Other than from Lazzarelli, the only other account of the historic figure Giovanni Mercurio da Correggio comes from the pen of another humanist scholar, Carlo Sosenna di Ferrara54 who wrote a commentary on a sonnet attributed to Mercurio. Sosenna appears from 1489-1491 among the teachers of the great University of Ferrara, famous for his prophecies and for his magic arts, as well as his humanist poetry.
Mercurio's sonnet is attributed to “Hermes the younger, who disputed and preached publically marvellous and new things above nature, recently joined by a great following in Rome.” It was apparently composed on the occasion of this preaching, during which it seems that Mercurio approached Pope Alexander VI. This must have been an occasion subsequent to that described by Lazzarelli, (indicated as taking place in the reign of Sixtus IV), and Kristeller dates this new appearance of Mercurio to 1492, based on his knowledge of Sosenna's activities during that decade. This may have been the same occasion wherein, according to Lazzarelli's Epistola Enoch, Mercurio presented himself before the College of Cardinals55. Mercurio's strategy seems to have been to make intermittent public appearances, when the spirit led him to do so. We also know that he appeared in the same Hermetic rig in Florence in 1496, a year after Savonarola had welcomed the French army of Charles VIII to that city as liberators who would purify the abuses of the Church, and not long after the French king's retreat. Perhaps inspired by the potential for a French-led Hermetic Renaissance, Mercurio later appeared in Lyons. We know absolutely nothing more about his historic activities.
What Mercurio stood for can be gleaned from Carlo Sosenna's commentary on Mercurio's sonnet, and from other works by Lodovico Lazzarelli. According to Carlo Sosenna di Ferrara, Mercurio's sonnet stated that :
Above the first heaven lies a sphere which, motionless, governs us and revolves, making some happy, others breathe : the happy place of the true Mind. Here, the highest Good has its throne; here no one unworthy can enter56; here the great Creator draws us but rules over our erring good with His; and in the lowest centre of the earth is that enemy of the human-race who controls the wandering spirits in the wind. Whence, my son, happy is the man who repents of all sin committed, abasing himself before God, rejecting all vain goodness from the mind, turning away from the human and mortal veil to possess that heaven which is above the sky.
This constitutes a fairly pious rendering of the Hermetic message in the thought-forms of the time. The true Mind (Poimandres in Corpus Hermeticum I) is accessible to the purified mind which has, in effect, separated itself from earthly attachment. This doctrine is more or less in tune with Marsilio Ficino's quintessence of the ancient Hermetic doctrine, a doctrine which influenced all his work subsequent to his translation of the first fourteen books of the Corpus Hermeticum in 1463. Since Ficino believed Plato had derived his wisdom from Hermes Trismegistus - through the esoteric traditions of Orpheus, Aglaophemus, Pythagoras and Philolaus - the Hermetic conception also informs his Theologia Platonica (1468). For Ficino, as for Carlo Sosenna and Lazzarelli, the Hermetic revelation encouraged him to leave behind the concerns of the body, (Ficino's “love of the flesh”), to embrace the “contemplative” (gnostic) life. (‘Contemplation’ is Ficino's regular translation of gnosis). According to Ficino (whom Lazzarelli had read and held in high esteem) the human soul, through its link to the body, is submitted to the evils and errors of the world along with the vagaries of the stars; but to those few who know how to free themselves through the art of inner ascension, they can find the way open to a truer and more perfect existence. This existence is man's origin and destiny, and ordinary men do not know it. Ficino takes his idea of the final purpose of earthly existence from the Corpus Hermeticum : γνωσις του θεου (gnosis tou theou), knowledge of God : Ficino's contemplatio Dei, which, along with Love is the essential task of man. From the Hermetic writings Ficino also takes the view of the transcendent potential of man : Man is an earthly god with a special link to the highest God. For man, the evil and imperfection of earthly life, the sickness of the human soul is due to agnosis - literally : without gnosis.
