Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

The Transmutations of a Young Averroist: Agostino Nifo’s Commentary on the Destructio Destructionum of Averroes and the Nature of Celestial Influences

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
Renaissance Averroism and Its Aftermath: Arabic Philosophy in Early Modern Europe

Abstract

This chapter examines Agostino Nifo’s analysis of the nature of celestial influence on the sublunary world in his commentary on Averroes’s Destructio destructionum (Tahāfut al-Tahāfut). First it explores how Nifo derives from sources contained in Averroes’s work and through the mediation of Albertus Magnus and other Latin philosophers, the idea that the heavenly bodies may cause ‘spiritual’ or ‘intentional’ as well as physical or corporeal change in the sublunary world. In his commentary (1497) on the fourteenth dispute of the Destructio, Nifo brings this dualist model of celestial influence together with material drawn from Neoplatonic, Hermetic and astrological sources in order to explain the principles of prophecy, alchemy, demonology and magnetism. Where Averroes had associated celestial influence with a form of unintentional causality, Nifo’s account suggests that celestial bodies follow patterns of intentional activity. In this way, celestial bodies are seen as a cause of change in the sublunary world, in general, and on man, in particular. The closing section contrasts Nifo’s method of synthesising conflicting philosophical positions and his defense of astrology with the work of his contemporary and sometime associate Giovanni Pico della Mirandola.

I would like to thank Guido Giglioni for his advice and encouragement while preparing this study.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

Log in via an institution
eBook
USD 16.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info
Hardcover Book
USD 109.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Durable hardcover edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Notes

  1. 1.

    Essential starting-points for the study of Nifo are the entries by Edward P. Mahoney in the Dictionary of Scientific Biography, 16 vols (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1970–1980), X, pp. 122–124, and by Stefano Perfetti in the New Dictionary of Scientific Biography, 8 vols (Detroit: Charles Scribner’s Sons and Gale/Cengage Learning 2008), V, pp. 280–281; and also the Bibliografia di Agostino Nifo by Ennio De Bellis (Florence: Olschki, 2005).

  2. 2.

    Seminal discussions which capture something of the range of Nifo’s interests include, with regard to the soul and intellection, Bruno Nardi, Saggi sull’aristotelismo padovano dal secolo XIV al XVI (Florence: Sansoni, 1958), esp. pp. 142, 376–383; Eckhard Kessler, ‘The Intellective Soul’, in The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, eds Charles B. Schmitt, Quentin Skinner, Eckhard Kessler and Jill Kraye (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 485–534, 496–500 and 504–507; Leen Spruit, ‘Agostino Nifo’s De intellectu: Sources and Ideas’, Bruniana et Campanelliana, 8 (2007), pp. 625–639; with regard to astrology and demonology, Paola Zambelli, ‘I problemi metodologici del necromante Agostino Nifo’, Medioevo, 1 (1975), pp. 129–171; Ead., ‘Fine del mondo o inizio della propaganda? Astrologia, filosofia della storia e propaganda politico-religiosa nel dibattito sulla congiunzione del 1524’, in Scienze, credenze occulte, livelli di cultura: Convegno internazionale di studi (Florence: Olschki, 1982), pp. 291–368 (352–356); Ead., L’ambigua natura della magia: Filosofi, streghe, riti nel Rinascimento (Milan: Il Saggiatore, 1991), pp. 240–241; Brian P. Copenhaver, ‘Astrology and Magic’, in Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, pp. 264–300 (272); with regard to scientific argument, William A. Wallace, Causality and Scientific Explanation, 2 vols (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1972–1974), I, pp. 139–144. Studies of Nifo’s interest in Averroes with particular relevance to this study are, Edward P. Mahoney, ‘Philosophy and Science in Nicoletto Vernia and Agostino Nifo’, in Scienza e filosofia all’Università di Padova nel Quattrocento, ed. Antonino Poppi (Padua and Trieste: Edizioni Lint, 1983), pp. 135–202, esp. pp. 192–200; Id., ‘Agostino Nifo’s Early Views on Immortality’, Journal of the History of Philosophy, 8 (1970), pp. 451–460; Id., ‘Plato and Aristotle in the Thought of Agostino Nifo (ca. 1470–1538)’, in Two Aristotelians of the Italian Renaissance (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000), V, pp. 81–101.

  3. 3.

    Averroes, Destructiones destructionum Averrois cum Augustini Niphi de Suessa expositione. Eiusdem Augustini questio de sensu agente (Venice: Ottaviano Scoto, 1497). For this study the more familiar title Destructio destructionum is adopted to refer to this work of Averroes.

  4. 4.

    See also De Bellis, Bibliografia, p. 21.

  5. 5.

    On the obscurity of the reasons for Nifo’s departure from Padua in 1499, see Zambelli, ‘Problemi metodologici’, pp. 135–136 and 144–146. On the question of the origins of Nifo’s De intellectu and his first De anima commentary (both first published 1503) prior to 1499, see ibid, p. 136.

  6. 6.

    For an overview of the arguments in the Tahāfut al-Tahāfut, see Oliver Leaman, Averroes and his Philosophy (Richmond: Curzon, 1998), esp. pp. 14, 179–196 and the introduction in Averroes, Tahāfut al-Tahāfut (The Incoherence of the Incoherence), ed. Simon van den Bergh, 2 vols (Oxford: Oxford University Press; London: Luzac, 1954), I, pp. ix–xxxvi. (References to, and quotations from, the English translation of Tahāfut al-Tahāfut are from this edition).

  7. 7.

