"A Miserable Quilt of Confused Erudition": The De perenni philosophia of Agostino Steuco

This dissertation is the first major anglophone study of the "De perenni philosophia" (1540) of Vatican librarian Agostino Steuco (1497–1548). It endeavors to place the author and his work within the contexts of the Catholic Reformation in Italy, Renaissance Platonic scholarship, and the intellectual culture of early modern Europe. Section I provides historical context by setting Steuco within the humanist and ecclesiastical landscape of early-sixteenth-century Italy, reconciling different profiles of the librarian in the current historiography. It also situates him in relation to patristic, Neoplatonic, and Renaissance traditions of classical scholarship and distinguishes his methodology from that of his peers Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499) and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–1494). Section II examines the "De perenni philosophia" through different lenses. It firstly demonstrates how Steuco “discovers” Christianity in pagan texts by imitating patristic methods of textual appropriation. It then uses Steuco’s text to detangle the world of early modern Platonism and its divergent trends. It lastly explores what Steuco hoped the "De perenni philosophia" could accomplish in the face of the Protestant Reformation and other contemporary controversies. Section III provides a preliminary reception history of the "De perenni philosophia" by examining the appropriation of Steuco’s work by three Protestant authors: Philippe de Mornay (1549–1623), Ralph Cudworth (1617–1688), and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646–1716). By tracing the varied fortunes of the work in three different geographical, confessional, and cultural contexts, it sheds light on the character of early modern erudition overall and questions the pre-/post-critical division according to which scholarship of the period is often evaluated. This study of Steuco and the overlooked "De perenni philosophia" should interest not only scholars of Renaissance and Reformation intellectual history, but also classicists, historical theologians, and others interested in the complicated textual underpinnings of the late Middle Ages and early modernity.