Sunny days with Bruno
THE PAST COUPLE OF DAYS have been uncharacteristically mild, so much so that I dragged an old chair out back and spent several hours reading in the afternoon sun.
The book was, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, by Frances Yates, an in-depth, scholarly treatment I first attempted about twenty years ago and never finished. I was completing my degree at the University of Virginia, and my memory of those days is a bit vague, but what I remember as being dry and dense has proved to be a delightful read, this time around. Perhaps I and my interests have matured or perhaps more likely there are merely fewer distractions, here beyond the pale of civilization.
Among the thought-provoking observations the author makes, in the course of building her case, is the suggestion that the revival of magic during the Renaissance may have been a factor in all philosophy being viewed with intense suspicion, during the Reformation. If true, then the devastating excesses of the Edwardian reformers may have been a reaction to Ficino, Pico, Bruno, and the rest of the Renaissance magi. A parallel suggestion is that the Reformation's iconoclasm may have been aroused by the magical use of images, as re-introduced especially by Ficino.
For me, the hard part about reading Frances Yates is the reminder of just how ignorant and illiterate I am, despite my sometimes pretending to a degree of expertise in such matters. Agrippa's, Thee Books of Occult Philosophy, to which she devotes an entire chapter, has sat on my bookshelf for more than two decades and, though I have mined it extensively, I have yet to read the whole thing through, beginning to end. Likewise, her frequent recourse to Lynn Thorndike's monumental, A History of Magic and Experimental Science, is another painful reminder. While I have never owned it in hard copy, I have known of its existence for years, and had access to copies, but never availed myself thereof.
With enough sunny afternoons, I might catch up to my reputation, yet.