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The New Humanity . . .

Restoration Review · 1970
(Volumes 12)

PREFACE

Those of us who edit journals and publish books should ever keep in view the “cloud of witnesses” that faithfully hovers over those who dare to venture into the less travelled pathways. One such witness is Giordano Bruno, who is hailed in history as “the greatest philosopher of the sixteenth century,” even if those that lived in the century knew nothing of his greatness. Though he spoke before kings and queens, his popularity was always short-lived, for he was too independent, too open, and too liberal for his time.

Educated in a monastery, he showed signs at an early age of high intellectual capacity, and he was unable to accept the teaching of his superiors uncritically. Charged with heresy in his native Italy, he wandered over Europe for sixteen years in cruel poverty, eking out a living by teaching little boys and setting type. He sometimes lectured for universities, but those who considered his ideas too radical always got the upper hand and compelled him to move on. Even though it was the Roman Catholics who first rejected him, the Protestants were equally unfriendly to him because of his heresies, the chief of which was his belief that the earth moves around the sun rather than the other way around.

Eager to return to Italy, he decided to slip back into the country in order to accept the invitation to teach a nobleman’s son, a risky act for a runaway monk. Once the youth wearied of his studies, he betrayed Bruno to the Inquisition, which was the beginning of the end of his tragic life. He was confined two years in Venice, then for six years he was in a dark dungeon in Rome. The authorities, realizing that he was a brilliant scholar, sought to spare his life even though they could not countenance his heresies. They tried to get him to recant, but he could not see that he had any reason to recant. When they finally condemned him to die, Bruno said to them: “You who pass judgment upon me, perhaps feel more fear than I, upon whom it is passed.” He subsequently was burned at the stake in 1600, meeting the ordeal with the courage of a martyr.

Every editor has judgment passed upon him, and appropriately so, whether or not it is prompted by fear. One thing is sure, an editor himself must be free of fear if he is worthy to join such a cloud of witnesses as that to which Bruno belongs. And if he is fearful, still he must act. That is Socrates’ definition of courage, action in the face of known danger.

The Inquisition, whether fearful in the execution of Bruno or not, had more cause to fear the verdict of history than he. In 1889 the Italians built his statue in honor of his noble life, erecting it over the very spot where he had been executed three centuries earlier. It was history’s verdict of the evil folly of the Holy Inquisition, who destroyed the wisest and best of its princes in a mad effort to bind men’s consciences to meaningless ecclesiasticism.

Bruno died without a friend in the world, and his writings were destroyed as soon as they were put in circulation, so it is hard to measure his influence upon intellectual history, though it is conceded to be substantial. Recent generations have revived interest in him, republished his works that survived the fires, and the Italians are especially proud of him.

It is our conviction that every editor should be more or less controversial, not for the sake of controversy per se but for the sake of truth. An editor is more than an educator, even more than a disciple of truth. He must be something of a gadfly after the order of Socrates, one who probes and disturbs the mind as well as one who explores new ideas. It is a risky endeavor, for every generation has its Inquisition, which stands by with innuendoes if not with fagots.

As an editor is aware of that cloud of witnesses he can assure himself in times of trial: Well, there was Giordano Bruno who was burned at the stake without a friend in the world. And he must believe in the vindication of history, and if a disciple of Jesus, in the vindication of God. Man may never build him a statue, which is just as well, but history will prove him an editor of good will and the Lord will make it all worthwhile with a “Well done, good and faithful editor.”