An even stronger, but less easy to document, connection between Bruno and Marlowe may have resulted from the fact that it appears both worked as spies for Sir Francis Walsingham around the same time, with Bruno writing reports under the pseudonym "Henry Fagot."(34) Marlowe probably started spying in 1583, which is when he was absent for half a term from Cambridge, although he also missed seven weeks the previous academic year.(35) Bruno lived in London from 1583 through 1585, and possibly continued his espionage for the British from France in 1586.(36) That their paths may have crossed during these years is certainly a possibility.

There are several inferences that Marlowe knew Bruno in the B Text of Doctor Faustus – in fact too many in one place for it to be coincidental. First of all, the antipope is named "Bruno."(37) Given Giordano Bruno's tremendous antipathy towards the papacy,(38) associating his name with someone seeking to displace the supposedly legitimate pontiff is appropriate. When Bruno is first brought in, in chains, the pope tells his attendants "Cast down our footstool."(39) While this is similar to a line and situation from Tamburlaine the Great, Part I, where Tamburlaine uses Bajazeth as a footstool,(40) there is also a connection to the historical Bruno–in his Le cena de le Ceneri (The Ash Wednesday Supper),(41) written in 1584, the character Gervasio tells the papal figure [p. 156] Polyhimnio he is "servus servorum et scabellum pedum tuorum" ("the servant of your servants and the footstool under your feet").(42) Another connection exists in lines 183-184 of the same scene, where Faustus, speaking of Bruno, says,

He shall be streight condemn'd of heresie,
And on a pile of Fagots burnt to death.

If the real Bruno chose his new surname "as a piece of black humour,"(43) Marlowe may have written this last line in the same spirit. Given the vagaries of Elizabethan orthography, there may be nothing in the parallels between Bruno's pen name and the reference to logs in the last line.(44) But if there is, Marlowe would have had to know of Bruno's pseudonym, either from the ex-monk himself or from Walsingham's circle, as it was a closely guarded secret that was not revealed until recent times.(45) Another Bruno connection comes earlier in the scene, when Faustus says he will

Restore this Bruno to his liberty,
And beare him to the States of Germany.(46)

Which is where Bruno went, within a year of leaving England.(47) There may also be symbolism in the name of the pope, Adrian. Adrian VI, who reigned earlier in the sixteenth century, was, until the twentieth century, the only non-Italian pope, and he was Dutch. There was, in London during the 1580s and 1590s, considerable upheaval over the presence of many Dutch and Flemish immigrants, who were Protestant refugees from Spanish persecution.(48) Pope Adrian [p. 157] was also the tutor of the future emperor Charles V, who attempted to eliminate Protestantism in his realm.

It is certainly possible that Bruno and Marlowe met during the mid-1580s, and that they discussed religion, and that Bruno either told Marlowe about Nicholas of Cusa's writings on non-Christian religions or recommended that the playwright read them. Bruno, a Dominican monk, studied subjects and texts outside those allowed by his superiors, and was forced to escape his monastery when accused by a brother monk of heresy.(49) His writings indicate that he had an interest in non-Christian religions, especially those of ancient Egypt. And, echoing the charges levied against Marlowe, Bruno was also accused of anti-Trinitarianism at his trial before the Inquisition.(50) Thus, Bruno may have been another of Marlowe's sources for information about Islam, and his life story may also have inspired the playwright to use controversial religious themes in his dramas. Whether or not Marlowe held heretical views, he was accused of them, and religion and the conflict it can cause is a subject in most of his surviving plays.(51)

Sir Walter Raleigh himself may have been one of Marlowe's sources of information about the Middle East, as he had an interest in Turks and their religion. Although his monograph on the subject–The life and death of Mahomet, the conquest of Spaine together with the rysing and ruine of the Sarazen Empire–was published posthumously in 1637, it is conceivable that his research into the subject went back many years and that it was discussed at the School of the Night gatherings.

Marlowe may also have had access to the Koran. The 12th century Latin translation by Robert of Ketton (upon which Nicholas of Cusa based his study), was published in Basle in 1542.(52)

Other publications, in both Latin and English, also described the beliefs of the Turks. Marlowe used some of these as sources for his Tamburlaine plays,(53) but there are many more. [p. 158] These fall into several categories–accounts of Englishmen being captured by Turks after either being shipwrecked or attacked by pirates, travelogues by both adventurers and religious pilgrims to the Holy Land, accounts of battles, and trade/diplomatic communications.(54)

All of these resources, along with allusions to Turks in English literature and plays, not only provided sources for Marlowe, but also a frame of reference for his audience. They would have recognized the threat that Turks posed to Western Europe, and had no reason to interpret the characters and events of Tamburlaine, Part II in anything but a literal way.

