Francesco Patrizi

Francesco Patrizi of Cherso (1529 to 1597) was a Renaissance philosopher born on the island of Cres off the coast of Dalmatia and a leading critic of the dominant Aristotelianism of his time. He studied at Padua from 1547, turned from medicine to the humanities, gathered Greek manuscripts in Cyprus, and later taught Platonic philosophy at Ferrara from 1578 and at the Sapienza in Rome from 1592. In his New Universal Philosophy he offered a major alternative to earlier schools of thought, drew on pre-Platonic sources, and treated the history of philosophy as part of philosophical inquiry itself. The work was condemned after theological criticism, and he was still defending it when he died. He should not be confused with the earlier humanist Francesco Patrizi of Siena.