Routledge History of Philosophy Volume IV

42 THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE ITALIAN RENAISSANCE
which had been corrupted in transmission. Even though Steuco shared Giorgi’s
predilection for Neoplatonic authors, he did not exclude Aristotle from the
perennial philosophy. His Aristotle, however, was the author of De mundo and
other misattributed works, containing hints—amplified by Steuco—of belief in
divine providence and immortality, though not, alas, in creation. 153 Despite (or
more likely because of) having studied in Bologna during Pomponazzi’s final
years there, he distanced himself from scholastic Aristotelianism and strongly
opposed the notion that philosophical truth was independent of theology. For
Steuco, reason and revelation, which both flowed from God, necessarily led to the
same conclusions. 154
Ficino’s Christianized Neoplatonism, although a key element in the syncretism
of thinkers like Giorgi and Steuco, did not gain much support as an independent
philosophical system. The only aspect which excited general interest was the
theory of love elaborated by Ficino in his Symposium commentary, a theory
which became so popular that it dominated the public perception of Platonism
throughout the sixteenth century and beyond. 155 Even Francesco da Diacceto
(1466–1522), Ficino’s Florentine successor, concentrated on the issues of love
and beauty, investing them, however, with a metaphysical and theological
significance absent in the stylized, literary treatments that proliferated
throughout Italy. Beauty, for Diacceto as for Ficino, was a divine emanation,
which inspired the human soul with a celestial love that fuelled its spiritual ascent
and guided it to an ecstatic union with the One. 156 As a philosophy professor at
the University of Pisa, Diacceto was constrained to lecture on Aristotle; but he
took every opportunity to defend Plato against Aristotle’s attacks and attempted
to establish a concord of the two philosophers which, in deliberate contrast to
Pico’s, squeezed Aristotle into a Platonic mould. 157
Not until 1576 did Platonism enter the curriculum at Pisa. Even then it was
merely an ancillary subject assigned to a professor whose main job was to lecture
on Aristotle. 158 Professorships specifically devoted to Platonism were established
in the universities of Ferrara (1578) and Rome (1592), but both were essentially
ad hominem chairs created for Francesco Patrizi da Cherso (1529–97). An
encounter with Ficino’s Theologia platonica had converted Patrizi, then studying
medicine at Padua, into a fervent Platonist, committed to overthrowing the
Aristotelian monopoly of the universities. 159 The first stage in this crusade was
the demolition of Aristotelianism. Combining superb humanist erudition with
unflagging polemical energy, he accused Aristotle of both plagiarizing and
misrepresenting earlier philosophers; questioned—like Nizolio and
Gianfrancesco Pico—the authenticity of the Aristotelian corpus; and challenged
the philosophical competence of ancient, medieval and Renaissance
Peripatetics. 160 His most damning charge against Aristotelianism, however, was
the same as that made by Petrarch two centuries earlier: its fundamental
incompatibility with Christianity. Addressing Pope Gregory XIV, Patrizi pointed
out the absurdity of teaching a philosophy so manifestly detrimental to religion
in universities throughout Europe and of using its impious tenets as the