Cornelius Gemma
Cornelius (or Cornelio) Gemma (28 February 1535 – 12 October 1578)
As an astronomer, Gemma is significant for his observations of a
Another milestone appears in his medical writings: in 1552, Gemma published the first illustration of a human
Gemma's two major works, De arte cyclognomica (Antwerp, 1569) and De naturae divinis characterismis (Antwerp, 1575), have been called "true 'hidden gems' in early modern intellectual history," bringing together such topics as medicine, astronomy, astrology, teratology, divination, eschatology, and encyclopaedism.[4]
Gemma also has the distinction of being called "the first true orchid hobbyist, in the modern sense."[5]
Life
Cornelius Gemma was born on 28 February 1535[6] in Leuven, but attended the Latin school at Mechelen. He began studying with the arts faculty in Leuven at the age of 14, and continued at the medical faculty. In 1569, he succeeded professor Nicolas Biesius and obtained a doctorate in 1570.[6]
Gemma died in Leuven around 1578, during an epidemic of the plague to which a third of the city's population had also succumbed.
Works
Gemma edited his father's posthumous work De astrolabo catholica (1556). In 1560, he began publishing his own work in the annual series Ephemerides meteorologicae, printed by Joannes Withagen. The Ephemerides is the earliest known astrological work from the
Gemma attempted to formulate a universal philosophy that brought together inferiors and celestials, nature, soul and intellect, numbers, ideas and external objects. In the three volumes De arte cyclognomica, he synthesized the teachings of Hippocrates, Plato, Galen, and Aristotle by a method perhaps derived from Lullius. This "cyclognomic art" is an arrangement of seven concentric circles, starting from the outermost:
- substances;
- accidents;
- absolute predicates;
- relatives;
- virtues;
- vices;
- questions.[11]
A profusion of charts, celestial diagrams, and
Gemma's two volumes De naturae divinis characterismis (1575), on divine marks or features in nature, included tales of medical marvels. An example may be found online in the Compendium Maleficiarum of
Gemma viewed the relation of
The Great Comet of 1577
One of Gemma's more scientifically significant works
Bibliography
- Thorndike, Lynn. History of Magic and Experimental Science, unknown edition. On Cornelius Gemma, pp. 406–408, limited preview online.
- Vanden Broecke, Steven. The Limits of Influence: Pico, Louvain, and the Crisis of Renaissance Astrology. Brill, 2003. On Cornelius Gemma, pp. 186–190, limited preview online.
- van Nouhuys, Tabitta. The Age of Two-faced Janus: The Comets of 1577 and 1618 and the Decline of the Aristotelian World View in the Netherlands. Brill, 1998. Extensive discussion of Gemma's views on comets, pp. 169–189 online.
- Hiro Hirai, "Cornelius Gemma and His Neoplatonic Reading of Hippocrates," in: Hiro Hirai, Medical Humanism and Natural Philosophy: Renaissance Debates on Matter, Life and the Soul (Boston-Leiden: Brill, 2011), 104–122.
Further reading
- Hirai, Hiro, editor. Cornelius Gemma: Cosmology, Medicine and Natural Philosophy in Renaissance Louvain. Fabrizio Serra, 2008. Proceedings from an international conference on Cornelius Gemma held on 23 February 2007, at ISBN 9788862271189
- Contents:
- "A Poem on the Copernican System: Cornelius Gemma and His Cosmocritical Art" by Fernand Hallyn;
- "Il linguaggio universale dei cieli: Cornelio Gemma, Tycho Brahe, Tommaso Campanella" by Germana Ernst;
- "'Vere Gemmeum est?': Cornelio Gemma e la stella nuova del 1572" by Dario Tessicini;
- "La notion de prodige selon Cornelius Gemma" by Jean Céard;
- "Cornelius Gemma et l'épidémie de 1574" by Concetta Pennuto;
- " and Gemma" by Hiro Hirai;
- "Cornelius Gemma and Universal Method" by Stephen Clucas;
- "Cornelius Gemma, Philosophie und Methode: Eine Analyse des ersten Buches der Ars cyclognomica" by Thomas Leinkauf.
Additional bibliography may be found at the conference website.
Notes
- ^ In his Latin biography, Melchior Adam says that Gemma died on 12 October 1579, at the age of 45; modern scholars, however, almost uniformly cite 1578 as the year of his death.
References
- ^ University of Otago Library exhibition note for The Earth & Beyond online Archived 12 February 2012 at the Wayback Machine; and R.H. Allen, Star Names: Their Lore and Meaning, Bill Thayer's edition at LacusCurtius, "Cassiopeia." The star is now identified as SN 1572.
- ^ University of Oklahoma Libraries, History of Science Collections, Recent Acquisitions, "The First Book Printed on Tycho Brahe's Printing Press at Uraniborg: Diarium, 1586," The Lynx 2 (November 2005), p. 9 online Archived 20 July 2010 at the Wayback Machine with Gemma's illustration.
- ^ University of Würzburg, Parasitology Research & Encyclopedic Reference of Parasitology online.
- ^ Cornelius Gemma: Cosmology, Medicine and Natural Philosophy in Renaissance Louvain conference proceedings website. Archived 6 October 2011 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Pierre Jacquet, "History of Orchids in Europe, from Antiquity to the 17th Century," ''Orchid Biology: Reviews and Perspectives 6 (1994), as cited by Joseph Arditti, Orchid Biology (Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002), p. 27 online.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-387-30400-7.
- ^ Steven Vanden Broecke, The Limits of Influence: Pico, Louvain, and the Crisis of Renaissance Astrology (Brill, 2003), p. 186.
- ^ Melchior Adam, "Cornelius Gemma" in Vitae Germanorum medicorum (1620), p. 239 online facsimile.
- ^ Vanden Broecke, The Limits of Influence, pp. 186–190.
- ^ Lynn Thorndike, History of Magic and Experimental Science, unknown edition, p. 408.
- ^ Charles P. Krauth, A Vocabulary of the Philosophical Sciences (New York 1878), p. 625 online.
- ^ Grazia Tonelli Olivieri, "Galen and Francis Bacon: Faculties of the Soul and the Classification of Knowledge," in The Shape of Knowledge from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment (Springer, 1991) online.
- ^ Francesco Maria Guazzo, Compendium Maleficiarum (1628, republished 1920 and 2004), pp. 57 and 108.
- ^ Stuart Clark, Thinking with Demons: The Idea of Witchcraft in Early Modern Europe (Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 367 online.
- ^ De prodigiosa specie, naturaque Cometae, qui nobis effulsit altior lunae sedibus, insolita prorsus figura, ac magnitudine, anno 1570.
- ^ Robert S. Westman, "The Comet and the Cosmos: Kepler, Mästlin, and the Copernican Hypothesis," in The Reception of Copernicus' Heliocentric Theory: Proceedings of a Symposium Organized by the Nicolas Copernicus Committee of the International Union of the History and Philosophy of Science, Torun, Poland, 1973 (Springer, 1973), pp. 10 and 28. For a description and reproduction of Helisaeus Roeslin's diagram, see pp. 28–29 online.
- ^ Tabitta van Nouhuys, The Age of Two-faced Janus (Brill, 1998), pp. 169–189.