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 Proceedings. of 100th Jubilee of Wu Chien-Shiung, May 28-June 2 (2012) xx-xx

The Italian Renaissance: Transition from Medieval to Early Modern

Europe of the University System and Higher Learning
Massimo Guarnieria,*, Pietro del Negro b
a
Dipartimento di Ingegneria Elettrica, University of Padua, via Gradenigo 6/A, 35131 Padua, Italy
b
Dipartimento di Studi Storici e Politici, University of Padua, Via Del Santo, 28, 35131 Padua, Italy

Abstract
This contribution presents an overview of the Renaissance in Italy, where it first appeared, and covers its prelude, rise, culmination
and eventual decline. The influence it had on the university system is first presented, and then its achievements in science and
technology are examined. The results of the top exponents in these fields are illustrated, including names such as Filippo Brunelleschi,
Leonardo da Vinci, Vesalius (a Flemish professor at Padua), Girolamo Cardano, Giovanni Battista Della Porta and Galileo Galilei,
who eventually produced a major contribution which heralded the beginning of the scientific revolution. Attention is given to
presenting how their knowledge was transmitted and how it spread from Italy to a large part of Europe, where it promoted further
cultural progress and thus profoundly changed the whole continent and particularly its science and technology.

Keywords: Renaissance, Humanism, Scientific Revolution, Medieval Revival, history of Science and Technology .

1. Introduction of cultural development which we call the

Renaissance proper, and which involved ethical,
Italy was one the first countries in Europe were
doctrinal, literary, artistic, scientific and technical
cultural development recommenced in the 11th
subjects. In this climate Renaissance Humanism
century with the institution of the early Western
emerged, an activity of cultural and educational
universities then named Studia, in Latin, which drew
reform in the fields of grammar, rhetoric, history,
on the retrieval of classic knowledge. Initially
poetry and moral philosophy. The Italian Renaissance
medicine and mathematics were the only applied
began its decline around the mid 16th century, but it
scientific subjects included in the curricula, whereas
still produced paramount results in arts, technology
artistic and technical subjects were excluded from the
and science, eventually inspiring the scientific
universities and nurtured in the workshops for
revolution. At the same time it expanded to central and
boosting the economic and artistic growth. Around the
northern Europe, where it endured right throughout the
14th century, when Italy was one of the most
17th century, carrying with it a legacy of innovative
advanced European countries in the economic,
knowledge and achievements which would continue to
technologic and cultural fields, a further strong
develop.
cultural advancement took place that largely depended
on the retrieval of classical texts. The most influential
2. The impact of Humanism on the Italian
figure in its rise around the mid 14th century was the
university system (Pietro Del Negro)
poet Francesco Petrarca. After involving figurative
arts, one century later it flowered in architecture, with
2. 1. Institutional aspects
Filippo Brunelleschi, and thus expanded into technical
The word Renaissance was coined and gained favor
areas.
in the mid 19th century by the Swiss historian Jacob
Subsequently, between the mid 14th and the late
Burckhardt to indicate the two-to-three century long
16th centuries Italian culture underwent an explosion
period beginning from the 14th century, during which
Italian civilization blossomed and, thanks to Italy, so
*Corresponding author: guarnieri@die.unipd.it did that of a large part of Europe, after the so-called
 Massimo Guarnieri and Pietro Del Negro
'dark centuries' of the Middle Ages had dispersed,
distorted or hidden a major part of the Greek-Roman
legacy [1]. Nevertheless one century before
Burckhardt, the Italian historian Saverio Bettinelli had
published a book regarding what he called the 'rebirth'
of Italy after the year Thousand [2]. As far as the
history of the Universities is considered, the
chronology proposed by Bettinelli, which shifts the
cultural rebirth of Italy forward from the 14th to the
11th century AD, and moreover seems more pertinent
than the date established by Burckhardt.
It is in fact rather difficult to not regard the birth of
both the University of Bologna and the medical school
of Salerno as the rediscovery of the classical
knowledge, namely episodes of a cultural Renaissance.
In fact the former exploited the retrieval of Roman law
in the version codified by Justinian, while the latter
was the first in Europe to recover the medical corpus
of the Greek antiquity and medieval Arabian culture,
the latter complementing the former, even though it
was exploited in Latin versions [3].
It is true that only in the XVI century did Salerno
become a real university, i.e. a general Studium as
defined by Canadian historian Paul F Grendler, who
proposed the best synthesis of the history of the Italian
universities in the Renaissance. He in fact pointed out
that it was not sufficient that a university was 'of
paper', i.e. had obtained the right to create doctors
from the Pope and/or from the Emperor, but it had
also to guarantee a minimal amount of teaching
content, which he set with a rather empirical but quite
reasonable choice in at least three 'faculties', namely
law, medicine and arts (in Italy theology was optional)
and a minimal number of professors, between six and
eight [4]. But we must also consider that the most
ancient Italian general Studia such as Bologna, Padua,
Naples, Siena and Rome, as well as other non-Italian
ones, emulated the model of the school of Salerno
with regard to teaching programs and methods [3]. We
also must observe that the Italian university system
acquired its fundamental features in the period
between the 11th and 14th centuries, so that almost all
the greater Studia were founded before Humanism
was established in the Italian culture [4]. Therefore, as
regards the institutional aspects, the Renaissance
added little to the framework inherited by what we can
define, in the wake of Bettinelli, the first phase of the
Italian 'rebirth', i.e. the age of transition from the early
to the late Middle Ages.
We can speak of the origin of the Renaissance only
in the case of the university of Ferrara, a university
which stood out on the Italian panorama of the second
XV and of XVI centuries, although it maintained a
secondary position in comparison to the great general
Studia of the time [4]. After half a century of
intermittent and somewhat stunted life, the university
of Ferrara became a general Studium in 1442, at a
time when Humanism had already emerged in the
Italian culture and by a couple of decades had begun
to penetrate the main university of the peninsula. In
the revival of the University of Ferrara a significant
role was played by the Humanist educator Guarino
Guarini, the best-known intellectual at the court of the
Marquises d’Este, the lords of Ferrara. In October
1442 Guarini delivered the inaugural lecture of the
general Studium, in which he praised the Humanistic
studies together with the traditional academic
disciplines. Although Guarini himself became
professor of Humanism in the new Studium, the
overall teaching structure did not differ so much from
that of other contemporary Italian universities, thus
reproducing an organization which had already
achieved its fundamental stability and consistency
several centuries earlier and which had remained
largely unchanged until the reforms of the late 18th
century, at least with respect to the names of
disciplines, the indication of the canonical texts and
the relevant authorities, namely those formal features
which were certified in rolls, i.e. the lists of subjects
and texts taught at the universities.
If we designate with the word Renaissance the
season during which the Humanistic culture became
established, first in the chancellery of the republics
and the aristocratic courts and then in the universities,
it must be concluded that it did not affect the formal
structure of the universities as educational institutions,
if not only marginally. In fact the Humanistic subjects
were included in a framework previously activated
 The Italian Renaissance: Transition from Medieval to Early Modern Europe of the University System and Higher Learning
and which included the teachings of grammar, rhetoric
and authors, i.e. Latin poets, usually.
2. 2. Political features
The impact the Renaissance had on university policy,
that is to say on that set of structural conditions which
together justifies the creation and maintenance of the
general Studies, and the network of relationships that
connected the various protagonists of university life
(students, professors, janitors, state and local political
authorities, professional guilds, church authorities: a
galaxy ruled in principle by the Pope and the
Emperor), was very limited. Of course Humanistic
ideology could provide a contribution of some
relevance to the academic studies, at least from the
rhetorical-cultural point of view, as far as it aimed at
the perfection of man through 'real' culture, born from
a critical reading of the ancients’ lesson, as the case of
Ferrara demonstrates. But if certain fundamental
conditions had not been present, such as financial
resources, the will of political authorities or the ability
to attract teachers and students to
accommodation facilities, the efforts of Humanists
would have been fruitless.
