Georgius Gemistus Plethon

MikeH

Thanks for the translation of the hexameters, Ross. No, one cannot deduce much from that. Nor does it matter much, except not to rely too much on scholars' conclusions from dubious unquoted evidence

Despite that caution, I have been reading Hankins, Plato in the Italian Renaissance, and want to try him out as an authority. Much of the book is not in Google Books, at least not that I can find. His general perspective is to minimize Plethon’s influence. However he is enough of a scholar (as opposed to a polemicist) to provide facts; and these facts lead me in the opposite direction. One line of thought, from Plethon to the Milan-based tarot, goes through Filelfo and would include Alberti, Malatesta, and others not versed in Neoplatonism. Another goes through Bessarion, Ficino and the revival of Proclus, Plotinus, and pseudo-Dionysus.

Here I will focus on the line of thought going through Filelfo etc, as that is where I think I might at least know where I am going.

FILELFO AND PHILOSOPHY

First, I think Woodhouse misled me as to Filelfo’s philosophical sophistication. Rather than spend time retyping long quotes from Hankins' main discussion of Filelfo, I will just post these pages—it is all relevant--, summarize, and add more quotes.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-APxZ-cdVAw0/TnmmmlKe6sI/AAAAAAAADik/R481d5tt17c/s1600/hankins90and91.jpg

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-tM_7GTGbyVA/TnmmmnQI6JI/AAAAAAAADis/LlgsrKQFYtw/s1600/hankins92and93.jpg

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-jaVcLTm7YrA/Tnmmm60wQ3I/AAAAAAAADi0/vpU7u9hrT2c/s1600/hankins94and95.jpg

Summary: Filelfo studied classical philosophy all his intellectual life. In outlook he could be described as an eclectic whose “sources were predominantly Stoic, Stoic, Middle Platonic, and Augustinian,” Hankins says. We can look at Hankins’ footnotes, pp. 93-94 for examples: Augustine, Dogenes Laertius, Boethius, Simpicius, Porphyry, Cicero, pseudo-Plutarch, Proclus. He translated Plato’s Euthyphro probably “around 1430,” Hankins argues (vol. 2, p. 407). He also translated three of Plato’s letters “1439/1440”—just the time, of course, of Plethon’s visit to Italy. Hankins has nothing but praise for Filelfo’s translations:
Filelfo’s merits as a philosopher emerge clearly when one examines his translations of Plato, which display accuracy, elegance, learning, and philosophical understanding. (Hankins p. 91)

Filelfo’s orientation toward Middle Platonism seems to me the most relevant to the images of the tarot. Of the Middle Platonists, the two most famous were Apuleius, in Latin, and Plutarch, in Greek. Since Filelfo was also a man of letters, in fact was court poet to two dukes and wrote “grossly obscene poetry” (Hankins p. 91), it seems reasonable to me that he would have been attracted to Plutarch’s essays, even if he didn’t quote from them in his De morali disciplina. Plutarch wrote Middle Platonic allegories with much Greco-Roman mythic imagery, of which the most relevant are On Isis and Osiris and On the Face in the Orb of the Moon.

I actually see lots of opportunity for Plutarch’s essays in the Milan-based tarot, from the Cary Sheet to the Marseille. To give details would take me too far afield. If you go to “Bianca’s Garden” at THF and do a search in that forum for “Plutarch,” 14 posts come up, mostly by me, relating Plutarch to particular cards. In the “Research” forum there, see the first 5 posts, which are also mostly by me. Cary Sheet examples are the Popess, the Star, and the Moon. (On Aeclectic, see my post on the Star at http://www.tarotforum.net/showpost.php?p=1968456&postcount=37.) In Noblet and after, many cards fit something in Plutarch. Before reading Hankins, I had no suspicion that this orientation might have gone back to Filelfo.

FILELFO AND PLETHON

Then there is the question of Filelfo’s contact with Plethon. It is clear that Filelfo respected Plethon philosophically. Hankins says
Filelfo, we know, met him in Bologna after the Council and was deeply impressed by his philosophical knowledge, but there is no suggestion in any of Filelfo’s writings that he was acquainted with the more esoteric side of Pletho’s beliefs, which Pletho was in any case careful to confine to initiates of his school. (p.437)
In a footnote, Hankins cites the letter in Legrand p. 48 that Ross posted and Woodhouse p. 158, which I posted.

In addition, we know that Filelfo read Plethon’s De Differentiis closely. Hankins says,
Filelfo too owned a copy of the De Differentiis which he annotated... (vol. 2 p. 438)
(Hankins’ reference is “Laur. LXXX, 24; see M. Bandini Cat. Codd. Graec. Bibl. Med. Laur. 3:213-215 and [i[Mostro della biblioteca di Lorenzo nella iblioteca Medicea Laurenzianoa... (Florence, 1949), p. 61, no. 206.)

Plethon, by his own account, wrote De Differentiis in Florence. See e.g.John Monfasani, George of Trezibond p. 202, http://books.google.com/books?id=qi...q=George of Trebizond de differentiis&f=false)
So he could easily have given (in person) or sent (soon after) a copy to Filelfo.


FILELFO, PLETHON, AND THE PRISCA PHILOSOPHIA

Hankins in one place describes Filelfo’s views in terms that I think probably shows the influence of Plethon. It is on p. 93, one of the pages I posted earlier, but it is worth seeing by itself. For Filelfo, Hanks says:
...Plato, the greatest of philosophers, owed his greatness in part to having brought together the physics of Heraclitus, the metaphysics of Pythagoas and the moral thought of Socrates. Even Plato’s doctrine of the Ideas had been borrowed from Pythagoras who was himself following Zoroaster and the Chaldean mages. This suggestion of an esoteric diadoche reminds us of Ficino’s ancient theology, although Filelfo first enunciated it in 1464, too early to have been influenced by Ficino or Bessarion.
It was Plethon who, we learn later in Hankins' sections on George of Trebizond and Ficino, had promoted Zoroaster as the original philosophical influence on Plato (Hankins p. 201, in Google Books). Thus Ficino saw Zoroaster as one of the six greatest philosophers of antiquity (Latin on p. 283-4, in Google Books): the others, in succession, were Trismegistus, Pythagoras, Orpheus, someone called Aglaothemis, and Plato). Moreover, Ficino, following Plethon, credited the Chaldean Oracles to Zoroaster. Hankins, on Ficino: ..
He also knew Pletho’s edition of the Chaldean Oracles and derived form it his notion of a “Zoroastrian trinity”...(p. 438)
It was also Plethon who first promoted the idea of the “prisca theologia”—articulated in embryo by Filelfo in 1464--in the Latin West. Compare Hankins on Filelfo, quoted above, with Hankins on Pletho:
We do not hear of Pletho and his followers sacrificing milk-white bullocks within the citadel of Mistra. His polytheism is the polytheism of late ancient Neoplatonism, and especially of Proclus, wherein the gods, arranged hierarchically from the high god Zeus, stand for transcendental principles or causes of substances and changes in the phenomenal world. Zeus is thus a sign for the principle of being, Poseidon (identified also with Neoplatonic Nous) is the principle of activity, Pluto of the human soul and so forth. The pagan myths and biblical stories, insofar as they have not been corrupted by poets and “sophists”, are not historical events, but shadowy representations in linguistic form of metaphysical (or divine) truths, which may only be grasped truly in contemplative noesis. The myths of Orpheus, the rape of Persephone, and Adam and Eve are thus at root the same story; both of them contain hidden truths about the fixity of human destiny, truths which, though visible to hidden powers of intuition within the soul, are strictly beyond the ability of language to communicate.(p. 200, Google Books)
The next page or so in Hankins is also well worth reading. He describes how for Pletho, all religions, pagan and Christian, have become corrupted.
But above these corrupted religions, there soared a more ancient and sublime form of religion which had been known to “antique legislators and philosophers” and might yet be known to choice spirits in the modern world through a diligent study of the greatest of ancient philosophers. (p. 201, in Google books)
It is this type of religion which Bessarion defended, first in Greek in 1459 and in more detail in Latin ten years later, in his defense of Plethon against George of Trezibond.


