academies

Italian humanists and scholars revived the ancient Greek academy beginning in the middle of the fifteenth century. The academy was an informal group that met for teaching, discussion, lectures, readings, and debate. Most importantly for Renaissance scholarship, these groups were a way for newly discovered manuscripts to circulate in a time when printed books were rare and expensive commodities. The original akademia was a school founded by the Greek philosopher Plato in a sacred precinct outside the walls of Athens. In 1462, under the patronage of Cosimo de' Medici, the ruler of Florence, a Platonic Academy began meeting in a Medici villa. Medici appointed as head of the group the scholar Marsilio Ficino, whom Medici held in high regard as the collector and translator of many significant ancient-Greek texts. The Platonic Academy had its imitators in Florence and other cities.

By the middle of the sixteenth century, the academy was a common feature of large cities and university towns throughout Italy and was spreading to the rest of Europe. In some cases, the academies posed an apparent threat to the established authorities, in particular the Catholic Church. The Accademia Secretorum Naturae (Academy of the Secrets of Nature), began meeting in Naples in 1560. Under the direction of the scientist Giambattista della Porta, the academy welcomed members who wrote about or taught the natural sciences. The group soon came under suspicion by the Catholic Church from 1560, however, for teaching ideas counter to official doctrine. The academy was formally condemned by the church in 1580 and quickly disbanded.

To establish a Renaissance academy marked a patron or scholar as a person of advanced ideas, a devotee of the new humanism and scientific inquiry that was inspired by Greek and Roman writers. But in many cases the purpose of the academy was as much social as educational. Many academies had informal names, such as the Confusi (the Confused), the Gelati (the Frozen) and the Infiammati (the Inflamed). Members adopted rules, symbols, secret signs, and garb that proclaimed their membership and marked them off from the ordinary run of city-dwellers.

By the end of the sixteenth century, there were several hundred academies in Italy. In cities that were growing into regional and national centers, academies persisted and grew, while in minor cities they declined and eventually disappeared. Some academies concentrated on a single area of interest, such as language (the Florentine Academy) or art (the Academy of Design, also in Florence). The Accademia dei Lincei (Academy of the Lynxes) was founded in Rome in 1603 by Federico Cesi, who named this group for the sharp vision and observational powers of the lynx. The most famous member of this group was Galileo, who found support among its members for scientific theories found heretical by the church. This academy was revived in the eighteenth century and is now the national scientific institute of Italy. The Renaissance academy also has survived in France with the Academie Francaise and in England with the Royal Society, both founded in the seventeenth century.

See Also: education; Ficino, Marsilio; humanism; Medici, Cosimo de'

Academies. An established gathering of Jewish scholars. The Talmudic terms are yeshivot (‘sitting’), also bet ha-midrash (Heb., ‘House of Study’), bet din gadol (Heb., ‘the great house of law’), and metivta rabba (Aram., ‘the great session’). After the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, several academies were founded, the most famous being that of Johanan b. Zakkai at Jabneh. Later academics were established in Babylonia at Sura and Pumbedita which survived until approximately the middle of the 11th cent. CE. The Academy on High (yeshivah shel maʾlah) is a rabbinic belief in an assembly in heaven of scholars and others who acquired merit on earth, by studying and keeping Torah. To be ‘summoned by the Academy on High’ is a euphemism for death. Academies may also refer to institutions in other religions, e.g. sojae (private academies) and shrine schools in Korea.