The birth of the general Studium of Ferrara was
made possible by the financial agreement between
Marquis Leonello d’Este and the town, even before
the intervention of Guarini. Furthermore, the reasons
cited by the city of Ferrara to justify her efforts were
those always mentioned on such occasions, before,
during and after the Renaissance. The formulas used at
the time can be translated as follows: the university
would make the town even more famous, citizens
would be facilitated in graduating and thus contribute
to the development of local society and the economy
through an increase in degree-certified professions and
economic terms, Ferrara would gain other benefits,
since on the one hand she would become a leader in
commerce (i.e. she would attract the money of
students both foreign and natives), while on the other
hand the latter would cease to be a passive item in the
town's trade balance. On a more strictly political level
in the Middle Ages the Italian university system
followed the model of Bologna, consisting of an
academic organization based on universities, the
corporations of foreign students, which had to
financially support professors through collectæ [5],
with the exception of the Studio of Naples, born after
the will of Emperor Frederick II, and of the University
of Rome, founded by the Pope. But soon the towns
and the lords of the cities which housed the University
intervened financially firstly in order to contribute to
the recruitment of the most prominent (and thus more
expensive) professors and then to completely replace
students in the paying professors. The student power
did not take long to pay the price of these
developments. Although the student guilds almost
everywhere survived until the 18th century, their role
in the university policy was strongly reduced in the
15th century and almost entirely eliminated during the
16th century. The choice of teachers and, more
generally, the management of the universities fell
within the competence of the political powers and of
the state authorities in particular from the 14th century
onwards.
urban In fact at the dawn of the Italian Renaissance the
geography of the general Studia was superimposed on
the territorial states: only the pontifical state boasted
more than one university, with those of Perugia and
Bologna becoming papal after they were born and
were established as part of free cities. Two basic
standards were followed: every territorial state would
possess only one university and every state of any
significance deserved to have its own Studium, which
in this way constituted an attribute of sovereignty
similar to the entitlements to mint coins, to be
represented abroad by diplomats and to possess
military forces. With the only exceptions of Naples
and Rome, two special cases in the Italian university
landscape, in most medium and large states the
university was located in the most important subject
cities, basically as a compensation for the loss of
independence, hence the tendency to maintain two
capitals, one political and one cultural. The prototype
given by the 14th century couple Milan-Pavia or of the
13th century Naples-Palermo (later ended by the
separation of the kingdoms of Naples and Sicily) were
followed in the fifteenth century by the couples
 Massimo Guarnieri and Pietro Del Negro
Venice-Padua, Palermo-Catania and Florence-Pisa. In
the case of the smaller states such as Siena, Ferrara
and Turin, the site of the university, usually in close
connection with the court, was the political capital
itself [6].
The Humanistic movement remained substantially
extraneous to the developments of university policy
during the Renaissance, particularly as we have seen
with regard to the shift of power from student
corporations to political authorities and the
preeminence of the territorial state on local authorities,
which was more or less marked depending on the
context and local traditions. However, 13th century
Padua and early 15th century Florence developed a
proto-Humanism and civic Humanism, respectively,
which interpreted cultural education in a republican
ideological framework, thus recovering a legacy
inherited from the classical age. In this perspective,
the University could become the privileged venue of
formation of the ruling élites of the free governments
and therefore help to avoid the 'tyrannical' drift, which
was threatening many of them. But they were mostly
the noble and princely courts who used the skills of
the Humanists, which could be nurtured regardless of
a republican project: pedagogical mastery, which
made them preferable to traditional tutors, elegant
style, full proficiency in ancient languages, especially
the ability to build effective rhetorical instruments that
could be used both in the political debate and in the
historic celebration. In other words, the Humanist was
usually deprived of the civil dimension, which the
noble power obviously could not tolerate and was
considered only a technician of the word.
Renaissance was thus largely unable to affect the
academic politics and universities as institutions and
neither had the strength nor the courage to make a
frontal attack on the medieval educational structure so
as to promote a radical reform. The only exception to
this condition was a minority component of all of the
Humanist movement, which found its best exponent in
the great philologist Lorenzo Valla. What prevailed
was the line of Guarini, i.e. of the coexistence between
medieval legacy and Humanistic inspiration. This
should not however lead us to underestimate the
impact of Renaissance culture on the universities.
Without doubt Humanism was absorbed by the
academic institution rather belatedly, often in
homeopathic doses and through underground paths
that almost always left unchanged the labels of the
teachings. However it is also true that the Humanistic
mole could dig tunnels, which changed from inside the
actual contents of the university disciplines, in the
medical-scientific area to a very incisive extent.
Rather belatedly: as Grendler points out, the
Humanists usually deserted universities between the
years 1340, when Humanism began to establish on the
cultural scene thanks to Petrarch, and the years around
1430, when a first group of universities (Bologna,
Florence and Pavia), accepted the studia humanitis
and the Humanists themselves. There were very few
exceptions, the most important of which is represented
by Gasparino Barzizza, who taught rhetoric, moral
authors, and rhetoric and poetry between 1407 and
1431 in Padua, Pavia and Bologna, standing midway
between the traditional teaching and that of the new
Humanistic philology [4]. As Grendler
summarizes: ”The reasons why the Humanists did not
become university professors are easy to find.
Teaching grammar, rhetoric, and authors in the
university was poorly paid and lacked prestige. A
Humanist could earn a higher salary as chancellor to a
republic or secretary to a prince. Most importantly, the
chancellor or secretary was highly visible and could
possibly shape events through his presence at the
prince’s elbow“. As a matter of fact in the 14th
century the most common career of those who studied
grammar, rhetoric and the ars dictaminis at the
University was notary, which at that time required the
achievement of a diploma, not a degree. As for the
Humanists inclined to teaching, their preferences went
to the pre-university schools for the nobility, where
they could ”shape the mind and character of future
rulers“ [4]. Guarini himself arrived at the university in
old age, he was almost seventy in 1442, after having
tutored the Este family, having taught Humanism on
behalf of the Town of Ferrara, and having led a
student hall of residence in his house.
 The Italian Renaissance: Transition from Medieval to Early Modern Europe of the University System and Higher Learning
2. 3. Humanist professors
The Humanists were not felt as a threat by other
university professors, many of whom had received a
Humanistic education before entering university. The
exception consisted of Valla, who frontally attacked
the medieval legal tradition for his lack of knowledge
of Latin and classical culture, and who also argued
with scholastic theologians. However, Humanists
joined the tradition of previous rhetorical and
grammatical studies, which they deeply changed. They
won new prestige for their line of disciplines and
could occupy a significant number of chairs, so that
the most famous and longest-serving Humanists
reached salaries equal to those of better-paid lawyers
or doctors, in old-ruled universities where wages grew
substantially with the years of service. The higher
penetration was reached in Rome at the time of Pope
Leo X, when twenty-one teachers out of a total of
eighty-seven taught Humanistic subjects.
In northern Europe, the spread of Humanism in the
universities found a major obstacle in the theologians,
who were the most influential component of those
universities. Conversely in the Italian universities,
where theology occupied complementary positions
before the Counter-Reformation, there was no clash,
also because Humanists rarely committed themselves
to ecclesiastical and/or theological questions, and
when they did, they preferred to work around rather
than attacking the scholastic tradition. Here again the
exception was Valla, who also proved the falsity of the
so-called donation of Constantine to the Pope, i.e. the
document by which the Roman curia had attempted to
retrospectively legitimize the establishment of a Papal
State.
Moreover, Humanists in the universities were placed
in a somewhat horizontal area, because they addressed
young students fresh out of high schools and also
because they consolidated a basic instruction that was
deemed to be preliminary to the pre-vocational
courses for lawyers and doctors, and finally because
their attendees often included an educated audience
which was not enrolled in the Studium so that it was
perhaps more the city than the university to profit
from their teaching. It is not coincidental that when the
Studium of Florence was moved to Pisa, almost all the
Humanistic teachings remained in the capital, possibly
as a consequence of the strong ties that linked their
teachers to the chancellery of the municipality and to
the court of the Medicis.
The traditional academic disciplines did not take
long to be affected by the Humanistic principles,
namely a perceived philology, the retrieval of the 'true'
classics, particularly the Greek texts in their original
versions and also the Latin ones by means of until then
unknown manuscripts, the expansion of horizons
beyond the literary tradition and consequently the
interest in archeology, numismatics, etc.., in order to
arrive at an all-round vision of the classical culture
and ancient history, the same implementation of
classical categories and lessons to contemporary
culture that was so evident in the Humanists of the
16th century. However this process occurred in
different ways and at different times depending on
local circumstances. Particularly, the great general
Studia usually proved to be less traditionalist than
minor ones.
