Marsilio Ficino

The Reverend Marsilio Ficino
Marsilio Ficino, painted in 1521-1552. Giovio Series, Pinacoteca Comunale of Como Marsilio Ficino, painted in 1521-1552. Giovio Series, Pinacoteca Comunale of Como
Born	19 October 1433 Figline Valdarno, Republic of Florence
Died	1 October 1499 (aged 65) Careggi, Republic of Florence
Philosophical work
Era	Renaissance philosophy
Region	Western philosophy
School	Christian humanism Neohermeticism Neoplatonism Augustinianism Thomism
Institutions	Platonic Academy of Florence
Main interests	Theology, astrology, metaphysics
Notable works	De Christiana religione (1474) Theologia Platonica de immortalitate animae (1482) De amore (1484) De vita libri tres (1489)
Notable ideas	Platonic love Prisca theologia

Marsilio Ficino (Italian: [marˈsiːljo fiˈtʃiːno]; Latin name: Marsilius Ficinus; 19 October 1433 – 1 October 1499) was an Italian scholar and Catholic priest who was one of the most influential humanist philosophers of the early Italian Renaissance. He was an astrologer, a reviver of Neoplatonism in touch with the major academics of his day, and the first translator of Plato's complete extant works into Latin. His Florentine Academy, an attempt to revive Plato's Academy, influenced the direction and tenor of the Italian Renaissance and the development of European philosophy.

Early life

Ficino was born at Figline Valdarno. His father, Diotifeci d'Agnolo, was a physician under the patronage of Cosimo de' Medici, who took the young man into his household and became the lifelong patron of Marsilio, who was made tutor to his grandson, Lorenzo de' Medici. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, the Italian humanist philosopher and scholar, was another of his students.

Career and thought

Platonic Academy

During the sessions at Florence of the Council of Ferrara-Florence in 1438–1445, when attempts to heal the schism of the Eastern (Orthodox) and Western (Catholic) churches had thus far failed, Cosimo de' Medici and his intellectual circle had made acquaintance with the Neoplatonic philosopher George Gemistos Plethon, whose discourses upon Plato and the Alexandrian mystics so fascinated the humanists of Florence that they named him the second Plato. In 1459 John Argyropoulos was lecturing on Greek language and literature at Florence, and Ficino became his pupil.

When Cosimo decided to refound Plato's Academy at Florence, he chose Ficino as its head. In 1462, Cosimo supplied Ficino with Greek manuscripts of Plato's work, whereupon Ficino started translating the entire corpus into Latin (draft translation of the dialogues finished 1468–69; published 1484). Ficino also produced a translation of a collection of Hellenistic Greek documents found by Leonardo da Pistoia later called Hermetica, and the writings of many of the Neoplatonists, including Porphyry, Iamblichus, and Plotinus.

Among his many students were Niccolò Valori and Francesco Cattani da Diacceto. The latter was considered by Ficino to be his successor as the head of the Florentine Platonic Academy. Diacceto's student, Giovanni di Bardo Corsi, produced a short biography of Ficino in 1506.

Theology, astrology, and the soul

Though trained as a physician, Ficino became a priest in 1473. In 1474 Ficino completed his treatise on the immortality of the soul, Theologia Platonica de immortalitate animae (Platonic Theology) and De Christiana Religione (On the Christian Religion), a history of religions and defense of Christianity. In the rush of enthusiasm for every rediscovery from Antiquity, he exhibited some interest in the arts of astrology (despite denigrating it in relation to divine revelation), which landed him in trouble with the Catholic Church. In 1489 he was accused of heresy before Pope Innocent VIII and was acquitted.

Writing in 1492 Ficino proclaimed:

"This century, like a golden age, has restored to light the liberal arts, which were almost extinct: grammar, poetry, rhetoric, painting, sculpture, architecture, music... this century appears to have perfected astrology."

