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21 Champier.jpg
Symphorien Champier, Liber de quadruplici vita. Lyon: Jacques Huguetan for Stephan Guenard, 1507.
Champier, the first to promote the works of Ficino in France, here publishes for the first time three until then unknown Hermetic treatises, which are now also considered to be part of the Corpus Hermeticum. Ficino had been unaware of their existence, as he had worked for his translation from the Greek manuscript that was brought to Cosimo de Medici (Florence, Biblioteca Medicea, Ms. Laurentianus Plut. 71.33), which only contained the first fourteen treatises. Cardinal Bessarion, as it happened, was in the possession of another Greek manuscript (Biblioteca Marciana, Cod. Marc. grec. Z 242 (= 993)) containing a better and complete version of the Corpus Hermeticum, which he bought in Florence in 1458!
