TOMMASO CAMPANELLA & 'ATHEISMUS TRIUMPHATUS'

Tommaso Campanella

Today, The Grandma has gone to the library to search more information about Tommaso Campanella, the Calabrian philosopher who was accused of leading a conspiracy against the Spanish rule also known as the Inquisition and who died on a day like today in 1639.

The Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition, in Spanish Tribunal del Santo Oficio de la Inquisición, commonly known as the Spanish Inquisition or Inquisición española, was established in 1478 by Catholic Monarchs Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella I of Castile.

It was intended to maintain Catholic orthodoxy in their kingdoms and to replace the Medieval Inquisition, which was under Papal control. It became the most substantive of the three different manifestations of the wider Catholic Inquisition along with the Roman Inquisition and Portuguese Inquisition.

The Spanish Inquisition may be defined broadly, operating in Spain and in all Spanish colonies and territories, which included the Canary Islands, the Spanish Netherlands, the Kingdom of Naples, and all Spanish possessions in North, Central, and South America.

According to modern estimates, around 150,000 were prosecuted for various offenses during the three centuries of duration of the Spanish Inquisition, out of which between 3,000 and 5,000 were executed.

Today, The Spanish Inquisition is more lively than ever and thousands of people continue suffering its illegal rules and antidemocratic ways in a country that belongs to the European Union. Against these attacks against freedom of expressioin and civil rights, the population must adopt a civil resistance taking the figure of Mahatma Gandhi as a inspiration and guide.

Tommaso Campanella (5 September 1568-21 May 1639), baptized Giovanni Domenico Campanella, was a Dominican friar, Calabrian philosopher, theologian, astrologer, and poet.

Born in Stignano, in the county of Stilo, in the province of Reggio di Calabria in Calabria, Campanella was a child prodigy. Son of a poor and illiterate cobbler, he entered the Dominican Order before the age of fourteen, taking the name of fra' Tommaso in honour of Thomas Aquinas. He studied theology and philosophy with several masters.

Early on, he became disenchanted with the Aristotelian orthodoxy and attracted by the empiricism of Bernardino Telesio (1509–1588), who taught that knowledge is sensation and that all things in nature possess sensation. Campanella wrote his first work, Philosophia sensibus demonstrata, published in 1592, in defence of Telesio.

Tommaso Campanella

In 1590 he was in Naples where he was initiated in astrology; astrological speculations would become a constant feature in his writings. Campanella's heterodox views, especially his opposition to the authority of Aristotle, brought him into conflict with the ecclesiastical authorities.

Denounced to the Inquisition, he was arrested in Padua in 1594 and cited before the Holy Office in Rome, he was confined in a convent until 1597.

After his liberation, Campanella returned to Calabria, where he was accused of leading a conspiracy against the Spanish rule in his hometown of Stilo. Campanella's aim was to establish a society based on the community of goods and wives, for on the basis of the prophecies of Joachim of Fiore and his own astrological observations, he foresaw the advent of the Age of the Spirit in the year 1600.

Betrayed by two of his fellow conspirators, he was captured and incarcerated in Naples, where he was tortured on the rack. Even from the confinement of the jail, Campanella managed to influence the intellectual history of the early seventeenth century, by maintaining epistolary contacts with European philosophers and scientists, Neapolitan cultural circles, and Caravaggio's commissioners.

Finally, Campanella made a full confession and would have been put to death if he had not feigned madness and set his cell on fire. He was tortured further, a total of seven times, and then, crippled and ill, was sentenced to life imprisonment.

More information: Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Campanella spent twenty-seven years imprisoned in Naples, in various fortresses. During his detention, he wrote his most important works: The Monarchy of Spain (1600), Political Aphorisms (1601), Atheismus triumphatus (1605–1607), Quod reminiscetur (1606?), Metaphysica (1609–1623), Theologia (1613–1624), and his most famous work, The City of the Sun, originally written in Italian in 1602; published in Latin in Frankfurt (1623) and later in Paris (1638).

Campanella was finally released from prison in 1626, through Pope Urban VIII, who personally interceded on his behalf with Philip IV of Spain. Taken to Rome and held for a time by the Holy Office, Campanella was restored to full liberty in 1629. He lived for five years in Rome, where he was Urban's advisor in astrological matters.

In 1634, however, a new conspiracy in Calabria, led by one of his followers, threatened fresh troubles. With the aid of Cardinal Barberini and the French Ambassador de Noailles, he fled to France, where he was received at the court of Louis XIII with marked favour. Protected by Cardinal Richelieu and granted a liberal pension by the king, he spent the rest of his days in the convent of Saint-Honoré in Paris. His last work was a poem celebrating the birth of the future Louis XIV, Ecloga in portentosam Delphini nativitatem.

Campanella's De sensu rerum et magia (1620) partly inspired the first fully-fledged it-narrative in English, Charles Gildon's The Golden Spy (1709).

Download Selected Philosophical Poems of Tommaso Campanella

The world is the book where the eternal

Wisdom wrote its own concepts.

Tommaso Campanella