 Filippo Bruno was born in January or February 1548, son of Giovanni Bruno, a soldier of modest circumstances, and Fraulissa Savolina, at Nola, about 17 miles north east of Naples. At the unusually late age of seventeen, beguiled perhaps by the prospect of a life dedicated to learning, he entered the Dominican convent of San Domenico Maggiore in Naples, assuming the name Giordano. In 1572 he became a priest and later that year began to study theology formally, obtaining his doctorate in July 1575. That year he was investigated by his Provincial for his views on the Trinity, a delicate topic in Reformation Europe. This was not the first occasion on which he had scandalized his fellow friars and, exasperated with the constraints of the religious life, he fled the convent in early 1576. He went first to Rome and then, taking off his habit, proceeded to northern Italy. He was now a fugitive from his order and excommunicate. Over the next fourteen or so years he moved from one town or city to another, first in Italy and then in France, Switzerland, England, Germany and Bohemia. In 1591 he returned, fatefully, to Venice. It was during these unsettled years that Bruno composed those Italian and Latin works of his that survive today.