Schmitt C.B. (ed.) The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy
Подождите немного. Документ загружается.
The
new philosophy of nature
247
of
the stars. The other was
that
once the earth had been promoted to the
rank of the other planets the totality of the processes of generation and
corruption produced on the earth could be explained only by reference to
the sun's heat and the earth's motion and position with respect to the sun. All
the functions of the celestial spheres, especially those of the sphere of the
fixed
stars with respect to the sublunary sphere, seemed to vanish together
with
the explanations
that
depended on them and with the finite character
of
the cosmos.
GIROLAMO
CARDANO
Cardano's De
subtilitate
(1550)
seems to mark the beginning of a new phase
in European culture, characterised by ideas and influences which did not
come
solely
from Italy or from a pure interest in studying
nature
as a
homogeneous
unity in isolation from metaphysical or social considerations.
By
this time, Cardano already had a lengthy career as a physician and a
philosopher behind him, not to mention the great mathematical achieve-
ment
of
his Ars
magna
(1545).
This experience enabled him to focus on some
of
the central issues in the philosophy of nature.
The
influence of Erasmus, representing the finest fruits of European
humanism, met and was united in Cardano's thought with the influence of
Pomponazzi,
representing the zenith
of
sixteenth-century Aristotelianism.
7
In different
ways
Erasmus and Pomponazzi
gave
directions for man to
fulfil
his moral and practical duty while heeding the intrinsic restrictions on
man's metaphysical power. Erasmus, in particular, had worked out in his
Enchiridion
an ethic which recognised the ineluctable requirements of
human nature, and his articulation of the relationship between reason and
the passions was no longer expressed in terms of diametric opposition. At
the same time he was moving towards a recognition of the unspoken
rationality of the Christian message, and this reconciled him to the share of
the rational
that,
like a divine signature, was found in man. The Christian
message
thus encountered in man an inner consent which arose from the
very
nature
of
those to whom it was addressed. Nature and reason
—
albeit in
the theological and ethical terrain - therefore tended to be united in
Erasmus, while the notion of reason on its own became so problematic, in
the
Encomium
moriae
for example, as to invite repeated accusations of
scepticism.
8
7. See
Nardi
1958 and
Schmitt
1983a
for the
problems
of
Renaissance
Aristotelianism.
8. In his De servo arbitrio
(1525)
Luther
frequently
accuses
Erasmus
of
scepticism.
See
O'Rourke
Boyle
1983, who
characterises
their
respective
positions
in the
debate
about
free
will
as
sceptic
and
Stoic.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
248
Natural philosophy
Pomponazzi
connected human mortality both with
an
epistemological
limitation which threatened
to
undermine
his own
philosophical conclu-
sions
and
with
a
purely animal destiny
that
seemed
to
arise from
the
determinism
of
his De
fato. In his De incantationibus the
quantity
of
natural
phenomena which could
not be
referred
to
active
and
passive qualities
indicated
how
vast
was the
domain
of
the occult, which
in
turn
lay
beyond
epistemological
certitude. Thus,
it was
necessary
to
invoke
the
heavens
to
account
for
decisive human actions
in
history
and
religion. Astrology
certainly seemed
to be
empirically guaranteed,
but it
introduced causes
external
to the
physical world
and
emphasised
the
uncertainty
of any
conclusions
that
might
be
formulated
by a
finite being.
Above
all, the
plausibility
and
coherence
of
Aristotelianism seemed
to
entail premises
which,
since they were
not
self-evident
per se,
threatened
to
undermine
the
integrity
of
Aristotle's
philosophy,
itself
reduced
to
being
just
one
of
several
possible
ways
of
discussing reality.
From Pomponazzi
and
Erasmus Cardano inherited
an
interest
in the
forms
in
which knowledge
was
expressed. This culminated
in his
formulation
of the
contrast between 'human knowledge'
and
'natural
knowledge'
in his De sapientia
(1544).
