When Rome Lost the Golden Age

Academic Cultures at the Dawn of the Enlightenment

Duration: 1 November 2023 until 31 October 2025
Project member(s): Dr. Fiammetta Iovine
Project type: Research
Organisation: Faculty of Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies, Center for the History of Philosophy and Science

Might Baroque Rome have been home to an “Enlightenment” of its own?

Had seventeenth-century Rome embraced modern science and experimental philosophy, coming to terms with atomism and the void, and accepting the notion of a cosmos ruled by mechanical laws, Europe might have known a very different Enlightenment. This statement might appear obvious, but the disbelief instilled by the Enlightenment that an alternative scenario was even possible in Catholic Rome has shaped a view that has remained unquestioned. In fact, precisely because of the toll exacted by the Counter-Reformation on the new science, Rome became a unique laboratory for reconciling the new mechanical and experimental philosophies developed in northern countries with the Christian faith that the papacy wished to protect.

About the project

As the condemnation of Galileo in 1633 made clear, Rome chose not to embrace the scientific revolution, fearing mostly a regime change. But, between 1670 and 1720, literary and scientific academic circles in Rome, with the support of a group of cardinals in the papal court, engaged in softly reinstating that revolution, in a form that was compatible with the tenets of religion. With the scientific supervision of Prof. Dr. Antonio Clericuzio (Roma Tre University – Rome), this RUBICON project founded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO) aims to investigate the nature of the ideals, programs, and chances of this attempted transition into modernity, starting from a re-examination of the academic culture and its institutions in Rome at the end of the century.

RESEARCH UPDATES ACADEMIES DOCUMENTS

Research Updates

Work in Progress – 20 May

The Congresso medico romano (Roman medical congress) is at the core of my present inquiry. This academy promoted discussions on medical topics and natural philosophical issues which proved relevant for the medical profession.

Work in Progress – 5 April

I am investigating the sect called Bianchi (the Whites) whose conversations were mostly held at Monsignor Pietro Gabrielli’s house since the late 1680’s and until 1690. The leading members of the group were arrested and tried by the Holy Office under the accusation of entertaining heretical ideas. My research involves visiting the Archive of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith, where are preserved the archives of the Holy Inquisition.

Work in Progress – 19 February 2024

My research is now focusing on the Accademia Fisico-matematica (Physico-mathematical Academy) founded in Rome by Giovanni Giustino Ciampini in 1677. I am presently examining Ciampini’s papers and books at the Vatican Apostolic Library.

Roman Academies: Public and Private Gatherings

THE PHYSICO-MATHEMATICAL ACADEMY (1677-1698)

A painting of Piazza Navona in the morning — Caspar van Wittel, Piazza Navona (1699), cm 96×216, Madrid, Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum

Founded in Rome 1677 by Giovanni Giustino Ciampini, this Academy was erected with the purpose of investigating “natural philosophy, based on experiments in imitation of the famous Academy del Cimento erected in Florence under the protection of Cardinal de Medici [Leopoldo] and other well-recognized ones in England, France, and Germany”.[1] Thus, in the words of Girolamo Toschi, its first secretary, Ciampini’s Academy was to revive the Florentine Academy del Cimento, founded in 1657 and closed in 1667, also following the example of the Royal Society, the Imperial Leopoldina Academy Naturae Curiosorum, and the French Academy of Sciences.

The Academy also enjoyed the protection of Christina of Sweden, an illustrious patron of arts and sciences, who lived in Rome from December 1655 until death in 1689. Among the members of the Physico-mathematical Academy there were: the mathematician, astronomer and physiologist Giovanni Alfonso Borelli (1608-1679), who was the author of De motu animalium (1680-1681) where physiological phenomena were explained in purely mechanical terms; the mathematician and Cartesian-Spinozist philosopher Vitale Giordani (1633-1711); the astronomer Geminiano Montanari (1633-1687), also one of the first to experiment blood transfusion in animals; and the Dutch engineer Cornelis Janszoon Meyer (1629-1701), who built a celebrated passonata on the Tiber near Porta Flaminia, an embankment which successfully prevented floodings in that area; the mathematician, astronomer and historian Francesco Bianchini, a Royal Society Fellow. Also, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz attended the Academy assiduously when he was in Rome between May and November 1689.

The Academy, which had been hosted all along in Ciampini’s apartments near piazza Navona, closed after the founder’s death on 12 July 1698. The institution had rooms for the gatherings and for the experiments, which Ciampini generously paid for, and the academicians could freely use Ciampini’s library of more than 7.000 volumes and access his collection of mechanical instruments and antiquarian rarities.

