lii INTRODUCTION

ed a number of those addressed to Fracastorius; some are absurd,
for instance that of Lanchius, who declares that the shades and
the ghost of Catullus himself stood amazed and admiring while
Fracastorius sang to them his poem Syphilis; nearly all say
that he was the Virgil of his century, just as they had said it
of Sannazaro in 1530; and that all Nature wept at his death.
"TThe aucior »iae praises, above all, the epigram of Adamo
Fumani of Verona, Secretary of the Council of Trent, which
ends in the typical manner:

Ad tristem acerbae mortis ejus nuntium
Vicina flevit ora, flerunt ultimae

Gentes, perisse musicorum candidum
Florem, optimarum et lumen artium omnium.

Giordano Bruno

We cannot feel sure that Fracastorius would have appreciated
a genuine compliment that was paid to him, nearly half a century
after his death, by the philosopher, Giordano Bruno, (1550—
1600), except in so far as it proved that his Homocentrica was
still read. Bruno, who calls him Fracastorio, thus Italianis—
ing his Latin name, makes him an interlocutor in four of his
five Italian Dialogues, De /infinio universo ed mondi, On
the Infinite Universe and its Worlds, a work which was written
1584—85 and was placed on the Indez Ezpurgatorius in 1603.
In Dialogue III he entrusts to Fracastorius the task of con—
vincing the stupid English pedant Burchio that countless worlds
make up the AII, and that these worlds may be inhabited
by beings no better or worse than ourselves. Whatever Fra—
castorius may have thought about this,he would certainly not
have dared to utter, in his lifetime, a doctrine that would be
regarded by the Church as fatal to their own of the Fall and the
Redemption. In Dialogue I, however, Fracastorius is made
to say that they are not offering such views to the masses, but
only to the learned, and that learned and truly religious theolo—
gians have never wished to interfere with the freedom of science.
"TThe theologians who burned Bruno at the stake in 1600 were
presumably unvwilling to include themselves in such a category.
As an interlocutor in these Dialogues, Fracastorius is calm and
dignified, in striking contrast with the violent, vituperative and
strictly orthodox Burchio; he sometimes uses Latin in his