FILELFO, PLETHON, AND THE TAROT AS HIEROGLYPH

I have no idea how Zoroaster and the Chaldean Oracles, which Plethon called to Ficino's and probably Filelfo's attention, might have influenced the tarot. (Well, there is http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=56819; but that is only one card.). The influence or lack thereof of Plotinus, Proclus, and pseudo-Dionysus on tarot has also been discussed on Aeclectic (on the last=named, there is http://www.tarotforum.net/showpost.php?p=1887145&postcount=210), but I don’t want to go there. I want to focus on just the theme of the “prisca philosophia,” which as far as I know was introduced to the post-ancient Latin West by Plethon.

What does the “ancient philosophy” uniting Christianity with paganism—for which Ficino after 1467 found a formulation acceptable to the orthodoxy of the time--have to do with the tarot? I hypothesize that Plethon’s high valuation of a primal philosophy, and a primal religion--one not fully realized until Christ, in Ficino’s revision--connects with what the Italians were also reading in ancient authors about hieroglyphs. Hieroglyphs were thought to have been the preferred means by which the Egyptians and after them the Romans communicated their most noble ideas, ideas that in that form could be understood and read by wise men anywhere, anytime.

Filelfo was well aware of hieroglyphs and the thinking about them. His friend Filarete, the architect whom Cosimo had sent to Francesco Sforza from Florence, wrote of hieroglyphs
They are all picture letters; some have one animal, some another, some have a bird, some a snake, some an owl, some are like a saw and some like an eye, and some with some kinds of figures, some with one thing and then another, so that there are few that can translate them. It is true that the poet Francisco Filelfo told me that some of these animals meant one thing and some another. Each one had its own meaning. The eel means envy. Thus each one has its own meaning...(Curran, The Egyptian Renaissance p. 85)
Here is that last part in Italian:
Vero e che ‘l poeta Francesco Filelfo mi diesse che quegli animali significavano chi una cosa e chi un’altra, ciascheduno ognuno per se, l’anguilla significa la ‘nvidia, e cosi ognuna ha sua significazione, se gia loro ancora on avessino fatto ch’elle fussino pure come sono l’altre e potessinsi compitare. (Curran p. 320).
None of this is very philosophical, to be sure. We’re getting there.

Filarete’s reference to Filelfo is confirmed in one of Filelfo’s letters. Charles Dempsey writes:
Filarete’s memory, at least on this one point, did not fail him, for a letter written by Filelfo in 1444 to Scalamonti, the biographer of Syriacus of Ancona, refers to Horapollo and specifically cites the eel as meaning envy (“Renaissance Hieroglyphic Studies and Bellini’s St. Mark,” in Hermeticism and the Renaissance: Intellectual History and the Occult in Early Modern Europe p. 354).
Alberti, who as a member of the curia was certainly in Florence for the conclave and probably attended Plethon’s lectures, later wrote, in a work thought to have been largely composed in the 1440s:
The Egyptians employed the following sign language: a god was represented by an eye, nature by a vulture, a king by a bee, time by a circle, peace by an ox, and so on. They maintained that each nation knew only its own alphabet, and that eventually all knowledge of it would be lost—as has happened with our own Etruscan: we have sepulchers uncovered in city ruins and cemeteries throughout Etruria inscribed with an alphabet universally acknowledged to be Etruscan, their letters look not unlike Greek, or even Latin, yet no one understands what they mean. The same, the Egyptians claimed, should happen to all other alphabets, whereas the method of writing they used could be understood easily by expert men all over the world, to whom alone noble matters should be communicated (On the art of building in ten books, trans. Rykwert, Leach, and Tavernor, p. 256.)
I would expect that this quote, or at least sentiment, would have been known not long after Alberti deposited his manuscript with Nicholas V in 1452; it would probably have been noticed by Filarete, Alberti’s fellow architect, who was writing his own book and who would have discussed it with Filelfo. In fact, it probably was a common idea among Platonistically oriented humanists, which could be found also in Apuleius’s Golden Ass and Plutarch’s Of Isis and Osiris (I gave some quotes at http://www.tarotforum.net/showpost.php?p=2457172&postcount=43); and the 1440s was a time when enigmatic medallions started to be in fashion in the northern Italian courts (Curran p. 76), of which Alberti’s “winged eye” was probably the first. In any case, by the late 15th century such sentiments were commonplace; the illustrations of the Hypnerotomachia trade upon it.

The examples these Italian scholars cited, following Horapollo, Plutarch, and Amiannus, were moral teachings, not incompatible with Christianity. But with Plethon’s perspective there could also be seen the probability of religious teachings, from a perspective wider than Christianity. Again, there is Alberti’s “winged eye”—the eye of God, but with pagan-looking wings (for the image, see my post at http://www.tarotforum.net/showpost.php?p=2467477&postcount=45). The very word “hieroglyph” meant “sacred carving”—so how could religious matters as well as moral ones not also have been communicated? And could one even separate morality from religion, since the latter was the foundation for the former?

Tarot cards, of course, are also pictures, and the trumps, even in the Cary Yale, mostly depict “noble matters,” in Alberti’s phrase. As such they are capable of being understood by people of various languages; and no doubt some would have thought even by people in the distant future, if the truths communicated were in fact eternal truths and not ephemera. And likewise they mixed pagan with Christian imagery, just as Plethon and those influenced by him did. (By the time of the Cary Sheet, I believe, Egyptianate imagery was added as well (see my post at http://forum.tarothistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=566&p=8116&hilit=Egyptianate#p8116). The result might then be something inexpressible in language, known only by intuition.

So my thought is that one way Plethon could have influenced tarot is not in the images of particular cards, nor through Neoplatonism as such, but merely in the significance of the tarot trump images generally, as communicating profound matters that transcend language, nationality, and particular religious beliefs and practices. At this time of religious warfare and factionalism, the hope of developing a religion that transcended particular places and their history would have been attractive. There were even Chinese in Florence then, with their picture-language, whose philosophical writings must have been imagined as similar expressions of the “prisca theologia” on an even broader scale.

Later, Pico’s and others’ research into Kabbalah would tend to confirm the idea of the prisca philosoophia and prisca theologia (the ancient philosophy and theology at the root of all subsequent ones). God’s spoke in geometrical figures, Jewish-derived examples of which can be seen in Agrippa’s Three Books of Occult Philosophy and also the Sefer Raziel (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sefer_Raziel_HaMalakh). God communicated the truth to Adam before the fall, and Adam passed down what he could remember to his posterity. God’s language may also be that spoken by angels, whom Ficino described as speaking in a different language that he could understand (Hankins vol. 1 p. 278, in Google Books).

