Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-sxzjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-24T00:37:58.661Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Humanist Lives of Classical Philosophers and the Idea of Renaissance Secularization: Virtue, Rhetoric, and the Orthodox Sources of Unbelief

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Ada Palmer
Ada Palmer*
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Humanists seeking to defend the classics in Christian-dominated Europe often reframed ancient philosophers as virtuous proto-Christians. This is particularly visible in the biographical paratexts written for printed editions of ancient philosophers such as Pythagoras, Epictetus, and Democritus, whose humanist editors’ Christianizing claims grew stronger over time. Pious humanists intended and expected the classics to strengthen and reaffirm Christian orthodoxy, but humanists’ own claims that pre-Christian sages, by the light of reason alone, had deduced the central truths of theology and surpassed Christians in the exercise of virtue inadvertently undermined the necessity of scripture and paved the way for later deism.

Type
Research Article
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 70 , Issue 3 , Fall 2017 , pp. 935 - 976
Copyright
Copyright © 2017 Renaissance Society of America

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Allen, Michael J. B. Synoptic Art: Marsilio Ficino on the History of Platonic Interpretation. Florence: Olschki, 1998.Google Scholar
Apuleius. Apulei Opera Orania Quae Extant Gev. Elmenhorstius Recensuit, Librumque Emendationum Et Indices … Adjecit. Ed. And trans. Gerhard Elmenhost and Johannes Rutgers. Frankfurt, 1621.Google Scholar
Aquinas, Thomas Summa Theologiae. Vols. 4–12 of Opera Omnia. Rome: Ex Typographia Polyglotta S. C. de Propaganda Fide, 1888–1906Google Scholar
Aquinas, Thomas. Super Boetium de trinitate. In vol. 50 of Opera Omnia, 75–171. Rome: Ex Typographia Polyglotta S. C. de Propaganda Fide, 1992.Google Scholar
Atheism from the Reformation to the Enlightenment. Ed. Michael C. W. Hunter and David Wootton. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992.Google Scholar
Baker, Patrick Italian Renaissance Humanism in the Mirror. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Banfi, Florio “Raffaele Maffei in Ungheria.” L’Europa Orientale 17 (1937): 462–88.Google Scholar
Baudoux, Bernaud “Philosophia, Ancilla Theologiae.” Antonianum 12 (1937): 293–326.Google Scholar
Baumer, Franklin L. Religion and the Rise of Scepticism. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1960.Google Scholar
Beech, Dave, and Roberts, John, eds. The Philistine Controversy. London: Verso, 2002.Google Scholar
Betts, C. J. Early Deism in France: From the So-Called “Déistes” of Lyon (1564) to Voltaire’s “Lettres Philosophiques” (1734). The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1984.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bradstock, Andrew Radical Religion in Cromwell’s England: A Concise History from the English Civil War to the End of the Commonwealth. London: I. B. Tauris, 2010.Google Scholar
Brown, Alison The Return of Lucretius to Renaissance Florence. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010.Google Scholar
Brown, Alison. “Lucretius and the Epicureans in the Social Context of Renaissance Florence.” I Tatti Studies 9 (2011): 11–62.Google Scholar
Buckley, George T. Atheism in the English Renaissance. New York: Russell and Russell, 1965.Google Scholar
Buckley, Michael J. At the Origins of Modern Atheism. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987.Google Scholar
Bullivant, Stephen “Defining ‘Atheism.’” In The Oxford Handbook of Atheism (2013), 11–20.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burleigh, J. H. S, ed. Augustine: Earlier Writings. Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1953.Google Scholar
Buys, Ruben “‘Without Thy Self, O Man, Thou Hast No Means to Look for, by Which Thou Maist Know God’: Pieter Balling, the Radical Enlightenment, and the Legacy of Dirck Volckertsz Coornhert.” Church History and Culture 93 (2013): 363–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buys, Ruben. Sparks of Reason: Vernacular Rationalism in the Low Countries, 1550–1670. Hilversum: Verloren, 2015.Google Scholar
