Giulio Cesare Vanini

Vanini, Giulio Cesare (1585-1619). An Italian priest and doctor of laws who came to France in 1614 and was brutally executed at Toulouse in 1619 for having written two atheistic and impious tracts. The more notable of these was translated into French and published in 1616 with the title Dialogues sur les secrets admirables de la nature, reine et déesse des mortels. He was execrated by Counter-Reformation theologians as an apostle of libertin doctrines.

[Ian Maclean]

Vanini, Giulio Cesare (c. 1584-1619) Italian philosopher. Vanini studied law at Naples and theology at Padua. He travelled in Germany and England in 1612, after which he abandoned his Catholicism. He published Amphiteatrum aeternae providentiae (the theatre of eternal providence) in 1615, and in 1616 De admirandis naturae reginae deaeque mortalium arcanis (On the secrets of nature, queen and goddess of mortal beings). He was much influenced by Averroes and Pietro Pomponazzi, rejecting revealed religion and divine creation, and advocating a conception of divinity as totally immanent in nature. His works were declared heretical and he was burned at the stake by the Inquisition.