— Marcilio Ficino, A letter to a friend (1492)

Ficino's letters, extending over the years 1474–1494, survive and have been published. He wrote De amore (Of Love) in 1484. De vita libri tres (Three books on life), or De triplici vita (The Book of Life), published in 1489, provides a great deal of medical and astrological advice for maintaining health and vigor, as well as espousing the Neoplatonist view of the world's ensoulment and its integration with the human soul:

There will be some men or other, superstitious and blind, who see life plain in even the lowest animals and the meanest plants, but do not see life in the heavens or the world... Now if those little men grant life to the smallest particles of the world, what folly! what envy! neither to know that the Whole, in which 'we live and move and have our being,' is itself alive, nor to wish this to be so.

One metaphor for this integrated "aliveness" is Ficino's astrology. In the Book of Life, he details the interlinks between behavior and consequence. It talks about a list of things that hold sway over a man's destiny. Regardless, in his later extensive commentary on Plotinus's Ennead III, he actively and systematically repudiated the Neoplatonic account of the soul, the hypostasis Soul's unity, as well as the transmigration of the soul, the soul's eternity as opposed to mere imperishability, and the notion that the soul was created by intermediaries and not by God directly. Instead he preferred to interpret all of these more pagan Neoplatonic points, as Stephen Gersh comments in his Analytic Study of the same work, as moral allegories―in keeping with his general tendency towards concordance between Platonism and Christianity.

Medical works

Probably due to early influences from his father, Diotifeci, who was a doctor to Cosimo de' Medici, Ficino published Latin and Italian treatises on medical subjects such as Consiglio contro la pestilenza (Recommendations for the treatment of the plague) and De vita libri tres (Three books on life). His medical works exerted considerable influence on Renaissance physicians such as Paracelsus, with whom he shared the perception on the unity of the microcosmos and macrocosmos, and their interactions, through somatic and psychological manifestations, with the aim to investigate their signatures to cure diseases. Those works, which were very popular at the time, dealt with astrological and alchemical concepts. Thus Ficino came under the suspicion of heresy; especially after the publication of the third book in 1489, which contained specific instructions on healthful living in a world of demons and other spirits.

Platonic love

Notably, Ficino coined the term Platonic love, which first appeared in his letter to Alamanno Donati in 1476. In 1492, Ficino published Epistulae (Epistles), which contained Platonic love letters, written in Latin, to his academic colleague and life-long friend, Giovanni Cavalcanti, concerning the nature of Platonic love. Because of this, some have alleged Ficino was a homosexual, but this finds little basis in his letters or his general works and philosophy. In his commentary on the Republic, too, he specifically denies to his readers that the homosexual references made in Plato's dialogue were anything more than to bemuse the audience, "spoken merely to relieve the feeling of heaviness". Regardless, Ficino's letters to Cavalcanti resulted in the popularization of the term Platonic love in Western Europe.

Death

Ficino died on 1 October 1499 at Careggi. In 1521 his memory was honored with a bust sculpted by Andrea Ferrucci, which is located in the south side of the nave in the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore.

Works

• Theologia Platonica de immortalitate animae (Platonic Theology). Harvard U. P., Latin with English translation.
  • vol. 1, 2001, ISBN 0-674-00345-4
  • vol. 2, 2002, ISBN 0-674-00764-6
  • vol. 3, 2003, ISBN 0-674-01065-5
  • vol. 4, 2004, ISBN 0-674-01482-0
  • vol. 5, 2005, ISBN 0-674-01719-6
  • vol. 6 with index, 2006, ISBN 0-674-01986-5
• The Letters of Marsilio Ficino, transl. by the Language Department of the School of Economic Science (Shepheard-Walwyn, 1975–2013). (With extensive endnotes.)