By way of example, the scholastic logic, which in
the 14th century had its first center in Oxford, endured
until the late 15th century to the attacks of the
Humanists, which succeeded when they came into
possession of more reliable translations of the
reference Greek texts, Aristotle first of all, and started
dealing directly with them, leaving aside the 'barbaric'
comments of the scholastics. Incidentally, so acting
they secured logics with a new role: while remaining a
preparatory discipline with respect to professional
curricula, in the same way as rhetoric and Humanism,
it was also considered to be the tool that made possible
the acquisition of a scientific method and laid the
foundation of the epistemology of science, a
development that was most evident with Paduan
Jacopo Zabarella and which then influenced the birth
of the modern science of Galileo.
2. 4. Natural philosophy
As regards natural philosophy, as well as all
disciplines where this strategy was feasible,
Humanists specifically aimed at rediscovering Greek
 Massimo Guarnieri and Pietro Del Negro
science, trying to get rid of the Arab mediation and
mediaeval comments, which had revalued it. At the
same time, the interpretation of Aristotle elaborated by
Averroes favored the affirmation of an important
philosophical movement, which in contrast to the
Christian doctrine denied the immortality of soul, thus
going somewhat against the Humanist mainstream.
This was probably the most advanced among the
achievements of Renaissance philosophy, since it
spawned the troubled recognition of the divorce
between philosophy and theology, at least in the
University of Padua that the Venetian government was
trying to preserve free from confessional influences in
the climate of full Counter-Reformation. Among other
things, the defense of the autonomy of philosophy was
also used by Paduan professors to claim the freedom
of education, an outcome not at all obvious in the
absolutist climate of the early 17th century.
As occurred with logic and natural philosophy, also
in medicine the influence of Humanism was fully felt
only in the last decades of the 15th century. The hub
of medical Humanism was Ferrara and the initiator of
the movement was the professor of medicine and
philosophy Nicolò Leoniceno, who promoted the
rediscovery of Galen as the maximum medical
authority, preparing new editions and translations of
his texts and standing against both the Arab
interpreters of the Greek doctor and the tendency to
regard him as a follower of Aristotelian philosophy.
Leoniceno largely ignored the studies of Galen on
anatomy. When a Latin version of these studies was
retrieved in the years 1520-30, anatomy, which also
had a late medieval background, was deeply revamped
thanks to Andreas Vesalius, a Flemish who was
professor of surgery, in fact anatomy, in Padua.
Extensive execution of dissections practiced on the
human body convinced Vesalius that the work of
Galen was evidently limited by the fact that his
anatomical research was based on the dissection of
animals. De humani corporis fabrica, the foremost
product of deeply innovative research by Vesalius,
deserves without doubt to be regarded as "the most
famous and most beautiful of all medical books of the
Renaissance" [4].
Leoniceno and his students also performed research
in botanical medicine, a discipline which would be
introduced in the university around 1530. In this case a
decade later the experimental option led the creation
of the gardens of simple, the first university
'establishment' located outside of the teaching rooms.
In subsequent decades the construction of stable
anatomical theaters was carried out, a sign, together
with the opening of clinical practice in hospitals, of a
growing importance of applied research in the medical
field, a phenomenon which also put in crisis the
traditional preeminence given to the theoretical with
respect to practical medicine.
Mathematics followed the same evolution of other
sciences, but in this case the retrieval of the Greeks,
Archimedes first of all who was appreciated for the
practical value of his studies in mechanics and
hydrostatics, was complemented with that of medieval
savant Leonardo Fibonacci, thanks to the Summa by
Luca Pacioli (1494). However 'Humanistic'
mathematics penetrated with some difficulty into the
academia: only in the mid 16th century did a
generation of professors sensitive to the recovery of
the ancients take over, with which a tendency emerged
to abandon the medieval name of the chair “astrology,
astronomy and mathematics” in favor of “mathematics
and astronomy”. With Galileo a further step was made:
mathematics in fact annexed natural philosophy,
subtracting it of Aristotle’s conditioning and, once
combined with the experimental method, laid the
foundations of modern science.
2.5. Moral philosophy, theology and law
In the case of moral philosophy, considered pivotal
knowledge for Humanists from Petrarch onwards, the
balance is full of light, but also shadows. It was the
first chair 'conquered' by the Humanists, in Florence
since late 1410, and, as its intermittent connection
with rhetorical studies indicates, was for some time
attached to the same studia humanitatis. However, the
teaching retained the Aristotelian texts adopted during
the Middle Ages, albeit in more reliable editions.
Moreover, the importance that it was given by
Humanists did not involve its revaluation in the
 The Italian Renaissance: Transition from Medieval to Early Modern Europe of the University System and Higher Learning
academic teaching program and it remained marginal,
as is evident by the modest salary that was usually
given to their teachers.
The 'faculties' which the Renaissance could not
penetrate all that much were theology and law. As
regards theology, Humanism harvested some limited
successes before the establishment of
Counter-Reformation, but outside of academic circles
it remained firmly under the control of the mendicant
orders born in the 13th century. Once again it is worth
mentioning the exception of Valla. With regard to law,
the mos italicus, namely the medieval tradition of the
gloss culminated with Bartolo di Sassoferrato, resisted
rather well to attacks made by the Humanists. It was
not until the early 16th century that the presence of a
renowned Humanist lawyer could be recorded,
Milanese Andrea Alciato, who however had no
follower in Italy and taught a long time in France,
where he founded a highly influential school.
Important philological operations were carried out
only in the mid 16th century, like the edition of the
most authoritative manuscript of the Pandects and a
chair of this name was established in Rome in 1567,
which was to confront Roman law in historic terms.
But it was not a coincidence that a Frenchman,
Marc’Antoine Muret, was called to hold it. Law, as
well as medicine, faced more closely with practice: the
first chair in the world of criminal law was established
in 1509 in Bologna. However, after their debut the
chairs of Pandects fell under the control of lawyers
devoted to the mos italicus and, more generally, the
Italian legal world continued to remain faithful to the
medieval tradition. The teaching of canon law was
downgraded, indeed, but this resulted not from the
secular soul of the Renaissance but from a decision of
the popes of Counter-Reformation to freeze the corpus
juris canonici at the fourteenth century and to submit
every publication in the field to papal permission.
2. 6. Women and university
For several centuries before, during and after the
Renaissance the universities both in teaching and
learning were occupations essentially reserved to men.
The fidelity of Humanism to a Roman law that was
centered around the pater familias explains, in part,
the fact that the female component, which had instead
left some trace, even if sporadic, in the Middle Ages,
disappeared from the universities of the Renaissance.
In the age of the Reformation the most important
Churches willingly greeted this exclusion. Only in the
the Baroque age, which was inclined to re-evaluate all
exceptions including the female one, did the
University (re-)open to women. In fact the first
officially documented female graduation in the world
was the doctorate in philosophy obtained at Padua in
1682 by the Venetian patrician Elena Lucrezia
Cornaro Piscopia.
3. Science and Technology in Italy from the dawn
of Renaissance to the advent of Scientific
Academies (Massimo Guarnieri)
3.1. Preface: the birth of a new cultural revolution
When we look back to the roots of European applied
science and technology in the Middle Ages we can
recognize a major ethical factor. The spread of Latin
Christianity throughout Europe in the Carolingian age
imposed a new respect for individuals, a more
egalitarian social pyramid and the waiver to slavery as
a resource of work, that is to say, in present concepts,
of mechanical energy. Soon after, Christian
monasteries spread the principle that manual work
together with prayers was a means of salvation and not
an obligation for dominated or inferior people. These
concepts were revolutionary with respect to the values
that ruled ancient empires and promoted new social
and economic orders [7].
The cultural prominence of monasteries allowed
them to spread among the rural and bourg
communities. At the turn of the new millennium the
monasteries of Latin Christianity still remained the
only centers of learning in Europe, which could be
cultivated with relative freedom in the monastic orders,
mainly those depending directly on the Pope and free
of obedience to the bishops, which typically were also
powerful feudal lords with strong secular interests.
