The Prisca Theologia in France

D. P. Walker

Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol. 17, No. 3/4. (1954), pp. 204-259.

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THE PRlSCA THEOLOGIA IN FRANCE

By D. P. Walker

I Introduction

Many Christian apologists, from the earliest Fathers onwards, have had the practice of citing texts from pre-Christian writers, prisci theologi, of

supposedly great antiquity, in order to show their conformity with Christian doctrine. These texts-Orphica, Hermetica, Oracula Chaldaica, fragments from pre-Socratic Greek philosophers, Sibylline prophecies-appear in company with Plato, whose religious opinions are thought to derive from them and from the Jewish Scriptures. This practice increased greatly in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, partly because of the revival of Platonism and the desire to integrate it into Christianity, and partly because many more such texts became available. l

The general attitude of the French to this prisca theologia has certain well- marked peculiarities, especially when compared with that of the Italians. There is, therefore, some justification for treating the French as a separate group. Although there are, of course, important differences between indivi- duals, religious sects, and periods, it can be said that on the whole the French are more cautious than the Italians and more patriotic. They are cautious about the dangers of magic, paganism and heresy; they are patriotic chiefly with regard to the culture of the Druids, and sometimes also that of mediaeval France. How these themes connect with the prisca theologia will appear in the course of this essay.2 These differences are not surprising when one remem- bers, first, the great importance of the University of Paris as a centre of ortho- doxy up to the time of the Council of Trent, and secondly, the contrast between the recently achieved unity of France as a nation and the fragmenta- tion of Italy.

I shall deal in this essay with certain French writers of the sixteenth century in some or all of whose works the prisci theologi play an important part.3 Some of these are almost too well-known to need any introduction: Lefkvre dYEtaples (Faber Stapulensis), perhaps the greatest of the early

1 Cf. infra Section 11. There was, of course, tive study; there are many French authors a strong Platonic tradition in the Middle connected with the prisca theologia whom I Ages (cf. Raymond Klibansky, The Continuity shall not mention, e.g. Marguerite de Navarre of the Platonic Tradition, London, 1g3g), and (DerniJres Poe'sies, ed. A. Lefranc, Paris, 1896, an interest in the prisci theologi; I know of no pp. 208-9) ; Pierre de Paschal (Paschalius, modern work dealing with the latter. I have Adversus Ioannis Maulii parricidas Actio . . . already dealt, in "Orpheus the Theologian Epistolae . . ., Lyons, 1548, pp. 113 ff.) ; and Renaissance Platonists," Journal of the Bartolomeo Delbene (Civitas Veri . . ., Paris, Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, XVI, 1953, 1609, pp. 245 ff.) ;Fran~oisHabert (Les Divins with some aspects of the Orphica in the Renais- Oracles de Zoroastre, Paris, 1558); Guy de sance, and have therefore treated these as BruCs (Les Dialogues, Paris, 1557, pp. 44, 48) ; summarily as possible here; but some repeti- Pierre de Lostal (Les Discours Philosophiques. tion has been unavoidable. Paris, I 579) ;Jean Bodin (Heptaplomeres, ed.

2 See Sections IV, V (patriotism), and VII, L. Noack, Schwerin, 1857, pp. 50, 66, 70, VIII, I X (cautiousness). 76 ff., 187, 278-284).

This is of course by no means an exhaus- 204

THE PRZSCA THEOLOGZA I N FRANCE 205

French humanists and evangelical reformers;l Pontus de Tyard, Bishop of Chalon-sur-SaBne, the philosopher and theoretician of the Pltiade;2 Pierre de la Ramte (Ramus), the immensely influential anti-Aristotelian logician,3 one of the victims of the St. Bartholomew; Philippe de Mornay (Duplessis- Mornay), Christian apologist, Protestant controversialist, and friend of Henry of Navarre.* I shall pay as much or more attention to two lesser-known Catholic writers, Symphorien Champier5 and Guy Lefkvre de la B ~ d e r i e , ~ both because the prisca theologia is a predominant theme in their total output (which is not the case with the four writers just mentioned), and because I think their historical importance has perhaps been underestimated or mis- understood by modern scholars.

Champier, a Lyonnais doctor,. philosopher and historian, is usually con- sidered as a mere transmitter of Ficinian Platonism. It is true that his books are largely made up of quotations, but these are not all, or even mainly, from Ficino. Moreover, as with so many other sixteenth-century authors, this method of composition by no means excludes individuality and independence of thought; the choice of passages quoted can be, and often is, highly signi- ficant.? One must also remember, in assessing Champier's historical status, the enormous importance of Lyons as an intellectual centre in the first half of the sixteenth century,.and the active part he played in its lifeY8 apart from his numerous publications.

La Boderie, most of whose work, apart from his translation^,^ was in verse, was certainly not a great poet; but he was a very odd and interesting one, as I hope this essay may show. Like Champier, he was a transmitter of Italian Platonism, but he transformed it still more radically. He too may have had considerable personal influence, in addition to that of his writings; he was a secretary of Fran~ois d'Anjou, brother of Henri 111, who had gathered round

There is no monograph on Lefkvre, but und Geistesgeschichte, Berlin, I 936, pp. 2 I 2 ff. see: A. Renaudet, Prireyorme et humanisme d There is no good study on La Boderie. Paris pendant le premiBres guerres d'ltalie (1494- Some information about his life and family 1517), 2nd ed., Paris, 1953, passim; P. Imbart will be found in : H. de la Ferrikre-Percy, Les de la Tour, Les Origines de la Rt$orm, T. 11. la Boderie, Paris, 1857. Some aspects of his Melun, 1944, pp. 383 ff. poetry are discussed in: M. Raymond, L'In-

See S. F. Baridon, Pontus de Tyard, Milan, Juence de Ronrard sur la poisie frayaise (1550-'950. 1585), Paris, 1927, 11,.pp. 273 ff. ; A.-hi.

To what degree Ramus significantly Schmidt, La Poeste sctenttj5que en France au XVIe altered traditional Aristotelian logic is doubt- siicle, Paris, n.d., pp. 182 ff. ;H. Busson, Lrs ful, cf. N. E. Nelson, Peter Ramus and the Con- sources et le diueloppement du rationalisme dans la fusion of Logic Rhetoric and Poetry, Univ. of littirature frangaise de la Renaissance (1533-I~OI), Michigan Contributions in Modern Philo- Paris, 1922, pp. 597 ff.; F. A. Yates, The logy, No. 2, 1947. O n his influence see R. French Academtes of the 16th Century, London, Tuve, Elizabethan and Metaphysical Imagery, '947, PP. 43-4. Chicago, 1947, pp. 331 ff., and other authori- When not quoting, he writes, as he says ties there clted. himself, "breviter clareque & placid0 stylo"

See R. Patry, Philippe du Plessis-Mornay : (Champier, Symphonia Platonis cum Aristotele, Un huguenot homme d7Etat (1549-1623), Paris, Paris, I 5 16, f. xr). '933. See, e.g., H. Hauser, Etudes sur la Rt$orne

See M. P. Alut, Etude Biographique C3 Bi- fraryaise, Paris, 1909, PP. 107 ff. (La "Rebeine" bliographique sur Symphorien Champier, Lyons, de Lyon.) 1859; W. Monch, Die Italienische Platonrenais- 51 V. infra note 7, p. 207. sance und ihre Bedeutung fur Frankreichs Literatur-

206 D. P. WALKER

him a remarkable collection of Catholic and Protestant writers and musicians, several of whom were members of Baif's Academy.1

There are several other French writers I shall cite occasionally: Amaury Bouchard, a friend of Rabelais, and the author of a Platonic treatise on the immortality of the soul and of an elogium of women;2 Louis Le Caron, a jurist, who, besides his Platonic Philosophie,3 published interesting dialogues, in which Ronsard, Jodelle and Rabelais are speakers;* Louis Le Roy, trans- lator of Plato and professor of Greek at the Collhge Royal from 1572;5 Fran~ois de Foix, duc de Candale, bishop of Aire, editor and translator of the Hermeti~a;~ Charles de Bourgueville, a lawyer of Caen, whose Atheomachie (1564) was supported by liminary verse of La Boderie and Vauquelin de la Fresnaye ; Georges Pacard, a Protestant apologist, whose Theologie Naturelle ( I 574) is a forerunner of Mornay's De la Verite' de la Religion Chrestienne ( I 58 I ) Finally, there are two unorthodox thinkers, Guillaume Postel and Michael Servetus, who are too individual and complex to be labelled.

0ne.of my chief aims is to compare the attitude of these writers to the prisca theologia with that of the Italians.l0 For it is evident that the interest in the prisca theologia in France begins, and continues, under Italian influence. l1

Lefkvre d'Etaples, who had visited Italy that he might speak with Pico, Barbaro and Ficino,12 revised and commented on Ficino's translation of the

1 E.g. La Primaudaye, Guy du Faur de Pibrac, Hesteau de Nuysement, Jean de la JessCe, Claude Le Jeune, Vaumesnil, Baltazar de Beaujoyeux ;cf. C1. Le Jeune, Airs (1608), ed. D. P. Walker, Rome, 1951, I, Introd. (by Fr. Lesure and Walker), pp. viii-x; Raymond, ZnJ. de Ronsard, 11, 157 ff. ; F. A. Yates, The French Academies of the 16th Century, London, 1947, Pa '24.

2 De Lexcellence et immortalitt de Lame extraict non seullement du timee de Platon mais aussi de plwieurs aultres Grecz et Latins philosophes-tant de la pythagoriquc que platonique famille . . ., Bibl. Nat., MS. fr. 1991 (dedicated to

L'lmnzortalitt de L'Ame, Et Resurrection des Corps, Paris, 1564; sig. A 3., a long poem by Vau- quelin on Bourgueville's book (reprinted in Vauquelin's Les Diverses Poesies, Caen, 161 2, pp. 412 ff.) ; sig. B 2V, sonnet "Contre les Athees" by La Boderie.

I shall not discuss Pacard's views in detail because I have not yet been able to see copies of the first two editions ; this makes it impos- sible to know his relation to Mornay. There are copies of these editions (1574 and 1579) in the library of the SociCtt de 1'Histoire du Protestantisme Fran~ais, Paris.

For Servetus v. infra, p. 248. On Postel Fran~ois I) ; Almaricus Bouchardus, T~CJsee KvaEala, "Wilhelm Postel. Seine Geistesart y u v a ~ x ~ i a ~cqridq~~ adversus Andream Tira-quellum, Paris, 1522. O n the former cf. Busson, op. cit., pp. 174-5 ; on the latter M. A. Screech, "A Further Study of Rabe- lais's Position in the Querelle des Femmes" in Frangois Rabelais (qe centenaire), Geneva, E. Droz, 1,953, PP. 133-4.

La Phzlosophie, Parls, 1555. 4 Les Dialogues, Paris, I 556 ; cf. L. Pinvert,

"Un Entretien Philosophique de Rabelais rapport6 par Charondas," Revue des Etudes Rabelaisiennes, I, 1903, p. 193.

5 See A. H. Becker, Loys le Roy, Paris, 1896. V. infra note 10, p. 208. Cf. J. Dagens,

"Le Commentaire du Pimandre de Fran~ois de Candale," Milanges . . . oferts ct Daniel Mornet, Paris, 1951, pp. 2 1-6.

Bourgueville, L'Atheomachie et Discours dc

und seine Reformgedanken," Archiv fur Refor- mationsgeschichte, T. 9, 1912, p. 287, T. I I , 1914, p. 200, T. 15, 1918, p. 187 ;Sir Geoffrey Butler, Studies in Statecraft, Cambridge, 1920, pp. 38 ff., I I 7 ff. ; M. A. Screech, "The Illusion of Postel's Feminism," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Znst., XVI, 1953, p. 162. loThis comparison will sometimes be only

implicit, in order to avoid repeating my previous article (cited above, note I, p. 204). l1 On general connexions between the early

French Renaissance and Italy, see : Renaudet, Prhgorme, and Monch, Die Ztalienische Platon- renaissance. l2 See Champier, Mirabilium divinorum hu-

manorumque volumina quattuor . . ., Lyons, 1517, sig. A ijv; cf. Renaudet, op. cit., pp. 136 ff.

THE PRISCA THEOLOGIA IN FRANCE 207

Pimander "out of love for Marsilio whom he venerates as a father."l Champier, as well as making frequent unacknowledged borrowings from Bessarion and F i ~ i n o , ~openly proclaimed himself a follower of the latter.3 Bouchardys treatise is based on Ficino, Pico and Bessarion, whom he constantly cites.4 Tyard's Discours Philosophiques are heavily influenced by Ficinian P la t~n i sm.~ Mornay admired Ficino and Pico as theologian^.^ La Boderie published French translations of several of Ficino's works. Nevertheless, right from the start, the French are anxious to assert their independen~e;~ and, in fact, not only is the attitude of Lefevre and Champier to the prisca theologia very dif- ferent from that of Ficino and Pico,O but the attitude of later French Platonists, both Catholic, such as Le Caron, Le Roy, La Boderie, and Protestant, such as Ramus, Pacard, Mornay, is equally different from that of, say, Steuco or Patrizi.

The Texts of the "Orphica" and "Hermetica"

Of the many texts attributed to prisci theologi I shall be dealing mainly with the Orphica and Hermetica. The Orphic texts which concern us are: first, fragments of Greek verse embedded in ancient writers, chiefly in the Greek Fathers and Proclus ; they are of various dates, a few possibly going back to pre-platonic times, but mostly hellenistic. Secondly, the Orphic Hymns, now thought to be of the second or third centuries A.D., and not quoted by any

l Mercurij Trismgisti Liber de Potestate et this last translation ;according to La Ferritre- Sapientia Dei: Per Marsilium Ficinum tra- Percy (op. kt., p. 161) there is an incomplete ductus . . ., Paris, 1494, sig. e iijr: "Curavit copy in the Bibl. Mazarine. La Boderie also libenter qua valuit diligentia : Faber Stapu- published a translation of Francesco di Gior- lensis ex viciato exemplari hoc opus reddere gio's De Harmonia Mundi (Venice, 1525), to- castigatum : tum amore Marsilij (quem tan- gether with a translation of Pico's Heptaplus quam patrem veneratur) tum Mercurij (also in the Garin edition just cited) by his sapientie magnitudine promotus." brother Nicolas (L'Harmonie du Monde . . .,

V. infra, pp. 2 I I , 2 17-9, 222, 245-7. Paris, 1579). V. infra, p. 234. E.g. Champier, De Triplici Disciplina . . .,

* E.g., Bouchard, De Lexcellence, folios qV, Lyons, 1508, sig. (ddd viij)r, (replying to 3 6 ~(Pico), 3oV (Bessarion), 2oV, 33r, 65v, 7 2 ~ Symphorianus Grignanus' Italie et Gallie Pane- (Ficino). gyicum, ibid., sig. (bbb v i ) ~ ) : "Dicis enim

Cf. F. A. Yates, French Academies, pp. 77 ff. licet corpore gallus sim: anima tamen non Mornay, Veritt de la Rel. Chrest., Antwerp, solum ficineus sed et italus: nedum gallus

1581, p. 617. sum. Non mireris me gallum: & in philo- Discours de 1'Honneste Amour sur le Banquet sophia : medecina : atque theologia multa

de Platon . . . Traduitz de Toscan en Fratyois par scribere." He goes on to a panegyric of the Guy le Feure de la Boderie, Paris, 1578 (Ficino, culture of the ancient Gauls (cf. infra, p. 2 1 4 , Sopra lo amore over convito de Platone, Florence, and ends: "Malo me gallum esse quam 154.4); LGs trois liures de la vie . . . Avec une I talum." apologie pour la medecine et astrologie, Paris, I 58I Kristeller ("Marsilio Ficino e Ludovico (Ficino, De Tr+lici Vita, Florence, 1489) ;De Lazarelli. Contributo alla diffusione delle la Religion Chrestienne, auec la Harangue de la idee ermetiche nel Rinascimento," Annali della dignitt de L'Homm de 3. Pic de la Mirandole, R. Scuola normale di Pisa, Ser. 11, VII, 1938, Paris, I 578 (Ficino, De Religione Christiana, in pp. 256-7) has already pointed out the greater his Opera Omnia, Basle, 1576, p. 1 ;Giov. Pico, caution of Lefkvre and Champier with regard De Hominis Dignitate . . ., ed. E. Garin, to the Hermetica. Florence, 1948). I have not been able to see

208 D. P. WALKER

ancient writer. l The Hermetica also fall into two groups : first, the Asclepius (or De Voluntate divina), a dialogue which has survived only in the Latin translation ascribed to Apuleius. Secondly, the Pimander (or De Sapientia et potestate Dei) and the Dejinitiones Asclepii, a group of fifteen short dialogues in Greek.2 Both these date from about the third century A.D. Though they purport to be of Egyptian origin, their content seems to derive mainly from Alexandrian P la t~n i sm.~

None of these texts were known in Western Europe until the fifteenth century, except for the Asclepius; this was quite widely known in the Middle Ages,4 both because it was in Latin and because Augustine discusses it at length in the Civitm Dei.6 From the time of George of Trebizond's Latin translation of Eusebius' Praeparatio Evangelica, printed in 1470,~ the main Orphic fragments were easily accessible ; and so was the Pimander after 1471, when Ficino published his translation of it.' The Orphic Hymns were not published until I 5 0 0 , ~but had been translated by Ficino in 1462 and are frequently cited in his works. The Dejinitiones Asclepii were printed first, in Lazarelli's translation, in 1 5 0 7 . ~ ~

See Walker, "Orpheus," p. 103. @rh6oocpo<. Poesis Philosophica, vel saltem, Re- See Kristeller, art. cit., supra note 9, p. 207. liquiae poesis philosophicae, Empedoclis, Parmen

The Dejinitiones happened to be missing in the idis, . . . Adiuncta sunt Orphei illius carmina first Greek MS. of the Hermetica, brought to qui a suis appellatus fuit 6 8~oh6yo~. . ., n.p., Florence in about 1460, and are not therefore I 573. Another collection of them was :Opcpoos in Ficino's translation; they were translated EX? e E 0 h O y L X ~ . EX TUV TOU LOU IOU~TLVOU. . .

TOU Al~~av8pow< de Quadruplici Vita, Lyons, 1507. The most ouvokyp~va, Paris, Steph. Prevosteau, 1588. convenient modern edition is: Corpus Her- Rent Perdrier published a Latin translation meticurn, ed. A. D. Nock & A. J. Festugikre, of the Orphic Hymns : Orpheipoetae vetustissimi Paris, 1945. The edition by Walter Scott Opera, iarn primdm ad uerbum translata . . .per (Oxford, 1924-36) has an unusable text, but Renaturn Perdrierium Parisiensem, Basle, I 555 ; valuable notes and a volume of Testimonia. I the Greek text of them is in Henri Estienne's shall quote from the former. 01. l j ~ X ~ W T E ~ ) O V T E <~ o ~ q ~ a l

by Lazarelli and printed in Champier's Liber XXL ~ ~ ~ E Y T O < XaL t W V &MWV

~ Hpoixq< X O L ~ ~ ~ E O ~

See Festugikre, La Rkvklation d'Herm2s Tris- . . ., n.p., 1566. Lefkvre D'Etaples' edition rnkgiste, T. I, Paris, 1944, Introduction. of, and commentary on, Ficino's transla-

See Kristeller, art. cit. (supra note 9, tion of the Pimander was published by the p. 207), p. 238. University of Paris in 1494 (u. supra p. 207,

Augustine, Civ. Dei, VIII, xxiii-xxvi. note I). In 1505 he dedicated to Guillaume (Begins) "Ad sanctissimum papam Nico- Bri~onnet this work together with the

laum .q. Georgii Trapezuntii in traductionem Asclepius :Pimander. Mercurii Trisrnegisti liber Eusebii Praefatio," n.p., 147.0. Eusebius is de sapientia & potestate dei. Asclepius. Eiusdem one of the most copious patristic sources for Mercurii liber de voluntate divina. Item. Crater Orphica and prisca theologia in general. Hermetis A Latarelo Septernpedano, Paris, 1505.

Mercurii Trismegisti Liber de Potestate et Champier reproduced most of Lefkvre's com- Sapientia Dei e graeco in Latinum tradwtus a mentaries in Theologia Trisrnegistica (in De Marsilio Ficino . . ., n.p., 147 1. Triplici Disciplina, I 508). From I 5 I 6 onwards

'Opcpew~ 'Ap yovaur~xa, Florence, I 500 ; these commentaries by Lefkvre frequently contains also the Orphic Hymns and Proclus' appear in editions of Ficino's translation of Hymns. the Pimander, as if they were by Ficino (see

See Kristeller, Supplementurn Ficinianum, Kristeller, Suppl. Ficin., pp. cxxx-cxxxi). In Florence, 1937, I, cxliv-v. I 507 Champier published Lazarelli's transla-

loV. supra note 2, p. 208. Editions of all tion of the Dejinitiones Asclepii, with his own these texts by French scholars are quite commentaries, and dedicated them to Le-numerous. Henri Estienne published a large fkvre (v. supra note 2, p. 208). DU Preau's collection of Orphic fragments in his IIolqubc French translation of the Hermstica (Mercure

209 THE PRISCA THEOLOGIA IN FRANCE

Renaissance scholars were aware that the antiquity and attribution of some of the Orphica and Hermetica were doubtful, particularly of the former, since they knew from the Suidas Lexicon that several writers of different periods had written under the name of Orpheus.1 But they accepted both of them as at least genuine documents of an ancient religious tradition; while the more enthusiastic had little hesitation in ascribing the Orphica to a philosopher more ancient than Pythagoras, and the Hermetica to an Egyptian God-king, Thoth, who invented the art of writing2 and was contemporary with, or more ancient than, M ~ s e s . ~ Mornay, the great Huguenot apologist, writes prudently in his De la Veritk de la Religion Chrestienne ( I 58I ) :

Mercure Trismegiste, qui est (si vrayment ces livres sont de luy, & pour le moins sont-ils bien anciens) la source de tous (sc. les Sages), enseigne partout: Que Dieu est un . . .

Fran~ois de Foix, on the other hand, bishop of Aire, in his French translation of the Hermetica (1579)~asserts that they are by the inventor of hieroglyphics, who was more ancient than Moses, and he seems even to regret that they are not in the scriptural canon : 5

Et combien que cest auteur & son traictk n'aye estC receu & auctorizk en

Trismegiste Hermes tres ancien Theologien & See Plato, Phaedrus, 274 C-275 b ;Philebus, excellent Philosophe, de la puissance t3 sapience de 18 b-d. Dieu. Item de la volonti divine. Avecq'un Dialogue This was a disputed point. Ficino's Argu- de Loys Lazarel poete Chrestien intituli .le Bassin mentum to his translation of the Pimander d'Hermes, le tout traduit de latin en frangoys par (which was reprinted in sll the earlier editions M. Gabriel Preau, Paris, 1549, dedicated to of the Hermetica) makes Hermes the "nepos" Cardinal Charles de Lorraine) reproduces, of a contemporary of Moses. Lazarelli con- without acknowledgment, Ficino's Argu- tradicts him and makes Hermes considerably menturn and Lefkvre's commentaries. Tur- the older (v. Kristeller, art. cit., p. 243; cf. nkbe's edition of the Greek text (Epyou TOU Lazarelli, Crater Hermetis, in Pimander, ed. Tproyeyto~ou IIotpav8pqc; . Aaxhqxtou Opot xpoq Lefkvre, 1505, f. 61'). Champier (De Triplici Ayyova paathoa . . ., Paris, 1554; with it Disciplina, 1508, sig. I I V ) writes: "Eodem appeared the Ficino-Lazarelli Latin trans- enim tempore apud eqyptios Moses et mer- lation, with Lefkvre's commentaries) contains curius et Asclepius floruerunt: ut testis est a dedication to Lancelot de Carle, Bishop of Augustinus" ;he is using "eodem tempore" a Riez, a friend of Ronsard, by Angelus Ver- little loosely, since Augustine (Civ. Dei, gicius (or Vergerius), in which he quotes from XVIII, xxxix) clearly states that Hermes' the Suidas Lexicon an impbrtant trinitarian grandfather was a contemporary of Moses. fragment (Scott, Hermetica, IV, 235). Fran- In a later work (Symphonia Platonis cum Aris-~ o i sde Foix published an edition in Greek and tctele, Paris, 1516, f. xiir) he places Moses Latin (Mercurij Trismegisti Pimandras utraque before Hermes, adducing the latter's plagiar- lingua restitutus, D. Francisci Flussatis Candallae ism from Genesis i. (i.e. Corpus Hermeticurn, ed. industria, Bordeaux, 1574), and a French cit., Traitt I). Lefkvre (1494 ed. of Hermetica, translation, with his own commentaries (Le sig. e iijr), Le Caron (La Philosophie, f. 549, Pimandre de Mercure Trismegiste de la Philosophie and hfornay (Veriti, p. I 76) all state or imply Chrestienne . . ., Bordeaux, 1579). On other that Hermes derives from Moses. early editions of the Hermetica, cf. Scott, P. 38. Hermetica, I, 31 ff., and Kristeller, art. cit., De Foix, Le Pimandre, sig. A 2'. On the supra note 9, p. 207. antiquity of Hermes, v. ibid., sig. A 3', (A 59,

1 See Otto Kern, Orphicorum Fragmenta, where he is said to be before Abraham (based Berlin, 1922, test. 223. on Suidas, v. Scott, Hermetica, IV, 235).

210 D. P. WALKER

nombre des sainctes lettres, si est ce que de tant qu'il se trouve estre con- cordant & expositeur,' non discordant, des sainctz escritz l'on ne peut faillir a reverer son advis, comme des autres sainctes personnes de telle condition.

Another Catholic bishop, Tyard, refers to "la Theologie du plus vieil, que je ssache, des Philosophes, Mercure Trismegiste," and, having quoted the prayer from Pimander I, he exclaims :

Que peut-on, j.e vous prie, choisir en David mesmes, de plus pieux, reverend, & religieux?