    Moritz Steinschneider notes that the manuscript copy of the translation in the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (Lat. 2434) dates its execution to 1328. Following Renan, Steinschneider identifies another probable manuscript in the Marciana, Venice (Lat. 251), a work listed by Kristeller as ‘Averroes, de aeternitate mundi contra Algazel’. I consulted both the Vatican copy and a third manuscript in the Riccardiana, Florence (Lat. 117) which are substantially similar in content (see below, footnotes 14 and 22). The extant manuscripts of this translation and Nifo’s preparation of the medieval translation for his edition are subjects which merit further consideration, in particular since Nifo states (Expositio, fol. 103rb) he had access to another translation of the Destructio destructionum by a ‘Nicolaus Hispanus’ (‘Nicholas the Spaniard’). See Moritz Steinschneider, Die hebräischen Übersetzungen des Mittelalters und die Juden als Dolmetscher: Ein Beitrag zur Literaturgeschichte des Mittelalters, meist nach handschriftlichen Quellen (Berlin: Kommissionsverlag des Bibliographischen Bureaus, 1893), pp. 330–332; Ernest Renan, Averroès et l’averroïsme: essai historique (1852, repr. Paris: Michel Lévy Frères, 1861), p. 66; Beatrice H. Zedler, ‘Introduction’ to Averroes, Destructio destructionum philosophiae Algazelis in the Latin Version of Calo Calonymos, ed. B. H. Zedler (Milwaukee: The Marquette University Press 1961), pp. 24–29; Mahoney, ‘Philosophy and Science’, pp. 173–174, 179–181; P. O. Kristeller, Iter Italicum: A Finding List of Uncatalogued or Incompletely Catalogued Humanistic Manuscripts of the Renaissance in Italian and Other Libraries, 6 vols and Index (London and Leiden: The Warburg Institute and Brill, 1963–1997), I, p. 185 and II, p. 212. On Renan and Averroes, see also the chapters by Marenbon and Akasoy in this volume.

  8. 8.

    A notable exception to this generalisation, reported by Zedler, is the thirteenth-century Spanish Dominican Raymond Martin, who made use of an Arabic or Hebrew version in the preparation of his Pugio fidei adversus Mauros et Judaeos (completed 1278). See Zedler, ‘Introduction’, pp. 21–23; Pierre Duhem, Système du monde: Histoire des doctrines cosmologiques de Platon à Copernic, 10 vols (Paris: Hermann, 1913–1959), IV, p. 514, cited by Zedler, ibid, p. 21.

  9. 9.

    Edward P. Mahoney, ‘Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and Elia del Medigo, Nicoletto Vernia and Agostino Nifo’, in Giovanni Pico della Mirandola: Convegno internazionale di studi nel cinquecentesimo anniversario della morte (1494–1994), ed. Gian Carlo Garfagnini, 2 vols (Florence: Olschki, 1997), II, pp. 127–156 (128–130); Mahoney, ‘Philosophy and Science’, p. 160, n. 118, suggests that Nifo’s commentary on Averroes’s Destructio may include some criticisms of Delmedigo. See Carlos Fraenkel’s chapter in this volume.

  10. 10.

    Pearl Kibre, The Library of Pico della Mirandola (New York: Morningside Heights, 1936), p. 259, notes a manuscript work (inventory item 1052) variously listed as ‘Auerois contra Algazelem’ and ‘Liber impugnacionum Auerois’ in the early inventories of Pico’s library. Given that Pico died in 1494, Kibre’s apparent identification (p. 131), in addition, of a printed edition of a work listed as Destructio destructioni [sic.] (inventory number 96) presents obvious chronological difficulties if Nifo’s is the first printed edition. On the inventories and the acquisition in 1498 of Pico’s library by Domenico Grimani, the dedicatee of Nifo’s commentary on Averroes’s Destructio, see ibid, pp. 1–10, 17–18.

  11. 11.

    Nifo, Expositio, fol. 2va. Hieronymus Bernardus is also mentioned in Nifo’s closing address, fol. 123va, as the son of ‘master (dominus) Petrus.’ Unless otherwise indicated translations from Latin works are by the author.

  12. 12.

    Destructio, ed. Zedler, ‘Introduction’, pp. 26–29.

  13. 13.

    Translation ibid, pp. 26–27 (the Latin text of the dedication is presented ibid, pp. 57–58).

  14. 14.

    Nifo, Expositio, fols 123rb-va. See also Mahoney, ‘Philosophy and Science’, pp. 179–180. The metaphysical discussions not included in Nifo’s edition are the tenth and sixteenth in the van den Bergh edition. Nifo’s edition ends at the second line of p. 299 of van den Bergh’s edition. MSS Vat. Lat. 2434 and Ricc. Lat. 117 (see above, footnote 7) also lack the same metaphysical discussions, but include two disputes on the natural sciences omitted in Nifo’s edition.

  15. 15.

    Nifo, Expositio, fol. 2va. See Averroes, Long Commentary on Physica, VIII, t. c. 3, in Aristotle, Opera cum Averrois commentariis, 12 vols (Venice: Giunta, 1562; repr. Frankfurt: Minerva, 1962), IV, fol. 340rF.

  16. 16.

    Averroes’s views on these matters continue to be a subject for scholarly discussion and a full restatement of medieval, early modern or modern debates in the context of Nifo’s Averroism lies beyond the scope of this study. Major modern contributions to the discussion of Averroes’s theories of cosmology and causation are Barry S. Kogan, Averroes and the Metaphysics of Causation (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1985); Herbert A. Davidson, Alfarabi, Avicenna, and Averroes on Intellect (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), esp. pp. 220–257; David Twetten, ‘Averroes’ Prime Mover Argument’, in Averroes et les averroismes juif et latin, ed. Jean-Baptiste Brenet (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), pp. 9–75. On the account in the Tahāfut al-Tahāfut, in particular, see also Leaman, Averroes, pp. 63–71. On the conflict of Aristotelian and Neoplatonic ideas in Averroes, see Leaman, Averroes, pp. 63–71. On the vexed question of the influence of emanational theories of causality on Averroes’s thought, see, in particular, Davidson, Alfarabi, Avicenna, and Averroes on Intellect, pp. 228, 230–231 and 254–257 and Kogan, Averroes and the Metaphysics of Causation, pp. 248–255. On the reception of the Arabic tradition of physics in the Latin philosophy of the later Middle Ages, see James A. Weisheipl, ‘The Interpretation of Aristotle’s Physics and the Science of Motion’, in The Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy, eds Norman Kretzmann, Anthony Kenny and Jan Pinborg (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), pp. 521–536 (521–529); with reference to fifteenth-century Padua, see Antonino Poppi, Causalità e infinità nella scuola padovana dal 1480 al 1513 (Padua: Antenore, 1966); with particular reference to Nifo’s debt to Averroes in his commentary on Destructio destructionum, see Mahoney, ‘Philosophy and Science’, esp. pp. 177–179, 189–200.