In this climate the rise of bourgeoisie and the urban
(bourg, initially) growth in Europe after 1000 AD was
 Massimo Guarnieri and Pietro Del Negro
enhanced by the development of production
technology based in particular on the water wheel and,
to a lesser extent, on the wind wheel.
The Domesday Book of 1086, which reported a
census commissioned by William the Conqueror,
recorded over 5624 wheels working in approximately
3000 English communities, attesting that at that time
the water mill had already become a motor capable of
producing as much power as 5 slaves of ancient times,
with a specific power significantly greater than muscle
power.
From the 11th century its use spread to different
manufacturing processes throughout Europe. By the
14th century it was used for grinding barley for
brewing, fabric fulling, grinding textile dyes, oil
pressing, noria (water lift) powering, iron making,
powering carpentry saws and lathes, leather tanning,
blade sharpening, paper making. Several of these uses
first appeared in Italy.
In order to meet the growth in demand for power,
water wheels were gradually built larger. In the 13th
century their diameters spanned between 1 and 3.5 m,
developing the power of 1 to 3.5 hp (0.7 to 2.5 kW),
while in the 16th century they had diameters as large
as 10 m. Similar developments and exploitations
regarded the wind wheel. Thus both the water and
wind wheels, primarily the former, became the
engines of a new technological revolution and the
rotary motion the primary movement releasing
versatile and mechanical power from water and wind,
able to power most production processes. The
beginning of a new economic and social era was
signed by the resort to what we now call renewable
energies [8].
This development also largely benefited from
foreign knowledge and technologies, namely Islamic
know-how, which arrived after the trading to the East
of the maritime republics and the crusades in the Holy
Land, and the Chinese know-how, which mostly
arrived after the Mongol expansion to the West. Not
surprisingly, the first signs occurred in southern
Europe. Paper coming from China through the Islamic
world was first produced in Europe in Moresque Spain
(Xativia, 1173) and Southern Italy (Amalfi, 1220).
Other contemporary technological imports from the
near and far East were cane sugar refining, alcohol
distillation, the ship stern rudder, and the horizontal
loom for silk weaving.
While wood mechanics of water and wind wheels
was gradually providing unforeseen levels of energy,
sophisticated mechanics developed into clock
manufacturing. Mechanical timekeepers appeared in
Europe during the Middle Ages, later than in China
and in the Islamic world. The first known primitive
acoustic devices, precursors of the alarm clock, were
used in monasteries around 1232 and the first clock
provided with an escapement appeared in 1285. Milan
in 1330 had the first civic clock, which chimed the
hours to the whole city. The fad for tower clocks soon
spread and the wealthy cities rivaled each other in
building the most fantastic. Padua had her one-handed
tower clock in 1344, designed by scholar and
physician Jacopo Dondi (1290-1359). This search for
highly complex and sophisticated mechanics was
mastered by Paduan philosopher and astronomer
Giovanni Dondi dall’Orologio (1318-1389), son of
Jacopo, whose astrarium (astronomical clock) built in
1364 after 16 years of work represented the motion of
the Sun, the Moon, and the 7 planets known at the
time. Unsurpassed in Europe for about 4 centuries, it
recalls the astronomical clock tower built in 1088 by
Chinese polymath Su Song and the monumental
astronomical clock by Arabic polymath Al-Jazari
designed in 1206. The original has gone lost but, since
Giovanni described its design in a detailed technical
report exceptional for the time, Il Tractatus Astarii,
several replicas have been built and are now working
in many museums.
Even more than the desire for exhibition of wealth
and technological advancement, these clocks reveal an
irresistible attraction for mechanics. In ancient times
amazing facts and miracles were felt as the prerogative
of metaphysical and supernatural entities and
precluded to mankind, on pain of divine punishment
(consider the myth of Icarus, who fell into the Aegean
sea for having tried to fly too close to the Sun with his
self-made wings). Christianity changed this viewpoint
with the cult of saints, men capable of extraordinary
 The Italian Renaissance: Transition from Medieval to Early Modern Europe of the University System and Higher Learning
actions, miracles, and no more violators of the
empyrean. The sophisticated mechanics of the Middle
Ages allowed the European engineers to do such
miracles which were a prelude to the affirmation of
the centrality of man that emerged in the Renaissance:
"There is no doubt that from the 11th to the 20th
century Western Europe did dream miracles for then
making them possible” [9].
This fad for mechanical technology later promoted a
more abstract knowledge that led to the development
of modern physics, which not by chance initially
regarded mechanics and kinematics [10].
The exploitation of productive mechanics was
boosted by economic progress and increasing trade
throughout Europe and to the East with a prominent
position being taken from the beginning by Italian
State-cities such as Florence, Venice, Genoa, Milan,
Bologna, … which became enormously wealthy.
German and Flemish cities followed a similar
evolution some time later.
The contacts with the Islamic world also promoted a
new attention to knowledge and science. From around
1000 AD religious scholars travelling to Islamic Spain
and Sicily began to translate from Arabic into Latin
the works on science (mathematics, astronomy,
chemistry, medicine, ....) written by classical Greek
and Muslim savants. These translations continued in
the 11th and peaked in the 12th and 13th centuries,
allowing the absorption of the Greek-Roman and
Islamic cultures into Christianity. Greek-Islamic
knowledge arrived also through a different channel,
trading of merchants of the maritime republics who
returned home with books and knowledge, too.
Leonardo Fibonacci of Pisa (1170-1245), reputed the
greatest mathematician of his time was a trader by
profession who lived long in the Pisan trading outposts
in North Africa, where he learned Hindu-Arabic
mathematics. His vocation for mathematics let him to
recognize its advantages, which he described in Liber
Abaci (1202). This book, considered the greatest
Western contribution to mathematics from antiquity,
allowed "Arabic” base-10 positional notation and zero
spreading in Europe.
In this general framework, in the 11th and 12th
centuries the first European universities, then called
Studia, were started. The very first case of higher
educational institution was the medical school of
Salerno, inspired by Islamic models and already active
since the 10th century. In 1088 the first
multidisciplinary high education school, the Studium
of Bologna, was conventionally established, where the
name “university” was used for the first time so that it
is deemed the first university ever. Nevertheless, apart
from ancient Greek high education schools such as
Plato’s Academia (387 BC), Aristotle’s Lyceum (335
BC) and Theodosius’ Christian Pandidakterion (425
AD), higher education institutions had risen earlier in
India (e.g. Taxila, 5th century BC, Nalanda at Bihar,
5th century AD, …), China (e.g. Nanjing, 258 AD),
Persia (Gundeshapur, 271), Korea (e.g. Taehak, 372
AD) and elsewhere in the East. From the 8th century
in the Arabic countries madrasas flourished and
hospital-medical schools were instituted which
granted physician licenses (first degrees in medicine).
Soon after Bologna several Studia arose in Italy,
France, England, Spain, … These medieval European
universities had something bright and new compared
with the former high schools of the near and far East:
they marked the birth of bourgeois culture. As such
they responded to several needs: erudition suitable for
engaging in the Investiture Controversy; knowledge of
Roman law (i.e. Code of Justinian); civic expertness
on administrative law; notary, legal, and of knowledge
for the corporations. The subjects initially taught,
perhaps due to the influence of Islamic schools, were
theology, law and philosophy, and medicine later
complemented by mathematics and astronomy. No
technical subjects were taught.
Remarkably the Studium of Naples was founded in
1224 by Frederick II of Sweden (1194-1250), then in
contrast to Pope Gregorius IX (1170-1241). It was the
first and the only totally secular Western university,
where exact sciences were cultivated too, so that it is
often regarded as the first scientific university.
New horizons opened to European culture,
previously dominated by religious thought and used to
passive acceptance of dogmas: the Church was no
longer the sole custodian of abstract culture and
 Massimo Guarnieri and Pietro Del Negro
knowledge. In fact in 1233 Pope Gregorius IX
instituted the Inquisition Court, officially for facing
heresy, but also for controlling every form of free
thought not conforming to the Roman Church
directions.
