The Accademia Pontaniana: A Model of a Humanist Network. Shulamit Furstenberg-Levi. Brill’s Studies in Intellectual History 258. Leiden: Brill, 2016. viii + 224 pp. $139.
Calma never identifies Taylor’s article, though the reader will encounter it easily enough in the other articles of the book). Moreover, he claims to have unearthed “60 new Latin commentaries in addition to those 14 mentioned by Taylor” (21). So, far from being the culmination of the study of unknown or unedited Liber de causis commentaries, these two volumes can be viewed rather as the first installment of a large, ongoing project. I can provide, however, one small cautionary note. Calma mentions “the commentary of Ambrogio Fiandino (d. 1532), one of the last authors whose commentary is still extant” (21). Frommy experience and that of others, I fear that Fiandino’s commentary will prove to be what Italians would term a delusione, a pastiche of wholesale plagiarisms rather than an original work.