STENSEN, NIELS. - In Latin Nicolaus Stenonis, Stenonius, erroneously also Steno; anatomist, geologist, bishop, b. according to the Gregorian calendar on 11 Jan. and according to the Julian calendar on 1 Jan. 1638 in Copenhagen, d. according to the Gregorian calendar on 5 Dec. and according to the Julian calendar on 25 Nov. 1686 in Schwerin; descended from a family of preachers from Scania, a region then belonging to Denmark.
Son of the goldsmith Sten Pedersen, he studied in 1656-60 at the University of his native city languages, mathematics and anatomy, and made, in 1660-64, bold anatomical discoveries (ductus Stenonianus, glands of the head, structure of the muscles and of the heart, knowledge of the oval [foramen]). Promoted doctor of medicine by decree of the University of Leiden, on 4 Dec. 1664, he published several writings rigorously scientific and devoid of all baroque emphasis (De glandulis oris, 1661; De glandulis oculorum, 1661; De musculis et glandulis, 1664). Between 1664 and 1665 he traveled in France, where in the circle of the founders of the Académie des Sciences he delivered the celebrated Discours sur l'anatomie du cerveau, partly anti-Cartesian. At the beginning of 1666 he reached Tuscany where Ferdinand II and his brother Leopold named him anatomist of S. Maria Nova. As a member of the Cimento and of the Accademia della Crusca, in an environment of scholarly men and of religious sentiments, such as Redi, Magalotti, Malpighi and Viviani, he became on the occasion of the dissection of a shark "promoter of modern geognosy" (cf. his ingenious Prodromus de solido intra solidum naturaliter contento, 1669). Two years earlier, on All Saints' Day, he had decided to convert to the Catholic faith and on 7 Nov. 1667 he was received into the bosom of the Catholic Church (cf. his Epistola de propria conversione, 1676).
From 1672 to 1674 "anatomicus regius" of Copenhagen, then one of the tutors of the crown prince Ferdinand III, in Florence, he received in 1675 priestly ordination, and on Easter Sunday, 14 Apr., he celebrated his first Mass before the miraculous image of the S.ma Annunziata.
As a priest he led a life of rigid poverty and renunciations. His spiritual zeal drove him even to address his friend of earlier times, Spinoza (Epistola ad novae philosophiae reformatorem, 1675). Requested by Duke John Frederick of Hanover, he received, on 19 Sept. 1677, together with the title of Titiopolis in part. inf., in the church of the Palazzo di Propaganda, episcopal consecration. After an activity of barely three years at Hanover (v. also his irenic writings, among other things against Leibniz) he had, following the death of the Catholic duke, to renounce his mission and at the request of Ferdinand of Fürstenberg, was by papal bull of 7 Oct. 1680 named suffragan bishop of Münster where, because of his reforming tendencies in the spirit of the Council of Trent (cf. his Parochorum hoc age, 1684), he created some adversaries among the canons of the Chapter themselves. After the death of Fürstenberg and even before the simoniacal election of the prince-elector Maximilian Henry of Cologne, which took place on 1 Sept. 1683, and which Innocent XI also refused to confirm, he left Münster to work, in conditions made very difficult by the diaspora environment, for two years in Hamburg, and the last year of his life at the Schwerin court where Duke Christian Louis I, converted to Catholicism, had called him as a simple missionary. His friend, Prince Cosimo III, had the body brought to Florence where it was buried in the crypt beneath the main nave of S. Lorenzo. S. is to be counted among the greatest naturalists; he anticipated his times to such a notable degree that only in the last century did people begin to evaluate his merits rightly. As a theologian he concentrated entirely on the tendency toward his own perfection and on pastoral zeal, and already among his contemporaries he had a reputation for holiness. An assembly of representatives of the dioceses of Osnabrück, Münster, Hildesheim and of Denmark, in a session of 29 March 1950 asked Archbishop Berning to provide for the preparations for the process of apostolic canonization.
Bibliography11 works
Gustavo Scherz