The Revival of Learning.
Pope Nicholas V. (1389-1455) was a man of great intellectual sympathies. He was not devoted to any one branch of learning, but was “a well-informed dillettante, wandering at will wherever his fancy led him.” Æneas Sylvius said of him: “From his youth he has been initiated into all liberal arts; he is acquainted with all philosophers, historians, poets, cosmographers, and theologians; and is no stranger to civil and canon law, or even to medicine.” He was the patron of scholars, and was equally devoted to ecclesiastical and profane literature. Although he was the son of a physician, it is not true that he was ever one himself, as has been stated.[811] It is pleasant, however, to reflect that this pope, whose name is most intimately associated with the revival of learning, probably imbibed much of the scientific lore of his time which his father’s profession would encourage, and that taste for learning and that liberal spirit which has always been associated with the medical profession. The Humanists—as those who devoted themselves to the Humanities, such as philology, rhetoric, poetry, and the study of the ancient classes, were called—found a friendly reception at the papal court.
Nicholas of Cusa was the reforming Cardinal Bishop of Brixen (1401-1464). Giordano Bruno called him “the divine Cusanus.” In physical science he was greatly in advance of his age, and he united moral worth with intellectual gifts of the highest order.
Pope Pius II., better known in literature as Æneas Sylvius, pope from 1458 to 1464, was also a great friend to the Humanists, a man of great intellectual power. He stands forth in history as “the figure in whom the mediæval and the modern spirit are most distinctly seen to meet and blend,” ere the age of science begins to strangle the age of superstition. Professor Creighton says that Pius II. is the first writer “who consciously applied a scientific conception of history to the explanation and arrangement of passing events.”[812]
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), “the Faust of the Renaissance,” excelled not only as an artist, but in all kinds of experimental investigation. He was an anatomist, botanist, physiologist, and chemist. Had he applied himself wholly to science, he would have been foremost in that branch to which he devoted his wonderful energies. He was one of the greatest and earliest of natural philosophers. He has been declared to have been “the founder of the study of the anatomy and structural classification of plants, the founder, or at least the chief reviver, of the science of hydraulics—[the discoverer of] the molecular composition of water, the motion of waves, and even the undulatory theory of light and heat. He discovered the construction of the eye and the optical laws of vision, and invented the camera obscura. He investigated the composition of explosives and the application of steam power.”[813]
Matthew de Gradibus, of Fiuli, near Milan, in 1480 composed treatises on the anatomy of the human body. He first described the ovaries of the female correctly.
Gabriel de Zerbis (about 1495), of Verona, an eminent but verbose anatomist, dissected the human subject, and recognised the olfactory nerves. He mentioned the oblique and circular muscular fibres of the stomach.
Alexander Achillini (1463-1512), of Bologna, the pupil of Mondino, is known in the history of anatomy as the first who described the two bones of the ear (tympanal bones), the malleus and incus. In 1503 he showed that the tarsus (or ankle and instep bones) were seven in number, so painfully and slowly was such a simple thing in human anatomy settled in those times. He was more accurately acquainted with the intestines than any of his predecessors.
Cornelius Agrippa (1486-1536) was born at Cologne, and was a profound student of what is known as “Occult Philosophy,” a strange jumble of astrology, alchemy, cabalism, theology, and the teaching of the so-called “Hermetic Books.” This sort of thing has of late years again become fashionable under the revived name of Theosophy.
He seems to have been sufficiently harmless; but as he knew much more of physical science than was considered consistent with good churchmanship in those times, he was persecuted by the monk Catilinet, and was forced to fly from place to place.