The Figures

Lodovico Lazzarelli

Lazzarelli (also spelled Ludovico), a poet crowned laureate by Emperor Frederick III in 1468 (Arbizzoni 2005), is the other Renaissance translator of the Hermetica, next to Ficino. Most popular histories run Ficino-Pico-Bruno and leave him out.

What do we know about Lodovico Lazzarelli for certain?

Lodovico Lazzarelli’s life is known mainly from a life written by his brother Filippo, from his own works and from the manuscripts that carry them; the card gives each key fact, its evidence and its status.

Checked on 4 November 2026, each source at the link in the card or in the list of sources below.

What did Lazzarelli translate from the Corpus Hermeticum?

Lazzarelli translated treatises XVI-XVIII of the Corpus Hermeticum, the three missing from Ficino’s Latin Pimander of 1463, whose Greek manuscript stops at XIV; his was the first Latin version of them, and for I-XIV he also read his own Greek manuscript (Hanegraaff 2015, p. 195). The Viterbo copy, dated 1482 by Foà (2001), joins it to Ficino’s fourteen treatises under three prefaces to Correggio, signed Enoch, in which Lazzarelli calls himself a former poet made a son of true wisdom by a new regeneration and argues, against Ficino, that Hermes was older than Moses (Arbizzoni 2005). Symphorien Champier printed the three treatises at Lyon in 1507 as the Diffinitiones Asclepii; on the first of them, see CH XVI.

Who was Giovanni “Mercurio” da Correggio?

Giovanni “Mercurio” da Correggio was a wandering preacher who presented himself as a prophet and a new messiah and took the name “Mercurio” from Hermes Trismegistus, the Latin Mercurius (Foà 2001). On Palm Sunday, 11 April 1484, he entered Rome crowned with thorns and preached in the streets. Lazzarelli’s Epistola Enoch, the main source, puts him on a black horse, while Hanegraaff (2020) has him on a white donkey, like Christ entering Jerusalem; Foà warns that the letter’s details may all be symbolic. Correggio was later tried for heresy in Bologna and stopped and questioned by a Franciscan inquisitor in Florence in 1486 (Foà 2001); the last record of him dates from 1506.

What is the Crater Hermetis?

The Crater Hermetis is Lazzarelli’s Latin dialogue on the highest dignity of man, written in Naples between 1492 and 1494, in which he leads King Ferdinand I of Naples towards rebirth (Arbizzoni 2005); a date of c. 1493 means no more than the middle of that span. The title comes from the mixing bowl of Corpus Hermeticum IV, in which people immerse themselves to receive mind. The dialogue joins the Hermetic treatises to Christian theology, identifies Pimander, the divine Mind of the first treatise, with Christ the Logos (Hanegraaff 2020), and shows a knowledge of Kabbalah and the Talmud long credited in those years to Pico alone (Arbizzoni 2005). Its earlier version has the humanist Giovanni Pontano as a third speaker; the 1505 print drops him and softens the claim that Hermetic teaching came before Judaism and Christianity (Moreschini 1985, in Arbizzoni 2005). Hanegraaff (2015, p. 200) calls that print seriously abridged.

Why does Hanegraaff call Lazzarelli the real Hermetic tradition?

Wouter Hanegraaff argues that Lazzarelli, not Ficino, Pico or Bruno, is the Renaissance reader who grasped what the Hermetic treatises are about: salvation through a knowledge beyond reasoned discourse, reached in ecstatic experience. He finds that point built into the Crater Hermetis, while nothing suggests that Ficino saw it; like Ficino, Lazzarelli still calls this knowledge cognitio, not gnosis (Aries, 2015, pp. 195-196). Renaissance interest in Hermes, he concludes, was mostly a discourse about ancient wisdom, with perhaps only Lazzarelli, followed by Cornelius Agrippa, as exceptions (pp. 205-206); Brian Copenhaver, reviewing the 2005 edition in 2009, judged him right (as quoted on Hanegraaff’s site). Hanegraaff also sorts who stood at the source of the prisca theologia: for Lazzarelli it was Hermes in Egypt, for Pico Moses, for Ficino Zoroaster (p. 182), though Ficino’s 1463 preface still put Hermes first and he moved Zoroaster to the head of the line only after 1469 (Celenza, sec. 3.1).

Why is Lazzarelli so little known?

Lazzarelli is little known because general histories followed Yates’s story of Ficino, Pico and Bruno (1964), into which, Hanegraaff (2020) argues, a figure with no bearing on magic or early modern science did not fit. His dialogue reached print only in the shortened form of 1505, and the 2005 edition of his Hermetic writings was out of print by 2020. He is mapped alongside the famous names on the Atlas.

Fair questions

Who was Lodovico Lazzarelli?

An Italian humanist poet (San Severino Marche, 1447-1500) who made the first Latin translation of Corpus Hermeticum XVI-XVIII, wrote the Crater Hermetis (1492-1494) and became a disciple of the prophet Giovanni “Mercurio” da Correggio. His first name is also spelled Ludovico.

What is the Crater Hermetis?

A Latin dialogue by Lazzarelli, written in Naples in 1492-1494, in which he teaches King Ferdinand I of Naples the way to rebirth, joining the Hermetic treatises to Christian theology. The title takes the mixing bowl of Corpus Hermeticum IV. Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples printed it in Paris in 1505; Claudio Moreschini published the full Latin text in 1985.

Did Lazzarelli translate the Corpus Hermeticum?

Only its last part. Ficino had translated treatises I-XIV in 1463; Lazzarelli translated XVI-XVIII, which were missing from Ficino’s Greek manuscript, into Latin for the first time. The earliest copy, in Viterbo, is dated 1482 (Foà 2001), and Symphorien Champier printed the translation at Lyon in 1507.

Who was Giovanni Mercurio da Correggio?

A wandering prophet who presented himself as a new messiah and a new Hermes; on Palm Sunday, 11 April 1484, he entered Rome crowned with thorns. Lazzarelli became his disciple, probably in 1481, and described the Rome visit in his Epistola Enoch. Correggio was tried for heresy in Bologna and stopped and questioned by a Franciscan inquisitor in Florence in 1486; the last record of him dates from 1506.

Where can I read Lazzarelli’s Hermetic writings?

In English, in Wouter Hanegraaff and Ruud Bouthoorn, Lodovico Lazzarelli (1447-1500): The Hermetic Writings and Related Documents (Tempe, 2005): the Epistola Enoch, the three prefaces, the Crater Hermetis and his alchemical writings, with Correggio’s writings and the life by his brother Filippo; Hanegraaff wrote in 2020 that it was out of print. The full Latin Crater Hermetis is in Claudio Moreschini’s edition (Pisa, 1985).

Listen & watch

Sources & further reading

• Wouter J. Hanegraaff & Ruud M. Bouthoorn, Lodovico Lazzarelli (1447-1500): The Hermetic Writings and Related Documents (Tempe, Arizona: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2005); Open Library record.
• Guido Arbizzoni, “Lazzarelli, Ludovico”, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 64 (2005), Treccani (consulted 4 November 2026).
• Simona Foà, “Giovanni da Correggio”, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 55 (2001), Treccani (consulted 4 November 2026).
• Wouter J. Hanegraaff, “How Hermetic was Renaissance Hermetism?”, Aries 15 (2015), pp. 179-209, here pp. 180, 182, 195-196, 200 and 205-206; open-access PDF, DOI.
• Wouter J. Hanegraaff, “The Real Hermetic Tradition (Lodovico Lazzarelli and Giovanni da Correggio)”, blog post, 24 October 2020, online.
• Paul Oskar Kristeller, “Marsilio Ficino e Lodovico Lazzarelli”, Annali della R. Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, ser. 2, 7 (1938), pp. 237-262; reprinted in his Studies in Renaissance Thought and Letters (Rome, 1956).
• Claudio Moreschini, Dall’Asclepius al Crater Hermetis (Pisa, 1985), pp. 203-265: the full Latin text of the Crater (cited from Arbizzoni 2005; not seen).
• Christopher S. Celenza, “Marsilio Ficino”, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (first published 2011, substantive revision 28 May 2024), section 3.1; online.