Antonio Niccolini (abbot)

Antonio di Filippo di Lorenzo Niccolini (Florence, 1701–1769) was an Italian abbot, jurist and scholar, who was considered one of the leading figures of eighteenth-century Tuscany.

He was born into a noble Florentine family, the youngest child of Filippo, third Marquess of Ponsacco and Camugliano, and was a relative of the Pope. He studied at the University of Pisa and became a member of several Tuscan academies and President of the Botanical Society of Florence.

He was a member of a commission to regulate the carrying of arms which brought him into conflict with the Inquisition who claimed they had the responsibility. After further conflict with representatives of Habsburg-Lorraine, he was exiled from Tuscany in 1748, after which he travelled extensively.

In 1747, then in London, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society as "a person of great Merit, universal Learning, and particularly well versed in Philosophical knowledge".

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