Ambiguities of the Prisca Sapientia in Late Renaissance HumanismAuthor(s): Martin MulsowSource: Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 65, No. 1 (Jan., 2004), pp. 1-13Published by: University of Pennsylvania PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3654279Accessed: 27/02/2009 22:00

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Ambiguities of

the Prisca Sapientia in

Late Renaissance Humanism

Martin Mulsow

The wisdom of the ancients, says Marsilio Ficino, was a pious philosophy.1 Born among the Egyptians with Hermes Trismegistus-and, according to Ficino's later writings, concurrently among the Persians with Zoroaster-it was raised by the Thracians under Orpheus and Aglaophemus. It later matured under Pythagoras among the Greeks and Italians and culminated in Plato. As is well known, this genealogy was not merely a historical thesis for Ficino and his followers but also a program for revival, a utopia achieved through restora- tion. For the assertion of a concordance between these early philosophies and their accordance with Christianity-in the sense of a Christian Platonism-

implied the synthesis of fragementary philosophemes into a fully developed doctrine in the service of a uniform and timely philosophia pia.

This program was formulated in a variety of ways during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries with differing protagonists and with diverse aims. Thus one could supplement the genealogy in a cabalist vein, introduce biblical char- acters such as Solomon or Moses, or (as was done by Bruno) use it to contest Christian doctrine. The genealogy could be read as culminating in various no- table modem figures such as for example, Paracelsus. Aristotle could be in- cluded or excluded from it, depending on whether one wanted to assimilate the Aristotelian tradition or to distance oneself from it; and one could leave the end

This article was translated by Janita Hamalainen. 1 Marsilio Ficino, "Letter to J. Pannonius," Opera (Basel, 1553), 871 ff. See also his Theologie

platonicienne de l'immortalite des dmes, lat. and fr. ed. by Raymond Marcel (3 vols., Paris, 1970), e.g. III, 148; On prisca theologia or prisca sapientia see Daniel P. Walker, The Ancient Theology (London, 1972); Charles B. Schmitt, "Prisca theologia e philosophia perennis: due temi del Rinascimento italiano e la loro fortuna," Atti del Convegno internazionale di studi sul Rinascimento e sull' umanesimo italiano (1970), 211-35; Michael J. B. Allen, Synoptic Art: Marsilio Ficino on the History of Platonic Interpretation (Florence, 1998).

1 Copyright 2004 by Journal of the History of Ideas, Inc.

of this genealogical lineage open in order to exhort the necessity of a scientific and moral reform.

Here, however, we shall be occupied with the question of what became of this program during the late Renaissance, when two developments took place simultaneously: on the one hand, the utopia of the prisca sapientia set about to conquer the field formerly reserved to the Aristotelians, namely, natural phi- losophy; on the other hand, the first doubts arose about the overall validity of the historical-philological foundation of the program, especially the dating of the works of Hermes Trismegistus. The latter began with the publication of the first part of Patrizi's Discussiones peripateticae in 1571, which aimed to reha- bilitate, contrary to Aristotle's critique, old presocratic natural philosophies, and in so doing it cleared the way for interpreting the latest advancements in non-Aristotelian natural sciences as resumptions of these very philosophies.2 This initiated a period of complex interaction between late humanist philology, innovative natural science, and speculative metaphysics.

This phase, however, not only entailed the grand synthesizing endeavors that one finds in Patrizi's Nova de universis philosophia; it also introduced historical critique-no doubt provoked by Patrizi-of the Hermetic prisca sapientia, understood in Frances Yates's sense, which was performed in care- ful detail long before Casaubon at the end of the Renaissance.3 Further, it was a phase characterized by an attempt to reevaluate Aristotelian philosophy against its opponents, which paradoxically was also motivated by Patrizi yet which managed to keep the venture open to "esoteric" depths. All of these develop- ments were intertwined, and each effected the articulation of encyclopedic projects at the beginning of the seventeenth century. On the basis of manu- scripts, letters, and some neglected texts, I want to introduce two such counter- currents, which illustrate how the migration of arguments from one cultural context to another can lead to wholly divergent and unexpected results. More- over, these results show the diverse consequences that a prisca sapientia-uto- pia could have for different visions of encyclopedic scholarship.

I. In the bookshop of Paolo Meietti in Padua, Teodoro Angelucci and Anto- nio Persio met accidentally on an autumn day in 1558. Meietti was the pub- lisher of Angelucci's medical textbook as well as of texts by Patrizi and his

2Francesco Patrizi, Discussiones peripateticae (Basel, 1571). 3 See Frances A. Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (London, 1966), 398,

"and yet the dating by Isaac Casaubon in 1614 of the Hermetic writings as not the work of a very ancient Egyptian priest but written in post-Christian times, is a watershed separating the Renais- sance world from the modem world. It shattered at one blow the build-up of Renaissance Neoplatonism with its basis in the prisci theologi of whom Hermes Trismegistus was the chief. It shattered the whole position of the Renaissance Magus and Renaissance magic with its Her- metic-Cabbalist foundation, based on the ancient Egyptian philosophy and Cabalism. It shat- tered even the non-magical Christian Hermetic movement of the sixteenth century."

Martin Mulsow 2

The Prisca Sapientia in Renaissance Humanism

colleague Giannini, and it is possible that Persio was out to discuss publishing possibilities for his forthcoming manuscript De natura ignis. In any case, they were there for business-related matters, so it was quite natural for Persio to

inquire about the current state of the controversy taking place within the circle of Meietti authors. The controversy had started four years earlier when

Angelucci, a young man in his thirties, attacked Patrizi in a pamphlet. The latter replied, and following another attack by Angelucci let his student, Muti, retort.4 During these four years the debate had increasingly centered around a

philological problem that evidently attracted the focus of dissent: the question of whether the Hermetic dialogues, on whose age and dignity Patrizi so heavily relied were authentic in the first place. Angelucci fresh from his sojourn as a student in Paris, under philologist Gilbert Genebrard, had been the first to in- troduce in Padua and Venice the latter's suggestions of a new dating. Accord-

ing to these suggestions, the Hermetic works did not derive from Moses's times but rather a much later, post-Aristotelian date. Yet it seems that in suggesting this (found in the new edition of his Chronographia of 1580) Genebrard had

appropriated many of the arguments of Matthieu Beroalde.5 As an ultra-Cal-

vinist, however, Beroalde was hardly someone whom the Catholic Genebrard could cite, and this seems at least to confirm an observation made by Anthony Grafton on Casaubon, that the original motivation for denying Hermes

Trismegistus his dignity of age was sparked by a Protestant desire to differen- tiate clearly between pagan and Christian traditions. It was altogether unac-

ceptable that the pagan Hermes should have received a revelation of the Chris- tian mysteries before Christ and even before Moses.6 This is a position not only

4Teodoro Angelucci, Quod metaphysica sint eadem quaephysica (Venice, 1584); Francesco Patrizi, Apologia calumnias Theodori Angelutii eiusque novae sententiae quod metaphysica eadem sintphysica eversio (Ferrara, 1584); Teodoro Angelucci, Exercitationum TheodoriAngelutii cum Francesco Patricio liber primus, in quo de Metaphysicorum authore, appellatione et dispositione disputatur, et quod Metaphysica sint eadem quae Physica iterum asseritur (Venice, 1585); Francesco Muti, Disceptationum libri V contra calumnias Theodori Angelutii (Ferrara, 1588). See Frederic Purnell Jr., "Francesco Patrizi and the Critics of Hermes Trismegistus," The Journal of Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 6 (1976), 155-78, and the volume Das Ende des Hermetismus. Historische Kritik und neue Naturphilosophie in der Spatrenaissance. Dokumentation und Analyse der Debatte um die Datierung der hermetischen Schriften von Genebrard bis Casaubon (1567-1614), ed. Martin Mulsow (Tiibingen, 2002), esp. Frederic Purell Jr., "A Contribution to Renaissance Anti-Hermeticism: The Angelucci-Persio Exchange," 127- 60, and Martin Mulsow, "Reaktionirer Hermetismus vor 1600? Zum Kontext der venezianischen Debatte iiber die Datierung von Hermes Trismegistos," 161-85; also Maria Muccillo, "Plotino nel tardo Rinascimento," Archivio storico per la Calabria e la Lucania 61 (1994), 37-137, esp. 95-109.

5 See Pumell, "A Contribution ... (note 4)," 139ff, and Mathieu Beroalde, Chronicum, Scrip- ture Sacrae autoritate constitutum (Geneva, 1575), 23.

6 See Anthony Grafton, "Protestant versus Prophet: Isaac Casaubon on Hermes Trismegistos" in his Defenders of the Text: The Traditions of Scholarship in an Age of Science, 1450-1800 (Cambridge, Mass., 1991), 145-61, esp. 150, regarding Isaac Casaubon, De rebus sacris et

3

held by Casaubon but one that can be seen already in Beroalde. Only through Beroalde's (albeit covert) guidance did Genebrard and Angelucci come to real- ize the implications making the new dating of Hermes unavoidable.

In the meeting, Persio queried Angelucci about his opinion on Patrizi's retorts through his student, Muti. Angelucci knew Persio to be an old friend of Patrizi and hence did not expect him to side with his own position.7 He was unaware of the fact-and incidentally unable to discern it from Persio's word- that Persio, too, had been convinced by Genebrard's arguments, maintaining that the alleged date of the Hermetic works could by no means be correct. The encounter left Angelucci confused.

Thus, Angelucci, upon returning from the bookshop, sat down at his desk to write a letter to Persio which summarized the major arguments against Muti's defense of Hermeticism including those of Genebrard, Beroalde, and Goropius Becanus.8 This unpublished letter represents by far the most convincing piece of criticism on the age of the Hermetic works before Casaubon.

