Hermes Trismegistus - Pater philosophorum

Manuscripts: Corpus Hermeticum

3 Hermes Trismegistus. Poimandres
Ms on vellum, 14th century
(Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana Laur. Plut. 71,33)

In 1460 a monk by the name of Leonardo of Pistoia brought this manuscript back with him from Macedonia. It contains tracts I-XIV of the Corpus Hermeticum. The first page has been considerably damaged.

Ficino completed the Latin translation in 1463 and eventually sold the manuscript to Angelo Poliziano (1454-1494), who left it to the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana.

Ref. Bandini III, 22-23; Reitzenstein, 320; NF I, xvi-xvii


4 Hermes Trismegistus. Poimandres
Ms on vellum, 14th century
(Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale Par. Graecus 1220)

Sammelband with Patristic texts. Fols 5r-43v contain the entire Hermetic corpus (CH I-XVIII). The scribe supplied corrections and additions of his own. Subsequently the text was systematically 'reviewed' by one or several younger Humanists, whereby the original script was scraped away and replaced by an invented text.

There are only three extant 14th-century Greek manuscripts containing CH I-XVIII. In addition to this copy there are two others, which are held by the Vatican library (respectively Vaticanus graecus 237 and 951).

Ref. Reitzenstein, 323-24; NF I, xi-xii, xvii

5 Hermes Trismegistus. Liber de potestate et sapientia dei
Ms on vellum, 15th century
(Florence, Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana Laur. Plut. 21,8)

After Ficino had completed his Latin translation of the Corpus Hermeticum in April 1463, copies were soon made. K.H. Dannenfeldt has noted 37, to which may be added the copy in the Royal Library in The Hague [no 7]. The copy exhibited here also contains, in addition to the Corpus Hermeticum, the Golden verses of Pythagoras, a selection from Ficino's commentaries on Plato and a number of letters, one of which dates to 1490. The manuscript, therefore, was completed after the first edition of the Corpus Hermeticum.

The Hermetic tracts (fols 3r-40v) are followed by a locus from Alcydius (=Altividius), taken from his unpublished text De immortalitate animorum. In it it is said that Hermes Trismegistus exhorted his pupils not to mourn for his death, as through dying he would in fact return to the true life. The fragment from Alcydius is also included in the Italian translation of the Corpus Hermeticum (1548) [no 51] and the Dutch version from 1607 based on this translation [no 59].

The manuscript exhibited was illuminated by Attavante degli Attavanti (1452-ca 1517), the most famous miniaturist of his time.

Ref. Kristeller SF II, viii-ix; D'Ancona and Aeschlimann, Attavante s.v.; Altividius: NF IV, 146

6 Corpus Platonicum
Ms on vellum, 1487
(Haarlem, Stadsbibliotheek 187 C 15)

Manuscript originally from the library of Raphael de Marcatellis (1437-1508), abbot of St Bavo's church in Ghent. The collection contains the Latin Asclepius, together with texts by Apuleius of Madaura, De deo Socratis and De Platone et eius dogmate. Apuleius was long considered to be the translator of the Asclepius into Latin.

The manuscript also contains Pimander, sive de potestate et sapientia Dei, together with other translations by Ficino, including the Aurea verba of Pythagoras.

Ref. Derolez, 44-47


7 Hermes Trismegistus. Liber de potestate et sapientia dei
Ms on vellum, early sixteenth century
(The Hague, Koninklijke Bibliotheek 130 E 8)

A copy of Ficino's translation of the Corpus Hermeticum, made in the Southern Netherlands, until recently unknown.