As I have pointed out is a couple of earlier posts the work carried out by mathematical practitioners in England in the last third of the sixteenth century and on into the seventeenth into navigation was an integral part of the deep sea voyages that mariners were beginning to undertake in what is usually referred to as the age of discovery or as I prefer to call it the age of exploitation. To quote myself:
Finding new lands, until then comparatively unknown to Europeans, was only a secondary aim of these voyages, their primary aim was commerce. The expeditions were searching for commodities with which they could make a fortune for themselves and their investors. Metal ores–gold, silver, copper–fine materials such as silk, and above all spices. The expeditions of Vasco da Gama (c. 1460s–1524), Christopher Colombus (1541–1506), and Magellan (1480–1521) were all about breaking the Arabic hold on the overland spice trade between Asia and Europe. The later multiple searches for a North-East or North-West passage were about finding a shorter, more direct trade route between Europe and Asia.
Important on the political level were those who proposed and supported the setting up of a British Empire to rival those of Spain and Portugal. The earliest was John Dee (1527–c. 1608), in his 1570 manuscript Brytannicae reipublicae synopsis, pushing the idea of English colonies particularly in North America in his General and Rare Memorials pertayning to the Perfect Arte of Navigation (1576). He was often derided for his intense interest in the occult. However, he was actually a leading and highly influential mathematical practitioner and navigational advisor to several of the early attempts to find both the North-East Passage and the North-West passage. As a promotor of empire, more influential that Dee was the geographer Richard Hakluyt (1552?–1616) with his Divers Voyages Touching the Discoverie of America and the Ilands Adjacent unto the Same, Made First of all by our Englishmen and Afterwards by the Frenchmen and BritonsWith Two Mappes Annexed Hereunto published in London by Thomas Woodcocke in 1562. This was followed by his never published manuscript A Particuler Discourse Concerninge the Greate Necessitie and Manifolde Commodyties That Are Like to Growe to This Realme of Englande by the Westerne Discoueries Lately Attempted, Written in the Yere 1584, which was dedicated to Queen Elizabeth. Hakluyt continued to collect accounts of voyages of discovery, oft interviewing the mariners personally, and in 1589 he published in London the first edition of his monumental The principall navigations, voiages, and discoveries of the English nations : made by sea or over land to the most remote and farthest distant quarters of the earth at any time within the compasse of these 1500 years : divided into three several parts according to the positions of the regions whereunto they were directed; the first containing the personall travels of the English unto Indæa, Syria, Arabia … the second, comprehending the worthy discoveries of the English towards the north and northeast by sea, as of Lapland … the third and last, including the English valiant attempts in searching almost all the corners of the vaste and new world of America … whereunto is added the last most renowned English navigation round about the whole globe of the earth. This was followed by two further volumes were published in 1599 and 1600, all three volumes running to over 1,760,000 words in three folio volumes and about two thousand pages. The whole edifice is now regarded as one of the great works of English literature.
Hakluyt continued to collect accounts of voyages from 1600 until his death in 1616 but never produced a fourth volume of his masterpiece containing these new narratives, this task was taken up by the Anglican cleric Samuel Purchas (bap. 1577–1726).
by Henry Richard Cook stipple engraving, 1820 Source: National Portrait Gallery
Samuel Purchas was the sixth son of George Purchas a cloth trader in the village of Thaxted in North-West Essex and was baptised in 1577. He attended St John’s College Cambridge, which is just thirty miles from his birth place, graduating BA in 1597 and MA in 1600. He was ordained a Deacon in 1598 and a Priest in 1601. In 1604, James I & VI presented him to the vicarage of St. Laurence and All Saints, in Eastwood in South-East Essex.
St. Laurence and All Saints Chuch Eastwood
Eastwood is two miles from Leigh on Sea. Both Eastwood and Leigh are today parts of the city of Southend-on-Sea but in the early seventeenth century Leigh was a thriving port on the Thames estuary and was a meeting place for mariners. Here he began collecting accounts of voyages, travels and discovery.
In 1613 , Purchas published his first book, Purchas His Pilgrimage: or Relations of the World and the Religions observed in all Ages and Places discovered, from the Creation unto this Present. A folio volume with nine hundred pages, it aimed to catalogue the world’s religions and geographies from biblical creation to contemporary discoveries, reflecting Purchas’s clerical perspective on divine providence amid human exploration.
First Edition 1613
It was instantly popular and there were expanded second and third editions in 1614 and 1617.
Second Edition 1614
A fourth edition was published inn 1626 containing additional maps, treatises and expansions, which exceeded nineteen hundred pages.
Fourth Edition 1626Taken from the fourth edition the earliest known map of China based on Chinese sources Purchas records that he originally based his map on a Chinese one, captured by Captain Saris, an English merchant in the port of Bantam (in modern Indonesia). Interesting to note the portrait of Matteo Ricci on the left hand side
In 1614, he was appointed chaplain to Archbishop George Abbot (1562-1633), the Archbishop of Canterbury, and rector of St. Martin, Ludgate in the City of London. Meanwhile he had made the acquaintance of Richard Hukluyt.
Around 1610, Purchas scraped an acquaintance with an aging and ailing Hakluyt, who at the time was collecting narratives for a further edition of the Principal Navigations. The contacts and interactions between Hakluyt and Purchas are unclear, but Purchas talks in his introduction to the Pilgrimes [his third book, 1625] about being promised the legacy of Hakluyt’s unpublished papers upon the latter’s death. The apparent agreement was never put into writing and Purchas ended up having to purchase Hakluyt’s literary remains for an unspecified yet substantial sum in 1617.[1]
In 1619, Purchas published His second book, Purchas his Pilgrim or Microcosmus, or the Historie of Man. Relating the Wonders of his Generation, Vanities in his Degeneration, Necessities of his Regenerations, a meditation on the history of humanity, framed, like his first book, from a biblical perspective.
In 1625, Purchas published his most ambitious book the monumental Hakluytus Posthumus, or Purchas his Pilgrimes, Contayning a History of the World, in Sea Voyages, & Land Travels, by Englishmen and Others.
In Purchas his Pilgrimes, he tells us that he has never been “200 miles from Thaxted in Essex where I was borne.”
A four volume compendium of travel narratives, most of them concerning the journeys of English travellers in the Elizabethan and Jacobean periods. This is, as the title tells us, the utilisation of the unpublished papers he purchased following Hakluyt’s death:
Volume I explores ancient kings, beginning with Solomon, and records stories of circumnavigation around the African coast to the East Indies, China, and Japan.
Volume II is dedicated to Africa, Palestine, Persia, and Arabia.
Volume III provides history of the North-East and North-West passages and summaries of travels to Tartary, Russia, and China.
Volume IV deals with America and the West Indies.
The fourth edition of the Pilgrimage (published in 1626) is usually catalogued as the fifth volume of the Pilgrimes, but the two works are essentially distinct. Purchas himself said of the two volumes:
These brethren, holding much resemblance in name, nature and feature, yet differ in both the object and the subject. This [i.e. the Pilgrimage] being mine own in matter, though borrowed, and in form of words and method; whereas my Pilgrimes are the authors themselves. acting their own parts in their own words, only furnished by me with such necessities as that stage further required, and ordered according to my rules. (Wikipedia)
Purchas has been criticised for his sloppy and at time biased editing but many of the narratives that he and Hakluyt collected are the only accounts we have of important aspects of exploration during this period.
The emphasis in Purchas’ work on the religious and moral aspects of his narrative, contrasts strongly with Hakluyt’s goal of inspiring and interesting the nation in pursuing the project of exploration.
Purchas continued to be read down into the nineteenth century as one interesting anecdote from the history of English literature testifies. Kubla Kahn is one the romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s most well know and loved poems, with its much quoted first stanza:
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure-dome decree:
Where Alph, the sacred river, ran
Through caverns measureless to man
Down to a sunless sea.
So twice five miles of fertile ground
With walls and towers were girdled round;
And there were gardens bright with sinuous rills,
Where blossomed many an incense-bearing tree;
And here were forests ancient as the hills,
Enfolding sunny spots of greenery.
Coleridge, himself tells to story of how he came to write the poem. Whilst reading he fell asleep under the influence of opium and dreamt to whole poem. Upon waking he immediately began to write it down but after a while he was disturbed by a visitor and had to take a break. Afterwards he could no longer remember the rest of the poem from his dream and so Kubla Kahn remained unfinished. The book he was reading when he fell asleep was Purchas His Pilgrimage.
The original passage from Purchas that inspired the drugged out poet was:
In Xamdu did Cubla Can build a stately Palace, encompassing sixteene miles of plaine ground with a wall, wherein are fertile Meddowes, pleasant Springs, delightful Streames, and all sorts of beasts of chase and game, and in the middest thereof a sumptuous house of pleasure.[2]
In his own account Coleridge names, the title of the false book by Purchas:
In the summer of the year 1797, the Author, then in ill health, had retired to a lonely farm-house between Porlock and Linton, on the Exmoor confines of Somerset and Devonshire. In consequence of a slight indisposition, an anodyne had been prescribed, from the effects of which he fell asleep in his chair at the moment that he was reading the following sentence, or words of the same substance, in ‘Purchas’s Pilgrimage’: ‘Here the Khan Kubla commanded a palace to be built, and a stately garden thereunto. And thus ten miles of fertile ground were inclosed with a wall.’
Some might find Coleridge’s reading matter strange for a poet but he was also a philosopher and deeply interested in the sciences. He was instrumental in introducing the continental Naturephilosophie of Friedrich Schelling (1775–1854) into England and was a passionate student of chemistry, optics, medicine and animal magnetism. It was also Coleridge (1772–1834) at the 1833 meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science who strongly objected to men of science using the term philosopher to describe themselves leading to Whilliam Whewell (1784–1866) coining the term scientist in imitation of the term artist.
[1] J. P. Helfers, The Explorer of the Pilgrim? Modern Critical Opinion and the Editorial Methods of Richard Hakluyt and Samuel Purchas, Studies in Philology, Vol. 94. No. 2 (Spring, 1997) pp160–186, p. 164
[2]Purchas his Pilgrimage: Lond. fol. 1626, Bk. IV, chap. xiii, p. 418.
Johannes Kepler (1571–1630) was born into what had once been a prominent family in the Free Imperial City of Weil der Stadt, his grandfather Sebald had been mayor of the city. By the time he was born the family fortune had declined, his father, who appears to have been something of a wastrel, had become a mercenary and disappeared out of his life when he was just five years old. His mother Katherina Guldenmann (1547–1622) was the daughter of an innkeeper.
Johannes Kepler portrait by Hans von Aachen Source: Wikimedia Commons
As a child, Kepler displayed an obvious high level of intelligence, was already interested in astronomy and apparently had an afinity for mathematics. After a solid school education, he won a stipend to study at the Lutheran university of Tübingen in a programme set up to educate young men as potential school teachers and Lutheran pastors to replace the Catholic teachers and pastors lost when Württemberg became Lutheran. The student were assigned to posts as teacher or pastor as these became vacant. Kepler was deeply religious and very much desired to become a pastor in order to serve his God. However, fate had a different future in store for him.
As a student his abilities in mathematics and astronomy had come to the fore under the guiding influence of the professor of mathematics Michael Mästlin (1550–1631).
Source: Wikimedia Commons
Under Mästlin’s tuition, Kepler had already become a Copernican, whilst still a student. Given his predilection for the mathematical disciplines, it came as no surprise that when Georgius Stadius (1550–1593), district mathematicus and professor for mathematics at the Protestant Stiftsschule (sort of university) in Graz died, and the authorities enquired in Tübingen about a replacement, Kepler was recommended for the position. Kepler still desiring to become a pastor was not in anyway happy about the suggested position. He had the right to decline but had he done so he would have been required to pay back his stipend, which he was in no position to do. So, reluctantly he packed his bags and set off to Graz to become a mathematics teacher and district mathematicus.
Graz von Süden um 1645, im Vordergrund drei der neuen Bastionen, Stich von Wenzel HollerSource
Although still bitterly disappoint by his lot, Kepler was a diligent teacher and in July 1595, whilst explaining the geometrical pattern created in the heavens by the cyclical nature of great conjunctions, those between Jupiter and Saturn, during an astronomy lesson he had an epiphany.
Kepler’s God was a rational god and therefore his creation must be logical even mathematical. Kepler had long pondered the question as to why there were exactly six planets, remember Kepler was a Copernican, the Ptolemaic cosmos had seven, and viewing the geometrical design he had just drawn for his students he became convinced that the answer must be geometrical.
Now on the trail, the young school teacher tried out numerous two dimensional geometrical constructions in order to find the geometrical frame in which he was certain that his rational god had constructed the heavens. However, he failed to find the solution that he was searching for. Then he decided that as the celestial sphere was three dimensional, then so must be the construction he was looking for. Finally, he hit pay dirt! The spheres of the six planets were separated by the five regular Platonic solids; everything was clear. There can only be five regular three dimensional solids therefore there can only be six planets. Kepler’s god was, in his opinion, not just a geometer but was geometry incarnate.
Kepler needed to reveal his discovery to the world, so he set out to write the book now mostly known simply as the Mysterium Cosmographicum.
Title page of the Mysterium Cosmographicum Source: Wikimedia Commons
The book not only contained his, in his opinion awe inspiring, discovery but also his efforts to determine more mathematical elements of the cosmos. Oft, he was simply out of his depth with the astronomy and mathematics required to complete his endeavours, so he turned to his teacher, Mästlin, for assistance, which was freely given. Most importantly, during that correspondence with Mästlin Kepler declared than although he had, for many years, yearned to serve as a theologian, now he could serve his god by revealing the secrets of his creation, which, as is well known, he continued to do until his death in 1630.
Kepler was still formally in the service of the university in Tübingen, so he required their permission to get his book published. He sent his finished manuscript to Mästlin, who presented it to the university authorities. Although, it was an open endorsement of Copernicus’ heliocentric system, it was in fact the first such in book form since the publication of De revolutionibus, and the university was staunchly geocentric, they did not object to it on scientific grounds. However, Kepler had included a detailed refutation of the scriptural arguments against heliocentricity and this the university theologians insisted should be removed if it was to be published. Kepler and Mästlin bowed to the inevitable and removed to offending sections, although Kepler would retain them and publish them verbatim thirteen years later in his Astronomia Nova. Mästlin saw the book through the press, adding Rheticus’ Naratio Prima, as an appendix and Kepler’s first book appeared in print in 1596.
Kepler was then totally unknown in the world of astronomy, so he sent out copies of his book to the leading astronomers of Europe including Tycho Brahe (1546–1601), Reimers Ursus (1551–1600) then Imperial Mathematicus in Prague, and Georg Limnaeus (1554–1611) professor for astronomy in Jena, who founded the first observatory in the city and who strongly supported the young colleague. Famously two copies of the book landed almost by accident in the hands of Galileo, then just as unknown as Kepler, establishing for the first time contact between the two men.
