The libertinage of Tommaso Campanella, the French Libertines and the Radical Reformation of the sixteenth century

A dis/simulator and nonbeliever to the point of identifying God and nature, Tommaso Campanella was one of the most radical libertines. His ideas and status as a rebel, condemned by all orthodoxies, were the key to his celebrity in seventeenth-century Europe and to the admiration that the critics of orthodox religion had for him, such as the French libertines who shared many ideas for him—ideas rooted in the Renaissance and Radical Reformation of the sixteenth century.