At some point, I think pretty early, alchemy was added to the mix, as part of the prisca theologia et philosophia. So we see enigmatic pictures of Greek myths offered allegoricaly. It, too, was imagined to be descended from divinity. Although this is late, here is Etteilla in the 18th century, holding that the secret of the elixir was first held by Adam (2nd Cahier, pp. 68-69).
La Médecine universelle tire son origine de l'arbre de vie qui étoit en Eden; le texte y est formel. Avant de déluge, on no se servoit que de la Médecine [p. 69] universelle [1: Sans Médecine universelle, on a de la peine à expliquer comment le grand âge des premiers Hommes...]; la science en étoit commune à tous les Hommes, & tous vivoient plusieurs siecles; mais mésusant d'une vie longue jusqu'à s'adonner à des vices sans contredit impardonnables, les Hommes furent submergés.

Par Chanaan, petit-fils de Noé, ceette Science passa seulement aux premiers nés des Chananéens, des Amorrhéens, des Guergésiens, des Hétiens, des Héviens, des Périsiens & des Jébusiens, ainsi par Sem & par Japhet à leurs premiers nés.
My translation:
The universal Medicine draws its origin from the tree of life that was in Eden; the text there is definite. Before the deluge, one was served only by the universal Medicine [Footnote 1: Without universal Medicine, it is difficult to explain the great age of the first Men...]; knowledge of it was common to all Men, and all lived several centuries; but misusing a long life so as to give themselves to unarguably unforgivable vices, Men were submerged.

By Chanaan, grandson of Noah, this Knowledge passed only to the first born sons of the Chananians, the Amorrhians, the Guergesians, the Hetians, the Hevians, the Perisians and the Jebusians, so by Sem and by Japhet to their first-born.
I have talked elsewhere about the close relationship of alchemy and tarot (http://forum.tarothistory.com/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=647).

I don’t know of anyone clearly articulating the belief in the prisca philosophia before Plethon. In fact, Plethon usually isn’t even mentioned, as opposed to Ficino and Pico (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perennial_philosophy). Nor is he mentioned in relationship to the prisca theologia(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermeticism#The_.22Prisca_Theologia.22)’ but he clearly had that as well. The tarot, in that spirit, could be conceived as a modern version of the hieroglyphs that, it was believed, were used by the ancients, and even God himself, to preserve a universal philosophy and religion which humanity could gradually understand on deeper levels as it progressed.

This is in addition to the Middle Platonic Plutarchian orientation that I see in the individual images of the Cary Sheet and Marseille-style cards, which I attribute more to Filelfo’s influence than Plethon’s.

So by investigating Plethon and Filelfo, we might add a piece or two to this jigsaw puzzle of tarot, or at least learn more of the cards’ historical context.
 

MikeH

Pletho and the Sun card

Since the people on the Chaldean Oracles thread (http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=56819) had the unhistorical idea that Waite's image came from Golden Dawn members' research on the Chaldean Oracles, here is the passage from the Oracles along with the PMB Sun card 2nd artist, the Cary Sheet card, the same card as reconstructed by Pollett, and the Vieville.

Having spoken these things, you will behold
either a fire leaping skittishly like a child over the aery waves;
or an unformed fire from which a voice emerges;
or a rich light that whirs around the field in a spiral.
But [it is also possible] that you will see a horse flashing more brightly than light,
either also a fiery child mounted on the swift back of the horse,
covered with gold or naked;
or even a child shooting arrows, upright upon the horse's back.
http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=56819

19caryShVieville.JPG


As I said in my previous post, the Chaldean Oracles were edited by Plethon and attributed by him to Zoroaster. Both Filelfo in Milan, 1464, and Ficino later in Florence repeat this attribution and make them part of a kind of "prisca theologia."
 

Huck

Since the people on the Chaldean Oracles thread (http://www.tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=56819) had the unhistorical idea that Waite's image came from Golden Dawn members' research on the Chaldean Oracles, here is the passage from the Oracles along with the PMB Sun card 2nd artist, the Cary Sheet card, the same card as reconstructed by Pollett, and the Vieville.

...

As I said in my previous post, the Chaldean Oracles were edited by Plethon and attributed by him to Zoroaster. Both Filelfo in Milan, 1464, and Ficino later in Florence repeat this attribution and make them part of a kind of "prisca theologia."

hi MikeH,

that's quite an interesting jump in this thread with your two last posts. For Plethon I see it generally of interest to get an detailed overview about the stations of his late life.

Filelfo I would perceive as an topic of itself, which might easily kill the original Plethon thread. Filelfo was rather important to the Milanese development and so to a complex world of Tarot development and Plethon' relationship to Filelfo is only a small part of this. So I would suggest an own Filelfo thread, in which one could follow Filelfo's own development and also that, what he took o Plethon.

Just to get clear the dates to understand the influence of Plethon on Filelfo: When Plethon worked on the Chaldean oracles? When Filelfo worked on the Chaldean oracles and best also, when Filelfo got the text of Plethon to the Chaldean oracles?

You indicate an influence of the Chaldean oracles at the PMB-sun ... which according some own discussion of mine likely was done 1465. You note in this context "Filelfo in 1464" ... what it this precisely? The date of Filelfo's manuscript ? I see, that Hankins doesn't go in detail to this?

I find from Malatesta in Condottieridiventura.it ...

Decide di ripiegare da Misistra, per una serie di concause che vanno dallo scarseggiare di vettovaglie e di munizioni, alle malattie, all’avvicinarsi del freddo ed al rafforzamento dell’esercito nemico, che minaccia di chiudergli le vie del ritorno. Fa trasportare in Italia le ceneri di Giorgio Gemisto Pletone, il filosofo della rinascita pagana e della cultura greca, che saranno inumate a Rimini. Sotto una pioggia battente ed in condizioni climatiche altamente sfavorevoli, effettua la ritirata delle sue milizie per vie inusuali e meno sorvegliate dai turchi. Per strada attacca Patimo, espugna il castello e ne fa a pezzi il presidio; fra le sue truppe, più di metà dei sopravvissuti si ammala di malaria; molti soldati muoiono per il freddo e la fame.

... that Malatesta transported the bones of Plethon in December 1464 to Rimini, but Malatesta himself returned in December 1465.

So there are two ways of communicative interaction possible:

1. The bones returned December 1464, the activity caused Filelfo's interest in Plethon and the Chaldean's oracle in early 1465 (which might be easily "Filelfo's 1464", cause errors in the range of the calendar differences are common).

2. Or Plethon really already made his work in 1464 (perhaps already informed, that Malatesta had the plan to transfer the bones - Sforza's system of spies likely worked rather well)

Further we have Cosimo di Medici's death in August 1464 ... When Cosimo died, likely a wave of condolences went through Italy and naturally a great interest in that, what Cosimo did in his last years (sponsoring Ficino's Platon translation) and also the new Medici Chapel with a big Trionfo of the holy three kings, between it also a picture with Plethon ...

Benozzo_Gozzoli%2C_Pletone%2C_Cappella_dei_Magi.jpg


... Plethon given interestingly at the side of the painter (Benito Gozzoli) himself and below the picture of pope Pius II., Enea Silvio Piccolomin. So a rather prominent position for Plethon, just in this year 1464, when the pope died in the same moth as Cosimo.

plethon-2.jpg


News about all this might have reached Malatesta, who in Morea took the opportunity to get Plethon's bones.

At another place ...
http://tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=161451
... in post #4 I've pointed to a Persian delegation in Venice ...

uzun-hassan.jpg


... in September 1464 and I explain there, that the quick departure of the Persian delegation might have something to do with the political changes accompanying Cosimo's death.

The fresh Italian contact to the kingdom of Uzun Hassan might have stimulated the public interest in old Persian religion (Zarathustra) and the whole naturally appeared with the new war between Venetia and the Osmanic Empire, in which Persia became interesting as a partner in military alliance.

