Symphorien Champier and the Reception of the Occultist Tradition in Renaissance France 9783110805512, 9789027976475

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SYMPHORIEN CHAMPIER AND THE RECEPTION OF THE OCCULTIST TRADITION IN RENAISSANCE FRANCE

SYMPHORIEN CHAMPIER AND

THE RECEPTION OF THE OCCULTIST TRADITION IN RENAISSANCE FRANCE

BRIAN P. COPENHAVER Western Washington University

MOUTON PUBLISHERS THE HAGUE · PARIS - NEW YORK

ISBN: 90-279-7647-3 © 1978,Mouton Publishers,The Hague,Netherlands Cover design by Carolyn Coldewey, based on an illustration from Champier's Guidon Printed in the Netherlands

PREFACE

This work is based on my University of Kansas dissertation (1970) of the same title. I owe great thanks to my teachers, William Gilbert and Jerry Stannard, who helped me complete the original version and supported my efforts to produce the revision which follows. I am also indebted to Charles Schmitt, D. P. Walker, and Frances Yates of the Warburg Institute, Charles Nauert of the University of Missouri, and to my colleagues Lee Dresbeck and Roger Hammill of Western Washington University who read the whole work in typescript and offered many useful suggestions and corrections. My friend Carolyn Coldewey drew the map on p. 156. These others were kind enough to contribute to my research on Champier in various ways: NatalieDavis, Guy Parguez, Eugene Rice, David McNeil, Lisabeth M. Holloway, William Stoever, Rodney Payton, William Wallace, Wayne Lobue, Milton Krieger, Tom Frazier, Herbert Taylor, Jane Clark, and Ann Drake. AFulbright Grantfunded by theU.S. and French governments supported my first year's work on Champier in Lyon; some of the final corrections were done when I was a fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies for 1975-76. The Bureau of Faculty Research of Western Washington University awarded me a summer research grant in 1973 and also subsidized the publication of the book. I am very grateful to all these people and to the institutions they represent. This preface is my only chance to give public thanks for a multitude of private debts to my most important patrons, my wife Kathleen and my children Gregory and Rebecca, whose charity was indispensable to my work. Roland Antonioli's Rabelais et la medecine (Geneva: Droz, 1976) reached me only after this book was in proof, so I have not profited from his valuable discussions of the relations between Champier and Rabelais and of medicine, pharmacy, and anti-Arabism in the early sixteenth century.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PREFACE

5

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

9

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS I. Abbreviations for Champier's Titles II. Some Other Sixteenth Century Editions containing Titles by Champier III. Abbreviations for Secondary Sources Frequently Cited

27 28

INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. THE PROBLEM OF THE OCCULTIST TRADITION IN EARLY MODERN EUROPE

31

CHAPTER ONE. A BRIEF LIFE OF SYMPHORIEN CHAMPIER: His CAREER AND CHARACTER I. His Adventurous Career II. His Disputatious Character Arena One: Medicine Arena Two: Humanism

45 45 66 67 81

CHAPTER Two. CHAMPIER'S USE AND CRITICISM OF THE SOURCES OF THE OCCULTIST TRADITION I. The Greek and Latin Classics II. The 'prisca theologia' III. Early Christianity IV. Islam V. Scholasticism and the Later Middle Ages VI. The Renaissance VII. The Dyalogus... in magicarum artium destructionem

11 11

97 98 117 123 136 147 161 172

8

Table of Contents

CHAPTER THREE. CHAMPIER'S CRITIQUE OF OCCULTISM

175

I. Some Preconceptions: The World-Soul and the Notion of Middle Things II. Natural Magic III. Demonology and Demonic Magic IV. Astrology V. Divination and Dreams VI. Occult Medicine VII. Alchemy and Cabala

176 184 191 198 210 213 229

CONCLUDING ESSAY. CHAMPIER'S RECEPTION OF THE OCCULTIST TRADITION

237

APPENDIX. A FACSIMILE AND AN ANNOTATED TRANSLATION OF CHAMPIER'S Dyalogus...in magicarum artium destructionem

243

Notes to the Appendix

320

BIBLIOGRAPHY

331

INDEX OF CHAMPIER'S WORKS

353

INDEX OF PROPER NAMES

355

INDEX OF SUBJECTS

363

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

The title-page illustration from Champier's Symphonia Platonis cum Aristotele et Galeni cum Hippocrate showing the four sages playing viols in consort

2

Duke Antoine leading his men to war, from Champier's Austrasie, sig. av°

57

Champier presenting his book to Duke Antoine, from Austrasie, sig. aiiv"

84

Diagram showing the possibilities of transmutation among the four qualities and four elements from Champier's Janua logicae et physicae, sig. fii

104

Cities in southeastern France

156

A physician and his patient, from the Janua, sig hiiii

187

Zodiacal figure from the 1537 edition of Champier's version of Guy de Chauliac, sig eii v°

215

A dying man surrounded by demons, saints, physicians, and other figures from an Ars moriendi probably printed in Lyon around 149Q',cLJourn.Hist.Med. 18 (1963), p. 173

226

The same illustration appears before sections 22 and 112 of Sebastian Brant's Ship of Fools (cf. Zeydel's edition, pp. 112, 363). The figure addressing the crowd is Wisdom

247

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

I. ABBREVIATIONS FOR CHAMHER-S TITLES Janua (1498)

MAD (1500?)

Nef P. (1502)

Janua logicae etphisicae [on sig. HiiiV: Impressum Lugduni per magistrum Guillermum Balsarim. v. die octobris anno domini mil iiij. cc. iiij. xx. &: xviij] (Allut, I, 105-107).1 Dyalogus singularissimus et perutilis viri occulentissimi domini Simphoriani lugdunensis. In magicarum artium destructionem cum suis anexis de fascinatoribus de incubis et succubis et de demoniacis per fratrem Symonem de Ulmo sacrae paginae doctorem et ordinis minorum fideliter correctus. Estque dyalogus liber in quo aliqui simul de aliqua re conferentes disserentesque introducuntur [on fol. 19 v": Impressum Lugduni per magistrum Guillermum Balsarin. xxviij. die mensis augusti.] (Allut, II, 107-108). La nef des princes et des batailles de noblesse avec aultres enseignemens utilz et profitables a toutes manieres de gens pour congnoistre a bien vivre et mourir dediques et envoyes a divers prelas et seigneurs ainsi quon pourra trouver cy

1. The chief sources of bibliographical information are Allut, Etude, Holmes, Th., and James F. Ballard and Michel Pijoan, Ά Preliminary Check-list of the Writings of Symphorien Champier, 1472-1539', Bulletin of the Medical Library Association 28 (1939-40), pp. 182-188. Holmes is the most complete of these sources, but since Allut is more widely available I have used Roman numerals to indicate the numbered entries in his bibliography and Arabic numerals to indicate the page numbers.

12

Guidon (1503)

NefD. (1503?)

List of Abbreviations apres composes par noble et puissant seigneur Robert de Balsat conseiller et chambrelan du roy nostre sire et son senechal aupays dagenes: Item plus le regime dung ieune prince et lesproverbes des princes et aultres petis livres tresutilz et profitables les quelz ont este composes par maistre Simphonen Champier docteur en theologie et medicine iadis natif de lionnoys. [on fol. Ixv: Et est cest present ouvre imprime a Lion en rue merciere par maistre Guillaume Balsarin imprimeur du roy nostre sire le .xii. iour de septembre mil cinq cens et deux] (Allut, III, 109-126).2 Le Guidon en francoys avecque les addicions en ung chacun principal chapitre selon Galten, Avicenne, Rasis, Halyabas, Arnauld de villeneuve, Salicet, Dinus de Florence, Petrus de argilata, Lanfranc, Thederic, et aultres modernes recuillies et asemblees par maistre Simphonen Champier avecque le chapitre universel et tressingulier auquel sont contenues les louanges principes et choses universelles de cyrurgie, pour plus facillement parvenir des choses universelles et communes aux particulieres, propres, et singulieres. Les dictz guidons ce vendront chez maistre Estienne Gueggnard, pres saint anthoine a Lyon, en la rue merciere, devant lymage de sainct Loys [on sig. Qviii: Imprime a Lion par J eh an de Vingle. Lan de grace. M.ccccc.iii. Le xvi jour de decembre] (Allut, IV, 127-131).3 La nef des dames vertueuses composee par maistre Simphonen Champier docteur en medicine contenant quatre livres. Le premier est intitule la fleur des dames. Le second est du regime de manage. Le tiers est des propheties des sibtlles.

2. There was a later edition of Nef P., Paris: Philippe Lenoir, 1525, and Holmes (Th., pp. 251-253) believes there may have been another before 1509. 3. Later editions appeared at Lyon: Guillaume Hoy on for Constantin Fredin, 1520, and at Paris: J. Petit, 1537; Holmes, Th., pp. 253-254.

Abbreviations for Champier's Titles

NefD. (1515)

Libelli duo (1506?)

13

Et le quart est le livre de vraye amour [on sig. xvi: Imprime a Lyons sur le rosne par Jacques Arnollet.] (Allut, V, 131-142). La nef des dames vertueuses composee par maistre Simphorien Champier docteur en medicine contenant quatre livres. Le premier est intitule la fleur des dames. Le second est du regime de manage. Le tiers est des proprieties des sibilles. Et le quart est le livre de vraye amour nouvellement imprimez a Paris pour Jehan de la Garde libraire [on sig. rviiiv*: ...nouvellementimprime a Paris le iii jour de may mil. ccccc et xv pour Jehan de la Garde libraire demourant sur le pont nostre dame...]4 Index librorum in hoc volumine contentorum. Domini Symphoriani Champerii physici lugdunensis libelli duo. Primus de medicinae claris scriptoribus in quinquepartitus tractatus. Secundus de legum divinarum conditoribus una cum impugnatione sectae machometicae quam arabes alchoranum vocant, opus turn propter hystoriarum cognitionem turn propter ret novitatem perutile. Dyalogus domini Symphoriani Champerii et Sebastiani Coppini mollissoniensis in legem machometicam. Eiusdem domini Symphoriani de corporum animorumque morbis eorundemque remediis opusculum in duos partitum libellos. Primus introductivus est in practicam Galeni. Secundus aegritundinum animorum curativus. Evangelicae christianaeque religionis ex scriptis gentilium etpoetarum etphilosophorum validissimis argumentis comprobatio. Eiusdem domini Symphoriani aphorismi sive collectiones medicinales. Alexandri Benedicti veronensis aphorismi sive collectiones. Alexandri aphrodisei graeci de febribus. Opera parva Hippocratis noviter de graeco in latinum traducta libri vii.

4. Another edition: Paris: Philippe Lenoir, [1531]; Holmes, ΤΑ.,ρρ. 254-55.

14

QV andT^G (1507)

TD (1509)

List of Abbreviations Epistolae quaedam adipsum dominum Symphorianum Champerium [(Lyon: Jannot de Campis)] (Allut, VI, 142-149).5 Domini Simphoriani Champerii lugdunensis liber de quadruplici vita. Theologia Asclepii Hermetis Trismegisti discipuli cum commentariis eiusdem domini Simphoriani. Sixti philosophi pythagorici Enchiridion. Isocratis ad Demonicum oratio praeceptiva. Silvae medicinales de simplicibus cum nonnullis in medicae facultatis praxim introductoriis. Quaedam ex Plinii iunioris practica. Tropheum gallorum quadruplicem eorundem complectens historiam de ingressu Ludovici xii. francorum regis in urbem Genuam. De eiusdem victoria in genuenses. Regum francorum genealogia. De clans lugdunensibus. De gallorum scriptoribus. De gallis summispontificibus. Epistolae variae ad eundem dominum Simphorianum. [on sig. Gviii: Impressum est praesens opus Lugduni expensis honestissimorum bibliopolarum Stephani Gueynardi et Jacobi Huguetanni: arte vero et industria Jannot de Campis: Anno domini .M.CCCCC.vii. Finitum pridie Kalendas Augusti.] (Allut, VII, 149-152). Simphoriani Champerii de triplici disciplina cuius partes sunt: Philosophia naturalis. Medicina. Theologia. Moralis Philosophia integrantes quadruvium. Contenta in hoc volumine. Vocabularius sive collectaneum difficilium terminorum

5. The various sections of Libelli duo are separately foliated, so I have indicated the sections referred to in my notes with the following abbreviations: med. de medicinae clans scrip toribus auct. leg. de legum divinarum conditoribus Cop. Dyalogus ... Champerii et Sebastiani Coppini Rel. Evangelicae christianaeque religionis morbis de corporum animorumque morbis Col. collectiones medicinales Hipp. Opera parva Hippocratis

Abbreviations for Champier's Titles

Austrasie (1510)

Galeni de oculis (1512)

15

naturalis philosophiae ac medicinae unacum philosophia platonica domini Symphoriani Champerii. Liber quartus ethymologiarum sancti Isidori qui est de medicina cum interpretation domini Simphoriani Champerii. Theologiae orphicae Simphoriani Champerii aurei libri tres. Theologiae trimesgisticae eiusdem domini Simphoriani de secretis et mysteriis egyptiorum particulae xii. Justini philosophi et martyris christiani admonitorius gentium. Epistola lenis imperatoris ad Amarum regem saracenorum de religione Christiana. De republica liber. Italiae et galliae panegyricum. De origine civitatis lugdunensis. Ludovici Bolognini de quattuor singularibus in Gallia repertis. Demosthenis oratio. Halcyon Platonis. [on sig. fffviii: Impressum est praesens opus Lugduni expensis honestissimi bibliopolae Simonis Vincentii: arte vero et industria Claudii Davost alias de Troys. Anno domini. M.ccccc.viii. finitum pridie kalendas martii.] (Allut, VIII, 153-156). Le Recueü ou croniques des hystoires des royaulmes daustrasie ou France Orientale dite a present Lorrayne de Hierusalem de Cicile. Et de la duche de Bar. Ensemble des sainctz contes et evesques de Toulx contenant sept livres tant en latin que en francoys. [on fol. cix: ... imprime a Lyon sur le rosne et acheve le xi. iour de millet Ian de grace mil cinq cens et dix. Pour Vincent de Portunaris de Trine libraire demourant audict Lyon en la rue merciere.] (Allut, X, 158-167). Index librorum in hoc volumine contentorum. Liber Galeni de oculis perutilis nusquam antea impressus in sesex continensparticulas, ab annis paucis a viro perdocto Demetrio graeco natione, de graeca lingua in latinam traductas. Speculum medicinae Galeni industria et labore cuiusdam doctissimi medici ex octavaginta septem ipsius Galeni operibus in tabula libellipraesentis ordine

16

Rosa gallica (1514)

Per. plat. (1515?)

List of Abbreviations notatis excerptum. Medicinae propugnaculum domini Simphoriani Champeni lugdunensis phisici; in speculum medicinae Galeni ex variis turn theologiae turn philosophiae turn medicinae professoribus congestum. [below: M.V.C & xii.; on fol. cxxxvi: ... Anno domini M.ccccc.xii. Die vero .xv. Mensis Februarii.]6 Rosa gallica aggregatoris lugdunensis domini Symphoriani Champeni omnibus sanitatem affectantibus utilis et necessana, quae in se continet praecepta, auctontates, atque sententias memoratu dignas, ex Hippocratis, Galeni, Erasistrati, Asclepiadis, Diascondis, Rasis, Haliabatis, Isaac, Avicennae, multorumque aliorum clarorum virorum libris in unum collectas: quae ad medicam artem rectamque vivendiformam plurimum conducunt. Una cum suapreciosa Margarita de medici atque aegri officio. [below: Venundatur ab lodoco Badio; on fol. CXXXVI: Ex officina Ascensiana emissum hoc opus. Anno domini M.DXIIII. V. idus Septembris.] (Allut, XII, 167-171).7 Quae in hoc opere continentur. Periarchon, id est de principiis platonicarum disciplinarum omniumque doctrinarum perquam facundi viri domini Symphoriani Champerii lugdunensium splendoris eximii, Serenissimi Calabrum et Lotharingorum ducts phisici primarii oppido quam frugiferum et succosum complectens quae sequuntur opuscula. De ratione speculativa, de noticia et rerum speculativarum cognitione, de rerum administratione seu de rebus gerendis. [below: Venales prostituuntur in calcographia Anthonii Bonnemere...]8

6. This same material appeared in both editions of Speculum Galeni, which are enlargements of this work. The royal privilege indicates that the publisher was Simon Vincent. See below, p. 20 n. 11, p. 89-90 n. 97. 7. On November 1, 1518, Badius issued a reprint of Rosa Gallica. 8. The royal privilege on sig. hvi vis dated April 12, 1515. See below, p. 26, for the similar Periarchon of 1533.

Abbreviations for Champier's Titles Symphonia (1516)

Croniques de Savoye (1516)

Cat. Med. (1516)

Epist. sanct. (1516)

17

Symphonia Platonis cum Aristotele et Galeni cumHippocrate domini Symphonani Champerii. Hippocraticaphilosophia eiusdem. Platonica medicina de duplici mundo cum eiusdem scholiis. Speculum medicinale platonicum et apologia literarum humaniorium. [below: Quae omnia venundantur ab lodoco Badio; on fol. CLXXIIv": Impressum est hoc opus apud Badium Parrhisiis. Anno salutis. MD.XVI. XIIII Calendas Maias.] (Allut, XIII, 171-174). Les Grans croniques des gestes et vertueux faictz des tresexcellens catholicques illustres et victorieux ducz et princes des pays de Savoy e e Piemont. Et tant en la saincte terre de Jherusalem comme es lieux de Sine Turquie Egipte Cypre Italie Suysse Daulphine et aultres plusieurs pays. Ensemble les genealogies et antiquitez de Gaulle et des treschrestiens magnanimes et tresredoubtez roys de France avecque aussi la genealogie et origene des dessuditz ducz et princes de Savoy e nouvellement imprimees a Paris pour Jehan de la Garde, [on fol. CXXXII: ... imprimees a Paris Ian mil cinq cens et seize le xxviie iour de mars pour Jehan de la Garde libraire...] (Allut, XIV, 174-178). Simphoriani Champerii lugdunensis in libros demonstrationum Galeni cathegoriae medicinales, in quibus praeclarissima quaeque et digna lectu quae Galenus in Demonstrativis sermonibus et Aristoteles in Cathegoriis et naturalium libris scripserunt breviter clareque et placido stilo pertractantur atque declarantursententiae. [on sig. eeviiv": Impressum Lugduni per Johannem Marion. Anno domini M.cccccxvi. die vero tertia mensis Junii.] (Allut, XV, 178). Epistolae sanctissimorum sequenti codice contentae. Divipatris Antonii magni Epistolae VII. FO. VII. Cum explanationibus domini Symphonani Champerii oppositis. Antoniorum catalo-

18

Cribratio (1516)

Epithome (1516)

Ars parva (1516?)

