Note 200 — Chapter XIII · THE RISE OF MODERN FREETHOUGHT—(Continued)

What had been done for freethought by Bruno in his fourteen years of wandering, debating, and teaching through Europe it is impossible to estimate; but it is safe to say that he was one of the most powerful antagonists to orthodox unreason that had yet appeared. Of all men of his time he had perhaps the least affinity with the Christian creed, which was repellent to him alike in the Catholic and the Protestant versions. The attempt to prove him a believer on the strength of a non-autograph manuscript200 is idle. His approbation of a religion for the discipline of uncivilized peoples is put in terms of unbelief.201 In the Spaccio della bestia trionfante he derides the notion of a union of divine and human natures, and substantially proclaims a natural (theistic) religion, negating all “revealed” religions alike. Where Boccaccio had accredited all the three leading religions, Bruno disallows all with paganism, though he puts that above Christianity.202 And his disbelief grew more stringent with his years. Among the heretical propositions charged against him by the Inquisition were these: that there is transmigration of souls; that magic is right and proper; that the Holy Spirit is the same thing as the soul of the world; that the world is eternal; that Moses, like the Egyptians, wrought miracles by magic; that the sacred writings are but a romance (sogno); that the devil will be saved; that only the Hebrews are descended from Adam, other men having descended from progenitors created by God before Adam; that Christ was not God, but was a notorious sorcerer (insigne mago), who, having deceived men, was deservedly hanged, not crucified; that the prophets and the apostles were bad men and sorcerers, and that many of them were hanged as such. The cruder of these propositions rest solely on the allegation of Mocenigo, and were warmly repudiated by Bruno: others are professedly drawn, always, of course, by forcing his language, but not without some colourable pretext, from his two “poems,” De triplice, minimo, et mensura, and De monade, numero et figura, published at Frankfort in 1591, in the last year of his freedom.203 But the allusions in the Sigillus Sigillorum204 to the weeping worship of a suffering Adonis, to the exhibition of suffering and miserable Gods, to transpierced divinities, and to sham miracles, were certainly intended to contemn the Christian system.