Page:The Gradual Acceptance of the Copernican Theory of the Universe.djvu/58

 pointing out some twenty of his errors. The Council sent him to the Consistory, the governing body of the church, where a formal sentence of excommunication was passed against him. When he apologized it was withdrawn. Probably a certain stigma remained, and he left Geneva soon thereafter with a warm dislike for Calvinism. After lecturing at the University of Toulouse he appeared in Paris in 1581, where he held an extraordinary readership. Two years later he was in England, for he lectured at Oxford during the spring months and defended the Copernican theory before the Polish prince Alasco during the latter's visit there in June.

To Bruno belongs the glory of the first public proclamation in England of the new doctrine, though only Gilbert and possibly Wright seem to have accepted it at the time. Upon Bruno's return to London, he entered the home of the French ambassador as a kind of secretary, and there spent the happiest years of his life till the ambassador's recall in October, 1585. It was during this period that he wrote some of his most famous books. In La Cena de la Ceneri he defended the Copernican theory, incidentally criticising the Oxford dons most severely, for which he apologized in De la Causa, Principio et Uno. He developed his philosophy of an infinite universe in De l'Infinito e Mondi, and in the Spaccio de la Bestia Trionphante "attacked all religions of mere credulity as opposed to religions of truth and deeds." This last book was at once thought to be a biting attack upon the Roman Church and later became one of the grounds of the Inquisition's charges against him. During this time in London also, he came to know Sir Philip Sydney intimately, and Fulk Greville as well as others of that brilliant period. He may have known Bacon; but it is highly improbable that he and Shakespeare met, or that Shakespeare ever was influenced by the other's philosophy.

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