Pietro Andrea Mattioli

Pietro Andrea Gregorio Mattioli (Italian: [ˈpjɛːtro anˈdrɛːa ɡreˈɡɔːrjo matˈtjɔːli]; 12 March 1501– c. 1578) was a doctor and naturalist born in Siena.

His most important work was a commentary on the medicinal plants of Pedanius Dioscorides first published in 1544 which was translated into several languages and went into thirteen editions in his lifetime.

His early studies are unknown but he may have studied in Venice, Siena, and Padua before he received his MD at the University of Padua in 1523, and subsequently practiced the profession in Siena, Rome, Trento and Gorizia, becoming personal physician of Ferdinand II, Archduke of Further Austria in Prague and Ambras Castle, and of Maximilian II, Holy Roman Emperor in Vienna.

[7] Mattioli argued against Fracastoro's theory of fossils, as well as against his own conclusions, as described as follows in Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology: The system of scholastic disputations encouraged in the Universities of the middle ages had unfortunately trained men to habits of indefinite argumentation, and they often preferred absurd and extravagant propositions, because greater skill was required to maintain them; the end and object of such intellectual combats being victory and not truth.

...Andrea Mattioli, for instance, an eminent botanist, the illustrator of Dioscorides, embraced the notion of Agricola, a German miner, that a certain 'materia pinguis' or 'fatty matter,' set into fermentation by heat, gave birth to fossil organic shapes.

Yet Mattioli had come to the conclusion, from his own observations, that porous bodies, such as bones and shells, might be converted into stone, as being permeable to what he termed the 'lapidifying juice.

The list of some of the most important men of the day that were admonished, rebuked, or pursued by the Inquisition contains Wieland, Anguillara, Gesner, Lusitanus and others.