In the preface to the book Kepler tells the story of his discovery in his own words:
When I was studying under the distinguished Michael Maestlin at Tübingen six years ago, seeing the many inconveniences of the commonly accepted theory of the universe, I became so delighted with Copernicus, whom Maestlin often mentioned in his lectures, that I often defended his opinions in the students’ debates about physics. I even wrote a painstaking disputation about the first motion, maintaining that it happens because of the rotation of the earth. I have by degrees—partly out of hearing Maestlin, partly by myself—collected all the advantages that Copernicus has over Ptolemy. At last, in the year 1595 in Graz when I had an intermission in my lectures, I pondered on this subject with the whole energy of my mind. And there were three things above all for which I sought the causes as to why it was this way and not another—the number, the dimensions, and the motions of the orbs.
[…]
Almost the whole summer was lost with this agonizing labour. At last, on a quite trifling occasion, I came near the truth. I believe Divine Providence intervened so that by chance I found what I could never obtain by my own efforts. I believe this all the more because I have constantly prayed to God that I might succeed if what Copernicus had said was true. Thus, it happened 19 July 1595, as I was showing in my class how the great conjunctions [of Saturn and Jupiter] occur successively eight zodiacal signs later, and how they gradually pass from one trine to another, that I inscribed within a circle many triangles, or quasi-triangles such that the end of one was the beginning of the next. In this manner a smaller circle was outlined by the points where the line of the triangles crossed each other.
Illustration from Johannes Kepler, Mysterium Cosmographicum (Tübingen: Georg Gruppenbach, 1596), showing how successive conjunctions of Jupiter and Saturn move through constellations of the zodiac, represented by symbols in the outer circle. ETH-Bibliothek Zürich, RAR 1367: 1
[…]
And then again it struck me: why have plane figures among three-dimensional orbits? Behold, reader, the invention and whole substance of this little book! In memory of the event, I am writing down for you the sentence in the words from that moment of conception: The earth’s orbit is the measure of all things; circumscribe around it a dodecahedron, and the circle containing this will be Mars; circumscribe around Mars a tetrahedron, and the circle containing this will be Jupiter; circumscribe around Jupiter a cube, and the circle containing this will be Saturn. Now inscribe within the earth an icosahedron, and the circle contained in it will be Venus; inscribe within Venus an octahedron, and the circle contained in it will be Mercury. You now have the reason for the number of planets.
The most famous image from Johannes Kepler, Mysterium Cosmographicum (Tübingen: Georg Gruppenbach, 1596), representing the heavens as a series of celestial spheres with Platonic solids filling the spaces between them. ETH-Bibliothek Zürich, RAR 1367: 1
[…]
This was the occasion and success of my labours. And how intense was my pleasure from this discovery can never be expressed in words. I no longer regretted the time wasted. Day and night I was consumed by the computing, to see whether this idea would agree with the Copernican orbits, or if my joy would be carried away by the wind. Within a few days everything worked, and I watched as one body after another fit precisely into its place among the planets.[1]
Although, we now regard Kepler’s first book as having very little scientific value, it set him on the path to becoming the man most responsible for discovering or creating the astronomy that we still use today. When Kepler was forced to leave Graz during the counter reformation, after everything else failed, he applied for a position working with Tycho Brahe, now ensconced in Prague as Imperial Mathematicus. Although driven by his unemployment there was a scientific reason for Kepler’s desire to go to Prague. Although his Platonic solids model of the cosmos was a surprisingly good fit, it wasn’t perfect, a fact that Kepler attributed to the available data. Tycho had the best astronomical data available and Kepler thought if he had access to it then he could perfect his model.
Tycho was not particularly impressed with Kepler’s heliocentric model but he did however recognise his obvious abilities and also required new assistants, after some initial difficulties between the two men, Kepler got his desired position in Prague. Unfortunately, Kepler had written an obsequious letter to Reimers Ursus when he sent him his book and which Ursus then published in one of his own books attacking Tycho, Ursus was Tycho’s sworn enemy, and as penance for the letter, Tycho began his employment by forcing him to write A Defence of Tycho against Ursus in their plagiarism dispute. The work was never finished and was first published in the nineteenth century. The historian of science, Nicholas Jardine, called the work the birth of history and philosophy of science.
Initially Tycho would not grant Kepler free access to his observational data but set him to determining the orbit of the planet Mars. The rest is, as they say, history. Kepler set of on his six year war with Mars and in the process demolished the deferents and epicycles of Ptolemaeus and Copernicus and discovered the first two of his planetary laws of motion:
The orbit of a planet is an ellipse with the Sun at one of the two foci.
A line segment joining a planet and the Sun sweeps out equal areas during equal intervals of time.
The second law actually being discovered first. They were subsequently published in his Astronomia Nova in 1609.
Title page of Astronomia Nova Source Wikimedia Commons
In the Mysterium Cosmographicum Kepler had been trying to find some form of rational ratio between the distances of the individual planets from the sun.
Illustration of the heliocentric cosmos from Johannes Kepler, Mysterium Cosmographicum (Tübingen: Georg Gruppenbach, 1596), emphasizing the uneven gaps between different celestial spheres. ETH-Bibliothek Zürich, RAR 1367: 1
He also tried to find the relationship between the distance of a planet from the sun and its orbital period. He had failed across the board but was still convinced that he could somehow fulfil these ambitions if only he had the right data. His laws of planetary motion went a long way to fulfilling these ambitions, especially his third law.
The square of the orbital period of a planet is directly proportional to the cube of the semi-major axis of its orbit: i.e. for two planets with P = orbital period and R = semi-major axis P12/P22=R13/R23
His third law appeared in print in his opus magnum, Harmonices Mundi, which was first published in 1619, twenty-three after his Mysterium Cosmographicum. There is, however, a very narrow connection between the two books.
Title page of Harmonices Mundi Source: Wikipedia Commons
The full title of the Mysterium Cosmographicum is Prodromus dissertationum cosmographicarum, continens mysterium cosmographicum, de admirabili proportione orbium coelestium, de que causis coelorum numeri, magnitudinis, motuumque periodicorum genuinis & proprijs, demonstratum, per quinque regularia corpora geometrica (Forerunner of the Cosmological Essays, Which Contains the Secret of the Universe; on the Marvelous Proportion of the Celestial Spheres, and on the True and Particular Causes of the Number, Magnitude, and Periodic Motions of the Heavens; Established by Means of the Five Regular Geometric Solids).
On 26 March 1598 in a letter to Herwart von Hohenburg the Bavarian chancellor, Kepler explained that the Mysterium Cosmographicum or Prodromus (forerunner) would serve as the introduction to a series of cosmographical treatises dealing more fully with the subjects of Aristotle’s De caelo and De generatione. […] in his notes for the second edition of the Mysterium Cosmographicum, Kepler remarked that he regarded the Harmonices mundi as “the authentic and appropriate successor” of his Prodromus.
[…]
Then on 14 December 1599 he communicated to Herwart his intention to write a cosmographic dissertation, evidently based on the quadrivium, with the title De harmonice mundi, which would consist of five parts:
A geometrical part on the constructible figures.
An arithmetical part on the solid relations.
A musical part on the origins of harmonies.
An astrological part on the origins of the aspects.
An astronomical part on the origins of the periodic motions of the planets.[2]
The Harmonices mundi when it was finally finished, life on a major scale having got in the way over the years, basically retained this scheme but the original first part was split into two and the original second part was placed at the beginning of the third part.
In the Mysterium Cosmographicum, Chapter 12, Kepler correlated the Platonic solids with the musical harmonies, as Plato had done, and also correlated musical harmonies and astrological aspects, but there is no suggestion of a “harmony of the spheres.”[3]
In the popular presentations of Kepler’s cosmology and astronomy there is a tendency, after having mentioned it briefly, to forget the Mysterium Cosmographicum, as if Kepler had abandoned it as juvenilia. However, as already noted above, in 1621 Kepler published an expanded second edition of Mysterium, half as long again as the first, detailing in footnotes the corrections and improvements he had achieved in the 25 years since its first publication.
[2] The Harmony of the World by Johannes Kepler, Translated into English with an Introduction and Notes by E. J. Aiton, A. M. Duncan, J. V. Field, Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society Held at Philadelphia for Promoting Useful Knowledge, Volume 209, 1997. Introduction p. XVI
In this series we have been very much concerned with the fact that in all areas of practical mathematics–navigation, cartography, surveying, etc–England lagged well behind continental Europe and was very much playing catch up, during the second half of the sixteenth century. This also applied when it came to mathematical instrument makers. Nürnberg had become a major centre for the production of scientific instruments of all sorts by the start of the sixteenth century with whole families and dynasties producing high class instruments that were sold all over Europe and other cities, such as Louvain and Prague, whilst not reaching Nürnberg’s production rates, had also become centres for the manufacture and distribution of a range of instruments. As I noted in an earlier episode:
When John Dee had returned from Louvain in 1547, he had brought with him besides ‘sea-compasses of divers sortes,’ what were comparative novelties in England, ‘rare and exquisitely made instruments Mathematical,’ ‘two great globes of Gerardus Mercator’s making,’ and astronomical instruments. These he had given to Trinity College, Cambridge, for ‘the use of the Fellows and Scholars.[1]
London and England remained devoid of instrument makers and initially had to rely on the services of European immigrants rather than homegrown talents.
Nicolas Kratzer Portrait by Hans Holbein the younger
Around the time that Kratzer presumably died England acquired a man, who would go on to become probably London’s first commercial instrument maker, the Netherlander, Thomas Gemini (c.1510–1562).
Thomas Gemini, whose birth name was Lambrit, signed his first published work, of which more in a minute, ‘Thomas Geminus, Lysiensis, whereby Lysiensis signifies ‘Leighe nighe unto Marke Wesett within the bishopryke of Leuke in the partes of bevonde the Sea’ according to his will. This is probably Lexhe or Lixhe, a village some 2 miles west of Vise and about 8 miles north of LiègeNearby are Vise’-le-Mach’e and Val-St Lambert from which Lambrit might derive. Thomas bequeathed his property to a brother, Jasper Lambrit. The name Geminus may indicate that Thomas and Jasper were twins. Unfortunately, as is too often the case with relatively minor figure in the Renaissance, that is basically all we know about Thomas Gemini, the man.[2]
Gemini was a printer, engraver and instrument maker, who moved to London around 1540. His first public appearance was as the author/ engraver of a compendium of anatomy entitled Cornpendiosa totius anatomie Delineatio published in London in 1545 by John Herford; at this time Gemini was not yet set up as a printer/publisher.
Thomas Geminus frontispiece to Cornpendiosa totius anatomie Delineatio 1545
This was a plagiarism of the work of Andreas Vesalius. It consisted of a series of copper plate engravings of the woodcuts that Jan van Calcar (c. 1499–1546) had designed for Vesalius, mostly taken from De Humani Corporis Fabrica Libri Septem (On the Fabricof the Human Body in Seven Books) and some from the abridged version De Humani Corporis Fabrica Librorum Epitome (Abridgement of the On the fabric of the human body) both published only two years before by Johannes Oporinus (1507–1568) in Basel. Gemini’s engravings, which were probably the first copper plate engravings published in England, were of excellent quality. However, whereas Jan van Calcar had presented his anatomical woodcuts in landscape setting, Gemini had striped them down to the basics.
Gemini included a Latin text to his engravings, also plagiarised from Vesalius’ Epitome and his descriptions of the illustrations in De fabrica. It seems that the book was intended to accompany the anatomical lectures held at the recently (1540) organised United Company of Barber-Surgeons of London.
The Latin text, however, proved too difficult for the trainee barber-surgeons and a second edition was published in 1553, this time with an English text and with the illustration description translated into English. This English Treatyse and the translations were the work of Nicholas Udall (1505–1556), dramatist and onetime headmaster of Eton College. The text was almost the same as that employed by the English physician, surgeon and anatomist, Thomas Vicary (c.1490–1561), first master of the Company of Barber-Surgeons in his Anatomie of Mans Bodie (1548); , which was a fourteenth-century compilation mostly representative of the surgical anatomy of Henri de Mondeville (c. 1260–1320). Udall also added some sections from Ludovicus Vassaeus’ Galenic In anatomen corporis humani tabula quatuor (1540) and a few fragments from Guy de Chauliac (c. 1290–c. 1370).
This produced a paradoxical volume with a largely medieval text the contents of which were contradicted by Vesalius’ illustrations. Despite its now relative uselessness, another English edition, with some editorial assistance from the alchemist and translator, Richard Eden (c. 1520–1576), was published in 1559, probably just for the engravings. This volume carried the imprint, “Imprinted at London within the blacke fryars: by Thomas Gemini. Anno salutis. 1559” and was the first edition of the book that Gemini printed himself. The 1553 edition and the 1559 edition were dedicated respectively to Edward IV and Elizabeth I:
Thomas Geminus frontispiece to Cornpendiosa totius anatomie Delineatio 1559 Very poor portrait intended to be Elizabeth was probably meant to be a portrait of Mary who died in the previous year
“…lyvinge and beeinge here in your realme of England under your graces protection. […] “…for as muche as I am not myselfe so perfete and experte in the Englsysshe toonge that I dare warrant or trust myne owne douinges. I have used the studious paynes, first of Nicolas Udall and certen other learned men, and now lastly of master Richard Eden. (1559)[3]
Although the cobbled-together-plagiarised English text was largely useless, Gemini’s plagiarised engravings proved very popular and were heavily plagiarised by others in turn for Raynold’s Byrth of Mankynde (London, 1545, and certain succeeding editions), William Bullein’s Government of Health (London, 1558, 1559), Vicary’s Profitable Treatise of the Anatomie of Mans Body (London, 1577), and Banester’s Historie of Man Sucked From the Sappe of the Most Approved Anathomistes (London, 1579). In 1560 or shortly thereafter Geminus’ plates were acquired by the Parisian printer Andtré Wechsel and, with the editorial assistance of Jacques Grévin, were reproduced with Latin and French texts (1564, 1565, 1569) borrowed from Geminus’ first edition of 1545. In turn these Parisian editions led to still others in France, Germany and the Netherlands as late as the mid-seventeenth century.[4]
Gemini had originally presented a set of the engravings to Henry VIII in 1544 and he urged Gemini to publish them as a book. From 1546 onwards Gemini received a £10 annuity during the king’s pleasure and following Henry’s death in 1547 he received a salary from Edward VI.
In 1555, Gemini printed two maps to celebrate the recent marriage of Mary Tudor and Philip II of Spain Britanniae Insulae Nova Descriptio and Nova Descriptio Hispaniae; these were the first copperplate maps printed in England.
