Giano Pelusio : ammiratore di Telesio e poeta dell’ «eta aurea»

Abstract

This article is included in a volume (in Italian) commemorating the fifth centenary of the birth of the naturalist philosopher Bernardino Telesio (Cosenza, 1509 – 1588), "the first of the moderns" (according to Francis Bacon) who developed the scientific method of inquiry. It focuses on one of his little-known admirers, the poet and orator Giano Pelusio (Crotone, 1520 – Rome, 1600), and on the latter's intellectual affinity with Telesio himself and with one of his most well-known followers, the philosopher Tommaso Campanella (Stilo, 1568 – Paris, 1639). A critical analysis of a selection of poetic verses of Pelusio and Campanella respectively shows how they both extolled Telesio in their sonnets and shared his anti-Aristotelian stance. They were united in their hope for a dawning 'golden age' on both the intellectual and political planes. In their political works, they both expressed their admiration towards the Order of Malta and its role in defending the southern Italian shores against Ottoman incursions. Two years after the 1565 Siege of Malta, Pelusio published his 'Ad proceres Christianos cohortatio', an appeal to European rulers exhorting them to cease hostilities between them and unite in assisting the Order in its endeavours. Campanella chose a Knight of Malta as one of the two interlocutors in his famous utopia, 'The City of the Sun'. Pelusio's sonnets dedicated to Telesio and to his brother Tommaso, to Jean de Valette (the Grand Master who led the Order during the Siege) and to Suleiman the Magnificent are published for the first time, together with a poem in which Malta, speaking in the first person, asks European powers to rush to its assistance. Extracts from the proofs of nobility of Maurizio Telesio, Bernardino's nephew, who was admitted into the Order in 1588, also appear in the appendix.