The Renaissance Philosophy of Man

Petrarca, Valla, Ficino, Pico, Pomponazzi, Vives

Ernst Cassirer, Paul Oskar Kristeller, John Herman Randall, Ernst Cassirer, Paul Oskar Kristeller, John Herman Randall

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9780226149790
• Topic: Filosofía
• Subtopic: Historia y teoría filosóficas

Despite our admiration for Renaissance achievement in the arts and sciences, in literature and classical learning, the rich and diversified philosophical thought of the period remains largely unknown. This volume illuminates three major currents of thought dominant in the earlier Italian Renaissance: classical humanism (Petrarch and Valla), Platonism (Ficino and Pico), and Aristotelianism (Pomponazzi). A short and elegant work of the Spaniard Vives is included to exhibit the diffusion of the ideas of humanism and Platonism outside Italy. Now made easily accessible, these texts recover for the English reader a significant facet of Renaissance learning.

NOTES

I. FRANCESCO PETRARCA

INTRODUCTION

1. G. Fracassetti, Lettere di Francesco Petrarca, V (Florence, 1892), 377.

2. The reader will have to discover this in the notes. A detailed analysis which would prove to be most revealing cannot be made here, since it would require too much space.

3. Hereinafter cited as Fam., while Petrarca’s second collection, the Letters of Old Age (Seniles), are quoted as Sen.

4. I wish to thank Miss Helen Florence North of Ithaca, N.Y., and Professor John H. Randall, Jr., for their careful revision of my translation.

A SELF-PORTRAIT

1. [In the word scholasticus so many meanings are united (schoolboy, student, scholar), that it cannot well be rendered by a single word in a modern language.]

2. [On the skeptical outcome of the New Academy, Petrarca got his information from Cicero’s philosophical writings, especially from the Academica posteriora. There he found Cicero saying (i. 12. 46) that in Plato’s books nothing is firmly stated and much discussed “in both directions” (in utramque partem).]

THE ASCENT OF MONT VENTOUX

1. [The name of the mountain appears as “Ventosus” in Latin documents as early as the tenth century, though originally it had nothing to do with the strong winds blowing about that isolated peak. Its Provençal form “Ventour” proves that it is related to the name of a deity worshiped by the pre-Roman (Ligurian) population of the Rhone Basin, a god believed to dwell on high mountains (cf. C. Jullian, Histoire de la Gaule, VI, 329; P. Julian, “Glose sur l’étymologie du mot Ventoux,” in Le Pélérinage du Mt. Ventoux [Carpentras, 1937], pp. 337 ff.).]

2. [In his History of Rome (xl. 21. 2–22. 7) Livy tells that King Philip V of Macedonia went up to the top of Mount Haemus, one of the highest summits of the Great Balkans (ca. 7,800 ft.), when he wanted to recon-noiter the field of future operations before the Third Macedonian War, which he was planning to fight against the Romans (181 B.C.). Since Petrarca knew the exact location of this mountain from Pliny’s Natural History (iv. 1. 3 and xi. 18.41), it must have been a slip of his pen that made him substitute “Thessaly” for “Thrace.”]

3. [Mela Cosmographia ii. 2. 17.]

4. [Cf. Cicero De imperio Cn. Pompei 21. 61, where he praises the courage of Pompey, who took over the command of the Roman armies in 77 B.C. though he was then but an “adulescentulus privatus.”]

5. [Virgil Georgica i. 145–46; Macrobius Saturnalia v. 6.]

6. [Matt. 7:14 (Sermon on the Mount).]

7. [A typical metaphor familiar to ecclesiastical writers; cf., e.g., Anselm of Canterbury Letters i. 43 (Migne, Patrologia Latina, CLVIII, 1113, etc.), where it is used as a friendly wish in salutations.]

8. [Ovid Ex Ponto iii. 1. 35.]

9. [Ps. 106(107):10; Job 34:22.]

10. [I Cor. 15:52; Augustine Confessions vii. 1. 1 (cf. Shakespeare, Merchant of Venice, Act. II, scene 2, line 183).]

11. [Though Petrarca was familiar with the idiom of southern France, he misinterpreted the Provençal word fiholo. There is still today a spring just below the summit of Mont Ventoux called “Font-filiole” and a ravine near by by name of “combe filiole,” the word meaning a water conduit or a rivulet, but the summit can have received the name only secondarily (P. de Champeville, “L’Itinéraire du poète F. P.,” in L’Ascension du Mt. Ventoux [Carpentras, 1937], p. 41).]

12. [Hannibal is said to have made his troops burn down the trees on rocks obstructing their way and pour vinegar on the ashes to pulverize the burned material when he crossed the Alps in 218 B.C. (Livy History of Rome xxi. 37; cf. Pliny Nat. Hist, xxiii. 57). Later authors referred to this incident as an example of Hannibal’s ingenuity in overcoming seemingly unsurmountable obstacles (Juvenal Satire 10, 153).]

13. [Petrarca is referring to Giacomo Colonna, bishop of Lombez, who had gone to Rome in the summer of 1333; cf. Fam., I, 5 (4), and I, 6 (5).]

14. [Confessions ii. 1.1.]

15. [Ovid Amores iii. 11. 35.]

16. [Two rival wills are struggling in Petrarca’s breast, the old one not releasing him from his amorous servitude and blocking his spiritual progress, the other urging him forward on the way to perfection (cf. Augustine Confessions viii. 5. 10; x. 22–23, and Petrarca’s Sonnet 52 (68).]

17. [The small-sized manuscript codex of Augustine’s Confessions, a present from Dionigi, accompanied Petrarca wherever he went until the last year of his life, when he could no longer read its minute script and gave the book to Luigi Marsili (see p. 33) as a token of his friendship.]

18. [Augustine Confessions x. 8. 15.]

19. [Seneca Epistle 8. 5.]

20. [Rom. 13:13–14, quoted by Augustine Confessions viii. 12. 29.]

21. [Matt. 19:21, quoted by Athanasius in his Life of St. Anthony (Latin version by Euagrius), chap. 2, and from there by Augustine Confessions viii. 12. 29.]

22. [Cf. Matt. 7:13–15.]

23. [Virgil Georgica ii. 490–92.]

ON HIS OWN IGNORANCE AND THAT OF MANY OTHERS

1. [This is actually the case in both autograph copies.]

2. [Suetonius Life of Nero 52.]

3. [At fifty the citizen of the Roman republic reached the age limit of military service, and at sixty he was no longer obliged to accept a public office (Seneca De brevitate vitae 20. 4; Livy History of Rome...