Therefore, Tamburlaine's burning of the Koran is a sign of Christian power and victory. Mahomet does nothing to prevent it, although challenged by Tamburlaine to do so. Marlowe emphasizes Mahomet's inaction in the following scene,(55) in which the King of Amasia sees Mahomet in the sky, armed and ready to assist Callapine in his battle with Tamburlaine. Mahomet is therefore able to come to earth and interact with humans, but is unable or unwilling to stop Tamburlaine's affront.

Some directors and critics have tried to interpret the illness that afflicts Tamburlaine later in the scene as divine retribution for his actions. While it may appear when reading a synopsis of the play that this is possible, in performance it is not. Had Tamburlaine been struck down while he was daring Mahomet and burning the Koran, this might be an imaginable interpretation, but that is not what happens. Tamburlaine finishes the burning and then listens to Techelles tell him about the massacre of the Babylonians, before becoming ill.

The final three lines of Tamburlaine's speech during the book burning ("Seeke out another Godhead to adore,/The God that sits in heaven, if any God,/For he is God alone, and none but he") further clarify the Protestant Christian theme. By burning the Koran and publicly challenging Mahomet to stop him, Tamburlaine shows that Mohammedanism is powerless. Tamburlaine advises his soldiers to turn from this heretical faith, which relies on a prophet who is now in Hell, and to turn to God himself. By exhorting his followers to turn to God(56) directly, Tamburlaine negates all the heresies that plagued Elizabethan England – Roman Catholics, who relied on the intercession of priests, saints, and the Virgin Mary; anti-Trinitarians who held that [p. 159] Jesus was separate from God the Father; and also Puritans, by the very fact that God was mentioned on stage.(57)

The last two lines of Tamburlaine's speech are not as clear as they should be, because of the restraint of iambic pentameter. In the line,

The God that sits in heaven, if any god,

the "if" does not mean "if there is," but, rather, "if you are going to worship." This is apparent in the context of the next line, but can seem confusing when first seen or heard, especially as the audience does not expect the murderous Tamburlaine to encourage divine worship. Tamburlaine's acknowledgment of God's divinity has unsettled at least one director – Peter Hall, in his production for the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1976, altered the text to read:

The God that sits in heaven, if any god,
Sits there alone, on earth there is none but me.(58)

But that is Sir Peter's message, not Marlowe's.

It would be foolish to attempt to defend Tamburlaine the Great, Part II as a work modeling Christian piety. It was entertainment for an audience who enjoyed death and destruction with their poetry, and a successful example of that genre. However, neither was it an incitement towards atheism (as defined by the Elizabethans). As shown, there are several orthodox Christian themes present in the two sections of the play that deal directly with religion.

