Robert Green Ingersoll & Giordano Bruno

"The Herald of the Dawn"

 Robert Green Ingersoll (1833 - 1899) is too little known today. Yet he was the foremost orator and political speechmaker of late 19th century America -- perhaps the best-known American of the post-Civil War era. No human being had been seen and heard by more Americans - or would be until the advent of motion pictures, radio, and television. His subjects ranged from Shakespeare and Burns to religion, from political and moral issues to the lives of famous patriots and scientists. 

In 1889, the Rationalists of Europe and America having conjointly provided for the erection of a life-size statue of Bruno, in the Campo dei fiori at Rome, on the spot where he was burned at the stake, February 17, 1600, by order of the papal Inquisition, Ingersoll was invited by the international committee to deliver the oration unveiling the memorial mentioned.

We can imagine with what wealth of feeling, -- what triumphant inspiration, -- the orator of universal liberty would have risen in the shadow of the Vatican to pay to the memory of him whom he had already styled "the first real martyr" that debt of gratitude and historic justice which had so long been overdue; and we can imagine also, but with regret, how much the world of art and letters was the loser because of his inability to accept an invitation which, coming from a source so truly representative of emancipated thought, was to him especially pleasing.

Of the sublime heights which he would have attained had he accepted, we catch a glimpse from the critical viewpoint of the eminent English Rationalist George Jacob Holyoake, who, in commenting on the great orator's loftiness and originality, said:--

"When his subject was Bruno, upon whom many pens had exhausted all the terms they knew, Ingersoll's first words were: 'The night of the Middle Ages lasted for a thousand years. The first star that enriched the horizon of this universal gloom was Giordano Bruno. He was the herald of the dawn.'"

But although the orator of the better age which Bruno so clearly foresaw, and for which he so nobly gave his life, was unable to pay in Rome the tribute of his gratitude, he rendered substantial aid at home, not only as the head of the committee representing the United States on the international committee, but as indicated in the following characteristic letter opening the American subscription: 

Law Office, Robert G. Ingersoll,
40 Wall Street.
New York.

Feb. 8, 1889.

T.B. Wakeman, Esq.
Treasurer of the Bruno Monument Committee.

"My dear Sir:
It gives me great pleasure to include my check for one hundred dollars ($100).
I shall never be quite satisfied until there is a monument to Bruno higher than the dome of St. Peter's.
Yours very truly,
R.G. Ingersoll."

(From: "A Biographical Appreciation of Robert Green Ingersoll" by Herman E. Kittredge  )
Signaled by Ernest Blalock

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