ABSTRACT
I feel the need to start this chapter by explaining the sense of its title. My reference to Max Weber’s famous study of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism does not imply either that I am a specialist Weber scholar or that I intend to get myself involved in the long and still lively critical debate surrounding his theses.1 My purpose is simply to use some of his ideas about the relationship between the Protestant ethic and the development of a capitalist technological society in order to question the prevailing conviction, particularly of recent commentators, that Bruno’s attitude towards the Protestant Reformation in all its aspects and characteristics was only and always negative.2