Caferro, William Review of The Swerve: How the World Became Modern, by Stephen Greenblatt. Modern Philology 111.3 (2014): E306–08.Google Scholar
Celenza, Christopher “Pythagoras in the Renaissance: The Case of Marsilio Ficino.” Renaissance Quarterly 52.3 (1999): 667–711.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Celenza, Christopher. Piety and Pythagoras in Renaissance Florence: The “Symbolum Nesianum.” Leiden: Brill, 2001.Google Scholar
Clement of Alexandria. Stromateis, I–III. Trans. John Ferguson. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1991.Google Scholar
D’Amico, John F. “Papal History and Curial Reform in the Renaissance: Raffaele Maffei’s ‘Breuis Historia’ of Julius Ii and Leo X.” Archivum Historiae Pontificiae 18 (1980): 157–210.Google Scholar
Davidson, Nicholas “Unbelief and Atheism in Italy.” In Atheism from the Reformation (1992): 55–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Davidson, Nicholas. “Lucretius, Atheism and Irreligion in Renaissance and Early Modern Venice.” In Lucretius and the Early Modern, ed. David Norbrook, Stephen Harrison, and Philip Hardie, 123–34. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.Google Scholar
de, Besse Pierre. Heraclitus Christianvs, Hoc Est, Peccatoris Poenitentis Suspiria, Lachrymae. Ed. Matthias Martinez van Waucquier. Cologne, 1615.Google Scholar
de, Besse Pierre. Democritus Christianus, Id Est, Contemptus Vanitatum Mundi. Cologne, 1616.Google Scholar
de Bujanda, Jesús Martínez, ed. Index Des Livres Interdits. Sherbrooke, Québec: Centre d’études de la Renaissance, Editions de l’Université de Sherbrooke, 1984.Google Scholar
de, Coras Jean. Altercacion, En Forme De Dialogue, De L’empereur Adrian Et Di Philosophe Épictète. Toulouse, 1558.Google Scholar
Dionisotti, Carlo Chierici e laici nella letteratura italiana del primo Cinquecento. Padua: Antenore, 1960.Google Scholar
Dionisotti, Carlo. Geografia E Storia Della Letteratura Italiana. Torino: Einaudi, 1967.Google Scholar
Edelheit, Amos Ficino, Pico and Savonarola: The Evolution of Humanist Theology 1461/2–1498. Leiden: Brill, 2008.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Epictetus. Encheiridion, Idem Latine Per Angelum Politianum. Trans. Angelo Poliziano. Nuremberg, 1529.Google Scholar
Epictetus. Enchiridion, Hieronymo Verlenio Interprete, Priore Illo Longe Locupletius. Trans. Heironymus Verlenius. Antwerp, 1550.Google Scholar
Epictetus. The Manuell of Epictetus Translated out of Greeke into French and Now into English, Conferred with Two Latin Translations. Trans. James Sandford. London, 1567.Google Scholar
Epictetus. Epicteti Stoici Philosophi Enchiridion. Trans. Angelo Poliziano. Lyon, 1600.Google Scholar
Epictetus. Epictetus His Manuall. And Cebes His Table. Out of the Greeke Originall by J. Healey. Trans. John Healey. London, 1610.Google Scholar
Epictetus. Epicteti Philosophi Enchiridion. Et Cebetis Thebani Tabulae. Quibus Accessere, Senecae Liber Unus De Tranquillitate Animi, Ac Sententiae Aliquot Selectissimae Philosophorum. Cologne, 1642.Google Scholar
Epictetus, and Gilles Boileau. Les Caractères D’Epictete, Avec L’Explication du Tableau de Cebes de M. L’Abbé de Bellegarde. Trans. Jean-Baptiste Morvan l’abbé de Bellegarde. Trevoux, 1704.Google Scholar
Epictetus, and Simplicius. Arte di Corregger La Vita Humana. Trans. Matteo Franceschi. Venice, 1583.Google Scholar
Epictetus, Simplicius, and Flavius Arrianus. Enchiridion, Hoc Est Pugio, Sive Ars Humanae Vitae Correctrix: 1. Trans. Hieronymus Wolf. Basel, 1563.Google Scholar
Eusebius of Caesarea, and Jerome. Heironymi Chronicon. Ed. Rudolf Helm. Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1913–26.Google Scholar
Febvre, Lucien The Problem of Unbelief in the Sixteenth Century: The Religion of Rabelais. Trans. Beatrice Gottlieb. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982.Google Scholar
Flüeler, Christoph, Lanza, Lidia, Toste, Marco, and Austenfeld, Anne-Marie, eds. Peter of Auvergne: University Master of the 13th Century. Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015.Google Scholar
