Tommaso Campanella: Universal history, Prophecy and the Succession of empires

VIDAL, SILVINA PAULA

The Oxford Handbook of Universal History Writing

Oxford University Press

Lugar: Oxford; Año: 2025;

Tommaso Campanella´s intellectual interests encompassed both natural philosophy and history, with a focus on politics. In his Historiographia (1638), he considered firsthand testimonies and the agreement between authors as the primary criteria for establishing the veracity of historical accounts. Conversely disagreement with opponents and discussion of authority were incidental conditions, never sufficient to “demolish a historian”. Discussion of authority played an important part in the final years of Campanella’s life, following his release from prison in 1626. He published pro-French writings in which he expressed a harsh criticism of the Spanish monarchy. In these texts Campanella presents himself as an eyewitness with first-hand experience of the events he chronicles. This chapter will address two issues: (1) the relation between Campanella’s historical preceptive and these political writings and (2) provide an interpretation for Campanella’s rejection of his previous defence of a theocratic universal monarchy in favour of a secular counter-hegemonic alternative.