Abstract
For almost 1000 years, the old Roman Empire was divided: between the East, centred on Constantinople, and the West. Both sides were heirs to classical (Roman and Greek) civilization, but East and West gradually went down different paths theologically, intellectually and culturally. The West went through a ‘Dark Age’, with Rome overrun by barbarians and its knowledge almost completely lost: the light of classical civilization only kept burning through the scattered monasteries of Western Europe. But in the East, the Roman Empire flourished, and came to be known as the Byzantine Empire. It expanded its power and influence across the Eastern Mediterranean, and even to Italy. For the Byzantines, there was no rupture between the Rome of Augustus and the Medieval world. The philosophy and culture of Rome, originally filtered from classical Greece, and now filtered once again through Byzantine Greece, was a living tradition, with significant intellectual centres flourishing in different periods, for instance in Athens and Alexandria.
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- 1.
The ‘Story’ of the resurrection of Plato presented here deliberately oversimplifies complex issues, for instance, the question of the ‘division’ of the Empire. We will re-explore much of the history presented, at least as it appertains to Marsilio Ficino, throughout this book.
- 2.
E. Cassirer (1945) ‘Ficino’s Place in Intellectual History’, Journal of the History of Ideas, VI, p. 498, citing P.O. Kristeller (1943) The Philosophy of Marsilio Ficino, trans. V. Conant. 1964 rpt (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith), pp. 19–20.
- 3.
We will examine Ficino’s philosophy and mission in Chap. 2.
- 4.
Lisa Jardine discusses the role of wealthy businessmen-patrons on the artistic and intellectual development of the Renaissance in (1996) Worldly Goods: A New History of the Renaissance (New York: Nan A. Talese/Doubleday).
- 5.
Hankins argues that Cosimo was very interested in learning, certainly collected and potentially read classical works, liked to spend time with the early Florentine humanists such as Leonardo Bruni, but that he himself was not very learned and perhaps preferred moral works for his own personal edification, Hankins Humanism and Platonism, II, pp. 190–1.
- 6.
Hankins Humanism and Platonism, II, p. 193.
- 7.
A. Field (1988) The Origins of the Platonic Academy of Florence (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton Univ. Press), p. 58, citing P.O. Kristeller (1975) Renaissance Thought and its Sources (New York: Columbia University Press), p. 161.
- 8.
Members Letters, VI, p. 81, n. 7, citing Ficino in his preface to writings on Plotinus (Opera Omnia 1537). Giovanni Corsi, Ficino’s contemporary biographer, says that Cosimo decided to support an Academy after meeting George Gemistos Pletho at the Council of Ferrara-Florence in 1439 in Members (1981) Letters III, p. 137 ‘The Life of Marsilio Ficino’; and Hankins, Humanism and Platonism, II, p. 188.
- 9.
Hankins, Humanism and Platonism, I, p. 479.
- 10.
Hankins, Humanism and Platonism, II, p. 205.
- 11.
Hankins, Humanism and Platonism, II, p. 206. See also the Letter to Michele Mercati (1 April 1466), cited by P.O. Kristeller (1986) ‘Marsilio Ficino and his work after five hundred years’ in G. C. Garfagnini (ed.) Marsilio Ficino et il Ritorno di Platone (Firenze: Leo S. Olschki Editore), I, pp. 32–3. M.J.B. Allen suggests that ‘maybe’ it was obtained in 1438 directly from Pletho (1994) Nuptial Arithmetic: Marsilio Ficino’s Commentary on the Fatal Number in Book VIII of Plato’s Republic (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press), p. 18.
- 12.
Field Origins, p. 108, citing Ficino’s Prooemium to the translation of Xenocrates De morte.
- 13.
Field Origins, p. 108, n. 3, citing P.O. Kristeller Supplementum Ficinianum, II, p. 104, citing Ficino in Prooemium to the translation of ten dialogues of Plato, to Cosimo de’ Medici: ‘(E) Bizantia Florentiam spiritus eius ipsis in licteris vivens attica voces resonus ad Cosmum Medicem advolavit’.
- 14.
