Non solum gloria

Abstract

The term “academia” originally referred to the grove in which Plato’s school of philosophy was established, and hence to that philosophical school itself; but we are concerned here with the “academies” founded through-out Europe from the fifteenth century onwards. These philosophical debating clubs, sometimes also focusing on subjects like literature and art, could be described as communities of congenial minds, of men devoting themselves to the pursuit of learning in an atmosphere of friendship, leisure, and ease, preferably in a country house outside the towns. The path of such Academies was not always a smooth one. When the first four members of the Academia dei Lincei (the first academy which devoted itself to the pursuit of science) took a vow never to marry and to devote their austere lives to their studies, the patron of the academy and father of one of them uttered dire threats against the young scientists and banished them from his palace.