So from various perspectives there is testified an interest in Plethon just in this year 1464.

The putti-with-sun motive from 1465 in the six additional cards of PMB ...

d0204619.jpg


... accompanied by two other putti at the card World in the same series ...

d0204621.jpg


... fit with the extended interest for putti of Malatesta in the Tempio Malatestiana. As examples ...

putti-world.jpg


music-angels.jpg


Putti became later a rather usual attribute, but in 1450's, when Duccio used them for his work at the Tempio for Malatesta (1450-1457) they might have been less common.

The relations between Sforza family and Malatesta were stressed, but it is not sure, how Sforza, the "old soldier", felt in 1465 about it, after Malatesta was excommunicated and took up condottieri-work in Greece as an act of repentance.

Well, the putti-with-sun motive is just "sun" in Tarot ... the sun is young in the East of the world and in the East of Italia was Persia and so somehow ideas connected to Zoroaster might have been acceptable.
Old Greek ideas to the sun symbol were not a horseman, but chariot drivers (Helios, Phaethon), but at least horse-connected.

For the later horseman in Marseille Tarot at sun cards one might think of the Indian Kalki, the 10th avatar in Indian mythology. But anyway, this is very late and I wouldn't discuss it in the current context.

************

For your mentioned Plutarch influence I could point to ...

http://tarotforum.net/showthread.php?t=80047&highlight=plutarch

..., an older thread, in which I focus on the condition, that Plutarch used pairs of heroes in his "Lives". Pairs were used as "stylish instrument" in Boiardo's Tarocchi poem and in the Sola-Busca Tarocchi, also the important Ferrarese scholar Guarino in an early phase ...

Guarino studied 5 years below Chrysoloras and had later a second journey with him, Filelfo - much younger (28 years) - took as wife a daughter of the Chrysoloras family.

But the Filelfo letter collection knows only a short letter from 1448 from Filelfo to Guarino. ...
http://www.uni-mannheim.de/mateo/itali/autoren/philelphus_itali.html#ALFA
 

Ross G Caldwell

Just to get clear the dates to understand the influence of Plethon on Filelfo: When Plethon worked on the Chaldean oracles? When Filelfo worked on the Chaldean oracles and best also, when Filelfo got the text of Plethon to the Chaldean oracles?

It doesn't seem likely that Filelfo knew Plethon's text, and I can't see any evidence that he knew of the Oracles at all.

Plethon's edition of the Oracles - drawn from Psellos and Proclus mostly - seems to be a work of his later years, back in Mistra. At least as far as I can tell from the vague information about precise dates given in various sources. Maybe it is impossible to know exactly when he produced it. The most detailed discussion of his work on the Oracles, and his attribution to Zoroaster, is in Michael Stausberg, Faszination Zarathustra, I, pp. 35-82. There are some pages missing from the preview, but I can't find any evidence that anybody in Italy knew of it before Mirandola and Ficino.

http://books.google.com/books?id=gB...sberg +faszination&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false

(scroll to the very top of the book - volume 1)

He also has a section (pp. 136-139) on Filelfo's opinion of Zoroaster and his primary place in the prisca philosophia, noting that, like Plethon, he dates him to 5000 years before the Trojan war. However, the source for this date is Plutarch, Isis and Osiris, chapter 46, which doesn't mention the Oracles, and I don't see any mention of Filelfo knowing the Oracles in Stausberg.

From a review -

"Stausberg's book (which originated as a doctoral thesis at the University of Bonn) shows how Zarathustra/Zoroaster was perceived and transmitted beginning with Georgios Gemistos Plethon, who claimed that the Chaldean Oracles were documents of Zoroastrian wisdom. But the key figure in the transmission of Zoroastrianism was Marsilio Ficino, as he amalgamated the figure of Zoroaster into his "Platonic theology." Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and Agostino Steuco were in different ways concerned about the acceptability of the ancient theology from the Christian point of view,...

"this book, based on sources in most European languages plus some non-European, is a monument of encyclopedic learning. All discussions of Zoroastrianism are presented in their proper biographical and intellectual contexts, and many of them -- even those well known to Renaissance scholars -- appear in a new light. A reader who starts with the twenty-page foreword (by the doyen of religious history studies in Germany, Carsten Colpe) might be astonished by its almost hymnical tone, but by the end of the book, it is clear that this study is a major contribution to the theory of religion and needs a translation into English."

(there's some work for you, Huck!)

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Faszination+Zarathustra:+Zoroaster+und+die+Europaische...-a064057487
 

Huck

It doesn't seem likely that Filelfo knew Plethon's text, and I can't see any evidence that he knew of the Oracles at all.

Plethon's edition of the Oracles - drawn from Psellos and Proclus mostly - seems to be a work of his later years, back in Mistra. At least as far as I can tell from the vague information about precise dates given in various sources. Maybe it is impossible to know exactly when he produced it. The most detailed discussion of his work on the Oracles, and his attribution to Zoroaster, is Michael Stausberg, Faszination Zarathustra, I, pp. 35-82. There are some pages missing from the preview, but I can't find any evidence that anybody in Italy knew of it before Mirandola and Ficino.

...
... "it is clear that this study is a major contribution to the theory of religion and needs a translation into English."

(there's some work for you, Huck!)

http://www.thefreelibrary.com/Faszination+Zarathustra:+Zoroaster+und+die+Europaische...-a064057487

... :) ... I surely will not attempt to translate a 1084-pages-dissertation (Stausberg) to English. Michael Stausberg, born in Cologne (1966), studied in Bonn religious history, now likely active in Norway.

So maybe I misunderstood MikeH. In Hankins (Mike's source) I found this ...
http://books.google.com/books?id=BLgfAAAAIAAJ&q=1464#v=snippet&q=1464&f=false
... which refers to the year "1464", in which Filelfo made "something" about Zarathustra and Chaldean mages. I took this as a sort of confirmation for Mike's 1464 ...

Mike wrote:
As I said in my previous post, the Chaldean Oracles were edited by Plethon and attributed by him to Zoroaster. Both Filelfo in Milan, 1464, and Ficino later in Florence repeat this attribution and make them part of a kind of "prisca theologia."

According this: Filelfo attributed the text to Zoroaster and this naturally not doesn't directly state, that Filelfo knew much about the text or the text itself. But MikeH offered a text passage and related the poem to cards. If this would be in any way relevant, then somebody should have known this text passage, before the cards were made (for the PMB-sun I assume the year 1465). So, possibly Filelfo might have known it ...

Stausberg now gives information about a text "Epistula [(Epistola)] de opinionibus philosophorum", made by Filelfo in 1464, which plausibly might contain the attribution of Chaldean oracles to Zarathustra. The search engine don't find this text mentioned in Hankins' "Plato in the renaissance", but Stausberg claims (footnote 275), that Hankins' work contains a translation at pp. 515-523.

But the description of Stausberg seems to indicate a small text with just a few remarks about Zarathustra (between them "Zarathustra lived 5000 years before the Trojan war")
with the tendency to accept the older Chaldean culture as higher and older than the Egyptian.
Stausberg notes, that a similar text to Zarathustra was already written in 1429 by Filelfo.

Ficino is said to have had the text of Plethon and passages are reported in Theologica platonica, which saw assumed to have been written short after 1473.

In this time 1464 (Filelfo) - 1473 (Ficino) the variously mentioned Uzun Hassan reigning in Persia had been a general Christian hope in the fight against the Osmans. Perhaps this stimulated the both writers to give some attention to Zarathustra, who somehow was a Persian ... just in 1473 the papal naval army returned victorious from Smyrna "in triumph" ... with great celebrations in spring in Rome.
 

