Born at Vico, Italy, sometime in October or November 1535, Giambattista Della Porta may well have been self‐educated. He was fascinated by the esoteric philosophies of the Renaissance, and his Magia Naturalis (1558) became famous for the bewildering mixture of scientific, occult, and classical material that it contained, and was translated into English in 1658.
Magia Naturalis, Book VII, discusses “The Wonders of the Lodestone” in 56 short chapters. Its particular value comes from the rich and abundant stock of classical and medieval references to magnetism contained within it, which in many ways provides us with the first history of this branch of science. Della Porta seems to have taken the innately occult “vertue” of the lodestone pretty well as read, though he was always keen to narrate his own experiments, which were usually performed with the intention of testing one legend or another.
Della Porta inquires on a number of occasions in his narrative into why lodestones attract...
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Bibliography
John Baptista Porta (Giambattista Della Porta), Natural Magick, John Baptista Porta, a Neopolitane: in Twenty Books (London, 1658). Translated from Magia Naturalis (1558) by an unspecified translator.
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Chapman, A. (2007). Della Porta, Giambattista (1535–1615). In: Gubbins, D., Herrero-Bervera, E. (eds) Encyclopedia of Geomagnetism and Paleomagnetism. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-4423-6_64
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