Tommaso Campanella
(1568-1639)
In Naples, in 1589, Campanella had come into contact with Giambattista della Porta, who was at the centre of a diverse group dabbling in experiments, magic, and astrology. Campanella here was exposed not only to primitive experiments, but also to astrology. His thoughts had now drifted so far from orthodoxy, that he was denounced to the Inquisition and, in 1592, he was for a time confined in a convent. [Note the similarities with the career of Giordano Bruno.] Campanella's interest in political reform was already evident in such early writings as De monarchia Christianorum (1593; "On Christian Monarchy") and Dialogo politico contra Luterani, Calvinisti ed altri eretici (1595; "Political Dialogue Against Lutherans, Calvinists, and Other Heretics"), in which he asserted that sinful humanity can be regenerated through a religious reformation founded on the establishment of a universal ecclesiastical empire. These abstractions yielded to a more limited, though still utopian, plan of reform after his return to Stilo in 1598, where the misery of the people moved him deeply. In accordance with this plan, Campanella became the spiritual leader of a plot to overthrow Spanish rule in Calabria. The plot was discovered, and he was arrested and taken to Naples. Forced under torture to confess his leadership in the plot, he feigned madness to escape death and was sentenced to life imprisonment.
He spent 27 years in prison in Naples, and then, upon his release, was jailed in Rome until 1629. During these imprisonments he often lived under the worst conditions and was tortured several times. It was early during his imprisonment that he wrote his celebrated Utopian work, La città del sole (1602). His ideal commonwealth was to be governed by men enlightened by reason, with every man's work designed to contribute to the good of the community. Private property, undue wealth, and poverty would be nonexistent, for no man would be permitted more than he needed. This work exhibits a fascination with neo-Platonism and primitive Christian communism. His version of Plato's Republic is governed by philosophers who guide the state by a combination of astrology and medicine, and have no respect for Aristotelian philosophy. Although this is not perhaps intended as a serious plan, this utopian book contains much social comment and clearly does reflect his beliefs closely on a wide range of issues, not least the importance of astrology and the encyclopedic reorganization of knowledge, the possibility of health and the prolongation of life, the desirability of a just society, and the millenarian dream of world-wide conversion to Christianity, which he relates to Columbus' voyage to the New World.
During Campanella's prison term of 27 years, he also wrote lyric poems, of which only a few survive, in Scelta (1622; "Selections"). Considered by some to be the most original poetry in Italian of the period, the collection includes madrigals, sonnets, conventional love poems, and metaphysical hymns. In 1622, Campanella also published his Apologia pro Galileo ("Defense of Galileo") in which he defended the Copernican system and the separate paths of Scripture and nature to knowledge of the Creator. He argued that truth about nature is not revealed in Scripture and claimed freedom of thought in philosophical speculation. One might suspect that such a defence, from such a quarter, was less than helpful to Galileo. His Metafisica (1638) expounds his theory of metaphysics based on a trinitarian structure of power, wisdom, and love. Many Campanella manuscripts survive in the Dominican archives in Rome.
After release from prison in 1626, he tried in vain to get his new ideas accepted by Rome. The discovery of an anti-Spanish plot in Naples in 1634 caused him to flee to France, where he was welcomed by King Louis XIII and Cardinal de Richelieu. He died in Paris.
Complete text of The City of the Sun, in translation
A Defense of Galileo, the Mathematician from Florence by Thomas Campanella, trans. Richard J. Blackwell (Notre Dame, 1994)
John M. Headley, "On the Rearming of Heaven: The Machiavellism of Tommaso Campanella", Journal of the History of Ideas 49 (1988) 387-404
John M. Headley, "Tommaso Campanella and Jean de Launoy: The Controversy over Aristotle and his Reception in the West", Renaissance Quarterly, 43 (1990) 529-550
John M. Headley, Tommaso Campanella and the Transfomation of the World (Princeton, 1997)
D.P.Walker, "General Theory of Natural Magic", from his Spiritual and Demonic Magic from Ficino to Campanella (1958; repr. University Park, PA, 2000)
