Cesare Cremonini, Italian philosopher and academic (b. 1550)
Cesare Cremonini (Italian: [ˈtʃeːzare kremoˈniːni, ˈtʃɛː-]; 22 December 1550 – 19 July 1631), sometimes Cesare Cremonino, was an Italian professor of natural philosophy, working rationalism (against revelation) and Aristotelian materialism (against the dualist immortality of the soul) inside scholasticism. His Latinized name was Cæsar Cremoninus. or Cæsar Cremonius.Considered one of the greatest philosophers in his time, patronized by Alfonso II d'Este, Duke of Ferrara, corresponding with kings and princes who had his portrait, paid twice the salary of Galileo Galilei, he is now more remembered as an infamous side actor of the Galileo affair, being one of the two scholars who refused to look through Galileo's telescope. What is often not remembered is that "Cremonini’s reason for not trusting the telescope was that he had looked through one. The image confused and dizzied him. He inferred that only people with quirky eyesight and unrestrained imagination could see what Galileo had claimed to see."