Juan Caramuel y Lobkowitz a Napoli. Scienza, tecnica e architettura tra Seicento e Settecento

The essay analyses the relationship between Spanish Cistercian monk Juan Caramuel y Lobkowicz and that cultural atmosphere, full of innovative ferments, which accompanied the years of his Bishopric in Campagna-Satriano and Sant’Angelo, an important diocese but very isolated in Southern Italy. He moved here in 1957, when he attained the rank of Bishop by Alexander VII Pope. In truth, he had this prestigious investiture because the Pope, his protector, wanted to remove him from Rome, where he was unpopular within Vatican because of his ideas against Jansenism and because he was a supporter of the theories of Cartesius and Galileo. On spit of that, during the period of his Bishopric in Campagna, he brought to maturity his theories regarding topics will be concerning both the binomial architecture-astrology, and that with the disciplines of mathematics and geometry In truth, more Naples than Campagna has been the place that offered him the necessary cultural environment where he could freely develop his anti-Aristotelian theories, which had put him at odds with the Roman Catholic Church. In Naples, in fact, he had met some of the most brilliant intellectuals and scientists of the Kingdom, including Giovan Battista Vico, Lucantonio Porzio, Antonio de Manforte and, above all, Leonardo di Capua, with whom he made friends. Di Capua introduced him to the Society of the Investiganti and Caramuel attended assiduously in their meetings. The Bishop was interested in their method of study and research. He discussed at length with them about mathematics, astronomy, astrology and the role of experiment and hypothesis, on the empirically probable as against the a priori, mathematically demonstrable, character attributed by the dominant Cartesianism to all scientific knowledge. It was a mutual cultural exchange that held disciplines together, which were considered different and distant from each other until then. During the period, also his theory on architecture of oblique improved, although the treatise about this was published in 1678, when he was Bishop of Vigevano. This theory was based on the application of the most up-to-date findings in the fields of mathematic, geometry and optics, which he developed during together the Academicians of the Investiganti. The aim of the essay is the critical reading of these cultural and scientific relationships and, above all, the influences the Caramuel’s theory of oblique have had on the develop of architecture in Naples between the end of the Seventeenth century end the second half of the eighteenth century.