In 1585–1586 he returned with Castelnau to Paris, where his anti-Aristotelian views were taken up by the college of Cambrai, but was soon driven from his refuge, and we next find him at Marburg and Wittenberg, the headquarters of Lutheranism. There is a tradition that here or in England he embraced the Protestant faith; nothing in his writings would lead one to suppose so. Several works, chiefly logical, appeared during his stay at Wittenberg (De Lampade combinatoria Lulliana, 1587, and De Progressu et Lampade venatoria logicorum, 1587). In 1588 he went to Prague, then to Helmstadt. In 1591 he was at Frankfort, and published three important metaphysical works, De Triplici Minimo et Mensura; De Monade, Numero, et Figura; De Immenso et Innumerabilibus. He did not stay long at Prague, and we find him next at Zürich, whence he accepted an invitation to Venice from a young patrician, Giovanni Mocenigo. It was a rash step. The emissaries of the Inquisition were on his track; he was thrown into prison, and in 1593 was brought to Rome. Seven years were spent in confinement. On the 9th of February 1600 he was excommunicated, and on the 17th was burned at the stake.
For more than two centuries Bruno received scarcely the consideration he deserved. On the 9th of June 1889, however, as a result of a strong popular movement, a statue to him was unveiled in Rome in the Campo dei Fiori, the place of his execution.
To Bruno, as to all great thinkers, philosophy is the search for unity. Amid all the varying and contradictory phenomena of the universe there is something which gives coherence and intelligibility to them. Nor can this unity be something apart from the things; it must contain in itself the universe, which develops from it; it must be at once all and one. This unity is God, the universal substance,—the one and only principle, or causa immanens,—that which is in things and yet is distinct from them as the universal is distinct from the particular. He is the efficient and final cause of all, the beginning, middle, and end, eternal and infinite. By his action the world is produced, and his action is the law of his nature, his necessity is true freedom. He is living, active intelligence, the principle of motion and creation, realizing himself in the infinitely various forms of activity that constitute individual things. To the infinitely actual there is necessary the possible; that which determines involves somewhat in which its determinations can have existence. This other of God, which is in truth one with him, is matter. The universe, then, is a living cosmos, an infinitely animated system, whose end is the perfect realization of the variously graduated forms. The unity which sunders itself into the multiplicity of things may be called the monas monadum, each thing being a monas or self-existent, living being, a universe in itself. Of these monads the number is infinite. The soul of man is a thinking monad, and stands mid-way between the divine intelligence and the world of external things. As a portion of the divine life, the soul is immortal. Its highest function is the contemplation of the divine unity, discoverable under the manifold of objects.
Such is a brief summary of the principal positions of Bruno’s philosophy. It seems quite clear that in the earlier works, particularly the two Italian dialogues, he approached more nearly to the pantheistic view of things than in his later Latin treatises. The unity expounded at first is simply an anima mundi, a living universe, but not intelligent. There is a distinct development traceable towards the later and final form of his doctrine, in which the universe appears as the realization of the divine mind.
Bruno’s writings had been much neglected when Jacobi brought them into notice in his Briefe über die Lehre Spinozas (2nd ed., 1879). Since then many have held that Descartes, Spinoza and Leibnitz were indebted to him for their main principles. So far as Descartes is concerned, it is highly improbable that he had seen any of Bruno’s works. Schelling, however, called one of his works after him, Bruno.
Bibliography.—The chief edition of the Latin works is that published at the public expense by F. Fiorentino, F. Tocco and H. Vitelli (Naples, 1879–1891), which superseded that of A. F. Gfrörer (Stuttgart, 1834, incomplete). The Italian works were collected by A. Wagner (Leipzig, 1830), and a new edition was published by P. de Lagarde (Göttingen, 1888–1889); also Opere Italiane, ed. Croce and G. Gentile (1907 foll.), with notes by the latter. In Germany, Gesammelte Werke, trans. L. Kuhlenbeck (1904 foll.). English translations:—The Spaccio, by Morehead, not as has been supposed by J. Toland (dated 1713, but probably printed earlier and very rare); of the preface to De l’ Infinito (J. Toland in posthumous works); Eroici Furores, L. Williams (1888). There are also French and German translations.
