1 I quote the text of Spenser's Minor Poems, ed. Ernest de Sélincourt (Oxford, 1910, 1960). Several of the authors and ideas discussed in this essay are considered at greater length in my Ph.D. dissertation, ‘Studies in Spenser and the Platonic Tradition’, Princeton University, 1967.

2 ‘Spenser's Fowre Hymnes’, JEGP, XIII (1914), 425.

3 Neoplatonism in the Poetry of Spenser, Travaux d'Humanisme et Renaissance, xxxv (Genève, 1960), pp. 114-118, 164-169, 178-192; cf. the Variorum Minor Poems, I, 564; Lewis, C. S., English Literature in the Sixteenth Century Excluding Drama (Oxford, 1954), pp. 376 Google Scholar ff.; Alfred W. Satterthwaite, Spenser, Ronsard, and Du Bellay. A Renaissance Comparison (Princeton, 1960), p. 165.

4 Lewis, ‘Neoplatonism in the Poetry of Spenser’, Études Anglaises, XIV (1961), 111; Moreau, ‘Introduction à la lecture des Hymnes de Spenser’, Revue de théologie et dephilosophic, troisième série, XIV (1964), 81-83; Hughes, ‘Milton and the Symbol of Light’, SEL, IV (1964), 14-18; cf. William B. Hunter, Jr., ‘Milton's Urania’, SEL, TV (1964), 36-39.

5 Books I and II of The Faerie Queene, The Mutability Cantos and Selections from the Minor Poetry (New York, 1965), p. 520.

6 ‘Spenser's Sapience’, SP, XIV (1917), 176.

7 ‘Spenser and Some Pictorial Conventions, with Particular Reference to Illuminated Manuscripts’, SP, XXXVII (1940), 155, 171 ff.; Christian Mysticism in the Elizabethan Age, with its Background in Mystical Methodology (Baltimore, 1940), pp. 222-227.

8 Spenser: Fowre Hymnes, Epithalamion. A Study of Edmund Spenser's Doctrine of Love (Oxford, 1967), pp. 52-58, 170 ff. (quotations from pp. 55 and 56). Miss Welsford finds the medieval Christian tradition represented in Spenser's own milieu by Richard Hooker, in his personification of Eternal Law.

9 Literature and Occult Tradition. Studies in Philosophical Poetry, trans. Dorothy Bolton (London, 1930), pp. 222-238.

10 Fletcher, ‘A Study in Renaissance Mysticism: Spenser's “Fowre Hymnes” ‘, PMLA, xxvi (1911), 460 ff.; Renwick's, W. L. edition of Daphnaida and Other Poems (London, 1929), pp. 212 Google Scholar ff., 224; Lily Bess Campbell, ‘The Christian Muse’, HLB, vni (1935), 6o- 63. See also Lilian Winstanley's argument for the direct influence of Plato, in The Fowre Hymnes (Cambridge, 1907), pp. xl-xli, 74-75.

11 ‘The Theme of Spenser's Fowre Hymnes’, SP, XXVIII (1931), 26 ff., 43-47; ‘Spenser's Fowre Hymnes: Addenda’, SP, XXXII (1935), 136-137, 141-142.

12 See PMLA, XXVI (1911), 461; SP, XXXII (1935), 141.

13 Discovrs De L'Honneste Amour Svr Le Banquet De Platon: … trans. Guy Le Fevre de La Boderie (Paris: lean Mace, 1578), pp. 309 ff. This translation of Ficino's Italian version of his commentary will be quoted throughout; Ellrodt, Neoplatonism in the Poetry of Spenser, pp. 114-120, has shown that Spenser probably used it. See also Marsilio Ficino's Commentary on Plato's Symposium, ed. and trans. Sears Reynolds Jayne, University of Missouri Studies, XIX, 1 (Columbia, 1944), p. 214 (hereafter, ‘Jayne’).

14 Discovrs, p. 313; Jayne, p. 214. Cf. Discovrs, pp. 19 ff., 265 ff.; Jayne, pp. 129, 202.

15 In his dedicatory epistle, Ficino emphasizes the redemptive value of the ‘sacré mystere' embodied in Diotima's speech; ‘L'amour souuerain de la Prouidence diuine’ is to be thanked for her inspiration. He praises Plato as the ‘Philosophe, sur tous autres excellent en pieté & religion’ (Discovrs, pp. 2-3.).

