Hostname: page-component-84b7d79bbc-g5fl4 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-27T21:06:55.972Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Hermes and the Sibyl: A Note on Ficino's Pimander

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Frederick Purnell Jr.
Frederick Purnell Jr.*
Affiliation:
Queens College of the City University of New York
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In April of 1463 Marsilio Ficino put the final touches on what was to be one of his most important and influential writings, his Latin translation of the Corpus Hermeticum undertaken at the request of Cosimo de’ Medici. Revered as the work of the legendary Egyptian sage Hermes Trismegistus, an authority mentioned with respect by Saint Augustine and Lactantius, the Hermetic texts came to occupy a position of preeminence in philosophical, literary, and artistic circles during the next one hundred and fifty years, principally in the form into which they were cast by Ficino. The status of Hermes as a philosophical source and as a link in the chain of ‘ancient theologians’ who foretold the truths of Christian revelation continued well into the seventeenth century.

Type
Research Article
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 30 , Issue 3 , Autumn 1977 , pp. 305 - 310
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1977

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

1 Ficino, M., Opera (Basel, 1576; photographic reprint, Turin, 1959), II, 1537 Google Scholar. Marcel, R., Marsile Ficin (1433-1499) (Paris, 1958), p. 252 Google Scholar. The colophon to the Pimander in Laurentianus 21.21 reads (fol. 39): ‘Finis libri Mercurii: Quem e graeco in latinum traduxit Marsilius Ficinus anno Mcccclxiii. Mense aprilis Florentiae. Deo gratias agens.’

2 De rebus sacris et ecclesiasticis exercitationes XVI ad Cardinalis Baronii Prolegomena in Annates (London, 1614), pp. 70-87.

3 I have examined a series of sixteenth-century anti-Hermetist authors in my ‘Francesco Patrizi and the Critics of Hermes Trismegistus,’ The Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 6 (1976), 155-178. The reader is referred to it for further information on the positions of Gilbert Genebrard and Francesco Muti, touched on briefly below.

4 Chronographia in duos libros distincta. Prior est de rebus veteris populi, posterior recentes historias, praesertimque ecclesiasticas complectitur (Paris, 1567), fol. C. The second book, treating events from the birth of Christ on, was the work of Arnaldus Pontacus.

5 Chronographia libri quatuor … (Paris, 1580), pp. 157-158.

6 Muti, F., Exercitationum libri V contra calumnias Theodori Angelutii in maximum philosophum Franciscum Palricium, in quibus pene universa Aristotelis philosophia in examen adducitur (Ferrara, 1588)Google Scholar, fols.12.22v. François Foix's translation had appeared in print at Bourdeaux in 1574.

7 Kristeller, P. O., ed., Supplementum Ficinianum (Florence, 1937)Google Scholar, I, cxxix (cited hereafter as Supplementum).

8 I have consulted the copies in the Pierpont Morgan Library, the Annmary Brown Memorial, and Harvard University Library. For the lengthy prefatory legend see Supplementum, I, 96. The same device is repeated in several later editions, though under the general title Mercurii Tristnegisti liber de potestate et sapientia Dei. The Sibyl-passage reads: ‘Deus ipse congreditur, nocte quidem per somnia, die crebrius per portenta, per quae omnia sibi futura pronuntiat, per aves, per intestina, perque sibyllam, propter quae vere dicitur homo scire.’ Cf. fol. [48] of the 1471 edition.

9 The most complete list of editions is that prepared by Dannenfeldt, K. H. in Kristeller, P. O., ed., Catalogus Translationum et Commentariorum: Medieval and Renaissance Latin Translations and Commentaries (Washington, D.C., 1960), 1, 138–139 Google Scholar. Of the twenty-four printings there enumerated I have examined seventeen, as follows: Treviso, 1471; Ferrara, 1472; Venice, 1481, 1491, 1493; Paris, 1494; Mainz, 1503; Paris, 1505; s.l., s.a. (Hain 8455); Florence, 1512; Venice, 1516; Basel, 1532; Lyons, 1549; Paris, 1554; Basel, 1561; Lyons, 1570; Basel, 1576. Only the 1472 and 1512 editions fail to mention the Sibyl in CH XII. The undated edition (Hain 8455) is practically identical with that of 1505, from which it must derive. With the edition of Lyons, 1549, the word ‘Sibyllam’ is capitalized and continues to occur in that form in succeeding printings.

