academies
Italian humanists and scholars revived the
ancient Greek academy beginning in the
middle of the fifteenth century. The acad-
emy was an informal group that met for
teaching, discussion, lectures, readings, and
debate. Most importantly for Renaissance
scholarship, these groups were a way for
newly discovered manuscripts to circulate
in a time when printed books were rare
and expensive commodities. The original
akademia was a school founded by the
Greek philosopher Plato in a sacred pre-
cinct outside the walls of Athens. In 1462,
under the patronage of Cosimo de’ Medici,
the ruler of Florence, a Platonic Academy
began meeting in a Medici villa. Medici
appointed as head of the group the scholar
Marsilio Ficino, whom Medici held in high
regard as the collector and translator of
many significant ancient-Greek texts. The
Platonic Academy had its imitators in Flo-
rence and other cities.
By the middle of the sixteenth century,
the academy was a common feature of
large cities and university towns through-
out Italy and was spreading to the rest of
Europe. In some cases, the academies
posed an apparent threat to the established
authorities, in particular the Catholic
Church. The Accademia Secretorum
Naturae (Academy of the Secrets of
Nature), began meeting in Naples in 1560.
Under the direction of the scientist Giam-
battista della Porta, the academy welcomed
members who wrote about or taught the
natural sciences. The group soon came un-
der suspicion by the Catholic Church from
1560, however, for teaching ideas counter
to official doctrine. The academy was for-
mally condemned by the church in 1580
and quickly disbanded.
To establish a Renaissance academy
marked a patron or scholar as a person of
advanced ideas, a devotee of the new hu-
manism and scientific inquiry that was in-
spired by Greek and Roman writers. But
in many cases the purpose of the academy
was as much social as educational. Many
academies had informal names, such as
theConfusi(the Confused), theGelati(the
Frozen) and theInfiammati(the Inflamed).
Members adopted rules, symbols, secret
signs, and garb that proclaimed their
membership and marked them off from
the ordinary run of city-dwellers.
By the end of the sixteenth century,
there were several hundred academies in
Italy. In cities that were growing into re-
gional and national centers, academies per-
sisted and grew, while in minor cities they
declined and eventually disappeared. Some
academies concentrated on a single area of
interest, such as language (the Florentine
Academy) or art (the Academy of Design,
also in Florence). The Accademia dei Lin-
cei (Academy of the Lynxes) was founded
in Rome in 1603 by Federico Cesi, who
named this group for the sharp vision and
observational powers of the lynx. The most
famous member of this group was Galileo,
who found support among its members
for scientific theories found heretical by
the church. This academy was revived in