Frazier, Alison “The First Instructions on Writing about Saints: Aurelio Brandolini (c. 1454– 1497) and Raffaele Maffei (1455–1522).” Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome 48 (2003): 171–202.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frazier, Alison. Possible Lives: Authors and Saints in Renaissance Italy. New York: Columbia University Press, 2005.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Frazier, Alison. “Biography as a Genre of Moral Philosophy.” In Rethinking Virtue, Reforming Society: New Directions in Renaissance Ethics, ed. David Lines and Sabrina Ebbersmeyer, 215–40. Turnhout: Brepols, 2013.Google Scholar
Fubini, Riccardo Humanism and Secularization: From Petrarch to Valla. Durham: Duke University Press, 2003.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Garin, Eugenio Il Ritorno Dei Filosofi Antichi. Naples: Bibliopolis, 1994.Google Scholar
Greenblatt, Stephen The Swerve: How the World Became Modern. New York: W. W. Norton, 2011.Google Scholar
Güsgens, Joseph. Joannes Chrysostomus Magnenus, Ein Naturphilosoph Des 17. Jahrhunderts. Ed. Joseph Güsgens. Bonn: P. Hanstein, 1910.Google Scholar
Hankins, James Plato in the Italian Renaissance. 2 vols. Leiden: Brill, 1990.Google Scholar
Hankins, James. “Marsilio Ficino on Reminiscentia and the Transmigration of Souls.” Rinascimento, n.s., 45 (2005a): 3–17.Google Scholar
Hankins, James. “Plato’s Psychogony in the Later Renaissance: Changing Attitudes to the Christianization of Pagan Philosophy.” In Platons Timaeos Als Grundtext Der Kosmologie in Spätantike, Mittelalter Und Renaissance, ed. Thomas Leinkauf and Carlos Steel, 387–406. Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2005b.Google Scholar
Hankins, James. “Religion and the Modernity of Renaissance Humanism.” In Interpretations of Renaissance Humanism, ed. Angelo Mazzocco, 137–53. Leiden: Brill, 2006.Google Scholar
Hankins, James. “Socrates in the Italian Renaissance.” In A Companion to Socrates, ed. Sara Ahbel-Rappe and Rachana Kamtekar, 337–52. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2009.Google Scholar
Hankins, James. “Iamblichus, Ficino and Schleiermacher on the Sources of Religious Knowledge.” Erudition and the Republic of Letters 1 (2016): 1–12.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hankins, James. “Ficino’s Critique of Lucretius.” In The Rebirth of Platonic Theology in Renaissance Italy: Proceedings of a Conference in Honor of Michael J. B. Allen, Florence, 26–27 April 2007, ed. James Hankins and F. Meroi, 137–54. Florence: Istituto Nazionale Di Studi Sul Rinascimento and Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, 2017.Google Scholar
Hankins, James, and Palmer, Ada. The Recovery of Ancient Philosophy in the Renaissance: A Brief Guide. Florence: Olschki, 2008.Google Scholar
Heninger, S. K. Touches of Sweet Harmony: Pythagorean Cosmology and Renaissance Poetics. San Marino: Huntington Library, 1974.Google Scholar
Hierocles. In Aureos Versus Pithagorae Opusculum. Trans. Giovanni Aurispa. Florence, 1474.Google Scholar
Hill, Christopher The World Turned Upside Down: Radical Ideas during the English Revolution. New York: Penguin, 1991.Google Scholar
Hinch, Jim “Why Stephen Greenblatt Is Wrong—and Why It Matters.” Review of The Swerve: How the World Became Modern, by Stephen Greenblatt. Los Angeles Review of Books (1 December 2012): https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/why-stephen-greenblatt-is-wrong-and-why-it-matters.Google Scholar
Hobbes, Thomas Translations of Homer: The Iliad and the Odyssey. Ed. Eric Nelson. Vols. 24 and 25 of The Clarendon Edition of the Works of Thomas Hobbes. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2008.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hudson, Wayne, and Lucci, Diego, eds. Atheism and Deism Revalued: Heterodox Religious Identities in Britain, 1650–1800. Farnham: Ashgate, 2014.Google Scholar
Iamblichus. De Vita Pythagorae, & Protrepticae Orationes Ad Philosophiam, Lib. Ii. Trans. Johannes Arcerius Theodoretus. [Heidelberg], 1598.Google Scholar
Israel, Jonathan Radical Enlightenment: Philosophy and the Making of Modernity 1650–1750. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002.Google Scholar
Jacob, Margaret The Radical Enlightenment: Pantheists, Freemasons and Republicans. London: Allen and Unwin, 1981.Google Scholar
Joost-Gaugier, Christiane L. Pythagoras and Renaissance Europe: Finding Heaven. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009.Google Scholar