10 I have examined the copy of this rare volume at the Annmary Brown Memorial, Providence, R. I. The colophon records: ‘Impressus Ferrariae per Magistrum Andream Galium civem Ferrariae … M.CCCC.LXXII… .’ Several factors in addition to the correct reading for the Sibyl-passage point to the independence of this printing from the Treviso edition.

11 Supplementum, I, viii-ix. Marcel, p. 255 n, refers to it as ‘le manuscrit plus précieux de cette traduction.’

12 This reading is supported by another early manuscript, Laurentianus 21.21, which reads ‘per silvam’ (fol. 33). For a description, see Supplementum, I, ix.

13 ‘Et per tutte le cose, gli pronuncia le cose future, per uccelli, per interiori, per i spiriti, per selve.’ Il Pimandro di Mercurio Trimegisto, tradotto da Tommaso Benci in lingua fiorentina (Florence, 1549), p. 99. For the background to Benci's translation, see Marcel, pp. 257-258, and Ragni, E., ‘Tommaso Benci,’ in Dizionario biografico degli italiani, VIII (Rome, 1966), 201–203 Google Scholar.

14 Comparison of the two editions reveals differences in spelling, punctuation, and chapter headings which suggest that the 1512 printing was set directly from a manuscript.

15 Cf. Deux livres de Mercure Trismegiste Hermés tres ancien Theologien & excellent Philosophe, l'un de la puissance & sapience de Dieu, l'autre de la volonte de Dieu. Aveq'un Dialogue de Loys Lazarel poëte Chrestien intitulé le Bassin d'Hermés. Le tout traduit de Grec en francoys par Gabriel du Preau … (Paris, 1557). The fact that du Preau includes a translation of the Latin Asclepius and the Crater Hermetis of Ludovico Lazzarelli indicates that he worked from one of the three printed editions (Paris, 1505; Hain 8455; Paris, 1522) which combined these two works with the Pimander. The comments by Lefevre represent a revision of his notes to the 1494 edition of the Pimander. Cf. Rice, E. F., Jr., ed., The Prefatory Epistles of Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples and Related Texts (New York-London, 1972), p. 135 Google Scholar. On Lazzarelli's treatise, see Kristeller, P. O., ‘Marsilio Ficino e Lodovico Lazzarelli: Contributo alia diffusione delle idee ermetiche nel Rinascimento,’ Annali della R. Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa. Lettere, Storia e Filosofia, set. 2, vol. 7 (1938), pp. 237–262 Google Scholar, reprinted in his Studies in Renaissance Thought and Letters (Rome, 1956), pp. 221-247; ‘Lodovico Lazzarelli e Giovanni da Correggio, due ermetici del Quattrocento, e il manoscritto II.D.1.4 della Biblioteca Comunale degli Ardenti di Viterbo,’ in Biblioteca degli Ardenti della Citta di Viterbo, Studi e Ricerche nel 1500 della fondazione (Viterbo, 1960), pp. 13-37. Marcel, p. 258 n, indicates that Benci's translation served as the basis for du Preau's version, yet the present case clearly disproves this. If du Preau had worked from Benci's Italian, he would have encountered no Sibyls.

16 ‘Dieu a donné sa cognoissance, & se manifeste à luy, de nuyt primierement par quelque songe, de iour souuventesfois par quelque evidente signification, par lesquelles choses il luy predit ce que doit avenir, ensemble par augures d'oyseaux, par speculation d'entrailles, par invocation d'esprit, finablement par les vaticinations des Sybilles.’ Deux livres de Mercure Trismegiste, fol. 61v. Compare note 8 above.

17 Ficino's own Argumentum to Cosimo, prefaced to the Pimander, makes reference to this association. Cf. Opera (Basel, 1576), II, 1836.

18 Much of the research embodied herein was undertaken during the summer of 1975, while the author was a Fellow of the Southeastern Institute of Medieval and Renaissance Studies at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Particular thanks are due to the staff of the University of North Carolina Libraries for their kind assistance.