Julius Caesar Scaliger or Giulio Cesare della Scala (April 23, 1484 – October 21, 1558), was an Italian scholar and physician spending a major part of his career in France. He employed the techniques and discoveries of Renaissance humanism to defend Aristotelianism against the new learning. In spite of his arrogant and contentious disposition, his contemporary reputation was high, judging him so distinguished by his learning and talents that, acc...
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Julius Caesar Scaliger or Giulio Cesare della Scala (April 23, 1484 – October 21, 1558), was an Italian scholar and physician spending a major part of his career in France. He employed the techniques and discoveries of Renaissance humanism to defend Aristotelianism against the new learning. In spite of his arrogant and contentious disposition, his contemporary reputation was high, judging him so distinguished by his learning and talents that, according to Jacques August de Thou, none of the ancients could be placed above him, and the age in which he lived could not show his equal.
Scaliger's father, Benedetto Bordon, was a miniaturist and illuminator. Scaliger himself was known in his youth by the family name Bordon, but later insisted that he was a scion of the house of La Scala, for a hundred and fifty years lords of Verona, and was born in 1484 at the Rocca di Riva, on Lake Garda.
When he was twelve, his kinsman the emperor Maximilian placed him among his pages. He remained for...
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