Patrizi da Cherso, Francesco (1529–97)

Francesco Patrizi was an Italian humanist and anti-Aristotelian who took up a newly-founded chair of Platonic philosophy at Ferrara in 1578, the first such chair in Europe. Through his various writings he contributed to poetic theory, rhetoric, and historiography, as well as to military history and hydraulics. His two most influential works were his Discussiones Peripateticae (1581) and his Nova de universis philosophia (New Philosophy of Universes) (1591). Patrizi cast doubt on the authenticity of many of the works attributed to Aristotle, and argued that Aristotle’s philosophy was incompatible with Christianity. He believed it should be replaced with his own synthesis of Platonism, Neoplatonism, and Hermeticism (or Hermetism). Patrizi saw light as the basic metaphysical principle, and interpreted the universe in terms of the diffusion of light (lumen) from God, the primary light (prima lux). His most influential doctrine concerned space, which he argued to be infinite, three-dimensional, and distinct from the bodies it contained.