The Geminus maps reflected the changing contours of diplomatic, economic, and political exchanges between England and Spain. They were part of the process by which Philip and Mary asserted the political claims of their co-monarchy and visually embodied their political authority over their own and each other’s kingdoms. Such large, multi-sheet, copperplate images – the map of the British Isles on two sheets measured 535 x 745mm, exceeded by that of Spain on four sheets at 724 x 895mm – were unknown in England before these examples. They required large, expensive printing presses to produce them and, as a result, they were normally destined for display in royal or noble palaces. Geminus almost certainly enjoyed some form of subsidy, if not direct royal patronage, in the context of their production.[5]
Gemini was a citizen of the Habsburg Netherlands, which was part of Philip’s empire. Philip was profoundly interested in cartography and sponsored numerous geographical projects.
The map of the British Isles was a reissue of a pre-reformation map by George Lily (died 1559), the son of the grammarian William Lily (c. 1468–1522), first high mast of St Paul’s School in London, papal editor or censor of maps, and chaplain to the English cardinal Reginal Pole (1500–1558), who was Archbishop of Canterbury under Mary from 1556 to 1558. Lily’s map had been published in Rome in 1546. The copperplates were brought to England by Pole. Because Lily’s map was pre-reformation it didn’t included new coastal surveys carried out by order of Henry VIII and was so already out of date when issued.
George Lily Britanniae Insulae Quae Nunc Angliae Et Scotiae Regna Continet Cum Hibernia Adiacente Nova Descriptio Note: West at the top
Geminus’ Hispaniae was only the third, non-Ptolemaic, modern map of the kingdom(s). It included Spain’s North African possessions, as well as other strategic places such as Algiers and the kingdom of Fez. This reflected the predominantly Mediterranean focus of Spain’s foreign policy, which if anything looked to the East rather than the North, and the greatest threat to Habsburg hegemony, the Ottoman empire. The first map of Iberia had appeared in Venice in 1551, created by Fra Vicenzo Palatino de Corzula under the title Spagna con le distantie de li loci and dedicated to Francisco de Navarra, bishop of Badajoz. Hieronymous Cock had copied it in 1553. On the only extant copy of this map the three cartouches remain empty, and above the largest are Charles v ‘s coat of arms, the pillars of Hercules, with his motto “Plus Outlre.” Geminus’s map derived directly from the latter and was copied by Ortelius for his famous Theatrum orbis Terrarum (Antwerp, 1570).[6]
Nova Descriptio Hispaniae 1553 Hieronymus Cock (c.1510-1570)
There is only one single surviving example of each of Gemini’s maps, both of which are in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris
As well as his own Cornpendiosa totius anatomie Delineatio, Gemini also printed books by the mathematical practitioner Leonard Digges (c.1515–c. 1559). It is thought that Digges turned to Gemini to print his books, because following his participation in the so-called “Wyatt’s Rebellion” in 1554 other publishers were wary of publishing the works of an albeit pardoned traitor.
Gemini published Digges’ A Prognostication of Right Good Effect, Fruitfully Augmented in 1555, with a second edition appearing in 1556.
In 1556, Gemini also printed and published Digges’ book for surveyors, ‘landmeters’, joiners, carpenters and masons, A Booke NamedTectonicon.
In the books that he printed and published for Digges, Gemini advertised the fact that he could supply all of the instruments mentioned in the book:
‘Imprented at London in ye Blackfriers by Thomas Gemine, who is ther ready exactly to make all the Instruments apertaining to thes booke.’
Gemini was a well known maker of mathematical instruments who also probably produced surgical instruments. Gemini produced and engraved several astrolabes: one with the arms of the Duke of Northumberland (John Dudley (1504–1553), Sir John Cheke (1514–1557) and Edward VI (1537–1553), dated 1552 (now in the Royal Belgian Observatory, Brussels). Cheke became provost of King’s college Cambridge and was tutor to both Edward VI and also Princess Elizabeth. Two about 1555 (National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, and Museo di Storia delle Scienze, Florence), and another for Queen Elizabeth (Museum of the History of Science, Oxford).
This astrolabe was made for Queen Elizabeth I. It is one of four known by Thomas Gemini, who moved to England from the Low Countries.The rate pattern is typically Flemish, and on the back is engraved an ‘astrolabum catholicum’ of the type designed by Gemma Frisius. On the plate are also engraved later dedications, showing that the astrolabe was given to the University of Oxford for the use of the Savilian Professors, by Nicholas Greaves. This, together with other instruments exhibited in the Museum of the History of Science in Oxford, was acquired by John Greaves, Nicholas’ brother and Savilian Professor of Astronomy, for his scientific journey in Levant in 1637-40. The astrolabe was possibly used for observations made by John Greaves to determine the latitude at Rhodes (Epact: Museum for the History of Science Oxford)This astrolabe, which has no latitude plates, bears various markings relating to its use in navigation. The instrument is engraved with a quadratum nauticum which has the names of the winds in English, Greek and Latin. The rete bears the normal astronomical and stellar markings.The maker was Thomas Gemini, and the instrument is marked with the incomplete date ‘155’. The instrument belonged to the bequest left by Robert Dudley to the Grand Duke of Tuscany Ferdinand II de’ Medici on his death (1649).(Epact: Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza, Firenze)This finely engraved and unusually large quadrant appears to have been made for Edward VI (reigned 1547-53) in 1551.In addition to the King’s name, the instrument carries three sets of initials: ‘T. G.’, ‘J C’ and ‘W B’. ‘T. G.’ on the reverse may refer to the instrument maker Thomas Gemini. ‘J C’ on the front at the curved edge could be John Cheke who fostered the study of mathematics at university and at court and in 1551 became tutor to Prince Edward. His heraldic device appears on an astrolabe made by Thomas Gemini in 1553. Finally, ‘W B’ on the front, close to the table of the initial years of lunar cycles, may be William Buckley, who made a ring dial for princess Elizabeth. The instrument has markings for an equal and an unequal hour quadrant and tables for the determination of Easter on the front and markings for a sinical quadrant on the back. (Epact: British Museum, London) The instrument is a double quadrant, made up of two brass plates between which is a wooden table of the same shape, kept together by pivots. The three plates rotate on top of each other about a single pivot placed at the right angle. By using the markings on the faces of the quadrants it is possible to make trigonometric operations, to measure elevation, to calculate the moveable feasts and to make astrological predictions. The symbol ‘II’, representing the sign Gemini, reveals the author to be Thomas Gemini, a maker of observational and measuring instruments. (Epact: Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza, Firenze)
All of Gemini’s in surviving instruments are in what is known as the Flemish style, which describes the instruments produced in the sixteenth century in Louvain by Gemma Frisius (1508–1555), Gerard Mercator (1512–1594), and Gualterus Arsenius (c. 1530–c. 1580), nephew of Gemma Frisius, and the most prominent member of the Arsenius family of instrument makers. Gemini’s engraved italic script very closely resembled that of Mercator. These facts indicate that Gemini might well have learnt his trade in Louvain, possibly as a student of Mercator. Although, he might have learnt his italic script from Mercator’s Literarum latinarum, quas italicas, cursorias que vocant, scribendarum ratio (How to write the Latin letters which they call italic or cursive)(Antwerp, 1540).
Another strong indication that he had indeed acquired his knowledge in Louvain is that Vesalius’ brother Franciscus is reported to have complained of an English plagiarist who had lived with them once in Louvain.
Gemini helped to establish the trade of instrument making in England in middle the sixteenth century. As well as his own work, it is thought that the first native English instrument maker Humfrey Cole (died 1591), about whom I’ll write in the next post in this series, worked for or with Gemini, setting up on his own following Gemini’s death.
[1] David Waters, The Art of Navigation in England in Elizabethan and Early Stuart Times, Yale University Press, 1958 quoting E. G. R. Taylor, Tudor Geography, ( 1485–1583), Routledge, 1930.
[5] Alexander Samson, Mapping the Marriage: Thomas Geminus’s “Britanniae Insulae Nova Descriptio” and Nova Descriptio Hiapaniae” (1555), Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance et Réforme, Vol. 31, No. 1 (WINTER / HIVER 2008), pp. 95-115, p. 96
In this episode we are going to take another look at a sixteenth century scholar, who had a profound influence on Galileo in many different ways, Guidobaldo dal[1] Monte (1545–1607).
Guidobaldo was born in Pesaro in the Duchy of Urbino, the son of Ranieri the head of a wealthy family. Ranieri was a professional soldier and the author of two books on military architecture. Ranieri was awarded the title of Marchese by the Duke of Urbino, Guidobaldo II della Rovere (1514–1574), who was also a noted soldier and patron of the arts, in particular of the painter Titian (c. 1488–1576). The Dukes of Urbino had a tradition of patronage of the arts and the mathematical sciences. In the fifteenth century, Federico III da Montefeltro (1422–1482), who ruled as duke from 1444 to his death in 1482 was the patron of the artist-mathematician Piero della Francesca (1415–1492) and the artist-engineer Francesco di Giorgio Martini (1439–1501), as well as the painter Giovanni Santi (c. 1435–1494), who studied under Piero della Francesca and was the father of Raphael (1483–1520).
Guidobaldo studied mathematics at the University of Padua in 1564. After university he, like his father became a soldier and served in the conflicts in Hungary between the Habsburg Empire and the Ottoman Empire. In 1588, was appointed visitor general of the fortresses and cities of the grand duke of Tuscany. Following his military service, he retired to the family estates of Montebaroccio, today Mombaroccio, near Urbino, where he dedicated his life to the study of mathematics, mechanics, astronomy, and optics. In period after Padua, dal Monte studied mathematics under Federico Commandino (1509–1575), who played a central role during the Renaissance in recovering the mathematics of Ancient Greece, publishing improved translations of several works by Archimedes as well as the works of Aristarchus of Samos (On the sizes and distances of the Sun and the Moon), Pappus of Alexandria (Mathematical collection), Hero of Alexandria (Pneumatics), Ptolemy of Alexandria (Planisphere and Analemma), Apollonius of Perga (Conics), and The Elements of Euclid. In 1588, dal Monte completed and published the Mathematical Collection of Pappus, which had been left incomplete when Commandino died.
Before turning to dal Monte’s concept of mechanics, the mean reason for this episode, it is worth making a brief look at his contribution to the history of linear perspective, which was also an important contribution to the development of geometric optics. In 1600, he published his Perspectivae Libri Sex (Six Books on Perspective), this was they first complete and correct geometric analysis of linear perspective and became the basic text for all future investigation of the topic. This was a work in the tradition of the so-called Urbino school of mathematics, as it was Piero della Francesca, who had written the previous best work on linear perspective, his De prospectiva pingendi (On the Perspective of Painting) probably composed between 1474 and 1482, which was partially plagiarised by Luca Pacioli (c.1447–1517) in his Divina Proportione published in 1509. Amongst other things dal Monte gave the first complete geometric analysis of the vanishing point, a definition used by all future authors writing on the topic. Although he didn’t do the same for the concept of the vanishing line, it is never the less implicit in his work.
We now turn to dal Monte’s work in mechanics, which is actually a work in statics, the other half of mechanics to dynamics.
Statics is the branch of classical mechanics that is concerned with the analysis of force and torque acting on a physical system that does not experience an acceleration, but rather, is in equilibrium with its environment. (Wikipedia)
Although already translated from Greek into Latin in the thirteenth century by William of Moerbeke (c. 1220 – c. 1286), Archimedes’ On the Equilibrium of Planes remained largely unknown in medieval Europe. Thābit ibn Qurra (c.830 –901) had translated it into Arabic and he wrote two related works, his Kitab fi ‘l-qarastun (Book of the Steelyard)–a steelyard is a single armed balance– and his Kitab fi sifat alwazn (Book on the Description of Weight) on the equal armed balance.
Thābit ibn Qurra
The pseudo-Aristotelian Questiones Mechanicae was well known in the Middle Ages and Jordanus de Nemore (fl. 13th century) developed a scholastic theory of statics in his science of weights (scientia de ponderibus) presented in three texts, the first Elementa super demonstrationem ponderum, which presents the conclusions of Thābit ibn Qurra’s text on the steelyard deriving them from seven axioms and nine propositions. This is the earliest of the three and the only one definitely ascribable to Jordanus. The two later texts are usually attributed to the school of. The second text Liber de ponderibus is a reworking of the Elementa super demonstrationem ponderum. The third De ratione ponderis is a corrected and expanded version of the Elementa. In his work he proves the law of the lever by the principle of work using virtual displacements. Using the same method, the De ratione ponderis also proves the conditions of equilibrium of unequal weights on planes inclined at different angles.
We now turn to the sixteenth century. As before mechanics means the science of machines and in particular the analysis explanation of the so-called six simple machines: the lever, balance, pulley, inclined plane, wedge, and screw. Whilst the texts dealt with theoretical concerns about simple machines these were still referred back to practical considerations of real machines. There were two principle texts in the sixteenth century on this topic on one side the pseudo-Aristotelian Questiones Mechanicae and on the other dal Monte’s Mechanicorum liber, first published in Pesaro in 1577.[2] In his volume dal Monte wrote:
Mechanics can no longer be called mechanics when it is abstracted and separated from machines.
The Questiones Mechanicae, which as its title implies is a set of question and answer largely devoted to the behaviour of bodies such as balances, levers, oars, rudders, wedges and the like. It was immensely popular with mathematicians, architects and engineers and went through more than a dozen editions and translations during the sixteenth century. It first appeared in Greek in the Aldine edition of the works of Aristotle in Venice in 1497, which went through many editions, and was translated into Latin by the naval architect Vittore Fausto (1490–1546) and published in Paris in 1517. Other Latin edition were by Niccolò Leonico Tomeo (1456–1531) in Venice, 1525; Paris, 1530, and further editions, as well as Alessandro Piccolomini (1508–1579) in Rome, 1547 and Venice 1565. Italian translations were published by the engineers Antonio Guarino in Modena in 1573 and by Oreste Vannocci Biringucci (1558–1585) in Rome in 1582.
As noted above dal Monte’s Mechanicorum liber appeared in Latin in 1577. This was followed four years latter in Venice by an Italian translation, Le mechaniche, under supervision by dal Monte, by the explorer and translator Fillipo Pigafetta (1533–1604), who had also produced an Italian translation, Compendio dal Theatro del Mondo of the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum of Abraham Ortelius (1527–1598) in 1612. Both the Latin original and the Italian translation were reprinted in 1615. A German translation appeared in 1629.