This contrast
was a
N
first, embryonic
distinction between
a
rhetorical-moral type
of
knowledge, used
for
dominating
and
deceiving others,
and a
knowledge, directed primarily
but
not exclusively
at
nature,
constructed from facts
and
capable
of
expansion
in
time. From Erasmus
and
Pomponazzi Cardano also inherited
the
link
between man's metaphysical limitations
and his
practical
and
moral
purpose. This
legacy
constantly conditioned Cardano's studies
of
nature
to
the point where they were seen
as the
rational discovery
of
the
structure
of
reality.
The
idea
of man
committing
his
practical capacities
to his
moral
purpose became
a
programme
to
improve
the
conditions
of
human
life
by
transforming
nature
(the
category
of utilitas was
already central
in
Erasmus). Alongside this aspect
of
Cardano's thought
and
whenever
he
moved
from
the
specific
to the
general causes
of
phenomena,
or
where
ignorance
of
such causes
led him to
metaphysics proper,
there
was constant
reference
to a
superior
and
anxiety-provoking realm inaccessible
to
reason
alone. From this arose
his
attempt
to
produce
a
complete systématisation
of
astrology,
equally rigorous
in its
mathematics
and in its
account
of all
celestial
change since
the
ancients
had
founded
the
discipline.
At the
same
time, Cardano, like others mentioned here, tackled
the
difficult relationship
between rationalism
and
esotericism, between faith
in
reason,
fully
aware
of
its tools
and
called upon
to
develop
a
programme
of
unheard-of novelty
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
The
new
philosophy
of
nature
249
and scope,
and the
awareness
of
reason's limitations. Nature's independ-
ence,
often defended against anthropomorphic
or
anthropocentric explana-
tions
and
against religious explanations
of
phenomena
that
could
be
accounted
for in
physical terms, therefore left considerable space open
for
astrology;
at the
same time,
it
also implied
the sui generis
independence
of
the
human world, regulated
by
natural
laws
no
less rigid
than
those
of
physics.
These
laws arose from
the
immutable psychology
of the
individual
and
were
therefore invariable
in
time, constituting
the
structure
of the
human
world.
Based
on
dominion
and
deception, they condemned
him to
failure
and therefore
to
unhappiness
in his
relations with others. These notions
formed
the
background
to the ars vivendi
constructed
by
Cardano
on a
foundation
of
cynicism,
which claimed
not
only
its own
morality
but
also
a
higher
one.
This cynicism, furthermore, underlay
his
interpretation
of
history
as the
history
of the
violence undergone
by the
humble
and the
oppressed,
as
described
in his Proxeneta
(posthumously published
in
1627)
and
Encomium Neronis
(1562).
The
De subtilitate may be
described
as an
encyclopaedia
of
nature
in the
sense
that
it
deals with each
of the
levels according
to
which
nature
is
structured, ranging from
the
elements
to man and
beyond
to the
obscure
area
of
demonic influence. Despite almost discounting
the Physics and De
caelo,
Cardano, like many
of
the thinkers discussed here, made much
use of
Aristotle's
works
of
natural
history.
He
focused
on the
relationship between
teleology
and
material necessity,
and on two
issues
in
particular.
The
first
was his
concern
for
man's capacity
to
transform
nature
for his
own
ends.
(In his
autobiography, Cardano claimed
to be the
first
to
move
in
this direction.) This capacity appeared
to
vary inversely with
the
increasing
complexity
and
superior organisation
of
the products
of
nature,
but
seemed
to
be
extensive
and
effective
at the
elemental
level.
Cardano
had
clearly
learnt this from experience
and
from techniques acquired
in the
most
disparate fields
of
knowledge,
as
well
as
from
his
work with
the
machines
that
were becoming increasingly important
in his day.
The
second
was the
opening
up of a
historical dimension
to
knowledge.
Though
this dimension relied
on the
accumulation
of
experiences
in
time,
Cardano
did not
hesitate
to see his own
function
as
decisive
in
identifying
the methods
to be
followed.
