Tommaso Campanella and On the Sense of Things and on Magic

Tommaso Campanella was born in Stilo, Calabria, in 1568 and at fourteen entered the Dominican order. As a very young man he read Bernardino Telesio's De rerum natura and was won over: nature had to be studied according to its own principles, through the senses, and not through the authority of Aristotle. From this insight came one of the most original philosophies of the late Renaissance, in which magic holds a central place.

A World That Feels

The key work is On the Sense of Things and on Magic. Campanella wrote a first Latin version around 1590 in Naples, but the manuscripts were taken from him a few years later during a journey. He rewrote it several times and composed an Italian version in prison in the early seventeenth century. The Latin text was printed in Frankfurt in 1620, edited by the German Tobias Adami, under the title De sensu rerum et magia.

The thesis is simple and radical. All things feel, that is, they possess a form of sensitivity, because without it they could neither preserve themselves nor react to what threatens them. For Campanella the whole world is a great living animal, a statue of God, in which every part perceives the others. The sympathies and antipathies of the magical tradition thus become expressions of this universal sensitivity.

Magic as the Art of Nature

Within this framework magic is not a demonic art but the practical knowledge of the bonds that unite things. Campanella distinguishes a divine magic, which works by grace, a natural magic, which uses the forces of nature and the stars, and a diabolical magic, which he rejects. Natural magic, he writes, is what the ignorant call a prodigy until they understand its cause.

In Naples Campanella came to know the circle of Giambattista Della Porta and shared his curiosity about natural secrets, but his perspective was more philosophical and political. For him the reform of knowledge had to accompany a religious and civil reform, and the knowledge of nature was a tool for building a just community.

Prison, the City of the Sun and the Rites with Urban VIII

In 1599 Campanella was accused of leading a conspiracy in Calabria against Spanish rule, linked to prophetic expectations of great changes. To escape a death sentence he feigned madness, holding out even under torture, and remained a prisoner in Neapolitan jails for about twenty-seven years. In his cell he wrote many of his works, including The City of the Sun, composed in 1602 and printed in 1623.

Released in 1626, he moved to Rome, where for a time he enjoyed the favour of Urban VIII. In 1628, by his own account, he performed private rites with the pope to protect him from the influence of an eclipse considered threatening. He explained their meaning in the pamphlet De siderali fato vitando, published in 1629 without his consent, which brought him fresh suspicion.

In 1634 Campanella fled to France, where he was welcomed by Richelieu. He died in Paris, in the Dominican convent on the rue Saint-Honoré, on 21 May 1639. His philosophy of universal sense is one of the last great attempts to hold together magic, natural science and theology, along the path opened by Ficino and Agrippa.