3.2 Rediscovery of classical authors and beginning
of the Renaissance
The prosperity that had enriched the Italian
middle-class at the beginning of the 15th century led
the desire for a greater knowledge and a renewed
interest in the science of Greek and Latin classics,
which promoted the direct translation of their works,
no longer mediated through the Arabic versions. The
universities enriched with new interests and
disciplines inspired by classical principles. They
boosted the intellectual and abstract knowledge,
enhancing the teaching of the liberal arts (i.e. worthy
of free men), drew inspiration from the classical
models of the trivium (grammar, dialectic, rhetoric)
and the quadrivium (arithmetic, geometry, music,
astronomy), as they were theorized respectively by the
Greek philosophers Zeno and Archytas in the 5th and
4th centuries BC. Medicine was a major subject, too.
Thus universities adsorbed the Aristotelian conception
of science, conceived as disinterested and detached
contemplation of truth, together with an esoteric,
occult and sacerdotal conception of knowledge, which
excluded technical culture. In the words of Andreas
Vesalius (1514-1564): "... At that time, and first of all
in Italy, the fashion doctors, imitating the ancient
Romans, began to despise handwork" (De humani
corporis fabrica, 1543.)
Techniques, then called servile or mechanical arts,
were practiced by the lower classes for profit (painting,
sculpture, architecture, mechanics, …) often in the
workshops and factories working on commitment of
the lords and clergy. However, technical knowledge,
though despised by the philosophers and scholars,
were no longer relegated to the servile rank: they had
become assets of the artisan and commercial
bourgeoisie, who proudly were increasing its
economic and social role. The workshops became real
laboratories, where artists (painters, sculptors, …) and
technicians (engineers, machine builders, …) were
educated [11]. The renowned Garden of San Marco,
instituted by Lorenzo the Magnificent in Florence in
the 15th century, gathered and educated the best gifted
young talents taken from the workshops. These were
the real schools of technical knowledge of the time.
In such a cultural atmosphere, the rumored
discovery in 1414 of a copy of Roman engineer
Vitruvius’ De Architectura (first century BC) was a
glaring event, which attracted increasing interest and
soon exercised great influence on Italian architecture.
More than other books it allowed the rediscovery of
Roman technical knowledge, a major factor in the
Renaissance. Over time the book was translated into
several other modern languages, becoming one of the
theoretical foundations of Western architecture.
3.3. Brunelleschi and the Rise of the Renaissance
The Renaissance flourished in Italy when the Towns
(free republican city-states) were becoming Signorie,
namely city-states led by the merchant aristocracy.
Though unable to evolve into a nation-state as in other
countries, they were venues of an extraordinary
economic and cultural development. This trend
emerged first in Florence, Venice, Milan, Bologna,
Genoa, Padua, Pisa, Arezzo, ... and then spread to
central and northern Europe.
The Renaissance is universally celebrated as a
period of great artistic flowering, which climaxed with
the immortal masterpieces by artists such as Botticelli,
Donatello, Raphael, Michelangelo. It is sometimes
overlooked that it was also a period of extraordinary
technical creativity by men such as Leonardo da Vinci.
It was, in fact, a period when great minds were able to
free themselves from the secular principles of
subordination to dogmas and greatly advanced in both
the artistic and technical fields, here merged in the
double meaning of the original Greek τέχνη and Latin
ars. Nobody before them had dared so much. It was a
cultural revolution well expressed by Pico della
Mirandola (1463-1494) in his Oratio de hominis
dignitate: “…I have made you neither heavenly nor
earthly, neither mortal nor immortal, so almost free
and sovereign creator you will form and sculpt
 The Italian Renaissance: Transition from Medieval to Early Modern Europe of the University System and Higher Learning
yourself into the shape that you had chosen. ... You
can regenerate, according to your will, in the higher
things that are divine. ... ". This thought, cultivated
over the centuries, would eventually
extraordinarily fruitful results.
The major initiator of the Renaissance
architecture and technology and one of its undisputed
geniuses was the Florentine Filippo Brunelleschi
(1377-1446), architect, sculptor, goldsmith,
clockmaker, mathematician and geodesist. After
formal learning, he received his professional education
in an artisan workshop and enrolled in the Silk
Merchants’ Guild. Exploiting his knowledge of optics
and triangulation, in around 1416 he pioneered studies
in perspective by defining it on a rigorous
mathematical basis, and later perfected it together with
Leon Battista Alberti and Piero della Francesca.
Perspective allowed the painters of the Renaissance to
represent reality giving the illusion of depth and
thickness: it was the first form of 3D simulation
graphics in the modern age. Applied in the technical
field it allowed the accurate representation of the
mechanical devices for the first time.
At that time Florence was engaged in completing
her new cathedral, Santa Maria del Fiore, which was
started in 1296 and was to represent the wealth and
power of the city. Away from the style of Gothic
cathedrals, it was inspired by Roman architecture and
was the largest building made at that time in
Christendom. A major problem remained unsolved in
the early 15th century: the missing big dome that
would cover the center of the church starting at a
height of 60 m. Brunelleschi, who had studied the
Pantheon in Rome around 1402 (the 43.2 m wide
dome of which had been built in 135 AD with later
forgotten concrete technology), devised a solution
which was both revolutionary and brilliant in many
ways. He conceived a double brick dome consisting of
eight segments, made with bricks laid in a herringbone
pattern on properly inclined planes, so as to sustain
themselves during construction. Thus only lightly
suspended scaffolding was used for the construction,
avoiding an enormous and extremely expensive
traditional ground-based scaffold. The work started in
1420 and ended in 1436, when the city was under the
rule of the banker Cosimo de’ Medici. The summit
lantern was finally completed almost 30 years later.
give
in
Fig. 1 - The dome of Santa Maria del Fiore in Florence was
designed by Filippo Brunelleschi from 1420 resorting to
revolutionary structural and manufacturing solutions.
Completed in 1436 it marked the flowering of the
Renaissance in the technological field. With its 45 m
diameter, 91 m height and weighing 37,000 tons it surpasses
all other brick domes ever made.
The outcome was the largest brick dome ever built,
and then the biggest ever, as wide as 45 m, towering
91 m from the floor) and with a weight of 37,000 t
(Fig. 1).
For the construction Brunelleschi devised various
innovative machines, exploiting his watchmaker
expertise. To lift the materials up to the height of the
dome construction plane he envisaged machinery and
cranes which alone marked a major advance in
mechanical engineering. He pioneered the rod and
crank mechanism for transforming rotary motion into
reciprocating motion. For transporting marble blocks
in 1421 he invented an amphibious boat provided with
14 wheels, named badalone, a very advanced machine
for the time. This is also remarkable because
Brunelleschi, obtained a 3 year privilege on it, a
forerunner of a patent warranty (the first patent law
was promulgated by the Venetian Senate in 1474).
The Brunelleschi approach to design and
construction pushed architecture to evolve from
 Massimo Guarnieri and Pietro Del Negro
empirical methods to mathematical speculation and
also introduced the modern approach to construction
management, based on what has been called the
technique of the technician.
There was no formal high education school then for
transmitting such exceptional technological
knowledge. Younger engineers could learn looking
directly at the works. So did the young Leonardo da
Vinci and Taccola.
3.4. Renaissance Engineers
The 15th century was marked by the creativeness of
several other Italian engineers and architects: no other
country had a similar blossoming of technical talents
at that time. They shared a strong aptitude for
experimental studies and designed a variety of
innovative devices, most of them depicted for the first
time in their books, which today provide a keen
insight into the technology standards of the
Renaissance. Only the most prominent of these
engineers are cited here. Jacopo Mariano, nicknamed
Taccola (1382-1453), wrote the treatises De ingeneis
and De machinis, illustrating innovative machinery,
including the first European piston pump and a
paddle-wheel boat, which included the crank and
connecting rod and crankshaft. Giovanni Fontana
(1395-1454), Padua alumnus, physician and engineer,
wrote Bellicorum Instrumentorum encyclopedia, an
early military treatises of the Renaissance depicting
fantastic devices, such as a darkroom and a
rocket-propelled bird. Antonio Averlino di Pietro,
nicknamed Filarete (1395-1465), architect and town
planner, designed large monumental buildings in
several Italian cities and wrote a Treatise on
Architecture. Leon Battista Alberti (1404-1472),
Padua alumnus, architect as well as a mathematician
and Humanist, scientifically described perspective in
De pictura and modern architectural theories in De re
aedificatoria, where he widely cited Vitruvius.
