Prisca Theologia Research Articles

The Prisca Theologia in the Early Reformation Debates

The paradigm of the prisca theologia, developed by Marsilio Ficino in the second half of the fifteenth century, had a huge influence throughout the early modern period. Its influence on the Reformation debates, however, has not yet been investigated. In the present article, I make an initial contribution to filling this gap. In the first part, I show that theprisca theologia was widely disseminated in the territories of the Holy Roman Empire at the beginning of the sixteenth century, including at the University of Erfurt where Martin Luther was educated. In the second half, I focus on two figures central to the Reformation debates: Johann Eck and Martin Luther. As I show, Eck had an ambivalent attitude towards theprisca theologia: on the one hand, he aimed to reconcile the scholastic tradition with the ancient doctrines of theprisci theologi; on the other hand, he distanced himself from the Hermetic and magical implications of theprisca theologia. Luther, meanwhile, developed an anti-paradigm to Ficino’s prisca theologia: he argued that the improper mixing of black and white magic was born in Persia and then developed in Egypt and Greece.

John Calvin

Abstract This article provides an overview and critique of John Calvin’s understanding of non-Christian philosophy and religions. I suggest Calvin’s thinking differed in three significant ways from early and medieval church belief. First, he gave a far less prominent place to the role of the demonic in religions. Second, Calvin rejected both traditional and Renaissance versions of the prisca theologia. Finally, it is noted that he explained glimmers of truth in non-Christian religion and philosophy by developing a rather unique understanding of human enlightenment as gifting from a specific role of the Logos rather than as enlightenment by the Logos per se.

Mehmed the Conqueror between Sulh-i Kull and Prisca Theologia

AbstractThis article presents a new interpretation of the reign of the Ottoman sultan Mehmed the Conqueror (r. 1444–46, 1451–81) as refracted through the twin historical lenses of Mughal South Asia and the Renaissance Mediterranean. On the one hand, it argues that Mehmed, despite his current reputation as a conquering hero of Islam, in fact aspired to a model of sovereignty analogous to Akbar's Sulh-i Kull, and with a common point of origin in the conceptual worlds of post-Mongol Iran and Timurid central Asia. On the other hand, it also draws from the historiography of the Italian Renaissance to interpret Mehmed's cultural politics as being simultaneously inspired by a particular thread of Renaissance philosophy, the Prisca Theologia, which in many ways served as the Ottoman equivalent of Akbar's Sulh-i Kull.

Prisca Theologia and Retrograde Phenomenology at Eranos : Corbin, Eliade, not Scholem

The article proposes a re-evaluation of the Eranos meetings by analyzing its underlying aspects as a «laboratory of spiritual scholarship». To this aim, the first half of the article highlights R. Otto’s approach to religious experience as a source of inspiration for the Eranos project, as the mentor of Olga Fröbe-Kapteyn, and it advances three key terms to understand the atemporal character of the lectures held at Ascona and their connections to Renaissance thinking. The first one, prisca theologia, is the assumption that Christianity «preserved» an ancient mystery which granted it a triumphalism perspective both over other religions and traditional forms of Judaism. I will propose the second key term as retrograde phenomenology, an essentialist approach designed to uncover alleged ancient mysteries and superior forms of religious ontology. The third term necessary to comprehend the Eranos enterprise is academic mystagogy, here regarded as the elaboration of uniquely «inspired» methods of interpreting religious texts. The second part of the article revisits the scholarly triad of Henry Corbin, Mircea Eliade, and Gershom Scholem, famously associated with the Eranos enterprise by Steven Wasserstrom, more than two decades ago, and suggests a reassessment of their roles at the Ascona meetings. I suggest that Henry Corbin’s form of academic mystagogy embodied forms of subjective interpretations of the role of imagination in Sufi texts, while Mircea Eliade’s search for pristine origins promoted an imagined archaic highly endowed with ontological significance. Finally, I situate Gershom Scholem’s historical approach in direct opposition to Corbin and Eliade’s mystagogical and perrenial projects and suggest considering the Kabbalah scholar as a theoretical mystic, whose work explored the tensions between academic and metaphysical approaches to religion.

