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Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica

Frans A. Janssen. 'Dutch translations of the Corpus Hermeticum'. Article published in Theatrum Orbis Librorum.
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Dutch translations of the Corpus Hermeticum

Frans A. Janssen

Both the history and the significance of the writings which together are called the Corpus Hermeticum and which take their name from the fictitious author Hermes Trismegistus, have been described several times. Still well worth reading is the account given of it by Frances Yates in the first three chapters of her book on the hermetic philosopher Giordano Bruno, perhaps the best book she ever wrote.[1] Drawing also on other sources which will be mentioned further on, I shall here first briefly summarize that history.

The group of Greek treatises which make up the C.H. has its origin in the second to third centuries A.D. within the Graeco-Egyptian civilisation of Alexandria. Until the Renaissance they were not generally known in the west, although distinct traces are to be found in Lactantius and a few others. A rediscovery took place during the Renaissance, in the sixties of the fifteenth century. In the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana at Florence there still remains a fourteenth-century manuscript of the Greek text of the C.H. which was presented to Cosimo de Medici in about 1460.[2] It is a simple paper manuscript, certainly not impressive, but recognised by Cosimo as something so important that he commanded Marsilio Ficino to translate it into Latin to enable him to read it himself. An autograph of Ficino has not survived; but the same library founded by the Medici preserves a number of copies of it - among others I saw there a splendidly illuminated manuscript (illuminated by no less a person than Attavante degli Attavanti) which contains this Latin translation which Ficino completed in 1463 in a handsome book script on white vellum.[3] Eight years later, in 1471, the first printed edition appeared,[4] followed by a series of new editions: as many as twenty during the first hundred years; and many manuscript copies were also made of it.[5] The influence of these writings on Renaissance and Humanism was enormous. To name but one example, from an unsuspected source, for the author was by no means a special devotee of the hermetic tradition: in his manual for librarians published in 1627, Gabriel Naudé, speaking of the arrangement of the books in an ideal library, says that the philosophy section begin with the oeuvre of Hermes Trismegistus, 'qui est la plus ancienne', with the writings of Plato, Aristotle, Bruno, Bacon etc. following after.[6]

Such a point of view becomes comprehensible only if one bears in mind that Hermes Trismegistus - the Hellenistic equivalent of Thot, the Egyptian god of the word - was looked upon during the Renaissance as the source of Plato and contemporary of Moses. The C.H. even counted with many people as much as another revelation next to the Bible. Its philosophical-religious concept cannot be summarised in a few words, but its essence is seen in man's ability to achieve immortality through knowledge of the divine. Later research has laid bare the Egyptian, Greek and biblical parallels of the C.H. and specially pointed out its link with gnosticism.[7] In the twentieth century the C.H. has been acknowledged as an important element in our cultural history,[8] whilst modern esoteric tendencies also pay a great deal of attention to the revelatory character of the writings of Hermes Trismegistus.[9]

As has been said, up to c. 1590 a score of editions appeared of Ficino's Latin translation of the C.H. [10] Of particular importance is the edition prepared by Jacques Lefèvre d'Etaples, printed in 1505 by Estienne, and the edition prepared by Adrianus Turnebus which he published himself in 1554; the latter, moreover, contains also the Greek text which thus became available in print for the first time. This Greek edition became the basis for two new Latin translations, one the work of François Foix de Candale, first published in 1574 together with a Greek Text (later published once more by Hannibal Roselli), and the other the work of Francesco Patrizi, also with Greek Text, the first edition of which appeared in 1591 and which also drew on the Foix de Candale version. Finally in the sixteenth century, several translations into modern languages came out: an Italian translation from the Latin of Ficino first appeared in 1548 (reprinted in 1549); it is the work of Tommaso Benci and was, by the way, made already very much earlier; a French translation, equally based on Ficino's Latin, albeit in the above-named edition of Lefèvre d'Etaples of 1505 (or its 1522 reprint) was published in 1549 by Gabriel du Preau (reprinted 1557);[11] a new French translation at the hand of Foix de Candale came out in 1574 (reprinted 1579), the first in a modern language which went straight back to the Greek original.