List of Abbreviations gus. FO. XLVIIL DivilgnatiiAntiocheniepiscopi epistolae XV. FO. LV. Divae VirginisMariae ad Ignatium Epistola I. FO. eodem. Divi Polycarpi ad Philippenses epistola I. FO. LXXXIX. Eiusdem ad divum Johannem evangelistam Epistola I. FO. eodem. Abagari Regis Edessenorum ad lesum Christum epistola L F. XCI. lesu Christi domini nostri ad Abagarum epistola I. FO. eodem. [below: Venundatur in aedibus lodoci Badii et loannis Parvi; on fol. XCII: Impressarum autem Prelo Ascensiano ad IIII Idus Martias MDXVI. Calculo Romano.] (Allut, XVII, 179180). Cribratio lima et annotamenta in Galeni Avicennae et Consiliatoris opera per Symphorianum Champerium liigdunensem illustnssimi Lotharingiae a physicis consiliarium primarium. [below: venundantur in officina Ascensiana; on fol. LXXII: Impressi in chalcographia Ascensiana pridie Calendas Maias M.D.XVI.] (Allut, XVI, 179).9 Quae hoc in volumine tractantur. Epithome commentariorum Galeni in libros Hippocratis Cohi. Primus aphorismorum. Secundus pronosticorum. Tertius regiminis acutorum morborum. Quartus epidimiarum. Eiusdem Domini Simphoriani Centiloquim isagogium in libros Hippocratis opus varium ac doctissimum in quo praeclarissima quaeque et digna lectu quae a Galena scripta sunt breviter clareque et placido stilo narrantur. [on sig. Qiiii: Impressum Lugduni per Johannem Marion Anno 1516. die 23 Junii.] (Allut, XVIII, 180-182). Index eorum omnium quae in hac arte parva Galeni pertractantur. Ars parva Galeni pergameni quam nostri graeco vocabulo Tegni appellant

9. For the several 16th century reprintings of Champier's critique of Peter of Abano, see Holmes, Th.t pp. 274-275.

Abbreviations for Champier 's Titles

Med. bei. (1516-1517?)

Speculum Gal. (1517)

19

ab Laurentiano florentino e graeco in latinum conversa. Item subiunguntur paradoxa domini Simphoriani Champerii lugdunensis illustrissimi principis domini Ducis Calabriae et Lotharingiae et Earri etc. primarii physici in artem parvam Galeni.Inquibuspraeclarissima quaeque et digna lectu quae a Trusiano, Gentili, Jacobo Forliviensi, Sermoneta, et Ugone Senensi, omnibusque neotericis scripta sunt ad medicos instruendos breviter clareque narrantur. Item additiones Haly rodoan admodumque acutae ac doctae. [(Lyon: Jean Marion)] (Allut, XX, 183-184). Medicinale helium inter Galenum et Aristotelem gestum quorum hie cordi ille autem cerebro favebat, a domino Simphoriano Champerio compositum, in duos libros divisum. Primus cerebri et cordis de principalitate humani corporis contendentium continet certamen. Secundus Dianae et Veneris atrocissimum conflictum complectitur. Opus turn propter historiarum cognitionem acphilosophorum medicorumque discrepantiam turn propter rei novitatem perutile. Item tertio variae calamitates quibus lotharingia cumsolum eo tempore quo helium descriptum est fuerit agitata simul et singularia in Lotharingia reperta enarrantur. [Lyon: Jean Marion.] (Allut, XXI, 184-188).10 Speculum Galeni Epithome sive Galenus abreviatus vel incisus aut intersectus quaecunque in speculo domini Simphoriani Champerii continebantur apprehendens, cut plurima variarum traductionum eidem in fine duplicata novaque annectuntur Galeni opera cum argumentis eiusdem domini Simphoriani. Medicinae propugnaculum domini Simphoriani Champerii lugdunensis physici in speculum medicinae Galeni.

10. Some authorities believe that Simon Vincent was the publisher: Holmes, Th., pp. 275-276.

20

Mirabilium (1517)

List of Abbreviations Libri superadditi cum in speculo medicinae non essent. Galeni vita. De dementis Galeni epitoma. De generatione animalium epitoma. Depassione uniuscuiusque particulae corporis et cura ipsarum qui liber decem tractatuum sive myamir intitulatur epitoma. Sylvae febrium ex libris Galeni ad complementum libri myamir. De gyneciis liber hoc est de passionibus mulierum. De dinamidiis liber. De morbis oculorum Galeni libri duo. Alia plurima Galeno ascribuntur opera quae cum ad manus pervenissent nostras quum stylo alieno penitus erant resecanda duximus, quae huic impressioniaddita sunt. Tabula omnes materias et singulares morbos comprehendens. Constantini aphricani terapeutica sen megatechni super libros de ingenio sanitatis Galeni. [on fol. cclxxiiv": Anno domini M.d.xvii. ii idus maias Lugduni loannes de lonvelle dictus Piston imprimebat.] (Allut, XXII, 188-196).11 Index librorum qui in hoc volumine continentur. Mirabilium divinorum humanorumque volumina quattuor. Primum videlicet de mirabilibus sacrae scripturae. Secundum de mirabilibus propositionibus beatissimi Fault apostoli. Tertium de propugnaculo religionis christianae. Quartum de mirabilibus mundi secundum Ptholomeum perlucide a domino Simphonano Champeno lugdunensi patritio Serenissimi ducis calabrum et lotharingorum pnmario corporis consiliario distincta. [vol. 4, fol. xxvv": Impressa Lugduni per

11. If one takes this to be a separate work from Galeni de oculis, then the first edition is the work which bears this colophon: [fol. cxxxvi:] '... Anno domini M.ccccc.xii. Die vero .xv. Mensis Februarii', and a royal privilege which says that '... Champier intends to have [it] printed by a bookseller living ... in Lyon named Simon Vincent...'. Both the colophon and the privilege are the same, then, in the 'first edition' of Speculum Galeni and in Galeni de oculis. Some material was added to Speculum Galeni, however, and the work was enlarged even further for its 'second edition', the most notable addition being the Megatechne of Constantine the African. See, below, p. 89.

Abbreviations for Champier's Titles

Practice, nova (1517/1518)

Herculani (1518)

Pronosticon (1518)

21

Jacobum Mareschal. Anno domini .M.ccccc.xvii. xxii mensis Augusti.] (Allut, XXIII, 196-198).12 Practica nova in medicina. Aggregatoris lugdunensis domini Simphonani Champerii de omnibus morborumgeneribus ex traditionibus graecorum latinorum Arabum poenorum ac recentium autorum aurei libn quinque. Item eiusdem aggregatoris liber unus de omnibus febrium genenbus. [on fol. clii: Impressum Lugduni per honestum virum Johannem Marion Anno domini M.ccccc. xvii. Die .xix. Martii] (Allut, XXIV, 198-199).13 Joannis Herculani veronensis expositio perutilis in primam Fen quarti canonis Avicennae una cum adnotamentis praestantissimi viri domini Symphoriani Champerii sive Champegii Lugdunensis equitis aurati ac serenissimiprincipis calabrum et Lotharingorum primarii medici necnon cum indice tarn capitum in Fen prima quarti canonis Avicennae quam dubiorum in expositione Joannis Herculani contentorum. [on fol. 186: Expensis honesti viri Vincentii de Portonariis de tridino de monteferrato Lugduni cusa anno domini. 1518 in aedibus Jacobi My t sexto mensis Decembris die.] (Allut, XXV, 199-200). Pronosticon libri tres quorum primus estdepronosticis seu praesagiis prophetarum. Secundus de praesagiis astrologorum. Tertius de praesagiis medicorum. [on fol. xii: ... excusorum impensis Vincentii de Portonariis insubris bibliopolae nominatissimi.] (Allut, XXVI, 200-201).

12. The four volumina of Mirabilium are foliated separately: De Mir. De mirabüibus sacrae scripturae Paul. Mirabilium propositionum divi Fault Prop. Mirabue religionis chrtstianae propugnaculum De mir. De mirabüibus mundi, 13. Holmes (Th., pp. 262-264) believes that Jean Marion printed an earlier edition for Simon Vincent c. 1511, and BM 545 dl, which gives no date, publisher, or place, is clearly another edition, though it differs very little from the 1517/18; the BM Catalogue gives a date of 515?' for BM 545 dl. The Venice: O. Scotus, 1522 edition is also very close to the 1517/18.

22 Due Hum (1519)

Arnaldi vita (1520)

Canon S. C. (1522)

Mesuae vita (1523)

List of Abbreviations Quae in hoc opusculo habentur. Duellum epistolare Galliae et Italiae antiquitates summatim complectens. Tropheum christianissimigalliarum regis Francisci huius nominis primi. Item complures illustrium virorum epistolae ad dominum Symphorianum Camperium. [on sig. mviiv": Impressum fuit praesens opus per loannem Phiroben et loannem Divineur Alemanos sumptibus honesti viri lacobi Francisci Deionta Florentini bibliopolae Veneti. Anno a virginis partu. M.CCCCCXIX. die decima Octobris.] (Allut, XXVII, 201-206). Arnaldi vita a domino Symphoriano Campegio aurato equite, ac Favergiae domino, serenissimi calabrum et lothoringorum ducis archiatro, edita in Arnaldi Villanovaniphilosophi et medicisummi opera omnia (Basel: Ex officina Pernea per Conradum Waldkirch, 1585), fols. ):(3v°-):(4v*. (Allut, XXXII, 217-218).14 Liber canonis totius medicinae ab Avicenna arabum doctissimo excussus a Gerardo cremonensi ab arabica lingua in Latinam reductus. Et a Petro Antonio Rustico placentino in philosophia non mediocriter erudito ad limam ex omniparte ab erroribus et omni barbanae castigatus: Necnon a domino Symphoriano Camperio lugdunensi secundis annotationibus terminisque arabicis et eorum expositionibus nuperillustratus: Una cum eius vita a domino Francisco Calphurnio non minus vere quam eleganter excerpta. [Liber Avicennae Lugduni finem fortius est optatum opere Jacobi Myt diligentissimi calcographi. Anno salutis M.cccccxxii. die vero .xxvi. novembris...] Domini Mesuae vita. Doctorum artis peoniae cognomina... in Opera Mesuae (Lyon: Giunta, 1523), sigs. Aiii-Av. (Allut, XXX, 208-209).

14. The earliest edition was probably: Lyon: Hoyon, 1520; see Ballard and Pijoan, 'Check-list', p. 183; Allut, Etude, p. 218; Holmes, Th., p. 279.

Abbreviations for Champier 's Titles Bayard (1525)

Symphonia G-H (1528?)

Antiquite (1529)

Allobroges (1530?)

23

Les Gestes ensemble la vie du preulx chevalier Bayard avec sa genealogie, comparaisons aulx anciens preulx chevaliers gentilz Israelitiques et chrestiens. Ensemble oraisons lamentations epitaphes audit chevalier Bayard. Contenant plusieurs victoyres des roys de France, Charles VIII, Loys XII, et Francoys premier de ce nom (abridged ed.),inM. L.Cimberand F.Danjou (ed.), Archives curieuses de l'histoire de France depuis Louis XIjusqu'a LouisXVIII... (Paris: Beauvais, 1835), pp. 81-202 (Allut, XXXI, 209-217).15 Symphonia Galeni ad Hippocratem, Cornelii Celsi ad Avicennam una cum sectis antiquorum medicorum ac recentium a domino Symphoriano Campegio, equite aurato, ac Favergiae domino, composita. Item, Clysteriorum Campt contra Arabum opinionem, pro Galeni sententia, ac omnium graecorum medicorum doctrina, a domino Symphoriano aurato equite, ac Favergiae domino digesti, contra communem Arabum ac Poenorum traditionem summa cum diligentia congesti, ac in lucem propagati. [(Lyon?)] (Allut, XXXIII, 218-221). L'Antiquite de la Cite de Lyon. Ensemble la Rebeine ou rebellion du Populaire contre les conseillers de la cite en 1529 et la Hierarchie de l'Eglise metropolitaine par Symphorien Champier (Lyon: Henry Georg, 1884) (Allut, XXXV, 222-235).16 Du Royaume des Allobroges avec l'antiquite et origine de la tres noble et ancienne cite de Vienne sur le fleuve du Rhosne par Symphorien Cham-

15. First edition: Lyon: De Villiers, 1525; Ballard and Pijoan, 'Check-List', p. 184; Allut, Utude, p. 210; Holmes, Th., pp. 280-282, mentions thirteen editions in all. 16. First edition: Paris: St. Denys, 1529; Ballard and Pijoan, 'Check-list', p. 182; Allut, £tude, p. 225; the 1884 edition of Antiquite by M. C. Guigue reproduces the second edition (Lyon: 1530) which contains La Hierarchie, not included in the first edition.

24

CGHC (1532)

Castigationes (1532)

List of Abbreviations pier. (Lyon: Henry Georg, 1884) (Allut,XXXV, 225-227).17 Claudii Galeni histonales campi, per dominum Symphorianum Campegium, equitem auratum, illustrissimi Lotharingiae ducis archiatrum, in quattuor libros congesti, et commentariis non poenitendis illustrati. Domini Symphoriani Campegii equitis aurati, clysteriorum camporum secundum Galeni mentem libellus utilis et necessanus. Eiusdem de phlebotomia libriduo. [below: Basiliae MDXXXII apud And. Cratandrum et Ιο. Bebelium, mense augusto] (Allut, XXXIV, 221-222).18 Castigationes sen emendationes pharmacopolarum, sive apothecariorum, ac Arabum medicorum Mesuae, Serapionis, Rasis, Alpharabii, et aliorum iuniorum medicorum, a domino Symphoriano Campegio equite aurato, ac Lotharingorum Archiatro in quatuor libros ac tomos divisae: in quas quicquid apud Arabes erratum fuerit summa cum diligentia congestum est. Liber primus de simplicibus medicamentis, quo docentur errata seplasiarum et pharmacopolarum, aromathanorum, ac recentium medicorum, additis eorundem confutationibus. Libersecundus in quo continentur Castigationes in antidotarium sen grabadin loannis Mesuae, Nicolai, Serapionis, ac aliorum recentiorum medicorum. Liber tertius est de ingenio curandorum corporum per medicinas laxativas. Liber quartus complectitur curationes ac remedia aegritudinum principalium humani corporis. Quibus adiungitur officina apothecariorum, et iuniorum medicorum. Item de phlebotomia sive sanguinis missione, et praesertim pleuritide, ex opinionibus Graecorum,

17. Probably first published with Antiquite in the Lyon edition of 1530; Allut, £tude, p. 226; Holmes, Th., pp. 286-287. 18. Clysteriorum campi and De phlebotomia are foliated separately.

Abbreviations for Champier's Titles

Myrouel (1532?)

Hortus Gallicus (1533)

25

quorum dicta in plerisque non intellexerunt Arabes. Item de vinis febricitantium ex traditionibus Graecorum, Arabum, Poenorum, ac confirmationibus sacrarum Literarum. [fol. LVI of Officina: ... Lugduni excusa apud Joannem Crespin, alias du Carre Anno publicae salutis Millesimo cccccxxxii. die. xii. mensis Aprilis] (Allut, XXXVIII, 242-245).19 Le Myrouel des appothiquaires et pharmacopoles par lequel est demonstre comment appo· thiquaires communement errent en plusieurs simples medicines contre [intention des Grectz, de Hypocras, Galten, Oribase, Paule Egynette, et aultres Grectz. Et par la maulvaise et faulce intelligence des autheurs Arabes, lesqueux ont falcifie la doctrine des Grectz par leurs maulvaise et non entendue interpretation et intelligence faulse. Item les lunectes des cyrurgiens et barbiers auquelles sont demonstrees les reigles et ordonnances et la voye par lesquelles se doybuent reigler les ban cyrurgiens lesqueulx veullent vivre selon dieu et la religion crestienne compose par mesire Symphorien Campese chevallier et docteur regent de luniversite de Pavie, seigneur de la Favergepremier medecin de monsieur le due de Lorrayne et de Bart, [on sig. Hiiii: Imprime a Lyon par Pierre Mareschal.] (Allut, XXXVII, 235-242). Hortus gallicus, pro Gallis in Galliascriptus, veruntamen non minus Italis, Germanis, et Hispanis, quam Gallis necessarius. Symphoriano Campegio equite aurato ac Lotharingorum archiatro authore, in quo Gallos in Gallia omnium aegritudinum remedia reperire docet, nee medicaminibus egere peregrinis, quum deus et natura de necessa-

19. The Officina pharmacopolarum seems originally to have been published in Lyon by Simon Vincent in 1511, and Holmes believes that an earlier edition of the entire Castigationes, now lost, appeared between 1511 and 1514; Galeni de oculis, fol. cxxxii; Holmes, Th., pp. 262, 266-268; Allut, £tude, p. 167.

26

List of Abbreviations

riis unicuique regioniprovideat. [below: Lugduni in Aedibus Melchioris et Gasparis Trechsel Fratrum M.DXXXIII] (Allut, XXXIX, 245-246).20 Campus Elysius Galliae amoenitate refertus in CEG quo sunt medicinae compositae, herbae etplan(1533) tae virentes, in quo quicquidapudlndos, Arabes, et Poenos reperitur apud Gallos reperiri posse demonstratur a domino Symphoriano Campegio equite aurato, ac Lotharingorum archiatro compositus. [below: Lugduni In Aedibus Melchioris et Gasparis Trechsel Fratrum MDXXXIII] (Allut, XXXIX, 246-248). Periarchon Periarchon id est de principiis utriusque philo(1533) sophiae, in quo praeclarissima quaeque et digna lectu quae Galenus in demonstrativis sermonibus, et Aristoteles in libris naturalium disciplinarum, ac Timaeus Locrus et Plato in libris de universo scripserunt, breviter, clareque, et placido stylo pertractantur atque declarantur sententiae, Symphoriano Campegio aurato equite, Lotharingorum archiatro authore. [below: Lugduni in aedibus Melchioris et Gasparis Trechsel Fratrum MDXXXIII] (Allut, XXXIX, 248-249). Gallicum Gallicum Pentapharmacum rhabarbaro, agarico, Pentapharmacum manna, terebinthina, et sene Gallicis constans, (1534) Symphoriano Campegio equite aurato, Favergiae domino ac Lotharingorum archiatro autore, [below: Lugduni Excudebant Melchior et Caspar Trechsel fratres. M.D.XXXIHI] (Allut, XLI, 251255). Cribratio M. Cribratio medicamentorum fere omnium, in sex (1534) digesta libros, domino Symphoriano Campegio, medico omnibus numeris absolutissimo, autore. His accesserunt Quaestio aurea de exhibitione medicinarum venenosarum, de mistorum gene20. CEG and the 1533 Periarchon were designed for publication with Hortus gallicus, of which there are two versions, one of sixty-eight and one of eightythree pages; the longer contains two additional pharmaceutical treatises; Holmes, ΓΑ.,ρρ. 290-291.

Other 16th Century Editions containing Titles by Champier

Libri VII (1537)

Monarchic^ (1537)

Galliae celticae (1537)

27

ratione, de concretis et abstractis. Apologia in academiam novam Hetruscorum. [below: Apud Sebastianum Gryphium, Lugduni, 1534] (Allut, XLII, 256-258). Symphoriani Champerii, philosophi ac medici ingenio eruditioneque summi viri libri VII de dialectica, rhetorica, geometria, arithmetica, astronomia, musica, philosophia naturali, medicina et theologia: Et de legibus et republicis eaque parte philosophiae quae de moribus tractat. Atque haec omnia sunt tractata ex Aristotelis et Platonis sententia. [below: Basiliae apud Henricum Petrum; on p. 135: Basiliae per Henricum Petrum mense Martio Anno MDXXXVII] (Allut, XLV, 260). De Monarchia Gallorum campt aurei ac triplici imperio, videlicet romano, gallico, germanico: una cum gestis heroum ac omnium imperatorum, authore Symphoriano Campegio aurato equite. [below: Lugduni ex Officina Melchioris et Gasparis Trechsel Fratrum M.D.XXXVII] (Allut, XLVI, 261-263). Galliae Celticae, ac antiquitatis lugdunensis civitatis, quae caput est Celtarum, campus, [below: Lugduni ex Officina Melchioris et Gasparis Trechsel Fratrum M.D.XXXVII] (Allut, XLVI, 262).

