Agricola's Bermannus (1530) and his “minor” works describe his career as an expert in mining knowledge. If we examine the period after publication of his collected works in 1546, Bermannus and the other works provide additional keys for understanding the influence of Agricola on development of the mineralogical and geological sciences in Italy. These publications also offer a way of understanding the link between the culture of the humanists and that of the practitioners; this, after all, led to the birth of the empirical sciences. Agricola's fourfold classification of fossil objects (earth, concretionary juice, stone, metal) improved considerably the twofold classification by Aristotle and became an influential paradigm for the scientists of the late sixteenth century that was further refined and developed as to the genetic environment of different types by Aldrovandi and Imperato.

Abstract For over two millennia, clays with perceived medicinal or alexipharmic properties have been recovered in bulk, processed into small troches or pastilles and stamped with a device or ‘seal’ as an indicator of their origin; this practice lent them their commonly applied name – terra sigillata or sealed earth. The first records are confined to the Mediterranean and Aegean regions, but early in the post-medieval period other sources in central and northern Europe came to be exploited. The history of this process of expansion is traced, the principal products of the major sources are identified by their respective seals, and some assessment is made of the validity of claims made for the effectiveness of such clays.

Abstract The Paper Museum comprises c. 10 000 drawings and prints, most of which are in the Royal Library at Windsor Castle. When viewed in their seventeenth-century context, 25 of these drawings depict ‘geological’ material that also served as materia medica: earths, calculi, bezoars, toadstones, corals, calcifying alga, fungus stone, lodestone, eagle-stones, Bologna stone, amber, amulets, figured stones and gems. Some of these are listed in the official 1639 pharmacopoeia of Rome. Eleven of these drawings are reproduced here, nine of them for the first time. A single drawing may depict up to 25 specimens, many of which were in the collections of members of the Academy of the Lynxes (Lincei) or collectors known to them. The archives of Cassiano dal Pozzo (1588–1657) confirm the Lincei’s interest both in Paracelsian chemistry and in materia medica. Cassiano owned copies of two fifteenth- and sixteenth-century manuscripts listing more than 34 minerals with their therapeutic uses. The Lincei also published a sixteenth-century manuscript containing 26 ‘minerals suitable for medical use’: De materia medica Novae Hispaniae , by Francisco Hernández (1651), whose work in materia medica has been lauded as ‘the most original … in the entire Renaissance’.

Under the pressure of industrial demands following the discovery of South African diamonds, gemology became a science during the late nineteenth century by combining morphological mineralogy with mineral physics and chemistry. However, it underwent an empirical, pre- to semiscientific period during the Renaissance, when market novelties required development in gemological knowledge. Pliny's Naturalis Historia (1469) was the reference treatise on gemstones among scholars, but it was the Italian translation of this work by Landino in 1476 that made gem studies grow. Indeed, while scholarly mineralogy developed through Latin texts, practical arts related to minerals developed through light handbooks in the new European languages. In Italy, the most active trading center at that time, where luxury goods were brought to be set in gold and distributed to all of Europe, most gem traders possibly understood some Latin, but certainly their providers did not, nor their customers. This is why the first original Renaissance book on gems, Speculum lapidum , by Leonardi (1502) , did not enjoy popularity until it was translated into Italian by Dolce in 1565. Similarly, Barbosa's accounts of travel to gem-producing India (1516) became known only after Ramusio translated them in 1554. Among gemological contributions in Italian, the most farsighted ones are Mattioli's translation of Dioscorides' De materia medica (1544) and Cellini's Dell'oreficeria (1568) . Moreover, three manuscripts did not reach the stage of being printed: Vasolo's Le miracolose virtù delle pietre pretiose (1577) , Costanti's Questo è ‘l libro lapidario (1587) , and del Riccio's Istoria delle pietre (1597) . They survived, however, to help clarify gem interests and activities by the merchant class in the transitional time from the Renaissance to the Baroque. Then, Italy lost its top position in culture and trade, and a Fleming, A.B. de Boot, wrote the treatise that summed up the available knowledge on gems at that time (1609).

The Italian naturalist Ulisse Aldrovandi (1522–1605)—often reductively considered as a mere encyclopedist and avid collector of natural history curiosities—lived an adventurous youth and a long maturity rich of manuscripts, books, and outstanding achievements. He assembled the largest collections of animals, plants, minerals, and fossil remains of his time, which in 1547 became the basis of the first natural history museum open to the public. Shortly after that, he established the first public scientific library. He also proposed a complete single classification scheme for minerals and for living and fossil organisms, and he defined the modern meaning of the word “geology” in 1603. Aldrovandi tried to bridge the gap between simple collection and modern scientific taxonomy by theorizing a “new science” based on observation, collection, description, careful reproduction, and ordered classification of all natural objects. In an effort to gain an integrated knowledge of all processes occurring on Earth and to derive tangible benefits for humankind, he was a strenuous supporter of team effort, collaboration, and international networking. He anticipated and influenced Galileo Galilei's experimental method and Francis Bacon's utilitarianism, providing also the first attempt to establish the binomial nomenclature for both living and fossil species and introducing the concept of a standard reference or type for each species. His books and manuscripts are outstanding contributions to the classification of geological objects, and to the understanding of natural processes such as lithification and fossilization, thereby also influencing Steno's stratigraphic principles. The importance given to careful observation induced Aldrovandi to implement a uniformitarian approach in geology for both the classification of objects and the interpretation of processes. Aldrovandi influenced a school in natural history that reached its climax with the Istituto delle Scienze of Bologna in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries with scientists such as Cospi, Marsili, Scheuchzer, Vallisneri, Beccari, and Monti in geology, and Malpighi, Cassini, Guglielmini, Montanari, Algarotti in other fields.