The chief English work on Giordano Bruno is that of J. Lewis M‘Intyre (London, 1903), containing life, commentary and bibliography. See also C. Bartholmess, J. Bruno (Paris, 1846–1847); Domenico Berti, Giordano Bruno da Nola (2nd ed., 1889); H. Brunnhofer, Giordano Brunos Weltanschauung (Leipzig, 1883); M. Carrière, Philosophische Weltanschauung der Reformationszeit, pp. 411-494 (2nd ed., 1887); F. J. Clemens, Giordano Bruno und Nicolaus von Cusa (Bonn, 1847); Miss I. Frith, Life of Giordano Bruno the Nolan (London, 1887); C. E. Plumptre, Life and Works of Giordano Bruno (London, 1884); Chr. Sigwart, in Kleine Schriften, 1st series, pp. 49-124, 293-304; A. Riehl, G. Bruno (1889, ed. 1900; Eng. trans. Agnes Fry, 1905); Landsbeck, Bruno, der Martyrer der neuen Weltanschauung (1890); Owen, in Sceptics of the Italian Renaissance (London, 1893); C. H. von Stein, G. Bruno (1900); R. Adamson, Development of Modern Philosophy (Edinburgh and London, 1903); G. Louis, G. Bruno, seine Weltanschauung und Lebensauffassung (1900); O. Juliusberger, G. Bruno und die Gegenwart (1902); J. Reiner, G. Bruno und seine Weltanschauung (1907). The most important critical works are perhaps those of Felice Tocco, Le Opere Latine di Giordano Bruno (Florence, 1889), Le Opere Inedite di Giordano Bruno (Naples, 1891), Le Fonti piu recenti della filos. del Bruno (Rome, 1892). See also H. Höffding, History of Modern Philosophy (Eng. trans., 1900); J. M. Robertson, Short History of Freethought (London, 1906); G. Gentile, Giordano Bruno nella Storia della cultura (1907). For other works see G. Graziano, Bibliografia Bruniana (1900). (R. Ad.; J. M. M.)
BRUNO (Brun, Bruns) OF QUERFURT, SAINT (c. 975–1009), German missionary bishop and martyr, belonged to the family of the lords of Querfurt in Saxony. He was educated at the famous cathedral school at Magdeburg, and at the age of twenty was attached to the clerical household of the emperor Otto III. In 996 he accompanied the emperor to Rome, and there gave up his post and entered the monastery of SS. Alexius and Bonifacius on the Aventine, taking “in religion” the name of Bonifacius. When the news reached Rome of the martyrdom of Adalbert, bishop of Prague (997), Bruno determined to take his place, and in 1004, after being consecrated by the pope as archbishop of the eastern heathen, he set out for Germany to seek aid of the emperor Henry II. The emperor, however, being at war with Boleslaus of Poland, opposed his enterprise, and he went first to the court of St Stephen of Hungary, and, finding but slight encouragement there, to that of the grand prince Vladimir at Kiev. He made no effort to win over Vladimir to the Roman obedience, but devoted himself to the conversion of the pagan Pechenegs who inhabited the country between the Don and the Danube. In this he was so far successful that they made peace with the grand prince and were for a while nominally Christians. In 1008 Bruno went to the court of Boleslaus, and, after a vain effort to persuade the emperor to end the war between Germans and Poles, determined at all hazards to proceed with his mission to the Prussians. With eighteen companions he set out; but on the borders of the Russian (Lithuanian) country he and all his company were massacred by the heathens (February 14, 1009).
During his stay in Hungary (1004) Bruno wrote a life of St Adalbert, the best of the three extant biographies of the saint (in Pertz, Mon. Germ. Hist. Scriptores, iv. pp. 577, 596–612), described by A. Potthast (Bibliotheca hist. med. aev.) as “in the highest degree attractive both in manner and matter.”
A life of St Bruno was written by Dietmar, bishop of Merseburg (976–1019). This, with additions from the life of St Romuald, is published in the Bollandist Acta Sanctorum (June 19), vi. 1, pp. 223-225. See further U. Chevalier, Répertoire des sources historiques, Bio-Bibliographie (Paris, 1904), s.v. “Brunon de Querfurt.”
BRUNSBÜTTEL, a seaport town of Germany, in the Prussian province of Schleswig-Holstein, on the N. bank of the Elbe, 60 m. N.W. from Hamburg. Pop. (1905) 2500. Brunsbüttel is the west terminus of the Kaiser Wilhelm Canal, which is closed there by double locks. Here also are an inner harbour, 1640 ft. long and 656 ft. wide, a coaling station, and a small harbour for the tugs and other vessels belonging to the canal company.
BRUNSWICK, KARL WILHELM FERDINAND, Duke of (1735–1806), German general, was born on the 9th of October 1735 at Wolfenbüttel. He received an unusually wide and thorough education, and travelled in his youth in Holland, France and various parts of Germany. His first military experience was in the North German campaign of 1757, under the duke of Cumberland. At the battle of Hastenbeck he won great renown by a gallant charge at the head of an infantry brigade;