  17. 17.

    Averroes, Long Commentary on Metaphysica, XII, t. c. 39, in Aristotle, Opera cum Averrois commentariis, VIII, fol. 323rD (relating to Metaphysica, 1072b); ibid, t. c. 51 (relating to 1074b15ff), in Aristotle, Opera cum Averrois commentariis, VIII, fol. 335rF. On the final cause in Averroes, see Kogan, Averroes and the Metaphysics of Causation, pp. 230–231, 242–248.

  18. 18.

    See Averroes’s comments on the distinction between the sciences of metaphysics and physics in the Long Commentary on Metaphysica, XII, t. c. 44 (relating to 1073a25ff), in Aristotle, Opera cum Averrois commentariis, VIII, fol. 328rE. For insights into the issues raised, see Twetten’s comments, ‘Averroes’ Prime Mover Argument’, p. 39, that Averroes’s argument in the Physica leaves God no more ‘separate’ than any other ‘celestial soul’ and yet ‘it would seem that the first cause or God is not a celestial soul,’ and Kogan, Averroes and the Metaphysics of Causation, pp. 264–265, who notes that Averroes’s ‘account of efficient causes … ceases to be viable beyond the realm of what Averroes would have called sublunary physics.’

  19. 19.

    Averroes, Long Commentary on De coelo et mundo, II, t. c. 36, in Aristotle, Opera cum Averrois commentariis, V, fol. 120rF-vG. On Aristotle’s account of the movers of the celestial spheres, see De coelo et mundo, II, 285a and 292a and Metaphysica, XII, 1074a. See also the discussion in Richard Sorabji, Matter, Space and Motion: Theories in Antiquity and their Sequel (London: Duckworth, 1988), pp. 219–226.

  20. 20.

    Averroes, Long Commentary on De coelo et mundo, II, t.c. 36, in Aristotle, Opera cum Averrois commentariis, V, fol. 120rC. The question of whether celestial souls of some kind exist in addition to celestial intelligences in Averroes is the subject of some discussion among modern scholars. See, Twetten, ‘Averroes’ Prime Mover Argument’, pp. 59–60, and Davidson, Alfarabi, Avicenna, and Averroes on Intellect, p. 226, n. 33. In his commentary on the Destructio destructionum, Nifo seems to be clear that, in questions of physics, the movers must be intelligences (intelligentia): Expositio, fol. 119rA; cf. Averroes, Long Commentary on De coelo et mundo, II, t.c. 37, in Aristotle, Opera cum Averrois commentariis, V, fol. 120vG-H. In this study, I use the term ‘sublunary world’, sometimes referred to in the Destructio as the ‘world of lower beings’ (mundus inferiorum), to describe that part of the Aristotelian universe which is lower than the moon and subject to generation and corruption. I use the term ‘heavens’ to describe the world of the moving and fixed stars and their movers. I use the term ‘universe’ to describe the totality of the heavens and the sublunary world.

  21. 21.

    Averroes, Tahāfut al-Tahāfut, Discussion 15, I, 299: ‘none of the philosophers doubts that there is here a final cause in second intention’; Kogan, Averroes and the Metaphysics of Causation, pp. 196–197. Leaman notes that Averroes’s approach to the way in which the heavens affect the sublunary bodies ‘replicates the Aristotelian vagueness’ (Averroes, p. 71). On the complex question of necessity and determinism in Aristotle and the classical tradition, see Richard Sorabji, Necessity, Cause and Blame: Perspectives on Aristotle’s Theory (London: Duckworth, 1980). On the notions of final, formal and efficient cause in Aristotle, see Physica, 194b–195a, and Metaphysica, 1013–1014a.

  22. 22.

    Averroes, Tahāfut al-tahāfut, ‘About the Natural Sciences’, p. 312. As already noted, these discussions on the natural sciences are not included by Nifo in his edition. However, a version of the passage cited (most notably lacking a phrase equivalent to the ‘prognosticating science’ phrase) does appear in the earlier of the extant Latin translations of the Destructio, to which Nifo may have had access. See MSS Vat. Lat. 2434, f. 51vb and Ricc. Lat. 117, f. 113va. See also above, footnotes 7 and 14.

  23. 23.

    See Nardi, Saggi sull’aristotelismo padovano dal secolo XIV al XVI, p. 184, and Poppi, Causalità e infinità nella scuola padovana, pp. 143–150, 222–236.

  24. 24.

    Translation from the textus of the Expositio, third dispute, dub. xviii, fol. 46ra. See also Nifo’s attribution of a similar statement concerning the ‘first mover’ to Aristotle, in Expositio, ninth dispute, dub. ii, fol. 98rb. Nifo also attributes an expanded notion of this idea to Averroes in his De primi motoris infinitate, appended to his commentary on the De generatione et corruptione (Venice: Heir of Girolamo Scoto, 1577), fols 109va-114rb, 110vab. De Bellis, Bibliografia di Agostino Nifo, p. 149 notes a subscript to the first edition of 1526, which dates the completion of this work to 1504.

  25. 25.

    Nifo, Expositio, fol. 107vb. On Nifo’s introduction of the term colcodea in this context see H. A Wolfson, ‘Colcodea’, The Jewish Quarterly Review, 36 (1945), pp. 179–182; repr. in Id. Studies in the History of Philosophy and Religion, eds Isadore Twersky and George H. Williams, 2 vols (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973–1977), II, pp. 573–576.

