Leonardo da Vinci - Kathleen Krull [2]
People’s lives were short and violent. The rate of accidental death was high; the murder rate was twice as high. Many rulers were tyrants—some homicidal. Wars were common. No country, or even city, was stable. Women were viewed as vain—the devil’s decoy. And if they stood out in any suspicious way, they might be tried for witchcraft—and burned.
The all-powerful Catholic Church was a beacon of light and learning in Europe in the Middle Ages. But non-believers were often brutally persecuted.
In ancient Greece and Rome, in China, and in Arab countries, scientists had discovered much about astronomy, medicine, mathematics, and more. Islamic scholars translated the work of ancient Greek scientists into Arabic, keeping their discoveries alive, adding their own ideas to them. But in Europe, much of this body of knowledge was lost for a long time—centuries in fact.
“Sciences” in medieval times did include astronomy and mathematics, but it was still an age when people believed in magic. So “pseudosciences” were taught as well—the study of angels; physiognomy, the link between a person’s character and what he or she looks like; astrology, the belief that the planets influence human behavior; and alchemy, the “study” of how to make gold out of other metals.
Learned men argued whether or not angels supplied the force that kept the planets in motion. And they counted only seven planets—of which Earth was not one. Instead, Earth occupied the center of the universe, with other astronomical bodies like the sun revolving around it.
But a great wave was splashing across Europe, changing how people thought in some very fundamental ways. The result was a new confidence in human achievement, what was possible to do in one’s lifetime here on Earth. This led to an explosion of new information and exchange of new ideas. All this coincided with a wonderful rediscovery of the ancient knowledge that had been lost.
Atop the wave of change was Leonardo da Vinci. He was born at the right time in the right place: in 1452 and in Italy. Because by then, it was officially the Renaissance, a glowing burst of fireworks in art, architecture, literature, and science. And nowhere was the Renaissance spirit brighter than in Florence, Italy.
As Leonardo grew up, he looked around him. He had an amazing flair for looking, like no one else in history before him.
“So many things unknown!” he wrote one day. But he wanted—and was determined—to find answers for himself. His method was to start questioning everything. His method was scientific.
CHAPTER TWO
The Outsider
THE YEAR WAS 1452. The place was the hilltop town of Vinci, in Tuscany, Italy. Towns don’t get much smaller. Vinci was a sleepy village of about fifty small buildings.
Piero da Vinci, at twenty-six years old, was an up-and-coming notary. That was his family trade—recording and certifying legal documents. Success made the family respectable middle-class landowners. Piero was so ambitious that he already had eleven convents as steady clients. His work kept him mostly in Florence, only a day’s journey by horseback. The independent city-state of Florence was the opposite of Vinci—a teeming intellectual and artistic center in northern Italy.
Piero seems to have been a player, a man-about-town. One of his relationships was with Caterina, a local peasant woman. Marriage was never the goal; we don’t even know her last name. But she had a baby: Leonardo. Being born illegitimate would set up roadblocks for Leonardo all his life.
Children with unwed parents were common enough. The nobility and peasantry took them in stride, but for people