16 Of the several tractates in which Plotinus defines Wisdom as a name for or an aspect of the Nous, the most important is ‘On the Intellectual Beauty’ (Enn. v.viii). See especially chs. 4-9 where, in Ficino's translation, we find sapientia equated with mens, vera essentia, principium & finis, pukhritudo prima, and exemplar. Venus is not mentioned. I think that the ideas in this tractate lie behind much that will be discussed in this study, not only in Ficino's thought but in Pico's, Augustine's, and Leone Ebreo's. William Nelson makes a good case for Spenser's indebtedness to Plotinus: see The Poetry of Edmund Spenser: A Study (New York and London, 1963), pp. 110-115,216-218, 310-312, and notes. I think it likely that Spenser came upon Plotinus’ ideas first, if not exclusively, in such Renaissance authors as I will discuss.

17 See Paul Oskar Kristeller's discussion of Ficino's doctrine of God, The Philosophy of Marsilio Ficino, trans. Virginia Conant (New York, 1943), pp. 164-169; also, Wind, Edgar, Pagan Mysteries in the Renaissance (New Haven, 1958), pp. 43–44 Google Scholar.

18 Commento … sopra una Canzona de Amore, I.iv; f. 4 in Opere di Hierony. Benivieni… (Firenze: per li heredi di Philippo di Giunta, 1519).

19 Commento i.iv, f. 3^{r - v} : ‘Seguendo adunque noi la opinione di Plotino non solo da migliori Platonici, ma anchora da Aristotile et da tucti li Arabi & maxime da Auicenna seguitata. Dico che Dio ab eterno produxe una creatura di natura incorporea & intellectuale tanto perfecta quanto e possibile che sia una cosa creata.’ Commento i.v, f. 4^V: ‘Dicono adunque e Platonici che benche Dio producessi una sola creatura, nondimeno produxe ogni cosa, perche in quella produxe le idee & le forme di tucti le cose.’

20 Commento i.iv, fs. 3^v-4: ‘Questa prima mente creata, da Platone & cosi dalli antichi philosophi Mercurio trimegista & Zoroastre, è chiamato hora figluolo de Dio, hora mente, hora Sapientia, hora ragione diuina. il che anchora interpretoro alchuni, uerbo.’

21 Commento, i.iv, f. 4: ‘Et habbi ciascuno diligente aduertentia di non credere chequesto sia quello die da nostri theologi è dicto figluolo di Dio. imperoche noi intendiamo per il figluolo di Dio una medesima essentia col padre a lui in ogni cosa equale creatore fmalmente & non creatura.’ Cf. J. W. Bennett's comments, SP, XXVIH (1931), 45.

22 SP, xxvin (1931), 43-44.

23 Commento, i.vii, f. 6; i.viii, f. 7^r-v; II.xvii, f. 26^{r – v}.

24 Commento n.viii, f. 19: ‘la belleza intelligibile che e in epse Idee, … chiamasi Venere celeste.’ Venus is also ‘lordine di quelle idee, dalquale depende lordine mondano chiamato Fato’ (II.xxi, f. ^{r – v}), and ‘lordine della prouidentia dalla quale questo mondo inferiore e recto et gouernato’ (in.vi, f. 45^v).

25 Commento II.x, f. 20; ‘ideale belleza… e di necessita nella prima mente, laquale senza mezo Dio della belleza delle Idee ueste & adorna.’

26 Commento n.xvi-xvii, fs. 25-27.

27 On the soul's ‘participation’ in the Angelic Mind via Venus, see Commento m.vi, fs. 45^v-45^r.

28 Commento m.x, f. 60: ‘lanima auida & sitibunda cerca el proprio & particulare intellecto alia uniuersale et prima mente coniungere, prima infra tucte le creature & uniuersale albergo della ideale belleza.’ Cf. J. W. Bennett's quotation and discussion, SP, XXVIII (1931), 26-27.

29 To the passages already adduced, add the identification of Pallas as ‘la intellectuale sapientia’ (n.vii, f. i8v) and ‘quella Ideale belleza dallaquale procede ogni sapientia syncera' (n.xxv, f. 35).

