The last time I wrote for CV was 2009, so basically the forthcoming here, oh dear, my

apologies.

Okay, now then, if I speak too fast, throw something at me.

Money would be best, but you know, cake is also good.

Forgive me, I've written it, so I'm going to sort of read and look up occasionally and

lose my place.

Anyway, Tomasso Campanella's The City of the Sun, 1623, model for a society governed by

astrology.

Tomasso Campanella's City of the Sun, the imaginary description of an ideal, what is

it?

Oh, the woman has printed the wrong paper for me.

I have all my prompts for, anyway.

Tomasso Campanella's City of the Sun, the imaginary description of an ideal city, written

from the confines of a prison cell, is often discussed in the context of early modern utopias.

So let's begin with a bit of background context and contrast with two other famous early utopian

cities.

The work that inaugurated this new genre of writing was the Utopia of Sir Thomas More,

Lord Chancellor of England, and was first published exactly 500 years ago in 1516.

The second famous utopian work is again English, curiously by yet another Lord High Chancellor

of England.

It makes you think they were very disenchanted with the politics of their days.

This time it's Francis Bacon and it's the New Atlantis, which first appears in print

just over 100 years later in 1627.

Neither of these famous English Renaissance utopias, though, had anything positive to

say about astrology or magic.

In More's Utopia, the Portuguese explorer Rafael Hiflode, who claimed to have sailed

with Amerigo of Tespucci, reports that the utopians knew astronomy and were perfectly

acquainted with the motions of the heavenly bodies, and have many instruments, well contrived

and divided, by which they very accurately compute the course and positions of the sun,

moon, and stars.

So technology, good.

But for the cheat of divining by the stars, by their oppositions or conjunctions, it has

not so much as entered into their thoughts.

Okay, that's not very promising from the English.

And it continues, the English disappoint us yet again.

Francis Bacon's New Atlantis displays a similar lack of enthusiasm for magic.

When one of the visitors suggested that the islander's knowledge of the outside world

and the world's ignorance of them seemed a condition and property of divine powers and

beings to be hidden and unseen to others, and yet to have others open and as in a light

to them.

Okay, shocking.

The governor of the island looked at them probably in horror and said, okay, gave a

gracious smile and said that we did well to ask for pardon for this question, for it suggested

as if we thought this land a land of magicians that sent forth spirits of the air into all

parts to bring a news and intelligence of other countries.

Such was definitely not the case, nor should it even be considered.

Now then.

Okay, while the first English utopia was written by Sir Thomas More, who was eventually canonized

as St. Thomas More, the Italians are more interesting.

The first Italian utopia was written by Heretic, who spent approximately 30 years of his life