Prejudice and science: the attack of Pietro Andrea against Amatus Lusitanus

Abstract

Our aim in this article was to show how religious and racial prejudice, in partnership with an oversized academic arrogance, were able to undermine any sense of fairness even in fields pertaining to those sciences more apparently free from ideological or nationalistic motivations. Having just finished a translation of a Latin Apologia, written by the Italian botanist and physician Pietro Andrea Mattioli against his Portuguese contemporary and colleague Amatus Lusitanus, we approached this matter from a literary and cultural point of view, trying to demonstrate the absence of scientific integrity and moral ground of Mattioli’s attack, through which this man of science almost destroyed the professional career and possibly tried to put an end to the physical existence of his Hebrew‑Portuguese peer.