[Disputationes Camaldulenses.] Christophori Landini Florentini libri quattuor: Primus de vita activa & contemplativa. Secundus de summo bono. Tertius & quartus in Publij Virgilij Maronis Allegorias....

Argenatori [i.e., Strasbourg]: Matthias Schürer, 1508. Very Good. Small folio (29 cm); [128] pages. Round roman type. In later (20th-century?) half vellum over marbled boards. Ochre-dyed edges. Minor shelf wear. Marginal ink annotations in contemporary hand, especially in the third book (allegorical reading of Aeneid). Adams L-125

The four dialogues that compose this book were the gateway to the Florentine Platonism that characterized the latter part of the 15th century. Written around 1470, they began circulating in manuscript (including a deluxe copy dedicated to Federico da Montefeltro) around 1473 and did not see print until 1480, in an edition now lost. There were only four more printings before the 20th century, the last in 1511. All are rare.

Landino was engaged by the Medici to teach at the Studio, and later at the Platonic Academy, where his students and colleagues included Ficino, Leon Battista Alberti, Giuliano and Lorenzo de' Medici (all of whom appear as characters in the dialogues), as well as Pico della Mirandola, Poliziano, Nicolas Cusano, and more. This group embraced a version of Platonism that promoted retirement from politics and civic engagement in favor of intense, quasi-mystical pursuit of divine and poetic inspiration, what came to be known as "poetic theology." The text offered here is the first major statement of this turn to "contemplation" as the highest good (although true to the dialogue form, both sides of the coin are given a voice). The latter two chapters present an interpretation of the Aeneid as an allegory of the soul's movement, led by the Heavenly Venus, from the fires of passion (Troy) through storms of appetite, to true wisdom (Italy). This trend to hermetic interpretation characterized the teachings of Landino's student Ficino and his followers. Indeed the yearning for a mystical engagement with the world, introduced in this text, became a key element of the Florentine Renaissance of Ficino, Poliziano, and Pico, until it morphed into the pieties of Savonarola's oppressive theocracy.