tellects of many lands, and his passion for inquiry
into natural knowledge, had freed him from passive obedience to
dogma. He doubtless, as did many others of his time, looked upon
himself as one of the enlightened, as one raised above the barren
theological questions which were moving the minds of lesser men

Yet it was out of this sceptical state of mind, that life in Italy and
intimate contact with ecclesiastics and religious, so often said to be
likely not to have any such effect, brought this acute scientific mind
into the Catholic Church. Nor did he become merely a formal adherent,
but an ardent believer, and then an enthusiastic proselytizer. One
American writer of a history of medicine, in his utter failure to
comprehend or sympathize with the change that came over Stensen,
speaks of him as having become at the end of his life a mere
"peripatetic converter of heretics." This phase of Stensen's life has,
however, as ample significance as any that preceded it.

Steno's expectations of the professorship of anatomy at Copenhagen
were disappointed, but the appointment went to Jacobson, whose work
indeed is scarcely less distinguished than that of {150} his
unsuccessful rival. The next few years Stensen passed in Paris, where
he was assiduous in making dissections, and where he attracted much
attention; and then, somewhat later, in Italy; in 1665 and 1666 he was
in Rome. Thence he went to Florence, in order to perfect himself in
Italian. The next few years he spent in this city, having received the
appointment of body physician to the Grand Duke, as well as an
appointment of visiting physician, as we would call it now, to the
Hospital of Santa Maria Nuova.

It was while at Florence that the whole current of Stensen's life was
changed by his conversion to Catholicity. His position as physician to
the Hospital of Santa Maria Nuova brought him frequently into the
apothecary shop attached to the hospital. As a result he came to know
very well the religious in charge of the department, Sister Maria
Flavia, the daughter of a well-known Tuscan family. At this time she
had been for some thirty-five years a nun. Before long she learned
that the distinguished young physician, at this time scarcely thirty
years of age, who was such a pleasant gentleman in all his ways, was a
Lutheran. She began, as she told afterwards, first by prayer, and then
by friendly suggestions, to attempt to win him to the Catholic Church.
Ste