Philology, Observation, and Medicine in Daniel Furlanus' Commentary on Theophrastus' De ventis

Daniel Furlanus’ commentary (1605) on Theophrastus’ De ventis reflects the values and practices of late sixteenth-century Paduan and Cretan intellectuals. The commentary combined Aristotelian philosophy, philological analysis, concerns about medicine, and direct observations of Crete, mirroring the forms of antiquarianism and textual inquiry supported by Gian Vincenzo Pinelli and Cretan academicians. Furlanus attempted to reconcile De ventis to Aristotle’s Meteorologica, depicting it as a book of problems, which offered only probable solutions. In his view, whereas the Meteorologica provided general theories, De ventis, as well as the Aristotelian Problemata 26, attempted to give causal explanations for the properties of individual winds. His observations of winds on Crete were employed to confirm Theophrastean and Hippocratic theories about the characteristics of winds and their relation to specific locations. Moreover, observations taken from Crete supported Theophrastus’ ideas about climate change, as Furlanus used them to build a narrative of the decline of Greek lands caused by natural catastrophes, a decline only recently reversed by Crete’s Venetian rulers.