The consequences of this should not be overlooked. The letter was surely an item of discussion in the circles of liberal scientists in Padua as well as

Venice, i.e., among Persio, Pinelli, Guilandini, Aicardi, Patero, and others.

ecclesiasticis exercitationes XVI (Geneva, 1654), 67: "haec sacrae Scripturae testimonia et his similia, qui stare possunt, si verum est, pleraque et ea quidem praecipua doctrinae Christianae mysteria, etiam ante Mosem Gentibus fuisse proposita? Nam Mercurium Trismegistum ante Mosem vixisse, siquidem certa sunt quae de eo traduntur, nullum est dubium." See also J. Harrie, "Duplessis-Momay, Foix-Candale and the Hermetic Religion of the World," Renaissance Quar- terly, 31(1978), 499-514.

7 See the letter from Persio to Angelucci, Biblioteca Corsiniana, Roma, Ms. Linceo 1, fol. 139rv, edited in Das Ende des Hermetismus (note 4), 369f. "Dico dunque che se ben V.S. si ricorda quando ci abbatessimo insieme quel di nella libreria del Miglietti, che io le dimandaicome si sodisfava delle risposte del Muti nella cosa di Hermete, perche ivi mi parve che se disfidasse. Non ad altro fine le feci cotal dimanda, se non ch'io era di contrario parere dal Signor Patritio, la cui parte colui difende, et mi accostava all' opinion del Genebrardo, il qual'6 seguitato anche da V.S., il quale non so, ne vorrei (dissi io) che haveste mutata opinione, che sa fatta questa sua cronologia. Et V.S. mi rispose che ci6 non sappeva, ma che in tal materia si trovava haver scritto pur assai, et si havesse fermata in Padua me l'haverebbe mostrata, quel poi che dicesse il Mutio di buono non haver ancor havuto tempo di vedere, ma vedera poi etc. Io le risposi di haverci havuto a caro di veder quello che gia haveva scritto, quando vi fosse stato quel commodo che ella dicea, per veder se io ho buon oppinion, et non altro di cio si parlo. Ma quell che io vedo nella scrittura de VS., ella intese tutto il contrario, cio6 che io dicessi che m'accosto et mi piace l'oppinion del Patritio, onde s'ha degnato di scrivermi sia difeso per dissuadermi, et rimovermi da quella opinione. Ma io, come ho detto, sono contro il Patritio, il quale come amicio horreria d'offenderlo contradicendoli senza pii che forti raggioni. Pero havendo io questo interesse in tal materia, et havendo visto quelle risposte date dal Muti cosi all' contra le ragioni del Genebrardo, delle quali io mi servo in una mia opra, mi naque desiderio di dimandar VS. a quel tempo per haveme il suo giuditio, il quale, si come prima fu conforme al mio a seguir il Genebrardo, cosi ho trovato che lo difende dottamente in queste sue risposte."

8 See Teodoro Angelucci to Antonio Persio, Biblioteca Corsiniana, Roma, Ms. Linceo 1, fol. 13 r-138r, edited in Das Ende des Hermetismus (note 4), 353-66.

Martin Mulsow 4

The Prisca Sapientia in Renaissance Humanism

These individuals together with the circle around Patrizi in Ferrara with whom they were in close contact were keenly aware of the whole range of implica- tions following from the arguments against Hermes. Indeed, Patrizi's Nova de universis philosophia was written with these philological problems in mind. Yet what impact did it have upon scientists' view on the prisca sapientia? One finds a broad spectrum of positions. First of all we find those for whom the prisca sapientia grounded an ideal concordance. The thesis of concordance held that ancient wisdom, Christian doctrine, and contemporary natural phi- losophies were principally in accord. Especially after the Council of Trent the thesis seemed well-suited for combining a reformed orientation with a reflec- tion on origins. This a prisca sapientia extremism was often linked with a certain Egyptophilia as well as a conception of Hermeticism as the oldest form of human wisdom. Patrizi asserted this position (as did Muti) in spite of some reservations he had concerning non-genuine elements in the corpus hermeticum or the botanist Guilandini.9 This extremism, however, was hardly shared by all circles in Padua and Venice. It seems that Angelucci's activities played a rela- tively significant role in introducing a more moderate prisca sapientia view around 1590.10 This can be understood as a position that-although articulated in part as a quest for the origins of philosophy and science, which was assumed to be in pre-Aristotelian and pre-Platonic times-does not trace these origins back to Hermes Trismegistus. Persio, for example, who had accepted Angelucci's arguments, remained reticent about interpreting Telesian philosophy in terms of Parmenideism, Pythagoreanism, and prisca sapientia, as was the case with the extremists. Persio merely admited that the Pythagorean Ocellus Lucanus was a precursor to the doctrine of four elements and recognized certain paral- lels between Telesio's assertions and both Pythagorean geometry and Parmenides's teachings.11 Paterno assumed a similar position. Other members of these circles seem to have chosen a third position which tended to be indif- ferent towards this search for utopian origins. For them prisca sapientia was not even an issue. Hence there existed, as Nancy Siraisi notes concerning the Paduan Physicians, a wide variety of positions on the notion ofprisca sapientia, ranging from extreme support to cool dissent.12

9 See Anthony Grafton, "Rhetoric, Philology, Egyptomania in the 1570s: J. J. Scaliger's Invective against M.Guilandinus's Papyrus," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 42 (1979), 167-94.

