1 Read at the Pacific Northwest Renaissance Conference 26 April 1957.

2 Sabbadini, R., Storia del Ciceronianesimo e di altre questioni letterari nell’ età della Rinascenza (Torino, 1885), p. 60 Google Scholar.

3 Hall, V., ‘Life of Julius Caesar Scaliger (1484-1558)’, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, New Series XL (1950), 96–97 Google Scholar.

4 Observations in M. T. Ciceronem.

5 Caelii Calcagnini Ferrariensis, protonotarii apostolici, Opera aliquot (Basileae, MDXLIIII), p. 253. Alberto Bendedei was likely of the Bendedei family in Ferrara. Two 15th-century scholars of that family are noted by M. E. Cosenza, Biographical & Bibliographical Dictionary of the Italian Humanists… (microfilm), s.v. Nicolaus and Timotheus Bendedeus.

6 Opera, 253-269; it was dedicated to Bendedei. See Breen, Q., ‘Celio Calcagnini (1479-1541)’, Church History XXI (1952), 225–238 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The date of Disquisitiones is 1536. Already in 1532 G. B. Gyraldus Cinzio had asked his opinion on imitating classical models; Celio responded with an essay called De imitatione (Opera, 269-276), which was altogether Erasmian in tone.

7 M. Ant. Maioragii orationes et praefationes … (Coloniae Agrippinae, apud Ioannem Gymnicum, sub Monocerote, MDCXIV). Jacobus Grifolus wrote a similar booklet in 1546. See my ‘Celio Calcagnini’, p. 238.

8 See Breen, Q., Mario Nizotio: De veris principiis… (Roma, 1956, Edizione Nazionale dei Classici del Pensiero Italiano), p. xxvii Google Scholar.

9 Majoragius even quotes an Italian line from Dante's ‘Paradiso’ (Decisiones, No. xxv, p. 115): ‘Sopra la fede, ogni virtu si funda'. Professor C. B. Beall has kindly supplied the location and comment: ‘Dante's line really goes:

10 A good illustration is Decisiones, No. 1, pp. 11-15, against Disquisitiones I (Opera Calcagnini, p. 253) in which Calcagnini said De officiis were better written De officio.

11 Vehement is Decisiones, No. XXII, pp. 102-115, against Celio's Disquisitiones XXII (Opera, pp. 263-265) in which Calcagnini relates how he talks when he is among his intimate friends who, with him, are immensely fond admirers of Cicero. In such gatherings he is wont to say that no other volume of Cicero is so carelessly written as the De officiis. The uncertainty of the times (Calcagnini says in effect) had driven Cicero this way and that, and this took its toll not only in his moral philosophy (morum cognitionem) but also in his style (dicendi facultatem). An illustration of Cicero's intellectual uncertainty is his confusion with respect to prudentia and scientia.

12 Deliciae epistolicae sive epistolarum…fasciculus Maioragii et al. (Lipsiae, MDCCXXXI). There is a ‘Praefatio ad Lectorem de Vita Scriptisque Maioragii’ by the editor, loan. Petrus Kohlius (pp. 1-96). Kohlius asked loan. Erhardus Kappius for his critical comments and additions, which are given as ‘Ad Editorem Epistola’ (pp. i-xxxiv). Kappius’ contribution gives what may be a fairly complete list of the works of Majoragius. Kohlius’ request might well be taken as a model of editorial conscientiousness.

13 Af. Antonii Majoragii Antiparadoxon, sive suburbanarum quaestionum libri sex, in quibus M. Tullii Ciceronis omnia paradoxa refelluntur (apud Seb. Gryphium, Lugduni, 1546).

14 Af. Tullii Ciceronis Paradoxa Stoicorum ad Brutum.

15 Cicero's Latin for paradoxa is admirabilia. He may truly have subscribed to them, though, like others, not to follow them. See Baiter, J. G., Af. T. Ciceronis opera (Lipsiae, 1865), VIII, 115 Google Scholar, who also says that the strictures on them in Pro Murena (29, 61; 30, 62) and the counsel to moderate them in De finibus III (e.g., cc. 1-10) and IV (e.g., cc. 19, 20) pertain mainly to bold and exaggerated ways of speaking. Cicero's Paradoxa are a kind of playful exercise; their ‘striking theorems', says Teuffel-Schwabe (History of Roman Literature, London, 1891, 1, 304), are expounded in ‘rhetorical rather than philosophical’ form. As an exercise in strict reasoning the Paradoxa is of no value, and Majoragius had little difficulty in showing this to be so.