• vol. I, 1975, ISBN 978-0-85683-010-5
• vol. II, 1978, ISBN 978-0-85683-036-5
• vol. III, 1981, ISBN 978-0-85683-045-7
• vol. IV, 1988, ISBN 978-0-85683-070-9
• vol. V, 1994, ISBN 978-0-85683-129-4
• vol. VI, 1999, ISBN 978-0-85683-167-6
• vol. VII, 2003, ISBN 978-0-85683-192-8
• vol. VIII, 2010, ISBN 978-0-85683-242-0
• vol. IX, 2013, ISBN 978-0-85683-289-5

Commentaries

• Gardens of Philosophy: Ficino on Plato, ed. and transl. by Arthur Farndell (Shepheard-Walwyn, 2006). ISBN 978-0-85683-240-6 This, the first volume in a five-volume series, provides the first English translation of the 25 short commentaries on the dialogues and the 12 letters traditionally ascribed to Plato. The volume contains the following:
  • Ficino's Preface to his Commentaries on Plato [addressed to Lorenzo de' Medici].
  • Hipparchus: The Desire for Gain
  • Philosophy or The Lover
  • Theages: Wisdom
  • Meno: Virtue
  • Alcibiades I: Nature of Man
  • Alcibiades II: Prayer
  • Minos: Law
  • Euthyphro: Holiness
  • Hippias: The Beautiful and Noble
  • Lysis: Friendship
  • Theatetus: Knowledge
  • Ion: Poetic Inspiration
  • Statesman: Kingship
  • Protagoras: Virtue
  • Euthydemus: The Views of the Sophists
  • Lesser Hippias: Truthfulness
  • Charmides: Temperance
  • Laches: Courage
  • Cratylus: Names
  • Gorgias: Rhetoric
  • Apology: Socrates' Defense
  • Crito: Socrates' Way of Life
  • Phaedo: Nature of the Soul
  • Menexenus: Love for One's Country
  • Critias: Story of Atlantis
  • Discussions of Plato's twelve letters
  • Two of Ficino's other prefaces to the dialogues and their commentaries
• Evermore Shall Be So: Ficino on Plato's Parmenides, ed. and transl. by Arthur Farndell (Shepheard Walwyn, 2008). (Does not include Latin text.) ISBN 978-0-85683-256-7
• When Philosophers Rule: Ficino on Plato's Republic, Laws, and Epinomis, ed. and transl. by Arthur Farndell (Shepheard-Walwyn, 2009). ISBN 978-0-85683-257-4 (Unabridged except for the commentary on Republic, bk. 8; see Nuptial Arithmetic, below.)
• All Things Natural: Ficino on Plato's Timaeus, ed. and transl. by Arthur Farndell (Shepheard-Walwyn, 2010). ISBN 978-0-85683-258-1
• On the Nature of Love: Ficino on Plato's Symposium, ed. and transl. by Arthur Farndell (Shepheard-Walwyn, 2016). ISBN 978-0-85683-509-4

Other translations of commentaries

• Commentaries on Plato. I Tatti Renaissance Library. Bilingual, annotated English/Latin editions of Ficino's commentaries on the works of Plato.
  • vol. 1, 2008, Phaedrus, and Ion, transl. by Michael J. B. Allen, ISBN 0-674-03119-9
  • vol. 2, 2012, Parmenides, pt. 1, transl. by Maude Vanhaelen, ISBN 0-674-06471-2
  • vol. 3, 2012, Parmenides, pt. 2, transl. by Maude Vanhaelen, ISBN 0-674-06472-0
• Commentary on Plato's Symposium on Love, transl. with an introduction and notes by Sears Jayne (Woodstock, CT: Spring Publications, 1985), 2nd edn., 2000, ISBN 0-88214-601-7