0 See Charles B. Schmitt, Aristotle and the Renaissance (Cambridge, Mass., 1983), 95ff. n See Antonio Persio, De natura ignis et caloris, Biblioteca Corsiniana, Roma, Ms. Linceo

VII and VIII, esp. VII, fol. 54rsqq.; Mulsow, "Philosophia italica als reduzierte prisca-sapientia- Ideologie. Antonio Persios und Francesco Patrizis Rekonstruktionen der Elementenlehre," Das Ende des Hermetismus (note 4), 253-80; also Mulsow, Friihneuzeitliche Selbsterhaltung. Telesio und die Naturphilosophie der Renaissance (Tiibingen 1998).

12 Nancy G. Siraisi, "Hermes among the Physicians," Das Ende des Hermetismus (note 4), 189-212.

5

Although all of three groups developed encyclopedic projects, it can be seen-as Ann Blair shows for the ventures from Bodin to Comenius, that a

religious (and, one might add, a mythical or even patriotic) ideology motivated the production of encyclopedias.13 The reason for this is simple enough: if wis- dom was already present in the very beginning, or, if in its divineness, it has

already been revealed then research is in the possession of the secured funda- ment of the whole. The origin guaranteed the unity of knowledge while also

demanding a synoptic tendency in reconstructive research, which, rediscov- ered this origin. If this can be identified as a pervasive motive encouraging the

encyclopedic project in general, then it should also be possible to see how the different positions regarding the prisca sapientia inflected encyclopedic works.

Here, we come across a certain difficulty. Following the enthronement of Clement VIII as pope in 1592, Hermeticism, Pythagoreanism, and Platonism could only be studied in a clandestine manner, and the result was that many of

encyclopedic projects in this vein remained unfinished and unpublished. Of

course, the Nova de universis philosophia by Patrizi represents an encyclope- dic project by a prisca sapientia extremist. It was published in 1591 with the

hope of gaining the Curia's acceptance, but by 1594 it had already become a victim of censorship.14 Other projects belonging to this group were the Her- metic encyclopedia, which took the form of a commentary by Annibale Rosselli, Muti's lost works, and Zoroaster by Johannes Jessen.15

What about the moderates who articulated vision of utopian origins with- out relying on Hermes? One could interpret Pythagoreanism and Eleaticism- or more specifically the ideas which emerged around 1590 as a reflection on the antiquissima sapientia italorum or the philosophia magnae graecae-to be a compromising reaction to the dating debates since Angelucci. Although the advocates ofthisphilosophia italica ideology were still led astray by a number of pseudo-epigraphs, especially those of the alleged works of Timaios Lokros and Ocellus Lucanus, they nevertheless refrained from referring to Hermes. Another factor that made the moderate or weakened form ofprisca sapientia particularly palatable to natural philosophers of mainly Southern Italian origin (Campanella, Persio, Muti, and Stelliola all came from Calabria) was its inher- ent patriotism. In Persio's work one finds notes to the tradition of Southern Italian philosophers; and the young Campanella, after visiting Persio in Padua

13 Ann Blair, "Mosaic Physics and the Search for a Pious Natural Philosophy in the Late Renaissance," Isis, 91 (2000), 32-58.

14 See Tullio Gregory, "L'Apologia e le Declarationes di Francesco Patrizi," Medioevo e Rinascimento. Studi in onore di Bruno Nardi (Florence, 1955), I, 150-73.

15 See Maria Muccillo, "Der scholastische Hermetismus des Annibale Rosselli und die Trinititslehre," Das Ende des Hermetismus (note 4), 61-101; see Robin B. Barnes: "The Prisca Theologia and Lutheran Confessional Identity c. 1600: Johannes Jessen and his Zoroaster," in Spdtrenaissance-Philosophie in Deutschland, ed. Martin Mulsow (forthcoming); Johannes Jessen, Zoroaster (Wittenberg, 1593).

Martin Mulsow 6

The Prisca Sapientia in Renaissance Humanism

in 1593, wrote a lost Apologia pro philosophis Magnae Graecae and then in

subsequent years, known as his "Pythagorean phase," the first extensive works on the subject.16 In 1595 the prisons of Rome witnessed secret discussions between Campanella, Nicolo Antonio Stelliola, and perhaps, also between Stelliola and Bruno. Stelliola aimed to write an Encyclopedia pythagorica, which was to assimilate all incentives coming from Bruno, Patrizi, Telesio, and

Campanella. This was to be an Encyclopedia pythagorica, not an Encyclope- dia hermetica. Even Stelliola's project, by way of Persio and Campanella, can be read as an indirect reaction to the dating debates in Veneto, but the work was never finished.17

It appears that encyclopedic thinking amounted to an empirically-oriented form of collecting for those who abstained altogether from postulating on original wisdom. Francis Bacon understood the sapientia veterum as a form of poetic and allegoric wisdom in the myths of antiquity. Similarly, Galilei and the activ- ists of the Accademia dei Lincei demonstrated only a wavering commitment to a historical program.18 Yet this connection is far from being certain. Neither can my tentative typology be generalized beyond the milieu of the Italian Counter-Reformation. As soon as the cultural setting changed, the parameters started to shift, and we encounter completely new constellations between criti- cal philology and the idea of a prisca sapientia.

