Volume 55, Number 18 · November 20, 2008
'But They Burned Giordano Bruno!'
By Anthony Grafton
Giordano Bruno: Philosopher/Heretic
by Ingrid D. Rowland
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 335 pp., $27.00
Long ago, I went with friends to visit the Roman villa of Cardinal Bessarion on the one day in the year when it was open to the public. One of the great scholars and churchmen of the fifteenth century, Bessarion wrote profound studies of ancient philosophy and supported such innovative thinkers as Lorenzo Valla and Joannes Regiomontanus. His modest country house was charming: open to the soft Roman air, the traces of graceful paintings still visible on its ceilings, it looked like the perfect place to collect books, protect Greek refugees, and ponder the similarities and differences between Plato and Aristotle, all of which Bessarion did there.
Review, 4534 words
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