Clement Salaman
Translator of, and authority on the philosopher Marsilio Ficino
CLEMENT SALAMAN, who has died aged 85, was an authority on Marsilio Ficino, the 15thcentury Renaissance philosopher and humanist, tutor of both Lorenzo and Cosimo de Medici, who wrote copious letters to his friends and colleagues.
Salaman led a group of translators that produced 12 editions of these letters, written in Latin, which had not previously been published in English. They are full of interest, wisdom, hermetic teachings and sound advice. Through his work Salaman became a fount of knowledge about Ficino and his inspirations, chiefly Plato, Pythagoras and the mysterious but hugely influential Hermes Trismegistus “the thrice great”, a figure who has been variously identified with Moses and Akhenaton, the founders of monotheism.
Travelling and lecturing around Europe, the US and Australia at the invitation of various philosophical groups, Salaman and his scholarship found enthusiastic audiences across the world.
Clement Francis Alexander Salaman was born on December 23 1932 at Treborough Lodge, near Road water in West Somerset, a large white Edwardian house belonging to his grandparents halfway up one of the Brendon Hills.
He was educated at Radley and Trinity College, Oxford, where he read History. He did his National Service in the Loyals and was fortunate to be sent with the regiment to Trieste. After Oxford, Salaman applied to the Colonial Service and was accepted for a posting to Nigeria. He spent a fourth year at Oxford reading Hausa, a language spoken in northern Nigeria, but was promptly sent to the south-western part of the country, where Yoruba is spoken. This experience summed up for him all that he disagreed with in the Colonial Service, and after two years he resigned.
He took a job teaching History and English at Leyton Grammar School, where there was great excitement before he arrived: “Have you heard? We’re getting a teacher who’s been at boarding school.” Salaman spent several happy years there before joining the Central Office of Information, where he dealt with advertising agencies over issues such as seat belts and drink-driving.
It was during this time that he became involved with the London School of Economic Science, an unusual organisation whose guiding light was Leonardo da Vinci Maclaren and whose disciples were popularly called “the Philosophers”. They believed in scholarship, self-denial, awareness, meditation and giving up much of their time and something of their wealth to the cause.
Salaman had found what he regarded as the fulfilment of an intuition he had felt as a schoolboy – that he would find something exceptional and strange that would fill his life. The group had so much success that the idea of starting a school became mooted and was eagerly taken up. A friend from Radley became the prime mover and de facto headmaster, and in due course invited Salaman to join him in their inaugural building in Queen’s Gate, South Kensington, and subsequently at what became St James’s School, Twickenham.
However busy he was on school or philosophical matters, Salaman loved to play the recorder and sing with friends in his sturdy baritone voice. He was a devotee of music from the first half of the 18th century. His house was always full of people. He was a generous and enthusiastic host, on one occasion providing a “renaissance dinner” for a group of four strangers who had won it in a raffle. Something went wrong with the renaissance soup, which curdled and, according to a nephew who was present, had a strange, not altogether sympathetic taste. Salaman roared with his readily identifiable laughter.
He was working on the 13th edition of the Ficino letters when illness overtook him.
Clement Salaman is survived by his wife, Juliet (née Nicholson), whom he married in 1961, and by a son and two daughters.
Clement Salaman, born December 23 1932, died May 4 2018