Plate XXXVI. THE TWO FIGURES DISSECTING ARE TRADITIONALLY SAID TO REPRESENT MICHELANGELO AND ANTONIO DELLA TORRE
III. Hieronymo Manfredi
Hieronymo Manfredi was a member of a family that had already for more than two centuries provided distinguished citizens, and especially physicians, to the city of Bologna.[168] He was born about the year 1430 and was educated at the University of Bologna. Here in 1455 he was laureatus in Philosophy and Medicine, and here he became professor of the latter subject in 1463.[169]
During the second half of the fifteenth century, a perfect mania for the study of astrology infected Italy and penetrated equally into the Court, the Church, and the Academy. The profession of Medicine was far from immune, and at the University of Bologna, where a chair of Astrology had long been established,[170] the study was pursued with ardour and enthusiasm. Here Manfredi early devoted himself to that will-o’-the-wisp, the pursuit of which absorbed and sterilized many of the best intellects of his day. By the year 1469 he was already regarded as an authority on the vainest of studies,[171] and as the years went on he seems to have devoted himself to it ever more and more. The generally credulous character of Manfredi’s astrological ideas may be gathered from the page of his Prognosticon ad annum 1479 which we here reproduce (Fig. [10]).
The history of Manfredi’s connexion with the University of Bologna may be briefly told. He appears for the first time on the professorial roll in 1462, when we find him giving the ‘extraordinary’ lectures on Philosophy, a subject then regarded as under especial charge of the physicians. In 1465 he was conducting the ‘ordinary’ course in Philosophy, and at the same time giving occasional lectures on Medicine. In the following year he was called to the chair of Theoretical Medicine, and in 1469 he helped the Faculty out of a difficulty by giving lectures on ‘Astronomia’ in place of the aged professor Giovanni de Fundis. The latter died in 1474, and from that date onward Manfredi assumed responsibility for the course on ‘Astronomia’. Among the colleagues who joined him were Gabriele de Gerbi, who became lecturer on Logic in 1476, Filippo Beroaldo, who became lecturer on Rhetoric and Poetry in 1479, and Alessandro Achillini, who became lecturer on Logic in 1484.[172]
Such was the regard for Manfredi’s powers of astrological prediction that to all the University announcements of his course of lectures on Astronomy is added ‘cum hoc quod faciat iudicium et tachuinum’.[173] In spite of his proficiency in the science, however, he was unable to foretell his own death. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola writes of him thus derisively:
‘quo anno [1493] obiit omnimoda[m] uite incolumitate[m] fuerat pollicitus Hieronymus manfredus astrologus nostra aetate singularis: a quo tamen nihil mirandum minus praeuisam aliorum mortem: qui nec suam ipse praeuiderit: nam cum proxima estate uita sit functus: in istius tame[n] anni publico uaticinio qui s[cilicet] ei fuit fatalis: multa & mira sequenti anno dicturum se non semel pollicebatur. Qui nescio oppignoratam fidem quomodo reluet: nisi forte de caelo uerius nunc terrena despiciat q[uam] de terra oli[m] caelestia suspiciebat.’[174]
Manfredi died in 1493 and was buried in the church of Santa Margarita in Bologna. This church no longer exists, but it contained in the eighteenth century a tomb bearing the inscription:
HIERON. MANFREDO BONON. PHILOSOPHO AC MEDICO SVAE AETATIS NEMINI SECVNDO ASTRONOMORVMQVE CITRA INVIDIAM FACILE PRIMARIO. POSVIT SVPERSTES IOAN. FILIVS SVISQVE POSTERIS. VALE ATQVE ILLVM VALERE OPTA.[175]
Manfredi left a widow, Anna, who was still living in 1496 with a household of ten persons in the Via S. Margarita.[176] The houses on one side of this street backed on the very walls of the buildings belonging to the ‘University of Medicine’,[177] and we may suppose that Hieronymo Manfredi had resided here on that account. His surviving son, Giovanni, lived hard by in the Via S. Antonio di Padoa.