Note 219 — Chapter XIII · THE RISE OF MODERN FREETHOUGHT—(Continued)

Bruno has been zealously blackened by Catholic writers for the obscenity of some of his writing219 and the alleged freedom of his life—piquant charges, when we remember the life of the Papal Italy in which he was born. Lucilio Vanini (otherwise Julius Cæsar Vanini), the next martyr of freethought, also an Italian (b. at Taurisano, 1585), is open to the more relevant charges of an inordinate vanity and some duplicity. Figuring as a Carmelite friar, which he was not, he came to England (1612) and deceitfully professed to abjure Catholicism,220 gaining, however, nothing by the step, and contriving to be reconciled to the Church, after being imprisoned for forty-nine days on an unrecorded charge. Previously he had figured, like Bruno, as a wandering scholar at Amsterdam, Brussels, Cologne, Geneva, and Lyons; and afterwards he taught natural philosophy for a year at Genoa. His treatise, Amphitheatrum Æterna Providentiæ (Lyons, 1615), is professedly directed against “ancient philosophers, Atheists, Epicureans, Peripatetics, and Stoics,” and is ostensibly quite orthodox.221 In one passage he untruthfully tells how, when imprisoned in England, he burned with the desire to shed his blood for the Catholic Church.222 In another, after declaring that some Christian doctors have argued very weakly against the Epicureans on immortality, he avows that he, “Christianus nomine cognomine Catholicus,” could hardly have held the doctrine if he had not learned it from the Church, “the most certain and infallible mistress of truth.”223 As usual, the attack leaves us in doubt as to the amount of real atheism current at the time. The preface asserts that “Ἀθεότητο autem secta pestilentissima quotidie, latius et latius vires acquirit eundo,” and there are various hostile allusions to atheists in the text;224 but the arguments cited from them are such as might be brought by deists against miracles and the Christian doctrine of sin; and there is an allusion of the customary kind to “Nicolaus Machiavellus Atheorum facile princeps,”225 which puts all in doubt. The later published Dialogues, De Admirandis Naturæ Arcanis,226 while showing a freer critical spirit, would seem to be in part earlier in composition, if we can trust the printer’s preface, which represents them as collected from various quarters, and published only with the reluctant consent of the author.227 This, of course, may be a mystification; in any case the Dialogues twice mention the Amphitheatrum; and the fourth book, in which this mention occurs, may be taken on this and other grounds to set forth his later ideas. Even the Dialogues, however, while discussing many questions of creed and science in a free fashion, no less profess orthodoxy; and, while one passage is pantheistic,228 they also denounce atheism.229 And whereas one passage does avow that the author in his Amphitheatrum had said many things he did not believe, the context clearly suggests that the reference was not to the main argument, but to some of its dubious facts.230 In any case, though the title—chosen by the editors—speaks daringly enough of “Nature, the queen and goddess of mortals,” Vanini cannot be shown to be an atheist;231 and the attacks upon him as an immoral writer are not any better supported.232 The publication of the dialogues was in fact formally authorized by the Sorbonne,233 and it does not even appear that when he was charged with atheism and blasphemy at Toulouse that work was founded on, save in respect of its title.234 The charges rested on the testimony of a treacherous associate as to his private conversation; and, if true, it only amounted to proving his pantheism, expressed in his use of the word “Nature.” At his trial he expressly avowed and argued for theism. The judges, by one account, did not agree. Yet he was convicted, by the voices of the majority, and burned alive (February 9, 1619) on the day of his sentence. Drawn on a hurdle, in his shirt, with a placard on his shoulders inscribed “Atheist and Blasphemer of the name of God,” he went to his death with a high heart, rejoicing, as he cried in Italian, to die like a philosopher.235 A Catholic historian,236 who was present, says he hardily declared that “Jesus facing death sweated with fear: I die undaunted.” But before burning him they tore out his tongue by the roots; and the Christian historian is humorous over the victim’s long cry of agony.237 No martyr ever faced death with a more dauntless courage than this