After this very brief survey of the textual tradition of the C.H. until c. 1590 there follows now a provisional report of some findings based on three early Dutch translations, made between c. 1580 and c. 1640 independently of each other. It has still to be stated beforehand that a Dutch paraphrase of the first treatise, entitled Poimandres (Pimander) (the whole C.H. is, by the way, often called after this first treatise), appeared in print already earlier, i.e. in Sebastian Franck's Die gulden arcke (1560), a translation of his Die guldin Arch of 1538.[12] Of this text which goes back to Ficino's Latin translation, the 'spiritualist' author says that it 'comprises everything a Christian has need to know'.

The earliest Dutch translation of the Corpus Hermeticum could have been known to scholars, for it is mentioned in Kristeller's Supplementurn Ficinianum. It was not printed, but we know it because it is preserved in manuscript in the Museum Plantin-Moretus at Antwerp; it bears the title Pimandre (ill. 1).[13]


1. Mercure Trismégiste, Pimandre. Antwerp, Museum Plantin-Moretus, MS M40.

This translation contains sixteen treatises where the Ficino version knows only fourteen and therefore follows the above-mentioned version of the alchemist Foix de Candale; besides, the Dutch text agrees in yet another point with that of Foix de Candale: the treatises are subdivided into numbered paragraphs. Further research will have to show whether the anonymous Dutch translator based himself on Foix's Latin text (1574) or on his French translation (1574 and 1579); my own impression is that the text is closer to the French version. It need cause no surprise that one of the Foix de Candale versions should have served as the basis for the Dutch translation; they were very well known and exerted great influence, i.e. on Philippe Plessis-Mornay: De la verité de la religion chrestienne, Latin translation: De vertitate religionis christianae, both published by Plantin in the early eighties.[14] It is not impossible that Plantin, who as follower of the spiritualist movement 'The Family of Love' was interested in this kind of text, may at this time have considered publishing a Dutch translation of the Corpus Hermeticum; however, I have until now been unable to discover any trace of such a thing in the Plantin literature.[15] As possible translator one would first of all think of Plantin's son-in-law Jan Moretus who translated for his father-in-law from both Latin and French; perhaps Plantin's proofreader Cornelis Kiliaan may also be in the running.[16]

The first Dutch translation is conveyed in a stately Dutch:

Also ick op een mael werdt overdenckende de dinghen die zijn, ende mijn verstandt nae hooghe saecken strecte, ende mijne lichaemelicke sinnen heel ontslaept ende verstorven waren, ghelijck den ghenen ghebeurt die overmidts vervultheijdt der spijsen oft vermoedtheijdt des lichaems slaeperich worden: So docht mij dat ick eenen sach die onmetelick ende onbegrijpelick was, de welcke mij noemde met mijnen naem ende seijde: Wat begheertdij te sien ende te hooren: ende wat hebt-dij in sin te leeren ende te kennen?
Ick vraegde hem, Wie zijt-dij? Hij sprack: Ick ben Pimandre, het Ghedachte des ghenes die door sij selven is.

 For comparison I quote here the English translation of the opening passage from the version by Everard, the first English translation printed in 1650 (cf. n. 24):

My thoughts being once seriously busied about the things that are, and my Understanding lifted up all my bodily Senses being exceedingly holden back, as it is with them that are heavy of sleep, by reason either of fulness of meat, or of bodily labour. Methought I saw one of an exceeding great stature, and of an infinite greatness, call me by my name, and say unto me, What wouldest thou hear and see? or what wouldest thou understand, to learn, and know? Then said I, Who art thou? I am, quoth the Poemander, the mind of the great Lord, the most Mighty and absolute Emperor.

 The Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica at Amsterdam which owns practically all the C.H. editions listed here, has had a transcript made in 1986 of this Antwerp manuscript and had this subsequently copied in calligraphy.

