ in Giordano Bruno’s Sigillus sigillorum, Leo Catana; Influence and Tradition: Giordano Bruno’s mnemonics and Giambattista Vico’s recollective philology, Paul Colilli; Macrocosm, microcosm and the circulation of the blood: Bruno and Harvey, Andrew Gregory; Monadology and the reception of Bruno in the young Leibniz, Stuart Brown; Being a modern philosopher and reading Giordano Bruno, Paul Richard Blum; Index.

Giordano Bruno was burnt at the stake in Rome in 1600, accused of heresy by the Inquisition. His life took him from Italy to Northern Europe and England, and finally to Venice, where he was arrested. His six dialogues in Italian, today considered a turning point towards the philosophy and science of the modern world, were written during his visit to Elizabethan London. He died refusing to recant views which he defined as philosophical rather than theological, and for which he claimed liberty of expression. The papers in this volume derive from a conference commemorating the 400th anniversary of Bruno's death. Some focus on his experience in England, others on the Italian context of his thought and his impact upon others. Together they constitute a major new survey of the range of Bruno's philosophical activity, as well as evaluating his use of earlier cultural traditions and his influence on both contemporary and more modern themes and trends.

The following contribution, in memory of Germana Ernst, develops a detailed textual comparison between the ideas in favour of freedom of philosophical discussion put forward by Galileo in his famous letters to Benedetto Castelli (1613), followed by the much extended version addressed to Christina of Lorraine (1615), and those put forward by Campanella in his Apologia pro Galileo (1616). The comparison in the arguments put forward by the two philosophers in the dramatic context of the Catholic Church’s rejection of the new Copernican astronomy brings to light a number of important convergences between their thoughts, but also a number of divergences that help to explain their strained personal relationship.

Giordano Bruno's visit to Elizabethan England in the 1580s left its imprint on many fields of contemporary culture, ranging from the newly-developing science, the philosophy of knowledge and language, to the extraordinary flowering of Elizabethan poetry and drama. This book explores Bruno's influence on English figures as different as the ninth Earl of Northumberland, Thomas Harriot, Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare. Originally published in 1989, it is of interest to students and teachers of history of ideas, cultural history, European drama and renaissance England. Bruno's work had particular power and emphasis in the modern world due to his response to the cultural crisis which had developed - his impulse towards a new 'faculty of knowing' had a disruptive effect on existing orthodoxies - religious, scientific, philosophical, and political.

The following contribution presents some so far unpublished documents relating to two figures of the late enlightenment. Samuel Engel was for many years the librarian of the municipal library in Berne (Switzerland), and a keen collector of rare books. His remarkable collection of Giordano Bruno's texts included four of the Italian dialogues written and published in London of which he made manuscript copies. An unpublished letter relating to those copies is presented and commented on in the first part of the following paper, while the second part presents unpublished manuscript comments on Bruno by Francesco Cancellieri, an erudite ecclesiastic who lived most of his life in Rome.

This brief note proposes to open a discussion on a question presented in contrasting terms in a recent volume on some aspects of Bruno's geometry. Is it incorrect to mention Bruno's name when speaking of the origins of non-Euclidean geometries? Or is it possible to mention Bruno's name in the context of that slow evolution of a new idea of space that finally gave rise to the revolutionary conception of the co-existence of Euclidean and non-Euclidean worlds? The following note argues in favour of this latter position, particularly as proposed on a number of occasions by Imre Toth.