Francesco Giorgi

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Francesco Giorgi Veneto[1] (1466-1540) was a Venetian Franciscan friar, and author of the work De harmonia mundi totius from 1525. The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy describes him as 'idiosyncratic'.[2] He wrote also In Scripturam Sacram Problemata (1536).

Giorgi is extensively discussed in Frances Yates, The Occult Philosophy in the Elizabethan Age (1979). In Chapter 4 she states

“ That Giorgi was a Christian Cabalist is a statement that means, not merely that he was influenced in a vague way by the Cabalist literature, but that he believed that Cabala could prove, or already had proved, the truth of Christianity. ”

In Chapter 12 she discusses Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice in the light of the theory of Daniel Banes that Shakespeare was familiar with Giorgi's and related writings on the Cabala.

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Also called Giorgio, Zorzi.
  2. ^ p. 357. Also (p. 69) the CHRP talks of Giorgi as a synthesizer of the pia philosophia of Ficino, and the concordia of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (along with Henricus Cornelius Agrippa and Paracelsus); on p. 312 he is classed with Ficino and Nicolas of Cusa as subscribing to a macrocosm and microcosm theory.

[edit] Bibliography

  • Saverio Campanini, Francesco Giorgio’s Criticism of the Vulgata: Hebraica Veritas or Mendosa Traductio? in G. Busi (ed.), Hebrew to Latin, Latin to Hebrew. The Mirroring of Two Cultures in the Age of Humanism, Berlin Studies in Judaism 1, Nino Aragno Editore, Turin 2006, pp. 206-231.
  • Saverio Campanini, Ein unbekannter Kommentar zum „Hohelied“ aus der kabbalistischen Schule von Francesco Zorzi: Edition und Kommentar, in G. Frank – A. Hallacker – S. Lalla (edd.), Erzählende Vernunft, Akademie Verlag, Berlin 2006, pp. 265-281.
  • Saverio Campanini, Le fonti ebraiche del De Harmonia mundi di Francesco Zorzi, in «Annali di Ca' Foscari», XXXVIII, 3 (1999), pp. 29-74.
  • Saverio Campanini, Haophan betoc haophan. La struttura simbolica del De Harmonia mundi di Francesco Zorzi, in «Materia Giudaica», 3 (1997), pp. 13-17.