Giordano Bruno Critical Essay | Critical Essay by Edward A. Gosselin

Critical Essay by Edward A. Gosselin

SOURCE: "'Doctor' Bruno's Solar Medicine," in The Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. XV, No. 2, Summer, 1984, pp. 209-24.

In the following essay, Gosselin analyzes The Ash Wednesday Supper, contending that in this work Bruno "bridge[s the two extremes" of scientific and philosophical solar literature.]

I. Gi; I. the Solar Age and the Internal History of Science =~ Sthe Solar Age and the Internal History of Science

In an article published in 1958, Eugenio Garin discussed the influence of the emperor Julian's Oratio ad solem upon the "solar literature" of the Renaissance. Nothing the deeply religious flavor of the texts of such authors as Gemistus Plethon, Marsilio Ficino, Giovanni Pico, and Agostino Steuco, Garin theorized that their platonizing tendencies had led them toward a recuperation, albeit Christian, of the sun worship of Julian [E. Garin, Studi sul Platonismo medievale, 1958]. Garin further suggested—and I think entirely correctly this time—that the continuation of the manufacture of "solar literature" into the seventeenth century, that is, from the time of Copernicus to that of Galileo, "could...
(read more)