Other works

• Nuptial Arithmetic: Marsilio Ficino's Commentary on the Fatal Number in Book VIII of Plato's Republic, ed. and transl. by Michael J. B. Allen (U. of California P., 1994).
• Icastes. Marsilio Ficino's Interpretation of Plato's Sophist, ed. and transl. by Michael J. B. Allen (Berkeley: U. of California P., 1989).
• The Book of Life, transl. with an introduction by Charles Boer, Dallas: Spring Publications, 1980. ISBN 0-88214-212-7
• De vita libri tres (Three Books on Life, 1489), transl. by Carol V. Kaske and John R. Clarke, Tempe, Arizona: The Renaissance Society of America, 2002. With notes, commentaries, and Latin text on facing pages. ISBN 0-86698-041-5
  • "De triplici vita". World Digital Library (in Latin). 16 September 1489. Retrieved 1 March 2014.
• De religione Christiana et fidei pietate (1475–6), dedicated to Lorenzo de' Medici. (English translation below.)
• On the Christian Religion, ed. and transl. by Dan Attrell, Brett Bartlett, and David Porreca (U. of Toronto P., 2022). (With extensive notes, indexes, etc.)
• In Epistolas Pauli commentaria, Marsilii Ficini Epistolae (Venice, 1491; Florence, 1497).
• Meditations on the Soul: Selected letters of Marsilio Ficino, transl. by the Language Department of the School of Economic Science, London. Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions International, 1996. ISBN 0-89281-658-9.
• Collected works: Opera (Florence, 1491, Venice, 1516, Basel, 1561).

See also

• Allegorical interpretations of Plato
• Contemporary Italian Renaissance philosophers:
  • Lodovico Lazzarelli
  • Giovanni Mercurio da Correggio
  • Giovanni Pico della Mirandola
• Greek love
• Hermeticism
• Renaissance magic
• Translations (historical)

From the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia

Marsilio Ficino — A philosopher, philologist, physician, b. at Florence, 19 Oct., 1433; d. at Correggio, 1 Oct, 1499. Son of the physician of Cosmo de' Medici, he served the Medicis for three generations and received from them a villa at Monte Vecchio. He studied at Florence and at Bologna; and was specially protected in his early work by Cosmo de' Medici, who chose him to translate the works of Plato into Latin. The Council of Florence (1439) brought to the city a number of Greek scholars, and this fact, combined with the founding of the Platonic Academy, of which Ficino was elected president, gave an impetus to the study of Greek and especially to that of Plato. Ficino became an ardent admirer of Plato and a propagator of Platonism, or rather neo-Platonism, to an unwarranted degree, going so far as to maintain that Plato should be read in the churches, and claiming Socrates and Plato as fore-runners of Christ. He taught Plato in the Academy of Florence, and it is said he kept a light burning before a bust of Plato in his room. It is supposed that the works of Savonarola drew Ficino closer to the spirit of the Church. He was ordained priest in 1477 and became a canon of the cathedral of Florence. His disposition was mild, but at times he had to use his knowledge of musle to drive away melancholy. His knowledge of medicine was applied very largely to himself, becoming almost a superstition in its detail. As a philologist his worth was recognized and Renchlin sent him pupils from Germany. Angelo Poliziano was one of his pupils.

As a translator his work was painstaking and falthful, though his acquaintance with Greek and Latin was by no means perfect. He translated the "Argo-nautica", the "Orphic Hymns", Homer's "Hymns", and Hesiod's "Theogony"; his translation of Plato appeared before the Greek text of Plato was published. He also translated Plotinus, Porphyry, Proclus, Iamblichus, Alcinous, Synesius, Psellus, the "Golden Thoughts" of Pythagoras, and the works of Dionysius the Areopagite. When a young man he wrote an "Introduction to the Philosophy of Plato"; his most important work was "Theologia Platonica de animarum lmmortalitate" (Florence, 1482); a shorter form of this work is found in his "Compendium theologiae Platonicae". He respects Aristotle and calls St. Thomas the "glory of theology"; yet for him Plato is the philosopher. Christianity, he says, must rest on philosophic grounds; in Plato alone do we find the arguments to support its claims, hence he considers the revival of Plato an intervention of Providence. Plato does not stop at immediate causes, but rises to the highest cause, God, in Whom he sees all things. The Philosophy of Plato is a logical outcome of previous thought, beginning with the Egyptians and advancing step by step till Plato takes up the mysteries of religion and casts them in a form that made it possible for the neo-Platonist to set them forth clearly. The seed is to be found in Plato, its full expression in the neo-Platonists. Ficino follows this line of thought in speaking of the human soul, which he considered as the image of the God-head, a part of the great chain of existence coming forth from God and leading back to the same source, giving us at the same time a view of the attributes of God of his relations to the world. His style is not always clear. Perhaps his distinctive merit rests on the fact that he introduced Platonic philosophy to Europe. Besides the works already mentioned, he left: "De religione Christiana et fidei pietate", dedicated to Lorenzo de' Medici; "In Epistolas Pauli commentaria", Marsilii Ficini Epistolae (Venice, 1491; Florence, 1497). His collected works: Opera (Florence,1491, Venice, 1516, Basel, 1561).

