The Culture of Science 305

Testelin’s tapestry of the establishment of the French Royal Academy of Science,

1666, and the Foundation of the Observatory, 1667.

studies), was allowed in the last years of her life to teach in public, and

thanks to surprising patronage from prelates in Rome was even able to

gain access to the scientific studies that the pope had placed on the Index

of Forbidden Ideas or Books. Laura Bassi remained an active participant in

the scientific community.

In 1666, the French Royal Academy of Science held its first formal meet­

ing in Paris. Like the English Royal Society, the French Academy enjoyed

the patronage of the monarchy, which even provided the Academy with an

astronomical observatory. Branches of the Academy began in several

provincial cities. Unlike members of its English counterpart, those in the

French Academy spent much time eating and drinking—one of them com­

plained that too much time was wasted at the fancy dinners that preceded

scholarly discussion.

Although some writers deliberately had used Latin because they believed

that knowledge ought to remain the preserve of the educated few, with the

gradual ebbing of Latin as the language of science, language barriers became

a greater obstacle to the diffusion of ideas and research. Galileo had written

in Italian to attract a wider audience among the elite, but also to remove sci­

ence from Latin, the language of religious discourse. Newton wrote Principia

in Latin, in part because only then could his work be read by most continen­

tal scholars. Newton’s Opticsy by contrast, appeared first in English, then in

Latin and French translations. Gradually during the eighteenth century,

each country’s vernacular became the language of its scientists.