iable curiosity in such matters. One
of his main weaknesses was a habit of boasting and exaggerating his own
powers, which at first imposed upon a vulgar audience and then left them
under the impression that he was a charlatan. The bookseller Ciotto
learned from students who had conversed with him at Frankfort, that 'he
professed an art of memory and other secrets in the sciences, but that
all the persons who had dealt with him in such matters, had left him
discontinued.'[106]

[Footnote 104: Mere correspondence with heretics exposed an Italian to
the Inquisition. Residence in heretical lands, except with episcopal
license, was forbidden. The rules of the Index proscribed books in which
the name of a heretic was cited with approval.]

[Footnote 105: Bruno speaks himself of 'arte della memoria et inventiva'
(_op. cit._ p. 339). Ciotto mentions 'la memoria et altre scientie'
(_ib._ p. 334).]

[Footnote 106: _Op. cit._ p. 335.]

Another weakness in his character was extraordinary want of caution.
Having lived about the world so long, and changed from town to town,
supporting himself as he best could, he had acquired the custom of
attracting notice by startling paradoxes. Nor does he seem to have cared
to whom he made the dangerous confidence of his esoteric beliefs.
His public writings, presumably composed with a certain
circumspection--since everybody knows the proverb _litera scripta
manet_--contain such perilous stuff that--when we consider what their
author may have let fall in unguarded conversation--we are prepared to
credit the charges brought against him by Mocenigo. For it must now be
said that this man, 'induced by the obligation of his conscience and by
order of his confessor,' denounced Bruno to the Inquisition on May 23,
1592.

When the two men, so entirely opposite in their natures, first came
together, Bruno began to instruct his patron in the famous art of memory
and mathematics. At the same time he discoursed freely and copiously,
according to his wont, upon his own philosophy. Mocenigo took no
interest in metaphysics, and was terrified by the audacity of Bruno's
speculations. It enraged him to find how meager was Bruno's vaunted
method for acquiring and retaining knowledge without pains. In his
secret heart he believed that the teacher whom he had maintained at a
considerable cost, was withholding the occult knowledge he so much
coveted. Bruno, meanwhile, attended Andrea Morosini's receptions in the