Giordano Bruno

The itinerant Neoplatonic scholar Giordano Bruno (1548–1600), one of the most fascinating figures of the Renaissance, was burned at the stake for heresy by the Inquisition in Rome on Ash Wednesday in 1600. The primary evidence against him was the book Spaccio de la bestia trionfante, a daring indictment of the church that abounded in references to classical Greek mythology, Egyptian religion (especially the worship of Isis), Hermeticism, magic, and astrology. The author of more than sixty works on mathematics, science, ethics, philosophy, metaphysics, the art of memory, and esoteric mysticism, Bruno had a profound impact on Western thought.

Giordano Bruno’s Cabala del cavallo pegaseo (The Cabala of Pegasus) grew out of the great Italian philosopher’s experiences lecturing and debating at Oxford in early 1584. Having received a cold reception there because of his viewpoints, Bruno went on in the Cabala to attack the narrow-mindedness of the university--and by extension, all universities that resisted his advocacy of intellectual freethinking. The Cabala of Pegasus consists of vernacular dialogues that turn on the identification of the noble Pegasus (the spirit of poetry) and the humble ass (the vehicle of divine revelation). In the interplay of these ideas, Bruno explores the nature of poetry, divine authority, secular learning, and Pythagorean metempsychosis, which had great influence on James Joyce and many other writers and artists from the Renaissance to the modern period. This book, the first English translation of The Cabala of Pegasus, contains both the English and Italian versions as well as helpful annotations. It will have particular appeal to all Renaissance scholars and those interested in the Renaissance cabalistic underpinnings of modern literature.

Le De infinito (1584) expose la conception de l'infini, de l'univers et des mondes qu'avait Giordano Bruno. Dans ce dialogue apparait pour la premiere fois la conscience que Bruno a de sa mission de philosophe: detruire la fausse image de l'univers defendue par les peripateticiens, autrement dit detruire les chaines qui ligotent l'homme a l'interieur d'un espace clos, et plus encore: detruire les hierarchies existant entre les etres vivants. Dans le cosmos infini de Bruno, les ensembles d'atomes les plus petits comme les plus grands ont la meme importance: dans l'univers infini, il n'y a pas de centre absolu, et donc tout peut etre a la fois centre et peripherie. De premiere importance pour les historiens des sciences et de la philosophie, ce livre, encore aujourd'hui, presente egalement le plus grand interet pour la maniere originale dont il affronte tous les grands themes de la modernite. Quatrieme volume de la serie des oeuvres italiennes de Giordano Bruno, cette edition est completee par un important appareil critique.