A General Account of Bonding

De vinculis in genere, usually translated ‘A General Account of Bonding’, is one of Bruno’s late Latin works, probably drafted during his stay at Helmstedt around 1588 and later. It survives in the Noroff codex in Moscow in two versions, a shorter, earlier one and a longer one that breaks off unfinished, and was first printed in 1891. The treatise generalises Bruno’s theory of magic into a theory of influence of every kind. He analyses the ‘binder’, the person or agent who seeks to bind; the ‘bindable’, the subject whose temperament, susceptibility and desires make it open to influence; and the bond itself, of which the most powerful is love. Bruno examines how beauty, speech, images, music and hope can captivate others, and how the binder must understand the nature of those he wishes to bind. The final section on ‘the bond of Cupid’ treats love as the foundation of all binding, from the cosmic attraction that holds the universe together to the passions of individuals. Ioan Couliano called it one of those little-known works whose importance far exceeds that of more famous ones, reading it as an early theory of mass manipulation; this interpretation has been influential, though some scholars think it exaggerates Bruno’s modernity. The treatise is usually read alongside De magia as the culmination of Bruno’s psychology of the imagination.

What it contains

• Shorter early version in aphoristic paragraphs
• Preface on the need for a general theory of bonding
• Thirty articles on the agent who binds
• Articles on the subject who is bound: temperament and susceptibility
• The bond of Cupid: love as the foundation of all bonds