Luigi Pulci’s Parody of Josephus’s Judean Antiquities: An Indictment of Marsilio Ficino

Abstract

Poi ch’io parti’ da voi is one of the earliest documents pertaining to the fifteenth-century polemic between the vernacular poet Luigi Pulci and the prolific philosopher Marsilio Ficino. Pulci’s sonnet parodies Josephus Flavius’s Judean Antiquities, written in the first century ce. In Judean Antiquities Josephus de-emphasizes biblical miracles; nevertheless, Ficino repeatedly cites Josephus in his religious treatise De Christiana religione. This study contextualizes Pulci’s parody within his discord with Ficino, and within the anticlerical poetic tradition of the epoch. A review of the polemic’s earliest chronology follows the examination of Pulci’s sonnet and an identification of his sort of parody. Ultimately, this study crystallizes the circumstances surrounding the Pulci–Ficino polemic, and identifies points of contention between a conservative religious point of view prevalent in the vernacular popular culture of the epoch and an innovative religious philosophy championed by Ficino.