Kafker, Frank A. “The Recruitment of the Encyclopedists.” Eighteenth-Century Studies 6.4 (1973): 452–61.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kahn, Victoria Rhetoric, Prudence, and Skepticism in the Renaissance. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1985.Google Scholar
Ker, James The Deaths of Seneca. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kors, Alan Charles. Atheism in France, 1650–1729: The Orthodox Sources of Disbelief. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kors, Alan Charles. Epicureans and Atheists in France, 1650–1729. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016a.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kors, Alan Charles. Naturalism and Unbelief in France, 1650–1729. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016b.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kristeller, Paul Oskar. “The Contribution of Religious Orders to Renaissance Thought and Learning.” American Benedictine Review 21 (1970): 1–55.Google Scholar
Kristeller, Paul Oskar. “The Myth of Renaissance Atheism and the French Tradition of Free Thought.” In Studies in Renaissance Thought and Letters, Volume 3, 541–54. Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 1993.Google Scholar
Lange, Johann Peter. Democritus Ridens. Cologne, 1649.Google Scholar
Lemay, Joseph A. Leo. Deism, Masonry, and the Enlightenment: Essays Honoring Alfred Owen Aldridge. Newark, DE: University of Delaware Press, 1987.Google Scholar
Lima, Luiz Costa. The Dark Side of Reason: Fictionality and Power. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1992.Google Scholar
Lucian, . Works. Trans. A. M. Harmon. 8 vols. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1921.Google Scholar
Lucretius. De Rerum Natura. Paris, 1570.Google Scholar
Maffei, Raffaele Commentariorum Urbanorum Raphaelis Volaterrani. Rome, 1506.Google Scholar
Maffei, Raffaele. Commentariorum Urbanorum Raphaelis Volaterrani. Lyons, 1552.Google Scholar
Magnenus, Johann Chrysostom. Democritus Reviviscens, Sive, De Atomis. Addita Est Democriti Vita, Etc. Papia, 1646.Google Scholar
Magnenus, Johann Chrysostom. Democritus Reviviscens, Sive, Vita et Philosophia Democriti. Leiden, 1648.Google Scholar
Marcus, Hannah “Banned Books: Medicine, Readers, and Censors in Early Modern Italy, 1559–1664.” PhD diss., Stanford University, 2016.Google Scholar
Marenbon, John Pagans and Philosophers: The Problem of Paganism from Augustine to Leibniz. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015.Google Scholar
McGregor, J. F., and Barry Reay, eds. Radical Religion in the English Revolution. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984.Google Scholar
McKnight, Stephen A. Sacralizing the Secular: The Renaissance Origins of Modernity. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989.Google Scholar
Meinel, Christoph “‘Das Letzte Blatt Im Buch Der Natur’: Die Wirklichkeit Der Atome Und Die Antinomie Der Anschauung in Den Korpuskulartheorien Der Frühen Neuzeit.” Studia Leibnitiana 20.1 (1988a): 1–18.Google Scholar
Meinel, Christoph. “Early Seventeenth-Century Atomism: Theory, Epistemology, and the Insufficiency of Experiment.” Isis 79.1 (1988b): 68–103.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Monfasani, John Review of The Swerve: How the Renaissance Began, by Stephen Greenblatt. Reviews in History 1283 (2012): http://www.history.ac.uk/reviews/review/1283.Google Scholar
Mortimer, Sarah Reason and Religion in the English Revolution: The Challenge of Socinianism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Neander, Michael En Lector, Librum Damus Vere Aureum, Planeque Scholasticum. Basel, 1559.Google Scholar
O’Callaghan, Daniel. The Preservation of Jewish Religious Books in Sixteenth-Century Germany: Johannes Reuchlin’s “Augenspiegel.” Leiden: Brill, 2012.Google Scholar
O’Malley, John W., Izbicki, Thomas M., and Christianson, Gerald, eds. Humanity and Divinity in Renaissance and Reformation: Essays in Honor of Charles Trinkaus. Leiden: Brill, 1993.Google Scholar
The Oxford Handbook of Atheism. Ed. Stephen Bullivant and Michael Ruse. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.Google Scholar
Pade, Marianne, ed. “Vitae Pomponianae: Lives of Classical Writers in Fifteenth-Century Roman Humanism.” Renæssanceforum 9 (2015) 87–106. http://www.renaessanceforum.dk/rf_9_2015.htm.Google Scholar
