Ray Moscow

I've read that Aquinas' Summa takes a lot of material from Ibn Sina -- without acknowledgement, of course.

Europeans owed a lot to those pesky Muslims!

Antipope Innocent II

That is completely wrong. Aquinas and other medieval philosophers didn't just acknowledge Ibn Sina and Ibn Rushd, they revered them. And Aquinas cites and acknowledges Ibn Sina and other Muslim scholars regularly in his work, so I have no idea where you got your statement above from. I just did a quick skim through the first few sections of the Summa Theologica and rapidly found three references to "Avicenna" (Ibn Sina) without even trying.

As they well knew. Statues of Ibn Sina and Ibn Rushd can be found on the walls of Medieval cathedrals alongside those of Aristotle and Plato.

Ray Moscow

I stand corrected.

Ray

WishboneDawn

Fun, eh? I find that I tend to learn the most here when I'm wrong. Peopll aren't hesitant to let you know!

Ray Moscow

Indeedy!

I would be interested in a few of the Avicenna references from Aquinas' Summa, since the electronic version I'm looking through is missing them (or else I am).

My memory on such things is noticeably faulty, and anyway I've not read the full Summa, only bits and pieces on a rainy day.

Update: PopeInnocent just sent me a couple of references.

Ray

Antipope Innocent II

That's Antipope to you. And you're very welcome.

Lógos Sokratikós

Well by such stretches of imagination of time that you propose, Aristotle sent men to the moon! Of course the present builds on the past, but you make Amadeo a black-and-white thinker, which he is not, it appears. He never said the middle ages were from venus and the renaissance from Mars, he's simply characterizing periods and justifying that characterization.

And yes, the periods are distinctive, even though our own has presidents sending crusades to the moorish east and the whole faith-based infidel-bashing crud. The more things change the more things stay the same, but this pretty much is the space age, preceeded by the age of colonization, preceeded by renaissance, preceeded by...

James Hannam

I've been the library and looked up some biograohies of Leonardo, in particular, Charles Nicholl's of 2004. This concentrates on his writings rather than art so is relevant to our enquiry. I'd mention that Nicholls repeats the old saw about Vesalius and the inquisition without blushing so he may not be completely reliable.

Anyway, he says Leonardo's mirror writing "a strong psychological element of secrecy. We know he was continuously on guard against the pilfering of his ideas" (p. 58). Later we learn "he was plagued by fears, often justified, of piracy and plagiarism". (p. 96) Nicholls says that Leonardo's mirror writing started as a function of his left handedness, but that he could write normally when he felt like it. Other biographies echo this. I think this confirms what I wrote in my introduction.

I'd also mention a note that Leonardo claimed his anatomical studies were "hindered" by a professional rival who reported him to the pope and the local hospital during his last years in Rome. Nothing seems to have some of this, but Leonardo was guilty of obtaining bodies in underhand ways. This, rather than the dissections themselves, could have got him into trouble. Like today, unauthorised dissection outside the medical school was frowned on.

Interestingly, an artist was prosecuted and imprisonned in the UK for bodysnatching as recently as 1998:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/73463.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/68877.stm



Best wishes

James

Antipope Innocent II

Consdering Leonardo was granted a license to dissect bodies in the Papal hospital in Rome by the Pope himself, the idea that dissecting would have got him in trouble with the Church is ridiculous. Especially since dissection had been going on with full Church sanction for at least 200 years before Leonardo anyway.

No Robots

In Rome Leonardo continued his anatomical studies, apparently at the Ospedale di Santo Spirito and as well carried on studies in distillation and physics, or more particularly optics. Unfortunately such studies appear to have brought him into conflict with a German mirror-maker known merely as Giovanni degli Specchi who seems to have been envious not only of Leonardo's influence with their common patron but as well of the considerably larger stipend that he received. As a result of the slanderous rumors which he spread, including suggestion of sacrilege in connection with Leonardo's anatomical studies, the latter found himself in papal disfavor and barred from Santo Spirito. Hence Leonardo terminated his anatomical studies.—Introduction to Leonardo on the Human Body (or via: amazon.co.uk).