VITELO (WITILO, VITELLIO). — Philosopher and mathematician, born in Silesia around 1230.
He studied the “arts” in Paris and later, perhaps between 1262 and 1268, according to Birkenmajer, canon law at Padua, while continuing to take an interest in mathematical and physical studies. In 1269 he met the Dominican friar Guglielmo di Moerbeke at the Papal Court in Viterbo and urged him to translate some mathematical and physical writings of Archimedes, Eutocius, and Heron; the Dominican did in fact translate them that year, and V. made use of them. Around 1274 he must have completed his celebrated work Perspectiva, dedicated to Friar Guglielmo, in which he follows in the footsteps of the no less celebrated works of Euclid, Ptolemy, and Alhazen. He spent a second period at the Papal Court between 1276 and 1278. He must have died shortly thereafter.
In addition to the Perspectiva and a Tractatus de primaria causa penitencie et de natura demonom «quem fecit... Witilo studens in iure canonico... tempore paschali in vacationibus» (ms. lat. 14796 of the Bibl. naz. of Paris), the short treatise De intelligentiis had been attributed to V. by C. Baeumker; Baeumker himself later recognized it as the work of a certain master Adam «pulchrac mulieris», otherwise unidentified. The attribution had been justified by certain similarities: Neoplatonic concepts concerning the so-called “metaphysics of light,” which seemed to be discernible in this work as well as in the Perspectiva. But Birkenmajer rightly observed that the Neoplatonic coloring of V.’s philosophy, as well as certain of his ideas concerning the afterlife, prophetic visions, and divinatory dreams, can be sufficiently explained by the familiarity he shows with the writings of Avicenna and Al-Gazali and, with regard to the “metaphysics of light,” with the writings of Roberto Grossatesta.