Roberto Valturio (1405-1475) in De re militari
described several military and naval vehicles and siege
machines, an advanced marine paddle propulsion boat
and a diving suit. Fra’ Giovanni Giocondo
(1433-1515), a Humanist, architect and military
engineer who also served the kings of France and the
Pope in Rome, designed several city walls aimed at
resisting against the recently appeared artillery, which
constituted the forerunner of modern fortifications.
Francesco di Giorgio Martini (1439-1501), painter and
architect, designed some seventy of the very first
fortifications capable of withstanding the artillery,
wrote a Trattato di architettura, ingegneria e arte
militare, and designed the archetype of the centrifugal
pump. Giuliano Giamberti da Sangallo (1445-1516)
was the favorite architect of Lorenzo the Magnificent
in both civil and military buildings and also active in
other Italian cities and in France for Charles VIII.
3.5. Leonardo da Vinci
However remarkable the innovations of other
Renaissance engineers were, none of them reached as
the heights of Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), who
has been named the archetypal Renaissance man,
whose insatiable curiosity was equaled only by his
creative force.
The illegitimate son of a Florentine notary he did not
attend higher formal studies and was educated in the
workshop of artist Andrea Verrocchio in Florence, and
was influenced by the work of Filippo Brunelleschi
and many artists and technicians who contributed to
making the city the first cultural center in Europe. He
spent his life moving to the courts of princes and kings,
who hired him for having at their service his creative
and artistic skills. The breadth of his interests was so
broad that he is often quoted as the most eclectic talent
that ever existed, at least in the Western world.
He painted several masterpieces, including the Mona
Lisa, arguably the most famous picture ever painted.
His search for excellence in the artistic representation
of the human body led him to investigate anatomy,
and his studies documented in his codes predated by
centuries those of other eminent anatomists, especially
regarding the vascular system, reproductive system
and biomechanics.
With the same analytical method, Leonardo
approached the design of a bewildering series of
machines and devices. In representing their "anatomy"
he invented a new and rigorous method of
 The Italian Renaissance: Transition from Medieval to Early Modern Europe of the University System and Higher Learning

representing the machines and so created the first ahead to be understood by his contemporaries. From
modern form of technical drawing. He conceived this point of view he was a man who conceived
machine tools, artisan production machines, war knowledge in a sacerdotal way, not to be transmitted
machines, entertainment devices, hydraulic works, or divulged, so that his method was not picked up by
ships, and flying machines. Many of these machines the engineers and natural philosophers of his time,
presented aspects of strong innovation with respect to who continued to cultivate two separate areas still
their contemporaries, predating technologies and lacking of a common language and communication
automation concepts that developed into real devices possibility.
only a long time later, possibly with the industrial
revolution.
Only few of the machines designed by Leonardo
were realized at his time. Many went forgotten and
were re-discovered only centuries later. Others were
objectively impossible. But in every case all were
amazing in their conception. From the Humanistic
point of view they expressed the centrality of man
over nature and the "superiority of the eye of the
mind" (i.e. of direct observation on the study of books,
Fig. 2). From the technical point of view they offer a
variety of ingenious concepts. In the stream of
Honnecourt and Brunelleschi, he re-invented a
scientific approach to engineering design 1700-1400
years after Archimedes and Heron and achieved
results far more advanced than the culture of the age in
which he lived.
Leonardo also worked on scientific subjects,
approaching them for the very first time, possibly by
using new mathematical tools, such as the forerunner
of the shear diagram. Though lacking a theoretical Fig.2 - The Vitruvian Man drawn by Leonardo da Vinci, ca.
education, he was close to some of the greatest 1490, attests the importance recognized in the Renaissance
scientists of his time, such as Luca Pacioli to the classical aesthetic ideals and the importance of the
(1445-1517), Italian monk and mathematician who scientific-technical approach in the artistic representation
wrote Summa di Arithmetica, Geometria, Proportioni (courtesy of Luc Viatour / www.Lucnix.be).
e Proportionalità, considered the most influential
European math book after Fibonacci's Liber Abaci, Spread of Italian Scientific and Technical
which included drawings by Leonardo. He also Knowledge. The knowledge of Italian technicians and
studied town planning. In this sense he anticipated artists was transmitted in their workshops, where
future scientific developments such as construction young assistants could learn and then start their own
science and material science and was a forerunner of careers. Just to mention one, the great German artist,
the scientific revolution. mathematician and engineer Albrecht Dürer
But he wrote for himself, deliberately in a hidden (1471-1528) made two long journeys to Italy which
form (from right to left) and with obscure symbolism. were extremely influential in his education.
He despised printing, typography, and technical and This system of informal schools in a very innovative
scientific disclosure, maybe because he was too far field carried out inside workshops and out of
 Massimo Guarnieri and Pietro Del Negro
educational institutions is less far from us than we
might think at first glance. On the same scheme the
British mechanical school developed from the late
18th to mid 19th century, which was started by Joseph
Bramah and then carried on by engineers such as
Henry Maudslay, Joseph Clement, Arthur Woolf,
Joseph Whitworth, Richard Roberts, and James
Nasmyth giving substantial contributions to the
evolution toward modern mechanical engineering at
the time of the industrial revolution. Around the mid
20th century in the United States William Shockley
started a similar unstructured school in a very
innovative technological field, microelectronics, first
at Bell Labs with John Bardeen and Walter Brittain
and then in California were his intuitions were
developed by scientists and technicians such as Robert
Noyce, Gordon Moore, Ted Hoof and Federico Faggin,
who gave a substantial boost to the rise of Silicon
Valley.
Printed Technical Treatises. A more powerful tool
for the widespread diffusion of technical knowledge
was printing, invented around 1450 and soon after in
strong expansion, first of all in Germany and Italy,
where around the end of the century two-thirds of a
total of 20 million European copies were concentrated.
This mass production marked an extraordinary
revolution. As French savant Pierre Borel wrote in
1655 “We would have been incredulous if we were
assured that ... countless books could have been
written in a short time with a speed a thousand times
greater than what we speak ... .” Besides the great
classic books such as Vitruvius’ De Architecture
(1468), Lucretius’ De rerum natura (1473), Euclid's
Elements (1482), also technical treatises of the days
were soon printed into incunabula: the first was
Valturio’s De Re Militari that was published in
Verona in 1472 after its scribe edition of 1460.
The print of books marked the end of the monopoly
of scribe copying held by monasteries. It allowed a
much wider circulation of new ideas among the
emerging middle class that could oppose nobility and
clergy and their traditional power monopolies. It
allowed the gradual democratization of knowledge:
ideas and culture ceased to be a privilege of religious
orders and scholars and became also a heritage of the
bourgeoisie. Knowledge spread as never before and
intellectual activities were transformed into a collegial
effort of discussion. In short, printing paved the way
for the expansion of the Renaissance and the birth of
the Scientific Revolution and allowed the formation of
new generations of artisans and technicians outside the
control of shops and guilds.
3.6. Science and Technology During the Late
Italian Renaissance
In the first sixty years of the 16th century Italy was
the theater of the Franco-Spanish Wars and was
invaded by large national armies which the opulent but
small Italian state-cities could not oppose. The
dreadful sack of Rome made by the imperial troops of
Charles V in 1527 is regarded as the beginning of the
decline of the Italian Renaissance. Nevertheless great
advancements in science and technology were still
achieved.
Italian Schools of Medicine. Starting from mid 16th
century Italian medicine marked impressive
advancements. The outstanding Flemish physician
Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564) received his doctorate
at Padua where he was immediately enrolled as a
professor. In 1543 he published De humani corporis
fabrica, one of the most influential science book ever
written, for which he has been called the father of
anatomy. In 1544 and 1545 Pisa and Padua had the
first university botanic gardens ever founded. Realdo
Colombo (1516-1559), a student of Vesalius, was also
an outstanding anatomist, professor at Pisa, Rome and
Padua, who authored De re anatomica (1559).
Polymath Gabriele Falloppio (1523-1562) was an
alumnus at Padua under Colombo and a professor at
Ferrara, Pisa and Padua. A supporter of Vesalius’
work, he started and published his discoveries on
anatomy in Observationes anatomicae in 1561.
