Note 186 — Chapter XIII · THE RISE OF MODERN FREETHOUGHT—(Continued)

One of the first to bring the new cosmological conception to bear on philosophic thought was Giordano Bruno of Nola (1548–1600), whose life and death of lonely chivalry have won him his place as the typical martyr of modern freethought.186 He may be conceived as a blending of the pantheistic and naturalistic lore of ancient Greece,187 assimilated through the Florentine Platonists, with the spirit of modern science (itself a revival of the Greek) as it first takes firm form in Copernicus, whose doctrine Bruno early and ardently embraced. Baptized Filippo, he took Giordano as his cloister-name when he entered the great convent of S. Domenico Maggiore at Naples in 1563, in his fifteenth year. No human being was ever more unfitly placed among the Dominicans, punningly named the “hounds of the Lord” (domini canes) for their work as the corps of the Inquisition; and very early in his cloister life he came near being formally proceeded against for showing disregard of sacred images, and making light of the sanctity of the Virgin.188 He passed his novitiate, however, without further trouble, and was fully ordained a priest in 1572, in his twenty-fourth year. Passing then through several Neapolitan monasteries during a period of three years, he seems to have become not a little of a freethinker on his return to his first cloister, as he had already reached Arian opinions in regard to Christ, and soon proceeded to substitute a mystical and Pythagorean for the orthodox view of the Trinity.189