Science Patronage and Academies in Early PDF

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HOS0010.1177/0073275316634713History of ScienceCarolino
Article HOS
History of Science
Science, patronage,
2016, Vol. 54(2) 107–137
© The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/0073275316634713
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The scientific academy of

the nobleman and university
professor André de Almada
Luís Miguel Carolino

Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), CIES, Lisboa, Portugal
Abstract
This paper revisits the historiography of seventeenth-century scientific academies by
analyzing an informal academy established in Coimbra (Portugal) by André de Almada,
a nobleman and professor of theology at the University of Coimbra. By promoting this
academy and sponsoring the publication of science books, Almada stimulated research
on astronomy and animated links of patronage, which included not only members of the
universities but also the community of astronomers and astrologers active in Lisbon.
This paper challenges the traditional view of academic societies as innovative institutions
opposed to the old-fashioned universities and provides an insight into the complex
relationship established between patronage, the institutional settings, and the practices
of science in a country wherein science was poorly institutionalized and political power
increasingly centralized.
Keywords
Patronage, scientific academies, universities, André de Almada, comets, University of
Coimbra, Portugal, André de Avelar, Luís de Avelar
Introduction
Since at least the publication of The Role of the Scientific Societies in the Seventeenth
Century by Martha Ornstein, in 1913, historians of science have understood
Corresponding author:
Luís Miguel Carolino, Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL), Departamento de História, Cacifo
221A-AA, Av. das Forças Armadas, 1649-026 Lisboa, Portugal.
Email: Luis.Miguel.Carolino@iscte.pt
Downloaded from hos.sagepub.com by guest on September 13, 2016

108 History of Science 54(2)
the contribution of early-modern scientific academies as essential to the rise of modern

science. The role of these learned societies is so well established that it has become a
truism in the traditional narrative of the so-called Scientific Revolution. As the Austrian-
born historian epitomized it:
The societies concentrated groups of scientists at one place, performed experiments and
investigations impossible to individual effort, encouraged individual scientists and gave them
both opportunity and leisure, often through financial support, for scientific work. They became
centres of scientific information, “fora sapientiae”, published and translated scientific books,
promulgated periodically scientific discoveries and thus coordinated the scientific efforts of the
various progressive European countries. They concerned themselves about matters of homely
interest such as trade, commerce, tools and machinery, and tried to improve everyday life by the
light of science. They contributed to the general enlightment by dispelling popular errors, and
at times endeavored to reach the public by means of lectures. But first and foremost they
developed the scientific laboratory, created the national observatory, devised, perfected and
standardized instruments, originated and insisted on exact methods of experimentation and thus
established permanently the laboratory method as the only true means of scientific study.1
By putting in place new and far-reaching patterns of organizing scientific research, pro-
viding new forms of financial support, and above all by pushing for a research program
based upon experimentation, scientific societies distinguished themselves from the uni-
versities, which Ornstein depicted as conservative institutions, clearly at odds with the
new philosophy and natural science cultivated at the avant-garde academies.2
Over the last four decades, crucial studies on early modern academic societies have
demonstrated that this thesis is for the most part unquestionable. The transformation of
concepts, methods, and practices that took place throughout the seventeenth century was
largely dependent on the institutionalization of new forms of organization among the
large gamut of personae scientificae of early modern Europe. Despite their differences,
scientific academies had in common what Roger Hahn called the “communal instinct to
share information within its members” and intellectual counterparts,3 as well as the
experimental stimulus and the public awareness of the utility of science. Stemming from
the amateur and informal academies, they developed into scientific societies well organ-
ized and articulated such as the Accademia del Cimento, the Royal Society, the Paris
Academy of Sciences, or the Berlin Academy, which was established as a result of
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz’s engagement.4 In this process of transformation from pri-
vate organizations to ‘public’ institutions a special role has frequently been recognized
1. Martha Ornstein, The Role of the Scientific Societies in the Seventeenth Century (Chicago,
IL: University of Chicago Press, 1913), p. 301.
2. For example, “the conclusion is thus inevitable, that the organized support which Science
needed in order to penetrate into the thought and lives of people was not obtained from
universities, but was derived from those forms of corporate activity which it had created for
itself, the Scientific Societies.” Ornstein, The Role of the Scientific Societies, p. 302.
3. Roger Hahn, The Anatomy of a Scientific Institution: The Paris Academy of Sciences, 1666–
1803 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1971), p. 3.
4. Among several studies, see Marco Beretta, Antonio Clericuzio and Lawrence M. Principe
(eds.), The Accademia del Cimento and its European Context (Sagamore Beach, MA:

Carolino 109
for the State, and particularly for the catalytic part played by Colbert, the Finance
Minister to King Louis XIV, who, by providing the Parisian community of virtuosi with
state-funding and a state-controlled research program, established the conditions to
assemble the numerous private academies that gathered around Paris at the time and to
launch the Paris Academy of Sciences, an archetype for subsequent scientific societies.5
This perception of scientific societies as key institutions in early modern science,
though essentially undeniable, tends nevertheless to portray academies as the exclusive
foci of ‘progressive’ science, whose dominance appears as inevitable in the long run.6 In
the linear and progressive process that characterizes those narratives on the “Scientific
Revolution,” the establishment of state-patronized scientific societies represents all
together a sine qua non condition for scientific progress and a new stage in this process.
Nevertheless, as David S. Lux clearly reveals in his study on the seventeenth-century
Académie de Physique of Caen, an academy which failed to succeed despite royal patron-
age and its extremely talented membership, not only was it extremely difficult to put in
place an organized academy of science, but also, and ultimately, the creation of state-
funded and state-controlled institutions did not necessarily contribute to the improve-
ment of science.7 The early modern period witnessed an emergence of a wide range of
diverse scientific academies, assemblées, and societies that coexisted with the establish-
ment of more organized and often state-sponsored institutions, although not contributing
(in)directly to it.
Moreover, in investigating the history of the learned organizations that preceded the
establishment of academies patronized by state or royal agents, historians have concen-
trated mainly on Italy and German ‘states’, with some attention also being devoted to
France, Denmark, and Prague’s Imperial court.8 As Stephen Pumfrey and Frances
Science History Publications, 2009) and particularly the contribution by Mordechai

Feingold, ‘The Accademia del Cimento and the Royal Society’ (pp. 229–42); Paolo Galluzzi,
‘L’Accademia del Cimento: “Gusti” del principe, filosofia e ideologia dell’esperimento’,
Quaderni Storici 16 (1981): 788–844; Hahn, Anatomy of a Scientific Institution; Michael
Hunter, The Royal Society and its Fellows, 1660–1700: The Morphology of an Early
Scientific Institution (Chalfont St. Giles, UK: The British Society for the History of
Science, 1982); W. E. Knowles Middleton, The Experimenters: A Study of the Accademia
del Cimento (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1971); Ornstein, The Role
of the Scientific Societies.
5. A penetrating critic of this sort of explanation of the origins of the Paris Academy of
Sciences, deeply reliant on the understanding of the Academy’s first historian Bernard de
Fontenelle can be found in David S. Lux, Patronage and Royal Science in Seventeenth-
Century France: The Académie de Physique in Caen (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,
1989), pp. 1–7.
6. See, for example, Wilbur Applebaum, The Scientific Revolution and the Foundations of
Modern Science (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2005), pp. 100–102; A. Rupert Hall,
From Galileo to Newton, 1630–1720 (New York, NY: Harper Collins, 1963), pp. 132–54;
Richard S. Westfall, The Construction of Modern Science: Mechanisms and Mechanics
(Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1971), pp. 108–13.
7. Lux, Patronage and Royal Science.
8. Mario Biagioli, Galileo Courtier: The Practice of Science in the Culture of Absolutism
(Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1993); Harcourt Brown, Scientific Organization

Dawbarn have already pointed out, by focusing on these cases, historians tend to empha-
size the existence of a particular culture of scientific patronage in Europe, a patronage
that promotes an “ostentatious science” (a term coined by Pumfrey and Dawbarn). In
fact, in Italy and northern Europe, the consolidation of regional power, which took place
in the sixteenth century, favored the patronage of this distinctive “ostentatious science.”9
The increasing desire of political autonomy backed by an aggrandizement of personal
wealth encouraged princes to support protégés and academies that contributed to glorify
the ruler’s self-image and to legitimize his power. The Accademia del Cimento, protected
by Florence’s Grand Duke Ferdinand II de’ Medici, was a case in point.10 Yet European
countries that experienced different political, social, and economic conditions necessar-
ily underwent different cultures of patronage.11 Pumfrey and Dawbarn have convinc-
ingly made this point by arguing that in Elizabethan England, in an increasingly
centralized ‘state’, patrons sponsored principally a ‘utilitarian’ form of science.12 What
kind of culture of patronage dominated in Spain and in Portugal, two political powers
with different ambitions but both relatively centralized and with unequivocal imperial
and colonial aspirations? With respect to the Spanish case, although not particularly
concerned with patronage and institutional studies, historians have documented the
gathering of botanical, natural history, and astronomical information from the diverse
parts of the empire in metropolitan institutions, such as Casa de la Contratación and,
in Seventeenth Century France (1620–1680) (Baltimore, MD: Williams and Wilkins,

1934); Andrea Bubenik, ‘Art, astrology and astronomy at the imperial court of Rudolf II
(1576–1612)’, in J.R. Christianson, A. Hadravová, P. Hadrava and M. Solc (eds.) Tycho
Brahe and Prague: Crossroads of European Science (Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Verlag
Harri Deutsch, 2002), pp. 256–63; John Robert Christianson, On Tycho’s Island: Tycho
Brahe and his Assistants, 1570–1601 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press,
2000); William Eamon, Science and the Secrets of Nature: Books of Secrets in Medieval
and Early Modern Culture (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univerity Press, 1994), pp. 194–
233; Paula Findlen, Possessing Nature: Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in
Early Modern Italy (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1994), particularly pp.
346–392; Bruce Moran, ‘Courts and academies’, in Katherine Park and Lorraine Daston
(eds.), The Cambridge History of Science, Volume 3: Early Modern Science (Cambridge,
UK: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 251–71; Bruce Moran (ed.), Patronage
and Institutions: Science, Technology and Medicine at the European Court, 1500–1750
(Woodbridge, UK: The Boydell Press, 1991); Pamela H. Smith, The Business of Alchemy:
Science and Culture in the Holy Roman Empire (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1994); Victor E. Thoren, The Lord of Uraniborg: A Biography of Tycho Brahe (Cambridge,
UK: Cambridge University Press, 1990); Robert S. Westman, ‘The astronomer’s role in the
sixteenth century: a preliminary study’, History of Science 18 (1980): 105–47.
9. Stephen Pumfrey and Frances Dawbarn, ‘Science and patronage in England: 1570–1625: a
preliminary study’, History of Science 42 (2004): 137–88, at pp. 137 and 139–41.
10. Middleton, The Experimenters. See Feingold, ‘The Accademia del Cimento and the Royal
Society’ for a more balanced interpretation.
11. Moran, ‘Courts and academies’, pp. 253–63.
12. Pumfrey and Dawbarn, ‘Science and patronage in England’.

