Celio Calcagnini

Celio Calcagnini (Caelius Calcagninus) (1479-1541) was an Italian humanist from Ferrara. His learning as displayed in his collected works is very broad. [http://www.orteliusmaps.com/ortbib/Ortbibsourcesc.htm]

He had a wide experience: as soldier, academic, diplomat and in the chancery of Ippolito d'Este. He was consulted by Richard Croke on behalf of Henry VIII of England. [Quirinus Breen, "Celio Calcagnini (1479-1541)", Church History, Vol. 21, No. 3 (Sep., 1952), pp. 225-238.] He was a major influence on Rabelais's literary and linguistic ideas and is presumed to have met him in Italy, as well as being a teacher of Clément Marot [M. A. Screech, "Rabelais". p. 289, p. 378.] [Stanley G. Eskin, "Physis and Antiphysie: The Idea of Nature in Rabelais and Calcagnini", Comparative Literature, Vol. 14, No. 2 (Spring, 1962), pp. 167-173.] and was praised by Erasmus. [Peter G. Bietenholz, Thomas Brian Deutscher, "Contemporaries of Erasmus: A Biographical Register of the Renaissance and Reformation" (2003), p. 242.]

Giovanni Battista Giraldi was a student of his, and succeeded him at the University of Ferrara.

He had a contemporary reputation as an astronomer, and wrote on the rotation of the earth. He knew Copernicus in Ferrara at the beginning of the sixteenth century. [http://hsci.ou.edu/exhibits/exhibit.php?exbgrp=9&exbid=52&exbpg=5] His "Quod Caelum Stet, Terra Moveatur" is a precursor of the "De Revolutionibus" of Copernicus, though A. C. Crombie's qualifies his rotational theory as "vague", [A. C. Crombie, "Medieval and Early Modern Science" II (1959 edition), p. 166.] and is often dated to about 1525. [R. J. Schoeck, "The Geography of Erasmus", p. 201, in Fokke Akkerman, Arie Johan Vanderjagt, A. H. Van Der Laan, "Northern Humanism in European Context, 1469-1625: From the 'Adwert Academy' to Ubbo Emmius" (1999).]

Works

*"Opera" (1544)

Notes