The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast (Giordano Bruno)

Giordano Bruno (January or February 1548 – February 17, 1600) was an Italian Dominican friar, philosopher, mathematician, poet, cosmological theorist and hermetic occultist.

Beginning in 1593, Bruno was tried for heresy by the Roman Inquisition on charges of denying several fundamental Catholic doctrines, including eternal damnation, the Trinity, the divinity of Christ, the virginity of Mary, and transubstantiation. Bruno’s pantheism was not taken lightly by the Church, nor was his teaching of the transmigration of the soul (reincarnation). The Inquisition found him guilty, and he was burned at the stake in Rome’s Campo de’ Fiori in 1600.
He idealized that the stars were distant suns surrounded by their planets, and raised the possibility that these planets might foster life of their own, a cosmological position known as cosmic pluralism. He also insisted that the universe is infinite and could not have a “center.”

After his death, he achieved considerable fame, being particularly celebrated by 19th and early 20th century commentators who considered him a martyr for science, although most historians agree that his trial for heresy was not a response to his cosmological views, but rather a response to his religious views and views on the afterlife.

Historian Frances Yates argues that Bruno was deeply influenced by Islamic astrology (particularly the philosophy of Averroes), Neoplatonism, Renaissance Hermeticism, and Genesis-like legends surrounding the Egyptian god Thoth.

The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast

Lo Spaccio de la Bestia Trionfante is a philosophical work published in London in 1584 and written in the form of a dialogue. An allegorical text of moral philosophy, with the three interlocutors, Sophia (Wisdom), Saulino (a fictional character) and Mercurio (the messenger of the gods of Roman mythology), discuss the implementation of a reform ordered by Jupiter to renew the vault of heaven and thus end a decline that has lasted for a long time: dealing, or “remove” from heaven old vices to replace them with new virtues. The work lends itself to be interpreted on different levels, among which remains fundamental that of the polemical intent of Bruno against the Protestant Reformation, yet another defeat of true Christianity.

“Among the heretics of every age, we find men who are full of the highest kind of religious feeling,” said Albert Einstein. This work is Bruno’s most representative, published in an atmosphere of secrecy in 1584 and for more than a century never considered anything but blasphemous, it was singled out by the ecclesiastical court in the summation of his final trial. This is not surprising because the book is a bold indictment of the corruption of the social and religious institutions of its time. The “triumphant beast” signifies the reign of multiple vices. Done in the form of allegorical dialogues, Bruno’s work presents the deliberations of the Greek gods who have gathered to banish from the heavens the constellations that remind them of their evil deeds. The crisis facing Jupiter, the elderly father of the gods, is symbolic of the crisis of a Renaissance world deeply troubled by new religious, philosophical, and scientific ideas.

The Law for Bruno

The Law, like the other virtues has two joint aspects, one divine and the other earthly, but the end is common, and the divine law can be well understood as “religion”. Religion is a term with an unclear etymology, but Bruno understands it as “to bind”, “to hold together”, from the Latin re-ligare. The law must promote human civilization and social cohesion; rites and ceremonies cannot and must not be performed to favor gods who are not among men, to appease their anger or ingratiate themselves with their favors: religious ceremonies make sense only when they are an integral part of public management, of civil life. It is in this way that the models that Bruno proposes, those of ancient Egyptian and Roman religions, should be understood, as well as the same metaphorical context within which the Spaccio is staged. The celestial reform that Jupiter proposes is both a religious and a civil reform: the laws of men do not come from the gods, but are with the gods.

Structure

First Dialogue

In the first part we find Sofia and Saulino discussing the succession of events in the World, the “vicissitude”. The mutation of matter is one of the main points of Bruno’s thought: everything in the universe is in continuous change and it is in the nature of things to pass from one extreme to another, that is, to proceed “per contrarii”. Therefore, Sofia concludes, the more truth is submerged in time, the more it will rise. Bruno makes the reform wanted by Jupiter, and therefore the restoration of values, part of the ordinariness of the universal vicissitude.