[1] Girolamo Toschi to Apollinare Rocca, Rome, 23 July 1677, in G. Tiraboschi, Biblioteca modenese, 6 vols., V, 285–6; the English translation hereby quoted is found in E. Knowles-Middleton, “Science in Rome, 1675-1700, and the Accademia Fisico-matematica of Giovanni Giustino Ciampini”, The British Journal for the History of Science 8 (1975), no. 29, 138–54: 144–5.

THE BIANCHI SECT (1680’s-1690)

An etching of Piazza di Monte Giordano — Giovan Battista Falda, Piazza di Monte Giordano (in the vicinity of Palazzo Taverna), in Il Nuovo teatro delle fabriche et edificii in prospettiva di Roma moderna, book I, tab. 22, Rome, 1665.

As the trial papers of the Bianchi (The Whites) reveal, the group took this name because it meant to ‘whitewash’ the Catholic faith. They claimed that Jesus was a politician who schemed to crown himself the King of Israel. Besides, he was not the son of God, Mary was a cunning Egyptian gypsy and Joseph a miserable wittol. Religion with its doctrine and sacraments was only instrumental to the power of the Church over the people. Monsignor Pietro Gabrielli (1660-1734), who hosted most of the Bianchi’s reunions at his apartments in Palazzo Taverna, nearby Monte Giordano’s square, was a young cleric who held the prestigious and remunerative posts of Apostolic Protonotary, Referendary of the Tribunal of the Signatura, president of the Apostolic Chamber, and Cupbearer to the Pope. The Bianchi were connected to some prominent Roman academies. An inspirational figure for Gabrielli was abbot Antonio Oliva, a former member of the Cimento Academy in Florence, who was currently a fellow of the Fisico-matematica Academy founded by Giovanni Ciampini. Furthermore, the Bianchi were also connected to the Congresso medico romano, a key medical academy, through the physician Sulpizio Antonio Mazzuti who took part in some gatherings of Gabrielli’s circle. When the Bianchi were arrested and condemned to prison by the Holy Office, Antonio Oliva committed suicide by throwing himself out of a window of the Tribunal. Gabrielli lost all his charges within the Church and was later transferred to a prison in Perugia. Escaped in 1708, Gabrielli reached Venice as a free man but was never able to set foot in Rome again. The sceptical and ‘political’ interpretation of religion that the Bianchi maintained was allegedly influenced by Spinoza’s philosophy. By seconding the identification of God and Nature, Spinozism lent itself to legitimate a sort of ‘naturalism’ as a secular moral compass and an epistemological framework of scientific inquiries which well suited mechanical philosophy. The works of Spinoza, already put to the Index of prohibited books in 1679, were banned again in 1690.

THE ROMAN MEDICAL CONGRESS (1681-1690)

[Congresso Medico Romano], Catalogo, Rome, 1682; this booklet, which lists what topics were discussed at the Academy and by which speaker from 10 March 1681 to 8 June 1682, is conspicuously dedicated to eight influential cardinals.

Established around 1681 by the physician and pontifical archiater Girolamo Brasavola (1628-1705) at his house nearby Piazza Navona, the Congresso medico romano proposed to investigate geometry, (natural) philosophy, medicine, anatomy, and chemistry with a distinct interest in experimental science (see [Congresso medico romano], Catalogo, Rome, 1682; dedication letter to the cardinals appearing in the frontispiece). In fact, the Academy turned occasionally into an anatomical theatre or a chemical laboratory to demonstrate the interactions of acid, alkali, and salt in bodily substances with the purpose of treating certain illnesses with iatro-chemical remedies. Attendees were mostly physicians or lecturers in practical or theorical medicine, although mathematicians, philosophers, and intellectuals interested in science were also admitted. More importantly, the Academy was attended by prominent cardinals who bestowed their protection on it: Carlo Pio (1622-1689), Decio Azzolini (1623-1689), Paluzzo Altieri (1623-1698), Federico [Baldeschi] Colonna (1625-1691), Flaminio del Taja (1602-1682), Giovanni Battista de Luca (1614-1683), Felice Rospigliosi (1639-1688), Benedetto Pamphilj (1653-1730).