Endnotes

1. Printed in Vivien Thomas and William Tydeman (eds.) Christopher Marlowe: The Plays and their Sources (Routledge, London and New York, 1994) p. 119
2. "My L. Admyrall his men and players having a devyse in ther playe to tye one of their fellows to a poste and so shoote him to deathe, having borrowed their Callyvers one of the players handes swerved his peece being charged with bullett missed the fellowe he aymed at and killed a chyld, and a woman great with chyld forthwith, and hurt an other man in the head very soore." Quoted in Constance Brown Kuriyama Christopher Marlowe: A Renaissance Life (Cornell University Press, Ithaca and London, 2002, p. 80).
3. Quoted in A.L. Rowse Christopher Marlowe: His Life and Work (Harper and Row, New York, 1964, p. 76)
4. Charles Nicholl The Reckoning (revised edition) (Random House, London, 2002, p. 52)
5. There are obvious connections between the audience approval of onstage murder in Elizabethan theatre with modern television programming.
6. Although the only allegorical characters are the Seven Deadly Sins that appear briefly at Mephistophele's command, the overall structure of the play focuses on the moral changes in a single character, as in Everyman and similiar works. However, in Doctor Faustus the character regresses in morality, and, after his demise, the audience is confronted with the consequences of impious actions.
7. F.P. Wilson Marlowe and the Early Shakespeare (Clarindon Press, Oxford, p. 29), quoted in A. L. Rowse, op cit. p. 74
8. Ibid. p. 33 and 75, respectively
9. The author directed a production of Tamburlaine the Great, Part II at the American Theatre of Actors (ATA) in New York City in September 2003. All references to stagecraft in this article are based on experiences encountered in this production.
10. The ATA production of Tamburlaine the Great, Part II was uncut. When the author directed Part I, also at ATA, in 1997, he cut only the four lines (II.i.23-26) that describe Tamburlaine's hair, as the actor playing the part did not have any.
11. In his article "Tamburlaine the Great in Performance" in Sara Munson Deats and Robert Logan's Marlowe's Empery (University of Delaware Press, Newark, DE, 2002 p. 74), David Fuller describes how Peter Hall had the Christian kings make fun of the Turk's description of Mahomet's levitating casket, and then goes on to suggest that directors should have the Turks also ridicule the Christians during their prayers. However, since these two groups are intent on forming an alliance, having them mock each other's beliefs would not help them cement their new relationship as allies. In the American Theatre of Actors production, the author had the two groups act respectfully during their allies' respective prayers.
12. Tamburlaine the Great, Part II II.i.28-41
13. The battle of Varna (Bulgaria) resulted in the conquest of the Christian army under the command of King Vladislav of Poland and Hungary by the Turkish Sultan Murad II (called Amurath in Elizabethan sources). The Hungarians and Turks had agreed on a ten-year truce the year before, which was broken with the encouragement of Pope Eugene IV. Sigismund, the son of Holy Roman Emperor Charles IV, was Elector of Brandenburg prior to ascending the Hungarian throne through his marriage to Queen Mary of Hungary. He was King of Hungary when he led an army against the Ottoman Sultan Beyazid I in 1396, who defeated him in Nicopolis, also in Bulgaria.
14. As in John Foxe's Actes and Monuments (London, 1684, vol.1, p. 840-841)
15. Tamburlaine the Great, Part II II.ii.39-63
16. Although Bakeless and Nicholl refer to Assheton as a Unitarian, this term did not exist until 1600, when it was used to refer to the state religion of Transylvania (Leonard George Crimes of Perception (Paragon House, New York, 1995 p. 316). As David Parke in The Epic of Unitarianism (Beacon Press, Boston, 195 p. 22) indicates, the term itself may refer to the oneness of God, or it may simply allude to the unification of the four official denominations into one new church. According to the Oxford English Dictionary (2nd edition, XIX, p. 77), it was not used in English until 1687. It eventually replaced other terms used to signify anti-Trinitarianism, which vary somewhat in meaning. Technically, Arianism (named after Arius, a 3rd century bishop who may or may not have held the beliefs ascribed to him) holds that, since Jesus was created by God the Father, He is inferior to the latter, although still divine. The principal form of anti-Trinitarianism in Marlowe's lifetime was Socianism, named after Faustus Socinus, a 16th century Italian who believed that Jesus was an extraordinary human, not divine in nature. Unitarianism developed in eastern Europe in the late 16th and early 17th centuries out of the teachings of both Socinus and Michael Servetus, a Spanish theologian who was executed in 1536. This type of Unitarianism is not the same as the more modern Unitarian Universalism, which allows for individual interpretations of who God is, but is what is known as Biblical Unitarianism, which is Christian in nature.
17. Procteur The Fal of the Late Arrian, Preface (the book is not paginated in a systematic way). In the Preface, Procteur also states that he will not name the author of the heretical tract, "whom I wold be loathe to displease, if he hath recanted that blasphemous oppinion, as one saye that he hathe."
18. That one could copy just the Arian portions of the book without Procteur's rebuttals would be easy, as they are printed in different typefaces.
19. A mathematician who was part of Sir Walter Raleigh's household and who was referred to as a "conjurer."