MikeH

Unfortunately, I had to return my interlibrary loan copy of Hankins, and it is still in transit. When it gets back on the shelves of the source library, I will go and copy pp. 515ff to see whether Zoroaster or Plethon is mentioned. It is probably the "text 30" of Hankins' footnote on p. 93 (one of the pages I posted in the first of my two most recent posts), where he talks about Filelfo's attributing the Chaldean Oracles to Zoroaster in 1464. Since nobody else made that attribution, he must have gotten from Plethon.

Perhaps a search for "Zoroaster" or "Chaldean" in Google Books for Hankins vol. 2 would turn up something. I will try, although I'm not sure of the spelling of these words in Latin.

Woodhouse (pp. 51-53) gives an English translation of Plethon's version--it's only 60 lines long--as well as a "Brief Explanation" that he wrote. Woodhouse says (p. 48f):
Gemistos' text of the Oracles was first translated into Latin by Marsilio Ficino, Cosimo de Medici's protege. His version gives the same sixty lines in the same order as Gemistos'; he probably also used, but did not translate, Gemistos' Commentary.
These texts were published in Paris in 1538, with a Latin translation 1539, and with two Latin translations in 1593, Woodhouse says (p. 49). In relation to the PMB Sun card, the following lines seem relevant (13-16, 45):
You must hasten towards the light and rays of the Father,
Whence your soul was sent out, clothed in abundant intellect.
The earth mourns them continually unto their children:
Those who thrust out the soul and inhale are easy to loose.
...
Draw tight from all sides the reins of the fire with an untouched soul.
Here "children" would seem to be the ideas of God as they exist in the minds of humans. But I have read somewhere that "boy" was a standard image for Intellect, or maybe something from Intellect, in Middle Platonic or Neoplatonic writings, and so an appropriate image for something intermediary between the Sun, i.e. Nous, and humans. If so, it may be that the children on the PMB Sun and World cards didn't need the inspiration of Plethon's version at all; however his attribution of the Oracles, which were frequently quoted by Neoplatonists, to Zoroaster might have given their appearance elsewhere some importance to Filelfo in terms of the "prisca theologia."

Line 45 seems to compare the rays, sent down to humans in the course of meditation or ritual, to horses, whose reins we must grab tightly. But of course there isn't a horse on the PMB card, so this line isn't relevant for that card anyway.

Plethon's version is very compressed. By 1650, the time of Vieville, the version I quoted earlier was probably available (although I must confirm that), with an explicit reference to the horse and child.

I will continue researching Filelfo and what was available to him, including his access to fragments of the Oracles in other works besides Plethon's edition. But I will probablyfocus more on Ficino, from whom interest in the Chaldean Oracles, as clearly stimulated by Plethon, would have radiated out to Europe generally in the 16th and 17th century. There are other lines in that version of the Chaldean Oracles of interest in relation to the tarot, but I don't have more time today.
 

MikeH

It occurs to me that I did not explain fully how the quote from Plethon's version of the Chaldean Oracles relates to the children on the PMB Sun and World cards. Also, I did not take into account Plethon's own explanation of these lines. Let me try again (lines 13-16, from Woodhouse p. 52).
You must hasten towards the light and rays of the Father,
Whence your soul was sent out, clothed in abundant intellect.
The earth mourns them continually unto their children:
Those who thrust out the soul and inhale are easy to loose.
The first two lines are clear enough. In the third line, "them" refers to the souls as they were on high, sent out by the Father, now fallen into matter; they are mourned by the earth because of this calamity, which is akin to death. The "children" are then the souls that remain trapped in matter. The earth directs its mourning to them as an indication that they have not always been that way, that they may regain their former life. All they have to do is "thrust out the soul and inhale" the divine rays.

The child on the Sun card could then be the soul speeding toward the light. However I am not totally satisfied by this interpretation, as ithe child on the card seems more like a daemon, the image of a daemon seen in trance directing the observer of the card toward the light. The same would be true of the two children on the World card, holding up the world of ideas to the observer, like good daemons directing the soul upwards. Such daemons are spoken of in a later place, line 34
Nature gives proof that there exist pure daemons

Now for Plethon's treatment of these lines in his "Commentary." There Plethon says of lines 13-16, as paraphrased by Woodhouse (p. 55):
The 'light and rays of the sun of the Father' (l. 13) mean the place from which the soul descends to earth. This is also called Paradise (l. 25). It is the soul's duty to hasten back to that light. Those who do not do so will suffer for their sins, and so will their children (l. 15). It is the task of reason to divert the soul from iniquity and so release it from oblivion (l. 16).
It seems to me that in referring to "oblivion" Plethon is tying line 16 with the lines immediately preceding (i.e. lines 10-12)
But the paternal intellect does not admit her volition
Until she has issued forth out of oblivion and spoken the word,
Having taken in the memory of the holy watch-word of the Father;
The soul ("her") is not admitted to Paradise until she has remembered a token of the divine rays, a memory which, following Plato's methods, can be recovered by the use of reason.

Plethon then interprets lines 13-16 in much the same way I have, except for giving them a moralistic gloss. Instead of merely longing for its home, the soul has return as its "duty"; and the fall is not merely inevitable, once separated from the Father, but a result of "sins."

Plethon's comment on the other line, by which I identify the children on the cards as daemons, is quoted by Woodhouse directly, not merely paraphrased (p. 57):
It is said that 'nature, or natural reason, persuades the sacred daemons, and in a word all that proceeds from the God who is good in himself, to be beneficent' (l. 34).
What is important here is that the daemons are referred to as "sacred," proceeding from God, and that they act according not just to nature but to "natural reason". In another place Plethon says more about daemons. Here again is Woodhouse's paraphrase (p. 56):
The soul uses a heavenly body as its vehicle, and that vehicle itself possesses soul of an irrational kind (called by philosophers the 'image' of the rational soul), but equipped with imagination and sensation. Through the power of imagination the rational is permanently united with such a body, and through such a body the human soul is united with the mortal body. The souls of daemons have superior, immortal vehicles, and the souls of stars have still more superior vehicles. 'These are the theories of the soul which appear to have been held from an even earlier date by the Magi following Zoroaster.'
The child on the Sun card could be the human soul using the Sun as its vehicle, or a daemon having the Sun as its vehicle, or the soul of the Sun itself.
 

Huck

Differences between German and English Wikipedia-articles: Chaldean oracles
---------------

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaldean_Oracles
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaldäische_Orakel

German: Julian the Theurg (or his father) is accepted as author. Julian gets an own (longer) and informative biography. The Chaldean Oracles have an earlier title, which is mentioned in the Suda, an early Byzantine dictionary ("Lógia di' epōn"), as the work of Julian.
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_der_Theurg
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suda

English: Julian the Theurg is doubted as the true original author. Instead Augustine of Hippo is mentioned as a critique of Julian.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustine_of_Hippo
The text is recognized as hellenistic, and from this very globally some connections are drawn to Neoplatonists like Plotin, Porphyri, Iamblichus. Finally Wilhelm Kroll and Westcott are mentioned.

German: In contrast to the English article the German article offers much more details (I reduced the text in own words):

******************

* It's noted, that 210 surely authentic and 16 doubtful fragments have survived

* 4/5th of the fragments have been quoted by Proklos, 1/5th comes from Damaskios

* the fragments were collected by Wilhelm Kroll in a dissertation and published in Latin 1894

* Details to Julian the Theurg, better given in the special article to Julian

* The oracles are given to specific gods as answers to questions (the questuions are not known). A very important role plays the goddess Hecate.