  26. 26.

    On the influence of Albertus on this passage in the Expositio, see Mahoney, ‘Philosophy and Science’, pp. 190–191 and 199–200; see also Expositio, fols 74va and 75rb, where Nifo variously associates the axiom with Themistius (as reported by Averroes) and Aristotle; James A. Weisheipl, ‘The Axiom Opus Naturae Est Opus Intelligentiae and Its Origins’, in Albertus Magnus: Doctor Universalis 1280/1980, eds Gerbert Meyer and Albert Zimmermann (Mainz: Matthias Grünewald Verlag, 1980), pp. 441–463 (455), with my translations of the Latin. On the subtlety of Averroes’s own arguments in this regard, see Leaman, Averroes, pp. 67–69.

  27. 27.

    William A. Wallace, ‘The Scientific Methodology of Albert the Great’, in Albertus Magnus: Doctor Universalis 1280/1980, pp. 385–407 (391–393); cf. the discussion by the same author of Nifo’s account of the syllogismus conjecturalis in Causality and Scientific Explanation, I, pp. 142–143.

  28. 28.

    On intention, see Deborah L. Black, ‘Psychology: Soul and Intellect’, in The Cambridge Companion to Arabic Philosophy, eds Peter Adamson and Richard C. Taylor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 308–326; Ead., ‘Imagination and Estimation: Arabic Paradigms and Western Transformations’, Topoi, 19 (2000), pp. 59–75. See also the discussion of Averroes’s account, in the Tahāfut al-Tahāfut, of ‘the existence outside the soul’ of the ‘universal’ in Leaman, Averroes, pp. 36–41.

  29. 29.

    Averroes, Commentarium magnum in Aristotelis De anima libros, ed. F. Stuart Crawford (Cambridge, MA: The Medieval Academy of America, 1953), p. 388; Id., Long Commentary on the De anima of Aristotle, ed. and trans. Richard C. Taylor (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2009), p. 305. All translations will be from this edition. In his introduction, pp. xliv–xlvi, Taylor explores the connections between Averroes’s treatment of intellect and soul as they relate to both the heavens and to man.

  30. 30.

    Nifo, Expositio, fol. 47vb. On the intelligible species and intention in Averroes and Nifo, see Leen Spruit, Species Intelligibilis: From Perception to Knowledge, 2 vols (Leiden: Brill, 1995), I, pp. 89–95 and II, pp. 71–89.

  31. 31.

    Kwame Gyekye, ‘The Terms “Prima Intentio” and “Secunda Intentio” in Arabic Logic’, Speculum, 46 (1971), pp. 32–38 (33–34). On Raymond Llull’s account of prima and seconda intentio, also considered to derive from Arab philosophy but distinctively different to that of Nifo, see Gyeke, ibid, pp. 37–38 and Anthony Bonner, The Art and Logic of Ramon Llull: A User’s Guide (Leiden: Brill, 2007), pp. 72–73.

  32. 32.

    Nifo, Expositio, fols 118ra, 119ra; cf. Averroes, Tahāfut al-Tahāfut, Discussion 15, I, p. 295. I have partially adapted van den Bergh’s translation to achieve a more literal rendering of the Latin of Nifo’s edition.

  33. 33.

    There may be a further connection here with the philosophy of Albertus Magnus. On Albertus’s reception of the Arabic tradition of intention, see Black, ‘Imagination and Estimation’, pp. 63–66, and Spruit, Species Intelligibilis, I, pp. 139–148. Spruit (ibid, p. 139) describes Albertus’s position as ‘midway between the spiritualistic psychology of the previous authors and the sense-dependent cognitive psychology of Thomas.’

  34. 34.

    According to Nifo, De sensu agente was finished in 1495, before the completion of the Destructio commentary in 1497, but elsewhere Nifo states that he had worked on at least one of the issues in the fourteenth dispute for 4 years (i.e., since approximately 1494), giving overlapping timeframes for the two works. See Nifo, Expositio, fols 121ra and 123rb and Agostino Nifo, De sensu agente, in Averroes, Destructiones destructionum, fol. 129rb.

  35. 35.

    Nifo, De sensu agente, fol. 128ra-vb.

  36. 36.

    Averroes, Commentarium magnum in Aristotelis De anima libros, ed. Crawford, p. 221; Id., Long Commentary on the De anima of Aristotle, ed. Taylor, p. 172.

  37. 37.

    Giles of Rome, Quodlibeta (Bologna: Johann Schreiber, 1481), III, q. 13, sigs g6ra-h2va; Gaetanus of Thiene, Quaestio de sensu agente (Vicenza: Enrico di Sant’Orso, 1486), sigs n6ra-n8rb. See Edward P. Mahoney, ‘Albert the Great and the Studio Patavino in the Late Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Centuries’, in Albertus Magnus and the Sciences: Commemorative Essays, ed. James A. Weisheipl (Toronto: Pontifical Institutes of Medieval Studies, 1980), pp. 537–563 (545–546); Id., ‘Agostino Nifo’s De Sensu Agente’, Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie, 53 (1971), pp. 119–142; Id., ‘Philosophy and Science’, pp. 176–179.

  38. 38.

    Gaetanus of Thiene, Questio de sensu agente, sig. n7rb. See also Mahoney, ‘Nifo’s De sensu agente’, p. 134. Giles’s more equivocal views on the identity of this agent are discussed by Carey J. Leonard, ‘A Thirteenth Century Notion of the Agent Intellect: Giles of Rome’, The New Scholasticism, 37 (1963), pp. 327–358 (341). Albertus declares that ‘every form multiplies its intention,’ but stops short of the suggestion that this is the work of an intelligence. See Albertus, De anima, l. 2 tr. 3 c. 6, in Opera omnia, ed. Bernhard Geyer et al., 40 vols (Münster: Aschendorff, 1951-), VII, i, p. 107b.

  39. 39.