Carolino 111
based on that, have argued that those practices fostered an empirical approach to the
study of nature.13 As far as sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Portugal is concerned, the
study of patronage and academies is new to the history of science.14
Studies on courts or academies as sites of natural knowledge usually link these new
forms of social organization of scientific work to the putting forward of ground-breaking
theories. Indeed, Tycho Brahe developed his observational program and geo-heliocentric
cosmological model at the island of Hven, a gift from his patron Frederick II, king of
Denmark, before moving to the Imperial court of Rudolf II, in Prague. Johannes Kepler
also lived some of his most decisive and creative years at the imperial court; Christoph
Rothmann worked in association with the scientific program in place at the court of the
German Landgrave Wilhelm IV of Hesse-Kassel; and Galileo’s major scientific accom-
plishments took place in the court of Medici, in Florence.15 Many other European courts
constituted suitable places for scientific discussion and innovation. The court of the
Duchy of Savoy in Turin, under Emanuele Filiberto, where Copernican cosmology was
discussed in poetical form, was a case in point.16 Nevertheless, courts and early acade-
mies did not necessarily promote innovative science from the theoretical point of view.
In Elizabethan England, patronage was directed especially to the promotion of utilitarian
science.17 Again, the relationship between patronage, the institutional settings, and the
type of science promoted was the key question. Studies on academies that emerged in
countries in which science was poorly institutionalized, such as the informal academy
that André de Almada created in Portugal, defy this overstatement that associates acad-
emies with scientific breakthrough or even the polarity between ‘traditional’ and ‘cut-
ting-edge’ science in the early modern period.
13. For example, Antonio Barrera-Osorio, Experiencing Nature: The Spanish American Empire
and the Early Scientific Revolution (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2006); Jorge
Cañizares-Esguerra, Nature, Empire, and Nation: Explorations of the History of Science in
the Iberian World (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006); María Portuondo, Secret
Science: Spanish Cosmography and the New World (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago
Press, 2013).
14. Important studies on Royal menageries in Renaissance-Portugal and on arts patronage
in eighteenth-century Portugal have already been published, such as Annemarie Jordan
Gschwend, The Story of Süleyman: Celebrity Elephants and Other Exotica in Renaissance
Portugal (Zürich, Germany: Pachyderm Production, 2010); Jessica Hallet (ed.), Cortejo
Triunfal com Girafas/Triumphal Procession with Giraffes (Lisbon, Portugal: Fundação
Ricardo do Espírito Santo, 2009); Angela Delaforce, Art and Patronage in Eighteenth-
Century Portugal (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002).
15. Biagioli, Galileo Courtier; Thoren, The Lord of Uraniborg; Westman, ‘The astronomer’s
role in the sixteenth century’.
16. Pietro Daniel Omodeo, ‘Una poesia copernicana nella Torino di Emanuele Filiberto’,
Studi Piemontesi 37 (2008): 31–9. See also Omodeo, ‘Renaissance science and literature:
Benedetti, Ovid and the transformations of Phaeton’s myth after Copernicus’, Science &
Education 23 (2014): pp. 557–64.

This dichotomy between traditional and innovative knowledge, when applied to this
period, is usually associated with an institutional contrast between academies and uni-
versities. Following Martha Ornstein’s perspective, historians of science tend to con-
ceive the establishment of science at European courts and the launching of academic
societies as institutional alternatives to the so-called old-fashioned universities. Since
universities left no room for innovation, scientists strove to create institutions that
granted them adequate conditions to pursue experimental and pioneering research. As a
celebrated historian of science put it:
With the principal seats of learning [i.e. the universities] effectively barred to it, the scientific
movement created its own institutions, not educational institutions, but organizations which
made science a sociological phenomenon as well as an intellectual one. The 17th century
witnessed the birth of the scientific societies.18
Today there is sound evidence that early modern universities were not such backward
and conservative institutions. Despite the apparent inflexibility of their statutes, the con-
straints of their financial and political support, and their self-conception as the heirs to a
monopoly of higher education, universities in England, France, Germany, or Italy not
only witnessed a greater flexibility than usually recognized, but they were more permis-
sive to the nova scientia than they were previously credited with. Furthermore, these
secular institutions seemed to be in a condition of providing their students with sufficient
up-to-date training in mathematics and natural sciences that allowed them to take part in
the complex process of scientific change that characterized the seventeenth century.19
Nonetheless, the historiography on science, academies, and patronage continues by and
large to conceive the academies in opposition to universities. In some cases, such as in
the very well-documented and researched book by K. Theodore Hoppen on the Dublin
Philosophical Society, historians documented the relationship between the university
community and the establishment of local scientific societies. And yet, they continue to
repeat the historiographical cliché of the dichotomy between innovative academies and
old-fashioned universities.20 No doubt, there was at times a tense relationship between
18. Westfall, The Construction of Modern Science, p. 108.

19. See, for example, L.W.B. Brockliss, French Higher Education in the Seventeenth and
Eighteenth Centuries: A Cultural History (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1987);
Mordechai Feingold, The Mathematicians’ Apprenticeship: Science, Universities and Society
in England, 1560–1640 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1984); M. Feingold
and Victor Navarro-Brotons (eds.), Universities and Science in the Early Modern Period
(Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Springer, 2006); Joseph S. Freedman, Philosophy and the Arts
in Central Europe, 1500–1700: Teaching and Texts at Schools and Universities, Variorum
Collected Studies Series, 626 (Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 1999); Pietro Daniel Omodeo,
‘Sixteenth century professors of mathematics at the German University of Helmstedt’, pre-
print of MPIWG (Berlin, Germany: Max-Planck-Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte, 2011).
20. K. Theodore Hoppen, The Common Scientist in the Seventeenth Century: A Study of the
Dublin Philosophical Society, 1683–1708 (London, UK: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1970),
pp. 53–72.

Carolino 113
these two institutions, which, according to Mordechai Feingold, comprised institutional

and intellectual as well as theological dimensions.21 That tension arose especially when
academies became more well-grounded. In this context, universities increasingly
regarded academies as serious challengers, whose activities risked putting into question
their monopoly with regard to higher education, and accordingly the university academic
bodies tried to restrict the academies’ sphere of action. It happened, for example, in early
eighteenth-century Paris, when the proposal for the creation of an academy of medicine,
inspired by the model of the Academy of Sciences, clashed with the opposition of the
firmly established Faculté de Médecine.22 Yet, there are also numerous cases in which
universities played a crucial role in favoring the establishment of academies, nurturing
them with expert personnel and research questions, thus influencing their own nature.23
This paper focuses on one such case study. In the early seventeenth century, a profes-
sor of theology at the University of Coimbra, named André de Almada, established an
informal academy devoted to studies of astronomy in Coimbra. André de Almada
(1570?–1642) – or D. André as his contemporaries called him – was a nobleman. Thus
similarly to what Tycho Brahe had achieved in Hven and Prague, Almada bestowed an
aristocratic status upon scientific activities in Coimbra. He animated links of patronage,
which included the university community, but also went beyond Coimbra, reaching the
community of astronomers and astrologers active in Lisbon, the vibrant capital of
Portugal. Yet, Almada was no Brahe. He authored a piece on the comets of 1618, but his
cosmological framework was rather traditional, even though his web of contacts
included astronomers with different views on cosmology, clearly at odds with his own.
Furthermore, this web of connections never reached the status of a well-founded
‘research’ organization such as the one that Brahe organized in his island of Hven. It
remained, like most academies in the Europe of its time, an informal academy with
apparently irregular meetings.
Yet, I believe that the study of this kind of academy and its patronage relationships
contributes to obtaining a more comprehensive understanding of the complex relation-
ship between scientific ideas and practices and their institutional settings in early mod-
ern Europe. First, it corroborates Pumfrey and Dawbarn’s thesis (which they applied to
Elizabethan England), according to which, countries whose political and administra-
tive structures were more centralized and which depended increasingly on colonial
21. Mordechai Feingold, ‘Tradition versus novelty: universities and scientific societies in the
early modern period’, in Peter Barker and Roger Ariew (eds.) Revolution and Continuity:
Essays in the History and Philosophy of Early Modern Science (Washington, DC: Catholic
University of America Press 1991), pp. 45–59.
22. Brown, Scientific Organization, pp. 147–8; Hahn, Anatomy of a Scientific Institution,
p. 102.
23. Cases in which academies depended to a certain extent on extant universities, can be
found in Hoppen, The Common Scientist, pp. 53–72; Michael Hunter, Science and Society
in Restoration England (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1981), pp. 35–6,
136ff.; Feingold, The Mathematicians’ Apprenticeship, pp. 190–213; Alberto Zampieri,
L’Accademia dei Disuniti in Pisa (Pisa, Italy: ETS, 2002), pp. 41–73.

revenues tended to stimulate a culture of patronage that promoted ‘utilitarian science’.

Early modern Portugal is an extreme example of that tendency. Secondly, the study of
André de Almada’s case in the context of the noble practices of patronage in Portugal
permits envisaging a picture in which there were very few patrons available for patron-
age and a community of personae scientificae dispersed and poorly connected. Thirdly,
the academy established by André de Almada demonstrates that universities could be
an important catalyzer of a ‘scientific community’ and, by doing so, facilitated the
birth of a scientific academy. Fourthly, despite its original dependency on the univer-
sity community, the academy of André de Almada seems to have been a place for
exchanging different ideas, thus substantiating the general view that early modern
academies rejected doctrinal dogmatism. Finally, an examination of the scientific work
carried out under the aegis of this academy reveals that, despite institutional autonomy,
an academy did not necessarily produce ‘innovative knowledge’. The papers produced
on the occasion of the observation of the comets of 1618 are a case in point. The major-
ity of the academy’s members held a conventional view on cometary phenomena, but
the academy received correspondence about the most ‘updated’ position on the matter.
A few years ago, while referring to the English case, Pumfrey and Dawbarn challeng-
ingly stated, “considerable and detailed research is needed to uncover informal com-
munities whose interests defy a simple dichotomy between ‘traditional’ and
‘innovative’ work.”24 I believe the academy of André de Almada was one such
community.
Patrons and clients: The nature of scientific patronage in

Portugal
Historians of science have superbly shown the link that existed between the courtly
patronage and the development of Copernicanism and natural science in Italy and
Germany.25 In some of these European regions, new political, economic, and religious
conditions paved the way to an increasing consolidation of regional power. An array of
local authorities emerged as centers of political protagonism conscious of their power
and seeking to consolidate and perpetuate their ‘reputation’. Science patronage was a
key instrument in this process of building up a political and cultural status. As William
Eamon has pointed out, “the luxurious ostentation of court culture was no mere show;
it was a display of the prince’s power.”26 For example, the life of Johann Joachim
Becher, who moved from one court of the Holy Roman Empire to another, constantly
looking for noble patrons who granted him conditions to foster a self-identity as cour-
tier expert in medicine, alchemy, mechanical projects, and commerce, and as a broker
between the world of courtiers, scholars, and the world of artisans, would not be
24. Pumfrey and Dawbarn, ‘Science and patronage in England’, p. 176.

25. Biagioli, Galileo Courtier; Omodeo, ‘Una poesia copernicana’; Westman, ‘The astrono-
mer’s role in the sixteenth century’.
26. Eamon, Science and the Secrets of Nature, p. 222.

Carolino 115
possible without the emergence of local authorities eager to display an image of wealth
and magnificence.27
Although in a very different environment, the Portuguese nobility was also con-
scious of the social and political impact of the symbolic use of patronage. A prelimi-
nary study of the books published in Portugal in the late sixteenth century and the first
half of the seventeenth century on natural and mathematical sciences, astrology, and
medicine, containing letters of dedications, suggests that a significant number of
authors looked for the support of patrons within the higher ranks of the Portuguese
nobility and clergy. Book dedications have been regarded as an instrumental tool in
entering the “clientage system.”28 It was a way of making public a patronage connec-
tion as well as a potential means to gain employment at a noble household or else-
where through the intervention of a patron. Research of this kind applied to the
Portuguese case permits not only envisaging the outline of patrons but also a glimpse
of the Portuguese ‘scientific community’ active in the early seventeenth century, a
study yet to be done.
The period covered in this study, roughly corresponding to the life of André de
Almada, coincides with a time spanning from 1580 to 1640, in which the Portuguese
kingdom was ruled by the Spanish Habsburgs. The ingress of Portugal into a “Europe of
composite monarchies,”29 partially affected the relations of power within the nobility and
its relations with kingship. The king was no longer in Portugal. In Lisbon, he was repre-
sented by the viceroy or governor while, in Madrid, where the Royal Court resided for
most of the time, a “Council of Portugal” (Conselho de Portugal) was established,
responsible for administrative supervision and policy regarding the Portuguese kingdom.
This council comprised six members, all Portuguese and generally of noble extraction.30
They, together with the members of the State Council (Conselho de Estado) in Lisbon,
constituted the apexes of the science patronage system in Portugal.
In fact, in the first decades of the seventeenth century, the majority of books published
in Portugal on natural and mathematical sciences, astrology, and medicine were dedi-
cated and supported by the noblemen and clergymen who belonged to the higher admin-
istration both in Lisbon and in Madrid. It was the case, for example, for Cristóvão de
Moura (1538–1613), 1st Marquis of Castelo Rodrigo, who was a right-hand man of the
Habsburg kings. After he had worked in favor of the Habsburg cause that led to the
‘Iberian Union’, Felipe II made him a member of the Council of Portugal and, some
27. Smith, The Business of Alchemy.

