science. He was born in Calabria in 1568, and died in 1639. He entered
the Dominican order when a boy, but had a free and eager appetite for
knowledge. He urged, like Bacon, that Nature should be studied through
her own works, not through books; he attacked, like Bacon, the dead
faith in Aristotle, that instead of following his energetic spirit of
research, lapsed into blind idolatry. Campanella strenuously urged that
men should reform all sciences by following Nature and the books of God.
He had been stirring in this way for ten years, when there arose in
Calabria a conspiracy against the Spanish rule. Campanella, who was an
Italian patriot was seized and sent to Naples. The Spanish inquisition
joined in attack on him. He was accused of books he had not written and
of opinions he did not hold; he was seven times put to the question and
suffered, with firmness of mind, the most cruel tortures. The Pope
interceded in vain for him with the King of Spain. He suffered
imprisonment for twenty-seven years, during which time he wrote much,
and one piece of his prison work was his ideal of "The City of the Sun."

Released at last from his prison, Campanella went to Rome, where he was
defended by Pope Urban VIII. against continued violence of attack. But
he was compelled at last to leave Rome, and made his escape as a servant
in the livery of the French ambassador. In Paris, Richelieu became
Campanella's friend; the King of France gave him a pension of three
thousand livres; the Sorbonne vouched for the orthodoxy of his writings.
He died in Paris, at the age of seventy-one, in the Convent of the
Dominicans.

Of Campanella's "Civitas Solis," which has not hitherto been translated
into English, the translation here given, with one or two omissions of
detail which can well be spared, has been made for me by my old pupil
and friend, Mr. Thomas W. Halliday.