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The
new philosophy of nature
257
theology
in the Platonic mould, it would replace the scholastic
Aristotelianism which had dominated the church for four centuries and
would
reunite
Christianity. Patrizi defended his orthodoxy by appealing to
the Fathers and by deploying the force - the only kind which Patrizi
regarded as persuasive — of
rationes
and demonstrations. This was the
programme which he
attempted
to initiate when teaching in Rome
(Clement
VIII had called him to teach at the Sapienza in
1592).
Patrizi's work
reopens the problem of the significance and religious implications of
the esoteric conceptions inspired by Florentine Platonism. This revival was
linked in Patrizi's thought, as in Bruno's, with a cosmological renewal
that
had
important
metaphysical consequences. Patrizi's claim to have recov-
ered the meaning of the divine and its relationship with the world
challenged
all
of
Aristotelian
physics and raised new metaphysical problems
about the intelligible world. His metaphysics was founded on an incorpor-
eal
element, similar to light, which connected the ineffable supreme unity to
creation at every
level.
Like
his predecessors, he began with the senses, but
then
developed a metaphysics of light
that
questioned the link between
Aristotelian
cosmology and the intelligible world. He tried to show how an
infinite space filled with the emanations
(lumen)
of
light
(lux) could explain
the processes of
life
in the material world, the
structure
of the heavens, the
heavenly
bodies and
their
movements, as
well
as the
nature
of an extra-
corporeal region in which eternal beings resided. The relationship between
the different worlds
thus
implied a distinction and a subordination, but the
constant and decisive action of an incorporeal element at every
level
allowed
the immediacy
of
divine
action, whose presence in
this
relationship
he stressed. Patrizi's
attitude
to the astronomical revolution (he favoured a
moving
earth
and a reconsideration
of
its position in the cosmos) testifies to
the primacy of the physical deductions drawn from his metaphysical
principles. As in Ficino, however, the assumption
that
Christianity's
importance was entirely in a speculative and atemporal realm
threatened
to
deprive it of its historical dimension.
14
TOMMASO
CAMPANELLA
Bruno often referred to the astronomical/astrological debate inspired by the
nova
of
1572,
the comet of 1577 and the great conjunction of 1583
that
was
14.
The
recent
renewal
of
interest
in
Patrizi
has led to a
deeper
appreciation
of his Nova de universis
philosophia
and Discussiones peripateticae,
which
he
published
at
Basle
in 1581.
With
considerable
historical
erudition,
he
accused
Aristotle
of
having
attacked
those
predecessors
from
whom
he
took
his
philosophy.
See
Muccillo
1981;
Vasoli
1983b,
pp.
559-83;
and
Wilmott
1984, 1985.
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2
5
8
Natural philosophy
deemed
to
denote religious changes. This conjunction, from which
Cardano anticipated
the
emergence
of a new and
entirely exceptional
lex,
was
no
doubt
the
origin
of the
religious reform which Bruno proposed
in
his
Spaccio.
Regarding
the
first
two
celestial phenomena, Bruno complained
that
events which jeopardised
the
Aristotelian cosmology
by
casting doubt
on
the
immutability
of the
heavens were misunderstood
and
regarded
as
miracles,
thus
nourishing
a
climate
of
apocalyptic expectation.
He
also
mocked
the
belief
that the
great conjunction portended
a
universal
conflagration.
Campanella,
in
particular
in his Articuli
prophetales
(1609), took
a
considerable interest
in
this astronomical/astrological situation
and
related
subsequent astrological events
to it in an
attempt
to
reveal
its
hidden
meaning.
15
At the
philosophical
level,
Campanella
was
interested
in
Ficino's
Neoplatonism,
in the
natural
history studies
of
Giambattista Delia
Porta
and in the
thought
of
Telesio,
which
he saw as a
means
of
liberation
from Aristotelianism,
as is
evident
in, for
instance,
his Del senso delle cose e
della
magia
(first written
in
Latin
in
1590).
Campanella's magical-operative
concerns
in the Del senso
relied
on
Telesio's ideas
as the
foundation
for the
thesis
of
a universal animation
and as a
means
of
explaining
a
broad range
of
experiences.