28. Feingold, The Mathematicians’ Apprenticeship, p. 209; Pumfrey and Dawbarn, ‘Science
and patronage in England’, p. 152.
29. J.H. Elliott, ‘A Europe of composite monarchies’, in Elliott, Spain, Europe and the Wider
World, 1500–1800 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009), pp. 3–24.
30. A sound and comprehensive account of the history of Portugal, in English, including the
period of so-called Iberian Union, can be found in A.R. Disney, A History of Portugal and
the Portuguese Empire, 2 volumes. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2009);
Malyn Newitt, Portugal in European and World History (London, UK: Reaktion Books,
2009); A.H. de Oliveira Marques, History of Portugal, 2nd ed. (New York, NY: Columbia
University Press, 1976).

years later, Felipe III promoted him to viceroy of Portugal.31 Just after he arrived in
Lisbon to assume the post of viceroy, Moura supported the publication of a medical book
on plague by Ambrósio Nunes, a professor of medicine at the University of Coimbra and
royal physician to the Portuguese crown.32 His son, Manuel de Moura Corte-Real fol-
lowed the same policy of finding protégés among ‘men of science’ and patronized the
publication of a celebrated book on cosmography and astrology authored by the would-
be royal chief cosmographer Manuel de Figueiredo.33
Other members of the Portuguese higher nobility not strictly related to political affairs
also engaged in science patronage by supporting the publication of books. Álvaro de
Lencastre was a case in point. A member of a noble household closely connected with the
Portuguese royal family, Álvaro de Lencastre, Duke of Aveiro, promoted the publication
of Chronographia ou reportorio dos tempos by André de Avelar, who we will find shortly
as a member of the scientific academy of André de Almada.34 Other members of
Portuguese noble families (some of them with close ties to the Habsburg rule and others
not) can be found among the patrons whose dedication letters suggest “relations of cli-
entage” in the domain of science.35
31. A great deal of information on Cristóvão de Moura can be found, for example, in Fernando
Bouza, Filipe I (Lisbon, Portugal: Temas de Debates, 2008); F. Castelo Branco, ‘Moura
(Cristóvão de)’, in Verbo. Enciclopédia Luso-Brasileira, Volume 13 (Lisbon, Portugal:
Editorial Verbo, 1972), p. 1466; Manuel Fernández Álvarez, Felipe II y su tempo (Madrid,
Spain: Espasa, 1998); Henry Kamen, Philip of Spain (New Haven, CT: Yale University
Press, 1997); Queiroz Velloso, O reinado do Cardeal D. Henrique (Lisbon, Portugal:
Empresa Nacional de Publicidade, 1946).
32. Ambrósio Nunes, Tractado repartido en cinco partes principales, que declaram el mal que
significa este nombre Peste con todas sus causas, y señales prognosticas, y indicatiuas del
mal con la preseruacion, y cura que en general, y en particular se deue hazer (Coimbra,
Portugal: Diogo Gomes de Loureiro, 1601).
33. Manuel de Figueiredo, Chronographia reportorio dos tempos, no qual se contem VI partes,
Suma dos tempos; esphera, cosmographia, e arte da nauegação, astrologia rustica, e dos
tempos, e pronosticação dos eclipses, cometas e samenteiras (Lisbon, Portugal: Jorge
Rodrigues, 1603).
34. André de Avelar, Chronographia ou reportorio dos tempos, 3rd ed. (Lisbon, Portugal:
Simão Lopez, 1594), and 4th ed. (Lisbon, Portugal: Jorge Rodrigues, 1602).
35. For example, Manuel de Figueiredo, Roteiro e navegação das Indias ocidentais, ilhas, antil-
has do mar, oceano occidental, com suas derrotas, sondas, fundos, conhecenças (Lisbon,
Portugal: Pedro Crasbeeck, 1609) [dedicated to Carlos de Borga, Earl of Ficalho, member of
State Council]; Gaspar Nicolas/André de Figueiredo, Tratado da pratica de arismetica com-
posta e ordenada por Gaspar Nicolas e agora de nouo emendada e acrecentada por Manoel
de Figueyredo cosmógrapho mór da conquista destes reynos de Portugal (Lisbon, 1607, 1613
and an edition with no date held at Biblioteca Nacional de Portugal, Res. 5132 P) [dedicated
to Francisco de Melo, Earl of Tentúgal]; Gaspar Cardoso de Sequeira, Thesouro dos prudentes
novamente tirado a lus (Coimbra, Portugal: Nicolau Carvalho, 1612) [to Vasco de Sousa, son
of the Earl of Miranda and member of State Council]; Afonso de Vilhafane Guiral e Pacheco,
Flor da arismetica necessaria, ao vso dos câmbios, e quilatador de ouro, e prata, o mais
curioso, que tem sahido (Lisbon, Portugal: Geraldo da Vinha, 1624) [to Miguel de Meneses,
Duke of Caminha]; Cristoforo Borri, Collecta astronomica ex doctrina (Lisbon, Portugal:
Matias Rodrigues, 1631) [to Gregório de Castelo Branco, Earl of Vila Nova de Sortelha].

Carolino 117
Unlike the English case, in which there is evidence that authors were in some cases
rewarded with a sum of money upon the presentation of a book,36 in early modern
Portugal it is not entirely clear whether the dedication of a book meant that the patron
had actually paid for, or simply facilitated, the publication of the book. Nonetheless, as
far as the patronage of science books is concerned, no evidence exists that rewarding of
money was involved in the process. Nevertheless, there is clearly a professional bias in
some dedications to patrons. It is not incidental that, just after entering the University of
Coimbra as professor of mathematics, in 1592, André de Avelar dedicated his treatise on
the sphere to the rector of the university, Fernão Martins de Mascarenhas.37 After distin-
guishing himself as an astrologer in Lisbon,38 Avelar applied for a position of professor
of mathematics at the university. He was the only candidate to apply for that position
and upon his examination presided over by the rector himself, Avelar was appointed
professor of mathematics.39 One year later, Avelar was eager to celebrate his accom-
plishment by associating the rector of the university with his Sphaera, already finished
in Coimbra. The same kind of maneuver was likely to be the case for the professor of
medicine and anatomy at the University of Coimbra, João Bravo Chamisso, who dedi-
cated the first (and unique) volume of his De medendis corporis malis per manualem
operationem to the ex-rector of the University, the influential clergyman and member of
State Council, Afonso Furtado de Mendonça.40 Other relations of patronage and broker-
age established at an occupational level involved professionals with different positions
in the social hierarchy. This was, for example, the case of Luis Mercado, an important
physician at the Royal Court in Madrid, who paved the way for the publication of a
book on De elementis by his Portuguese colleague, the obscure physician Diogo Lopes,
native from the border city of Penamacor.41
Nevertheless, in seventeenth-century Portugal, no ‘man of science’ found conditions
of patronage similar to those that, for example, Kepler knew while working under the
protection of Rudolf II in Prague, or Rothmann experienced whilst involved in research
36. As Mordechai Feingold informs us, “Prince Henry was in the habit of giving between £3
and £5 for each dedication.” Feingold, The Mathematicians’ Apprenticeship, p. 209.
37. André de Avelar, Sphaerae vtrivsque tabella ad sphaerae huius mundi faciliorem enuclea-
tionem (Coimbra, Portugal: António de Barreira, 1593).
38. André de Avelar had published an influential astrological book in Lisbon, in 1585: Reportorio
dos tempos o mais copioso que ate agora saio a luz conforma à noua reformação do sancto
Papa Gregorio XIII (Lisbon, Portugal: Manuel de Lyra, 1585). I was unable to consult this
edition, only the second issued in 1590.
39. Manuel Lopes de Almeida, Apontamentos para a biografia de André de Avelar, professor
de matemática na Universidade (Coimbra, Portugal: Junta de Investigações do Ultramar,
1966), p. 8.
40. João Bravo Chamisso, De medendis corporis malis per manualem operationem (Coimbra,
Portugal: Manuel de Araújo, 1605).
41. Diogo Lopes, Tractatus de elementis et de rerum omnium mixione, in quo veterum et classi-
corum opiniones impugnantur (Coimbra, Portugal: Manuel de Araújo, 1602). Luis Mercado
seemed to have been close to Spanish monarchs. See Nicasio Mariscal, El libro de la peste del
Dr. Luis Mercado con un estúdio preliminar acerca del autor y sus obras (Madrid, Spain:
Real Academia Nacional de Medicina, 1921), pp. 26–7.

projects undertaken by Wilhelm IV, Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel. It was not a question of

motivation or propensity for science, an issue always difficult to evaluate. The nonexist-
ence in early modern Portugal of such a sort of local prince-practitioner has its roots in
the political and economic structures of Portuguese society. Historians have identified
two opposite trends in the long-term evolution of Portugal’s nobiliary stratification over
the early modern period: on the one hand, the higher aristocracy became increasingly
crystallized and dependent on royal authority while, on the other hand, the base of the
noble group tended to enlarge, by the progressive incorporation of new members with
fewer privileges.42 According to Nuno Monteiro, this pattern of evolution not only dif-
fered extensively from that which characterized the European nobility but also affected
the nature of the Portuguese nobility itself. Unlike the European high nobility whose
economic bases stood in increasingly larger possession of lands, the Portuguese aristo-
cratic élite became more dependent on royal graces and favors. Thus, this social group
tended to stabilize (and crystallized) as the result of the Crown’s own policy.43 At the
bottom of the noble pyramid, different from what happened in the rest of Europe, there
was a rise in numbers of low noblemen, thought to be increasingly poor.44 Neither of
these two groups embodied an alternative form of power to the royal sovereignty. In
effect, the higher nobility (who in central Europe and northern Italy depended on concen-
trated power, privileges, and social prestige at a regional scale) in Portugal, resided
essentially at the Royal Court, taking part in the central government of the country and
empire. The exception was the would-be ruling dynasty, the House of Braganza, who
lived for most of the sixteenth century and first decades of the seventeenth century in the
42. See, among others, Mafalda Soares da Cunha, A Casa de Bragança, 1560–1640: Práticas
senhoriais e redes clientelares (Lisbon, Portugal: Editorial Estampa, 2000); Nuno Gonçalo
Monteiro, ‘Notas sobre nobreza, fidalguia e titulares nos finais do Antigo Regime’,
Ler História 10 (1987): 15–51; N.G. Monteiro, O crepúsculo dos grandes: A casa e
o património da aristocracia em Portugal, 2nd ed. revised (Lisbon, Portugal: Imprensa
Nacional-Casa da Moeda, 2003); N.G. Monteiro, Elites e poder. Entre o Antigo Regime
e o Liberalismo, 3rd ed. (Lisbon, Portugal: ICS-Imprensa de Ciências Sociais, 2012);
N.G. Monteiro, Pedro Cardim, M.S. da Cunha (eds.), Optima Pars: Elites ibero-americanas
do Antigo Regime (Lisbon, Portugal: ICS-Imprensa de Ciências Sociais, 2005). An over-
view in English of the historiography of the Portuguese aristocracy can be found in N.G.
Monteiro, ‘17th and 18th century Portuguese nobilities in the European context: a historio-
graphical overview’, e-Journal of Portuguese History 1 (2003): 1–15 and N.G. Monteiro,
‘Nobility and aristocracy in ancien régime Portugal (Seventeenth to Nineteenth Centuries)’,
in H.M. Scott, The European Nobilities in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,
Volume 1: Western and Southern Europe, 2nd ed. (Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan,
2007), pp. 256–84.
43. Monteiro, ‘17th and 18th century Portuguese nobilities’, p. 5.
44. For a comparison between the evolution and nature of Portuguese and Europeans nobilities,
see Monteiro, ‘17th and 18th century Portuguese nobilities’ and Monteiro, ‘Nobility and
aristocracy in ancien régime Portugal’.