He
placed
his own
speculations
on the
same
timeless
level
as the
perception
of
intelligible
truths
contemplated
by the
sapiens.
None
of
this came
to
grips with society seen
in
terms
of
the laws
of
nature
which
regulated
it -
even less
did it
touch
the
civil
role
of
religion within
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
250
Natural philosophy
society.
Religion was, of course, destined to change, but according to
rhythms not determined by man. There was also the problem of the
immortality of the soul and of free
will,
the latter thrown into disarray by
the very astrology Cardano had, in his commentary on Ptolemy's
Tetrabiblos
(1554),
set
himself
to restore. The appeal to astrology underlines
another salient feature of Cardano's philosophy. He was no longer willing
to accept the authority of Aristotle and Galen in physics and medicine, and
was
a champion of the indispensable role of experience, even if always
subject to rational verification; his
view
of
nature
oscillated between the
extreme simplicity of the principles needed to account for all living
processes — basically, warmth and moisture — and the immense variety of
phenomena which had to be explained in terms of these principles. He
stressed the determinant importance of celestial warmth as the agent in
every
process of generation, sufficient even to account for the spontaneous
generation of man, if not for his highest intellectual processes. This led him
into cosmological problems. Almost sarcastically hostile to Copernicanism,
he tended not only to emphasise the decisive role
of
celestial
heat but also to
question the Aristotelian notions about
matter
and movement
that
enforced
the rigid separation of celestial and sublunary events.
Cardano, too, sought in the heavens the explanatory key for religious and
historical changes in the human world. He saw himself as the learned man
destined to perfect, or at least to advance, many branches
of
knowledge
by
raising them to a higher
level
beyond rational explanation. When he
encountered the metaphysical restrictions mentioned above, he did not
hesitate to invoke a higher inspiration which guided him into the realm of
mysticism and which was mysterious and enigmatic, even to those whom it
guided.
BERNARDINO
TELESIO
Telesio
was less wide-ranging
than
Cardano and more closely involved
with anti-Aristotelian criticism. The first version, in two books, of his De
rerum
natura iuxta propria principia
appeared
in
1565.
It is
livelier
but
less
organised and effective
than
the definitive 1586 version in nine books.
9
It
begins with the works of Aristotle, criticising Peripatetic cosmology
precisely
at the moment when the senses (and therefore direct experience)
were being claimed as the principal criterion for our evaluation of reality.
9.
Sertorio
Quattromani
produced
a
synthesis
of
Telesio's
philosophy
in
Italian,
first
published
in
Naples
in 1589; see
Quattromani
1914.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
The
new
philosophy
of
nature
This
position, sometimes considered simplistic
and
metaphysically
naive,
10
is
important
for two
reasons.
One is the
postulation
of an
insuperable limit
to our
knowledge, demonstrated
by our
inability
to
decide definitively
on the
constitution
of the
heavens because
of the
limitations
of our
observational instruments.
The
second factor
is an
emphatic denunciation
of the
arbitrary superimposition
of
abstractly
rational schemata
on to
concrete physical processes which should instead
be
investigated
iuxta propria principia
(according
to
their
own
principles).
Telesio's
position drew strength from
its
analytical rigour.
It is
evident
that
his position presupposed
a
substantial identity
of
the principles
that
act at the
cosmic
level
and
those basic
to our
knowledge, otherwise
the two
factors
(epistemological
limitations
and the
validity
of the
senses) would
be
irremediably opposed.
Telesio
thus
found
in the
concreteness
of the two
principles
of
heat
and
cold
(which
are
both incorporeal
and
perennially opposed,
as
well
as
acting
on
matter
within
a
space entirely without qualitative determinations)
the
causes
of all
terrestrial physical processes.
He
based
the
relative cosmic
locations
of
the
sun and the
earth
on the
attributes
of
heat
and
coldness,
and
on their opposition.