II. In another fortuitous meeting in a bookshop, this time in Venice in 1601, Ernst Soner, a student of Medicine from Altdorf and currently in Padua to

study, was rummaging through the recent publications. Having come to Venice either to pick up or to change some money, he seized the opportunity "as usual"

16Tommaso Campanella, De Sphaera Aristarchi; Philosophia Pythagorica; De Philosophia Empedoclis; to this phase see Nicola Badaloni, Tommaso Campanella (Milan, 1965), 68ff. A list of Persio's analogous notes has been preserved in Biblioteca Corsiniana, Rome, Ms. Linceo 1, fol. 147v.

17 See Nicola Badaloni, "II programma scientifico di un bruniano: Colantonio Stelliola," Studi storici, 26 (1985), 161-75. Stelliola published only the plan: Enclopedia Pythagorica mostrata da Nicol'Antonio Stelliola Lynceo (Naples, 1616). "La Encyclopedia, Dottrina antichissima, fi app6 li sapienti di quella eta, in somma riverenza: come Madre delle Virtfi humane, & Maestra amministratrice delle scienze tutte, & arti.... Gli antichi pensavano che tutte le scienze e arti derivassero da un'unica fonte dette Sophia da altri Magia o Sapienza. I greci l'han chiamato Encyclopedia, culmine e complemento di tutte. Essi stabilirono che solo i migliori e puri di cuore vi potessero accedere. A causa della decadenza morale, ne e rimasto solo il nome, per cui le particolari professioni son restate nel solo appoggio del credere alli scritti de maestri er nell'appoggio della probabilita di opinioni er con ci6 moltiplicando le diversita di pareri che restino intrigati nell'inviluppo de sofismi."

18 See Silvia de Renzi, "II progetto e il fatto. Nuovi studi sull'Accademia dei Lincei," Intersezioni, 9 (1989), 501-17; Federico Cesi e lafondazione dell, Accademia dei Lincei. Mostra bibliografica e documentaria (Naples, 1988); David Freedberg, The Eye of the Lynx (New Ha- ven, Conn., 2002); and the descriptions of the "Lucretian" programs by Vincenzo Cesarini in Pietro Redondi, Galilei eretico (Turin, 1983), esp. ch. 3.

7

to browse in bookshops. "In one of them," Soner writes in a letter, "I came

upon a Physician (...), with whom I discussed all kinds of medical authors.

Cesalpino, too, was mentioned. Thereupon the gentleman asked me whether I had ever encountered or would know a certain German Physicist by the name of Taurellus."19 Soner replied that he had indeed already met Taurellus once and spoke with him in passing. In fact Soner had actually been a student of Taurellus in Altdorf, but it seemed safer to the German Lutheran not to reveal his Protestant identity ("non erat tutum, ne haereseos suspicionem in me

concitarem"). His caution, however, turned out to be unwarranted as the inter- locutor intended only to praise Taurellus: "he had never seen anything, he said, more subtle and astute than his 'Alpes Caesae'...." Still, Soner remained appre- hensive about mentioning other books by Taurellus since these contained a

decidedly Protestant metaphysics. What could have motivated a northerly philosopher polemically to "tear

down the Alps," to use Taurellus's pun on the name, "Cesalpino" and in a manner that, as Soner's acquaintance maintained, "even surpassed Scaliger's polemics with Cardano in subtlety?"20 Andrea Cesalpino was a famous scien- tist and philosopher from Rome. The question of how news of Taurellus's ag- gressiveness could have been disseminated over a distance of a thousand kilo- meters, from Altdorf to Rome, becomes even more compelling if considered in

light of Scaliger's stance towards the Milanese philosopher. Of course Taurellus's intervention had not in fact been built up over such a long distance but rather quite a short one, that is, to the neighboring lecture hall in Altdorf, where Philipp Scherb adapted Cesalpino's ideas for Germany. This adaptation by Scherb has a highly complex background and equally complex consequences, which shifts from the Venetian bookshop to a Frankfurt milieu of publishers, humanists, and merchants.