Carolino 119
Ducal palace of Vila Viçosa (some 150 km away from Lisbon). Nevertheless, despite
being in Vila Viçosa, the Braganzas were able to follow closely the political life and the
social and cultural changes that took place in the Royal Court (for the most part) in
Lisbon and later in Madrid.45
The overseas expansion and the making of the Portuguese empire contributed deci-
sively to the process of power centralization in favor of the king. The increasing depend-
ency of royal finances upon colonial revenues caused the king to rely not exclusively on
land-incomes (considerably enlarged after the incorporation of the Portuguese military
orders – Avis, Christ, and Santiago – in the realm) and, consequently, to strengthen the
ties of clientage that linked the noble households to the king and royal interests. By dis-
tributing to them pensions (tenças) and offices of governance in the overseas empire,
Portuguese sovereigns granted the partnership of the main families of the Portuguese
aristocracy and ultimately controlled them.46 This process, which the Portuguese histo-
rian Vitorino Magalhães Godinho characterized as “mercantilization of state” (mercanti-
lização do Estado),47 led to the dissipation of regional centers of power embodied by
local noble households.
In this context, unlike what happened for example in northern and central Europe, in
Portugal, the nobility was not in a position to put in place consistent systems of patronage
that favored the emergence of court astronomers or alchemists or supported the rise of
scientific academies. The exception was probably the Braganza Ducal court at Vila
Viçosa, where Teodósio I (1510–1563) and Teodósio II (1568–1630) appointed some
humanists with mathematical training,48 though their activities seem to have been basi-
cally focused on the education of the Braganza heirs.49
The Royal Court was thus the cardinal source of scientific patronage in Portugal.
Since at least the early sixteenth century one can consistently find a courtier with sci-
entific training at the Portuguese Royal Court, the chief-cosmographer (cosmografo-
mór). Apart from advising the king on the whole range of topics related to navigation,
the chief-cosmographer was also charged with the training of nautical personnel and
control of navigational instruments and charts.50 In a state which was progressively
45. Cunha, Optima Pars.

46. Unlike the high nobility of central Europe and northern Italy, the Portuguese aristocracy
essentially was not a large landowner but “instead depended upon resources distributed by
the Crown.” Monteiro, ‘Nobility and aristocracy in ancien régime Portugal’, p. 274.
47. Vitorino Magalhães Godinho, ‘A formação do Estado e as finanças públicas’, in V.M.
Godinho, Ensaios e estudos. Volume 1: Uma maneira de pensar (Lisbon, Portugal: Sá da
Costa Editora, 2009), pp.123–73.
48. Luís de Matos, A Corte Literária dos Duques de Bragança no Renascimento (Lisbon,
Portugal: Fundação da Casa de Bragança, 1956).
49. Mafalda Soares da Cunha, ‘D. Teodósio II, sétimo duque de Bragança. Práticas senhoriais
como política de reputação’, Monumentos 27 (2007): 57. For more details on the Ducal
court of Teodósio II, see Leonor Freire Costa and Mafalda Soares da Cunha, D. João IV
(Lisbon, Portugal: Temas e Debates, 2008), pp. 59–75.
50. Luís de Albuquerque, Curso de História da Náutica (Coimbra, Portugal: Livraria Almedina,
1972), pp. 251–71.

going into a ‘mercantilization’ process and whose revenues depended largely upon its
overseas empire, the chief-cosmographer was a key figure in the Royal Court. This
explains the reason why Portuguese kings, who did not patronize the publication of
books on natural and mathematical sciences, astrology, and medicine until the rise of
Braganza’s dynasty to power (1640), began to promote the publication of some works
of their chief-cosmographers. In fact, several books by the celebrated chief-cosmogra-
pher and university professor of mathematics Pedro Nunes were published with the
support of the royal family.51 The Habsburg king Felipe III also favored the publica-
tion, in Lisbon, of a nautical work of his chief-cosmographer João Baptista Lavanha.52
Portuguese royal patronage thus never became as magnificent as the most culturally
sophisticated courts of Europe. Yet, it likely had a correspondent: Tudor England.
Pumfrey and Dawbarn, in their seminal article on science and patronage in early modern
England, established a connection between the growing centralization of the English
state, with colonial interests, and the fact that the English court promoted the useful
instead of the ‘ostentatious’ patronage characteristic of the “Continental paradigm.”53
Although finding it difficult to identify a “Continental paradigm” while referring to the
cultural practices of patronage in Continental Europe, I believe that the Portuguese case
corroborates Pumfrey and Dawbarn’s thesis and provides it with a further theoretical
implication. Probably, Pumfrey and Dawbarn’s statement made about the English case
could be generalized and used to characterize more centralized states with colonial inter-
ests in the early modern period. Portugal is a case in point. As one can conclude from the
examples already mentioned, the books on natural and mathematical sciences, astrology,
and medicine published in early seventeenth-century Portugal with the sponsorship of a
patron focused mainly on utilitarian issues, that is to say, forms of knowledge that aimed
at controlling nature and providing patrons with expected results, corroborate this the-
sis.54 In fact, together with medical books, whose usefulness is always more difficult to
track down, the large majority of ‘science’ books dedicated to patrons covered cosmog-
raphy and nautical subjects and practical astrology.
This tendency is also clear in books that were published under the patronage of
Portuguese clergymen. In the seventeenth century, the Catholic Church embarked on a
system of patronage that ultimately aimed at consolidating the Counter-Reformation
51. Namely Pedro Nunes, Tratado da sphera com a theorica do sol e da lua (Lisbon, Portugal:
Germão Galharde, 1537) [dedicated to Prince Luís]; Nunes, De crepusculis liber unus
(Lisbon, Portugal: Luís Rodrigues, 1542) [dedicated to King João III]; Nunes, Libro de
algebra en arithmetica y geometria (Anvers, Belgium: Biuda y herederos de Iuan Stelsio,
1567) [to the Cardinal-Infant Henrique]; Nunes, De arte atque ratione navigandi (Coimbra,
Portugal: António de Mariz, 1573) [dedicated by the publisher to King Sebastião].
52. João Baptista Lavanha, Regimento nautico (Lisbon, Portugal: António Alvares, 1606).
54. Pumfrey and Dawbarn, ‘Science and patronage in England’, p. 142. Obviously, in some
cases, there is an overlap between ‘ostentatious’ and ‘utilitarian’ sciences. For a discus-
sion on these categories, see Pumfrey and Dawbarn, ‘Science and patronage in England’,
pp. 140–3.

Carolino 121
religious canon and the cultural hegemony of the Church.55 It was most likely driven by
the same purpose that key figures of the Catholic Church in Portugal patronized the
publication of ‘science’ books. Those figures included the bishops Afonso de Castelo
Branco,56 Afonso Furtado de Mendonça,57 Miguel de Castro,58 and two influential cler-
gymen who joined together the bishop dignities with the office of chief-Inquisitor
(inquisidor-geral), Pedro de Castilho59 and Fernão Martins de Mascarenhas (the latter
had served as rector of the University of Coimbra).60 Mascarenhas is a very interesting
case because, despite being a very influential inquisitor,61 he happened to patronize the
publication of books of two mathematicians who later were accused of being crypto-
Jews.62 Those were the cases of the already mentioned André de Avelar and Manuel
Bocarro Francês. The sponsorship that Mascarenhas provided to Bocarro Francês’
Tratado dos cometas que appareceram em novembro passado de 1618 has been inter-
preted as a way of getting previous protection from prospective religious and intellec-
tual detractors.63 As elsewhere in Europe, the appearance of comets in 1618 caused an
55. Pumfrey and Dawbarn, ‘Science and patronage in England’, p. 147. See also, though with a
different approach, J.L. Heilbron, The Sun in the Church: Cathedrals as Solar Observatories
(Camridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999).
56. Ambrósio Nunes, Tomus primus enarrationum in priores tres libros aphorismorum
Hippochratis cum paraphrasi in comentaria Galeni (Coimbra, Portugal: Diogo Gomes
Loureiro, 1603).
57. Chamisso, De medendis corporis.
58. António da Cruz, Recopilaçam de cirurgia (Lisbon, Portugal: Jorge Rodrigues, 1601 and
Lisbon, Portugal: António Alvares, 1605) and A. da Cruz, Recopilaçam de cirurgia agora
novamente emmendada e acrescentada (Lisbon, Portugal: António Alvares, 1620).
59. Simão de Oliveira, Arte de navegar (Lisbon, Portugal: Pedro Crasbeeck, 1606); Jerónimo
Nunes Ramires, Commentaria in librum Galeni de ratione curandi per sanguinis missionem
(Lisbon, Portugal: Pedro Crasbeeck, 1608).
60. A great deal of information on the clergymen, can be found in Francisco Bethencourt,
The Inquisition: A Global History, translated by Jean Birrell (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge
University Press, 2009); Giuseppe Marcocci and José Pedro Paiva, História da Inquisição
Portuguesa (Lisbon, Portugal: Esfera dos Livros, 2013); José Pedro Paiva, Baluartes da fé
e da disciplina: O enlace entre a Inquisição e os bispos de Portugal (1536–1750) (Coimbra,
Portugal: Imprensa da Universidade de Coimbra, 2011).
61. It was under his government that the particularly severe and voluminous index of forbidden
books of 1624, prepared by the Jesuit Baltasar Álvares, was published. See Marcocci and
Paiva, História da Inquisição Portuguesa, p. 150. In a recent article, Maria Teresa Payan
Martins has demonstrated that this influential index was actually based upon the Spanish
Index Librorum Prohibitorum et Expurgatorum, published in Madrid in 1612. Maria Teresa
Payan Martins, ‘O Índice Inquisitorial de 1624 à luz de novos documentos’, Cultura. Revista
de História e Teoria das Ideias 28 (2011): 67–87.
62. Obviously, in both cases, the authors were not known to be crypto-Jewish when the books
received the Inquisitor’s support.
63. José Sebastião da Silva Dias, Portugal e a cultura europeia (séculos XVI a XVIII) (Coimbra,
Portugal: Universidade de Coimbra, 1953), p. 49.

