Alcibiades’s silens: notes of aesthetics and philosophy in Pico (1463-1494), Erasmus (1467-1436) and Bruno (1542-1600)
Julián BARENSTEIN
Original title: Los silenos de Alcibíades: notas de estética y filosofía en Pico (1463-1494), Erasmo (1467-1436) y Bruno (1542-1600)
Published in The Medieval Aesthetics
Keywords: Aesthetics and Philosophy, Erasmus, Giordano Bruno, Pico della Mirandola, Silens.
Of the multiple influences that Plato’s philosophy has had on Renaissance thought, in this paper we are interested in focusing on a specific and even minimal question, namely, that reference to the silens that appears in Sympsium (215b-c). In our work we propose, then, to trace the presence of the concept of Silenus in three authors: Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494), Erasmus of Rotterdam (1467-1436) and Giordano Bruno (1542-1600). We will stop, in this way, in the famous Epistle that Pico sent to Ermolao Barbaro in 1485 and that is part of the De Genere dicendi philosophorum, in the monumental Adagia of Erasmus, especially in the adage 2201, Sileni Albibiadis, and in the dialogues Spaccio de la bestia trionfante and Cabala del cavallo Pegaseo by Giordano Bruno. The Silens, as is well known, are hollow figurines, horrible looking, disgusting and despicable, inside which are full of gems, exotic jewels and precious. Our research aims to show that, according to the selected authors, this is the philosopher’s own way of seeing himself, his aesthetics –whose most finished and original example is Socrates– and, by extension, the way of being proper to philosophy.
Erasmus editor of Saint Jerome: the Opera omnia (1516)
Inmaculada DELGADO JARA
Original title: Erasmo editor de san Jerónimo: las Opera omnia (1516)
Published in Mirabilia Journal 31 (2020/2)
Keywords: Erasmus, Fathers of the Church, Humanism, Saint Jerome.
The biblical and patristic project of Erasmus began in 1516, after a long maturation period of at least 15 years (from 1500 to 1516), with the publication in that annus mi-rabilis of the Novum Instrumentum and the Opera omnia of Saint Jerome –two milestones in his biblical and patristic project that will continue for twenty years with the edition of more than a dozen Fathers of the Church, both Greek and Latin–. At this time he had already discovered that the Sacred Scripture and the Fathers of the Church (espe-cially Saint Augustine, Chrysostom, Basil, Origen and Saint Jerome) could renew what he understood by theology: he does not want a scotist, nominalist, thomisttheology, that is, that of the recentiores, but a true theology, the vetus theologia or later the bibli-cal philosophia Christi, centered on the gospels and apostolic letters. But to reach this, we not only have the texts of the Scripture, but also the Fathers of the Church –and among them the greatest Latin Father, Jerome–, from which to take in the purest mes-sage of the Scripture, a redditio ad fontes, which he will defend throughout his life as the foundation of the theological renewal that he perceived as profoundly necessary in his time. The study deals with his herculean nine-volume edition of Saint Jerome’s Opera omnia –the first and most important of his many editions of the Fathers of the Church–. Because we anticipate that, with Erasmus, “the first patrology” was born. Its great editorial and translating task will facilitate the dissemination of patristic thought that will influence studies on New Testament philology as well as the development of dogmatic theology and Christian piety itself.
Erasmus, Biographer of Jerome: Hieronymi Stridonensis Vita (1516)
Victoriano PASTOR JULIÁN
Original title: Erasmo, biógrafo de san Jerónimo: Hieronymi Stridonensis Vita (1516)
Published in Mirabilia Journal 31 (2020/2)
Keywords: Biography, Erasmus, Humanism, Saint Jerome, Theology.
The life of Jerome of Stridon was written by Erasmus as an introduction to the edition of his Opera Omnia (1516). He developed it mainly from Jerome’s own correspondence, the first four volumes consisting of its edition. Erasmus read and imitated Jerome’s work, due to his piety and knowledge since his youth. This is the reason why the Vita Hieronymi will develop around two axes: Jerome according to Jerome and Jerome according to Erasmus. Thus, he conceives life as a forensic speech in which he defends Jerome’s cause and, at the same time, that of Humanism and of the vera theologia, of which he will be a defender and advocate. Thereby, Jerome’s biography turns, so to speak, into an apologia pro vita sua for Erasmus. In this work, we have translated –for the first time in Spanish language– more than a third of its 1565 lines, keeping the Latin text at the bottom of the page. At the same time, we have studied both Jerome’s and Erasmus’ context, focusing especially on the almost total complicity of both theologians and humanists.
