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BRUNO, GIORDANO (b. Nola, Italy, 1548; d. Rome,
Italy, 17 February 1600), philosophy.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Tallarigo, Felice Tocco, and Girolamo Vitelli, eds., 3 vols.
(Naples-Florence, 1879-1891), also in a facsimile reprint
(Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt, 1962). Latin works discovered
and published since this edition are Due dialoghi
sconosciuti e due dialoghi noti, Giovanni Aquilecchia, ed.
(Rome, 1957); and Praelectiones geometricae e ars deformationum,
Giovanni Aquilecchia, ed. (Rome, 1964). The
Italian works are collected in Dialoghi italiani, Giovanni
Gentile, ed., revised by Giovanni Aquilecchia (Florence,
1957), which contains all the Italian dialogues in one
volume; one of the works, La cena de le ceneri, has been
published separately with intro. and notes by Giovanni
Aquilecchia (Turin, 1955).
Translations of Bruno's works include “Concerning the
Cause, Principle, and One,” Dorothea W. Singer, trans.,
in Sidney Greenberg, The Infinite in Giordano Bruno (New
York, 1950), pp. 77 ff.; “On the Infinite Universe and
Worlds,” Dorothea W. Singer, trans., in her Giordano
Bruno, His Life and Thought (New York, 1950), pp. 227 ff.;
Des fureurs héroïques, Paul-Henri Michel, trans. (Paris,
1954); The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast, Arthur D.
Imerti, trans. (New Brunswick, New Jersey, 1964); Giordano
Bruno's “The Heroic Frenzies,” Paul Eugene Memo,
trans. (Chapel Hill, N.C., 1964).
II. SECONDARY LITERATURE.
A bibliography of Bruno's
works and of books and articles on him up to and including
1950 is Virgilio Salvestrini and Luigi Firpo, Bibliografia
di Giordano Bruno (1582-1950) (Florence, 1958). Documentary
sources on his life are Vincenzo Spampanato, ed.,
Documenti della vita di Giordano Bruno (Florence, 1933);
and Angelo Mercati, ed., Il sommario del processo di Giordano
Bruno (Vatican City, 1942). The standard biography
is Vincenzo Spampanato, Vita di Giordano Bruno (Messina,
1921); on the trial, see Luigi Firpo, Il processo di Giordano
Bruno (Naples, 1949).
The following brief selection from a vast literature
includes books illustrative of the history of Bruno's reputation:
Domenico Berti, La vita di Giordano Bruno da Nola
(Florence, 1867); Felice Tocco, Le opere latine di G. Bruno
(Florence, 1889), and Le fonti più recenti del Bruno (Rome,
1892); J. Lewis McIntyre, Giordano Bruno (London, 1903);
Giovanni Gentile, Giordano Bruno e il pensiero del Rinascimento
(Florence, 1920); Leo Olschki, Giordano Bruno
(Halle, 1924), also translated into Italian (Bari, 1927); Ernst
Cassirer, Individuum und Kosmos in der Philosophie der
Renaissance (Berlin-Leipzig, 1927), also translated into
English by Mario Domandi (New York, 1963); Antonio
Corsano, Il pensiero di Giordano Bruno (Florence, 1940);
Eugenio Garin, La filosofia (Milan, 1947); Walter Pagel,
“Giordano Bruno: The Philosophy of Circles and the
Circular Movement of the Blood,” in Journal of the History
of Medicine and Allied Sciences,6 (1951), 116-125; Alexandre
Koyré, From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe
(Baltimore, 1957); Paolo Rossi, Clavis universalis (Milan,
1960), pp. 109-134; Paul-Henri Michel, La cosmologie de
Giordano Bruno (Paris, 1962); Paul Oskar Kristeller, Eight
Philosophers of the Italian Renaissance (Palo Alto, Calif.,
1964), pp. 127-144.
This article is based on my books, Giordano Bruno and
the Hermetic Tradition (Chicago, 1964), and The Art of
Memory (Chicago, 1966). On Bruno, Gilbert, and Bacon,
see my essay “The Hermetic Tradition in Renaissance
Science,” in Art, Science, and History in the Renaissance,
Charles S. Singleton, ed. (Baltimore, 1968), pp. 255-274.