Sublime

The Being of Platonic philosophy

He ranked truth above custom, and justice above the law.

Peter Clergue, the randy rector of Montaillou, died before he could be sentenced. On 16 January 1329, he was pronounced a heretic, and his remains were dug up and burnt.

He was staying at his lovely, well-tended estate at Nomentum, with his wife, various close friends, and his household of slaves and freedmen. He was there cross-examined by a tribune about his remark about Piso. Seneca insisted that he never said his health depended on Piso’s: such a thing would have been entirely false, and Seneca claimed that he

Cesare Borgia was the son of the Spanish-Italian cardinal Rodrigo Borgia, soon to become Pope Alexander VI, who vies for the hotly contested title of most libertine Renaissance pope. “He had in the fullest measure all the vices of the flesh and of the spirit,” the pope’s contemporary Francesco Guicciardini wrote. He was the first pope to recognize

Dans ses carnets, il dénonce d’ailleurs « les hommes avides des seules richesses et jouissances matérielles et complètement privés du désir de la sapience, unique nourriture et véritable richesse de l’âme2 ». Il consacre donc bien plus de temps à apprendre qu’à se cantonner dans des activités lucratives qui lui permettraient de gagner plus qu’il n’

may perhaps be attained by man, for to that extent I am inclined to believe that I am wise; whereas the persons of whom I was speaking have a superhuman wisdom which I may fail to describe, because I have it not myself;

St Bonaventure (c.1217–74), for instance, governor-general of the order from 1257 to 1274, was a university man and speculative theologian of enormous erudition who succeeded grandly in combining the mystical elations of Franciscan piety with the rational disciplines of academic philosophy.