PIETRO d'ABANO. - Physician and philosopher, b. at Abano (Padova) in 1257, d. at Padova ca. 1315.
Having completed his first studies at Padova, after many travels he went to Parigi, where he taught philosophy and medicine at that University; on returning to Padova, he taught for several years at the University, nevertheless arousing the concerns of the ecclesiastical authorities. Acquitted during his lifetime of the charge of heresy, forty years after his death, when his writings were subjected to a new trial, he was condemned and his ashes were disinterred and burned.
P. d'A. is regarded by some (Ferrari, Pincherle Calogero) as the averroism (v.). In reality, he condemned as erroneous and impious the thesis of the unity and uniqueness of the agent intellect (Thorndike, Nardi). P. was a credulous and consistent astrologer, and, in those times, averroism, astrology, heresy, and unbelief had become terms almost synonymous.
Principal works: Conciliator differentiarum philosophorum et praecipue medicorum (Venesia 1476); Liber compilationis physionomiae (ivi 1482); Expositio problematum Aristotelis (Padova 1482); among the unpublished works, Lucidator astronomiae should be noted (cf. P. M. Duhem, Le système du monde, IV, Parigi 1913).