Tommaso Campanella1568-1639
From STANISLAS KONARSKI, 1929 by William John Rose For it does seem likely that a man of Konarski痴 calibre would want to know more about the man whose work was published in Warsaw after a long pause during his first term there as a professor (1722). It is to his credit that he saw the superior worth of Comenius・methods, and did not for a moment hesitate to adopt them, even though the man was not a Catholic : just as Comenius himself had used without stint the rich stores of suggestion he found in Campanella. (etc)
Note from the Internet 9 Dec 04 -- I have no idea if the data accurate. The Inquisition at Rome at this period was particularly active in its endeavours to reform errant philosophers, and Bruno was by no means the only victim who felt its power. Thomas Campanella, born in Calabria, in Italy, A.D. 1568, conceived the design of reforming philosophy about the same time as our more celebrated Bacon. This was a task too great for his strength, nor did he receive much encouragement from the existing powers. He attacked scholasticism with much vigour, and censured the philosophy of Aristotle, the admired of the schoolmen. He wrote a work entitled _Philosophia sensibus demonstrata_, in which he defended the ideas of Telesio, who explained the laws of nature as founded upon two principles, the heat of the sun and the coldness of the earth. He declared that all our knowledge was derived from sensation, and that all parts of the earth were endowed with feeling. Campanella also wrote _Prodromus philosophiae instaurandae_ (1617); _Philosophia rationalis_, embracing grammar, dialectics, rhetoric, poetry, and history; _Universalis Philosophatus_, a treatise on metaphysics; _Civitas solis_, a description of a kind of Utopia, after the fashion of Plato's _Republic_. But the fatal book which caused his woes was his _Atheismus triumphatus_. On account of this work he was cast into prison, and endured so much misery that we can scarcely bear to think of his tortures and sufferings. For twenty-five years he endured all the squalor and horrors of a mediaeval dungeon; through thirty-five hours he was "questioned" with such exceeding cruelty that all his veins and arteries were so drawn and stretched by the rack that the blood could not flow. Yet he bore all this terrible agony with a brave spirit, and did not utter a cry. Various causes have been assigned for the severity of this torture inflicted on poor Campanella. Some attribute it to the malice of the scholastic philosophers, whom he had offended by his works. Others say that he was engaged in some treasonable conspiracy to betray the kingdom of Naples to the Spaniards; but it is probable that his _Atheismus triumphatus_ was the chief cause of his woes. Sorbi�re has thus passed judgment upon this fatal book: "Though nothing is dearer to me than time, the loss of which grieves me sorely, I confess that I have lost both oil and labour in reading the empty book of an empty monk, Thomas Campanella. It is a farrago of vanities, has no order, many obscurities, and perpetual barbarisms. One thing I have learned in wandering through this book, that I will never read another book of this author, even if I could spare the time."
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W. Paul Tabaka
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