Giovanni (or Johannes) di Casali (or da Casale; c. 1320 – after 1374) was 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 the

Franciscan The Franciscans are a group of related Mendicant orders, mendicant Christianity, Christian Catholic religious order, religious orders within the Catholic Church. Founded in 1209 by Italian Catholic friar Francis of Assisi, these orders include t ...

Order, a

natural philosopher Natural philosophy or philosophy of nature (from Latin ''philosophia naturalis'') is the philosophical study of physics Physics is the natural science that studies matter, its fundamental constituents, its motion and behavior throu ...

and a

theologian Theology is the systematic study of the nature of the divine and, more broadly, of religious belief. It is taught as an academic discipline, typically in universities and seminaries. It occupies itself with the unique content of analyzing the ...

, author of works on theology and science, and a

papal legate 300px, A woodcut showing Henry II of England greeting the pope's legate. A papal legate or apostolic legate (from the ancient Roman title ''legatus'') is a personal representative of the pope to foreign nations, or to some part of the Catholic ...

. He was born in

Casale Monferrato Casale Monferrato () is a town in the Piedmont region of Italy, in the province of Alessandria. It is situated about east of Turin on the right bank of the Po, where the river runs at the foot of the Montferrat hills. Beyond the river lies the v ...

around 1320‘Giovanni da Casale’
''Enciclopedie on line'', Treccani. and entered the

Franciscan order , image = FrancescoCoA PioM.svg , image_size = 200px , caption = A cross, Christ's arm and Saint Francis's arm, a universal symbol of the Franciscans , abbreviation = OFM , predecessor = , ...

in the Genoese province. He was lecturer in the Franciscan stadium at

Assisi Assisi (, also , ; from la, Asisium) is a town and ''comune'' of Italy in the Province of Perugia in the Umbria region, on the western flank of Monte Subasio. It is generally regarded as the birthplace of the Latin poet Propertius, born aroun ...

from 1335 to 1340. He subsequently was lector at

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cambridge bec ...

ca. 1340 to 1341, where he encountered the mathematical physics developed by the

Oxford Calculators The Oxford Calculators were a group of 14th-century thinkers, almost all associated with Merton College, Oxford; for this reason they were dubbed "The Merton School". These men took a strikingly logical and mathematical approach to philosophical ...

. He was also an

inquisitor An inquisitor was an official (usually with judicial or investigative functions) in an inquisition – an organization or program intended to eliminate heresy and other things contrary to the doctrine or teachings of the Catholic faith. Literal ...

Florence Florence ( ; it, Firenze ) is a city in Central Italy and the capital city of the Tuscany region. It is the most populated city in Tuscany, with 383,083 inhabitants in 2016, and over 1,520,000 in its metropolitan area.Bilancio demografico an ...

, and a lector in

Bologna Bologna (, , ; egl, label= Emilian, Bulåggna ; lat, Bononia) is the capital and largest city of the Emilia-Romagna region in Northern Italy. It is the seventh most populous city in Italy with about 400,000 inhabitants and 150 different nat ...

from 1346 to ca. 1352. In 1375 Pope

Gregory XI Pope Gregory XI ( la, Gregorius, born Pierre Roger de Beaufort; c. 1329 – 27 March 1378) was head of the Catholic Church from 30 December 1370 to his death in March 1378. He was the seventh and last Avignon pope and the most recent French pop ...

appointed him papal legate to the court of King Frederick of Sicily.Maarten van der Heijden and Bert Roest
‘Franaut-J’
''Franciscan Authors, 13th – 18th Century: A Catalogue in Progress''. About 1346 he wrote a treatise ''De velocitate motus alterationis'' (On the Velocity of the Motion of Alteration) which was subsequently printed in

Venice Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto Regions of Italy, region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 ...

in 1505. In it he presented a graphical analysis of the motion of accelerated bodies. His teachings in

mathematical physics Mathematical physics refers to the development of mathematics, mathematical methods for application to problems in physics. The ''Journal of Mathematical Physics'' defines the field as "the application of mathematics to problems in physics and t ...

influenced scholars at the

University of Padua The University of Padua ( it, Università degli Studi di Padova, UNIPD) is an Italian university located in the city of Padua, region of Veneto, northern Italy. The University of Padua was founded in 1222 by a group of students and teachers from B ...

and, it is believed, may have ultimately influenced the similar ideas presented over two centuries later by

Galileo Galilei Galileo di Vincenzo Bonaiuti de' Galilei (15 February 1564 – 8 January 1642) was an Italian astronomer, physicist and engineer, sometimes described as a polymath. Commonly referred to as Galileo, his name was pronounced (, ). He was ...

.Marshall Clagett, ''The Science of Mechanics in the Middle Ages,'' (Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin Pr., 1959), pp. 332-3, 382-391, 644

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Casali, Giovanni di 1370s deaths 14th-century Italian Roman Catholic priests Italian Franciscans Catholic clergy scientists 14th-century Italian Roman Catholic theologians 14th-century Italian mathematicians Year of birth unknown Medieval physicists Year of birth uncertain 14th-century Latin writers

See also

References