Vitelo (Witilo, Vitellio)

VITELO (WITILO, VITELLIO). - Philosopher and mathematician, b. in Silesia, around 1230.

He studied the "arts" in Paris, and later, perhaps between 1262 and 1268, according to Birkenmajer, canon law in Padua, continuing to take an interest in mathematical and physical studies. In 1269 he met the Dominican friar William of Moerbeke at the papal court in Viterbo and urged him to translate certain mathematical and physical writings of Archimedes, Eutocius and Hero, which the Dominican indeed translated in that year and which V. used. Around 1274 he must have completed his celebrated work Perspectiva, dedicated to friar William, in which he follows in the footsteps of the no less celebrated works of Euclid, Ptolemy and Alhazen. He made a second stay at the papal court between 1276 and 1278. He must have died shortly thereafter.

Besides the Perspectiva and a Tractatus de primaria causa penitencie et de natura demonum «quem fecit... Witilo studens in iure canonico... tempore paschali in vacationibus» (ms. lat. 14796 of the Bibliothèque nationale in Paris), the short treatise had been attributed to V. by C. Baeumker

De intelligentiis had been attributed to V. by C. Baeumker, which Baeumker himself later recognized to be the work of a master Adam "pulchrae mulieris," not further identified. The attribution had been motivated by certain similarities: of Neoplatonic concepts concerning the so-called "metaphysics of light." That seemed to be noted in this work as in the Perspectiva. But Birkenmajer has rightly observed that the Neoplatonic tinge of V.'s philosophy, like certain of his ideas on the afterlife, on prophetic visions and on divinatory dreams, are sufficiently explained by the familiarity he shows with the writings of Avicenna and Al-Ghazali, and, as far as the "metaphysics of light" is concerned, with the writings of Robert Grosseteste.

Bruno Nardi