Francesco Cattani da Diacceto

Francesco Cattani da Diacceto (16 November 1466 – 10 April 1522) was a Florentine Neoplatonist philosopher of the Italian Renaissance.

Life

Diacceto was born in Florence on 16 November 1466, the son of Zanobi Cattani da Diacceto and Lionarda di Francesco di Iacopo Venturi.

Diacceto died in Florence on 10 April 1522.

Works

His grandson Francesco Cattani da Diacceto, bishop of Fiesole, attempted to collect and publish his works in both Latin and Italian, and commissioned Benedetto Varchi to write his biography. This was published together with the Tre libri d’amore e un panegirico all’amore of the elder Cattani in Venice in 1561.

The works of Diacceto, in the original Latin, are collected in the 1563 edition, Opera Omnia, edited by Theodor Zwinger and published in Basel.

De Pulchro, which is based on Plotinus, contains Diacceto's Neoplatonic theory of magical and astrological effects, in a chapter entitled: "The twofold soul, first and second, and its cognition likewise twofold, from which derives the appetite for beauty, and natural Magic: the nature of which he shows and which he differentiates from superstitious magic."