Ludovico Iusto XIII regi christianissimo, ad Christianae rei patrocinium, dedicat Fr. Thomas Campanella, ordin. praedicat. tres. hosce libellos, videlicet: Atheismus triumphatus, seu Contra antichristianismum, etc. De gentilismo non retinendo. De praedestinatione et Reprobatione et auxiliis divinae gratiae Cento Thomisticus

Two parts in one volume, 4to (224x158 mm.). [24], 273 [i. e. 271], [1] pp.; [4], 63, [9], 65-344 [i. e. 342], [2] pp. Omitted in pagination pp. 257-258 of the first part and pp. 211-212 of the second. Collation: a⁴ e⁴ i⁴ A-Ll⁴ (verso of ll. i4 and Ll4 blank); [π]² A-H⁴ e⁴ I-Cc⁴ Cc⁴ Dd-Tt⁴ (H4 verso blank). With the engraved coat-of-arms of the king of France on the title page. Section title pages for Atheismus triumphatus (l. e2r), De gentilismo (l. [π]1r), and De praedestinatione (l. e1r). With woodcut initials, head- and tail-pieces. Printer's device on the second and third section title page (ll. [π]1and I1). Later panelled calf with gilt spine and gilt title on morocco lettering piece, red sprinkled edges (binding slightly rubbed and worn). Ownership entry at the bottom of the general title page, slightly faded ‘Ex libris Ioannis [...] De [...deleys I.V.D. et nob. Jor […]'. Manuscript marginal annotations in the second part. Slightly uniformly browned, some light staining, marginal small restorations to the general title page not affecting the text, all in all a good copy.

Rare second editionof the Atheismus triomphatus, and first edition of the De gentilismo non retinendo and the De praedestinatione.

The Atheismus triomphatus was written in Italian between April and July 1605 under the title Recognoscimento filosofico della vera universale religione contro l'anticristianesimo e macchiavellismo, then completed and translated into Latin in 1607. The work was sent to Kaspar Schoppe (1576-1649), with a request for a German translation. It was Schoppe who suggested to Campanella to change the title from Recognitio verae religionis to Atheismus triumphatus. Finally, in 1631 the philosopher managed to publish the work in Rome, but after only a few months the religious authorities ordered its confiscation. Campanella was unable to have the confiscation revoked, despite his willingness to modify the censored passage with the astrological prognostication of the Church and his repeated protests. He then managed to have it reprinted in Paris in 1636. Like the first edition, this second edition was also placed on the Index.

The De gentilismo non retinendo, written in Naples in 1609-10, and the De praedestinatione, composed in mid-1628, obtained the necessary printing licences at the Sorbonne in 1635. These two treatises were first printed in Paris in 1636, with a dedicatory letter to Louis XIII. Together they form the second part of the Paris edition of the Atheismus triomphatus.

The ideas attributed by Campanella to the atheist (“atheus”) in his Atheismus triumphatus were the same that he preached in Calabria at the end of the 16^th century, as testified by the depositions of his companions during the trial of 1599. In the book, the narrating self (“ego”) identifies with the atheist and the reader is thus confronted with a debate of the “I” with itself, which first accepts the atheistic doubts of the politicus that once prevailed in its soul (the pretrial Campanella, who approaches religion from a rational point of view and considers it exclusively as an instrument of power, according to Machiavelli's thought), and then moves on to consider religion as a virtus naturalis inherent to man, and the Christian religion in particular as the most universal and complete, arguing that there is no contrast between Christian law and natural law. The Atheismus triumphatus can therefore essentially be considered as a sort of Bildungsroman, a novel of formation in which the narrator's inner journey from atheism to Christian faith is presented in all its controversy and ambiguity. In fact, the atheist's arguments against religions in the second chapter of the book are so convincing and well explained that they leave the readers, including the religious authorities, with not a few doubts as to what Campanella was really believing; to the point that the opinion spread that the book was actually a crypto-apology, deserving the title Atheismus triumphans rather than Atheismus triumphatus. Beyond a few controversial passages in the work, the religious authorities mostly urged Campanella to accompany that part of the treatise with short arguments in refutation of the atheistic theories before the more extensive ones presented later in the work, so that the reader would not be confused by being exposed to the atheistic doctrines for too long (cf. V. Frajese, L' “Atheismus Triumphatus” come romanzo filosofico di formazione, in: “Bruniana & Campanelliana”, vol. 4, no. 2, 1998, pp. 313-342; and G. Ernst, Tommaso Campanella, Bari, 2002, pp. 120-127).