Thus,
the
superiority
of
the senses
to
other modes
of
knowing
—
which
seemed
to
depend
on the
senses even
in the
most complex operations
and might even
be
thought
of as
'weakened sensation'
—
allowed
Campanella
to
refute Aristotelian epistemology.
At the
same time,
the
centrality
of the
senses provided
a
sound operative base, thanks
to that
universal
consensus
which united
all
things, including
man.
Campanella's
dependence
on
Telesio
is
evident
at the
cosmological
level
as
well,
but he
developed
his
views
to the
point where
the key to the
understanding
of
all
physical
processes opened
the way to
magical operative models involving
man—nature
and
man—man relationships.
In the Del senso, on the
other hand,
magic
was
presented
as a
tool
for
utilising
natural
processes
by
reproducing
them;
it
imitated
nature
by
imitating
the
mechanisms
of
nature
itself.
The
magus
continually extended
his
field
of
activities, referring them
not so
much
to the
creation
of
an artificial world
as to the
actualisation
of
an ever-
present potentiality which tended
to
coincide with
the
concept
of
nature.
All
these elements never entirely disappeared from Campanella's work;
15.
Campanella 1977, p. 251: 'Credo igitur sextum sigillum incepisse in anno 1583, postquam lamina
ilia apparuit et postubi coniunctiones magnae, transactis omnibus triangulis signorum coelestium,
ad primum revertuntur, ut mox dicemus. Unde Cardanus a 1583 expectat rerum mutationem
ingentem; nova quoque Stella in anno 1572 hanc aetatem intimasse potest.' There are several other
passages in a similar vein.
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The
new philosophy of nature
259
after his conversion they became
part
of a general epistemological system
which,
while evolved for apologetic motives, never lost sight of the need
for
radical reform. Campanella did not reject any of the secular fields of
enquiry
—
from medicine through astrology to magic
—
because he believed
that
it would be possible to integrate them into an orthodox system.
Through the metaphysical concept of
primalitates
(each creature, like the
divinity,
was in its own fashion power, wisdom and
love)
and in full
awareness of the fact
that
in front of the highest mysteries of theology
reason was reduced to stammering,
this
synthesis reached the highest
level,
represented by the certainty
of
prophecy, which was seen as an
uninterrupt-
ed chain of revelation from the biblical
prophets
to contemporary mystics.
Campanella
could therefore
present
his philosophy as orthodox and capable
of
confronting the two principal enemies of the faith: Aristotelianism and
Machiavellianism.
16
It was also able to deal comprehensively with the
individual sciences, eliminating what was dangerous to religion.
Beneath its professions of extreme naturalism, his philosophy
presents
certain ambiguities. For example, the
natural
foundation of his epistemol-
ogy
had to legitimise a higher
level
from which, in
turn,
he had to draw the
conditions of its intelligibility. Thus, in his
Citta
del
Sole
(1602) he declared
that
Christianity had only added the sacraments to
natural
law, where it was
destined by its higher rationality to impose itself. So the superiority of the
senses to the intellect was valid both at an inferior
level
—
that
of the
perception of perceptible reality — and also at the higher
level
of the
perception
of
future
events by superior inspiration, a perception which was
called
upon to constitute the
level
of revelation. Prophecy,
thus
promoted
to the
rank
of
scientia
experimentalise
could therefore be considered as the
highest form
oigratia
gratis
data,
by which the divinity guided and provided
for
man, and also as the highest form of magic, namely divine magic.
17
Cardano died in 1576 and Telesio in 1588; Bruno was
burnt
in Rome in
1600.
So Campanella was now working in a very different climate. From
his various prisons, he had to stay in touch with a world whose scientific and
religious
coordinates were changing rapidly.
Under such circumstances his
attitude
towards Copernicanism is
16.
Campanella
1977, pp. 214—15,
attacks
'Aristotelismum,
negantem
mundi
a Deo
creationem,
et
providentiam,
et
amicitiam
cum
hominibus,
et
animarum
singularum
immortalitatem,
et
religionem
a Deo
datam,
et
paradisum,
et
purgatorium,
et
infernum
a
Platone
et
Stoicis
asserta,
dicentem
esse
fabulas,
et
includentem
Deum
primo
orbi,
ut
moveat.
