Page:The Gradual Acceptance of the Copernican Theory of the Universe.djvu/57



HEN the Roman Catholic authorities awoke to the dangers of the new teaching, they struck with force. The first to suffer was the famous monk-philosopher, Giordano Bruno, whose trial by the Holy Office was premonitory of trouble to come for Galileo.

After an elementary education at Naples near his birth-place, Nola, Filippo Bruno entered the Dominican monastery in 1562 or 1563 when about fourteen years old, assuming the name Giordano at that time. Before 1572, when he entered the priesthood, he had fully accepted the Copernican theory which later became the basis of all his philosophical thought. Bruno soon showed he was not made for the monastic life. Various processes were started against him, and fleeing to Rome he abandoned his monk's garments and entered upon the sixteen years of wandering over Europe, a peripatetic teacher of the philosophy of an infinite universe as deduced from the Copernican doctrine and thus in a way its herald. He reached Geneva in 1579 (where he did not accept Calvinism as was formerly thought), but decided before many months had passed that it was wise to depart elsewhere because of the unpleasant position in which he found himself there. He had been brought before the Council for printing invectives against one of the professors,

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