Hilary Gatti - The Ash Wednesday Supper: A New Translation

THE ASH WEDNESDAY SUPPER

Giordano Bruno

The Ash Wednesday Supper is the first of six philosophical dialogues in Italian that Giordano Bruno wrote and published in London between 1584 and 1585. It lays out a revolutionary cosmology founded on the new Copernican astronomy, one that Bruno extends to infinite dimensions, filling it with an endless number of planetary systems. As well as opening up the traditional closed universe and reducing earth to a tiny speck in an overwhelmingly immense cosmos, the work offers a lively description of Brunos clash of opinions with a group of conservative academics and theologians in Oxford and London.

This edition presents, on facing pages, a new English translation with a newly edited Italian text of what has recently been claimed as the final version of Brunos Ash Wednesday Supper. The extensive critical commentary by editor and translator Hilary Gatti takes into account the most current discussion of the textual, historical, cosmological, and philosophical issues raised in this seminal work of the late European Renaissance.

(The Lorenzo Da Ponte Italian Library)

GIORDANO BRUNO (15481600), born Filippo Bruno, was an Italian Dominican friar, philosopher, mathematician, poet, and cosmological theorist. He is known for his cosmological theories, which conceptually extended the then-novel Copernican model. Bruno wrote extensively not only on cosmology but also on the art of memory, a loosely organized group of mnemonic techniques and principles.

HILARY GATTI is a retired professor in the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Rome, La Sapienza.

THE LORENZO DA PONTE ITALIAN LIBRARY

General Editors
Luigi Ballerini and Massimo Ciavolella
University of California at Los Angeles

Honorary Chairs
Ambassador Gianfranco Facco Bonetti
Dr. Berardo Paradiso
Honorable Anthony J. Scirica

Advisory Board
Remo Bodei, Universit di Pisa
Lina Bolzoni, Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa
Francesco Bruni, Universit di Venezia
Cesare De Michelis, Universit di Padova
Giorgio Ficara, Universit di Torino
Giuseppe Mazzotta, Yale University
Gilberto Pizzamiglio, Universit di Venezia
Margaret Rosenthal, University of Southern California
John Scott, University of Western Australia
Elissa Weaver, University of Chicago

Agincourt Ltd. Board of Trustees
Luigi Ballerini
Vivian Cardia
Maria Teresa Cometto
Nicholas Gravante
Lorenzo Lagnoloni
Lorenzo Mannelli
Eugenio Nardelli
Berardo Paradiso
Silvana Riggio
Nicola Tegoni
Diego Rodino di Miglione
Giorgio Van Straten

THE DA PONTE ITALIAN LIBRARY

GIORDANO BRUNO

A new translation of La cena de le ceneri with the Italian text annotated and introduced by

Hilary Gatti

University of Toronto Press 2018
Toronto Buffalo London
www.utppublishing.com
Printed in Canada

ISBN 978-1-4875-0144-0 (cloth)
ISBN 978-1-4875-2140-0 (paper)

Printed on acid-free, 100% post-consumer recycled paper with vegetable-based inks.

The Lorenzo Da Ponte Italian Library

Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

Bruno, Giordano, 15481600, author
The Ash Wednesday supper / Giordano Bruno ; a new translation of La cena de le ceneri with the Italian text annotated and introduced by Hilary Gatti.

(Lorenzo da Ponte Italian library)
Published in collaboration with the UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Text in original Italian and in English translation on facing pages.
ISBN 978-1-4875-2140-0 (softcover). ISBN 978-1-4875-0144-0 (hardcover)

1. Copernicus, Nicolaus, 14731543. 2. Astronomy -- Early works to 1800. 3. Occultism Early works to 1900. I. Gatti, Hilary, editor II. Bruno, Giordano, 15481600. Cena de le ceneri. English. III. Bruno, Giordano, 15481600. Cena de le ceneri. IV. Title. V. Series: Lorenzo da Ponte Italian library

QB36.C8B8713 2018 520 C2017-905697-2

This volume is published under the aegis of Agincourt Press Ltd. with the financial assistance of The UCLA Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, and a generous contribution from Professor Lorenzo Mannelli.

University of Toronto Press acknowledges the financial assistance to its publishing program of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council, an agency of the Government of Ontario.

Bruno himself supplied no captions to his illustrations in La cena delle ceneri, which are mostly diagrammatic. It is thought that he prepared the woodcuts himself, possibly for economic reasons. They are often of poor quality, and may have been prepared when he no longer had his text in front of him, as the letters in the diagrams often fail to correspond to those indicated in the text itself. The brief descriptions offered here are the editors interpretations of what he writes about them in his text.

Introduction

La cena de le ceneri / The Ash Wednesday Supper

Dialogue III

Dialogue IV

Dialogue V

This translation of Giordano Brunos Cena de le ceneri, with facing Italian text and comment, has been many years in the making, during which time I have incurred a number of important debts to various institutions. My thanks to the University of Rome La Sapienza for the periods of study leave that made the project possible, to the Warburg Institute in London, whose library and archives have provided invaluable material over the years, to the British Library and the library of the Scuola Normale in Pisa, whose fine collections of Bruniana have proved indispensable, and to the Center of Medieval and Renaissance Studies of the University of California at Los Angeles, whose directors past and present, Brian Copenhaver and Massimo Ciavolella, were responsible for including this text in the Lorenzo da Ponte Library.

I am also indebted to a number of individual scholars for help, advice, and support. Elisabetta Tarantinos work on the textual problems involved has proved essential; David Marsh contributed numerous helpful suggestions for the translation; Robert Westman has provided valuable advice on Brunos reading of Copernicus. For their more general support of my Bruno studies, particular thanks to Eugenio Canone, Ornella Faracovi, Marta Fattori, Martin McLaughlin, and Ingrid Rowland.

This book is dedicated to the memory of the three distinguished scholars who, in the early years of its inception, constantly encouraged me in my endeavour: Giovanni Aquilecchia (formerly of University College, London, and nominee of the Centro Studi Bruniani Giovanni Aquilecchia in Naples); Eugenio Garin (formerly of the Scuola Normale in Pisa, and former Director of the Istituto Nazionale di Studi sul Rinascimento in Florence), and J.B. Trapp (former Director of the Warburg Institute in London).

La cena de le ceneri (translated here as The Ash Wednesday Supper) was written in London in 1584 while Bruno was serving in the French Embassy as a Gentleman Attendant to the French Ambassador, Michel de Castelnau, Lord of Mauvissire, to whom the work is dedicated. It was published anonymously in London by the printer John Charlewood, with no indication of the place of publication or of the printer.