Vanini Giulio Cesare (c.1584–1619), Italian philosopher, a Renaissance Aristotelian who studied law and theology. He became a monk and traveled all over Europe. After abjuring, he taught and practiced medicine. He was burned at the stake by the Inquisition. His major work is four volumes of dialogues, De admirandis naturae reginae deaeque mortalium arcanis (‘On the Secrets of Nature, Queen and Goddess of Mortal Beings,’ 1616). He was influenced by Averroes and Pietro Pomponazzi, whom he regarded as his teacher.
Vanini rejects revealed religion and claims that God is immanent in nature. The world is ruled by a necessary natural order and is eternal. Like Averroes, he denies the immortality and the immateriality of the human soul. Like Pomponazzi, he denies the existence of miracles and claims that all apparently extraordinary phenomena can be shown to have natural causes and to be predetermined. Despite the absence of any original contribution, from the second half of the seventeenth century Vanini was popular as a symbol of free and atheist thought. P.Gar.