The second Dutch translation of the C.H. was the first to be printed: it lies quasi hidden away in a booklet concerning Cornelis Drebbel's invention of the perpetuum mobile: Wonder-vondt van de eeuwighe bewegingh, die den Alckmaersche philosooph Cornelis Drebbel [...] te weghe ghebrocht heeft [...] Ooc mede bij gevoeght een boeck Pymander, beschreven van Mercurius driemaal de grootste [...] (Alkmaar, Jacob de Meester, voor Gerrit Pietersz [Schagen], 1607;[17] ill. 2).


2. Wonder-vondt van de eeuwighe bewegingh (Alkmaar 1607)

This translation, which is not catalogued under Hermes or Mercurius, was difficult to find. My only clue was a manuscript note by a reader of the third Dutch translation, to be discussed hereafter, the one made by Van Beyerland (see n. 21), who in the margin of the last but one page expressed his disapproval of 'een duijtse alkmaarsche druk [...] 1607' [a Dutch Alkmaar edition ... 1607]. A bibliographical search among early seventeenth-century Alkmaar editions delivered no more than the short-title Wonder-vondt van de eeuwighe bewegingh, and only when I applied for this book did the sought-for translation come to light. Only ten of the seventy-one pages in this book relate to Drebbel's perpetuum mobile. And only when, having been alerted to Gerrit Pietersz Schagen, one goes deeper into the literature on this Alkmaar scholar, does one realise that the Hermes translation which he edited is mentioned therein.[18]

The source of this translation must be the above-mentioned Italian translation by Benci of 1548. For the Alkmaar edition agrees with this in the number of chapters (15; cf. Ficino: 14, and Foix de Candale: 16; the translator explicitly notes with the added chapter: 'translated from the Italian'), in the additional quotations from Chalcidius and Rhaziel and in several Italianised spellings such as 'Tazio' for Tatius or Tat and 'Trimegistus' for Trismegistus.

The translator of this Dutch Hermes may have been the publisher Gerrit Pietersz (van) Schagen (1573-1616), scholar, polyglot and friend of Drebbel; he is also the author of the dedication. The connection established by this little book between the Hermes texts and Drebbel need not surprise us. Like so many other scholars of his time, Drebbel was interested in alchemy at whose root Hermes was thought to be. It is not my purpose here to enter into discussion of Drebbel's importance as technician and alchemist, but I do want to mention that the Augsburg physician Karl Widemann indicates Drebbel as the man hiding behind the pseudonym Julianus de Campis under whose name a defence of the Rosicrucians was published in 1615. Widemann does so in his Sylva scientiarum, an important source for our knowledge of alchemists and early Rosicrucians, which he composed between 1610 and 1630 and of which only the autograph has survived. It is in my view not certain that Drebbel is indeed the author of this work by De Campis, but what is quite certain is that Drebbel's reputation as an alchemist was such that it was believed to be the case.[19]

This second Dutch translation reads somewhat stiffly; let us look at the opening sentences:

Doen ick denckende was van die Natuer der dinghen, ende verheffende die ooghen des gemoedts nae die hooghe dingen, hebbende nu in 't slapen die sinnen des Lichaems, also als dat pleech te ghebeuren den ghenen, die door versaetheyt, ofte door moeyelijcken arbeydt van den slaep beswaert zijn, soo docht my schielicken te sien eenen uytermaten groot van Lichame, die my riep by name, sprekende in dese maniere: O Mercuri, wat ist dat welcke du begeerste te hooren ende te sien? ende wat dingh ist, dat welcke du begeerste te leeren ende te verstaen? Doe sprack ick tot hem, ende seyde: Wie bistu? Ende hy seyde: Ic ben Pymander, t'gemoet van die Godlijcke macht.

 The third Dutch translation is easy to find: it is mentioned in Mead's now rather oldfashioned, but still readable study.[20] Its title is Sesthien boecken van den voor-treffelijcken ouden philosooph, Hermes Tris-megistus [...] uyt het Grieckx [...]. Met eene schoone voor-rede, uyt het Latijn, van Franciscus Patricius [...] (Amsterdam, Ysbrant Rieuwertsz [la Burgh], 1643; ill. 3; 2nd edn. 1652; ill. 4).


