Imperial Dictionary of Universal Biography/Volume 3/Vanini, Lucilio

by James Frederick Ferrier

VANINI, Lucilio, a martyr, like Servetus, Bruno, and Campanella, to the brutal bigotry of a ferocious ecclesiasticism, was born at Tourosano in the kingdom of Naples, in 1585. On the title-pages of his books he called himself Julius Cæsar Vanini. Combining with a rather weak head and unsettled habits an ardent thirst of knowledge, he jumbled together in his brain the opinions of Aristotle and Pomponatius, Averrhoes and Cardan, and travelled into almost every country of Europe where philosophy was cultivated. He published at Lyons, in 1615, a work entitled "Amphitheatrum æternæ providentiæ adversus veteres philosophos, atheos," &c.; and in the following year he published at Paris four dialogues, "De admirandis Naturæ, Reginæ Deæque mortalium, arcanis." The first of these works is quite unexceptionable in point of orthodoxy, but the latter is decidedly materialistic in its philosophy, and pantheistic in its theology. Soon after its publication he went to reside at Toulouse. This was unfortunate, for Toulouse was then a very hot-bed of bigotry, and the only town in France in which the inquisition had a flourishing establishment. It is not improbable that Vanini went thither for the very purpose of bearding the lion of persecution in his den. If so, his fate is less deserving of commiseration. Be that as it may, he made no secret of his opinions. The authorities very soon took hold of him, and the parliament of Toulouse, of whom Gramond was the president, condemned him to be burnt alive for impiety—a sentence which was executed on the 19th of February, 1619, with every aggravation which the most refined cruelty could suggest, and recorded by Gramond with all the exultation which the most fiend-like malice could dictate. For full particulars respecting the life, works, and death of Vanini, the reader may be referred to La vie et les sentimens de Lucilio Vanini, Rotterdam, 1717, by Durand, and to an article by Victor Cousin in the Revue des Deux Mondes, December, 1843.—J. F. F.