Martinus Smiglecius
Martinus Smiglecius (another Latin variant: "Martinus Leopolitanus", also , ; 11 November 1564 – 26 or 28 July 1618) was a Polish Jesuit philosopher and logician, known for his erudite scholastic "Logica". Life. He was born on 11 November 1564 in Lwów (Leopolis) in the Kingdom of Poland (now Lviv, Ukraine). He used the surname Lwowczyk, or Leopolitanus, and later adopted the name Smiglecius (after the town of Smigle, from which his family originated). He attended the Jesuit school in Pułtusk and until 1586 studied in Rome, where he joined the Jesuit order in 1581. His education was financed by the  prominent Polish statesman Jan Zamojski. He obtained a master's degree in philosophy and a doctor's degree in theology at the Academy of Vilnius, and taught philosophy and theology there. In 1599 he took part in a public disputation with the Protestants Marcin Janicki and Daniel Mikołajewski. It was recorded by Martin Gratian Gertich. He spent the last 20 years of his life teaching in the colleges of Pułtusk, Poznań, Kraków and Kalisz. He died in Kalisz on 26 or 28 July 1618. Publications. His major works include: The "Logica". Marcin Śmiglecki's "Logica", first published in 1618 in  Ingolstadt, was reprinted several times, in particular at Oxford in 1634, 1638, and 1658, being used there as a textbook. It harked back to Gregory of Rimini, discussing mental propositions. As a textbook author his reputation survived in the satirical poem "The Logicians Refuted", attributed to both Jonathan Swift and Oliver Goldsmith. Samuel Johnson, writing in 1751 as a fictitious correspondent in "The Rambler", claimed that as a student he "slept every night with Smiglecius on my pillow." Views. In a live controversy of the time, Smiglecius sided with Benedictus Pereyra against Giuseppe Biancani. The issue was the status of  mathematical proof in physics, where Pereyra denied mathematics an essential status.