The purpose of this article is to analyze a short, little-known—yet notably rich—work of Leon Battista Alberti, in order, first, to grasp its relations to its classical model, the pseudo-Pythagorean Golden Verses, as well as to the rest of Alberti’s writing, and then to determine its nature. The author is thereby led to refute the theory that this is a treatise of esoteric hermeticism or a sort of prayer which might offer information about the religious beliefs of Alberti. An edition of the text and a translation into French are appended.

Researchers should cite this work as follows:

• Paoli, M., (2025), "Un abrégé de la pensée de Leon Battista Alberti en langue vernaculaire: les Sentenze pitagoriche", HSSCommons: (DOI: )

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1. Renaissance and Reformation

Original publication: Paoli, Michel. "Un abrégé de la pensée de Leon Battista Alberti en langue vernaculaire: les Sentenze pitagoriche." Renaissance and Reformation 38 (1): 2020. 41-60. DOI: 10.33137/rr.v38i1.8748. This material has been re-published in an unmodified form on the Canadian HSS Commons with the permission of Iter Canada / Renaissance and Reformation. Copyright © the author(s). Their work is distributed by Renaissance and Reformation under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. For details, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/.