. . et
negantem
daemones
et
angelos,
et
somnia
ab eis, et
apparitiones
. . .
Machiavellismus
[est]
tyrannorum
officina,
detestans
religionem
et
omnia
ad
regnandum
temporaliter
humana
studia
impellens.
Apprime
concors
Aristotelismo,
quia
aliud
saeculum
melius
non
agnoscit.'
17.
Campanella
1949-,
v (De gratia
gratis
data).
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2Ó0
Natural philosophy
particularly important because
it
clarifies some decisive steps
in his
thought.
His retention, despite numerous doubts,
of
Telesio's cosmology with
its
immobile
earth
as one of
his axioms
put him in an
awkward situation with
regard
to
developments
in the
astronomical revolution.
He
argued
that
such
developments seemed
to
vindicate
not
only Copernicus
and
Galileo,
but
also those
who
spoke
of an
infinite cosmos
and an
infinity
of
solar systems,
such
as
Bruno, whom
he
often mentioned
in his Apologia pro Galileo
(1616)
and
his
Metaphysica
(1638). These arguments also surface
in his Theologia
where, amid numerous oscillations, Campanella's fundamental position
can
be
traced
to
Telesio,
though developed
in a
theological direction.
In the
wake
of
Galileo's
astronomical discoveries, Campanella declared
that
it was
a time
of
great uncertainty
as far as the
most important issues were
concerned.
18
Nonetheless,
he
seemed convinced
of the
validity
of the
most
diverse routes
to
understanding
the
structure
of
the cosmos.
Like
the
reality
of
creation, this
structure
seemed
to be an
object which could
be
investigated
but not
entirely apprehended
by
reason. This
attitude
clearly
reveals
how
difficult
it was to
unite
nature
and the
Bible,
the two
books
of
creation, when their contents were understood
as
both
an
explanation
and a
sign
of
God's
will
in two
different
but
converging realms. Moreover,
it was
essential
to
bear
in
mind
that
both books
had a
temporal dimension
and
development.
The
problem
of
God's double revelation, which also
exercised
Bruno
and
Galileo,
became particularly dramatic when scientific
discovery
became
the
integrating element
of an
historical development
whose significance
was not
only scientific
but
also religious.
Campanella's position
on
this issue leads
to two
central points
in his
thought. First,
the
difficulty
of
knowing
the
structure
of the
heavens
was
the difficulty
of
grasping
a
sphere
of
being which
was, in his
opinion, still
linked with
the
destiny
of the
soul
and the
life
of the
divinity.
The
investigation
of
natural
phenomena
was
always threatening
to
spill over
into theology, where
it was
impossible
to
attain
definitive results. Second,
Campanella rejected
the
mathematical interpretations which astronomers,
beginning with Copernicus,
had
given
for
recently discovered celestial
phenomena, reaffirming
that
such phenomena were genuine novelties
introduced
by God
into
an
apparently atemporal cosmic order.
19
He
thus
18.
Campanella 1927, p. 176 (A Galileo, 8 marzo
1614):
'Tutti
filosofi del mondo pendeno ogge dalla
penna di Vostra Signoria, perch' in vero non si può filosofare senze uno vero accertato sistema della
costruzione de' mondi, quale da lei aspettiamo; e già tutte le
cose
son poste in dubbio, tanto che non
sapemo s'il parlare è parlare.'
19.
Campanella 1977, p. 118: 'Dicam tamen hoc unum, mundum videlicet
esse
in manu Dei quasi
horologium, et secundum placitum illius motus et agendi patiendique mensuras sortiri.'
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
The
new philosophy of nature
261
identified such phenomena as signs of the imminent apocalypse. It is worth
mentioning here the thesis
that
the sun was gradually approaching the earth.
In the context of Telesio's cosmology, based on an opposition of heat and
cold,
this process signified the progressive extinction
of
one
of
the two agent
causes and the victory
of
the other. From Campanula's millenarian point of
view,
it converted the subordination of Christianity to philosophy
predicted by Bruno into a programme for the religious unification of all
mankind under a single Pastor, presaging the golden age and the
return
of
man and
nature
to a primordial condition where error and sin no longer
existed.
