Heresy Read Online Free PDF Page B

wrong-footed—as he had intended I should be. I had abandoned my baptismal name when I entered the monastery of San Domenico Maggiore and taken my monastic name of Giordano, though I had reclaimed it briefly while I was on the run. For Walsingham to address me by it now was clearly a little trick to show me the reach of his knowledge, and he was evidently pleased with its effect. But I recovered myself, and said, “I know enough to see that only a fool would attempt to hide anything from a man who has never met me, yet calls me by the name my parents gave me, a name I have not used these twenty years.”
    Walsingham smiled. “Then you know all that matters at present. And I know that you are no fool. Reckless, perhaps, but not a fool. Now, shall I tell you what else I know about you, Doctor Giordano Bruno of Nola?”
    “Please—as long as I may be permitted to separate for Your Honour the ignominious truth from the merely scurrilous rumour.”
    “Very well, then.” He smiled indulgently. “You were born in Nola, near Naples, the son of a soldier, and you entered the monastery of San Domenico Maggiore in your teens. You abandoned the order some thirteen years later, and fled through Italy for three years, pursued by the Inquisition on suspicion of heresy. You later taught in Geneva, and in France, before attracting the patronage of King Henri III in Paris. You teach the art of memory, which many consider to be a kind of magic, and you are a passionate supporter of Copernicus’s theory that the earth rotates around the sun, though the idea has been declared heretical by Rome and by the Lutherans alike.”
    He looked at me for confirmation, and I nodded, bemused.
    “Your Honour knows much.”
    He smiled.
    “There is no mystery here, Bruno—when you stopped briefly in Padua, you became friends with an English courtier named Philip Sidney, did you not? Well, he is shortly to marry my daughter, Frances.”
    “Your Honour could not have found a worthier son-in-law, I am sure. I shall look forward to seeing him,” I said, and meant it.
    Walsingham nodded.
    “As a matter of curiosity—why
did
you abandon the monastery?”
    “I was caught reading Erasmus in the privy.”
    He stared at me for a moment, then threw back his head and guffawed, a deep, rich sound, such as a bear might make if it could laugh.
    “And I had other volumes on the Forbidden Index of the Holy Office. They would have sent me before the Father Inquisitor, but I escaped. This is why I was excommunicated.” I folded my hands behind my back as Iwalked, thinking how strange it seemed to be reliving those days in this green English garden.
    He regarded me with an inscrutable expression and then shook his head as if puzzled. “You intrigue me greatly, Bruno. You fled Italy pursued by the Roman Inquisition for your suspected heresy, and yet you were also arrested and tried by the Calvinists in Geneva for your beliefs, is it not so?”
    I tilted my head, half assenting. “There was something of a misunderstanding in Geneva. I found the Calvinists had only swapped one set of blind dogma for another.”
    Again he looked at me with something approaching admiration and laughed, shaking his head. “I have never met another man who has managed to get himself accused of heresy by both the pope
and
the Calvinists. This is a singular achievement, Doctor Bruno! It makes me ask myself—what
is
your religion?”
    There was an expectant pause while he looked at me encouragingly.
    “Your Honour knows that I am no friend of Rome. I assure you that in everything my allegiance is to Her Majesty and I would be glad to offer her any service I may while I remain under her sovereignty.”
    “Yes, yes, Bruno—I thank you, but that is not an answer to my question. I asked what is your religion? In your heart, are you papist or Protestant?”
    I hesitated. “Your Honour has already pointed out that both sides have found me wanting.”
    “Are you saying that you are