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Title: Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition by Frances Amelia Yates ISBN: 0-226-95007-7 Publisher: University of Chicago Press Pub. Date: February, 1991 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $22.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (5 reviews)
Rating: 2
Summary: A clumsy piece of homework by an outsider...
Comment: What is "Gordano Bruno and the Hermetic tradition"?
Let me put it very simply: it is a succession of clumsily written reviews of the main Hermetic treatises, starting with the original manuscripts brought over from Byzantium after its fall and ending with the works of Bruno, Campanella and other more recent thinkers and magicians. Each chapter deals with a book or a series of books by one or several Hermeticists. Yates dutifully summarizes the book, adds a few more or less enlightened comments and biographical notes and then moves on to examine the writings of the following Renaissance crank. She makes a copious use of quotations, most of them in Latin and most of them not translated...
I want to make something very clear: this is by no way a biography of Bruno. It is not even an intellectual biography of the "Nolan philosopher": nowhere are we told by Yates why, when and how he became a Hermeticist.In fact, she starts her exposition on him when he is already a full-fledged magus in Paris, where he is trying to engratiate himself with King Henri III by publishing a treatise on mnemonics. The whole first chapter dealing with Bruno is an outline of that book. The following chapter describes another book and so on. Briefly, we never leave the libraries...
If you are looking for a insights into how Hermeticism influenced Renaissance painting, music, architecture and other aspects of civilization, you won't find them here. I repeat, this is a description of the Hermetic literature of the XVIth century in Italy and elsewhere, with a focus on the books written by Bruno.
You may now ask: OK, I understand that this is not a biography about Bruno. Does Yates do a good job in explaining the Hermetic treatises?
Would you believe a "History of Western Scientific Thought" written by a Tunguse shaman from Krasnoiarsk ? My guess is that you would at the very least take his exposition with quite a handful of salt.The reason is obvious: a Siberian sorcerer belongs to a world that is too different from ours to be able to really understand Newtonian science. And even if he could understand it, his own religious and cultural background is so hostile to mechanistic science that he is bound to be biased in his treatment of the subject.
Now why should one trust an account of Hermetic philosophy and its influence on XVIth century Catholic thinkers written by a modern historian coming from a Protestant and rationalistic tradition?
I for one do not believe that such a historian is capable of dealing properly with such a subject and Mrs Yates being precisely the modern, rationalistic, Protestant historian I am talking about(otherwise she would not be an award-winning sacred cow, see what happens to truly great but marginal historians like Hillaire Belloc who are writing from a Catholic perspective) fails in giving a truly enlightening, living picture of Hermeticism and Giordano Bruno.
To put it very simply, she does not understand what she is talking about! That is the reason why we get all those insipid summaries worthy of a first year college student.
Furthermore, although she shows on the whole more respect toward her characters than your average historian, Yates does regard the Hermetic thinkers of the Renaissance, including Bruno, as a bunch of crackpots and megalomaniacs. Deeply interesting they are but still they are crackpots as all pre-Reformation, pre-Enlightenment thinkers are bound to be in the mind of a mainstream Western historian.
Just see how she starts her book in a typical fashion: by condescendingly exposing the superstitious attitude of the ancients. Ficino, Pico, Bruno, they all believed that the Hermetic literature had been written at the time of the pyramids, before Moses! But, aha, WE know that they are in fact nothing more than pious forgeries dating from the 2nd century AD! Casaubon, an obscure Protestant Greek scholar of Swiss origin living in England has proved it. Never mind this bigot had a huge axe to grind, never mind Pico and Ficino, who believed in the remote antiquity of the Hermetic manuscripts, mastered the Greek language just as well as Casaubon, we should believe the Calvinist philologist because...because he comforts our prejudices, of course!
To say that there is absolutely nothing to be learnt from "Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition" would of course be a gross exaggeration, for there are interesting pieces of information scattered throughout the book, specially when the author manages to raise her nose from her nine-point summaries and laborious sketches to give us a larger view of the fascinating world of the Renaissance but this is really such a minor aspect of "Giordano Bruno?that I wouldn't recommend it for that reason.
Much better to read Adrian Gilbert's The New Jerusalem", believe me.