Soner was not the only student of Taurellus and Scherb at Altdorf. There was also Melchior Goldast, today mainly known to scholars of old German

9 Ernst Soner to Nicolaus Taurellus, Padua, "die Veneris sancto," 1601, printed in Epistolae clariss. Germaniae medicorum ... tam quoad hermetica et chymica. Quam etiam Galenica principia..., ed. J. Homung (Leipzig, 1661), 353f.: "Cum nuper Venetiis essem nummorum meorum causa, visitavi, ut soleo, aliquot Bibliopolarum tabemas: forte fortuna incidi in quendam Medicum, cujus tamen nomen nondum scire potui, quo cum, cum mihi multus sermo de variis scriptoribus Medicis, inter caetera mentio fiebat Caesalpini: hic ille me interrogabat, num quid vidissem aut novissem quendam germanum Medicum Taurellum: cumque ego annuissem & vidisse me illum & alloquutum in transitu (discipulum enim ejus me jactare, non erat tutum, ne haereseos suspicionem in me concitarem) nihil, inquiebat, unquam vidi subtilius aut acuratius ipsius Alpibus caesis, magnum ipsum antea feci ex methodo praesagiendi, quam miro ordine & singulari eruditione contextuit, Weckerum imitatus: (haec enim illius verba fuere) sed hic vir in Alpibus caesis, videtur subtilitate superare ipsum quoque Scaligerum contra Cardanum."

20 See Nicolaus Taurellus, Alpes Caesae, Hoc est: Andr Caesalpini Itali, Monstrosa et superba Dogmata, Discussa et Excussa (Frankfurt, 1597), and on Taurellus and Siegfried Wollgast, Philosophie in Deutschland 1550-1650 (Berlin, 19932), 148ff.

Martin Mulsow 8

The Prisca Sapientia in Renaissance Humanism

philology or historians of law, who felt obliged to administer and safeguard the heir of Scherb after his death in 1605.21 In 1606 Goldast came to Frankfurt, the town of publishers and fairs, with hardly any money to work as a proof-reader. One of the first publishing ventures was to edit and typeset anew two books from Scherb's shelves, small works by the Paduan and Bolognese philosopher Ottaviano Ferrari, which Scherb himself had brought along from his iter italicum in 1578/79. They were philological works on Aristotle, concerning the de sermonibus exotericis (i.e., the lost dialogues of Aristotle). Like Goldast, Scherb felt them to be much more than mere philological marginalia. Both saw the differentiation between "exoteric" and "esoteric" (or "acroamatic") philoso- phy as the key to overcomimg the current crisis of philosophy in Protestant Germany. There, the Ramists with their reduction of problems to matters of rhetoric and topic had become increasingly influential in both philosophy and

theology. For them metaphysics was outmoded, and even questions oftransub- stantiation were held by some to be mere verbal suggestions.

On the other hand, even in the scientific disciplines Platonic-Hermetic specu- lation and innovation was winning ground and exerting increasing competitive pressure on university-teaching. Aristotelianism, which was only starting to become established in Germany, was caught in the middle. It seems to me that the vertical schema of "flattening vs. deepening" represented one mode of per- ception which offered orientations in this intellectual situation. Since Aris- totelianism was caught in the middle, and the Calvinist and Lutheran orthodox- ies (as Robin Barnes has emphasized concerning Jessen) were still "pliable" and easy to form, one could get the idea of opening up Aristotelianism to these speculative tendencies.22 Thus, what Jessen tried to do with his adaptation of Patrizi in 1593 in Lutheran Wittenberg was likewise attempted on the Calvinist side with Bruno by Raphael Eglin in Zurich in 1595 and more clearly in Marburg in 1609. A similar endeavor was made by Eilhard Lubin with Bruno and Her- meticism in Lutheran Rostock in 1598.23 In general the common denominator in all these cases was the attempt to prove the Aristotelian doctrine to be largely compatible with tendencies associated with the prisca sapientia utopia.

In this context a reflection on the ancient differentiation between esoteric and exoteric philosophy could prove to be helpful in distinguishing esoteric Aristotelianism from the flattening exoteric mode of the Ramists, although this

21 See Martin Mulsow, "Die wahre peripatetische Philosophie in Deutschland. Melchior Goldast, Philipp Scherb und die akroamatische Tradition der Alten," Fordern und Bewahren. Studien zur europdischen Kulturgeschichte der friihen Neuzeit, ed. Helwig Schmidt-Glintzer (Wiesbaden, 1996), 49-78.

22 See Barnes, "The Prisca Theologia and Lutheran Confessional Identity c. 1600." 23 Elilhard Lubinus, Phosphorus (Rostock, 1596). See Die Philosophie des 17. Jahrhunderts,

IV, Das Heilige R6mische Reich Deutscher Nation; Nord- und Ostmitteleuropa, ed. Helmut Holzhey and Wilhelm Schmidt-Biggemann (Basel, 2001), 24-26.

9

Martin Mulsow

did entail some contradictions. We find that Patrizi had already in 1571 de-

ployed the esoteric/exoteric distinction in order to wipe out Aristotle by main-

taining that all of Aristotle's esoteric and substantial assets were merely appro- priated from Platonic thinking.24 In Germany, however, there were reasons for not simply subsuming Aristotle under Plato. The existence of a politicized Aristotelianism, which particularly attracted men like Goldast, represents one reason, and another reason was that Aristotelian logic and methodology were considered to be institutionally irreplaceable.

