Invention of Eyeglasses: Medieval Italy's Gift to Reading

Eyeglasses were invented in northern Italy around 1286, probably in Pisa or Venice, by an unknown craftsman. The best evidence comes from a sermon given in Florence in 1306 by the Dominican friar Giordano da Pisa, who said the art had been discovered less than twenty years earlier. Simple convex lenses for reading spread quickly across Europe and became one of the most useful inventions of the Middle Ages.

Background: lenses before spectacles

People had long known that curved glass or crystal could magnify. The Arab scholar Ibn al-Haytham explained how light and vision worked in his Book of Optics, written in the early eleventh century and later translated into Latin. In the thirteenth century the English friar Roger Bacon described in his Opus Majus (1267) how a segment of a glass sphere laid on a page could make letters appear larger for people with weak eyes.

Monks and scholars used so-called reading stones: polished hemispheres of glass or rock crystal placed directly on a text. These helped, but they had to be moved line by line. The new idea of the 1280s was to grind two smaller lenses and hold them in front of the eyes.

The evidence for the invention

The key witness is Giordano da Pisa (also called Giordano da Rivalto), a Dominican preacher. In a sermon at the church of Santa Maria Novella in Florence on 23 February 1306, he told his listeners that it was not yet twenty years since the art of making eyeglasses had been found. He described it as one of the best and most necessary arts in the world, and said he had seen and spoken to the man who first made them.

A second witness is a chronicle of the Dominican convent of Santa Caterina in Pisa. It records that Brother Alessandro della Spina, who died in 1313, made eyeglasses himself after seeing a pair made by someone who would not share the secret.

Venetian records support an Italian origin. Regulations of the city’s guild of crystal workers from 1300 and 1301 refer to small glass discs for the eyes and to glass for reading. Venice, with the glass-making centre of Murano nearby, was well placed to supply clear glass for lenses.

How the first spectacles worked

The earliest spectacles had two convex lenses in round frames made of bone, wood, horn or metal. The two frames were fastened together by a rivet at the top, so the wearer could pinch them onto the nose or hold them up by hand. Historians call these rivet spectacles.

Convex lenses correct presbyopia, the long-sightedness that develops with age. They mainly helped older people read and do close work. In 1953 several pairs of medieval rivet spectacles were found beneath the choir stalls of the convent of Wienhausen in northern Germany, showing what the early frames were like.

The earliest known painting of spectacles is a fresco of 1352 by Tommaso da Modena in the chapter house of San Nicolò in Treviso. It shows Cardinal Hugh of Saint-Cher, who had died in 1263, reading with a pair of rivet spectacles. Within a century, apostles and scholars wearing glasses had become a common sight in European art.

Myths and facts

Myth: Salvino degli Armati of Florence invented eyeglasses. A supposed tomb inscription calling him the inventor was long accepted, but historians have shown that it was a later fabrication of the seventeenth century.

Myth: Roger Bacon invented spectacles. Bacon described magnifying lenses, but there is no evidence that he made or wore eyeglasses.

Fact: the inventor is unknown. Every early source points to Italy in the 1280s, but none names the person who first made them.

How spectacles spread

Spectacles soon became a trade. By the fifteenth century, workshops in Florence and Venice produced large numbers of them, and they were exported across Europe. Concave lenses to correct short-sightedness appeared in the fifteenth century, and Florentine makers began to grade lenses by the age of the wearer.

The rise of printing after the Gutenberg press increased demand still further, as more people read more books. Much later, side arms resting on the ears became common in the eighteenth century, and Benjamin Franklin described his bifocals in the 1780s.

Timeline

• c. 1011–1021: Ibn al-Haytham writes his Book of Optics.
• 1267: Roger Bacon describes magnifying lenses in his Opus Majus.
• c. 1286: Eyeglasses are invented in northern Italy.
• 1300–1301: Venetian guild rules mention glass lenses for the eyes and for reading.
• 23 February 1306: Giordano da Pisa mentions the new invention in a Florentine sermon.
• 1313: Death of Alessandro della Spina, credited with making spectacles in Pisa.
• 1352: Tommaso da Modena paints spectacles in a fresco at Treviso.

Why it matters

Before spectacles, many scribes, scholars and craftsmen lost the ability to do close work in middle age. Eyeglasses added years to their working lives, supported the growth of reading and learning, and began the long history of optical instruments that led to telescopes and microscopes.