Knowledge, Freedom, and Brotherly Love: Homosociality and the Accademia dei Lincei

Abstract

Special Cluster: Gender and Early-Modern ScienceThe Accademia dei Lincei, often considered the earliest of scientific organizations, was established in 1603 by Federico Cesi, a young Roman aristocrat who was soon to become prince of San Polo and Sant'Angelo, duke of Aquasparta, and marquis of Monticelli. 1 After a period of very limited activity, which lasted until 1609, the academy quickly revived its membership and visibility, and by 1611 it included prestigious figures like Galileo and Giovanbattista della Porta.Its ranks continued to increase until 1625, when it listed thirty-two members, most of them located in Rome, Naples, and Florence.2 The Lincei became an important reference point in the fledgling Italian philosophical community and played a relevant role in Galileo's later career, but it collapsed shortly after the prince's death in 1630.Cesi left behind a vast, elaborate, and well-documented academic project that usually bore little more than a family resemblance to the [End Page 139] actual academy.This essay analyzes the gender dimensions of Cesi's project and traces them into some aspects of the academy's historical record.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 15 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.