Hermes is best known in the Renaissance as the supposed author of the Corpus Hermeticum, a collection of 17 Greek texts on spiritual education of which 14 were translated into Latin by Marsilio Ficino in 1463. One text of the ancient Corpus Hermeticum was translated into Latin in late Antiquity under the title “Asclepius” (the Greek text is lost), and was the main conduit through which the doctrine of Hermes Trismegistus was known in the Latin West. The theoretical Hermeticism in the Corpus Hermeticum was accompanied by numerous texts of technical Hermeticism (in alchemy and talismanic-making), most of which were transmitted via Arabic.
In the older Classical tradition we find two Hermes. In the Asclepius (fourth century CE) Hermes Trismegistus states that his grandfather (or ancestor) was the god Hermes. Saint Augustine (De civitate Dei, VIII, 8) identifies the older Hermes as the son of Maia, daughter of Atlas, and Mercurius Trismegistus as his grandson. In the Arabic tradition, however, we find three. Abu Ma‘shar (787886), in his Kitab al-uluf (Book of the Thousands), had stated that the first Hermes lived in Egypt before the flood, the second in Babylon, and revived the sciences after the flood, and the third, once again in Egypt, taught alchemy and passed on his wisdom to Asclepius. This appears to be a survival of a legend in ancient Egyptian history, as told in the Book of Sothis that one Hermes inscribed Egyptian knowledge on stone before the Flood, and another recovered it after the Flood. This became known to Arabic scholars through a chronicle written by Annianus (after the fifth century), who is cited by Abu Ma‘shar, al-BirUnI, and Bar Hebraeus. But AbU Ma‘shar makes the second Hermes a Babylonian, perhaps because of his Iranocentricity. The story of the three Hermes then became embedded in the alchemical tradition, and in this way reached the Latin West.
In their catalogue of medieval Latin Hermetic texts, Paolo Lucentini and Vittoria Perrone Compagni list 41 different works, extant in some 400 manuscripts. Most of these give instructions on the various materials to be used to make talismans and to summon spirits, so providing the practical aspect to the theory of the Asclepius. However, it cannot be immediately assumed that all these works were thought to be by an Egyptian Hermes or to convey Egyptian wisdom. When Hermes is quoted by AbU Ma‘shar, he is a Persian, and this is reflected in Hermann of Carinthia’s De essentiis (1143), in which quotations of ‘‘Hermes’’ (or ‘‘Hermes Persa’’) refer to citations from AbU Ma‘shar’s Great Introduction to Astrology, whereas quotations of ‘‘Trimegistus’’ refer to the Asclepius.
A significant number of texts in Arabic purport to convey the occult teaching of Hermes as transmitted by Aristotle to his royal pupil Alexander (the pseudoAristotelian Hermetica), and excerpts from these books survive in Latin translation (Antimaquis, De luna secundum Aristotelem, Liber de quattuor confectionibus).
No overlap has been observed between the Arabic texts attributed to Hermes and the Greek Hermetic corpus, but it is undoubted that the Greek Corpus Hermeticum originated in Egypt. Of Egyptian origin, also, is the art of alchemy, with which Hermes’ name is closely associated, and the magical art, which used spirits (daemons) in its operations. A leitmotif in Hermetic works is the discovery in an underground chamber or crypt of a stele made of marble, ebony, or emerald with mysterious writing or symbols on it. The best-known of these steles was the emerald tablet of Hermes, on which is written a hymn that encapsulates the mystery of alchemy. This first appears in Latin in a mid-twelfth-century translation of the Secret of Creation of Pseudo-Apollonius, made by Hugo of Santalla (see the entry on Apollonius of Tyana in this volume).
The Asclepius remained the best-known conveyor of Hermetic doctrine in the Latin West. It was known to Lactantius in the second century CE and Augustine in the fourth, and was copied and quoted frequently in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. It takes the form of a dialogue between Hermes Trismegistus and Asclepius.
The Egyptian context of the conversation is presumed from the beginning, but the first explicit mention is in Section 24, when the conversation turns to statues ‘‘ensouled and conscious, filled with spirit and doing great deeds, foreknowing the future, and predicting by prophecy, dreams and other means.’’ During the course of this conversation, Trismegistus refers to Egypt as an ‘‘image of heaven’’ and states that ‘‘our land is the temple of the whole world.’’ The editor and commentator on the Corpus Hermeticum, A.-J. Festugiere, had claimed that the Egyptian element of the Corpus is only a veneer, and that the texts represented rather the academic culture of Hellenistic Alexandria. But discoveries in Armenian and in the Coptic papyri of Nag Hammadi prompted a reappraisal of the Egyptian roots of the doctrines.
These are some of the doctrines, as expressed in the Asclepius. The administration of all things is by the heavens, as ‘‘a perceptible god’’ (Section 3), but through the agency of the sun and moon, and the aid of daemons (5). Man is a ‘‘great wonder’’ with the capacity for becoming a god; everything is permitted to him, and he can know all things (6). The sensible universe is a ‘‘second god’’ created by the master and shaper of all things, and man was brought into being to admire this creation (8); hence there are three gods: the master of eternity, the universe, and mankind (10). Man’s aim should be to disdain earthly possessions and seek out the divine (11). Music brings all knowledge into its correct sequence (13). In the beginning, there was hyle (the Greek word used for matter), infused with spirit, which had the capacity for coming into being and procreating (14). God fills all things with spirit (16); matter nourishes bodies, spirit nourishes souls (18). All mortal and immortal things and all sensible and insensible things are connected in that they all depend on one thing (19). God cannot be named, is of both sexes, and ever pregnant with his own will (20). Man is superior to the gods in that he is both mortal and immortal, whereas gods are only immortal (21). Man can call down souls into appropriate matter in order to make living statues, which have the power of looking after things and foretelling the future (24); this is the art of making gods (37). Hymns, praises, and sweet sounds in tune with heaven’s harmony keep the statue-god happy in the presence of mankind. It is these lesser gods who help humankind through loving kinship, looking after individual things and giving advice for the future (38). The world is eternal, governed by the action of the sun and the movement of the stars (30), and regulated by heimarmenti (fate), necessity, and order (39). God requires no gifts other than worship and prayer (41).
The emphasis on ensouling matter, making ‘‘gods’’ who can help man, binds the theoretical Hermetic texts of the Corpus Hermeticum with the technical ones, such as the Antimaquis, and the various texts on making talismans. For a talisman is analogous with a statue, in that it is made of natural substances, but endowed with soul or spirit through the performance of various ritual acts, and spirits of the upper world are summoned to do the bidding of the practitioner. The Corpus Hermeticum enjoyed a new vogue after Ficino’s translation of 1463, under the title Pimander (printed in 1472), and encouraged the idea of a ‘‘perennial philosophy’’ or ‘‘ancient theology’’ founded by sages of hoary antiquity. Only with the debunking of an age-old Hermes by Isaac Casaubon in 1614 did the Hermetic doctrines start to lose their interest.
See also: > Apollonius of Tyana
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