Quinzio Bongiovanni
naturalist
Quinzio Bongiovanni (or Quinto Buongiovanni) (Tropea c.1550 - Naples 5 June 1612) was an Italian doctor and scholar, active in the disputes between traditional scholasticism and the natural philosophy of Bernardino Telesio, Giambattista della Porta and members of the Accademia dei Lincei.
Family background and career
Quinzio Bongiovanni was the son of Giovan Nicola, a doctor, and Lamberta Fazzari. The family had probably originally come from Maida, which it left to escape the feudal domination of the House of Caracciolo, and moved into the Palazzo Bongiovanni, home to the Vianeo brothers, pioneering surgeons, who were also from Maida. Quinzio finished his studies in medicine and philosophy under Giovan Bernardino Longo and Giovan Girolamo Polverino in Naples. In 1571 he published the work for which he is principally remembered, Peripateticarum disputationum de principiis naturae (Venice 1571), dedicated to Cardinal Antonio Carafa. He was a member Accademia degli Affaticati ('Academy of the Weary') in his home town of Tropea.
Some time before 1583 he was appointed Protomedico (Chief Physician) to the King (Philip II of Spain), a position which required him to license and regulate all healers, surgeons, midwives and alchemists in the kingdom. He insisted that apothecaries be prevented from preparing herbal remedies before being properly inspected, otherwise 'they make the compositions up in their own way, without fear of God or justice, and to the detriment of human bodies, which for this reason are daily made to suffer.' He apparently also worked for a time for the Prince of Bisignano. He returned to Naples in 1588 and was appointed Reader in Philosophy and Medicine at the University of Naples. He later became Professor of Medicine, and Archiater to Popes Pius V and Gregory XIII. Among his most distinguished pupils were Marco Aurelio Severino and Giovanni Battista Cavallari.
“Quinzio Bongiovanni” enters the record as naturalist. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Quinzio, Bongiovanni and naturalist can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Quinzio Bongiovanni” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.