The Way Philosophers Pray: Hymns as Experiential Knowledge in Early Modern Europe

Marco Piana,Matteo Soranzo

doi:10.21071/mijtk.v5i.12087

Abstract

Beginning with the work of Marsilio Ficino through the poems of Michele Marullo, Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola, Pierre Ronsard, Edmund Spenser and others, this essay discusses the revival and fortune of philosophical hymns in Quattrocento Italy and the diffusion of this genre in Early Modern Europe. In doing so, we will attempt at framing this phenomenon in the context of Early Modern religious pluralism and interpret it as an instance of experiential knowledge.

Highlights

In common parlance as well as in standard histories of philosophy the language of prayer and the language of reason are ascribed to different, if not contrasting, domains
We will attempt at framing this phenomenon in the context of Early Modern religious pluralism and interpret it as an instance of experiential knowledge
Humanistically trained scholars like Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola (1470–1533) perceived the recitation of prayers straying from Christian liturgical practice as deeply problematic, contributing to suppressing or confining this genre to non-philosophical domains such as antiquarianism or literature

Summary

Ficino’s Hymns and Spiritual Exercises

Grounded in his interpretative work on Plotinus’ Enneads, Ficino’s interest in ancient hymns was guided by more pressing needs than the satisfaction of scholarly curiosity. As can be learned from these letters, Ficino’s hymns are to be taken as an attempt at rediscovering ancient hymns as religious experiences and spiritual exercises, the purpose of which – in line with Plato’s philosophy – is turning the human soul away from the multiplicity of the bodily prison toward her archetypical counterpart, which is thought to reside in the intelligible world This practice may seem strange to a modern reader. Hymns and prayers are carefully distinguished from incantations (cantiones), by which Ficino meant petitions to alternative intelligences that some could call to act directly, and blasphemously, upon things.45 Whether these restrictions, as Walker argued, stemmed from Ficino’s attempted apology of his magic or – as Robichaud has clearly demonstrated – from his Neoplatonic sources, it should be taken into account that meditative prayers in general are more open to innovations than other types of prayer.. Open to innovation and intended to recreate the presence of God in the subject’s soul, meditative prayers are marked by a lack of uniformity found, for instance, in the more formulaic and standardized language that members of a priestly class impose upon ritualistic prayers. Once adopted as a form of meditation, the theurgical hymns found or mentioned in pre-Christian sources could be perceived as spiritual exercises perfectly compatible with a Christian outlook that was open, especially during the late fifteenth century, to a relative degree of religious inclusivism.

Early Success of Hymns

Hymns and Spirituality at Court

Conclusion