CHAPTER III 



THE FIFTEENTH AND SIXTEENTH CENTURIES 



Introduction 



WITH THE renaissance of science which followed the Middle 

 Ages, a significant change in the profession of men who wrote 

 about nature is to be noted. Except for Arab writers, all the names 

 mentioned in the last chapter are of scientists connected with the 

 church; bishops, monks, or nuns. In the Middle Ages, learning and 

 religion were almost synonymous. In the sixteenth century, with 

 the exception of the great explorers, twenty-one of the twenty-six 

 prominent writers on luminous phenomena were physicians or had 

 studied medicine, an extraordinary tribute to the scholarship of 

 the group. In the seventeenth century medical men were still promi- 

 nent in scientific affairs but had largely given way to the professional 

 scientist. 



In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, attention was directed to 

 the grand sweep of the heavens and the striking phenomena of the 

 earth. With the exception of a few electroluminescences, like the 

 aurora borealis and the ignis lambens, the only known common 

 types of luminescence were due to living organisms, the glowworm, 

 phosphorescent wood, or the " burning " of the sea. The latter, 

 especially, aroused the interest of navigators, although they did 

 little to determine the origin of the light, and its connection with 

 animalcules was unsuspected. 



Early Explorers 



Columbus (1 446?- 1 506) referred to mysterious lights in the water 

 the night before he landed on San Salvador in 1492, which may 

 have been the luminous worm, Odontosyllis.^ Don Joao de Castro 

 (1500-1548) , Portuguese naval commander and Governor of India, 

 recorded luminescence in the Red Sea in 1541 near Massaua.^ 

 De Castro described the luminescence as " gieat dazzling white 

 patches that lighted and glittered like the stars." The officers were 

 so astonished they slackened sail to take soundings, for the white 



^ L. R. Crawshay, Possible bearing of a luminous syllid on the question of the 

 landfall of Columbus, Nature 136: 559-560, 1935. 



'^ Histoire general des voyages, 177. Quoted from Krukenberg, 1887: 120. 



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