Career
He believed in the complex Pythagorean and Brunian cosmologies, including the view that the planets and stars were like the earth, covered in plants and animals: "Stigliola said to medical .that it seemed irrational to him that bodies so much larger than the earth and the space between the centre of the earth to the moon should be composed simply of idle fire, and not instead of all manner of elements and plants and animals and men, just as our countryman Philolaus held." Indeed, Stigliola and Bruno were born just two years apart in the same region of southern Italy, Nola, and in the same town of Monte Cicala. Early studies and life in Naples Stigliola studied medicine at the University of Salerno, gaining his degree in 1571, after which he lived in Naples. Instead, he turned his attentions to architecture and teaching.
He became, in the 1580s, topographer to the city of Naples, and developed new plans for the city"s port and city wall, neither of which were implemented.
Instead, he turned to teaching, perhaps medicine as well as architecture. He was said to have had, at one time, 400 students.
He also turned his hand to the very risky business of printing, establishing a press on the Porta Reale from 1593 to 1606. Eighty-two of these printed works are known today and the press was "one of the greatest of his day".
He was tried for heresy in Naples in 1595.
The following are works by Stigliola: Theriace et Mithridatia Libellus (1577) De gli elementi mechanici (1597) Telescopio, over ispecillo celeste (1627 posth) Encyclopedia pythagorea (1616).