Campanella's prophetic and reforming vocation are thus expressed
in works whose Utopian character does not conceal the re-emergence of the
attempt to demonstrate the highest things on rational grounds. In this
Campanella
resembles the other thinkers who have already been consid-
ered. Amidst the uncertainties of physics and cosmology, on the one hand,
and the inaccessible
arcana
of
theology,
on the other, Campanella too sought
a common ground for faith and reason, for rationalism and esotericism, on
which
to construct his practical and reforming activity.
TOWARDS
MODERN
SCIENCE
AND
PHILOSOPHY
In his
Spaccio,
Bruno praises both the intellect and the hand, emphasising
the necessity for their joint action in order to modify the 'orders' of nature.
Francis Bacon's
Novum
organum
opens by indicating
that
enquiry into
nature
would only be fruitful
if
it started from an awareness of the intrinsic
limitations of knowledge, whether considered as pure contemplation or as
practical operation devoid of theory. As with Cardano, man's epistemo-
logical
limitation is converted into a practical programme for the general
transformation of
nature
for purposes useful to man. The temporal
dimension which Cardano also had posited as a consequence of this
limitation
gave
rise to the idea
of
progress as a result
of
collaboration and of
the accumulation of knowledge in the most rigorous and systematic
fashion. Bacon's
belief
that
the discovery
of
natural laws and the dominion
over
nature
would complete the work of the creation — understood as
something unfinished, left to man to complete and perfect — was also an
echo
of the religious inspiration
that
in different guises ran throughout the
new philosophy of nature. Bacon's debt to this line of thought indirectly
emphasises, however, the problematic relationship between it and the
scientific
revolution.
20
According
to what Kepler told
Galileo,
it was these
20. See Spiritus 1984, pp-
265-81
(Rees);
the
remainder
of the
volume
is
also
relevant
to
this
topic.
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2Ó2
Natural philosophy
thinkers, and Bruno in particular, who had opened up the new vistas in
cosmology.
21
Galileo,
however, often suppressed their names and in any
case had been educated in a different tradition. Moreover, he displayed a
lively
awareness of purpose and method which cannot be reconciled with
any
legacy
to him from, for instance, Campanella.
22
But Galileo's
distinction between the written book of God and the book of
nature
resembles a similar distinction in Bruno's thought, and the similarity is not
diminished by the different emphasis
that
both gave to mathematics. For
Galileo
as
well,
to establish the mathematical laws of the cosmos using a
yardstick
that
was adequate to what had been God's procedure and also such
that
our awareness was on the same qualitative,
if
not quantitative, plane as
divine awareness, meant to possess a key capable of unlocking God's
modus
operandi
and the secret intentions of his legislative
will
in
nature.
In other
words,
his discoveries also coincided with the emergence of a revelation.
Galileo's
relationship with the philosophy
of
nature
shows equally clearly
its limits within the scientific revolution. By rejecting, as Aristotle had
done, the possibility of a mathematical account of physical phenomena
which
was not merely a
matter
of practical approximations but which
might reveal their deepest structures
—
that
is, by favouring the notion of a
ceaseless coming-into-being which could not be understood in terms of an
intelligible
structure
—
the philosophy of
nature
was in opposition to both
Galileo
and Descartes. It was not by chance
that
Descartes noted the
efficacy
of
the work of the
novatores
more in the context of the criticism of
Aristotelian philosophy
than
in the construction of a new philosophy.
23
The methodological characteristics
of
the philosophy
of
nature
appeared to
be inadequate in the face
of
new scientific developments, especially those in
physics.
Certainly, the programme outlined in the
Discours
de la
méthode
developed at its highest
level
as a realisation of a scientific morality and as a
reform
of
the human world, moving from the individual plane to
that
of
the
dominion of the human race over
nature
and the transformation of man's
intentions towards it. But the Cartesian dream of a
mathesis
universalis
had
already allied itself with the
attempt
to construct a new metaphysical
foundation for the new learning.
24
Other factors, however, worked to prolong the influence of the
philosophy of
nature.
