Background
Dominicus De Clavasio was born near Turin, Italy at the beginning of the 14th century.
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Dominicus De Clavasio
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also known as
Dominicus de Clavagio, Dominicus Parisiensis, Dominic de Chivasso
astrologist mathematician physician scientist
Education
De Clavasio studied arts at Paris during 1349-1350, and became Master of Arts by 1350. He then received the Doctor of Medicine degree by 1356.
Career
De Clavasio was active in Paris from about the mid-1340s. He was head of the Collège de Constantinople at Paris in 1349. He also served as an astrologer at the court of John II.
De Clavasio is the author of a Practica geometriae written in 1346; a questio on the Sphere of Sacrobosco; a Questiones super perspectivam; a set of quesliones on the first two books of the De cáelo of Aristotle, written before 1357; and possibly a commentary on Aristotle’s Meteorology. He mentions in the Practica his intention to write a Tractatus de umbris et radiis.
The Practica was a popular work during the Middle Ages and has survived in numerous manuscript versions. It served, for example, as a model for a Geometria culmensis, written in both Latin and German near the end of the fourteenth century. The Practica is divided into an introduction and three books. The introduction contains arithmetical rules and the description of an instrument, the quadratum geometricum of Gerbert. Book I deals with problems of measurement, book II contains geometrical constructions of two-dimensional figures, and book III is concerned with three-dimensional figures. In the course of the Practica, De Clavasio mentions Ptolemy and the thirteenth-century mathematician and astronomer Campanus of Novara.
The Questiones super perspectivam reveal De Clavasio's familiarity with the standard authors of the medieval optical tradition, such as Witelo, Roger Bacon, Peckham, and Ibn al-Haytham (Alhazen). His work is not based, however, on the influential Perspectiva communis of Peckham but is a commentary on the De aspectibus of Ibn al-Haytham and the latter’s Latin successor, Witelo.
He may have died between 1357 and 1362.
Achievements
Views
The questiones on the De cáelo have not been edited, although a few that are concerned with physical problems have been examined. They reveal that De Clavasio was part of the tradition established at Paris during the fourteenth century by Jean Buridan, Nicole Oresme, and Albert of Saxony. Like these Parisian contemporaries, he adopted the impetus theory as an explanation of projectile motion as well as of acceleration in free fall. Also like his colleagues at Paris, De Clavasio considered impetus as a quality.
As is true of the Questiones de caelo of Albert of Saxony, De Clavasio’s discussions of impetus reveal the influence of both Oresme and Buridan. If he was directly familiar with Oresme’s conceptions of impetus, he most likely drew them from the latter’s early Latin questiones on the De Caelo. According to De Clavasio, a body in violent motion possessed both impetus and an “actual force” (virtus actualis), although the relationship between these factors is unclear. Also, as Nicole Oresme may have done, he may have connected impetus with acceleration rather than velocity.
On the theory of impetus De Clavasio wrote in his 1357 De Caelo: "When something moves a stone by violence, in addition to imposing on it an actual force, it impresses in it a certain impetus. In the same way gravity not only gives motion itself to a moving body, but also gives it a motive power and an impetus."
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References
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Born
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Nationality
Italian -
Ethnicity
Career
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1349