Prophetic representation and political allegorisation : the hospitaller in Campanella’s The City of The Sun

Abstract

Scholars have long been puzzled by Campanella’s peculiar choice of the Hospitaller as one of the two interlocutors in The City of the Sun. While much has been written by Campanella and his commentators to account for the Genoese sailor of Columbus, who was the Knight’s guest in the dialogue, the host remains a largely mysterious character. Campanella himself makes just a couple of fleeting references to the Hospitaller Knights of Malta in his works, leaving us with an absence of textual evidence which adds to the complexity of understanding a choice that is evidently not accidental. The aim of this contribution is to present a number of historical considerations on the ancient Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem – universally known as the Knights of Malta – and its presence in the Mediterranean, particularly in Calabria, as a backdrop for exploring Campanella’s choice in the light of both the prophetical and the political elements that underpin The City of the Sun and – as this article hopes to show – the figure of the Hospitaller.