Piety and Pythagoras in Renaissance Florence: The Symbolum Nesianum. .

Christopher S. Celenza. Piety and Pythagoras in Renaissance Florence: The Symbolum Nesianum.

(Studies in the History of Christian Thought, 101.) Leiden and Boston: Brill Academic Publishers, 2001, xiii + 238 pp. index, append. bibl. $85. ISBN: 90-04-12211-7.

The first part of this book is a study of a remarkable text from the Florentine Quattrocento consisting of an interpretation of forty-eight of the Pythagorean symbols--not to be confused with the so-called golden sayings--by a notable follower of Ficino. It contributes greatly to our understanding of the intellectual and spiritual impact of Renaissance Pythagoreanism. Celenza begins with a brief fortuna of the symbols up to the end of the fifteenth century, drawing on the work of Walter Burkert, J. O'Meara, and other scholars of late antiquity, and on J. H. Swogger's introduction to his edition of a similar commentary on the symbols by Antonio degli Agli (who was in this indebted to Ficino despite being one of his early mentors). After examining the different approaches that Florentine thinkers adopted in their interpretations, Celenza focuses on Nesi himself, and concludes by surveying the later reception history, dealing specifically with Filippo Beroaldo the Elder, Erasmus, Reuchlin, and Lilio Gregorio Gir aldi. In the second part he presents us with a critical edition and en face English translation of the Symbolurn Nesian urn, along with a commentary, three appendices, a bibliography, and indices.

The Symbolum, which leans heavily on Ficino for its philosophical arguments, is attributed to the diplomat, university official, preacher, and piagnone, Giovanni Nesi, and is sandwiched inside the massive Eptathicurn of Paolo Orlandini, twice prior of S. Maria degli Angeli, twice vicar general of the order of Camaldolese monks. Nesi's work consists of a visionary interpretation of the Pythagorean dicta that, unlike the earlier satirical interpretations of Leon Battista Alberti and Angelo Poliziano, "oscillates," Celenza argues, "between Ficinian Neoplatonism and Savonarolan apocalypticism" (2-3). It was obviously compiled in the belief that the precepts of an ancient sect which believed in reincarnation could nonetheless be useful to a community of monks, and more particularly since they possessed a "hidden energy"--not surprisingly, perhaps, given their original function as "cultic taboo-precepts," and given Pythagoras' own soteriological status as a holy man. Celenza stresses (as he has in several articles) the importance both of Ficino's "overall vatic image of Pythagoras" (whom Ambrose had declared was born a Jew) and of his role in crafting a "vatic sensibility" in Florence (26). But the other "penumbral presence" in this story is the fideistic Savonarola, whom almost all of Ficino's circle elected to follow and whose role resembles--strange as it might first appear--that of a latter-day Pythagoras. Indeed, Nesi's work bears witness, in Celenza's suggestive reading, to the inner workings of the piagnone movement still recovering from the shock of the loss of its prophet.

Even so, the context of the Symbolum Nesianum is post-Ficinian, post-Savonarolan, and complicated. In January 1500, over a year after Savonarola's death, Nesi joined the Camaldolese monks at a meal in their refectory at S. Maria degli Angeli, the church where Ficino had lectured on Plato's Philebus and Parmenides and on St. Paul's Epistle to the Romans, and which had already played such a signal role in the Platonic revival, as a recent article by Dennis Lackner amply demonstrates. Nesi was apparently intrigued by certain "exercises" two monks, Luca and Marco, had separately performed by way of expounding upon "collections of short phrases" or symbola. Having heard these gymnastica monachorum, he sought permission from Prior Guido to compose his own commentary on the Pythagorean symbols, which was read out to the brothers three days later and apparently preferred to the earlier symbola.

We learn all this from an "inherently deceptive" source, a unique codex in Florence's Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale containing, inter alia, the Eptathicum. Orlandini assembled this collection of seven theological treatises, including the three Gymnastica, in 1518, and inserted sundry comments, fragments of dialogues about the works, and notes on monastery guests into its interstices in order to present us, Celenza argues, with an imagined, idealized portrait of Camaldolese life during the priorate of Guido da Settimo. In doing so he played a critical role in redacting the texts of all three Gymnastica.

Thus Nesi's work has numerous ramifications and invites analysis from a variety of perspectives. Celenza's study and edition, attractively printed if rather expensive, is a learned contribution to our understanding of the sym ho/a and their historical context.