While the rise of Florentine Neoplatonism is usually associated with the philosophers Marsilio Ficino and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Lodovico Lazzarelli also made important contributions to the forging of Christian Hermeticism. Like...
moreWhile the rise of Florentine Neoplatonism is usually associated with the philosophers Marsilio Ficino and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola,
Lodovico Lazzarelli also made important contributions to the forging of
Christian Hermeticism. Like Pico, he became attracted to Jewish mysticism and the Kabbalah and in his work Crater Hermetis (c. 1493), he contributed to this intellectual trend with a passionate and poetical vision of ascension, the technology of which he partly borrowed from the mystical Judaica, at the same time creating (according to Wouter Hanegraaff) a particularly pure form of ecstatic Christian mystery. In my paper I introduce this text and point out the decisive meeting of Lazzarelli with Giovanni “Mercurio” da Correggio, whom he identified as the reborn Hermes Trismegistus, while he styled himself as a reborn Enoch. Their twin story is a fascinating example of early Renaissance Neoplatonic mysticism which synthesized high religiosity with classical philosophy and a fervent desire for the deification of man.