In the second part there is the “Oration of Jupiter”, the speech that he pronounces to the divine college convened by himself. The father of the gods is discouraged because the laws that he has sent to men have been usurped by “unworthy armchair women”, and the sky itself bears witness to this with the disorder of the constellations. It is therefore necessary to reform the sky in order to restore the World, it is necessary that “we remove from our shoulders the grievous sum of errors that holds it back”. The “sale” will consist in the expulsion of these constellations, “triumphant beasts”, symbol of the crisis in which humanity finds itself.

In the third part of the exhibition continues with the dialogue between Sofia and the messenger of the gods, Mercury: It was decided that in the place occupied by the constellations of Ursa Minor (where the North Star is located), the Dragon, Cepheus, the Artophyllace and in that next to the Crown are to be located respectively the virtues Truth, Prudence, Sophia, Law and Judgment, each with its handmaidens; Thus Falsehood, Casualness, Ignorance, Prevarication, Iniquity, and with them also the many “ministries”, such as foolish faith, hypocrisy, excess, revenge, etc., disappear.

At the end of this last part there is the curious description that Mercury makes to Sofia of the dispositions given to him by Jupiter before he arrived. The “winged deity” thus lists a whole series of seemingly insignificant tasks, “minuzzaria”: every thing in the World, even the apparently most insignificant has its importance, because “divine cognition is not like ours, which follows after things; but it is ahead of things and is found in all things, so that, if it were not found there, there would be no proximate or secondary causes.”

Second Dialogue

The second dialogue proceeds with Sophia answering Saulin’s questions and explaining why those five virtues were preferred to the others. In front of all things there can only be truth, cause, beginning, middle and end of everything. Prudence, also known as providence when referred to the divine, acts in us as an expression of that and is guided by dialectics and metaphysics. Sophia is wisdom, that is, the end of knowledge itself, a noble intent when aimed at the search for truth. “To sophia succeeds the law, her daughter”, because the law must be subservient to wisdom and with this operate. Judgment has, finally, the task of taking care of the law. The result of this new chain of values, and Bruno is explicit, cannot therefore include a blind law, which descends from gods that “are moved or angry” for what men do; that threaten and reward without having clear the “end and the utility of the men themselves”; that “does not kindle the appetite of glory in human breasts”.

The second part of the second dialogue sees Wealth claiming a place for itself, but there is no room for wealth: it is what makes Judgment “limp”, silence the Law and trample Wisdom. Neither does there seem to be room for Poverty, which seeing Wealth being chased away “became innate”. Jupiter, however, prefers it to Wealth because “riches are an impediment to philosophy”. And Sofia wisely comments that he is poor not who has little but who desires much. It is the turn of Fortune, the blindfolded goddess, who asks to occupy the place of the constellation of Hercules. Fortune, in her speech, claims that place because just for being without sight, she gives herself to “all equally”, and therefore cannot be blamed for the vices and problems of humanity. Jupiter, while approving the motivations put forward by Fortune, does not consider her worthy to take that important space, which instead he assigns to Fortitude – and we are at the last part of the second dialogue: if there is no will and no strength of mind, one cannot reach any goal, otherwise remaining at the mercy of fate.

Instead of the Lyre, Bruno places Memory, Mnemosyne with her nine daughters, the Muses. The dialogue proceeds with other constellations that are passed off to be replaced by Penance, Simplicity, Diligence, Fatigue, etc..

In the last dialogue, the first part contains the criticism against Idleness and the Golden Age. It is in fact Ozio himself who defends the golden age: everyone praises it and invokes it because it is under the banner of a simple life, without worries, in which one can have everything that nature provides without fatigue. Jupiter answers that man has been given hands and intellect, functions that distinguish him from animals and that man cannot leave unused because “moving away from the bestial being, more highly they approach the divine being”. And he adds that therefore there cannot be virtue in idleness, “since there is a great difference between not being vicious and being virtuous”. For idleness there is room only after worthy occupations, otherwise idleness is not only useless but harmful, Jupiter concludes. For Bruno, exalting the golden age is tantamount to promoting stasis and ignorance. The implicit reference is also to the earthly paradise, from which the biblical god chases man away, condemning him to work: on the contrary, work is not a divine punishment, the use of hands and reason is for better or for worse that of human civilization. In this way we can understand why Bruno, at the end of the previous dialogue, had spent quite a few pages exalting Work.