The initially limited achievements of mathematical
21. See
Kepler
1610.
22.
Galilei
1890-1909,
iv, p. 738: 'Io
stimo
più il
trovar
un
vero,
benché
di
cosa
leggiera,
che '1
disputar
lungamente
delle
massime
questioni
senza
verità
nissuna.'
23. See, e.g.,
Descartes
1897-1910,
1, pp.
156-70
(letter
to
Isaac
Beeckman,
17
October
1630).
24. See
Gilson
1951.
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The
new
philosophy
of
nature
physics
(consider,
for
instance,
how
long
it
took
for
dynamics
to
acquire
a
mathematical expression),
the
different times
at
which
the
individual
disciplines acquired scientific status, religious interference
in
speculations
of
the most diverse kinds
—
these are just some
of
the reasons
why it
continued
to retain some
of its
authority. Animistic concepts like
spiritus,
occult
speculation
and the old
hypothetical accounts
of the
structure
of
matter
persisted, drawing strength from
the
difficulty
of
explaining
the
phenom-
ena
of
life
by
mathematical coordinates.
In
areas
of
speculation which
overlapped with ethics
and
religion,
the
continuing vitality
of the
philosophers
of
nature
was
guaranteed
by the
audacity
and
novelty
of
their
teaching, which
had
influence throughout Europe.
In
ethics, Cardano
formulated
a
view
of
history
and of the
human world which
was
open-
minded
to the
point
of
cynicism;
and he
came
to be
regarded
as one of the
masters
of
irreligion
and libertinage. In the
more narrowly religious field,
Bruno's anti-Christian polemics enjoyed
an
underground success, inspiring
thinkers like
John
Toland. Bruno's
views
were destined
to
flourish anew
in
the eighteenth century,
no
longer
for
their explicit paganism
but as a
reappraisal
of
the relationship between politics
and
religion
in the
past
and as
an example
of the
possibility
of
reconciling them
by
means
of a
tolerance
unknown
in
modern times.
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10
A
SCEPTIC'S DEFINITION OF
MAGIC
When
Henricus Cornelius Agrippa published
an
enlarged edition
of
his
De
occulta philosophia in
Cologne
in
1533, seven years after
he had
written
his
invective
De
incertitudine
et
vanitate
scientiarum
atque
artium
(1526),
he
appended
to it a Censura
sive
retractio
in
which
he
reprinted
the
chapters
on
magic
from
De
incertitudine.
Since
in
these chapters Agrippa's ardour
for
occult
wisdom
had
somewhat abated,
we may
take their definition
of
natural magic
to be the
tempered judgement
of a man who was, in any
event,
sincere
in his
Christian piety
and
skilled
as a
vulgariser
of
other
people's
ideas. 'That magic
is
natural',
he
explained,
which, having observed the forces of all
things
natural
and celestial and having
examined by
painstaking
investigation the
sympathy among
those
things,
brings
into
the
open
powers
hidden
and
stored
away in
nature;
thus,
magic links lower
things
(as
if
they
were magical
enticements)
to the gifts
of
higher
things... so
that
astonishing
miracles
thereby
occur, not so
much
by art as by
nature
to which - as
nature
works
these
wonders
-
this
art of magic offers herself as
handmaid.
Agrippa
recognised
that
magic
was an art, a
practical technique,
but he
also
insisted
on a
theoretical content
in
magic,
an
analytic basis
in the
study
of
nature. Learned
men had
called magic
'the
highest point
of
natural
philosophy'
because they
saw in it
speculative
as
well
as
pragmatic responses
to
the
cosmos.
1
The
obverse
of
this learned
natural
magic,
was
sinful
demonic
1.
Agrippa
1533, pp.
CCCLII-III:
'Naturalem magiam non aliud putant quam naturalium scientiarum
summam potestatem, quam idcirco summum philosophiae naturalis apicem eiusque
absolutissimam consummationem vocant. . .