Goldast wanted to offer a "deepened" Aristotle, just as Scherb had done in his presentation of Cesalpino's Simplician, his Neoplatonist interpretation of Aristotle. Goldast proceeded philologically by introducing his new edition of Ferrari with an open letter to the Marburg Aristotelian Rudolph Goclenius en- titled De cryptica veterum philosophorum disciplina. It describes the ancient

practice of distinguishing in a small circle of initiates certain traditions from

publicly accessible works or lectures, whereby the latter ones by no means all entailed arcana that could be understood only by the highly educated.25 Goldast, however, fails to admit that large parts of his work were direct transcriptions of Patrizi's Discussiones peripateticae.26 Goldast was thus as much a reader of Patrizi as Jessen, but his approach to the problems was explicitly philological. Two facts indicate his wish to interpret-or to infiltrate Aristotelianism in an "esoteric" manner in line with his foregrounding of Patrizi: for one, he identi- fied Paracelsus as the first of the modems to take up the ancient practice of esoteric delivery,27 and secondly, he was a friend of the Calvinist alchemist

Raphael Eglin, who had a hand in the edition Goldast was producing at the time in Frankfurt. Nor does it seem to me to be a coincidence that Jessen pub- lished a new edition of Carlo Sigonio's book De Dialogo in 1605, in which, as in the work of Ferrari, the problem of esoteric versus exoteric was revisited.

24 See Maria Muccillo, "La vita e le opere di Aristotele nelle Discussiones peripateticae di Francesco Patrizi da Cherso," Rinascimento II.s. 21 (1981), 53-119, esp. 89ff; M. J. Wilmot, "Aristoteles exotericus, acroamaticus, mysticus: Two Interpretations of the Typological Classifi- cation of the Corpus aristotelicum by Francesco Patrizi da Cherso," Nouvelles de la Republique des Lettres (1985), 67-95.

25 Melchior Goldast, "De cryptica veterum Philosophorum disciplina epistola ad Rudolphum Goclenium Philosophum Marpurgensem," Clavis philosophiae peripateticae aristotelicae, hoc est: Octaviani Ferrarii, Hieronymi F. Mediolanensis, De sermonibus Exotericis, liber unus, et de disciplina encyclico, liber alter, nunc primum in Germania editi ex Bibliotheca Melchioris Haiminsfeldii Goldasti (Frankfurt, 1506 [recte:1606]), 3-33.

26 See as well Goldast's excerpts from Patrizi: Staats- und Universitdtsbibliothek Bremen, Ms. msa 0004/06; also Martin Mulsow, "Gelehrte Praktiken politischer Kompromittierung. Melchior Goldast und Lipsius' Rede De duplici concordia im Vorfeld der Entstehung der protestantischen Union," Die Praktiken der Gelehrsamkeit in der Friihen Neuzeit, ed. Helmut Zedelmaier and Martin Mulsow (Tibingen, 2001), 307-47, esp. 320.

27 Goldast, "De cryptica," 21: "Patrum memoria exstitit Theophrastus Paracelsus Helvetius, qui ad veterum Philosophorum morem primus in Germania coepit alia discipulis tradere priva- tim et familiaribus, alia publice profiteri in scholis."

10

The Prisca Sapientia in Renaissance Humanism

III. We are thus back with Patrizi and the familiar discussion on Hermeti- cism and prisca sapientia, only now in a specific German milieu. We see how the complex Paduan debates of 1588 had taken up-as an after-effect of the Discussiones peripateticae and before the Nova de universis philosophia- French Calvinist skepticism regarding the claims to antiquity of non-biblical wisdom in order to direct it against the critics of Aristotle. In Germany critical debates were focused on the "flattening" occurring among the opponents of

metaphysics, so pro-Aristotelian arguments were imported from Italy that had served quite a different purpose there. In Italy the Ramist works were forbid- den, and thus the rhetorical "flattening" failed to emerge as a salient issue in the same way as it did in Germany. Only when read against its countercurrent does it become intelligible, namely, how in Germany a critical philologist such as Goldast-who, incidentally, shared the Calvinist confession with Beroalde and was a student of Beza's in Geneva-could argue the opposite ofAngelucci. Goldast supported the traditional wisdom of the "ancients" and their esoteric

practice, yet without considering the validity of Hermeticism. The activities of Goldast and Eglin also belong to the preliminary phase of

the Herbor encyclopedic ventures in that they opened Reformed school-phi- losophy to esoteric tendencies. If one understands "encyclopedia" the way, for example, Stelliola did (i.e., in the sense of enkyklios paideia,an esoteric educa- tional practice that Ferrari attempted to reconstruct), then it is clear that any encyclopedic venture must automatically be understood as an esoteric project.