Sosenna is pressed by the sonnet to distinguish between man's Will (his inmost soul), and his animal appetite which, while it cannot be ignored in this life, must needs be subjected to the inner divine Will. Sosenna interprets the Earth allegorically (and alchemically) as prima materia : the ‘first matter’ of alchemical transmutation or regeneration, of itself the fount of evil and the “mortal veil” over the spirit, which stands between body and soul, and through cognizance of which the soul is regenerated, arising as the alchemical phoenix rises from the ashes of the world, to head beyond the control and influence of the stars. Here we have, as an underground movement with a public face, led by a common man (or uncommon man) with no theological expertise, but with an open ear to inspiration, an authentic attempt to link an esoteric Christianity to an ancient gnosis, a regenerative experience which, according to Lazzarelli, has been forgotten for centuries and which can now flower again, to recover the glory of humanity and to effect the transformation of the world.
Mercurio promised initiation to his disciples. He had come in a conscious parallel to Christ's entry into Jerusalem; he had been greeted by the people and had headed for the ‘Temple’ of Rome, the Vatican, to announce a new dispensation and divine revelation. He had also actively demonstrated something few would dare to do - at least in the open. He had identified the Mind (Poimandres) which had opened to Hermes Trismegistus with Christ, and made that identity itself open to all who dared to be reborn in the gnosis57.
Lodovico Lazzarelli - Born-again gnostic
According to the antiquarian Lancillotti, who made a study of Lazzarelli in about 1700, Lodovico Lazzarelli, a “minor humanist” was born in 1450 in Sanseverino in the Marche province, north-east of Rome and part of the Papal lands. He was taught by Eligio Calenzio and Merula. Hebrew, Greek, mathematics and astrology were his best subjects. He was crowned a poet in 1469 by Federico III, king of Naples and went on to work as secretary to Matteo Acquaviva at Atri; for Campano at Teramo, for Guilio Cesare Varano at Camerino and for the Patriarch of Antioch, Lorenzo Zane in Rome. He remained in contact with Neapolitan humanist circles and with those in Rome but, interestingly, there is no evidence that he ever had any contact with the exalted atmosphere of the Florentine Platonists, patronised in the 1480s by Lorenzo the Magnificent, grandson of Cosimo dei'Medici. While Lancillotti does not refer to Lazzarelli's conversion from humanist poetry to Hermetism, he does tell us that he was known to drive out evil spirits and sickness at the sign of the cross, and that perverse men suspected him of being interested in magic arts. Lazzarelli is certainly notable for his Hebraic interests, quoting Hebrew authors repeatedly in his Crater Hermetis and displaying a knowledge of Qabalistic literature normally regarded in this period as the speciality of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. Lazzarelli is recorded as having debated with the Jewish scholar Vitalis Hebraeus while a resident of Teramo.
Lancillotti, without stating the provenance of Lazzarelli's interest, does refer to the latter's unique translation of libellus XVI of the Corpus Hermeticum, the original of which did not appear in Marsilio Ficino's 1463 translation, nor subsequent editions of his Pymander published that century. This work, the epistle of Asclepius to King Ammon (‘οροιΑσκληπιουπροςΑµµοναΒασιλεα =horoi Asklepiou pros Ammona Basilea) was rendered by Lazzarelli into the Latin composition entitled Definitiones Asclepii, and featured in the discoveries made by Paul Oskar Kristeller while exploring the Community Library of Viterbo58. These discoveries tell us quite a lot about the relationship between Lazzarelli and his spiritual father, Mercurio.
The codex consists of a small and very delicate collection of manuscripts dating from the late fifteenth century. Ninety-two pages long with beautiful titles in red, blue and gold with illuminated initials, this exquisite collection is not only the earliest example of a Latin humanist volume re-uniting the entire Hermetic tradition but was assembled as a presentation
from Lazzarelli to Mercurio da Correggio -a fitting act of homage from disciple to master. The codex contains three works : two of which are prefaced in prose and one in verse, addressed to ‘Ioannes Mercurius de Corigio’ and written by ‘Ludovicus Enoch Lazarellus’. The three works are as follows : Ficino's translation of the first fourteen treatises of the Corpus Hermeticum, the Latin Asclepius (whose translation was attributed wrongly to Apuleius of Madaura) and the Definitiones Asclepii, translated by Lazzarelli himself.
