By all means see my Campanella
entry Civitas Solis in the Wishful Thinking section, where many
things not mentioned here are properly discussed. What is of the utmost and
only interest to me here is Campanella’s religious universalism, which reminds
me of my own thinking regarding religious transcendence. Mind you, I am totally
against any kind of substitution of a natural religion by an artificial
universalist hybrid, like they tried to do with the acultural Esperanto
language in the area of human communication. Each religion ought to remain
forever connected to the specific historical culture that it represents, and
substitutes are ridiculous and demonstrably ineffective. But Campanella’s
clever “utopia” (at the time when
heretics were habitually burned at the stake, he barely avoided their fate and
lived until seventy 1568-1639) presents a philosophical religious vision, and
even the author’s severest detractors could not successfully accuse him of
trying to transplant it into real life.
Tommaso Campanella’s Civitas
Solis is of particular interest to my Religion section on account of
his brave and virtually revolutionary depiction of religion, in his utopian city
of the sun. Campanella was a Dominican monk, regularly in trouble for his
atrociously unorthodox views, but not without friends in high places, who must
have shielded him from the more serious and lethal charges of heresy. Indeed,
there is plenty of heresy in the book which we are now looking at.
Let us start with his depiction
of the city’s temple, which is conspicuous for the absence of a cross.
“On the top of the hill is a rather spacious
plain, and in the midst of it there rises a temple, built with wondrous art.
The temple is built in the form of a circle; not girt with walls, but standing
on thick columns, beautifully grouped. A very large dome built with great care
in the centre or pole contains another small vault as it were rising out of it,
and in it is a spiracle, which is right over the altar. There is but one altar
in the middle of the temple, and it is hedged round by columns. The temple
itself is on a space of more than 350 paces. Without it, arches measuring about
eight paces extend from the heads of the columns outward whence other columns
rise about three paces from the thick, strong and erect wall. Between these and
the former columns there are galleries for walking with beautiful pavements and
in the recess of the wall which is adorned with numerous large doors, there are
immovable seats, placed as it were between the inside columns, supporting the
temple. Portable chairs are not wanting, many and well adorned. Nothing is seen
over the altar but a large globe, on which the heavenly bodies are painted, and
another globe, upon which there is a representation of the earth. Furthermore,
in the vault of the dome there can be discerned representations of all the
stars of heaven, from the first to the sixth magnitude with their proper names
and power to influence terrestrial things marked in three little verses for
each. There are the poles and greater and lesser circles, according to the
right latitude of the place, but these are not perfect because there is no wall
below. They seem, too, to be made in relation to the globes on the altar. The
pavement of the temple is bright with precious stones. Its seven golden lamps
hang always burning, and these bear the names of the seven planets. At the top
of the building several small beautiful cells surround the small dome and
behind the level space above the bands or arches of the exterior and interior
columns there are many cells both small and large, where the priests and
religious officers dwell to the number of forty-nine. A revolving flag projects
from the smaller dome, and this shows in what quarter the wind is. The flag is
marked with figures, up to 36, and the priests know what sort of year the
different kinds of winds bring and what will be the changes of weather on land
and sea. Furthermore, under the flag a book is always kept written with letters
of gold…”
Unlike in Francis Bacon’s New
Atlantis, written just three years after Campanella’s utopia, this book is not the Bible. But wait… “…The great ruler
among them is a priest whom they call by the name Hoh, although we should call
him Metaphysic. (!!!) He is head over all, in temporal and spiritual matters,
and all business and lawsuits are settled by him, as the supreme authority…”
The philosopher-priest? The
parallel with my stress on the philosophization of religion becomes uncanny
here! But here now comes the most revealing evidence of Campanella’s cultural
and religious universalism:
“There I
saw (depictions of) Moses, Osiris, Jupiter, Mercury,
Lycurgus, Pompilius, Pythagoras, Zamolxis, Solon,
Charondas, Phoroneus, with very many others. They even have Mahomet,
whom nevertheless they hate as a false and sordid legislator. In the most
dignified position I saw a representation of Jesus Christ and of the twelve
Apostles, whom they consider very worthy and hold to be great. Of the
representations of men, I perceived Caesar, Alexander, Pyrrhus,
and Hannibal in the highest place; and other very renowned heroes in
peace and war, especially Roman heroes, were painted in lower positions under
the galleries. And when I asked with astonishment, whence they had obtained our
history, they told me that among them there was a knowledge of all
languages, and that by perseverance they continually send explorers and ambassadors
over the whole earth, who learn thoroughly the customs, forces, rule, and
histories of the nations, bad and good alike. These they apply all to their own
republic, and with this they are well pleased.”
As I say in my Civitas Solis entry,
Campanella wants to show a universal ideal in Civitas Solis, which could
be accepted by all nations even of non-Christian religions, and he goes out of
his way to distance his utopian paradise from a strictly Christian state,
expected from a devout Christian apologist. Still, he does make several
favorable references to Christianity, to show its high standing in his ideal
State.
“They strongly recommend the religion of the
Christians and especially the life of the apostles. They admire Christian
institutions and look for a realization of the apostolic life in vogue among
themselves and in us.”
But it is still amazing and even
incredible how in his day he could actually get away with a characterization of
Jesus Christ (“whom they consider very worthy and hold to be great”) that
is demonstrably disrespectful to his Divine status in Christian
theology.
Lastly, I wish to reiterate my
amazement at Campanella’s brave attempt to universalize and to philosophize
religion, so much in tune with my Allegory of the two-storied Temple, and
at the even more astonishing fact that he could get away with it.
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