The question and answer format of Questiones Mechanicae covered a wide range of topics but did not include discussions of all the simple machines. The approach encouraged discussions and both Tartaglia (c. 1499–1557) in his Quesiti et Inventioni Diversi (1554) and Benedetti (1530–1590) in his Diversarum speculationum mathematicarum, et physicarum, liber (1585) discussed several of the questions from it. On the First Day in his Discorsi e dimostrazioni matematiche intorno a due nuove scienze (Discourses and Mathematical Demonstrations Relating to Two New Sciences) (1638) Galileo includes an extensive discussion of the so-called Aristotle’s wheel paradox, which first appeared in the Questiones Mechanicae:
In the Questiones Mechanicae:
For let there be a larger circle ΔZΓ a smaller EHB, and A at the centre of both; let ZI be the line which the greater unrolls on its own, and HKthat which the smaller unrolls on its own, equal to ZΛ. When I move the smaller circle, I move the same centre, that is A; let the larger be attached to it. When AB becomes perpendicular to HK, at the same time AΓ becomes perpendicular to ZΛ, so that it will always have completed an equal distance, namely HK for the circumference HB, and ZΛ for ZΓ. If the quarter unrolls an equal distance, it is clear that the whole circle will unroll an equal distance to the whole circle so that when the line BHcomes to K, the circumference ZΓ will be ZΛ, and the whole circle will be unrolled. In the same way, when I move the large circle, fitting the small one to it, their centre being the same, AB will be perpendicular and at right angles simultaneously with AΓ, the latter to ZI, the former to HΘ. So that, when the one will have completed a line equal to HΘ, and the other to ZI, and ZA becomes again perpendicular to ZΛ, and HA to HK, so that they will be as in the beginning at Θ and I.
(Joyce van Leeuwen, The Aristotelian Mechanics: Text and Diagrams, Springer, 2016 via Wikipedia)
Diagram of Aristotle’s wheel as described in Questiones Mechanicae.
Now since there is no stopping of the greater for the smaller so that it [the greater] remains for an interval of time at the same point, and since the smaller does not leap over any point, it is strange that the greater traverses a path equal to that of the smaller, and again that the smaller traverses a path equal to that of the larger. Furthermore, it is remarkable that, though in each case there is only one movement, the centre that is moved in one case rolls a great distance and in the other a smaller distance
(Israel E. Drabkin, Aristotle’s Wheel: Notes on the History of a Paradox, Osiris. 9: 162–198 via Wikipedia)
Part of Galileo’s discussion of the Artiste’s Wheel Paradox in the Discorsi. Galileo Galilei, DialoguesConcerning Two New Sciences, trans. Henry Crew & Alfonso de Salvio, Dover, 1954, p. 50
The problem was also discussed by Gerolamo Cardano (1501–1576) in his Opus novum de proportionibus numerorum (1570) and Marin Mersenne (1588–1648) in his Quaestiones Celeberrimae in Genesim (1623).
Galileo also included several other themes from the Questiones Mechanicae in his Discorsi.
Dal Monte took a very different approach in his Mechanicorum liber to the informal question and answer style of the Questiones Mechanicae. Dal Monte’s book is presented in the logical style of Euclid’s Elements with definitions, postulates, and propositions. As a student of Commandino, who had edited and published the works of Archimedes, dal Monte is here channelling Pappus, who in turn is channelling Archimedes. In the same year as he published the Mathematical Collection of Pappus, dal Monte also published a paraphrase of Archimedes On the Equilibrium of Planes in Pesaro, which contains a rigorous axiomatics treatment of the lever, his In Primvm Archimedis aequeponderantium libros paraphrasis.
Starting with the definitions of Pappus and Commandino of the centre of gravity of a body, dal Monte tries to provide a rigorous treatment of all simple machines as levers. Although his book would go on to be highly influential he was not entirely successful in his endeavours. As noted above for dal Monte his theoretical mathematical machines were reflections of real machines. Throughout his book the illustrations contain a picture of a real machine next to a geometrical diagram of the theoretical machine.
Although he disagreed with del Monte on many points the influence of Mechanicorum liber can be seen throughout the statics in Galileo’s Discorsi.
It was not only in the Discorsi that dal Monte influenced Galileo, in fact the historian of Renaissance mathematics, Paul Lawrence Rose (1944–2014) described dal Monte as “possibly the greatest single influence on the mechanics of Galileo” (DSB). In other significant ways dal Monte had a major influence on Galileo’s life. Galileo, at the urging of his father, originally started to study medicine at the University of Pisa in 1580. However, he instead studied mathematics under Ostillio Ricci (1540–1603), Court Mathematicus to Grand Duke Francesco (1541–1587), first at the university in Pisa then possibly at the Accademia ale Arti del Disegno (Academy of the Arts of Drawing) in Florence, where Ricci also lectured. It was through connections to this Accademia that Galileo also learnt to draw. Ricci introduced the young Galileo to the works of both Euclid and Archimedes, the later having a life long influence on him.
In 1585, Galileo dropped out of university without a degree and in 1586, he produced his first academic paper, a small tract entitled La Billancetta (Little Balance ), describing a hydrostatic balance that he believed represented the real method that Archimedes used to determine if the crown of King Hiero II of Syracuse was really made of gold. The young Galileo didn’t have a degree and was not rich or influential, so he needed a patron. He send copies of the manuscript of La Billancetta to the leading North Italian mathematicians of the period, the Jesuit professor of mathematics at the Collegio Romano, Christoph Clavius (1538–1612) and Guidobaldo dal Monte. Both men were very impressed with the efforts of the fledgling mathematician. However, both also initially thought that Galileo’s argumentation was flawed. Clavius remained by this judgement, although he and Galileo remained friends until Clavius died.
Dal Monte came to accept Galileo’s argumentation and decided to help him, becoming his patron. He spoke with his brother, Francesco Maria del Monte (1549–1627), who was a cardinal on the court of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Ferdinando de’ Medici (1549–1609).
Cardinal Francesco Maria del Monte portrait by Ottavio Leoni Source: Wikimedia Commons
Francesco Maria spoke with the grand duke, who appointed Galileo lecturer for mathematics at the University of Pisa in 1589.
Ferdinando I de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany portrait by Pulzone, Scipione 1590 Source: Wikimedia Commons
It should be noted a poorly paid, low status position at the university. In his usual arrogant style, Galileo managed to piss off the powers that be in Pisa and in 1592 his contract was not renewed. Dal Monte came to the recue and got him a position as professor for mathematics at the University of Padua, where he stayed until 1610, when his became court philosophicus and mathematicus to the Grand Duke of Tuscany having maintained and expanded that initial contact with the house Medici instigated by the dal Montes.
Galileo and dal Monte remained close friends and colleagues until the latter’s death in 1607, often collaborating on mathematical topics. It is often difficult to say, which ideas were originated by whom over the years. Galileo never gave anybody else credit in his publications and dal Monte didn’t publish most of his works over the years. However, in dal Monte’s notes ideas are to be found that also appear in Galileo’s published works. The most famous example is the parabola law of projectile motion, which is credited to Galileo as one of his greatest discoveries in dynamics.
In 1592 on his first journey from Pisa to Padua, Galileo visited dal Monte on his family estates of Montebaroccio. The two men discussed projectile motion whilst drinking wine in the garden next to a shed with a sloping roof. They came up with the idea of rolling an inked ball upwards along the slope roof at an angle to the horizontal to imitate a cannon shot in slow motion. The resulting line left on the roof, the two men thought, resembled a parabola or a catenary[3], in fact both men thought a catenary was a parabola.[4]
Heilbron p. 131 see footnote 4
Guidobaldo dal Monte had a major impact on the development of mechanics in the latter part of the sixteenth century both through his own book, Mechanicorum liber and through his generous patronage of Galileo.
[1] In most sources the family name is written del Monte but Guidobaldo wrote it dal Monte.
[2] The accounts of the publication history, contents and impact of the pseudo-Aristotelian Questiones Mechanicae and dal Monte’s Mechanicorum liber are based on Chapter One, Machines in the Field, in the Book, and in the Study of Domenico Bertoloni Meli, Thinking with Objects: The Transformation of Mechanics in the Seventeenth Century, The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006 pp. 18–39
[3] A catenary is the curve that an idealized hanging chain or cable assumes under its own weight when supported only at its ends in a uniform gravitational field. It is not a parabola.
[4] Accounts of this fateful meeting can be found in David Wootton, Galileo Watcher of the Skies, Yale University Press, 2010, p. 57 and J. L. Heilbron, Galileo, OUP, 2010, p. 131
Johannes Kepler was a very prolific author but there is an aspect to his major books that usually doesn’t receive enough attention. As well as the torrent of words that poured from his pen, his books were always richly embellished with masterfully executed and deeply expressive illustrations. This visual communication between Kepler and his readers reached a high point in the fascinating, immensely complex frontispiece of the Tabulae Rudolphinae (Rudolphine Tables) published in Ulm in 1627. The frontispiece of this monumental collection of tables, that probably did more to further the acceptance of a heliocentric model of the cosmos than any other publication, is a complex sketch of the history of astronomy from Aratus (c. 312–240 BCE) down to Kepler himself, in the following I will narrate the story of this wonderful depiction of that history.
It depicts the Temple of Urania, the muse of astronomy, which is here an open sided pavilion with a decagon base and a domed roof supported on ten columns. The columns are in pairs and starting from the back develop in style and materials to depict the passage of time. The first pair are simple tree trunks with the branches loped off, the second pair consists of simple stone blocks piled on top of each other. Moving towards the front there are two pairs of brick column and at the front are a pair of smooth Corinthian columns, the one on the right having an achanthus-leaf capital. The floor of the pavilion depicts the stary heavens which form the fundament on which the observations, the columns, to which we will return later, are built.
The Emperor (Rudolf) sits on his throne in the middle of the roof and above him hovers the imperial eagle, who is dropping gold coin from his beak down on the astronomers below. This element of the illustration contains more than a little irony. Throughout his time as imperial mathematicus, Kepler had extreme difficulties getting the imperial treasury to pay his wages. By the time he finally came to print the Tabulae Rudolphinae he was owed a large sum of money in back wages, some of which he tried in vain to obtain to cover the printing costs. In the end he paid the printing costs out of his own pocket and then instead of handing the finished product over to the current emperor, who property the book was, he took the whole first edition to the Frankfurt Bookfair, where he sold it to recuperate his outlay.
Around the rim of the roof are six goddesses each one representing significant aspects of Kepler’s astronomy. From left to right they are optics (the shining head of the goddess is creating a shadow of a globe), the telescope, logarithms (holding in her hands rods of the ratio of one to two, and the number around her head showing the Keplerian natural logarithm of 1/2: 0.6931472), geometry (with a compass, square-ruler and a diagram of an ellipse), ‘stathmica’, namely the laws of the lever and balance (holding a balance, with the Sun at the fulcrum and a star at the end of the longer arm, an allusion to the slowing of a planet’s motion as the magnetic force of the Sun decreases with increasing distance), and magnetics (holding a lodestone and compass).
The ceiling of the pavilion depicts the Tychonic system of the cosmos with the Earth at the centre orbited by the Moon and the Sun with the other planets orbiting the sun. Hanging down from the Earth in the middle of the pavilion is a board with the title of the book, Tabulae Rudolphinae.
The six columns at the front each represent to work of an astronomer, starting from the left Aratus (c. 312–240 BCE), Hipparchus (c. 190–c. 120 BCE), Copernicus (1473–1543), Tycho (1546–1601), Ptolemaeus (fl, 150 CE), and Meton (5th century BCE). Aratus wrote a poem, Phenomena that describes the cosmology of Eudoxus of Cnidus (c. 390–c. 340 BCE), his column is decorated with an armillary sphere. Hipparchus is, of course, next to Ptolemaeus the most important of the Greek astronomers and his column is decorated with a celestial sphere and he is depicted holding his star catalogue. Moving to the righthand side, Ptolemaeus is shown sitting whilst drawing a diagram. Part of the Greek title of the Almagest is visible and the diagram on the table in front of him shows Ptolemy’s theorem (if a quadrilateral is inscribed in a circle, then the sum of the products of its two pairs of opposite sides is equal to the product of its diagonals). Ptolemaeus’ column is decorated with an astrolabe. Behind Ptolemaeus is the column for Meton, who gave his name to the Meton cycle which aligns the solar and lunar cycles over a nineteen-year period, and amongst other things forms the basis for the Jewish lunar-solar calendar. Meton’s column is decorated with a dial displaying his cycle. At the back of the pavilion between the tree trunk columns stands a nameless Chaldean, that is Babylonian, astronomer who is measuring the angular distance between celestial bodies using his fingers.
We now move to the front and the centre of attraction framed by the two Corinthian columns. On the left sits Copernicus, his column is decorated with a Jacob’s staff and his parallactic rulers or triquetrum, which Tycho had brought to Hven. On the plinth of the column rests a tablet with observations of Regiomontanus (1436–1476) and Bernhard Walther (1430–1504), which were included in De revolutionibus. On the right stands Tyco Brahe dressed in a full-length ermine robe and wearing his Order of the Elephant medal. He is pointing out to Copernicus the model of his system of the cosmos on the ceiling. By his elbow on the plinth of his column is his Astronomiae instauratae Progymnasmata (Prague 1602/3), which was the publication of his model. His column is decorated with his quadrant and his sextant.
Underneath Copernicus and Tycho on the base of the pavilion is a panel depicting a map of Hven, the island where Tycho built his observatory, Uraniborg, where he carried out twenty years of, for the time, extremely accurate astronomical observations, the material that Kepler used to calculate the Tabulae Rudolphinae. To the right of this are two panels depicting the printing of the book. The first panel shows a pressman inking the exposed type lying on the platen. The pressman on the left has raised the frisket with his right hand and is now removing the printed sheet which he will pass to his left hand to place on the pile of printed sheets under the bed of the press, and replace it with a new sheet ready to be printed. The second panel shows a compositor setting type. The panel to the left of centre shows Kepler with a model of the roof of the pavilion and a list of some of his principal scientic texts, Mysterium Comographicum (1596), Astronomiae Pars Optica (1604), Astronomia Nova (1609), and Epitome Astronomiae Copernicanae (1618–1621). To the right of Kepler is another panel with an image of the schoolteacher and poet Johann Baptist Hebenstreit (c. 1580–1638), a friend of Kepler’s. Hebenstreit wrote a poem, ‘An idyll on the Keplerian star-spangled tower, showing depicted the birth and progress of astronomy up to our age and the quite new, long-desired and incomparable work of the Tables’, which explains the imagery of the frontispiece and which was printed as the preface to the book.
There is, of course, always the open question, just how much of this wonderful illustration could users of the Tabulae Rudolphinae actually interpret correctly.
When I first started delving into the history of astronomy there was a pantheon of the great historians, who ruled over the discipline far above us mere mortals–for example, I. Bernhard Cohen, Edward Rosen, Robert S. Westman, Richard S. Westfall, and others.
One of those giants, Owen Gingerich, died 28 May at the grand old age of 93. Gingerich was for many years a professor for both astronomy and the history of science at Harvard University.
