Introduction

Giordano Bruno: philosopher, poet, playwright, mnemonist, and magus. He managed to impress and inspire, as well as infuriate and frighten, royalty, scholars, clergy, and laymen alike. He spent time at Henry Ill's court in Paris, Queen Elizabeth I's court in London, and Emperor Rudolf IF s court in Prague. He taught mathematics, rhetoric, and the art of memory. A prolific writer, he composed nearly fifty texts between 1582 and his imprisonment by the Inquisition in 1592 and execution at the stake in 1600 as an "unrepentant heretic." But with all that Bruno was, has been thought to be, or has been made to be, at his core he was a poet and an architect of ideas. His crafting of language and crafting of ideas are intimately related in the way they exploit highly symbiotic systems. Bruno made geometry speak and language display. The commerce between symbolic and linguistic lexicons in the Renaissance gave Bruno much to work with, but it was Bruno, more than any other thinker of his time, who gave such commerce life.