Lodovico Lazzarelli

The most important document for reconstructing Lazzarelli's biography is the Vita Lodovici Lazzarelli Septempedani poetae laureati per Philippum fratrem ad Angelum Colotium written by Lazzarelli's brother Filippo. This text addressed to the humanist Angelo Colocci was written immediately after Lazzarelli's death. The Vita is characterized by an hagiographic tone and pays particular attention to the author's literary endeavors while passing under silence important aspects of his career, e.g. his interest for magic arts. This document, however, gives important evidence of Lazzarelli's otherwise uncertain chronology.[1]

Thanks to this document, for example, we know that Lazzarelli was born in 1447 and earned his early literary education in Teramo. In this town, Alessandro Sforza, the lord of Pesaro, awarded a prize to Lodovico at age 13, for a poem on the battle of San Flaviano in 1460. Lazzarelli's family had moved to Teramo after their father's death, but Ludovico was born in San Severino Marche (in Latin Septempeda, hence Lazzarelli's humanistic nickname Septempedanus).[2]

We also know that Lazzarelli was a student of Giovanni Mercurio da Correggio (Latin name: Iohannes Mercurius de Corigio; 1451-?), an Italian itinerant preacher, Hermeticist, and alchemist[3] who D. P. Walker described as "a wonder-working magus, who had himself, as Lazzarelli tells us, been regenerated by Hermes Trismegistus".[4][5]

Part of a series on
Hermeticism
Hermes Trismegistus
Hermetic writings Liber Hermetis (astrological) Definitions of Hermes Trismegistus Corpus Hermeticum Poimandres Asclepius Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth Prayer of Thanksgiving Korē kosmou Cyranides The Book of the Secrets of the Stars The Secret of Creation Emerald Tablet Kitāb al-Isṭamākhīs Liber Hermetis de alchemia
Historical figures Ancient and medieval Zosimos of Panopolis Jābir ibn Ḥayyān (may be legendary) Abu Ma'shar al-Balkhi Ibn Umayl Maslama al-Qurṭubī Aḥmad al-Būnī Early modern Marsilio Ficino Lodovico Lazzarelli Giovanni da Correggio Pico della Mirandola Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa Paracelsus John Dee Giordano Bruno Jakob Böhme Robert Fludd Christian Rosenkreuz (legendary, see Rosicrucianism)
Modern offshoots As above, so below Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn Hermetic Qabalah Rosicrucianism The Kybalion

Lazzarelli edited and wrote commentaries on many of the works within the Corpus Hermeticum, often following on from the work of earlier Hermeticists, such as Marsilio Ficino. Thus, he wrote a dedication to Ficino's translation of the Poimandres and Asclepius. He himself wrote a translation of the Defitiones Asclepii, while his most significant work was the Crater Hermetis. As Walker notes:

Lazzarelli's dialogue, the Crater Hermetis, culminated in a mystery, revealed in a hymn, which is based on the man-made gods in the Asclepius...which was one of the main sources of the magic in [Ficino's] De Vita coelitus camparanda...[6]

The work is a dialogue between Lazzarelli and King Ferdinand of Aragon, whom Lazzarelli is initiating into "a mystery which is both Christian and Hermetic - early in the dialogue Lazzarelli tells him: 'Christianus ego sum o Rex: et Hermeticum simul esse non pudet'..."[7] Using Orphic hymns, the king is prepared for "the final revelation of the mystery".

The 'Crater' here is the Platonic krater, envisioned by both Plato and the Neoplatonists as the cosmic crucible in which all souls were created, and that was also represented in the Christian narrative of the Holy Grail. Since the aim of the initiation was to reveal "the kingdom of Israel (which poets call the Golden Age), for which Jesus Christ taught his disciples to pray",[8] there is an attempt here to syncretise Orphic-Hermetic magic and ritual with the Christian message. Lazzarelli associated the demons he summoned during the ritual with "separated bits of the Holy Spirit, or the spirit of Christ" and "interpreted Hermes' attraction of demons into idols as being identical with Christ's inspiration of the Apostles".[9] Indeed, the reference to the Golden Age, which was a powerful Pythagorean motif, also used by many ascetic mystics of the Hellenic period, was also an attempt at syncretisation. In fact, Lazzarelli goes further, to associate Neoplatonic angels and daimones with Christian angels, God's love with Orphic love, and Christian piety with Hermetic piety. Thus, his work was part of a wider attempt to stress the common roots and beliefs of all religions, including Islam and Judaism, that characterised the Renaissance. Accordingly, Walker tells us that, "From the Kabbalah Lazzarelli quotes an allegory, which he says is in the Sepher Yezira".[10] The intent was to connect the Kabbalistic use of Hebrew letters in divination with his own "magical theory of language" in which "he believes that words have a real, not conventional, connection with things and can exert power over them"[11] – another significant aspect of Hermetic mysticism that had its roots in Pythagorean and Neoplatonic belief, and that he wished to integrate into the Christian message.

Thus, Walker firmly associates Lazzarelli with the tradition of Neoplatonic and Orphic magic, theurgy and ritual that emerged during the 15th century in Renaissance Italy, and that was widely debated amongst intellectuals and theologists of the time.

• Contemporary Italian Renaissance philosophers: Marsilio Ficino, Giovanni Mercurio da Correggio, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola
• Hermetica (philosophical writings attributed to Hermes Trismegistus)
• Hermeticism
• Renaissance humanism
• Renaissance philosophy
• Renaissance magic

• Wouter J. Hanegraaff and Ruud M. Bouthoorn, Lodovico Lazzarelli (1447-1500): The Hermetic Writings and Related Documents, Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, Tempe 2005.
• Walker, D. P. (1958). Spiritual and Demonic Magic, from Ficino to Campanella.

• Life of Ludovico Lazzarelli (1447/1450 - 1500) and works
• Ludovico Lazzarelli Ovidio Cristiano (in Italian)
• Fasti christianae religionis manuscript