Abstracts

Alberto Bondolfi, “Quel rôle pour la théologie dans le De potestate civili de Francisco de Vitoria ?”

This paper aims to present the concrete circumstances that led Francisco de Vitoria to write his relectio De potestate civili and to compare this latter with other Vitoria’s writings that preceded and followed it. In this way, we shall see Vitoria’s statements in their context, with special attention to the debates on the American colonisation.

Angelika Bönker-Vallon, “Lois et bagatelles. Remarques concernant l’idée de la providence divine chez Giordano Bruno”

In Giordano Bruno’s book The Expulsion of the Triumphant Beast the god Jupiter tries to regulate an abundance of earthly trivia through the divine providence. What initially looks like an irony of religious ideas turns out, in more detail, to be a serious reform of religion, which is combined with a radical correction of natural philosophy. The divine presence can only be understood as an infinite unity that works in an infinite universe, in order to act as a norm for ethics and politics.

Matthias Kaufmann, “The concept of law in light of the Spaccio della bestia trionfante”

In the 2nd dialogue of Spaccio, Sofia explains how she operates via her daughter la legge. Her explanation of the functioning and the intended effects of law, the interaction between law, religion and politics offers a combination of heterogeneous traditions. We find Thomistic elements concerning divine law, criticisms of Epicurean understanding of the Gods and a nearly Machiavellian view on the republic. From this, Bruno is able to create something like a coherent political-legal position.

Alain Wijffels, “Alberico Gentili and the ideal of international governance”

Alberico Gentili’s work reflects foremost his intention to restore civil law studies according to their original purpose as a key expertise in the art of good public governance, upstream of the political decision-making process. The incorporation of a legal-humanistic register in his works (combined with traditional late-medieval legal learning) was an attempt to update legal scholarship in order to secure the position of civil lawyers in public governance, not least international governance.

Maria Stefania Montecalvo, “Celio Secondo Curione. The re-discovery of classicism, religious reform, and political change”

Curione’s activity in Basel as professor and editor of classical texts is connected with his engagement in the Reformation. He was interested in Greek and Roman historians and in Cicero’s rhetorical works. The edition of Cicero’s Philippics is remarkable for Curione’s political ideas both in the dedication to Edward VI and in the oratio to humanissimi auditores. An unpublished letter of 25 November 1552 seems to reveal Curione’s intention to go to England thanks to Bullinger and Cheke’s support.

Angelika Bönker-Vallon, “Cosmology after Copernicus. Innovation and restoration in Giordano Bruno’s The Ash Wednesday Supper”

Copernicanism and the infinity of the universe are two main concerns of Giordano Bruno’s thought. Thus, Bruno discusses the physical processes in an infinite universe in a most serious way. The real concern, however, is a far more radical reform of the world view. The goal is not only to offer undeniable knowledge about the universe, but also to reanimate the forgotten contents of the “true ancient philosophy”. Innovation and restoration are, therefore, the two keystones of Brunonian world view.

Ingrid D. Rowland, “Vicissitudo in the Eroici Furori of Giordano Bruno (1585)”

This paper analyzes the role of one of the most significant and multifaceted concepts of Giordano Bruno’s philosophy, that of vicissitudo, in De gli eroici furori, the last of his Italian dialogues published during his stay in England. By taking into account the meaning of this concept–exchange or alternation 469between states or ideas, mutation, transformation, metamorphosis, etc.–, the paper aims to illustrate its centrality to Bruno’s theory of an infinite and ever-changing universe.

Sergius Kodera, “Staging vicissitudine in Giordano Bruno’s Candelaio”

This contribution suggests that in Giordano Bruno’s only stage-play the theater as literary genre is especially apt for instantiating a highly original notion of vicissitudo (a philosophic term generally associated with the notion of change). Bruno uses the stage not merely as a congenial mode of expression to instantiate the physical, somatic nature of vicissitudo. He also developed his philosophical ideas in tandem with many of the artistic possibilities of contemporary theater.

Hilary Gatti, “Giordano Bruno’s Ash Wednesday Supper as a prelude to Galileo’s Dialogue on the Two Major World Systems”

Bruno as Hermetic Magus meant ignoring an interpretative tradition that had considered his post-Copernican infinite universe as a prelude to Galileo. Here I refer to that tradition and to more recent attempts to place Bruno’s cosmological speculation in relation to Galileo. His Paduan period with access to Pinelli’s famous library suggests Galileo’s knowledge of Bruno’s cosmological works. An Appendix to the main text indicates parallels between Bruno’s and Galileo’s cosmological dialogues.

Miguel Ángel Granada, “Dios y el espacio en la filosofía de Giordano Bruno”

For E. Grant, “Bruno’s infinite space […] is coeternal with but wholly independent of God”. However, De immenso and Lampas allow to establish the relation between God and space in accordance with the doctrine of the six primary principles: a) Mind-Intellect-Spirit and b) Chaos-Orcus-Night. Both triads represent the two (non hierarchised) aspects of God’s essence: potency and act, matter and form, void space and mind. As a consequence, God is space and matter no less than mind and form.

Paul Richard Blum, “Two kinds of infinity. Nicholas of Cusa and Giordano Bruno”

Nicholas of Cusa and Giordano Bruno differ in the notion of the infinite, its epistemological and metaphysical status. Whereas Cusanus postulates the infinite as the condition for the metaphysical and epistemological correlation between reality, creation, and understanding, Bruno challenges Aristotelianism turning the transcendence of the infinite into the immanence of truth. Cusanus aims at understanding God, Bruno at explaining the universe.