intellectual turmoil in Portugal. A great deal of manuscripts on these phenomena were

produced and a few treatises were published in Lisbon and Coimbra.64 When the 1618
comets appeared, the Chief-Inquisitor and former rector of the University of Coimbra
was able to rise to the occasion and grant the publication of the innovative book from a
rising astronomer and physician trained abroad.
Nevertheless, two genres of books were published without noblemen or clergymen
dedicatee since the late sixteenth century in Portugal. These were the cases of philo-
sophical treatises published, usually with a royal license, by Jesuits and of the popular
books composed by a group of astrologers active above all in Lisbon. These were the
by-products of two distinct communities related to philosophical and ‘scientific’
practices.
Jesuits had a profound influence over Portuguese intellectual life. They ruled, among
other educational institutions, the College of Arts of the University of Coimbra, the
University of Évora and the College of Santo Antão, probably the main mathematical
training center in Portugal at the time. In the Lisbon college, Jesuits were concerned with
the teaching of nautical sciences and other practical branches of mathematics, such as
military architecture. Yet in the early seventeenth century, the professors of the College
of Santo Antão constituted a community of astronomers that followed the recent discov-
eries in astronomy.65 For example, the Italian Jesuit Giovanni Paolo Lembo, who taught
at Lisbon from 1615 to 1617, observed the phases of Venus and showed them to his
students and to “other curious persons.”66 Despite occasionally displaying astronomical
observations to a non-Jesuit audience, the interaction between the Jesuit community and
the broad scientific community seems to have been restricted to formal education and
other occasional contacts.
Much more diffused and penetrating in Portuguese society was the community of
astrologers and authors of popular books. Although it is impossible to figure out the
number of popular books published annually in Portugal, it must have reached large
numbers of copies. As one can conclude from the analysis of astrological almanacs,
the large majority of this genre of popular literature was composed and produced in
64. Luís Miguel Carolino, Ciência, astrologia e sociedade. A teoria da influência celeste em
Portugal (1593–1755) (Lisbon, Portugal: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, 2003), pp. 167–
98 and 239–87.
65. Luís de Albuquerque, A “aula da esfera” do Colégio de Santo Antão no século XVII
(Coimbra, Portugal: Agrupamento de Estudos de Cartografia Antiga/Junta de Investigações
do Ultramar, 1972); Ugo Baldini, ‘As Assistências Ibéricas da Companhia de Jesus e a activ-
idade científica nas missões asiáticas (1578–1640). Alguns aspectos culturais e institucion-
ais’, Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia 54 (1998): 195–245; U. Baldini, ‘L’insegnamento della
matematica nel Collegio di S. Antão a Lisbona, 1590–1640’, in Nuno da Silva Gonçalves
(ed.) A Companhia de Jesus e a missionação no Oriente (Lisbon, Portugal: Fundação
Oriente, 2000), pp. 275–310 (also in Baldini, Saggi sulla cultura della Compagnia di Gesù
(secoli XVI–XVIII) (Padua, Italy: CLEUP, 2000); Henrique Leitão, A ciência na “Aula da
Esfera” no Colégio de Santo Antão, 1590–1759 (Lisbon, Portugal: Comissariado Geral das
Comemorações do V Centenário do Nascimento de S. Francisco Xavier, 2007), pp. 51–65.
66. Giovanni Paolo Lembo, Declaração da Sphera, Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo
(henceforth A.N.T.T.), Livraria MS 1770, fol. 33v.

Carolino 123
Lisbon.67 This evidence points to the existence of a vibrant community of astrologers

active in the capital city of the country.
Both the Jesuits and the authors of popular books did not need to rely upon the patron-
age relationship in order to have their works published. Unlike them, physicians and
astronomers were constantly looking for the support of a patron to facilitate publication.
A new edition or a new book was quite often an occasion to be associated with a different
patron. Yet none of these patrons provided the Portuguese ‘men of science’ with condi-
tions to embark on a life dedicated exclusively to ‘science’. These astronomers, the
majority of them physicians, lived on their medical activity or, in some cases, on teaching
appointments. Pumfrey and Dawbarn put forward the concept of ‘connectivity’ or density
of patronage opportunities.68 If one applies this concept to characterize the relations
of patronage in early seventeenth-century Portugal, one would conclude that Portuguese
clients, just as in the English case, were poorly related to sources of patronage.
The scientific academy of André de Almada

In this context of a community dispersed and poorly connected, André de Almada con-
stituted a magnet for the personae scientificae who sought to publish, perform astro-
nomical observations, or debate cosmology. In Coimbra, where he taught theology at the
University, he became a cardinal point not only for the local community of virtuosi, but
also for the astronomers and astrologers active in Lisbon. In a similar way as Samuel
Hartlib did in London,69 and many other intellectuals in university cities throughout
Europe, Almada encouraged young intellectuals and associated people with scientific
interests around his circle.
André de Almada was born in Lisbon into an aristocratic family with close ties to the
Royal Court70 that later would enter the restricted group of the Portuguese higher nobility.71
67. Indeed, almost all astrological almanacs produced in seventeenth-century Portugal were cal-
culated to the meridian of Lisbon. See Luís Miguel Carolino, A escrita celeste: Almanaques
astrológicos em Portugal nos séculos XVII e XVIII (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: Access Ed.,
2002).
69. See, among others, Charles Webster, The Great Instauration: Science, Medicine and
Reform, 1626–1660, 2nd ed. (Oxford, UK: Peter Lang International Academic Publishers,
2002).
70. His parents were Antão Soares de Almada and Vicencia de Castro. Almada is occasionally
mentioned to have been a member of the Society of Jesus (for example by Stegmüller) but it
was not the case. The original sources, including his notebooks held at the Biblioteca Geral
da Universidade de Coimbra, never identified him as a Jesuit father. On Almada’s life, see
R. Cabral, ‘Almada (André de)’, in Verbo. Enciclopédia Luso-Brasileira, Volume 1 (Lisbon,
Portugal: Verbo Editorial, 1963), p. 1340; Francisco Leitão Ferreira, Alphabeto dos lentes da
insigne Universidade de Coimbra desde 1537 em diante (Coimbra, Portugal: Universidade
de Coimbra, 1937), pp. 6–7; ‘Continuação das Breves Notícias da Universidade de Coimbra’,
Jornal de Coimbra, xiv: 76, 1819, pp. 129–30; Friedrich Stegmüller, Filosofia e teologia
nas universidades de Coimbra e Évora no século XVI (Coimbra, Portugal: Universidade de
Coimbra, 1959), pp. 20–21.
71. O crepúsculo dos grandes, pp. 41, 46, 178, and 532.

As a nobleman, he received some pensions from the king Felipe II, one of them just after
his graduation from the University of Coimbra.72 In Coimbra, Almada resided in the
Royal College of São Paulo and later attended the university lectures. This was the typi-
cal path of the Portuguese high nobility’s second-born sons. In order not to disperse the
family patrimony, second-born sons usually did not marry and entered an ecclesiastical
career, especially after the crisis in the Asian empire. The offspring of the Portuguese
élite aristocracy who were not expected to inherit the title and the household were there-
fore sent to the royal colleges of São Paulo and São Pedro, in Coimbra.73 As Monteiro
argued, “Since the mid-sixteenth century, most of the boarders at these two institutions
had been younger sons of the grandees and premier aristocrats, all of them members of
the Kingdom’s élite.”74 André de Almada was one of them.
After passing the examinations in philosophy, in 1590,75 Almada enrolled on a course
of theology, graduating in December 1595.76 In the beginning of the seventeenth cen-
tury he was appointed professor of theology, climbing the academic ladder up to the
position of professor of Prima theologia.77 During the 1630s, Almada served on several
occasions as vice-rector and then as rector between 1638 and 1639.78 This phase of
public life earned him some criticism and sarcasm from his counterparts in Coimbra.79
Being of noble extraction and attracted by astronomical science and astrology, Almada
appeared as an ideal source of patronage. Indeed, he patronized the publication of a few
books on astronomy and astrology, which came out usually enriched with his coat-of-
arms.80 In one of these works, the astrologer Gaspar Cardoso de Sequeira referred to
Almada’s mathematical skills and his position as a patron of sciences. As he put:
72. A.N.T.T., Chancelaria de Filipe I, livro 31, fol. 165v. and livro 32, fols. 251r.–251v.
73. Monteiro, O crepúsculo dos grandes, p. 523; Monteiro, ‘17th and 18th century Portuguese
nobilities’, pp. 11–12; Monteiro, “Nobility and Aristocracy in Ancien Régime Portugal”,
p. 269.
74. Monteiro, ‘Nobility and Aristocracy in Ancien Régime Portugal’, p. 269.
75. Arquivo da Universidade de Coimbra (henceforth A.U.C.), Autos e graus, vol. 16, liv. 2,
fols. 3r., 33r. and 34r.
76. A.U.C., Matriculas, vol. 2, liv. 1, fols. 1 ff.; Autos e graus, vol. 17, liv. 3, fol. 1; vol. 18, liv.
1 fols. 8r. and 9v.; vol. 18, liv. 2, fols. 2v.–3r.
77. Ferreira, Alphabeto dos lentes, p. 6.
78. Several administrative acts involving Almada can be found at M. Lopes de Almeida, Artes
e ofícios em documentos da universidade. I – Século XVII (Coimbra, Potugal: Universidade
de Coimbra, 1970) and LJoaquim Ferreira Gomes, Luís Ferrand de Almeida and Luís de
Albuquerque, Autos e diligências de inquirição. Contribuição para a história da Universidade
de Coimbra (Lisbon, Portugal: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, 1989).
79. Pieces corrosively denouncing his arrogant fashion and the apparent relationship with nuns
can be found in the Biblioteca Geral da Universidade de Coimbra (henceforth B.G.U.C.),
MS 324, Carta a hum amigo que estaua na Corte, fols. 51v.–56r.; B.G.U.C., MS 362, Obras
satyricas Syluaa barba de Dom André de Almada sendo ViceReitor na Universidade fols.
418v.–419r.; B.G.U.C., MS 393, Certame da humanidade com a bicha de sete cabeças glori-
oso trabalho de Hercules e retrato dos sete pecados mortaes… 15 de maio de mil seiscentos
e trinta e tres anos, fols. 52r–59v.
80. Luís de Avelar, Nox attica hoc est dialogus de impressione metheorologica et cometa anni
Domini 1618 (Coimbra, Portugal: Nicolau de Carvalho, 1619); Gaspar Cardoso de Sequeira,

Carolino 125
While living Apelles, if someone wished to visit his workplace, first of all, one would give
proofs of his knowledge in order to be received accordingly. And since Your Lordship is more
expert in mathematical science than Apelles skilled in the art of painting, and wishing to offer
you my works so that I can reveal my knowledge, I first wrote two volumes, which I believe are
welcome, and I ventured to offer you this volume, which, because of its perpetual nature, needs
to be scrutinized by your conspicuous doctrine and, with your support, be known of all men.81
In Coimbra, André de Almada shaped a circle of mathematicians and virtuosi who shared
an interest in astronomy. Cristoforo Borri, a Jesuit professor of mathematics at the College of
Arts of the University of Coimbra in the late 1620s, mentioned some of the astronomical
observations carried out by members of this circle using instruments that belonged to Almada.
Referring to one quadrant owned by Almada, Borri described his patron as follows:
I saw one [of this instruments] in the city of Coimbra preserved by D. André de Almada,
primario professor of sacred theology at the University of Coimbra, a man equally noblest and
highly learned not only in all sciences but also, in truth, the most distinguished amateur in
mathematical sciences.82
The academy created by Almada in Coimbra remained an informal organization,

though it certainly deserved to be understood as an institution. Historians of scientific
institutions and patronage practices have emphasized the sociological view according to
which an institution comprised not only formal organizations but also the unofficial rela-
tionships established on the basis of a shared collective behavior and ethos. In these
institutions, despite the informal character, their members were provided with social
identity and legitimacy granted by their fellow counterparts.83 This seems to have been
the case for a large number of academies established in Europe in the sixteenth and sev-
enteenth centuries, such as the Accademia Secretorum Naturae animated by Giambattista
della Porta at his home in Naples in the 1560s. This informal academy, which was devoted
Pronostico geral e lunario perpétuo, assi das luas nouas e cheas, como quartos crescentes,
e minguantes (Coimbra, Portugal: Nicolar de Carvalho, 1614); G. C. de Sequeira, Thesouro
dos prudentes (Coimbra, Portugal: Nicolau de Carvalho, 1626).
81. “Quando em tempo de Apelles alguma pessoa pretendia entrar na fabrica de suas obras,
daua mostras primeiro do que sabia, para que conforme ao que soubesse, fosse delle rece-
bido em ellas. E como Vossa M. na sciencia da mathematica he mais consumado do que
Apelles perito na arte de pintar, dezejando eu, offerecerlhe minhas obras, para dar mostras
do que sei, compus primeyro dous volumes, que cuido sam bem recebidos, e daqui tomei
atreuimento para lhe oferecer este que por ser perpetuo, he necessario passar pelo exame de
sua doctrina, manifesto, para que com se emparo seja de todos tambem recebido quanto he.”
Sequeira, Pronostico geral, fol. A2.
82. “Aliud ego vidi in Ciuitate Conimbricae seruatum a D. Andrea Dalmada sacrae theolo-
giae in Conimbricensi vniuersitate primario professore, viro iuxta nobilissimo, ac doctis-
simo cum omnium scientarum tum vero potissimum mathematices eximio amatore.” Borri,
Collecta astronomica, p. 80.
83. Bruce Moran, ‘Introduction’, in Moran (ed.) Patronage and Institutions, p. 1; Michael
Hunter, Establishing the New Science: The Experience of the Early Royal Society
(Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press,1989), p. 15; Zampieri, L’Accademia dei Disuniti, p. 9.

to experimental research on the “secrets of nature,” assembled scholars, alchemists and

other intellectuals active in Naples with the sole requirement that they had “discovered
some new secret of nature useful in medicine or the mechanical arts and beyond the level
of ordinary comprehension,” as Della Porta’s contemporary, Giovanni Imperiali,
explained.84 Later, after completing the transition of the scientific activity from private
patronage to formal organizations, academies, such as the Royal Society, became public
institutions, provided with a corporate personality, whose fellow members, officially
enrolled according to the academy’s statutes, devoted themselves to an empirical study
of natural philosophy and published accordingly in the academy proceedings. Like the
Accademia Secretorum Naturae, the academy dynamized by Almada was an informal
institution, most likely with no official roll, no official publication, and yet a community
whose members shared information, letters and research interests.
Almada’s academy had no formal membership, its fellows being most likely univer-
sity professors and occasional students who attended the university such as Luís de
Avelar. Avelar, a student of canon law, who published his Nox attica on the comets of
1618 (discussed below) with the support of André de Almada, was the son of the univer-
sity professor of mathematics, André de Avelar. His father André was in all probability
also a member of the academy as he had a long-life commitment to astronomical and
astrological studies and was active until early 1620s. Another member of this academy
was the already mentioned Cristoforo Borri. The membership of the academy also
included a number of fellows whose identity and quantity is very difficult to trace. Borri,
for example, while referring to the numerous astronomical observations in which he took
part in Coimbra, such as the one he performed on the night of 21 November 1627, men-
tioned that the astronomical observations were attended by a large number of mathemati-
cians (cum multis mathematicis).85 If this was the case, Almada’s circle could count on
numerous regular affiliates, at least in the late 1620s.
Almada’s academy was also apparently deprived of a long-term scientific program.
Usually early modern academies of sciences, such as Caen’s Académie de physique or
the Dublin Philosophical Society, tended to associate a program on dissections and topics
related to medicine and natural history with a plan of astronomical observations.86
Nevertheless, in the case of Almada’s academy, there is no evidence of members engaged
in medical studies. Almada’s focus was astronomy and astronomy was certainly the leit-
motiv of the academy’s discussions. Yet, taking into account the dispersed records that
reveal the activity of this academy, it had no fixed schedule for its meetings. Probably it
depended on astronomical occurrences and on the active engagement of its members.
The appearance of comets in late 1618 was a moment of great activity as the academy’s
core members, including Almada, produced works on these celestial phenomena (see
84. Quoted in Eamon, Science and the Secrets of Nature, p. 200. On Della Porta’s academy, see
Eamon, Science and the Secrets of Nature, pp. 199–201; Mario Gliozzi, ‘Sulla natura dell’
“Accademia de’ Secreti” di Giovan Battista Porta’, Archives Internationales d’Histoire des
Sciences 12 (1950): Michele Maylender, Storia delle Accademie d’Italia (Bologna, Italy:
Cappelli, 1930), Volume V, pp. 150–1.
85. Borri, Collecta astronomica, p. 164.
86. Hoppen, The Common Scientist; Lux, Patronage and Royal Science.

Carolino 127
next section). The stay in Coimbra of Cristoforo Borri in 1626 and 1627 was also crucial
for bringing forth a regular plan of astronomical observations. When Borri arrived at
Coimbra to teach mathematics at the Jesuit College of Arts, he had an ongoing intellec-
tual project in mind. After being removed, some fifteen years earlier, from the teaching
of mathematics at the College of Brera, in Milan, due to his unorthodox views, he
traveled as a missionary through Macao, Cochinchina (corresponding today to Vietnam
and Laos) and Goa, in India, before landing in Lisbon. During this period, he made occa-
sional astronomical observations and above all he developed his cosmological concep-
tions.87 Upon arriving in Coimbra, he immediately set about his project of writing a book
on cosmology, which he apparently had almost finished in July 162788 and eventually
published, in 1631, under the title Collecta astronomica ex doctrina de tribus caelis
aereo, sydereo, empyreo,89 after facing some opposition from Jesuit authorities in
Portugal. Probably with this project in mind and certainly instilled by the gregarious
character of André de Almada and by the facilities that the would-be rector of the
University of Coimbra provided, he engaged in a plan of astronomical observations.
These observations covered the common topics of astronomy at the time, including
celestial coordinates of several stars, the surface of the Moon, and Mars and its motion.90
Borri explicitly mentioned that, in these observations, he made use of a solid and port-
able quadrant, which the patron of the academy ordered to be constructed according to
Tycho Brahe’s description in Astronomiae instauratae mechanica (Wandsbek, 1598).91
As Borri informed us:
This instrument is a quadrant actually made of wood, yet very much solid (solidissimus),
protected by a thin and very smooth piece of bronze and distinct in their parts. In magnitude it
exceed the olden instruments, being its semi-diameter approximately six inches. Thus, not only
the degrees, but also the minutes are straightforwardly perceived.92
87. See Luís Miguel Carolino, ‘The making of a Tychonic cosmology: Cristoforo Borri and
the development of Tycho Brahe’s astronomical system in the early seventeenth-century’,
Journal for the History of Astronomy 39 (2008): 313–44.
88. Cristoforo Borri, Relatione d’alcune cose di edificatione occorse al P. Christoforo Borro
della Compagnia di Giesù nell’India Orientale, massime in Cochinchina, Archivum
Romanum Societatis Iesu (Rome), Jap.Sin. 68, fl. 46. A transcription of this document can
be found in Francesco Surdich, ‘L’ attività di Padre Cristoforo Borri nelle Indie Orientali
in un resoconto inedito’, in F. Surdich, Fonti sulla Penetrazione Europea in Asia (Genova,
Italy: Fratelli Bozzi, 1979) pp. 79–122.
89. Borri, Collecta astronomica.
90. Borri, Collecta astronomica, pp. 80–1, 137, 146, and 164–5.
91. Borri, Collecta astronomica, pp. 80–1 and 164–5. Joaquim de Carvalho had already noticed
this. Joaquim de Carvalho, ‘Galileu e a cultura portuguesa sua contemporânea’, in Obra
completa, Volume II História da cultura 1948–1955 (Lisbon, Portugal: Fundação Calouste
Gulbenkian, 1982), pp. 405–84, at 421.
92. “Illud instrumentum est quadrans reuera ex ligno, solidissimo tamen, itemque aeris laminis,
ijsque laeuissimus obductus, et in suas distinctus partes. Magnitude, antiqua superat instru-
menta, huius semidiameter accedit ad sex palmos: ita vt non tantum gradus, verum etiam
minuta commodissime distinguantur.” Borri, Collecta astronomica, p. 80.

Figure 1. Engraving of the Moon surface observed by Borri in Coimbra, on 6 July 1627 (Borri,
Collecta astronomica, Note 35, p. 137).
While at Coimbra, Borri also used a telescope, with which he observed, for example,
the Moon surface in July 1627. The Italian Jesuit did not give details to whom the instru-
ment belonged, but it was likely an instrument from Almada’s circle. Later, Borri
included a drawing of the Moon observed in Coimbra in his Collecta Astronomica,
claiming that it was “the exact face of the waxing Moon” (Exacta crescentis Lunae
facies) (see Figure 1).93 Ewen A. Whitaker has already pointed out the low accuracy of
Borri’s drawing.94 It is not clear whether the poor quality of the sketch, originally
engraved in wood, resulted from Borri’s inability, the printer’s lack of technical expertise
or whether Borri deliberately sketched it that way in order to emphasize the view that the
Moon was an Earth-like body. Be that as it may, the resemblance with the ocean coast-
lines that Borri knew so well from his voyages to East Asia is noteworthy.
The astronomical observations carried out at Almada’s academy were important for
him to develop an innovative cosmological view. Basically, based upon astronomical
observations and other theoretical reasoning, Borri put forward theories such as the
tripartite division of the universe (distinguishing an airy heaven, caelum aereum;
aethereal heaven, caelum aethereum; and the Empyrean heaven, caelum empyreum),
the fluidity and corruptibility of heavens and the celestial nature and location of comets.95
93. Borri, Collecta astronomica, p. 145.

94. Ewen A. Whitaker, Mapping and Naming the Moon: A History of Lunar Cartography and
Nomenclature (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999), p. 25.
95. Carolino, ‘The making of a Tychonic cosmology’.

Carolino 129
These were some of the ground-breaking theories that he advanced within the
Portuguese scholastic milieu, which were to exert a profound influence in Jesuit teach-
ing of cosmology from the 1630s onwards.96 Yet, as I shall explore in the next section,
those cosmological positions were in disagreement with the most common view in the
scientific academy of Almada.
Yet, André de Almada was a reference point not only for the community of virtuosi or
professors of the university, who could attend the academy’s sessions, but also for all
those engaged in astronomical and astrological research in the country and, particularly in
Lisbon. Manuel Bocarro Francês was a case in point. Born in Lisbon into a new-Christian
family around 1593, Bocarro Francês studied in Spain, at the University of Alcalá de
Henares and University of Sigüenza, where he graduated in medicine. In 1618, he was
already in Lisbon, where he observed the comets of 1618 and published the already-
mentioned Tratado dos cometas que appareceram em novembro passado de 1618. Clearly
aware of the academy that Almada had established in Coimbra, after his observations on
the comets of 1618, he entered into contact with Almada’s circle. Bocarro argued that the
comets that appeared in late 1618 were celestial phenomena, a thesis that led him to dis-
card scholastic cosmology and criticize vehemently Aristotle’s lack of mathematical
expertise.97 Seeking feedback from Almada, he wrote to André de Avelar. According to
Bocarro, “Lord André de Almada gave us reason on those questions, which we discussed
by letter with André de Avelar, mathematics professor at Coimbra.”98
In this statement, Bocarro Francês was probably guided by his enthusiasm, as we
know that Almada’s view on comets was rather conventional. Yet, Bocarro’s case, in
addition to suggesting that Almada, just as other patrons of academies throughout
Europe, could have played a role in centralizing scientific correspondence, demonstrates,
together with the example of Cristoforo Borri, that the academy patronized by Almada in
the early seventeenth century refused dogmatism. By doing so, it corroborates a wide-
spread point of view in the historical studies on scientific academies that associates the
rising of these institutions with the rejection of theoretical dogmatism. Although it never
went as far as to reject the association of members who were taken to be “partisans of
rigid philosophical and doctrinal creeds” as it happened, for example, in the Paris
Academy of Sciences with respect to Jesuits and Cartesians,99 the academy of André de
96. L.M. Carolino, ‘Cristoforo Borri e o impacto da nova astronomia em Portugal no século
XVII’, Revista Brasileira de História da Ciência 2 (2009): 160–81.
97. On Manuel Bocarro Francês’s cosmological views, largely inspired by Stoic cosmology,
see L.M. Carolino, ‘Manuel Bocarro Francês, the comet of 1618, and the impact of Stoic
cosmology in Portugal’, in Miguel Ángel Granada (ed.) Novas y cometas entre 1572 y 1618.
Revolución cosmológica y renovación política y religiosa (Barcelona, Spain: Universitat de
Barcelona, 2012), pp. 195–224.
98. “Et tandem Dominus D. Andrea de Almada, super huiusmodi quaestiones, quas cum Andrea
de Auellar professor mathematico Conimbricensi in scriptis habuimus, nobis palmam
tribuit.” Manuel Bocarro Francês, Fasciculus trium verarum propositionum astronomicae,
astrologicae, et philosophicae (Florence, Italy: Typis Francisci Honuphrii, 1644), praefati-
uncula ad lectorem, fol. 3v.
99. Hahn, Anatomy of a Scientific Institution, p.15.

