Note 78 — Chapter X · FREETHOUGHT IN THE RENAISSANCE

Of the literary freethinking of the later Renaissance the most famous representative is Pomponazzi, or Pomponatius (1462–1525), for whom it has been claimed that he “really initiated the philosophy of the Italian Renaissance.”78 The Italian Renaissance, however, was in reality near its turning-point when Pomponazzi’s treatise on the Immortality of the Soul appeared (1516); and that topic was the commonest in the schools and controversies of that day.79 He has been at times spoken of as an Averroïst, on the ground that he denied immortality; but he did so in reality as a disciple of Alexander of Aphrodisias, a rival commentator to Averroës. What is remarkable in his case is not the denial of immortality, which we have seen to be frequent in Dante’s time, and more or less implicit in Averroïsm, but his contention that ethics could do very well without the belief80—a thing that it still took some courage to affirm, though the spectacle of the life of the faithful might have been supposed sufficient to win it a ready hearing. Presumably his rationalism, which made him challenge the then canonical authority of the scholasticized Aristotle, went further than his avowed doubts as to a future state; since his profession of obedience to the Church’s teaching, and his reiteration of the old academic doctrine of two-fold truth—one truth for science and philosophy, and another for theology81—are as dubious as any in philosophic history.82 Of him, or of Lorenzo Valla, more justly than of Petrarch, might it be said that he is the father of modern criticism, since Valla sets on foot at once historical and textual analysis, while Pomponazzi anticipates the treatment given to Biblical miracles by the rationalizing German theologians of the end of the eighteenth century.83 He too was a fixed enemy of the clergy; and it was not for lack of will that they failed to destroy him. He happened to be a personal favourite of Leo X, who saw to it that the storm of opposition to Pomponazzi—a storm as much of anger on behalf of Aristotle, who had been shown by him to doubt the immortality of the soul, as on behalf of Christianity—should end in an official farce of reconciliation.84 He was however not free to publish his treatises, De Incantationibus and De Fato, Libero Arbitrio, et Prædestinatione. These, completed in 1520, were not printed till after his death, in 1556 and 1557;85 and by reason of their greater simplicity, as well as of their less dangerous form of heresy, were much more widely read than the earlier treatise, thus contributing much to the spread of sane thought on the subjects of witchcraft, miracles, and special providences.