This acceptance of the Herrnetica applies only to the Pimander and Dejni- tiones; for it was thought by most of the French, from Champier on,3 that Apuleius had tampered with the text of the Asclepius, especially in the passages dealing with idols. This dialogue is therefore treated with much greater caution, and by De Foix is rejected outright as a f ~ r g e r y . ~

The Tradition of the "Prisca Theologia"

If a Christian wishes to believe in the existence of a series of ancient theologians who in some measure foreshadow the Christian revelation, he must assume or accept as historical fact the following :

Either that the only or main pre-Christian revelation was the Jewish one ; but that this filtered through to the Gentiles, the usual channel of communi- cation being Egypt, where Moses had taught the priests or left books.

O r that there were partial pre-Christian revelations other than that given to the Jews.

These are not mutually exclusive, since a Gentile revelation may be sup- posed to be reinforced by the Jewish one. But the first assumption is evidently more surely orthodox, since it safeguards the unique authority of the Old Testament, and this is the assumption adopted by the Fathers5 and the more cautious Renaissance syncretists. The French do quite often imply the second assumption, but they are careful to limit this non-Jewish revelation to those religious truths which, according to even the strictest orthodoxy, are attain- able by natural reason: the existence of God, the need to serve Him, the necessity of His revealing Him~e l f .~ Champier, even in his Apologia de Studio humanae Philosophiae, dedicated to Lef&vre d'Etaples, does not dare to give as

Hermtica, ed. Nock & Festugitre, pp. I 7 ff. V. infra, pp. 238-9. a Tyard, Deux Discours de la Nature du Monde, * De Foix, Le Pimandre, sig. a qr.

Paris, 1578, folios I 12~-113~ 5 E.g. Justin Martyr, Cohortatio ad Gentiles; (i.e. Le Second Curieux, of which the first edition is of 1557; Clement of Alexandria, Stromata; Eusebius, the I 578 edition contains an Avant-discours by Preparatio Evangelica; Augustine, Civitas Dei. Du Perron, which emphasizes and adds to 6 On these "Preambles of Faith." see Dic- Tyard's use of the priscd theologia. On Du tionnaire de Thiologie Catholique, ed. Vacant & Perron's syncretism, see Yates, French Acade- Mangenot, T. XVI, Paris, 191 5, col. I 71 ff. mies, pp. 168 ff.). (art. Foi, Sect. vi).

211 THE PRISCA THEOLOGIA IN FRANCE

his own opinion that "there is in Plato some semblance of our religion, illuminated by the light of nature," but puts it in the mouth of "certain Christians"* (he is, in fact, quoting Bessarion),2 and follows it by all the evidence he can collect from Cyril, Eusebius, Augustine and Thomas Aquinas, to prove that Plato drew all his religious truths from the Hebrew scripture^.^ He mentions the belief that some Gentile philosophers received a revelation exceeding what natural reason could attain, but with the double protection of Augustine and his fourteenth-century commentator, Franciscus de Maronis.* Mornay affirms that natural reason can lead to a belief in the existence of God,S and, like so many others, backs this up with the fact, denied by M ~ n t a i g n e , ~that no savages have been discovered, however primitive, without some sort of religion.' But he defines most exactly the limits of this "natural" religion : it knows the existence of God, but can only say what He is not ; it knows He must be worshipped, but loses itself in idolatry and vain cere-monies ;9 it can even know the necessity of revelation, but

1 Champier, Symphonia Platonis cum Aristotcle . . . @ apologia literarum humaniorum, Paris, I 5 16, f. clixr : "Quis enim nesciat Platonem & Mercurium Christianos non fuisse : neque tales quos sequi e vestigio debeant: qui se Christianos profitentur? Speciem quandam nostrae religionis in Platone fuisse non dif- fitentur quidam christiani luce naturae illus- tratam : quam eius creator & princeps divina filij sui doctrina postea plenius (ut aiunt) aperuit : & sua beneficentia manifestius re- velavit: qua specie non mediocriter iuvari posse hominem arbitrantur : qui ex Platonis doctrina ad nostrae religionis perfectiorem statum se contulerit: ita principia quaedam vere theologie Platonis scriptis surgere (ut aiunt) & quasi scaturire videntur . . ."

Bessarion, I n Calumniatorem Platonis Libri IV, ed. Ludwig Mohler, Paderborn, I927 (first ed., Rome, 1469), p. 103.

Ibid., f. clixv. He cites (copying Bessar- ion, I n Calumniatorem Platonis Libri IV, ed. cit., 111, viii, p. 245) : Cyril Alex., Contra Julianum, I (Migne, Patr. Gr., LXXVI, col. 548a; Plato and Pythagoras learning Moses' doctrine in Egypt) ;Eusebius, Pr*. Evang., passim ("omnem fere theologiae Platonic? rationem a sacris literis nostris acceptam esse ingenue fatetur") ;Augustine, Ciu. Dei, VIII, xi (Plato having Jewish Scriptures read to him in Egypt; hence similarity of Timaeus to Genesis i.) ;Augustine, Confess., VII, ix (find- ing in "Platonici" Gospel of St. John, i. r-10) ; Thomas Aquinas, I n Sent. Petr. Lomb., I, dist. 3, qu. I, art. 4.

Champier, Symphonia, f. clviir-v. He quotes Augustine, Civ. Dei, 11, vii: "quidam eorum (sc. philosophorum) quaedam magna quantum divinitus adiuti sunt invenerunt:

quantum autem humanitus impediti sunt erraverunt maxime"; and Franciscus de Maronis on this (Quidquid nota dignum ex omnibus beati augustini & tidate a% . . . lib& colligiflotest. . . Francisco & mayronis autore . . ., n.p., n.d. (ca. 1475), Lib. 11, Veritas ii) : "Ex quo accipitur documentum quod philo- sophi attingunt ad aliquas veritates divino auxilio quae excedunt facultatem lurninis naturalis quia divinitus inquit sunt adiuti."

Mornay, Verite', p. I 3 : "Or c o m e tous hommes peuvent lire en ce livre tant du monde que de soy-mesmes ;aussi n'y a-il eu peuple quelconque soubs le ciel, qui n'y ait apprins & apperceu une DivinitC, encor que, selon la diversitt des imaginations, ils l'ayent diversement conceue." Cf. ibid., pp. 485-6.

Montaigne, Essais, ed. Villey, Paris, 1922, 11, 218 (i.e. 11, xii; longevity of Brazilians attributed to "la tranquillit6 et serenit6 de leur ame . . . comme gents qui passoyent leur vie en une admirable simplicit6 et ignorance, sans lettres, sans roy, sans relligion aucune").

Mornay, Veriti, pp. 14, 150-1, 475 ; Le Roy, De la Vicissitude ou Varietk des Choses en Z'Univers, 3e ed., Paris, 1579, f. 25' (he adds : "Et s'il plaisoit A Dieu qu'il voulust estre adort par tout le monde en une mesme maniere, les hommes seroient delivrez de grandes haines & cruelles discordes advenantes entre eux par la diversitt des religions") ; Ramus, Commentariorurn de- Religione Christians Libri IV, Frankfurt 1577, p. 33; cf. G. Atkin- son, Lds Nouveaux Horizons de la Renaissance frangaise, Paris, 1935, pp. 93-7; Cicero, De Natura Deorum, I, I 7 (all peoples have belief in Gods), I, 23 (many have not).

Mornay, of. cit., pp. 484-5. O Ibid., pp. 483-4.

212 D. P. WALKER

Oyons sur ce les Payens, qui ont certes bien connu que toutes les eschelles de leur Philosophie estoyent trop courtes, pour y parveilir, & qu'il falloit estre illumint & enseignd d'enhaut. Platon dit: La Theologie ne se peut expliquer comme les autres disci lines, mais a besoin d'une assiduelle meditation, @ lors tout ci, coup nostre esprit est i 4lumine'comme d'un feu, qui puis apres s'allume @ en-tretient sy-mesme :bref, dit il, nous ne connoissons rien de divin par nostre science. Si celuy d'entre les Philosophes qui a veu plus clair confesse ici sa veue courte, si elle n'est aidte d'enhaut, quel jugement pouvons nous faire des autres?l

And Mornay elsewhere constantly emphasizes that even this imperfect revela- tion came to the Greeks from M ~ s e s . ~ This is undoubtedly the predominant view, affirmed by Catholics, such as Le Roy, La Boderie, and TyardY3 by Protestants, such as Pacard and Ramus,4 and by the more unorthodox, such as Servetus and P ~ s t e l . ~

The ways in which this tradition was thought to have been transmitted vary slightly. Usually it was supposed, not without some historical ev iden~e ,~ that Plato and his main predecessors, Orpheus and Pythagoras, had visited Egypt; there they studied the writings of Moses, that is the Pentateuch, or learnt from mosaically indoctrinated Egyptian priests-for this there was no historical evidence, but weighty patristic authority.: At the same time, while in Egypt, they may have learnt the Hermetic tradition; but this would come to the same thing, since most of the French asserted that Hermes had followed Moses both in time and d o ~ t r i n e . ~ There was a language difficulty, since in Plato's time the Septuagint translation had not yet been made. Champier reproduces Augustine's suggestion that Plato used a Hebrew i n t e r ~ r e t e r ; ~ whilst Ramus reverses the usual mode of transmission by supposing that he acquired his knowledge of Mosaic teaching from Jews who came to Athens in order to learn Greek or do business.1°

The Druids as "Prisci Theologi"

The series of the prisci theologi contains many members I have not yet 1 Ibid., p. 487. Plato, Epistle 7, 341 c-d; Niort, 1610, pp. 129, 156-7; Ramus, op. cit.,

Parmenides, I 35 b. P. '9. 2 Ibid., pp. 104, I@, 161, 176, 609. Servetus, Christianismi Restitutio . . ., 1553 3 Le Roy, op. cit., folios 33v, 60~-611; La (Reprint, Nuremberg 1790), pp. 130, 137 ;

Boderie, L.a Galliade, Paris, 1578, Aux Lecteurs Postel, De Orbis Terrae Concordza . . ., n.p., & passim; Tyard, Deux Discours, 1578, f. 611 n.d., p. 23. (combining the two assumptions) : "Entre les 6 Plutarch, De Iside et Osiride, 354 de; opinions prophanes . . . il a pleu ti la souve- Diodorus Siculus, Bibl. Hist., I , 23, 69, 96; raine source de veritt . . . de semer quelque Diogenes Laertius, Vitae, 111, 6-7. estincelle & apparence de vray : comme l'on 7 V. supra note 5, p. 210. TO these can be peut cognoistre en l'advis de ceux, qui, added : Cyril, Contra Julian., Lactantius, Div. possible ayans leuz les livres de Moyse, Inst. croyoient la Terre avoir au commencement V. supra note 3, p. 209. estC cachk. sous les Eaux." Cf. Bourgueville, Champier, Symphonia, f. clixv. Augustine, Atheomachie, pp. I 7, 62-4, 76. Civ. Dei, VIII, xi.

* Pacard, Theologte flaturelle, 2nd ed., 10 Ramus, Comm. de Rel. Chr., pp. 19-20.

213 THE PRISCA THEOLOGIA IN FRANCE

mentioned. Some of these have writings attached to their names, such as the Oracula Chaldaica ascribed to Zoroaster,l the Sibylline propheciesY2 or the Symbola of Pythag~ras .~ Some figure only as groups of ancient religious teachers, whose doctrines were orally transmitted, or whose writings happen no longer to exist. Of this kind are the Gymnosophists of India, the Magi of Persia, and the Druids of ancient Gaul.

Now the Druids have always had a right to a place in the list of prisci theologi; they appear already in Clement of Alexandria, and occur in some of Ficinoys lists. But with the French syncretists their place becomes much more conspicuous, and they are evidently connected with the patriotic movement which produced the early French "history," founded on the legend of Francus and the Pseudo-Berosu~.~ Their historical foundation, mainly in Caesar and DiodorusY6was of course much sounder, and Champier, Ramus, La Boderie and others, have no difficulty in showing that the Druids were powerful religious leaders who preached the immortality of the soul, and in making a case for the high civilization of the ancient Gauls.'

I t was more difficult to deal with two awkward facts in the same classical sources: that the Druids practised human sacrifice, and that their religion was polytheistic. * The former is sometimes mentioned ; Champier and Le Roy do so, expressing no disapproval, and Ramus excuses it as being an almost universal practice among pagan peoples.9 La Boderie describes the practice at length, remarking : lo

Et les Druydes vieux, autrement tkeshumains, Faisoient ce sacrifice eux-mesmes de leurs mains

He then defends it by an explanation its insight:

See Milton V. Anastos, "Pletho's Calen- dar and Liturgy," Dumbarton Oaks Papers, No. 4, 1948, p. 287.

2 See A. BouchC-Leclercq, Histoire de la Divination dam l'dntiquite', T. 11, Paris, 1880, PP. '99 ff.

See L. G. Giraldi, Opera Omnia, Leyden, 1696, 11, 638 ff.

Clemens Alex., Stromata, I, xv. Ficino, Op. Omn., p. I . Cf. Origen, Contra Celsum, I, 16 (Migne, Patr. Gr., T. I I , col. 690) ;Dion Chrysostom, Orationes, XLIX (Teubner, 1919, pp. 123-4). By Clement (ibid.) and Hippolytus (Philosophoumena, I, xxv) the Druids' philosophy is said to be Pythagorean. All these, except Origen and Ficino, are quoted in T. D. Kendrick, The Druids, Lon- don, 1927, pp. 2 19-220.

See H. Gillot, La Querelle des Anciem 6' des Modernes en France, Paris, 1914, pp. 125 ff.

Caesar, De Bello Gallico, VI, I 3, 14. Diodorus, Bibl. Hist., V, 28, 31. Cf. Ken- drick, Druidr, pp, 212 ff., where classical writers on Druids are quoted.

remarkable both for its boldness and

7 For Champier and La Boderie, see this and the following page. Ramus, Ltber de moribus veterum Gallorum, Paris, 1559, folios 35' ff. Cf. Postel, LYHistoire Memorable des expeditions . . ., Paris, 1552, folios 47', 81 (the Gauls' belief in immortality of the soul shows that divine providence has had greater care of them than of any other nation not excepting the Jews). For other I 6th and I 7th centurv writers on Druids. cf. Kendrick. ~ruids,' pp. I 7 ff.

Caesar, Bell. Gall., VI, 16. Diodorus, Bibl. ~ i s t . , . ~ , 3I .

9 Champier, Mirabilium divinorum . . ., I 5I 7, Vol. 111, f. iiijv. Le Roy, Vicissitudes, f. 44'. Ramus (De mor. Vet. Gal., folios 49-50') admits that it is "atrocitas religionis horrenda," but, he adds, "atrocitas gentium communis, vel potihs gentilium daemonum propria: sic enim quondam humanis hostiis litabant f ed gentes omnes." Cf. Postel, Hist. Mem., f. 47'-' (druids excused by reference to Jews sacrificing infants to Moloch). 10 La Boderie, Galliade, folios 52v-53.

D. P. WALKER

Quoy que d'un homme occis la victime inhumaine A Dieu doux & clement soit en horreur & haine, Si est ce toutesfois qu'ils ont peu estre induits Sous espece de bien, d'estre A tel ma1 conduits. Possible que Ianus par esprit profetique Avoit signifit A Dis leur pere antique,' Que l'homme qui estoit tombt de son degrt, Et qui esoit bany du Paradis sacrC, Ne pouvoit recouvrer ceste grace perdue, Si par la mort d'un homme elle n'estoit rendue: Et si l'homme Archetype ayant pris un vray corps, Par mort ne redonnoit la vie & les accords Des bas, moyens, & hauts, par chaine entresuyvie Resouldant les canaux par oh coule la vie.

This seems to me bold because it is rare for Renaissance Platonists to mention pagan prototypes of the crucifixion, even when these lie close to hand-they felt, I think, a bashful reverence for this mystery, personal and tragic, whereas the Trinity could be compared to almost anything. It seems to me to have insight because it recognizes that the same kind of religious feeling lies behind two apparently very different sacrifices.

Noel Ta i l l e~ ied ,~ a Franciscan, also connects Druidic and other human sacrifice with the crucifixion :

Le commencement de ceste doctrine d'ainsi sacrifier les hommes, avoit prins son origine de la doctrine des Juifs & des Prophetes, lesquels assez souvent avoient predit plusieurs belles choses du sacrifice, que devoit offrir Jesus Christ A Dieu son Pere, par sa mort & passion, . . .

This truth was perverted by the pagan gods, who were really devils, in order that, when Christ was sacrificed, "on fist peu de cas de sa mort, comme estant chose accoustumee dCs longtemps, dYofFrir des hosties humaines."

The Druids' polytheism is usually passed over in silence-but anyway they were in this respect no worse than the Greeks. Champier, having extolled the Druids as law-givers and preachers of the immortality of the soul, remarks, "the Gauls once worshipped the Gentiles' gods, as did the other nations," and ends, after a reference to Greek and Roman idolatry, by warning us against rejecting, because of these superstitions, all such ancient wisdom, which may help us towards a better understanding of the Scriptures and the art of g~vernment .~ Elsewhere Champier frequently cites the Druids amongst the other "barbarian" sages from whom the Greeks stole their religious and philosophical ideas, and evolves an interesting extension of the prisca theologia to include the theologi parisienses : as once the Greeks took all their wisdom from

1Janus is Noah; Dis Samothes was son of cultores galli fuere ut cetere gentes"; ibid., a het and first King of the Gauls. f. viv: "Nos tamen non propter superstitiones ref, F. Saxl, "Pagan Sacrifice in the prophanorum debemus musicam fugere : si

Italian Renaissance," Journal of the Warburg quid inde utile ad intelligendas sanctas and Courtauld Inrt., 11, 1938-9, pp. 346 ff. scripturas rapere potuerimus nec ad illorum

Taillepied, Histoire de I'Estat et Republique theatricas nugas converti si aliquid de citharis des Druides . . .,Paris, 1585, I, 52'-56'. & de organis rerumque publicarum guber-

Champier, Mirabilium divinorum . . ., I 5I 7, natoribus quod ad spiritualia valeat cum 111, f. iiijv: "Gentilium quodam deorum bardis & Druydibus disputemus."

215 T H E PRISCA THEOLOGIA IN FRANCE

the Chaldeans, Jews, Egyptians and Druids, and developed it with great literary brilliance, so the great Italian scholastics, such as Petrus Lombardus and Thomas Aquinas, derived from the theologians of the S0rbonne.l Whythen, he continues angrily, do the Italians despise us as barbarians, when Cicero was taught by a Gaul,2 "and finally they owe to the Gauls even sacred theology itself?"3 One can see here that Champier, unlike many later Plat~nis ts ,~has no sense of any break in the continuity of the tradition which leads from the Druids and other prisci theologi through Plato to the Christian revelation, and thence through the mediaeval theologians to his own times;b

Champier, De Triplici Disciplina, I 508, sig. (ddd viii)r: "Egyptiorum enim et hebreorum scripturam grece philosophie iure anteponunt: quoniam omnia bona ab egyp- tijs & hebreis (quos barbaros greci vocant) ipsi furati sint : nec quicquam utilitatis a dijs suis habuerunt. Sic & gallorum theolo- giam italice eloquentie iure anteponimus : habuerunt (ut Pomponius scribit) magistros sapientie druydas semper galli. Hi terre mundique magnitudinem & formam: motus celi & syderum ac quid dij velint scire profitentur." (Pomponius Mela, De Situ Orbis, 111, ii (Kendrick, op. cit., p. 216).) Cf. Champier, De Quadruplici Vita, 1507, sig. g iir, the same passage at the end of his com- mentary on the DGnttiones Asclepii; ibid., sig. diir: "Quattuor profecto celeberrima & bonarum litterarum & scientiarum studia in orbe extiterunt scilicet in Chaldea: egypto: grecia : & postremo in Italia : & nunc gallia ipsa : sive parisiense gymnasium (pace om- nium dixerim) in theologia principatum tenet."

Misinterpretation of the name Lucius Plotius Gallus (see Pauly-Wissowa, Real-Encyclopadie, 4 I Halbband, 195 I , col. 598).

Champier, De Quadr. V., sig. g iir : "Nonne Thomas : Petrus Lombardus : Gregorius de aremino & alij quamplurimi theologiam a parisiensibus & gallis habuerunt? Cur ergo in nos invehuntur barbarosque appellant si rhetoricam : aliasque bonas disciplinas & tandem ipsam sacram theologiam a gallis ipsi habuerunt?" (He also claims Ausonius and Statius as Gallic poets; why the latter I do not know. Cf. ibid. : "Cur igitur italici gallos parvipendunt & accusant: et non potius laudant atque admirantur : qui falsitate con- tempta etiam theologiam secuti sunt: que sola Vera est ab omni falsitate remota?").

E.g. Le Roy, op. cit., f. 96v, "Durant le regne de Tamberlan, commenqa la restitu- tion des langues, & de toutes disciplines"; it began, as in a 19th-century text-book, with Petrarch "ouvrant les librairies p i e ~ a fermees,

& ostant la pouldre & ordure de dessus les bons livres des autheurs anciens." Then follows a list of Italian humanists and Byzan- tine refugees.

Ramus, Scholae in Liberales Artes . . ., Basle, 1578, pp. 1086-7 (Pro Philosophica Parisiensis Academiae Disciplina Oratio, given March 155o/1): after a slighting reference to the Carolingian renaissance, when, he says, the University of Paris was founded, he remarks that the following centuries were not favour- able to letters until the capture of Constanti- nople, when Bessarion, Gaza, George of Trebizond, etc., came to the West; then 6 6 divina quaedam lux novorum temporum, novarumque literarum actutum per eos Dei angelos affulsit."

Cf. Champier's Tropheum Gallorum (De Quadr. V., sig. A i ff.), where, after a lot on the ancient Gauls, he gives a list of famous French writers; this begins with quite a full selection of early mediaeval theologians, in- cluding Bernard of Clairvaux, William of Paris, Henry of Ghent, whose works are also given ; then, after Pierre d'Ailly and Gerson, we arrive at Gaguin, Lefkvre, Clichtowe and Bouelles (ibid., sig. E iiiv-E viii). Champier, Libelli duo. Primus de medecine claris scrip-toribus . . ., n.p. ( ?1506), folios ixv-xxxv : SUC-

cession of philosophers "qui in medecinis claruerunt" :Zoroaster, Hermes Trismegistus, Moses, Orpheus, Pythagoras, Hippocrates . . . Plato . . . Raymond Lull, Lefkvre, Ficino. Cf. La Boderie, Galliade, folios 74-5 (list of French theologians, from Ps.-Dionysius up to the 16th century).

Cf. also Ficino's letter of 1489 to Pren-ninger, reprinted in Klibansky, op. cit., p. 45, which gives a bibliography of Platonism, in- cluding Augustine, Ps.-Dionysius, Boetius, several mediaeval works and writers (Avice- bron's Fons Vitae, the Liber de causis, Henry of Ghent, Avicenna), and ending with Bessarion, Nicolas of Cusa and himself. This clearly shows, as Klibansky says, that Ficino is "fully consciouq of being the descendant of a long

216 D. P. WALKER

he cites scholastics very frequently, and will even explicitly prefer, on certain points, their Aristotelian views to Platonic 0nes.l

An indication of how highly the Druids were rated as religious philosophers can be seen in the Dialogus de animae immortalitate2 of Charles de Bouelles, a pupil of Lefevre's, who was greatly influenced by Nicolas of C ~ s a . ~ In this dialogue a Gaulish Druid is the chief speaker. Bouelles chose him because the Druids were the earliest sages to preach the belief in personal immortality to young noblemen ; it was this belief which produced the admirably reckless courage of the ancient Gauls in battle.4 This Druid's Cusan mathematical arguments fit in weli with the tradition that the Druids' philosophy resembled PythagorasY;6 it is less easy to account for his quoting St. P a ~ l . ~

La Boderie represents the combination of patriotic French "history" and prisca theologia in an extreme and reckless form, as we have already seen in the example cited above.' Although he is aware of the questionable authen- ticity of the Berosus chronicles forged by Annius of Viterbo, which Champier and Ramus had doubts about and Mornay rejectedY8 he does in fact base his chronology on them, and is thus able to place the beginning of the Gauls' civilization immediately after the Flood, and make their poets-musicians- philosophers the teachers not only of the Greeks but also of the Egyptians and M o ~ e s . ~Hence, in spite of his peculiar, and almost obsessive, devotion to line of Latin Platonists."

1 E.g. De Quadr. V., sig. e iijr: Many "Platonici" affirm the soul exists before the body, "Peripatetici econtra. Parisienses autem nostros quos omnis catholicus in-sequitur : reor peripateticos esse & cum istis de creationis ordine sentio."

Carolus Bovillus, De Animae immortalitate, Dialogus unus . . ., Paris, 1551.

See E. Cassirer, Individuum und Kosmos in der Philosophie der Renaissance, Leipzig, 1927, PP. 93 ff.

Bovillus, of. tit., f. 41 (Ad Lectorem) : "Hi (sc. Druyides) prae cunctis quos memorat orbis celebrantur gnavi animarum immor- talitatis extitisse, & ad occultam eorum doc- trinam, undecunque & Gallia, tyrannorum & nobilium filios convenisse, qui privatim ab eis edocerentur, hominum animas post obitum non ire in nihilum, sed post hanc vitam beatiori long& seculo frui. Hinc quum futurae vitae aevum brevi praesentis vitae stadio ante- ferrent, & honest& in be110 occumbere mallent, quhm diuturnam in otio vitam transigere : insignem olim bellorum gloriam genti Gallorum peperere."

Cf. supra note 4, p. 2 I 3. Bovillus, op. cit., f. I 11.'Supra pp. 213-4. La Boderie was not with-

out successors. Mr. R. E. Asher has drawn my attention to an equally astonishing case of druidic prisca theologia : Sebastian Roulliard, Parthenie ou Histoire de la tres-auguste ct tres-

devote Eglise de Chartres; dediee par les vieux Druides, en l'honneur de la Vierge qui enfan- teroit . . ., Paris, 1609. In this section I owe much to Mr. Asher's help; he has written a book on this French "history", which will, I hope, soon be published. The Roulliard work is too rich in curious ideas to be dealt with here.

