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Leonardo Da Vinci, baptized and died Roman Catholic
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Original Message
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Do you think his gift for painting involved some infused
grace?
He was wise man, Leonardo received the "grace" of the Last Sacrament. Extreme Unction.
As were most of his fellow Italian citizens at the time, Leonardo da Vinci was a Catholic. Leonardo was an immensely talented artist, inventor and scientist. Based on his own writing and the firsthand accounts of those who knew him, Leonardo da Vinci was also a deeply moral individual who strived to live ethically and believed strongly in the importance of self-mastery.
From: Sherwin B. Nuland, Leonardo da Vinci (A Penguin Life), Lipper/Viking/Penguin Putnam Inc.: New York City, NY (2000), page 12:
One day... of 1452, a prosperous eighty-year-old landowner set down a few details of a recent notable event in his family: "A grandson of mine was born, son of Ser Piero my son, on April 15... His name was Lionardo." There follow the name of the priest who baptized the little boy and a lit of ten people present at the ceremony.
Nuland, pages 99-100: Vasari describes Leonardo's final months, no doubt from details given to him when he visited Melzi many years later, probably in 1566: "Finally, being old, he lay sick for many months. When he found himself near death he made every effort to acquaint himself with the doctrine of Catholic ritual." Notwithstanding his belief in God and in the existence of the soul, it was a ritual -- and indeed an entire formalized religion -- from which he had in general kept himself separated, "holding lightly by other men's beliefs, seeing philosophy above Christianity," as Pater put it. No wonder he needed to "acquaint himself with the doctrine," as the end of his life approached.
On Easter eve 1519, Leonardo made his will, leaving all his notebooks to Melzi and arranging for masses to be said at three different churches, as though in a final scattering of his heritage, an act symbolic of the dispersion of his talents. He died on May 2, having received the sacraments of the Church with so many of whose teachings on the history and character of the natural world he had disagreed.
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