The Forbidden Universe Read Online Free PDF Page B

Bruno’s perspective at least, also ideally positioned in Europe’s power politics, in which a major conflict between the Catholic and Protestant nations was looming. Henri had a relaxed attitude to Protestantism, both at home and abroad, and as a result of anxiety about the strength of the major Catholic power of Spain he favoured closer ties with Protestant England, Spain’s great enemy. Many, not just Bruno, saw Henri as Europe’s best hope for a peaceful and tolerant future. As a powerful Catholic monarch with a zealous interest in magic and the Hermetica and no animosity towards Protestants, Bruno considered Henri the ideal leader of his Hermetic revolution. There are indications in other books publishedin Paris at that time, and in plays being performed in the king’s honour such as the Ballet comique de la Reine (the first ballet, staged for the court of Catherine de’ Medici in 1581) that Bruno was not alone in this view of Henri.
    Meanwhile a well-established circle of expatriate Italians who had settled in Paris because of their heterodox ideas (probably because of the Medici influence) welcomed Bruno with open arms. More significantly, these Italians had some influence over the king. But lurking behind the Franco-Italian circle was, inevitably, an eminence grise , a secret adviser and friend of the greatest movers and shakers of the time. This shadowy force-to-be-reckoned with was one Gian Vincenzo Pinelli of Padua (1535–1601), a scholar and collector (primarily a botanist but his interests were truly Renaissance in scope and depth) best remembered today as Galileo’s mentor. Pinelli had built up a pan-European network of correspondents and informants who reported to him on not just scientific and cultural issues but also political events. Unsurprisingly, he therefore showed great interest in Bruno’s arrival in Paris and they are likely to have met when Bruno visited Padua during his wanderings.
    After the larger-than-life Hermeticist arrived in the French capital in 1581, he gave public lectures and published two books on the magical art of memory. Bruno soon attracted the attention of the King, and having cannily dedicated the first of his books, On the Shadows of Ideas ( De umbris idearum ) to Henri, was duly summoned for a royal audience. As a reward he was given a paid lectureship at one of Paris’ colleges. His next move was more surprising: in the spring of 1583 he left Paris for London, where he was to spend more than two years and produce his most important work. The English ambassador in Paris sent a report to Queen Elizabeth’s spymaster, Francis Walsingham, advising him of the impending arrival of Bruno, ‘whose religion I cannot commend’. 7 With a niceironic edge Bruno described himself to the Oxford scholars as a ‘doctor of a more abstruse theology’. 8 Well, yes. That’s one description of it.
    Although he had no official diplomatic standing, Bruno was clearly on some kind of unofficial, or semi-official, mission to England. Travelling with letters of introduction from Henri, he lived in the house of the French ambassador, Michel de Castelnau, Sieur de Mauvissière. Because he kept such close company with Castelnau – even accompanying him regularly to Queen Elizabeth’s court – and Castelnau was in turn happy to be known as an associate of Bruno, it fostered the impression that the latter had the French king’s backing. And it seems Henri had no problem with that.
    As to the purpose of Bruno’s mission, it fitted perfectly his agenda of uniting Christianity and averting a catastrophic war in Europe. The idea was to get the Catholic nations to band together under a single monarch and the Protestant nations to unite under another, both of whom would be advised and influenced by Hermeticists who would ensure peace between them. Henri III and Elizabeth I were prime candidates.
    English esoteric circles, too, had great influence at the royal court, most obviously in the shape of