Girolamo Fabrici d'Acquapendente (1537-1619) was
an alumnus and successor of Falloppio who strongly
promoted the construction of the first stable
anatomical theater, completed in 1594 (Fig. 3), with
 The Italian Renaissance: Transition from Medieval to Early Modern Europe of the University System and Higher Learning
which he revolutionized the teaching of anatomy.
Thus Padua became the most advanced school of
medicine in Europe at the time, together with Leiden
(Holland). This and other Italian universities attracted
students from all over the continent which wanted to
achieve the highest education in medicine. Just to give
an example, the English physician, William Harvey
(1578-1657), the discoverer of blood circulation,
received his doctorate in Padua.
Fig.3 – The anatomical theater at the University of Padua,
the first stably built in 1594, represents the absolute
primacy of the Italian and particularly Paduan Medical
School at the time when Renaissance was expanding from
Italy to the north-central Europe.
Farming Technology. Farming technologies
advanced in that time in Italy, with the first European
seed driller patented by Camillo Torello in Venice in
1566 and the second one conceived by Thaddeus
Cavallina in Bologna in 1602. These machines were
the forerunners by about one century of similar
machines that contributed to the agrarian revolution in
England.
Architecturte. Paduan architect Andrea Palladio
(1508-1580) flourished in this period. Under the
influence of Vitruvius he designed several outstanding
buildings in the territories of the Venetian Republic,
which were later imitated in several countries. His
theories and methods are summarized in the treatise I
Quattro Libri dell’Architettura published 1570, a very
influential work also out of Europe. He is widely
considered the most influential individual of modern
Western architecture.
Other important technological advancements in Italy
during the 16th century concerned military
architecture. One of the earliest and best examples of
new citadel-fortress is Palmanova, in the Venetian
territory, which was constructed from 1593 on the
project of nobleman and engineer Giulio Savorgnan
(1510-1595) and engineer and architect Bonaiuto
Lorini (1537-1611), to face the possible invasions
from the Ottoman Turks, and resist their artillery. In
1597 Lorini published the treatise Delle fortificazioni
where, among other things, he affirmed the need for a
new relationship between pure mathematics and
mechanics. Starting from Italy a revolutionary military
architecture was emerging that would reach the height
of its development in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Around one century later French Sébastien Le Prestre
Marquis de Vauban excelled in the design of such
fortresses.
However already during the Franco-Spanish
campaigns in Italy the foreign military engineers
acquired the sensibility for the new Italian ideas,
including those for large, spacious and bright premises
and for complex wood machinery, and took them back
to their homes. So the Renaissance expanded to Spain
and France, where it flourished from the early 16th
century and then extended to England, where it peaked
in the second half of the 17th century. Significantly,
Inigo Jones (1573-1652), the first Renaissance English
architect, visited Italy twice where he studied
architecture, and Christopher Wren (1632-1723), the
astronomer and great architect who built St Paul
Cathedral of London after the fire of 1666, acquired
the sensibility for Renaissance style in France.
Mechanical Engineering. A major technician of the
time was Agostino Ramelli (ca. 1531-1600), who was
an Italian military engineer in the service of Charles V
of France first and then of the future king Henry III. In
1588 he published Le diverse et artificiose machine ....,
were he illustrated 194 different machines and devices,
a work very influential throughout Europe in the
 Massimo Guarnieri and Pietro Del Negro
following century. The celebrated mechanical treatise
Theatrum Instrumentorum Machinarum, published in
1572 by Jacques Besson (ca. 1540-1573), a example Jacopo Dondi and his son Giovanni, who
mathematician and inventor in the service of the
Charles IX of France, can be envisaged in the process
of expansion of the Renaissance towards the North. It
is an illustrated book on machines that had great
success and sparked a popular interest in engineering
and technology. Both Ramelli and Besson designed
advanced water wheels with spoon shaped blades,
predating the hydro-turbine that would appear in the
19th century. Their devices were mainly made with
wood, as in the medieval tradition, although
metallurgy also greatly advanced in that century.
The treatise De La Pirotechnia, written by
Vannoccio Biringuccio (1480-1537), was published
posthumously in Venice in 1540. It was the first
modern treatise on the extraction of minerals and
chemical metallurgy. It was proof of the growing
importance of mining and metallurgy, caused by the
expansion of the demand of metals for gunfire
weapons: estimates indicate that from 1460 to 1540
iron production in Central Europe quadrupled,
reaching 100,000 tons per year. Biringuccio’s work
paved the way for the influential De Re Metallica libri
XII, published posthumously in 1556 by German
Georg Bauer (Agricola, 1494-1555), who was a
student at Padua and Bologna.
Another famous treatise was Novo teatro di machine
et edificii per varie et sicure operationi, … by Vittorio
Zonca (1568-1602), that featured substantial
advancements in technical drawing, including the
metric scale and the axonometric representation,
which enables the representation and measurement of
the third dimension. In 1627 it was translated even
into Chinese. Machinae novae by Faust Vrancic
(Fausto Veranzio, 1551-1617) among other
innovations presented an improved version of the
Leonardo’s parachute, which was successfully tested
in Venice in 1617.
3.7. Early Merging of Science and Technology
Even if scholastic and Humanistic subjects were
mainly taught in the universities, with mathematics
and astronomy in a complementary role, it happened
that professors were outstanding technicians. As an
were celebrated clockmakers as we have already seen,
both were professors at Padua. During the sixteenth
century such cases increased while attention to the
dissemination of knowledge influenced the
universities.
Tartaglia and Girolamo Cardano. Niccolò Fontana,
nicknamed Tartaglia (1500-1557), was a
mathematician and a military engineer for the
Venetian Republic. He is important not only because
he contributed to the solution of the cubic equations,
but also because he made the very first attempt of
applying mathematics to physics, when he used it in
computing the fall of heavy bodies, namely
cannonballs. [12,13]. Girolamo Cardano (Cardan,
1501-1576) was one of the most representative
scholars of the century. Professor at Padua (where he
had studied), Milan, Pavia and Bologna, he was a
mathematician, physician, chemist, wizard and
technician. He was one of the first in the Modern Age
to merge theoretical and applied interests, adopting
some of the ideas of Leonardo, and among the earliest
supporters of the experimental method. As a
mathematician he paved the way to paramount
developments. In 1545 he published the treatise Ars
Magna, were he generalized the solution of cubic
equations which had been found by Scipione del Ferro
(1465-1526), a professor in Bologna Studium, for the
special case x3+px=q around 1500 and elaborated by
Tartaglia for more general cases around 1541. The
treatise also reported the solution of the fourth degree
equation, found with the help of Cardan’s student
Luodovico Ferrari (1522-1565). The book reported
also the first insights of complex numbers, since he
understood that the square root of negative numbers
had mathematical sense. Cardan conceived early
numerical procedures forerunning those now used in
computers and wrote the first treatise on probability,
conceived for gambling that he practiced for coping
with his financial problems.
As a technician he devised an advanced combination
 The Italian Renaissance: Transition from Medieval to Early Modern Europe of the University System and Higher Learning
lock. In his De subtilitate of 1547 he illustrated the
gimbal (Cardan suspension in Latin countries). In De
veritate rerum, published posthumously in 1577, he
introduced the universal joint (Cardan joint), derived
from his suspension, which allows the transmission of
motion between two shafts having axes not coaxial
and also in relative motion. These devices are still of
broad applications today. Thus Cardan was possibly
the first university professor to study both science and
technology and to disseminate them with the power of
printing.
He travelled to England, were he gained high
reputation as a physician. He was accused of heresy in
1570, arrested for several months and forced to abjure.
Della Porta and Branca. The Neapolitan polymath
Giovanni Battista Della Porta (1535-1615) was one of
the most significant figures in the late Italian
Renaissance who was in contact with the best
innovative Italian thinkers of his time. In his research
in chemistry he obtained sulfuric acid and other
substances. His investigation in optics led him to
perfect the camera obscura by providing it with a
convex lens. In those areas he was one of the
prominent European savants of his time, but most of
all he rediscovered pneumatics more than 1500 years
after the Alexandrian golden age and Hero. He
experimented with the effects of steam under pressure,
obtaining spectacular results, such as steam powered
fountains as early as 1606. In these activities he was
the very first European, paving the way for future
technical developments.