II. SOME OTHER SIXTEENTH CENTURY EDITIONS CONTAINING TITLES BY CHAMPIER

Annotatiunculae (1533)

Annotatiunculae Sebastiani Montui artium ac medicinae doctons in errata recentiorum medicorum per Leonardum Fuchsium Germanum collecta. Apologetica Epistola pro defensione Arabum a domino Bernardo Unger Germano composita. Epistola responsiva pro Graecorum defensione in Arabum errata, a domino Symphoriano Campegio composita. [Lugduni anno

28

Isagogae (1536)

Homiliae (1525) Pleuritidis (1537)

Fontaines (1539)

List of Abbreviations salutis M.D.XXXIII Benoist Bounyn] (Allut, XL, 249-251). Santis PagniniLucensispraedicatorii ordinis Isagogae ad sacras literas, Liber unicus, Eiusdem Isagogae ad mysticos sacrae scripturae sensus, libri xviii, [below: Prostant Lugduni apud Hugonem a Porta. M.D.XXXVI] (Allut, XLIV, 259-260). Homiliae praeclarorum doctorum. [below: Impressum Lugduni per honestum virum calcographum Joannem Crespin. ... Mcccccxxv.] De Curatione pleuritidis per venae sectionem, autore domino Andrea Turino Pisciensi, philosophiae ac medicinae doctore, dementis septimi ac chnstianissimi regis consilario. [below: Sub Scuto Basiliensi apud Michaelum Parmenterium Lugduni M D XXXVII]. Cy apres sensuyt ung petit traicte des fleuves et fontaines admirables desdictes Gaulles, iadis compose par messire Symphorien Champier chevalier, nouvellement traduictenlangue Franchoise par son filz Claude Champier, on fols. 50-57 of Gilles Corrozet and Claude Champier, Le Cathalogue des villes et citez assises es troys Gaulles avec ung traicte des fleuves et fontaines, illustre de nouvelles figures (Paris: Antoine Bonnemere, 1539).21

III. ABBREVIATIONS FOR SECONDARY SOURCES FREQUENTLY CITED Allut, Etude

Paul Allut, Etude biographique et bibliographique sur Symphorien Champier. Lyon: Nicolas Scheuring, 1859. Audry, 'de Phares' J. Audry, 'Symon de Phares et les medecins astrologues de Lyon', Lyon-Medical 143 (1929), pp. 431-439,469-473. , 'Gonsalve' 'Gonsalve de Tolede et YAmicus Amicorum', 21. There was an earlier edition in 1537; Holmes, Th., p. 295.

Abbreviations for Secondary Sources Frequently Cited

29

Lyon-Medical 144 (1929), pp. 176-181, 209-215. -, 'Rabelais' 'Rabelais et les medecins de Lyon', Ly on-Medical 147(1931), pp. 504-511. 'Un Medecin de la Renaissance: Andre Briau', -, 'Briau' Ly on-Medical 148 (1931), pp. 490-499. 'Michel Servet et Symphorien Champier', Ly on-, 'Servet' Medical (1935), pp. 293-303, 328-336. 'Le Peintre Jehan Perreal et le monstre milanais', -, 'Perreal' Lyon-Medical (1935), pp. 54-57. 'Les Testaments de Simon de Pavie et de Sym, 'Simon phorien Champier', Lyon-Medical 161 (1938), de Pavie' pp. 754-762. Audry and M. Lannois, 'Angelo Cato, archeveque Audry and Lannois,'Cato' de Vienne astrologue etmedecin', Lyon-Medical (1935), pp. 749-755,781-786. Marsilii Ficini florentini, insignis philosophiplaFicini opera tonici, medici atque theologi clarissimi, opera, et quae hactenus extitere... 2 vols. 1576; rpt. (2 vols. in 4), Torino: Bottega d'Erasmo, 1959. Holmes, Th. Margaret I. Holmes (Brunyate), 'Italian Renaissance Influence in the Early 16th Century, with Particular Reference to the Work of Symphorien Champier', M.A. Thesis, Univ. of London, 1963. Klibansky et al., Raymond Klibansky, Erwin Panofsky, and Fritz Melancholy Saxl, Saturn and Melancholy: Studies in the History of Natural Philosophy, Religion, and Art. New York: Basic Books, 1964. Mönch, PlatonWalter Mönch, Die italienische Platonrenaissance renaissance und ihre Bedeutung fur Frankreichs Literaturund Geistesgeschichte (1450-1550). Romanische Studien 40. Berlin: Verlag Dr. Emil Ebering, 1936. Potton, Etudes' A. Potton, 'Etudes historiques et critiques surla vie, les travaux de Symphorien Champier', Revue du Lyonnais l (1864), I, pp. 7-32, II, pp. 114-140. Thomdike, Intel- Lynn Thomdike, The Place of Magic in the Inlectual History tellectual History of Europe. Diss. Columbia University, 1905. -, History A History of Magic and Experimental Science.

List of Abbreviations

30

8 vols. New York: Columbia University Press, 1923-1958. James B. Wadsworth, Lyons, 1473-1503: The Wads worth, Beginning of Cosmopolitanism. Publications of Lyons the Medieval Academy of America, no. 73. Cambridge: The Medieval Academy of America, 1962. Walker, Demonic D. P. Walker, Spiritual and Demonic Magic from Ficino to Campanella. Studies of the Warburg Institute 22. London: The Warburg Institute, 1958. -, Theology The Ancient Theology: Studies in Christian Platonism from the Fifteenth to the Eighteenth Century. London: Duckworth, 1972. Yates, Bruno Frances A. Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition. London: Routledge andKegan Paul, 1964.

BHR HR JHI JWCI RER RH RN RQ RR

Bibliotheque d'Humanisme et Renaissance Humanisme et Renaissance Journal of History of Ideas Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes Revue des titudes rabelaisiennes Revue Histonque

Renaissance News Renaissance Quarterly Revue de la Renaissance

INTRODUCTORY ESSAY

THE PROBLEM OF THE OCCULTIST TRADITION IN EARLY MODERN EUROPE

"This is that mysticall Philosophy, from whence no true Scholler becomes an Atheist, but from the visible effects of nature, grows up a reall Divine...' Sir Thomas Browne, Religio Medici, 48 Because Isaac Newton was an associe etranger of France's Academic Royale des Sciences, his death required that his life and works be remembered in a formal essay from the pen of the Academic's permanent secretary. Newton died in 1727, and so Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle. came to write his £loge of Newton. Fontenelle's own learning gave him sufficient information on Newton's work as a scientist, but the details of Newton's life came to Fontenelle from notes supplied him by John Conduitt, the husband of Newton's niece. We are not surprised to learn that Fontenelle's Eloge made no use of certain data from Conduitt's notes: e.g., that Newton had made some negative statements about Descartes or that one of Newton's motives in beginning his work on mathematics was to learn whether judicial astrology had any claims to validity. Fontenelle's commitment to Cartesianism explains the former omission, and the latter simply seems normal in the Age of Enlightenment.1 Astrology was no longer a major intellectual problem for those who would read the Eloge. It would seem to have been unworthy of Newton's attention. The occultist tradition and all its claims about the powers of magic, alchemy, divination, witchcraft, Cabala, and the other secret arts no longer demanded a serious response from serious thinkers. Years before, Fontenelle had taken the time to compose 1. Charles Coulston Gillispie, 'Fontenelle and Newton', in I. Bernard Cohen, ed., Isaac Newton 's Papers and Letters on Natural Philosophy and Related Documents (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1958), pp.427, 436-437.

32

Introductory Essay

a delightful polemic against the belief in oracles and demons, his Histoire des Oracles (1686), which shows that by this time, when Bayle was writing on the comet and Balthasar Bekker against the devil, occultism had already become as much an occasion for wit as a subject for sustained analysis.2 By the time the first edition of the Encyclopaedia Brittanica appeared in 1771, the transformation was complete. The first Brittanica gave only one hundred and thirty-two lines, less than a full page, to its articles on astrology, alchemy, Cabala, demons, divination, magic, the word Occult', and witchcraft; 'Astronomy' occupied sixty-seven pages and 'Chemistry' one hundred and fifteen.3 In the first years of the sixteenth century, when Symphorien Champier published his earliest attack on the magical arts, the reputation of the occultist tradition was sounder by far. The Margarita philosophica (1503), an encyclopedic work very popular with Champier's contemporaries, not only treated astrology as a serious intellectual problem but also assented to some of its claims.4 In this earlier and very different climate of opinion, Giovanni Corsi composed his Vita Marsilii Ficini (1506), and we may understand the formulation of this little work to have been as responsive to the fashions of Renaissance humanism as Fontenelle's Eloge was to the style of the French Enlightenment. Two passages in the Vita give us a 2. Paul Hazard, La Crise de la conscience europeenne: 1680-1715 (Paris: Artheme Fayard, 1961), II, pp. 142-164; for Fontenelle's text, see Oeuvres de Monsieur de Fontenelle... (Paris: Chez les Ubraires Associes, 1766), II, pp. 191-396. 3. Encyclopaedia Brittanica; or, a Dictionary of Arts and Sciences Compiled upon a New Plan... (Edinburgh: For A. Bell and C. Macfarquhar, 1771), I, pp. 77, 433-500, II, pp. 1-2, 66-180, 304, 446-447, III, pp. 2-3, 409, 947. 4. Thomdike, History, V, pp. 139-141 ff.; Gregorius Reisch, Margarita philosophica totius philosophiae rationalis, naturalis, et moralis principia dialogice duodecim libris complectens (Strassburg: Joannes Schottus, 1504), sigs. siiiv0siiii, svii v"-sviii, xv v*-aaii, ddii ve-ddiii, eevii v°, hhvii ve-ii ii; from these pages one can get a sense of Reisch's mixed opinions on astrological and other occultist questions, but since the Margarita is a relatively rare book, it may be worthwhile to reproduce a few illustrative chapter heads: 'De secunda parte astrologiae, et qualem influentiam coelestium corporum in inferiora Theologi cum Philosophie concedunt, voluntatem omnino excipientes' (yii-yiii); 'Electio temporum ad initianda diversa opera sub certis constellationibus in parte conceditur ab Augustino et medicinae diversis auctoribus' (z ve-zii); 'Quod demones rebus aut verbis a necromanticis cogi nequeunt, sed a solo Deo, an gel is, sanctis, et hominibus iustis virtute divina; sed vocati a necromanticis veniunt propter initum pactum' (zvi-zvii).

The Problem of the Occultist Tradition in Early Modern Europe

33

clear sense of the intellectual distance between ihephilosophes who read the Eloge and the doctissimi viri who were Corsi's audience. The passages deal mostly with medical problems: 'His [Ficino's] health was not at all steady since he suffered greatly from weakness of the stomach, and, although he always put on a cheerful and festive appearance in company, when he was alone he was thought to become depressed and sad as if growing listless, which came either from black bile ... or, as he himself used to say, from Saturn... Some who were troubled with black bile he cured with his skill in medicine so that they returned to their original good health, and this was marvellous to see... But he had observed many things bearing on physiognomy, in which, since he had spent not a little study [on it] in his early youth, he turned out to be a distinguished practitioner. He also gave uncommon attention to astronomy, in which subject he attained much praise, especially in confuting the astrologers — since indeed he avoided the horoscopists and all dilettantes, contentious scholastics, devoted only to Peripatetics and neoterics — shunning, as they say, both the snake and the dog... But this is by no means to be omitted, that in magic he was considered extraordinary and godlike, with evil demons and many ghosts driven out and expelled from places, everywhere the most eager defender of religion, always immeasurably hostile to superstition.'5 However one handles the translation of these lines and their terminological problems, certain things are clear. First of all, Ficino's alleged hostility to superstition looks suspect even on the brief and 5. 'Vita Marsilii Ficini per Joannem Cursium', in Raymond Marcel, Marsile Ficin (1433-1499), Les Classiques de l'humanisme (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 1958), pp. 686-687: 'Valitudo illi haud satis constans, quippe qui ex debilitate stomachi plurimum laboraret et quamquam in convictu huarern se ac festivum semper exhiberet, in solitudine tarnen desidere ac moerere quasi torpescere putabatur, quod proveniebat sive ex atra bili... sive, ut ipse dicebat, a Saturno... Nonnullos, quod mirabile visu fuit, atra bile vexatos medendi solertia ita curavit, ut ad p ristin am redigeret valitudinem... Observaverat quin etiam plurima ad Physiognomiam spectantia, in qua quum non parum studii in prima juventa consumpsisset, evaserat artifex egregius. Astronomiae quoque non vulgärem operam dedit, qua in re plurimum laudis ac praesertim in confutandis Astrologie assecutus est. Genethliacos siquidem ac sciolos omnes, contentiosos scholasticos, Peripateticis, Neotericis tantum addictos, cane, ut aiunt, pejus et

34

Introductory Essay

incomplete evidence which Corsi offers. Ficino's estimate of the powers of Saturn and Corsi's unashamed reference to the expulsion of demons and ghosts give away too much to the magical worldview. Secondly — and this is to repeat my first point from a different perspective — Corsi seems not to have realized that he was leaving evidence of Ficino's having been 'superstitious' in the very act of describing him as an enemy of superstition. Clearly, it did not occur to Corsi as it did to Fontenelle, simply not to mention his subject's attitude toward occultism. In Corsi's time the problem of occultism was unavoidable. It was a standard topic of analysis for the best contemporary minds. The occultist tradition was still intellectually respectable; it possessed what the sociologists of knowledge call 'cognitive validity'.6 In fact, it seems that the cognitive validity and authority of occultism grew stronger in the Renaissance, thanks to the attention which Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola gave to astrology, Cabala, the Hermetica, magic, and other species of occultism.7 I believe that one of the more important stories to be told about European history will explain how the occultist tradition lost its intellectual respectability, how it became tasteful and sensible and intellectually appropriate for Fontenelle to avoid discussing Newton's interest in occultist problems. For brevity's sake, I refer to this problem as 'the disappearance of the cognitive authority of the occultist tradition'. I use the word Occultist' to describe a category of thinking and practice which includes as subcategories 'magic', 'astrology', 'witchcraft', 'demonology', 'Cabala', 'divination', 'alchemy', and related terms. By Occultist tradition' I mean the diachronic transmission in ancient, medieval, and early modern times of various analyses of and angue evitabat... Illud vero nequaquam omittendum: in Magia habitum esse singularem atque divinum, malis daemonibus ac manibus pluribus e locispulsis fugatisque, Religionis ubique defensor acerrimus, superstition! supra modum infensus.' If one reads 'in Magiam' for 'in Magia' in the last sentence, Corsi's picture of Ficino seems less inconsistent. For the biographical value of Corsi's Vita, see: P. O. Kristeller, 'Per la biografia di Marsilio Ficino', Studies in Renaissance Thought and Letters (Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1956), pp. 191-211. 6. Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge (New York: Anchor Books, 1967), pp. 92-98, et passim. 7. Yates, Bruno, pp. 62-115, 143; Walker, Demonic, pp. 3-59.

The Problem of the Occultist Tradition in Early Modern Europe

35

positions on occultism which, seen at any one moment, possess discernible and relatively stable synchronic relations revealed to us mainly in literary contexts. In more traditional terms, Occultist tradition' represents the notion that over a long period of time European thinkers used more or less the same terminology and the same conceptual apparatus to describe their understandings of problems which they called magic, astrology, divination, etc. My purpose in doing this study of Champier was to help answer this question: 'To what degree and for what reasons did the occultist tradition possess cognitive authority in the late medieval and early modern period?' Insofar as I am able to give a useful answer, I may be helping to solve the larger puzzle: 'Why and how did the occultist tradition lose its cognitive authority between the last quarter of the fifteenth century and the first quarter of the eighteenth century?' Some of the more recent work done in the history of occultism demands that I explain the approach I have taken to Champier's thought, an approach which may be found culpably ignorant of the uses which historians have been making of anthropological and sociological methodologies and findings. Keith Thomas, Alan Macfarlane, H. C. Erik Midelfort, and others have been quite successful in applying social scientific analyses to the study of European witchcraft and, especially in Thomas' case, to the general problem of occultism (which he calls 'the decline of magic').8 I did not write about Champier in ignorance of this interdisciplinary scholarship, but what I owe to it is practically invisible in what follows. My conscious model in this study has been the work of Frances Yates and D. P. Walker. I believe that their techniques are useful and even indispensable in writing the intellectual history of the occultist tradition through the examination of individual thinkers — an enterprise which, as far as I know, the interdisciplinary approach to occultism has not yet successfully managed. Before it can be managed, it will be necessary to have a clearer idea of what important individuals actually thought and claimed to think about occultism. Scholars like Yates and Walker have undertaken this clarifying labor for 8. Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1971); Alan Macfarlane, Witchcraft in Tudor and Stuart England (London: Routledge andKeganPaul,1970);H.C. Erik Midelfort, Mfc/t Hunting in Southwestern Germany, 1562-1684: The Social and Intellectual Foundations (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1972).

36

Introductory Essay

thinkers like Pico, Ficino, Giordano Bruno, Agrippa von Nettesheim, Paracelsus, Jean Bodin, and others.9 I have tried to do it for Ch ampier. Eventually it may become possible to write the history of occultist thinking from the point of view of a sociology of knowledge, but first we need to have a better idea of what past states of knowledge were and what they claimed to be. At this time it seems that the best lesson which intellectual historians can learn from social scientists is the danger of carrying into the study of magic or astrology or witchcraft the sort of theoretical baggage popularized by Frazer's Golden Bough and similar works. While I am aware of the difficulty of claiming to see the past pretheoretically, I have tried to avoid the macrotheoretical schemata which try to sort out magic, religion, and science for all times and all men.10 But since I use the words Occult' and 'magic' and their derivatives so frequently throughout the book, the reader ought to know why I hesitate to approach them theoretically or to define them. Consider these questions: 9. Yates, Bruno', Yates, The Art of Memory (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1966); Walker, Demonic; Walker, Ancient Theology; Charles G. Nauert, Jr., Agrippa and the Crisis of Renaissance Thought, Illinois Studies in the Social Sciences 55 (Urbana: The University of Illinois Press, 1965); Walter Pagel, Paracelsus: An Introduction to Philosophical Medicine in the Era of the Renaissance (Basel: S. Karger, 1958); Ursula Lange, Untersuchungen zu Bodins Demonomanie (Frankfurt-am-Main: V. Klostermann, 1970). 10. The process whereby modern scholars lost the confidence of the early social scientists in their ability to distinguish clearly among magic, science, and religion is itself a good illustration of the deterioration of a certain kind of cognitive authority. For discussions of these distinctions and their history, see: Dorothy Hammond, 'Magic: A Problem in Semantics', American Anthropologist 72 (1970), pp. 1349-1356; Murray Wax,'Religion and Magic', in James Clifton, ed., Introduction to Cultural Anthropology (New York: H. Mifflin, 1968), pp. 225-242; Murray G. Murphey, On the relation between Science and Religion', American Quarterly 20 (1968), 275-295; J. G. Frazer, The Golden Bough (2nded. rev.; Ixjndon: MacMillan,1900),I,pp.63-64,69-71,III,pp.458459; Emile Durkheim, Les formes elementaires de la vie religieuse: Lesysteme totemique en Australie, Bibliotheque de philosophic contemporaine (5th ed. rev.; Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1968), pp. 47-63; Marcel Mauss, A General Theory of Magic, trans. Robert Brain (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972), pp. 11-17; J. D. Y. Peel, 'Understanding Alien Belief-Systems', The British Journal of Sociology 20 (March, 1969), p. 76; Roland Robertson, The Sociological Interpretation of Religion (New York: Schocken Books, 1972), pp. 43-51; Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1970), pp. 20-40, 73-136.

