Page:Catholic Encyclopedia, volume 14.djvu/535

 TELESIO

477

TELL EL-AMARNA

elli (1567), secretary of the Council of Trent, of which he wTOte the acts and a diary; Vinocnzo Lupoli (1792), a distinpuishcd jurisconsult. The diocese contains 24 parishes with 60,600 inhabitants, 40 secular and 10 regular priests, 2 convents of men and 5 nunneries, and a school for young girls.

Cappklletti, Le rhiese d'llnlia, XIX; Pacelu, Memorie sto- richfdi Tflfse (1775).

U. Benigni.

Telesio, Bernardino, Italian humanist and phil- osopher, b. of a noble family at Cosenza, near Naples, 1508; d. there, 1588. He studied successively at Milan, Rome, and Padua. In Southern Italy the re- volt apriinst .\ri.=ttolr,ini>m had already begun. At

r idua Telesio first

( I me to be recognized 1 1 1 uler of the anti- \i I I I leans. After ! I lin^ several years in K me, where he en- 1 \ed the patronage of P lul IV, Telesio re- turned to Naples, and 1 iter founded an acad- luv at Cosenza. His prmcipal work is enti- tled "De rerum nitura ju.xta propria prmupia", the first p irt of which was pub- h--hed m Rome, 1565, md the second in N iplfs 1587. He was 1 radical opponent both of the method and of the content of Aristotelean philoso-

Frjm Frcher's Theatr Vir- ^^- ' ^^ considered

orumaaromm. Nuremberg' KSs's! that the scholastic fol- lowers of Aristotle re- lied too much on reason and too little on the senses. The "rea.soners", he beheved, were over-confident of their power to reach the secrets of nature by syllogistic methods. With conscious humility, therefore, he determined .to trust to his senses alone, and, beginning "in the dust", he strove to reach the highest pinnacle of natural truth. This exclusion of reason from the ta.sk and the conse- quent exaltation of sense above every other faculty of the mind resulted naturally in the sensistic doctrine that all knowledge is feeling (sensus) or sensation, and in the materialistic doctrine that the soul itself is material. In the content of his philosophy he op- po.sed the Aristotehan doctrine of matter and form, substituting for it the doctrine (hat everything is composed of matter and force, the two principal forces being heat and cold. Heat is centralized in the sun, and cold in the earth. As the Platoni.st Patrizzi pointed out, there is an inherent contradiction in Telesio's system. For, if we are to rely on the .senses and not on reason, since the senses do not reveal the existence of matter except a.s modified by forces, the central doctrinal principle is in contradiction with the most important methodological tenet. This puint was brought out in the discussions between the advo- cates of Aristotle and the followers of Telesio in the sixteenth century. Among the most .ardent disciples of Telesio were Campanclla and Giordano Bruno.

FiOREKTlNO, Bfrnardino Telesio, Studi storici, etc. (2 vols., Fliirence. 1872); Huffdino, lli«l. of Mod. Phil., tr. Meyf.r. I (London, 1900), 92 nqq.; Wi.vdelband, Hint, of Phil, tr. Tl'FTS (Nfw York, 1901), 3.06 sqq.

WiLUAM Turner.

Telesphonis, Saint, Pope (about 125-136). He was the seveni h Roman bishop in succession from the Apostles, and, according to the testimony of .St. Ire- nieus (Adv. hxreses, III, iii, 3), suffered a glorious

martyrdom. Eusebius (Hist, eccl., IV, vii, xiv) places the beginning of his pontificate in the twelfth year of Hadrian's reign (128-129), his death in the "first year of the reign of Antoninus Pius (138-139). These statements, however, should be compared with Light- foot, "The Apostohe Fathers", I (London, 1899), 201 sq., section on "Early Roman Successions", and Har- nack, "Geschichte der altchristl. Literatur", pt. II, "Die Chronologic", I (Leipzig, 1879), 70 sq. In the fragment of the letter of Irena>U8 of Lyons to Pope Victor concerning the celebration of Easter (Euseb., "Hist, eccl.," V,x.\iv),Telesphorusismentionedasone of the Roman bishops who always celebratecl Easter on Sunday, without, however, abandoning church fel- lowship with those communities that did not follow this custom. None of the statements in the "Liber pontificalis" and other authorities of a later date as to liturgical and other decisions of this pope are genuine. In the Roman Martyrology his feast is given under 5 January; the Greek Church celebrates it on 22 February.

DncHESNE, LihtT pontificalis, I (Paris, 1886), 129 sq.; Jafp6, Regesta rom. pont., I (2nd ed.), 6; Langen, Geschichte der rSm- ischen Kirche, I (Bonn, 1881), 103-104.

J. P. KiRSCH.

Telesphorus of Cosenza (Theophorus, Theo- LOPHORu.s), a name assumed by one of the pseudo- prophets during the time of the Great Scliism. He gave out that he was born at Cosenza and lived as a hermit near the site of the ancient Thebes. His book of predictions on the schism was the most popular of the numerous prophetic treatises that were spread broadcast by the many self-constituted prtiphets of that period. More than twenty manu- scripts of it are still extant, and it first appeared in print with various interpolations: "Liber de magnis tribulationibus in proximo futuris, etc." (Venice, 1516). The work was originally compiled about 1386 from the writings of Joachim of Flora, John of Roquetaillande, the "Cyrillic Prophecy", and other apocalyptic treatises whose authors are mentioned in the dedicatory preface addressed to Antoniotto Adorno, the Doge of Venice. Its chief prophecies are: the schism will end in 1393 at Perugia, where the antipope and his followers will be punished; a short period of peace will follow, whereupon the Emperor Frederick III with three antipopes will inaugurate a cruel persecution of the clergy, who will be deprived of all their temporalities; King Charles of France will be imprisoned, but miraculously liberated; the "Angelic Pastor" will ascend the papal throne; under his pontificate the clergy wiU voluntarily renounce their temporal possessions and a general council will legislate that the income of the clergy is limited to what is necessary for a decent Hvelihood; the "An- gelic Pastor" will take from the German electors the right to elect the emperor, he will crown the French King Charles emperor, and restore the Church to its original poverty and service of (5od; finally, the pope and the emperor will undertake a crusade, regain tlie Holy Land, and bring the Jews, Greeks, and infidels back to Christ. A refutation of these prophecies, written by the German theologian Henry of Langenstein, is printed in Pez, "Thes;i,urus Anec- dotorum Noviss," I. II (Augsburg, 1721-9), .507-64.

Hampers, Kaintrprophetien u. Kaisersngrn (Munich, 1896). 23.0 sq.; Pastor, Gesch. der Pdpsle., tr. A.vtrobus, I (London. 1891). 1.02-.5.

Michael Ott.

Tell el-Amama Tablets, The, are a collection of some 3.'J0 clay tablets found in 1887 amid the ruins of the ancient Egyptian city of Akhetaton (modern Tell el-.'\marna) about midway between Memphis and Thebes. 200 of them are now in Berlin, 82 in the Briti.sh Museum, .50 in Cairo, 22 in Oxford; only a few .are private property. They are WTitten in the B.abylonian language and cuneiform characters and