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CHAPTER IV: AndreÆ and Campanella - Yves Guyot, Socialistic Fallacies [1910]

Edition used:

Socialistic Fallacies (London: Cope and Fenwick, 1910).

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CHAPTER IV

AndreÆ and Campanella

I

  • i. Andreæ and the Universal Christian Republic.
  • ii. Campanella, the Dominican, and the Civitas Solis—Powers and duties of ministers—The minister of eugenics—A convent with sexual promiscuity.

Jean Valentin AndreÆ, a Protestant pastor, published in 1620 a “Description of the Universal Christian Republic,” in which he re-models More's “Utopia” from the Protestant point of view. The authority of government is in the hands of a pontiff, a judge and a minister of science. He reasserts in all the appropriate accents the return to God and the absorption in the grace of Christ.

In the same year a Dominican born in Calabria who, being accused of conspiring against Spanish sovereignty and of other crimes, had passed more than twenty-five years in the prisons of Naples, and had three times suffered torture, published the “Civitas Solis.” In this work the government is entrusted to a prince-priest named Hob, with three ministers under him: Pan, Sin and Mor, charged respectively with war, with science, and with everything that concerns generation and the maintenance of life. Von Kirchenheim remarks with astonishment that these are the first ministers of special departments known in the history of politics.

II

Campanella boldly accepts communism—living in common and community of women and of children. The minister Mor, with the assistance of subordinates of either sex, selects the parties to every marriage, and after taking the opinions of astrologers, directs the day and the hour at which they are to procreate their offspring. From the time when they are weaned, children are brought up in common. Campanella has them instructed in a particular manner. The work of adults is reduced to four hours a day and is directed by officials with the right to inflict punishment. Jurisdiction is solely of a criminal nature, as there cannot be civil disputes. Once a year everyone must confess. Meals are taken in common, the use of wine being forbidden.

Campanella commenced by putting forward the feelings of honour and of duty as sufficient motives for right conduct; he ends with penal sanctions. His conception of society is that of a monastic institution which permits of sexual promiscuity.

In his “De Monarchia Hispanica” he sets out a scheme of universal monarchy under the suzerainty of the Pope, supported by the military power of Spain. All the peoples of Europe will be one, heretics will be exterminated, peace will prevail on earth and the community of property will entirely suppress poverty.