Francesco Maurolico and the restoration of Euclid in the Renaissance

The first printed edition of the Elements, based on the medieval recensio of Campanus of Novara, appeared in Venice in 1482; some years later, in 1505, Bartolomeo Zamberti published a new (and quite different) tranlslation based on a greek code. The contemporaneous availability of two Latin editions -- we could say two editiones principes -- of the Elements, both unsatisfactory for different reasons, gave rise to different reactions among the European mathematicians: some of them embraced the cause of Campanus, some others the cause of Zamberti, and others rejected both Campanus and Zamberti redactions. In the last case, the absence of an established, shared and trustworthy Euclidean text, let the mathematicians write ‘their’ Elements. In this paper I describe the main features of the transmission of the Elements in the early Renaissance Europe and I focus my attention on the figure of the mathematician Francesco Maurolico (1494-1575). Maurolico (see http://www.dm.unipi.it/pages/maurolic/intro.htm) was very unsatisfied with the available editions of Campanus and Zamberti and in a letter dated 1532 he announced an original publication programme about Euclid's Elements, founded on the following essential points: emaculare, or to correct the available editions by mathematical mistakes, reddere faciliorem, or to make easier, if possible, the Euclidean proofs; coaptare, or to choose every time the best logical architecture, the best proof, the best language between the two editions. In other words, he composed a new text coming from the joining of the two Renaissance traditions with many additions of his own. The Elements “ex traditione Francisci Maurolyci” – which are going to appear in the volume Elementa geometriae of the Edizione Nazionale dell’opera matematica di Francesco Maurolico – were only partially published in XVIth century, nevertheless it’s possible to detect some influence in Clavio’s fundamental recensio of the Elements (1574) and in Borelli’s Euclides restitutus (1658).