Elisabeth Blum, “Panpsychism in Giordano Bruno and Tommaso Campanella”

Giordano Bruno and Tommaso Campanella assume a universe where everything is alive. The soul is not the body’s form, it constructs the body as its instrument. While individuals are limited in time, the living world, governed by the world-soul, endures. This world-soul is for Bruno the immanent god, for Campanella a created mediator between God and the world. Bruno rejects man’s privilege as intellectual animal, while Campanella maintains it, via second soul, infused directly by God.

Raffaele Carbone, “Ethics and law in Montaigne and Bruno”

At the dawn of modernity, Montaigne stresses the multiplicity of laws and of customs and the obscure basis of law, while Bruno draws attention particularly to their ability to cement human communities. The question of the relationship between law, ethics and customs is answered differently by the two thinkers, albeit with the occasional concordance, but both invite us to reflect on the relationship between man and nature, and on whether laws represent a strengthening or an adulteration of nature.

Jean-Paul De Lucca, “Law and religion in Bruno’s Spaccio de la bestia trionfante and Campanella’s L’Ateismo trionfato”

Due to similarities in their ideas, parallels in their biographies, and overlaps in the history of their reception, Giordano Bruno and Tommaso Campanella are often placed alongside one another in the literature. Through its focus on two major works, this chapter discusses points of convergence and divergence in the philosophers’ treatment of law and religion, nature and truth, unity and 471universality. An English translation of the dedicatory letter of Campanella’s Ateismo is included in an appendix.

Dilwyn Knox, “The world soul and individual souls. Two notes on Giordano Bruno’s Lampas triginta statuarum”

Bruno’s philosophy was monistic, governed by the idea that the “One Being”, conceived in two modes as an absolute first principle, and its epiphany, the universe, was the only truly existent thing, all other things being accidents of it. This essay illustrates the tension between Bruno’s drive towards a simplified monist ontology and his recourse to Neoplatonic concepts to articulate the fluid world of accidents, in particular with regard to how individual souls related to the World Soul.

Angelika Bönker-Vallon, “Adam and Eve in early modern anthropology. Giordano Bruno’s position on preadamitic life and his defense of the concept of anima mundi”

In modern times the biblical couple of Adam and Eve gains new meaning. The question whether the peoples of America are descendants of Adam and Eve provokes anthropological debates. Protestants retell the story of the first parents to legitimate new Protestant societies. Giordano Bruno, however, abandons the anthropocentric positions connected with Adam and Eve. Instead, he discusses the possibilities of preadamitic life on the basis of the ancient idea of an universally live-giving world-soul.

Paul Richard Blum, “Giordano Bruno’s satire of the transmigration of the souls in his Cabala”

In his dialogue Cabala del cavallo pegaseo, Giordano Bruno uses patterns of Christian Kabbalah in order to explain the paradoxes of the human mind, which is individual, immortal, and transmigrating from body to body according to the majority of theories in the Renaissance. The problem is key to understanding the human/animal divide, as well as the dignity and the divinity of humans. With his satirical method, Bruno unfolds the problem without teaching a solution.

Elisabetta Tarantino, “History and religion in Giordano Bruno’s Candelaio”

This chapter follows on from an article published by Hilary Gatti in 2012 on the influence of Bruno’s Candelaio (publ. 1582) on Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night (c. 1602) and Ben Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair (c. 1614). In particular, I explore further my theory that the rationale behind this three-way intertextual nexus is found in the indictment of religious strife, in the indictment of religious strife.

Sergius Kodera, “Staging an early modern metropolitan labyrinth. The experience of place and space in Giordano Bruno’s Candelaio”

One of the Candelaio’s characterizing features is the constant presence of the metropolitan space of Naples. By using early modern travel guides and city maps, this contribution shows how this space interacts with the literary and philosophic notions of space created both as a text and as a play, thus directing us to one of Bruno’s most crucial philosophical concepts: that place–like body–is never abstract, but always a highly concrete material entity in an infinite (and mutable) universe.

Raffaele Ruggiero, “François Baudouin and the model of Roman jurisprudence in early modern state-building during European religious warfare”

This study concentrates on François Bauduin’s activity as a humanist and jurist during the French religious warfare of late 16th century. Particular attention is given to his De institutione historiae universae et eius cum iurisprudentia coniunctione and to the influence on it of Quintus Mucius Scaevola as an ancient model of how the solution of juridical problems in the field of civil law can be used as a principle of social goodwill.

Alberto Bondolfi, “Wie evoluiert die Lehre des Widerstandsrechts in der „reformierten“ Reformation? Zwingli, Calvin und die französischen Monarchomachen”

This papers aims to describe the remarks of the reformer of Zurich, Huldrych Zwingli, as well as that of Jean Calvin on the topic of resistance in connection with the debates at the Councils of Constance and Basel and with the political situation in Switzerland. Then, we shall examine the change of 473arguments in the writings of some Monarchomachs with respect to both their continuity and discontinuity with the above debates.

Thomas Leinkauf, “Martin Luther und Giordano Bruno. Eine indirekte und asymmetrische Konfrontation”

Martin Luther and Giordano Bruno are seemingly incomparable heroes of 16th century intellectual and religious history. This paper tries nonetheless to make explicit on the one hand the differences and on the other hand the common viewepoints taking into account the complex historical and intellectual presuppositions (Reformation–Counter-Reformation; scepticism; pietism; political constraints).