    Averroes, Long Commentary on Physica , VII, t.c. 12, in Aristotle, Opera cum Averrois commentariis, IV, fol. 317rB-C; Albertus, Physica, l. 7, tr. 1, c. 4, in Opera omnia, ed. Münster, IV, ii, pp. 525b–526a.

  40. 40.

    Averroes, Long Commentary on De coelo et mundo, II, t.c. 42, in Aristotle, Opera cum Averrois commentariis, V, fols 126vM-127rA; Albertus, De caelo et mundo, l. 2, tr. 3, c. 5, in Opera omnia, ed. Münster, V, i, pp. 151a and 152b. See also Albertus’s account of divination in dreams, where ‘heavenly forms, projected towards us, touching our bodies move (them) very forcibly, and impress their virtues’, in De somno et vigilia, l. 3, tr. 1, c. 9, in Opera omnia, ed. Auguste Borgnet, 38 vols (Paris: Vives, 1890–1899), IX, p. 190a. While Thomas Aquinas’s views on several subjects discussed in this section differ from those of Albertus and Averroes, Thomas also accepted the principle that the influence of a celestial body could reflect both its corporeality as a body and the spiritual power of its mover in the production of substantial forms. See Thomas Litt, Les corps célestes dans l’univers de Saint Thomas d’Aquin (Louvain: Publications Universitaires de Louvain; Paris: Béatrice-Nauwelaerts, 1963), p. 180.

  41. 41.

    See Troilo’s characterisation of Averroism as ‘dualist, transcendent (and) not without deep veins of mysticism and theosophy.’ (Erminio Troilo, Averroismo e aristotelismo padovano [Padua: CEDAM, 1939], p. 40.)

  42. 42.

    Translated from the textus in Nifo, Expositio, fol. 117ra: ‘dicunt philosophi quod celum est quoddam animal obediens ipsi deo glorioso in suo motu: quilibet motus voluntarius fit sine dubio propter quoddam intentum;’ see van den Bergh’s English translation of the Arabic in Averroes, Tahāfut al-Tahāfut, Discussion 15, I, p. 293.

  43. 43.

    Nifo, Expositio, fol. 119ra, referring to Averroes, Long Commentary on De coelo et mundo, III t.c. 72, in Aristotle, Opera cum Averrois commentariis, V, fol. 230rE; Expositio, fol. 119rb, references to Averroes, De generatione et corruptione, II t.c. 56 and 58, in Aristotle, Opera cum Averrois commentariis, V, fols 385vH-K, 386rA-D.

  44. 44.

    Nifo, Expositio, fol. 119rab. Cf. Plotinus, Enneads II, iii, 1, in Opera omnia, trans. Marsilio Ficino, eds Georg Friedrich Creuzer and Georg Heinrich Moser (Paris: Didot, 1855), p. 61. Nifo’s account draws closely (sometimes verbatim) on the account in Ficino’s commentary on Plotinus, see Ficino, In Plotinum, in Opera omnia, 2 vols (Basel: Heinrich Petri, 1576; facsimile repr., Turin: Bottega d’Erasmo, 1962), II, pp. 1609–1610.

  45. 45.

    Nifo, Expositio, fol. 119va. Nifo may have in mind a particular passage in De mundo. See in Aristotle, Opera cum Averrois commentariis, VII, fol. 116vH-M. On the De mundo, its ideas and later reception see Jill Kraye, ‘Aristotle’s God and the Authenticity of De mundo: An Early Modern Controversy’, Journal of the History of Philosophy, 28 (1990) pp. 339–358 (341–344); repr. in Ead., Classical Traditions in Renaissance Philosophy (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), XI. Kraye notes that both Marsilio Ficino and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola cite the De mundo as an authoritative source.

  46. 46.

    Nifo, Expositio, fol. 119va. Cf. Aristotle, De mundo, in Aristotle, Opera cum Averrois commentariis, VII, fol. 111rC-D.

  47. 47.

    Nifo, Expositio, fol. 119va. On the use of the term gubernatio, cf. Aristotle, De mundo, in Aristotle, Opera cum Averrois commentariis, VII, fol. 119vG: ‘what the helmsman is in a ship, this God is God is in the universe’ (‘quod in navi gubernator est … hoc Deus est in mundo’).

  48. 48.

    Nifo, Expositio, fol. 119va.

  49. 49.

    The story of the creation of the universe and of men is found in Timaeus, 29d-47e. On man’s relationship to the universe, see in particular 44d. On Platonism and Neoplatonism in Nifo, with particular reference to the soul, see Mahoney, ‘Agostino Nifo and Neoplatonism’, in Two Aristotelians of the Italian Renaissance, VI, pp. 205–231, and ‘Plato and Aristotle in the Thought of Agostino Nifo’.

  50. 50.

    On Isaac’s blend of Neoplatonism and Aristotelianism, see Alexander Altmann, ‘The Philosophy of Isaac Israeli’, in Isaac Israeli: A Neoplatonic Philosopher of the Early Tenth Century, eds A. Altmann and Samuel M. Stern (London: Oxford University Press, 1958), pp. 149–217, esp. pp. 172–179; Sarah Pessin, ‘Jewish Neoplatonism: Being above Being and Divine Emanation in Solomon ibn Gabriol and Isaac Israeli’, in The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Jewish Philosophy, eds Daniel H. Frank and Oliver Leaman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 91–110; Marie-Thérèse d’Alverny, ‘Pseudo-Aristotle, De Elementis’, in Pseudo-Aristotle in the Middle Ages: The Theology and Other Texts, eds Jill Kraye, Charles B. Schmitt and W. F. Ryan (London: The Warburg Institute, 1986), pp. 63–83.

  51. 51.

    Isaac ben Solomon Israeli, Opera (Lyon: Bartholomaeus Trot, 1515), fols 10vb-11ra.

  52. 52.

    Albertus Magnus, De caelo et mundo, l. 2, tr. 1, c. 4, in Opera omnia, ed. Münster, V, i, p. 110b.