30 On Wisdom as an ideal and a discipline in the Middle Ages, see Marie-Thérèse d'Alverny, ‘La Sagesse et ses sept filles. Recherches sur les allégories de la philosophic et des arts libéraux du IXe au Xlle siècle’, Mélanges dédiés à la mémoire de Félix Grat (Paris, 1946), 1, 245-278, and Eugene F. Rice, Jr., ‘Nicholas of Cusa's Idea of Wisdom’, Traditio, xin (1957), 345-368. For the Renaissance, see Rice, The Renaissance Idea of Wisdom (Cambridge, Mass., 1958), and Romúaldez, Antonio V., ‘Towards a History of the Renaissance Idea of Wisdom’, Studies in the Renaissance, xi (1964), 133–150 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31 On Christian Doctrine, tr. D. W. Robertson, Jr. (New York, 1958), II.vii.n, p. 40.

32 Tuve, Rosemond, Allegorical Imagery. Some Medieval Books and Their Posterity (Princeton, 1966), pp. 85–89 Google Scholar, 101 ff., 160 ff. Cf. Ficino's definition of Wisdom as the Truth which ‘reveals divine things’.

33 On this feminine figure and her relation to Christ in allegory and iconography, see Tuve and Collins as cited above, n. 7, the study by d'Alverny cited in n. 30, and the same author's ‘Le Symbolisme de la sagesse et le Christ de saint Dunstan’, Bodl. Lib. Rec, v (1956), 232-244, and ‘Quelques aspects du symbolisme de la “sapientia” chez les humanistes’, Archivio di Filosofia. Umanesimo e Esoterismo (Padova, i960), pp. 321-333.

34 On this point, see particularly d'Alverny, Bodl. Lib. Rec, v (1956), 239-241.

35 Confessions XII.ii-ix.

36 Confessions XII.xv: ‘not certainly that Wisdom manifestly co-eternal and equal unto Thee, Our God, His Father, and by Whom all things were created, and in Whom, as the Beginning, Thou createdst heaven and earth’ ﹛Basic Writings of Saint Augustine, ed. Whitney J. Oates [New York, 1948], 1, 212).

37 Confessions XII.XV, p. 213.

38 See De Genesi ad litteram I.xvii.32, II.viii.16 (whence the quotation), and III.XX.31; discussed by J. Pepin, ‘Recherches sur le sens et les origines de l’expression Caelum caeli dans le Livre XII des Confessions de Augustin, S. Bulletin Du Cange, XXIII 1953, 209–217 Google Scholar

39 Though Augustine elsewhere holds that Ideas exist only in the Word of God, Pepin finds that in De Genesi ad litteram the Olumination of the Caelum caeli implies communication of the Ideas from begotten to created Wisdom ﹛Bulletin Du Cange, XXIII, 269-272).

40 He compares Augustine's doctrine to ideas in Plotinus, Proclus, Philo, and Origen (Bulletin Du Cange, xXIII, 244-268).

41 See Etienne Gilson, The Christian Philosophy of Saint Augustine, tr. L. E. M. Lynch (New York, i960), pp. 77-96.

42 Knowles, David surveys this development in The Evolution of Medieval Thought (London, 1962), pp. 206–218 Google Scholar.

43 Plotinus’ opinion, he reports, was followed ‘da tucti li Arabi & maxime da Auicenna’ (Commento i.iv, £3).

44 Medieval Latin and the Rise of European Love-Lyric (Oxford, 1965), 1, 69-80, 86-97.

45 See Louis Bouyer, The Seat of Wisdom. An Essay on the Place of the Virgin Mary in Christian Theology, trans. Fr. A. V. Littledale (New York, 1962), especially chapters 1-3 and 11. (Long ago, Lilian Winstanley suggested that Sapience was modeled upon medieval pictures of the Virgin Enthroned: he. cit., n. 10 above.) 46 Quoted from STC 2117, The Bible And Holy Scriptvres Conteined In The Old And Neuve Testament… . (London: Christopher Barker, 1576).

47 A Godly and learned Exposition vppon the Prouerbes of Solomon: .. . trans, into English, by Mfarcelline]. Ofutred]. (London: Thomas Dawson for George Bishop, 1580), f. 112.

48 Exposition, f. n o , on Prov. viii.22; cf. f. 44^v.

49 Manley's, Frank introduction to his edition of Donne's Anniversaries (Baltimore, 1963), pp. 18–40 Google Scholar, presents evidence that supports my argument; in a few places we refer to the same texts.

50 M. St. Clare Byrne and Gladys Scott Thomson, ‘ “My Lord's Books”: The Library of Francis, Second Earl of Bedford, in 1584’, RES, VII (1931), 398, no. 24.

