GIORDANO BRUNO. 239 tentiam in me fertis quam ego accipiam ". Eight days later he was burnt in the presence of a multitude of people who were assembled in Rome for the Jubilee. More than one passage might be quoted from Bruno's works showing that he had anticipated for himself some such fate as this. When he was interrogated by the Venetian tribunal he admitted that his doctrines were indirectly op- posed to the faith. His defence was that he was not an innovator in religion but in philosophy. He declared that he had never attached himself to any heretical sect ; that, on the contrary, he preferred the religion of the Catholics to that of the Lutherans and Calvinists, because it laid more stress on good works ; and that he was willing to submit to the Church in matters of theology. This last position was, as Berti says, a traditional position adopted by Bruno from the philosophers of the Middle Ages, who had tried to obtain toleration by means of it. In several passages of his works, and not merely in his answers to the Inquisitors, he says that in matters of faith he submits to the theologians. Sometimes this submission is merely ironical ; it is in part, as has been said, the traditional means of defence of philo- sophers against persecution ; but it is also expressive of Bruno's philosophy of religion, as will be seen. If it had been possible for Catholicism to grant philosophical freedom, he would have regarded it almost as the philosophers of antiquity regarded the religion of the State. It was philo- sophical freedom that he claimed, not freedom to found a new religious sect. But philosophical freedom was the kind of freedom that was least of all likely to be conceded by the Catholic reaction. Only an unqualified submission would have satisfied the Church, and this Bruno was incapable of making. A few months before Bruno's extradition by the Venetian government, Galileo had begun to lecture at Padua. As is well known, Bruno accepted the Copernican astronomy as the basis of his cosmology before Galileo had made his dis- coveries with the telescope. Kepler, who lived in Prague fifteen years later than Bruno and was acquainted with some of his works, expressed admiration for him and regret that Galileo had not made some reference to his predecessor in the advocacy of the new astronomical doctrines. The fact that Bruno has a place in the history of astronomy as well as in the history of philosophy is expressive of the change that was taking place in the chief direction of the enthusiasm of discovery that characterised the Renaissance in Italy. This enthusiasm had been in great part trans-
