Giulio Cesare Vanini

Lucilio Vanini (Taurisano, 1585 - Toulouse, 9 February 1619) was an Italian free-thinker who, in his writings, signed himself Giulio Cesare Vanini. He was trained in the scholastic tradition of the late Renaissance, but soon turned against it, much as Giordano Bruno had done, and his thought sits at the border between heterodox Aristotelianism, naturalism and intellectual libertinism. He was burned at the stake for blasphemy and atheism, which makes him a symbol of the persecution of free thought in Counter-Reformation Europe.

He was born in southern Italy, near Lecce, and studied philosophy and theology in Naples, and later law in Padua, where he came under the influence of Pietro Pomponazzi, whom he regarded as his master. After a wandering life through France, Switzerland and the Low Countries, earning his living by teaching and writing for others, he took refuge in England in 1612, where he was arrested. He then tried to return to the Catholic fold and published Amphitheatrum aeternae providentiae divino-magicum (1615) against atheism, but his second work, De admirandis naturae reginae deaeque mortalium arcanis (1616), was re-examined and condemned for its heterodox claims. He ended up teaching in Toulouse under a false name, was arrested in November 1618 and, after a long trial before the local parliament, sentenced.

His ideas rest on a materialist and mechanistic rationalism that understands the universe as a system governed by natural laws, leaving no room for the supernatural wonders of the Christian tradition. God appears in his thought very close to nature, which explains the label of pantheism. He also read religions as political instruments created by ruling classes to control peoples, a view that brings him close to Machiavelli.

His influence was small during his lifetime, but his figure later became a reference point for libertinism and critical thinking in Europe. He is considered one of the early representatives of natural determinism in modern philosophy.