La cité du soleil

First edition of the French translation, published before the original Italian edition. Indeed, Campanella only published in 1623 a Latin translation which remained for several centuries the sole version of his famous utopia.
Bradel binding in full mottled paper, smooth spine, black shagreen title-label, binding signed T. Boichot.
Occasional light foxing.

Composed by the Dominican monk Tommaso Campanella during his imprisonment in 1602, the work describes the city of Solar, a utopia inspired by Plato's Republic, but socialist and much more radical than that of Thomas More, published 80 years earlier. In this ideal world, everything is held in common. The ideal city of the city of the sun, which has a planned and collectivist economy, observes the equality of all persons and the principles of natural laws manifesting through the observation of the stars.

The BNF devotes a long article to Campanella:

"Born in Stilo in Calabria, Campanella entered the Dominican order when he was not yet 14 years old. Very quickly, his talents were equaled only by the independence of his temperament. His life was marked by trials, in Naples, in Padua, in Rome (where he was suspected of heresy in 1597) and again in Naples where he was incarcerated after the failure of a political conspiracy against the Spanish authorities: he had attempted to rouse his compatriots against Spanish domination in order to establish a form of utopia. He escaped the death penalty in 1601 and spent 25 years in prison before being freed in 1629 and appointed master in theology by Pope Urban VIII. However, new difficulties arose and he fled Italy for France in 1634, where he was welcomed by Richelieu and Louis XIII.
Campanella's writings are dense and address all domains of knowledge of his era: he had the project of bringing together his texts in complete works in ten volumes for which he conceived an impressive table of contents starting from 'rational philosophy' to end with 'miscellanea'. His objective was to 'reform all sciences in conformity with Nature and Scripture' in order to take into account geographical and astronomical discoveries: his Philosophia sensibus demonstrata (1591) follows in the lineage of Bernardino Telesio who advocated reaching truth through observation of nature.
It was in prison that he wrote his vision of the ideal republic, Città del Sole, referring to More and Plato: the first version, in Italian, was completed in 1602 and would not be published until 1904. A second version was written in Latin in 1613, it was published in 1623 and met with a wide audience. The City of the Sun takes the form of a dialogue between the Grand Master of the Hospitallers and a Genoese captain, former pilot of Christopher Columbus. After a forced landing at Taprobane (Ceylon), this witness discovers a city consisting of seven concentric circular zones bearing the names of the seven planets, fortified and comprising at its center a hill on which is built a round temple, the soul of the city. The Metaphysician Hoh reigns supreme over a triumvirate composed of Pon - power in solar language, dealing with defense and war -, Sin - wisdom, charged with science (children learn while walking, before ten years old, thanks to the enclosure walls bearing various objects of knowledge) -, and Mor - love, who works to improve the human race by resorting to eugenics. Four magistrates, Temperance, Magnanimity, Justice, Activity, complete this hierarchy and only these can be revoked by the people. This society has few laws, no prison, confession is mandatory, the inhabitants wear the same clothes which they change four times a year, they eat and sleep together and live about 200 years. Work occupies four hours of the day, agriculture is privileged, money is despised, and they all believe in a single god of whom the sun is the visible image.
Combining realism and mysticism, this city of the sun invites one to 'remember and return to the Lord'; by the laws and logic that govern it, it is however not immune to concentrationary excesses that would transform man into his own executioner."

Very rare first edition in vernacular language of one of the great Utopias of the 17th century.