Messianic and Utopian Influences on Imperial Spain

A Comparative Study in the Works of Tommaso Campanella and Pedro Fernández de Quirós
1. Auflage 2025
ISBN: 978-1-032-86133-3
Verlag: Taylor & Francis

Buch, Englisch, 172 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 417 g

Reihe: Routledge Studies in Cultural History

Roure draws a novel connection between Tommaso Campanella’s utopian ideas for Imperial Spain and Catholicism and Portuguese navigator Pedro Fernández de Quirós’ vision of an idyllic society and a mythical city of New Jerusalem in the antipodes.

The book presents newfound evidence suggesting Spain experimented with Messianism to secure their empire in the late Renaissance. The case is made that the Spanish monarchy contemplated Campanella’s Messianic ideas and sent Quirós to initiate them on the imagined Terra Australis Incognita. Campanella and Quirós shared idiosyncratic beliefs that by means of divine providence Spanish power would imminently transform the world, elevate humanity to a higher spiritual plane, dominate politics and religion, and prepare for the second coming. The work advances our understanding of previously unknown links amongst Campanella’s religious solutions for idealising temporal government, Quirós’s objective of a utopian society in the great south land, and Spain’s tentative experimentation with Messianism. It also permits the drawing of inferences on the possible rationale behind political messianism in the contemporary world.

This book is a valuable resource for scholars, students, researchers, and professionals interested in European and World History of the late Renaissance as well as those interested in the religious and political imperatives of Imperial Spain during the Habsburg period.

Zielgruppe

Academic and Postgraduate

Autoren/Hrsg.

Roure, George M

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Europäische Geschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Mentalitäts- und Sozialgeschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction

1. Politics, religion, and Terra Australis Incognita during the times of Campanella and Quirós

2. Campanella, Quirós, and the idea of a global theocracy

3. Campanella, Quirós, and idiosyncratic interpretation of end-time prophecy

4. The Memorials of Quirós and Campanella’s City of the Sun

5. Quirós, Campanella, and their links to the Spanish Crown and Roman papacy

6. Epilogue

Über Autor(innen)

George M. Roure is an Australian historian with origins from Spain’s Catalonia region. Author of The 16th Century Spanish Plan to Make Australia the New Holy Land, he is the first academic researcher to closely study Quirós’s messianic ideas and connect him to the Dominican Philosopher Tommaso Campanella.