Skip to main content

Hermes, Trismegistus

 Person

Staff Only

Biography

Hermes Trismegistus is the purported author of the Hermetic Corpus, a series of sacred texts that are the basis of Hermeticism. The Asclepius and the Corpus Hermeticum are the most important of the Hermetica. These texts were very popular during the Middle Ages. Hermes Trismegistus was credited with tens of thousands of highly esteemed writings, which were once thought to be of immense antiquity. This has since been disproved and they are now believed to be of multiple authorship. Frances Yates describes them in "Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition" as:

"...they were certainly not written in remotest antiquity by an all wise Egyptian priest, as the Renaissance believed, but by various unknown authors, all probably Greeks, and they contain popular Greek philosophy of the period, a mixture of Platonism and Stoicism, combined with some Jewish and probably some Persian influences".pp. 2–3

Found in 1 Collection or Record:

'Trimogestus ad Asclepium et Hammonam et Ermium' [incomplete], also known as Asclepius, 12th century

 Part
Identifier: MS 16/ff. 192r-198r
Scope and Contents This section of the manuscript contains the Asclepius, attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, but probably by Apuleius. (Virtually all literature ascribed to the name Hermes Trismegistus is incorrectly attributed. Individual works attributed to Hermes Trismegistus are authorised under the title in Library of Congress authority files.) The text is in fact a dialogue between Hermes Trismegistus and Asclepius on cosmological and theological ideas. It is thought to...
Dates: 12th century
Found in: University of Edinburgh Library Heritage Collections / Western Medieval Manuscripts / Composite manuscript including ten texts