BRUNO, GIORDANO

born 1548, Nola, near Naples died Feb. 17, 1600, Rome original name Filippo Bruno, byname Il Nolano Italian philosopher, astronomer, mathematician, and occultist whose theories anticipated modern science. The most notable of these were his theories of the infinite universe and the multiplicity of worlds, in which he rejected the traditional geocentric (or Earth-centred) astronomy and intuitively went beyond the Copernican heliocentric (Sun-centred) theory, which still maintained a finite universe with a sphere of fixed stars. Bruno is, perhaps, chiefly remembered for the tragic death he suffered at the stake because of the tenacity with which he maintained his unorthodox ideas at a time when both the Roman Catholic and the Reformed churches were reaffirming rigid Aristotelian and Scholastic principles in their struggle for the evangelization of Europe. Additional reading Editions. Modern editions of Bruno's works are (Latin): Opera latine conscripta, ed. by Francesco Fiorentino et al., 3 vol. in 8 parts (187991, reprinted 1962), supplemented by Due dialoghi sconosciuti e due dialoghi noti (1957) and Praelectiones geometricae e Ars deformationum by Giovanni Aquilecchia (1964), which were unknown to the previous editors. (Italian): Dialoghi Italiani, by Giovanni Gentile, 3rd ed. by Giovanni Aquilecchia (1958), is the standard edition of the six dialogues. Concerning the Cause, Principle and One, in Sidney Greenberg, The Infinite in Giordano Bruno (1950); Cause, Principle and Unity, by Jack Lindsay (1962); On the Infinite Universe and Worlds, in Dorothea Waley Singer, Giordano Bruno: His Life and Thought (1950); The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast, anon. (1713) and by A.D. Imerti (1964); The Heroic Frenzies, by P.E. Memmo, Jr. (1964). Biography. Vincenzo Spampanato, Vita di Giordano Bruno (1921), with an appendix of documents reprinted with new documents in Documenti della vita di Giordano Bruno, ed. by Vincenzo Spampanato and Giovanni Gentile (1933); Giovanni Aquilecchia, Giordano Bruno (1971), a synthetic but exhaustive biography, with a bibliographical appendix that substantially brings up to date that contained in Virgilio Salvestrini, Bibliografia de Giordano Bruno, 15821950, 2nd posthumous ed. by Luigi Firpo (1958). Critical studies. Giovanni Gentile, Il pensiero italiano del Rinascimento, 4th ed. (1968), which considers Bruno as a precursor of the 19th- and 20th-century philosophical Idealism; Paul O. Kristeller, Eight Philosophers of the Italian Renaissance (1964); Frances A. Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (1964), which reacts to the progressive interpretation of Bruno's thought by considering it as belonging to the occult tradition based on the texts of the pseudo-Hermes Trimegistus; and The Art of Memory (1966), which includes a study of Bruno's mnemotechnic works considered against their historical and philosophical background.