Magia
itaque naturalis ea est, quae rerum omnium
naturalium atque coelestium vires contemplata, earundemque sympathiam curiosa indagine
scrutata,
reconditas ac latentes in natura potestates ita in apertum producit: inferiora superiorum
dotibus, tanquam quasdam illecebras, sic copulans . . . ut exinde stupenda saepe consurgant
miracula,
non tarn arte quam natura cui se ars ista ministram exhibet haec operanti'; see nn. 11, 22
below;
Umanesimo
e
esoterismo
i960,
pp. 144—5 (Zambelli); Nauert 1965, pp. 32-3, 98, 106,
111-13,
192-3;
Muller-Jahncke 1973. On
Agrippa,
as on Renaissance magic in general, the many articles of
Paola
Zambelli are fundamental; for
Agrippa,
see Zambelli
i960,
1965, 1966, 1969,
1973b,
1976,
1985
and also her editions of
Agrippa: Testi umanistici
su
Yermetismo
1955, pp. 105-62 and
Agrippa
1958.
264
ASTROLOGY
AND
MAGIC
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Astrology
and
magic
265
magic.
Warning
that
'natural
magic
has
sometimes relapsed into sorcery
and theurgy (most often through strategems
of
evil
demons)', Agrippa
raised
the
spectre
of
demonology
that
haunted
the
Renaissance revival
of
ancient magic
as it
animated
the
concurrent witchcraft craze.
2
When
Agrippa
described magic
as a
linking
of
inferior
to
superior entities,
he
alluded also
to
astrology
as an
ingredient
of the
magical worldview: 'magic
is
so
connected
and
conjoined with astrology
that
anyone
who
professes
magic without astrology accomplishes nothing'.
But the
magus
who
understands
the
powers
of
the
stars
can tap
forces 'hidden
and
stored away
in
nature',
secret
or
occult powers
that
produce
the
characteristically
'astonishing' effects
of
magic,
the
same powers
that
lent their name
to
Agrippa's
most famous book,
De occulta philosophia.
3
Although
one may
speak retrospectively
of an
'occultist tradition'
in
European culture, Renaissance philosophers would have found
the
term
'occultism'
as
strange
as
'humanism'; both words have their uses,
nonetheless,
as
historical categories. European occultism includes
the
concepts
of
magic, astrology, demonology
and
occult
natural
power
to
which
Agrippa referred
in the
definition above;
it
also embraces
the
related
notions
of
divination, illusion, witchcraft, numerology, cabala
and
theurgy
that
he
treated elsewhere.
4
Despite
its
having been obscured
by
polemics
that
began with
the
Greek philosophers
and the
Church Fathers
and
reverberate
in the
debates
of
modern anthropologists
and
students
of
religion,
this complex
of
ideas constitutes
a
coherent tradition
in
western
intellectual history. Variations
in the
tradition, such
as the
rise
of
witchcraft
beliefs
in the
Middle
Ages,
left intact
the
kinship among these concepts,
whose collective development
saw its two
strongest moments
in
late
antiquity,
in the
centuries
of
Plotinus, Porphyry
and
Proclus,
and
again
in
the Renaissance,
in the age of
Agrippa, Ficino
and
Pico.
5
In
his Censura
sive
retractio,
Agrippa named
the
inventors
of
magic
and
blamed them
for
their impious
legacy.
Some, like Zoroaster, Hermes
Trismegistus
and
Kirannides, were mythical
or
semi-mythical progenitors
2 Agrippa 1533, p.
CCCLV:
'Hinc patet hanc naturalem magiam nonnunquam in goetiam et theurgiam
reclinantem,
saepissime
malorum daemonum vaframentis erroribusque obretiri'; Nauert 1965,
pp.
245-8; cf. Zambelli 1985, pp. 76—7.
3 Agrippa 1533, p.
CCCLII:
'Magia
. . . cum astrologia sic coniuncta atque cognata est ut qui magiam
sine
astrologia profiteatur is nihil agat sed tota aberret via'; see n. 1 above.
4 Agrippa 1533, pp.
CCCLIV-LXII;
Copenhaver 1978a, pp. 31-42,
97-171;
the eight volumes of
Thorn
dike 1923-58 contain the most detailed description of occult beliefs from late antiquity to the
seventeenth century.
5.
Parinetto 1974, pp.
121-31,
165-76;
Douglas 1975, pp.