  53. 53.

    Isaac’s De elementis was translated into Latin in the twelfth century by Gerard of Cremona. Altmann and Stern, Isaac Israeli, p. 133. Kibre, The Library of Pico della Mirandola, p. 239 (inventory number 893).

  54. 54.

    Nifo, Expositio, fol. 119va.

  55. 55.

    Ibid., fol. 119vb. Maimonides’s position in the Guide of the Perplexed (Dux perplexorum), pt 1 c. 68 and 69, is to employ an emanational argument to reconcile God as final cause with the operation of efficient cause in the universe. See The Guide of the Perplexed, ed. Shlomo Pines (Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press, 1963), pp. 163–167.

  56. 56.

    Nifo, Expositio, fol. 119vb; cf. Averroes, Long Commentary on Metaphysica, XII, t. c. 18, Aristotle, Opera cum Averrois commentariis, VIII, fol. 304rE-F. Nifo also assigns views in support of various kinds of creation ex nihilo to Homer, Orpheus and the mysteriously titled ‘Hermes Enoch Mercurius’ in this passage.

  57. 57.

    Nifo, Expositio, fol. 119vb; cf. Averroes, Long Commentary on Metaphysica XII, t.c. 18, in Aristotle, Opera cum Averrois commentariis, VIII, fol. 305vG-H.

  58. 58.

    For Alexander’s views on providence, see Kraye, ‘Aristotle’s God’, p. 340.

  59. 59.

    See Aristotle, Metaphysica, 1067a.

  60. 60.

    Nifo, Expositio, fol. 119vb.

  61. 61.

    Aristotle, Physica, VIII, 267a.

  62. 62.

    Averroes, Long Commentary on Physica, VIII, t. c. 82, in Aristotle, Opera cum Averrois commentariis, IV, fol. 430vI-K.

  63. 63.

    Ibid, fol. 431vA. On discontinuous movement, see Ruth Glasner, Averroes’ Physics: A Turning Point in Medieval Natural Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), pp. 125–126.

  64. 64.

    Nifo, Expositio, fol. 119vb. In a later passage, fol. 120rb, Nifo returns to the example of ‘a stone moved by a stick which only moves because of the hand which exercises an influence on (influit) the stick.’ Nifo concludes that in the same way that any ‘instrument’ (like the stick) moves by virtue of the ‘first cause’, it is not necessary for the ‘instruments of the first bodies (i.e., of the celestial bodies) to be joined in place, but by the action of (their) virtues.’

  65. 65.

    Ibid, fol. 119vb.

  66. 66.

    Nifo returns to the idea of the magnet later in the commentary (fol. 120va) to explain the reference to the influence of the heavens on a choleric man.

  67. 67.

    Albertus uses the example of the magnet as part of his argument concerning the need for an external input to sensation. He rejects the view of Plato that there is some kind of emission from the eyes of a bewitcher towards the eyes of someone bewitched as the same as the suggestion that ‘virtue goes out from the magnet to the iron.’ See De anima, l. 2, tr. 3, c. 6, in Opera omnia, ed. Münster, VII, i, p. 107a. Nifo’s use of the magnet image also differs significantly from that of Marsilio Ficino, who uses the magnet as an analogy for the animation of the corporeal universe by the ‘souls of the spheres’. See Ficino, Platonic Theology, eds and trans. Michael J. B. Allen and James Hankins, 6 vols (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001–2006), I, pp. 282–285.

  68. 68.

    Nifo, Expositio, fol. 119vb. The theory that individual species of metal are associated with individual planets can be found in Albertus Magnus, Mineralia, l. 3, tr. 1, c. 6, in Opera, ed. Borgnet, V, p. 66b; Albertus Magnus, Book of Minerals, trans. Dorothy Wyckoff (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), p. 168.

  69. 69.

    Ibid., fol. 120ra. The full list of authorities cited in this passage is Plato, ‘Magot Grecus,’ ‘Germa Babylonicus,’ Hermes Egyptius, Ptolemeus, Geber Hispalensis, Thebit and Zoroaster (their ‘head’). With the exception of the reference to Zoroaster and the correction of ‘Magot’ to ‘Magor,’ this list coincides precisely with a list of authorities on the aid to be gained from engraving signs (sigillae) on gems in Albertus Magnus, Mineralia, l. 2 tr. 3 c. 3, in Opera, ed. Borgnet, V, p. 51a; Albertus Magnus, Book of Minerals, trans. Wyckoff, p. 134. On the authorities cited by Albert, several of which are spurious, see Wyckoff’s edition, Appendix C, pp. 272–275 and David Pingree, ‘The Diffusion of Arabic Magical Texts in Western Europe’, in La diffusione delle scienze islamiche nel Medio Evo europeo, ed. Biancamaria Scarcia Amoretti (Rome: Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, 1987), pp. 57–102 (81–84).

  70. 70.

    Nifo, Expositio, fol. 120ra.

  71. 71.

    Marsilio Ficino, In Plotinum, II, iii, c. 9, in Id., Opera, II, p. 1629: ‘vitam nobis corpoream a stellis infundi.’ On the influence of Ficino on the treatment of the soul in the Destructio commentary, see Edward P. Mahoney, ‘Marsilio Ficino’s influence on Nicoletto Vernia, Agostino Nifo and Marcantonio Zimara’, in Marsilio Ficino e il ritorno di Platone: Studi e documenti, ed. Gian Carlo Garfagnini, 2 vols (Florence: Olschki, 1986), II, pp. 509–351 (517–520).

  72. 72.

    Plotinus, Enneads, IV, iii (not ii, as Nifo suggests), 11; trans. A. H. Armstrong, 7 vols (Cambridge, MA, and London: Cambridge University Press, 1934), IV, p. 71. Cf. Plotinus, Opera omnia, p. 206.

  73. 73.

