The index of this folio opens with the incantations of Abaris the Hyperborean and closes with the magic of Zoroaster and the spells of Zamolxis. That is an index to Plato and a great example of how the Renaissance read him. The title page sets the tone before you even reach the text: the device of the publisher Antoine Vincent shows a hand descending from clouds, gripping a serpent-twined staff crowned with a radiant, all-seeing eye, watching over the divine Plato. The eye motif long predates its appearance on the United States one-dollar bill in 1935.
The translation is the one that transformed the intellectual landscape of Europe. In the 1460s Cosimo de' Medici set Marsilio Ficino to turn all of Plato into Latin, with one famous interruption: when a manuscript of Hermes Trismegistus reached Florence, Cosimo ordered Plato set aside so the Egyptian sage could be translated first. You could argue, and we would, that Western esotericism was born in that pause. Ficino's complete Plato, published in 1484, gave Europe the dialogues fused with his Neoplatonic and Hermetic commentary, influencing Renaissance thinkers including Pico and Agrippa. This Lyon edition offers the mature form of that translation, newly collated against the Greek by two scholars, the reasoning laid out in a prefatory epistle, with six dialogues freshly rendered by Sebastiano Corrado and received into the volume, as the title notes, for the first time.
The magic is in the text itself. In the first Alcibiades, a dialogue now mostly neglected, where Socrates describes the education of Persian princes, the printed marginal note reads “Magica Zoroastri deorum cultus est”: the magic of Zoroaster is the worship of the gods. That sentence was the license plate of Renaissance magic, the classical warrant Pico and Agrippa cited to argue that magia, rightly understood, was the oldest form of religion and not at all a crime. The volume ends with the Timaeus, printed here under the title De Universitate, the creation of the world-soul that underwrote three centuries of cosmological speculation.
The imprint carries a good deal of drama as well. Antoine Vincent was one of the great Huguenot publishing magnates of Lyon, within a few years of this book the organizer of one of the largest printing ventures of the century, the Genevan Psalter. His printer, named in the colophon, is Balthazar Arnoullet, the man whose shop had secretly run off Michael Servetus's Christianismi Restitutio in 1553, the book that was burned at Geneva along with its author.
The copy is handsome and storied: contemporary vellum over boards, the covers gilt with an interlaced arabesque medallion at center and floral tools at the corners, the spine gilt with fleurons. The provenance stretches across four centuries of French owners. An engraved armorial plate mounted within, three cooking pots under a marquis's coronet, flanked by rearing greyhounds, is identified in an old ink hand as René de Montbourcher, of the Breton house of Montbourcher, marquises du Bordage. A circular armorial ink stamp repeats on the title and through the volume; an ink signature of A. de Grateloud speaks for the nineteenth century; a pencil note records an acquisition in 1921; and a small early manuscript label, “Platonis opera omnia,” still does its filing duty. Wide-margined and fresh within, the worming confined to margins, with wear and repairs to the binding as detailed below.
PLATO; Marsilio FICINO, translator (1433-1499). Divini Platonis Opera omnia, Marsilio Ficino interprete. Nova editio, adhibita Graeci codicis collatione à duobus doctissimis viris castigata: cuius collationis ratio ex epistola operi praefixa facile constabit. His accesserunt sex Platonis dialogi, nuper à Sebastiano Conrado tralati, neque unquam adhuc in hoc volumen recepti. Lyon: Antoine Vincent (colophon: printed by Balthazar Arnoullet), 1557.
Physical Description: Folio (about 35 x 24 cm). [16], 667, [32] pp., the index ending with the Arnoullet colophon. Woodcut device to title, historiated initials, woodcut astronomical and cosmological diagrams in the Timaeus and elsewhere.
Binding: Contemporary vellum over boards, covers with fillet frames, central gilt arabesque medallion and gilt floral cornerpieces, spine with raised bands and gilt fleurons in the compartments, later red morocco lettering label. Corners renewed in vellum, spine ends worn with loss to the headcap, old repairs.
Provenance: (1) Engraved armorial plate (three marmites under a marquis's coronet, greyhound supporters) mounted within, identified in an old ink hand as René de Montbourcher: the Breton house of Montbourcher, marquises du Bordage. (2) Circular armorial ink stamp (a crowned shield within a wreath) to title and repeated through the volume. (3) Ink ownership signature “A. de Grateloud,” nineteenth century. (4) Early manuscript paper label “Platonis opera omnia.” (5) Pencil acquisition note dated 1921 to an endpaper.
Condition: Front inner hinge cracked, the free endpaper splitting at the gutter; light worming to the gutter margins at front and rear, well clear of the text; title with small marginal chips and a washed early ink inscription; scattered staining. The text block clean, fresh, and wide-margined.
