The greatest accomplishment of the century was in exploration and colonization. The ex pedition of Bartholomew Diaz around the Cape of Good Hope to India (1487) and Columbus' discovery of America initiated a great period. The Cabots touched the Ameri can continent at the north and Vespucci at the south just before the century opened. Magellan's vessels sailed around the world, though he lost his life on the way. Verrazano, an Italian with a French expedition, sailed along the coast of North America and entered the harbor of Now York (1524). By the mid century many of the islands of the Pacific had been discovered, including Australia; the Por tuguese laid the foundation of their great empire in India, and Pizarro and Cortes had founded the Peruvian and Mexican possessions of the Spanish Crown on the American con tinent. By the end of the century there was free European intercourse with the East and the West and the riches of both these wealthy portions of the world were pouring into Spain and Portugal, stimulating an intense national life which gave rise to a great literature in both countries. England was preying upon the commerce, particularly of Spain, enriching her people and preparing to take up colonization for herself at the beginning of the next cen tury.
The century witnessed the foundation of modern music. The greatest genius of it is Palestrina. He is to music what Dante is to literature and art, and whenever he is properly appreciated that, generation has a good musical taste. The beginnings of the century's music comes from Flanders. Archadelt, the master of Palestrina, wrote some church music which is still used. Claude Goudimel, another Fleming, influenced his time deeply and as the master of Orlando di Lasso, the first to co-ordinate words and music so as to harmonize and bring out the meaning of both, influenced all the after time. Other pupils of Goudimel were the brothers Animuccia who created the Oratorio, named in honor of the oratory of Saint Philip Neri., their great friend, at Rome. Josquin (Josse Despres) in France and Hans Sachs in Germany laid the foundation of modern pop ular song music and foreshadowed many sub sequent developments.
The foundations of the physical sciences were laid broad and deep in this period. The greatest scientific discovery is that of Coperni cus, who revolutionized man's thinking as to the universe more, than any other who ever lived. He did not make many observations nor were those he made particularly exact, but he reached a magnificent generalization, the Coper nican theory, which has come to be the accepted teaching as to the universe. His theory was not acceptable to his generation and practically all the mathematicians and astronomers objected to it. It was not generally accepted until the generation after Galileo in the following cen tury. Copernicus' studies had been made in Italy; it was there, according to tradition, that he first hinted of his theory, and when he pub lished his book it was dedicated with permis sion to Pope Paul III. Until Galileo's unfor
tunate insistence on teaching the theory as ab solute science, there was no hint of opposition. Copernicus' greatest scientific contemporary was Leonardo da Vinci, whose work in science belongs to this century (died 1519). Leonardo discovered capillarity and diffraction, made ob servations on resistance, on density, on the weight of air, on dust figures, on vibrating surer faces and on friction and its effects. Duval has claimed a place for him in the history of the biological sciences for his original obser vations in botany, zoology, paleontology and physiology. He developed practical engineering, studied the problems of flying and made a series of very practical inventions. He was a zealous dissector and made sketches of his work which, rediscovered in recent years, show clearly that his proposal to write a textbook of human anatomy was quite serious.
The biological sciences developed strikingly, beginning with Vesaliusoe, the °father of mod ern anatomy," who wrote a great textbook, mag nificently illustrated, and still one of the bibli ophilic treasures of medicine. His pupil, Colum bus, working as a papal physician at Rome, dis covered the circulation of the blood in the lungs, and one of his successors in the Papal University, Casa1pitio, described the circula tion of the blood in the body. In the mean time, Servetus, a Spaniard working in Paris, had written a description of the circulation in a theological work on the Trinity, for which, unfortunately, he was put to death by Calvin at Geneva.
Many other important discoveries were made in Italy at this time. The names of Eustachius, Fallopius, Varolius, Sylvius, are forever enshrined in the history of medicine because of structures named after them which they were the first to describe. After anatomy, botany developed the most and C.wsalpinus, the anatomist, is called by Linnaus "the first sys tematic botanist." Many of the universities had botanical gardens of their own and collections of plants for study were made. The great names in botany are Valerius Cordus, Conrad Gesner and Leonard Fuchsius. Before the end of the century, the calendar was corrected under Pope Gregory XIII to the form we now have and some extremely important de velopments in practical medicine and surgery had been made. Italy was the great Mecca for enthusiastic students of science and Coper nicus, Linacre, Vesalius and Caius in the early part of the century as Harvey later went down there to do special work. Padua was the moat famous university of the world and almost no ambitious young university man in another country felt that he could count himself fortu nate unless he had been there.