Cecco d'Ascoli [key], 1269?–1327, Italian astrologer, mathematician, poet, and physician, whose real name was Francesco degli Stabili, b. Ascoli. A teacher of astrology at several institutions in Italy, he was professor of mathematics and astrology at the Univ. of Bologna (1322–24). He was denounced as heretical largely because, in defending astrology against Dante's attack on it in the Divine Comedy, Cecco himself had accused the great poet of heresy; he was burned at the stake. His chief work was L'acerba, an allegorical didactic poem of encyclopedic range.
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