VANINI, Giulio Cesare (also Lucilio). - A muddled and restless figure of an Aristotelian pseudo-philosopher, b. at Taurisano di Lecce in 1585, d. at Toulouse on 9 February 1619.
He graduated in jurisprudence at Naples on 6 June 1606, when he had perhaps already entered the Carmelite Order under the name of fra' Gabriele. Later, after 1608, he went to study at Padua, in the company of his confrere Bonaventura (in the world Gian Battista) Ginocchi. From Padua, it seems, the two friars went beyond the Alps, wandering through the reformed countries, until, having landed in France, the general of the Order, Enrico Silvio, obliged them to move on. Having gone to Venice in 1612, they obtained from the English ambassador letters of recommendation for the heads of the Anglican Church, and on 28 June of that year, in London, they renounced Catholicism. Suspected by the Anglicans because of the reputation for libertinism that accompanied them, and soon reduced to a sorry state, they asked for and obtained permission to return to the Catholic Church; but while Ginocchi went back to Italy, V. remained in France, where a fierce struggle against libertines and atheists had begun. In June-July 1615 he obtained from the ecclesiastical authorities permission to print at Lyon the Amphitheatrum Aeternae Providentiae divino-magicum christiano-physicum, necnon astrologo-catholicum, adversus veteres philosophos, atheos, epicureos, peripateticos et stoicos, and the following year at Paris the dialogues De admirandis Naturae reginae deaeque mortalium arcanis. Reworkings of the manuscript of this latter work and its printing by a non-Catholic publisher aroused strong suspicions as to the true intent pursued by V. in these writings; so that he, to avoid the worst, thought it well to move away from Paris and settle at Toulouse, under the false name of Pompeo Usciglio. Intemperate language in disputes with the leading theologians of Toulouse induced the Parliament of the city to have him arrested (Aug. 1618). Tried as a blasphemer and atheist, he was condemned to have his tongue cut out and to be burned at the stake. The following year the Amphitheatrum and the De arcanis were repudiated and prohibited, because «attiesimi tanto periculosores assertores quanto occultiores et libertatis abominandae vindices» (16 July 1620, cf. E. Nemer [v. bibl.], pp. 186-98).
V.'s thought represents no progress in the history of philosophy. At a moment of profound renewal of science and philosophy, he limits himself to repeating the old themes of an Aristotelianism in the process of dissolution, reaping, without literary scruples and without restraint, from the works of Pomponazzi, Cardano, Scaligero, and others.