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Fioravanti, Leonardo

Born: Bologna, 10 May 1517

Died: After 1583

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Encyclopedia of Renaissance Philosophy

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Abstract

Leonardo Fioravanti was one of the most peculiar medical practitioners active in late sixteenth-century Italy. Beginning his career as a common empirical healer in Palermo, he moved up the Italian peninsula as well as the social hierarchy, becoming first a licensed surgeon (Naples, Rome), then a successful medical writer (Venice) and a graduated physician (Bologna), and finally a doctor at the court of king Philip II of Spain. A supporter of alchemical medicine and a master of self-fashioning, Fioravanti portrayed himself as the miraculous healer, the new Asclepius, the initiator of a new way of curing. His reputation swung for all his life (and in the following centuries) between that of an untrustworthy mountebank and that of a medical genius, earning him admiration and contempt in equal measure. The truth lies probably in the middle: although his bombastic claims and his advertising strategies put him in close relationship with charlatans, some aspects of his practice truly foreshadowed some future developments in medicine. His whole activity is characterized by an explorative attitude, an experimental approach, and a general refusal of the academic immobilism, all key features of the upcoming scientific revolution.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Literary Studies, Faculty of Arts and Philosophy, Ghent University, Ghent, Belgium

    Ruben Celani

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  1. Ruben Celani
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Correspondence to Ruben Celani .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dept. of Philosophy a. Cultural Heritage, Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia, Venezia, Italy

    Marco Sgarbi

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  1. Center for the History of Philosophy and Science, Radboud University Nijmegen, Nijmegen, The Netherlands

    Hiro Hirai

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Celani, R. (2022). Fioravanti, Leonardo. In: Sgarbi, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Renaissance Philosophy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-14169-5_1191

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