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BRUNO, GIORDANO. De la causa, principio, et Uno. > 3 white-on-black woodcut diagrams in text. [24], 142 pages * De l'infinito universo et Mondi. > 2
BRUNO, GIORDANO. De la causa, principio, et Uno. 3 white-on-black woodcut diagrams in text. [24], 142 pages * De l'infinito universo et Mondi. 2 white-on-black woodcut diagrams in text. [32], 175 pages. Together, 2 volumes in one. Small 8vo, 17th-century vellum, lacks ties. Venice [i. e., London: John Charlewood], 1584; 1584
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Notes: first editions of 2 important metaphysical works composed during Bruno's 1583-85 stay in England. The first is an attempt to determine the underlying principles of the universe, while the second sets forth his ideas on the infinity of the universe and the plurality of worlds. "The brilliant dialogues in Italian that Bruno published while in England have been the most widely read of his works and were the main foundation for his reputation as a bold philosopher breaking out of the closed medieval universe into a new vision of the cosmos" (DSB). Bruno's views, which incorporated both Copernican heliocentricity and elements of the pseudo-Egyptian religion of the Hermetic Corpus, inevitably brought him into conflict with the Church, and in 1600 he was burned alive as a heretic in Rome. DSB II, 539-44; STC 3936, 3938; Woodfield, Surreptitious Printing in England 8, 10.
The front free endpaper is inscribed in a contemporary hand: "ex dono Joannis Florio." While the handwriting has not been authenticated as that of the Anglo-Italian translator and lexicographer John Florio, he and Bruno were in fact friends, having become acquainted while employed by the French embassy in London. Florio was thoroughly familiar with Bruno's writings, citing De la Causa and De l'Infinito in the list of sources in his 1598 Italian-English dictionary A Worlde of Wordes. "Florio probably possessed copies of these books and certainly studied them with much care for the purposes of the dictionary"--Yates, John Florio (1934), page 266; see also pages 87-123.
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