16 This is the well-known physician and mathematician. He was one of Majoragius’ teachers. See my book named in note 8 above, p. xlvi, for Majoragius’ boast of having had as teachers Angelus Appianus, Primus Comes (his cousin and one of the persons in Antiparadoxon), Aruns Bataleus, Hieronymus Cardanus, Vincentius Magius, and Andrea Alciati (to whom Antiparadoxon is dedicated). For further data see Kohlius’ ‘Praefatio', pp. 11-17; see note 12 above. The Book of My Life (De vita propria liber), by Jerome Cardan, ed. and tr. Jean Stoner (New York, 1930) has the following: in ch. 48, ‘Testimony of Illustrious Men Concerning Me', Cardanus says Majoragius ‘refers to me in his Antiparadoxon’ (p. 250), and ‘I entertained a warm affection for … Marc Antonio Morago’ (p. 64)—this spelling should be added to the list in Cosenza (op. cit.). In ch. 45, ‘Books Written by Me', he names On the Zeal of Socrates (p. 221), on which the editor comments: ‘Cardan, in this essay … , appears to have taken the role of detractor, as if for the sake of an exercise in syllogizing, just as he espoused the cause of Nero in his Encomium Neronis’ (p. 318). He wrote On the Immortality of the Soul ‘more for the purpose of a study of the subject than as an expression of final opinion’ (p. 227). Cardanus reports at length on his On the Best Way of Life (pp. 230-232), in which he agrees with Plato's Phaedo that ‘the body … is not the chief part of man’ (p. 232). See note 40 below. See also Ore, Oyestein, Cardano,the Gambling Scholar (Princeton, 1953)Google Scholar. Ore says that Cardanus ‘did not believe in the infallibility of the classical theories of Hippocrates and Galen and rebelled against the authority of Aristotle’ (p. 47). On his mathematical work, especially the Ars magna, see p. 48. Pp. 181-241 contain a translation of the Liber de ludo aleae (The Book on Games of Chance) made by Sydney Henry Gould; Ore calls this book ‘the first text on the theory of probability’, and in ch. 4, “The Science of Gambling’, he enlarges on this.

17 Antipar., pp. 3-6.

18 Alciati taught in Ferrara 1542-1546. See Viard, Paul Émile, André Alciat, 1492-1550 (Paris, 1926), pp. 101–106 Google Scholar. See note 16 above.

19 Viard, , op. cit., note 1 on pp. 167–168 Google Scholar.

20 The same may have been an effect of his friendship with Cardanus.

21 These refer to Celio Calcagnini, Gaudentius Merula Novariensis, Lucilius Philaltheus (whose identification as an Aristotelian scholar I owe to Prof. P. O. Kristeller). Majoragius wrote ‘Apologia in Gaudentium Merulam’; see Deliciae epistolicae, pp. 310-352. Merula had written a dialogue in which Majoragius was accused of depreciating Cicero and Terence.

22 Not identified.

23 Bartholomeus Riccius published Apparatus linguae latinae (1532); see Cosenza. For ‘observator’ see my Mario Nizolio, p. xviii-xix

24 The letter dedicatory connects his censures of Calcagnini (and also of Merula and Lucilius) with his condemnations of the Bartholuses and the Balduses. In fact, his condemnation of the latter is introduced by ‘quia’, and then he says, ‘etiam ipse scribere tandem in Ciceronem aggressus…’

There is a rough parallel between the dialogue form of the Antiparadoxon, on the one hand, and the meetings of Calcagnini with intimate associates to censure Cicero's carelessness as a philosopher. See above note 11. On the report of these meetings in Disq. XXII Majoragius comments in Decisio XXII, ‘By the immortal gods, had I been one of this Calcagnini's friends among whom he would speak of Cicero being careless … I would have made you, Calcagnini, suffer forever for such rashness.’ A psychologist might make something of the volte-face in the Antiparadoxon.

25 Antipar. III, p. 14; n, p. 58; v, p. 199. It is assumed in the letter dedicatory. I cannot check this claim of Majoragius.

26 In Antipar. III, p. 95, it is said that more than a score of mistakes are to be found in Cicero's Topica, and that there is wrong reasoning in Book iv of Definibus. In Antipar. IV, p. 170, a passage in Disp. Tusc. is criticized.

27 Antipar. v, p. 199, ‘for the most part Cicero agrees with us'.

28 This term is not used in the dialogue.

29 See note 26 above.

30 See my introduction to Mario Nizolio, pp. lxv-lxvii.

31 He had studied six years under Majoragius (p. 36).

32 See Kristeller, Paul Oskar, Il pensiero filosofico di Marsilio Ficino (Firenze, 1953), pp. 318–321 Google Scholar.

33 Ibid., pp. 149-152, 118-119; for views of Pico see pp. 119-123 and references in the notes. Cf. Pico: De hominis dignitate, Heptaplus, De ente e una e scritti vari a cura di Eugenio Garin (Firenze, 1942), pp. 466-467.