In this framework the treatise Le Machine: volume
nuovo et di molto artificio… by Giovanni Branca
(1571-1640) included the design of the first European
steam jet turbine, which has its very far precursor in
Hero’s aeolipile. Even though it would be unable of
practical exploitation, it constituted the first European
conceptual engine for transforming heat
mechanical energy. It followed the Hero’s aeolipile, of
I century AD. However it is worth mentioning that a
similar machine intended to propel a spear had been
described in 1551 by Turkish scientist and engineer
Taqi al-Din Muhammad ibn Ma'ruf al-Shami al-Asadi
(1526-1585). These ideas later spread to North Europe,
were they evolved into the devices of Edward
Somerset (1601-1667), the 2nd Marquess of
Worcester in England and Denis Papin (1647-1712) in
France, alluding to the merging of the two forms of
energy, thermal and mechanical, which would power
the industrial revolution almost two centuries later.
3.8. Galileo Galilei and the Experimental Method
After studying mathematics at the University of Pisa
Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) started his career as a
professor and scientist in Florence and Pisa. In 1492,
at age 28, was called to teach Fortifications and
Geometry at the University of Padua, where he
remained until 1610, in what he called "the best 18
years of all my life". In the climate of relative
intellectual freedom guaranteed by the Venetian
Republic he could expand his creativity and mark a
fundamental advancement in the birth of modern
scientific investigation. According to Stephen
Hawking, “Galileo, perhaps more than anyone was
responsible for the birth of modern science."
Building on the conviction of the superiority of
observations and precise measurements over
metaphysical principles and formal logic, he
conceived the experimental method, based on
repeatable measurements made with reliable
instruments and combined these observations with
mathematical formulations suitable to predict general
results. In particular he gave the first substantial
contributions to modern mechanics, studying the
motion of bodies with such experimental and
mathematical tools. In doing so he was the first one
that summed experimental physics, theoretical physics
and mathematics, indicating a method that today is the
foundation of scientific research [14].
He also founded modern astronomy, carrying out
careful astronomical observations of celestial bodies
into and pioneering the use of the telescope, which he
greatly improved. In Sidereus Nuncius of 1610 and
Dialogo sopra i due massimi sistemi del mondo,
published 1630, he supported the heliocentric theory
proposed by the Polish astronomer and clergyman
Mikołaj Kopernik (Copernicus, 1473-1543), identified
 Massimo Guarnieri and Pietro Del Negro
the Medicean planets (Jupiter's moons, which he used
as a proof of the Copernican theory), sunspots, and
lunar craters which he saw as a proof of the
imperfection of the sidereal world.
Fig. 4 – Galileo Galilei taught at the University of Padua for
18 years (1592-1610), the best of his life by his own
admission. During this period he studied the motion of
heavy bodies, developed the experimental method and
began modern astronomical observation.
It is little known that he was also a fine technician.
He perfected the geometric and military compass (or
sector, a precursor of the slide ruler). Since few
precise instruments were available, he built by himself
those he needed in his experiments. They included the
thermoscope, forerunner of the thermometer. He also
made a water timekeeper, to measure with sufficient
precision the short time intervals, and, of course, built
his improved version of the recently invented
telescope (the name was coined by others for his
instrument), and later perfected also the microscope
(also named for his instrument). He was also granted a
patent for a machine powered by animal and capable
of lifting water from deep wells.
He was an extraordinary teacher and his lectures on
subjects regarded as complementary in the university
of the day attracted a growing number of students
from all over Europe, thus becoming a powerful tool
for spreading the scientific principles and methods that
Galileo was contributing to create. In the climate of
religion wars of the first half of the 17th century, the
enormous cultural prestige of Galileo made his
support of the Copernican theory dangerous for the
Roman Church and the Inquisition summoned him in
the famous trial for heresy of 1633 that ended with his
abjuration and, in reason of his age (69 years), with
house arrest for life at his home in Arcetri, near
Florence, so avoiding the death sentence which had
been handed down to other philosophers such as
Giordano Bruno (1548-1600).
His creativeness did not stop. In 1636 he wrote
Discourses and mathematical demonstrations
concerning two new sciences, the first book on the
science of materials and structures, now fundamental
engineering subjects [14]. Nearing the end of his life
and blind, in 1641, he conceived the pendulum clock,
which resorted to the isochronism of small oscillations
discovered many years before and which included a
pin escapement of his own design, very advanced and
precise. He instructed his son Vincenzo to build it, but
also the latter died in 1647 without completing the
work, so that pendulum clock was done years after by
Dutch scientist Christiaan Huygens (1629-1695).
Even though his books were included in the Index of
Forbidden Books, their teachings were not cancelled
and continued to spread.
3.9. The Scientific Revolution
The ideas of Galileo and other scholars spread
throughout Europe, merging with those of
philosophers such as Copernicus, Johannes Kepler,
Francis Bacon, René Descartes, Christiaan Huygens,
up to Isaac Newton. The exchange of idea was
facilitated by the use of Latin, the learned language
that was then used by scholars, such as we now do
with English. They generated a revolutionary way of
interpreting the knowledge of the physical world,
natural philosophy as it was named then. It firmly
established the superiority of new methods of
investigation, with which science became a cognitive
system in continuous and constant evolution. It
 The Italian Renaissance: Transition from Medieval to Early Modern Europe of the University System and Higher Learning
became necessarily collegial and participatory, since
its development became more important than the
intermediate contributions of each individual who was
pursuing it. Science evolution stared relying on the
systematical and continuous effort carried
generation after generation by many people who made
measurable and repeatable observations, even after
their initiator had disappeared. These revolutionary
principles, specifically European, were able to root out
previous ideas of ancient philosophers: the scientific
revolution, in fact [15,16].
In this new approach to knowledge instrumentation
and technology played a major role. Thus the
scientific revolution produced the final re-evaluation
of technics and the recognition of its profound impact
on concepts of science, nature and philosophy.
In this evolution the university of Padua played a
major role. According to British historian and
Cambridge professor Herbert Butterfield “Allowing
that the honour of being home to the scientific
revolution might be said to belong to one single place,
that place is Padua”.
3.10. The first Scientific Academies
The need to establish regular systematic conditions
for exchanging and confronting ideas and results
promoted the institution of societies devoted to
science, which, inspired to the classical model of
higher education, where called academies, from the
name of Plato’s School opened in Athens in 387 BC
and closed in 529 AD by emperor Justinian. Following
Humanistic academies, the early scientific ones of the
modern age appeared in Italy. As early as 1560
Giovanni Battista Della Porta, whom we already
encountered as a pioneer of new science and steam
power, founded the Academia Naturae Secretorum in
Naples, where individuals who had made a new
discovery in the natural sciences could be admitted. It
was dissolved in 1579 by Pope Paulus V on suspicion
of witchcraft.
Following on from this example, in 1609 aristocrat
and science enthusiast Federico Cesi founded the
Accademia dei Lincei in Rome, which Dalla Porta
adhered to in 1610 and Galileo in 1611. The academy
supported the latter in publishing his books, up to his
inquisition trial. It was dissolved in 1630, at Cesi’s
death.
In 1657 some disciples of Galileo founded the
on Accademia del Cimento in Florence, which disbanded
in 1665. They included Evangelista Torricelli, who
demonstrated the existence of a vacuum and invented
the barometer, breaking the millenary belief held by
Aristotle of its impossibility, which was summarized
in the mot “Natura abhorret a vacuo”.
In subsequent years many other academies were
funded in Italy (Turin, Bologna, …) and around
Europe, such as Wadham College of Oxford (1648)
and Académie de Physique of Caen (1662). Some of
them with time would gain paramount importance and
prestige, such as the Royal Society of London (1660),
the Académie Royale des Sciences of Paris (1666) and
the Kurfürstlich-Brandenburgische Societät der
Wissenschaften of Berlin (1700), just to mention a
very few. These were the real centers of discussion
and dissemination of scientific and technical
knowledge, home of the new culture until the advent
of the technical universities (ca. 1800). They were the
expression of a new conception of science and
technology, stemming from two completely new
concepts: intellectual collaboration among researchers
and communication of results.
Together with the legacy of the fathers of the
scientific revolution, they are the foundation upon
which modern science and technology continue
developing all around the world.
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