One has to keep in mind, however, that the characteristics which made prisca sapientia attractive around 1600 were precisely the ones that later came under attack. The end of the Hermetic-Platonic prisca sapientia represented an extended process encompassing numerous phases: it was a process of mar- ginalization, from the utopia of an intellectual avant garde to an eighteenth- century ideology of subcultural and subpolitical fringe groups. It had manifold consequences due to its varied causes. The philological deprivation of its his- torical basis was only one such cause. The phase of a complex blend of philol- ogy, natural speculation, and Christian metaphysics only came to a complete halt with the strict development of confessional orthodoxies. In the case of Protestantism this occurred during the first half of the seventeenth century but even earlier in Catholicism. Another result of prisca sapientia, which differed from the dispute between Angelucci and Patrizi, began during Patrizi's lifetime within Catholic circles, that is, the emergence of anti-Platonism, mainly among Jesuits in Patrizi's Rome, immediately following the publication of the Nova de universis philosophia and found its most poignant expression in 1594 (the same year that witnessed the denunciation of Patrizi's book) in Giovann Batista Crispo's De Platone caute legendo, a text highly esteemed by Possevino and

11

his "selective" reading-directives.28 In Protestant Germany there were no such

authoritarian directives for appropriate reading. Nevertheless, the motto de

ethnicis philosophis caute legendis guided the program of the historian of phi-

losophy Jakob Thomasius and became a concern of early Enlightenment his-

tory of philosophy and theology; and pagan philosophy was to be examined on

whether or not it would or already had injected heresies into Christianity.29

Apart from Hermann Coming's concurrent accomplishments in setting bounds-

once more with Casaubon-to the burgeoning Hermeticism in the German

Paracelsian milieu, one can say that the theological verdict as such was of fore-

most importance around 1700.30 What was at stake was the question of whether

Platonism was ruining early and pure Christianity. When Johann Lorenz

Mosheim in 1725 cites Goldast's De cryptica veterumphilosophorum disciplina, he does it with the intention of discrediting as a vice that which for Goldast had been a virtue, namely, the clandestine practice of Pythagorean and Platonic

antiquity.31 For Mosheim, this practice represented a morality of lies, decep- tion, and concealment effecting the Neoplatonism of the second and third cen- turies after Christ. This philologically enlightened theologian viewed the fabri- cation of pseudo-epigraphs as morally discrediting the entire esoteric tradition, and Brucker followed him in this judgment.32 The prisca sapientia was, in-

deed, dead; it was refuted philologically, defeated historico-critically by the

28 Giovanni Battista Crispo, De ethnicisphilosophis caute legendis (Rome, 1594); cf. Sylvain Matton, "Quelques figures de l'antiplatonisme de la Renaisance a l'age classique," Contre Platon. 1. Le Platonisme devoile, ed. Monique Dixsaut (Paris, 1993), 357-413, esp. 401 ff: "De Bellarmin a Crispo: La reaction antiplatonicienne post-tridentine"; Muccillo, "Plotino nel tardo Rinascimento"; Tullio Gregory, "L'Apologia e le Declarationes di Francesco Patrizi"; Antonio Rotond6, "La censura ecclesiastica e la cultura," Storia d'Italia (Turin, 1973), V, 1399-1492, and esp. his "Cultura umanistica e difficulti di censori. Censura ecclesiastica e discussioni cinquecentesche sul platonismo," Le pouvoir et la plume. Incitation, controle et repression dans l'Italie duXVIe siecle (Paris, 1982), 15-50, and see A. Enzo Baldini, "Aristotelismo e platonismo nelle dispute romane sulla ragion di stato di fine cinquecento," Aristotelismo politico e ragion di stato, ed. A. Enzo Baldini (Florence, 1995), 201-26.

29 See Ralph Hafner, "Jakob Thomasius und die Geschichte der Haresien," Christian Thomasius (1655-1729). Neue Forschungen im Kontext der Friihaufklirung, ed. F. Vollhardt (Tiibingen, 1997), 141-64; Martin Mulsow, Moderne aus dem Untergrund. Radikale Friihauf- klirung in Deutschland 1680-1720 (Hamburg, 2002), 29 1 ff.

30 See Hermann Conring, De hermetica Aegyptiorum vetere etparacelsiorum nova medicina liber unus (Helmstedt, 1648, Helmstedt, 16992).

31 Johann Lorenz Mosheim, De caussis suppositorum librorum inter Christianos Saeculi I etII (Helmstedt, 1725), here the edition of the text in his Dissertationes ad historiam ecclesiasticam pertinentes, I, 217-65, esp. 254ff. See Martin Mulsow, "Eine Rettung des Servet und der Ophiten? Johann Lorenz Mosheim und die haretische Tradition," Johann Lorenz Mosheim (1693-1755). Theologie im Spannungsfeld von Philosophie, Philologie und Geschichte, ed. M. Mulsow, R. Hafner, H. Zedelmaier, and F. Neumann (Wiesbaden, 1997), 45-92.

32 See Brucker, Otium vindelicum (Augsburg, 1729).

Martin Mulsow 12

The Prisca Sapientia in Renaissance Humanism

elimination of myths of origin, and as Neoplatonism it was morally suspect. And, as the oldest sapientia, Christian Thomasius was inclined to understand the unspoiled simplicity of the primitives.33 Such wisdom, however, bore no more encyclopedic projects.

University of Munich.

33 See Martin Mulsow, "Gundling vs. Buddeus: Competing Models for the History of Phi- losophy," History and the Disciplines: The Reclassification of Knowledge in Early Modern Eu- rope, ed. D. R. Kelley (Rochester, N.Y., 1997), 103-26.

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