Solon apparently was told by the Egyptian priests that deluges and fire had periodically ravaged the earth, causing civilisations to collapse and disappear. However, because of the disposition of the Nile Valley, Egypt had miraculously been spared and all her ancient temples and sanctuaries had survived. In them and them alone was preserved a complete memory of the great events of the distant past and of deeds previously accomplished by mankind. They even contained a record of the origins of the world and knowledge of that golden age when mortals had fraternised with the gods.
Classical writers who had visited or lived in Egypt, such as Herodotus, Diodorus Siculus and Proclus Diadochus, likewise extolled the immensely old wisdom of the Egyptian priests, and especially their revered knowledge of the heavens and the motion of the stars. Many deemed Egypt a sacred land, a land in which the gods had once dwelt and taught men the divine and sacred science, and where the secrets of immortality had been revealed to those who were fully worthy.19 However, this wonderful and pristine Egyptian science had thus far remained out of the reach of Renaissance scholars such as Cosimo de’Medici because it was written in the mysterious and impenetrable hieroglyphic language which no one anymore could understand. Ancient and holy Egypt had fallen into a deep coma from which, it seemed, it might never again awake.
One can therefore imagine the intellectual shockwave that passed through the learned circles of Florence in 1460 when Cosimo de’Medici excitedly announced that he had in his possession a collection, translated by some unknown hand into Greek, of the fabled lost books of Hermes Trismegistus. The late Dame Frances Yates, a world authority on the Renaissance, puts the scale of the discovery into context: From … early Christian writers, more about Hermes Trismegistus could be learned, particularly from Clement of Alexandria, who, in his striking description of the procession of the Egyptian priests, says that the singer at the head of the procession carried two books of music and hymns by Hermes; the horoscopus carried four books by Hermes on the stars. In the course of this description Clement states that there are forty-two books by Hermes Trismegistus, thirty-six of which contained the whole of the philosophy of the Egyptians, the other six being on medicine. It is very improbable that Clement knew any of the Hermetica which have come down to us, but the Renaissance reader believed that he had in the Corpus Hermeticum and the Asclepius precious survivors of that great sacred library of which Clement speaks.20
Cosimo and his contemporaries believed that the ‘divine’ Plato had himself been taught philosophy by the priests of Egypt. It was the desire to regain contact with the source of that philosophy that mostly fired the imagination of Cosimo de’Medici and led him to action.
Drop Plato, translate Hermes instead
When the Hermetic texts reached Cosimo, it so happened that his adopted son, Marsilio Ficino, was busy translating the works of Plato from Greek into more accessible Latin. Cosimo ordered the young man to drop Plato at once and to concentrate all his efforts full-time on the translation of the Hermetica.
Ficino, then 27 years old, had already acquired a reputation as a fine scholar, theologian and linguist – especially in Greek and Latin. Born in 1433, he was the natural son of a Florentine physician, the latter a close friend of Cosimo de’Medici. Cosimo adopted Ficino after the death of his father, and encouraged him to pursue his passion for Plato's works.
Roman Catholicism had a long history of disapproval of Platonic philosophy going back before the closure of the original Academy in 529. By the 1400s, however, Plato was beginning to find supporters again within the Church – and Ficino was one of these. He therefore set out very deliberately to apply his intellect to an integration of Plato's philosophy with Roman Catholic teachings. He would also try to do the same, as we shall see, with the philosophy found in the books of the ‘Egyptian sage’ Hermes Trismegistus. But what was amazing was that the man who was to be the head of Cosimo de’Medici's Platonic Academy should have been ordered to put aside Plato and to focus instead on the translation of the books of Hermes. As Frances Yates comments: It is an extraordinary situation. There are the complete works of Plato, waiting, and they must wait whilst Ficino quickly translates Hermes, probably because Cosimo wants to read him before he dies. What a testimony this is to the mysterious reputation of [Hermes] the Thrice Great One! …21
Within a year Ficino managed to complete a Latin translation of the 14 books or ‘tracts’ of the Hermetica (as the collection that Leonardo da Pistoia had brought back from Macedonia is now known). In 1473, ten years after finishing this work, Ficino was ordained a priest of the Roman Catholic Church and eventually became a high official at the Cathedral of Florence. It is widely accepted by scholars that his translations of the Greek classics and, especially, the works of Plato, were part of the impetus behind the Italian Renaissance. But what is less appreciated is the huge, indeed revolutionary, effect that Ficino's translation of the Hermetica was also to have on Western culture and on the Catholic Church itself.