29-40,
73-89,105-13; Sharpe 1975, pp. 72-
96,149-51»
190-4; Evans-Pritchard 1965, pp. 26-47, 56-7,78-9; Hull 1974, pp. 5-9; M. Smith 1978,
pp.
1-7; Aune 1980, pp.
1507-16,
1536, 1557; Cohn 1975.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008
266
Natural philosophy
of
zprisca sapientia; their
chief
service
to the occultist tradition was to make it
venerable by locating it in a distant and sacred past. Others were historical
figures,
and some of these were important in the history
of
philosophy: the
Neoplatonists Iamblichus, Proclus and Synesius; the Arab sage Alkindi; and
such heroes of medieval Christendom as Albertus Magnus, Roger Bacon
and Ramon
Lull.
6
Some
of
the medieval works in which Agrippa sought his arcane wisdom
had marginal, even scandalous reputations in the Renaissance. The most
notorious was 'the book published under the name of Picatrix\ the Latin
title for the Arabicgrimoire only recently confirmed as a source for Marsilio
Ficino's
refined theorising on magic as
well
as Agrippa's more sensational
compendium on the occult.
7
Certain other medieval texts, like the Liber
aggregationis Qr the Speculum astronomiae attributed to Albertus Magnus,
have scarcely mattered to the history of philosophy because uncertain
authorship or the certainty of false ascription protected the philosopher's
good
name by detaching it from books of such ill-repute. This apologetic
strategy finally fails in the face of undoubtedly genuine works
—
the De
mineralibus of Albertus, the De occultis operibus naturae of Thomas Aquinas,
the De universo
of
William
of
Auvergne
—
in which prominent philosophers
acknowledged
and defended principles of occultism. As long as medieval
thinkers shared the metaphysical, physical and cosmological premises of
ancient philosophy, some concessions to magic were inevitable since the
elements of the magical
world
view
were common ideas
well
respected by
ancient philosophers. The revival of ancient learning in the Renaissance
could
only deepen the conviction
—
already familiar in the Middle
Ages
—
that
the
magus
and the philosopher used much the same conceptual lexicon.
'Natural magic they consider nothing less
than
the chief authority among
the natural forms of knowledge', wrote Agrippa of his fifteenth-century
predecessors, '[and] on
that
account . . . they call [it] the most perfect
achievement of natural philosophy.'
8
6
Agrippa
1533, pp.
CCCLII-LV;
1958, pp. 41-8, 51-5;
Walker
1972, pp. 1-21, 29, 33-5, 59;
Zambelli
1965, 1969; Magia, astrologia e religione 1974, pp.
48-82
(Zambelli);
Copenhaver
forthcoming
a, b
and c;
D'Alverny
and
Hudry
1974, pp. 139-41,
149-67;
Wellmann
1928;
Rohr
1923;
Hopfner
1974;
Thorndike
1923-58,
1, pp.
641-9,
11, pp. 517-92,
616-91,
862-73;
Yates
1982-4,
1, pp.
9-125.
7
Agrippa
1533, p.
CCCLIII:
'Ex
recentioribus
vero
scripserunt
in
naturali
magia
. . .
Albertus,
Arnoldus
de
villa
nova,
Raimundus
Lullius,
Bachon,
et
Apponus,
et
autor
libri
ad
Alfonsum
sub
Picatricis
nomine
editus,
qui
tamen
una cum
naturali
magia
plurimum
superstitionis
admiscet,
quod
quidem
feceruntetalii';
Garin
1969, pp.
389-419;
1976a,
pp.
245-6;
1976c,
ch. 2;
Perrone
Compagni
1975, PP-
237-47;
Delcorno
Branca
1976, pp.
470—1.
8
Introduction
to
Albertus
Magnus,
Pseudo-
1973, pp.
xi-xvii,
xxx-xlviii; Albertus
Magnus
1977;
Introduction
to
Albertus
Magnus
1967, pp.
xxix-xli;
McAllister
1939, pp. 1-9;
Thorndike
1923-58,
11,
pp.
338-71,
593-615,
692-745;
see n. 1
above.
Cambridge Histories Online © Cambridge University Press, 2008