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The reception of Nikola Sagri’s tidal reports along the European coastline of the Atlantic from Frane Petrić to Francis Bacon and Giovanni Battista Riccioli
Ivica Martinović
; Institut za filozofiju, Zagreb, Hrvatska
Sažetak
While composing his Ragionamenti sopra le varietà de i flussi et riflussi del mare Oceano Occidentale (1574), Nikola Sagri, captain from the island of Šipan, was guided by two main goals: to find out the cause of tides and to publish tidal reports on two important navigation routes. In doing so, he expressed his attitude towards observation sententiously: “long and true experience is the mother of every science” (la lunga e vera esperienza è madre d’ogni scienza). The first report, “Nota particolare del tempo e l’hora de i flussi e riflussi del mare Oceano Occidentale,” which contains data on the
appearance of high waters along the Atlantic coast from Gibraltar to Flanders by hour and minute, was appended to the third dialogue of the first part, while the second, shorter report on the onset of tide in the Bristol Channel and along the coast of Ireland, was appended to the first dialogue of the second part. Ivan Marija Sagri, who, after the sudden death of the writer printed the Ragionamenti, explained in the foreword that his late brother was a uomo curioso e industrioso.
While writing on the same theme in “De maris affluxus, et refluxus varietate,”Book 28 of his Pancosmia, Frane Petrić was the first to present in a printed book Sagri’s reports on the occurrence of tide on the European coasts of the Atlantic and on the navigation routes along their coastline, by using the syntagms ex Sagri relatione or ex
Sagro. Moreover, as a natural philosopher he used them in his reasonings on the causes of tides: against the sentence on the Moon as the only cause of tides, and in support of the sentence on the eventual chasms on the seabed. Under the influence of his teacher Rudolph Goclenius, Otto Casmann, professor in Stade in the German north, in the chapter “Duorum Nautarum marini aestus observatorum specialis historia” of his book Marinae quaestiones (1596), included a
large quotation from Book 28 of Petrić’s Pancosmia. But Casmann also ‘understood’ Petrić’s commentary of Sagri’s report as Sagri’s text, in consequence of which Petrić’s commentary could be wrongly attributed to Sagri. In addition, in the chapter “Causae, cur maria alia magis, alia aestuant minus” in which Casmann amply quoted from Book 29 of Petrić’s Pancosmia, he made two references to Sagri, the first being an explicit quotation on the shallows along the Belgian coast, and the second, failing to mention the source, in which he drew attention to the variety in the hours of tide (varietas horarum
affluxus) both along the coastline and the navigation route.
Unlike Casmann, papal engineer Bartolomeo Crescenzio had access to the printed works and manuscripts of Nikola Sagri thanks mainly to the assistance of the latter’s brother Ivan Marija Sagri, including among them the “ingenious discourse he had composed on tides”. In his influential compendium Nautica mediterranea (1602), Crescenzio published in full both Sagri’s observations on tidal reports, yet adapted them in terms of toponymy and terminology. The instruction following Sagri’s first report conveys the same meaning in Crescenzio’s Nautica, though formulated in somewhat simpler sentences to suit the first users of this book – the captains of the Papal fleet.
According to the pages of his work Euripus (1624), Marko Antun de Dominis became acquainted with Sagri’s first report through Casmann’s Marinae quaestiones (1596), therefore, in Petrić’s presentation of Sagri’s report. While commenting Petrić’s
objections to Sagri in his Euripus (1624), he twice referred to Sagri’s observations, but his commentary would most certainly have taken a different course if he had access to Sagri’s Ragionamenti and his argumentation in support of the Moon action on tides.
In his advocation of geocentrism in Almagestum novum (1651), particularly in his refutation of Galileo’s erroneous explanation of the cause of tides, the Jesuit scholar Giovanni Battista Riccioli called upon Sagri’s reports, based on Crescenzio. Moreover, by producing their integral Latin translation, he breathed new life into them and spread
their influence among the professors and students at Jesuit Colleges till 1757.
When Isaac Gruter prepared from Francis Bacon’s heritage Scripta in naturali et universali philosophia (1653) for Elsevier, Amsterdam publisher, this edition also included Bacon’s shorter treatise De fluxu et refluxu maris. By presupposing the existence of consensus rerum, correspondence between the motion of the Moon and sea tides, Bacon formulated his research programme and decided to study three experiments, the second of which he formulated from Petrić’s review of Sagri’s first report. Whether in his formulation of ‘the second experiment’ he drew from Petrić’s Pancosmia or from
Casmann’s Marinae quaestiones – remains an open problem. At the end of his treatise Bacon advocated for the observations along the Atlantic coasts introduced by Sagri to be furthered and advanced.
While including the integral text of Sagri’s two reports on tides in Almagestum novum, Riccioli, in two editions of his later work Geographiae et hydrographiae reformatae libri duodecim (1661, 1672), published a table of tide appearances at Atlantic littorals of European countries, which, in comparison with the later observations
of tides in the works of Slotboom, Dudley and Varenius, retained considerable observation data that Sagri had made from Gibraltar to Nieuwpoort, along the south coast of England, along the coast of Ireland, and while crossing the English Channel from the starting point in a Flanders harbour.
Between 1591 and 1672 Sagri’s tidal reports were used for four different purposes: natural-philosophical research of the causes of tides in Petrić, Casmann and de Dominis, practical nautical use in the navigation along the European coast of the Atlantic in Crescenzio, methodological in Bacon, and polemic-cosmological in Riccioli.
Ključne riječi
Nikola Sagri; Frane Petrić; Otto Casmann; Bartolomeo Crescenzio; Marko Antun de Dominis; Giambattista Riccioli; Francis Bacon; Renaissance natural philosophy; tides, observations
Hrčak ID:
131460
URI
Datum izdavanja:
15.10.2014.
Posjeta: 1.418 *