In the preface to the Pymander59, Lazzarelli pays tribute to Marsilio Ficino but takes the opportunity to correct the latter's dating of Hermes. Ficino had dated Hermes as having lived very shortly after Moses. Lazzarelli claims the classical author Diodorus Siculus60 as his authority for believing Hermes to have been senior to Moses. By the values of the time, this was tantamount to saying that Moses' wisdom derived from the tradition of Hermes. It is however interesting in this context that Lazzarelli does not mention the Harranian Sabian identification of Hermes with Enoch (which had appeared in the West in pseudo-Hermetic alchemical works since the twelth century). This would have afforded him plenteous ammunition for ascribing a date for Hermes way back in the hoariest antiquity, for in Genesis chapter V we learn that Enoch was the great, great, great grandson of Seth, Adam's son, and father of Methuselah (who we are told lived for 969 years and was the grand-father of Noah). We may thus suppose that Lazzarelli was himself ignorant of the Enoch-Hermes identification. Was Mercurio so when he (presumably) gave the new name to Lodovico?
And Enoch walked with God : and he was not; for God took him.
(Gen. V.24).
God took him. As a regenerated man, fostered by his spiritual father, Lazzarelli was granted the privilege of ascending to the highest. In Lazzarelli's account of his adoption and rebirth, the gnostic mood is perhaps more definitely pronounced than in any other document of the Renaissance.
Lazzarelli's prefaces to each of the three collected works are drenched in the sacred and solemn tone of the true initiate. Great accent is placed on doctrines of a secret or even sectarian character, in particular the idea that the Hermetic rebirth which he has experienced is exactly analgous to Christ's gift of the Holy Spirit to His disciples.
Those who have experienced the palingenesia (=rebirth) are set aside from ordinary humanity. So deep is Lazzarelli's conflation of antique Hermetism with the origin of Christianity that he even interprets the famous idol-making passage in the Latin Asclepius as being a type for the appearance of the flames of spirit above the heads of the disciples in the Acts of the Apostles, the act whereby (according to Lazzarelli) Christ made those closest to Him gods. The passage in question, Asclepius III.37 tells of how :
Our ancestors were at first far astray from the truth about the gods; they had no belief in them, and gave no heed to worship and religion. But afterwards, they invented the art of making gods out of some material substance suited for the purpose. And to this invention they added a supernatural force whereby the images might have power to work good or hurt, and combined it with the material substance; that is to say, being unable to make souls, they invoked the souls of daemons, and implanted them in the statues by means of certain holy and sacred rites.
This passage was rejected throughout the next century by religious Hermetists (with notable exceptions such as Giordano Bruno), as having been either a). an insertion of the ‘translator’ Apuleius of Madaura, or b). as simply being incompatible with Christianity altogether, its being tainted with demonic magic. Lazzarelli was in no doubt that his conversion from secular poetry to sacred studies was a real rebirth, exactly on the lines of Corpus Hermeticum XIII. Through it, Lazzarelli was convinced that he had been brought to a higher perception of life and reality :
TAT: Father, God has made me a new being, and I perceive things now, not with bodily eyesight, but by the working of nous [mind]. HERMES : Even so it is, my son, when a man is born again; it is no longer body of three dimensions that he perceives, but the incorporeal. TAT : Father, now that I see in mind, I see myself to be the All. I am in heaven and in earth, in water and in air; I am in beasts and plants; I am a babe in the womb, and one that is not yet conceived, and one that has been born; I am present everywhere.
HERMES : Now, my son, you know what the Rebirth is. (Corpus Hermeticum XIII. 11-12).
Lazzarelli contrasts the old life and the new. While sacred writing offers the enticements of the angels, the water of eternal life, the fruits of the Tree of Life and the joy of Paradise; profane verse offers merely the baiting of Tantalus, the waters of Lethe, the wicked fruits of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, (dialectical or dualistic consciousness, mundane awareness), and the deadly allurements of Tartarus (hell). According to Lazzarelli, whoever knows how to taste the fruit of the Tree of Life can free himself from material attachment and ascend above the celestial realms to the kingdom of angels; while those devoted to the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil fall from their native dignity into the heimarmene (ε’ιµαρµηνη= ‘the night-cloak’: destiny/fate/the governance of the stars) and become the slaves of death. This true gnosis, declares Lazzarelli, he owes to the illiterate Giovanni Mercurio, his initiator and spiritual master. Lazzarelli as Enoch is Mercurio's faithful disciple and he offers his work to him. Mercurio, who knows all the mysteries of Christ and of Hermes -mysteries reserved for the few - has fostered the spiritual regeneration of Lazzarelli, secretly communicating his wisdom to him. Mercurio is the spiritual son of Hermes Trismegistus. Enoch is his grandson : “Thus he is called to communicate his wisdom to all men, being the salvation and hope of his century.”
