Elijah Fiorenza
(article published on the Future of Calabria - June 2009)
An unknown "iconography" of Tommaso Campanella, dating from the eighteenth century, was discovered in France, in Paris. The lithograph engraved by Ferdinand, steel in excellent condition, (measures 15x24) full page, on heavy paper, with white margins and the back of the same color is by the famous French artist R. de Moraine. In the fine print acknowledges the friar Stiles, in Dominican habit, kneeling to beg two gentlemen of the time near a boat while in the background there are notes on a small hill the holy crucifix. Tommaso Campanella, which ends on Renaissance thought, was born Sunday, 5 September 1568 at six o'clock pm at Stilo in Calabria, and entered the Dominican Order at age fourteen. Astrologer, physician and magician, ruled by the universal yearning for innovation, make sure you have a mission, inexhaustible in his work an extraordinary knowledge, wrote the His work with unstoppable force as "a volcano erupting." Aristotelianism and Thomism of disappointed, he studied various Eastern philosophers and writings. L '"indiscipline" of the Dominican southern allowed him to attend in Naples Giovan Battista Della Porta, an admirer of magic. In 1591 it underwent a first trial for heresy and magical practices. He stayed a few months in prison and out, instead of returning in the convents of his Povincia, in disobedience to what had been imposed, he went to Padua, where he met Galileo Galilei. The next three processes: one to two in Rome and Padua (1596 and 1597). In the end, was forced to return to Stilo in Calabria Ultra, with prohibition to preach and confess and with the task of clarifying the orthodoxy of his writings. But his concern for renewal, reorders the dreams of religious and political visions of messianic type, enhanced by its astrological conceptions, encouraged him to preach and to plot a revolt against Spain, which was to be the beginning of his grand design . But Campanella in 1599, betrayed by some conspirators, he was arrested, imprisoned and sentenced to death. The brother of Stylus saved from death with skillful deception of madness, he was able to strongly support the verification tests through the hardest and most cruel. The death sentence was changed into that of perpetual imprisonment. The prison, which lasted twenty-seven years, first hard, became a way more and more tolerable, until it becomes almost purely formal. Campanella was able to write his books, hold mail and receive visits. In 1626 the English king had him released from prison, but freedom lasted very little, because the papal nuncio had him imprisoned again and transferred to Rome in the prisons of the Inquisition. But here the fate of Campanella completely changed, because of the protection of Pope Urban VIII, so that spot between carceris Thomas had at his disposal no less than the palace of the Holy Office. While in prison in Naples, his political plans were oriented towards Spain, regarded as the power that could have achieved the desired "universal innovation," but in Rome Campanella became pro-French. For this reason, having been discovered in Naples in 1634 a conspiracy against the English, organized by a disciple of Campanella, the Calabrian philosopher was unjustly considered co-responsible, and we had to flee to Paris, under a false name and "disguised" as a friar minor monastery under the protection of the French. Lived in Paris since 1634 Campanella moments of notoriety, admired and flattered by many scholars and several aristocratic families. King Louis XIII gave him a modest livelihood, was a friend of the powerful card. Richelieu. His death occurred May 21, 1639 as he tried in vain with its astrological techniques, to take away death.