51 Quotations in this paragraph are from The Treatise ofHeauenly Philosophie: … (London: for William Norton, 1578), p. 61. Palfreyman paraphrases Ecclesiasticus i.8-10, Wisdom vii.25-27, Wisdom vii.11-12 and 28, and Wisdom viii.2.

52 Cf. ‘A prayer for wisedome vnto almightie God’ (p. 66), in which God is ‘the onely founteine of all wisedome’, and is asked ‘to inspire vs henceforth with thine heauenly and diuine Spirit of wisedome’.

53 Neoplatonism in the Poetry of Spenser, p. 168; cf. p. 165.

54 Neoplatonism in the Poetry of Spenser, p. 164.

55 To the emphasis upon Christ's ‘glorie’ here, compare Mutabilitie vii.7, in which Nature is compared to the ‘glorious Lord in strange disguise Transfigur'd’ before his disciples.

56 The Arte of Nauigation, Conteining a compendious description of the Sphere, … trans. Richard Eden (4th edition, London: Iohan Iugge Wydowe, 1584), f. 7^V.

57 Summa Theol. 1, q. xli, art. 3 ad 4; Basic Writings of Saint Thomas Aquinas, ed. Anton C. Pegis (New York, 1945), 1, 396.

58 I suspect that these lines were inserted between 11. 154-158 and 180-182, which constitute a coherent stanza on the righteousness of God, lacking only the proper rhyme in 1. 180. Spenser apparently added 11. 159-179 to prepare for the vision of Sapience.

59 Commento m.x, f. 60: ‘ad quella peruenendo lanima grado in ordine sexto termina el suo camino, nelie licito nel septimo quasi sabbato del celeste amore, muouersi piu oltre, ma iui debbe come in suo fine allato al primo padre fonte dogni belleza felicemente riposarsi.’ 60 To Spenser's opinion as I have construed it, compare that of Thomas Morton, A Treatise of the Nature of God (London: Tho. Creede for Robert Dexter, 1599), pp. 38-67.

60 Morton concludes, ‘And thus by gathering the nature of God out of his workes and word, by finding out a patterne of it in the Angelicall nature, and lastly, by adding vnto this angelicall nature that wherein it commeth short of God, we haue in some sort indeuored to do that, which it is impossible to performe: for in this case, the least glimse of the truth is to be esteemed knowledge’ (p. 67).

61 Rather, pseudo-Anacreon; see Ode 57 of the Anacreontea.

62 Neoplatonism in the Poetry of Spenser, p. 166.

63 Confessions XII.xv; Basic Writings, I, 212 ff.; cf. chapter ix, p. 208. See also Ficino's account of the generation of beauty in the Angelic Mind, Comm. in Conviv. i.iii (Jayne, pp. 127-129).

64 Commento n.vi, f. I7^r-v: ‘nessuna cosa semplice puo essere bella, di che segue che in Dio non sia belleza. Dopo Dio commincia la belleza perche commincia la contrarieta sanza laquale non puo essere alcuna cosa creata, ma sarebbe solo epso Dio, ne basta questa contrarieta et discordia di diuerse nature ad constituire la creatura se per debito temperamento non diuenta & la contrarieta unita & la discordia Concorde, il che si puo per uera definitione assegnare di epsa belleza, cio è che non sia altro che una arnica inimicitia & una Concorde discordia… . Pero solo in Dio diceua non essere discordia, perche in lui non è unione di diuerse nature, anzi è epsa unita semplice sanza compositione alcuna.’

65 Commento II.x-xi, xvii.

66 I quote from the edition of Santino Caramella (Bari, 1929).Translations are my own. See Ellrodt's argument for Leone's influence, Neoplatonism in the Poetry of Spenser, pp. 178-193.1 have found several passages in the Dialoghi (especially in Leone's exposition of Aristophanes’ and Diotima's myths in the Symposium) relevant to the ‘Garden of Adonis canto’ of The Faerie Queene: see chapters iv and v of my dissertation (cited in n. 1).

67 Dialoghi, p. 345: ‘la idea non propriamente esiste ne l'intelletto, anzi è il medesimo intelletto e mente divina; però che la idea del mondo e la somma sapienzia, per la qualeil mondo fu fatto, e la sapienzia divina e il verbo, e l'intelletto suo la sua propria mente… . II medesimo intelletto o idea e la medesima prima bellezza, per la quale ogni cosa e bella.’