* The content of the original can't be reconstructed in detail. It seems, that the author referred to Platonism, especially the Parmenides dialog.

* A Triad is seen as highest principle with father (Fire, the highest, Force ("dynamis) and Intellect (Nous). The Intellect has two form. All together build a unity (I interpret, that this is rather similar to the Chinese Tao-Yang-Yin-model with Tao=Father, dynamis=yang). The Father hasn't created the world, but the Nous as Demiurg. The Father isn't part of the world, he has retired.
[contrasting to this statement in German wikipedia I found this explanation: "At the top of
the hierarchy is a trinity consisting of (1) the Supreme Deity, (2) a Demiurge
Intellect, and (3) a female divinity identified as Hecate.", a somewhat different opinion.
http://www.doaks.org/publications/doaks_online_publications/ByzMagic/magic05.pdf ....]

* Angels and messengers called "íynges" appear to communicate between gods and humans, also "synocheís", which stabilize a cosmic order. Eros has a big role, which is seen as a universal force, which creates harmony. A migration of the souls is part of the oracle concepts, but it seen as impossible, that humans could become animals.

* An important theme is given the descend of the soul from the spiritual level to the world of the body and its intention to return back and ascend to its true home. A relation is seen to the Platon dialog "Timaios" with "7 spheres of the planets" and "chariot of the soul". The oracles could help to realize the ascend.

* The old name had been "ta lógia", the adjective "Chaldean" had been used seldom before 11th century. The older sources spoke of Chaldeans or Theurgs as authors, so it is assumed, that Julian the Theurg and his father (who seems to have been called Julian the Chaldean) were both considered as authors.
[my remark: it is interesting, that in the I-Ching we have the same story: a father (King Wen, who made the hexagrams and possibly the judgment) and a son (the duke of Chou) are seen as the authors.]

* Numenios, who lived in the 2nd century, showed similarities to the Chaldean oracles. It's not clear, if Numenios took from the oracles or if the authors of the oracles from Numenios.
It's a possibility, that the author of the oracle had been a priest in the temple of Belos in the home town of Numenios, Apameia in the Roman province Syria.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numenius_of_Apamea

* Porphyri in 3rd century wrote a lost work, which had the topic of the oracles (the oracles of Julian the Chaldean - Eis ta Ioulianoú tou Chaldaíou), possibly identical to "Tōn Chaldaíōn ta lógia" (which also is lost).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porphyry_(philosopher)

* Iamblichos of Chalkis, who probably also lived in Apameia, taught about the Oracles and gave the oracles a very high evaluation. He is said to have written a very big commentary with at least 28 books (lost).
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iamblichos_von_Chalkis

* Emperor Julian and Synesios of Cyrene and Proklos (a commentary is lost) are said to have been enthusiastic about the oracles. Damaskios (last scholarch of the platonic academy in Athen) made an interpretation of the oracles.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_the_Apostate
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synesius
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proclus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damascius

* Michael Psellos, a Byzantian scholar of 11th century, had an intensive occupation with the oracles. He considered similarities and differences between the oracles and Christian teachings. The base of his work was the lost commentary of Proklos, from which he possibly hadn't a version very near to the original (possibly only in fragments). He noted the oracles variously and wrote 3 texts focused on their teachings (all 3 texts survived; (Exḗgēsis - an interpretation, Hypotýpōsis and Ékthesis). He delivered 42 fragments.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Psellos

* Michael Italikos wrote a "17th letter", which had as base the same text, which was also available to Psellos (12th century).
see http://www.doaks.org/publications/doaks_online_publications/ByzMagic/magic05.pdf

* Then comes Plethon. Plethon composed 36 of 42 Orakel, which he found in Psellos' work. ("60 teils defekte Hexameter"); the other six he believed to be corrupted. He made considerable editorial changes and wrote a commentary with explanations.
As author he identified Zarathustra and thought, that Zarathustra's pupils had collected the texts. According his opinion, Platon took his teachings from Zarathustra.
Plethon took the Chaldean Oracle as the oldest extant document of Zarathustra's tradition [Filelfo considered Zarathustra to have lived 5000 years before the Trojan war].
Plethon's collection was translated to Arabian language already during 15th century.

* Ficino had a copy of Plethon's text.

* Giano Lascaris translated the Oracles between 1500 and 1503 to Latin.

* In 1538/39 there were Greek and Latin editions printed in Paris, the Latin ontained the also the commentary of Plethon.

* François Habert translated the oracles to French (Les divins oracles de Zoroastre, 1558, Paris).

* Johannes Opsopoeus published 1589 an edition with a new Latin translation. He also edited the commentaries of Plethon and Psellos

* Plethon's opinion about the origin of the oracles was accepted first without critique.

* Marsilio Ficino, the papal librarian Agostino Steuco († 1548) and Francesco Patrizi († 1597) researched the oracles with this idea. It was generally accepted.

* In 1591 Patrizi's "Zoroaster et eius CCCXX oracula Chaldaica („Zarathustra and his 320 Chaldean Oracles“) took this very enlarged collection from Proklos, Damaskios, Simplikios, Olympiodoros und Synesios His enthusiasm for the Oracles caused dfficulties with the inquisition. 1596 "Nova de universis philosophia" by Patrizi, which contained many quotations and the edition in the appendix, was prohibited and burnt. But the reception of the Oracles stayed alive, till the mid of the 18th century constantly new editions appeared.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/patrizi/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franciscus_Patricius
[It's interesting to observe, that this Patrizi, who had a rather flexible life with much travels and journeys, spend his late life in Ferrara (as far I get it, also the time, when he published about the Oracles).]

* In 17th century scholars started to doubt the authorship of Zarathustra.

***********

My Personal Notes

* An English study of 1989 by Ruth Dorothy Majercik ...
http://books.google.com/books?id=Ow0VAAAAIAAJ&dq=De+oraculis+Chaldaicis+kroll&source=gbs_navlinks_s
... looked like a worthwhile text in English language.

* In my early studies maybe 25 years ago I'd had a German text about the Chaldean oracles ... I don't remember the name and author and much of the content, but then I had the impression, that the concept of soul descend and ascend in these Oracles reminded me on the book of death from Tibet.

* I had worked in the past years occasionally about lot books, naturally more of the renaissance lot books than others. Well, these have in common, that a mathematical scheme is used and you're guided mostly to a poetical answer. The used mathematical scheme usually had a sort of cosmological model, somehow presenting "life" or aspects of it. In many cases the model was rather cheap constructed, but there are also models of high complexity (especially Fanti 1526).
Why not just see the Chaldean Oracles as a lot book?

---------------

Location Apameia (or Apamea)

If we look at the history of Chaldean oracles, it seems that all connected authors of the early time were connected to the Syrian city Apameia (or came from a region nearby).
In late 4th century AD Apameia is said to have become capital of Syria Secunda (in other words Apameia dominated the cities Epiphania, Arethusa and Larissa, all at the river Orontes). To the East Apameia was connected to the trading route Chalcis ad Belum, Beroea (= Aleppo) - Hierapolis. Aleppo (Beroea) is called the "end of the silk road", Chalcis was the home city of Iamblichus and Hierapolis was the center of the great cult of the Dea Syria. As Southern trading routes were difficult and had long passages through deserts, Apameia had a crucial position to reach the river Euphrat from Southern-Eastern regions of the Mediterranean Sea.

