The Academy of the Lynx

Galileo’s World at a Glance
Gallery at the Exhibit Website
Location: Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History (Fall 2015, Spring 2016).

“not only to acquire knowledge of things and wisdom, and living together justly and piously, but also peacefully to display them to men, orally and in writing, without any harm.”  
Federigo Cesi, Constitution of the Academia dei Lincei

A new phenomenon characterized science in the 17th century: the scientific society. One of the earliest and most important was the Academy of the Lynx (Accademia dei Lincei). Federigo Cesi, Duke of Aquasparta, founded the Lynx in 1603. Galileo soon became the best-known member. For the rest of his life, Cesi provided Galileo and other Lynx with crucial intellectual, financial, and moral support. The works of the Lynx spanned all fields of science, including the most important early natural history of America.

In founding the Lynx, Cesi was inspired by another society, the Academy of the Secrets of Nature (Accademia Secretorum Naturae), established by Giambattista della Porta in Naples. Della Porta in turn became an early member of the Lynx. Della Porta’s works and his relationship with Cesi throw light on the Lynx’s formative years.

Section 1: The Academy of the Lynx

1. Giambattista della Porta, Phytognomonica (Naples, 1588), “Plant Anatomy”
2. Giambattista della Porta, Natural Magick (London, 1658), “Natural Magic”
3. Giambattista della Porta, De furtivis literarum notis (Naples, 1563), “On Secret Writing”
4. Lettere di Galileo Galilei al Principe Federigo Cesi (1629?), “Letters from Galileo to Prince Federigo Cesi”
5. Giambattista della Porta, Della Fisonomia di Tutto il Corpo Humano (Rome, 1637), “Human Anatomy”
6. Francesco Stelluti and Federigo Cesi, Trattato del Legno Fossile Minerale (Rome, 1637), “Treatise on Fossil Mineral Wood”
7. Giambattista della Porta, De aeris transmutationibus (Rome, 1610), “On the Transformations of the Atmosphere”

Further reading:

• Federigo Cesi and Francesco Stelluti, Apiarium (Rome, 1625); trans. Clara Sue Kidwell, 1970
  • White Background
  • Tan Background
• Dava Sobel, Galileo’s Daughter: A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love (Walker, 1999)
• David Freedberg, The Eye of the Lynx (Chicago, 2002)
• Clara Pinto-Coreia, The Ovary of Eve: Egg and Sperm and Preformation (Stanford, 2002)

Curators: Kerry Magruder, James Burnes, Tom Luczycki, Katrina Menard, Brent Purkaple.

Timeline

Highlights

Cesi’s family was unhappy with the secrecy of the group and applied sufficient pressure to disperse the young Cesi’s friends. Six months after its founding in 1603, only one member remained in Rome.

In 1609, Cesi reconstituted the Lynx with Francesco Stelluti. In 1610, Cesi traveled to Naples, meeting with Fabio Colonna, Ferrante Imperato, and the 70-year-old della Porta, welcoming the latter as their first new member.

During Galileo’s visit to Rome in early 1611, Cesi met Galileo and invited him to join the Lynx. Galileo became the 6^th member, the second non-founding member of the Academy of the Lynx after della Porta. Galileo proudly included the emblem of the Lynx and added the title “Linceo” after his name on the title pages and frontispieces of his subsequent books.

Johann Schreck and Johann Faber joined the Academy in 1611, the 7^th and 8^th members. The 9^th, Fabio Colonna, was added early in 1612.

All of these members participated in the effort to publish Hernandez.

Historical overview

Inspired by della Porta, in the summer of 1603, prince Federigo Cesi and three friends founded the Academy of the Lynx as an organization devoted to learning, including collaborative and experimental investigations in the natural sciences.  

According to plan, in Cesi’s home in Rome, they began holding lectures three days a week, and conducting experiments on the other two days. Cesi established a library, purchased scientific instruments, and created a botanical garden.  In this original vision of the Academy, devotion to learning was to be absolute.  Members took vows of chastity and swore not to enter into any other religious order.  In later years, these principles would be strained, as one member (Heck) vainly sought permission from the others to marry, and at least two members became Jesuits.  

