[After Bernardino Telesio] - photo 1
[After Bernardino Telesio] - photo 2
[After Bernardino Telesio] - photo 3

[After Bernardino Telesio]

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£ 2 268
Auction dateClassic
13.07.2022 10:30UTC +01:00
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CHRISTIE'S
Event location
United Kingdom, London
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ID 794574
Lot 42 | [After Bernardino Telesio]
[After Bernardino Telesio]

De Fluoribus and De Mari, in Latin, manuscript on paper [Italy, late 16th century]

A contemporary and unpublished synthesis of Bernardino Telesio's heliothermal theory of tidal motion, likely prepared for circulation as a pamphlet in late 16th-century Italy.



198 x 135mm. 54 leaves, complete, modern foliation in pencil followed here, 20-23 lines written in black in (ink erosion and showthrough, occasional smudges and stains). Unbound, in a fitted red cloth case, title gilt.



Content: De Fluoribus, beginning 'Fluor est medius habitus materia, quae du[m] a magna crassitie ad tenuitate[m] expanditur [...]' ff.1-38; De Mari, beginning 'Mare enim qu[am] si no[n] simplex est, certe no[n] admodu[m] multiplex [...]' ff.38-52v.



The text of these two treatises appears to be unpublished, but the encomiastic reference to the late Renaissance philosopher Bernardino Telesio of Cosenza (1509-88) on f.52: '[...] legerit libros Bernardini Telesii Cosentini Principis philosophorum omnium', and the content of the discussions on the sea and the tides indicates that the manuscript was designed as a pamphlet to propagate Telesian heliothermal theories. According to Pietro Daniel Omodeo, 'Bernardino Telesio of Cosenza is one of the Renaissance thinkers who most strenuously defended the ideal of inductive science. He envisaged an inquiry of nature which was firmly anchored in empirical observation at a time in which this was far from common. A priori approaches, resting on standard corpora and a set of acknowledged authorities, prevailed in higher education and scholarly debates, despite the rise of a new practical culture in broad sectors of society' (P.D. Omodeo, ed., Bernardino Telesio and the Natural Sciences in the Renaissance, 2019, p.1). Much of Telesio's career was spent in fervent attacks on Aristotle and Galen's work: with his De Rerum natura iuxta propia principii published in Naples in 1586, he positioned himself at the head of the great Southern Italian movement which protested against the accepted authority of abstract reason, and was one of the first proponents of empirical thought, a forerunner for Tommaso Campanella, Giordano Bruno, Francis Bacon and René Descartes.



The text of the present manuscript synthesises Telesio's heliothermal theory in another work of his, the De Mari, his theory of the cold earth at rest and the hot sun in motion, and the cause of the continuous motion of the sea being its simmering, produced by solar heat and the formation of vapors ('manifeste calor est auctor', f.1). Waves are analogous to the boiling of water in a pot ('ibi a sole coqui amplius dicant', f.42). Telesio's tidal theory is part of an extremely varied Renaissance discussion of the phenomenon, which Omodeo boils down into four separate lines of thought: the traditional Aristoteleian astrological and lunar approach; the vitalistic explanations of Giordano Bruno and Francesco Patrizi, with their principle of universal animation; the Galilean mechanical explanations; and Telesio's own heliothermal explanation (Omodeo, p.144). These early attempts at rational-empirical explanations of natural phenomena coincided with an increase in geographical knowledge, maritime navigations and colonial expansion of the period, and came from a need to break from a astrological natural-philosophical position that was increasingly seen as an occult and superstitious.





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Place of origin:Italy, Europe
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