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The opinions of the Humanists. The first doubt. The launching of the theory of plagiarism
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THE OPINIONS OF THE HUMANISTS
That the early scholars of the revival of learning were all unanimously delighted with the Trismegistic writings, is manifest from the bibliography we have already given, and that they should follow the judgment of the ancient Fathers in the matter is but natural to expect; for them not only were the books prior to Christianity, but they were ever assured that Hermes
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had been a really existent personality, like any of the Biblical worthies, such as Enoch and Noah (as was unquestionably believed in those days), and further, that he was prior to, or a contemporary of, Moses. 1
Thus in the editio princeps of Ficino we read: “Whoever thou art who readest these things, whether grammarian, or rhetorician, or philosopher, or theologian, know thou that I am Hermes the Thrice-greatest, at whom wondered first the Egyptians and the other nations, and subsequently the ancient Christian theologians, in utter stupefaction at my doctrine rare of things divine. ”
The opinion of Ficino, that the “writer” of the “Pœ mandres” tractates was one who had a knowledge both of Egyptian and Greek, is of interest as being that of a man uncontaminated by the infinite doubts with which the atmosphere of modern criticism is filled, and thus able to get a clean contact with his subject.
Of the same mind were Loys Lazarel and du Preau, the first French translator; while the Italian Cardinal Patrizzi appends to his labours the following beautiful words (attributed by some to Chalcidius 2), which he puts in the mouth of Hermes:
“Till now, my son, I, banished from my home, have lived expatriate in exile. Now safe and sound I seek my home once more. And when but yet a little while I shall have left thee, freed from these bonds of body, see that thou dost not mourn me as one dead. For I return to that supreme and happy state to which the universe’s citizens will come when in the after-state.
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[paragraph continues] For there the Only God is supreme lord, and He will fill His citizens with wondrous joy, compared to which the state down here which is regarded by the multitude as life, should rather be called death. ” 1
Patrizzi believed that Hermes was contemporary with Moses, basing himself upon the opinion of Eusebius in his Chronicum, 2 and thought that it would be to the greatest advantage of the Christian world, if such admirable and pious philosophy as was contained in the Trismegistic writings were substituted in the public schools for Aristotle, whom he regarded as overflowing with impiety.
THE FIRST DOUBT
And that such opinions were the only ones as late as 1630, is evident from the favour still shown to the voluminous commentaries of de Foix and Rossel. Nevertheless some fifty years previously, a hardy pioneer of scepticism had sturdily attacked the validity of the then universal Hermes tradition on one point at least—and that a fundamental one. For Patrizzi (p. 1a) declares that a certain Jo. Goropius Becanus was the first after so many centuries to dare to say that Hermes (as a single individual) never existed! But the worthy Goropius, who appears to have flourished about 1580, judging by an antiquarian treatise of his on the race and language of the “Cimbri or Germani” published at Amsterdam, had no followers as yet in a belief that is now universally accepted by all critical scholarship. But this has to do with the Hermes-saga and not directly with the question of the Trismegistic works,
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and so we may omit for the present any reference to the host of contradictory opinions on “Hermes” which are found in all the writers to whom we are referring, and none of which, prior to the decipherment of the hieroglyphics, are of any particular value.
THE LAUNCHING OF THE THEORY OF PLAGIARISM
It was about the middle of the seventeenth century that the theory of plagiarism and forgery was started. Ursin (Joh. Henr. Ursinus), a pastor of the Evangelical Church at Ratisbon, published at Nü rnberg in 1661, a work, in the second part of which he treated of “Hermes Trismegistus and his Writings, ” 1 and endeavoured to show that they were wholesale plagiarisms from Christianity, but his arguments were subjected to a severe criticism by Brucker some hundred years later. 2
This extreme view of Ursin was subsequently modified into the subsidiary opinions that the Trismegistic works were composed by a half-Christian (semi-christiano) or interpolated by Christian overworking.
The most distinguished name among the early holders of the former opinion is that of Isaac Casaubon, 3 who dates these writings at the beginning of the second
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century; Casaubon’s opinions, however, were promptly refuted by Cudworth in his famous work The True Intellectual System of the Universe, the first edition of which was printed at London, in folio, 1678. 1 Cudworth would have it, however, that Casaubon was right as far as the treatises entitled “The Shepherd of Men” and “The Secret Sermon on the Mountain” are concerned, and that these treatises were counterfeited by Christians since the time of Iamblichus—a very curious position to assume, since a number of the treatises themselves look back to this very “Shepherd” as the original document of the whole “Pœ mandres” cycle.
But, indeed, so far we have no arguments, no really critical investigation, 2 so that we need not detain the reader among these warring opinions, on which the cap was set by the violent outburst of Colberg in defence of orthodoxy against the Alchemists, Rosicrucians, Quakers, Anabaptists, Quietists, etc., of which fanatici, as he calls them, Hermes, he declares, was the Patriarch. 3
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