The Problem of the Occultist Tradition in Early Modern Europe

37

1. Did Marsilio Ficino perform a magical rite? 2. Did Lucrezia Borgia's victim swallow arsenic? No one answering the second question has any trouble deciding what counts as arsenic. People agree about what-in-the-world the word 'arsenic' represents, and under the right conditions one can discover in 1977 whether the poison killed someone in 1500. But in the first question there are other issues to be settled: A. What counted as magic? a. for Ficino? b. for Ficino's contemporaries? B. What counts as magic in 1977? Qearly there is an important difference between the representation of behavior by the phrase 'practicing magic' and its representation by a phrase like 'swallowing arsenic'. Perception of the former behavior varies much more with one's cultural standpoint than perceiving the latter. Evidences of swallowing arsenic are empirical data more or less detachable from cultural circumstance, but practicing magic will mean quite different things to a Christian missionary and his primitive congregation. What did 'magic' mean to the authors of these three statements? 1. 'My child, do not be a diviner, for that leads to idolatry. Do not be an enchanter or an astrologer or a magician. Moreover, have no wish to heed or observe such practices, for all this breeds idolatry' (The Didache).11 2. 'There is no science which gives us more certitude of Christ's divinity than magic and Cabala' (Pico della Mirandola).12 3. 'The radical conflict of principle between magic and religion sufficiently explains the relentless hostility with which in history the priest has often pursued the magician. The haughty self-sufficiency of the magician, his arrogant demeanor toward the higher powers, and his unabashed claim to exercise a sway like theirs could not but revolt the priest, to whom, with his awful sense of the divine majesty, and his humble prostration 11. Didache 2.4, ed. Cyril Richardson, Tie Library of Christian Classics, Vol. I: Early Christian Fathers (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, n. d.), p. 172. 12. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Gian Francesco Pico, Opera omnia (15571573) (rpt. Hildesheim: G. Olms, 1969), I, p. 105: 'Nulla est scientia, quae nos magis certificet de divinitate Christi, quam Magia et Cabala'.

38

Introductory Essay

in presence of it, such claims and such a demeanor must have appeared an impious and blasphemous usurpation of prerogatives that belong to God alone' (J. G. Frazer).13 I believe one must read all three of these statements in the context of a Christian polemic against other religions which was begun by the Apostolic Fathers and continues to effect twentieth century thinking about magic. The first comes from the Didache, a late first century manual of Christian morality, liturgy, and ministerial practice. In warning the faithful away from magic, it ignores the important commitment of early Christian writers to the veracity and, in some cases, the legitimacy of the fundamental ingredients of the magical world-view in the West: astrology, demonology, divination, magical medicine, the notion of an 'ancient theology', etc. Early Christian scholars were generally more interested in Scripture, theology, and morality than in the phenomenon of religion, and did not bother — except on grounds of faith — to make clear and comprehensive distinctions between the nature of that phenomenon and the nature of magic. They were sure, however, that their religion was Christ's truth and that outside it was error and idolatry. To carry this saving conviction to the world they produced an apologetic literature in which 'magic' and related words are not descriptive terms but polemic labels. They do not indicate the maintenance of a magical worldview among pagans and its rejection by Christians; Christians lacked both the means and the motive to reform the cosmology of Plato, Aristotle, and Ptolemy, a cosmology which implied as much for them as for the pagan enemy a cosmos held together by astral influences, demonic powers, and other magical bonds. A Christian who hurled the epithet 'magic' at his pagan opponent accused not so much an error in gnosis as a failure ofpistis. But given faith, given the proper choice of religion, the choice of cosmological knowledge (stars, planets, demons, etc.) ceased to be problematic. In fact, for theists there could be little choice in this matter in later antiquity and thus few fundamental differences in cosmological gnosis between, for example, Justin Martyr and the pagan lamblichus.14 Some of Justin's occultist beliefs entered Christian tradition because 13. Frazer, Golden Bough, p. 64. 14. Justin First Apol. 5-6, 9-10, 14, 18, 26, 30, 41; lamblichus, On the Mysteries of the Egyptians, Chaldeans, and Assyrians, trans. Thomas Taylor (3rd ed.; London: Stuart and Watkins, 1968), pp. 24-26, 29-48, et passim.

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they were offered in Christian faith; the same beliefs in pagans were damned as idolatry because they were unsanctified by faith in Christ. The cosmology which supported the magical worldview in Western culture maintained its ascendancy until Galileo and his successors promulgated the Copernican Revolution in the seventeenth century. The details of the various versions of the old cosmology — Platonic, Neoplatonic, Peripatetic, Stoic, Gnostic — became obscure to Christian thinkers in the early Middle Ages, and so few Christians from after Augustine's time through the eleventh century could comment at any length on the content of the magical erudition which derived from the old cosmology. But, as Tertullian promised, when the Church and the faithful lost the content of the Classical worldpicture, they also got free of it. Justin Martyr's otherworldliness had been seriously constrained by his awareness of the cosmos in which he and lamblichus both lived, but the otherworldliness of early medieval thinkers was blissfully empty of cosmological weight. And so the invective force of 'magic' and similar terms for early medieval Christians became clearer. The author of the Canon episcopi (early tenth century) and the sorcerers he condemns are not joined by the magical gnosis of the cosmos which Justin and lamblichus shared.15 Ignorance of the world clarified the distinction between God's enemies, who practiced magic, and God's friends, who did not. Writing six centuries after the author of the Canon episcopi, Pico della Mirandola claimed just the opposite: not only is magical gnosis (Lat. scientia) important, but no other scientia tells us more about Christ's divinity. Pico and Ficino helped complete a revival of Classical cosmology which had been underway since the late eleventh century. They believed that the magical wisdom of antiquity could reinvigorate the physical, intellectual, and religious lives of their contemporaries. They also knew that the Church and the faithful had been badly served during the media tempestas, the dark time between the end of the ancient world and their own era of rebirth. They helped propagate the anti-medieval humanist polemic which asserted the identity of the very old and the very good, proclaimed antiquitas as a criterion of the good life, and argued that sacred 15. Jeffrey Burton Russell, Witchcraft in the Middle Ages (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1972), pp. 75-77.

40

Introductory Essay

knowledge had been handed down in zprisca theologia which was as old as Hermes Trismegistus, supposedly a contemporary of Moses. The Hermetica, the writings attributed to Hermes, were actually products of late antiquity and depended on much the same cosmology assumed by Justin and lamblichus. It was the recovery of the details of this cosmology and the absence of any alternative which argued so strongly to Pico and Ficino the significance of the astrological, demonological, and magical ideas which the cosmology implied. The failure of Pico's reforming vision in his own lifetime is well known. It was a personal failure which preceded the two larger events which doomed his project of a religious reformation grounded in the old cosmology — the Protestant Reformation and the Copernican Revolution. The rapid success of Luther, Calvin, and the other reformers pre-empted Pico's magical solution to one of his central problems, the insufficiency of the orthodox Christianity of the later Middle Ages for the needs of fifteenth and sixteenth century Christians. And the eventual success of Copernicus' stand against Ptolemy vitiated that solution in so far as it assumed the old cosmology whose disassembly Copernicus began. These same new phenomena, Protestantism and post-Copernican science (no longer gnosis or scientia), give us the polemic context of J. G. Frazer's influential analysis of religion and magic. The magical consequences of the old cosmology had lost their cognitive authority long before Frazer wrote. True, Newton was interested in alchemy and the Hermetica and Mesmer attempted an occultist treatment of electricity, but the issue was really settled in Fontenelle's day. Frazer formulated his descriptions of religion and magic in the full flush of Victorian confidence (or was it faith?) in post-Newtonian science and technology.16 He lived well into the twentieth century but remained unshaken by the visions of relativity and indeterminacy created by Planck, Einstein, Heisenberg, Schrödinger, and others. His science admitted no disorder, no chance, and he found that it resembled magic to the extent that its principles were determinist. For magic, Frazer argued, was simply the mistaken application of the associative laws of contiguity and similarity which, when properly applied, produced science. The people who 16. For these comments on Frazer, I have depended on pp. 7-80 of the 1900 edition of the Golden Bough.

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made such mistakes were 'the rudest savages', 'the dull, the weak, the ignorant, and the superstitious'. What a distance Frazer had come from the time of Ficino, Dr. Faustus, and Prospero! He had discarded their cosmology for a new worldview whose technological manifestations — the locomotive, the telegraph, the iron battleship — gave power beyond Faustus' most elaborate fantasies. Since it was clear to Frazer that science and not magic had made Western man lord of nature and prince of history, he found it easy to forget that Europeans had once called magic an important part ofscientia and easy to father magic on the weak and ignorant savages who had no battleships and no telegraphs. Nor had they the Gospel. Frazer's concept of religion is unashamedly Christian and Protestant; its principle sources the Epistles and the Prophets. Religion for him is the evolutionary partner of science and European culture. 'The more thoughtful part of mankind ... the shrewder intelligences' have advanced beyond the animal confusion of the aborigines who suppose that the higher powers beyond nature can be manipulated as if they were as much parts of nature as sticks and stones. The properly religious attitude, untainted with the magician's automatic manipulations, is one of propitiation and conciliation, a'confession of ignorance and human weakness', a 'recognition of man's powerlessness', of 'man's entire and absolute dependence on the divine'. Frazer's magic is what they do; his religion and science what we do. I have beaten what for social scientists is a horse long dead because outside anthropological and sociological circles the influence of Frazer's thinking about magic, religion, and science is still quite strong. This is partially because much social scientific discussion of these problems since Evans-Pritchard's work on the Azande seems a nominalist reaction to the earlier and more confident formulations of Frazer, Durkheim, Mauss, Malinowski, and others. No definitions as compelling for the layman as Frazer's have arisen, and when historians of witchcraft and other occultist phenomena have turned to Evans-Pritchard and his successors they have found methods and models, not definitions. 'The radical conflict of principle' which Frazer saw between religion and magic was either invisible or at least soluble for Pico and Ficino, who hoped to call on the occultist tradition in the task of reforming Christianity. The author of the Didache, on the other hand, forbade magic to members of his new faith, but this prohibi-

42

Introductory Essay

tion remained unenforceable until post-scientific men, like Frazer, dispensed with the cosmology common to Pico and Ficino and the author of the Didache. Something can be learned by asking what 'magic' meant to each of these people, but framing this question obviously raises problems of language more complex than those implied by a question about the meaning of a term like 'arsenic'. The use in Western culture of words like 'magic' does not point to phenomena which can be objectively determined so much as it indicates the user's attitude toward a very broad range of thought and behavior which the user perceives in a certain way. When we hear these words we should not expect they will lead us to anything in the world or in the mind as well defined as arsenic. In dealing with Champier, I will be content if they lead me to other words in texts, some as elusive, some more precise, which may tell us something about the intentions with which people have uttered these words in the past. As far as I know, my first chapter is the only sizeable and reasonably complete biographical statement published on Champier since the early essays of Allut and Potton. James B. Wadsworth's monograph on Lyon in the Renaissance covers Champier's early career and his first statements on occultism, and I owe a great deal to his book. M. I. Holmes' thesis on Champier also studies his career and is particularly useful for its bibliographical information. I have taken special pains in the biographical chapter to indicate any occasion which might have helped shape Champier's understanding of occultism. The second chapter treats the sources on which Champier depended for his treatment of occultism. The third chapter analyzes Champier's critique of occultism. As an appendix, I have included a facsimile, a translation, and an annotation of Champier's Dyalogus... in magicarum artium destructionem. It was not until my typescript was about to go to the printer with final corrections that I learned of Annie Rijper's edition and translation into French of the Dyalogus, which appeared in the new French journal Anagrom in 1974.17 I have kept my version of the Dyalogus in this book because: Rijper gives 17. Annie Rijper, 'Symphorien Champier, Condemnation des sciences occultes, edition critique du Dyalogus in magicarum artium destructionem, avec une traduction franqaise, une introduction et des notes par Annie Rijper', Anagrom 5-6 (1974), pp. 1-54.

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an edited text where I give a facsimile with emendations; Rijper's translation is French, mine English; the source notes in Rijper's version are incomplete and in some cases, I believe, erroneous. lam indebted to Ms. Rijper for her emendations and translation as a check on my own work, a previous draft of which appeared in my dissertation in 1970.

CHAPTER ONE

A BRIEF LIFE OF SYMPHORIEN CHAMPIER: HIS CAREER AND CHARACTER

'... thus is man that great and true Amphibium, whose nature is disposed to live not onely like other creatures in divers elements, but in divided and distinguished worlds...' Browne, Religio Medici, 34

I. His ADVENTUROUS CAREER Symphorien Champier was born in the early 1470's in a Lyonnais village then called Saint-Symphorien-le-Chateau. His father, most probably, was Andre Champier, a notary and an apothecary, from whom he may have acquired some early Latin skills and some interest in the medical arts.1 The details of his earliest education remain unknown. It is certain, however, that he spent some time at the University of Paris before 1495.2 In later years he remembered the 1. In Libelli duo, (med.), fol. xl ve, a letter from Gonsalvo of Toledo to Champier, dated January 17, 1506, refers to Champier's being in his thirty-third year. The colophon of De triplici disciplina, dated February 29,1508, has 'Anno aetatis meae. xxxvi'. Allowing for all the chronological and arithmetical variations, one can thus place Champier's birthdate sometime between 1472 and 1475, but Holmes (Th., pp. 57-58) believes that Champier's birthdate can be fixed 'between January 17th and February 28th of the year 1474'. His birthplace is now called Saint-Symphorien-sur-Coise, and older authorities have said that Claude Champier, a well-to-do burgher of that village, was his father. See: Nef P., fol. liiiiv"; J. Tricou, 'Le Testament de Symphorien Champier', BHR 18 (1956), p. 103; Claude le Laboreur, M.-C. Guigue, Georges Guigue, Les Masures de VIle-Barbe (Lyon: Vitte et Perrussel, 1887), pp. 429-430; M.-C. Guigue, 'Notes sur la famule de Symphorien Champier', Royaume des Allobroges... (Lyon: Henry Georg, 1884), pp. xxviii-xxix; Wadsworth, Lyons, p. 73; Allut, Etude, p. 12. 2. Duellum, sig. kvi v°; Marcel Gouron, Matricule de l'Universite de Medecine de Montpellier (1503-1599), Travaux d'Humanisme et Renaissance, Vol. XXV (Geneva: E. Droz, 1957), pp. 215-216; Champier's matriculation at Montpellier

46

A Brief Life of Symphorien Champier

following of the men who taught him there:'... in humanitate, Guido luvenalis, Johannes Fernandinus, Faustus Andrelinus, Hieronymus Balbus forliviensis; in artibus et philosophia, Cornelius... germanus, Johannes Colar britannus'. The Italians, Balbi and Andreiini, could have given Champier first-hand knowledge of the accomplishments of the Italian Renaissance. Jean Fernand and Guy Jouenneaux could have led him to the Latin classics, and (if John Colet was the britannus named above) the door was also open to patristic and Neoplatonic studies.3 Champier must have seen many doors opening in these early years of the revival of learning in France. We can only guess about what he learned from the 'little group of friends of literature and ancient piety' who gathered in Paris in the last twenty years of the fifteenth century. Jean Fernand and his brother Charles moved in a circle of humanist Carmelites whose most famous member, Baptista Spagnuoli (Mantuanus), may well have influenced Champier's decision to treat medicine and theology as interdependent disciplines. Much clearer is his long-lived admiration for Lefevre d'itaples and for two of his students, Charles Bouelles and Josse Clichetove. Lefevre's enthusiasm for Aristotle, Plato, the Fathers, the Neoplatonists, mysticism, and occultism left its mark on almost all Champier's work.4 in 1495 was not recorded in the Matncule itself but in the notes of the episcopal notaries of Maguelone; the entry reads: 'Simphorianus Champierius, Lugdunensis. D. 1504', and is contained under the heading 'Annee 1495'. 3. TD, sig. Cvii ve; Wadsworth, Lyons, p. 74; Holmes, Th., pp. 45,62; Augustin Renaudet, Prereforme et humanisme a Parts pendant les premieres guerres d'ltalie (1494-1517), (2nd ed. rev.; Paris: Librairie d'Argences, 1953), pp. 118136; Pierre Imbart de la Tour, Les Origines de la Reforme, Vol. II: L'Eglise catholique: La Crise et la Renaissance, ed. Yvonne Lanhers (Melun: Librairie d'Argences, 1944), pp. 352-353,367-368; Wilfred P. Mustard, The Eclogues of Faustus Andrelinus and loannes Arnolletus (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1918), pp. 7-19;Thomdike,/ftifory, IV, 560. 4. Renaudet, Prereforme, pp. 118, 136-159, 374 n. 6, 500, 514, 620 n. 6, 669-671, 685 n. 2; Wadsworth, Lyons, pp. 78-79; Wadsworth, ed., Le Livre de Vraye Amour: A Text with Introduction and Notes (The Hague: Mouton, 1962), p. 18; Benoit-Marie de la Sainte-Croix, 'Les Cannes humanistes (environ 1465—jusque 1525)', fitudes Carmelitaines, mystiques et missionaires 20, 2 (October,1935), pp. 43, 72-81, 85-88; Gordon W.Jones, 'Baptista Mantuanus—Amateur Physician', Bulletin of the History of Medicine 36 (January, 1962), pp. 148,152-53,160; Eugene F. Rice, 'The Humanist Idea of Christian Antiquity: Lefevre d'£taples and his Circle', Studies in the Renaissance 9 (1962), p. 127. For Champier's relations with Lefevre, there are informative

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Prepared by Paris and her scholars to enter the world of higher learning, Champier moved south to the famous medical school of Montpellier where he matriculated in 1495.5 We know the names of only two of his teachers there: Honore Piquet of Provence, the Dean of the medical school in 1495, and Nicole Beauboys from the Low Countries.6 But we can infer a good deal about Champier's years in medical school. We can guess, for instance, that he might have chosen another Studium, Padua or maybe Paris, since Montpellier no longer dominated medical education as she had in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, but that his was a sound choice and a very Catholic one since Montpellier remained a fortress of the faith though long surrounded by Albigensian country.7 Moreover, it was closer to home, to Lyon. The Arabs dominated the curriculum, but one read a good deal of Hippocrates, Galen, and the 'modems' as well. Rather, one was read to, for in those days of scanty libraries the bulk of instruction was oral, an enervating routine of copying doctrine and commentary in a notebook balanced on the knee. Like any student, Champier might have had a key to the library, but as of 1505 it contained only fifty volumes. Anatomies were even rarer than books. Between 1526 and 1535 three dissections a year was the average, and the cadaver letters in many of his books, but see especially: Libelli duo, QV, TG, TD, Mirabilium, and Duellum. See also: Eugene F. Rice, ed., The Prefatory Epistles of Jacques Lefevre d'Etaples and Related Texts (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972), pp. 53-55, 74, 136, 166-169, 174-176, 187-189, 322-324, 400. 5. See above, n. 2; Holmes (Th., p. 62) points out that the municipal archives of Lyon (Serie BB 369) give Champier the title 'docteur en droit' in 1519, but I have found no other claim to legal degrees in Champier's works. Given Champier's fondness for honors and titles, I am inclined to believe that the archival note is mistaken and that the same can be said for his being called 'docteur en theologie' on the title-page of Nef P.; see also, Wadsworth, Lyons, p. 127 n. 31. 6. TD, sig. Cviiv'; Ernest Wickersheimer, Dictionnaire biographique des medecins en France au Moyen Age (Paris: E. Droz, 1936), I, p. 298, II, p. 565; Wadsworth (Lyons, p. 94 n. 7) says that 'Wickersheimer... is silent on Nicholas', but I have assumed that Nicholas de pulchro bosco may be a latinized form of the Nicole Beauboys whom Wickersheimer does mention. 7. Hastings Rashdall, The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages, ed. F. M. Powicke and A. B. Emden (London: Oxford University Press, 1936), II, pp. 119-121, 135-139; V. L. Saulnier, 'Medecins de Montpellier au temps de Rabelais', BHR 19 (1957), p. 426.

