made them more useful to mariners, while QUADRANTS,
cross-staffs, and BACKSTAFFSwere also invented or refined.
The development of practical literature and of printing
processes suitable for cartography was invaluable to the
spread of navigational knowledge. Regiomontanus’s
Ephemerides (1474) proposed the principle of working out
longitude from lunar distances, and the idea was taken up
again by Apian (1524), Gemma Frisius (1530), and Pedro
NUNES(1560).
The most comprehensive 16th-century treatise on
navigation was by the Aragonese cosmographer Martin
Cortés de Albacar, the Breve compendio de la sphera y la
arte de navegar (Seville, 1551) it deals with practical navi-
gation, the construction of navigational instruments (in-
cluding the nocturnal for telling the time at night), the
drawing of charts, and the rules for plotting ships’ courses.
Cortés de Albacar was apparently the first person to real-
ize that the magnetic pole and the true pole might not
be the same, enabling him to give the first clear account
of the magnetic variation of the compass. Nine editions
of the English translation of the Breve compendio are
known from the period 1561–1630. An important home-
produced English handbook on navigation was John
DAVIS’s The Seamans Secrets (1594).
Further reading: William J. H. Andrewes (ed.), The
Quest for Longitude (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Collec-
tion of Historical Scientific Instruments, 1996); J. E. D.
Williams, From Sails to Satellites: The Origin and Develop-
ment of Navigational Science (Oxford, U.K.: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1993).
Neakademia (New Academy, Aldine Academy) The
academy founded by AldusMANUTIUSin Venice around
1500 for the propagation of Greek scholarship. Under its
constitution, which was drawn up in Greek, only Greek
was to be spoken at its sessions; fines for violation of this
rule were accumulated to provide occasional banquets in
imitation of Plato’s symposia. The Neakademia had be-
tween 35 and 40 members, about a third of them Greeks.
Members were divided into sections to undertake speci-
fic publishing projects for the ALDINE PRESS, with proof-
readers and correctors attached to each section. Girolamo
ALEANDROand Pietro BEMBOwere among its distinguished
members, and the academy also welcomed visiting schol-
ars such as ERASMUSand Thomas LINACRE.
Neapolitan Academy A literary society that first
emerged as a coherent group in Naples in the 1440s under
the patronage of ALFONSO(I) the Magnanimous and the
leadership of Antonio BECCADELLI. A little later it became
known as the Accademia Pontaniana after its new leading
member, Giovanni PONTANO.
Nebrija, Elio Antonio Martínez de Cala de (Elio
Nebrissa, Elio Nebrixa) (1444–1522) Spanish humanist
He was born at Lebrija (Latin name: Nebrissa), Seville,
and studied at Salamanca and from 1461 to 1470 at
Bologna, concentrating on classical languages but reading
widely in law, medicine, and theology. He taught grammar
and rhetoric at Salamanca from 1475. In 1502 he was one
of the group of scholars gathered by Cardinal XIMÉNES DE
CISNEROSat Alcalá to produce the COMPLUTENSIAN POLY-
GLOT Bible. He was also appointed royal chronicler
(1508–09). Failing to succeed to the chair of grammar at
Salamanca in 1513, he moved to the university of Alcalá.
His daughter Francisca also became a professor at Alcalá,
and one of the first women to teach at a European univer-
sity.
The greatest Spanish humanist of the Renaissance,
Nebrija published in 1481 his Latin grammar Introduc-
tiones latine, which he later translated into Spanish for
Queen Isabella. The Introductiones was designed to super-
sede the medieval Latin grammars then in use by setting a
new humanist standard for teaching the language, and,
with the help of the new technology of the printing press,
it quickly became a bestseller across Europe. Interpretatio
dictionum ex sermone latino in hispaniensem (1492), a
Latin–Spanish dictionary, listed 30,000 words. In the same
year he published the first scientific grammar of any Eu-
ropean vernacular language, Gramática sobre la lengua
castellana (1492). He also published a Spanish–Latin dic-
tionary (c. 1495, expanded 1516), a volume attempting to
regularize spelling (Reglas de orthographía en la lengua
castellana, 1517), a classics-based educational manual,
and commentaries on the Latin poets Persius and Pruden-
tius.Negretti, Jacomo See PALMA VECCHIONegretti, Jacopo See PALMA GIOVANENegroli family Italian makers of weapons and ARMOR.
They succeeded the MISSAGLIA FAMILY as the leading
Milanese manufacturers in this field in the first half of the
16th century. Leading members were Jacopo and Filippo
(active 1525–50) who made embossed parade armor as
well as more practical suits. Among their clients were
Emperor Charles V and Francis I of France.neo-Latin literature The quantity and quality of original
Latin writing in the Renaissance tend to be underesti-
mated as few people now possess the necessary facility in
Latin to appreciate it, very little of it has been translated,
and interest has generally been focused upon the emer-
gent literature in the VERNACULAR. In these circumstances
it is easy to forget that the Latin writings of PETRARCHwere
as widely known and imitated as his innovatory Italian
poems (see SONNET), since Latin as the universal language33338 8 NNeeaakkaaddeemmiiaa