    Marsilio Ficino, De vita libri tres, III, 20, in Id., Opera, I, pp. 560–561; Id., Platonic Theology, VI, pp. 194–195. On Plotinus’s statues and Ficino’s De vita, see Brian Copenhaver, ‘Astrology and Magic’, in Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, pp. 264–300; 274–279. On the question of Ficino and demons, see also D. P. Walker, Spiritual and Demonic Magic from Ficino to Campanella (London: The Warburg Institute, 1958; repr. Stroud: Sutton, 2000), esp. pp. 45–53; Michael J. B. Allen, The Platonism of Marsilio Ficino: A Study of His Phaedrus Commentary, its Sources and Genesis (Los Angeles and Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), pp. 8–23.

  74. 74.

    Nifo, Expositio, dub. xviii, fol. 46va.

  75. 75.

    Ibid, fol. 46va–b; see Zambelli’s discussion of this part of the third dispute as a kind of ‘double truth’ argument in ‘Problemi metodologici’, esp. pp. 146 and 162–163. Caution needs to be exercised when interpreting ‘double truth’ arguments, in Averroes and more generally, given the difficulty of determining the intentions of the author. For a balanced view, see Stuart MacClintock, Perversity and Error: Studies on the ‘Averroist’ John of Jandun (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1956), pp. 98–99. Nifo’s other, more extensive, early discussion of demons is the short treatise De demonibus, in his De intellectu. De demonibus (Venice: Petrus de Querengis, 1503), fols 77ra-83vb, which is discussed by Zambelli in ‘Problemi metodologici’. A full discussion of Nifo’s treatment of demons in the context of Aristotelian natural philosophy, Neoplatonic and other sources in both the Destructio commentary and the De demonibus lies beyond the scope of this study.

  76. 76.

    Nifo, Expositio, fol. 121ra. For an overview of determinism and causality in Aristotle and subsequent classical philosophical tradition, see Sorabji, Necessity, Cause and Blame; for considerations in the early modern period, see Antonino Poppi, ‘Fate, Fortune, Providence and Human Freedom’, in Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, eds Charles B. Schmitt, Quentin Skinner, Eckhard Kessler and Jill Kraye (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), pp. 641–667.

  77. 77.

    Nifo, Expositio, fol. 121ra. Nifo could have found the question of the freedom from celestial influence of human choice (liberum arbitrium) or human will (libera voluntas) discussed in several texts by Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas, including the same chapter of Albertus’s Mineralia which he seems to have used elsewhere in this text as a source. In this chapter Albert notes ‘in man a two-fold principle of action, namely nature and will … nature is controlled by the stars; but the will is free.’ See Albertus Magnus, Mineralia, in Opera, ed. Borgnet, V, l. 2 tr. 3 c. 3, p. 51b; Albertus Magnus, Book of Minerals, trans. Wyckoff, p. 135. See also Paola Zambelli, ‘Albert le Grand e l’astrologie’, Recherches de théologie ancienne et médiévale, 49 (1982), pp. 141–158 (esp. 144); Thomas Aquinas, L’astrologie. Les opérations cachées de la nature. Les sorts, trans. and ed. Bruno Couillaud (Paris: Les Belles Lettres, 2008), esp. pp. XLIII-XLIV. On the translation of arbitrium and voluntas in such contexts, see Jerzy B. Korolec, ‘Free Will and Free Choice’, in Cambridge History of Later Medieval Philosophy, pp. 623–641 (630).

  78. 78.

    Nifo, Expositio, fol. 121rb. On the Stoic tradition, astrology and determinism, see A. A. Long, ‘Astrology: Arguments Pro and Contra’, in Science and Speculation: Studies in Hellenistic Theory and Practice, eds Jonathan Barnes, Jacques Brunschwig, Myles Burnyeat and Malcolm Schofield (Cambridge and Paris: Cambridge University Press and Editions de la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, 1982), pp. 165–193; for a subtle account of Stoic arguments concerning necessity, see Sorabji, Necessity, Cause and Blame, ch. 4 (pp. 70–88).

  79. 79.

    Nifo, Expositio, fol. 121va. Cf. Plotinus, Enneas secunda, l. 3 c. 13, in Opera omnia, trans. Ficino, p. 67. On the complex history of the cogitativa from Avicenna to Averroes, see Black, ‘Imagination and Estimation’, esp. pp. 5–6, 13; H. A. Wolfson, ‘The Internal Senses in Latin, Arabic, and Hebrew Philosophic Texts’, The Harvard Theological Review, 28 (1935), pp. 69–113; repr. in Studies in the History of Philosophy and Religion, I, pp. 250–314; George P. Klubertanz, The Discursive Power: Sources and Doctrine of the Vis Cogitativa according to St. Thomas Aquinas (Saint Louis, MO: The Modern Schoolman, 1952).

  80. 80.

    Nifo, Expositio, fol. 122ra. On the incompatibility of the unitary intellect and freedom of choice, see Thomas Aquinas, De unitate intellectus contra Averroistas, c. 4, in Opera omnia, 50 vols (Rome: Leonine Edition, 1882-), XLIII, p. 308a-b. On Nifo’s use of De unitate intellectus in his De intellectu, see Edward P. Mahoney, ‘Agostino Nifo and Saint Thomas Aquinas’, Memoire Domenicane, n.s. 7 (1976), pp. 195–226 (207–208). On the phrase ‘a single soul for [each] man’ (una anima totalis hominis) see Edward P. Mahoney, ‘Agostino Nifo and Saint Thomas Aquinas’, Memorie Domenicane, n.s. 7 (1976), pp. 195–226 (207–208).

  81. 81.

    Nifo, Expositio, fol. 122ra. Averroes’s more famous and dangerous notion of a unitary intellect to all men is discussed by Nifo elsewhere in the Destructio commentary. See Mahoney, ‘Plato and Aristotle’, V, p. 82. On the contrast in Nifo’s later De intellectu (1503) and Libellus de immortalitate anime (1518) between the views of Averroes and Ficino on the freedom of the individual soul’s will, see Mahoney, ‘Ficino’s Influence’, pp. 522–524.