Beyond the events of the trial, it was one book in particular that made Campanella suspect to the guardians of orthodoxy: the Atheismus triumphatus. The story of the censure of the Atheismus is one of the most exemplary of the powerful censorship machine of dissent deployed by the Counter-Reformation Church. And even before the ecclesiastical hierarchies dealt with the text by prohibiting its printing, Kaspar Schoppe - to whom the philosopher had initially delivered (and dedicated) the work - seems not to have been committed to its publication, commenting years later that far from being a text of Catholic apologetics, the Atheismus was, on the contrary, very apt to reinforce the impiety of atheists. Tobias Adami himself - a devout Lutheran, but open-minded and a faithful friend of Campanella - although he had several of the friar's texts printed while still in prison, carefully avoided to publish the Atheismus that Campanella had entrusted to him, begging him to print it immediately. In the introduction to the first of Campanella's books published by Adami (1617), the latter drew the attention of the “philosophos Germaniae” to several of Campanella's works that were to follow, also recalling the Atheismus, but ambiguously citing it as Triumphum atheismi, which could mean triumph over atheism, but also the triumph of atheism. Soon after, Marin Mersenne's volumes appeared, and the image of Campanella as an atheist, or at least suspected of atheism, became dominant in Europe: thus Adami's ambiguities dissipated, and the text was seen as a triumph of atheism by contemporaries and later generations: by Catholics, Anglicans, Lutherans, Calvinists, Greek Orthodox; not to mention godless libertines. The Anglican philosopher and pastor Robert Burton, in his famous Anatomy of Melancholy, cites Campanella honorably among the “novatores”, but in the chapter devoted to “epicures, atheists, hypocrites” and in general to “all impious persons”, and places him (with Mersenne) alongside Machiavelli, Cardano, Charron, Bruno, and Vanini. The Dominican's reputation among Calvinists was even worse. In the disputation De atheismo, published at the time of Campanella's death (1639), the intransigent and highly influential Dutch theologian Gijsbert Voet placed Campanella alongside those who, like Vanini and others, under the guise of fighting atheism and libertinism, actually opened the doors wide to it (cf. L. Addante, Tommaso Campanella. Il filoso immaginato, interpretato, falsato, Bari, 2018, pp. 8-9).

Giovanni Domenico Campanella was born in Stilo, Calabria, the son of a poor, illiterate shoemaker. In 1582, to escape the stifling environment of ignorance and poverty in his own town, he decided to enter the Dominican Order, taking the name of Tommaso. In 1588 he was transferred to Cosenza to complete his theological studies. On that occasion, a friend gave him a copy of Bernardino Telesio's De rerum natura, which deeply influenced Campanella's thought. The following year, to the concern of his superiors, he expressed his enthusiasm for the work of Telesio by writing the strongly Telesian Philosophia sensibus demonstrata, which he had printed in Naples in 1591, where he had moved.

In 1592 he underwent his first trial. Imprisoned for possessing a familiar demon under the nail of his little finger, a court of the Order ordered him to renounce Telesio's philosophy and return to Calabria. Campanella defied the sentence and fled first to Rome, then to Padua, where he attended the university under a false name and befriended Galileo. Arrested in 1594 on the orders of the Roman Inquisition, he was tortured and sent to the Roman prisons, where Francesco Pucci and Giordano Bruno were also held in those years. In prison he wrote a compendium of physics, which was later printed in 1617 by Tobias Adami in Frankfurt under the title Prodromus philosophiae instaurandae.

Liberated in 1598, he returned to Calabria. Settling again in Stilo, he became the instigator of an anti-Spanish revolt aimed at establishing a society based on the communion of property and women, guided by his astrological knowledge. Denounced by two conspirators, he tried to escape but was soon recaptured and imprisoned in the Castel Nuovo in Naples. Sentenced to life imprisonment, he spent the next few years writing some of his most important works, including De Monarchia Hispanica, De sensu rerum et magia, the Philosophia Realis, which includes the Civitas solis, and the Atheismus triumphatus. In 1616 he also wrote a courageous Apologia pro Galileo, in which he openly sided with the astronomer.

Finally freed in 1626, Campanella was able to win the favor of Urban VIII thanks to his astrological knowledge, which the pope valued highly. In 1632 he dictated to the French scholar Gabriel Naudé a now lost autobiography and a bio-bibliography (Syntagma de libris propriis), which was later published in Paris in 1642. In the years following his release from prison, the orientation of his political thought shifted from the glorification of the Spanish monarchy, which he had previously seen as a nation appointed by divine providence to bring about the world theocracy he envisioned, to that of the French crown. And it was in Paris that he sought refuge in 1634 to avoid new problems with the Spanish authorities, having realized that not even papal support could now protect him.

Received with honor by Richelieu, Campanella obtained a pension from Louis XIII and the approval of some of his works by the Sorbonne. Nevertheless, the French years were not easy for him. In 1638, shortly before his death, he wrote the Ecloga in portentosam Delphini nativitatem about the birth of the new Dauphin of France, who he believed was destined for a great future. The prediction turned out to be accurate, for it was the future Louis XIV.

Campanella's works had a very complex genesis and development. They were often written in Italian and then translated by him into Latin, and they underwent various remakes and revisions. Only a small part of them were published during his lifetime, mostly outside Italy: in Frankfurt, where his friend Tobias Adami edited and sometimes translated for publication Campanella's manuscripts, which he had personally collected during a trip to Naples or had received from the author; and in Paris, in the last years before his death.

Italian Union Catalogue, IT\ICCU\TO0E\012024; L. Firpo, Bibliografia degli scritti di Tommaso Campanella, Turin, 1940, pp. 101-103, no. 10 and pp. 110-112, nos. 15 and 16; M. Ciliberto and C. Vasoli, eds., Archivio dei filosofi del Rinascimento. Tommaso Campanella, Istituto nazionale di studi sul Rinascimento, seconda serie, vol. XLVIII, Florence, 2008, pp. 481-491; Vinciana, 2165; Caillet, I, 291; A. Cassaro, Atheismus Triumphatus: genesi, sviluppo e valore dell'opera, Naples, 1983.

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