The City of the Sun

The City of the Sun (Latin: Civitas Solis) is a philosophical work by the Italian philosopher Tommaso Campanella. It is an important early utopian work. The work was written during Campanella's imprisonment for heresy and sedition. The City of the Sun is presented as a dialogue between "a Grandmaster of the Knights Hospitaller and a Genoese Sea-Captain". It describes a theocratic society where goods, women and children are held in common. It also resembles the City of Adocentyn in the Picatrix, an Arabic grimoire of astrological magic. In the final part of the work, Campanella prophesies —in the veiled language of astrology— that the Spanish kings, in alliance with the Pope, are destined to be the instruments of a Divine Plan: the final victory of the True Faith and its diffusion in the whole world. Campanella held a his vision of a unified, peaceful world governed by a theocratic monarchy.