His main area of research was the history of astronomy of the Early Modern Period, especially, but not exclusively, Copernicus and Kepler. Anybody, who reads this blog, will know that this in one of my key areas of interest, so over the years I have read many of Gingerich’s papers and books, several of the latter adorning my bookshelves. I learnt a great deal reading Gingerich. Just to give one example, I first learnt about the itinerant German mathematician, Paul Wittich (c. 1546–1586), who played a significant role in the evolution of the Tychonic geo-heliocentric model of the cosmos, as well as the distribution of prosthaphaeresis, a trigonometrical forerunner of logarithms, through a joint paper by Gingerich & Westman.[1]
Gingerich first ran across Wittich’s work on geo-heliocentric models in the marginalia of his copy of Copernicus’ De revolutionibus.
Paul Wittich’s geoheliocentric planetary model – as annotated in his copy of Copernicus’s De revolutionibus in February 1578 Source: Wikipedia Commons
Having been inspired by the marginalia in Erasmus Reinhold’s personal copy of De revolutionibus, Gingerich began a thirty-year-long survey of all the extant copies of the 1st and 2nd editions of De revolutionibus that he could find, recording provenance, marginalia, censorship etc.
The results of this odyssey were published in his An Annotated Census of Copernicus’ DeRevolutionibus (Nuremberg 1543 and Basel 1566) (Brill, 2002).
It is a monumental work of scholarship and an invaluable asset for all scholars of the history of Early Modern astronomy. It, of course, cost a fortune and was way outside of my book buying budget. However, one Sunday I walked past one of Erlangen’s university bookshops and espied a copy of the Census in their shop window on offer at a ridiculously low price. I returned to the shop when it was open and inquired why it was so cheap. The book seller explained that it had been ordered by a professor on approval and had been damaged and could not be returned. I didn’t hesitate and am as a result a proud owner of this unique volume. I have examined it many times over the years and still haven’t discovered the supposed damage. He also produced a much shorter, but equally useful, survey of the surviving copies of Peter Apian’s AstronomicumCaesareum.
Gingerich also wrote a highly entertaining collection of essays, documenting his adventures whilst researching his Copernicus Census, The Book Nobody Read: Chasing the Revolutions of Nicolaus Copernicus (Walker, 2004).
I do not have heroes, but Owen Gingerich was very much one of my go to sources for accurate and in-depth scholarship on the history of astronomy. Imagine my surprise, or better said shock, when he turned up to comment on my humble blog. He didn’t use the blog’s comments column but sent me an email. When I opened up my email account and saw that first email, I nearly fell off my chair. I opened it with trepidation, it was a very warm and friendly email pointing out an error in my most recent blog post. Although they remained few and far between, it was not the only email that I received from him and not always negative. He particularly praised my post on Johannes Petreius (c. 1497–1550), the publisher of Derevolutionibus, saying that he had learned something new from it.
Yesterday the history of astronomy community lost one of its greats and the tributes are pouring in all over the Internet. Gingerich was, with justification, highly respected and, as everyone is reporting a generous and warm gentleman scholar.
[1] Gingerich & Westman, The Wittich Connection, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, Vol 78, Part 7, 1988
I suppose it’s almost inevitable that if one begins to take a deeper interest in the history of science, then at some point one’s attention turns to the history of the book. After all, whether in the form of wedges impressed in clay tablets, symbols carved in stone or wood[1], or various forms of writing on leaves, papyrus, parchment, vellum or paper, books are the medium with which creators of knowledge transmit that knowledge to other. Science based only on oral transmission would develop very slowly and not very far.
My interest began with the cliché that the invention of the printed book was a major factor in the expansion of scientific activity in the Early Modern Period, in Europe that is called the scientific revolution. In this case it’s a cliché that is true. I acquired and read Elizabeth Eisenstein’s excellent, classic The printing press as an agent of change (ppb. CUP, 1980), which is a comprehensive introduction to the early world of the printed book. This was followed by the equally classic The Coming of the Book: The Impact of Printing 1450–1800 by Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin (Verso, 1976), originally published in French as L’Apparition du livre (Editions Albin Michel, 1958), now somewhat dated by still highly informative.
My interest in book history began to deepen when I began to examine the question, why was Copernicus’ De Revolutionibus published in Nürnberg, leading to the study of all aspects of Renaissance scientific book publishing.
Over the years I have acquired a shelf full of books on the history of the book that includes, Addrian Johns’ The Nature of the Book: Print and Knowledge in the Making (University of Chicago Press, 1998), with it’s rejection of some of Eisenstein’s key theories. I followed the ensuing debate between the two in various papers. Also on that shelf, amongst others, are Erik Kwakkel’s excellent Books Before Print (ARC Humanities Press, 2018) on medieval manuscripts, Keith Houston’s delightful, and beautifully presented The Book: A Cover-to-cover Exploration of the Most Powerful Object of Our Times (W. W. Norton & Company, 2016), Andrew Pettegree’s The Book in the Renaissance (Yale University Press, 2010).
Not included in that earlier post is Tom Moles’ The Secret Life of Books (Elliot & Thompson, 2019), which looks at the functions that books fulfil outside of being reading material, and which I sort of reviewed here. As a footnote to the second footnote on that blog post, I did buy Henry Petroski’s TheBook on the Bookshelf (Vintage Books, 1999).
One book on book history that I’m very pleased to have acquired, relatively cheaply, was a second-hand copy of is Margaret Bingham Stillwell’s The Awaking Interest in Science During the First Century of Printing 1450–1550: An annotated Checklist of First Editions viewed from the Angle of their Subject Content – Astronomy • Mathematics • Medicine • Natural Science • Physics • Technology, which is a 430 page mine of information and proved very useful in writing my Renaissance Science series of blog posts.
A fairly recent acquisition is Book Parts edited by Dennis Duncan & Adam Smyth (OUP, 2019), which is what the title says it is, a collection of essays on the individual parts that make up a book – Introductions, Dust Jackets, Frontispieces, Title Pages and eighteen more. It contains a fascinating ten-page essay by Dennis Duncan on the history of indexes. So, it was fairly obvious that when he brought out a whole book on the subject Dennis Duncan Index, A History of the: A Bookish Adventurefrom Medieval Manuscripts to the Digital Age (W. W. Norton, 2022) that I would acquire a copy. The hardback appeared in February, but economic straights caused me to wait until the paperback appeared in Penguin in October, but I can happily report that it was worth the wait.
Readers of my book reviews may have noticed that I always include a brief comment on the index of the book I’m reviewing. In my opinion, for an academic volume a good index is of prime importance. You have borrowed a massive tome out of the library and are only interested in one of the topics that it contains, you turn immediately to the index to find the relevant passages, to save you having to read the whole thing. A good index is a boon and an important research tool, a bad or non-existent index is a nightmare. I have a paperback of one very important history of science biography in which almost none of the pages listed in the index under a given heading match up with the pagination of the text. It frustrates me every time I turn to it. I suspect that the paperback has a different pagination to the hardback, and nobody thought to redo or adjust the index. Recently l borrowed Marshall Claggett, Archimedes in the Middle Ages, Volume Three: The Fate of the MedievalArchimedes 1300 to 1565, Part III The Medieval Archimedes in the Renaissance, 1450–1566 (The American Philosophical Society, 1978) from the library, only to discover when I got it home that it is 1246 pages long and has no table of contents and no index! For my purposes next to useless!
Indexes and tables of contents are important tools in academic books, which enable the reader to find things without having to read the entire texts. We tend to take them for granted and probably implicitly assumes that they are always there, will always be there, and always have been. The last, of course, is nonsense. The first books were not born with a neat table of contents at the front and a comprehensive index at the back, so where and when did they first appear, how do they differ from each other and how did they evolve into their current forms? These are the questions that Duncan’s volume answers and does so both excellently and highly entertainingly.
It is seldom the case that I read an academic book with a smile on my face, whilst doing so, or break out into laughter at irregular intervals in the text. I did with Duncan’s charming tome. He has a wry sense of humour and a love of bad jokes and is not reluctant to use them. These traits are already obvious in the book’s title, whereby Index, A history of the is a classic index entry, which also, rest assured, appears in the book’s index.
Duncan doesn’t start with the index but with alphabets, it’s a trivial fact that without an ordered alphabet, one can’t have an ordered index, but not something that one usually thinks about, so ingrained is our ability to rattle off the alphabet at the drop of a hat, that we give no thought to where and when this ordering comes from.
Having acquired part of the skeleton with which to compile an index we now move onto its birth in the writings of medieval monks or rather its twin parallel births! We also have the birth on the concordance and what differentiates an index from a concordance.
I said before that we had acquired part of the skeleton with which to compile an index, why only part? What’s missing? What is missing is pagination, without the page number an index entry is a lost term in search of a page. Having launched the alphabetical, paginated index on the world stage, our author know takes it on a romp and at time a wild ride through its evolution down to the present, its changing status its pros and cons, and its uses and abuses. Along the way we meet the table of contents and sort out the similarities and differences between it, the index, and the concordance. A stimulating and fascinating journey, which I can only recommend that you embark on. The price of a ticket is Duncan’s wonderful book. The paperback is one of the best €10.77[2]s I have every spent on a book.
Embellished with the now ubiquitous grayscale illustrations, Duncan’s book is, naturally, equipped with a first-class apparatus, an intriguing table of contents, extensive endnotes, and of course probably the best index that a book ever had.
You don’t have to be a book historian, or even interested in book history to enjoy this book. It is a truly delightful read for all those who love reading and who have an open and inquiring mind.
[1] I find it a fascinating etymological fact that the English word book comes from the German Buch, which derives from Buche the German for beech tree as German books were originally written on sheets of beech wood.
[2] Prices will of course vary, depending on where you buy a copy
Whether they were introducing materia medica into the medical curriculum at the universities, going out into the countryside to search for and study plants for themselves, leading students on field trips to do the same, establishing and developing botanical gardens, or creating their herbaria, the Renaissance humanist physicians in the first half of the sixteenth century always had their botanical guides from antiquity to hand. Mostly one or other edition of Dioscorides but also Theophrastus on plants, Pliny’s Historia Naturalis, and Galen’s texts on medical simples. The work of all four of these authors concentrated largely on plants growing around the Mediterranean, although they did include some medical herbs from other areas, India for example. The North Italian, Renaissance, medical humanists also started out studying the Mediterranean plants, but soon their field of study widened, as the changes they had initiated spread throughout Europe led to other medical humanists to search for and study the plants of their own local regions. This expansion became even larger as colleagues began to study and compare the plants growing in the newly discovered land in the so-called age of exploration. Reports began coming into Europe of plants growing in the Americas and Asia. These developments meant that Dioscorides et al were no longer adequate guides for the teaching of medical herbal lore and the age of the Early Modern printed herbal began.
As already noted in an earlier episode of this series Dioscorides’ De Materia Medica, which is, of course, a herbal, was well known and widely available throughout the Middle Ages, but it was by no means the only medieval herbal. Herbal medicine was widely used throughout the Middle Ages and many monks, apothecaries, and herbalists, who utilised herbal cures, compiled their own herbals, some of which were copied and distributed amongst others. A few of these herbals were printed during the incunabula period in the second half of the fifteenth century. Many printer publishers in this early period were on the lookout for potential money earning publications and herbals certainly fit the mould.
The earliest of these was the De proprietatibus rerum of the Franciscan friar Bartholomeus Anglicus (before 1203–1272), written in the thirteenth century and printed for the first time about 1470, which went through twenty-five editions before the end of the century. This was an encyclopaedia containing a long section on trees and herbs.
De proprietatibus rerum, Lyon 1482, erste Seite (Eisenbibliothek, Schlatt) via Wikipedia Commons
This was followed by the herbal of Apuleius Platonicus, also known as Pseudo-Apuleius, about whom almost nothing is known, but it is assumed he probably wrote his herbal the Herbarium Apuleii Platonici in the fifth century; the oldest known manuscript dates from the sixth century. It is a derivative text based on Dioscorides and Pliny. It is a much shorter and simpler herbal than Dioscorides, but was immensely popular throughout the Middle Ages, existing in many manuscripts. The first printed edition appeared in Rome in 1481.
Shortly after the Herbarium Apuleii Platonici, three other medieval herbals were printed and published in Mainz in Germany. The Latin Herbarius (1484), and the Herbariuszu Teutsch or German Herbarius (1485), which evolved into the Hortus or Ortus sanitates (1491).
Fruits of Paradise. Hortus sanitatis 1491 Source: Wikimedia Commons
These herbals probably date back to the Early Medieval Period but unlike the Herbarium Apuleii Platonici there is no hard proof for this. All three books went through numerous editions under various titles in various languages. In England the first printed herbal was by Rycharde Banckes in which the title page begins Here begynneth a newe mater, the whiche sheweth and treateth of ye vertues and proprytes of herbes, the which is called an Herball, which appeared in 1525.
It had no illustrations. This was followed by the more successful The grete herbal, printed by Peter Treveris in 1526 and then again in 1529. Many of the illustrations were taken from the French Le GrantHerbier,but which originated in the Herbariuszu Teutsch, continuing an old process of copying illustrations from earlier books, which as we will see continued with the new Renaissance herbals to which we now turn.
Whereas the printed medieval herbals were largely derived from the works of Dioscorides and Pliny, the Renaissance humanist physicians produced new printed herbals based on new material, which they and their colleagues had collected on field trips. However, these new herbals were still based in concept on Dioscorides’ De materia medica, were medical in detail, although they gradually led towards botany as an independent discipline throughout the century.
We begin with four Germans, who are often described as “The Fathers of Botany”. The first of these was Otto Brunfels (possibly 1488–1534), a Carthusian monk, who converted to Lutheran Protestantism and became a pastor.
Otto Brunfels portrait by Hans Baldung Grien Source: Wikimedia Common
He was the nominal author of the Herbarumvivae eicones published in three volumes between 1530 and 1536 and the German version of the same, Contrafayt Kräuterbuch published in two volumes between 1532 and 1537. Both publications were published by Hans Schott in Straßburg and were illustrated by Hans Weiditz the Younger (1495–c. 1537). I said nominal author because it is thought that the initiative for the book was Schott’s centred around Weidnitz’s illustrations with Brunfels basically employed to provide the written descriptions of the plants. Weidnitz’s illustrations, drawn from nature, are excellent and set new standards in the illustration of herbals.
Nymphaea alba, also known as the European White Waterlily, White Lotus, or Nenuphar from “Herbarium Vivae Eicones” Hans Weiditz the Younger Source: Wikimedia Commons
They are, however, not matched by Brunfels’ descriptions, which are very poor quality, simply cobbled together from early descriptions.