Rating: 3
Summary: The Truth about Bruno
Comment: Actually, this book can not be evaluated at once. Rather, you should concede four stars to the greater part of the book and not any star to the rest. For this is widely an excellent book. Yates does not only prove that Bruno is not the pioneer of modern science he is often stated to be, but convincingly exposes the background against which his works have to be understood. To that purpose, she shows the impact of the Hermetic writings, an ancient source written in the second and third centuries A.D., but by some Christian Renaissance writers such as Ficino or Pico della Mirandola held to be of an authority greater and older than even Moses, on Renaissance thought. Thus it is demonstrated in chronological order how the corpus Hermeticum was received by Renaissance writers, focussing on magic that was derived from some passages of the corpus Hermeticum. Bruno is placed within this tradition. Congeniously, Yates acknowledges the significance of Casaubon's exact dating of what had been held a prophecy of Christianism for more than two centuries and discusses the following dispute which finally made the type of the Renaissance magus disappear, although this tradition of thinking never completely vanished. So this is, without any doubt, the fundamental book about Giordano Bruno and the impact of Hermetism on Renaissance thought. It provides information clear and dear also on magic in general and thus illuminates even some passages of Shakespeare and (unconsciously) Goethe's Faust.Thus the book inspires to study Renaissance authors such as Pico or Ficino or more literature on Renaissance Thought ( I recommend the overwhelming collection Renaissance Thought and the Arts" by Paul Oskar Kristeller).
All the more it is a pity that Yates, writing with transigating passion, is lead astray to some statements about science and antique thought in general that cannot be left uncommented upon. Ancient philosophy in the time when the corpus Hermeticum was written did NOT necessarily, not even realy, stagnate (p.4, p. 449). On the contrary, Plotinus, writing about 250 A.D., renewed philosophical thought in a way that he is now often considered to be one of the greatest metaphysicians that ever lived. Furthermore, the reason for this presumed stagnation is, according to Yates, that the ancient philosophers did not know the principle of experimentation. But this principle is completely alien to philosophy, be it ancient or modern (this is quite evident, but if someone still doubts, he should read e.g. Wenisch's Die Philosophie und ihre Methode"). The exhausting prize of modern science at the end of the book (p. 447-55) is not to the point and ignores that ancient thought must not be treated as a failing attempt at Galileo's achievements (as the German scholar Jörg Kube emphasized). Her sideswipe against Descartes (p. 454-55), finally, seems to me completely out of place. So I recommend this book to anyone who wants to know the truth about Giordano Bruno and the essence of magic, but you should not believe what is said about ancient philosophy and philosophy in general.
Rating: 5
Summary: The Hermetic Tradition is the basis of much of the Gospels
Comment: Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake in 1700 because he believed in the authenticity of the Hermetic Traditon that purported to be of ancient Egyptian origin. It proved to be a fraud more correctly dated during the first century AD adding significance to the symbolism of the Gospels written about the same time, probably in the following order: Mark, Matthew, Luke and John. The Hermetic Tradtion compliments the expanding elaborations of the Gospels when read in this order. Indeed, the Gospels can hardly be comprehended without the benefit of this work that spells out how gods are created, first in stone, then by extrapolation, converted to a spiritual power. Giordano Bruno is the vehicle by which the author makes her point because of his misguided belief. The work is an eye-opener to the serious student of the Christian religion who ought also to read Iasiah for a more rounded interpretation of the symbolism of the Bible. The book is intended for the serious student, but is essential to all who want better to understand the value of the myth and its symbolic relationship to the creation of the Christian religion. Fascinating reading for anyone who has met the prerequisites, including having read Plato's REPUBLIC and will fit into his positive philosophy.
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Title: The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age (Routledge Classics) by Frances Amelia Yates ISBN: 0415254094 Publisher: Routledge Pub. Date: 01 September, 2001 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Rosicrucian Enlightenment (Routledge Classics) by Frances Amelia Yates ISBN: 0415267692 Publisher: Routledge Pub. Date: 09 November, 2001 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: The Art of Memory by Francis A. Yates ISBN: 0226950018 Publisher: University of Chicago Press Pub. Date: December, 1974 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: The Way of Hermes: New Translations of The Corpus Hermeticum and The Definitions of Hermes Trismegistus to Asclepius by Clement Salaman, Dorine Van Oyen, William D. Wharton, Jean-Pierre Mahe ISBN: 0892818174 Publisher: Inner Traditions Intl Ltd Pub. Date: April, 2000 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Hermetica : The Greek Corpus Hermeticum and the Latin Asclepius in a New English Translation, with Notes and Introduction by Brian P. Copenhaver ISBN: 0521425433 Publisher: Cambridge University Press Pub. Date: 12 October, 1995 List Price(USD): $33.00 |
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