20. For example, Marlowe's schoolmaster at the King's School had a copy. The treatise text in the book is not an exact copy of handwritten copy that led to Kyd's arrest (now British Museum MS Harley 6848, f. 187-189). There are spelling differences between the two, and the copyist of the manuscript frequently writes out numbers that are written as Roman numerals in the book. For instance, the book has "vi of Deut," which is written as "sixt of Deut" in the manuscript. The survivng manuscript is incomplete, and the three sheets preserved in the British Library are bound in the wrong order.
21. Nicholl op cit. p. 351-532
22. George Buckley Atheism in the English Renaissance (Russell and Russell, New York, 1965) p. 127. It is possible that the manuscript was Marlowe's, and that he purposely incriminated Kyd as part of his duties as a spy.
23. As does the denunciation of Richard Baines, whose report on Marlowe, prepared days before the playwright's death, echoes Kyd's accusations.
24. See note 2, above
25. V.i.171-200
26. See note 3, above
27. Op. cit. p. 73
28. As Nabil Matar in Islam in Britain, 1558-1685 (Cambridge University Press, 1998) p. 21 states: "Turk and Muslim were interchangeable terms in seventeenth-century England."
29. Here begynneth a lytell tratyse of the turkes law called Alcaron. And it also speketh of Machamet the Nygromacer
30. As Henry Chadwick in Augustine: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2001) p. 13 explains regarding Mani, the third century Persian who founded the Manichaean religion: "He [Mani] employed some biblical themes and terms, and allowed a redemptive role to Jesus – only he understood Jesus as a symbol of the plight of all humanity rather than as a historical person who walked the earth and was crucified. A quasi-divine redeemer could not in truth have been physically born or killed (an opinion anticipating Islamic doctrine); the crucifixion was no kind of actuality but a mere symbol for the suffering which is the universal human condition." De Worde's statement could also refer to the story that, when Mani was imprisoned and condemned to death (possibly by crucifixion), he simply left his body: "The Apostle of Light took off the warlike dress of the body and sat down in a ship of Light and received the divine garment, the diadem of Light and the beautiful garland. And in great joy he flew together with the Light-gods that are going to the right and to the left of him, with harp-sound and song of joy." Quoted in George, op cit. p. 197.
31. Nestorianism was the dominant type of Christianity in Arabia until Islamic attacks forced it further east. Nestorians minimized, but did not deny, Jesus' divinity. Nicholas believed the medieval legend that Mohammed was converted by a Christian monk, referred to as Sergius the Nestorian, and thus would have been baptized: "..because he [Mohammed] was a Christian, even though a Nestorian, assuredly he was baptized. For Nestorians embrace the Gospel and are baptized." Jasper Hopkins Nicholas of Cusa's De Pace Fidei and Cribratio Alkorani: Translation and Analysis (Arthur J. Banning Press, Minneapolis, 1990) p. 183.
32. This analysis has been further confirmed in recent centuries. See, for instance, Abraham Geiger's "What Did Muhammed Borrow from Judaism?" (1898), W. St. Clair-Tisdall's The Sources of Islam (1901), Charles Torrey's "The Jewish Foundation of Islam" (1933) , all three published in Ibn Warraq (ed.) The Origins of the Koran (Prometheus Books, Amherst, NY, 1998), and Patricia Crone and M. Cook's Hagarism: The Making of the Islamic World (Cambridge University Press, 1980).
33. A.D. Wraight and Virginia Stern In Search of Christopher Marlowe (Adam Hart, Chichester, 1993/reprint of 1965 edition) p. 134-135
34. John Bossy in Giordano Bruno and the Embassy Affair (Yale University Press, New Haven, 1992) documents at length all the evidence that indicates the distinct possibility that Bruno was the "Henry Fagot" who informed on the French ambassador (in whose home he was living) and other Roman Catholics.
35. Rowse op.cit.p. 26
36. Bossy op cit. p. 62-71
37. Doctor Faustus B Text III.i.88-200
38. Bossy op cit.. p. 156-164
39. III.i.88
40. Tamburlaine the Great, Part I IV.ii.1
41. It is probable that some of the dialogue recorded in this work came from School of the Night sessions.
42. Quoted in Bossy op cit. p. 116-117
43. Bossy op cit. p. 142
44. The capital letter and the single g and t
45. If this scenario is correct, then it is evidence that Marlowe himself wrote the B text of Doctor Faustus, and the "additions" were not added by another poet.
46. III.i.120-121
47. Michael White The Pope and the Heretic (William Morrow, NY, 2002) p. 214
48. Which, in 1587, incited someone, perhaps Thomas Kyd, to write the "Dutch Church Libels," which led to Marlowe's arrest.
49. White op cit. p. 8
50. Ibid. p. 91
51. In addition to the Tamburlaine plays, The Massacre at Paris, Doctor Faustus, and The Jew of Malta all deal to a certain extent with religion.
52. Margaret Bald Banned Books: Literature Suppressed on Religious Grounds (Facts on File, New York, 1998) p. 140
53. Of the thirteen sources listed in Thomas and Tydeman, op cit., ten deal with Turkish history and beliefs.
54. The Turkish Company was chartered in 1581 to explore trade with the Turkish empire (Matar op cit. p 21). Also in the 1580s, Queen Elizabeth asked Sultan Murat for naval assistance against the Spaniards, but he declined (ibid. p. 123).
55. V.ii.30-35
56. Who, by definition, consists of God the Father, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit
57. The antonomasia "Wrath of God," used by Tamburlaine and his enemies to refer to him in both Tamburlaine plays would seem to imply a puritan influence, alluding to an angry deity anxious to punish sinful believers. However, it is found in several of the Continental sources (see, for instance, Thomas and Tydeman, op cit. p. 82 and 117) Marlowe drew upon that predate the rise in puritanism in England in the late 16th century.
58. Quoted in Steve Simkin A Preface to Marlowe (Pearson Editions, Harlowe, 2000) p. 95