48

A Brief Life ofSymphorien Champier

available might be an executed criminal or a plague victim.8 As early as 1496 Champier had been recognized for his skills in the 'Apollonian and Aesculapian art', and by 1498 he was calling himself 'phisicus universitatis Montispesulani'? Although the baccalaureate in medicine normally required a two or three years' residence, it is difficult to say just how long Champier stayed in Montpellier after 1495. His correspondence indicates that within one year of his matriculation he was practicing medicine and teaching the liberal arts in Dauphine and also, probably, in the Bourbonnais.10 It was at this time that he and Jacques Robertet, one of the Bourbon entourage, pursued literary studies together. With Robertet, perhaps, Champier began his work in Greek although he still considered himself a novice in this tongue over a decade later. It is also likely that Robertet's connection with the Bourbons opened Champier's eyes to the benefits that might flow from noble patronage.11 Since the 8. Paul Delaunay, La Vie medicateaux XVI*, XVII*, et XVIII* siecles (Paris: Editions Hippocrate, 1935), pp. 65-77; Stephen d'Irsay,Histoire des universites franqaises et etrangeres des origines a nos jours, Vol. I: May en Age et Renaissance (Paris: Auguste Picard, 1933), pp. 110-120; C. D. O'Malley, Andreas Vesalius of Brussels, 1514-1564 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 19 65), pp. 11-16; A. Germain, L'Ecole de medecine de Montpellier: ses origines, sa constitution, son enseignement: Etude historique d'apres les documents originaux (Montpellier: J. Martel aine, 1880), p. 80; Germain, La Renaissance a Montpellier: Etude historique d'apres les documents originaux avec pieces justificativesinedites(Montpellier:J.Martel aine, 1871),p.46; TheodorPuschmann, A History of Medical Education from the Most Remote to the Most Recent Times, trans, and ed. Evan H. Hare (London: H. K. Lewis, 1891), pp. 219, 246-248. 9. Jacques Robertet to S. C., May 15, 1496, TG, sig. Giiii; S. C. to Durand de la Grange and Andre Botin [1498], Janua, sig. Gviii. 10. S. C. to Jean Rabot, [1498], Janua, sig. Aii; S. C. to Durand de la Grange, ibid., sig. Gviii; S. C. to Andre Briau, ibid., sig. Dvi; Allut, Etude, p. 106; Wadsworth, Lyons, pp. 73-77; Germain, Ecole, pp. 23-24; Puschmann, Education, p.239. 11. Jacques Robertet to S. C., May 15, 1496, TG, sig. Gmi;NefD. (1515), sig. pviiv"; Jacques Robertet to S. C., October 21, 1496, Libelli duo, (Col.), fols. xxvi vVxxvii; S. C. to Symphorien Grignano, [1508-1509], TD, sig. dddviii; Henry Guy, Histoire de la poesie franqaise au XVIe siecle, Vol. I: L'Ecole des rhetoriqueurs, Bibliotheque litteraire de la Renaissance (Paris: H. Champion, 1910), p. 59 n. 81. On Champier's knowledge of Greek there seems to be no clear evidence; see: Potton, 'fitudes', I, 13: Imbart de la Tour, Origines, II, 364; Julien Baudrier, Bibliographie lyonnaise: Recherches sur les imprimeurs, libraires, relieurs etfondeurs de Lyon auXVIe siecle (Paris: F. de Nobele, 1964), XII, 96.

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days of Barthelemy Buyer, the pioneer of humanist printing in Lyon, Lyonnais scholars had sought patronage in the nearby courts of the Bourbons and of Dauphine; thus, we can understand Champier's haunting these localities early in his career.12 To gain the leisure for writing learned books and the financial backing for publishing them, Champier needed fuller resources than teaching and the practice of medicine could give him. Until 1503, he was in pursuit of Bourbon favor. His two most famous books, the Nef des Princes of 1502 and its companion of the following year, the Nef des Dames, were directly aimed at securing the lucrative good will of the House of Bourbon. Champier's acquaintance with the Robertet family, his correspondence with Bourbon court physicians, and the dedications of the moralizing essays which constitute the two Nefs, all bear traces of his quest for the friendship of the great. But his plans miscarried in October of 1503 when the death of Pierre II caused the Bourbons to adopt marital schemes which were not consonant with the contents of the little Nefs.13 Though the Nefs did not win Champier entry to the court of Moulins, they did help gain for him posterity's recognition that he was among the first to introduce Plato and especially Marsilio Ficino's Plato to the scholars of Renaissance France. In the Nef des Princes, Ficino's editions of and commentaries on Plato's writings came for the first time into the French vernacular, and the fourth book of the Nef des Dames, the Livre de Vraye Amour, was based largely on sections of Ficino's Liber de amore. Like Sebastian Brant's Ship of Fools, which was printed in Lyon in 1498 and 1499, Champier's two Ships were concerned with moral problems. Brant's famous poem had advice for all society, but Champier was most concerned with telling the aristocracy, his potential patrons, 'how to understand how to live and die well'. The Nef des Princes explains how the prince can manage his realm and his family in a manner both noble and Christian. The Nef des Dames takes up the problems 12. Charles Perrat, 'Barthelemy Buyer et les debuts de Fimprimerie a Lyon', HR 2 (1935), p. 244. 13. Nef P., fols. iii-iv; S.Coppin to S.C., [1507], QV, sig. , fol. 16.

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Still alive in Ficino's works, these planetary demons partook in the government of the cosmos and especially in the regulation of man's fate.119 Champier's use of the Intro du ctorium was not entirely uncritical : here he cites Albumasar on occult lunar and solar influences; there he finds him guilty of self-contradiction or of 'heaping impiety on impiety'. Alchabitius (al-Qabisi), Albumasar's successor in astrology and iatromathematics, appears with equal frequency but less criticism in Champier's works. The glosses of the Janua, qualified only by the reader's general sense of Champier's wish to construct an orthodox critique of astrology, are full of Alchabitius'rich accounts of the powers of the planets; for example: 'Saturn signifies ... the weight of cold and dryness, the melancholic complexion, and of the illnesses its increase signifies diseases which are phlegmatic, melancholic, viscous, thickened, and acute such as leprosy, morphea, gout, and cancer.'120 The names of some of the greatest Arab authorities came down to Champier attached to textbooks of medicine. Champier knew Rhazes (al-Razi) for his Continens and his Liber ad Almansorem, both standard offerings in the medieval medical curriculum, and also listed under his name a book/n astrologia and another In alchimia de sublimationibusy2·1 Rhazes' predecessor Alkindus (al-Kindi) appears in LibeUi duo as the author of a treatise De theorica magicarum. His warnings about the dangers of astrology did not add up to a repudiation of that science, which was more thoroughly criticized by Alpharabius (al-Farabi), Rhazes' contemporary. Both Alkindus and Alpharabius wrote on the nature of the heavenly bodies which they found to be animate and immortal like the 'living gods' of the Platonic tradition. Alpharabius explicitly associated the stellar and planetary spheres with the hierarchy of cosmic intellects which 119. Lemay, Abu Ma'Shar, pp. 42, 48-50, 85, 347-348; Klibansky et al., Melancholy, pp. 127-128,132-133, 179-180; Carmody, Astrological Sciences, p. 88. 120. Janua, sigs. Dv°-Dv: 'Alchabicius: Satumus significat ... gravitatem frigoris et siccitatis, complexionem melancolicam, et augmentum eius ex infirmitatibus significat morbos flegmaticos et melancolicos et viscosos et congelatos acutos ut lepram, morpheam, podagram, et cancros...'; MAD, fol. 10v°; Cribratio, fol. LX-LXI; QV, sigs. cviii, fv; Symphonia, fol. XC; Klibansky et al., Melancholy, p. 130; Sudhoff, latromathematiker, p. 20. 121. Janua, sig. Fvii; QF, sigs.ivii.kv; Libelliduo, (merfj.fol.xxiv*; Fakhry, Islamic Philosophy, pp. 115-119; Elgood, Persia, pp. 198-201.

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proceeded from his 'third intellect' and governed the elementary processes of generation and corruption in the sublunar region. This emanationist cosmology, which was practically universal among the Arab authorities whom Champier knew, seems to have vitiated Alpharabius' skeptical handling of the pretensions of practicing astrologers. His theory of the 'active intellect', moreover, advanced the magical career of the imagination, for he held that in certain men this faculty of the soul becomes the organ of divination and prophecy when immediately joined to the active intellect.122 A comparison of the scant remains of Alpharabius' work with the extensive writings of Avicenna (Ibn Sina) reveals that thelatter's chief merit was not so much his originality as his systematic and comprehensive coverage of problems already outlined by his predecessors. Westerners tend to connect Avicenna with the Arab reception of Aristotelian philosophy, which the great Moslem teacher digested in the style of the summae in his Sufficientia (Kitab al-shifa). But Avicenna's contributions to the occultist tradition grew mainly out of his mastery of Islamic Neoplatonism for which he was chief advocate both in the East and the West.123 His fame and his accomplishments were clear to Champier, who called him 'that illustrious interpreter of Galen', 'an admirable and distinguished physician', and 'Avicenna, our prince'. A look at the citations in the Janua establishes the depth of Avicenna's influence on Champier, especially in medical and scientific matters.This influence continued throughout Champier's career and extended to questions outside of science and medicine, not least of all to occultism. No physician in Champier's time could be untouched by Avicenna's authority. His Sufficientia in the translation of Gundissalinus, his Canon in the translation of Gerard of Cremona, his Cantica together with Averroes' Commentary on it, and his De viribus cordis in the version of Arnaldus of Villanova remained fundamental to the university medical curriculum from scholastic times through the early sixteenth century.124 For 122. Libelliduo, (med.), fol.viv°;Fakhry,Islamic Philosophy,pp. 82,98-103, 125,132-133,137-138; Walzer, Greek into Arabic,pp.l4-15,21-22,208,211-214. 123. Fakhry, Islamic Philosophy, pp. 147-150; Peters, Aristotelian Tradition, pp. 166-168. 124. Janua, sigs. Cv, D, Eviiv0, Fiii, Fvi, H v"; QV, sig. bv; Rosa gallica, fols. XII-XIII; Symphonta G-H, p. 5; Cribratio, fol. LVIIv"; S.G. to Pere Tussano, [1533], Gallicum pentapharmacum, p. 5; Elgood, Persia, pp. 190, 206-207; Peters, Aristotelian Tradition, pp. 163-165.

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all his anti-Arabism and despite his attacks on the 'Avicenntstae', Champier thought it worth his while to cooperate with Rustico da Piacenza on an edition of the Canon, Cantica, and De viribus cordis in 1522. This edition includes a letter of Champier's to the Bishop of Ross in Scotland in which he expresses both his consciousness of Avicenna's authority and his willingness to set limits to it. 'Avicenna professed medicine', he reminded the Bishop, 'under the filthy and impious Mohammedan sect. Avicenna's name spread and became prominent in Spain so that then for the first time he was known not so much as Galen's interpreter as simply the prince of physicians. Also, no one was judged according to the term 'medicine' who did not come out of the workshop of Avicenna, and [only] one who earned the name 'Avicennista' was held worthy of the title and assessment [of 'physician']. Therefore, most worthy Bishop, I am not only raising doubts (as you once did about Magdalene) but am actually and urgently aspiring to emend and annotate the linguistic and literary errors of Avicenna.'125 However many Avicenna's errors, his accomplishments remained so central to Champier's work in humanist medicine that it seemed needful to single him out from among the Arabs for the relative scarcity of his mistakes. He was too wise, Champier insisted, to have swallowed all the superstitions of his coreligionists. Or if his medical terminology was sloppy, this was more the fault of his times than of his personal failings. All in all, Champier saw Avicenna much as he did Plato or Origen or the prisci theologi, as an authority capable of serious error but so estimable that time spent in distinguishing his wisdom for his folly was time well spent.126 125. S.C. to Robertas Cockburnus, [1522], Canon B.C., sig. +2: "Verum multis post seculis Avicenna sub mahomethea spurcissima et nephanda secta medicinam profitente. Avicennae nomen apud hispanos increbuit ac emicuit ut turn primum non tarn Galeni interpres sed medicorum princeps dumtaxat vocaretur. Neque item hoc medicinae nomine censeretur qui non ex Avicennae officina prodisset et satis tituli et estimationis haberet qui Avicennista nuncupari meruisset. Ego igitur, Antistes dignissime, non modo quam olim de Magdalena poposcisti dubia, sed et nunc Avicennae errata animo promptissimo sive lingua sive literis emendate et annotare concupisco'; Castigationes, fol. VIII. 126. Symphonic, fol. V; S.C. to F. Dubois, Lyon, February 15,1528, Symphonia G-H, pp. 5-7; S.C. to Albert du Puy, [1516], Cribratio, fol. Ill;ibid., fols. Vv«, XLII v'; CEG, pp. 10, 59-62.

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Two of Avicenna's works, the Refutation of Astrologers and the Treatise on Fate, might lead us to wonder why Champier did not find the great physician especially useful in his assault on the magical arts since these books argue for the preservation of free will and against the arrogant determinism of the astrologers. But beyond Avicenna's admission in these very treatises of a certain measure of celestial influence on earthly life there lies his firm commitment to the emanationist cosmology sketched out by Alpharabius and so rich in astrological significance. Avicenna's critique of astrology, like Alpharabius' before him, was spoiled by his beliefs regarding 'the chain of intelligences and souls' with which he bound the highest parts of the cosmos to the lowest. Some of the links in the chain were the souls which moved the spheres; Avicenna identified these with the angels and thereby helped open the way for a Christian understanding of the Neoplatonic celestial intelligences. Champier accepts Avicenna as an authority on angels, and in the/anwa he offers only very general and vague qualifications of the Arab scholar's picture of the procession of heavenly powers from the One. Christian doctrine, of course, forbade him to hold with Avicenna that the human soul emanated from the active intellect, the last in the series of 'separate intelligences', but there was nothing necessarily unorthodox in seeing the celestial intelligences as the causes of generation and corruption. The motions of the heavenly bodies, Avicenna taught, govern the differentiation and combination of the four terrestrial elements and thereby enter into the development of earthly life.127 In De triplici disciplina Champier offers the following summary of the emanationist argument which he ascribes both to Plotinus and Avicenna, who 'argue very subtly that each and every thing is subject to divine power and providence, granted, of course, this arrangement: that the incorporeal causes, i.e., God and the angels and the souls of the heavenly bodies, are the makers of natural things; 127. M. A. F. Mehren, Ύιιββ d 'Avicenne sur l 'astrologie et sur le rapport de la responsabilite humaine avec le des tin', Le Museon 3 (1884),pp. 384-385,389, 397, 399, 402;Henry Corbin, Avicenna and the Visionary Recital, trans. Willard Trask, Bollingen Series LXVI (New York: Pantheon Books, 1960),pp. 46,162163; Fakhry, Islamic Philosophy, pp. 158-159, 163-164, 177; Conger, Macrocosms, pp. 51-52; Symphonia G-H, p. 8;Janua, sigs. Ciiiv0, Cvii; QV, sig. eiiv°eiii.

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and that corporeal causes are the instruments of the makers above. Finally, they show that whatever terrestrial events occur on earth arise out of some general combination of all superior and inferior causes together. But since no one can ever understand all these things, surely no one can draw a certain conclusion about anything of this sort.'128 It seems likely that Champier meant this final qualifier to refer to the attitudes of Avicenna and Plotinus, both of whom took pains to disclaim the certainty which colored the astrologers' arguments. At no point, at any rate, does Champier offer a clear and comprehensive rebuttal of the emanationist cosmology which entered his thinking through the works of Avicenna and others. Avicenna's psychology inhibited occultist speculation as much as it excited that kind of thinking. As Champier well knew, Avicenna reinforced Alpharabius' magical theory of the imagination with his proposal that prophecy and prophetic dreaming were the results of some mysterious contact between the superior intelligences and the imaginative faculty.129And yet Champier quailed at the reprehensible rationalism he saw in the great physician's estimate of the powers of the imagination; many of his books echo the chapter of the Cribratio which complains of 'the error of Avicenna and others who say that all miracles happen naturally'. Champier's point was his dogmatic certainty that 'certain wondrous events can be caused by God, by spirits (good and evil alike), and also by nature'. Avicenna and others were 'too much addicted to nature' when they minimized the earthly 128. TD, sig. eeii: 'Plotinus et Avicenna subtilissime disputant sub divina potestate providentiaque et cuncta et singula contineri, eo videlicet ordine, ut causae incorporeae scilicet deus et angeli corporumque celestium animae rerum naturalium artifices sint; causae vero corporeae sint superiorum artificum instrumenta. Deinde ostendunt quaecumque terrena in terris accidunt ex communi quodam concursu superiorum inferiorumque simul causarum omnium provenire. Cum autem cuncta haec nullus unquam comprehendere valeat, nimirum neminem certam ulla de re huiusmodi ferre posse sententiam'; MAD, fol. 17; cf. Avicennae perhypateticiphilosophiac me die orum facile primi opera in lucem redacta ac nuper quantum ars niti potuit per canonic o s emendata. Logyca, Sufficientia, De caelo et mundo, De anima, De animalibus, De intelligentiis... (1508; facsimile rpt. Frankfurt-am-Main: Minerva G.m.b.H., 1961), sigs. Av°-A2,C2v e . 129. Walzer, Greek into Arabic, p. 10; Ruth Harvey, The Inward Wits: Psychological Theory in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, Warburg Institute Surveys VI (London: The Warburg Institute, 1975), pp. 49-50; Janua, sig. Gviv"; Rosa gallica, fol. CIX.