The second of the so-called “German Fathers of Botany” was Hieronymus Bock (1498–1554), whose Latin texts were published under the name Hieronymus Tragus (Tragus is the Greek for the German bock, a male goat).
David Kandel (1546) – Kreütter Büch, (1546) a Herbal Source: Wikimedia Commons
Like Brunfels he converted from Catholicism to Lutheran Protestantism. His knowledge of plants was acquired empirically on botanical excursions. His first publication was Deherbarum quarundam nomenclaturis, a tract linking Greek and Latin names to local plants, which, interestingly was published in the second volume of Brunfels’ Herbarumvivae eicones. It was also Brunfels who persuaded him to publish his own herbal. This was titled Neu Kreütterbuch and appeared in 1539. Unlike Brunfels book, Bock’s herbal had no illustration, however, his plant descriptions were excellent, setting new standards. In 1546 there was a second expanded edition with illustration by David Kandel (1520–1592).
Neu Kreütterbuch Steinbrech David Kandel Source: Wikimedia Commons
A third expanded edition was published in 1551 of which a Latin translation, De stirpium, maxime earum, quae in Germania nostra nascuntur …, was published in 1552. All these editions were published by Wendel Rihel in Straßburg, who produced an edition without the text in 1553 and several editions after Bock’s death.
The original German edition without illustrations had less impact that Brunfels’ herbal but after the addition of the illustrations and the Latin edition his work became successful. Bock was very innovative in that instead of listing the plants in his book in alphabetical order, he listed them in groups based on what he perceived as their similarities. An early step towards systematic classification.
The third of the German herbal authors Leonhart Fuchs (1501–1566) was the most well-known and successful of the quartet.
Leonhart Fuchs portrait by Heinrich Füllmaurer Source: Wikimedia Commons
He received his doctorate in medicine from the University of Ingolstadt in 1524. After two years of private practice followed by two as professor of medicine in Ingolstadt, he became court physician to George von Brandenburg Margrave of Ansbach. He acquired a very good reputation and was reappointed to the professorship in Ingolstadt in 1533. As a Lutheran, he was prevented from taking up the appointment and became professor for medicine in Tübingen instead in 1535, where he remained until his death despite many offers of other positions. In Tübingen he created the botanical garden. He edited a Greek edition of Galen’s work and translated both Hippocratic and Galenic medical texts. Fuchs became somewhat notorious for his bitter controversies with other medical authors and the sharpness of his invective.
Unlike Brunfels and Bock, whose herbals were based on the own empirical studiers of local German herbs, Fuchs concentrated on identifying the plants described by the classical authors, although when published his herbal included a large number of reports on local plants as well as new plants discovered in the Americas. In 1542 he published his De Historia Stirpium Commentarii Insignes (Notable commentaries on the history of plants) in Latin and Greek, it contained 512 pictures of plants, which are even more spectacular than the illustrations in Brunfels’ Herbarumvivae eicones.
Cannabis plant from ‘De historia stirpivm commentarii insignes … ‘ Source: Wellcome Library, London. via Wikimedia Commons
In a rare innovation he named the Illustrators, Heinrich Füllmaurer and Albrecht Meyer along with the woodcutter Veit Rudolph Speckle including portraits of all three.
Portrait of the three engravers of Fuchs’ ‘de Historia….’ Credit: Wellcome Library, London. via Wikimedia Commons
A German translation New Kreüterbuch was published in 1543. Alone, during Fuch’s lifetime 39 editions of the book appeared in Dutch, French, German, Latin, and Spanish. Twenty years after his death an English edition was published.
Fuchs influence went further than the editions of his own books. The excellent illustrations in his Historia Stirpium were borrowed/pirated reused in a number of later herbals and botanical books:
The majority of the wood-engravings in Doeden’s Crūÿdeboek (1554), Turner’s New Herbal (1551-68), Lyte’s Nievve Herball (1578), Jean Bauhin’s Historia plantarum universalis (1650/1), and Schinz’s Anleitung (1774), are copied from Fuchs, or even printed from his actual wood-blocks, while use was made of his figures in the herbals of Bock, Egenolph, d’Aléchamps, Tabernaemontanus, Gerard, Nylandt, etc., and in the commentaries on Dioscorides of Amatus Lusitanus and Ruellius. It was not the large woodcuts in De Historia Stirpium (1542) which chiefly served for these borrowings, but the smaller versions of the blocjks, made for Fuchs’ octavo herbal of 1545.[1]
If Fuchs is the most well known of the so-called four German “Fathers of Botany”, then Valeriuis Cordus (1515–1544) is the least well known.
Artist unknown Source: Wikimedia Commons
His father was Euricius Cordus (1486–1535), who published his Botanologican, a guide to the empirical study of plants in 1534. Valerius can be said to have gone into the family business, studying medicine and botany under his father at the University of Marburg from the age of twelve in 1527. He graduated bachelor in 1531 and changed to the University of Leipzig, also working in the apothecary shop of his uncle Johannes Ralla (1509–1560), where he learnt pharmacology. In 1539 he changed to the University of Wittenberg, where he once again studied medicine and botany, and lectured on the De materia medica of Dioscorides. In Wittenberg he continued his studies of pharmacology in the apothecary shop of the painter Lucas Cranach the Elder (c. 1473–1553), where he wrote his Dispensatorium, a pharmacopoeia, a systematic list of medicaments. During a short visit to Nürnberg in 1542, there were strong ties between Wittenberg and Nürnberg, Cordus presented his Dispensatorium to the city council, who awarded him with 100 gulden, paid for it to be printed posthumously in 1546, as the Dispensatorium Norimbergense. It was the first officially government approved pharmacopoeia, Nürnberg being a self-governing city state. It soon became the obligatory standard throughout Germany.
Source: Wellcome Library, London. via Wikimedia Commons
On the last of his many journeys from Wittenberg, Cordus travelled through Italy visiting Padua, Lucca, Florence, and Rome, where he died, aged just twenty-nine in 1544. When he died, he had published almost nothing, his Dispensatorium, as already stated was published posthumously as were two further important books on botany. In 1549, Conrad Gessner published the notes on his Wittenberg lectures on Dioscorides De materia medica, which had collected by his students, as Annotationes in Dioscoridis de materia medica lihros in Straßburg.
Gessner also published his Historiae stirpium libri IV (Straßburg 1561), which was followed in 1563 by his Stirpium descriptionis liber quintus. As with the other German herbals, Cordus’ books were issued in many further editions. Like Brock, Cordus rejected the alphabetic listing of the earlier herbals and in fact went much further down the road of trying to distinguish what we now call species and genus.
Not considered one of the “German Fathers of Botany”, the work of Joachim Camerarius the Younger (1534–1598) was also highly influential.
Joachim Camerarius the Younger Engraving by Bartholomaeus Kilian Source: Wikimedia Commons
Son of the famous philologist and the friend and biographer of Philip Melanchthon, Joachim Camerarius the Elder (1500–1574), he studied at Wittenberg and other universities before completing his doctorate in medicine in Bologna in 1562. Following graduation, Camerarius returned to Nürnberg where he set up as a physician practicing there for the rest of his life. Already a lifelong fan of botany, influenced by his time in North Italy he set up a botanical garden in his home city. He was a central figure in the reforms in the practice of medicine in Nürnberg similar to those I outlined in episode XXXII of this series, of which the publication and adoption of Cordus’ Dispensatorium was an important element.[2] Camerarius was also a central figure in the medical-botanical republic of letters that I will deal with in a later episode. As well as his own herbal Hortus Medicus et Philosophicus (Frankfurt/M., 1598), he published an expanded German translation of the Di Pedacio Dioscoride Anazarbeo Libri cinque Della historia, et materia medicinale tradotti in lingua volgare italiana (1554 and later editions) of Pietro Andrea Mattioli (1501–c. 1577), as Kreutterbuch deß hochgelehrten unnd weitberühmten Herrn D. Petri Andreae Matthioli : jetzt widerumb mit viel schönen neuwen Figuren, auch nützlichen Artzeneyen, und andern guten Stücken, zum andern mal auß sonderm Fleiß gemehret und verfertigt (Frankfurt, 1586).
J. Camerarius. Mattiolisches Kräuterbuch Cichorium intybus Source: Wikimedia Commons
As with the introduction of the materia medica into the university medical curriculum, the field trips, the botanical gardens, and the herbaria, which all spread out through Europe from Northern Italy, the new style herbals also spread throughout the continent during the sixteenth century.
In the Netherlands, the printer-publisher and bookseller Christophe Plantin (c. 1520–1589), who I dealt with fairly extensively in an earlier post, contributed much to the dissemination of herbals and other plant books. The first notable Flemish author was the physician and botanist Rembert Dodoens (1517–1585), who published a herbal in Dutch, his Cruydeboeck, with an emphasis on the local flora of the Netherlands, with 715 images, 515 borrowed from the Dutch edition of Fuchs’ herbal, and 200 drawn by Pieter van der Borcht the Elder (c. 1530–1608) with the blocks cut by Arnold Nicolai (fl. 1550–1596), published in Antwerp in 1554 and again in 1563.
Rembert Dodoens portrait by Theodor de Bry Source: Wikimedia Commons
Unlike Fuchs, who still listed his herbs alphabetically, Dodoens grouped his herbs according to their properties and reciprocal affinities, making his book as much a pharmacopoeia as a herbal. The Cruydeboeck was translated into French by Charles de l’Ecluse (1526–1609) in 1557, Histoire des Plantes, into English via the l’Ecluse French by Henry Lyte, A new herbal of historie of plants in 1578. Later in 1583, it was translated into Latin Stirpium historiae pemptades sex. Both the French and the Latin translations were commissioned and published by Platin. It is claimed that it was the most translated book after the bible during the late sixteenth century and in its numerous versions it remained a standard text for two hundred years.
Title page of the Crvydt-Boeck (1618 ed.) Source: Wikimedia Commons
Charles de l’Ecluse, better known as Carolus Clusius, was himself a physician and botanist, a student of Guillaume Rondelet (1507–1566) at the University of Montpellier, he became one of the leading medical botanists in Europe.
This portrait is the only known painted portrait of Clusius. It was made in 1585 when Clusius was in Vienna. Attributed to Jacob de Monte Source: Wikipedia Commons
Clusius had two great passions languages and botany. He was said to be fluent in Greek. Latin, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Flemish, and German He was also a polymath deeply knowledgeable in law, philosophy, history, cartography, zoology, minerology, numismatics, and epigraphy. In 1573, he was appointed director of the imperial botanical garden in Vienna by Maximillian II (1564–1576) but dismissed again shortly after Maximillian’s death, when Rudolph II (1576–1612) moved the imperial court to Prague. Later in his life, when he was called to the University of Leiden in 1593, he created the university’s first botanical garden. His first botanical publication was his translation into French of Dodoens’ Cruydeboeck.This was followed by a Latin translation from the Portuguese of Garcia de Orta’s Colóquios dos simples e Drogas da India, Aromatum et simplicium aliquot medicamentorum apud Indios nascentium historia (1567) and a Latin translation from Spanish of Nicolás Monardes’ Historia medicinal delas cosas que se traen de nuestras Indias Occidentales que sirven al uso de la medicina, , De simplicibus medicamentis ex occidentali India delatis quorum in medicina usus est (1574), with a second edition (1579), both published by Plantin.His own Rariorum alioquot stirpium per Hispanias observatarum historia: libris duobus expressas (1576), based on an expedition to Spain and Portugal followed. Next up Rariorum aliquot stirpium, per Pannoniam, Austriam, & vicinas quasdam provincias observatarum historia, quatuor libris expressa … (1583). All of these were printed and published by Plantin. His Rariorum plantarum historia: quae accesserint, proxima pagina docebit (1601) was published by Plantin’s son-in-law Jan Moretus, who inherited the Antwerp printing house. Appended to this last publication was a Fungorum historia, the very first publication of this kind. In his publications on plants, Clusius definitely crossed the boundary from materia medica into the discipline of botany qua botany.
Title page, Rariorvm plantarvm historia Source: Wikimedia CommonsChestnuts Source: Wikimedia Commons
The third Platin author, who made major contributions to the herbal literature was another of Guillaume Rondelet’s students from Montpellier, Mathias de l’Obel (1538–1616), a Frenchman from Lille also known as Lobilus.
Matthias de l’Obel by Francis Delaram, print, 1615 Source: Wikimedia Commons
His Stirpium aduersaria noua… (A new notebook of plants) was originally published in London in 1571, but a much-extended edition, Plantarum seu stirpiumhistoria…, with 1, 486 engravings in two volumes was printed and published by Plantin in 1576.
Plantarum, seu, Stirpium historia /Matthiae de l’Obel page 111 Source: Wikimedia Commons
In 1581 Plantin also published a Dutch translation of his herbal, Kruydtboek oft beschrÿuinghe van allerleye ghewassen… There is also an anonymous Stirpium seu Plantarum Icones (images of plants) published by Plantin in 1581, with a second edition in 1591, that has been attributed to Loblius but is now thought to have been together by Plantin himself from his extensive stock of plant engravings. Like others already mentioned, de l’Obel abandoned the traditional listing of the plants alphabetically and introduced a system of classification based on the character of their leaves.
The major Italian contributor to the new herbal movement in Europe was Pietro Andrea Gregorio Mattioli (1501–c. 1577),
Pietro Andrea Mattioli portrait by Moretto da Brescia Source: Wikimedia Commons
who, as already mentioned in the episode on the publication of the classical texts as printed books, produced a heavily annotated Italian translation version of Dioscorides’ De materia medica, which included descriptions of one hundred new plants, Commentarii in libros sex Pedacii Dioscoridis Anazarbei, de medica materia, which went through four editions between 1544 and 1550, published by Vincenzo Valgrisi (c. 1490– after 1572) in Venice, and selling thirty-two thousand copies by 1572.
Source: Wikimedia Commons
Mattioli’s annotations, or commentaries, were translated into translated into French (Lyon, 1561), Czech (Prague, 1562) and German (Prague, 1563).
Another Italian botanist was Fabio Colonna (1567–1640)
Fabio Colonna artist unknown Source: Wikimedia Commons
who disappointed by the errors that he found in Dioscorides researched and wrote two herbals of his own Phytobasanos (plant touchstone), published in Naples, 1592 and Ekphrasis altera, published in Rome, 1616. Both books display a high standard in the illustrations and in the descriptions of the plants.
Fabio Colonna, Phytobasanos Sive Plantarum Aliquot Historia Source
The main Portuguese contribution was the Coloquios dos simples, e drogas he cousasmediçinaisda India by Garcia de Orta (1501–1568) published in Goa in 1563, one of the earliest European books printed in India, which as we have seen was translated into Latin by Clusius.
