Abstract
The aim of this article is to trace the influence of Axiochus, an apocryphal text attributed to Plato, on Humanism. The dialogue, which belongs to the literary genre of “consolation”, addresses the theme of contempt of death and the immortality of the soul. The jurist Pedro Díaz de Toledo (1410/15 – 1466) translated it into Spanish in 1444 from a Latin version entitled De morte contemnenda, which Cencio de’ Rustici had translated eight years earlier, probably from the Greek codex provided by Joannes Chrysoloras, the Vaticanus gr. 1031. For his part, the humanist Beatus Rhenanus (1485 – 1547), the owner of five editions, revised and corrected in detail the text of a translation by Rudolf Agricola, proposing a number of amendments and changes that would appear in the Basel edition printed by Adam Petri in 1518.
Highlights
Collection of Neoplatonic texts published by Aldo Manuzio in 1497, which contained a version of Axiochus
The aim of this article is to trace the influence of Axiochus, an apocryphal text attributed to Plato, on Humanism
The pseudo-Platonic Axiochus is a brief and attractive work written in a careful style, which provides the reader with a consolatio mortis, a series of arguments in defence of the immortality of the soul and a myth that includes a suggestive description of the Netherworld
Summary
The jurist and man of letters Pedro Díaz de Toledo was born between 1410 and 1415, probably in Seville, into an influential Spanish family of Jewish converts. At the beginning of the 1430s, he began to study law at the University of Valladolid, finishing his studies on 12 September 1438 at the University of Lleida, where he acquired thorough training in civil and canon law. As González Rolán and Saquero Suárez-Somonte point out, both the title, Fedrón instead of Fedón, and the inclusion of this dialogue instead of Axiochus is probably due to the Latin codex used by Díaz de Toledo to make the Spanish translations of both diacon el salmista david. Of the Latin version of Axiochus, in addition to the above-mentioned Spanish translation by Díaz de Toledo, only one printed edition and thirty eight manuscripts are preserved, among which is the one held by the Library of the Cathedral at Burgo de Osma (Ms 124), to which we have previously referred. In the Dialogue, Díaz de Toledo incorporates words and phrases from his translation of Axiochus, enriching the literary work with this lexical and architectural interconnection
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