Newton Deified and Defied: The Many "Newtons" of the Enlightenment

More than any other scientist in history, Isaac Newton has been both deified and defied. In this article, I wish to summarize several aspects of the revised historiography on Newton. I will note in particular Newton's debt to the prisca sapientia and prisca theologia for his natural philosophy. I argue that Newton's natural philosophy cannot be separated from his theology. In the process, however, Newton had radically altered traditional Christian beliefs. And, in so doing, Newton ironically perpetuated the conflict he wished to avoid.

Catholic Cosmopolitanism and the Future of Human Rights

Political Catholicism began in the 20th century by presenting a conception of confessional politics to a secularizing Europe. However, this article reveals the reworking of political Catholicism’s historical commitment to a balance of two powers—an ancient Imperium and Sacerdotium—to justify change to this position. A secular democratic faith became a key insight in political Catholicism in the 20th century, as it wedded human rights to an evolving cosmopolitan Catholicism and underlined the growth of Christian democracy. This article argues that the thesis of Christian democracy held a central post-war motif that there existed a prisca theologia or a philosophia perennis, semblances of a natural law, in secular modernity that could reshape the social compact of the modern project of democracy. However, as the Cold War ended, human rights became more secularized in keeping with trends across Europe. The relationship between political Catholicism and human rights reached a turning point, and this article asks if a cosmopolitan political Catholicism still interprets human rights as central to its embrace of the modern world.

EL VALOR DE LA EXPERIENCIA MÍSTICA EN EL PENSAMIENTO DE MARSILIO FICINO

En el presente artículo desarrollaremos el problema del amor y la mística en el pensamiento de Marsilio Ficino haciendo un recorrido por sus principales teorías: su cosmología y su concepción sobre la naturaleza humana, su teoría sobre la prisca theologia, vinculada a su defensa de una pia philosophia y, por último, el furor divino y la melancolía en sintonía con la experiencia mística. Asimismo, en este trabajo, desarrollamos el significado del amor en relación con la belleza, comprendiendo que el amor no es otra cosa que deseo de belleza y la belleza, por su parte, no es otra cosa que el esplendor de la bondad divina. Evaluaremos hasta qué punto en cada una de las teorías mencionadas, encontramos relación con la contemplación y la vía mística dirigida hacia el conocimiento de la divinidad. En suma, el objetivo principal del artículo es examinar el papel que juega el misticismo en el pensamiento de Marsilio Ficino.

Fabulae and Imaginatio in Gianfrancesco Pico’s Thought

In Renaissance philosophy, the term fabula is often used to mean a poetic or fantastic tale that conceals the truth beneath metaphorical language. This article will focus on a rather different concept of fabula found in Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola’s works. To the younger Pico, the entire tradition of Greek and Latin poetry is a fabula: that is, a false and immoral narration inspired by demons. In the first part of this article, I will trace the origin of this use of fabula to the early Christian apologists. I will argue that Gianfrancesco’s intention was to build on this idea through an interpretation of ancient thought that differed from the historiographical model of prisca theologia proposed by Marsilio Ficino and Giovanni Pico. In the second part, I will show the close relationship, in Gianfrancesco’s philosophy, between fabula and imaginatio.

Francesco Patrizi’s concept of “nature”: presence and refutation of Stoicism

ABSTRACTThis essay analyzes the ways in which, in his Nova de Universis Philosophia, Francesco Patrizi uses, adopts, and, in some cases, rejects the Stoic philosophical tradition. Although, at first glance, most of Patrizi’s remarks on Stoicism and Stoic understanding of nature are critical – as this article demonstrates – he widely relied on Stoic teaching that he sought to combine with Neoplatonism and the prisca theologia doctrine.

From Sinai to Athens: Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s philological quest for the transmission of theological truth

ABSTRACTIn the summer of 1486, Pico came into possession of what he regarded as the original Chaldean text of the Chaldean Oracles, whose Greek text thus came to appear to him as an incomplete and flawed translation. The now-lost purported original Chaldean Oracles were a back translation infused with kabbalistic elements produced by Flavius Mithridates. In his Conclusiones nongentae (Rome, 1486), however, Pico devoted to them fifteen conclusions. Through an overall analysis of these conclusions, the first part of the article points out the kabbalistic themes and symbols that Pico descried in the original Chaldean Oracles. In the second part, an in-depth analysis of one of these conclusiones demonstrates that Pico’s reading of the oracle quoted therein implied that the Greek translator had missed the kabbalistic purport of the original. The article shows that Pico’s Conclusiones aimed at pointing out that the transmission of kabbalah to Zoroaster and from Zoroaster (although not without misinterpretations) to the Greek world – in other words, the existence of a divinely revealed prisca theologia transmitted through the ages – could be demonstrated on the basis of philological analysis and that, according to Pico, insofar as they provided a philological reconstruction of that science and its transmission, the Conclusiones should be reckoned as the culmination of the studia humanitatis.

Reformation, Renaissance and Hermeticism: Contexts and Interfaces of the Early Reformation Movement

ABSTRACTThis article contextualizes three theological currents that emerged on the eve of the Reformation and traces their interdependence: first, Luther's anti-Pelagian Augustinianism and the sola scriptura principle; second, the Florentine project of linking Hermeticism and the Christian Cabbala, exemplified in the works of Ficino and Pico della Mirandola. Attempting to link a new concept of magic with prisca theologia, both sought to harmonize contemporary forms of worship using Hermetic sources to advance the notion of common Christian origins and an optimistic anthropology alien to Luther's soteriology. The third current relates to magic, as delineated in Heinrich Kramer's Malleus maleficarum. Directed against Florentine Hermeticism, the book's Augustinian imprint, demonology, and view of witches bore significant parallels to Luther's theology. This aspect remains largely unexamined. Developing the premise that sixteenth-century Wittenberg was receptive to Florentine ideas, this article shows that Luther's early Christocentrism must arguably be seen as an alternative to those of others.

Esotericism in Classical Rabbinic Culture

This essay addresses the function of the Talmud and other classical rabbinic writings in the study of Western Esotericism. It begins with an overview of the Talmud with reference to other postbiblical Jewish texts occasionally cited by contemporary scholars as ostensible witnesses to the esoteric practices of the ancient rabbinic sages. Next, it asks whether these texts actually support such a thesis. Finally, it considers how the Talmudic sages were misunderstood to be esoteric exegetes by Christian Kabbalists, such as Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and Johannes Reuchlin, so as to validate their respective pursuits of the prisca theologia, a revelation of pre-Christian divine secrets. The contribution thereby proposes a revised empirical basis upon which to assess the contributions of the Talmudic sages to discourse about Western esotericism.

Alchemy of the Ancient Goths: Johannes Bureus’ Search for the Lost Wisdom of Scandinavia

The Swedish polymath Johannes Bureus (1568–1652), Royal Librarian and close friend of King Gustavus Adolphus, is primarily known as an exponent of early modern “Gothicism,” i.e., the idea that the ancient Goths of Scandinavia were the first rulers of Europe and Sweden the true origin of Western culture. But Bureus was also an avid reader of alchemical literature, as well as a practising alchemist. Influenced by the Neoplatonic revival of the Renaissance, he viewed alchemy as part of a prisca theologia stemming from the ancient Goths, arguing that the Scandinavian runes constituted a “Gothic Cabala,” in which the secrets of all sciences—including alchemy—had been hidden for posterity. Drawing on Bureus’ notes, glosses and excerpts from textual sources, this article considers the role attributed to alchemy in his quest for this lost wisdom of the Goths.

Filarete and the East: The Renaissance of a Prisca Architectura

Filarete's Libro Architettonico, written in Milan between 1460 and 1464/66, calls for a rebirth of antiquity. This is conventionally interpreted as a appeal for the emulation of Roman (or Greek) architecture, but Berthold Hub shows that Filarete's designs have noticeable elements in common with the architecture of the Near and Far East. The Libro locates the ideal buildings it describes in "India" and repeatedly mentions Egypt as being the place of origin of all architecture and as the model to be imitated. Filarete and the East: The Renaissance of a Prisca Architectura provides evidence of Filarete's familiarity with the Orient and subjects his designs to detailed comparison with buildings from India and Turkey. The author argues that Filarete was aiming to revive a prisca architectura, analogous to the efforts of humanist contemporaries who were searching for ever-older and more venerable evidence of an original truth, a prisca theologia.

Alchemical Poetry in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: A Preliminary Survey and Synthesis Part II — Synthesis

This article provides a preliminary description of medieval and early modern alchemical poetry composed in Latin and in the principal vernacular languages of western Europe. It aims to distinguish the various genres in which this poetry flourished, and to identify the most representative aspects of each cultural epoch by considering the medieval and early modern periods in turn. Such a distinction (always somewhat artificial) between two broad historical periods may be justified by the appearance of new cultural phenomena that profoundly modified the character of early modern alchemical poetry: the ever-increasing importance of the prisca theologia, the alchemical interpretation of ancient mythology, and the rise of neo-Latin humanist poetry. Although early modern alchemy was marked by the appearance of new doctrines (notably the alchemical spiritus mundi and Paracelsianism), alchemical poetry was only superficially modified by criteria of a scientific nature, which therefore appear to be of lesser importance. This study falls into two parts. Part I provides a descriptive survey of extant poetry, and in Part II the results of the survey are analysed in order to highlight such distinctive features as the function of alchemical poetry, the influence of the book market on its evolution, its doctrinal content, and the question of whether any theory of alchemical poetry ever emerged. Part II is accompanied by an index of the authors and works cited in both parts.

Alchemical Poetry in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: A Preliminary Survey and Synthesis Part I — Preliminary Survey

This article provides a preliminary description of medieval and early modern alchemical poetry composed in Latin and in the principal vernacular languages of western Europe. It aims to distinguish the various genres in which this poetry flourished, and to identify the most representative aspects of each cultural epoch by considering the medieval and early modern periods in turn. Such a distinction (always somewhat artificial) between two broad historical periods may be justified by the appearance of new cultural phenomena that profoundly modified the character of early modern alchemical poetry: the ever-increasing importance of the prisca theologia, the alchemical interpretation of ancient mythology, and the rise of neo-Latin humanist poetry. Although early modern alchemy was marked by the appearance of new doctrines (notably the alchemical spiritus mundi and Paracelsianism), alchemical poetry was only superficially modified by criteria of a scientific nature, which therefore appear to be of lesser importance. This study falls into two parts. Part I provides a descriptive survey of extant poetry, and in Part II the results of the survey are analysed in order to highlight such distinctive features as the function of alchemical poetry, the influence of the book market on its evolution, its doctrinal content, and the question of whether any theory of alchemical poetry ever emerged. Part II is accompanied by an index of the authors and works cited in both parts.

L’Idée de fable. Théories de la fiction poétique à la Renaissance (review)

