Jozef Matula, ed. Florentine Platonism and Central Europe: Florentinischer Platonismus und Mitteleuropa.

Olomouc: Palacky University of Olomouc, 2001. Pbk. 212 pp. index, illus, n.p. ISBN: 80-244-0360-9.

This collection of papers originated from an international conference organized by the Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy at Palacky University in Olomouc to investigate the influence of Florentine Platonism in Bohemia and Hungary during the Renaissance. The six essays in part 1 deal specifically with persons from that region. The essays in part 2 have no specific reference to Central Europe.

The first essay, by Valery Rees, focuses on Marsilio Ficino's correspondence with Matthias Corvinus, king of Hungary and a patron of Renaissance culture. In his letters, Ficino emphasizes the role that a spiritual regeneration inspired by Platonic principles must play in the emergence of a true philosopher-king. Rees claims that Ficino had a decisive role in generating the cultural creativity of Florence in the late Quattrocento but is more convincing in suggesting that Ficino hoped to inspire a similar outburst of creativity in Hungary. Rees concedes, however, that most of the artists and scholars whom Matthias patronized were imported from Italy. In any case, his premature death in 1490 and the political disasters that struck Hungary in the 1520s reduced the longterm effects of his patronage. Libuse Hrabova demonstrates the cultural importance of Johannes Vitez, bishop of Vrad, archbishop of Gran, and uncle and patron of the humanist Janus Pannonius. Vitez collected a rich library, acquiring many volumes from the Florentine bookseller Vespasiano da Bisticci, and even founded a new university at Pressburg. A generation later, the Bohemian nobleman Bohuslav von Lobkowicz of Hassenstein (1461-1509) cultivated in his Latin poetry the humanist interests acquired while he studied canon law at Bologna and Ferrara. He also built a significant library. An essay by Filip Karfik describes his career but concentrates mainly on his library, since two surviving manuscripts from it were Platonic: one an early Greek manuscript of Plato that he may have received with the help of Ficino and the other a collection of Platonic texts translated by Ficino. In the end, however, Karfik concludes that Bohuslav was not deeply influenced by Platonism. An essay by Tomas Nejeschleba takes up a later figure, Johannes von Jessen (1566-1621), a Bohemian Lutheran whose Zoroaster (1593), written soon after his return from study at Padua, is strongly influenced by the Platonist Francesco Patrizi. Yet nearly all of Jessen's later works show him to be a traditional scholastic Aristotelian. Pavel Floss analyzes the works of the great Bohemian educator Comenius and finds traces of Platonic influence, a few of them from the Florentines but most of them from Nicholas of Cusa and Tommaso Campanella. Jozef Matula studies Florentine influence on the seventeenth-century Jesuit philosopher Caspar Knittel. His Via regia (1682) reflects some interest in Platonism, but his central goal of inventing a universal art that would enable the reader to master any science derived from Raymundus Lullus.

Part 2 contains five essays dealing with Florentine Platonism in general. Karel Floss demonstrates the important place that Dionysius the Areopagite held in the thought of not only Ficino but also Ambrogio Traversari, Lefevre d'Etaples, and many medieval thinkers. Surprisingly, though he mentions Lorenzo Valla's doubts about the apostolic date of the Dionysian treatises, he fails to mention Scaliger's demolition of Dionyius' claim to be a contemporary of the apostles in the late sixteenth century and implies that the transformation of Dionysius into pseudo-Dionysius occurred much more recently. Erwin Schadel studies the place of musical theory in Ficino's thought. Ficino regarded music as an integral part of his quest for a comprehensive, unifying cosmology based on both Christian and Platonic principles. Schadel demonstrates the struggle that Ficino and his successors had in reconciling Pythagorean and Orphic musical principles with the emerging modern system of harmony. An essay by Bozena Seilerova and another by Seilerova and Vladimir Seiler discuss the views of Giovanni Pico on human nature and on the toleration of non-Christian intellectual and spiritual traditions, both classical and oriental. In the final essay, Rudolf Chadraba discusses the relationship between Renaissance Platonism and Raphael's frescoes in the Vatican palace, suggesting (but certainly not proving) that the architect Bramante and the papal adviser Egidio da Viterbo had a decisive influence on the iconography of the frescoes.

CHARLES G. NAUERT

University of Missouri

Columbia