an life-long incarceration. It is also singular that but few
contemporaries mention the fact of his condemnation and execution. Rome
was crowded in the jubilee year of 1600. Bruno was burned in open
daylight on the Campo di Fiora. Yet the only eye-witness who records the
event, is Gaspar Schoppe, or Scioppius, who wrote a letter on the
subject to his friend Rittershausen. Kepler, eight years afterwards,
informed his correspondent Breugger that Bruno had been really burned:
'he bore his agonizing death with fortitude, abiding by the asseveration
that all religions are vain, and that God identifies himself with the
world, circumference and center.' Kepler, it may be observed, conceived
a high opinion of Bruno's speculations, and pointed him out to Galileo
as the man who had divined the infinity of solar systems in their
correlation to one infinite order of the universe.[117]

[Footnote 117: Doubts have recently been raised as to whether Bruno was
really burned. But these are finally disposed of by a succinct and
convincing exposition of the evidence by Mr. R.C. Christie, in
_Macmillan's Magazine_, October 1885. In addition to Schoppe and Kepler,
we have the reference to Bruno's burning published by Mersenne in 1624;
but what is far more important, the _Avviso di Roma_ for February
19,1600, records this event as having occurred upon the preceding
Thursday. To Signor Berti's two works, _Documenti intorno a G. Bruno_
(Roma, 1880), and _Copernico e le vicende_, etc. (Roma, 1876), we owe
most of the material which has been lucidly sifted by Mr. R.C.
Christie.]

Scioppius was a German humanist of the elder Italianated type, an
elegant Latin stylist, who commented indifferently on the _Priapeia_ and
the Stoic philosophy. He abjured Protestantism, and like Muretus, sold
his pen to Rome. The Jesuits, in his pompous panegyric, were first
saluted as 'the praetorian cohort of the camp of God.' Afterwards, when
he quarreled with their Order, he showered invectives on them in the
manner of a Poggio or Filelfo. The literary infamies of the fifteenth
century reappeared in his polemical attacks on Protestants, and in his
satires upon Scaliger. Yet he was a man of versatile talents and
considerable erudition. It must be mentioned in his honor that he
visited Campanella in his prison, and exerted himself for his
liberation. Campanella dedicated his _Atheismus Triumphatus_ to
Scioppius, calling him 'the dawn-star of our age.' Schoppe was al