Palmer, Ada Reading Lucretius in the Renaissance. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Palmer, Ada. “The Recovery of Stoicism in the Renaissance.” In The Routledge Handbook of the Stoic Tradition, ed. John Sellars, 117–32. New York: Routledge, 2016a.Google Scholar
Palmer, Ada. “The Active and Monastic Life in Humanist Biographies of Pythagoras.” In Forms and Transfers of Pythagorean Knowledge: Askesis—Religion—Science, ed. Almut-Barbara Renger and Alessandro Stavru, 211–226, 519–524. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2016b.Google Scholar
Passannante, Gerard The Lucretian Renaissance: Philology and the Afterlife of Tradition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2011.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Petrarch, Francesco Letters on Familiar Matters (Rerum Familiarium Libri). Trans. Aldo S. Bernardo. 3 vols. New York: Italica, 2005.Google Scholar
Reuchlin, Johannes On the Art of the Kabbalah (De Arte Cabalistica). Trans. Martin Goodman and Sarah Goodman. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1993.Google Scholar
Robichaud, Denis J.-J. “Renaissance and Reformation.” In The Oxford Handbook of Atheism (2013), 179–92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Screech, Michael A. Montaigne’s Annotated Copy of Lucretius: A Transcription and Study of the Manuscript, Notes and Pen-Marks. Geneva: Droz, 1998.Google Scholar
Seneca. Select Letters. Ed. and trans. Walter Coventry Summers. London: Macmillan, 1910.Google Scholar
Seneca, and Desiderius Erasmus. Opera Omnia, Cum Notis Erasmi. Ed. Desiderius Erasmus. Basel, 1515.Google Scholar
Sheppard, Kenneth Anti-Atheism in Early Modern England 1580–1720: “The Atheist Answered and His Error Confuted.” Leiden: Brill, 2015.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Simplicius. Simplicii Commentarius in Enchiridion Epicteti. Trans. Heironymus Wolf. Leiden, 1640.Google Scholar
Smith, Nigel “The Charge of Atheism and the Language of Radical Speculation, 1640–60.” In Atheism from the Reformation (1992), 131–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Socinus, Faustus Opera Omnia. Vols. 1–2 of Bibliotheca Fratrum Polonorum. Ed. Frans Kuyper, Daniel Bakkamude, and Andrzej Wiszowaty Sr. Amsterdam, 1656.Google Scholar
Solaro, Giuseppe Lucrezio: Biografie Umanistiche. Bari: Dedalo, 2000.Google Scholar
Soranzo, Matteo “Un’identità religiosa nel primo Cinquecento: Gli Hymni Heroici Tres di Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola.” Italian Studies 70.1 (2015): 53–57.Google Scholar
Trinkaus, Charles E. In Our Image and Likeness: Humanity and Divinity in Italian Humanist Thought. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970.Google Scholar
Uckelman, Sara L. “Logic and the Condemnations of 1277.” Journal of Philosophical Logic 39.2 (2010): 201–27.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wagar, W. Warren, ed. The Secular Mind: Transformations of Faith in Modern Europe: Essays Presented to Franklin L. Baumer. New York: Holmes and Meier, 1982.Google Scholar
Wallace, Dewey D. Shapers of English Calvinism, 1660–1714: Variety, Persistence, and Transformation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilbur, Earl M. A History of Unitarianism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1945.Google Scholar
Wippel, John F. “The Condemnations of 1270 and 1277 at Paris.” Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies 7 (1977): 169–201.Google Scholar
Woodhouse, Christopher Montague. George Gemistos Plethon: The Last of the Hellenes. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986.Google Scholar
Wootton, David “Unbelief in Early Modern Europe.” History Workshop 20 (1985): 82–100.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wootton, David. “Lucien Febvre and the Problem of Unbelief in the Early Modern Period.” Journal of Modern History 60.4 (1988): 695–730.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wootton, David. “New Histories of Atheism.” In Atheism from the Reformation (1992), 13–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zucchini, Giampaolo “Unpublished Letters Added to the Letters of Fausto Sozzini, 1561–1568.” In Socinianism and Its Role in the Culture of the Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries, ed. Lech Szczucki with Zbigniew Ogonowski and Janusz Tazbir, 17–24. Warsaw: Polish Academy of Sciences, 1983.Google Scholar