The sun was
impelled
to
perpetual motion
by the
nature
of
fire
and
heat;
the
earth
was
destined
by its own
weight
to
immobility.
This arrangement balanced
the
conflicting tendencies which
made
life
possible.
The sun was the
unique
natural
fire
and the
basis
for a
cosmology
to
which
all
physical processes
and
their equilibrium were
referred. Telesio could
thus
eliminate
the
complex physical
and
metaphysi-
cal
paraphernalia necessitated
by the
Aristotelian relationship
of
earth
and
heavens.
He
required only
the
wise intervention
of an
ordering mind
at the
beginning
of
creation
and the
constant physical interaction
of the two
principles
of
heat
and
cold.
In
Telesio's universe everything was sentient
and
aware
of
being
sentient. Otherwise
it
would
not
have been possible
to
carry
out
a
project which relied only
on
natural
principles. Here
the
distinctive
feature
of
Telesio's thought
is to be
found.
By
confining metaphysics
to a
level
different from
the
physical,
he
emphasised
that
not
only man's
awareness
but
also
his
moral
life
and
even
his
physical constitution would
have
to be
investigated from
the
moment when
the
basic cosmic process
became specifically manifest
in man.
It
is not
surprising, therefore,
that
Telesio chose
the spiritus
of
the human
organism
—
the
specific form
in
which fire
and
celestial warmth appropriate
io.
See
Gentile
1911 in
particular.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
252
Natural philosophy
earthly
matter
and
turn
it
into
a
living organism
- as the
ultimate criterion
to explain all epistemological processes from memory
to
intellect.
He had to
admit
that
the spiritus at the
root
of the
human organism
was
itself
a
sense
since everything
in
nature
which
is
capable
of
conserving itself
can do so
only
because
it
possesses
in
some degree
a
comprehension
of
reality
allowing
it to
distinguish between
that
which
threatens
and
that
which
favours
its
survival.
His
treatment
of
human awareness
thus
culminated
with
the
recognition
of the
superiority
of
sensation
to all
other levels
of
awareness because
it
was presented passively,
as a
real physical modification,
but also
as
capable
of
initiating
a
form
of
discourse (possibly
too
swift
for
conscious
awareness) which allowed
all the
other forms
of
knowledge.
From these premises evolved
the
thesis
of the
character
of the
natural
realities, within us,
of
vice
and
virtue. These realities were changeable
in the
individual
but
could
be
misunderstood
if
attention
was not
paid
to
their
dependence
on an
essential function
of the spiritus,
namely
its
self-
preservation
and its
inevitable connection with
the
different temperaments.
Telesio's
critique touched every aspect
of
Aristotelian philosophy, from
physics
to
cosmology, from epistemology
to
ethics.
The
quality
of his
textual analysis
and his
intellectual rigour
in
clarifying physical problems
influenced Bruno
and,
especially, Campanella,
and
ultimately found
an
echo
in
Bacon.
The
strength
of
his position
was
that
it
could
be
applied
to
situations beyond those
he
himself
had foreseen. His ambiguity resided
in his
conception
of the
study
of
nature;
his
attempt
to
limit
it
within precise
boundaries encountered insuperable obstacles.
On the one
hand,
he
postulated
the
existence
of a
human soul
of
divine origin, superior
to the
spiritus,
thus
introducing
a
level
of
discourse higher
than
that
of
his original
enquiry.
On the
other hand,
his
positing
of a
divinity
that
had
decided
the
rationality
of
everything
from
the
beginning
had to
come
to
terms with
the
joint collapse
of
the Aristotelian relationship between
the
sublunary sphere
and
the
heavens
and
between
the
heavens
and the
realm
of the
intelligible.
Above
all, the
notion
of spiritus,
which
was
central
to the
magical
and the
medical
traditions, made
it
possible
to
reintroduce
a
vision
of
nature
that
more strongly emphasised
the
living character
of
everything
and the
consequent connection between
man and
cosmos. Thus, Telesio was able
to
reopen both
the
metaphysical problem
and the
problem
of how
magic
worked.
