Giordano Bruno
Topic: Giordano Bruno
1. The Situation in Brief
Giordano Bruno (1548–1600) visited England April 1583 – autumn 1585, lodging at the French Embassy in London under the protection of ambassador Michel de Castelnau. He published six major Italian philosophical dialogues in London during this period, two dedicated to Sir Philip Sidney. There is no documented direct connection between Bruno and Henry Neville. However, their networks overlapped at multiple documented nodes, and the chronological and social proximity is close enough to warrant a research packet.
2. Bruno's English Circle: Documented Contacts
| Person | Connection to Bruno | Connection to Neville |
|---|---|---|
| Philip Sidney | Bruno knew him personally (Bruno's own statement in La Cena); dedicated Lo Spaccio (1584) and De gli eroici furori (1585) to him | Neville toured Europe with Robert Sidney (Philip's younger brother), 1578–1582; Philip Sidney recommended Neville to Robert in 1580 letter |
| Fulke Greville | Associated with the Ash Wednesday Supper; Bruno's Cena is set in Greville's house (though some scholars dispute this is literal) | Greville was Sidney's closest friend; in the same court circle |
| John Florio | Lived at the French Embassy alongside Bruno for two years; appears as a character in Bruno's dialogues | Florio later connected to the Shakespeare canon (his Montaigne translation, 1603) |
| Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester | Praised extensively in La Cena | Leicester was a patron of Neville's circle; Anne Killigrew's family had court connections |
| Francis Walsingham | Praised in La Cena; John Bossy (Giordano Bruno and the Embassy Affair, Yale, 1991) argues Bruno was Walsingham's spy "Fagot" | Neville accompanied Walsingham on the Scottish diplomatic mission, 1583 — the same year Bruno arrived in London |
3. Chronological Overlap
| Date | Neville | Bruno |
|---|---|---|
| 1578–1582 | Grand Tour with Henry Savile and Robert Sidney; Venice, Padua, Paris, Prague | In France; knew Sidney "by reputation in Milan and France" |
| April 1583 | Back in England; documented with Walsingham at Durham (Scottish mission) | Arrives London; lodges at French Embassy |
| Summer 1583 | In England; enters Parliament 1584; marries Anne Killigrew Dec. 1584 | Visits Oxford with Albert Laski; meets Sidney "in the flesh" |
| 1584–85 | Active in Parliament and Berkshire | Publishes six London dialogues (two dedicated to Sidney); departs 1585 |
Neville was in London and its social orbit for the entire duration of Bruno's English visit. He had moved in the same Sidney/Walsingham network since his Grand Tour with Robert Sidney.
4. The Sidney Dedications
Bruno's two Sidney dedications are his most philosophically ambitious English works:
- Lo Spaccio de la bestia trionfante (The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast, 1584) — a moral allegory of cosmic reform, dedicated to Sidney.
- De gli eroici furori (On the Heroic Frenzies, 1585) — a philosophical love poetry sequence. The dedicatory letter opens: "Most illustrious knight..." and explains that the work's love poetry is directed not at a woman but at a "religion of natural contemplation."
Frances Yates argued (Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, Chicago, 1964) that the Eroici Furori and Sidney's Astrophil and Stella "come out of the same atmosphere." Stephen Clucas ("Giordano Bruno's 'Degli Eroici Furori' and Fulke Greville's 'Caelica'," Renaissance Studies 4.2, 1990) extends this to Greville.
5. Bruno and Shakespeare
Hilary Gatti, The Renaissance Drama of Knowledge: Giordano Bruno in England (Routledge, 1989), traces Bruno's influence on Thomas Harriot, Christopher Marlowe, and Shakespeare. The relevant Shakespeare connections include:
- The cosmological speech in Love's Labour's Lost (often read as engaging with the Copernican/Brunian debates Bruno brought to England)
- Hamlet's cosmological language ("infinite space")
- The general climate of Hermetic and Neoplatonic ideas that permeates the late romances
These connections, if valid, point toward an author who was immersed in the intellectual world Bruno inhabited during his London stay — not toward someone who was absent from that world.
6. Scholarly Caution
Mordechai Feingold ("Giordano Bruno in England, Revisited," Academia.edu) argues that the received picture of Bruno as intimately embedded in the Sidney circle is overstated. He contends that Sidney's connection to Bruno was brief and largely limited to the Oxford visit in June 1583, and that the Greville house setting for the Cena may be literary fiction. This revisionist position should be acknowledged.
The claim for this packet is not that Neville met Bruno, but that:
- Both moved in the Sidney/Walsingham/Leicester orbit during 1583–1585
- Neville's tutor Savile was part of the same intellectual world (mathematics, natural philosophy, cosmology)
- The absence of documentary evidence of a meeting is not the same as evidence of absence
7. Citations
- Yates, Frances A. Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1964.
- Yates, Frances A. The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age. London: Routledge, 1979.
- Gatti, Hilary. The Renaissance Drama of Knowledge: Giordano Bruno in England. London: Routledge, 1989; repr. 2012.
- Bossy, John. Giordano Bruno and the Embassy Affair. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991; repr. 2002. [Wolfson History Prize winner; argues Bruno was Walsingham's spy "Fagot."]
- Ciliberto, Michele, and Nicholas Mann, eds. Giordano Bruno 1583–1585: The English Experience / L'Esperienza Inglese. Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 1997.
- Clucas, Stephen. "Giordano Bruno's 'Degli Eroici Furori' and Fulke Greville's 'Caelica'." Renaissance Studies 4.2 (1990): 201–227. JSTOR: https://www.jstor.org/stable/24412423.
- Feingold, Mordechai. "Giordano Bruno in England, Revisited." Academia.edu. [Revisionist challenge to exaggerated Sidney-circle claims.]
- Thrush, Andrew. "NEVILLE, Sir Henry I (1564–1615)." History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1604–1629. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1604-1629/member/neville-sir-henry-i-1564-1615. [For Neville's 1583 appearance with Walsingham.]
- "Neville Research Wiki: Giordano Bruno." http://nevilleresearch.com/index.php?title=Giordano_Bruno. Local: wiki_giordano_bruno.md.