The Way Philosophers Pray: Hymns as Experiential Knowledge in Early Modern Europe
Main Article Content
Abstract
Beginning with the work of Marsilio Ficino through the poems of Michele Marullo, Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola, Pierre Ronsard, Edmund Spenser and others, this essay discusses the revival and fortune of philosophical hymns in Quattrocento Italy and the diffusion of this genre in Early Modern Europe. In doing so, we will attempt at framing this phenomenon in the context of Early Modern religious pluralism and interpret it as an instance of experiential knowledge.
Downloads
Article Details
Proposed Policy for Journals that Offer Open Access
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Since issue IV and for the future issues, it is the policy of the publisher that authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).
References
Alles, Gregory D., Henning Graf Reventlow, Roland Gebauer, Niclas Förster, Johannes Wallmann, Bruce L. Guenther, Vincent Brümmer, et al., « Prayer », in Religion Past and Present Online, Brill, Leiden. Accessed June 7, 2019.
Argyle, Michael, Psychology and Religion: An Introduction, Routledge, New York 2000.
Barnes, Corey, « Thomas Aquinas on Christ’s Prayer », in Roy Hammerling (ed.), A History of Prayer: The First to the Fifteenth Century, Medieval Academy of America, Cambridge 2009, p. 319–336.
Bellah, Robert N., Philip E. Hammond, Varieties of Civil Religion, Harper and Row, San Francisco 1980.
Borris, Kenneth, « Platonism and Spenser’s Poetic », in Kenneth Borris, Jon Quitslund, Carol Kaske (eds.), Spenser Studies XXIV, AMS Press, New York 2009, p. 209–269.
Bremmer, Jan N., Jan R. Veenstra (eds.), The Metamorphosis of Magic from Late Antiquity to the Early Modern Period, Peeters, Leuven 2002 (Groningen Studies in Cultural Change, 1).
Campanella, Tommaso, Le poesie, ed. Francesco Giancotti, Einaudi, Turin 1998.
— Selected Philosophical Poems of Tommaso Campanella: A Bilingual Edition, trans. Sherry Roush, University of Chicago Press, Chicago 2011.
Caravale, Giorgio, Forbidden Prayer: Church Censorship and Devotional Literature in Renaissance Italy, Ashgate, Burlington 2011.
Cave, Terence C., « Ronsard’s Bacchic Poetry: From the Bacchanales to the Hymne De L’autonne », L’esprit créateur, 10/2 (1970), p. 104–116.
Ceard, Jean, « Dieu, les hommes et le poète: structure, sens et fonction des mythes dans les Hymnes de Ronsard », in Madeleine Lazard (ed.), Autour des Hymnes de Ronsard: études, Champion, Paris 1984 (Unichamp, 7), p. 83–101.
Celenza, Christopher S., « Late Antiquity and Florentine Platonism: the ‘Post-Plotinian’ Ficino », in Michael J. B. Allen, Valery Rees and Martin Davies (eds.), Marsilio Ficino: His Theology, his Philosophy, his Legacy, Brill, Leiden 2002 (Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History, 108), p. 71–98.
— « The Platonic Revival », in James Hankins (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Philosophy, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2007, p. 72–96.
— « What Counted as Philosophy in the Italian Renaissance », Critical Inquiry, 39/2 (2013), p. 367–401.
Cole, Allan Hugh Jr., « Prayer », in David Adams Leeming, Kathryn Wood Madden, Stanton Marlan (eds.), Encyclopedia of Psychology and Religion, Blanton Peale, New York 2009, p. 1371–1373.
Conti, Natale, Natale Conti’s Mythologiae, trans. John Mulryan, Steven Brown, ACMRS, Tempe 2006 (Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 316).
Copenhaver, Brian P., « Renaissance Magic and Neoplatonic Philosophy: Ennead 4.3–5 in Ficino’s De Vita Coelitus Comparanda », in Gian Carlo Garfagnini (ed.), Marsilio Ficino e il ritorno di Platone, vol. II, Leo S. Olschki, Florence 1986 (Istituto nazionale di studi sul Rinascimento. Studi e testi, 15), p. 351–369.
— « Scholastic Philosophy and Renaissance Magic in the De Vita of Marsilio Ficino », Renaissance Quarterly, 37/4 (1984), p. 523–554.
De Capua, Paola, « Tra Giano Vitale, Pietro Corsi e Niccolò Ridolfi », Studi Medievali e Umanistici, 15 (2017), p. 451–512.
Di Nola, Tommaso, Tommaso Campanella. Il nuovo Prometeo da poeta-vate a restauratore della politica e del diritto, Edizioni Studio Domenicano, Bologna 1993.
