Campanella, Tomaso

CAMPANELLA, TOMASO: Italian monk and philosopher; b. at Stilo (50 m. n.e. of Reggio), Calabria, Sept. 5, 1588; d. in Paris May 21, 1639. He entered the Dominican order at the age of fifteen; studied philosophy and theology at Cosenza and Naples, and added to his other accomplishments a knowledge of medicine, astrology, alchemy, and magic. He boldly rejected the Aristotelian system and chose to study nature rather than authority, whereby he made many and powerful opponents. After wandering through Italy for a number of years he returned to Cosenza in 1598, and the next year was arrested by the government, charged, probably truthfully, with being implicated in a conspiracy to free Naples from the Spanish dominion. His political and social views were undeniably dangerous. He was kept in prison till 1626, when Pope Urban VIII. succeeded in having him transferred to the Inquisition, and in 1629 set him free. For a few years he lived at Rome, but, not feeling secure there, in 1634 he went to Paris, where he was received with favor by Cardinal Richelieu. His last years were spent in preparing a complete edition of his works, of which, however, only one or two volumes appear to have been published. The philosophy which Campanella would substitute for that of Aristotle was incomplete and fantastic, influenced by Thomas Aquinas, Bernardino Telesio (b. at Cosenza 1508), Raymond Lully, and the Cabala, but in part independent and in certain points anticipatory of the work of more modern thinkers. He held that God has made a twofold revelation of himself, in nature and in the Bible; on the one rests philosophy, on the other theology. These have nothing to do the one with the other. He was thus able to take a very conservative position in theology, and stoutly defended Roman Catholicism and the papacy (as in his Monarchiæ Messiæ and Discorsi della liberta e della felice suggettione allo stato ecclesiastico, Jesi, 1633). Certainty, he taught, is found only in immediate intuitions; the first truth is that I exist; then that I can, that I know, and that I want or will; these three activities indicate the fundamental qualities of all being (potentia, sapientia, amor). He believed that matter is eternal and that the world was created through emanations from the deity. His views concerning society and the State were communistic; they are set forth in his Civitas solis, idea reipublicæ philosophicæ, printed as an appendix to part iii. (politica) of his Realis philosophiæ epilogisticæ partes iv, hoc est, de rerum natura, hominum moribus, politica, et œconomica (Frankfort, 1623); there is an English translation (incomplete) by T. W. Halliday in Ideal Commonwealths, vol. xxiii. of "Morley's Universal Library" (London, 1885).

Bibliography: Campanella is said to have written eighty-two works, most of them during his long imprisonment. He gives some account of them in his De libria propriis et recta rations studendi syntagma, ed. G. Naudé, Paris, 1642. Among the more important of those which have been published, besides the ones already mentioned, are: Philosophia sensibus demonstrata, a defense of Telesio, Naples, 1590; Prodromus philosophiæ instaurandæ, Frankfort, 1617; De sensu rerum et magia, 1620; Apologia pro Galileo, 1622; Astrologicorum libri vii, 1630; Atheismus triumphatus, Rome, 1631; Medicinalium libri vii, Lyons, 1635; De gentilismo non retinendo and De prædestinations contra Thomisticos, Paris, 1636; Philosophiæ rationalis partes v, videlicet grammatica, dialectica, rhetorica, poetica, historiographia, 1638; Universalis philosophiæ seu metaphysicarum rerum juxta propria dogmata partes iii, libri xviii, 1638; De monarchia hispanica, Amsterdam, 1640, Eng, transl., A Discourse Touching the Spanish Monarchy, London, 1654. A selection from his works by A. d’Ancona appeared in 2 volumes at Turin, 1854. His sonnets have been translated into English by J. A. Symonds with the sonnets of Michelangelo, London 1878. For his life and criticism of his writings and teachings consult: Cyprian, Vita et philosophia T. Campanella, Amsterdam, 1705, 2d ed., 1722; M. Baldacchini, Vita e filosofia di T. Campanella, Naples, 1840; Berti, La vita e la opere di T. Campanella, Rome, 1878; L. Amabile, Fra Tommaso Campanella, la sua congiura, i suoi processi, e la sua pazzia, 3 vols., Naples, 1882; idem, L’andata di Fra T. Campanella a Roma dopo la lunga prigionia di Napoli, ib. 1886; idem, Fra T. Campanella ne' castelli di Napoli, in Roma ed in Parigi, 2 vols., ib. 1887; idem, Del carattere di Fra T. Campanella, ib. 1890; E. Nys, T. Campanella et ses théories politiques, Brussels, 1889; G. S. Felici, Le dottrine filosofico-religiose di T. Campanella, Lanciano, 1895; P. Lafargue, in Die Vorläufer des neueren Socialismus, pp. 469–506, Stuttgart, 1895; von Koslowski, Die Erkenntnislehre Campanellas, Leipsic, 1897.