Western Civilization_ Volume B_ 1300 to 1815 - Jackson J. Spielvogel [76]
By the fifteenth century, a consciousness of being humanists had emerged. This was especially evident in the career of Lorenzo Valla (1407–1457). Valla was brought up in Rome and educated in both Latin and Greek. Eventually, he achieved his chief ambition of becoming a papal secretary. Valla’s major work, The Elegances of the Latin Language, was an effort to purify medieval Latin and restore Latin to its proper position over the vernacular. The treatise examined the proper use of Classical Latin and created a new literary standard. Early humanists had tended to take as Classical models any author (including Christians) who had written before the seventh century C.E. Valla identified different stages in the development of the Latin language and accepted only the Latin of the last century of the Roman Republic and the first century of the empire.
HUMANISM AND PHILOSOPHY In the second half of the fifteenth century, a dramatic upsurge of interest in the works of Plato occurred, especially evident among the members of an informal discussion group known as the Florentine Platonic Academy. Cosimo de’ Medici, the de facto ruler of Florence, became its patron and commissioned a translation of Plato’s dialogues by Marsilio Ficino (mar-SIL-yoh fee-CHEE-noh) (1433–1499), one of the academy’s leaders. Ficino dedicated his life to the translation of Plato and the exposition of the Platonic philosophy known as Neoplatonism.
In two major works, Ficino undertook the synthesis of Christianity and Platonism into a single system. His Neo-platonism was based on two primary ideas, the Neoplatonic hierarchy of substances and a theory of spiritual love.The former postulated the idea of a hierarchy of substances, or great chain of being, from the lowest form of physical matter (plants) to the purest spirit (God), in which humans occupied a central or middle position. They were the link between the material world (through the body) and the spiritual world (through the soul), and their highest duty was to ascend toward that union with God that was the true end of human existence. Ficino’s theory of spiritual or Platonic love maintained that just as all people are bound together in their common humanity by love, so too are all parts of the universe held together by bonds of sympathetic love.
RENAISSANCE HERMETICISM Hermeticism was another product of the Florentine intellectual environment of the late fifteenth century. At the request of Cosimo de’ Medici, Ficino translated into Latin a Greek work titled Corpus Hermeticum (KOR-pus hur-MET-i-koom). The Hermetic manuscripts contained two kinds of writings. One type stressed the occult sciences, with an emphasis on astrology, alchemy, and magic. The other focused on theological and philosophical beliefs and speculations. Some Hermetic writings espoused pantheism, seeing divinity embodied in all aspects of nature and in the heavenly bodies as well as in earthly objects. As Giordano Bruno, one of the most prominent of the sixteenth-century Hermeticists, stated, “God as a whole is in all things.”14
For Renaissance intellectuals, the Hermetic revival offered a new view of humankind. They believed that human beings had been created as divine beings endowed with divine creative power but had freely chosen to enter the material world (nature). Humans could recover their divinity, however, through a regenerative experience or purification of the soul. Thus regenerated, they became true sages or magi, as the Renaissance called them, who had knowledge of God and of truth. In regaining their original divinity, they reacquired an intimate knowledge of nature and the ability to employ the powers of nature for beneficial purposes.
In Italy, the most prominent magi in the late fifteenth century were Ficino and his friend and pupil, Giovanni Pico