Witelo biography definition

(b. Poland, ca. 1230/1235; d. after ca. 1275)

optics, natural philosophy.

Life. Very little is known of Witelo’s life.

Witelo biography definition

His homeland and national origins must be inferred from scattered remarks in his Perspectiva. There he refers to “our homeland, namely Poland” and mentions the city of Vratizlavia (Wroclaw) and the nearby towns of Borek and Liegnitz,¹ thus revealing an intimate knowledge of the environs of Breslau (Wroclaw) in Silesia, which suggests that he probably was born and raised there.

In the preface to the Perspectiva, Witelo refers to himself as “the son of Thuringians and Poles,” from which it may be gathered that on the paternal side he was descended from the Germans of Thuringia who colonized Silesia in the twelfth and thriteenth centuries, while on the maternal side he was of Polish descent.

Witelo’s education and adult life likewise must be reconstructed from the most fragmentary evidence.

It may be surmised, from a reference to time spent