The inward consistency of what Lazzarelli has gained from Mercurio and from the Hermetic writings with the better-known position of the famous Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494), Lazzarelli's brilliant contemporary, is immensely striking. Take for example, the following quotations from Pico's epoch-marking Oratio de dignitatis homini (1486):
Think on how Origen the theologian, asserts that Jesus Christ, the Teacher of Life, made many revelations to his disciples, which they were unwilling to write down lest they should become commonplaces to the rabble. This is in the highest degree confirmed by Dionysius the Areopagite who says that the occult mysteries were conveyed by the founders of religion, from mind to mind, without writing, through the medium of speech.
We shall fly up with winged feet, like earthly Mercuries, to the embraces of our blessed mother and enjoy that wished-for peace, most holy peace, indivisible bond, of one accord in the friendship through which all rational souls not only shall come into harmony with the one mind which is above all minds, but shall in some ineffable way become altogether one. This is that friendship which the Pythagoreans say is the end of all philosophy. This is that peace which God creates in his heavens, which the angels descending to earth proclaimed to men of good will, that through it men might ascend to heaven and become angels. Let us wish this peace for our friends, for our century.
Consistency of thought, yes, but one can only speculate as to what Pico would have thought if he had known that authentic Hermetic regeneration practices were available in the Italy of his time. For all the likeness of viewpoint, there is yet a very different flavour between the writings of the two men. Pico did not see himself as being a privileged insider in the same way as Lazzarelli did; as a revealer of mysteries, yes, but not in the strictly initiatic sense. In spite of Pico's evident mysticism, he was very much a man of books. However, it is hard to imagine that Pico would not have known about Giovanni Mercurio da Correggio. Was there a certain snobbery which might have prevented him from making contact? We must suspect that to Pico, Mercurio probably looked ridiculous. The issue does highlight the fact that at the very time of the eruption of serious religious Hermetism into Europe, there were at least two ways of taking the matter. For Pico and Ficino, and many churchmen who followed these two Florentines in whole or in part, the Hermetic revelation was regarded as a confirmation of Christianity, a basis for unifying the dispa
rate philosophies of Averroes, Aristotle and Plato; a major insight into the religio mentis (the religion of the mind), the contemplative life : an epoch-marking spur to scientific endeavour, since the Hermetica stressed man's freedom and potential dominance of the natural order, and a remarkable vision of the original theology from which all thought was thought to have been derived.
The other stream, and one can see that this stream might already have predated even the translation of Ficino's Pymander in 1463, was to see Hermetism as a magical religion of itself, into which one could happily place Christian elements on the basis that the revealer of gnosis, be he Hermes or Asclepius, or even ‘Enoch’, had been inspired by Christ. Even Pope Alexander VI approved of Hermes. The Egyptian hierophant did not seem in any way to threaten the Church. Besides, Pico had all but Catholicised the ancient mystagogue. However, there were others (among whom we must include Giordano Bruno 1548-1600, author of an epoch-marking work on the infinitude of the universe) whose intention may have been rather to Hermeticise the Church : a different matter altogether - and one feels strongly that Lazzarelli is somehow among them, if in fact he is not a progenitor of this impulse. It may be that southern Italian humanists, living under the thrall of a frequently erratic and ever-present politicised Papacy, favoured the latter view. Magic and surviving pagan practices were particularly rife in the south, (looked down on by Florentines and Venetians), as was the ubiquitous threat of punishment for heresy, when it suited the Papal state. It does seem to me that there is something in this atmosphere that may bind the most determined religious Hermetists of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries : Lazzarelli, Giordano Bruno and Tommaso Campanella - every one had very strong southern Italian connections.
The Golden Builders Page 8