Champier, Symphonia, f. xiv: the most ancient philosophers were the Chaldeans, then, "si Beroso Caldqo credimus," the Druids. Ramus, De Mor. vet. Gal., f. 36'. Mornay, Verite', p. 151. For other rejections of Ps.-Berosus, see Glllot, op. cit., pp. 139-140.

La Boderie, Galliade, Advertissement : if the fragments of Annius, which some "doctes de nostre temps" do not consider "enfans legi- times des Peres dont ils portent le nom," be rejected, then he has enough other evidence to prove that the Gauls invented all "Arts, disciplines & escholes publiques incontinent apres le Deluge universel." The whole poem shows the transmission of all culture from the Gauls and Jews to the Egyptians-Greeks- Romans-Italians, and back again to the French. This is not to be taken as patriotic poetic fiction, like Ronsard's Franciade. His Galliade, says La Boderie, is not an epic, taken from the "fables moisies des Grecs," which aims at "delectation & way-semblance" rather than "utilitk & verite," but a serious historical work.

THE PRISCA THEOLOGIA IN FRANCE

Orpheus as a theologian,l he writes :

Mais le celeste son nos vieux Bardes ravit Et devant mon Orfee, & devant mon David. Donq des Bardes Gaulois ensuivant la trace Monta son instrument le grand Harpeur de Thrace.

"Prisca Theologia" in the Christian Era. Ps.-Denys and St. Denys

As far as we have yet considered it, the tradition of the prisca theologia consists of: supposedly ancient texts-Hermetica, Oracula Chaldaica, Orphica, etc. ; groups of sages who left no writings-Druids, Gymnosophists, Magi ; Moses and the Pentateuch; Plato. These all, in some measure, lead up to the Christian revelation, to the New Tesiament. But, though the culmination is here, the tradition can continue into the Christian era. Even the most revolutionary heretics, such as ServetusY3 accorded some authority to early Christian writers, and nearly all Renaissance Platonists considered the Neo- platonists as essential aids to understanding Plat-even as writing within the Christian tradition, although they had rejected the revelation. The accept- ance of the Neoplatonists was enormously helped by the writings of Dionysius, which Klibansky has described as a "pious plagiarism--one of the most momentous in h i~ tory ."~ If one believed that the Corpus Dionysiacum was written by the Dionysius whom St. Paul converted at Athens5-and this was generally believed in the sixteenth century, except, as Bellarmin remarks, for "just the Lutheran heretics, and certain know-alls, Erasmus, Valla and a few othersw6-then it was evident that much in the Neoplatonists, especially in Proclus, was plagiarized from this nearly apostolic source, and, in particular, that their religious interpretation and elaboration of Plato was both Christian and correct.

Champier reproduces a passage of FicinoY7 in which, having stated that

1 V. infra, pp. 226-7. secula hominibus manifesta fieri posse. Quod Galliade, f. 831. quidem ita contigit, nam Philonis, Nu-

3 V. infra p. 248. meniique temporibus primilm coepit mens Klibansky, op. n't., p. 19. priscorum Theologorum in Platonicis chartis

ti Acts, xvii. intelligi, videlicet statim post Apostolorum, Bellarmin, Opera Omnia, Naples, 1872, Apostolorumque discipulorum conciones &

VIII, 2I (after a list of Ps.-Dionysius' works) : scripta. Divino enim Christianorum lumine "Soli haeretici Lutherani et quidam scioli usi sunt Platonici ad divinum Platonem inter- Erasmus, Valla, et pauci alii, opera supra pretandum. Hinc est qubd magnus Basilius nominata negant esse sancti Dionysii Aero- [Basil, Homilia, XVI (Migne, Patr. Gr., T. 31, pagitae." col. 4711 & Augustinus [Augustine, Conf.,

Champier, De Triplici Disciplina, sig VII, ix] probant, Piatonicos Johannis Evan- (dd vi i )~; Ficino, Op. Omn., p. 25 (De Chns- gelistae mysteria sibi usurpavisse. Ego certk tiana Religione, c. xxii) : (I give Ficino's text, reperi praecipua Numenij, Philonis, Plotini, which is better punctuated) "Prisca Gentilium Jamblichi, Proculi mysteria, ab Johanne, Theologia, in qua Zoroaster, Mercurius, Or- Paulo, Yerotheo, Dionysio Aeropagita ac-pheus, Aglaophemus, Pythagoras consense- cepta fuisse. Quicquid enim de mente divina runt, tota in Platonis nostri voluminibus angelisque et ceteris ad theologiam spec-continetur. Mysteria huiusmodi Plato in tantibus magnificum dixere: manifeste ab Epistolis vaticinatur, tandem post multa illis usurpaverunt." Champier adds: "& ab

218 D. P. WALKER

the "prisca gentilium theologia" of Zoroaster, Orpheus, Hermes and Pythago- ras is contained in Plato's writings, and that Plato, in his Epistles,' had pro- phesied that after many centuries these mysteries would be made manifest, he goes on to say :

Indeed, immediately after the preaching and writings of the apostles and apostolic disciples the Platonists used the divine light of the Christians for interpreting the divine Plato. Hence it is that Basil and Augustine demon- strate that the Platonists have appropriated the mysteries of John the Evangelist. I certainly have found that the chief mysteries of Plotinus, Iamblichus, Proclus, Philo and Numenius are taken from John, Paul, Dionysius and Hierotheus. For anything sublime that they have said about the divine mind, angels and other things pertaining to theology they have manifestly appropriated from them and stolen from them.

But, though the Neoplatonists may derive from Dionysius and other Christians, Champier is equally sure that in some measure Dionysius derives from Plato. He even criticizes the greatly venerated Lefkvre for not admitting this. In 1514an Italian correspondent of his, Hieronimus of Pavia, wrote to him describing a visit to Lefkvre, who, in their discussions, had seemed unwilling to follow exclusively either Plato or Aristotle, but had been wholeheartedly enthusiastic about Diony~ius.~ In his reply, Champier says that he is surprised that Lefkvre can enthuse for Dionysius without also enthusing for plat^;^ he then quotes a typical piece of negative theology from the beginning of Dionysius' De divinis .Nominibus,4 and asks, this time in Bessarion's words :

Has not Dionysius taken this from Plato, and used almost the same words?

that is, from the Parmenides seen through the eyes of P r o c l ~ s . ~ And, with the

eis furati sunt." fideique symistes totus exundat in doctrina Cf. Postel, De Orbis Terrae Concordia, p. 23: sacra : totusque raptatur ad dionisij ipsius

(having quoted Plato, Epistle 2, on the three ambrosiam ad sacros illius nectaris fontes kings (v . infra p. 22 I ) ) "Quae verba post- necnon ad hierothei divinos amores . . ." quam A Christianis didicisset explicare Por- Champier, Mirab., sig. A iiijv-(A v) ; phyrius, exponit de unitrino Deo: primam Duellum, sig. br. esse hypostasim summum deum, secundb Ps.-Dionysius, De Diuinis Nominibus, omnium opificem, tertib animi mentem. (Migne, Patr. Gr., T. 3, col. 588 b), passage Quae quum miser ille cognovisset, mirum beginning : hxhpxcrrar rGv orjorijv J1 bxcpoGoro~ tanti eum fecisse gloriolam humanam, ut A &optaria. vero ipso quod fateri necesse habetst, re- Bessarion, I n Calumn. Plat., ed. cit., pp. 89- silierit, & veluti Maximus, Amelius, Plotinus, 91; Champier, loc. cit. : "Haec nonne a sua A nostris habuerit." Platone per eadem fere verba Dionysius

Presumably a reference to Epistle VI. sumpsit?" Champier also quotes this passage Champier, Mirabilium Diuinorum . . ., from Dionysius, with Bessarion's comment,

1517, sig. .A ijr-A iijr, and in Champier, in his Apologia (Symphonia, f. clviiir). Duellum epastolare . . ., 1519, sig. a iiir : "Sic 13 Plato, Pamnides, 142 a ; see Klibansky, autem utrique philosophorum est addictus: Pluto's Parmenides in the Middle Ages and thc ut neque platonicus / neque peripateticus Renaissance, London, 1943, pp. 25-31 and appellari gaudeat. Sed apostolicus totus passim.

T H E PRZSCA THEOLOGZA IN FRANCE 2x9

powerful protection of the earliest of the Fathers, Champier dares to assert (still in Bessarion's words) :l

Plato, illuminated by the light of nature, wrote these things concerning the One and the first principle of all things and the simplicity and unity of God: our most saintly doctors, the princes of the Christian religion, taught them, inspired by the divine spirit. This fact seems to prove clearly enough that Plato sometimes both thought and wrote rightly on divine matters.

I n making this connexion between Dionysius and Plato, Champier has in mind, I think, Lefkvre's preface to his edition of Dionysius' works, which appeared first in 1481, and was reprinted in 1498.~ In this, Lefhre protests vehemently against those who call Dionysius a disciple of Plato-it is as if one called St. John a Pythagorean or a Platonist, "as some of the profane have done, and not rather a heavenly and other-worldly writer." Dionysius has only been thought to be a Platonist, because the later Platoqists learned from him and other Christians to interpret Plato correctly; Nicolas of Cusa went wrong on this point, because the thefts of the "platonici" (Neoplatonists) had escaped his n ~ t i c e . ~ At the end of the preface Lefkvre quotes various texts on these thefts, ending with the Ficino passage I have just quoted out of Champier; this, in the original, ends with the words "appropriated from them," and Lefkvre comments :

Thus Marsilius. And if he had not wanted to be a bit too gentle with the adversaries of Christian wisdom, he would have said outright : stolen from them.

Though Champier, as we have seen, silently borrowed both the Ficino passage and Lefkvre's addition to it, he had enough sense and independence to protest against Lefkvre's attempt to eat his cake and have i t ; one must not simul- taneously claim that Dionysius has nothing to do with Plato and that he taught the Neoplatonists the right way to interpret plat^.^

1 Champier and Bessarion, loc. cit. : "Hec Ibid., Epistola . , .piis lectoribus; on Nicolas de uno & primo principio ac de sui simpli- of Cusa and Dionysius, see Klibansky, Pluto's citate & unitate dei plato luce nature illus- Parmenides, p. 25. tratus scripsit :hec nostri sanctissimi doctores : V. supra note 7, p. 2 I 7. Christiane religionis proceres divino afflati Ibid. : "Haec Marsilius. Et nisi in adver- spiritu docuere: que res aperte satis testari sarios Christianae sapientiae molior esse videtur recte aliquando & sensisse de divinis maluisset : plane dixisset, furati sunt." rebus & scripsisse platonem." (Champier's Lefkvre may possibly mean that Christian text.) meanings are wrongly read back into Plato

Divini Dionysii Aeropagiie Caelestis hierarchia. by these thieving Neoplatonists. He says Ecclesiastics hierarchia. Divina nomina. Mystica (ibid.) that Dionysius is not to be considered theologia. Undecim epistolae. Ignatii Undecim "platonicus" because "verbis disserendo de epistolae. Polycarpi Epistola una. Theologia vivi- divinis usus sit platonicis. quinimo & verba, fians Cibus solidus, Venice, per ioannem & sententiae & Platoni, & reliquis philo- tacuinum de Tridono, 148 I . Renaudet (Pri- sophis pro maiori parte (ne dicam pro tota) rgorme, pp. 374 ff.) knew only of the 1498/9 de deo digne loquendi ante apostolorum reprint of this; which somewhat upsets his tempora deerant. Et proinde profusum chronology of Lefkvre's interests. equidem risum (ne si Heraclitus quidem

3

2 2 0 D. P. WALKER

Lefhre's enthusiasm for Dionysius had patriotic as well as religious causes. He identified Dionysius the Areopagite with St. Denys, the first bishop of Paris, who was martyred there.l Moreover, he thinks that it was by a decree of divine providence that Dionysius had been bishop of Athens, the birth-place of all culture, before he came to Paris. God had predestined Paris to be the centre of religious studies, and had therefore sent to it a man from Athens, learnkd beyond all human wisdom. Dionysius thus makes Paris the sister and companion of Athens; the university of Paris ought to be called "Dionysia bonarum litterarum omnium a~ademia . "~ We have here a ain an effort, such as we noticed in Champier's extension of the prisca the0 fogia, to ensure an historical continuity between the pagan and Christian worlds which is to include mediaeval France and thus lead up to their own time. They have prevented the incarnation from breaking history in two, and they themselves stand in the unbroken succession ofprisci theologi which stretches back, through the Parisian theologians, to Dionysius-St.Denys, Plato, Orpheus, Hermes Trismegistus and Moses.

The place of Dionysius-St. Denys in the whole line ofprisci theologi is shown well in this sonnet of La Boderie :3

Cornme de 1'Infiny de la Coronne ronde Decode la Sagesse au sourgeon eternel,4 Tout ainsi par rondeurs son ruisseau perennel Es siecles retornez se retorne en ce Monde.

En Luz Israel beut de sa source feconde, Moyse en arrousa le terroir solennel Qui est baignC du Nil, le grand Mercure isnel L'y puisa, & depuis Orfee encor l'y sonde : .

fuissem) temperare haud valuissem : cum aliquando apud Platonicos ita legendum occurrisset. Post apostolorum, apostolorum- que virorum contiones & scripta: a Philone & Numenio incaeperunt scripta divini Plato- nis intelligi."

This identification ,has a history going back to Hilduin, the first translator of Dionysius; cf. Ps.-Dionysius, Oeuvres Corn-#Utes, tr. M. de Gandillac, Paris, 1943, In- trod. p. I I , and Migne, Patr. Gr., T. 4, col. 1079-1082.

Lefkvre, ibid. : "Insuper non sine divina ordinatione, et summa providentia id effec- tum esse mihi visum est : ut hic sanctissimus, & longe divina sapientia illustrissimus pater, primum atheniensium antistes atticam rexerit ecclesiam: & civitatem primariam omnium litterarum parentem illuminaverit. qua illu- minata mox in gallias a beatissirno Clemente apostolus missus : sedem apud parrhisiorum insignem urbem . . . delegerit . . . Tunc deus illum locum piorum studiorum fontem prae- ordinavit : ut ad quem in certum eventus rei argumentum ex athenis virum supra omnem humanam sapientiam doctum direxerit. Vos igitur Dionysia bonarum litterarum omnium

academia :eadem & parrhisiensis quam unus idemque pater sociam fecit athenis & sororem : vestro applaudite: apostolo vestro primo antistiti . . ." There is a long mediaeval tradition connecting the university of Paris with the Athenian academy; cf. E. Gilson, La Philosophie au Moyen Age, 3rd ed., Paris, 1947, pp. 193-4.

La Boderie, Galliade, sig. i jv. Sonnet to the Duc dYAlenqon; cf. ibid., folios 27', 73"' (Dionysius connected with the university of Paris and the Druids), and Bourgueville, Atheomachie, pp. 112-3, on Ps.-Dionysius-St. Denys : "les racines de la dicte foy qu'il planta en ce Royaulme, par le vouloir de Dieu lors Gentil & idolatre, ont produict telz rameaulx, & les rameaulx telz fruictz, que nostre Roy & Royaulme se tiltrent & sont appellez Tres- Chrestiens, & luy 1'Apostre de France:"

In the Cabala, Keter (Crown) and Chochmah (Wisdom) were equated by Christian cabalists with God the Father and Son; they are the first two Sefiroth (emana- tions) from Ensoph (Infinity) ; cf. L. Blau, Th Christian Interpretation of the Cabala in the Renaissance, Columbia U.P., 1944, p. 15.

THE PRZSCA THEOLOGZA IN FRANCE

Puis le divin Platon dYEgypte la derive En la ville oh Pallas feist naistre son Olive, Et dYAthenes Denis sur Seine la borna:

Si que Paris sans pair de la ville A Minerve, De Thrace, Egypte, & Luz fut faite la reserve, Oh le Rond accomply des Sciences torna.

Language and Interpretation

The whole structure of the prisca theologia rests on the belief that ancient theologians wrote with deliberate obscurity, veiling the truth, and, correla- tively, that religious texts should be interpreted allegorically. If, for example, when Plato wrote :l

Toutes choses sont autour du Roy de lYUnivers, & toutes choses B cause de luy, & iceluy est cause de ce qu'il y a de beau, & autour du second sont les secondes choses, & du troisiesme les troisiesmes.

he was referring to the Trinity, one must obviously suppose that he was writing in a deliberately enigmatic way; indeed, in this case, he tells us so, prefacing the above sentence with :

De la nature du Premier, il en faut parler par enigmes, afin que s'il avenoit inconvenient de la lettre par mer ou par terre, on la lise comme ne la lisant pas.

Now if, according to the usual assumption, Plato learnt about the Trinity in Egypt from Mosai'c writings or traditions, then one must find the Trinity in the Old Testament by means of the same sort of interpretation-for example, "Hear, 0 Israel, The Lord our God is one Lordu2 means, as Mornay explains : "The Lordw-God the Father, "our GodM-the Son, "one Lord"- the Holy Spirit proceeding from both of them.3 This kind of Biblical exegesis is of course extremely common at all periods, and so is the belief that religious mysteries should be safeguarded from the profane by a disguise that only the initiated can ~ e n e t r a t e . ~ The Platonists of the fifteenth and sixteenth cen- turies had therefore little difficulty in justifying their christianizing interpreta- tions of Plato, the ancient theologians, and the Bible, by recalling this belief, which also conveniently explained why the learnkd Druids had left no writings

Plato, Epistle 2, 312 d-e; Mornay's trans- presents remarkably convincing reasons of a lation (Veritk, pp. 104). This Epistle is con- practical kind : unveiled truth becomes cor- sidered spurious by most modern scholars. rupted by passing from one unfit mind to

Deuteronomy vi. 4. another, whereas the husk of fable ensures Mornay, Veritk, p. 106. that only minds fit for truth get to i t ; more- This was such an ancient and universally over fables, especially in verse, embalm the

accepted tradition that one does not often truth, prevent its being altered, even when find a discussion of the reasons for this transmitted by the ignorant, during periods "veiling" : it is therefore perhaps worth of cultural decadence. Cf. the discussion on noting that Leone Ebreo (Dialoghi d'dmorc, veiling in Bodin's Heptaplomres, Lib. I11 (ed. ed. S. Caramella, Bari, 1929, PP. 99-101) L. Noack, Schwerin, 1857, pp. 71 ff.).

222 D. P. WALKER

behind them.l La Boderie provides a good example of how this veiled, esoteric tradition was conceived. The Druids, he begin^,^

. . . retindrent tousjours ceste fason antique De ne reveler point la science mystique A la tourbe ignorante, ains aux doctes Jurez La bailler seulement dessous sens figurez.

Moses handed on the secret to Joshua and the seventy elders; these in turn passed to the Prophets "Dessous grands sacrements les sciences secretes." Thus did Hermes Trismegistus teach "sa doctrine fort profonde & obscure" to the Egyptians, Zoroaster to the Bactrians, Orpheus to the Thracians. Thus did Pythagoras give to his disciples "ses symboles sacrez sous silence,"

Et le divin Platon sous enigmes voiloit Les mysteres de Dieu qu'8 Dion reveloit.

And did not Christ Himself preach in parables? He too left no writings of His own, but relied on a secret, oral tradition; and so

Tous les Sages de nom de tous les siecles view Sans lettres ont tousjours par parolle interprete D'ame en ame entonn6 leur doctrine secrete,

Donq ne faut s'esbahir si nos Gaulois appris Des Druydes sacrez, n'ont point laisst d'escrits.

The fact that some of the Bible must be interpreted allegorically3 provided a powerful means of defending the pagans. Champier reproduces Bessarion's argument in favour of taking Plato's Heavenly Aphrodite as pure, religious love:4 this is also the theme of the Song of Songs, but if "Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins, which feed among the lilies" or "Thou hast ravished my heart, my sister, my spouse ;thou hast ravished my heart with one of thine eyes, with one chain of thy neck,"6 and "plura alia ad hunc modum

1 E.g. Ramus, Scholae in Liberales Artes, dist qu'on faisoit bien des querelles pour si 1578, p. 1064, De mor. vet. Gal., f. 42. ff.; Le peu de cas. Or ce blaspheme demeura pour Roy, Vicissitudes, f. I 7'-' (oral tradition of the gaige 6s oreilles des courtisans, qui en ont fait Druids compared to that of Pythagoreans and un proverbe, ce qu'on n'eust pas faict, si luy Cabala) ;Bessarion, In Calumn. Plat., ed. cit., qui entreprenoit d'enseigner les autres eust P. 19. entendu, & sagement interpret6 ce passage."

La Boderie, Galliade, folios 48'-49. * Champier, De Triplici Disc., sig. C ijr-v; Cf. J. Bodin (De la Demonomanie des Bessarion, I n Cal. Plat., ed. cit., p. 447. Cf.

Sorciers, Paris, I 580, f. 65') on the dangers of Champier, Symphonia, f. clviir, where he not doing this :"Or il est advenu que ces bons quotes Eusebius (Praep. Evang., XII, vi-ix) Interpretes du sens literal ont faict un million and Ambrose (De Bono Mortis, c. 5, Migne, d'Atheistes, lesquels prenant au pied de la Pat. Lat., T. 14, col. 549) on the derivation of lettre le Serpent qui parle en Genese, vont Plato's Symposium from the Song of Songs. The disant que les bestes parloient le temps jadis, allegorical interpretation of the latter was so comme un Mareschal de France disputant firmly established that its literal interpreta- avec un Prelat de reputation, apres l'avoir tion could be used with comic effect, e.g. ouy prescher, que Adam pour avoir mang6 Epistolac Obscurorum Virorum, ed. of I 710, la pomme, avoit attir6 tout le genre humain London, p. 28. en eternelle damnation, horsmis une petite Song of Solomon iv. 5 , g ;Champier quotes poignee de Chrestiens: voyant que le most of this chapter. prescheur ne le contentoit pas du sen3 literal,

223 THE PRISCA THEOLOGIA IN FRANCE

amatoria verba," were to be "perverted and misinterpreted, then Solomon no less than Plato could be accused of venereal sensuality." The same defence could be effectively used to account for the obscurity and vagueness of the ancient theol'ogians' statements about the Trinity, the after-life, and so forth ;l

it had always needed considerable ingenuity to find these in the Old Testa- ment (nor was it plain-sailing in the New), and one could not therefore com- plain if one had to look far below the surface of the text to find them in Orpheus or Hermes.

With the Italians the poetic veiling of truth was often used to explain away ancient polytheism-the many gods are merely names, personifications, of aspects, powers, of the one God, usually called Jove or Zeus.2 I t is rare for French philosophers to accept this theory, and most of them keep strictly to patristic euhemerism : that is, the names of the pagan gods are those of famous rulers or inventors of whom statues were made, and these were inhabited by deceiving demons who wished to be worshipped.3 Champier does, however, in his Apologia Literarum Humaniorum, give a spirited defence of the use by Christians of the names of the old gods.4 He first summarizes the usual objections :

Someone might perhaps say: "you sometimes write that Plato, Hermes and Orpheus worshipped one God, whom they rightly called by the name of Jove ;and that this name is fitting for God, because He gives life to all.5 But Jerome6 contradicts you: let never Almighty Jove be heard from a Christian's mouth. For Jove is the name of an idol, or rather of a demon hiding in an idol. . . . You say elsewhere that Plato thinks there is one God, who is however called by various names-Apollo, Mars, Minerva- according to his various manifestations. What profit or use, what edifica- tion or piety is there in this?

1 Cf., e.g., passage from La Boderie quoted Platonem LMercurium & Orpheum unum above, p. 222 ; Lazarelli, Crater Hermetis, in deum colere :quem recte nomine Jovis appel- Lefkvre's edition of the Hermtica, 1505, folios lant : illudque nomen Jovis deo congruere : 68~-69 ("Sacri etiam christiane religionis quod omnibus det vitam. At contradicit theologi (quos prophetas appellant) poeticis Hieronymus. Nunquam in ore hominis figmentis usi sunt"). Cf. also Walker, christiani sonet Juppiter omnipotens. Nam "Orpheus," pp. I 06-7. Jupiter est nomen Idoli :quin potius dqmonis

2 The only general modern work I know of in idolo latitantis . . .Item dicis alibi Platonem on this vast subject is :J. Seznec, La Survivance unum putare deum diversis tamen nominibus des Dieux Antiques, London, I940 (see especi- nunc Apollonis :nunc Martis : nunc Minerve ally pp. 75 ff.) ; for the general character of nuncupatum ob diversas rationes. Sed quid Renaissance Neoplatonic interpretations of hqc habent fructus & utilitatis: quid qdifica- ancient mythology, see E. H. Gombrich, tionis aut pietatis?" "Botticelli's Mythologies," Journal of the War- 5 Ultimately from Plato, Cratylw, 396 a-b burg and Courtauld Inrt., VIII, 1945, pp. 36-8. ("oi p b ydp Zijva ol8L Aia xa?.oGorv auv~rOhpcva

8 See Seznec, op. cit., Ch. I ;H. Liebeschiitz, 8'ci~h Sqhoi rfjv cpSorv 70; 6coG . . .6r' 8v Cijv kc1 Fulgentiw Metaforalis (Stud. der Bibl. War- nLor TO;< CGow Sxdrpxcr.") ; also in many my-burg; IV), I 926. Perhaps the most important thographers (e.g. Fulgentius, see Liebeschiitz, single source was Augustine, Civ. Dei, Libri op. cit., p. 78), and in Bessarion, In Cal. Plat., 11-X. d d . dt., p. 233.

4 Champier, Symphonia, f. clvv-clvi : "Alius Jerome, Contra Jovinianum, Migne, Pat. forsitan dicere posset: tu aliquando scribis k t . , T. 23, col. 338.

