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Bruno at Oxford

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Robert Mcnulty*
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
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Extract

The strange and important figure of Giordano Bruno more and more draws our attention. With equal possibility of accuracy we may view him as charlatan and as martyr to learning; his colossal ego made him seem the first just as it made him become the latter. Particularly his residence in England in 1583-84 and his connections there with Sidney, Greville, Dyer, Dee, and Florio have drawn the attention of students of the English Renaissance. ‘Appare dunque manifesto', says Professor Ludovico Limentani, Tinteresse di qualsiasi informazione che possa illuminare anche del piu fioco barlume quel periodo della travagliata esistenza del grande pensatore.’

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1960

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References

1 Ludovico Limentani, ‘Giordano Bruno a Oxford', Civilità Modema, Anno IX (July-October 1937), 254-255. See also Frances Yates, ‘Giordano Bruno's Conflict with Oxford', Journal of the Warburg Institute, II (January 1939), 227-242, and ‘Religious Policy of Giordano Bruno', Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, III (April-July 1939-40), 181-207. I am grateful to Professor Paul E. Memmo, Jr., of Fordham University, for reading the present article and for permission to consult his as yet unpublished study and translation of Bruno's Gli Heroici Furori.

2 Giordano Bruno, Dialoghi Italiani, Nuovamente ristampati con note da Giovanni Gentile, Terza edizione a cura di Giovanni Aquilecchia (Firenze, 1957), pp. 133-134. The note on the passage sums up most of what has been said about Bruno at Oxford.

3 à Wood, Anthony, The History and Antiquities of the University of Oxford, ed. Gutch, John (Oxford, 1796), pp. 215218 Google Scholar.

4 Gabriel Harvey's Marginalia, ed. G. C.Moore Smith (Stratford-Upon-Avon, 1913), p. 156: ‘Jordanus Neopolitanus, (Oxonij disputans cum Doctore Vnderhil) tam in Theologia quam in philosophia, omnia reuocabat ad Locos Topicos, et axiomata Aristotelis; atque inde de quauis materia promptissimè arguebat.'

5 ‘Bruno a Oxford', p. 259.

6 STC 13470. Allison, A. F. and Rogers, D. M., A Catalogue of Catholic Books in English Printed Abroad or Secretly in England 1358-1640 (Bognor Regis, 1956), nos. 400401 Google Scholar. Hereafter cited as A&R.

7 DNB; Alumni Oxonienses, ed. Joseph Foster (Oxford, 1891), I.

8 DNB; Alumni Oxonienses, Vol. III.

9 Dialoghi Italiani, p. 212.

10 Alumni Oxonienses, Vol. I (under Colepepper).

11 Singer, Dorothea Waley, Giordano Bruno His Life and Thought (New York, 1950), P. 34.Google Scholar

12 Lewis Mclntyre, J., Giordano Bruno (London, 1903), p. 22 Google Scholar.

13 Limentani, Ludovico, ‘La Lettera di Giordano Bruno al Vicecancelliere dell'Università di Oxford', Sophia, Anno 1 (1933), 317354 Google Scholar.