68 Dialoghi, pp. 346-356; cf. the English translation by F. Friedeberg-Seeley and Barnes, Jean H., The Philosophy of Love (London, 1937), pp. 412–425 Google Scholar.

69 Dialoghi, pp. 346 ff.: ‘ilprimo intelletto (di mente d'Aristotile) e uno medesimo col sommo Iddio, in nissuna cosa diverso se non [ne] li vocabuli e modi di filosofare appresso di noi de la sua simplicissima unitá… . Essendo Dio la sua medesima sapienzia, primo intelletto, idea de l'universo, la sua bellezza è quella medesima de la sapienzia e intelletto suo, idea del tutto; e quella (come t'ho detto) e la vera e prima bellezza.’

70 Dialoghi, p. 351: ‘Aristotile, … non avendo la mostrazione de li nostri teologiantichi come Platone, … gionse a la somma sapienzia, prima bellezza, de la quale il suo intelletto saziato, senza vedere piú oltre, affermò che quella fusse il primo principio incorporeo di tutte le cose.’

71 Dialoghi, p. 348: ‘concedendoti che la sapienzia e intelletto divino, idea de Funiverso, è in alcun modo distinta e altra dal sommo Iddio: però che Platone pare che cosi Faffermi. Egli tiene che Fintelletto e sapienzia divina, che è il verbo ideale, non sia propriamente il sommo Iddio, né manco in tutto altro e distinto da lui, ma che sia una sua cosa dependente ed emanante da lui e non separata né distinta da lui realmente, come la luce del sole.’

72 Neoplatonism in the Poetry of Spenser, p. 186.

73 Dialoghi, p. 349: ‘Sai che ‘1 sommo Iddio non è bellezza ma primo origine de la sua bellezza; e la sua bellezza, cioè quella che da lui prima emana, è la sua somma sapienzia, owero intelletto e mente ideale.’

74 Neoplatonism in the Poetry of Spenser, p. 187.

75 Cf. HHB, 99-112, where beauty is a quality belonging to God's attributes, but not itself an attribute. Looking upon God's works, we discover ‘his beautie’ through the goodness manifest in the creation (11. 127-133).

76 Dialoghi, p. 350: ‘non può discernereinlui stesso cosa qualeilpossa direbellezza….Contemplare … non è possibile che s'abbi del purissimo e occulto origine di quella (bellezza).’ Cf. Pico, On Being and the One, ch. 5: On the Dignity of Man, On Being and the One, Heptaplus, trans. Paul J. W. Miller et at. (Indianapolis, ‘Library of Liberal Arts’, 1965), pp- 51-53.

77 Dialoghi, p. 274: ‘li filosofi tengono che l'intelletto nostro si possa coppulare con l'intelletto agente separato da materia, che è del mondo angelico.’

78 Dialoghi, p. 275: ‘la sacra scrittura ne mostrò quanto piú alto può volare l'intelletto umano, quando è fatto, per grazia di Dio, profetico ed eletto da la divinitá, perché allora può avere la coppulazione con la bellezza divina immediamente come qualsivoglia degli angeli.’

79 Dialoghi, p. 275: ‘tutti gli altri hanno avuto la profezia mediante angelo.’

80 Dialoghi, p. 351: ‘Ma vorria che mi mostrasse donde Moise e gli altri santi profeti significarono questa veritá platonica.

81 Dialoghi, p. 3 51: Tantica interpretazione caldea disse, onde noi diciamo in principio, “con sapienzia creò Dio il cielo e la terra”.’

82 Williams, Arnold, The Common Expositor. An Account of the Commentaries on Genesis, 1527-1633 (Chapel Hill, 1948), pp. 40-41Google Scholar.

83 Dialoghi, p. 352: ‘I nostri primi… parlano precisamente; e non dicono: “Dio sapience creò”, owero “saviamente creò“: ma disserò: “Dio con sapienzia”, per mostrare che Dio è il sommo creatore e la sapienzia è mezzo e instrumento, col quale fa la creazione.’

84 Dialoghi, p. 355: ‘Sai che Salamone e gli altri teologi mosaici tengono che ‘1 mondo sia prodotto a modo di figlio dal sommo bello come padre e da essa somma sapienzia, vera bellezza, come di madre.’

