Lot 580
Hermes Trismegistus
Rare Books, Manuscripts & Photographs
Auction: Rare Books, Manuscripts & Photographss | 10 May 2007
Description
Mercurii Trismegisti poemander, seu de potestate ac sapientia divina. Paris: Adr. Turnbebus, 1554, small 4to, 2 parts in one volume, Greek and Latin title and text, the Greek edited by P. Angelio da Barga, woodcut initials and ornaments, part 2 with final blank, seventeenth century calf, slightly spotted, some light dampstaining to lower margin at beginning, once rebacked and recornerned, rubbed, lower cover detached
Footnote
Note: The name Pimander is derived from the Egyptian P-eime nte-re, "the knowledge [or understanding] of Re", rendered into Greek as "the intelligence of the supreme power". It was the name given to the first fourteen treatises of the Corpus Hermeticum, after the name of the first treatise. This new corpus of Greek texts arrived in Florence in about 1463 where they were studied by Ficino and from which he found a link between Plato and the Old Testament. Ficino's Latin translation was first published in Treviso in 1471; Adams M346, cf. Caillet 5094.