Reviewed by: L’Idée de fable. Théories de la fiction poétique à la Renaissance Elena Kazakova Teresa Chevrolet. L’Idée de fable. Théories de la fiction poétique à la Renaissance. Genève: Droz, “Travaux d’Humanisme et Renaissance” N° CDXXIII, 2007. 765 pages. In L’Idée de fable, Teresa Chevrolet focuses on the theoretical framework that surrounds literary production in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italy and France. Such a study is not without its precedents: one could mention the History of Literary Criticism in the Italian Renaissance by Bernard Weinberg (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1961) that Chevrolet heavily draws upon, as well as the more recent Poétiques de la Renaissance edited by Perrine Galand-Hallyn and Fernand Hallyn (Genève: Droz, 2001). These precursors notwithstanding, most of her book is based on her own patient readings of a large amount of treatises on poetic theory and commentaries of ancient authors of the time, the majority of Italian origin, which she quotes generously throughout the text. Such a bulk of primary sources makes possible Chevrolet’s attempt to catalogue all of the different currents and views that emerge, influence, and contradict each other over these two centuries. [End Page 1198] The book is divided into three main parts, following chronological development of the poetic theory. In the first part, Chevrolet develops the idea of the fable as allegory, presenting this as the dominant conception of fiction in the first half of the sixteenth century. Following the rediscovery of Plato’s Republic, Neo-Platonists found it necessary to defend poetic fiction against Plato’s merciless indictment of the poets. They attempted to answer Plato’s charges by linking the fable to the truth. Thinking fiction in terms of allegory provided the means to do so since such an approach makes it possible to suggest that a fable may contain a hidden meaning that is related to philosophical and religious truths. Chevrolet bases her presentation of the interpretative tendencies of the period on Paolo Rossi’s distinction between fable as a veil under which lie truths inaccessible to the mob and fable as a pedagogical instrument that exposes knowledge to everyone without distinction (Francesco Bacone, dalla magia alla scienza [Bari: Laterza, 1974]). Chevrolet’s discussion of the former model describes the extent of the fascination with mystery and hidden meaning in the first half of the sixteenth century, the theoretical explanation of which is found in the concept of prisca theologia, a theory that claimed that all cryptic messages of the past, such as the words of the first poets or Egyptian hieroglyphs, express the same eternal truths, with these ancient poets and sages being directly inspired by gods. However, the tendency to seek hidden meanings everywhere leads to a situation where allegorical reading is no longer possible due to the multiplication of interpretations gone out of control, making it impossible to find this hidden meaning as each interpretation may be considered as a symbol for something else. As for the pedagogical potential of fiction, that is, of allegory as a carrier of knowledge and morals, Chevrolet shows that this latter possibility is valued and exploited by theoreticians at the same time as they emphasize fiction’s capacity to conceal the truth. Thus, she insists on the dual nature of Neo-Platonic allegory, concluding that such a duality also marks the contemporary understanding of the nature of literature itself, which was seen both as the original sacred language and as a language constructed by men for men. The second part explores the acceptance and integration of Aristotelian ideas into Renaissance literary debates. Chevrolet opens with a presentation of the profound misunderstanding on the level of terminology that accompanies the entry of Poetics, rediscovered and translated into Latin and Italian in the early sixteenth century, into literary circles already versed in the language of Plato and classical authors. It is through people like Plato, Horace, and Cicero that such terms as mimesis and verisimilitude, crucial to Aristotle, were being read. Commentaries on the work manifest the general tendency to take these terms out of their context in an attempt to identify them with the familiar notions found...

Idolatrous Cultures and the Practice of Religion

In the fifteenth century, idolatry could be understood as one in a diversity of religious rites. Nicholas of Cusa and subsequent Platonists emphasized that no rite was necessary, only love, and drew on prisca theologia to understand religion throughout the world. By the turn of the sixteenth century, cosmographers such as Peter Martyr Anglerius incorporated these ideas into descriptions of religious and cultural practice. Early Reformation concerns about removing superstitious rites and images, and the Counter-Reformation response to that critique, led to a vilification of heterodox religion as idolatrous and the increasing location of idolatry in cultures outside of Europe.

The religious foundations of Francis Bacon's thought

In this important study, Stephen A McKnight investigates the relation of Francis Bacon's religious views to his instauration, or program for reforming and advancing learning in order to bring relief to man's estate. McKnight provides close textual analyses of eight of Bacon's texts in order to establish the religious themes and motifs that pervade his writings from 1603 to 1626. McKnight begins with the Atlantis because it offers the fullest articulation of Bacon's vision of instauration and because the principal religious themes in Bacon's writings are all contained within it. Next, he turns to The Great Instauration and The New Organon to show the centrality of religious concepts in two of Bacon's major philosophical works. He then examines five of Bacon's early published and unpublished works, including The Advancement of Learning and Wisdom of the Ancients, to demonstrate that religious imagery and biblical themes permeate Bacon's program of reform from the outset. McKnight maintains that Bacon's vision of reform is drawn from the Judeo-Christian Scriptures, particularly the Genesis account of the Creation and the Fall; from apocalyptic expectation of renewal in the Old Testament; and from salvation themes of the New Testament. He also demonstrates that Bacon's Christian ideas are augmented and transmuted by related themes and imagery found in the prisca theologia, a mixture of Neoplatonic, Hermetic, alchemica, magic, and Jewish esoteric traditions. According to McKnight, Bacon believed that scholastic error and ecclesiastical dogma obscured religious truth and required a search for a truer, deeper level of understanding of the Scriptures and of God's saving acts in history.

A Philosophical Path for Paracelsian Medicine: The Ideas, Intellectual Context, and Influence of Petrus Severinus (1540-1602) (review)

Reviewed by: A Philosophical Path for Paracelsian Medicine: The Ideas, Intellectual Context, and Influence of Petrus Severinus (1540–1602) Dane T. Daniel Jole Shackelford . A Philosophical Path for Paracelsian Medicine: The Ideas, Intellectual Context, and Influence of Petrus Severinus (1540–1602). Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2004. Pp. 519. Cloth, $83.00. The Paracelsian and Danish royal physician Petrus Severinus complained, "If we can make more potent [drugs], extracted from metals and minerals, . . . I ask, what age except this one will oppose our efforts?" (115). Indeed, early modern attempts to prepare and prescribe drugs forged in the alchemical laboratory often faced vehement opposition by the university-trained physicians who were weaned on the humoral theory and herbal materia medica of Galen. The orthodox Galenists disdained not only the "chemical poisons" of the Paracelsians, but also their theoretical speculations. After all, the Paracelsians dismissed the belief that disease was the result of humoral imbalances, and promoted both the analogy of microcosm (the human) and macrocosm (the natural world, including the stars), and the idea that diseases were essences or actual beings. Severinus was prescient in his prediction that chemical medicine would become popular, but—as Jole Shackelford notes in the introduction to his A Philosophical Path for Paracelsian Medicine—the concepts of Paracelsus and his followers continue to remain peripheral to the grand narratives of early modern intellectual history. This remains the case despite the illuminating studies of such scholars as the late-Enlightenment medical historian Kurt Polycarp Sprengel, Walter Pagel, and Allen Debus. Thus, Shackelford sheds much needed light on this significant strand of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century science and medicine. Via text-oriented study, particularly of Severinus's Idea medicinæ philosophicæ (Ideal of Philosophical Medicine), Shackelford provides a long-awaited and meticulous biographical account of Severinus and explains with refreshing clarity the sources and speculative theory behind his brand of chemical medicine. Like such recent scholars as Michael Walton and Charles Gunnoe, Shackelford presents Paracelsianism as an ideology, duly noting that the ideas of Severinus, reflecting the reception of Paracelsus in general, were frequently accepted or rejected on religious grounds. To begin, Shackelford establishes Severinus's importance, noting that the medical author and Wittenberg professor Daniel Sennert wrote in 1619 that most iatrochemists followed in the steps of Severinus, who had molded Paracelsus's ideas into a coherent philosophy. Shackelford then traces the story of how Severinus—after studying at such universities as Padua and Paris—joined his friend Pratensis (a recognized Paracelsian) and Tycho [End Page 488] Brahe in bringing an increasingly eclectic Denmark up to continental cultural and intellectual standards. Unfortunately, Severinus's appointment as physician to the king distracted him from completing most of his research projects, but he had already left for posterity his Idea medicinæ, published in 1571. As Shackelford writes, the Idea medicinæ promoted Severinus's belief that Paracelsian medicine was not only an alternative to humoral medicine, but also promised to cope better with "new" fevers. Also, Severinus invested Paracelsianism with authority by emphasizing its ancient forebears and by arguing that Paracelsus was the latest in the line of prisca theologia—one of the few to "ascend to the inner chambers of the Mosaic mysteries" (57). In his amalgamation of Neoplatonism, the Hippocratic tradition, and Paracelsus, Severinus's featured doctrine was efficient causation, or "semina theory." Unlike Robert Boyle's inertial, material corpuscles and their active principles, Severinus's semina were "intrinsically formal and immaterial, and were logically and ontologically prior to matter" (17). The characteristics of these "loci," which accounted for all change in the subvisible world, could be observed through chemical analysis, and they were uniquely attractive to Christians, who were drawn to Severinus's Paracelsian interpretation of Genesis and his idea that when the predestinations contained in the semina are completed, the world will reach its end. Shackelford engages the reader with such fascinating topics as why Tycho—who was not just an astronomer, but also a student of alchemy—departed Denmark, and how Paracelsians were involved in the effort to improve the Danish Bible by "cleansing" it of non-Lutheran elements. Very welcome too is Shackelford's discussion of the neglected topic of Paracelsian therapeutics, especially his evaluation of...