Della Porta's Naples: The Academy of Secrets

Giambattista della Porta was born in Naples around 1535 into a family wealthy enough to support a lifelong obsession with natural philosophy. His house became the meeting place of what may have been the first scientific society in Europe.

The Academy of Secrets

Around 1560, della Porta founded the Accademia dei Segreti, the Academy of Secrets. The entry requirement was simple: bring a new discovery in natural science that no one else had published. Members experimented with optics, magnetism, agriculture, and cryptography. Della Porta himself had already published Magia Naturalis at age fifteen, a book that would go through dozens of editions across Europe.

The Inquisition

The Inquisition shut down the Academy around 1578. The charge was sorcery, though the real concern was likely the uncontrolled investigation of nature outside Church supervision. Della Porta was summoned to Rome, examined, and forbidden from meeting with his group. He complied with the letter of the ruling and spent the rest of his life publishing the Academy’s findings in expanded editions of Magia Naturalis, making them available to anyone who could read.

Naples

The city itself mattered. Naples in the sixteenth century was the largest city in Europe after Paris, a center of printing and trade where Arabic, Greek, and Latin texts circulated alongside folk knowledge from the surrounding countryside. Della Porta’s work sat at the intersection of all three, and his house on the Via Toledo was where the mixing happened.