Each of the four initial members received a diploma and ring, and took a secret name, emblem, and motto. The Academy adopted a patron saint and devised its own emblematic seal. The early Lynx held ambitious ideals: they hoped to establish non-clerical monasteries as centers of scientific learning in various cities around the world. Each monastery would be equipped with a library, a museum, a botanical garden, laboratories, and a printing office to support scientific publications. By printed works and personal travel the various monasteries would be able quickly to communicate their discoveries to each other and to the world. This broad organization never developed, but a private scientific academy might indeed provide a valuable channel of communication outside established university and ecclesiastical circles.

Of more immediate concern, however, Cesi’s parents were not sympathetic.  Faced with increasing parental scrutiny and criticism, members began to write to each other in code.  On Christmas day, 1603, in a solemn ceremony, Cesi appeared in a purple robe as “principe” of the Academy, and gave his three friends matching pendants depicting a lynx. They adopted John the Baptist as the patron saint of the Academy.  Cesi’s family remained unhappy with the secrecy of the group and applied sufficient pressure to disperse the young Cesi’s friends. Cesi himself moved to the family home in Acquasparta. One year after its founding, none of the members remained in Rome. 

Despite their dispersal, members remained determined to maintain the Academy at long distance.  They continued to correspond, gathered occasionally together in various locations, including in Naples with della Porta.  Cesi commissioned Heck to spread word of the Lynx, establish channels of correspondence with leading scientists across Europe, and to buy books for the library. Heck traveled to Germany, France, England, Ireland and Scotland before returning to his native Holland. He then traveled to Prague, where he met Kepler and Tycho Brahe.

In 1610, Cesi traveled to Naples, meeting with Fabio Colonna, Ferrante Imperato, and the 70-year-old della Porta, welcoming the latter as their first new member.  Della Porta became the head of a chapter of the Lynx in Naples. During Galileo’s visit to Rome in early 1611, Cesi met Galileo and invited him to join the Lynx.  Galileo became the 6th member, the second non-founding member of the Academy of the Lynx after della Porta. Galileo proudly included the emblem of the Lynx and added the title “Linceo” after his name on the title pages and frontispieces of his subsequent books.  Johann Schreck and Johann Faber joined the Academy in 1611, the 7th and 8th members.  The 9th, Fabio Colonna, was added early in 1612.  Each of these members participated in the effort to publish Hernandez.  

At della Porta’s urging in 1611, Cesi acquired the royal manuscript of Hernandez.  Its publication remained one of Cesi’s chief motivations and a central objective of the Lynx. With support from Don Alfonso Turiano, the Spanish ambassador to Rome, Stelluti was able to publish the Lynx’s edition of Hernandez in 1651.  

Although the principles of devotion to learning, of collaborative and experimental investigation, and of international communication endured, later members were not required to submit to the same vows and ceremonial trappings as practiced in 1603.  For example, Cesi himself married in 1614 and, shortly a widower, again in 1617.  He continued to bestow emerald rings to new members until 1629.  

By 1616, there were at least 18 members, joined in common cause through correspondence rather than participation in regular meetings.  Additional members were inducted over the years, up through Cesi’s death in 1630.  Their interests spanned the areas of archaeology, poetry, philosophy, history, and Arabic and oriental languages, in addition to the natural sciences.  Of 35 total members, 23 were mainly interested in the natural sciences.  In addition to correspondence, members of the Lynx worked to publish books, financed by Cesi, including Hernandez, the Apiarium, and several of Galileo’s major works.

The Academy of the Lynx lost its founder, visionary and financial patron when Cesi died in 1630, and dissolved when Galileo was brought to trial in 1633.  An effort to reconstitute the Lynx succeeded in 1847 when Pope Pius IX founded the Pontifical Academy of the New Lynx.  Select foreign scientists were invited to join, and thus Charles Darwin joined Galileo among the most illustrious members of the Lynx.  In 1875 the sponsorship of the Lynx passed to the Italian government.