Lucilio Vanini was born in 1585 in Taurisano, Terra d'Otranto, Italy. His father was Giovan Battista Vanini, a businessman from Tresana in Tuscany, while his mother was the daughter of a man named Lopez de Noguera, a customs contractor of the Spanish royal family's lands in Bari, Terra d'Otranto, Capitanata, and Basilicata. A document dated August 1612, discovered in the Vatican Secret Archives, describes Vanini as of Apulia, which is consistent with the native land he mentions in his own works.