Further reading

• Allen, Michael J.B; Rees, V; Davies, Martin (2002). Marsilio Ficino: his theology, his philosophy, his legacy. Brill. ISBN 9789004118553. Retrieved 26 May 2013.
• Ernst Cassirer, Paul Oskar Kristeller, John Herman Randall, Jr., The Renaissance Philosophy of Man. The University of Chicago Press (Chicago, 1948.) Marsilio Ficino, Five Questions Concerning the Mind, pp. 193–214.
• Clucas, Stephen; Forshaw, Peter J; Rees, Valery (2011). Laus Platonici Philosophi: Marsilio Ficino and his Influence. BRILL. ISBN 9789004188976. Archived from the original on 5 October 2016. Retrieved 8 September 2014.
• Thomas Gilbhard, Stéphane Toussaint, Bibliographie ficinienne 2000-2010, Paris 2024 («Accademia. Revue de la Société Marsile Ficin» XXIV, 2022), 127 p.
• Anthony Gottlieb, The Dream of Reason: A History of Western Philosophy from the Greeks to the Renaissance (Penguin, London, 2001) ISBN 0-14-025274-6
• James Heiser, Prisci Theologi and the Hermetic Reformation in the Fifteenth Century (Repristination Press, Malone, Texas, 2011) ISBN 978-1-4610-9382-4
• Paul Oskar Kristeller, Eight Philosophers of the Italian Renaissance. Stanford University Press (Stanford California, 1964) ch. 3, "Ficino," pp. 37–53.
• Raffini, Christine, "Marsilio Ficino, Pietro Bembo, Baldassare Castiglione: Philosophical, Aesthetic, and Political Approaches in Renaissance Platonism", Renaissance and Baroque Studies and Texts, v.21, Peter Lang Publishing, 1998. ISBN 0-8204-3023-4
• Robb, Nesca A., Neoplatonism of the Italian Renaissance, New York: Octagon Books, Inc., 1968.
• Reeser, Todd W. Setting Plato Straight: Translating Ancient Sexuality in the Renaissance. Chicago: UChicagoP, 2016.
• Field, Arthur, The Origins of the Platonic Academy of Florence, New Jersey: Princeton, 1988.
• Allen, Michael J.B., and Valery Rees, with Martin Davies, eds. Marsilio Ficino: His Theology, His Philosophy, His Legacy. Leiden: E.J.Brill, 2002. A wide range of new essays. ISBN 9004118551
• Voss, Angela, Marsilio Ficino, Western Esoteric Masters series. North Atlantic Books, 2006. ISBN 978-1-5564-35607

External links

• Works by Marsilio Ficino at Open Library
• Platonis Opera Omnia (Latin) Archived 3 April 2012 at the Wayback Machine
• Celenza, Christopher S. "Marsilio Ficino". In Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. ISSN 1095-5054. OCLC 429049174.
• Marsilio Ficino at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
• Marsilio Ficino entry by James G. Snyder in Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
• Short Biography of Ficino
• Catholic Encyclopedia entry
• The Influence of Marsilio Ficino
• www.ficino.it Website of the International Ficino Society Archived 7 March 2018 at the Wayback Machine
• Online Galleries, History of Science Collections, University of Oklahoma Libraries. High resolution images of works by and/or portraits of Marsilio Ficino in.jpg and.tiff format.