In April 1973 m, Lawrence Lerner and I published an article in Scientific American in which we argued that Giordano Bruno was not a scientist in the Galilean sense of the word. In November 1986. Lerner and I published another article in Scientific American, arguing that a root cause of Galileo’s Trouble with the Inquisition in 1632-3 was not just the formal similarity of The Dialogue on the Two Great World Systems with Bruno’s Ash Wednesday Supper but that the Dolphin emblem on Galileo’s title page caused the Church to think Galileo’s work carried a Brunonian message.
My proposed paper, written after years of work and publications on Bruno’s religious ideas, sums up my understanding of his message to England in 1583-5, as he composed his five Italian dialogues there. The entirety of his message from the first, The Ash Wednesday Supper, to the last, The Heroic Frenzies, was a religious message that transcended the Copernican Theory that was at these works’ base. And, most important, The Ash Wednesday Supper’s proemial poem, « To the Malcontent, » introduced the religious message that Bruno world develop in all five Italian Dialogues. Consequently, this poem, never before fully understood or explained, was an introduction to all five of Bruno’s works, not just one.
