Bernardino Baldi
| Reverend Bernardino Baldi | |
|---|---|
| File:Bernardino Baldi.jpeg | |
| Born | June 5, 1553 Urbino, Duchy of Urbino |
| Died | 10 October 1617 (aged 64) Urbino, Duchy of Urbino |
| Occupations | Catholic priest translator mathematician hellenist |
| Title | Abbot |
| Parent(s) | Francesco Baldi and Virginia Baldi (née Montanari) |
| Academic background | |
| Alma mater | University of Padua |
| Influences | Federico Commandino[1] Guidobaldo del Monte[1] |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | Mathematics Classics |
| Sub-discipline | History of Mathematics |
Bernardino Baldi (5 June 1553 – 10 October 1617) was an Italian mathematician, poet, translator and priest.
Biography
Baldi descended from a noble family from Urbino, Marche, where he was born. He pursued his studies at Padua, and is said to have spoken about sixteen languages during his lifetime, though according to Tiraboschi the inscription on his tomb limits the number to twelve.
The appearance of the plague at Padua forced him to return to his native city. Shortly afterwards he was called to act as tutor to Ferrante Gonzaga, from whom he received the rich abbey of Guastalla. The oldest biography of Nicolaus Copernicus was completed on 7 October 1588 by him.[2] He held office as abbot for 25 years, and then returned once again to Urbino. In 1612, he was employed by the duke as his envoy to Venice. Baldi died at Urbino on 12 October 1617.
He is said to have written upwards of a hundred different works, the chief part of which have remained unpublished. His various works show his abilities as a theologian, mathematician, geographer, antiquary, historian and poet. His Cronica dei Matematici, a collection of lives of mathematicians, from antiquity to his own time, was conceived in emulation of Vasari's Lives, and was intended to contain the lives of more than two hundred mathematicians. The work was not published in the Renaissance, but an abridgement appeared in Urbino in 1707. His life has been written of by Ireneo Affò and Giammaria Mazzucchelli, among others.
See also
Writing
Scientific works
- De gli automati, overo machine se moventi, Libri 2 (Venice, 1589; repr. 1601), On Automatons; Author: Hero of Alexandria, translated from the Greek
- Scamilli impares Vitruviani (Augsburg, 1612)
- De Vitruvianorum verborum significatione (Augsburg, 1612) -- a.k.a. Lexicon Vitruvianum
- Heronis Ctesibii Belopoeeca (Augsburg, 1616)
- In mechanica Aristotelis problemata exercitationes. (Aristotle's Mechanics) (Mainz, 1621)
- Cronica de matematici, overo Epitome dell'istoria delle vite loro (Urbino, 1707)
Other works
- La corona dell'anno (Venice, 1589)
- Versi e Prose di Monsignor Bernardino Baldi da Urbino (Venice, 1590)
- Il Lauro, scherzo giouenile (Pavia, 1600)
- La Deifobe, overo gli oracoli della Sibilla Cumea Monodia (Venice, 1604) (About the Oracles of the Cumaean Sibyl)
- Il Diluvio universale, cantato, con nuova maniera di versi (Pavia, 1604)
- Concetti morali (Rome, 1607)
- Oratione di Bernardino Baldi... alla Serenità del nouvo Duce M. Antonio Memmo (Venice, 1613)
- In tabvlam aeneam Evgvbinam, lingua Hetrusca veteri perscriptam, divinatio (Augusta Vindelicorum, 1613)
- La Nautica: Poema
- Encomio della patria (1706)
From the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia
Bernardino Baldi — An Italian poet and savant, b. at Urbino, 5 June, 1553; d. at the same place, 10 October, 1617. After being initiated into higher mathematics by his fellow-townsman Commandino, he went to Padua (1573) and Rome (1576), where he managed to acquire a wide erudition, scientific, classical, and Oriental; Chaldaic, Arabic, and Persian were among the languages he learned. Having subsequently taken orders, he was made Abbot of Guastalla (Manua) by Prince Ferrante Gonzaga. In spite of many wanderings, entailing long-protracted absences, he retained the abbacy until 1609, when his native city claimed him for the rest of his life. Cardinal Cinzio Aldobrandini, the nephew of Clement VIII, and Francesco Maria della Rovere, Duke of Urbino, were proud of his friendship. The latter entrusted him with an embassy to Venice in 1612.
Baldi's poetic laurels were mainly earned by "La Nautica", a didactic poem closely following the "Georgics" in finely polished blank verse (1576). To this were added nineteen "Egloghe miste" (1583) "L'invenzione del bossolo de navigare", miscellaneous short poems (1590), and the "Epigrammi" (1614). An attempt at introducing fourteen and eighteen syllable lines in "Lauro" (1600) and "Il Diluvio Universale" (1604), met with utter failure. In addition to his Latin poems and several polyglot compilations, we have: "Cento Apologhi" (1583), some dialogues, a well-known "Descrizione del palazzo ducale d'Urbino" (1587), the biographies of Federico, second Duke, and Guidobaldo I, of Urbino, a curious biographical work on Italian and foreign mathematicians (Urbino, 1707), two Latin treatises on Vitruvius, numerous letters and translations from the Targum Onkelos, the Arabic Psalms, Aratus, Musaeus, Hero of Alexandria, Aristotle, etc. The unconstrained elegance of his diction gives him a foremost rank as a prose-writer. A standard edition of his best writings is that of Ugolini and Polidori (Florence, 1859).
P. Ireneo Affo, Vita di Bernardino Baldi (Parma, 1783); Zaccagnini, La Vita e le opere edite ed inedite di Bernardino Baldi (Parma, 1903). As to the sources of La Nautica, see Zaccagnini, Giornale storico della letteratura Italiana (1902), XL, 366-396; as to the Egloghe, Ruberto, Propugnatore, XX.
References
- Back to citation occurrence 1.0 Back to citation occurrence 1.1 Amaturo 1963.
- Back to citation On the revolutions, Foundations of natural history, Band 1, p.335, Nicolaus Copernicus: Complete Works, Edward Rosen, Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992.
Bibliography
- Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Baldi, Bernardino". Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
- Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "Bernardino Baldi". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
- Rose, Rose and Wright, A New General Biographical Dictionary (1857), pp. 46-48. (in Google Books)
- Amaturo, Raffaele (1963). "Baldi, Bernardino". Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (in Italian). Vol. 5: Bacca–Baratta. Rome: Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. OCLC 883370.
External links
- Online Galleries, History of Science Collections, University of Oklahoma Libraries High resolution images of works by and/or portraits of Bernardino Baldi in.jpg and.tiff format.