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sphere of operations of God and His spiritual creatures, questioned the supernatural character of miracles, and treated the imagination as a sort of universal explanation of the inexplicable in human affairs.130 In thus criticizing Avicenna, Champier was enlarging the realm of the marvellous, but one of his specific proposals for limiting the activity of the imagination had an opposite, rationalizing effect. He rebuked Avicenna for claiming that 'not only the body attached to the soul of the one imagining obeys the imagination, ... but also external matter, which we deny' —thus confining the occult agency of the imagination to the body of the imagining subject.131 In the long run, such a constraint points away from magical notions like fascinatio or the evil eye and toward a scientifically manageable, psychosomatic etiology. Champier, clearly, was along way from any such concept. If any prescientific rationalism emerged from his critique of Avicenna's psychology, it was soon choked off by his engagement in the post-Ficinian renaissance of occultism. A passage from the Canon, for instance, gave Champier the chance to demystify his understanding of melancolia by denying that the possibility of a demonic origin of melancholy was relevant to the medical diagnosis of that ailment; it was sufficient for the physician to know that colera nigra dominated the complexion. Champier noted all this in the Dyalogus but then spoiled its rationalist import by reminding his reader that 'Avicenna does not deny that melancholy is sometimes caused by a demon'. The Dyalogus also reproduced Avicenna's rather clearheaded description of incubus as a kind of respiratory attack. Avicenna theorized that the incubus might spring as well from Other, non-material causes', but the few words he lent to this possibility gave less away to the magical worldview than the rich picture of the sexual habits of incubi and succubi which Champier borrowed from Aquinas for this section of the Dyalogus,132 In the 130. Cribratio, fols. XXXIX v°-XLII; Pronosticon, fol. iiiiv°; Rosagallica, fols. CXv°,CXIIII. 131. Q V, sig. bv: Obedire etiam imagination! non corpus solum animae imaginanti coniugatum, quod et omnes medici concedunt et sapientes non negant, sed et materiam quoque exteriorem, quod negamus'; Pronosticon, fol. iiiiv"; Cribratio, fol. XL; cf. Avicennae ... Logyca, Sufficientia..., sig. C4v°; Liber Canonis Avicennae revisus et ab omni errore mendaque purgatus summaque cum diligentia impressus (1507; facsimile rpt. Hildesheim: G.Olms,1964),fol. 33 v"; Harvey, Inward Wits, pp. 50-51. 132. Liber Canonis Avicennae, fols. 188v°, 191 v°-l92;MAD, fol. 15: '... Avi-

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case both of melancolia and of incubus, Avicenna's neglect of demonic intervention was too absolute for Champier's Christian taste. Avicenna's imposition of Neoplatonism on the Moslem mind was unacceptable to Algazel (al-Ghazali), whose reaction against the Avicennan philosophy threatened not only that great thinker's fame but Islam's whole enterprise of falsafah as well. The rescue of the philosophical tradition was the work of Averroes (Ibn Rushd), who altered the movement of falsafah in two ways: he replaced Avicenna's relatively independent thinking with a stricter explication of Aristotelian texts; and he modified Avicenna's preoccupation with Neoplatonism by paying more heed to the systematic integrity of Peripatetic thought.133 An important effect of Averroes' revisions was that his writings were somewhat less useful to the occultist tradition than those of Avicenna. The following passages from his Commentary on the Cantica illustrate his distance from Avicenna in this regard: '[Avicenna] Also, if those stars which are called unlucky are in their exaltation, they will have significance for the corruption of living things. But if those called lucky are in exaltation, they will signify the general well-being of these things. [Averroes] ... The findings of natural philosophy are totally against this. For all the actions of the stars are praiseworthy since the being of everything here below is linked up with the motion and position of the things in the various parts of the sphere. But the diversity of some of these things with respect to others depends on the calculation of their relative distance and nearness.'134 Champier's citations of Averroes against the astrologers indicate that he was aware of this difference. 'Averroes is renowned for his excenna non negavit quoniam melancolia aliquando a demone'; Practica nova, pp. 79-81 ;TD,sig.fv°. 133. Peters, Aristotelian Tradition,pp. 2Π, 219; Fakhry, Islamic Philosophy, pp. 244-249, 302-307. 134. Averrois cordubensis Colliget libri VII. Cantica item Avicennae cum eiusdem Averrois commentaries, M. A. Zimarae contradictionum solutiones, quorum series, et additamentum versa pagina manifestat: Supp. I, Aristotelis opera cum Averrois commentaries (1562-1574; rpt. Frankfurt-am-Main: Minerva G.m.b.H., 1962), fol. 236 G-K: '[Avicenna] Si etiam stellae, quae dicuntur infortunatae, fuerint in exaltatione sua, signiflcabunt super corruptionem animatorum. Si vero fortunatae dicuntur, fuerint ibidem, significabunt salutem eorundem omnimodam. [Averroes] ... Hoc tarnen to turn est contra Ulud, quod

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planation of Aristotle's philosophy', we learn from the Pronosticon, 'and foremost among the Arabs he condemns, censures, and rails at astrology'. As with almost everything Champier read, however, Averroes' books were not entirely barren of support for astrology and other occult sciences. Avicenna's celestial angelology did suffer under Averroes' reforming pen, but even this most faithfully Aristotelian of all the Arab scholars passed on the emanationist cosmology of his Neoplatonizing predecessors.135 Averroes also followed the practice of Arab scholarship in preparing a textbook of medicine, his Kitab-al-Kullyat and Champier's Colliget, fundamentally Aristotelian in its principles but no final departure from the iatromathematical bent of Islamic medicine.136 We will not err in emphasizing the significance of Arab medical scholarship for Champier's handling of the occultist tradition. From his first months as a student of medicine to his last years as a famed Galenist and anti-Arabist, Champier's work in medicine brought him face to face with clinical and theoretical recommendations from the great Arab textbooks which were among the chief determinants of his failed attack on the magical arts: be fore prescribing phlebotomy, check the disposition of the constellations; know the correspondences between bodily organs and zodiacal signs; understand the numerological associations of the humors and temperaments and elements.137 Perhaps we will not stray too far from the historical declaration est in philosophia natural!. Nam omnes astrorum actiones sunt laudabiles, quoniam esse omnium horum inferiorum est ligatum cum motu et situ eorum in partibus diversis spherae. Diversitas autem quorumdam cum quibusdam ex eis contingit ratione elongationis et propinquitatis eorum adinvicem.' 135. Pronosticon, fol. viii: 'Averroys in Aristotelis philosophiaceleber explananda, et inter Arabes primus ubique astrologiam lacerat, damnat, insectatur'; Janua, sig. Fvv"; QV, sig. diii; Cribratio, fol. LVII; Averroes, Epitome ofParva Naturalia: Translated from the Original Arabic and the Hebrew and Latin Versions, trans. Harry Blumberg, Corpus commentariorum Averrois in Aristotelem, Vol. VII: Medieval Academy of America Publication, 71 (Cambridge, Mass.: Medieval Academy of America, 1961), pp. 46-47; Averrois ... Colliget, fols. 195 K-L, 236 A-F; Corbin, Recital, pp. 69-70; Fakhry, Islamic Philosophy, p. 321; De Boer,Philosophy in Islam, p. 196. 136. Campbell, Arabian Medicine, I , p. 166; Janua, sig. Gvi; Libelliduo, (med.), fol. xxii v°. 137. Elgood, Persia, pp. 300-301; Campbell, Arabian Medicine, I, p. 190; Edward G. Browne, Arabian Medicine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1921), pp. 115-117; Abel, 'Decadence', p. 295; F.J. Carmody, ed., Leopold of

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circumstances if we call on Chaucer's description of an earlier English physician to mirror the likely condition of Champier's medical attitudes: With us there was a Doctour ofPhisik; In al this world ne was ther noon hym lik, To speke ofphisik and of surgery e, For he was grounded in astronomye. He kepte his pacient a ful greet deel In houres by his magyk natureel. Wei koude he fortunen the ascendent Of his y mages for his pacient. Wei knew he the aide Esculapius, And Deyscorides, and eek Rufus, Olde Ypocras, Haly, and Galyen, Serapion, Razis, andAvycen, Averrois, Damascien, and Constantyn, Bernard, and Gatesden, and Gilbertyn.1^

V. SCHOLASTICISM AND THE LATER MIDDLE AGES Champier the humanist might infrequently use the term 'scholastic' to mean 'captious champion of the old stupidity polluted with the dirt of barbarism', but patriotism burned more brightly in his spirit than humanism. The opinions of the Paris theologians were proud testimony of the intellectual primacy of Champier's countrymen and thus not lightly to be discarded.139 Thomas Aquinas, 'divine Austria: 'Li compilacione de le science des estoilles' Books /-///, University of California Publications in Modem Philology, Vol. 33,no. 2 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1947), pp. 37-38; for the wide availability by Champier's time of Arab astrological texts, see Carmody, Astrological Sciences, pp. 78-85, 87-102,113-116,132-136,144-150. 138. F. N. Robinson, ed., The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer (2nd ed.; Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1957), p. 21 [General Prologue, 11. 411-448, 429-434]; Campbell, Arabian Medicine, I, p. 199. 139. Castigationes, fols. VIIIvMX: 'Scholastic! sive morosi veteris inscitiae

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Thomas', influenced Champier's treatment of occultism much as Augustine did: his works gave authoritative direction to Champier's quest for orthodoxy but provided only superficial answers to the contentions of astrologers and magicians. There was no science nor even much rationalism in the Thomist critique of magic, only piety. When Champier's Cribratio called up a regiment of Christian scholarship against Peter of Abano's assertion that astrology is a useful and relatively accurate art, Aquinas was in the first ranks, armed, however, only as a defender of free will, intellect, and Providence. De quadruplici vita freely acknowledged that Thomas and his fellow theologians had allowed quite a bit of room for the operation of celestial influence once the relative autonomy of human will and mind was established. Intellect and will, faculties of the soul, operated in a corporeal frame whose physiological functions were clearly subject to stellar and planetary forces; thus, 'the impressions of heavenly bodies' might touch even will and intellect though only 'indirectly and accidentally'. The process of human generation also took place at the nether end of the descending cosmic machinery. The bodies in which men were born were moved by motions ultimately celestial, a condition which moved Aquinas to grant that 'astrologers are able to foretell the truth in the majority of cases, especially in a general way'.140 Champier noted that in the long dispute over the nature of the heavenly bodies St. Thomas had adopted the position that they were not animate beings but bodies moved by created spirits. The final cause of all the cosmic motions was the generation of the human person, too lofty a purpose for the blind flight of lifeless spheres. 'We must assert', Thomas concluded, 'that the angels possess an immediate rule not only over the heavenly bodies, but also over the sunt propugnatores, barbarieique sordibus contaminati...'; QV,sig. dii; Walker, Ancient Theology, pp. 75-77,114. 140. Cribratio, fols. LXIv°-LXII; QV, sig. cv; Aquinas, ST I.115.3-4 (trans. Fathers of the English Dominican Province [New York: Benziger Bros., 19471948], I, pp. 562-564); fitienne Gilson, L'Esprit de la philosophic medievale, Gifford Lectures, Universite d'Aberdeen (2nd ed. rev.; Paris: J. Vrin, 1948), pp. 347-348; Thomas Litt, Les Corps celestes dans l'univers de Saint Thomas d'Aquin, Philosophes medievaux VII (Louvain: Publications universitaires, 1963), pp. 222, 233-234, 240-241; James Collins, The Thomistic Philosophy of the Angels, The Catholic University of America Philosophical Studies 89 (Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 1947), p. 324.

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inferior bodies'.141 One need only recall early Christianity's fondness for the cognate notions of soul-voyage and planetary guardiandemons to understand why Thomist cosmology was not entirely at variance with the astrological demonology of Ficino's time and Champier's. In De malo Thomas draws an explicit parallel between the superior spirits who move the upper celestial bodies and the inferior spirits, or demons, who move the material bodies of the sublunar region.142 There were three routes through which such spirits could act on men — 'intellect, internal senses, and external senses' — and of these three the internal faculty of the imagination was particularly susceptible to the occult manipulations of good and evil angels alike. Demons and angels could work no real miracles but through an appropriate disturbance of the body's humors and Spiritus they could stimulate the phantasy to present apparently marvellous images to the mind. Aquinas' demons were quite powerful. Through their own control of corporeal objects they could actually transport a man over long distances and with the indirect apparatus of the imagination they could make a man believe that he had become a wolf or a bear.143 The stars and planets did not rule such potent spirits. If a demon answered an invocation uttered under a particular constellation it was because he wished to deceive some hapless mortal into overestimating the powers of the heavenly bodies or because he knew that the stars sometimes disposed sublunar matter toward just the occult effect he had in mind. So clever were these demons that Thomas saw them lurking behind all the pretenses of astrological and natural magic; the practice of the secret arts was evidence of an Occult pact' between the demon and his unknowing human victim. Demons roamed this world in search of mortal prey and sometimes fashioned strange shapes out of air to 141. TD, sig. kkviv°-kkvii; Aquinas, ST 1.70.3, 1.110.2 (Dominican trans. [1947-1948], I, pp. 348-349, 540-541); Litt, Corps, pp. 51, 97, 99,104-106; Collins, Angels, pp. 306, 310-311. 142. Lea, Materials, 1, p. 214. 143. Aquinas, ST 1.111.3-4, 1.114.4 (Dominican trans. [1947-1948], I, pp. 544-546, 557-558); Lea, Materials, I, pp. 93, 214; Murray Wright Bundy, The Theory of Imagination in Classical and Medieval Thought, University of Illinois Studies in Language and Literature, Vol. XII, nos. 2 and 3 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1927), p. 222; Charles E. Hopkin, The Share of Thomas Aquinas in the Growth of the Witchcraft Delusion, Diss. University of Pennsylvania, 1940, pp. 65-66; Collins, Angels, pp. 315, 325-328.

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entice or terrify their quarry. One frequent demonic manifestation was the incubus. Aquinas' intricate account of the sexual habits of this night creature found its way into Champier's Dyalogus.1** The success Thomas enjoyed with the scholastic method in his renovation of theology paved the way for the triumph of scholasticism in other fields, medicine, for instance, where a leading proponent of the techniques of the schoolmen and the theories of the Arab doctors was Peter of Abano. Champier knew Peter chiefly for his Conciliator, a bulky collection of over two hundred differentiae which passed important medical problems of the day through the scholastic sieve of questions divided, authorities cited, objections rebutted, and solutions formulated. The entry under Peter's name in Champier's little history of medicine (De medicinae claris scriptoribus] shows that the Conciliator was still an important book in the early sixteenth century, still so influential that Champier devoted a considerable portion of his Cribratio to a question-by-question refutation of its most objectionable sections.145 Peter was a splendid physician, Champier admitted, but also '... a man of great, occasionally too great, daring and rash opinion who followed Apuleius, Porphyry, and others partial to condemned magic'. When he was composing his history of medicine, Champier could not recall that he had ever seen any of the magical treatises ascribed to Peter, but as he continued to read and write about medicine his suspicions grew deeper. Famous thinkers like Pico della Mirandola and his nephew Gianfrancesco condemned what Peter had written about alchemy and astrological magic; some even charged him with using the Picatrix, the most notorious of the Arab manuals of magic to come out of the Middle Ages.146 144. QV, sig. diii; Cribratio, fol. LV v°; MAD, fols. 14 \°-15; Aquinas, ST I.51.3, 1.64.2,1.110.4,1.115.5-6 (Dominican trans. [1947-1948], I, pp. 266-267, 321322, 542, 564-566); Lea,Materials, I, pp. 214-215; Kaplan, Delusion, p. 126; Joan Evans, Magical Jewels of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance Particularly in England (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1922), p. 132. 145. Bruno Nardi, Saggi sull'Aristotelismo padovano dal secolo XIValXVI, Studi sulla tradizione Aristotelica nel Veneto (Florence: G. C. Sansoni, 1958), pp. 27-38; Libeüi duo, (med.), fol. xxxi; CEG, p. 78;Arnaldivita, sig. ):(4v°; Thorndike, History, II, p. 885; Campbell, Arabian Medicine, I, pp. 153, 161. 146. Libeüi duo, (med.), fol. viii v°: '... vir magnae sednonnumquam nimium audacis temerariaeque doctrinae secutus Apuleium Porphirium, et ceteros damnatae magiae studiosos...'; Cribratio, fols. V v°, LVIII-LVI; Thorndike, History, II, pp. 879-883, 888, 911-913.

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Champier had always suspected that some of the differentiae of the Conciliator were superstitious, and there could be no doubt of its author's appetite foriatromathematics. Relatively innocent passages recommended the first quarter of the moon for bloodletting or proposed correspondences between celestial animals (Scorpio, Draco) and terrestrial animals bothersome to man (tapeworms). Sections dealing with astrological constraints on human procreation or with man's ability to turn away the noxious influences of the heavens were more dangerous. Peter reasoned that man's strength was too small to pit against the malign powers of the stars themselves but that man could '... avert the impressions of those bodies by rendering matter indisposed [to those impressions]'.147 A logical consequence of this line of thought was the preparation of talismans, stones inscribed with zodiacal or other images and intended to attract or to deflect the influences of stars and planets. The Cribratio doubted the efficacy of this 'fabrica imaginum astronomicarum' and denounced Peter of Abano for dirtying his hands with so vile a superstition. Champier also condemned Peter for advising the therapeutic use of incantations (praecantationes). Peter thought that incantations might excite the curative virtue of the imagination, but Champier saw only the overwhelming censure of 'the judgments of the holy fathers'. Especially shocking was Peter's comparison of the effects of incantations with the results of Christian prayer or even of the words of the Eucharist, and there was little reassurance in his copying Albumasar's proposal that the hour of prayer be astrologically determined. Another clear threat to faith was Peter's claim that a knowledge of celestial configurations could enable one to foresee history's great moments, the deluge or the coming of Mohammed, for example, the foreknowledge of which Champier reserved to Providence. In cases like these Champier was inclined to refer Peter's allegations of the success of astrological or other kinds of magic to pacts made with demons. He did not agree with Peter that demons 147. Conciliator differentiarum philosophorum et praecipue medicorum clarissimi viri Petri de Abano patavini foeliciter incipit (Mantua: Johann Wurster and Thomas von Siebenburgen, 1472), fol. 193 v* (Diff. LXXXXIIII): 'Valemus tarnen ipsorum impressiones avertere materiam indispositam reddendo'jifruf., fols. 48, 57, 202V-203, 225-227, 302v'-305 (Diff. XXIII, XXVIII, GI, CXIII, CLXVIII); Libelli duo, (med.), fol. xxxi; Thorndike, History, II, pp. 890-895; Sudhoff, latromathematiker, pp. 14-15.

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could be conjured because they obeyed the movements of the constellations or cringed at the enchantments of magicians, but he did fear that their traps had snared the author of the Conciliator.14^ Champier found much less to complain of in the works of Arnaldus of Villanova, Peter's contemporary. To the 1520 edition of Amaldus' Opera omnia (one of nine sixteenth century editions) Champier added a little Vita of the author which a modern critic has called 'a tissue of errors'. But we are less interested in the details of Amaldus' life — an exciting life of friendships with popes and kings and chilling encounters with inquisitors and haughty Paris theologians — than in Champier's attitude toward this physicianmagus. Champier joined the general approval of Amaldus' books by taking medical advice from them and by specifically acknowledging that '... there is no one among the physicians who does not approve, praise, and admire Arnaldus, especially in that branch of medicine called practical*® But what of Arnaldus' imprudent application of his astrological learning? Did he not presume to infer the date of Anti-Christ from a conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in Pisces? Was his name not attached to a treatise on sigilla which prescribed the sort of talismanic magic for which Champier denounced Peter of Abano? And what of Arnaldus, the great adept, who '... made gold leaf which did not yield to the most perfect gold' and composed a treatise De lapide philosophorum and a Thesaurus thesaurorum et rosarius philosophorum? 'As a youth', Champier replied, 'he wrote some things about alchemy which, according to some, he cast in the fire after he first applied his mind to philosophy'. As for reports of actual transmutations, these were '...false and fabulous and unworthy of so great a man' since they were direct contraventions of God's plan for the universe. The learned might doubt the probity of some of Arnaldus' iatromathematics and there might be traces 148. Cribratio, fols. LV v°-LXIII; Libelli duo, (med.), fol. viiiV;Pronosticon, fol. viii; Peter of Abano, Conciliator, fols. 288-289 (Diff. CLVI); Wilhelm Gundel, Dekane und Dekansternbilder: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Sternbilder der Kulturvolker (2nd ed. rev.; Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1969), p. 280. 149. Arnaldi vita, sig. ):(4 v": 'sed nemo quippe inter medicos est qui Arnaldum non probet, laudet, admiretur,praesertim in eaparte medicinae quae practica appellatur...'; Thorndike, History, II, pp. 843, 847, V, p. 115; Emmanuel Lalande, La Vie et les oeuvres de maitre Arnaud de Villeneuve (Paris: Chamuel, 1896), pp. 45, 70,175.

