Placing Bruno-both advanced philosopher and magician burned at the stake-in the Hermetic tradition, Yates's 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,...