ABSTRACT
The Clerk to the Inquisitorial Court, taking down Bruno’s words, writes: “In the first instance I betook me to Mez, alias Magonza, a city of the Archbishop who is first Elector of the Empire.” 1 He undertook a journey of between four and five hundred miles along roads neither very easy nor very safe to Mainz (Magonza being a corruption of Moguntiacum, the Latin name for the city, itself derived from Mogons, the local god of the Kelts when they held sway in that district). “Here I stayed twelve days; but not finding such means of subsistence as I required either here or at Vispure (Wiesbaden), 2 which is not far off, I went on to Wittenberg in Saxony.” Bruno omits to mention that his philosophic mission first led his steps to a university situated in the picturesque town of Marburg. The enlightened mind of Melancthon had liberated the human spirit, to some extent, in Protestant Germany. Perhaps he will fare better there than he did at either Geneva or Oxford.
