La Villa. Bartolomeo Taegio
its purpose is the pursuit of knowledge, or, in Taegio’s words, “il fin dell’anima” (the spirit’s goal). Taegio’s emphasis on the value of contemplation recalls the philosophical thinking of Marsilio Ficino, the leader of the Platonic Academy in Florence and “the most influential exponent of Platonism in Italy during the fifteenth century.”167 In his Theologica Platonica (1474) Ficino called contemplation the highest goal of human existence, and he argued that, because contemplation is never perfectly attained in this life, the human being must have an immortal soul.168 The human soul occupied the central position in Ficino’s hierarchy of possible modes of existence, an unbroken scale of mediation between the sensible and the intelligible—that is, in Platonic terms, between appearances (phenomena) and ideas (noumena).169 The theory of a graduated cosmos has its roots in the philosophy of that pseudonymous early sixth-century Neoplatonist author known to scholars in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance as Dionysius the Areopagite, whose De divinis nominibus and De mystica theologica Ficino translated in 1492.170
Taegio referred to Marsilio Ficino only once in La Villa, and then it was to identify him as the owner of a villa that is called by the original form of Taegio’s family name, Montevecchio. In fact, Ficino is the first villa owner mentioned in La Villa. The second is Ficino’s pupil Pico della Mirandola, the basic outline of whose teaching was undoubtedly familiar to Taegio, as the following passage from La Villa (p. 4) clearly indicates. In response to a question from Partenio about what the object of the contemplation fostered by the solitude of the villa should be, Vitauro replies, “You ought to know that the elements have only being, the plants have being in common with the elements and life as well, the beasts have being in common with the elements, life in common with the plants, and sense as well. And men have being in common with the elements, life in common with the plants, sense in common with the beasts, and intellect in common with the angels. Thus the immortality of our souls is proven.”
Taegio’s articulation of the concept of a graduated cosmos represents his synthesis of the speculative scheme of Bovillus and the philosophy of Pico. In his De sapiente (1509) Bovillus postulated a universe consisting of four different existential levels: being, living, sensing, and reasoning. The lowest of these levels is shared by everything that is, including minerals, plants, beasts, and humankind. The highest level is reserved for human beings. The passage in which this system is postulated can be found at the beginning of first chapter of De sapiente:
Homini omni insunt a natura Substantia, Vita, Sensus et Ratio. Est etenim, vivit, sentit et intelligit omnis homo. Ast alii hominum duntaxat ut simplicis substantie, alii ut Substantie et Vite, ali ut Substantie, Vite et Sensus, alii denique Substantie, Vite, Sensus et Rationis actu atque operatione funguntur.
(All men by nature consist of Substance, Life, Sense and Reason. For indeed every man exists, lives, senses and understands. Some men in their actions and works function with substance only; others not only with substance but also with life; others not only with substance and life but also with sense; and still others not only with substance, life and sense but also with reason.)171
Bovillus’s system is ethical as well as metaphysical; it describes not only the gradations of existence, which are supposed to reveal the hidden order of the microcosm and the macrocosm, but also the path along which a human being can pass from acedia (spiritual inertia) to self-knowledge and knowledge of the cosmos, which Bovillus associated with virtus (virtue). Bovillus acknowledged only the influences of Ramon Lull and Nicholas of Cusa on the development of these ideas, but his intellectual debt to Pico, though unacknowledged, is amply evident.172
In Oratio de dignitate hominis, which was written probably in 1487 and published only after his death, Pico based his argument for the surpassing excellence of human nature on the human being’s God-given power to choose his place on the scale of created beings. Pico’s scale consists of four levels, like Bovillus’s, but it is marked by two important differences: it encompasses “ways of life” rather than modes of existence per se, omitting Bovillus’s first level; and it makes a distinction between two kinds of knowing. Pico’s levels are vegetative, sensual, rational and intellectual. The highest of these, which Pico associated with the contemplative life, is the way of life of the angels. The most concise statement of this theme is found in the following passage.
FIGURE 6. De quattuor hominum gradibus, woodcut illustration from Carolus Bovillus, Le Livre du Sage, p. 56.
Nascenti homini omnifaria semina et omnigenae vitae germina indidit Pater; quaequisque excoluerit illa adolescent, et fructus suos ferent in illo. Si vegetalia, planta fiet. Si sensualia, obrutescet. Si rationalia, caeleste evadet animal. Si intellectualia, angelus erit et Dei filius.
(The Father bestowed on man when he was born the seed of every kind and the germ of every way of life. Every one of these a man cultivates will mature and bear its fruit in him. If vegetative, he will be a plant. If sensual, he will become a brute. If rational, he will turn out to be a heavenly being. If intellectual, he will be an angel and the son of God.)173
Taegio’s scheme, which is composed of being, life, sense, and intellect, combines the first three of Bovillus’s levels with Pico’s highest level, making the state of contemplation man’s chief end and his link with the divine. In La Villa (p. 4) Taegio called attention to his affinity with Pico by asking, rhetorically, “Don’t you know that the intellect is a divine thing, and that man is the link in the chain that binds mortal things with the divine?” The resemblance between Taegio’s “chain” and Bovillus’s shows that Taegio was familiar with the De sapiente. The fact that Taegio made the highest level of existence mankind’s link with the divine strongly suggests that he was influenced by Pico directly, through a reading of the Oratio de dignitate hominis, as well as indirectly, through Bovillus.
Taegio was also influenced by Pomponazzi, the great Aristotelian rival of Ficino. While most of the fifteenth-century humanists, including the Florentines of Ficino’s Academy, embraced Platonism, “the organized intellectual life of the universities remained loyal to the Aristotelian tradition.”174 In northern Italy, the center of that life was the University of Padua, where Pomponazzi lectured from 1488 to 1509.175 Pomponazzi compared the “whole human race to a single body composed of different members,” in which all parts, while specialized, have some things in common. Pomponazzi said, in De immortalitate animae, that “all men … must share in three intellects: the theoretical, the practical or operative, and the productive,” and that “the universal end of the human race is to participate relatively in the speculative and the productive intellects but perfectly in the practical.”176 Taegio alluded to this passage of De immortalitate animae in La Villa (p. 13) where he said, speaking through Vitauro, “As long as that intellect you call practical inquires into what is truly just, honorable, and useful, it is speculative, but when one applies it to actions and to particular things, it becomes practical.” Later in his dialogue, Taegio made an oblique reference to another treatise by Pomponazzi. In De naturalium effectuum admirandorum causis, sive de incantationibus Pomponazzi sought to transform astrology into a rational science by explaining all so-called miraculous effects in terms of either ordinary natural causes, or natural forces not ordinarily experienced, or the influence of the observable motions of stars and planets. Pomponazzi’s phrase “Sed haec est consuetudo vulgi, ascribere daemonibus vel angelisquorum causas non cognoscunt” (But this is the custom of the common people: to ascribe to demons or to angels causes they don’t understand)177 is echoed by Vitauro’s line in La Villa (p. 55) “There are many things held by common folk to be miracles which are nevertheless natural.” Pomponazzi completed De incantationibus in 1520, but it was not published until it was printed in Basel in 1556, three years before La Villa was published in Milan.
Taegio’s intellectual debts to Pomponazzi, Bovillus, Pico, and Ficino are apparent in his specific references to particular philosophical statements of theirs, and generally in his elevation of the contemplative life. Taegio’s endorsement of contemplation over action in La Villa is subordinated