Chapter 4 An Indirect Convergence between the Accademia del Cimento and the Montmor Academy: The ‘Saturn dispute’
Giulia Giannini
Introduction
The purpose of the present chapter is to examine an indirect (albeit signifi- cant) point of contact between the Florentine academy, later known as the Accademia del Cimento, and the so-called Montmor Academy: their role in the ‘Saturn dispute’. In particular, this essay intends to demonstrate how, despite fragmentary evidence and often interrupted exchanges, the issue of the plan- et’s strange appearances offers a unique standpoint from which to assess the interests and the ways in which the two societies operated, as well as the na- ture of their relations. The two academies were active between 1657 and 1666–7, in Florence and Paris, respectively. The first occasional meetings at the house of Henri Louis Habert de Montmor (1600–1679) can be dated back to the period between 1654 and 1656.1 However, it is only from 1657 – when the academy approved its own statutes – that the beginning of the Parisian circle can be dated with certainty. The Cimento, on the other hand, never had official rules or statutes.2 The dat- ing of its meetings can be determined thanks to the diaries kept by its acade- micians, and also through the only publication produced by the Florentine academy: the Saggi di naturali esperienze (1667). This book – signed by the ‘ac- cademici del Cimento’ and by the ‘Saggiato segretario’, Lorenzo Magalotti – attested that an ‘academy’, sponsored by Prince Leopoldo de’ Medici (1617– 1675), was ‘founded in the year 1657’.3
1 Harcourt Brown, Scientific organizations in seventeenth century France (1620–1680) (New York, 1967 (1934)), 69–71. 2 See in particular: Paolo Galluzzi, ‘L’Accademia del Cimento: ‘Gusti’ del Principe, filosofia e ideologia dell’esperimento’, Quaderni storici 48 (1981), 788–844. 3 ‘[…] la nostra accademia istituita dell’anno 1657’, Lorenzo Magalotti, Saggi di naturali espe rienze (1667) (Palermo, 2001), 40. English transl. in W.E. Knowles Middleton, The Experiment ers: a study of the Accademia del Cimento (Baltimore, 1971), 92.
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Even less information is available regarding the cessation of their activities. Having never official statutes, the Accademia del Cimento did not have an of- ficial closure either. By the time when the Saggi was published, the meetings had become sporadic, many of the academicians moved elsewhere, the prince was elected cardinal and thus the meetings simply ceased to take place. The circumstances that led to the disbandment of the Parisian group are equally unclear. In June 1664 – following a long debate on the form that the group should have taken in order to become more robust and better regulated–4 Christiaan Huygens informed Robert Moray that the Montmor Academy had ‘ceased to exist’. On its ‘remains’ another group activity emerged, spearheaded by some of the members of the Montmor Academy.5 They met in the house of Melchisedéch Thévenot (c.1620–1692), one of the most active members of the Montmor Academy, at least until the establishment of the Académie Royale des Sciences in 1666. The history of the relations between the two academies – which prior to the foundation of the Royal Society and of the Académie Royale des Sciences were the two most renowned groups of scholars engaged exclusively in matters of natural philosophy – is difficult to piece together, given that the various at- tempts to establish epistolary exchange often encountered delays, if not out- right indifference. Consequently, the dialogue between the two academies might be better described as a succession of monologues.
1 Fragmentary and Difficult Exchanges a Autumn 1658: Michelangelo Ricci, Melchisedéch Thévenot and the First Contact between the Two Academies As is well known, the first tentative contact between the two academies was made by Melchisedéch Thévenot,6 a French diplomat, bibliophile and man of letters, and a collector of travel literature. His language skills earned him the
4 See for instance: Christiaan Huygens to Lodewijk Huygens, 6 April 1663, Christiaan Huygens, Œuvres complètes de Christiaan Huygens, Tome iv. Correspondance 1662–1663 (The Hague 1891), letter n. 1104, 323–324; and Christiaan Huygens to R. Moray, 12 Mars 1664, Christiaan Huygens, Œuvres complètes de Christiaan Huygens, Tome v. Correspondance 1664–1665 (The Hague, 1893), letter n. 1218, 39–42. 5 ‘A Paris il n’y avoit rien de nouveau en matiere de Sciences, sinon que l’Academie chez Mon- sieur de Montmor a pris fin pour jamais, mais il semble que du debris de celle cy il en pour- roit renaistre quelqüe autre, car j’ay laissè quelques uns de ces Messieurs avec de tres bonnes intentions’, Christiaan Huygens to R. Moray, 12 June 1664, Œuvres complètes de Christiaan Huygens, v, letter n. 1234, 69–70. 6 On Thévenot see especially: Robert McKeon, ‘Une lettre de Melchisédech Thévenot sur les débuts de l’Académie Royale des Sciences’, Revue d’histoire des sciences et de leur