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claiming to be translations from an Egyptian sage/man/god: Hermes
the Thrice Greatest. This revelation came through the translation of
this "Corpus Hermeticum" from Greek into Latin by Marsilio Ficino
in the fifteenth century and his efforts at establishing an Academy in
Florence which would renovate the World, both the little and the big.
A rather impressive text. What then was this Corpus Hermeticum?
Here I am confounded by the same problem which it is my intention
in this paper to claim confronted Ficino. The ambiguity of the Corpus
Hermeticum lies not in some particular interpretation, but rather it is
incumbent upon any interpretation of these strange texts, even to their
description, and especially to an explanation of their origins. I hope to
make this clearer further on. For now, perhaps, I should start as the
Corpus Hermeticum begins itself, that is: "Once upon a time."
Once upon a time, in the ancient land of Egypt the God Thoth, or
Tehuti was worshipped. Tehuti was a moon-god, the patron of science
and literature, of wisdom and inventions, the spokesman of the gods
and the keeper of their records. If the Egyptian pantheon were an
English department, Tehuti would be the Fullbright scholar who
returns with an endowed chair. He isn't the Head of the department,
but he's always snapping up the best students. Egyptian theologians
claimed that Thoth was the demiurge who created the universe with
the sound of his voice. Thoth invented arithmetic, surveying,
geometry, astronomy, soothsaying, magic, metallurgy, music, and
writing. He was an inventive chap.
Once upon a little later time, say the fifth century b.c.e., the Greeks
discovered the Egyptians and began mapping the Hellenic pantheon
onto the Theban. Their homegrown Greek god of messages and
messengers, Hermes, was equated with Thoth. One of the Egyptian
titles of respect for Tehuti was aa-aa or twice-great. The Greeks seem
to have done one better by talking about a mysterious Hermes
Trismegistus, or Hermes the Thrice-great.
Now our once upon a time falls into history, so that nothing is very
clear. Some Greek writers claimed that Hermes Trimesgistos was a
human. Some held him to be a sage. Others a god. And others some
combination of all three. Galen knew of the writings of "Hermes the
Egyptian". Athenagoras in the second century A.D. knows of Hermes
Trismegistus whose family is linked with the gods. And both Clement
of Alexandria and Iamblicus gave thumbnail sketches of the books of
Hermes Trismegistus. Magic, astronomy, alchemy, cosmology and
theosophy seemed to have been his especial topics. Iamblicus informs
us, or mis-informs us, that Hermes wrote his works in Egyptian, in
hieroglyphics (after all he did invent them) then they were translated
into Greek. Also, Iamblicus claims, many other books were being
circulated under the name of Hermes which were not written by him.
No such Greek works survived through to Christian Europe. By the
fourteenth century Greek was operationally an unknown language,
even to the educated monk or scholar. A single work, which claims to
be a sort of seminar session between Hermes and the god of healing,
Asclepius, did get translated into Latin some time in late antiquity and
survived in an eleventh century codex.
There our tale would end. Except that its plot was thickened, as are so
many human stories, by war. The Turks were threatening to conquer
Constantinople, seat of the Eastern Roman Empire and center of
Orthodox Greek Christianity. Negotiations were held in 1439 in
Florence between representatives of the Metropolitan and the Pope, an
attempt to smooth over theological differences between the two
Catholic and Universal versions of the Christian faith, so that political
aid might follow. Among the Greek priests and scholars sent to
negotiate with the Italians was one Gemisthus Pletho. Pletho knew his
Aristotle as the Europeans did not, he knew the original Greek. Pletho
also knew Plato's works, none of which save the Timaeus were in
common use in Latin translation. Pletho was winning theological
arguments using an erudition the Europeans lacked. Lacked but were
soon to win for themselves. Just as the Soviet launch of Sputnik
galvanized America's effort in aerospace, so this embarrassing show
of Greeks with Greek scholarship hastened the study of Greek
language, literature and philosophy in Europe.
One of the members in the audience in 1439 who heard Pletho and
saw that Greek could be a strategic advantage for Florence was
Cosimo Medici. It took Cosimo a couple of decades but he found the
perfect young scholar to learn this new Greek and translate the works
of Plato and the neoPlatonists. That scholar was Marsilio Ficino.
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