Studies in Spanish Renaissance Thought (review)

BOOK REVIEWS 229 of attaining immortality (pp. 177, 182). The Platonic inspiration here is obvious. On most other philosophic points, however, Gelli follows Aristotle, particularly in the "Averroist" interpretation of Pomponazzi. De Gaetano seems to regard this interpretation as "modern" and "authentic" (p. 228). Be that as it may, Gelli regards the immortality of the individualhuman soul as knowable only by faith, not by reason. Aristotle's teaching on this matter is ambiguous , and Aristotle is taken as the very type of philosophic reason. Some of Gelli's religious opinions have something in common with the Protestant reformers, both transalpine and cisalpine, although De Gaetano seems to force the sense of some of the texts he quotes. (There is nothing particularly Protestant about calling for the very highest moral standards in the church.) Gelli belongs to the main tradition of Italian humanists who viewed ancient literature and philosophy in a Christian perspective. There are many misprints, some ltalianisms, some errors in English. "The Stagyrite," for example, should not designate the Philosopher from Stagira (p. 225). De Gaetano has utilized all the published and unpublished sources for his learned study and has produced a most readable account of a leading personality of Renaissance Florence. PAUL J. W. MILLER University of Colorado Studies in Spanish Renaissance Thought. By Carlos G. Norefia. International Archives of the History of Ideas, no. 82. (The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1975. Pp. ix + 277. Gld. 87.50) Norefia's views are clear and marked by a special maturity of appreciation and balance of judgment. He has chosen to treat his subject via four fine studies: Spanish Logicians of Montaigu College; Vitoria, Salamanca, and the American Indians; Fray Luis de Le6n and the Concern with Language; and Juan Huarte's Naturalistic Philosophy of Man. Norena's treatment of Francisco Vitoria does two things. It brings together an immense amount of secondary information for the first time, giving insight into the character of the great theologian. Second, it interprets Vitoria's texts, concluding with an exposition of his views. Norefia has tried to reveal key tensions in Vitoria's thought. One of these is how to maintain, on the one hand, that the society of all nations is natural--much as political society is natural in individual states--and on the other, thatjus gentium's binding force comes from the consent of men. These two theses, however hard to reconcile, are the strong doorposts through which safe entry into the world of the best sixteenth-centurymoral theorists has to be made. A strong point is made of Vitoria's notable moral integrity in the face of the Conquista. Norefia stays close to the texts and does not speculate much on the wider implications or possible solutions of this issue or of others. The best essay, I believe, is the one on Luis de Le6n, a figure of great attraction to Norefia as to me. An approach is made to Fray Luis the philosopher of language, in a legitimate sense, through Fray Luis the poet. "At once serene and tortured, living constantly in the twilight of hope and despair," according to Norefia, Fray Luis's central idea was of Christ as a "point of convergence of God's infinite perfection and man's contingent misery." Where is the contingency ? In Luis de Le6n's treatment of weakness (asin La Perfecta Casadaor his introduction to St. Teresa of Avila), in the suffering of the New Christian Jews in Spain, in the distortion of the Hebrew Bible by period scholars, in the rejection of the vernacular as a language of culture, were found the miseries of Fray Luis. And where the transcendence? In the word of God in the Scriptures that revealed for Fray Luis a divine plan guaranteeing a perfect correspondence between words and things, this being a cabalistic tenent at the heart of the greatest Castilian prose and poetry. Norefia says that Fray Luis has the most explicit and complex philosophy of language of any Spanish Renaissance author: "this is the key to his intellectual inspiration and distinguishing trait of his 230 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY genius." For Fray Luis, the connection of words and things is natural. But Norefm concludes that...