Dillon, John M., Andrei Timotin (eds.), Platonic Theories of Prayer, Brill, Leiden 2016 (Studies in Platonism, Neoplatonism, and the Platonic Tradition, 19).
Erasmus of Rotterdam, The Correspondence of Erasmus (Letters 1356–1534), trans. Roger Aubrey Baskerville Mynors, Alexander Dalzell, Toronto University Press, Toronto 1992.
Faivre, Antoine, Access to Western Esotericism, State University of New York Press, Albany 1994.
Feinstein, Blossom, « On the Hymns of John Milton and Gian Francesco Pico », Comparative Literature, 20/3 (1968), p. 245–253.
Ficino, Marsilio, Commentary on Plato’s Symposium on Love, ed. and trans. Sears Reynolds Jane, Spring Publications, Dallas 1985.
— Three Books of Life, ed. and trans. Karol Kaske, John R. Clark, Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, Tempe 1994.
— The Letters of Marsilio Ficino, vol. I, Shepeard-Walwin, London 2018.
Filoramo, Giovanni, « Religious Pluralism and Crises of Identity », Diogenes, 50/3 (2003), p. 31–44.
Foà, Simona, « Giraldi, Gregorio Lilio » in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, 56, Treccani, Rome 2001.
Ford, Philip, Ronsard’s Hymnes: A Literary and Iconographical Study, Medieval & Renaissance Texts & Studies, Binghamton 1997.
Foucault, Michel, The Hermeneutics of the Subject, Lectures at the Collège de France (1981–1982), ed. Frédéric Gros, François Ewald, Alessandro Fontana, Graham Burche, Palgrave, New York 2005.
Friedman, John B., Orpheus in the Middle Ages, Harvard University Press, Cambridge 1970.
Garfagnini, Gian Carlo, Marsilio Ficino e il ritorno di Platone: studi e documenti, Leo S. Olschki, Florence 1986 (Istituto nazionale di studi sul Rinascimento. Studi e testi, 15).
Gersh, Stephen, « The Medieval Legacy from Ancient Platonism », in Stephen Gersh, Maarten J. F. M. Hoenen (eds.), The Platonic Tradition in the Middle Ages: a Doxographic Approach, De Gruyter, Berlin 2002, p. 3–30.
Goffis, Cesare F., « Il sincretismo lucreziano-platonico negli Hymni naturales del Marullo », Belfagor, 24 (1960), p. 386–417.
Gombrich, Ernst, « Icones Symbolicae: The Visual Image in Neo-Platonic Thought », Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 11 (1948), p. 163–192.
Hadot, Pierre, Arnold Ira Davidson, Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault, trans. Arnold Ira Davidson, Blackwell, Oxford 2011.
Hadot, Pierre, The Veil of Isis: An Essay on the History of the Idea of Nature, trans. Michael Chase, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Cambridge 2006.
Hammerling, Roy, A History of Prayer: The First to the Fifteenth Century, Brill, Leiden 2008 (Brill’s companions to the Christian tradition, 13).
Hanegraaff, Wouter J., Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism, Brill, Leiden 2006.
— Esotericism and the Academy: Rejected Knowledge in Western Culture, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2012.
— « The Platonic Frenzies in Marsilio Ficino » in Jitse H. F. Dijkstra, Justin E. A. Kroesen, Yme Kuiper (eds.), Myths, Martyrs, and Modernity: Studies in the History of Religions in Honour of Jan N. Bremmer, Brill, Leiden 2010 (Numen Book Series: Studies in the History of Religions, 127), p. 553–567.
Hankins, James, « Ficino, Avicenna and the Occult Powers of the Rational Soul », in Fabrizio Meroi, Elisabetta Scapparone (eds.), La magia nell’Europa moderna: Tra antica sapienza e filosofia naturale, Leo S. Olschki, Florence 2003 (Istituto nazionale di studi sul Rinascimento. Atti di convegni, 23), vol. I, p. 35–52.
— « Marsilio Ficino and the Religion of the Philosophers », Rinascimento, 48 (2008), p. 101–121.
— Plato in the Italian Renaissance, Brill, Leiden 1990 (Columbia Studies in the Classical Tradition, 17).
— « Plato in the Middle Ages », in Joseph R. Strayer, William Chester Jordan (eds.), Dictionary of the Middle Ages, vol. IX, Scribner and Sons, New York 1987, p. 694–704.
Hornik, Henry, « More on Ronsard’s Philosophy: The Hymns and Neoplatonism », Bibliothèque d’Humanisme et Renaissance, 27/2 (1965), p. 435–443.
Gersh, Stephen, Maarten J. F. M. Hoenen, Pieter Th. van Wingerden, The Platonic Tradition in the Middle Ages: A Doxographic Approach, De Gruyter, Berlin 2002.