The full corpus
Ficino had given his translation the title of Pimader, the name of the mysterious ‘universal mind’ that supposedly had revealed to Hermes Trismegistus the divine wisdom imparted in the Hermetica.
Although the printing press had just been invented 15 years before,22 the publication of Pimander was a huge success. It had first circulated in handwritten copies but eventually was printed in 1471 in Treviso (apparently without permission from Ficino) under the title Pimander or the Power and Wisdom of God. This was somewhat misleading since the term Pimander, which is derived from the original Greek Poimadres – itself derived from Peime-n-Ré, meaning the ‘knowledge of Ré’, the Egyptian sun-god – only appears briefly in the opening part of the book. None of the other tracts in the Hermetica mention Pimander at all.
Be that as it may the Treviso edition was so successful that it prompted another publisher at Ferrera to bring out a rival edition in 1472, again without Ficino's permission. By 1543, the same year that Copernicus's famous De revolutionibus orbium coelestium (‘On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres’) was first published in Nuremberg, there were over 50 separate editions of the Hermetica circulating in Europe!
When Ficino had translated the texts back in 1463, he had not included a tract called the Logos Teleios, the Perfect Discourse, better known as the Asclepius. This was because the latter (a fragment of which, the reader will recall, was also found amongst the Nag Hammadi Gnostic texts) had already been translated into Latin from a Greek original sometime in late antiquity and had been circulating among European scholars since medieval times. We shall come back to the Asclepius in due course but, in brief for now, this book purports to explain the magical religion of the Egyptians and, more importantly, the mysterious talismanic skills that they supposedly deployed to draw down the powers of the stars into statues and other objects.23 It was this type of magic that was to impress Ficino deeply and to influence his many followers.
The Asclepius was printed for the first time in 1469 with the complete works of Apuleius, only two years before the first printed edition of Ficino's Pimander. It thus quickly became customary to attach the Asclepius to the Hermetica, the whole forming one major corpus generally known as the ‘philosophical’ Hermetica or Corpus Hermeticum. There is also a further booklet known as the Definitions of Asclepius that is sometimes added to this corpus.
According to French scholar Jean-Pierre Mahé, professor of humanities at the Sorbonne in Paris, the Definitions of Asclepius was rediscovered in 1484, that is two decades after the rediscovery of the Hermetica, in a far more dramatic and flamboyant manner than the Ruritanian spectacle of a monk riding his little donkey into Florence. Apparently a certain Senore Ludovico Lazzarelli, in an obscure tract titled The Letter of Enoch, narrated how his master, Don Giovanni Mercurio da Correggio, had helped him to find these lost writings of Hermes Trismegistus (called also Mercurio by the Italians). On Palm Sunday in April of the year 1484, Giovanni Mercurio, then exactly 33 years old, that is the s
upposed age of Christ at his Crucifixion, rode into Rome on a black stallion guided by two servants, and made his way towards the Vatican. Dressed in black and wearing a golden belt and purple shoes, Giovanni Mercurio had placed on his head a crown of thorns, and upon his brow was fixed a silver plaque in the form of a lunar crescent on which were written these words: This is my son Pimander, whom I personally chose. From early childhood he has grown to sublime heights, and I have empowered him with all my compliance to cast away demons and to install my truth and my justice upon all nations. Be warned not to oppose him! Heed his words and obey him with fear and reverence. These are the words of the Lord of all the sanctuaries of the world, Jesus Christ.24
Giovanni Mercurio then pulled a heap of leaflets out his saddlebag and threw them all around. The crowds gathered; some thought him mad, others thought that he was making some strange vow, but the majority hailed him as a prophet. At the Vatican, the Swiss Guard baffled by this strange scene, stood aside and let him pass. In the cathedral Giovanni Mercurio announced that he was the reincarnated Pimander. He spent the next few days talking to the crowds then returned to his hometown in Bologna, where he was widely acclaimed by women and children. Not surprisingly, he was soon arrested by the Inquisition for blasphemy and threatened with the stake. In 1486, however, he was released under the protection of the then king of France, Charles VIII.