Almada was certainly a forum for open-minded individuals to meet and discuss astro-
nomical and astrological issues.
The debate on the comets of 1618

One of the topics intensely discussed at Almada’s circle was the comets that crossed the
skies in late 1618. Comets and novae have been explored by the historiography of early
modern science over the recent decades on the grounds of the crucial challenge that these
phenomena raised to the traditional cosmology. By concluding, through astronomical
observation and mathematical reasoning, that comets and new stars were originated
above the Moon, the observations of these phenomena are usually understood to have
paved the way for the decline of the Aristotelian worldview and the adherence to alterna-
tive cosmologies.100 What was the position of the astronomers and virtuosi of Almada’s
academy on this controversy? This is a telling question as the historiography of early-
modern scientific academies has tacitly associated the rising up of these institutions with
the defence of new theories and disciplinary changes.
The cosmological discussions undertaken at Almada’s circle were, in some way, epit-
omized in the treatise Nox attica hoc est dialogus de impressione metheorologica et
cometa anni Domini 1618 by Luís de Avelar.101 Avelar was a promising virtuoso. The son
of the university professor of mathematics André de Avelar, Luís was already finishing
his degree in canon law when the comets appeared.102 He took part in the observations
100. For example, among others, Roger Ariew, Descartes among the Scholastics (Leiden, The
Netherlands: Brill, 2011), pp. 179–215; Peter Barker, ‘The optical theory of comets from
Apian to Kepler’, Physis 30 (1993): 1–25; Peter Barker and Bernard R. Goldstein, ‘The role
of comets in the Copernician Revolution’, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science
19 (1998): 299–319; Miguel Á. Granada, Sfere solide e cielo fluido: Momenti del dibattito
cosmologico nella seconda metà del Cinquecento (Naples, Italy: Guerini e Associati, 2002);
Granada (ed.), Novas y cometas entre 1572 y 1618; Michel-Pierre Lerner, Le monde des
sphères. II - La fin du cosmos classique (Paris, France: Les Belles Lettres, 1997), pp. 39–66;
Víctor Navarro-Brotóns, Disciplinas, saberes y práticas: Filosofia natural, matemáticas y
astronomia e la sociedade española de la época moderna (Valencia, Spain: Publicaciones de
la Universidad de Valencia, 2014), pp. 255–76, pp. 357–89; W.G.L. Randles, The Unmaking
of the Medieval Christian Cosmos, 1500–1760: From Solid Heavens to Boundless Aether
(Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 1999), pp. 80–105; Sara Schechner Genuth, Comets, Popular
Culture and the Birth of Modern Cosmology (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
1997); Dario Tessicini and Patrick J. Boner (eds.), Celestial Novelties on the Eve of
the Scientific Revolution, 1540–1630 (Florence, Italy: Leo S. Olschki Editore, 2013);
Victor E. Thoren, ‘The comet of 1577 and Tycho Brahe’s system of the world’, Archives
Internationales d’Histoire des Sciences 29 (1979): 53–67; Tabitta Van Nouhuys, The Age of
Two-faced Janus: The Comets of 1577 and 1618 and the Decline of the Aristotelian World
View in The Netherlands (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1998); Robert Westman, ‘The
comet and the cosmos: Kepler, Mästlin and the Copernician hypothesis’, in Jerzy Dobrzycki
(ed.) The Reception of Copernicus’ Heliocentric Theory (Dordrecht, The Netherlands:
Reidel, 1972), pp. 7–30.
101. Avelar, Nox attica.
102. A.U.C., Matriculas, vol. 4, fol. 7r. ff.; Autos e graus, vol. 24, 65.

Carolino 131
Figure 2. André de Almada’s coat-of-arms as it appears in Nox attica by Luís de Avelar.
and accordingly wrote and published Nox attica under the patronage of André de Almada,
who Avelar described as the ideal patron, a chief-master (antistes) of sciences, who
joined together the different knowledge that is usually dispersed in different people.103
Nox attica exhibited André de Almada’s coat-of-arms (Figure 2), showing to the public
the patronage connections that linked the author to Almada’s circle.
Written in the form of a dialog, it puts in scene three characters, a student of
law (scholasticus), an astronomer (astrologus), and a philosopher (philosophus). The
resonance with the discussions, which took place at the academy, is evident. The
scholasticus, who, exhausted of studying law, decided to take a night to converse with
a mathematician and a philosopher on the recently appeared comet, is certainly Luís de
103. “Nox haec attica, quam per hos dies meditabar, tuo nomine illustrissime Domine, tecta, ac
tuta e tenebris producta, dies attica fiet: neque enim alium deposcit patronum, aut amabit
defensorem, quam eum scientarum antistitem, in quo coniunctum est, eximium est, quidquid
in alijs per partes miramur.” Avelar, Nox attica, dedicatory letter, [fol. 3r].

Avelar.104 As far as the astrologus and the philosophus are concerned, one can speculate
that Luís de Avelar drew his inspiration from his father André and from some philoso-
pher that belonged to Almada’s circle in order to compose the other two interlocutors of
the dialogus noctis atticae. In fact, the manuscript treatise, which André de Avelar wrote
on the comets of 1618 put forward theories whose contents are very much consistent
with those attributed by Luís de Avelar to the astronomer. Some factual data also cor-
roborate this interpretation. In Nox attica, for example, the astrologus mentioned to have
observed the first comet, for the first time, on 20 November.105 And, indeed, André de
Avelar, in his Discurso astronomico e astrologico do cometa que apareceo por novembro
de 1618 em Coimbra, stated that:
On the 19th of November I was told that, at the daybreak, a sign of notorious size appears in the
heaven. I did my best to see it in the next day and, at five of clock in the morning, I saw it in the
south-eastern part.106
The ideas attributed to the philosophus, in the dialog, are the traditional Aristotelian posi-
tion, which could be found, for example, among any of the professors of philosophy at
the time in the Coimbran College of Arts.107 Moreover, André de Almada wrote a short
treatise that presents a clear connection to topics discussed in Nox attica.
In this fictional debate, by asking questions, the student played the role of directing
the conversion, making it progress according to the list of themes usually covered in
cometary treatises. Thus, although Portuguese patrons tended to support the ‘utilitarian’
form of science, the observation of comets and of the Moon’s surface apparently did not
stem from practical concerns, such as, in the case of Moon, the finding of longitude. Nox
Attica covers topics such as the nature, composition, location, cause and influence of
comets as the moot questions, which the astronomer and the philosopher tried to answer
according to their area of competence. By doing so, together with revealing the cometary
thought, it also shed some light on the disciplinary organization held by those who took
part in the debate and, most likely, by some of the core members of the informal academy
that Almada established in Coimbra.
Luís de Avelar revealed that the first comet was detected in Coimbra in late November
and lasted for one month, while the second was first visible on the night of 30th November.108
104. “Quia animum iurisconsultorum studijs, et priuatis negotijs lassum, relaxare opportet,
noctem hanc ab eorum studio vacare volo; sed qui sunt isti, qui mostra ad limina tendunt?
Est ne fortasse astrologus, et noster philosophus?” Avelar, Nox attica, fol. 1r.
105. Avelar, Nox attica, fol. 3 (“ut die 20 et 25 Nouembris obseruaui”).
106. “Aos dezanoue de novembro fui auisado que no çeo de madrugada aparecia hum sinal de
notauel gramdeza[.] Fiz deligensia ao outro dia pelo ver e as sinquo oras da menhã o ui na
quarta oriental austral.” André de Avelar, Discurso astronomico e astrologico do cometa
que apareceo por novembro de 1618 em Coimbra pello Mestre Andre de Avellar lente jubil-
lado em mathematica, Biblioteca da Ajuda, Lisbon, COD. 46-VIII-16, fol. 1v.
107. Luís Miguel Carolino, ‘Philosophical teaching and mathematical arguments: Jesuit philoso-
phers versus Jesuit mathematicians on the controversy of comets in Portugal (1577–1650)’,
History of Universities, 16, 2000, pp. 65–95.
108. Avelar, Nox attica, fols. 3 and 4v.

Carolino 133
This sort of information was provided by the astrologus, who in the dialog assumed the
role of having performed the astronomical observations. While discussing the nature of
these two phenomena, the three interlocutors agreed that the first was not a proper comet.
It was instead a meteorological occurrence (impressio) produced by the rising of terres-
trial exhalations made up of dry and viscous matter, but lacking the comet’s characteristic
shapes and durability. As the philosophus elucidates, probably based on Aristotle’s dis-
tinction between scattered stars and proper comets (Meteorology I 344a 9–24):
In what concerns the opinion of people, we answer that, properly speaking, we cannot designate
such phenomena a comet. A comet, although being an igneous impression (impressio ignita) taking
place in the supreme region of air (as the common school of philosophers holds) – thus sharing the
same substance with our impression [nostra impressio] – it differs in name from our impression
according to (as Aristotle said) the more or less [time it lasts] and its figure or shape. A comet is an
impression (impressio) in the form of a sphere or star provided with this or that shape according to
the nature of its progenitor (as astrologers teach). This was not the case in this impression.109
In this respect, André de Almada had a different position. From his point of view, the
exhalations that moved upwards in late 1618 were responsible for a single comet, which,
due to the great amount of material, lasted long, and assumed different forms. Thus,
unlike Luís de Avelar,110 Almada took the two comets of 1618 (indeed, they were three,
but the members of Almada’s academy observed only the first two comets) to be one and
the same phenomenon.111
Yet, as far as the essential question on the nature of comets is concerned, Almada,
Luís de Avelar, and André de Avelar agreed that comets were meteorological phenom-
ena. Thus they held an Aristotelian conception of comets, according to which comets
were made up of incandescent vapors comprising various exhalations that sprung from
the Earth’s surface and that move on the boundaries of the terrestrial region.112 The
patron of the academy, for example, although apparently avoiding the discussion on
nature and location of comets, recognized that “the aim with which nature makes comets
was to consume the poisonous and pestiferous exhalations.”113
109. “Nunc quod attinet ad vulgi opinionem, respondemus, quod cometa proprie loquendo dici
tale signum non potest, quia quanuis sit impressio ignita in suprema aeris regione (ut comu-
nis philosophorum schola tenet) sedem habens, ac proinde eiusdem speciei cum nostra
impressione, differunt tamen nominaliter secundum magis, et minus (ut Aristoteles inquit)
et proprie in figura, seu forma, quia impressio in modum globi, seu stellae[;] dicitur cometa
cum tali, vel tali forma iuxta naturam sui progenitoris (ut astrologi docent) quae impressioni
huic deerant.” Avelar, Nox attica, fols. 3r.–3v.
110. And indeed unlike André de Avelar as well. Avelar, Discurso astronomico, fols. 2r.–3r.
111. André de Almada, Obseruaçois do cometa que foi visto em novembro do anno de 618,
A.N.T.T. MS LIV 2563, fols. 412–415v., at fol. 412v.
112. See, also, apart from the excerpt just quoted in the text, Avelar, Nox attica, fol. 2v.; Avelar,
Discurso astronomico, fol. 3.
113. “O intento para que a natureza ordenou os cometas foi para consumirem as exhalaçois
venenosas e pestiferas.” Almada, Obseruaçois do cometa, fol. 412v. A similar statement
associating comets with terrestrial exhalations can be found at fol. 414r.

