Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic tradition

About this book

Placing Bruno both advanced philosopher and magician burned at the stake in the Hermetic tradition Yatess acclaimed study gives an overview not only of Renaissance humanism but of its interplay and conflict with magic and occult practices. "Among those who have explored the intellectual world of the sixteenth century no one in England can rival Miss Yates. Wherever she looks she illuminates. Now she has looked on Bruno. This brilliant book takes time to digest but it is an intellectual adventure to read it. Historians of ideas of religion and of science will study it. Some of them after reading it will have to think again. . . . For Miss Yates has put Bruno for the first time in his tradition and has shown what that tradition was." Hugh Trevor-Roper New Statesman "A decisive contribution to the understanding of Giordano Bruno this book will probably remove a great number of misrepresentations that still plague the tormented figure of the Nolan prophet." Giorgio de Santillana American Historical Review "Yatess book is an important addition to our knowledge of Giordano Bruno. But it is even more important I think as a step toward understanding the unity of the sixteenth century." J. Bronowski New York Review of Books