for ancient literature already aroused by the native poets, Dante (1300),
Petrarch (1341), and Boccaccio (1350), was nourished by the influx of Greek
scholars, part of whom came in pursuance of an invitation to the Council of
Ferrara and Florence (1438) called in behalf of the union of the Churches
(among these were Pletho and his pupil Bessarion; Nicolas Cusanus was one
of the legates invited), while part were fugitives from Constantinople
after its capture by the Turks in 1453. The Platonic Academy, whose
most celebrated member, Marsilius Ficinus, translated Plato and the
Neoplatonists into Latin, was founded in 1440 on the suggestion of Georgius
Gemistus Pletho[1] under the patronage of Cosimo dei Medici. The writings
of Pletho ("On the Distinction between Plato and Aristotle"), of Bessarion
(_Adversus Calumniatorem Platonis_, 1469, in answer to the _Comparatio
Aristotelis et Platonis_, 1464, an attack by the Aristotelian, George of
Trebizond, on Pletho's work), and of Ficinus (_Theologia Platonica_, 1482),
show that the Platonism which they favored was colored by religious,
mystical, and Neoplatonic elements. If for Bessarion and Ficinus, just as
for the Eclectics of the later Academy, there was scarcely any essential
distinction between the teachings of Plato, of Aristotle, and of
Christianity; this confusion of heterogeneous elements was soon carried
much farther, when the two Picos (John Pico of Mirandola, died 1494, and
his nephew Francis, died 1533) and Johann Reuchlin (_De Verbo Mirifico_,
1494; _De Arte Cabbalistica_, 1517), who had been influenced by the former,
introduced the secret doctrines of the Jewish Cabala into the Platonic
philosophy, and Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim of Cologne (_De Occulta
Philosophia_, 1510; cf. Sigwart, _Kleine Schriften_, vol. i. p. 1 seq.)
made the mixture still worse by the addition of the magic art. The impulse
of the modern spirit to subdue nature is here already apparent, only that
it shows inexperience in the selection of its instruments; before long,
however, nature will willingly unveil to observation and calm reflection
the secrets which she does not yield to the compulsion of magic.