85 Josephine Waters Bennett, SP, XXXII (1935), 141.

86 Cf. Neoplatonism in the Poetry of Spenser, pp. 187-189.

87 Dialoghi, p. 355: ‘la somma sapienzia innamorata del sommo bello come femmina del perfettissimo maschio, e il sommo bello reciprocando Famore in lei, essa s'ingravida de la somma potestá del sommo bello e parturisce il bello universo, loro figlio, con tutte sue parti.’ I wish to note before concluding my account of Leone's opinions and Spenser's dependence upon them that Louis Le Roy, though he follows Pico and Leone very closely in some respects, takes positions counter to them which tend to support Ellrodt's argument. In Le Sympose De Platon, … (Paris: Pour Vincent Sertenas, 1559), fs. 136“”, 149, 162-163, !66, 175, 177, I79v, we find it either argued or assumed that a vision of God, and of his beauty, is accessible to man, and that knowledge of God and of ‘vne beauté vniuerselle’ is ‘sapience’. Le Roy gives, however, no more than a hint (f. I36v) of Leone's personified Wisdom, identified with Beauty, and though references to Christ and Christian doctrine are not lacking in his commentary (see fs. I77^v-I79^v), Le Roy does not identify Christ with either ‘sapience’ or ‘beauté vniuerselle’. I believe I have demonstrated that, where Leone and Le Roy differed, Spenser followed Leone.

88 Cf. Ficino's Cotnm. in Conviv. i.iii, and Spenser's account of the awakening of Love, HL, 57-77.

89 Enid Welsford stresses that God's love for his creatures is an important theme elsewhere in the Dialoghi: op. cit., n. 8 above, pp. 25-26.

90 Kabbalistic doctrines in the Dialoghi are discussed briefly by F. Secret, Les Kabbalistes Chretiens de la Renaissance (Paris, 1964), pp. 79-81. It is significant that they were included in Johann Pistorius’ collection of kabbalistic texts and treatises, Artis Cabalisticae: Hoc Est, Reconditae Theologiae Et Philosophiae, Scriptorvm: Tomvsl,… (Basle: Sebastian Henricpetri, 1587). Though little is known of Leone's life, it is evident that, when he settled in Italy after 1492, he moved among Jews and Christians interested in the Kabbala. He must have learned much from his father, Isaac Abravanel, who refers in his Biblical commentaries to the Zohar and other kabbalistic works. He is known to have met Pico, and is supposed to have written a treatise on celestial harmony (now lost) at his request. The best English account of his life, works, and influence is A. R. Milburn's ‘Leone Ebreo and the Renaissance’, in Isaac Abravanel, Six Lectures, ed. J. B. Trend and H. Loewe (Cambridge, 1937),pp. 131-157; on the range and variety of his father's learning, see L. Rabinowitz, ibid., p. 79. Cecil Roth surveys Jewish contributions to die intellectual life of Florence, and Leone's place in that milieu, in The Jews in the Renaissance (Philadelphia, 1959), pp. 111-136; see also pp. 137-164, ‘The Christian Hebraists’.

91 There are now several excellent studies of kabbalism. The greatest scholar in this field is Scholem, Gershom G.; see his Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, 3rd rev. ed. (New York, 1954, 1961)Google Scholar, On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism, trans. Ralph Manheim (New York, 1965), Ursprung und Anfange der Kabbala (Berlin, 1962), and Von der Mystischen Gestalt der Gottheit. Studien zu Grundbegriffen der Kabbala (Zürich, 1962). For the Renaissance, see Joseph Leon Blau, The Christian Interpretation of the Cabala in the Renaissance (New York, 1944), and Secret's Kabbalistes Chrétiens.

92 Scholem explains the system of sefiroth in Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, pp. 205-243; cf. pp. m-118, 139, 143, and On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism, pp. 103-109.

93 Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, p. 230.

94 Scholem traces the development of this doctrine in ch. iv of Von der Mystischen Gestalt der Gottheit, pp. 135-191.

95 Von der Mystischen Gestalt der Gottheit, pp. 167-169.

96 Von der Mystischen Gestalt der Gottheit, p. 169.

97 Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, pp. 225-228; Von der Mystischen Gestalt der Gottheit, pp. 178-183. On the rituals associated with die idea of hieros gamos, see On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolism, pp. 137-153.

