HERMES TRISMEGISTUS (with Iamlichus & Proclus - trans. by Marsilio Ficino)

MERCURII TRISMEGISTI PYMANDER, De Potestate et sapienta Dei. Eiusdem Asclepius, De voluntate Dei... Iamblichus De mysteriius Aegyptiorum... Proclus in Platonicum Alcibiadem... De sacrificio & magia

      Basle: Mich. Isingrinium, August, Basle: Mich. Isingrinium, August,, 1532.. Sm. 8vo, 480 [i.e. 460], (4)pp. Contemp. boards covered in vellum (with ms on inside), old library stamps on title, occasional staining and worming (not affecting text).. ! Early Edition of the Pymander and Asclepius, attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, together with texts by Proclus, Iamblichus and Porphyry. The Asclepius of Hermes was translated by Apuleius and the other works by Marsilio Ficino. Adams H-345. STC, German, 398. Rosenthal, Bib. Magica, 445. Not in Bib. Esoterica; Caillet; De Guaita; Durling; Duveen; Ferguson; Manly P. Hall Catalogue. OCLC notes 2 copies in the US and 3 abroad.#11;#11;! One of the most influential works on philosophy ever printed, the OPymander of HermesO is the foundation stone of an intellectual movement which was to have profound influence in the European Renaissance. It is neither an alchemical, astrological or magical text and has nothing to say about ways of operating in the physical warld. It is, rather, a philosophical mystical text whose object is enlightenment rather than power. The manuscript, known as the OCorpus Hermeticum,O was brought to Florence from Macedonia about 1460 by a monk named Leonardo da Pistoia. The mansucript was presented to Cosimo de Medici who engaged Marsilio Ficino to translate it from the Greek into Latin. The first edition was printed at Treviso in 1471. Ficino titled his translation of the 14 treatises OPimander,O but actually that is the title of only the first treatise of the corpus, which gives an account of the creation of the world. Hermes, a mythical name associated with a class of gnostic revelations, was for the Renaissance scholars a real person, an Egyptian priest who had lived in remote antiquity. Like the Hellenic Greeks, they looked to the past for the foundation of truth. Thus Ficino, finding traces of Platonic thought, saw Hermes as the source, while in fact the writings probably date from early Christian times. In 1614 Isaac Casaubon proved the hermetic writings date from the first through third centuries A.D. as the Greek is late Hellenic and the doctrine is drawn directly from Plato, the Stoics and Persian thought. VD16 H-2462. See: Yates, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition.