On the Immortality of the Soul

Luca Bettini, Florentine [of the Order of] Preachers, to Niccolò Michelozzi of the same religious order, sends warmest greetings.

A large historiated or decorative initial 'L' at the beginning of the text body.

I have read in these days, most excellent Niccolò, and quite gladly, at the home of our Giovanni Francesco Pico, Lord of Mirandola and Count of Concordia—who is in these times (to use a local adage) as it were a public ἐργαστήριον [workshop] of all letters—a digression on the immortality of the soul, drafted no less learnedly than eloquently (as is always his custom) during the interpretation of Aristotle’s books on the soul. From this I was moved with as much spiritual pleasure as I had previously been afflicted with sadness—with which I was quite tormented when I noticed that certain men of our age, raised to the stars by titles of wisdom among the common crowd of vulgar philosophers, had done no small harm to the republic of letters in this matter, and had driven headlong both themselves and no few followers.

Nor is it a wonder; for it is the practice of these men, common indeed to many who devote themselves to letters, to think no one worthy of wisdom unless he has always in hand the writings of either Aristotle or Averroes, or only those of a few of his own sect, and those indeed barbaric; and would that they did so as successfully as they do shamelessly, since each one frequently pursues his own opinions according to his whim, tastelessly indeed and with great bombast, performing not at all the duty of an interpreter, but rather like one addicted to alchemy. Wherefore they ought more truly and by the best right be called "Philodoxers" [lovers of opinion] rather than philosophers; or you might better call them not τῆς ἀληθείας φιλοθεάμονας [beholders of the truth], as it is in Plato, ἀλλ’ ὁμοίους φιλοσόφοις [but those resembling philosophers].

Certain of these men have written on the immortality of the soul according to the opinion of Aristotle in such a way that they have sufficiently demonstrated their own ignorance in this one matter, if their writings are compared more diligently and exactly with Aristotle himself by one who is not ignorant of the ancient interpreters, especially the Greeks, and of Plato and the Platonists—without whom anyone who thinks he has attained the philosophy of Aristotle cannot but be unlearned. This author of ours confronts this deadly disease with such diligence, richness of doctrine, and prudence that nothing further seems possible to be desired by anyone in this matter, and there is now no one [of those whose] delirious...