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The spy code-named Henry
John Bossy made the case in a 1991 book. Bruno was a Neapolitan friar who became a philosopher of nature and a hermetic magician. He argued for an infinite universe and for the possibility of life in outer space, and he doubted the Trinity and the divinity of Christ. The Inquisition burned him in Rome in 1600, and a famous statue there honors him as a martyr for freedom of speech.
In 1583 Bruno was serving as the French ambassador's secretary, so he was in the right place at the right time. Whoever Henry was, he was the first to name Francis Throckmorton to Walsingham as a spy. Most historians do not accept Bossy's argument, because the evidence is entirely circumstantial.
Why did Bruno's infinite universe alarm the Church?
Copernicus had proposed in 1543 that the Earth circled the Sun, but he still pictured a finite universe. Bruno went further and argued for infinite space filled with countless suns and worlds like ours. That picture removed Earth and the Church's ordered cosmos from the center of creation. The Inquisition burned him in Rome in 1600, and a statue stands on the site in the Campo de' Fiori, unveiled in 1889.
What was Bruno doing in England?
Bruno lived in England from 1583 to 1585, staying at the French embassy in London under Ambassador Michel de Castelnau. He lectured at Oxford and moved in the circle of Sir Philip Sidney. During those years he wrote several of his best-known works in Italian, including The Ash Wednesday Supper.
How do historians identify code-named spies?
Historians match the dates, places, and information in an agent's reports against known movements of possible candidates. Handwriting and the spelling habits in surviving letters offer further evidence. Many Elizabethan reports used aliases or initials, and few agents are known with certainty.
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