Alessandro della Spina
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Alessandro della Spina (born 13th century-died 1313) was a Dominican friar, credited with the invention of spectacles.
Spina was a Dominican friar, in the second half of the 13th century, at the monastery of the Church of Santa Caterina, Pisa. The church's history is known by a manuscript, the Chronica antiqua, a Pisan chronicle of the 14th century. This chronicle portrays him as a modest, intelligent, and mechanically versed copyist and illuminator, "capable of remaking anything he saw".[1]
In 1305, Jordan of Pisa, a friar of the same monastery, was recorded to have spoken of Spina in one of his sermons; lay listeners wrote the sermons down. Jordan declared that glasses were less than 20 years old, and he had known their creator well, but without giving his name.