In the second part Saulino and Sofia discuss the ancient Egyptians. “Nature is nothing but God in things” and “God all is in all things,” Sofia explains, but in nature the divine presents itself in different forms, some of which have common traits, these traits can be thought of as gods, for example the gods of Olympus or those of ancient Egypt:

”So you have to think of each of the gods for each of the species under different genes of the entity, because just as divinity descends in a certain way as far as it communicates itself to nature, so to divinity one ascends by nature, so by the life shining in natural things one mounts to the life above those things. “(Sophia: dialogue III, part II)

So in worshipping Jupiter, for example, they were not worshipping him as if he were God, but worshipping God in him. Here Bruno, in order to prevent the reader from misunderstanding by identifying the name of the deity with his characteristics, refers the worship of Jupiter to the Egyptians. In fact, Saul takes Sofia back by pointing out that Jupiter was an unknown deity to the Egyptians, but was found much later in Greek civilization. Sophia invites Saulin not to think about the name, but to pay attention to the “most universal custom”. The divine communicates itself to man in “innumerable ways… and with innumerable names”. And this is precisely the wisdom that is necessary to discern, beyond the multiform aspect of nature, beyond the passing of time, beyond the variability of names, the divine unity that underlies everything, “which habit is called magic”.

Third Dialogue

Quotes

“To Sophia succeeds the law, her daughter; and for this she wants to work, and for this she wants to be used; for this the princes reign, and the kingdoms and republics are maintained. […] Jupiter has given him the power to bind, which maximally consists in this, that she does not become such that she incurs contempt and indignity.”
(Sophia: dialogue II, part I)

 

“Divinity is revealed in all things … every thing has Divinity latent in it.”

 

“Fortune is varied, only the elements remain what they are in substance , persevering that same principle which was always the only material principle, which is the true substance of things, eternal, ingenerable and incorruptible.
Divinity is revealed in all things … everything has Divinity latent in it. For it envelops and imparts itself even to the smallest beings, and from the smallest beings, according to their capacity. Without her presence nothing would have being, for she is the essence of existence from the first to the last being.”

 

“Animals and plants are living effects of Nature ; this Nature…is nothing but God in things…. Different living beings represent different divinities and different powers , which, in addition to the absolute being they possess, obtain being communicated to all things according to their capacity and measure . So that all God is in all things (although not totally, but in some more abundantly and in others less)… Think thus, of the sun in the crocus, in the narcissus, in the heliotrope, in the rooster, in the lion ….To the extent that one communicates with Nature, so one ascends to Divinity through Nature.

 

Those sages knew that God is in things, and Divinity latent in Nature, working and shining in different ways in different subjects, and succeeding through different physical forms, in certain dispositions, to make them partakers of her, I say, of her being, in her life and intellect.

 

If it is not Nature itself, it is certainly the nature of Nature, and it is the soul of the Soul of the world, if it is not the soul itself.

 

Of the eternal corporeal substance (which is not producible from nothing , nor reducible ad nihilum , but rarefiable, condensable, formable, positionable, and “fashionable”) the composition is dissolved, the coloring is changed, the figure is altered, the being is altered, the fortune is varied, only the elements remain what they are in the substance, persevering that same principle which was always the only material principle, which is the true substance of things, eternal, ingenerable, and incorruptible.

 

Of the eternal incorporeal substance nothing is changed, formed, or deformed, but only that thing always remains which cannot be the subject of dissolution, since it is not possible for it to be the subject of composition, and therefore, neither by itself nor by accident, it cannot be said to die.

 

Of the eternal corporeal substance (which is not producible ex nihilo, nor reducible ad nihilum, but rarefiable, condensable, formable, arrangeable, and “fashionable”) the composition is dissolved, the complexion is changed, the figure is modified, the being is altered, the fortune is varied, only the elements remaining what they are in substance, that same principle persevering which was always the one material principle, which is the true substance of things, eternal, ingenerable and incorruptible.

 

Of the eternal incorporeal substance nothing is changed, is formed or deformed, but there always remains only that thing which cannot be a subject of dissolution, since it is not possible that it be a subject of composition, and therefore, either of itself or by accident, it cannot be said to die.

The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast (e-book PDF)