TOSCANELLI DAL POZZO, PAOLO (Paulus Florentinus). - Mathematician, astronomer, geographer, b. in Florence in 1397 and d. there on 10 May 1482.

He studied in Padua with his brother Piero, obtaining his doctoral degree in 1424; he then returned to Florence, where he was enrolled in the guild of physicians and apothecaries, but there is no evidence that he practiced medicine. A humanist of very broad learning, he was on terms of friendship and scholarly exchange with F. Brunelleschi, C. Landino, P. Bracciolini, L. B. Alberti, Nicholas of Cusa, G. Müller (Regiomontanus) and with other scholars. His mathematical and astronomical works are lost (and so is one on agriculture); there survives a manuscript containing valuable observations on comets, wholly original, which would suffice to confirm his fame, moreover unanimously recognized and attested by his contemporaries. With a gnomon built in S. Maria del Fiore he succeeded in determining the obliquity of the ecliptic. T. was also a geographer, no longer strictly bound to the Ptolemaic tradition, but rather eager to keep abreast of the results of the travels and voyages of his time, as is attested by interrogations of people who came together in Florence from distant lands: Tartars come from the Tanais, Ethiopians arrived for the Council of 1441, etc.

But the best-known speculations in the geographical field are those that led him to propose to the Portuguese court (by means of an ecclesiastic met during a stay in Rome) the project of reaching the Indies, that is, eastern Asia, by sailing directly from the Iberian coasts westward across the Atlantic Ocean. The project, presented to Portugal in 1474 together with a demonstrative chart, is said not to have been accepted, but later it would have served as the basis for Columbus's undertakings. The question has aroused endless controversy among modern critics. By now it may be considered certain that the Toscanellian project existed, as did the chart, today lost (the identification with an anonymous chart preserved in Florence has no substance), that accompanied it. It is also certain that Columbus knew of T.'s project, but a direct correspondence between the two seems to have to be excluded.

Bibliography2 works

BIBL.: G. Uzielli, La vita e i tempi di P. dal P. T. (Raccolta Colombiana, 5), Rome 1894; G. Celoria, Sulle osservazioni di comete fatte da P. dal P. T. e sui lavori astronomici suoi, Milan 1921. The many polemical writings of S. Crinò, A. Magnaghi, G. Caron, R. Biasutti concerning the «chart» are recorded in the Bibliografia storica nazionale, III, IV, V, Rome 1947-49, see index under the entry P. dal P.

P. Roberto Almagià

@incollection{ec12_toscanelli_dal_pozzo_paolo_pau, author = {Almagia, Roberto}, title = {Toscanelli dal Pozzo, paolo (paulus florentinus)}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {XII}, pages = {363--364}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1954}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/toscanelli-dal-pozzo-paolo-paulus-florentinus} }

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Toscanelli dal Pozzo, Paolo (Paulus Florentinus)

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