The index of this folio opens with the incantations of Abaris the Hyperborean and closes with the magic of Zoroaster and the spells of Zamolxis. That is an index to Plato and a great example of how the Renaissance read him. The title page sets the tone before you even reach the text: the device of the publisher Antoine Vincent shows a hand descending from clouds, gripping a serpent-twined staff crowned with a radiant, all-seeing eye, watching over the divine Plato. The eye motif long predates its appearance on the United States one-dollar bill in 1935.
The translation is the one that transformed the intellectual landscape of Europe. In the 1460s Cosimo de' Medici set Marsilio Ficino to turn all of Plato into Latin, with one famous interruption: when a manuscript of Hermes Trismegistus reached Florence, Cosimo ordered Plato set aside so the Egyptian sage could be translated first. You could argue, and we would, that Western esotericism was born in that pause. Ficino's complete Plato, published in 1484, gave Europe the dialogues fused with his Neoplatonic and Hermetic commentary, influencing Renaissance thinkers including Pico and Agrippa. This Lyon edition offers the mature form of that translation, newly collated against the Greek by two scholars, the reasoning laid out in a prefatory epistle, with six dialogues freshly rendered by Sebastiano Corrado and received into the volume, as the title notes, for the first time.
The magic is in the text itself. In the first Alcibiades, a dialogue now mostly neglected, where Socrates describes the education of Persian princes, the printed marginal note reads “Magica Zoroastri deorum cultus est”: the magic of Zoroaster is the worship of the gods. That sentence was the license plate of Renaissance magic, the classical warrant Pico and Agrippa cited to argue that magia, rightly understood, was the oldest form of religion and not at all a crime. The volume ends with the Timaeus, printed here under the title De Universitate, the creation of the world-soul that underwrote three centuries of cosmological speculation.
The imprint carries a good deal of drama as well. Antoine Vincent was one of the great Huguenot publishing magnates of Lyon, within a few years of this book the organizer of one of the largest printing ventures of the century, the Genevan Psalter. His printer, named in the colophon, is Balthazar Arnoullet, the man whose shop had secretly run off Michael Servetus's Christianismi Restitutio in 1553, the book that was burned at Geneva along with its author.
The copy is handsome and storied: contemporary vellum over boards, the covers gilt with an interlaced arabesque medallion at center and floral tools at the corners, the spine gilt with fleurons. The provenance stretches across four centuries of French owners. An engraved armorial plate mounted within, three cooking pots under a marquis's coronet, flanked by rearing greyhounds, is identified in an old ink hand as René de Montbourcher, of the Breton house of Montbourcher, marquises du Bordage. A circular armorial ink stamp repeats on the title and through the volume; an ink signature of A. de Grateloud speaks for the nineteenth century; a pencil note records an acquisition in 1921; and a small early manuscript label, “Platonis opera omnia,” still does its filing duty. Wide-margined and fresh within, the worming confined to margins, with wear and repairs to the binding as detailed below.
PLATO; Marsilio FICINO, translator (1433-1499). Divini Platonis Opera omnia, Marsilio Ficino interprete. Nova editio, adhibita Graeci codicis collatione à duobus doctissimis viris castigata: cuius collationis ratio ex epistola operi praefixa facile constabit. His accesserunt sex Platonis dialogi, nuper à Sebastiano Conrado tralati, neque unquam adhuc in hoc volumen recepti. Lyon: Antoine Vincent (colophon: printed by Balthazar Arnoullet), 1557.
Physical Description: Folio (about 35 x 24 cm). [16], 667, [32] pp., the index ending with the Arnoullet colophon. Woodcut device to title, historiated initials, woodcut astronomical and cosmological diagrams in the Timaeus and elsewhere.
Binding: Contemporary vellum over boards, covers with fillet frames, central gilt arabesque medallion and gilt floral cornerpieces, spine with raised bands and gilt fleurons in the compartments, later red morocco lettering label. Corners renewed in vellum, spine ends worn with loss to the headcap, old repairs.
Provenance: (1) Engraved armorial plate (three marmites under a marquis's coronet, greyhound supporters) mounted within, identified in an old ink hand as René de Montbourcher: the Breton house of Montbourcher, marquises du Bordage. (2) Circular armorial ink stamp (a crowned shield within a wreath) to title and repeated through the volume. (3) Ink ownership signature “A. de Grateloud,” nineteenth century. (4) Early manuscript paper label “Platonis opera omnia.” (5) Pencil acquisition note dated 1921 to an endpaper.
Condition: Front inner hinge cracked, the free endpaper splitting at the gutter; light worming to the gutter margins at front and rear, well clear of the text; title with small marginal chips and a washed early ink inscription; scattered staining. The text block clean, fresh, and wide-margined.
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