This
was to
exercise many
of his
followers, starting with
Campanella.
These problems also help
to
explain
the
difficulties Telesio
had
with
ecclesiastical censorship.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
The
new
philosophy
of
nature
253
THE
STRUGGLE
WITH
AUTHORITY
Cardano
was
arrested
and
tried between
1570 and
1571. Bruno
was in
prison from
1592
until
1600,
when
he was
burnt
at the
stake.
In 1593
Telesio's
works were condemned.
In 1594
Patrizi's
Nova de universis
philosophia
was
condemned. Campanella
was a
prisoner
of the
Inquisition
from 1594
to
1597
and
again from 1599
to
1628.
A
number
of
factors have
to
be considered before
the
full complexity
of
this dissidence
can be
understood. Censorship
was
tighter
in
Italy
than
elsewhere;
and
also these
writers were prolonging,
in a
different form,
a
tradition which felt itself
to
be outside
the
knowledge premised
on
orthodox religious belief. Equally,
Platonism posed
the
censors with
a
number
of
dilemmas
that
some
of
these
writers attempted
to use as
levers
in
order
to
impose,
if
only
in
embryonic
form,
their
own
programmes.
11
Admittedly, Telesio
and
Cardano both
bowed
to
ecclesiastical authority, though
in the
latter's case
he
saw
it
almost
as
the
wise man's duty, given
the
futility
of
opposing something like
religion
which enjoyed
a
higher necessity. Some were entirely sincere
in
their
views.
Consider,
for
instance,
the
extended
and
unresolved debate
about
the
genuineness
of the
conversion
of
Campanella, whom some
historians regard
as the
emblematic figure
of the
Counter-Reformation.
12
Beyond
all
this, however,
there
are
underlying factors which explain,
for
example,
how
Patrizi could propose
his
philosophical synthesis
as the new
ideology
of the
Catholic Church. Clearly
it was the
unstable situation
which
encouraged Bruno
to
return
to
Italy where,
in the
wake
of
Patrizi's
views
and
their short-lived success,
he
might
be
able
to
adapt
the
extremism
of
his
anti-Christian
views
to the
complexities
of the
situation.
As
Mocenigo,
Bruno's first accuser
at his
trial,
put it:
'When Patrizi went
to
Rome,
Bruno said this pope
is an
honest
man
because
he
favours
philosophers,
and I too may
hope
to be
given preference;
and I
know
that
Patrizi
is a
philosopher
and
that
he
does
not
believe
in
anything.'
13
These
words tell
us
much about Patrizi
and
Bruno,
as
well
as
other
nature
philosophers.
The
issues
are
subtle,
but two
factors stand out. First,
the
anti-
Aristotelianism
of
both took
a
radical form which undermined
the
entire
spectrum
of
philosophical certainties. This paralleled
the
ferment
of new
religious
beliefs, some
of
which claimed
a
prophetic legitimisation,
thus
emphasising
the
delicacy
of the
church's situation. Second,
the
scientific
11.
See
Rotondo
1982. 12. See Di
Napoli
1947. 13. A.
Mercati
1942, pp. 56-7.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
254
Natural philosophy
revolution held
out the
promise
of
a Christian apologetic different from
the
polemical
opposition
of
these writers.
To be
sure,
the new
science would
have been unthinkable without
their
decisive contribution
to the
cosmological
renewal,
but
their
analysis
of man and of the
human
world
proceeded with
an
extreme open-mindedness
and
freedom.
GIORDANO
BRUNO
The
new
philosophy
did not
immediately welcome
the
revolution
in
astronomy. Cardano
was
hostile towards heliocentrism;
he saw it as
proof
of
how
even
the
most ridiculous products
of the
human
intellect
occasionally
found
a
practical justification. Telesio would have nothing
to
do with
the
notion
that
the
earth
moved
and
refuted
it for
reasons which
were
central
to his
philosophy. Bruno, however, found
in
Copernicus
the
means
of
demolishing Aristotelian physics
and
cosmology
and of
revealing
the interrelation between
the
finiteness
of
the cosmos, traditional metaphys-
ics
and the
Christian religion.