Almost every aspect of this whole strange episode underlines the incredible religious impact that the Hermetica had on the collective mind of the Renaissance and, even more curious, the way that Hermes/Mercurio Trismegistus was being attached to the Christian faith.
A repercussion of Giovanni Mercurio's strange but short career as a ‘prophet’ of Hermes Trismegistus, was that the poet and astrologer Lodovico Lazzarelli, who had been an eyewitness to Giovanni's cavalcade into Rome on that Palm Sunday back in 1484, also succumbed to the Hermetic spell, and adopted the mystical name of ‘Enoch’ (another alleged incarnation of Hermes).25 Lazzarelli became Giovanni's most ardent disciple and, according to him, here is how the Definitions of Asclepius were found: It was by chance, while scrutinising relentlessly the old books of those who inspired me, and while over a cup full of the most suave nectar which, I do not doubt, had flowed from the huge crater [bowl] of Hermes Trismegistus, by which I mean a small book in Greek having the title of the Definitions of Asclepius. As soon as I read it, its conciseness and the mysterious authenticity of its wisdom enchanted me and filled me with admiration.26
Lazzarelli made it his task to translate the Definitions of Asclepius immediately into Latin, but it was only after his death in 1507 that this book was eventually printed – alongside the work of the French Neoplatonist and occultist Symphorien Champier, in his Book of the Quadruple Life. Now, at last, the full works attributed to Hermes Trismegistus were in the hands of Western scholars, and something quite extraordinary was about to happen …
Veiling Hermes in the Church (1)
In the mind of Marsilio Ficino, Hermes Trismegistus was a historical person who had lived in ancient Egypt and had actually been the author of the Hermetica. This view was shared by all the Renaissance humanists and philosophers – notably the great Christian Hermetic-Cabalist Giovanni Pico della Mirandola – who, like Ficino, were totally seduced by the Hermetica. As professor Jean-Pierre Mahé explains: According to Marsilio Ficino, [Hermes] Trismegistus [Hermes Thrice-Great] had merited his surname by becoming at the same time the greatest of philosophers, the greatest of priests and the greatest of kings … And his successors were Orpheus, Aglaophemus, Pythagoras and Philolaus, the teacher of Plato … Thus, the works of Trismegistus were the true source of ancient wisdom. Not only the divine Plato, but also the legendary Pythagoras and even the inspired poets such as Orpheus, perpetuated the same Egyptian doctrine: all bouncing the echo, as it were, of a single and same ancient theology, the prisca theologia … 27
Concerned, however, not to undermine the authority of the Bible and awake the Inquisition, the early Hermetic scholars accepted that Hermes Trismegistus came after Moses. This play-it-safe idea had originated with Saint Augustine, the Manichean hearer who converted to Catholicism and became one of the great doctors of the Church (see Chapter Five). Augustine accepted that Hermes Trismegistus lived long before the Greek philosophers, but insisted that he, … came after Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Joseph and even Moses. Because Moses was born in the time of Atlas, brother of Prometheus, who was a great astronomer … he was the grandfather of the older Mercury [Hermes], himself the grandfather of [Hermes] Trismegistus.28
But some did not agree with this chronology. Lazzarelli, who had translated the Definitions of Asclepius and utterly believed in Hermes Trismegistus's older origin, argued: … It was not at the times of Moses that Trismegistus had lived, but long before, as one can easily ascertain from the works of Diodorus of Sicily. The latter reported, in his chronology of the kings of Egypt, it was first gods that ruled then human brings. Hence it is evident that Mercury (Hermes) Trismegistus lived in the times of the gods … whereas Moses lived at an epoch where the Bible and many other ancient writings known in Egypt clearly state when ruled pharaohs …29