34 Kristeller, , op. cit., pp. 130–134 Google Scholar. Note 4, p. 134, points out that this threefold distinction (communication, form, and cause) derives from Proclus and is often found in St. Thomas Aquinas. Prof. Kristeller also refers to Fabro, C., La nozione metqfisica di partecipazione secondo S. Tommaso d'Aquino (Milano, 1939), pp. 327, 319Google Scholar, cf. pp. 229, 234; Geiger, L. B., La Participation dans la philosophic de S. Thomas d'Aquin (Paris, 1942)Google Scholar. Cf. Garin, E., op. cit., pp. 461–462 Google Scholar.

35 Euthydemus, 283.

36 Majoragius may have thought this notion sufficiently implied in the ‘Idea’, which Socrates brings into the dialogue (5D3), but as such it is there not made explicit. For the ‘Idea’ in the Euthyphro see Burnet, J., Plato's Euthyphro, Apology of Socrates, and Crito (Oxford, 1924), p. 31 CrossRefGoogle Scholar of notes.

37 See reference in Garin, E., op. cit. in note 34 Google Scholar above.

38 See reference in Garin, E., op. cit. in note 34 Google Scholar above.

39 See Garin, Eugenio, La Filosofia: storia dei generi letterari Italiani (Milano, 1947), I, 374–378 Google Scholar for information on G. Pico della Mirandola's view of Christ's divinity. Further on Pico see the references in notes 33, 34.

40 The Antiparadoxon has other Christian Platonist passages; e.g., the divine mind as Christ (pp. 67-68), the body as sepulchre or prison of the soul (pp. 70-77), the future life (pp. 78-79), the freedom of man (pp. 187-199), true riches (pp. 227-231). Aristotle is called ‘impius’ because he laughed at Solon's saying that upon death alone can it be determined whether a life had been happy (p. 74). The reference is to Ethics 1, x, 1-5 and Herodotus 1, 30-33. Those who deny a future life or say man can be happy only in this life are said to fall under an interdict by the Christian laws, and are to be held impious and wicked. One should have no communication with them. If they persist they are condemned to be burned vivus vidensque (p. 76). There must have been Christian Platonists of various kinds; I wonder whether this view was generally held by them.

41 Reprehensionum contra Marium Nizolium Brixellensem libri duo (Mediolani, 1549), pp. 196-197. The reference to Steuchus in my Mario Nizolio (p. xliv) is insultingly meager. I owe further light on him to Professor Kristeller, and I have since then found an admirable discussion in Garin, E., La Filosqfia, II, 85–88 Google Scholar, with bibliography, pp. 93-94. Steuchus believed that Ficino's Platonism was the answer to the doctrines of Luther and Calvin. His learned work De perenni philosophia (Lugduni, 1540) traces the eternal Platonic philosophy back to Adam. His works were published in 3 vols., Paris, 1577.

42 Steuchus was in Venice as librarian, later as bishop. He helped Calcagnini in business affairs, also in getting books. Calcagnini sent Steuchus Erasmus’ Familiar Colloquies to be printed; see letter of October 1525 (Opera Calcagnini, p. 116); in another letter (no date) he writes more about this (p. 118); Steuchus sent him a book (not named), September 1525 (pp. 117-118). In October 1525 Calcagnini writes that three letters came from Steuchus in the space of a few days; Calcagnini says Steuchus ‘professes all philosophy, masters mathematics, and by a divine comprehension of soul pierces things theological’ (pp. 121-122).

43 Ibid., pp. 111-112.

44 My Mario Nizolio, pp. xxix, lxiv-lxv, II, 51, 130, 137-140, 144, 179, 180.

45 Ibid., p. lx.

46 Ibid., p. xxix and I, 29, and passim.

47 Antiparadoxon, p. 37.

48 Ibid., p. 38. The reference is to Horace, Ep. 1, 7, 23.

49 Ibid., pp. 94-95.

50 Ibid., p. 108; see also p. 156.

51 Ibid., p. 110.

52 Ibid., p. 115.

53 Ibid., p. 126.

54 Ibid., pp. 132-133.

55 Ibid., p. 135.

56 Ibid., pp. 158-159.

57 Ibid., p.211.

58 Ibid., pp. 38, 41, 82, 108, 123.

59 Ibid., pp. 48-49, 119.

60 Ibid., p. 199.

61 See my article on and translation of it in the JHT XIII (1952), 384-412.

62 Leibnitz also said this in ‘De stilo philosophico Nizolii', G. G. Leibnitii opera philosophica, ed. J. E. Erdmann (Berolini, 1840), pars prior, pp. 55-71.