high opinion of the Germans. He foresaw that
when they turned their attention from theology to science and pure
speculation, great results might be expected from their solid
intellectual capacity. He seems in fact to have taken a pretty accurate
measure of the race as it has subsequently shown itself. Wittenberg he
called the German Athens. Luther, he recognized as a hero of humanity,
who, like himself, defied authority in the defense of truth. Yet he felt
no sympathy for the German reformers. When asked by the Inquisitors at
Venice what he thought about these men, he replied: 'I regard them as
more ignorant than I am. I despise them and their doctrines. They do not
deserve the name of theologians, but of pedants.' That this reply was
sincere, is abundantly proved by passages in the least orthodox of
Bruno's writings. It was the weakness of a philosopher's position at
that moment that he derived no support from either of the camps into
which Christendom was then divided. Catholics and Protestants of every
shade regarded him with mistrust.

A change in the religious policy of Saxony, introduced after the death
of the Elector Augustus, caused Bruno to leave Wittenberg for Prague in
1588. From Prague he passed to Helmstaedt, where the Duke Heinrich Julius
of Brunswick-Wolfenbuettel received him with distinction, and bestowed on
him a purse of eighty dollars.[98] Here he conceived two of his most
important works, the _De Monade_ and _De Triplici Minimo_, both written
in Latin hexameters.[99] Why he adopted this new form of exposition is
not manifest. Possibly he was tired of dialogues, through which he had
expressed his thought so freely in England. Possibly a German public
would have been indifferent to Italian. Possibly he was emulous of his
old masters, Parmenides and Lucretius.

[Footnote 98: It is a curious fact that the single copy of Campanella's
poems on which Orelli based his edition of 1834, came from
Wolfenbuettel.]

[Footnote 99: They were published at Frankfort, and dedicated to the
friendly Prince of Wolfenbuettel.]

At Helmstaedt he came into collision with Boetius, the rector of the
Evangelical church, who issued a sentence of excommunication against
him. Like a new Odysseus, he set forth once again upon his voyage, and
in the spring of 1590 anchored in Frankfort on the Main. A convent (that
of the Carmelites) sheltered him in this city, where he lived on terms
of intimacy with the printers Wechel and Fi