Lodovico Lazzarelli
Ludovico Lazzarelli (4 February 1447 – 23 June 1500) was an Italian
Born at
Biography
The most important document for reconstructing Lazzarelli's biography is the Vita Lodovici Lazzarelli Septempedani poetae laureati per Philippum fratrem ad Angelum Colotium written by Lazzarelli's brother Filippo. This text addressed to the humanist Angelo Colocci was written immediately after Lazzarelli's death. The Vita is characterized by an hagiographic tone and pays particular attention to the author's literary endeavors while passing under silence important aspects of his career, e.g. his interest for magic arts. This document, however, gives important evidence of Lazzarelli's otherwise uncertain chronology.[1]
Thanks to this document, for example, we know that Lazzarelli was born in 1447 and earned his early literary education in Teramo. In this town, Alessandro Sforza, the lord of Pesaro, awarded a prize to Lodovico at age 13, for a poem on the battle of San Flaviano in 1460. Lazzarelli's family had moved to Teramo after their father's death, but Ludovico was born in San Severino Marche (in Latin Septempeda, hence Lazzarelli's humanistic nickname Septempedanus).[2]
We also know that Lazzarelli was a student of Giovanni Mercurio da Correggio (Latin name: Iohannes Mercurius de Corigio; 1451-?), an Italian itinerant preacher, Hermeticist, and alchemist[3] who D. P. Walker described as "a wonder-working magus, who had himself, as Lazzarelli tells us, been regenerated by Hermes Trismegistus".[4][5]
Works
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Hermeticism |
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Lazzarelli edited and wrote commentaries on many of the works within the Corpus Hermeticum, often following on from the work of earlier Hermeticists, such as Marsilio Ficino. Thus, he wrote a dedication to Ficino's translation of the Poimandres and Asclepius. He himself wrote a translation of the Defitiones Asclepii, while his most significant work was the Crater Hermetis. As Walker notes:
Lazzarelli's dialogue, the Crater Hermetis, culminated in a mystery, revealed in a hymn, which is based on the man-made gods in the Asclepius...which was one of the main sources of the magic in [Ficino's] De Vita coelitus camparanda...[6]
The work is a dialogue between Lazzarelli and King Ferdinand of Aragon, whom Lazzarelli is initiating into "a mystery which is both Christian and Hermetic - early in the dialogue Lazzarelli tells him: 'Christianus ego sum o Rex: et Hermeticum simul esse non pudet'..."[7] Using Orphic hymns, the king is prepared for "the final revelation of the mystery".
The 'Crater' here is the Platonic krater, envisioned by both
Thus, Walker firmly associates Lazzarelli with the tradition of Neoplatonic and Orphic magic, theurgy and ritual that emerged during the 15th century in Renaissance Italy, and that was widely debated amongst intellectuals and theologists of the time.
See also
- Contemporary Italian Renaissance philosophers: Marsilio Ficino, Giovanni Mercurio da Correggio, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola
- Hermetica (philosophical writings attributed to Hermes Trismegistus)
- Hermeticism
- Renaissance humanism
- Renaissance philosophy
- Renaissance magic
Notes
- ^ The text of the Vita can be read in M. Meloni,"Lodovico Lazzarelli umanista settempedano e il De Gentilium deorum imaginibus, in Studia picena, 66 (2001):114 ff.
- ^ G. Arbizzoni, "Lazzarelli, Ludovico," Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani p. 180
- ^ "Giovanni Mercurio da Correggio", Wikipedia, 2023-06-13, retrieved 2023-10-10
- ^ Walker 1958, p. 70.
- ISBN 978-0-7914-3737-7.
- ^ Walker 1958, p. 64.
- ^ Walker 1958, pp. 64–65.
- ^ Walker 1958, p. 67.
- ^ Walker 1958, p. 71.
- ^ Walker 1958, p. 68.
- ^ Walker 1958, p. 69.
References
- Wouter J. Hanegraaffand Ruud M. Bouthoorn, Lodovico Lazzarelli (1447-1500): The Hermetic Writings and Related Documents, Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Tempe 2005.
- Walker, D. P. (1958). Spiritual and Demonic Magic, from Ficino to Campanella.