Bruno regarded Copernicus
as the matematico who had
succeeded
in
renovating
and
correctly describing
the
movements
of
the heavens.
But his
description, while adequate
for
practical purposes,
was not a
sufficient
foundation
for a new
natural
philosophy. Copernicus' assumptions about
physical
nature
—
the
mobility
of
the
earth,
the
centrality
of
the
sun
—
were
merely
the
starting-point
for
Bruno's philosophy,
as can be
seen
in his
Cena
de
le
Ceneri
(1584).
By
developing some
of the
ideas found
in
Nicholas
of
Cusa,
above
all the
coincidence
of
opposites,
and by
carrying
to its
extreme
consequences
the
fact
that
it was
technical factors which
had
induced
Copernicus
to
posit
a
universe which
was so
very much larger
(a
point
already stressed
by
Rheticus
in his Narratio prima),
Bruno
set
himself
up
as a
metaphysician, postulating
the
coincidence
of
matter
and
divinity.
In
his
De
la
causa, principio et uno
(1584),
he
deduced
the
infinity
of
the universe from
the infinity
of
God's omnipotence.
The
cosmos appeared
to be
made
up of
innumerable solar systems similar
to our
own,
so it
made
no
sense
to
talk
about celestial spheres
and
differences between
the
supra-
and
sublunary
realms when elemental processes were everywhere identical. Stellar
movements were
not
characterised
by
mathematical perfection.
But
rather,
according
to a
unifying hypothesis which extended
the
laws
of
becoming
to
everything
and
which favoured
an
organic type
of
explanatory model, they
were
seen
as
moving
in
response
to a
purpose which presided over
the
life
of
the cosmos
and
made
it
intelligible. The junction
of the
physical
and the
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
The
new
philosophy
of
nature
255
metaphysical
in
Bruno's thought
was not
entirely without problems.
The
celestial
world
was
still privileged
at the
expense
of our own; he was
ambiguous towards astrology because
of the new way he
approached
eschatological
questions;
and it was
still difficult
to
distinguish
spiritus,
diffused throughout infinite space
and
animating
the
stars, from divinity.
Indeed,
in
some
of
Bruno's writings this
spiritus
appeared
to be the
divine
body, where
the
coincidence
of
matter
and
divinity posited
not
only
an
indissoluble link between
the two but
also
the
irreducibility
of
the divine
to
the cosmic, even when
the
latter was thought
of
as infinite.
He
regarded this
as legitimating
his
claim
to be
able
to
look
at
physical problems from
various points
of
view:
atomist, Paracelsian
and so on.
Bruno still considered
his
metaphysical reform
to be as
much prophetic
as
philosophical
in its
attack
on the
origins
and
foundation
of
Christianity,
and
he also regarded
it as an
attempt
to
regenerate social harmony.
The
Ref-
ormation marked
the end of
one
cycle
and the
beginning
of a new one, for
which
Bruno
saw
himself as
the
standard-bearer.
Just
as
Rheticus regarded
Copernicus'
discoveries
as a
revelation
of
God's creation,
so too did
Bruno,
who
was
much more aware
of the
implications
of
heliocentrism
than
Copernicus
had
been.
If the
intelligible world
was not in
fact something
which
could
put
itself
beyond
the
finite world, Christ's Incarnation
—
which
lay
at the
heart
of the
theological controversy about transubstantiation
which
was
poisoning Europe — became meaningless. Indeed,
it
became
possible
to
restore Ficino's ancient Hermetic magical religion
of
nature,
of
which
Christianity
was a
misunderstanding because
it had
comprehended
the letter
but had not
grasped
the
inner allegorical
and
ethical significance
of
the myths
and the
cult
of
nature
that
they indicated.
The insuperable
gulf
between human
and
divine
—
which was
the
correct
way
to
express
the
relationship between
the two
terms,
in
contrast
to the
Reformation's notion
of the
absolute relevance
of
man's interior world
to
his salvation
—
led
Bruno
to
posit
a
relative autonomy
of the
human world
that
derived
its
legitimacy from
that
gulf.
It
also
led him to
maintain
the
necessity
of
describing
an
intermediate, allegorical-symbolical sphere
as the
single point
of
encounter
at
which
the
divine disclosed itself
to man.
From
this
there
arose
a
naturalistic ethic
in
which human rationality, supplying
the needs
of
civic
life,
could
not but be in
harmony with
the
laws given
to
man
by God.
Seen from
the
other side
of the
insuperable gulf, such laws
could
not aim at the
greater glory
of
the divine
- a
goal
by
definition denied
to man. Instead their goal was
to
increase
the
well-being
and
civic
splendour
of
man.
In his Spaccio de la bestia trionfante
(1584),
Bruno
turned
the
formula
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
256
Natural philosophy
soli
Deo gloria
upside down into
soli homini gloria. The
content
of
human
reason therefore agreed with God's
laws,
according
to a new and
different
conjuncture between reason
and
esotericism,
no
longer linked
to a
traditional cosmological structure. This conjuncture
was
valid
at
both
the
social
level
and at the
higher
level
of
the sage,
who in
this way re-established
communication between
the
human
and the
divine,
thus
setting
himself
up
as
an
alternative
to
Christ. According
to
Bruno,
there
were
two
different
religious
planes
in
civic
life.
The
higher
one, a
combination
of the
political
and
the
religious, agreed with reason
and
human
nature,
and
also with
the
goals
that
the
divinity required
man to
reach.
The
lower plane,
characterised
by a
purely interior religiosity,
was
reached
by
those
who
could
not
raise themselves above
the
phantasms
of
their
own
imaginations.
They
might, indeed they
had, to
continue
to
nourish themselves
on
those
illusory
'mystical foods', those myths
of
otherworldly salvation
by
which
the impostor Christ bound
men to
himself
by
playing
on
their fear
of
death.
Faced
by the
danger Christ posed
to
society,
the
political authorities
had
reduced
him to a
purely interior factor,
the
source
of the
masses' fear
of
death,
and
thus
useful
in
governing them.
Christ
had
played
on the
fear
of
death, promising
man an
illusory
metamorphosis (through
the
Eucharist) which would bring eternal
life.
Jesus
had
therefore broken
the
law
of
nature,
setting
himself
up
as the
unique
and irreplaceable intermediary between
man and
God.
In his Spaccio
Bruno
taught
the
opposite, namely
that
the
metamorphosis
of man
into divinity
only
occurred
at an
intermediate
level
between
the two
terms,
a
level
which
defined
the
natural
character
of
civic
laws
and
of
religion.
In his Eroicifurori
(1585),
he
tried
to
realise this encounter
at the
highest possible
level.
The
intellect
and
love
of the furioso
coincided with
the
divinity,
in a
manner
reminiscent
of
Nicholas
of
Cusa, reaching ever-higher levels
but
never
attaining perfect coincidence. This limit could, however,
be
seen
as a
positive
factor
in
that
there
was no
ultimate
level
which could
not be
transcended.
The
medium called upon
to
operate this coincidence
had to be
none other
than
nature,
which
was
itself
a
divinity
and the
authentic
and
indispensable mediator between
the
human
and the
divine.
It was
apparently only from
the
height
of
this last, supreme
level
that
Bruno could
address
the
human world
on the
civic
and
religious planes.
FRANCESCO
PATRIZI
DA
CHERSO
Patrizi's
Nova de universisphilosophia
(1591)
outlined
his
proposals
for a new
ideology
for the
Catholic Church. Based
on the
authority
of an
ancient
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008