ABSTRACT
If Petrarch preferred Plato to Aristotle (for example, in De suis ipsius et multorum ignorautia), Quevedo was of the opposite opinion. 1 In Virtud militante he used the words of St Augustine for his own ends when he complained that in Plato there were no ideas on charity, 2 and in Providencia de Dios he distanced himself openly from Plato on an issue as significant as the immortality of the soul:
Permitio la Majestad eterna que por las plumas de los filósofos se deslizasen algunos resplandores de la verdad, anticipados con providencia para veneer con su dispositión la ignorancia contumaz; lo que se reconoce en Aristóteles, cuya dotrina es prólogo admitido de la teología escolástica, con cuya lógica, filosófía y metafisica se conleccionan todos los argumentos de las escuelas católicas, sirviendo de antídoto a la dotrina de Platón, con la cual, al opuesto, todos los herejeS informaron sus errores. Censura es ésta del Severo juicio de Tertuliano, libro De anima, cap. 23: Doleo bona fide Platonem omnium haereticorum condimentarium factum. Paréceme que tuvo razón el doctísimo africano de tenerle lástima y no respeto, pues no sólo lo dice, sino que lo verifica. No es poco importante esta diferencia entre Platón y Aristóteles para justificar el bien preterido séquito que éste tiene. (Quevedo 1979c: 1563)
[The eternal Majesty allowed, sliding down through the philosopher's quills, some glimmers of truth, anticipated with providence and vanquishing obstinate ignorance with their disposition, what is recognized in Aristotle, whose doctrine is a recognized prologue of ecclesiastical theology, with whose logic, philosophy, and metaphysics are elaborated all the arguments of the Catholic schools, serving as an antidote to Plato's doctrine, with which, in the opposite manner, all the heretics gave form to their errors. The latter is rebuked by the severe judgement of Tertullian, and his book De anima, cap. 23: Doleo bona fide Platonem omnium haereticorum condimentarium factum. It would seem to me that the most learned African was correct in showing him pity and not respect, for not only does he say this, but he verifies it. It is not of small importance this difference between Plato and Aristotle for justifying the much preferred retinue that the latter possesses].
Plato's speculations in Symposium and Phaedrus, reorientated by Plotinus during the third century in equally metaphysical terms, received a new orientation from Marsilio Ficino in Dialog? sopra l'amore (1469), in which he affirms that God is beautiful and engenders love, and is the author and custodian of all things. Judah Leon Abravanel, Leo Hebraeus, the most instrumental in continuing this approach, published the Dialoghi d'amore in 1535, perhaps the most influential work of its time, 152although not the most original. In it he argues that love dominates all beings, is the principle of union and vivification of all reality, serves as the idea of ideas, is of divine origin, amd is infinite and intellectual in nature. The Dialoghi had a decisive influence on erotic theories of the sixteenth century, as can be seen in Bembo (Gli Asolani), Castiglione (Il cortegiano), and Francisco de Aldana (Tratado de amor en modo platónico). 3 The translations into Spanish by Inca Garcilaso and Carlos Montesa contributed to the popularization of neoplatonic doctrines concerning love, This philography or erotic field was popular in Spain and Italy throughout the sixteenth century. Key examples are the ode to the musician Salinas by Fray Luis de León, the mysticism of St John of the Cross, and, along more profane lines, the erotic poetry of Camoens, Herrera, and Cervantes; also in prose, with the Diana of Montemayor and Cervantes's Galatea. In the prologue to the first part of Don Quijote, Cervantes writes: 'Si tratáredes de amores con dos onzas que sepáis de la lengua toscana, toparéis con León Hebreo, que os hincha las medidas". thus illustrating the degree of diffusion, and also of popularization, which the neoplatonic doctrine had gained, which by the middle of the sixteenth century, in Italy, had already turned into 'sluggish eclecticism'. 4