Thomas, was born at Stilo, a village of Calabria, in 1568. His progress in languages at school was so rapid, that his father was induced to send him to Naples to study law; but of his own accord he joined the order of Dominicans, and applied to the study of theology. He first signalized himself in the disputes which then raged between the Dominicans and Franciscans; but soon followed in the wake of Cardan and Telesius, whose book he publicly defended at Naples, he began to question, and then discarded the authority of Aristotle, although not till after he had mastered the entire circle of Greek, Latin, and Arabian commentators. After a careful study of all the previous systems of philosophy, he published his Philosophia sensibus demonstrata; and from the novelty of his opinions he made so many enemies, that he had to take refuge successively in Rome, Florence, Venice, Padua, and Bologna. On account of his supposed connection with a conspiracy then organized in Calabria against the Spanish government, he was seized at Venice, carried to Spain, and imprisoned. He remained in confinement till the death of Philip III., when, at the intercession of Pope Urban VIII., he was transferred to the prison of the Inquisition at Rome, and finally liberated in 1629. It was during his incarceration in Spain that he wrote his Atheismus triumphatus, and his Apologia pro Galileo. To escape the machinations of the Spaniards against him, he retired to France; and by the efforts of Cardinal Richelieu he obtained a pension of 2000 livres from Louis XIII. After visiting Descartes in Holland, he attached himself to a Dominican convent at Paris, where he died in 1639. Campanella was the contemporary of Bacon, and like him attempted to deduce all knowledge from nature and experience. He held the only two sources of knowledge to be revelation and nature, and from these endeavoured to construct a new system of theology, metaphysics, ethics, and political economy, in opposition to the prevailing schools of Aristotle and Machiavelli. With Bacon he also attempted a new classification of the sciences.

Besides those already mentioned, his principal works are:—Philosophiae rationalis et realis partes V., 4to, Paris, 1638; Cæstus Solis, 12mo, Utrecht, 1643; Ad doctorem gentium de gentilitismo non retinendo, et de praedestinatione gratiâ, 4to, Paris, 1636; De sensu rerum et magia, 4to, Paris, 1637; De praedestinatione, electione, reprobatione, et auxiliis divina gratia, contra Thomisticos, 4to, Paris, 1636; Universalis philosophiae seu metaphysicarum rerum justa propria dogmata, partes tres, libri XVIII., fol., Paris, 1637; De monarchia Hispanica discursum, 24mo, Amsterdam, 1640; Scelta d'alcune poesie filosofice, Frant. 1622, under the pseudonym of Settimontano Spilla, &c., &c.