If you visit the famous Cathedral of Siena located between Rome and Florence, you will find that the entire floor, which dates back to 1488, is paved with exquisite marble designs depicting religious and mythological scenes. One of these scenes shows the Egyptian sage Hermes Trismegistus handing a book to an oriental figure standing in a respectful manner bowing slightly. Written upon the book in Latin are the words ‘Suscipite O Licteras Et Lege Egiptii’, meaning ‘Take up thy letters and laws O Egyptians’, and the bowing figure, according to Frances Yates, was ‘perhaps intended to be Moses.’30 What seems to support this amazing identification is the plaque under the feet of the figures which states: ‘Hermes Mercurius contemporaneous of Moses’, implying, says Yates: … a supplication from the lawgiver of the Hebrews (if the suppliant figure is Moses) to the lawgiver of the Egyptians to revive Egyptian piety and morality … The representation of Hermes Trismegistus in this Christian edifice, so prominently displayed near its entrance and giving him so lofty a spiritual position, is not an isolated phenomenon but a symbol of how the Italian Renaissance regarded him and a prophecy of what was to be his extraordinary career throughout Europe in the sixteenth century and well on into the seventeenth century …31
Veiling Hermes in the Church (2)
The ancient Egyptian sage Hermes Trismegistus, and by extension the writings attributed to him, were indeed due for a glittering Renaissance career. In 1544, for example, when the French humanist Adrien Turnèbe (better known simply as Turnebus) published in Paris the first edition of the original Greek text of the Hermetica accompanied by Ficino's translation in Latin, the theologian Petrus Paulus Vergerius had this to say in the preface: Hermes Trismegistus was an Egyptian by race … He flourished before the time of pharaoh, as many of the chronographi think. Some, among whom is Cicero, suppose that he is the person whom the Egyptians call Thoth … He must have lived, therefore, before pharaoh, and consequently, before Moses also … He wrote at the time many books of mystical philosophy and theology. Among these writings, there are two of special importance: the one is called Asclepius, and the other, Poimandres [i.e. the Pimander].32
After Turnebus's publication came the work of the bishop of Aire, François Foix de Candale, better known as ‘Flussas’, who published a new edition of the Hermetica. Flussas was even more enthusiastic than his predecessors, and dedicated the work to the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian II, informing him that Hermes Trismegistus had attained to a knowledge of divine things which he first wrote in Egyptian, then in Greek, surpassing that ‘which was revealed to the Hebrew prophets, and equalling that of the Apostles and Evangelists’: What more is made known to us by those who were instructed by our Saviour himself? And yet this man [Hermes] was anterior in time not only to the disciples of our Lord, but also to all the prophets and teachers of our law, and, as the ancients say, to
Moses himself.33
In 1591 came the Italian Neoplatonist scholar Francesco Patrizi da Cherso, also known as Franciscus Patricius, who was also to publish an edition of the Hermetica in his work Nova de universis philosophia (‘New Philosophy of Universes’). Patrizi not only saw Hermes Trismegistus as the source of all wisdom, but in the preface of his book, which is addressed to Pope Gregory XIV, Patrizi actually urged the pope to order that the Hermetica should be taught to everyone, even to the Jesuits, because it could somehow serve as a ‘conversion’ tool for the Catholic Church: I hope that you and your successors will adopt this new restored religious philosophy and cause it to be studied everywhere … I would have you then, Holy Father, and all future Popes, give orders that some of the books which I have named shall be continually taught everywhere, as I have taught them in the last fourteen years at Ferrara. You will thus make all able men in Italy, Spain and France friendly to the Church; and perhaps even the German Protestants will follow their example, and return to the Catholic faith. It is much easier to win them back in this way than to compel them by ecclesiastical censures or by secular arms. You should cause this doctrine to be taught in the schools of the Jesuits, who are doing such good work. If you do this, great glory will await you among men of future times. And I beg you to accept me as a helper in this undertaking.34