CHAPTER IX.
GIORDANO BRUNO.
Scientific Bias of the Italians checked by Catholic Revival--Boyhood of Bruno--Enters Order of S.Dominic at Naples--Early Accusations of Heresy--Escapes to Rome--Teaches the Sphere at Noli--Visits Venice--At Geneva--At Toulouse--At Paris--His Intercourse with Henri III .-- Visits England--The French Ambassador in London--Oxford--Bruno's Literary Work in England--Returns to Paris--Journeys into Germany--Wittenberg, Helmstaedt, Frankfort--Invitation to Venice from Giovanni Mocenigo--His Life in Venice--Mocenigo denounces him to the Inquisition--His Trial at Venice--Removal to Rome--Death by Burning in 1600--Bruno's Relation to the Thought of his Age and to the Thought of Modern Europe--Outlines of his Philosophy.
The humanistic and artistic impulses of the Renaissance were at the point of exhaustion in Italy.

Scholarship declined; the passion for antiquity expired.

All those forms of literature which Boccaccio initiated--comedy, romance, the idyl, the lyric and the novel--had been worked out by a succession of great writers.

It became clear that the nation was not destined to create tragic or heroic types of poetry.
Architecture, sculpture and painting had performed their task of developing mediaeval motives by the light of classic models, and were now entering on the stage of academical inanity.

Yet the mental vigor of the Italians was by no means exhausted.