3. Hermes Trismegistus, Sesthien boecken (Amsterdam 1643)

The translator, who refers to himself only by the initials A.W.V.B. below the epilogue, was the Amsterdam businessman Abraham Willemsz van Beyerland.[21] This Van Beyerland (1586/7-1648) amassed a fortune in the perfumery industry and spent it on collecting the manuscripts of the German mystic Jacob Böhme and the financing of their publication in his own translations. Böhme's works had hardly been published at all until Van Beyerland took an interest in them: it is thanks to him that the world was able to get to know the work of this great theosophist. His Hermes translation is Bemistic in nature as regards its formulation and the added commentaries: Van Beyerland wanted to stress the unity between hermetic and Bemistic ideas. He says in his epilogue that the aim of this publication is the fight against unbelief: like Patrizi and Plessis-Mornay he wanted to lead mankind to Christian hermeticism. Nor is it then without good reason that these two names occur in these Sesthien boecken van [...] Hermes Tris-megistus. The latter is quoted extensively in the epilogue in connection with the remark that Hermes lived before Moses and Plato. The former plays a larger part in the third Dutch translation. Not only is Patrizi's preface to his C.H. edition printed in translation, what is even more important is that Van Beyerland based his translation on his Greek and Latin edition of 1591 (although he also availed himself of Ficino's translation). He says in the epilogue that in his translating labours he met with 'assistance from several who were experienced in the Greek language'; his model is moreover not followed uncritically.


4. Hermes Trismegistus, Sesthien boecken (Amsterdam 1652)

In the Seshtien boecken, as also in Van Beyerland's Böhme translations, a sign is used as a hyphen (see ill. 4, third line; it also occurs, incidentally, on a few occasions in Du Preau's French CH. translation of 1549). It is also met with in alchemy where it stands for 'praecipitare' [= to precipitate]. A century later it is mentioned in Gessner's printing manual as a hyphen.[22] Van Beyerland uses this sign to indicate the division between parts of compound words which each have a meaning of their own, such as for instance Tris-megistus, Neder-duytsch, on-eyndelijck. It is only found in editions produced by Van Beyerland and then indicates his involvement in the printing of them.

Apart from taking the form of a second edition, Van Beyerland's Hermes translation was spread also in the form of two manuscripts, i.e. a copy of the whole work and a paraphrase of book 16.[23]Furthermore, this Dutch version influenced the earliest German translation.[24] The fact that the Dutch translation was known in mystic circles is evident also from an uttering of the seventeenth-century mystic Pierre Poiret: '1e Poemandre [...] qu'un ami ou disciple de Jacob Böhme traduisit et publia en Flamen l'an 1652 sur l'édition Grecque et Latine de Patritius, beaucoup meilleure que l'édition de Ficinus et que celle dont se servit le Duc de Candale.'[25]

Van Beyerland's translation is lucid and readable; the opening sentences read as follows:

Doen ick een-maal betrachte de wesende dingen, en mijn ghemoet sich verhief, al-daar verblickerde de sinnen mijnes lichaams gansch en geheel; ghelijck de gene, die van spijse over-laden, ofte moede van arbeyt, met slaap, over-vallen worden. En nog quam voor, ghelijck als of ick yemant sagh, seer groot, en van on-eyndelijcke lenghte; mijnen naam noemende, en seggende tot my: Wat wilt ghy hooren en sien, en wat is 't, 't geen ghy, in 't ghemoet, ghedenckt te leeren, en te erkennen? Ick seyde: wie zijt ghy? Hy sprack: ick ben Poemander, het ghemoet des heerschappenden.