It has inner logic, that just here, at an needle eye of trading routes and place of exchange between Eastern and Western ideas a religious melting-pot existed.

Apameia is counted inside the Syrian Tetrapolis: Antioch, Seleucia Pieria, Apamea, and Laodicea. The number of inhabitants in Apameia and Antioch in Roman time is given with 1/2 million for each of both by wikipedia, so both were near to the dimensions of the contemporary Rome and Alexandria. Both cities suffered variously later from strong earthquakes, Apamea was destroyed by one in 1152 and abandoned during 13th century.

http://books.google.com/books?id=hD...0CEUQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=syria secunda&f=false

apameia.jpg
 

MikeH

Interesting research, Huck. I found the part about the relationship of Plethon to Psellos especially helpful, that Plethon took 36 of Psellos’ 42, and also your listing of published editions. I wasn’t aware of the French.

The fragment about the boy and the horse, which I quoted in relation to the Sun card and which is not in Plethon’s version, is also not one of Psellos’s 42. It comes from Proclus’s In Rem Publicam, 1.111.3-11 of Kroll’s 1899 Leipzig edition. I get this information from the book Hecate Soteira: A Study of Hekata’s Roles in the Chaldean Oracles and Related Literature, by Sarah Iles Johnston, 1990, p. 111. That’s the only book on the Oracles I have been able to find locally, although I have other books on request from interlibrary loan. I think her source is Lewy, The Chaldean Oracles and Theurgy. The fragment is his 146 = Kroll’s fragment 57.

I have no idea when Proclus’s In Rem Publicam was first available to humanists. Looking at Kroll’s Latin introduction to Vol. 1, in Google Books, I see a date of 1538, probably when it was first published. In the introduction to Vol. 2, in the Free Library online version, I see a date of 1492, Laurentian, i.e. from the Medici Library. But that might just be for that copy. I haven’t tried to decipher the Latin and am not sure I can.

I do notice that an English translation of the Oracles in 1661 has the fragment in question. Here is the relevant part:
But also to see a Horse more glittering than Light.
Or a Boy on [thy] shoulders riding on a Horse,
Fiery or adorned with Gold, or devested,
Or shooting and standing on [thy] shoulders.
(http://www.esotericarchives.com/oracle/oraclesj.htm)

It would be interesting to see the 16th century French translation, to see whether it is there, and of course the Latin earlier. On the whole, the English translation of 1661 looks pretty bad, very confused. Ficino’s Latin, if it is anything like Woodhouse’s English translation, is much better.

I have been trying to determine more precisely when Ficino got his copy of Plethon’s edition of the Chaldean Oracles. I have not found anything definite, such as a letter thanking someone for it. As I said, I have requested several books on interlibrary loan (including the one you suggested). But my tentative answer: sometime after 1463 and before the end of 1469.

In 1463, when Ficino wrote the preface to his translation of Hermes Trismegistus, he lists Hermes as the first philosopher, in a line ending with Plato, with no mention of Zoroaster. Here is Hankins (p. 462):
In the preface to his translation of the Pimander, written in 1463, the Egyptian and Greek theologians are now grouped with Moses as instances of an older dispensation which prefigured the new faith of Christianity...We are also given a new diadoche of six anction theologians, beginning with Hermes Trismegistus, continuing through Orpheus, Aglaophemus, Pythagoras, Phkilalaus, and conclusiing (absoluta) with Plato.
Hankins adds later that it was not until 1474 that Ficino identified Zoroaster as the author of the Oracles, although he “evidently knew Plethon’s commentary as early as 1467/1469” (p. 463).

Why did Hankins give 1467/1469 as the time when Ficino knew Pletho’s version of the Oracles? He doesn’t explain. I turn to (a) Michael J.B. Allen’s Marsilio Ficino: The Philebus Commentary, and (b) an article by Moshe Idel.

Ficino’s Philebus Commentary put Zoroaster at the head of the list of philosophers that ended with Plato. On page 181 of Allen’s edition (p. 180 of the translation):
...But as the ancient theologians said—those whom Plato followed, Zoroaster, Hermes Trismegistus, Orpheus, Aglaophemus, Pythagoras—the vain belief in many gods arose universally from the many names of the Ideas...
Then again on p. 247:
Therefore the ancient theologians, Zoroaster, Hermes Trismegistus, Orpheus, Aglaophemus, Pythagoras, since...
The rest of this sentence will appear a little later in this post, as quoted by Moshe Idel.

According to Allen, using a complex philological argument which I could not possibly summarize (and don’t understand), the Philebus Commentary was written in the latter part of 1469, just after the Symposium Commentary and before Ficini started the Platonic Theology.. Allen says (p. 56)
In conclusion, then, I would argue for the latter half of 1469 as the period in which Ficino wrote the Philebus commentary.
This chronology seems accepted by other scholars, e.g. Anthony Levi on p. 108 of of Marsilio Ficino: His Theology, His Philosophy, His Legacy ed. Michael J.B. Allen and Valery Rees (in Google Books, see link below).

In addition, the words immediately following the list of philosophers in my second quote from the Philebus Commentary (Allen p. 247) suggest the influence of Plethon’s Oracles. Here I will quote Moshe Idel, p. 151 of his essay “Prisca Theologia in Marsilio Ficino and in Some Jewish Treatments,” pp. 137-158 of Marsilio Ficino: His Theology, His Philosophy, His Legacy (http://books.google.com/books?id=CX..."Prisca Theologia in Marsilio Ficino"&f=false
Here is what Idel says (the numbers in parentheses are his footnotes):
After enumerating the names of the sages mentioned Ficino maintains that:
they brought themselves as near as possible to God’s ray by releasing their souls, (38) and since they examined by the light of that ray (39) all things by uniting and dividing through the one and the many, they too were made to participate in the truth.(40)
This assessment is of paramount importance for the proper understanding of the nature of the ancient theology as envisioned by both Ficino and Pico. By a purifying way, or a mystical technique, the ancient pagan theologians brought themselves into contact with the divine light. It is quite possible that the passage betrays the influence of the Chaldean Oracles, which were attributed in the Renaissance to Zoroaster; using theurgic methods, the ancient figures were able to release their souls in order to attain communion with the divine ray. Participation in the truth is not the result of a revelation but of the ascent of the theurgist’s soul to the source of the Truth. Importantly, Ficino traces the earliest expression of the prisca theologia to Zoroaster. The last in this line is none other than Plato. It is this attribution of the ultimate origin of philosophy to Zoroaster that is characteristic of many of the Christian Renaissance syntheses, by contrast with contemporary Jewish insistence on the ancient Mosaic origin of Greek and pagan thought.

(38) On the separation of the soul from the body as part of the teaching of the Chaldeans see Hans Lewy, Chaldean Oracles and Theurgy, rev. edn Paris, 1978, pp. 186-188.

(39) On the centrality of the ray and light in the Chaldean Oracles see Lewy, ibid, pp. 60-61, 149-55, 185-200. See also Ficino’s Theologia Platonica X.8, which corresponds to the Chaldean Oracles, verses 13-14; cf. Ilana Klutstein-Roitman, Le Traductions latines des Oracles chaldaiques et des Hymnes Orphiques, Ph.D. Thesis, Hebrew Unviersity, Jerusalem, 1981, pp. 22-23.

(40) Ficino, The ‘Philibus’ Commentary p. 246. On Truth as a cosmic entity in the Chaldean Oracles,, see Lewy, Chaldean Oracles, pp. 144-48.

