Julius Caesar Scaliger

Julius Caesar Scaliger, born Giulio Cesare della Scala on 23 April or August 1484 in Padua, was an Italian scholar and physician who spent a significant part of his career in France. He employed the techniques and discoveries of Renaissance humanism to defend Aristotelianism against the New Learning. Despite his contentious disposition, his contemporary reputation was exceptionally high, with Jacques Auguste de Thou claiming that none of the ancients could be placed above him and that he had no equal in his own time. Scaliger's father was Benedetto Bordone, a miniaturist and illuminator. Scaliger himself was known in his youth by the family name Bordone, but later insisted on his lineage from the house of La Scala, lords of Verona. His son later claimed he was born at the Rocca di Riva, on Lake Garda. According to his own account, which is disputed by critics, he served as a page to Emperor Maximilian for seventeen years, distinguishing himself as a soldier and captain, and studied art under Albrecht Dürer. He fought at the Battle of Ravenna in 1512, where his father and elder brother were killed. After leaving military service, he studied medicine and natural history. He accompanied the bishop of Agen as his physician in 1525, settling in Agen for the remaining thirty-two years of his life. He was charged with heresy in 1538 but acquitted. He died in Agen on 21 October 1558. His scientific writings, including commentaries on Aristotle and Theophrastus, and his critical *Exotericarum Exercitationes* on Cardano's *De Subtilitate*, displayed encyclopedic knowledge and accurate observation, influencing later natural historians and philosophers.