Statue of Garcia de Orta by Martins Correia at the Institute of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Lisbon Source: Wikimedia CommonsTitle page of Colóquio dos Simples de Garcia de Orta. Goa, 1563. Source: Wikimedia Commons
It was the Portuguese, who brought the herbs of Asia into the European herbals in the sixteenth century, those of the newly discovered Americas were brought into Europe by the Spanish, most notably by Nicolás Monrades (1493–1588).
Nicolás Monrades Source: Wikimedia Commons
Monrades learnt about the American herbs and drugs not by visiting the Americas but by collecting information at the docks in Seville. He published the results initially in three separate parts the first two parts in 1569 and 1571 and in complete form in 1574 under the title Primera y Segunda y Tercera partes de la Historia medicinal de las cosas que se traen de nuestras Indias Occidentales que sirven en Medicina.
Nicolas Monardes, Dos libros, 1565, title page Source: Wikimedia Commons
This is the book that once again Clusius translated into Latin. It was also translated into English by John Frampton, a merchant, who specialised in books on various aspects of exploration, and published under the titles The Three Books of Monardes, 1577, and Joyfull newes out of the new founde worlde, 1580.
Nicolas Monardes, John Frampton translation Joyfull newes out of the new-found world (1596), University of Liverpool Special Collections and Archives, SPEC Fraser 567.Source
The most significant herbal produced in Switzerland didn’t become published in the sixteenth century. This was the general history of plants, Historia plantarum compiled by the polymath Conrad Gessner (1516–1565), which was still unfinished when he died.
Conrad Gesner by Tobias Stimme Source: Wikimedia Commons
It was partially published in 1750, with the first full publication being by the Swizz Government at the end of the nineteenth century. The quality of the drawings and the descriptions of the plants would have set new standards in botany if Gessner had published it during his lifetime. A student of Gessner’s, who also went on to study under Fuchs was Jean Bauhin (1541–1613).
Jean Bauhin Source: Wikimedia Commons
As a young man he became an assistant to Gessner and worked with him collecting material for his Historia plantarum. Later he decided to compile his own Historia plantarum universalis. Like his teacher he died before he could complete and publish his work. It was first published in full in three volumes in 1650/1.
Historia plantarum universalis, 1650 Source: Wikimedia Commons
Jeans younger brother Garpard (1560–1624) also set out to produce a complete catalogue of all known plants, but like Jean he never lived to see it published.
Gaspard Bauhin Source: Wikimedia Commons
In fact, unlike Jean’s Historia plantarum universalis, it was not even published posthumously. He did, however, publish sections of it during his life: Phytopinax (1596), Prodromos theatre botanici (1620,) and Pinax theatre botanici (1623). The Pinax contains a complete and methodological concordance of the names of plants, sorting out the confusing tangle of different names awarded by different authors to the same plant.
Caspar Bauhin (1623), Pinax Theatri Botanici, page 291. On this page, a number of Tithymalus species (now Euphorbia) is listed, described and provided with synonyms and references. Bauhin already used binomial names but did not consistently give all species throughout the work binomials. Source: Wikimedia Commons
This was a major step in the development of scientific botany. The work of all three Swiss authors transcends the bounds of the herbal into the science of botany.
The only notable French botanical author of the sixteenth century was Jean Ruel (1474–1537), who produced a Latin translation of Dioscorides in 1516, which served as the basis for Mattioli’s Commentarrii. He also wrote a general botanical treatise on Aristotelian lines, De Natura stirpium, published in 1536.
De natura stirpium Basel 1537. Title page Source: wikimedia Commons
One should, however, remember that the students of Guillaume Rondelet in Montpellier form a veritable who’s who of botanical authors in the sixteenth century.
Turning finally to England the earliest herbal author was William Turner (c. 1509–1568), who during his wanderings through Europe had studied botany at the University of Bologna under Luca Ghini (1490–1556), who, as we saw in the previous episode, had a massive influence on the early development of medical botany in the early sixteenth century. Turner also knew and corresponded with Conrad Gessner and Leonhart Fuchs. Turner’s first work was his Latin, Libellus de re herbari novus (1538). In 1548, he produced his The names of herbes in Greke, Latin, Englishe, Duche, and Frenche with the common names that Herberies and Apotecaries use. His magnum opus was his A new herball, wherin are conteyned the names of herbes… published in three volumes, the first in London 1551, the first and second on Cologne in 1562, and the third together with the first and second in 1568.
llustration of Mandrake plant from William Turner’s Herbal,
It was illustrated with the pictures from Fuchs’ De Historia Stirpium Commentarii Insignes. Henry Lyte (1529?–1607),
Henry Lyte Source: Wikimedia Commons
an antiquary, published an English translation of Dodoens Cruydeboeck, A nievve Herball, or Historie of Plantes,…, from the French of Clusius in 1578. This included new material provided by Dodoens himself. Once again the illustration were taken largely from Fuchs.
A page on gillofers (gillyflowers, that is, carnations and pinks), from A niewe Herball by Henry Lyte, 1578. Source: Wikimedia Commons
John Gerrard produced the most successful English herbal, his The Herball or GenerallHistorie of Plantes(1597), which was however, a plagiarism.
John Gerard Frontispiece of 1636 edition of Herball Source: Wikimedia Commons
A Dr Priest had been commissioned by the publisher John North to translate Dodoen’s Stirpium historiae pemptades sex into English, but he died before completing it. Gerrard took the work, completed it, and rearranged the plants according to the scheme of de l’Obel from that of Dodoens, and then published it as his own work.
Gerrard Herball 1579Virginia Potato
As I hope is clear from the above herbals were an important genre of books in the sixteenth century, which over time gradually evolved from books of a medical nature into the earliest works in the science of botany.
[1] Agnes Arber, Herbals: Their Origin and Evolution: A Chapter in the History of Botany 1470–1670, CUP; 1912, republished Hafner Publishing Company, Darien Conn., 1970, p. 70
[2] This is wonderfully described in Hannah Murphy, A New Order of Medicine: The Rise of Physicians in Reformation Nuremberg, University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, 2019, which I reviewed here
One of the products of the Republic of Letters during the Humanist Renaissance was the beginning or the foundation of the modern European library. Naturally they didn’t invent libraries; the concept of the library goes back quite a long way into antiquity. To a great extent, libraries are a natural consequence of the invention of writing. When you have writing, then you have written documents. If you preserve those written documents then at some point you have a collection of written documents and when that collection becomes big enough, then you start to think about storage, sorting, classification, listing, cataloguing and you have created an archive or a library. I’m not going try and sort out the difference between an archive and a library and will from now on only use the term library, meaning a collection of books, without answering the question, what constitutes a book?
The oldest know libraries are the collections of clay tablets found in the temples of Sumer, some of which date back to the middle of the third millennium BCE. There were probably parallel developments in ancient Egypt but as papyrus doesn’t survive as well as clay tablets there is less surviving evidence for early Egyptian libraries. There is evidence of a library in the Sumerian city of Nippur around two thousand BCE and a library with a classification system in the Assyrian city of Nineveh around seven hundred BCE. The Library of Ashurbanipal in Nineveh contained more than thirty thousand clay tablets containing literary, religious, administrative, and scientific works. Other ancient cultures such as China and India also developed early libraries.
Library of Ashurbanipal Mesopotamia 1500-539 BC Gallery, British Museum, Source: Wikimedia Commons
Artistic rendering of the Library of Alexandria, based on some archaeological evidence Source: Wikimedia Commons
With the gradual decline of the Western Roman Empire, libraries disappeared out of Europe but continued to thrive in the Eastern Empire, the future Byzantium. The Islamic Empire became the major inheritor of the early written records of ancient Greece, Egypt, Persia, and Rome creating in turn their own libraries throughout their territories. These libraries became to source of the twelfth century translation movement, also known as the scientific renaissance, when those books first began to re-enter medieval Europe.
The manuscript collections of the medieval libraries were very small in comparison to the great Greek libraries such as Alexandria and Pergamum or the many public libraries of Rome, numbering in the best cases in the hundreds but often only in the tens. However, the guardians of these precious written documents did everything in their power to keep the books safe and in good condition and also endeavouring to acquire new manuscripts by copying those from other monastery libraries, often undertaking very arduous journeys to do so.
Chained library in Hereford Cathedral Most of the books in the collection date to about 1100. Source: Wikimedia Commons
Things began to improve in the twelfth century with the scientific renaissance and the translation movement, which coincided with the founding of the European universities. The number of works available in manuscript increased substantially but they still had to be copied time and again to gradually spread throughout Europe. Like the monasteries the universities also began to collect books and to establish libraries but if we look at the figures for Cambridge University founded in 1209. The university library has its roots in the beginning of the fifteenth century, there would have been earlier individual college libraries earlier. The earliest surviving catalogue from c. 1424 list 122 volumes in the library. By 1473 a second catalogue lists 330 volumes. It is first in the sixteenth century that things really take off and the library begins to grow substantially. The equally famous Oxford University Bodleian Library was first founded in 1600 by the humanist scholar Thomas Bodley in 1600, replacing the earlier university library from 1444, which had been stripped and dissipated during the Reformation.
Thomas Bodley Artist unknown Source: Wikimedia Commons
We have of course now reached the Humanist Renaissance and it is here that the roots of the modern library were laid. The Humanist Renaissance was all about written texts. The humanists read texts, analysed the content of texts, annotated texts, translated texts, and applied philological analysis to texts to correct and/or eliminate errors introduced into texts by repeated copying and translations. The text was everything for the humanists, so they began to accumulate collections of manuscripts. Both humanist scholars and the various potentates, who sponsored the humanist movement began to create libraries, as new spaces of learning.
The Malatestiana Library was founded by Malatesta Novello of Cesena (1418–1485) in 1454.
Malatestiana Library of Cesena, the first European civic library Source: Wikimedia Commons
The foundations of the Laurentian Library in Florence were laid by Cosimo de’ Medici (1389–1464), as one of a sequence of libraries that he funded.
Reading room of the Laurentian Library Source: Wikimedia Commons
Pope Nicholas V (1397–1455) brought the papal Greek and Latin collections together in separate libraries in Rome and they were then housed by Pope Sixtus IV (1414–1484), who appointed the humanist Bartolomeo Platina (1421–1481) librarian of the Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana.
Sixtus IV appointing Bartolomeo Platina librarian of the Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana. From left Giovanni della Rovere, Girolamo Riario, Bartolomeo Platina, later Julius II (Giuliano della Rovere), Raffaele Riario, Pope Sixtus IV Source: Wikimedia Commons
This was followed by the establishment of many private libraries both in Rome and in other Italian cities. As with other aspects of the Humanist Renaissance this movement spread outside of Italy to other European Countries. For example, the Bibliotheca Palatina was founded by Elector Ludwig III (1378–1436) in Heidelberg in the 1430s.
Elector Ludwig III. Contemporary image on the choir ceiling of the Stiftskirche (Neustadt an der Weinstraße). Source: Wikimedia Commons
These new humanist libraries were not just book depositories but as stated above new spaces for learning. The groups of humanist scholars would meet regularly in the new libraries to discuss, debate or dispute over new texts, new translations, or new philological corrections to old, corrupted manuscripts.
The (re)invention of movable type printing in about 1450 meant that libraries began to collect printed books as well as manuscripts. The first printer publishers in Italy concentrated on publishing the newly translated texts of the humanists even creating a new type face, Antiqua, which imitated the handwriting that had been developed and propagated by the first generations of humanist scholars.
The spread of libraries during the Renaissance is a vast subject, too much to deal with in a blog post, but one can get a perspective on this development by looking at a sketch of the career of Johannes Müller (1436–1476) aka Regiomontanus or as he was known during his live time, Johannes de Monte Regio.
Smithsonian “Print Artist: Braeht” (whereby the signature appears to be rather Brühl sculps[it] possibly Johann Benjamin Brühl (1691-1763) ) – Smithsonian Institution Libraries Digital Collection Source: Wikimedia Commons
Regiomontanus is, today, best known as the most significant European mathematician, astronomer, and astrologer of the fifteenth century, so it comes as something of a surprise to discover that he spent a substantial part of his life working as a librarian for various humanist book collectors.
Regiomontanus graduated MA at the University of Vienna on his twenty-first birthday in 1457. He had actually completed the degree requirements much earlier, but university regulations required MA graduates to be at least twenty-one years old. He then joined his teacher Georg von Peuerbach as a teacher at the university, lecturing on optics amongst other things. Both Regiomontanus and Peuerbach were convinced humanists. In 1460 Basilios Bessarion (1403–1472) came to Vienna.
Basilios Bessarion Justus van Gent and Pedro Berruguete Source: Wikimedia Commons
Bessarion was an avid book collector and Regiomontanus’ job in his personal entourage was to seek out and make copies of new manuscripts for Bessarion’s collection. A task that he fulfilled with esprit. Bessarion had in the meantime also taught him Greek. In 1468, Bessarion presented his personal library to the Senate of Venice in 1468 and the 482 Greek manuscripts and 264 Latin manuscripts today still form the core of the St. Mark’s Biblioteca Marciana.
Cardinal Bessarion’s letter to Doge Cristoforo Moro and the Senate of Venice, announcing the donation of his library. BNM Lat. XIV, 14 (= 4235), fol. 1r. Source: Wikimedia Commons
Regiomontanus left Bessarion’s entourage around 1465 and reappears in 1467 at the court of János Vitéz Archbishop of Esztergom (German, Gran) in Hungary.
János Vitéz frontispiece of a manuscript Source: Wikimedia Commons
Vitéz, an old friend of Peuerbach, was a humanist scholar and an avid book collector. Although Regiomontanus served as court astrologer, his Tabulae Directionum, one of the most important Renaissance astrological texts was produced at Vitéz’s request, his main function at Vitéz’s court was as court librarian. From Esztergom he moved to the court of the Hungarian King, Matthias Corvinus (1443–1490), who had been educated by Vitéz.
Matthias Corvinus of Hungary portrait by Andrea Mantegna Source: Wikimedia Commons
Like his teacher, Corvinus was a humanist scholar and a major book collector. Once more, Regiomontanus served as a court librarian. The Bibliotheca Corviniana had become one of the largest libraries in Europe, second only to the Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana, when Corvinus died. Unfortunately, following his death, his library was dissipated.
Long before Corvinus’ death, Regiomontanus had left Hungary for Nürnberg, with Corvinus’ blessing and a royal pension, to set up a programme to reform astronomy in order to improve astrological divination. During his travels, Regiomontanus had not only made copies of manuscripts for his patrons, but also for himself, so he arrived in Nürnberg with a large collection of manuscript in 1471. His aim was to set up a printing house and publish philologically corrected editions of a long list of Greek and Latin mathematical, astronomical, and astrological texts, which he advertised in a publisher’s list that he printed and published. Unfortunately, he died in 1476 having only published nine texts including his publishers list and to the shame of the city council of Nürnberg, his large manuscript collection was not housed in a library but dissipated.
