Hermes Trismegistus - Pater philosophorum

Manuscripts: Texts of the Asclepius

1 Hermes Trismegistus. Asclepius
Ms on vellum, 10th-11th century
(Brussels, Bibliothèque Royal 10054-10056)

One of the eight surviving Asclepius manuscripts, included in the work of Apuleius of Madaura (ca 123 CE), who for a long time was regarded as its translator. The Greek text, still known to Lactantius in the fourth century under the title Logos teleios, has been lost. The Asclepius, as the single most important revelation of Hermes, guaranteed the continuation of the Hermetic tradition prior to the rediscovery of the Corpus Hermeticum. The text is quoted by amongst others Bernardus Silvestris, Alanus ab Insulis, Albertus Magnus, Roger Bacon and Thomas Bradwardine.

A.D. Nock noted a great many correspondences between the Asclepius and the Corpus Hermeticum, the most striking of which are the parallels with CH XVI. All is One: 'omnia unus esse aut unum esse omnia' (cf. CH XVI.3). The elaboration on the central position and the functions of the sun from CH XVI return in abridged form in Asclepius 29.

Other Hermetic themes in the Asclepius: God has no names or all names, and he is androgynous. He has two images: the cosmos and man. These are one. God, the lord and master of the All, creates a second God, visible and tangible; He beholds his loveliness and loves him as the child of his divinity. This is the cosmos; man is created to behold this second God. The divine origin of man makes him a great miracle; he is a praiseworthy being. Hermes exclaims: 'O Asclepi, magnum miraculum est homo, animal adorandum atque honorandum'. These words leave echoes throughout the Renaissance, as an illustration of human dignity.

The magical and Egyptian elements from the Asclepius, to which Augustine objected in De civitate Dei VIII, exerted a great appeal on thinkers like Ficino and Giordano Bruno. It is this very passage and the following apocalyptic complaint that have survived in the gnostic library of Nag Hammadi. (VI, 8; see illus. 1a). In the crucial passage Hermes says that although God is the creator of the inferior gods, including the planets, man is the maker of the gods in the temples, animated statues (statuas animatas), which are inspired with the breath of life (spiritus, pneuma): statues possessing knowledge, which may heal and can predict the future.

Philosophers who adopted a moderate view concerning magic considered this passage to be a fabrication of Apuleius.

The manuscript exhibited here once belonged to Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464). In a marginal note at the beginning of the text he refers to Augustine's De civitate Dei.

Cusa alludes to the Asclepius amongst others in De berillo VI, when he says that according to Hermes Trismegistus, man is the second God. In a sermon he even quotes the original Greek text as he had found it in Lactantius. In diverse places in his work, including De docta ignorantia I.24, he refers to the passage from the Asclepius where Hermes says that God has no name and yet has all names.

Ref. NF II; Mahé; Van Velthoven, 98-99, 224; Van de Vyver


2 Hermes Trismegistus. Asclepius
Ms on paper, 17th century
(Amsterdam, University of Amsterdam Library 2492 D 3)

Copy of the Latin Asclepius based on the edition included in Nova de universis philosophia (1591, 1593) [nos 47 and 48] of Francesco Patrizi. The manuscript is added to the Dutch Corpus Hermeticum translation of A.W. van Beyerland (1586/87-1648) of 1643 [no 60], which was made after the Greek-Latin edition included in Patrizi's work.

The added Asclepius manuscript has been paginated consecutively with the Corpus Hermeticum. Apparently the author wished to complete the Hermetic corpus. He also added a number of fragments from Stobaeus, which Van Beyerland mentioned in his epilogue, but left untranslated: Patrizi XIII: Liber sacer, sive Minerva Mundi (= Korè Kosmou); XVI: De energia et sensu; XVII: De veritate; ad XIII: De providentia et fato.

The manuscript ends with the oracles of Zoroaster, in a copy based on Patrizi's edition.