Being meteorological phenomena, comets never reached the celestial region. In fact,
while discussing the location of comets, the astrologus of dialogus noctis atticae was
asked about the use of the technique of parallax to estimate the location of a body. He
gave a very short and broad definition of what the parallax technique consists of – “paral-
lax is the diversity of aspect, that is to say, the difference between the real and the appar-
ent place [of a body], through which an airy impression is distinguished from an heavenly
one, and its distance to the Earth is known”114 – and recognized that according to the
majority of authors, the novae that came into view in 1572, 1600, and 1604 were indeed
celestial phenomena. Yet, he argued that the comet of 1618 was not in the heavenly
region because it was made up of meteorological matter.115 In this point, the philosophus
added a final touch to the discussion by arguing that it was impossible for a terrestrial
exhalation to cross the sphere of fire.116 Thus, the astronomers of Almada’s circle did not
seem to be very familiar with the parallax technique. In fact, André de Avelar recognized
that he did not measure the parallax of the comet of 1618.117
Following the traditional understanding of the origins of comets, Luís de Avelar
recognized an important role for celestial bodies. Planets, through their motion, make
possible the concentration of terrestrial exhalations in a certain point where, due to the
proximity to the sphere of fire, they deflagrated, giving rise to a comet. In the case of
the comets of 1618 (or the second comet, according to the position of the Avelars), an
instrumental role was assigned to Mars and Mercury, “which were the principal promi-
sors (promissores) of the present comet.”118 According to André de Avelar the appear-
ance of this comet was preceded by a conjunction of Saturn and Mars, on 4 November,
which led to production of a comet at the exact moment when Mars and Mercury were
in conjunction at 60º, thus attributing their character to this phenomenon.119 Needless to
say, this kind of theory paved the way for astrological speculation on the effects of the
comet. In the dialogus noctis atticae, both the astrologer/astronomer and the philoso-
pher went through the discussion. Based on the common accepted theory of the influ-
ence of celestial bodies over the terrestrial, the philosophus mentioned the generic
effects attributed to comets, such as intemperate weather, violent storms, and the dete-
rioration of air that would bring various diseases, while the astrologus was responsible
for revealing more particular and dramatic effects related, among other issues,
to the planetary effect on comets, the place in the zodiac where comets were seen, its
shape, and color.120 This kind of astrological speculation was apparently the topic that
114. “Paralaxis est diuersitas aspectus, hoc est, differentia inter verum, et visum locum, qua
distinguitur impressio aerea ab aetherea, et illius distantia a terra agnoscitur.” Avelar, Nox
attica, fol. 5v.
115. Avelar, Nox attica, fol. 5v–6r.
116. Avelar, Nox attica, fol. 6v.
117. Avelar, Discurso astronomico, fol. 2v.
118. Avelar, Nox attica, fol. 4v. Cfr. Almada, Obseruaçois do cometa, fol. 412v ff., who also
recognized a role to Saturn; Avelar, Discurso astronomico, fol. 3v.
119. Avelar, Discurso astronomico, fol. 3v. See also Almada, Obseruaçois do cometa, fol. 413r.
120. Avelar, Discurso astronomico, fols. 10r.–13v.

Carolino 135
interested André de Almada the most. In fact, the brief manuscript, which is attributed
to Almada, is basically an astrological account of the effects of comets. According to
him, the comet was also produced under the effect of Mercury and Mars, with some
influence of Saturn. Because of those rulers, the comet threatened kings and noblemen
with death, people, and particularly religious personnel, with diseases, and foretold
other effects such as important shipwrecks.121
In short, the members of Almada’s academy who wrote on the comets of 1618 put
forward a conventional understanding of these phenomena. They argued that comets
were meteorological phenomena whose origins were in great part due to celestial influ-
ences. This understanding suggests that in the late 1610s, the Aristotelian worldview was
still dominant among the members of Almada’s informal academy. Furthermore, the role
ascribed to the astronomer and to the philosopher in dialogus noctis atticae indicates that
disciplinary classification was very much reliant on the traditional taxonomy, taught and
followed, for example, at the University of Coimbra. Thus, in this case, the usual associa-
tion that historiography establishes between the arising of innovative ideas and the rising
up of new institutional settings proves to be groundless.
Just like many other academies and assemblées established on an informal basis
throughout Europe, the academy of Almada apparently did not survive its patron, who
died in 1642. In the 1630s, there seems to have been almost no activity.122 Probably
Almada was very much involved in the administrative life of the university, which he
served as rector and vice-rector. Cristoforo Borri, most likely the most contemporary
member who ever worked at Almada’s circle, had left Portugal in 1629 and died soon
thereafter in Rome. André de Avelar, probably the long-lasting collaborator of André de
Almada and supporter of the academy’s activities, faced a terrible experience at the
Inquisition. Accused of Jewish practices, in 1620, when he was in his seventies, he was
arrested and subjected to two long trials and eventually condemned to imprisonment for
life.123 His son Luís was also accused of being a Jewish believer and put on trial. In the
end, upon public penitence and contrition, he was released.124 After that, he apparently
vanished into thin air. A couple of years had passed since he published Nox attica. As far
as the community of learned people whom, for example, Borri mentioned to take part in
astronomical observations, they actually seemed not to have produced any astronomical
text, and thus it is very difficult to identify them and track down their path. This is one of
the difficulties of studying an informal academy in a country such as Portugal, where
science was poorly institutionalized.
121. Almada, Obseruaçois do cometa, fols. 413v.–414v.

122. Or, at least, I was unable to track it down.
123. A description of André de Avelar’s inquisitorial trials can be found at António Baião,
Episódios dramáticos da Inquisição portuguesa (Porto, Portugal: Renascença Portuguesa
1919), Volume 1, pp. 133–54; Maria de Deus Manso, ‘O segundo processo na Inquisição
do Mestre André de Avelar (1620–1622)’, in Universidade(s). História, memória, perspec-
tivas. Actas do congresso de “História da Universidade” (Coimbra, Portugal: Comissão
Organizadora do Congresso de História da Universidade, 1991), Volume iv, pp. 281–93.
I was unable to consult the trials held at A.N.T.T.
124. A.N.T.T., Inquisição de Coimbra, proc. 6869, fl. 33v.

Conclusion
Like many other scholars and noblemen throughout Europe of the sixteenth and seven-
teenth centuries, André de Almada sought to embody the ideal of the cultural and science
patron in Portugal. As elsewhere in Europe, a number of nobles and higher clergymen
used to patronize the publication of science-related books in this country. Following the
example of his social counterparts, Almada also animated links of patronage by facilitat-
ing the publication of astrological and astronomical books. Yet, his patronage efforts
went further beyond that. He established a scientific academy, wherein he promoted
astronomical practices and debates. This academy included university scholars and occa-
sionally some students among its members, but its influence went beyond Coimbra,
reaching the community of astronomers and astrologers active in Lisbon.
Similarly to the academies studied or simply mentioned in classical works, such as
those that Martha Ornstein, Harcourt Brown, or Michele Maylender dedicated to these
learned organizations of seventeenth-century Europe, the academy of André de Almada
was established on informal grounds. It had no formal membership, no fixed schedule
for its meetings, and the scientific program seems to have been dependent on the inter-
ests of its patron and principal members.
Yet, an examination of this academy provides an insight into the complexity of early
modern academies, which the historiography of science often describes in a very linear
way as the institutional fora that gave birth to modern science, in opposition to the so-
called traditional universities. An analysis of the establishment of this academy spon-
sored by a nobleman and professor of the University of Coimbra demonstrates that, in
some cases, early-modern university communities played a catalytic role in the arising of
scientific academies. Thus, unlike what is usually claimed in the traditional narrative of
the ‘Scientific Revolution’, universities and scientific societies did not invariably
embody different intellectual programs.
Nevertheless, there is no doubt that the institutional conditions of academies facilitated
the exchanging of different ideas. It has been argued that scientific academies were crucial
in rejecting theoretical dogmatism in the early modern period. The academy of André de
Almada corroborates this point. In fact, some unorthodox cosmological views, such as the
Stoic-inspired cosmological ideas of Bocarro Francês, were discussed in Almada’s circle.
And yet, not only innovative ideas found fertile ground in academies. In fact, if some fel-
lows of the academy patronized by Almada delved into Bocarro Francês’ unorthodox
ideas, the large majority of them endorsed more conventional cosmological views. The
study of the academies such as the one of Almada hence defies the use of the common
dichotomy between ‘traditional’ and ‘innovative’ work to approach the research activities
developed at scientific academies in the first half of the seventeenth century.
Finally, by focusing on this case of sponsoring scientific activities in the context of the
practices of science patronage in Portugal during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries,
this article corroborates the view that countries relatively centralized and increasingly
dependent upon the colonial revenues tended to promote utilitarian over ostentatious
patronage of science. In Portugal, the higher aristocratic families were increasingly tied
to the royal house. They resided essentially at the Royal Court and took part in the central
government of the country and empire. Thus, unlike what happened, for example, in

Carolino 137
Germany and Italy, in early-modern Portugal the social and economic conditions were
not favorable to the consolidation of regional power and, consequently, to the emergence
of local and powerful courts, culturally sophisticated and eager to patronize science. In
this context, the community of scientific personae active in this country tended to be
poorly connected to the sources of patronage.
Acknowledgements
An earlier version of this paper was presented to the workshop “Meta-Scientific Foundations of
Astronomy (IX–XVII centuries) and their Cultural–Institutional Settings” organized by Pietro
Daniel Omodeo at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, in August 2014. I
would like to thank Pietro Daniel Omodeo, Sonja Brentjes, Pedro Raposo and all the participants
at the workshop for their sharp and helpful comments and suggestions. This article also benefited
from the discussion with Augusto J.S. Fitas, who read the manuscript and made a great deal of
comments, which helped to improve the early version of the paper. I also would like to thank the
anonymous referees for their insightful criticisms and for saving me from a couple of factual
errors.
Author biography
Luís Miguel Carolino is an Assistant Professor in the Department of History at the Lisbon University
Institute (ISCTE-IUL), where he is also a researcher associated with CIES. He is
particularly interested in the institutionalization of science in the early modern Europe and the
relationships between science, religion and State-making from the sixteenth century to the late
eighteenth century.

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The scientific academy of

Luís Miguel Carolino

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the contribution of early-modern scientific academies as essential to the rise of modern

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Science History Publications, 2009) and particularly the contribution by Mordechai

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in Seventeenth Century France (1620–1680) (Baltimore, MD: Williams and Wilkins,

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18. Westfall, The Construction of Modern Science, p. 108.

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these two institutions, which, according to Mordechai Feingold, comprised institutional

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revenues tended to stimulate a culture of patronage that promoted ‘utilitarian science’.

Patrons and clients: The nature of scientific patronage in

24. Pumfrey and Dawbarn, ‘Science and patronage in England’, p. 176.

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27. Smith, The Business of Alchemy.

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projects undertaken by Wilhelm IV, Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel. It was not a question of

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45. Cunha, Optima Pars.

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intellectual turmoil in Portugal. A great deal of manuscripts on these phenomena were

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Lisbon.67 This evidence points to the existence of a vibrant community of astrologers

The scientific academy of André de Almada

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The academy created by Almada in Coimbra remained an informal organization,

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to experimental research on the “secrets of nature,” assembled scholars, alchemists and

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93. Borri, Collecta astronomica, p. 145.

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The debate on the comets of 1618

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121. Almada, Obseruaçois do cometa, fols. 413v.–414v.

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