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of superstition in his little book of Remedies against Sorcery, but no wonder! An occasional slip from so prolific a genius could be explained, Champier protested, by his having explored so many paths of learning without benefit of a master's guidance. And besides, Champier added, it was well known that some of these erring volumes were probably wrongly ascribed to Arnaldus.150 Both Arnaldus and Peter were among those medieval authorities who were so widely and so closely associated with damnable magic that Champier had either to condemn their errors or to go to unusual lengths to justify using their books for various purposes. With Albertus Magnus and Ramon Lull there was less difficulty. Though Albertus stood accused of necromancy, he was clearly one of God's chosen. His enormous researches in natural history had given him countless chances to imitate Pliny's occultist mystifications, but his record on that score was rather good. Lull's innocence was clear from his '... having been crowned with martyrdom for the Catholic faith'. As with Arnaldus, if there were any truth to the tales of Ramon's and Albertus' having dabbled in the occult, this must have been a fault of indiscreet youth not justly to be imputed to the more prudent and saintly adult. Champier had comparatively little to say about anything Lull wrote, including those ideas of his which were most at issue in the Renaissance debate on occultism: the iatromathematical and Cabalist interpretations of his ars combinatorial1 150. Arnaldivita, sigs. ):(3 -4: iuventutealiquainalchimiascripsitquae, ut quibusdam placet, ipse igni dedit, cum primum animum ad philosophiam applicuisset ... faceretque (ut aiunt alchimistae) laminas aureas non cedentes (inquiunt) perfectissimo auro... Quae autem de alchimia Amaldi dicuntur, falsa et plena fabularum sunt et tanto viro indigna'; Cribratio, fol. LXI; Libelli duo, (med.), fols. xxxvii-xxxviii; Pronosticon, fol. viiiv0; Haec sunt opera Arnaldi de villa nova nuperrime recognita et emendata diligentique opere impressa quae in hoc volumine continentur (Lyon: Fransois Fradin, 1509), fols. 3 ve, 5, 88-89, 215 v°, 292ve-304; Lalande, Arnaud, pp. 47, 58, 61-65, 70, 79-81, 143-149; Sudhoff, latromathematiker, pp. 21-22; Thomdike, History, II, p. 855. ISl.Janua, sigs. Biiii, Cv, Hiii; Arnaldi vita, .sigs. ):(3v°-4; Cribratio, fol. LVIv"; MAD, fols. 8, 11; Libelli duo, (med.), fols. xxixv°-xxx; Epithome, sig. Ciiv°; Albertus Magnus, Quaestiones super de animalibus, 3.6 (Opera omnia, ed. B. Geyer and E. Filthaut [Münster: Aschendorff, 1955], XII, p. 127); De animalibus libri xxvi nach der Cölner Urschrift, ed. Hermann Stadier, Beitrage zur Geschichte der Philosophie des Mittelalters XV und XVI (Münster: Aschendorff, 1916-1921), I, pp. 553-554; De anima, 3.3.4 (Opera omnia, ed. Clemens Stroick [Münster: Aschendorff, 1968], VII/I, p. 213); Litt, Corps, pp. 234236; Thomdike, History, II, pp. 871-872; Frances A. Yates, The Art of Mem-

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Three of these famous doctors, Arnaldus, Peter, and Ramon Lull, were associated historically or traditionally with Montpellier, where Champier learned his medicine. All three, moreover, presided over the beginnings of a small-scale revolution in Western thought which caused Renaissance medicine to become deeply affected by iatromathematics. This process reached its peak in the work of Marsilio Ficino but still governed the thinking of Champier's generation of physicians. One of Ficino's forerunners in this transformation whom Champier read was Antonio Guaineri, who taught medicine at Pavia in the early fifteenth century and wrote significantly on poisons, plague, and the mysteries of melancholy.152 Another was Jean Ganivet, a Franciscan friar of the same period whose aim in composing his Amicus medicorum was to help physicians fortify their art with powerful stellar and planetary influences. Those who studied The Physicians' Friend found explanations '... of the houses of heaven which show influence on the patient, the physician, his medicines, and the nature of the illness' and of '... the influences of planets on various sicknesses and on knowing whether the sick are curable or not'. Lyon saw four editions of the Amicus medicorum in the hundred years after 1496, one of them the work of Champier's friend, Gonsalvo of Toledo. Ganivet's book was too forthright in its praises of medical astrology to win Champier's public approval. The Dyalogus copies Ganivet but without acknowledgment.153 Between Champier's private reading of Ganivet and his open excoriation of Peter of Abano, there was plenty of room for the influence on his thought of this late medieval tradition of iatromathematics. Witchcraft was another occultist phenomenon which grew markedly in the later middle ages; two important medieval institutions, scholasticism and the Inquisition, have regularly been blamed for its growth. The procedures of the Holy Office did, no doubt, diminish the justice of the witch trials just as the authoritative pronounceory (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1966), pp. 187-198. 152. Libelli duo, (med.), fol. xxxiii;Mi4Z), fol. 15 v°; Thomdike, History, II, pp. 843, 881, IV, pp. 215-231; Klibansky et al., Melancholy, pp. 94-97, 263; Yates, Memory, pp. 187-188; Campbell, Arabian Medicine, I, p. 160; A. Germain, De la medecine et des sciences occultes a Montpellier dans leurs rapports avec l'astrologie et la magie (Montpellier: Boehm, 1872), pp. 5-24, 34-37. 153. Ganivet, Amicus, sigs. dii-eii; MAD, fols. 9-11; Thorndike, History, IV, pp. 134-139; Sudhoff, latromathematiker, p. 25; Wadsworth, Lyons, p. 84.

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ments of Thomas Aquinas and William of Auvergne lent weight to certain beliefs allied to witchcraft.154 But a search for the crucial developments in the history of witchcraft leads us to four beliefs originally distinct in the minds of their Roman, early Christian, and medieval proponents but eventually blended by later medieval authorities into the witchcraft stereotype which supported the great witch-hunts of the fifteenth through the seventeenth centuries. These were: the belief in maleficium or evildoing by occult means; the belief that the witch was Satan's servant, subjugated to him; the belief that witches flew about at night on sinister errands; and the belief that witches held sabbats or regular meetings where blasphemy, apostasy, demonolatry, and diabolical orgies were routine.155 The precise role of Christian attitudes toward heretics in shaping the witchcraft stereotype is presently unclear, but we do know that long before Champier's unpleasant experience with the mob he called Vaudois, the term 'Waldensian' had ceased to refer clearly to the unorthodox poverty and asceticism of the Poor Men of Lyon and had come to denote as well the orgiastic excesses of witchcraft. In the words of a sixteenth century observer: 'Crescit cum magia haeresis, cum haeresi magia.'l5G Imagine a perimeter of approximately eight hundred miles drawn from Dijon southeast to Annecy, then further south to Briangon, then southwest to Carcassonne and on north to Toulouse, then northeast again to Dijon. Such a figure includes the sites of many of the important witch trials recorded in French-speaking territory in the later Middle Ages. Champier's Lyon is the most important city within this perimeter. Lyon itself seems to have avoided most of the witch-craze, but we can guess that the people of this thriving crossroads heard regular news of the trials which terrified their neighbors north and south.157 During fifty-nine years (1427-1486) of the fifteenth century, there were more witchcraft trials than in the previ154. Russell, Witchcraft, pp. 133,142-159,173; Cohn,Demons,pp. 174-176; Hopkin, Delusion, p. 179; Hansen, Zauberwahn, p. 196. 155. Cohn, Demons, p. 147 et passim. 156. Cohn, Demons, pp. 32-42, 228-230; Russell, Witchcraft, pp. 19,111-112, 123-132, 142, 219-220; Cohn, 'Satan', pp. 8-9; Hansen, Zauberwahn, pp. 308309, 413-415; Hansen, Quellen und Untersuchungen zur Geschichte des Hexenwahns und der Hexenverfolgung im Mittelalter (Bonn: C. Georgi, 1901), pp.408-415. 157. Hansen, Quellen, pp. 445-516; Zauberwahn, pp. 420-428, 440; Emma-

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ous two centuries combined. Between 1421 and 1440 poor people of Dauphine confessed that they held regular assemblies where they

Cities in southeastern France

worshipped the Devil under various sinister forms. In 1470 Jacques Bouton, a magistrate of Dijon, sentenced Jeanne the Gossip-Monger to the stake for her visits to the Sabbat.158 £tienne Hugonod, a viceinquisitor, visited Villars-Chabod, a village near Annecy, in the Fall nuel Le Roy Ladurie, LesPaysans de Languedoc (1966; rpt. Paris—The Hague: ficole Pratique des Hautes Etudes & Mouton, 1975), pp. 405-414. 158. Russell, Witchcraft, pp. 181-187, 193-198, 216-218, 244; Hansen, /en, pp. 484-485.

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of 1477 and extracted the following admissions from the poor of that village: '... she denied God her creator, saying: I deny God my creator and also the Catholic faith and the Holy Cross, and thou, the demon called Robinet, I take as my Lord and Master. And she did homage to this demon by kissing him on the foot... Near a place called laz Perroy they held a synagogue of heretics where men and women gathered in great numbers to feast and dance and dance backwards...'159 Such confessions continued to flow as Champier grew up, travelled in Burgundy and Dauphine, and attended the medical school of Montpellier. But the history of witchcraft in Champier's France is not one of unrelieved credulity and panic. Laurent Bureau, one of Champier's early patrons, headed a royal commission whose enquiry into the activities of Waldensians in the Southeast of the kingdom led to their being cleared of accusations of libertine and demonic behavior by 1509. Nearly two decades earlier, in 1491, victims of the famous Vauderie of Arras had been publically and formally declared innocent of witchcraft. In 1519, Agrippa von Nettesheim, acting as orator and advocatus of Metz in Lorraine, worked to free an old peasant woman of witchcraft charges — not because witchcraft was an illusion but because legal procedures had been violated.160 And yet few men were as learned in the occultist tradition or as ready to challenge accepted beliefs as Agrippa. His decision to limit his defense of the old woman to matters of procedure reflects the very secure place of witch beliefs in the European mind of the early sixteenth century. The Church's opposition to the practice of witchcraft was as vigorous as ever, but the resistance to the belief in witchcraft propagated through the earlier Middle Ages by the Canon Episcopi 159. Wadsworth, Lyons, pp. 80-81; Lea, Materials, I, pp. 238-241; Hansen, gellen, p. 493; '... tune deum creatorem suum negavit, dicendo: Ego nego deum creatorem meum et fidem catholicam necnon et sanctem crucem, et te demonem vocatum Robinet recipio in dominum et magistrum meum. Et eidem demon! homagium fecit cum osculando in pede... dimisso viro et familia, accessit cum dicto Masseto ad locum dictum laz Perroy ... in quo loco tenebatur sinagoga hereticorum, ubi repent homines et mulieres in magno numero, qui ibidem galabant et coreabant et ducebant coreas retroverte...' 160. Cohn, Demons, pp. 41-42, 232; Hansen, Quellen, pp. 500, 506, 512513, 515-516; Nauert, Agrippa, pp. 55-60; cf. above, p. 51 n. 16.

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weakened considerably by the fifteenth century. When Heinrich Institoris and Jacob Sprenger published their Malleus maleficarum (1486), their purpose was to discredit all the old evidence for the unreality of witchcraft. As preface the Malleus carried Innocent VIH's famous bull, Summis desiderantes affectibus (1484), which gave the papal blessing to the witch-hunts conducted by Sprenger and Institoris in Germany; as motto its title page bore the announcement that 'to disbelieve in witchcraft is the greatest of heresies'. The Malleus was the most successful (thirty editions by 1669) of aseries of fifteenth century witchcraft treatises whose general effect was to fan the fires of persecution lit by the inquisitors and to quench the doubts of the Canon Episcopi.^1 At least a dozen or so of these treatises were written or published in France before the appearance of Champier's Dyalogus in 1500. Jean Vineti, who presided over the Inquisition at Carcassonne, composed a Tractatus contra demonum invocatores (c. 1450), which found the arguments of the Canon inapplicable to the new and different reality of fifteenth-century witchcraft.162 Several of the treatises, especially La Vauderye de Lyonois en brief (c, 1460), emphasized the association of witchcraft with '... that apostasy or sect commonly called Waldensian or/az'cturerie in French and known to be especially prevalent in the upper parts of this kingdom, namely in Lyon and environs...'.163 The reputation of the Lyonnais for witchcraft was not confined to the South. A Recollectio taken in Arras in 1460 warned that 'Waldensian women and men also either by pressing bands or needles in the head or by binding delicate members or by other established means achieve the same end as by digging up the newly dead in secret and opening up the umbilicus or some 161. Russell, Witchcraft, pp. 18, 43, 169-170, 175-176, 200, 205-207, 228235; Antoinette Marie Pratt, The Attitude of the Catholic Church towards Witchcraft and the Allied Practices of Sorcery and Magic, Diss. The Catholic University, 1915, pp. 49-50;Lea,Aia£ena/i,I,pp. 304-346; H. R.Trevor-Roper, The European Witchcraft Craze of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries and Other Essays (New York: Harper and Row, 1969), p. 117. 162. Hansen, Quellen, pp. 99-104,118-127,124-130,133-145, 227-231; Lea, Materials, I, pp. 272, 276, 297, 304. 163. Lea, Materials, I, pp. 292-294: '... apostasia a fide seu secta, quae Valdesia vulgariter seu faicturerie gallice nuncupatur et in superioribus huius regni partibus permaxime regnare comperitur,utpote Lugduni etcircumadiacentibus locis et regionibus...'; Hansen, Quellen, pp. 183-184, 188-195, 241; Russell, Witchcraft, p. 248.

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other [part] to draw out blood for the preparation of their unguents by mixing, etc. And sometimes they carry off to their meeting the roasted bodies of infants so that they can eat them, just as in certain well-known proceedings, especially in the Lyonnais...'.164 The Flagellum maleficorum (c. 1462) of Pierre Mamoris, regent of the University of Poitiers and associate of the Bishop of Saintes, continued this tradition of grisly narrative and diminishing skepticism. One of the first to introduce the term 'sabbat' into a witchcraft treatise, Mamoris had more confidence in the confessions of the accused than in the strictures of the outmoded Canon Episcopi. Champier copies large sections of the Flagellum in his Dyalogus, and it is likely that he was attracted to Mamoris' book by the attention it gave to medical problems — the power of imagination, the theories of Avicenna, the relationship of witchcraft to insanity, etc.165 Champier's Dyalogus owed roughly the same debt to the Flagellum as to Ganivet's Amicus medicorum. Both Mamoris' book and Ganivet's were important summaries of the later medieval understanding of significant items in the occultist tradition — witchcraft and iatromathematics .— which Champier struggled unequally to overcome. To analyze all the many, important medieval contributions to Champier's understanding of the occultist tradition would be both tiresome and unnecessary, yet one should recognize that these were many and important. This does not mean that Champier was any less a part of the Renaissance 'school' of occultism; if it means anything in terms of historical periodization, it means that Renaissance occultism was a good deal more medieval than some critics have suggested. Champier's great learning in the occultist literature of the 164. Hansen, Quellen, pp. 166-167: 'Viri eciam et mulieres Valdenses aut per infixionem spinterum aut acuum in cerebro vel stringendo tenera membra aut aliis exploratis modis idem faciunt, ut ex ipsis de recenti secrete exhumatis per apercionem umbilici aut alias extrahant sanguinem ad conficiendum sua unguenta per commixtionem etc. Et aliquando deferunt ad congregacionem corpora infantulorum assata, ut commedantur, sicut patet in aliquibus processibus de Lugdunensibus partibus maxime...'; cf. MAD, fol. 12. 165. Flagellum maleficorum a magistro Petro Mamoris editum cum alto tractatu de eadem materia per magistrum Henricum de Colonia (Lyon: [Guillaume Balsarin], n.d.), sigs. aiiiiv0, avi-avii, bviii, cv°, cviii;MAD, fols. 7-15; Lea,Materials, I, pp. 298-299; Hansen, Quellen, pp. 208-212; Zauberwahn, pp. 444447; Wadsworth, Lyons, pp. 81-82; Russell, Witchcraft, pp. 237-238.

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Middle Ages did not, however, compel him to advertise his dependence on medieval sources. Jacopo da Voragine's Legenda aurea, from which Champier lifted two of his Saint-v.-the-Demon stories for the Dyalogus, may have gone unannounced in that little book simply because it was too unsophisticatedly medieval to be worthy of a humanist's attention — at least publicly. This same fear of vulgar medievalism may have prompted Champier to cover up his extensive use of other neoterici like Mamoris and Ganivet. One place where we can get an idea of the extent of his familiarity with such sources is the section of Tropheum gallorum titled De virisgallis illustribus, a a long list of France's most celebrated scholars which names the following treatments of occultism and related topics, some of them little-known: Richard of St. Victor, De duodecim apparitionibus In apocalypsum Johannis In danielem prophetam De visione Nebuchodnosor Peter of Blois, De praestigiis fortunae Peter of Cluny, De conversatione hermetica Alexander of Villedieu, De sphaera Jean Noblet, Centiloquium enigmatuml6& Medieval writers could bring to Champier the sort of information that added narrative interest as well as orthodox piety to his works on magic. From the Golden Legend he took grim woodcuts of demons and stories about their encounters with the saints, from Thaddeus of Parma an unbelievably intricate outline of the various magical arts, from Gratian a stern warning against '...the vain observations of incantations and the stars', from Peter Lombard a judicious analysis of the power of demons to possess men's bodies.167 Champier also knew the best of the medieval scientists — Grosseteste, Buridan, 166. MAD, fols. 12v°-13,17 v°-18;VoTa%jne,Legende doree,I,p.l39,ll,p. 27; TG, sigs. Eiiii-Evi. 167. MAD, fols. 13 v°, 17v°; Cribratio, fol. LXXI v"; Practica nova, pp. 78-79; NefD. (1503), sigs. giiii-hiiii;Libelli duo, (med.), fols. vi v°-vii; Voragine, Legende dore'e, II, pp. 120-131; Decretum Gratiani emendatum et variis electionibus simul et notationibus illustratum... editumpostjustiHenningii Boehmeri euros denuo recognornt etediditj.P, Migne (Paris: Garnier, 1891), 2.26.3-5 [Pat. Lai., 187, pp. 1342ff.]; Petri Lombardi episcopiparisiensis sententiarum libri////... (Louvain: Ex Officino Bartholomei Grauii, 1552), p. 160 [II. sig. viii.E]; Wadsworth, Lyons, p. 138; Thomdike, History, V, p. 118; Lea, Materials, I, p. 85.

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Occam, John of Holy wood — and found their researches particularly useful in matters of astrology.168 Pierre d'Ailly and his brilliant associate Jean Gerson had been ambiguous in their treatments of magic and astrology, and yet Champier still pored over their weighty volumes, of which the following appear in the Tropheum gallorum: Pierre d'Ailly, De anima et accidentibus eins Concordia theologiae et astronomiae Jean Gerson, Trialogus contra astrologiam De veris et falsis visionibus De observatione dierum superstitiosa De erroribus magicae De passionibus animae. Hildegard of Bingen's well-known anti-occultism was likewise mingled with her own curious brand of magic, but this did not stop Champier from enlisting her aid against Satan's mortal servants in his Pronosticon.1^ He hoped to extract particular ideas, sentences, phrases which might fit an empty space in his anti-occultist mosaic. His primary goal was neither consistency nor intellectual integrity. He chose his sources because they suited the needs of his orthodoxy or, in the case of clearly impious writings, because they contained information which could be forced into the necessary patterns. He rejected altogether no part of the whole range of occultist literature known in his time, and his criteria for selection were so haphazardly conceived that he could not help absorbing the habit of inconsistency which seems to have been almost inherent in the European occultist tradition.

VI. THE RENAISSANCE Champier knew well how much his writing depended on the existence of an occultist tradition and so from time to time he betrayed his fear of being charged with plagiarism, here listing his sources '... lest we be caught in the act of obvious theft', there begging the 168. Janua, sigs. Cvi, D; Periarchon, pp. 17,19. 169. Janua, sigs. Aiiiiv", Gvve; TG, sig. Evi; Pronosticon, fol. viv°; Cribratio, fol. LXI; Thorndike,History, IV, pp. 101-131; Charles Singer, From Magic to Science: Essays on the Scientific Twilight (New York: Dover, 1958),pp. 199-239.

