Patrizi, Francesco(1529–1597)
Francesco Patrizi, also known as Patritius, was a vigorous defender of Platonism and an unremitting foe of Aristotelianism. He was versatile even for his time, being at once philosopher, mathematician, historian, soldier, and literary critic. Born in Dalmatia, he studied at Padua (Francesco Robertelli was a teacher-friend) and Venice. Having been an early and avid reader of Marsilio Ficino's Theologia Platonica, he turned from careers in business and in medicine to develop further his interest in Platonism.
After some years in France, Spain, and Cyprus in the service of various noblemen, Patrizi was in 1578 appointed by Duke Alfonso II as professor of Platonic philosophy at the University of Ferrara—which, with Florence and Pisa, was an important center of Platonism in Italy. In 1592 he was called to the University of Rome by Pope Clement VIII. He considered the privilege of expounding Platonism at Rome his crowning achievement, and he held that position until his death.
Although intellectual activity was his chief concern, Patrizi also showed interest in practical matters: He offered means for diverting a river threatening Ferrara, and presented plans for improving military strategy against the Turks and naval plans against the British.
In 1553 Patrizi's Discorso on types of poetic inspiration appeared, followed by his dialogues on history (1560). After visiting France, Spain, and Cyprus, he published Discussiones Peripateticae (1581), which violently attacked Aristotelianism. His achievement dates largely from his appointment at Ferrara, although correspondence with Telesio (1572) indicates an earlier interest in the study of nature. In Della Poetica (1586), he produced the first modern study of literary history, which also was an attack on Aristotle's Poetics. In 1587 there appeared several polemics defending his friend Orazio Ariosto against Torquato Tasso and Jacopo Mazzoni and upholding Patrizi's Platonic view of art as transcendental against their Aristotelian theory of poetry as imitation.
Patrizi's chief philosophical work, Nova de Universis Philosophia (1591), contained four parts: Panaugia, on light; Panarchia, on first principles; Pampsychia, on souls; and Pancosmia, on mathematics and natural science. Dedicated to Gregory XIV, who had been a fellow student at Padua, its aims were the linking of Christianity with the teachings of Zoroaster, Hermes, and Orpheus; the derivation of the world from God through emanation; and the insistence on a quantitative study of nature. His last work was Paralleli Militari (1594).
Patrizi's metaphysics of light is suggestive of Ibn Gabirol and Robert Grosseteste, and places him in the company of Geronimo Cardano and Bernardino Telesio. Defending the cognitive value of mathematics (as did Nicholas of Cusa), Patrizi helped to establish the subsequent priority of space over matter in the study of nature. His doctrines, fanciful yet impressive, failed (as did those of Giordano Bruno and Telesio), for want of an adequate method, to overthrow the well-entrenched Aristotelians. The decisive attack came only in the seventeenth century, when Galileo Galilei and others postulated a new physics of quantities that was related to astronomy and was based on experiments and calculations.
Aristotelianism; Bruno, Giordano; Ficino, Marsilio; Galileo Galilei; Grosseteste, Robert; Ibn Gabirol, Solomon Ben Judah; Matter; Nicholas of Cusa; Platonism and the Platonic Tradition; Space; Telesio, Bernardino.
Bibliography
Works by Patrizi
Discorso. 1553.
Della Historia. Venice, 1560.
Discussiones Peripateticae. Basel, 1581.
Della Poetica. Ferrara: V. Baldini, Stampator Ducale, 1586.
Nova de Universis Philosophia. Ferrara, 1591.
Paralleli Militari. Rome: L. Zannetti, 1594.
Works on Patrizi
Brickman, B. An Introduction to Francesco Patrizi's Nova de Universis Philosophia. New York, 1941.
Kristeller, P. O. Renaissance Thought: The Classic, Scholastic, and Humanistic Strains. New York, 1961.
Robb, N. Neoplatonism of the Italian Renaissance. London: Allen and Unwin, 1935.
Salata, F. "Nel terzo centenario della morte di F. Patrizi." Atti e memorie della Società Istriana di Archeologia e Storia Patria 12 (1897): 455–484.
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