A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages; volume III

by Henry Charles Lea

[620] Gregor. Heymburg. Confut. Primatus Papæ (Fascic. Rer. Expetend. II. 117).—B. Platinæ Vit. Pauli II.—Cantù, I. 186-7, 198.

Creighton (Hist. of the Popes, III. 276 sqq.) has printed from a Cambridge MS. a curious correspondence between Pomponio, while imprisoned in the Castle of Sant’ Angelo, and his jailer, Rodrigo de Arevalo, afterwards Bishop of Zamora. It shows how fragile was the philosophy of the Platonists when exposed to real privations.

[621] Marsil. Ficin. Epistt. Libb. VIII., XI., XII. (Opp. Ed. 1561, I. 866-7, 931, 946, 962-3); De Christ. Relig. c. 11, 13, 22, 24, 26 (I. 15, 18, 25, 29); De Vita Cœlitus comparanda Lib. III. c. 1, 2 (I. 532-33); In Platonem (II. 1390); In Plotinum c. 6, 7, 12, 15 (II. 1620-22, 1633, 1636).—Cantù, I. 179.

Yet we find him attributing a fever and diarrhœa to the influence of Saturn in the house of Cancer, for Saturn had been in his geniture from the beginning; and his cure he ascribes to a vow made to the Virgin.—Epistt. Opp. I. 644, 733.

[622] D’Argentré I. II. 250.—Cantù, I. 182, III. 699-700.

[623] J. Pic. Mirand. Vita, Conclusiones, Apologia, Alexand. PP. VI. Bull. Omnium Catholicor. (Opp. Basil. 1572). Cf. Cantù, I. 185.

[624] Concil. Lateran. V. Sess. VIII. (Harduin. IX. 1719).—Ripoll IV. 373.—Renan, pp. 53, 363.—P. Pomponatii Tract. de Immort. Animæ c. xiv.—Cantù, I. 179-81.—Bayle, s. v. Pomponace, Note D.

The device by which philosophers escaped responsibility for their philosophy is illustrated by the concluding words of Agostino Nifo’s treatise De Cœlo et Mundo, in 1514: “In qua omnibus pateat me ornnia esse locutum ut phylosophum: quæ vero viderentur Sanctæ Romanæ Ecclesiæ dissonare illico revocamus, asserentes ea incuria nostra proficisci non autem a malitia, quare nostras bas interprætationes omnes et quascunque alias in quibusvis libris editis Sanctæ Romanæ Ecclesiæ submittimus.”

And so Marsilio Ficino—“Nos autem in omnibus quæ scribimus eatenus affirmari a nobis aliisque volumus quatenus Christianorum theologorum concilio videatur”—De Immort. Animæ, Lib. XVIII. c. 5.

Pomponazio winds up his treatise on the immortality of the soul with “Hæc itaque sunt quæ mihi in hac materia dicenda videntur. Semper tamen in hoc et in aliis subjiciendo sedi Apostolicæ”—De Immort. Animæ c. xv.