Ovidio Montalbani

Ovidio Montalbani studied philosophy with Vincenzo Montecalvi and medicine with the famous physician Bartolomeo Ambrosini.[1] In 1625 at a very young age he became a lector at the University of Bologna, teaching first logic, then the theoretic medicine, mathematics and astronomy and later moral philosophy. In 1657, he became custodian of the Aldrovandi Museum - succeeding Bartolomeo Ambrosini, who had been custodian since 1642.[4] He was the doyen of the Collegio Medico of Bologna and its prior from 1664 onwards.[5]

Montalbani was a member of several academies, including the Accademia dei Gelati (with the alias "l'Innestato"), the Accademia degli Indomiti (as "lo Stellato"), and the Accademia della Notte (as "il Rugiadoso").[3] He was also a member of the free-thinking Venetian Accademia degli Incogniti, as well as one of the founders of the Accademia dei Vespertini, which held its first Assemblies in his house.[1]

A politically involved citizen of the city of Bologna, he held several magistrates, such as those of the court of the merchant forum and Tribune of the Plebs. As a censor for the Bolognese Inquisition he was charged of reviewing the first edition of Galileo’s Complete Works, published in Bologna by Carlo Manolessi, in 1655–1656.[1]

He died in Bologna on 20 September 1671.

Ovidio Montalbani was one of the most prolific polymaths of his day. Among his many publications can be found works on archaeology, linguistics, medicine and botany. In 1629 he was given the task of writing the Tacuino, a sort of annually produced astrological calendar for doctors indicating the best and worst days for blood-letting, purges and surgery. Montalbani often enriched this medical «almanac» with essays on subjects as diverse as the grafting of plants and the Bolognese and Lombard dialects. Montalbani's tacuinum of 1661, entitled, Antineotiologia, an attack on innovations in the practice of medicine, was harshly criticized by Marcello Malpighi and Giovanni Alfonso Borelli.[6]

In his “De Illuminabili Lapide Bononiensi Epistola” (1634), Montalbani discussed the properties of the “Bologna stone” a piece of barium sulfate (baryte) found on Mount Paderno. Montalbani's treatise was one of the first studies on the subject of inorganic phosphorescence.[7] In 1668 Montalbani edited the previously unprinted Dendrologia by Ulisse Aldrovandi.[8]

Montalbani published a number of scientific works under the pseudonym of Giovanni Antonio Bumaldi. Carl Peter Thunberg gave the name of Bumalda to a genus of Japanese plants.[9][10]

A close friend of Thomas Dempster, he pronounced his funeral oration, which was published in Bologna in 1626, a year after Dempster's death.[11]

Montalbani is an ambivalent figure in the early seventeenth-century Scientific Revolution. While he was a proponent of empirical observation in natural philosophy, he was also a staunch opponent of Marcello Malpighi’s medical ideas and a proponent of the Ptolemaic system.[1]

• «Ovidio Montalbani Bolognese». In : Le glorie de gli Incogniti: o vero, Gli huomini illustri dell'Accademia de' signori Incogniti di Venetia, In Venetia : appresso Francesco Valuasense stampator dell'Accademia, 1647, pp. 356–359 (on-line).
• Ghilini, Girolamo (1647). Teatro d'huomini letterati (in Italian). Vol. II. Venice: Guerigli. p. 206.
• Zani, Valerio (1672). Memorie imprese, e ritratti de' signori Accademici Gelati di Bologna (in Italian). Bologna: Manolessi. pp. 350–353.
• Orlandi, Pellegrino Antonio (1714). Notizie degli scrittori bolognesi (in Italian). Bologna: Costantino Pisarri. pp. 222–223.
• Fantuzzi, Giovanni (1786). Notizie degli scrittori bolognesi (in Italian). Vol. VI. Bologna: Stamp. di San Tommaso d'Aquino. pp. 57–64.
• Muzzi, S. (1844). "Memorie dei Montalbani in S. Francesco e specialmente del famosissimo Ovidio". Eletta dei monumenti più illustri e classici, sepolcrali ed onorari di Bologna e suoi dintorni compresi gli antichi del cimitero. Bologna. IV.
• Antonio Neviani, Le Curae analyticae di Ovidio Montalbani Spigolatura aldrovandiana, in Atti della Pontificia Accademia delle scienze nuovi Lincei, LXXXVII, sess. IV, Civitate Vaticana [1934], pp. 267–272;
• Sorbelli, Albano (1938). "Il "tacuinus" dell'Università di Bologna e le sue prime edizioni". Gutenberg Jahrbuch: 109–114.
• Bignardi, Agostino (1967). "Per la storia dell'agricoltura bolognese. Gli almanacchi rurali di Ovidio Montalbani". Economia e Storia. XIV: 167–184.
• Foresti, Fabio (1981). "Il "Vocabolista bolognese" di Ovidio Montalbani e l'etimologia dialettale nel '600". Etimologia e lessico dialettale. Atti del XII Convegno per gli studi dialettali italiani, Macerata … 1979. Pisa: 237–246.
• Scappini, Cristiana; Torricelli, Maria Pia (1993). Sandra Tugnoli Pattaro (ed.). Lo studio Aldrovandi in Palazzo Pubblico (1617-1742) (in Italian). Bologna: CLUEB. p. 206.
• Marchi, Roberto (2000). "Ovidio Montalbani e Giordano Bruno, teoria del minimo e aspetti della cultura matematica, medica e astrologica nella Bologna del '600". Bruniana e Campanelliana: Ricerche Filosofiche e Materiali Storico-testuali. VI (2): 554–560. JSTOR 24331747.

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Ovidio Montalbani.

• Marchi, Roberto (2011). "MONTALBANI, Ovidio". Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, Volume 75: Miranda–Montano (in Italian). Rome: Istituto dell'Enciclopedia Italiana. ISBN 978-8-81200032-6.
• Roda, Aldo (1999). "The Discovery of Luminescence: "The Bolognian Stone"". Bioluminescence & Chemiluminescence: Perspectives for the 21st Century. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. ISBN 0471987336. Archived from the original on 2006-12-02.