98 Von der Mystischen Gestalt der Gottheit, pp. 35, 170-176, 181-183.

99 Scholem notes that the manuscript on which he based his translation of the Book Bahir was earlier used by Flavius Mithridates for the Latin translation requested by Pico della Mirandola (Ursprung und Anfdnge der Kabbala, p. 42, n. 1). On Sophia (a two-fold emanation, ‘the Wisdom of God’ and ‘the Wisdom of Solomon’) and Shekhinah in the Book Bahir, see Ursprung und Anfdnge der Kabbala, pp. 78-85, 109-123.

100 In this connection, see Secret, Francois, ‘Le symbolisme de la Kabbale chretienne dans la “Scechina” de Egidio da Viterbo’, Archivio di Filosofia. Umanesimo e Simbolismo (Padova, 1958), pp. 131–154 Google Scholar.

101 Reference to the Zohar alone, in an inferior translation, vitiates Saurat's argument (see n. 9 above).

102 See, for example, Paulus Ricius and Archangelus of Burgonovo in Pistorius’ Artis Cabalisticae, pp. 122, 801-803, 806-809; Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, Three Books of Occult Philosophy, trans. J. F. (London: R.W. for Gregory Moule, 1651), Book ni.ch. x,pp. 366 -370; Philippe de Mornay, A Woorke concerning the trewnesse of the Christian Religion, trans. Arthur Golding (London: George Robinson for Thomas Cadman, 1587), pp. 77- 80.

103 Several recent studies have illuminated Postel's thought and his debts to the kabbalistic tradition. See in particular Bouwsma, William J., ‘Postel and the Significance of Renaissance Cabalism’, JHI, xv (1954), 218—232; the same author's Concordia Mundi: The Career and Thought of Guillaume Postel (1510-1581) (Cambridge, Mass., 1957)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Secret, Les Kabbalistes Chretiens, pp. 171-186.

104 Bouwsma's translation of a passage from the Apologia pro Serveto, in Concordia Mundi, p. 149.

105 Bouwsma, Concordia Mundi, pp. 148-164, relates this part of Postel's strange spiritual biography.

106 On Postel's ‘Sapience créée’, see d'Alverny, op. cit., above, n. 33, Archiuio diFilosofia. Umanesimo e Esoterismo, pp. 331-333; also, Frank Manley's edition of Donne's Anniversaries, pp. 20 ff., which introduced me to Postel's thought. Bouwsma discusses Postel's treatment of the feminine principle in Concordia Mundi and in JHI, xv (1954), 224-228; see also Screech, M. A., ‘The Illusion of Postel's Feminism. A note on the interpretation of his Très Merveilleuses Victoires desFemmes du Nouveau Monde’,JWCI, XVI (1953), 162–170 Google Scholar.

107 Richard Wills, De Re Poetica, trans, and ed. from the edition of 1573, by Fowler, A. D. S., Luttrell Soc. Reprints, 17 (Oxford, 1958), pp. 18–19 Google Scholar.

108 Fowler finds the De Re Poetica indebted to the prefatory discourses on poetry in Landino's Dante and Ficino's commentaries on Plato; he suggests that E. K. was indebted to Wills (pp. 28-33).

109 The full title of Digby's treatise gives some idea of his ambitions: Theoria Analytica, Viam ad Monarchiam Scientiarum demonstrans, totius Philosophies & reliquamm Scientiarum, necnon primorum postremorumque Philosophorum mysteria arcanaque; dogmata enucleans. On Digby's career at Cambridge, see the DNB and Porter, H. C., Reformation and Reaction in Tudor Cambridge (Cambridge, 1958), pp. 185 Google Scholar ff. His works are discussed briefly in several books on philosophy in England; the only lengmy study is J. Freudenthal, ‘Beiträge zur Geschichte der englischen Philosophie’, Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophic, rv (1891), 450-477, 578-603, which gives a good account of Digby's debts to Reuchlin.

110 See Book n, chs. 11 to 14 in particular.

111 Freudenthal, ‘Beitrage’, p. 599, n. 70.

112 The Souks immortall crowne … (London: H. Lownes, 1605), sig. D3^V. I am indebted for this reference to Hawkins, Sherman, ‘Mutabilitie and the Cycle of Months’, in Form and Convention in the Poetry of Edmund Spenser. Selected Papers from the English Institute, ed. William Nelson (New York, 1961), p. 175, n. 11; cf. pp. 80–81 Google Scholar.