Alessandro della Spina (born 13th century-died 1313) was a Dominican friar, credited with the invention of spectacles.

Life

Spina was a Dominican friar, in the second half of the 13th century, at the monastery of the Church of Santa Caterina, Pisa. The church's history is known by a manuscript, the ''Chronica antiqua'', a Pisan chronicle of the 14th century. This chronicle portrays him as a modest, intelligent, and mechanically versed copyist and illuminator, "capable of remaking anything he saw".Frugoni 2013, p5. In 1305,

Jordan of Pisa Jordan of Pisa (Italian ''Giordano da Pisa''), also called Jordan of Rivalto (''Giordano da Rivalto'', 1255 – 19 August 1311), was a Dominican theologian and the first preacher whose vernacular Italian sermons are preserved. His ''cultus'' wa ...

, a friar of the same monastery, was recorded to have spoken of Spina in one of his sermons; lay listeners wrote the sermons down. Jordan declared that glasses were less than 20 years old, and he had known their creator well, but without giving his name.

Discussion

In the 17th century,

Carlo Roberto Dati Carlo Roberto Dati (2 October 1619 – 1676) was a Florentine nobleman, philologist and scientist, a disciple of Galileo (1564-1642) and, in his youth, an acquaintance of Evangelista Torricelli (1608-1647). Biography Dati was born in Florence. H ...

argued Jordan meant Spina. He did not have access to the Chronica antiqua manuscript, but relied on a transcription by his friend

Francesco Redi Francesco Redi (18 February 1626 – 1 March 1697) was an Italian physician, naturalist, biologist, and poet. He is referred to as the "founder of experimental biology", and as the "father of modern parasitology". He was the first person to cha ...

, who had altered the text by modifying or omitting phrases. When Dati died in 1676, Redi published a letter on Spina's invention of spectacles, falsifying both the Chronica antiqua and Jordan's sermon. In the 17th century, people wanted to give a name and country to the inventor of glasses.Frugoni 2013, op. cit., p. 6-9. Out of parochialism, people wanted it to be a fellow citizen of their town. Around the same time, Ferdinando Leopoldo Del Migliore wrote that Spina was a Florentine, then in 1684 he too made forgeries to attribute the invention of spectacles to fellow Florentine Salvino D'Armati. The myth of Salvino, inventor of glasses, was transmitted until the 20th century. It was not until 1920 that the manufacture of this fake was revealed by the philologist Isidoro del Lungo. In 1956, historian

Edward Rosen Edward Rosen (12 December 1906 – 28 March 1985) was an American historian, whose main field of study was early modern science and, in particular, the work of Copernicus, Galileo and Kepler. Academic life Edward Rosen's academic life, includ ...

published a detailed history of deliberate forgeries or unintentional errors in the invention of eyeglasses, passed down from author to author, since the 17th century. According to Rosen, Allessandro della Spina was indeed a

friar A friar is a member of one of the mendicant orders founded in the twelfth or thirteenth century; the term distinguishes the mendicants' itinerant apostolic character, exercised broadly under the jurisdiction of a superior general, from the ol ...

in Pisa, but he was not a native of that city.

References

*Chiara Frugoni, Le moyen age sur le bout du nez - lunettes, boutons et autres inventions medievales, he Middle Ages on the nose, glasses, buttons and other medieval inventions Les Belles Lettres, 2013 (ISBN 978-2-251-38111-4)

Life

Discussion

References

Further reading