Illustrious fellows of the Congresso included the pontifical archiater Giovanni Maria Lancisi (1654-1720), also director of the hospital Santo Spirito in Sassia, and Giacomo Sinibaldi (1640-1720), professor at La Sapienza University and dean of the College of physicians of Rome. A valued member of the Congresso also was Albert Günther, a German physician, well versed in iatro-chemistry, who in August 1690 denounced Brasavola, Sinibaldi, and Lancisi at the Holy Office for harbouring atomism and Cartesian ideas. Günther knew of the ongoing investigation of the Inquisition on the Bianchi and was afraid that the Congresso would soon be implicated because of the deposition of Antonio Sulpizio Mazzuti, a fellow physician of the Congresso who took part occasionally in the meetings of the Bianchi. Günther’s deposition triggered Lancisi’s confession, who admitted having held the same heretical ideas as the Bianchi and avowed his penchant for atomism and mechanical philosophy. The equivalence between atheism and the new philosophy was then easily established, reinforced even by the trial against ‘the atheists’ which had started in Naples a few years earlier. Because of the protection that the Congresso and Lancisi enjoyed in high places, the trial was put to rest, but this medical Academy was forever disbanded after 1690.

Documents

An unknown celestial map of the [Halley] Comet’s passage over Rome from 29 August to 11 September 1682 realised by the Physico-mathematical Academy

With the help of a telescope, Giovanni Giustino Ciampini, Francesco Serra, Domenico Quartaroni, Cornelis Janszoon Meyer and other members of the Physico-mathematical Academy of Rome observed the comet which appeared on 29 August 1682 under the left forefoot of the Ursa maior constellation. Relating this event, Ciampini recited a discourse at the Academy which was published anonymously that year: Discorso tenuto da N.N. nell’Accademia Fisicomatematica romana. Con occasione della cometa apparsa il mese d’Agosto del presente anno 1682 ed osservazioni sopra di essa fatte in Roma (Rome: Nicol’Angelo Tinassi, 1682). Details of the observations (date, time, longitude, latitude, meteorological conditions) are mentioned in the discourse, but no astronomical chart of the comet’s course is appended to the publication. However, in the exemplar possessed by the Vatican Apostolic Library (R.G.Scienze.IV.1148) is found a loose chart of the sky, ink drafted by an expert hand, which reproduces the course of the comet through the constellations then visible from Rome.

The chart is dedicated to Queen Christina of Sweden, who moved to Rome in December 1655. In panegyric literature, the Queen was often associated to the Northern constellation of the Ursa maior because she came from the North. This drawing was apparently used as the basis for a gravure which would be printed by the typographer Marinari of Piazza Navona, near the Academy’s quarters; this implies the brief legend on the chart (si stampa da Marinari in Navona). This document is evidence that the Queen’s patronage of the Physico-mathematical Academy was still active in 1682.

The Vatican exemplar of Ciampini’s discourse on the 1682 comet is bound with three other works published by the Academy between 1681 and 1687, including a relation concerning the invention of new optical instruments (Nuove invenzioni di tubi ottici dimostrati nell’Accademia Fisicomatematica romana nell’anno 1686, Rome: Gio. Giacomo Komarek, 1686). Many of the tables accompanying the Vatican exemplar are beautifully hand drawn and were probably used for the engravings which are found in printed copies of these tracts. On the front of the ancient cardboard cover of the Vatican exemplar, which wraps all four treatises, an ink note says: “the Signor Marc’Antonio Cellio lives in S. Stefano in Piscinola alley, at Signor Aledico Torretti’s” (Il Signor Marc’Antonio Cellio habita nel vicolo di S. Stefano in Piscinola, dal Signor Aledico Torretti). Marc’Antonio Cellio was a member of the Physico-mathematical Academy experienced in crafting lenses and building telescopes.

There is little doubt that the Vatican exemplar comes from the milieu of the Physico-mathematical Academy, possibly from Ciampini’s own personal library.

Vatican Apostolic Library, MS Vat. Lat. 9063, fol. 64r-v – Letter from Francesco Bianchini to Giovanni Giustino Ciampini, Verona, 30 January 1687

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With this missive, Bianchini, who had attended the Physico-mathematical Academy in Rome and was then in Verona, sends to Ciampini the inaugural lecture that he had delivered at the Academy of the Aletofili (the lovers of the truth). The Aletofili was a physico-medical academy which Bianchini founded in Verona in December 1686. Bianchini asks Ciampini to share the discourse with the physician Girolamo Brasavola, who had opened in his house the Congresso medico romano. The Congresso was a medical Academy attended by several physicians and philosophers in Rome. Opened around 1681, the Congresso also discussed atomism and mechanical philosophy, and was disbanded in 1690 as a consequence of the warning received from the Inquisition.

Funding

NWO