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Document 49469

GRAND DUKE FERDINAND II de MEDICI
Pupil of Galileo and inventor of a thermometer and a hygrometer.
Manuscript LS: "Grand Duke of T." in Italian, 1p, 7½x10½. Poggio di Caiano, 1655 November 4. With complete English translation. In part: "We present again to His Holiness the prayer for the canonization of the Beati Margherita da Cortona...But as the community of her city of Cortona is very poor, and therefore unable to sustain for such ceremony, the necessary expenses, wishes that we would help with our influence to see if it could use the occasion of the other and particularly of those Beati recommended by His Majesty the Catholic King...." Docketed on verso, which has 1½-inch diameter paper seal affixed at mid-vertical fold. FERDINAND II, son of Cosimo II de Medici, was Grand Duke of Tuscany from 1621 (he was 10 when his father died) to his death in 1670. GALILEO, philosopher and mathematician extraordinary to the Grand Duke of Tuscany since 1610, was Ferdinand's teacher. When Galileo was tried by the Inquisition of the Roman Catholic Church, forced to reject his belief in the Copernican theory and placed under house arrest in 1633, the deeply religious Ferdinand was condemned because he did nothing to defend him. Ferdinand, who continued to take an interest in science, developed scientific instruments including a thermometer insensitive to barometric pressure (c.1644) and a condensation hygrometer (c. 1655). During his reign, he attempted to maintain Tuscany's neutrality, especially in the Franco-Spanish hostilities of the Thirty Years' War. Ink lightly smudged in some words. Vertical fold and ½-inch cut touch signature. Additional cuts on letter and integral leaf, mainly in blank areas. Lightly soiled in blank right corner and left blank edge, touching three words. Overall, fine condition for a document almost 350 years old.

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