Hill, Eugene D., « Everard Digby: A Syncretic Philosopher at Spenser’s Cambridge », Kenneth Borris, Jon Quitslund, Carol Kaske (eds.), Spenser Studies XXIV, AMS Press, New York 2009, p. 135–154.
Hirai, Hiro, Le concept de semence dans les théories de la matière à la Renaissance. De Marsile Ficin à Pierre Gassendi, Brepols Publishers, Turnhout 2005 (De diversis artibus, 72).
James, William, The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature, Modern Library, New York 1936.
Kippenberg, Hans G. and Kocku von Stuckrad, Einführung in die Religionswissenschaft, Beck, Munich 2003.
Klutstein, Ilana, Marsilio Ficino et la théologie ancienne: oracles chaldaïques, hymnes orphiques, hymnes de Proclus, Leo S. Olschki, Florence 1987 (Istituto nazionale di studi sul Rinascimento. Quaderni di Rinascimento, 5).
Kouidis, Apostolos P., « Ronsard’s Four Hymns to the Seasons: A Glorification of the Benevolent World », Kentucky Romance Quarterly, 22/2 (1975), p. 223–234.
Kristeller, Paul Oskar, Renaissance Thought and its Sources, Columbia University Press, New York 1979.
— Proclus as a Reader of Plato and Plotinus, and His Influence in the Middle Ages and in the Renaissance, Editions du C.N.R.S, Paris 1987.
Lazard, Madeleine, Autour des ‘Hymnes’ de Ronsard: études, Champion, Paris 1984 (Unichamp, 7).
Lazzarelli, Ludovico, Wouter J Hanegraaf, Ruud M. Bouthoorn, Lodovico Lazzarelli (1447–1500): The Hermetic Writings and Related Documents, Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Tempe 2005.
Ludwig, Walther, « Antike Götter und christlicher Glaube. Die Hymni naturales von Marullo », in Berichte aus den Sitzungen der Joachim Jungius Gesellshaft der Wissenschaften E. V., Hamburg, Verlag Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Hamburg 1992.
Marullus, Michael, Hymnes naturels, trans. Jacques Chomarat, Droz, Geneva 1995 (Travaux d’humanisme et Renaissance, 296).
— Inni naturali, trans. Donatella Coppini, Le Lettere, Firenze 1995 (Il nuovo melograno, 21).
— Poems, trans. Charles Fantazzi, Harvard University Press, Cambridge 2012.
Monfasani, John, « Platonic Paganism in the Fifteenth Century », in Cesare di Maio (ed.), Reconsidering the Renaissance, Center for Medieval and Early Renaissance Studies, New York 1992 (Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 93), p. 45–61.
Moreschini, Claudio, Rinascimento cristiano. Innovazioni e riforma religiosa nell’Italia del Quindicesimo e Sedicesimo secolo, Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, Rome 2017.
Moss, Ann, « Latin Liturgical Hymns », Humanistica Lovaniensia: Journal of Neo-Latin Studies, 40 (1991), p. 73–111.
Pantin, Isabelle, La poésie du ciel en France dans la seconde moitié du seizième siècle, Droz, Geneva 1995 (Travaux d’humanisme et Renaissance, 297).
Piana, Marco, « Fallax Antiquitas: Gianfrancesco Pico Della Mirandola’s Critique of Antiquity », Ph.D. Diss., McGill University 2018.
Pico della Mirandola, Gianfrancesco, Hymni heroici tres, Alexandrum Minutianum, Milan 1507.
— Ioannis Francisci Pici Mirandulæ Domini, et Conc. Com. &c. Hymni heroici decem post tres priores ad diuersos Cœlites.: Item eiusdem principis poema eodem metro, quo excitamur a somno miseræ uitæ ad tranquillam, & perpetuam uigiliam, Baptista Phaellus, Bologna 1531.
Plotinus, Les Ennéades de Plotin: traduites pour la première fois en français accompagnées de sommaires, de notes et d’eclaircissements et précédées de la Vie de Plotin, trans. Marie Nicolas Buillet, Minerva, Frankfurt 1968.
— The Enneads, trans. Stephen Mackenna, Penguin, London 1991.
Proclus, Proclus’ Hymns: Essays, Translations, Commentary, trans. Robert. M. van den Berg, Brill, Leiden 2001 (Philosophia antiqua: a Series of Monographs on Ancient Philosophy, 90).
Rappe, Sara, Reading Neoplatonism: Non-Discursive Thinking in the Texts of Plotinus, Proclus, and Damascius, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2007.
Rees, Valery, « A Sojourner in Florence: Neoplatonic Themes in the Hymni naturales of Marullus », Acta Conventus Neo-Latini, 16 (2018), p. 559–570.