224 D. P. WALKER He answers, with unusual asperity, that these objections are so feeble as hardly to need an answer :

When I name Apollo nobody could be so silly or frivolous as to think that I wish to restore the old statues of the gods-anyway I am not a scu1ptor.l

By "Apollo" and 'yupiter" he intends their etymological meanings: "not many" and "helping father" or "life-giving."$ In applying such names to the true God, he is merely taking them away from their unjust possessors and restoring them to their rightful owner. If this were not allowed, one could not even 'use the name "deus," since this too has been applied to demons. But elsewhere, like Lefkvre and later philosophers, such as Le Roy and M ~ r n a y , ~he is harsh on polytheism and keeps to the euhemeristic-demon line.

For poets who wished to imitate Greek and Latin models it was more difficult completely to abandon the old gods. Ronsard did not do so, and defended his practice with the veiling theory: the oldest poetry, for him the best, was

une Theologie allegorique, pour faire entrer au cerveau des hommes grossiers par fables plaisantes et colorees les secrets qu'ils ne pouvoient comprendre, quand trop ouvertement on descouvroit la veritC.

And :

les Muses, Apollon, Mercure, Pallas, Venus, et autres telles deitez, ne nous representent autre chose que les puissances de Dieu, auquel les premiers hommes avoient donnC plusieurs noms pour les divers effectz de son incomprehensible majestC.

1 Champier, ibid. : "Quotiens Apollinem nomino nemo sit tam vecors & levis ut putet me veteres deorum statuas instaurare velle: neque enim plastes sum."

2 Apollo so-called "secundum Chrysippum : quod solus est & non multi-; from Cicero, De Natura Deorum, 11, xxviii (Apollo is the sun, Sol, "vel quia solus ex omnibus sideribus est tantus, vel quia, cum est exortus, obscur- atis omnibus solus apparet"), with perhaps also one of the derivations in the Cratylus (405 c), from ~b 8xhoGv.

Jupiter as "life-giving," v. supra n. 5, p. 223 ; as "helping father," from Cicero, De Nut. Deor., 11, xxv (''juvans pater") ;this is also in many mythographers, e.g., Boccaccio, Genea- logie Deorum Gentilium, 11, ii (ed. V. Romano, Bari, 1951, I, 70), together with the "life- giving" etymology.

3 Champier, De Quadr. V., sig. e ivv (all demons are evil, "Quamvis gentilitas loco deorum eos veneretur") ; cf. De Tripl. Disc., sig. (dd vi)r. Lefkvre, 1505, ed. of Hermetica, f. 59' (on the Fates, "circa quas non minus solebant ethnici ineptire :quam circa reliquos (quos sibi finxerunt) deos / nova et miri-

potentia fingentes numina") . Le Roy, op. cit., f. 54. (good pagans, like

Plato, condemned scandalous fables about the gods; Orpheus, "principal autheur de telles fables," was rightly torn in pieces : "Et pourtant je m'esmerveille des poetes du jourd'huy, qui pour se rendre plus semblabes par imitation aux anciens remettent sus telles fictions Payennes, ne considerans la religion Chrestienne en laquelle ils sont eslevez aliene de toute superstition, & les meurs de leur temps :ausquelles chacun escrivant en vers & en prose, se doit principalement accom-moder").

Mornay, op. cit., c. xxii, xxiii (pp. 509, 526) (cf. Walker, "Orpheus," p. I 13). Cf. Postel, op. cit., p. 283 (deification of "cui ne meritb quidem hominis appellatio, sed immanissimae potius belluq competebat. Hinc prqdo & urbium eversor Mars, hinc pqderastes & figulus Jupiter, impostor & dicax Mercurius, Venus meretrix . . . in coelum linguis & favoribus popularium conscenderunt").

* Ronsard, Abbregi de 1'Art Poetique Fraqoys, I 565 (Oeuvres Compldtes, ed. Vaganay, Paris, 1923-4, IV, 471).

225 THE PRISCA THEOLOGIA IN FRANCE

But in practice Ronsard's "theologie allegorique" was not perceptibly Christian; his use of mythology in his Hymnes, for example, is as neutral, or ambiguous, as that of his model, Maru1lus.l

Protests, however, both from Huguenots and Catholics, against the poetic use of pagan mythology for any but evidently Christian purposes were numerous and v igo r~us .~ They begin with the temporary rejection of it by members of the PlCiade itself: Du Bellay's Lyre Chrestienne ( I 552), Jodelle's Ode liminaire to Denisot's Cantiques ( I 553),4 Ronsard's Hercule Chrestien ( I 555). In some of these one can see an effort to save something from their own iconoclasm: among the shattered gods and heroes a few figures still stand, somewhat insecurely, among whom are Orpheus, Hermes and the sibyl^.^ Jodelle, for example, in introducing Denisot's hymns on the Nativity, con-temptuously dismisses them all :

1 0 n Ronsard's debt to Marullus, see A.-M. Schmidt, La Poksie ScientiJigue en France,. -

PP. 73 ff. The correct interpretation of Marullus'

Hymni JVaturales (Florence, 1497) is still very doubtful; cf. Soldati, La Poesia astrologica nel quattrocento, Florence, 1906, p. 275, and Croce, Marullo . . . Biograja, testi e traduzioni . ..,Bari, 1938, p. "3. An early editor of the Hymni, Beatus Rhenanus, implies that they are not Christian, but could just be interpreted as such: "Tu vero cum hos Hymnos legeris per Iovem Opt. Max. qui primo celebratur, deum ipsum intellige : reliqua autem deorum cohorte, dei organa instrumentaque, ipsam inquam Naturam, quae deo superintelligibili proxime subest, cape. Atque ita e poeticis nugamentis frugem aliquam (& si praeter elegantiam ea modica aut nulla erit) elicito." (Marullus, Epigrammata et Hymni, Paris, I 529, f. 50).

See Marcel Ravmond. L'Influence de Ron- surd sur la Poisie fhngaise ' ( 1 ~ ~ ; - 1 ~ 8 ~ ) , Paris, 1927, I, 330 ff., 11, 266 ff.

DU Bellay, Quatriesme livre de I'Eneide . . . Oeuvres de l'invention de l'autheur, Paris, I 552, (Du Bellay, Oeuvres Pohtiques, ed. Chamard, T. IV, Paris, 1934, p. I 37 ;cf. p. I I I (Hymne Chrestien), I I g (La Monomachie de David et de Goliath) ; in the dedication of this collection (ibid., VI, 253) he announces that in future he will have his works printed in two separate sections, "Lyre Chrest. & Lyre Propha.," "afin de ne mesler les choses sacrCes avecques les prophanes").

4 Nicolas Denisot, Cantiques du Premier Ad- venement de Jesu-Christ Par Le Conte d'dlsinois, Paris, 1553, pp. 5-12.

6 Ronsard, Les Hymnes, Paris, 1555 (Oeuvres Compl., ed. Vaganay, VI, 137), preceded by a sonnet of Denisot, which begins :

0 combien est ce Dieu, ce grand Dieu admirable En ses effects divins, ce Dieu qui t'a donnt Par sa grace cest heur d'avoir si bien sonnt Sous un Hercule feint, Jesuschrist veritable.

Tu es d'un vain Poete, et d'Amant miserable, Fait le Harpeur de Dieu, maintenant couronnt D'un Laurier qui n'est point pour un temps ordonnt, Puisque tu as choisy un sujet perdurable.

6 Du Bellay (ed. cit., IV, I 37-8) begins with a rigorous exclusion of all pagan ornament:

Chasse toute divinitt (Dict le Seigneur) devant la mienne : Et nous chantons la vanitt De l'idolatrie ancienne. . . . . . . . . Ou est donq' l'esprit tant cynique, Qui ose donner quelque lieu Aux chansons de la Lyre ethnique En la republique de Dieu?

But then follows a curious similitude:

Si nostre Muse n'estoit point De tant de vanitez coyfee, La saincte voix, qui les coeurs poingt, Ne seroit par nous estoufCe. Ainsi la grand' troppe echaufCe Avec' son vineux EvoC Estrangloit les chansons d'OrphCe Au son du cornet enroue.

And he also adduces the famous example of the Jews robbing the Egyptians (v. infra p. 253), which allows us to embellish Chris- t ~ a n songs with the ornaments of ancient poetry.

Ronsard is, of course, bound by his subject to assume that pagan myth can be interpreted as Christian allegory. But he too has a harsh diatribe against the ancient gods (ed. cit., VI, 140-1). God sent to the Gentiles the Sybils to announce the incarnation; but they attri- buted the prophecies "A leurs faux Dieux contre toute raison" (ibid., I 39-40).

D. P. WALKER

Que nous servent ces Deesses, L'une sortant d'un cerveau : L'autre de l'ecume fille, Qui aborde en sa coquille, Virevoltante sus l'eau?

Plato was right to banish the poets who invented such fables. But Orpheus (and Arion and Amphion) did not sing of

chose vaine Chose caduque, ou humaine,

but preached immortality of the soul and the moral law to

la sourde pierre, Ou l'homme-beste qui erre Sans maison & sans citt.

Denisot is a new Orpheus, preaching a more sublime message.l It is possible that Jodelle is not thinking of Orpheus as a priscus theologus ;2

but there is no doubt about Orpheus in La Boderie's Cantique "aux Poetes de ce temps."3 La Boderie knocks down the idols with still greater violence :

Arriere le fads Dieu qui au lait d'une chtvre Succe les meurs d'un Bouc, & jamais ne se stvre; Ou bien estant stvrt, comme salle faquin Toute Grtce honnit d'une odeur de bouquin.

He begs his contemporaries to abandon "les contes monstrueux dWHCsiode & d'Homere,"

Et si l'antiquitt vous est tant venerable Que sa honte aujourdhui vous paroist honorable; Imitez pour le moins pour avoir plus d'honneur D'entre les Sonneurs Grecs tout le premier Sonneur :

Ecoutez les beaus Chans de sa Lyre itofbe, Comme Orfte est unique, aussi L'VN GVIDE ORFEE,

Then follow, quite faithfully translated, five of the Orphic fragments4 which are regularly used by Renaissance Platonists to demonstrate that Orpheus

l Jodelle apud Denisot, loc. cit. Orpheus, on the Orphic Lithica. A remark in one of in the underworld, is also compared to Christ Ronsard's Sonets pour Hkllne (ed. Vaganay, 11, descending into Hell and "Tuant la mort de 238) indicates a vogue for the prisca theologia ses mains"; this is very rare. at Henri 111's court :

Some members of the Pltiade were cer- Entre les courtisans, afin de les braver, tainly interested in prisci theologi : on Ronsard I1 faut en disputant Trimegiste approuver, and Orpheus see Walker, "Orpheus," p. 107 ; Et de ce grand Platon n'estre point ignorante.

Bad published a version of the xspl aerop6jv, La Boderie, L'Encyclie des Secrets a5 I'Eter-attributed both to Orpheus and Hermes nitk, Antwerp, n.d., privilege of Oct. 1570, Trismegistus (Presages d'orpheus sur les tremble- p. 189, "Guidon Le Fevre de la Boderie aus mew de terre, at the end of his Meteores, Paris, Poetes de ce temps, se jouant bon escient 1567)' and a long poem on Orpheus, Les sur 1'Anagrammatisme de son nom, L'VN Muses, based largely on the Orphic Argonautica GVIDE ORFEE." On La Boderie's fond- (Oeuvres, ed. Marty-Laveaux, 11, 7 1 ff.; cf. ness for anagrams v. infra p. 232, n. 5. ibid., V, 353, Les vers dore? de Pitagoras) ; Kern, Orphicorum Fragments, Fr. 245, 139, Belleau's Les Amours et nouveaux Eschanges des 167, 168, 299;line 16 of the Hymn of Apollo Pimes prkcieuses, Paris, 1576, is largely based (Orphica, ed. E. Abel, Leipzig, 1885, p. 76).

T H E PRISCA 7HEOLOGIA IN FRANCE 227

was a monotheist and Trinitarian.l For La Boderie, when Orpheus sings of Jove, Jove is God the Father and not a "salle faquin" ; when Orpheus says that Pluto, Bacchus and Helios are really one with Jove, he is being truly monotheistic ; 2 when he speaks of Love (Eros) the son of Wisdom, he means the Holy Ghost and the Son,3 and not "1'Enfant que lon peint avecques un bandeau," who is the son of "Venus la vaine."* Orpheus has become the one narrow gate through which all the gods may still pass. The Druids share this privileged position. We have already seen that their human sacrifice was a laudable, if boss shot at the Cru~if ixion;~ even their mistletoe was allowed to grow on "the Tree of Life for all but only me" :

Allons au guy l'an neuf, allons au sacrt bois, Tous Druydes nouveaus, sous 1'Hercule Franqois, AUons chercher le guy qui dans la forest brille Comme le Rameau d'or de la vieille Sibylle, Qui non aus chesnes croist, mais qui est entC Avec l'arbre de la Vie au Paradis plant6. Le grand Prestre aujourd'huy sa serpe d'or appreste, Et du surpelis blanc qu'il s'accoustre & se veste, Qu'on laisse l'habit vieil, qu'on prenne le nouveau, Afin de comparer aus nopces de 1'Agneau. Allons au guy l'an neuf pour cueillir la racine Qui contre tous les maus nous sert de med i~ ine .~

As Dorat said about La Boderie's Galliade, "Quid non cogit amor ~ a t r i a e ? " ~ But La Boderie, though he is, I think, a significant example of the late

French Renaissance attitude to these questions, is by no means a normal one.g

He also inserts translations of two psalms: Boderie's devotion to Orpheus; one of the Nos. (Vulgate) XVIII, XXVIII. most significant is in his Hymnes Ecclesiastiques

See Walker, "Orpheus," pp. 109-11 7. (2nd ed., Paris, I 582, privilege of June I 578). La Boderie, ibid., p. 191 : This work was aimed at counteracting the

effects of Marot's and Bkze's translation of Et Jupiter est Un, un Pluton, Bacchus Un, the Psalms and contains nothing but Chris- Un Soleil, U n Dieu Seul A tous ces noms commun. Qu'est-il donc besoing qu'ici je te recite tian prayers and hymns, and fervent appeals Un A un, & A part tout ce qu'un seul excite? to French poets to abandon the pagan Xluse,

with the exception of the translations of three Kern, Orph. Fragm., Fr. 239. Orphic Hymns (folios 261-2). On Orpheus

Ibid., p. I 92 : in his Galliade, cf. infra pp. 232-3. MCme ce grand Harpeur a voulu designer V. supra pp. 213-4. Le Fils, & Saint Esprit pour les siens enseigner. George Herbert, The Surifice. "La Sagesse, dit-il, fut la mere premiere La Boderie, Encyclie, p. 238 (Cantique to

Avec le dous Amour." 6 Bouche de lumiere ! the Duc dYAlencon. who is the "Hercule Kern, fr. 168, line 9. Franqois" here, as Etiennes for I 569). On this

* Ibid., p. I 98. Cf. ibid., p. I 96 : Orpheus, Druidic rite, cf. Pliny, Nut. Hist., XVI, 249 in his Argonautica, has veiled the truth about (in Kendrick, op. cit., p. 2 I 7). Cf. Roulliard,

the Golden Fleece by making Jason and Parthenie, folios 47"-54' (the oak is the cross, Hercules his heroes : the mistletoe Christ).

Dorat, Elegiacs in front of the Galliade -Car OrfCe en Egypte aus sacrez livres leut, (sin. a iir). . -Et y leut la toison-que Gedeon tleut, I t rs' interesting to compare him with Et leut qu'un Roy du Ciel ci bas se devoit rendre, Vauquelin de la Fresnaye, who, in his Art Et comme la rousCe en la toison descendre.

(Judges, vi. 36-40.) Poetique (Les Diverses Poesies, Baen, I 6 I 2,

pp. 108-I lo), gives a milder, more liberal One could cite many more instances of La version of some of La Boderie's main themes :

228 D. P. WALKER

His philosophy was deeply influenced by Ficinian Platonism, and he had a thorough knowledge. of, and genuine admiration for, the Hermetica and Orphica ;on the other hand, he was a keenly orthodox Catholic and a madly patriotic Frenchman-he wrote his Hymnes to counteract the effects of the Protestant psalms,l and he seriously constructed a history of civilization which made France its origin, natural home and chief contributor.2 These conflict- ing elements, typical of many of his contemporaries but in a more extreme, intransigeant form, produce this strictly limited version of the doctrine of truth-veiling : the Orphica, Hermetica, Plato and all Druidic practices, may be interpreted so that they conform with Christianity, but all other pagan religions, myths, legends, are rigorously outlawed. It'ith these very important exceptions, the Greeks have "masquek veritk du voile de mensonge" ; 3 as when they transformed the true story of the tower of Babel into the untrue story of the giants' piling Pelion on O ~ s a . ~ One finds throughout La Boderie's poetry a strong bias against the Greeks as being over-eloquent, over-subtle. "Graecia menciaxV5 has stolen truth from the barbarians and spoilt it with a lot of highly-coloured e m b r ~ i d e r y ; ~ even Orpheus is not always safe from this charge, as we shall see.

This view, however, of Greek poetic mythology-as a bad, over-elaborate kind of veiling-was a widespread one, and one finds the exact reverse of Ronsard's interpretation of polytheism as poetic allegory : it was the exces- sively veiled, fabulous poetry of the Greeks which produced polytheism. This fits in well with the prevailing euhemerism: a famous king is hyperbolically deified by a too eloquent poet. Champier, in his Nef des dame^,^ after an euhemeristic account of polytheism, says :

La source de science estoit en Grece et toutes foys par legierete detende- ment a grande faconde de parler & eloquence il est increable combien de nues de mensonges ilz ont excitk.

Mornay also speaks of the

Poetes anciens, qui estoyent aussi Philosophes, & qui ont faict par leurs fictions ouverture a la pluralitk des D i e ~ x . ~

after a short history of poets as civilizing Hynznes Eccl. (v. supra n. 4, p. 227), ded. to prophets-Orpheus, the Druids, David- Henri 111: "Et par ce moyen comme sur la Vauquelin tells us not to be ashamed of the poupe de la nef de 1'Eglise ores fort agitCe hluses and Apollo, de tempestes, & de vents & de doctrines

De 1'Xpolon surtout qui divin & sacrC contraires, par un contre-chant, comme De~ancrant de Delos en France s'est ancri.. jadis Orfte m'opposer au chant pipeur des Portez donc en trophi. les despouilles payennes Syrenes, lequel fait sommerger & ptrir tant Au sommet des clochers de vos citez Chrestiennes. d'hommes . . ."

i.e. Christian poets may and should use This is the theme of his Galliade; on the pagan ornament. Vauquelin also has an his- seriousness of tvhich, v. supra note 9, p. 2 I 6. torically sounder version of La Boderie's Galliade, f. I ov. theory that poetry came from France and has Ibid. notv returned to i t : (ibid., p. 20) Petrarch's Juvenal, Satira X,line I 74. sonnets derived from the love-poetry of Galliade, folios I I 6v- I I 8 ~ . Proven~al troubadours, and they have now V. infra pp. 232-3. come back to France with the sonnets of Champier, La .hkf des dames tlertueuses, Tyard, Saint-Gelais, etc. (cf. F. A. Yates, Paris, 1515,sig. n iiv. French Academies, p. 44). Mornay, Veritt!, p. 54.

THE PRZSCA THEOLOGZA IN FRANCE 229

I t was usual to contrast this dangerously ornamented poetry of the Greeks with the simple truth of the Bible. Mornay deals at length with the objec- tion :l

Ces Escritures ont un stile simple, nud & grossier, si elles estoyent de Dieu, elles parleroyent bien autrement.

He begins by answering that this is the style suitable to the absolute, uncon- ditional commands of God and to the necessity of their being understood by all. But he also defends it on aesthetic grounds ;when people read such st vies as the sacrifice of Isaac or the death of Absalom, they feel :

un fremissement en leurs corps, une emotion en leur coeur, une tendresse d'afection en un seul moment, plus grandes, que si tous les Orateurs de Rome ou d'Athenes leur preschoyent mesme matiere en jours entiers.

This is because "la beaut6 veritablement ne veut point de fard, que plus elle est nue, & plus vifs sont ses a t r a i t ~ . " ~ But Mornay cannot do without more complicated interpretations of the Bible; its truth may be simple, but it must have depth. The opening of Genesis, he says, is so plain that "il n'y a si idiot, si simple homme, qui ne puisse entendre cela, je dis autant qu'il est besoin pour son salut"; but if we go deeply into it, "ce sont des Abismes, qui font peur aux plus presomptueux," that is, layers and layers of meaning, such as

Mornay, Verite', p. 612. mesmes: des pastorelles, il en est plein, mais 2 Cf. his remarkable eulogy of David's de llEternel pour pasteur, & d'Israel pour

poetry (ibid., pp. 574-5) :"Venons aux poesies troupeau. L'art y est si excellent, que c'est de nos Escritures, & vienent les Payens A con- excellence de la traduire. Les afections si fronter les leurs: qui doute encor qu'ils ne vives, qu'elles esteignent & estoufent toutes -rougis'sent de honte, je laisse l'art, la mesure, autres. S'il escrivoit de par l'homme, n'avoit- & l'antiquitt, qui ne sont que superfices, & il pas aussi beau sujet qu'Homere? Son duel plus belles toutesfois 6s nostres qu'ts Grecques de Goliath, ses victoires des Philistins, ses ne Romaines, que sont celles, que plus nous amours de Bersabee, &c. Et doutons-nous leur envions, qu,e vanteries d'hommes? qu'il ne fust sujet A des passions, & compost louanges controuvees, amours non plus hu- de mesme paste que nous? Ou estoit-il mains, mais indignes d'hommes? L'un stupide, qui nous reveille tant? sans amour, chante les despits d'Achille : l'autre, les & sans honneur, qui ne parle jamais d'autre erreurs d'Enee : un autre, les amours de Paris chose? mais certes un autre Esprit batoit & d'Helene : & cela passt si avant en usage, dedans ses venes, un autre feu penetroit ses qu'il semble impossible d'estre Poete & Theo- mouelles: & nu1 ne sauroit nier lisant ses logien, mesmes historien tout ensemble, tant Psalmes, si vifs, si ardens, si pleins d'afections, nos joyes & nos chants sont naturellement puis qu'il adresse ses amours & ses vehemens esloignez de Dieu, & de veritt. Que dirons- desirs ailleurs, qu'il avoit veu une beautt, nous donc des Poemes de David principale- convoitt un honneur, goustt un plaisir, autre ment, si nous considerons qu'il est devant qu'humain." It is only the tone that is new tous ceux-la, c'est A dire, que ce n'est pas here; comparisons between the Bible and imitation, mais afection simple. Cherchons- pagan poetry, and the Bible as a model 01

nous des Chants de victoire, nous y en avons, poetic practice, go back to Jerome and mais au Dieu des Armees : des Chants nup- Augustine, cf. E. R. Curtius, Europuisch~ tiaux, il n'en manque point, mais de Dieu, & Literatur und Lateinisches Mittelalter, Bern, 1947, de ceux qui le craignent :des amours ardentes, PP. 49, 54, 80. c'est l'amour mesmes, mais embras6 de Dieu

230 D. P. WALKER

one finds, for example, in the Heptaplus of Pico della Mirandola,' whom Mor- nay greatly admired.

The great depth of meaning in the Bible was also traditionally explained by the peculiar nature of the Hebrew language. The theologian, Hieromnime, in Tvard's Le Second Curieux,%tates that the tetragrammaton is unpronounce-able,

pour nous apprendre que Dieu n'a aucun nom, duquel nous puissions avoir cognoissance: car sa substance est son nom, & son nom est sa sub- stance. Donc comme sa substance nous est incongneue, si est son nom: car selon les Mosa'iques, suivis par les noms sontP l a t ~ n , ~ substantiels, j'entens signifians la substance de la chose nommee : mesmes en la saincte & Adamique langue des Hebreux. Aussi Zoroastre, & longtemps apres luy Iamblique4 ont asseurk (selon leur secrette magie) la conference des hommes avec les Anges, estre faite en langue barbare, c'est a dire Hebra'ique: laquelle Zoroastre avoit en si grande reverence, pour sa primautk ancienne, qu'il ne vouloit point qu'au service divin lon changeast par aucune traduction les anciens mots barbares, c'est a dire Hebreux. Reverence laquelle se voit curieusement observee par 1'Eglise Catholique en la conservation de certain mots, comme Alleluia . . . For Champier the elegance of Greek and Latin literature is a degeneration ;

Hebrew is the original, pure speech in which God talked to man, and men to angels5 The Gauls also had a simple, "barbarian" language; they taught the art of writing to the Greeks, who complicated and corrupted it . He quotes, from the beginning of the DeJinitiones Ascle~ii,~ the injunction not to translate Egyptian hieroglyphics into Greek

Giov. Pico, Heptaplus, in De Hominis Digni- Orac. Chald., Xligne, Patr. Gr., T. 122, col. tate, ed. Garin, Florence, 1942. This is, of I 132; Psellus gives Hebrew as the example course, only an extension, on Neoplatonic and of a powerful barbarian language. cabalistic lines, of the traditional fourfold Iamblichus, De Mysteriis, VII, v. Biblical exegesis. Champier, Duellunl epistolare, Lyons, I 5 I 9,

Paris, I 557, in his Deux Discours . . .,Paris, sig. c iiiiv-(c v ) ~ . Cf. Servetus' reproach to 1578,f. 9 6 ~ ;cf. ibid., f. 97' (Hebrew is the hlelanchthon and other reformers that they language "authorisee de Dieu" and "en sa are "rhetores" who think of nothing but puritt elle sert de receptacle a la vraye 6 6 elegantia"; "at spiritus sanctus nunquam congnoissance de la divine veritt"). On the per talia organa loquutus est" and prefers power of Hebrew, cf. Tyard, De Recta Nominum "simplicem et vulgarem sermonem" (Chtis-impositione, Lyons, I 603 ; Ficino, Comm. in tianismi Restitutio, 1553, Nuremberg reprint, Cratylum (Op. Omn., p. 1309); La Boderie 1790, p. 673). Calvin indignantly denied (infra note 5, p. 232) ; DU Bartas, Seconde both that Melanchthon's style was over-Semaine, Babylone, in his Works, ed. Holmes, ornate and that that of the Bible was less Lyons & Linker, Univ. of North Carolina, eloquent than that of the Greeks and Romans 111, 1940, pp. 128-133. One of the main (DeclarationPOUT maintenir la vraye foy que tiennent patristic sources was probably Origen, Contra tous Chrestiens de la Trinite' des personnes en un ~eul Celsum, IV, 33-35, V, 45-6 (Migne, Patr. Gr., Dieu, Geneva, 1554, pp. 182-3) ; but cf., in T. I I , cols. 1077-1084, 1249-1253). On the his De Scandalis, Geneva, 155 1, pp. 18 ff., a Cabala, v. infra note 2, p. 23 1. defence of the "simplex & rudis Scripturae

i.e. in the Cratylus, cf. infra note 4, p. 231. stylus." Oraculum Chaldai'cum : " '0v6pura Pdrppapa 6 Hermetica, ed. Nock & Festugikre, p. 232 ;

p+xoz' &h'~k(n<," apud Psellum, Exkositio Def. Ascl., tr. Lazarelli (in Champier, De

231 THE PRISCA THEOLOGIA I N FRANCE

afin que de si grands mystkres ne parviennent point jusqu'aux Grecs et que l'orgueilleuse elocution des Grecs, avec son manque de nerf et ce qu'on pourrait dire ses fausses graces, ne fasse p2lir et disparaitre la gravitk, la solidite, la vertu efficace des vocables de notre langue. Car les Grecs, 6 roi, n'ont que des discours vides bons B produire des dkmonstra- tions: et c'est 18 en effet toute la philosophie des Grecs, un bruit de mots. Quant a nous, nous n'usons pas de simples mots, mais de sons tout remplis d'efficace.

\Ye have here, as in Tyard, a theory of language, according to which the word is considered as a magical symbol that not only denotes objects but also exerts powers connected with those objects, because it contains their substance or essence. ,4s in any kind of magic, all things are sympathetically linked, in vertical series stretching through many levels from God to material things, and in horizontal ones on any given level; these symbols are therefore end- lessly complex in meaning and virtue, since a symbol indicating any one thing may also mean any or all of the others in the series linked to it.l One linguistic theory of this kind is the basis of cabalistic interpretation, and provides one of the reasons why a simple Hebrew sentence can contain many profound meanings ; 2 another is the basis of the interpretation of hieroglyphics, as practised in this period, and is also relevant to the interpretation of ordinary texts.3 For, though hieroglyphics were thought to be visually representative symbols, the interpretation proper to them could be applied to verbal texts on two grounds: first, because words can convey a visual image; secondly, because, according either to a Cabalistic theory of language or to that based on a mistaken reading of the C~atylus,~ Thewords are representative symbols.

Quadr. Vita, sig. P): "Quantum igitur possi- I, Ixx, "De virtute propriorum nominum" bile est o rex omnem (ut potes) sermonem (Agrippa, Opera, Lyons, per Beringos fratres, serva inconversum : ne ad graecos perveniant n.d., p. I 10).

talia mysteria : Neve grecorum superba 2 Cf. G. Scholem, "Bibel in der Kabbala," locutio atque dissoluta ac veluti calamistrata : Encyclopaedia ~udaich, Bd. IV, n.d., col. 688. debilem faciat ~ravi ta tem :validitatem :ataue From Pico onwards the Christian Cabala be-

0

activam nominum locutionem. Greci enim comes an important element in the prisca o rex verba habent tantum nova [Lazarelli theologia; I have not had space to deal with must have read ' ' idyo.~gxzrvo;J<"; a better read- this here. ing is "i(~voi)<" (empty) ] : demonstrationum 3 See Gombrich, "Zcones," pp. 169 ff. ; activ;~. Et hec est grecorum philosophia ver- George Boas, The Hieroglyphics of Horapollo, borum sonus : Nos autem non verbis utimur : New York, 1950; K. Giehlow, Die Hiero- sed vocibus maxinlis ["qwvai~ peyiorari, ,, glyphenkunde des Humanismus, Vienna and Leip- usually e m ~ . ~ d e dto "ucorilT<" (full of) ] zig, 1915. operum." Chhmpicr, like Tyard, also cites 4 Namely, the theory that the connexion Zoroaster: "hauci a11 re Zoroaster primus between words and their meanings is not ethnicorurn theologu~ vetat barhara verba conventional (Oiocr) but real or natural mutari. barbara vero dicebantur hebra'ica vel ( P ~ E L ) e.g. Comm. in Cratylum; cf. Ficino, proxime inde derivata." (Duellum, sig. c iiiiv). (O*.Omn., pp. I309 ff.) ; Clemens Alex.,

Cf. E. H. Gombrich, "Zcones Synibolicae, Stromata, I, xxi ("a1 61 xpijrar xai -jcvrx<~ihi-'I he Visual Image in Neoplatonic Thought," Aexror $&pPapor piv, p3ocr 6h T& 6v6parz Exouorv '

Journal of the Ilhrburg and Courtauld Inst., XI, ixci xai sdr~r3xa: 6poi.oyo3orv dr 6 i v O ~ o ~ c o rGuva-I 948, pp. 163 ff. For a typical Renaissance ~ w r i p r : eivxr T&; P a p P k p ~ ~ ,Q W V ~ kyop~vb~") . exposition of a magical theory of language, -4nd cf. supra p. 224, Champier's defence of see Cornelius Agrippa, De Occulta Philosophia, his use of the names of pagan gods.

232 D. P. WALKER interpretation of texts as collections of icones symbolicae could obviously be applied to the Hermetica, since Hermes originally wrote in hieroglyphics. De Foix, having given a somewhat simplified description of hieroglyphics :l

C'est peintures de creatures ou choses faictes, qui par la proprietd de leur nature signifioient le propos que lon vouloit exprimer par cest escrit,

explains that the translation of these into Greek makes it very difficult to understand Hermes' metaphors rightly. For example, when he says that God has "puissance des deux ~exes , "~ this must not be taken to mean that God has male and female attributes. De Foix means, I think, that Hermes used two hieroglyphics, representing man and woman, and meaning, at the lowest level, human procreation, to express, at the highest level, divine fecundity.

Sometimes it was supposed that other prisci theologi learnt the art of hiero- glyphic symbolism in Egypt, and used it as best they could in verbal language. Le Roy writes :3

Que Pythagoras fut fort estimd d'eulx (sc. des prestres egyptiens), & luy aussi les estima beaucoup tellement qu'il voulut imiter leur fason mystique des parler en paroles couvertes & cacher sa doctrine & ses sentences sous paroles figures & enigmatiques, estans les Iettres que lon appelle hiero- glyphiques en Egypte presque toutes semblables aux preceptes de Pythagoras.

La Boderie thinks this was the case with Orpheus. Because he believes in the magical power of words and symbols,6 La Boderie's attitude to this question

De Foix, Le Pimandre, Preface, sig. (a 5)'. stituendi ratione similitudinem habere com- He is referring to Pimander, I (Corp. Herm., perio divinas nostrorum literas, ita omnia

ed, cit., p. 9) : ' ' 6 6k NoCs 6 Or6s, drpprv6OqXu; mystic0 quodam sensu quaecunque Moses, Ljv . . ." Cf. Champier, De Tripl. Disc., 1508, quae David, quae Prophetae reliqui coelesti sig. (kk vi i i )~, who also quotes Orpheus (Kern, Spiritu afflati protulerunt. In nova verb lege Fr. 168, line 3) : "Zrb< bipaqv ybv r~o , Zrb< novoque instrumento cum Assertor noster ait, C1pPpo~o~EXXETO vi)p(~q," and Isaiah lxvi. 9: Aperiam in parabolis os meum, & in aenig- "Numquid ego qui alios parere facio: ipse mate antiqua loquar, quid aliud sibi voluit, non pariam?" ; and Lazarelli, Crater Hermetis qu im hieroglyphic& sermonem faciam, & (Lefkvre's Pimander, 1505, f. 76'97) : "ap- allegorick vetusta rerum proferam monu-pellat eum (sc. Deum) utriusque sexus fecun- menta?" ditate plenissimum. Orpheus vero :et mascu- V,,e.g., his Encyclie, pp. 152 ff., the long lum et feminam eum esse canit." Neither of hymn, Le Tabernacle, constructed on the these writers expresses any disapproval. Hebrew names of God (in Hebrew charac-

Le Roy, Vicissitudes, f. 33~-34. ters), which he prefaces thus : i.e. Pythagoras' Symbola (v. supra note 3,

Pardonnez, 6 Bontt, si en mes vers estranges p. 2 13). The same might also be supposed of J'ose invoquer voz Noms en la langue des Anges, Moses, and the study of hieroglyphics may . . . . . . . .

therefore help in the interpretation of the Old Et vous tous qui lisez les hauts Noms en ce livre, Testament, and even of the New; cf. J. P. Gardez, gardez vous bien que ne veniez ensuivre Valeriano, Hieroglyphics sive de sacris Aegyp- Par envieuse erreur le vice audacieus

Du magique Sorcier importunant les Cieus. tiorunz . . ., Basle, 1575 (1st ed. 1556), title- Ne reclarnez le saint pour faire chose impure, page, and Epistola nuncupatoria sig. or qv: Et d'icy ne tirez ni lettre, ni figure. (having mentioned that Moses was educated by Egyptians) "cum hac hieroglyphics in- "lesCf. J. Bodin, Demonomanie, 1580, f. 6 ~ :

233 THE PRZSCL4 THEOLOGIA IN FRANCE

may seem somewhat inconsistent. As we have seen,l he approves in principle of truth being veiled by fable or parable; but the veiling symbol itself has power for good or evil. Therefore, to change one set of symbols for another may be disastrous, even though both represent the same truth. Orpheus, we are told with evident disapproval, having learnt in Egypt the secrets of Moses, Hermes, and Zoroaster,

Les traitant par-apres en poetiques nombres Les peignit & voila de nuages & d'ombres, Afin entre les siens de se rendre admirt, Et qu'on ne sceust l'autheur dont il avoit tirt Ses beaux traits rayonnans sous l'escorce des fable^.^

,4nd a little later:

Pour distinguer du Ciel les flambeaux & estoiles Sous nuages obscurs, & Poetiques voiles, Imitant L'Escriture & les mercs anciens Hieroglifiquement des vieux Egiptiens, I1 nous remplit le Ciel de monstrueuses formes

namely, the signs of the Zodiac and the names of the constellations. Likewise, "d'autant qu'il avoit leu en meint volume Hebrieu" about the Wisdom of God, he invented the story of Athene springing from Zeus' head,

par 18 faisant entendre Que le Pere eternel l'eternel Fils engendre.3

What Orpheus has done is to translate good Hebrew allegories and good Hermetic hieroglyphics into bad Greek fables, which eventually led to idolatry. I t was against this that Asclepius gave his warning,* and Orpheus himself repented of i t ; he abjured the polytheism of which he was the inventor in a longish poem, usually known as his P~linode.~ This is the main reason why Orpheus occupies such a privileged position for a strongly anti-poly- theistic Platonist like La Boderie. Orpheus can kill two birds with one stone: both show, by his Palinode, that Greek polytheism was false and pernicious,

Sorciers, comme Agrippa & ses cqmplices, Vrayment Platon n'a point pour nCant recherche

souillent ce grand & sacrC nom de Dieu (sc. La secrkte vertu aus propres noms comprise,

tetragrammaton), en le meslant en leurs Ayant de noz Hebrieus ceste science aprise Comme autre meint secret qu'aus Grecs il a cache

caracteres." In Vauquelin de la Fresnay's (ibid.,p. 254. ) Pastorale on the death of La Boderie (Vauque- lin, Di~~erses Poesies, I 61 2, pp. 399-402), who v. ssupa, p. 222.

is of course called Orpheus, the shepherds La Boderie, Galliade, folios I I 3'- I I 4'. lament that the woods will no longer re-echo Ibid., f. "4'. The equation of Athene

with the Word was quite usual; it is made by ripres luy tles Hebreux les sairlcts noms du grand Ficino, Pico and llornay (see FYalker,

Dieu. "Orpheus," p. I I 7). I,a Boderie justifies his passion for anagrams V. supra pp. 230-1. Champier (De Quadr.

on his own and his friends' names by referring Vita, sig. f iiijv) also implies that Orpheus'

to the etymologies in the Cratylus-an art polytheism came from his misguided trans-

which Plato had learnt from the Jewish lation of Egyptian texts into Greek, and

Cabalists : quotes the warning of Asclepius. See Ft'alker, "Orpheus," pp. 109 ff.

234 D. P. WALKER

and, in that and other fragments, be an example of a good priscus theologus who preached trinitarian monotheism. l

Cautiousness. (i) Magic

We have already seen several instances of the cautiousness of the French in dealing with matters connected with the prisca theologia; I wish now to examine this attitude in more detail. There are three main classes of dangers that frightened them :

First, that they or their readers might be infected by a kind of magic, which partly derived from Neoplatonic sources and from earlier prisci theologi.

Secondly, that they might seem to be approving of, or tolerating, idolatry and polytheism.

Thirdly, that they might encourage or spread heretical opinions, especially with r e p r d to the Trinity and the nature of the soul.

The subject of magic is relevant here, apart from its connexions with Neoplatonism and the Hermetica, because of Ficino's and Pico's interest in it and their close relation to French Platonism. Moreover, as we shall see, magic connects directly with idolatry. The Florentines, as much as the French, made the usual distinction between good magia naturalis and bad sorcery, necromancy, or whatever other pejorative term one wishes to use. The former was the "consummation of natural phi lo~ophy,"~ while the latter involved the assistance of the devil or his servants. The Italians were also aware that, at least in the eyes of ecclesiastical authorities, the distinction was not as sharp as could be desired. Pico learnt from experience the danger of publishing works on natural magic, even in so heavily veiled a form as his Conclusiones ; 3 Ficino was intensely worried about the talismans and other kinds of astrological magic in his De Triplici Vita.* Nevertheless they believed strongly enough in the importance of good magic, and the possibility of dis- tinguishing it from bad, to dare to publish these works. The attitude of the French to magic is more difficult to determine ;but there is no doubt that on the whole they are much more timid, and tend to draw the line between good and bad magic in such a way that the good class contains almost nothing but a theoretical possibility.

The way that Champier deals with the De Triplici Vita is significant. His De Quadruplici Vita (1507) is presented as an imitation and extension of it, and in his Epistola prohemialis he proclaims himself a disciple of F i ~ i n o . ~ But, although he discusses at length the question of astrological influences and reaches much the same conclusions as Ficino-namely, that the stars can incline, but not determine, corporeal things, and can only affect the soul

E.g. La Boderie's Cantique (v. supra pp. 'See Ficino, Op. Omn., p. 572 (Apologia at 226-7) ; the Palinode is the first fragment he end of De T r . V.), 910-912 (letters about it) ; quotes. cf. Kristeller, Suppl. Ficin., I, lxxxv; Della

2 Pico, Opera Omnia, Basle, 1572, p. 120. Torre, Storia dell'ilccademia Fiorentina, Florence See L. Dorez & L. Thuasne, Pic de la 1902, pp. 623-5.

Mirandole en France, Paris, 1897, pp. 56 ff. 6 Champier, De Quadr. Vita, 1507, sip. br-V.

T H E PRISCA THEOLOGIA I N FRANCE 235

indirectly, through the body1-there is hardly a mention of the spiritus, and all Ficino's elaborate methods, dietetic and musical, of nourishing it and attracting to it beneficent astral i n f l ~ x e s , ~ H e does, however, are omitted. deal with Ficino's talisman^.^ These "are thought by the learnkd to be more superstitious than true ;which can very easily be proved" ;4 and he reproduces Thomas Aquinas' arguments to prove that anything effected by them must be due to demons, and not to astrological i n f l ~ e n c e . ~ Their use is a sign of a tacit pact with the devil; the use of "suffumigations and invocations" is a sign of a "manifest pact."6 Thomas does not mention suffumigations, and perhaps Champier inserted them in order to show that he also disapproved of Ficino's astrological music, as described in the De Triplici Vita, which involved the use of incense.' H e then exclaims: "Alas, how much impiety lies hid under the cover of astrology." But he makes some attempt to defend Ficino, by quoting from the Ad Lectorem of the De Vita coelitus comparanda (the third book of the De Triplici Vita) :

If you do not approve of talismans, which were however invented to benefit men's health, but which I myself do not so much approve of as merely describe, then dismiss them, with my permission, even, if you wish, on my advice. But a t all events, unless you disregard life itself, do not disregard medicines strengthened by some celestial support. For I have long since discovered by frequent experiment that there is as much dif- ference between medicines of this kind and those made without astro-logical selection as between wine and water.

O n this Champier makes the shrewd comment: "See the way Marsilio him- self speaks, as if uncertain of his own mind (ut ambiguus)" ; lo he then recalls that the De Vita coelitits comparanda purports to be a commentary on Plotinusll and may therefore be taken merely as such, and finally he quotes Ficino's conventional declaration of submission to the judgment of the church.

Champier, ibid., sig. (c v)r ff. hlisereor secte huius miserrime : que sui nescit See Walker, "Ficino's Spiritus and hlusic," misereri. Et dum alijs salutem & bona

Annales Musicologiques, T. I , Paris, 1953, p. eventura presagire frustra lahorat: ipsa 131. elephantino (sic) morbo tahescens: cancrum

See Ficino, Op. Onzn., pp. 530, 548-561 quoque uscjue ad animc sue interiora serpere (De Tripl. Vita (1st ed. 1489), Ad Lectorem, sinit." 111, xiii-xx). Ficino, Op. Onin., p. 530: "Si non probas

Champier, ibid., sig d iijr: "magis super- imagines astronomicas alioquin pro valitu- stitiosa quam Vera a doctis esse creduntur (sc. dine mortalium adinventas, quas & ego non imagines astronomicae) : quod facillime pro- tam proho quam narro, has utique me con- bari potest." cedente, ac etiam si vis consulente dimittito.

Thomas Aquinas, Contra Gentiles, 111, hledicinas saltem celesti quodam adminiculo cii-cvi. confirmatas, nisi forte vitam neglexeris, ne

Thomas Aquinas, Secunda Secundae Sunlrnae negligitote. Ego enim frequenti jamdiu ex-Theologiae, Qu. xcvi, Art. ii; De Occultis perientia compertum haheo tanturn interesse Operibus hirturae (Opusculurn xxxiv) . inter medicinas huiusmodi atque alias absque

See Walker, "Le ChantOrphique de L h r - delectu astrologico factas, quantum inter sile Ficin," Musique etPo;sie au XVIesihcle, ed. dl! merum & aquam." Centre Nat. de la Rech. Sc., Paris, I 954, p. I g f. loChampier, ibid., sig. diijv: "Vide qualiter

Champier, ibid., sig. d iijr: "Heu quanta ipse Marsilius ut ambiguus loquatur." impietas sub umbra astrologiae latitat. " V. infra p. 237, n. 3.

4

Xow Champier was quite justified in being worried and cautious about the De Triplici Vi ta . Ficino was up to something even more dangerous than talismans ; something which is a striking example of the real perils of the prisca theologin. He was singing Orphic and other hymns to the sun and other planetary deities, whilst burning incense and drinking wine ;l and one of the main sources of this practice was an idolatrous passage in the ..lsclej~us. Here is a case where magic has become theurgy, as it probably did in Pico's com- bination of Orphism and C a b a l i ~ m . ~ There is nothing inherently suspect in theurgy-that is, the attempt to reach God by ritualistic, non-rational means-except that there is no room for it in the church; she has her own theurgy and cannot tolerate any other. Ficino was a deeply pious Christian, and I think his own conscience was clear; Orpheus was inspired by the One God and so was Hermes, and for someone living in a magically analogical world there was no impiety in addressing hyinns to the sun, "the visible image of God."" But he was aware that his "antiquus ad Orphicam lyram carminum cantus"* might not seem so innocent to others; he nowhere describes it openl;., and he never published his translation of the Orphic hymn^.^

The idolatrous passage in the Asclepius is : 6

(Hermes :) Jl'hat has already been said about man, although marvellous, is less so than this: that man has been able to discover the divine nature and produce it, is admirable beyond all other mar~rels. Our first ancestors, then, since they were in graLre error concerning the gods, being incredulous and paying no attention to worship and religion, in~rented the art of making gods. Having done so, they added a virtue appropriate to it, taken from the world's nature, and mixed these ;since they could not make souls, they e~roked the souls of demons or angels, and put them into images with holy and divine rites, so that through these souls the idols might have the power of doing good and evil. . . . (Asclepius :) . . . of what kind is the quality of these terrestrial gods? (Hermes :) I t consists, 0 Asclepius, of herbs, stones and aromas, which

See \\'alker, art. cit. supra, note 7 , p. conuenientem eamque rniscenter, quoniam 2 3 5 . animas facere non poterant, euocantrs anirnas

See LValker, "Orpheus," p. 102, and daemonum uel angelorum eas indidcrunt infra p. 239. imaginibus sanctis diuiriisque In) steriis. per

Ficino, 01. Onzti., p. I 745, from Plato, quas idola et bene f'~ciendi et male uires Republic, \'I, 508 b-C. habere potuissent . . . Et horum, o 'I risme-

* Ficino, Op. Oinn., p. 944. giste, deorum, qui terreni habentur, cuius-Cf. \Valker, "Orpheus," p. 109. modi est qualitas? Constat, o Asclepi, de Asclepius, c. xiii, Corpus Hermeticum, ed. cit.? herbis, de lapidibus, et de aromatibus diuini-

" pp. 347-9: minus enim miranda, etsi tatis naturalem uim in se habentibus, et miranda sunt, quae de hornine dicta sunt; propter hanc causam sacrificiis frequentibus omnium enim mirabilium uincit admirati- oblectantur, hymnis et laudibus ct dulcissimis onem, quod homo diuinam potuit inuenire sonis in modum caelestis harinoniae con-naturam eamque efficere. Quoniatn ergo cinentibus, ut illud, quod caeleste est, proaui nostri multum errabant circa deorum caelestius (var. :caelesti usuj et frequentatione rationem increduli et non animadvertentes ad inlectum in idola possit laetum, humanitatis cultum religionemque diuinam, inuenerunt patiens, longa durare per tempora." Cf. artem qua efficerent deos. Cui inuentae ibid., p. 325, on man-made gods. adiunxerunt uirtutem de mundi natura

T H E PRISCA THEOLOGIA IN FRANCE 237

have in them a natural divine power. And it is for the following reason that people delight them with frequent sacrifices, with hymns and praises and sweet sound concerted like the harmony of the heavens: that this heavenly thing, which has been attracted into the idol by repeated heavenly rites, may bear joyously with men and stay with them long.

This is undoubtedly a capital source for Ficino's general theory of magically influencing the spiritus by celestial influxes. I n the summary of this theory, with which the De Triplici Vita ends,l he presents a paraphrase of the above passage as the source of Plotinus' Ennead IV, iii, I I , ~which, according to Kristeller, is the "liber Plotini" on which the whole D e Vita coelitzis conzpararlda is supposed to be a ~ o m m e n t a r y . ~ This chapter of Plotinus, as Ficino interprets it, states that one can attract into, and retain in, a material object "something vital from the soul of the world and the souls of the spheres and stars," that is, celestial ~ p i r i t u s , ~if the object is of a material and form which reflects the celestial source of spiritus in question. This passage and the Asclepius one fit in with, and connect together, Ficino's astrological meclicine, music and talis- mans; and he is plainly using them to reinforce his theory. He camot , how- ever, quite pass over the fact that Hermes (and Plotinus) i~ ta l~rngabout pagan idolatry, and he becomes, as Champier would say, extremely *'ambi- guous." H e admits that the Egyptians' magic was "illicit," because the demons in the statues were worshipped as gods; but implies that demons are all right if used as means and not worshipped as ends. He then provides an alternative line of defence by citing Thomas Aquinas to show that purely astrological magic could not produce demon-inhabited images ; 6 therefore, we are left to

Ficino, De Trill. Vita, 111, xxvi (Op. Omn., likely that it is Enn., IV, iv, of which c. 30-42 p. 570-2) ; he also cites this passage in 111, deal with astral influence in much greater xiiii, 111, xx (OF. Omn., pp. 548, 561). detail.

2 Plotin, Ennkades, ed. and tr. Brthier, Paris, See Walker, "Ficino's Spiritus," pp. 139 ff. 1924-38, IV, 78: "Les anciens sages qui ont ti Ficino, Op. Omn., p. 571 : "Addit (sc. voulu se rendre les dieux prtsents en con- Hermes) sapientes quondam Aegyptios, qui struisant des temples et des statues, me & sacerdotes erant, quum non possent paraissent avoir bien vu la nature de l'uni- rationibus persuadere populo esse deos, id vers; ils ont compris qu'il est toujours facile est, spiritus aliquos super hominibus, ex-d'attirer l'5me universelle, mais qu'il est cogitasse Magicum hoc illicitum, quo dg-particulikrement ainst de la retenir, en con- mones allicientes in statuas esse numina de- struisant un objet disposC 8 subir son influence clararent (i.e. Ascl., xiii, cit. subra). Sed Iam- et en recevoir la participation. Or la reprt- blichus damnat Aegyptios, qubd daemonas sentation imagte d'une chose est toujours non solum ut gradus quosdam ad superiores disposte 8 subir l'influence de son modkle, deos investigandos acceperint, sed plurimum elle est comme un miroir capable d'en saisir adoraverint. Chaldaeos verb daemonibus l'apparence." Then follows the sun as an non occupatos Aegyptiis anteponit." The example of a visible representation of an reference must be to Iamblichus, De Myst., intelligible model. VI, vii, where, however, demons as "gradus"

Ficino (Op. Omn., p. 529) says that the do not occur. De Vita coelith comparanda is a commentary on Ficino, ibid., "Ego autem primb ex beati "librum Plotini de favore coeliths hauriendo Thomae sententia puto, si mod0 statuas tractantem." Kristeller (Suppl. Ficin., I , loquentes effecerint (referring to Ascl., viii, k i v ) states that this "liber Plotini" is Enn., ed. cit., p. 326, on oracular idols), non sim- IV, iii, I I , because in one MS. the De V. c. c. plicem ipsum stellarum inflwum ibi forma- appears among the commentaries on Plotinus visse verba, sed daemones. Deinde si forti: in this place. I t seems to me perhaps more contigerit, eos in eiusmodi statuas ingredi,

imply, his own talismans and Orphic singing have nothing to do with demons. Lefkvre's treatment of the same Hermetic passage provides the expected

contrast. H e writes by the side of it "PROPHANA HEC ALIUS LAPSUS HERMETIS,"

and sharply rebukes Hermes for admiring men for their greatest wickedness, that is, for attracting "demonic spirits" into "images" ; Hermes is writing

about herbs, stones, and aromas, symphonies and hymns, by which they (sc. the Egyptian priests) propitiated those spirits put into statues and images. This some sorcerers are still wont to do (0unhappy times !), who think they have spirits shut up in rings or vessels, a most impure race of men, hostile to God and man. . . .l

Lefkvre can scarcely be referring to Ficino, on whose translation of the Her~netica he was commenting and whom he "venerated as a father" ; 2 but, if he had read the De Triplici Vita, this might be taken as a warning against Ficino's magic. Nor is it likely that he had Lazarelli in mind, whose Crater Hermeiis contains as its climax a most curious hymn based on the god-making parts of the Asclepius; for he reprints this work at the end of this edition of the Hclmetica."ut then, Lefevre himself, in about 1492, had written a long treatise 011 was he perhaps astrological magic, which he never p ~ b l i s h e d ; ~ being harsh on his own error^?^

Champier most certainly had read the De Tri/)lici Vita, and when he reproduces Lefkvre's commentary on the I-ierrnetica he leaves out this reference to illicit Hermetic magic.6 He also defends Hermes as best he can by noting besides this and other dangerous passages in the Asclepius that they are inter-

non arbitror hos ibi per coelestem inflnxum in r 505 jf. I I \ ) lie adds : "Tertium tamen fuisse devinctos, sed potius suis cultoribus hunt dialogum caute legendum admoneo, obsequutos denique decepturos." Thomas nam gentiles plane gerltilitik exponunt & Aquinas, Contra Gentiles, 111, civ-cvi. faciunt cluoddam ad suos errores funda-

1 Lefkvre, ed. of Pimander, 1505, folios 57"- mentum r k v ~ c t a ~ ~ 8 L vr ph ; T ~ V ~ S C T U L ~ T ? T ~ .

5 8 ~ , "de herbis / lapidibus et aromatibus / ad divinationem ad idololatriam / orgia concentibus et hymnis : quibus propiciarent deorum teletas / aut verius thelothrescias spiritus illos statuis imaginibusque inditos. [ ? for O-G;oO;r;axciz] / magias / theurgias / Q i o d adhuc facere solent / nonnulli phitonici tatum / opifices deos / et huiusmodi impura (o seculum infelix) qui aut in annulis / aut & nefaria quamplurima. nobis autem unus vasculis se spiritus clausos habere putant / deus est . . ." This change may be connected genus hominum impurissimum / deo homi- with the case of the astrologer Simon de nibusque infensum . . ." Phares, as Thorndike suggests (op. cit., IV,

2 V. supra note I , p. 207. 513-4, 545 ff.). In 1593 Simon de Phares 3 Lazarelli, Crater Hermetis, in Lefkvre's appealed to the Paris Parlenzent against a pre-

Pimander, I 505, folios 78-9. On this hymn, cf. vious conviction at 1,yons for practising Kristeller, art. cit., szlpra note 9, p. 207, pp. astrology; in I 594 the appeal was rejected 253-4. on the basis of a report from the Sorhonne,

4 See Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic in which judicial astrology and talismans are and Exterimental Science, IV, Columbia U. P., firmly condemned. '934, P. 5'3. 6Champier, De Tripl. Disc., 1508, sig.

6 That Lefkvre's attitude to these things ( II v i i ) ~ (on rlscl., xiii). In the commentary changed considerably between the carry on A d . , xii (ibid.) he 1eai.e~ out LeRvre's coil- 1490's and I505 is indicated by his treatment temptuous reference to Platonic ideas (Le-of the comparatively anodine Pittlander I I I revre, ed, of llermetica, 150.5, f. 57' : "specim (ed, cit., pp. 44-6) ; in 1494 (sig. e ivr) he et formas id est ideas (de qi~ibus apud sho\vs no disapproval in his commentary, but platoncm et platonicos: tot et tanla,").

239 THE PRISCA THEOLOGIA IN FRANCE

polations or distortions due to Apu1eius.l However, in spite of this and his rather half-hearted defence of the De Vita coelith comparanda, outlined above, Champier elsewhere condemns Ficino's magic emphatically and without re- serves :

(in the first two sentences he is summarizing the Decretum Gratiani)3 I t is allowable to administer herbs and gems for reasons of health, but with- out any incantations. Astrological images and characters, except for the sign of the cross, are absolutely condemned. You will find much about these even in the works of our own theologians and philosophers; and especially in Marsilio Ficino the Platonist, in the third book of the De Triplici Vita; but this is what I wanted to say briefly: that in our times we see several who, depraved by these wicked arts, having secretly entered into friendship with the devil, seduce very many people and involve their souls in the gravest errors. But we, who are resolved never to depart from Catholic purity, care nothing for such things ; we prefer to be perpetually ill rather than be healthy by contempt for our Saviour.

Here again, Ficino is certainly not classed among the sorcerers who have entered into a pact with the devil; but he is, I think, considered to be one of those who have been seduced by them and led into grave errors.

In Jean Bodin's Demonomanie there is a similar condemnation of this kind of magic, together with a similar assertion that some at least of its practisers had innocent intentiom4 He does not mention Ficino, but names only Agrippa, ;;le maistre Sorcier," whom he believed to have been in close league with the devil,5 Pico, and "les nouveaux Academiques," that is, Proclus, Iamblichus, P ~ r p h y r y . ~ I t is from these Neoplatonists that Bodin derives the magic which tries to bo coupler et lier le ciel et la terre, les puissances celestes et terrestres," and which, in modern times, has been practised by Agrippa and Pico. Agrippa, he says,

compose des caracteres, qu'il dit propres aux Daemons de chacune pla- nette, lesquelz characteres il veut estre gravez au metal propre A chacune

Ibid., sig. (11 vii)~, cf. hh ijr, (11 v)', puritate discedere: talia floccipendimus : ( I I vii)r. eligentes nos magis semper egrotare quam

Champier, Libelli duo. Primus de medecine cum salvatoris contumelia sanos esse." claris scriptoribus . . ., f. ;viijv: "Herbas gem- 3 Decretum Gratiani, Pars 11, Causa XXVI, masque sanitatis gratia slne ulla incantatione Qu. V, c. iii, and Qu. VII, c. xviii (Migne, deferre concessum est. Ymagines vero astro- Pat. Lat., T. 187, cols. I 346, 1372). logorum characteresque preter signum crucis 4 Bodin, Demonomanie, I 580, folios IgV-2oV; penitus damnantur. De quibus etiam apud cf. ibid., folios 37'-38, 52'-53'. nostros theologos & philosophos multa re- Bodin takes the spurious Liber IV of peries : & precipue apud marcilium ficinum Agrippa's De Occ. Phil., to be the key to all platonicum libro tertio de triplici vita: sed the rest (Demon., f. 51'). hec breviter dixisse volui: quod hac nostra 6 Ficino produced translations or para-tempestate plerosque videmus his malis phrases of: Proclus, De SacriJiGiis et Magia; artibus depravatos. clam inita cum diabolo Iamblichus, De Mysteriis; Porphyry, De Ab-amicitia quam plurimos seducere & gravis- stinentia, (Ficino, Op. Omn., pp. 1928, 1873, simis erroribus animas implicare. Nos autem 1932).quibus propositum est nunquam a catholica

240 D. P. WALKER

planette, B l'heure qu'elles sont en leur exaltation ou maison, avec une conjonction amiable, & .veut alors qu'on ayt aussi la plante, la pierre, & l'animal propre B chacune planette, & de tout cela qu'on face un sacrifice a la Planette, & quelquefois l'image de la Planette, & les Hymnes d'Orphee le Sorcier, ausquelles le Prince de la Mirande s'est trop arrest6 sous ombre de Philosophie, quand il dict les hymnes d'Orphee n'avoir pas moins de puissance en la Magie, que les hyrnnes de David en la Cabale . . . & se vante d'avoir le premier decouvert le secret des Hymnes d'0rphee.l

This condemnation of plar,,:x-y magic combined with Orphic hymns is relevant to Ficino not only X Zczuse ~t describes accurately his magic, whether Bodin was aware of this or !lot, but also because the passages in Agrippa's De Occulta Phzlosophia referred to by Bodin are largely based on Ficino and are in rn,ln_y cases copied word for word.2 But Bodin would, I think, have put Ficino ~ I Ithe class of misguided moderns and pagan Platonists of antiquity- \% ho, though in fact practising a diabolic magic, believed that they were attaining to t:ie highest God 'hrough intermediate spirits and powers ; these are only idolaters, not Sorcerers, bccause they are not wittingly in league with the devil.3

VIII

Cautiousness. (ii) Idolatry and Pohtheism

Magic has already led us to idolatry by way of a certain passage in the Asclepius. In the same work there is another passage on the old gods which produces an interesting variety of ~ o m m e n t . ~ Hermes, having unequivocally identified the Egyptians' gods with demon-inhabited statues, utters an apocalyptic lament over their future destruction; strangers will occupy the sacred land of Egypt; all the ancient religious rites will be forbidden, and

Giov. Pico, "Conclusiones numero xxxi 111, xiii (Op. Omn., p. 549). De Occ. Phil., 11, secundum propriam opinionem de mod0 in- xxv-xxvi (Opera, pp. 186-8) -De Tr. V., 111, telligendi hymnos Orphei secundum Magiam, xxi (Op. Ornn., p. 563), and letter to Ant. id est secretam divinarum rerum naturalium- Canisiano (Op. Ornn., p. 651). De Occ. Phil., que sapientiam A me primum in eis reper- I, lxxi (Opera, pp. I I 1-2) -De Tr. V., 111, tam," No. 4 : "Sicut hymni David operi xxi (Op. Omn., p. 562). Cabalae mirabiliter deserviunt, ita hymni Bodin, Demon., f. nov : "Nous disons donc Orphei operi veri: licitae & naturalis Magiae" que les Platoniques, & autres Payens, qui par (Op. Ornn., p. 106). Agrippa (De Occ. Phil., une simplicitt de conscience, & par ignorance I, lxxi; Opera, ed. cit., p. I 12) had also con- adoroient, & prioient Jupiter, Saturnus, nected Orphic hymns with natural magic and Mars, Apollo, Diane, Venus, Mercure, & quoted, without acknowledgment, another autres demy-dieux vivans saintement, prians, of Pico's Orphic Conclusiones : "Nihil efficacius & jeusnans, & faisans tous actes de justice, de hymnis Orphei in naturali Magia, si debita charitC, & de pitit, ont bien estt idolastres, musica, animi intentio, & caeterae circum- mais non pas Sorciers, ny ceux qui sont en stantiae, quas norunt sapientes, fuerint ad- pareil erreur, encores qu'ilz s'effor~assent de hibitae" (Pico, Op. Ornn., p. 106); he puts sqavoir les choses futures par moyens Diabo- this just after an often verbatim summary of liques, attendu qu'ils pensoient faire chose Ficino's rules for planetary music (Ficino, agreable 2 Dieu." De Trip[. Vita, 111, xxi, Op. Ornn., p. 562). Ascl., ix (Corpus Hermeticum, ed. cit., pp.

E.g. Agrippa, De Occ. Phil., I, xxxv 326 ff.). (Opera, ed. czt., pp. 49-50) -Ficino, De Tr. V.,

241 THE PRISCA THEOLOCIA IN FRANCE

nothing will remain of the old gods but fables in which even children do not believe, and a few inscribed stones; there will be a period of crime and despair, until God destroys the wicked by fire or flood, and restores the world to its pristine beauty.

The traditional orthodox interpretation of this is given by Augustine : l

Hermes is constrained "by a di\.ine force" (vi divina) to divulge the true nature of the pagan gods and predict their overthrow by Christianity, and is led "by a diabolic force" (vi diabolica) to praise and worship them.Lefkvre and Champier follow this line and cite A ~ g u s t i n e . ~ Ficino, on the other hand, in the digz~mentunzpreceding his translation of the Herrneti~a,~which is re-printed in most of the French edition^,^ puts forward these prophecies as Hermes' greatest glory, apparently taking them to refer both to the incarna- tion and the Last Day :

now he foresees the ruin of early religion, now the rise of the new faith; now the coming of Christ ; now the future judgement, the resurrection of the ages, the glory of the blessi.d, the torments of the sinner^.^

He too cites Augustine : these prophecies led Augustine to "doubt whether he (sc. Hermes) uttered many things by knowledge of the stars or by revela- tion from demons." This is presumably an inaccurate memory of Augustine's "vi. divina" and "vi diabolica" ; in any case, it is a grossly, and perhaps intentionally, misleading indication of Augustine's views on Hermes' prophecies.

Lefkvre and Champier, in addition to reproducing Augustine's comments on this passage, gi\.e an interpretation by Lazarelli :'

Lazarelli takes this passage analogically, as if the idols were the apostles; the man making them were Christ; the virtue put into them from above were the Holy Spirit; Egypt were the darkness of the Gentiles and perse- cution of the disciples, apostles and martyrs; the inscribed stones telling

Augustine, Cii.. Dei, VIII , xxiii-xxvi. siderum, an revelatione demo nun^, multa Ciu. Dei, VIII , xxiv: "L7ide si non et vi protulerit."

divina maiorum suorurn errorem praeteritu~n 7Lef6vre, ed. of Hermetica, 1505. f. 52"

prodere, et vi diaholica poenam daernonr~m (Champier, De Tri/~/. Disc., sig. ( I I viijr) : futuram dolere compellitur." "Lazarelus hunc locum ad Analogiam trahit

Lefkvre, ed. of I-lernwtica, I jog, f. 4gV cluasi idola a~os to l i sint: fictor homo. ("lapsus Hermetis" I~esidc the test) , 52' khristus; virtdc desuper 'indita, spiritus (commentary, referring to Cic. Ilei, VIII , sarlctus; Egyptus, tenehre gentium 8r, per-xxiii). Champier, De Tripl. Disc., six. i I r secutio discipulorum, apostolorum & mar-vii)v-v tyrum; lapides inscripti pia facta narrantes,

Ficino, Ob. On1,1., p. 1836. posteritatis corda, nor1 opera sed sola verba I n those of LefLvre, Du P r t a t ~ , and fidei retinentia. Hec excogitata pie, sed ad

T u r d b e ( u . supra liote 10, p. 208). litteram forte violenta. Lapsum Hermetis Ficino, ibid. : "Hie ruinam previdit prirce cum Augustino, 8r, in hoe & in tertiodecimo

religionis, hie ortum nove fidei. Hie ad- capite, sentio." ( l iy ,punc tua t io~~ . )I cannot ventum Christi. Hie futurum iudiciurn, find this in Lazarelli s Crater Hermetis; but it resurrectionem seculi, beatorum gloriani, may possibly be a reading of the final hymn supplicia peccatorum. Quo factum est ut there (Lefcvre, ibid., f. 781). Aurelius August in~~rdubitaverit, peritiarle

242 D. P. WALKER

of pious deeds were the hearts of posterity, preserving not works but only the words of faith.

But Lefkvre was too good a humanist to accept this very "hieroglyphic," and also typically late mediaeval, exegesis :

These things have been piously thought out, but do perhaps too much violence to the text. I feel with Augustine that here, and in Ch. xiii (passage quoted above pp. 236-7), is one of Hermes' lapses.

Champier, though he includes this judgment of Lefkvre's in his catalogue of Hermes' lapsus,l certainly did not object to this kind of interpretation; for he himself finds in Socrates' death presages of the thirty pieces of silver, the trans- figuration, the institution of the Eucharist, and the cock that crowed t h r i ~ e . ~ I t is more that he is generally frightened of Hermes, as well as attracted by him; he prefaces his Theologia Trismegistica with a little prayer, in which he asks God to keep him pure from "all cult cjf abominable idols, Jupiter, Plutonicus, Pantomorphus, Fortune, Fate, Ousiarchai, horoscopes, images, Egyptian oracles . . ."3 that is, from all the really or possibly polytheistic parts of the Asclepius. Champier was aware that these terms could be so interpreted as to become innocent; but, holding a magical theory of language,"e be-lieved, I think, that words in themselves could be powerful and dangerous. I t is significant that he quotes this comment of Franciscus de hfaronis on Augustine's rejection of Porphyry's triad of principia : "From this we can take the lesson that in theology not only the opinion but even the words make a man he re t i~a l . "~

\.Ye have already dealt with one possible defence of the polytheism of the prisci theologi : that it was merely the poetic personification of the various powers of the one God. But, as we saw, this was a double-edged weapon of defence, since it could be argued that it was these dangerous poetic fictions of the Greeks which in fact led to idolatry. There was, however, another way of accounting for polytheism in ancient theologians, particularly in Plato. Justin had made the suggestion, which Bessarion and others thatr e ~ e a t , ~ the

Champier, De Tripl. Disc., sig. ( I I vii)r. f. iij r-v (in his Libelli duo . . ., n.p., n.d.). Champier, ibid., sig. fi: "Cum legenda Champier, De Tripl. Disc., sig. hhr : "Ad

se offerent philosophorum et poetarum que- deum Oratio . . . ille (sc. deus) inceptis piam de Christo vaticinia venit id mihi in nostris: ac votis aspiret: et a b omni infan- mentem (quod soliti sunt nostri theologi dorum idolorum cultura a iove plutonico vomere) Jesu scilicet humane salutis auctori pantomorpho : fortuna ;fato ;usiarchis ;horo-in terris accidisse nihil; quod aut figuris scopis : simulachris : egyptiorum oraculis . . . praesignatum : aut praesagiis previsum non alijsque diris facinoribus expiatos efficiat . . ." fuerit." Socrates as an example of this: Cf. supra p. 2 3 I . "Quid vesperi paulo ante obitum de calice Champier, .Sj.iphonia, f. clxviv : Franciscus atque benedictione & in obitu de gallo fit de Xfaronis on Augustine, Ciz'. Dei, X, xxiii, mentio: nisi Christum ea hora ire insti- "Ex quo dicto accipitur documenturn quod tuturum sacramenturn gallumque concen- in theologia non solum sententia: sed etiam turum?" There is an expanded version of verba faciunt hominem hqreticum." Fran-this in Champier's Euangelice Christianeque ciscus de hfaronis, op. ctt., Lib. X, Veritas xii. religionis ex scriptis gentilium &'poetarum &'philo- Ps.-Justin, Cohott. ad Gent., c. 20 (Liigne, sophorum validissimis argumentis comprobatio, Pat. Gr., T. 6, col. 276) ;Bessarion, In Cdum.

243 THE PRISCA THEOLOGIA IN FRANCE

example of Socrates' death deterred Plato from clearly promulgating the Mosaic truth he had learnt in Egypt. Le Caron, an enthusiastic if muddle- headed Platonist, writes, after an exposition of Plato's 2nd (trinitarian) Epistle :

L'exemple de son maistre Socrate lui fermoit la bouche, & ostoit la franchise de parler :de sorte qu'il estoit contraint de deguiser par obscuritC de parolles ce qu'il entendoit mieux.

For the same kind of reason, Plato and Socrates, Champier tells us, could mock at pagan superstition only surreptitiously, "because of the mob."2

Cautiousness. (iii) Heresy

There are two main classes of heresy which may be connected with the prisca theologia :

Trinitarian heresies :3 chiefly Arianism, and attempts to identiftr the Holy Ghost with the anima or spiritus mundi.

Heresies concerning the nature of the soul : pre-existence of the soul; the Neoplatonic astral body; metempsychosis.

I shall deal here with only the first of these cla~ses .~

Plat., ed. cit., p. 229. sius, tyrant of Syracuse, the addressee of Le Caron, Philosophie, f. 23'. On the Plato Epistle 21. Ita ambitio perdidit verum, & A

Epistle see above p. 22 I , and below p. 247. consortio nostro expulit. Quid non de-Cf. Bourgueville, Athomachie, p: 55, on the clarasset Pythagoras ille post visos Gymno- myth of Er in Republic X, into whlch Plato put sophistos, Magos, Aegyptios, prophetasque "tout ce qu'il en avoit apris des Prophetes, divinos homines, nisi ut admirationi esset, ea non comme le tenant d'eulx, pour la crainte reticere voluisset? Et ne proderet sanctam qu'il avoit des Grecz, ausquelz les Propheties trinitatem, quam in Trismegisto legerat, ob- estoient odieuses, mais feignant I'avoir ouy trudit discipulis tetractyn, id est quater-dire A un appellC Here Pamphilien . . ." narium, qco idem innuebat, sed involucris

Champier, De Tripl. Disc., sig. (dd v i ) ~ : tegendo . . ." "Merito Socrates Varro et Plato quamvis 3 Cf. D. Cantimori, "Anabattismo e Neo- latenter propter turbam superstitiones gen- platonismo nel xvi secolo in Italia," in Rendi- tilium deriserunt." Cf. ibid., sig. Cr (Plato's conti della R. Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, and Aristotle's polytheism was a necessary Clmse di scienze morali, storiche e jilologiche, concession to the vulgar; how unwillingly Serie Sesta, XII, Rome, 1937, pp. 542 ff. ;and Plato made it can be seen by how briefly he his Itabenische Haeretiker der Spatrenaissance, tr. writes of sacrifices in Laws VIII). This is the W. Kaegi, Basle, 1949, pp. 4 ff., 86-91, I 04-5, prevailing view; but some were less kind to 168, I 75-7, 184-192, 348 ff., 356-361 ;Walker, Plat-Postel (De Orbis Tirrae Concordia, "Orpheus the Theologian," pp. I I 7-9. p. 23) writes : "Nullum est dubium, Platonem I know of no modern work on the second. long6 plura fuisst proditurum de sancta A 16th-century book which deals exclusively trinitate, quae scilicet a prophetis didicerat, with Platonic heresies about the soul is: J. B. nisi religioni duxisset santa publicare mysteria, Crispus, De Ethnicis Philosophis caute legendis. .., quae aegrk obtinuerat, & ut sibi soli haberet. Rome, 1594; only the first part of this seems Quae ne prodere quidem voluit tyranno, a to have been published, with the sub-title: quo maxima beneficia acceperat [i.e. Diony- "De Platone caute legendo. ..Disputationum

244 D. P. WALKER

I t was mainly Plato and the "platonici" who were considered responsible for these heresies; but earlier theologians are also involved, since Plato was supposed to derive from them and therefore Platonic metaphysical conceptions were read back into them. Attention was particularly concentrated on Plato because of the persistent controversies, from the fifteenth century onwards, about the respective merits and the compatibility of Plato and Aristotle. I n these controversies one of the main weapons for attacking or defending1 either philosopher was their liability to encourage unorthodox religious opinions. This was indeed the main point at issue between Bessarion and George of Trebizond ;2 the discussion still goes on, more amicably, between Lefkvre and Champier;3 it becomes violent again with the noisy anti-Aristotelianism of R a r n ~ s ; ~it is still a matter of practical importance to the church for Patrizi5 and that passionate anti-Platonist, C r i s p u ~ . ~ We are not here concerned with the stones that could be thrown at Aristotle-the eternity of the world, the non-individuality of the intellect, his failure to mention the Trinity, and so forth. These controversies are relevant here only in so far as they throw light on Plato's weak spots, listed above. Already in Bessarion's In Calumniatorem Platonis (1469)we find both these weak spots and also the best arguments with which Plato's theology can be defended by an orthodox Catholic. The basis of any sound defence must be the admission that Plato was not a Christian, and the insistence that it is both wrong and dangerous to read him as if he were; one can then admire how near he came to the truth, either through natural reason or knowledge of the Mosa'ic tradition, without the slightest risk of being infected by his errors. I t is on these lines that Bessarion defends Plato? and he is also careful always to expound at length the orthodox doctrine Libri XXI I I In quibus Triplex Rationalis that he was able to produce all the heresies Animi status ex propriis Platonis principiis and superstitions which have since afflicted corrigitur, et catholicae ecclesiae sanctionibus the church. "Et quidem, tanta fuit in captivo expurgatur . . ." Platone sapientia, tantaque leporis elo-

I feel justified in using military meta- quentiae dulcedo, ut parum abfuerit, quin phors, since the dispute was often thought of de victoribus triumph0 ipse actus, trium-as a battle. Crispus, for example (op cit., pharet." Then follows a list of Fathers Praefatio, sig. (a 6 ) ~ - ( a 7) ), explains that the infected by this dangerous p.0.w. : Clement early Fathers could not defend themselves Alex., Origen, Justin, Eusebius, and even with the arms of faith, since they were fighting Augustine. 6 6 contra negantes principia," but had to de- See L. Mohler, Khrdinal Bessarion als feat pagan philosophers with their own Theologe, Humanist und Staatsma?~n, Paderborn, weapons, by showing that all their wisdom 1923, I, PP. 351-389. came from Egypt and thence from the Cf. supra pp. 2 I 8-9. Hebrew prophets. But this victory unfortu- V. irfra p. 256. nately led to civil war, caused by the captured F. Patrizi, h'ova de Universis Philosophia, leaders of the enemy, "e quorum numero illi Venice, 1593; in the dedication to Gregory sunt magni Duces, Zoroastri, Mercurij, XIV (and future popes) Patrizi urges that his Socrates, Platones, Aristoteles, Procli, Plo- new philosophy, founded (so he says) on tini . . ." Plato, above all, "humaniter, & Plato, Neoplatonists, Oracula Chaldaica and plus quam par erat a nostris benigne sus- Hermetica, be taught in all Christian schools ceptus, cum Ethnicus esset, & Hostium and universities, instead of the impious philo- famosissimus Antesignanus, & vanis Grae- sophy of Aristotle. The achievements of the corum tum exterarum gentium supersti- Jesuits in education and propaganda could tionibus apprime imbutus," gained such in- thus be enormously increased, and even the fluence, owing to his cleverness, eloquence Lutherans might be converted. and "famosa illa ad Aegyptum navigatio," V. supra note 4, p. 243, and note I , p. 244.

245 T H E PRISCA THEOLOGZA IN FRANCE

on any point he is discussing.l If, on the other hand, one tries to prove, for example, that Plato's the One, Mind and Soul of the World are an orthodox conception of the Trinity, then there is a real danger of drifting into heresy- in this case, Arianism.

O n the whole the French, as one would expect, follow Bessarion when dealing with these difficulties. Champier frequently follows him to the extent of copying him ;2 indeed, as far as the prisca theologia is concerned, the influence of Bessarion on early French Platonists is, I think, stronger than that of Ficino. Champier, however, also occasionally adds arguments of his own, or taken from sources other than Bessarion. In his Apologia he begins by presenting the attack :

Someone might perhaps say: what have I to do, pray, with Orphic or Trismegistic philosophy, since these are pagan, and by the magnificent pomp of their language delude easily swayed minds? O r what again with Platonic philosophy? which is perilous, and gave Arius the opportunity of disseminating the heresy of the inequality of the divine persons, whence the whole world was shaken with great commotions. Fl'hat profit to me is the doctrine of Porphyry, Proclus and other Platonists, most dangerous enemies of our faith?

His answers are: first, as Bessarion had said,4 it is the heretics' fault if they misuse Plato, who cannot justly be made responsible for their errors. Secondly, even if one admits that Plato's philosophy contains many errors (which Champier freely and frequently does),5 there is no good reason for banning him completely; for why do the Parisian theologians read Origen? Why did .Jerome, who condemned his errors, translate him?6 "And why are Lactantius, Tertullian, the Gestn Petri per C1ementem7 and Eusebius read, although they

See Walker, "Orpheus," p. 18. "Diceret forsitan aliquis, Quid mihi quaeso 2F,.g. Champier, De Tripl. Disc., sig. cum philosophia orphica aut trismegistica :

(A ~ 1 ) ~ ; Bessarion, In Calumn. Plat., ed. czt., cum haec gentilia sint: & magnifico ver-pp. .g3-2' (Aristotle never referred to the borum apparatu mobiles ludificantia sensus? trlnity ; Plato vero multa certe de trinitate Quid item cum philosophia Platonica? quae locutus est: sed longe aliter quam nostra periculosa est :& arrhio praebuit occasionem : religio doceat" ; explanation of Plato, Epistle suam disseminandi heresim de inequalitate 2). They both cite the same passages from divinarum personarum : unde totus orbis Thomas Aquinas on this question : Thomas, magno tumultu concussus est? Quid mihi I n Sent. Petr. Lomb. I. dist. 3, qu. I , art. 4 (that Porphyrius : Proclus & cqteri Platonici in-Plato was able to have some knowledge of fensissimi nostrae fidei hostes conferent doc- the Trinity because he had been to Egypt).- trinae . . .?" Champier, ibid., sig. C ijr, Bessarion, ibid., Bessarion, op. cit., ed. cit., p. 103. p. 297; Thomas, Sum. Theol., I, qu. 3d, art. I E.g. Champier, Mirabilium divinorum, sig. (that the Gentiles had some knowledge of the (A ?)I; Syrnphonia, f. clviiir. The errors are: appropriata of the Persons (potentia, sapientia, < < animarum praeexistentia," "numerus deo-bonitas), but not of the propria (paternitas, rum," "coeli et siderum animae," "et multa

jiliatio, processio) ) .-Champier, ibid., sig. ccr alia" ;the list is copied from Bessarion, op. cit., (also in Evangelice christianeque religionis . . . ed. cit., p. 87. comprobatio, f. vijr (in Libelli duo . . .), and in See Dict. de The'ol. Cath., ed. Vacant, etc., De Quadr. V., sig. e ijr); Bessarion, ibid., T. 8, cols. 899, 921. PP. 287, 297. The Ps.-Clementine Homilies (Migne,

Champier, Symphonia Platonis . . .,f. cliiiiv : Pat. Gr., T. 2, col. 57 ff.) ; cf. Dict. de Th'ol.

246 D. P. WALKER

contain much that is erroneous and not approved by the church?"l That is to say, we must not throw away the wheat with the chaff, but learn to separate them and value each correctly :

I agree therefore with our Lefkvre d'Etaples, who, in his commentary on Hermes Trismegistus, writes : Here Mercurius and Asclepius, prophets of the Gentiles (like the Sybils, Plato and Balaam) seem, according as they receive light or darkness, to have lucid and obscure moments of prophecy, sometimes pure and sometimes impure.2

But Champier admits that the study of philosophy can be pernicious-if it leads to useless speculation and thus to neglect of practical duties and true religion. Echoing his objector's questions, he asks :

What does it matter to me whether Being is univocal, equivocal or rather analogical? . . . what do equinity and lapidity and that kind of thing matter, if I neglect to learn what I ought, and fail to do what I ought or do it feebly?3

This is one of the very rare instances of Champier's attacking scholasticism- he does it only to defend Platonism.

A little later in the same work, Champier again takes up the accusation that Platonism was responsible for the heresies of Origen and Arius, and answers it with Bessarion's bold and effective argument :4

Those who write that Plato was the author of various heresies rife among Christians, why do they not for the same reason condemn and reject even the evangelic and apostolic books, and the whole doctrine of the Holy Scriptures? For all those who, misinterpreting Holy Writ, have gone astray from the true doctrine, have attempted to strengthen their opinions by the authority of God's words.

He then points out that Arius did in fact defend his heresy by citing the words of God, for example, "My father is greater than I," or, "My doctrine is not

Cath., T. 3, col. 201 ff. sit analogum? . . . quid equinitas aut lapi- 1 Champier, Symphonia, f. clvr: "Cur Lac- deitas & caetera id genus :si neglexero discere

tantius : Tertullianus : Gesta petri per cle- que debeo : & quae operari aut posthabuero : mentem :Eusebius cum in ipsis multa falsa & aut frigide executus fuero?" ab ecclesia non approbata legantur?" Champier, ibid., f. clviiiv : "Platonem

Champier, ibid., "Dicam cum Fabro quippe scribunt auctorem fuisse variarum stapulensi nostro que in comment0 in Mer- hqresum: quq inter christianos pullularint: curium Trismegistum ita scribit. Hic enim cur non pari ratione evangelicos etiam & Mercurius & Asclepius gentium vates (ut apostolicos libros : ac omnem sacrarum liter- sibylle ut plato & balaam) videntur habere arum doctrinam damnent atque rejiciant? ut lucem patiantur et tenebras et lucida & Quicunque enim minus recte sacros libros opaca vaticiniorum intervalla : puraque in- interpretati a vera sententia deviarunt :conati terdum et nonunquam impura." Lefkvre, ed. sunt opiniones suas divinorum verborum of Hermetica, 1505, f. 52V; twice repeated by auctoritate roborare." This argument is Champier in De Tr$l. Disc., sig. hh iijr, I I ~ . taken verbatim from Bessarion, In Cal. Plat.,

Champier, Symphonia, f. clvv: "Quid mihi ed. cit., p. 101.

an ens est universum qquivocum: an magis

THE PRISCA THEOLOGZA IN FRANCE 247 mine, but his that sent me."l As in Plato's case, the error is evidently not in Christ's words but in those who pervert them :

For if Origen or Arius had perfectly understood Holy Writ, they would in no wise have fallen into such perverse error, which afterwards they were obliged to defend improperly with the words of Christ and Plato. Christ's words are not to be fitted to Plato's doctrine; but Plato's or Hermes' words to Christ's d ~ c t r i n e . ~

One of the main sources of this accusation against Plato was the passage about the three kings, quoted above, in Plato's 2nd E p i ~ t l e . ~Porphyry's interpretation of this is quoted by Cyril in his Contra J ~ l i a n u r n ; ~ in Mornay's translation it runs :

L'Essence de Dieu va jusques A trois subsistences [~xooraool~] . Car il y a le Dieu supreme, qui est le Bon : apres luy le second, qui est l'ouvrier de l'univers, & le troisiesme est 1'Ame du Monde : car la DivinitC s'ttend jusques A l'ame. Et c'est ce que veut dire Platon parlant des trois Rois, car encores que toutes choses dependent de ces trois, c'est toutesfois en premier lieu du premier, & en second de ce Dieu, qui est de luy, & en troisieme du troisieme qui procede de cestuy-ci.

Cyril, who introduces this in a series of trinitarian passages from Hermes and Orpheus, remarks that Plato appears to agree with the Arians, in that he ranges the hypostases one under another; but he suggests that Plato perhaps knew the truth, but was prevented from speaking clearly by fear of "Socrates' h e m l ~ c k . " ~Mornay, on the same passage, follows Cyril in noting that it looks Arian, though he adds kindly "encore est-ce beaucoup en un P a ~ e n . " ~ But he then refers back to another of Porphyry's expositions of Plato's hypostases, also quoted by Cyril, in which it is clearly stated that the second hypostasis, Mind, is coeternal with the first ;8 he is thus able to conclude :

Mais quand il (sc. Plato) reconnoist une mesme essence, il monstre que la diversit6 est 6s fonctions seulement, & en l'ordre des causes, qui est bien pass6 plus outre que les A r r i e n ~ . ~

Now this attempt to make Plato a strictly orthodox trinitarian is a step in a dangerous direction. Mornay was much too competent a theologian to go too far; but for others less prudent this tendency could lead to the error

Gospel of St. John, xiv. 28; vii. 16. curij." Champier, Symphonia, f. clixv : "Nam si V. supra p. 22 I.

Origenes : aut Arrius perfecte sacram scrip- Cyril Alex., Contra Julianum, Lib. 1, turam intellexissent : nequaquam lapsi fuis- Migne, Pat. Gr., T. 76, col. 553 b-d. sent in tam perversum errorem :quem inepte Mornay, Verite, pp. I 22-3. postea & Christi & Platonis verbis defendere Cyril, ibid., Migne, Pat. Gr., T. 76, cols. cogerentur. Non Christi dicta ad Platonis 553 d-555 a. sententiam accomodanda sunt :sed verba Pla- Mornay, ibid. tonis : aut Mercurij ad sententiam Christi." Cyril, Contra Julianum, I, hfigne, Pat. Gr., Bessarion, In Cal. Plat., ed. cit., p. 103; T. 76, col. 552 b-c ;Mornay, VeritP, p. 122. Champier has added the words: "aut Mer- Mornay, ibid., p. 123.

248 D. P. WALKER

against which Champier warned us, namely, that of adapting Christianity to Platonism, instead of the other way round. The French, as far as I know, were all too aware of this danger to fall into i t ; but some Italians, Steuco and Patrizi, for example, and the heretics discussed by Cantimori,l certainly committed this error amongst others. There is, however, one heretic who may almost be considered French, since he spent his adult life in France, and was burnt by a Frenchman: Michael Servetus.? Moreover, it seems quite likely that it was Champier who introduced him to Plato and the prisca the~logia;~ in his early works, written before he had met Champier, he is constantly attacking the "metaphysicians," among whom Platonists are expressly in- cluded,* whereas in the Christianismi Restitutio5 the prisci theologi, especially Hermes, and the platonizing Fathers are his chief authorities.

I cannot here go far into the tangled wood of Servetus' theology, nor attempt to estimate accurately the part played in it by Platonism and Her- metism; I shall merely give a few examples of heretical opinions which probably derive in some measure from these source^.^ I t must be remembered that, according to Servetus, the reign of Antichrist began soon after Christ's death, was in full swing by the time of Constantine and the Council of Nicea, and was only gradually coming to an end in the sixteenth century.' This outlaws all post-Nicene Fathers and all mediaeval theologians. In conse-quence a great weight of authority is thrown on theprisci theologi and the earlier Fathers, many of whom, as we know from Champier, held highly unorthodox opinions ;8 Servetus had no other past to support him. There is, therefore, a strong a priori case for supposing that some of Sen~etus' heresies derive from these sources. As one would expect from his fondness for Origen and Eusebius

1 V. supra note 3, p. 243. see, e.g., pp. 75-6: "How, pray, does their 2 See R. H. Bainton, "The Present State (sc. the "metaphysicians' ") doctrine differ

of Servetus Studies," The Journal of Modern from the fictions of the Gentiles, who have History, Univ. of Chicago, IV, I 932, p. 72, and the tradition that Mercury means the word his Michel Servet, Geneva, 1953; B. Becker, through which instruction is conveyed to the Autour de Michel Servet et de Se'bcstien Castellion, understanding, that Paris means feeling and Haarlem, 1953. Minerva bravery? For in like manner they

3 He must have met Champier some time say that the third being means love, and the before 1536, when, under the pseudonym of second knowledge. They take great pride in Michael Villanovus, he published on his Platonizing, by multiplying separate beings. behalf In Leonardum Fuchsium Apologia . . ., To sow disagreements and inconsistencies in 1536 (facsimile reprint, Oxford, 1909). In the Scriptures is their delight." the dedication of this he appears as a disciple Christianismi R e s t i t - 4 . . ., Vienne, 1553 of Champier and a devoted Catholic: since (page by page reprint, Nuremberg, 1790). Fuchs, he says, attacks not only nearly all See the excellent analysis of Servetus' theo- doctors, "sed & ecclesiam catholicam impie logical works in F. Trechsel, Die Protestant- proscindat : non potui mihi temperare, quin ischen Antitrinitarier vor Fauslus Socin. Erstes & pro ecclesia, ut pro matre filius, & pro Buch. Michel Servet und seine Vorganger, Heidel-Symphoriano Campegio, cui ut discipulus berg, 1839, especially (on this change of atti- multa debeo, aliquid scriberem." tude to Platonism) pp. 77, I 25-6.

Libri V I I de Trinitatis erroribus per M. Even these examples are over-simplified Serveturn, alias Reves ab Aragonia Hispanurn, and do not do justice to the complexities (and Basle, 153 1 ;Libri duo dialogorum de Trinitate; contradictions) of Servetus' ideas. capitula quatuor de justicia regni Christi, Basle, See, e.g., Christ. Rest., pp. 394-9, 67 1-2.

1532. English translation of both these by Cf. supra p. 245. Servetus constantly cites Earl Morse Wilbur, T h T w o Treatises of groups of pre-Nicene Fathers; e.g., Christ. Servettu on the Trinity . . ., Harvard U.P., 1932; Rest., p. 584, to support the view that demons

249 THE PRISCA THEOLOGIA IN FRANCE

and his loathing for Athanasius and Augustine,l he includes Arianism among his many trinitarian errors, but in a curious form. The Word and the Spirit are certainly not coeternal with the Father, but were created, just before the creation of the world, as instruments for making and animating i t ;2 the Word was visible and later became the body of Christ, as the Spirit, identified with the Soul of the World, became his ~ p i r i t . ~ One of the authorities he cites for the temporal priority of the Father with respect to the Word is part of an Orphic oath : 4

I swear by thee, Voice of the Father, which he first pronounced when he constructed the whole universe with his counsels.

This is, of course, in itself a perfectly innocent text, which Mornay twice quotes when expounding the orthodox doctrine of the T r i n i t ~ . ~ But it suited Servetus' book, because Orpheus uses the word ('@l;sq" (voice, sound) instead of ( ( ~ o ~ o ~ " and Servetus (according to Justin, because of metrical e~igencies) ,~ wishes the Word to be a sensible voice, both heard and seen.7

This word is the sensible emanation of the wisdom of God, equated with the Platonic Mind; it contains therefore, in visible form, all the Ideas:

From all eternity were in God images or representations of all things, in His Wisdom, truly shining forth in the Word itself of God, as in the archetypal world. . . . This was from the beginning of the world the re- ceived doctrine about the Wisdom of God, published in the Holy Scrip- tures, and taught to the Greeks by the Chaldeans and Egyptians from the tradition of their ancestors. . . . Zoroaster and Trismegistus taught it, from whom, chiefly from Trismegistus, all the Greeks learnt it, from Orpheus to plat^.^

This sensible emanation implies no change in God, for He is invisible only because of the inadequacy of our senses ;He contains the essence of all bodies, have aerial bodies : Justin, Clement Rom., Clement Alex., Tertullian, Cyprian, Origen, Lactantius, Eusebius.

See, e.g., Christ. Rest., p. 702 : ". . . Athanasium . . . imaginum cultorem, cum charactere bestiae: Augustinum item cum suo monachismo, bestiae adoratorem, et reli- quos omnes trinitatis illius invisibilis reales distinctores."

Servetus, Christ. Rest., pp. 727-8 (creation of the Word and Spirit, citing Tertullian, Clement Alex., Philo Jud., Hermetica, Orphica), 131, 143 ff., 154-5, 163 ff., 166 (Word is the same as the lux divina, containing all arche- typal forms; "Deus verbo corpora creauit et spiritu viuificauit" ( I 66) ).

The Word already had an humanam Jiguram (e.g. p. 691, citing Tertullian) ; the Word and Spirit were combined with human flesh and spirit during the incarnation, see especially De Trinitate Diuina Dialogus Secundus,

modum generationis Christi docens (Christ. Rest., pp. 248 ff.).

Kern, Fr. 299; Servetus, ibid., p. 728. Mornay, Veriti, pp. I o I -2. Cf. Walker,

"Orpheus," p. "7. Ps.-Justin, Cohort ad Gent., c. i5, Migne,

Pat. Gr., T. 6, col. 272. Servetus, ibid., p. 138 ("Est sermo Dei

visibilis et audibilis, in sensu simul et intel- lect~") , 164 ("in sermone Dei erat spiritus, in spiritu sermo : sermo visibilis, spiritus per- ceptibilis"). Cf. ibid., p. 153 : "Ea ipsa solis lux varie dispensatur, sicut lux Christi. Orpheus et reliqui veteres verbum Dei vocarunt cpavqra apparentem Deum, qui ex infinito primus apparuit."

Servetus, ibid., p. 137: "Ab aeterno erant in Deo rerum omnium imagines, seu repre- sentationes, in sapientia ipsa, in verbo ipso Dei ut in archetypo mundo vere lucentes . . . Haec fuit de sapientia Dei ab origine mundi

250 D. P. WALKER and, after the resurrection, "You will with your bodily organs see, touch, taste, smell and hear God." l

This inverted Neoplatonic emanationism, in which matter and body, instead of being defect and negativity, are put into the source of all being, leads to a renovation and distortion not only of Christianity but of Platonism as well. The transcendence of the Christian God and the Platonic intelligible world disappear, and the Neoplatonic hierarchies of being are blurred beyond recognition. For Servetus Plato's the One and the Good, and Mind or Being, become merged into the Soul of the World, which is both mental and sensible :

All Platonists affirm that God is the Soul of the World and that this spirit of the universe sustains and vivifies e~erything.~

To support this panthe i~m,~ Servetus cites not only the Stoics who are its most obvious source-Sene~a,~ Aratus in St. Paul5-but also a whole battery of passages from the Hermeti~a.~Although in most of the Hermetic treatises the transcendence of God or Mind is preserved, nevertheless he is able to find some genuine support in certain of them, for example, in a passage of Treatise V, which he summarizes thus :

recepta doctrina, sacris litteris prodita, quam estant fascht d'une absurdit6 si lourde, repli- ex maiorum traditione, Chaldei et Aegyptii quay A l'encontre, Comment povre homme, Graecos docuerunt. Ex Sacris hoc docuerunt si quelcun frappoit ce pavt icy avec le pied, Job, Moses, David, Salomon et alii. Id ipsum & qu'il dist, qu'il foulle ton Dieu, n'aurois tu docuerunt Zoroaster et Trismegistus, a point horreur d'avoir assubjetti la majest6 de quibus ab Orpheo ad Platonem Graeci omnes Dieu A tel opporbre? Alors il dit, Je ne fay didicerunt, maxime a Trismegisto." nulle doute que ce banc, & ce buffet, & tout

Zbid., p. 731 : "Substantia Dei in se nec ce qu'on pourroit monstrer, ne soit la sub- est nobis visibilis, nec palpabilis, non ob sui stance de Dieu . . ." Cf. Christ. Rest., p. I 82 : defectum, sed ob infirmitatem nostram . . . "Adiectio Deitatis in rebus ipsis, seu adiectio Ille enim omnem corpoream vim, et omnium rerum in Deo ipso, nomen non mutat, Deitas corporum essentiam veram in se continet." in lapide est lapis, in auro est aurum, in ligno You would see God "indita sensibus tuis cor- lignum, secundum proprias ideas." poreis Deitatis percipiendae virtute, ut in- Servetus, Christ. Rest., p. 131 : "Deus est detur post resurrectionem, quando Deum id totum quod vides, et id quod non vides, ut corporalibus his tuis organis videbis, tanges, ait Seneca, et citat Lactantius." Seneca, Nut. gustabis, olfacies, et audies. Audi, quid Quaest., 11, c. 45, which Lactantius does not dicam . . ." (he then repeats it). cite, though he does refute Stoic pantheism

Zbid., p. 132: "Deum item esse animam (Div. Inst., 11, v-vi; Migne, Pat. Lat., T. 6, mundi, Platonici omnes affirmant et spiritum cols. 276-284). universi ornnia sustinere, ac vivificare." Servetus, ibid., p. 132: "Idem (sc. ac

a Cf. the whole passage leading up to this Trismegistus) docet Paulus acto. I 7. Deum (Christ. Rest., pp. .125-132). Many more pene in singulis rebus palpari, cum sit in examples could be cited of Servetus' tendency singulis rebus insitus. Ex Arato citat, nos esse toward a materialistic, or monistic, pan- progeniem divinam, . . . nos in Deo ipso theism. Ca1vi~'s account (Declaration pour vivimus, movemur, et sumus." Acts xvii. 27- maintenir la vraye foy . . ., 1554, pp. 89-90) of a 28 ;Aratus, Phainomena, lines 1-5. conversation while Servetus' was under trial Servetus, ibid., p. 132. is probably not much exaggerated :"Car pour Hermetica, ed. cit., p. 64. Festugitre (ibid., ce qu'il disoit que toutes creatures sont de la p. 73) remarks: "il y a tout un courant de propre substance de Dieu, ainsi que toutes panthtisme stoicien dans le C.H., cf. V 9-1I,

choses sont pleines de diem infinis: c'est le XI 14, XI1 20, 23, XVI 3, 19." langage qu'il n'a point eu honte de pro- Servetus, ibid. : "Ad Tatium ait, Deum noncer, & mesme coucher par escrit: moy unum esse omnia, et esse veluti multicor-

THE PRISCA THEOLOGIA IN FRANCE 251

The one God is all things, and is as it were many-bodied (multicorporeus, x o ~ u a o ~ a r o ~ ) ,since there is nothing in bodies which is not He.

I t was, of course, only a thinker as revolutionary and reckless as Servetus who could thus adopt a Stoic Soul or Spirit of the World as his God. But even for the prudent and orthodox there was a danger that a Platonic or Neo- platonic Soul of the World might contaminate their conception of the Holy Ghost; after all, the Trinity fitted remarkably well into the triad: One or Good, Mind or Being, Soul or Spirit of the Wor1d.l The great safeguard against identifying the Holy Ghost with the third hypostasis was that this was undoubtedly a creature-indeed, a lot was known about its creation from the Tirnaeu~.~On the other hand, the functions of the Soul of the World, im- manent, connecting the intelligible with the sensible world, God with man, were similar to those of the Holy Ghost; moreover the status of the latter and its relation to the other two Persons was still felt to be doubtful and obscure- Ramus, having briefly stated the doctrine of the procession of the Holy Ghost, says :3

But the difference between "begotten" and "proceeding," though it may be known to God Himself, is, as they confess, unknown to even the greatest theologians. You are told that the Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, but, says Na~ ianzen ,~ do not inquire too closely about how this happens.

And Ramus, immediately after this, interprets Plato's "third King" as the Soul of the World and the equivalent of the Holy Ghost-without c~ rn rnen t .~ We also find Mornay tentatively equating Plotinus' Soul of the World with the Holy Ghost, although "il n'en parle pas si distinctement qu'un Gregoire Nazianzene;" but he much prefers to take Plotinus' will and love of God as a third hypostasis, which, in Plotinus, they are not.' La Boderie has the same rather vacillating attitude ; in his Encyclie, Uranie, his mouthpiece, proclaims that if a man

poreum: quia nihil est in corporibus, quod 5 Ramus, Comm. de Rel. Clzr., p. 74: "Hunc ipse non sit." Cf. ibid. : "Et in libro, quod in trinum regem alibi Plato nominat Deum, solo Deo sit pulchrum et bonum, Omnia mentem, animum mundi, ut'Deus sit rex ipse quae sunt, inquit, sunt in Deo, et ab eo summus infinita potentia : mens autem pendent. Ibidem ait, Deum esse omnia, et sapientiae & consilii principatus a summo Deum omnia facientem sibi omnia assimilare, rege proximus: anima verb mundi, quae sicut omne agens assimilat sibi passum." i.e. rerum ortus, interitusque per regem mentis Treatise IX, ed. cit., p. IOO sapientia definitos exequatur." He gives

Cf. Walker, "Orpheus," p. I 18. almost exactly the same interpretation in his 2 Plato, Timaeus, 34 a-36 d. edition of Plato's Epistles (Platonis Epistolae (i

Ramus, Comm. de Rel. Chr., p. 73: "Dif- Petro Ramo Eloquentiae tY Philosophiae professore ferentiam autem geniti & procedentis, & si Regio Latinae factae, 2nd ed., Paris, 1552, Deo ipsi nota sit, theologi tamen summi p. 12). ignotam sibi esse confitentur : Audis spiritum Mornay, Verite', pp. I 16-7. He has sum- procedere patre & filio, sed quomodo id marized Plotinus, Enn., V, i, 3, and V, i, 2. fiat, noli nimis indagare, ait Nazianzenus." Mornay, ibid., pp. I 20-1, summarizing

Gregory Nazianzenus, Oratio XX, xi Enn., VI, viii, 13 and VI, viii, I 5. (Migne, Pat. Gr., T. 35, col. 1077). La Boderie, Encyclie, p. 22.

5

252 D. P. WALKER estime le Monde en rien n'estre animt,

Vraiment sans Ame il doit luy-mesme estre estimt :

If it were not an innate belief in man that there is "une Ame souveraine Qui regist l'univers," then

d'aage en aage en tout lieu, Tous hommes n'auroint point confess6 quelque Dieu.

But he adds this side-note :

Icy comme dessus le Monde est dict estre animk de l'opinion de Platon. Non toutesfois qu'on doive penser que Dieu Trinum eternel & infiny soit 1'Ame du Monde fini & perissab1e.l

The wider context of the "prisca theologia." Conclusion

Before concluding this essay I wish to fill up two gaps-or rather to indi- cate how they should be filled.

First, since I have been concerned with showing the characteristic cautious- ness of the French, I may have given the impression that they only mentioned the prisci theologi in order to warn people against them. This was by no means the case. All the writers I have cited use the Hernzetica, Orphica and Plato to show the universality and antiquity of the belief in one God, in the Trinity, in the creation ex nihilo, in the immortality of the soul and an after-life of punishments and rewards. I t is merely that, while doing this, they are very much aware of possible dangers and very concerned to safeguard the unique- ness of the Christian revelation.

Secondly, I have discussed only those writers (though by no means all of them) who did accept the tradition of the prisca theologia and made consider- able use of it, and I have examined some of their defences of it. But to see this kind of Renaissance syncretism in its proper perspective one must realize that it was one factor in a wider struggle that was going on, a struggle which in- volved the status and survival of all non-Christian culture. I can here do no more than outline certain aspects of this struggle which are particularly relevant to the prisca theologia. The two basic views in conflict can be, rather crudely, described as follows :

Liberal: the Gentiles as well as the Jews were being prepared for the Christian revelation. They had partial revelations, or reached God by natural reason, or learnt from the Mosa'ic tradition. Some of them were possibly saved. The whole of religious truth is not plainly shown forth in the Bible; valuable, indeed essential, help can be gained from non-canonical writers, both Christian and pagan.

Illiberal: the Jewish revelation was the only pre-Christian one. All the Cf. a similar cautionary remark in the fessor & librorum visitator," where, after the

Au Lecteur (Encyclie, p. 7 ); and at the end of usual formula, is added: "Quod de mundi the book, the approbation b y "Thomas anima aliquoties scribit, Platonicum est ;sicut Gozeus A Vellomonte sacrae Theologiae pro- auctor in suis annotationibus declaravit . . ."

253 THE PRISCA THEOLOGIA IN FRANCE

pagans were damned, and all their acts, including their thoughts and writings, were sinful and worthless. Everything in the Bible is true ; nothing not in the Bible is true (with the possible exception of some things in Augustine).

These are, of course, extremes, and most sixteenth-century theologians stand somewhere between them. But the prisca theologia is evidently compatible only with some form of the first, and must be in violent conflict with any view approaching at all nearly to the second.

Throughout this struggle certain texts of Augustine and Paul are thrown back and forth. The "liberals" quote from Augustine's Confessions his avowal of the religious truth about the Word he found in "certain books of the Platonists" ;l and from his D e Doctrina Christians the injunction: "Whatever those called Philosophers, and especially the Platonists, may have said true and conformable to our faith, is not only not to be dreaded, but is to be claimed from them, as unlawful possessors, to our use," as the Jews once robbed the Egyptians, as Moses became "learnkd in the wisdom of tht: Egyptians" ; 2 they interpret Romans i. 18-32,3as implying that the Gentiles had knowledge of the true God, by contemplating nature, though some of them went astray. The "illiberals" quote from Augustine's Retl-actiones his regrets for his earlier approval of Platonism ;4 and from his Contra Juliatlunz the statement that all actions of all pre-Christian pagans were ~ i n f u l ; ~ they in- terpret the same passage from Paul as meaning that all the Gentiles were sodomitical idolaters, and rightly damned.

Of the prereformers we already have some acquaintance with Lefkvre and Champier; they were "liberals," but cautious and timid ones. Champier cites the pro-platonic passages from Augustine, but he also cites the Retrac-ti one^.^ Lefkvre, commenting on Romans I and 11, asserts that those who have not heard the Gospel, but have lived well according to the law of nature, may be saved; this is "neque divina pietate . . . indignum / neque apostolic? sententie a d ~ e r s u m . " ~ O n the other hand, we have seen his great wariness of the Hel-metica, and later, aS he approached more nearly to Lutheranism, he

Augustine, Conf., VII, ix. "Qui vero inter illos huius ignorantiae nocte De Doctr. Chr., 11, xl (hfigne, Pat. Lat., perdurante secundum legem naturaliter ho-

T. 34, col. 63). minibus insitam bene vixerunt: etiam si Augustine (Civ. Dei, VIII, ix) quotes aliquando peccaverint: mod0 postea egerint

Romans i. 19-20 to warn his readers against a penitentiam: putamus post mortem aliquod complete rejection of Gentile philosophy, and felicitatis genus habituros: et loca aliqua dei (ibid., VIII, xxiii) Romans i. 21-3 as a descrip- dono sortituros: ubi melius vel saltem minus tion of Hermes Trismegistus' idolatry. male sint habituri: quam hi qui sordide et

4 Augustine, Retract., I, i (Migne, Pat. Lat., flagitiose vixerunt. Vel profecto cum theo- T. 32, col. 587), referring to his Contra logis dicendum erit quod si naturaliter bene Academicos; he retracts nothing in the Conf., vixerint : & constet eos non accepisse nuncium or De Doctr. Chr. de christo: quod deus ante mortem mittet

5 Augustine, Contra Julianum, IV, iii (Migne, illis angelum lucis qui veritatem aperiat : aut Pat. Lat., T. 44, col. 750 ff.). Cf. infra p. 257. ita ab eo inspirabuntur ut christum cognos-

ti Champier, Symphonia, f. clixv (Augustme, cant. Sic putare me cogit iusticie 8r clementie Conf., VII, ix) ; Evang. Christ. rel. comprobatio divine contemplatio." (in Libelli duo . . .) f. ijv (Augustine, De Doctr. 'Epistole diui Pauli apostoli cum commentariis Christ., 11, xl) ; Symphonia, f. clxiiijv (Augus- preclarissimi uiri Jacobi Fabri stapulensis, Paris, tine, Retract., I, i). When discussing the 1517, f. lviir; he is referring, I think, to savages recently discovered by Vespucci, American natives. Champier writes (De Tr@. Disc., sig. ee iijr) :

254 D. P. WALKER

went over to the "illiberals" ;in the preface of his commentary on the Gospels (1522)he writes:'

Let everyone hold this as a most firm belief, which was the opinion of our ancestors, of that primitive church crimsoned by the blood of the martyrs : to know nothing outside the Gospels is to know everything.

This extreme evangelism is also the key to the view of the other two figures who dominate the early French reformation: Erasmus and BudC.

Erasmus' championship of literae humaniores as an essential aid to educa- tion and as a source of moral lessons is too well known to need restatement here.2 He too quotes the favourable passages from Augustine, and regards pagan civilization as a providential preparation for the general acceptance of Christianity.3 But, like Lefhvre, Erasmus, in his Paraclesis (1519), subordinates everything to the Gospels; "the Platonists, Pythagoreans, Academics, Stoics, Cynics, Peripatetics, Epicureans" may claim what they will for their doctrines, but "indeed only this one doctor has come down from heaven. . . . ' y 4 He continues :

But if anything is brought from the Chaldeans or Egyptians, merely be- cause of this, we intensely desire to know it . . . and are often grievously disquieted by the dreams of some little man, not to say impostor, not only with no profit, but also with a great waste of time, if not with some worse result, though this is already quite bad enough.

By mixing this "prophane literature" with Christian philosophy, we run the risk of corrupting the latter, and we certainly confine its message, which

Quoted by Margaret Mann, Erasme et les tales animos praestamus Auctori nostro & de'buts de la RejCorme frangaise (1517-36), Paris, Principi Christo? . . . Nam quorsum attinet 1933, p. 65: "Atque hoc firmissime teneant hic contentione rem exaggerare, cum hoc omnes, quod majores nostri, quod primaeva ipsum impiae cujusdam dementiae sit, Chris- illa ecclesia, sanguine martyrum rubricata, tum cum Zenone aut Aristotele, & hujus sensit: extra evangelium nihil scire, id esse doctrinam cum illorum ut modestissime omnia scire." Cf. ibid., pp. 70-1, on Lef&vreYs dicam, praeceptiunculis conferre velle? Affin- preface to his translation of the Gospels gant illi suae sectae principibus, quantum (1524). possunt, aut quantum libet : Certe solus hic e

* See, e.g., A. Renaudet, Etudes Erasmien- coelo profectus est Doctor . . . Si quid a nes (1521-152g), Paris, 1939, pp. 122-135. Chaldeis aut Aegyptiis adfertur, id ob hoc

E.g. Erasmus, Opera Omnia, Leyden, ipsum acrius avemus cognoscere, quod e pere- 1703-6, T. V, col. 83, 92 (Ratio seu Methodus grino sit orbe deportatum, & pretii pars est compendia ~erveniendi ad veram Theologiarn); T. e longinquo venisse, & saepenumero insom- X, cols. I 706, I 7I 2-3, I 730-2 (Antibarbarorum niis homunculi, ne dicam impostoris, tam Liber I). anxie distorquemur, non solum nu110 fructu,

Erasmus, Op. Omn., V, 139: "Platonici, sed magno temporis dispendio, ut ne quid Pythagorici, Academici, Stoici, Cynici, Peri- addam gravius: tametsi jam hoc ipsurn ut patetici, Epicurei, suae quisque sectae dog- nihil accedat gravissimum est. Atqui fit, ut mata, tum penitus habent cognita, tum hujusmodi cupiditas non item Christianos memoraliter tenent, pro his digladiantur illi, titillet animos, quibus persuasum est, id quod vel emorituri citius, quam auctoris sui patro- res est, hanc doctrinam non ex Aegypto cinium deserant. At cur non multo magis Syriave, sed ex ipso venisse coelo?"

THE PRZSCA THEOLOGZA IN FRANCE 255

should be known to all, to a few of the 1earnPd.l Erasmus must, I think, be here referring to the Oracula Chaldaica and the Hermetica, and to the use of the prisca theologia in general. And, in spite of his great devotion to ancient litera- ture, Erasmus does not in fact use this tradition. The reason why he rejects it is probably not only his evangelism, but also his dislike and mistrust of the metaphysical side of religion; and it was this aspect of Christianity that was foreshadowed by the prisci theologi.

Budk's evangelism leads, in his De Transitu Hellenismi ad Christianismum (1534), to the same rejection, but for different, more typically Protestant, reasons.2 For him, Christianity is centred on the mystery of the Atonement, the Crucifixion; and though it was possible to find presages of this in pagan literature, Renaissance syncretists very rarely did so. In consequence, Budk's rejection of the ancients as sources of religious knowledge is more absolute than Erasmus', who, with his attention concentrated on ethical values, could still find in them precious confirmation of the moral truths of the Gospels.

One would expect, on the face of it, that orthodox Protestants (Lutherans and Calvinists) would be more inclined than Catholics toward the "illiberal" view because of their tendency to regard the Bible as the unique source of revelation. This is in fact true, but with some very important exceptions. Protestant apologists who base their arguments on an appeal to reason are necessarily more liberal, and do often make considerable use of the prisca theologia, as we have seen in the case of one of the greatest of them, M ~ r n a y , ~ and the same is true of P a ~ a r d . ~ The attitude of Ramus is peculiar to himself. He states clearly that the whole of religious truth is in the Bible;5 the theo- 'logian, to support every point, should quote from the divine scripture^,^

but do not despise human literature from famous poets, orators and

1 Erasmus, Op. Omn., V, 141: "Coelestia See Josef Bohatec, Budi und Calvin, Graz, dogmata, ceu Lydiam regulam, ad nostram 1950, pp. I-" 7 (on BudC), especially p. 55 pertrahimus vitam: & dum omnibus modis (contrasting BudC's attitude to the ancients fugimus, ne parum multa scisse videamur, with that of Erasmus). For BudC's earlier quidquid usque est profanorum litterarum views in De Asse (1515), see L. Delaruelle, huc provehentes, id quod est in Christiana Guillaume Budt!, les origines, les dibuts, les ideks philosophia praecipuum, non dicam, cor- mattresses, Paris, 1907, pp. 192 ff. rumpimus: sed quod negari non potest, ad Cf. supra pp. 209, 2 I 1-2, 247, 25 I .

paucos homines contrahimus rem, qua Cf. supra p. 2 I 2, note 4. Christus nihil voluit esse communius." This Ramus, Comm. de rel. Chr., pp. 6 ff. (1, i, contrasts with the curious advertisement on entitled "Quid Theologia sit, & qubd tota the title-page of Lefhvre's 1494 edition of the salutis doctrina sacris literis contineatur"). Pinlander: "Tu quicunque es / qui hec legis : 6 Ramus, ibid., p. 2 : "sed humana ad sive Grammaticus : sive Orator : seu Philo- irritandum auditionis lectionisve famem veluti sophus : aut Theologus : scito. Mercurius condimenta ab insignibus Poetis, Oratoribus, Trismegistus sum : quem singulari mea doc- Historicis ne contemnito, non ut inde ulla trina & theologia : Egyptii prius & Barbari : religionis vel authoritas vel approbatio repe- mox Christiani antiqui theologi : ingenti stu- tatur, sed ut planum sit Christianam Theo- pore attoniti / admirati sunt. Quare si me logiam non adeb abstrusam esse: vel ab emes / & leges : hoc tibi erit commodi : quod hominum sensibus remotam, quin naturali parvo ere comparatus : summa te legentem quadam luce populis omnibus illucescat, voluptate / & utilitate aficiam. Cum mea hominesque ideo humanitas ipsa ad divina doctrina cuicunque aut mediocriter erudito : studia capessendum invitet, atque alliciat." aut doctissimo placeat. . . ."

256 D. P. WALKER

historians, used, like condiments, to stimulate the appetite for reading; not that any religious authority or confirmation is to be sought there, but that it may be clearly shown that Christian theology is not so very abstruse.

Men are thus to be enticed to the truth, whereas before they had been repelled from it by the "spinae" of the Scholastics. And Ramus in fact reduces the prisca theologia, presented together with tags from classical Latin poets, to nothing more than a rhetorical decoration. He does, however, as we have seen, subscribe to the belief that Plato learnt from Moses and find the Trinity in his Epistles, of which he published an edition ;l but this is merely, I suspect, because of his passionate dislike of Aristotle, who is vilified as impious through- out his Commentaria de Religione Chri~tiana.~ I t may be said, then, that Ramus had a narrow Protestant outlook which would have excluded the prisca theologia, were it not for his two prevailing marottes: love of rhetoric and hatred of Aristotle.

Apart from such exceptional, though extremely important, cases as Mornay, Pacard and Ramus, the attitude of French Protestants to the prisca theologia is one of contempt and neglect. Calvin's attacks on Servetus, either alive or dead, do not mention his Platonism or Hermetism. In the Institution Chrestienne, however, Plato is given credit for having taught that "le souverain bien de l'ame est la similitude de Dieu, quand, estant parvenue a la vraye contemplation d'iceluy, est en luy tout transformke" ;but this is immediately followed by Plutarch's Gryllus on the same theme!3 And a little later4 he makes the extraordinary statement that in the Tinzaeus

Platon mesmes, qui est entre tous (sc. les philosophes) le plus sobre et le plus raisonable, et approchant le plus de religion, y est tout estourdy, car il cherche un Dieu corporel: ce qui est indigne et tres ma1 convenable a la majestk divine.

Theodore de Bkze sneers at Castellio's interest in the Sibylline prophecies, which he had edited: "I hear you are wont to prefer them even to the most holy prophets, as being more evident and clear.)j5 I t is interesting to contrast this with the attitude of a Counter-reformation saint, Cardinal Bellarmin, who uses the Sybils as his 8th class of proof that Christ is the son of God and remarks: "The Sybils predicted many things more clearly than any of the prophet^."^

V. supra note 5, p. 251. dicere, vaticinare ex tuis illis Sybillis, quas* Ramus, ibid., pp. 26-7, 91, 99, 142-3. audio te solere ipsis etiam sanctissimis Pro-3 Calvin, Institution de la Religion Chrestienne, phetis, tanquam apertiores & clariores ante-

ed. J. Pannier, Paris, 1936-9, T. I, p. 51. ferre, uter ex duobus regibus sit victor futurus, "bid., I, 59. Henricus an Philippus." On Castellio and 5 Bhze, Volumen Tractationurn Theologicarum, the Sybils, see F. Buisson, Shbastien Castellion,

Geneva, 1570, p. 393 (De Aeterna Dei Prae- Paris, 1892, I, pp. 279 ff. destinatione contra Seb. Castellionem) : Castellion, 6 Bellarmin, Opera Omnia, Naples, 1872, I, in arguing against predestination,has assumed I go : "Sybillae multa clarius praedixerunt, that he knows God's will; if so, then let him quam ulli prophetarum." Cf. ibid., I, 158: prophesy "quamdiu Dominus sit passurus ut "Quod Patres docent, Gentiles etsi plures Ecclesiam Dei vastes. Aut, si ista non placet Deos colerent : tamen unum Deum naturaliter

T H E PRZSCA THEOLOGZA IN FRANCE 257 Indeed the clash between the liberal and illiberal views appears most

clearly in post-tridentine controversies, such as that between De Andrade, a Portuguese delegate to the Council of Trent, and Chemnitz, a Lutheran theologian. The controversy, in so far as it concerns us, centres on the follow- ing Canon of the Council :l

If anyone should say that all the works which were done before justifica- tion, for whatever reason they were done, are sinful or deserve God's hatred; or that the more vehemently anyone strives to be in a fit state to receive grace, the more gravely he sins; let him be anathema.

Chemnitz attacks this mainly by quoting from Augustine's Contra J u l i a n ~ m . ~ He also cites the opinion of Justin, Clement of Alexandria and Epiphanius, that some of the Greeks were saved by philosophy, "because, as the Law was for the Jews an education to lead them to Christ, so was philosophy for the Greeks"; this opinion, he says, is manifestly impious and contrary to the teaching of St. Paul.3 De Andrade can do little about the passages from A ~ g u s t i n e , ~who does in fact unequivocally state that the pagans' most virtuous actions were sinful "in so far as they were not done from faithVv5 He relies largely, not on any authority, but on the argument that this damnation of virtuous pagans supposes a monstrously tyrannous and cruel God, who demands from men what He Himself has prevented them from h a ~ i n g . ~ He also interprets Romans I as meaning that some Gentiles could and did attain

cognoscere potuisse, sicut re ipsa Philosophi ignotum. Clemens primo Stromatum dicit : unum Deum cognoverunt, et ea ex parte Per se quoque aliquando Graecos iustificabat quasi nat~ral i ter Christiani fuerunt," citing Philosophia. Item: Sicut lex Iudaeis fuit Justin, Clement Alex., Eusebius, Lactantius. paedagogus in Christum: Ita Philosophia

Sessio Sexta, Canon VII (Canones et De- Graecis. Epiphanius dicit quosdam sine lege creta . . . Concilij Tridentini . . ., Cologne, 1569, Moisi & gratiae, sola lege naturae salvatos. p. 54) : "Si quis dixerit, opera omnia, quae Haec Jesuwitae proferre non audent, sunt ante justificationem fiunt, quacunque ratione enim palam impia." Cf. Chemnitz, Examen facta sint, vere esse peccata, vel odium Dei Concilii Tridentini, ed. Preuss, Berlin, I 86I ,

mereri : aut quanto vehementius nititur se P. 20. disponere ad gratiam, tanto eum gravius J. P. Andradius, Orthodoxarum Explicati- peccare, anathema." On this controversy, cf. onum Libri decem, Cologne, 1564, pp. 276-7, H. Jedin, Das Konzil von Trient, ein Ueberblick 284-5. ueber die Erforschung seiner Geschichte, Rome, E.g. Augustine, Contra Julianum, IV, iii 1948, PP. 61-5. (Migne, Pat. Lat., T. 44, col. 753) : "Si

Chemnitz, Theologiae Jesuuitarum praecipua gentilis, inquis, nudum operuerit, numquid capita. Ex quadam ipsorum cemura quae Coloniae quia non est ex fide, peccatum est? prorsus Anno 60. edita est, Annotata per Martinum in quantum non est ex fide, peccatum est." Kemnicium, Leipzig, 1562, sig. (c 6)r. 6 Andradius, ibid., . pp. 290-1 : Chemnitz

Chemnitz, ibid., sig. (c 6 ) ~ : "SED must allow the salvation of good Gentiles by QUIDAM, aiunt (sc. Jesuitae), ex veteribus natural reason, "Nisi forti: iniquum, fcrum, aliter quam Augustinus senserunt. Dicant & immanissimum prioribus illis saeculis Deum igitur Jesuwitae diserte, quid senserint quidam fuisse fingas: neque enim diritas atque im- ex veteribus de operibus infidelium. Justinus manitas tetrior ulla esse potest, quAm sempi- in utraque Apologia disputat : Ethnicos qui ternis cruciatibus homines mancipare propter secundum rectam rationem vixer~~nt , fidei illius inopiam, ad quam nullus patebat quales apud Graecos fuerunt Socrates & Heraclytus, aditus, & quam consequi nulla via nullaque fuisse Christianos, & Christum ipsis non fuisse ratione poterant."

258 D. P. WALKER

to a knowledge of the true G0d.l He defends Justin, Clement and Epiphanius, "these three most splendid lights of the ancient church," with the utmost vehemence, expressing amazement at Chemnitz' "demented insolence" in daring to attack them, and he explicitly approves of their view of Greek philosophy as a propaideutic to the Christian re~e la t ion .~ It was these early Greek Fathers, together with Eusebius, Cyril and Lactantius, writing on the same lines, who were the chief storehouses of the texts of the prisci theologi and the main models for the syncretizing use of these texts. I t is, therefore, not surprising to find post-tridentine Catholics, such as La Boderie, De Foix and Le Roy, accepting and using the prisca theologia.

If most of the French were well aware of the dangers of the prisca theologia, why did they use it, and what is the historical significance of their doing so? Some answers to these questions have been suggested in the course of this essay; but, since they may have been obscured by the mass of exemplifying detail, they had better be restated here.

The most fundamental motive for using the prisca theologia was in order to have a past without breaks, a past that included and connected together the Christian and Jewish worlds, Greece and Rome, ancient Gaul, and, for some, mediaeval France. In attempting this, they may be said to have "tried to bend the past out of its eternal shape"; but, with whatever mistakes in chronology and interpretation, they did also try to preserve the continuity of history, which the Christian revelation was always threatening to break. The consequences of this attempt were important in several ways. I t encouraged, indeed demanded, an imaginative interpretation of ancient texts, which, though it was a continuation of a long patristic and mediaeval tradition, produced new and valuable results ; for Plato, in whose philosophical expres- sion myth plays such an important part, it was especially appropriate and fruitful.

This wide, unbroken view of history also entailed, and helped to support, religious liberalism. With the French this tendency was counteracted to some degree by their wariness of unorthodoxy. Nevertheless, it remains true that most of the writers we have examined were more concerned with finding similarities than differences between various philosophies and religion^.^

1 Andradius, ibid., p. 288. so Philosophie was to the Grccianr to bring them to Andradius, ibid., pp. 287-8, 295-8. It is salvation. Now although this erronious doc-

interesting that the English translator trine be as contrary to truth as darknesse is ("T.B.") of La Primaudaye's Acadernie ( The to light, and as hell is to heaven, yet did French Acadernie . . . newly translated into English Andradius defend it in a booke set forth by by T.B., London, 1586), having justified La him at their instigation (as himselfe pro-Primaudaye's use of pagan moral philoso- testeth) who were of greatest authority in the phers (chiefly Aristotle) and even quoted the late Tridentine Councell." "liberal" passages from Augustine ( v . supra Further research would, I believe, show p. 253),. finds it necessary to add (Epistle that these liberal tendencies were reflected in Dedzcatone) : "But my meaning is not to practical, religio-political life, that is to say, approve that Apocryphal1 tradition of Clemens that most advocates of the prisca theologia held Alexandrinus, who saith, that As the Law was a eirenic, reunionist opinions and, later in the schoole-master to the Jews to leade'them to Christ: century, belonged to the politique group; this

T H E PRZSCA THEOLOGZA IN FRANCE 259

The other main motive for an irterest in the prisca theologia was the desire not only to understand Platonism and Neoplatonism but also to believe in them. The prisca theologia, by integrating them as f a r as possible into Chris- tianity, helped to keep them as living bodies of ideas, which could evolve and grow, and thus become a dynamic factor in Renaissance religion and philo- sophy.

is suggested by much of the evidence in Frances Yates' French Academies (see particularly Ch. x,PP. '99 E.1.

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The Prisca Theologia in FranceD. P. WalkerJournal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol. 17, No. 3/4. (1954), pp. 204-259.Stable URL:

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9 The Illusion of Postel's FeminismM. A. ScreechJournal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol. 16, No. 1/2. (1953), pp. 162-170.Stable URL:

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1 Pletho's Calendar and LiturgyMilton V. AnastosDumbarton Oaks Papers, Vol. 4. (1948), pp. 183-305.Stable URL:

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2 Botticelli's Mythologies: A Study in the Neoplatonic Symbolism of His CircleE. H. GombrichJournal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol. 8. (1945), pp. 7-60.Stable URL:

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2 The Present State of Servetus StudiesRoland H. BaintonThe Journal of Modern History, Vol. 4, No. 1. (Mar., 1932), pp. 72-92.Stable URL:

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