 If we consider all three Dutch translations of the Corpus Hermeticum, what stands out first is that they originated among groups of people who were interested in hermetic-mystical ideas: this applies to the circle around Plantin, that around Drebbel and certainly to that of Van Beyerland. Secondly, it is notable that the last two translations were ignorant of their predecessor(s). Thirdly, it has to be stated once again that each of the three translations followed a different textual tradition which can be represented as follows:

NOTES

[1] Frances A. Yates, Giordano Bruno and the hermetic tradition (London 1964; several reprint editions).
[2] MS Plut. 71, 33, No. 7. fos. 123r-144v.
[3] MS P1ut 21, 8, No. I. fos. 3r-40v.
[4] Hermes, Trismegistus, Liber de potestate et Sapienta Dei. Traductus a Marsilio Ficino (Treviso, Gerardus de Lisa, 1471).
[5] There are at least two early manuscript copies in the Netherlands: The Hague, Royal Library (130 E 8) and Haarlem, Municipal Library (187 C 15).
[6] G. Naudé, Advis pour dresser une bibliothèque (1627). Mit einem Nachwort von Horst Kunze (Leipzig 1963), p. 100.
[7] For literature on the C.H. see the summary of Antonino Gonzáles Blanco in: Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, Vol. 2 (1984), pp. 2240-81. Important are A.-J. Festugière, La révélation d'Hermès Trismégiste, 4 vols. (Paris 1950-4); Jean-Pierre Mahé, Hermès en Haute-Egypte. Les textes hermétiques de Nag Hammadi et leurs parallèles grecs et latins, 2 Vols. (Québec 1978-82), and Garth Fowden, The Egyptian Hermes (Cambridge etc. 1986). Cf. for a short but excellent introduction The encyclopedia of religion, ed. Mircea Eliade, vol. 6 (New York/London 1987), 'Hermes Trismegistus' by Jean-Pierre Mahé and 'Hermetism' by Antoine Faivre
[9] See the work of the Grandmaster of the Lectorium Rosicrucianum, J. van Rijckenborgh, The Egyptian Arch-Gnosis and its call in the eternal present. Proclaimed and explained again from the Tabula Smaragdina and the Corpus Hermeticum of Hermes Trismegistus, 4 vols. (Haarlem 1982-....; translated from the Dutch: De Egyptische oer-Gnosis [...] 4 vols., 1st/2nd edn. (Haarlem 1960-86). This work, comprising also the whole C.H. in translation, has also been published in German and French.
[10] For a bibliographical list see K.H. Dannenfeldt, 'Hermetica Philosophia', in: Catalogus translationum et commentariorum; mediaeval and renaissance Latin translations and commentaries. Annotated lists and guides; vol. I, ed. Paul Oskar Kristeller (Washington 1960), pp. 137-56.
[11] It is not based on Benci's Italian translation (so Raymond Marcel, Marsile Ficin (Paris 1958), p. 258, n. 1): see Frederick Purnell, 'Hermes and the Sybil; a note on Ficino's Pimander', in: Renaissance Quarterly, 30 (1977), p. 309.
[12] Sebastian Franck, Die gulden arcke. ([Emden, Willem Gailliart?] 1560), fos. xxxvi-xxxvii.
[13] Paul Oskar Kristeller, Supplementum Ficinianum, vol. I. (Florentiae 1937; repr. 1973), p. cxxx ('cod. 266 Musei Arnverpiensis cf, Catalogum quem composuit Denucé); this is no doubt the source of Raymond Marcel, Marsile Ficin (Paris 1958), p. 258, n. 1 and p. 750; cf. also Paul Oskar Kristeller, Iter Italicum, vol. 3 (London-Leiden 1983), p. 77; J. Denucé, Musaeum Plantin-Moretus. Catalogue des manuscrits (Anvers 1927), p. 190, No. 266 (now M 40).
[14] Cf. Jeanne Harrie, 'Duplessis-Mornay, Foix de Candale and the hermetic religion of the world', in: Renaissance Quarterly, 31 (1978), pp. 502-4.
[15] E.g. Léon Voet, The Golden Compasses, 2 vols. (Amsterdam 1969-72); idem, The Plantin Press, 6 vols. (Amsterdam 1980-3); Alastair Hamilton, The Family of Love (Cambridge 1981). I am grateful to Prof. H. de la Fontaine Verwey for a reference to Christoffel Plantijn, Correspondence, vols. 8-9 (Antwerpen/'s-Gravenhage 1918), p. 177, where Plantin says he will send 'le trismegistre françois'; a French Hermes printed by Plantin is equally unknown (it is uncertain whether in this context a Plantin edition is intended).
[16] Cf. Maurits Sabbe, Uit het Plantijnsche huis (Antwerpen 1923), pp. 69-76; F. Claes, De bronnen van drie woordenboeken uit de drukkerij van Plantin (s.1 1970), p. 41.
[17] Copies in Leiden University Library (Thysiana) and Haarlem, Teylers Museum.
[18] Nieuw Nederlands biografisch woordenboek, vol. I (Leiden 1911), Col. 1452; G. Tierie, Cornelis Drebbel (Amsterdam 1932), p. 103, n. 4; H.A.M. Snelders, 'Alkmaarse natuurwetenschappers uit de 16de en 17de eeuw', in: Alkmaarse historische reeks, 4 (1980), p. 101. The Wondervondt is not listed in the chapter dedicated to the printer Jacob de Meester in J.G.C.A. Briels, Zuidnederlandse boekdrukkers en boekverkopers in de Republiek der Verenigde Nederlanden (Nieuwkoop 1974), pp. 356-60.
[19] For the Widemann manuscript see Carlos Gilly, Johann Valentin Andreae 1586-1986. Die Manifeste der Rosenkreuzerbruderschaft. Katalog einer Ausstellung der Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica, 2 Aufl. (Amsterdam 1987), pp. 46-51. On De Campis see Hans Schick, Die geheime Geschichte der Rosenkreuzer (Schwarzenburg 1980), pp. 238-46. On Drebbel in general see i.a. G. Tierie, Cornelis Drebbel (Amsterdam 1932); L.E. Harris, The two Netherlanders; Humphrey Bradley and Cornelis Drebbel (Leiden 1961); Snelders, art. cit. (n. 18), pp. 110-19.
[20] G.R.S. Mead, Thrice-greatest Hermes (London/Benares 1906) [= Studies in Hellenistic theosophy and gnosis I], pp. 12-13 (where the 2nd edn. of 1652 is mentioned). The translation can also be found in the libraries mentioned in n. 21, in British Museum. General catalogue of printed books and in The national union catalog. Pre-1956 imprints.
[21] The copy in the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica at Amsterdam (on temporary loan from Amsterdam University Library) is interleaved and contains on the additional leaves an interesting commentary in manuscript by Reinier de Graaf (1674-1717), son of the Delft physician of the same name. Further copies: Amsterdam University Library; Royal Library The Hague; Warburg Institute and Dr Williams's Library London. On Van Beyerland and his CH. translation see [F. van Lamoen], Abraham Willemsz van Beyerland. Jacob Böhme en het Nederlandse hermetisme in de 17e eeuw. Catalogus bij een tentoonstelling in de Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica (Amsterdam 1986); J. Bruckner, 'A.W. van Beyerland's Hermes translation', in: The modern language review, 63 (1968), pp. 911-13. I thank Mr Van Lamoen for his help.
[22] C.F. Gessner, Der in der Buchdruckerei wohl unterrichtete Lehr-Junge (Leipzig 1743; Nachdruck mit Vorwort von Frans A. Janssen, Darmstadt 1984), p. 394.
[23] Respectively: Hermes Trismegistus, Sesthien boecken. MS Vlissingen 1740 (Amsterdam University Library, XV1 B 13); Grondige oplossinge van de natuur [...] Door S.D.I. Nagesien en gecorrigeert door H.P. MS, s.l. 1712, pp. 79-85 (Amsterdam, Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica).
[24] Hermes Trismegistus, Erkäntnuss der Natur [...] Verfertiget von Alethophilo (Hamburg 1706), who in spite of his assertion that he is translating from the Greek and Latin follows Van Beyerland's translation to the letter. The English translation (Hermes Trismegistus, The divine Pymander [...] Translated [...] by [...] Doctor Everard, London 1650) follows Patrizi.
[25] [Pierre Poiret], La théologie réelle (Amsterdam 1700), p. 58 in the added 'Lettre sur les principes et les caractères des principaux mystiques et spirituels'; Latin version: Pierre Poiret, Bibliotheca mysticorum (Amstelaedami 1708), p. 173.