— « Ficinian Ideas in the Poetry of Edmund Spenser » in Kenneth Borris, Jon Quitslund, Carol Kaske (eds.), Spenser Studies XXIV, AMS Press, New York 2009, p. 73–134.
Robichaud, Denis J. J., « Ficino on Force, Magic, and Prayers: Neoplatonic and Hermetic Influences in Ficino’s Three Books on Life », Renaissance Quarterly / Publ. by the Renaissance Society of America (2017), p. 44–87.
Robichaud, Denis J. J., Matteo Soranzo, « Philosophical or Religious Conversion? Marsilio Ficino, Plotinus’ Enneads and Neoplatonic epistrophe », in Simona Marchesini (ed.), Simple Twists of Faith, Changing Beliefs, Changing Faiths: People and Places, Alteritas, Verona 2017, p. 135–166.
Ronsard, Pierre, Hymnes, ed. Albert Py, Droz, Geneva 1978.
— Selected Poems, trans. Malcolm Quainton, Elizabeth Vinestock, Penguin, London 2002.
Rowan, Steven, Gerhild Scholz Williams, « Jacob Spiegel on Gianfrancesco Pico and Reuchlin: Poetry, Scholarship and Politics in Germany in 1512 », Bibliotheque d’humanisme et Renaissance 44, no. 2 (1982): 291–305.
Satterthwaite, Alfred W., Spenser, Ronsard, and Dubellay, Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ, 2016.
Scaliger, Julius Caesar, Poetices libri septem, Jean Crespin, Geneva 1561.
Schilbrak, Kevin (ed.), Thinking Through Rituals: Philosophical Perspectives, Routledge, New York 2004.
Silver, Isidore, « Ronsard’s Reflections on Cosmogony and Nature », PMLA, 79/3 (1964), p. 219–233.
Soldati, Benedetto, La poesia astrologica nel Quattrocento: ricerche e studi, Le Lettere, Firenze 1986 [1906].
Soranzo, Matteo, « A New Look at Spirituality: Knowledge and Transformation in Early Modern Italy », Journal of Religion in Europe, 8 (2015), p. 185–209.
— « Concordance et Différence Religieuse », in L’époque de la Renaissance (1400–1600), t. II: La nouvelle culture (1480–1520), ed. Eva Kushner, Benjamins, Amsterdam 2017, p. 7–19.
— « Exploring the Forests of Antiquity: The Golden Bough and Early Modern Spirituality », in Bill Gladhill, Micah Myers (eds.), Walking Through Elysium: Aeneid 6 and Its Cultural Reception, Toronto University Press, Toronto 2019, p. 77–93.
— « Les hymnes platoniciens et leur rôle dans la spiritualité prémoderne », in Eva Kushner (ed.), L’Époque de la Renaissance (1400–1600), t. II: La nouvelle culture (1480–1520), Benjamins, Amsterdam 2017, p. 29–37.
— Poetry and Identity in Quattrocento Naples, Ashgate, Farnham 2014.
— « Un’identità religiosa nel primo Cinquecento: gli Hymni Heroici Tres di Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola », Italian Studies, 70/1 (2015), p. 53–75.
— « Words of Conversion: Poetry and Religious Identity in Early Modern Italy », Journal of Religion in Europe, 6 (2013), p. 229–262.
Spenser, Edmund, The Fowre Hymnes, ed. Lilian Winstanley, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 1907.
Stone, Donald, « The Sense and Significance of Ronsard’s Seasonal Hymns », Symposium: A Quarterly Journal in Modern Literatures, 18/4 (1964), p. 321–331.
Stuckrad, Kocku von, « Discursive Study of Religion: From States of the Mind to Communication and Action », Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, 15 (2003), p. 255–271.
— Locations of Knowledge in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Esoteric Discourse and Western identities, Brill, Leiden 2010 (Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History, 186).
— Scientification of Religion: An Historical Study of Discursive Change, 1800–2000, De Gruyter, Boston – Berlin 2014.
Tateo, Francesco, Tradizione e realtà nell’umanesimo italiano, Dedalo Libri, Bari 1969.
Timotin, Andrei, La prière dans la tradition platonicienne, de Plato à Proclus, Brepols, Turnhout 2017 (Recherches sur les rhétoriques religieuses, 22).
Stark, Rodney, Roger Finke, Acts of Faith: Explaining the Human Side of Religion, University of California Press, Berkeley 2000.
Voss, Angela, Marsilio Ficino, North Atlantic Books, Berkeley 2006.
Walker, Daniel P.,« Orpheus the Theologian and Renaissance Platonists », Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 16/1–2 (1953), p. 100–120.
— Spiritual and Demonic Magic from Ficino to Campanella, University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame 1975.
Yates, Frances A., Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, University of Chicago Press, Chicago – London 1964.
— The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age, Routledge, London 1979.