As we have seen, Marsilio Ficino considered the death of Socrates an exact parallel to the death of Jesus. Socratic humility and Socratic ignorance were for Ficino a precise analogue to the holy simplicity of the saints. He remarks that Socrates, like the early Christian martyrs, seemed simple- minded to fools, but was in fact the wisest of all.
ANGELS AND DEVILS
After the fifteenth century, secular and Christian models again began to diverge. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, most people felt that it was necessary, once again, to make a choice between Socrates and Jesus.
Caravaggio's lost first painting of The Inspiration of St Matthew represented the saint as a version of Socrates. Matthew was barefoot and shabbily dressed, and struggled to hold his pen, with a lot of help from a beautiful, androgynous angel. The illiterate saint recalled the Socrates who did not write. The painting used the iconography of Socrates to suggest the limi- tations of merely human wisdom: even the first Gospel writer was, like Socrates, no more than a holy fool.
10. In this lost painting by Caravaggio, St Matthew looks like Socrates: bare-foot, bald and goggle-eyed, with thick, stone-mason's arms. The saint is, again like Socrates, not accustomed to writing: the the angel has to help him hold his pen. The sinuous, androgynous angel may recall Socrates' sexy young friend, Alcibiades.
But the priests of the Contarelli Chapel, in San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome, who had commissioned the painting, rejected it; this Matthew was too foolish and pagan in his likeness to Socrates, and too little like a Christian saint.
Many Reformation thinkers felt that Ficino and Erasmus had gone too far in their admiration for the pagan Socrates. Luther complained, 'Some barely fail to make prophets of Socrates, Xenophon and Plato. But these fine disputations represent supreme ignorance of God and mere blasphemies.' To Luther, even suffering was not enough to please God. The most renowned pagan deaths, even if they had not been as easy as they were, could not please God: the greatest work is nothing without faith in the one true God. 'Even if Cicero or Socrates had sweated blood, that would not make it pleasing to God.'
Milton's Paradise Regained (published in 1671) presents Socrates as an inspiration for both Jesus and the Devil. In Book 3, Satan tries to tempt Jesus with worldly glory. In reply, the Saviour gives Satan two examples of those who have managed to achieve glory 'Without ambition, war, or violence'. The first is Job and the second Socrates, 'for truth's sake suffering death unjust', who now lives 'Equal in fame to proudest conquerors'.
But in Book 4, it is Satan who cites Socrates, when he tempts Jesus with pagan philosophy. Socrates, Satan declares, was the one who brought philosophy down from heaven, who was 'pronounced / Wisest of men' by the Oracle, and 'from whose mouth issued forth / Mellifluous streams, that watered all the schools'. Jesus replies that all knowledge offered by pagan learning is 'false, or little else but dreams'. Socrates was the wisest of the ancient philoso- phers only because he knew that he knew nothing. 'Much of the Soul they talk, but all awry', Jesus declares, sug- gesting that even Plato's Socratic discussion of the soul's immortality in the Phaedo will not stand up to Christian scrutiny.
Satan and Jesus present us with two very different ver- sions of Socrates. For Satan, Socrates is an orator, a public teacher, an inventor of doctrine and the founder of all sub- sequent philosophical schools. Socrates, in this Satanic view, influenced later philosophy precisely by his words. But Milton's Jesus corrects this Satanic view, suggesting rather that the imitation of Socrates should be much more like the Imitatio Christi. Socrates becomes a model for courage in death. He is admirable only for his humble acknowledge- ment that he knows nothing, and for his submission to unjust execution.
know yourself, know your death
In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, Socrates is usually a model for secular doubt, scientific enquiry and, especially, self-knowledge.
A painting by Jusepe de Ribera (c. 1591-1652) shows Socrates as a contemporary seventeenth-century gentle- man, looking into a mirror. This motif is fairly common in paintings of the period. In other images, Socrates holds up a mirror for a younger man, a boy or a group of younger men. Sometimes this contemplative Socrates comes very close to the figure of Vanitas, and is depicted with skull and book as well as the mirror. Even in Ribera's pared-down interpre- tation of the theme, Socrates' meditations seem dark and serious, a far cry from the comic Socrates doused in slops. The injunction 'gnothi seauton' ('Know yourself') seems close
11. In this painting by Jusepe de Ribera, Socrates - dressed as a contemporary seventeenth-century gentleman - contemplates his own reflection in a mirror. Socrates was closely associated with the motto, 'Know Yourself'. Here, his dark reflections also suggest 'Memento Mori'.
to 'Memento mori'. Socrates sees both his face and his death in the dark mirror he holds.
The three-way association between Socrates, self- knowledge and death became of central importance in the work of Michel de Montaigne (1533-92). Montaigne had a particularly intense and intimate relationship with the figure of Socrates. At times in the Essays, Socrates is merely the subject of illustrative anecdotes, like any other character from antiquity. But Montaigne finds that Socrates mirrors himself more closely than any other antecedent.
Socrates, like Montaigne, professed his own ignorance. The ignorance of Socrates was criticised by more positivist scientific thinkers of the period: for instance, Francis Bacon remarks in the Advancement of Learning that 'men ought not to fall ... into Socrates' his ironical doubting of all things'. Montaigne, on the other hand, admires Socrates precisely for his 'ironical doubting'. In the Apology for Raymond Sebond, Montaigne's great profession of faith in ignorance, Socrates becomes a crucial precursor of his own position: 'his best knowledge was the knowledge of his ignorance, and sim- plicity his best wisdom'.
Socrates, like Montaigne, spent his life trying to under- stand himself. Montaigne cites Socrates approvingly when he tries to justify his own interest in himself. Socrates earned the name 'wise' because 'he alone had seriously digested the precept of his god: to know himself'.
Montaigne's admiration for the dying Socrates was very great, but not unbounded. The Socrates of the Crito, who expressed attachment to his own city over all others, and who refuses to disobey the Laws, was unworthy of a man who claimed to be a citizen of the world. In this respect, if in no other, Montaigne felt himself superior to Socrates himself.
He loved Paris, but considered all men his compatriots: 'I am scarcely infatuated with the sweetness of my native air.' Socrates failed to anticipate fully Montaigne's own cosmo- politan, anthropological broad-mindedness.
But Montaigne was particularly haunted by the nobil- ity of Socrates' last hours. Many of the remarks on Socrates' death were added in Montaigne's final set of revisions: as he approached his own death, Montaigne thought more and more about that of Socrates.