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reader to agree that his regular borrowing from a writer did not mean that he had nothing of his own to add. From his first books to the last, he recalled what he owed Marsilio Ficino, though he always held that his debt was not that of a plagiarist. Won omniapossumus omnes', he argued, while continuing to reveal to his readers the many similarities between his own work and that of Ficino and the Italian Neoplatonists.170 Champier's Nef des Dames leaned heavily on Ficino, whom the Lyonnais thought of as being one of the last in the long line of Plato's direct heirs, for its introduction of the new Platonism to Renaissance France. In both structure and content, his De quadrupici vita and De triplici disciplina evince a thorough familiarity with Ficino's De triplici vita, a work very much concerned with questions of magic and astrology. Thumbing through Ficino's volumes, as he must often have done, Champier would have seen the following titles: Commentum in librum Enneadis tertiae quartum, de demonibus; lamblichus de mysteriis', Excerpta Marsilii Ficini ex graecis Prodi commentariis in Alcibiadem Platonis primum; Ex secundo libro Porphyrii, de sacrificiis et diis atque demonibus; Ex Michaele Psello de Demonibus interpres Marsilius Ficinus; Marsilii Ficini florentini in Dionysium Areopagitam de divinis nominibus ... egraeca lingua in Latinum translatum', Synesius de somniis translatus a Marsilio Ficino florentino ad Petrum Medic em. Taken together, these formed an encyclopedia of occultism and especially of demonology. For Champier's favorite prisci theologi Ficino was also a fundamental source — especially for the Hermetica, of which he was both translator and commentator.171 Ficino covered 170. S.C. to Jerome of Pavia, Nancy, August 4,1514, Mirab ium, sig. Avi; S.C. to Jacques de Vitry, [1508], TD, sig. hhv°; S.C. to F. de Rohan, Lyon, June 8,1507, QV, sig. b v°; Allut, Etude, p. 198. 171. Duellum, sig. cviii v°; Libelli duo, (auct. leg.), fol. xlvi; TD, sigs. ccviiiv0ddii,hhiiiv°;/Yc:m opera,ΙΙ,ρρ. 1070-1081,1707-1717,1873-1908,1908-1914, 1934-1937, 1939-1945, 1968-1978; Wadsworth, Lyons, pp. 116-118; Vraye Amour, pp. 13, 28-31; Walker, Ancient Theology, p. 81 n.4; M nch, Platonrenaissance, pp. 229-230; Vasoli, 'Temi', p. 243; Dannenfeldt, 'Zoroaster', p. 13; Antonioli, 'Medecin lecteur', pp. 54-55.

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practically the entire range of occultist topics in his various writings, and we find Champier following his lead on all sorts of questions directly and indirectly related to the magical worldview. In De triplici disciplina, for instance, he copied Ficino's De Christiana religione when he felt the need to say a word about the role of miraculous events in Christian revelation. In the same book there are seven brief chapters on vaticinium or prophesying excerpted directly from the Theologia platonica where Ficino rhapsodized on Plato's mantic and poetic frenzy. A less elegant section of the Dyalogus repeats some lines from Ficino's Commentary on the Symposium which propose Spiritus as a medium for the powers of the evil eye.172 One could go on listing specific correspondences,but the more important question concerns Champier's attitude toward Ficino's general position on magic, astrology, and the rest. Ficino was never a thorough and consistent opponent of astrology, and yet he did make enough particular statements qualifying or condemning the secret science of the skies so that Champier could pick and choose, selecting exactly what he needed to lend authority to his own anti-astrological arguments. It was even possible for Champier to cite a Disputatio contra judicium astrologorum by Marsilio against determinism and stellar talismans, even though this little book was never published and was far from being a solid, wellreasoned rebuttal of astrology.173 Champier modeled De quadruplici vita on Ficino's De triplici vita but not without some emendations, for Ficino was too quick to admit the power of the stars and too slow to assert the invulnerability of man's will. When he found Ficino faltering, Champier fell back on more acceptable works like those 172. TD, sigs. eeiii-eeiiii (cf. Ficini opera, I, pp. 13-15); ibid., sigs. ii iiii-ii vi (cf. Ficini opera, I, pp. 292-295); QV, sigs. biii v°-biiii (cf. Ficini opera, I, p. 427); MAD, fol. 7 (cf. Ficini opera, II, pp. 1357-1358); Paul Oskar Kristeller, The Philosophy of Marsilio Ficino, trans. Virginia Conant, Columbia Studies in Philosophy 6 (1943; rpt. Gloucester, Mass.: P. Smith, 1964),pp. 308-309,313. 173. QV, sig. cvi (cf. Ficini opera, I, pp. 781-782); ibid., sig. diii; Kristeller, Philosophy, p. 311; Thorndike, History, IV, pp. 569-573; Eugenio Garin, ed., G. Pico della Mirandola: Disputationes adversus astrologiam divinatricem, Libri I-IV, Edizione nazionale dei classici del pensiero Italiano (Florence: Vallechi, 1946), p. 11; Pagel, Paracelsus, p. 220; Ernst Cassirer, The Individual and the Cosmos in Renaissance Philosophy, trans. Mario Domandi (New York: Harper and Row, 1964), p. 110; P.O. Kristeller, Supplementum Ficinianum: Marsilii Ficini florentini philosophi platonici opuscula inedita et dispersa... (Florence: L. Olschki, 1937), I, pp. cxxxix-cxli, II, pp. 11-76.

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of Pico della Mirandola. Even so, in De quadruplici vita, De triplici disciplina, and elsewhere there are many traces of Ficinian astrology, which was neither so orthodox that it could be used with impunity nor so erroneous that it had to be entirely rejected.174 D. P. Walker's study of Ficino's occultism finds that the learned Florentine occasionally accepted a spiritual astrology (i.e., one depending on the semi-magical operation of Spiritus or pneuma throughout the cosmos and within men) which attributed powers to Spiritus far greater than those commonly allowed in medical treatises. He also accepted a demonic astrology which depended on a somewhat un-Christian belief in the existence and activity of good planetary demons. Though there were strong hints and flashes of such doctrines in Ficino's books, his general conclusions were cautious enough to be roughly compatible with Champier's orthodoxy.175 And even his more suspect teachings influenced Champier — his Spiritus theory, to begin with the most interesting case. De triplici disciplina and De quadruplici vita are relatively well -planned and rather cautious works in which the Ficinian Spiritus emerges only occasionally and, in most cases, none too clearly, but theJanua logicae et phisicae, Champier's first and most artless book, is quite explicit in this regard. 'Unassimilated', we should say, as well as 'explicit' when we describe the/anwa's account of Spiritus, for much of it is contained in marginal glosses with no comment from Champier. The Janua, moreover, is a manual, a quick-study aid for the arts student, and so we should not expect to find in it Champier's bestconsidered judgments. But later works as well as the main texts of the Janua show the traces of these odd bits of Ficino's pneumatology, which we ought to regard, I believe, as a critical ingredient in Champier's blend of occultism. Much of the Ficinian advice in the Janua is medical, and medicine is the logical starting point for the spintus theory which can be discovered in the little book. As priest and physician, Ficino concerned himself with illnesses of the soul as much as with bodily sickness; in spintus he saw a key to both the corporeal and the non-corporeal problems of the human condition. 174. QV, sig. cv; TD, sigs. biiv°-biii (cf.Ficiniopera,n,pp. 1672-1707); ibid., sigs. ee-eeii (cf. Ficini opera, I, pp. 12-13,44, II, pp. 1609-1635); ibid., sig. ii ii v° (cf. Ficini opera, II, p. 1677); Mönch, Platonrenaissance, pp. 222, 224, 229; Kristeller,Philosophy, p. 313; Walker, Demonic, p. 12. 175. Walker, Demonic, pp. 38-39, 53,167; Gundel, Dekane, p. 280.

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Our Spiritus', Champier learned from Ficino, 'drinks of the cosmic Spiritus through the Sun's rays and Jupiter's in as much as it is itself Solarian and Jovial'.176 Just as cosmic Spiritus enlivens the anima mundi so man's vital energies depend on a Spiritus humanus which, because of its continuity with the Spiritus mundanus, is constrained by the celestial powers. Among these the Sun is paramount, 'lord of generation and author of increase', but all the heavenly bodies emit very powerful occult forces which touch our Spiritus and penetrate even to the depths of the earth. Considering the wonders God allows in the sublunar region, it follows that these even more amazing effects should proceed from the higher spheres. A man will be wise, then, to remember this 'dictum Marsilii Ficini'' passed on by the author of the Janua: 'to live successfully and move with the best, know thy talent, star, genius, and the locus suitable to them'.177 A chapter of De triplici disciplines, titled 'Theologiae Trismegisticae particula sexta de demonibus' and lifted from Ficino's Commentary on the Symposium, sketches the Ficinian pneumatology in its full astrological setting. Nothing, save a rather vague salute to Catholic doctrine at the chapter's end, would prevent a reader from understanding it as an invitation to call on the combined powers of the planetary demons, Spiritus, and the so-called astral body of theNeoplatonists to help him master the various influences which defined his destiny. Thus to understand Champier as a champion of clearly illicit astrology would be unfair in light of all he wrote against this dark science, but this chapter is a striking example of the inconsistency often imposed on Champier by his habit of piling authority upon authority, his crude hope of generating philosophy from the mere accumulation of citations.178 Ficino's magic was of a piece with his astrology, part of the same 176. Janua, sig. Fvii v°: 'Spiritus noster haurit mundi spiritum per radios sous et iovis quatenus ipse sit Solaris et iovialis'; ibid., sigs. Fiiv", Fv, Fviii, Gviv", Hv°-Hii (cf. Ficini opera, I, pp. 510-512); S.C. to Guichard de Lessart, Lyon, March 22, [l506],Libelli duo, (rel.), fols. iv°-ii; S.C. to P.Emilio,[l508], TD, sig. Cvii. 177. Janua, sig. Hii: 'Dictum Marcilii Ficini: Ut prospere vivas agasque in primis, cognosce [injgenium.sidus, genium tuum.et locum eisdem convenientern...'; i'£>irf.,sigs.Avi,Cv°, Diiiv", Dvii-Dviii, Fviii (cf. Ficini opera, I, pp. 532,535,546, 549,566); QV, sigs.bii, cv; Symphonia, fol. XCIIII;Klibanskyeial.,Melancholy, pp. 265, 270; Yates, Bruno, pp. 68-69. 178. TD, sigs. kkiii v"-kkiiii (cf. Ficini opera, II, pp. 1342-1343).

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occultist program which strained for orthodoxy while it yielded here and there to the temptation of using powers which the Church classified among Satan's traps and tools. Ficino wrote of and probably practiced both natural magic, based largely on the understanding and manipulation of Spiritus in men and the living universe, and demonic magic.179 The tension he suffered because of the conflict between the allurements of magic and the Church's interdiction of magical practice is clear, to cite a well-known case, in what he said about magical jewels, whose virtues he was one of the first to exploit in the Renaissance. Yet this anxiety did not produce in Ficino the rather rigid compliance with the dictates of faith which we usually find in Champier. On talismans, as on most other magical topics, Champier felt compelled either to denounce the errors of his great predecessor or to discover in them saving qualifications whose existence might have surprised their alleged author. Champier supposed that Ficino's worrying over his melancholia had moved him to experiment with the 'images and characters of the astrologers', a particularly dangerous species of magic 'whereby the Devil seduces many'. He made his suspicions of Ficino clear but then tried to save the famous Platonist's reputation by adding the statement 'that Marsilio himself does not so much approve of images as talk about them'.180 Closely associated with Ficino in the task of bringing the new Plato and the new magic to Renaissance Europe was Pico della Mirandola. In his nine hundred theses, in the famous Oration which introduced them, in the Apologia which defended them, and in the Heptaplus, Pico showed himself a truly fascinated student of the occult, but after 1491 he devoted himself entirely to putting together his Disputationesadversusastrologiam divinatricem, which has been called the most significant and influential polemic against astrology written in the early modern period. The question of Pico's apparently radical change of heart is still unresolved and cannot 179. Walker, Demonic, pp. 12, 34, 38, 44-45, 53; Kristeller, Philosophy, p. 314; Nauert, Agrippa, p. 249. 180. QV, sig. diiiv": 'Sed dicendum est Marsilium ipsum imagines non tarn approbare quam narrare' (cf. Ficiniopera,I,p. 530); ibid.,sigs. biiv°-biiii,bviv°bvii, diii; Janua, sigs. Diiii v°-Dv (cf. Ficini opera, I, p. 565); Libelliduo, (med.), fol. viiiv0; Cnbratio, fol. LVIII; Klibansky etal., Melancholy,pp. 256,266-267; Walker, Demonic, pp. 42-43,168-169; Evans, Magical Jewels, pp. 156-157; Vasoli, 'Temi', p. 238.

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be wished away; one should recall, however, that even the Disputationes did not absolutely reject astral influence and that its arguments were aimed largely at protecting free will, a limited objective whose attainment was not completely irreconcilable with astrology. Champier's Platonic leanings were reason enough to bring him to read Pico. Their common struggle against the magical arts only sealed the bond. Much of Champier's work in this area seems externally to be a straightforward repetition of Ficino, but a closer examination will often reveal the influence of Pico, who became a much more forthright opponent of illicit occultism than his Florentine colleague.181 One hears in the chapters of De quadruplici vita and other works some of the keynotes of Pico's arguments — the harsh proscription of those who would breach the sacred limits of human freedom, the repeated effort to confine stellar influences to light, heat, and motion, the striking animosity toward Peter of Abano — as well as frequent verbal echoes of the Italian's versions of the more traditional complaints against astrology. The other Giovanni Pico, the bold, young magus who proclaimed that 'there is no science which gives us more certainty about Christ's divinity than magic and Cabala', also appears in Champier's books.182 One of the prefatory 181. S.C. to Jerome of Pavia,Nancy, August4,1514, Afira&t7tum,sig. Aiiiiv"; S.C. to Jerome of Pavia, [1516], Duellum, sig. cviiiv"; Thorndike, History, IV, pp. 494, 498-499, 508, 529-543, 572-573; Walker, Demonic, p. 55; Yates, Bruno, pp. 87-91,111-116; Allen, Star-Crossed, pp. 23-35, 54; Ernst Cassirer, 'Giovanni Pico della Mirandola: A Study in the History of Renaissance Ideas', in Renaissance Essays from the Journal of the History of Ideas, ed. P. O. Kristeller and Philip P. Weiner (New York: Harper and Row, 1968), pp. 31, 35, 56; J. Festugiere, 'Studia Mirandulana', Archives d'histoire doctrinale et litteraire du Moyen-Age 7 (1933), p. 146; Eugenio Garin, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Ft'iae doifrma(Florence: FeliceleMonnier, 1937), pp. 167-168,181-185; Donald Weinstein, Savonarola and Florence: Prophecy and Patriotism in the Renaissance (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970),pp. 212-215n. 109; Hans Baron, 'Willensfreiheit und Astrologie bei Marsilio Ficino und Pico della Mirandola', in Kultur- und Universalgeschichte... (Leipzig and Berlin: B. G. Teubner, 1927), pp. 155-157; Paolo Rossi, 'Considerazioni sul decline defl'astrologia agli inizi dell'eta modema', in L'Opera e U pensiero dt Giovanni Pico della Mirandola nettastoria dell'umanesimo: Convegno internazionale (Mirandola: 15-16 Settembre 1963) (Firenze: Istituto nazionale di studi sul rinascimento 1965), I, pp. 317-318, 322-330; Yates, 'Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and Magic', ibid., pp. 190, 203. 182. Pico, Opera, I, p. 105: 'Nulla est scientia, quae nos magis certificet de divinitate Christi, quam Magia et Cabala'; QV, sigs. cve, ciiv°, cv-cvi, cviii-diii (cf. Pico, Opera, I, pp. 20, 502-504, 535-539, 582-588, 602-603, 620-623,

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letters in De triplici disciplina proposes distinctions between good and bad Cabala which reflect remarks in Pico's Apologia of 1487. This Apologia was Pico's imprudent response to a papal commission's condemnation of several of the 900 theses he had planned to defend publicly in Rome in 1486. It was in these theses that the erudite Count of Mirandola first combined two of the more important traditions which were to dominate the renaissance of occultism of the late Quattrocento and after: Christian Cabala and the prisca theologia. When Champier sees the Hebrew art of Cabala as somehow comparable to the stream of ancient Hermetic wisdom, he is not only influenced by some of the general drift of the Apologia but also actually reproduces some of Pico's phrases and sentences.183 Pico's nephew Gianfrancesco was in many important respects quite unlike his illustrious uncle. He is best known for his Examen vanitatis doctrinae gentium (1520), one of the first books to introduce Greek skepticism to the Christian West. For Gianfrancesco, Christianity was the measure of all things. He despised in varying degrees all other religious and philosophical systems for diverting men's attention from the teachings of the Church, and his scorn extended even to the Aristotelian system, so widely accepted for its compatibility with Christian dogma. Such a position ill suited the syncretism which Champier inherited from the Italian Neoplatonists (including the elder Pico), but Gianfrancesco was the author of other books — anti-occultist books — which were very useful to the scholarly Lyonnais. These works — De rerumpraenotione (15061507) and De veris calamitatum causis nostrorum temporum (1519) — appeared before the Examen with its skeptical, fideist disdain for pagan learning; we might expect, then, that Champier would have turned against Gianfrancesco after having heard of the Examen and its rude handling of Aristotle and all Renaissance syncretism including the notion of prisca theologia. Yet in a work published two years before he died Champier still thought well enough of the younger Pico to take the trouble to defend him against some 642-659);Pronosticon, fol. iiiv" (cf. Pico, Opera, I, pp. 527-531); Cribratio, fol. LVv°; Mönch, Platonrenaissance, pp. 222, 224, 229; Thorndike, History, V, p. 119; Garin, Pico, p. 167; Yates, .Bruno, pp. 105-106. 183. S.C. to Jacques de Vitry, [1508], TD, sigs. hh-hhii (cf. Pico, Opera, I, pp. 180-181); Yates, Bruno, pp. 84-91, 96-97,106-111.

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unkind remarks in Erasmus' Ciceroraanws.184 It seems more likely that Champier was willing to overlook Gianfrancesco's radical skepticism than that he was simply unaware of the Examen, In his own time, as Jean Bodin and Gabriel Naude testified, Gianfrancesco was widely known, not least of all for a criticism of the magical worldview so vehement that we might forget that even he clung to some belief in occult natural powers. He launched his most important assault on the magicians and the astrologers in De rerum praenotione, which was more thoroughly anti-occultist than his uncle's Disputationes even though it depended on that earlier work. Perhaps it was this relative lack of ambiguity which convinced Champier that the Pronosticon^ attack on natural magic should come from the younger Pico's book (although the text of the Pronosticon seems to refer to the elder Pico). Gianfrancesco had never written aHeptaplus nor had he made statements as suspiciously magical as his uncle's nine-hundred theses. Champier's Pronosticon bears the heaviest marks of Gianfrancesco's influence, but there is similar evidence elsewhere, as in the recitation of Peter of Abano's errors in the Cribratio and in the confutation of alchemy in the Annotatiunculae.™5 Other Italians besides Ficino and the two Picos helped guide Champier through the perilous maze of Renaissance occultism. There was Cardinal Bessarion, the great Platonist, to be imitated in his syncretism and studied in his knowledge of the ancient theology. There was Lodovico Lazzarelli, a protege of the mysterious Mercurio da Corregio, whose version of the Diffinitiones Asclepii, one of the Hermetica, Champier printed in De quadruplici vita and in Duellum epistolare.186 But the presence of all this Italian influence does not 184. Charles B. Schmitt, Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola (1469-1533) and His Critique of Aristotle, International Archives of the History of Ideas 23 (The Hague: Martinas Nijhoff, 1967), pp. 2-3, 6-7,191-192, 200, 204, 206; Richard H. Popkin, The History of Skepticism from Erasmus to Descartes (1960; rpt. New York: Harper and Row,1968),pp.l9-22;Walker,Z)emomc,p.l46;Mon