  82. 82.

    Nifo, Expositio, fols 122ra, 122va. On the operation of the celestial bodies on the soul per accidens, see In Plotinum, II, l. 3 c. 13, in Ficino, Opera omnia, II, p. 1635.

  83. 83.

    Nifo, Expositio, fol. 123rb.

  84. 84.

    Albertus himself was engaged in a reconciliation of Aristotelian and Platonic ideas. See, for example, Albertus’s references to man as parvus mundus in the Physica and imago mundi in the De somno: Physica, l. 8 tr. 1 c. 9, in Opera omnia, ed. Münster, IV.ii, pp. 565b–566a; De somno, l. 2 tr. 1 c. 9, in Opera, ed. Borgnet, IX, p. 189b. For a discussion of Albertus’s combination of ‘Arabic Plotinus material’ and Peripatetic philosophy, see Thérèse Bonin, ‘The Emanative Psychology of Albertus Magnus’, Topoi, 19 (2000), pp. 45–57, esp. pp. 47–48. On the reconciliation of Platonic and Aristotelian notions concerning the infinite power of God and creation from antiquity to Averroes, see Sorabji, Matter, Space and Motion, pp. 249–281.

  85. 85.

    Nifo, Expositio, fol. 80ra. This and other examples of ‘double truth’ argument are cited by Zambelli, ‘Problemi metodologici’, pp. 137–138. As Zambelli suggests in one of her later studies, the Destructio commentary could have been a point of reference for Pomponazzi and others in the exploration of Averroes’s ideas concerning the natural status of religions. Averroism evidently presented Nifo with a range of philosophical possibilities which he could explore in this work. See Paola Zambelli, Una reincarnazione di Pico ai tempi di Pomponazzi (Milan: Il Polifilo, 1994), p. 49.

  86. 86.

    Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, De hominis dignitate, in Id., De hominis dignitate, Heptaplus, De ente et uno e scritti vari, ed. Eugenio Garin (Turin: Aragno, 2004), p. 142; Oration on the Dignity of Man, in The Renaissance Philosophy of Man, eds Ernst Cassirer, Paul Oskar Kristeller and John Herman Randall, Jr (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1948), pp. 223–254 (244). Translation from this edition. Nifo mentions Pico in connection with Platonic theories of the human soul in the Destructio commentary, fol. 9va. Edward P. Mahoney, ‘Plato, Pico, and Albert the Great: The Testimony and Evaluation of Agostino Nifo’, Medieval Philosophy and Theology, 2 (1992), pp. 165–192, discusses this passage at length and identifies Albertus Magnus as a source for the views expressed by Nifo to be those of Pico. On the influence of Pico on Nifo, see also Mahoney, ‘Nifo and Neoplatonism’, VI, p. 222; Id., ‘Pico, Elia, Vernia and Nifo’, pp. 143–156.

  87. 87.

    Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Disputationes adversus astrologiam divinatricem, ed. and trans. Eugenio Garin, 2 vols (Florence: Vallecchi, 1946–1952; repr. Turin: Aragno, 2004).

  88. 88.

    Among recent studies, Stephen Alan Farmer, Syncretism in the West: Pico’s 900 Theses (1486): The Evolution of Traditional, Religious, and Philosophical Systems (Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 1998), presents an account of both Pico’s syncretic strategies in the Oratio and Theses, and of the modern debates surrounding the Disputationes; Anthony Grafton, ‘Giovanni Pico della Mirandola: Trials and Triumphs of an Omnivore’, in Id., Commerce with the Classics: Ancient Books and Renaissance Readers (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1997), pp. 93–134, makes a strong case for the particular importance of the humanist approach to the historicity of sources adopted by Pico in the Disputationes.

  89. 89.

    See the discussion of the basis in post-Plotinian Neoplatonism of Pico’s syncretism in Farmer, Syncretism in the West, pp. 18–28.

  90. 90.

    On Nifo’s work as an example of ‘eclectic Aristotelianism’ in the Renaissance, see Charles B. Schmitt, Aristotle and the Renaissance (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1983), pp. 89–109, esp. pp. 98–103.

  91. 91.

    The connections between Nifo and Pico in relation to magic, and Nifo’s reaction in his post-1499 works on astrology to the Disputationes are discussed by Zambelli, ‘Problemi metodologici’, p. 130; Ead., Una reincarnazione, p. 48; Ead., L’ambigua natura, pp. 240–241; Ead., ‘Fine del mondo’, pp. 352–356.

  92. 92.

    See, for example, Pico, Disputationes, ed. Garin, I, pp. 100–106 and II, pp. 472–84 (2.1, and 11.2); see also Grafton, ‘Trials and Triumphs’, esp. pp. 117–118; on the Disputationes and the continuity of argument in this regard with Pico’s earlier works, see the discussion and extracts (from Disputationes 3.24 and 3.25) in Farmer, Syncretism in the West, pp. 139–149.

  93. 93.

    Nifo, Expositio, fol. 122rb.

  94. 94.

    Zambelli, ‘Problemi metodologici’, esp. pp. 164 and 171.

  95. 95.

    Zambelli, Una reincarnazione, p. 49.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Spring Park Avenue, CR0 5EG, Shirley, Croydon, London, UK

    Nicholas Holland

Authors
  1. Nicholas Holland
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Nicholas Holland .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Auf der Papenburg 14, Bochum, 44801, Germany

    Anna Akasoy

  2. Warburg Institute, Woburn Square, London, WC1H 0AB, United Kingdom

    Guido Giglioni

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2013 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Holland, N. (2013). The Transmutations of a Young Averroist: Agostino Nifo’s Commentary on the Destructio Destructionum of Averroes and the Nature of Celestial Influences. In: Akasoy, A., Giglioni, G. (eds) Renaissance Averroism and Its Aftermath: Arabic Philosophy in Early Modern Europe. International Archives of the History of Ideas Archives internationales d'histoire des idées, vol 211. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-5240-5_6

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation