The hiding Humanist — Ioannes, the good fellow

Kőszeghy, Péter (2012) The hiding Humanist — Ioannes, the good fellow. Hungarian Studies, 26 (2). pp. 233-240. ISSN 0236-6568

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Abstract

The letter of Marsilio Ficino was published under the title Dubitatio utrum opera philosophica regantur fato an providentia and summarised his tenets of Platonist-Humanist philosophy as it were. Based on his book of letters, this writing is part of a correspondence in which Ficino responds to Ioannes Pannonius of Buda, who, in his letter to Ficino — also published by the book of letters — criticised Ficino’s views. Literary criticism has been trying to identify the persona of Ioannes Pannonius for long. In the highly influential study of Florio Bánfi, Joannes de Varadino (Giovanni Unghero, Giovanni Varadino), that is, John of Várad, Augustine monk is identified as the supposed person. Bánfi’s views were reconsidered by Klára Pajorin in 1999, who reckoned that Ioannes Pannonius is John Vitéz the Younger. The author of the present study wishes to enhance the idea of Valery Rees (1999) who thinks that Ioannes Pannonius was created as a fictitious character by Ficino, and thus, the author reckons that the letter came in handy primarily against Savonarola and his followers because the correspondent from Buda raises those very topics on the bases of which Ficino can elaborate the sole decorous model of behaviour, the path that should be followed by the fictitious addressee as well.

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