The late Roman Catholic Bishop of Kilfenora, a tiny diocese in County Clare in western Ireland, was responsible on 23 October 1988 for beatifying another bishop and elevating him to the position of Blessed, the first step along the time-consuming path to sainthood. It would be unusual, one might think, for a minor bishop to have such power, but not when you discover that amongst the Bishop of Kilfenora's other sees is that of Rome. This bishop was none other than John Paul II, the late Pope, who had been responsible during his pontificate for creating more saints and beatifying more persons than did his five predecessors combined. In total Pope John Paul II canonised 469 people and beatified over 1,300 more. The subject of the autumn 1988 ceremony held in Rome was Nikolas (or Niels or Nicolaus) Stensen, the Titular Bishop of Titiopolitan, whom geologists and historians of science are more likely to remember by the Latin version of his name, Steno. Geologists revere him as the ‘father of geology’, and his ideas gave rise to what has been labelled by some ‘the Stenonian Revolution’ in geology.

STENO AND THE TUSCAN LANDSCAPE: TURNING THE KEY TO THE CONCEPT OF STRATIFICATION

Nikolas Stensen (Figure 5.1) was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, on 20 January 1638 and died 48 years later in Germany on 25 November 1686. In that comparatively short time he achieved much in several fields: in medicine, natural history and in the church.