To close a last example of a lost and dissipated Renaissance library. The English mathematicus John Dee (1527–1609) hoped to establish a national library, but he failed to get the sponsorship he wished for.
John Dee artist unknown Source: Wikimedia Commons
Instead, he collected books and manuscripts in his own house in Mortlake, acquiring the largest library in England and one of the largest in Europe. In the humanist tradition, this became a research centre, with other scholars coming to Mortlake to consult the books and to discuss their research with Dee and other visitors. However, when Dee left England for the continent, in the 1580s with Edward Kelly, to try and find sponsors for his occult activities, his house was broken into, and his library pillaged and sold off.
Despite the loss of some of the largest Renaissance book collections and libraries, the period saw the establishment of the library both public and private, as a centre for collecting books and a space for learning from them.
The publication of Vesalius’ De fabrica certainly marks a major change in the study and teaching of anatomy at the medieval university, but, as I hope is clear, that change did not come out of thin air but was the result of a couple of centuries of gradual developments in the discipline. It also didn’t trigger an instant revolution in the discipline throughout the university system but spread slowly, as is almost always the case with major innovations in a branch of knowledge. In the case of Vesalius’ anatomy, it was not just the normal inertia inherent in theory change, but also a long-prolonged opposition by neo-Galenists.
The beginnings of the acceptance of Vesalius anatomy took place, naturally, in his own university of Padua and other North Italian universities resulting in a dynasty of excellent professors at those universities, leading to a major influx of eager students from all over Europe.
Following Vesalius, the first of the significant Paduan anatomists was Gabriele Falloppio (1523–1562). Born in Modena, the son of an impoverished noble family. Lacking money, he joined the clergy, was appointed a canon of Modena Cathedral, and received an education in medicine at the University of Ferrara, graduating in 1548. In the same year he was appointed professor for anatomy at the university. In 1549 he was appointed professor for anatomy at the University of Pisa and in 1551 he received the same position at the University of Padua. Although, most well know today for his study of the reproductive organs leading to the naming of the Fallopian tubes after him, he made major contributions to our knowledge of bones and muscles. His major area of research was, however, the anatomy of the head where he systematically expanded our knowledge.
Portrait of Gabriele Falloppio artist unknown Source: Wikimedia Commons
Earlier that Falloppio was Matteo Realdo Colombo (c. 1515 – 1559), who was a colleague of Vesalius at Padua. The son of apothecary born in Cremona he initially apprenticed to his father but then became apprentice to the surgeon Giovanni Antonio Lonigo for seven years. In 1538 he enrolled as a medical student at Padua, where he quickly acquired a reputation for the study of anatomy. He became friends with Vesalius and was appointed to teach his courses while Vesalius was in Basel overseeing the publication of De fabrica. Vesalius attributes many of the discoveries in De fabrica to Colombo. Their relationship declined, when Colombo pointed out errors in Vesalius’ work, leading to them becoming rivals.
Matteo Realdo Colombo artist unknown Source: Wikimedia Commons
Colombo left Padua in 1544 and went to the University of Pisa and from 1548 he worked at the papal university teaching anatomy until his death in 1459. Colombo was also involved in priority disputes with Falloppio. His only published text, De re anotomica issued posthumously in 1559 contains many discoveries also claimed by Falloppio, most notably the discovery of the clitoris and its sexual function.
Source: Wikimedia Commons
Colombo made many contributions to the study of anatomy, perhaps his most important discovery was the rediscovery of the so-called pulmonary circulation, previously discovered by Ibn al-Nafis (1213–1288) and Michael Servetus (c. 1511–1553).
Bartolomeo Eustachi (c. 1510–1574), a contemporary of Vesalius, who belonged to the competition, was a dedicated supporter of Galen working at the Sapienza University of Rome.
Bartolomeo Eustachi artist unknown Source: Wikimedia Commons
However, he made many important anatomical discoveries. He collated his work in his Tabulae anatomicae in 1552, but unfortunately this work was first published in 1714.
Julius Caesar Aranzi (1529/30–1589) was born in Bologna and studied surgery under his uncle Bartolomeo Maggi (1477–1552), who lectured on surgery at the University of Bologna.
Portrait of Julius Caesar Arantius (Giulio Cesare Aranzi, 1530–1589). From the Collection Biblioteca Comunale dell’Archiginnasio, Bologna, Italy. Source.
He studied medicine at Padua, where he made his first anatomical discovery at the age of nineteen in 1548. He finished his studies at the University of Bologna graduating in 1556. At the age of twenty-seven he was appointed lecturer for surgery at the university. Like the others he made numerous small contributions to our understanding of human anatomy, of particular importance was his study of foetuses. However, his major contribution was in the status of anatomy as a discipline. As professor for anatomy and surgery in Bologna starting in 1556, he established anatomy as a major discipline in its own right.
A very central figure in the elevation of anatomy as a discipline at the medieval university was Girolamo Fabrici d’Acquapendente (1533–1619). Fabrici studied medicine in Padua under Falloppio graduating in 1559. He went into private practice in Padua and was very successful, numbering many rich and powerful figures amongst his patients. From 1562 till 1565 he also lectured at the university on anatomy. In 1565 he succeeded Falloppi as professor for anatomy and surgery at the university, a post he retained until 1613. As an anatomist he is considered one of the founders of modern embryology and as also renowned for discovering the valves that prevent blood following backwards in the veins, an important step towards the correct description of blood circulation.
Girolamo Fabrizi d’Acquapendente artist unknown Source: Wikimedia Commons
Girolamo Fabrici is also renowned for several of the students, who studied under him in Padua. Giulio Cesare Casseri (1552 – 8 March 1616) not only studied under Fabrici but was also employed as his servant.
Giulio Cesare Casseri artist unknown Source: Wikimedia Commons
The two of them later had a major falling out, but Casseri still succeeded Fabrici as professor in Padua. His biggest contribution was his Tabulae anatomicae, containing 97 copperplate engravings, published posthumously in in Venice 1627, which became one of the most important anatomical texts in the seventeenth century.
Casseri was succeeded as professor in Padua by another of Fabrici’s students the Netherlander, Adriaan van den Spiegel (1578–1625).
Adriaan van den Spiegel artist unknown Source: Wikimedia Commons
Van den Spiegel was born in Brussels but studied initially in Leuven and Leiden, in 1601 he transferred to Padua, where he graduated in 1604. His main text, his De humani corporis fabrica libri decem, which he saw as an updated version of Vesalius’ book of the same title, was also published in Venice in 1627.
Source: Wikimedia Commons
For English readers Girolamo Fabrici’s most well-known student was William Harvey (1578–1657). Born the eldest of nine children to the jurist Thomas Harvey and his wife Joan Halke.
William Harvey, after a painting by Cornelius Jansen Source: Wikimedia Commons
He was educated at King’s School Canterbury and matriculated at Gonville & Caius College Cambridge in 1593. He graduated BA in 1597 and then set off on travels through mainland Europe. He travelled through France and Germany and matriculated as a medical student at Padua in 1599. During his time in Padua, he developed a close relationship with Fabrici graduating in 1602. Upon graduation he returned to England and having obtained a medical degree from Cambridge University, he became a fellow of Gonville & Caius. The start of a very successful career. His major contribution was, of course, his Exercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis et Sanguinis in Animalibus (An Anatomical Exercise on the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Living Beings), the first correct account of the blood circulation and the function of the heart published in Frankfurt in 1628.
He also published an important work on the development of chicken embryos in the egg, Exercitationes de generatione animalium (On Animal Generation) published in 1651.
L0010265 W. Harvey, Exercitationes de generatione animalium Credit: Wellcome Library, London.
It could be argued that Girolamo Fabrici’s most important contribution to the history of anatomy was the erection of the university’s anatomical theatre. We saw in the last episode that the universities had been erecting temporary wooden dissecting spaces in winter for a couple of centuries, as described by Alessandro Benedetti (1450?–1512) in his Anatomice: sive, de historia corporis humani libri quique (Anatomy: or, Five Books on the History of the Human Body) in 1502:
A temporary theatre should be built at a large and well-ventilated place, with seats arranged in a circle, as in the Colosseum in Rome and the Area in Verona, sufficiently large to accommodate a great number of spectators in such a manner that the teacher would not be inconvenienced by the crowd… The corpse has to be put on a table in the centre of the theatre in an elevated and clear place easily accessible to the dissector.
During the second half of the sixteenth century several institutions began to assign a permanent room for such spaces, the University of Montpellier in 1556, the Company of Barber Surgeons in London in 1557 and so on. Girolamo Fabrici raised the stakes by having the first ever purpose-built anatomical theatre designed and built in Padua in 1594. The project was the work of the Venetian polymath Paolo Sarpi (1552–1623) and the artist-architect Dario Varotari (c. 1539–1596). A closed elliptical shape with tiers of standing spaces for the observers rising steeply up the sides, giving a clear view of the dissecting table in the centre.
Anatomical Theatre Padua design Source: Wikimedia CommonsAnatomical Theatre Padua as it is today Source: Wikimedia Commons
In Northern Italy the first to follow suit was the University of Bologna, which one year later opened its Anatomical Theatre of the Archiginnasio now situated in the Archiginnasio Palace the main building of the university.
A general view of the Anatomical theatre reconstructed after WWI when it was destroyed by bombing. Source: Wikimedia Commons
Originally situated elsewhere, it was rebuilt in its current setting between 1636 and 1638. The Bolognese rejected the Paduan Ellipse for a rectangular room claiming it to be superior.
Of greatest interest however was the Theatrum Anatomicum built far away from Northern Italy in 1596 in the still young university of Leiden. The University of Leiden was established in 1575, in the early phases of the Eighty Years’ War, as the first university of the newly founded United Provinces.
The Academy building of Leiden University in 1614. Source: Wikimedia Commons
Leuven, the original alma mater of Vesalius, was located in the remaining Spanish Netherlands. Home to both Rudolph Snel (1546–1613) and his son Willebrord (1580–1626) as well as Simon Stevin (1548–1629), who founded its school of engineering, the university was strong on the sciences for its early days. However, it was its school of medicine that would become most influential in the seventeenth century, and this school of medicine had deep connections to Padua and Girolamo Fabrici.
The connections start with Johannes Heurnius (Jan van Heurne) (1543–1601), born in Utrecht, he initially studied in Leuven and Paris before going to Padua to study under Fabrici, where he graduated MD in 1566. Returning to the Netherlands he became a town physician in Utrecht before being appointed professor of medicine at the new University of Leiden in 1581. He introduced anatomy in the tradition of Vesalius into the still young Dutch university, as well as the Paduan emphasis on anatomical demonstrations and practical clinical work.
Source: Wikimedia Commons
The anatomical theatre was introduced by Pieter Pauw (1564–1617), born in Amsterdam the son of the politician Pieter Pauw and his wife Geertruide Spiegel, he studied medicine at the University of Leiden, under Johannes Heurnius and Gerard Bontius (c. 1537–1599), another Padua graduate, graduating in 1584.
Pieter Pauw Source: Wikimedia Commons
He continued his studies in Rostock graduating MD in 1587. From here, he moved to Padua to study under Fabrici. Forced by his father’s illness he returned to Leiden in 1589, he was appointed assistant to Bontius, taking over responsibility for the medical botany. In 1592 he was appointed professor for anatomy and in 1596 he erected the permanent anatomical theatre in the same year.
Leiden anatomical theatre in 1610. Source: Wikimedia Commons
Otto Heurnius (otto van Heurne) (1577–1652) was the son of Johannes Heurnius and studied medicine under his father and Pieter Pauw in Leiden. He graduated MD in 1601 and was appointed assistant to his father, whom he succeeded a year later as professor, not without criticism. In 1617 he then succeeded Pieter Pauw as professor for anatomy.
Otto Heurnius Source: Wikimedia Commons
Otto’s most famous student was Franciscus Sylvius (Franz de le Boë) (1614–1672). Born into an affluent family in Hanau he studied medicine at the Protestant Academy of Sedan then from 1632 to 1634 in Leiden, where he studied under Otto Heurius and Adolphus Vorstius (Adolphe Vorst) (1597–1663), who had also studied at Padua under Adriaan van den Spiegel, graduating MD in 1622. Vorstius was appointed an assistant in Leiden in 1624 and full professor in 1625. Sylvius continued his studies in Jena and Wittenberg, graduating MD in Basel in 1637. He initial practice medicine in Hanau but returned to Leiden to lecture in 1639. From 1641 he had a successful private practice in Amsterdam. In 1658 he was appointed professor for medicine at Leiden, with twice the normal salary.
Franciscus Sylvius and his wife by Frans van Mieris, Sr. Source: Wikimedia Commons
Under Sylvius it became obvious, what had been true for some time, that Leiden had, in the place of Padua, become the leading European medical school, particularly in terms of anatomy. By the middle of the seventeenth century the change that Vesalius had introduced into the study and teaching of anatomy at the medieval university had been completed. Previously a minor aspect of the medical education, anatomy had now become a prominent and central discipline in that course of studies. Sylvius produced a stream of first-class graduates, who would go on to dominate the life sciences in the next decades that included Reinier de Graaf (1641–1673), who made important contributions to the understanding of reproduction,
Reinier de Graaf Source: Wikimedia Commons
Jan Swammerdam (1637–1680), an early microscopist, who made important studies of insects,
Jan Swammerdam Reproductive organs of the bee drawn with a microscope Credit: Wellcome Library, London. There is no known portrait of Swammerdam
Nicolas Steno (1638–1686), who made important contribution to anatomy and geology,
Portrait of Nicolas Steno (1666–1677). Unsigned but attributed to court painter Justus Sustermans. (Uffizi Gallery, Florence, Italy) Source: Wikimedia Commons
and Frederik Ruysch (1638–1731), an anatomist best know for his techniques for conserving anatomical specimens.
The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Frederick Ruysch by Jan van Neck (1683). Amsterdam Museum. Source: Wikimedia Commons
Sylvius was also one of those, who introduced chemistry into the study of medicine, which we will look at in the next episode.
For a detailed study of the work on reproduction of Harvey and many of the Leiden anatomist, I recommend Matthew Cobb’s The Egg & Sperm Race: The Seventeenth-Century Scientists Who Unravelled the Secrets of Sex, Life and Growth, The Free Press, London, 2006
If your philosophy of [scientific] history claims that the sequence should have been A→B→C, and it is C→A→B, then your philosophy of history is wrong. You have to take the data of history seriously.
John S. Wilkins 30th August 2009
Culture is part of the unholy trinity—culture, chaos, and cock-up—which roam through our versions of history, substituting for traditional theories of causation. – Filipe Fernández–Armesto “Pathfinders: A Global History of Exploration”
The Renaissance Mathematicus 