  Surely one of the most interesting aspects of Patrizi's philosophical works is his ongoing dedication to the study of sources in the history of philosophy as an essential part of his developing his own philosophical views. Not content merely to interpret the major sources such as Aristotle and Plato, nor even to limit himself to the “comparatio” tradition which sought to delineate the major differences between those two schools of thought, Patrizi used his linguistic, historical and humanistic skills to recover, study and make available a great many sources which he believed (rightly or wrongly) to have dated from the pre-Platonic and pre-Socratic period. He may thus be said to have exemplified an interest in two themes prevalent in other Renaissance authors – the notion of a “perennial philosophy” which reappears in different guises at different periods in the history of thought, and that of an “ancient theology” traceable back to pre-Hellenic civilizations (Schmitt 1966; Vasoli, 1981; Muccillo, 1996). His systematic collection of pre-Aristotelian sources as part of his attempt to determine the Stagirite's true place in the history of philosophy put valuable textual materials in the hands of future generations of scholars in a way that anticipated the modern collections of resources in the last two centuries.