friend to return to Venice he was seized by order of
the Inquisition. Finally condemned in Rome, he was burned (1600) in the
Campo de' Fiori, where a monument now stands in his honour, erected some
years ago, to the great chagrin of the Roman Church.

Much is made of the fate of Bruno because he is one of the world's
famous men. No country has so illustrious a victim of that era to
commemorate as Italy, but in other lands

[85] blood just as innocent was shed for heterodox opinions. In France
there was rather more freedom than elsewhere under the relatively
tolerant government of Henry IV and of the Cardinals Richelieu and
Mazarin, till about 1660. But at Toulouse (1619) Lucilio Vanini, a
learned Italian who like Bruno wandered about Europe, was convicted as
an atheist and blasphemer; his tongue was torn out and he was burned.
Protestant England, under Elizabeth and James I, did not lag behind the
Roman Inquisition, but on account of the obscurity of the victims her
zeal for faith has been unduly forgotten. Yet, but for an accident, she
might have covered herself with the glory of having done to death a
heretic not less famous than Giordano Bruno. The poet Marlowe was
accused of atheism, but while the prosecution was hanging over him he
was killed in a sordid quarrel in a tavern (1593). Another dramatist
(Kyd) who was implicated in the charge was put to the torture. At the
same time Sir Walter Raleigh was prosecuted for unbelief but not
convicted. Others were not so fortunate. Three or four persons were
burned at Norwich in the reign of Elizabeth for unchristian doctrines,
among them Francis Kett who had been a Fellow of Corpus Christi,
Cambridge. Under James I, who

[86] interested himself personally in such matters, Bartholomew Legate
was charged with holding various pestilent opinions. The king summoned
him to his presence and asked him whether he did not pray daily to Jesus
Christ. Legate replied he had prayed to Christ in the days of his
ignorance, but not for the last seven years. "Away, base fellow," said
James, spurning him with his foot, "it shall never be said that one
stayeth in my palace that hath never prayed to our Saviour for seven
years together." Legate, having been imprisoned for some time in
Newgate, was declared an incorrigible heretic and burned at Smithfield
(1611). Just a month later, one Wightman was burned at Lichfield, by the
Bishop of Coventry, for heterodox doctrines. It is possible that p