I do not yet have access to Lewy, but verses 13-14 are ones I quoted in my last post. Here they are again, with 15 and 16:
You must hasten towards the light and rays of the Father,
Whence your soul was sent out, clothed in abundant intellect.
The earth mourns them; continually unto their children:
Those who thrust out the soul and inhale are easy to loose.
The separation of soul from body would seem to be implied by line 16.

Ficino also shows his affinity with Plethon’s Chaldean Oracles in the sentences at the beginning of the paragraph, immediately preceding the ones I have quoted.
Plato adds that these gifts were handed down with the brightest fire, for individual things have been revealed by the ray of the divine truth. The ray of a fire has two powers: one burns, the other illuminates. So it is with the sun’s ray too, so too with God’s ray: it purges intelligence and souls with heat, separating them from lower things; it illuminates them with light. With the fervour of heat it inflames and excites the appetite of everything towards itself. With the splendour of light it reveals to all those who desire it the clarity of truth. Therefore the ancient theologians Zoroaster,...
The words following I have already quoted. These sentences clarify what Ficino means by “uniting and dividing” in the part quoted by Idel: heat divides, light unites.

The affinity of Ficino’s words with the Oracles is evident, in lines 13 and 45-48:
You must hasten towards the light and rays of the Father,
...
Draw tight from all sides the reins of the fire with an untouched soul.
When you behold the most holy fire without form
Flashing with quivering flames through the recesses of the whole world,
Then hearken to the voice of the fire.
So I think we can see why Woodhouse gave 1467/69 as the date when Ficino acquired the Plethon manuscript. For myself, I think we should allow the possibility of an earlier date than Woodhouse’s 1467 because Ficino translated the Philebus in 1464—he read some of it to Cosimo on his deathbed—and then lectured on that dialogue shortly after Cosimo's death, but interrupted (Allen p. 10: this must have been 1466, because Allen discusses the theory that the interruption was precipitated by Francesco Sforza's March 1466 death). There is also the 1464 date of Filelfo’s letter; perhaps there is a causal connection between the two humanists’ information.

It remains unclear from whom Ficino might have acquired Plethon’s manuscript. I would have thought Bessarion, but Woodhouse says that it is not among Bessarion’s manuscripts bequeathed to the city of Venice (p. 51):
Some significance should perhaps be given to the fact that the collection of Gemistos’ manuscripts which Bessarion bequeathed to the Library of San Marco, and which are thought to date mainly from the 1440s, including his autograph of the Summary of the doctrines of Zoroaster and Plato (acknowledged to be a later work), but not the autograph of the Commentary or the Brief Explanation. This tends to confirm their separation in time. It seems reasonable in any case to treat the Commentary and the Brief Explanation as relatively early works, since they evidently reflect an interest which Gemistos owed to Elissaeus.
Elissaeus is a Jewish teacher that Scholarios said introduced Plethon to Zoroastrianism (p. 51), and despite doubts about Scholarios’s truthfulness, Woodhouse considers this Elissaeus the likeliest source for Plethon’s introduction to the Oracles, given their sensitive nature among Christians. By “relatively early,” I think Woodhouse means before the 1440s.

There remains the question of whether either Ficino or Filelfo had access to the Proclus In Rem Publicam, with its imagery evocative of the PMB Sun card. If ithis work was in the Laurentian library in 1492, surely Ficino knew about it, at least late in life, and others after him. I have no idea whether Filelfo did, or when.
 

Ross G Caldwell

Hi Mike,

Does Hankins really say that Filelfo attributes the Oracles to Zoroaster?

It is probably the "text 30" of Hankins' footnote on p. 93 (one of the pages I posted in the first of my two most recent posts), where he talks about Filelfo's attributing the Chaldean Oracles to Zoroaster in 1464. Since nobody else made that attribution, he must have gotten from Plethon.

Perhaps a search for "Zoroaster" or "Chaldean" in Google Books for Hankins vol. 2 would turn up something. I will try, although I'm not sure of the spelling of these words in Latin.

It turns out this text 30 must be a letter of Filelfo to Dominico Barbadico, 13 April, 1464 (Venice 1502, f. 151v (entire letter, 150r-151v); Hankins 2, pp. 521-22, ll. 250-271 (entire letter, pp. 515-522))

Et huius quidem ideae inventor omnium primus, quotquot aut in Ionica aut in Italica claruissent philosophia, Pythagoras fuisse perhibetur. Secutus is quidem Zoroastren, qui bellum Troianum, ut Plutarchus refert, annis quinque millibus antecessit. Pythagoras enim ut caeteros omnis suae tempestatis, homines, formae venustate, atque praestantia mirifice adeo antecelluit, ut pro Appolline haberetur, ita divina quadam ingenii bonitate atque sciendi studio, cunctis mortalibus superior fuit. Quapropter ubi universam peragrasset Europam, quo undique, quicquid scitu dignum animadvertebat, acciperet, ductus tandem illustri fama sacerdotum, atque prophetarum, Aegyptiorum, profectus in Aegyptum, ubi simul cum lingua omnem illorum sapientiam didicisset, illud etiam intelligere visus est, Aegyptios eximiam omnem disciplinam a Magis, qui a Zoroastre fluxerunt, hausisse. Quare ad Chaldaeos se contulit, quo et Chaldaeos audiret qui astrologiae gloria habebantur insignes, et Magis quos apud illos versari acceperat congrederetur. Magorum igitur diuturna usus consuetudine non obscure intelligere visus est unum Zoroastren Persen, ut antiquissimum philosophorum omnium, ita etiam acutissimum, sapientissimumque fuisse. Quare ex illa hora, Zoroastris philosophiam amplexus est. Quam postea Plato quoque Pythagoreis usus et auctoribus et doctoribus est secutus. Manarunt in quam ab ipso usque Zoroastre philosopho, quae sapienter et peracute de Idea, scripta a Platone referuntur.

I'm working on a good translation, but the gist of it is explaining Pythagoras' background, first seeking wisdom in Europe, then Egypt, then among the Chaldeans/Magi, who preserved the philosophy of Zoroaster.

There is no mention of the Oracles as such, nor any quotes. My sense is that he doesn't yet have the Oracles, or, if he read Psellos' version, he yet had no reason to attribute them to Zoroaster (because Psellos doesn't). There is little in this description of Pythagoras' place in the philosophical tradition (except perhaps for the emphasis on Zoroaster) that could not have been taken from the traditional biographies of Pythagoras by Iamblichus, Porphyry and Diogenes Laertius, as well as scattered references to his studies in Egypt and Babylonia in Christian sources like Clement.
http://www.completepythagoras.net/mainframeset.html

Link to snippet of Hankins' transcription of the letter (the rest can be assembled by searching for rarer words from the above passage, in two different Google Books snippet views)-
http://books.google.com/books?id=5f...ook_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CDAQ6AEwAA

Link to the Venice 1502 publication at the University of Mannheim (the basis for Hankins') -
http://www.uni-mannheim.de/mateo/itali/philelphus1/jpg/s151b.html

Link to Migne's edition of Psellos' commentary on the Oracles, with Opsopoeus' as well.
http://www.veritatis-societas.org/1...orum_Chaldaicorum_(MPG_122_1115_1122),_GM.pdf
(note that the subtitle "Magic Sayings uttered by Zoroaster the Magus" should be taken to be Opsopoeus' title (or someone else's) since if you read through the parts written only by Psellos, you see he doesn't mention Zoroaster. It seems clear that Plethon is the first to make the attribution.)

Part 2 -
http://www.veritatis-societas.org/1...Oracula_Chaldaica_(MPG_122_1123_1154),_GM.pdf