Hankins Humanism and Platonism, II, p. 369. Hankins further argues that the first Medici pope, and son of Lorenzo, Leo X, was interested in promoting Lorenzo and Ficino’s relationship to turn Lorenzo into the philosopher-king, Humanism and Platonism, II, p. 368.
- 15.
Hankins Humanism and Platonism, II, p. 291.
- 16.
J. Hankins (2003) Humanism and Platonism, I, p. 314.
- 17.
Hankins Humanism and Platonism, II, p. 142.
- 18.
Field Origins, p. 16.
- 19.
Iacapa Bracciolini and Francesco Salviati, for example.
- 20.
Members Letters, V, pp. 3–4, Letter to Sixtus.
- 21.
Letters V, p. 15, Letter to Sixtus. This is prescient, if we think ahead to the Dominican monk, Girolamo Savonarola.
- 22.
Ficino was the dominant translator and interpreter of Plato until 1819. Torquato Tasso, Ben Jonson, Milton, Racine, Leibniz, Spinoza, Berkeley, Rousseau, Kant and Coleridge all owned his translation. Hankins Humanism and Platonism, II, p. 441.
- 23.
I will use the term Platonist for all Platonists after Plato in this work. I simply point out here the differentiation now made between Middle Platonists, for instance, and Neoplatonists. This is a difference that Ficino would not have recognized.
- 24.
Allen calls him a ‘syncretist by temperament’, Nuptial Arithmetic, p. 27.
- 25.
This section owes a large debt to Hankins’ meticulous research of Ficino’s life in Hankins Humanism and Platonism and Hankins Plato in the Italian Renaissance.
- 26.
In 1473, Ficino was ordained first deacon and then priest in the Archbishop’s palace in Florence, P. Serracino-Inglott (2002) ‘Ficino the Priest’, p. 8, in M.J.B. Allen, V. Rees and M. Davies (eds) Marsilio Ficino: His Theology, His Philosophy, His Legacy. (Leiden, Boston and Koln: Brill), pp. 1–14.
- 27.
For a longer discussion of the relationship between priest and doctor in Ficino’s thought and in his period, see Serracino-Inglott, ‘Ficino the Priest’, pp. 1–6.
- 28.
Hankins Plato in the Italian Renaissance, II, p. 438. Indirectly there are influences, of course.
- 29.
B.P. Copenhaver (2011) ‘How to do magic and why: philosophical prescriptions’ in J. Hankins (ed.) The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Philosophy, rpt (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp. 137–8.
- 30.
A. Brown (2010) The Return of Lucretius to Renaissance Florence (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press), p. 17, p. 20 and p. 23.
- 31.
Copenhaver ‘How to do magic and why’, p. 138.
- 32.
Hankins Plato in the Renaissance, I, pp. 277, n. 27 citing Corsi in R. Marcel (ed.) (1958) Marsile Ficin, 1433–1499 (Paris: Belles Lettres), p. 685: ‘Statura fuit admodum brevi gracili corpore et aliquantulum in utrisque humeris gibboso. Lingua parumper haesitante atque in prolatu litterae dumtaxat ‘S′ balbutiente, sed utrumque non sine gratia. Cruribus ac brachiis, sed praecipue manibus oblongis. Facies illi obducta et quae mitem aspectum ac gratum praeberet, color sanguineus. Capilli flavi ac crispantes et qui frontem sursum protenderent.’
- 33.
R. Black (2011) ‘The Philosopher and Renaissance Culture’ in Hankins The Cambridge Companion, p. 27. Black suggests Ficino only taught for a year at the university.
- 34.
‘Hankins Plato in the Italian Renaissance, I, p. 29.
- 35.
Hankins Humanism and Platonism, II, p. 240.
- 36.
This did not make Ficino’s ideas and their dissemination unproblematic. Pietro Dolfin, General of the Camaldolese Order, complained about Ficino’s use of the church to give lectures on philosophy in a 1487 letter to Guido Lorenzi, Prior of Santa Maria Degli Angeli. Hankins Plato in the Italian Renaissance, I, p. 348.
- 37.
Field Origins, p. 9.
- 38.
Hankins argues that Cosimo had a genuine, if not ‘highly unusual’, interest in learning and the company of intellectuals, with no particular interest in Platonism, Humanism and Platonism, I, p. 430 and p. 435.
- 39.
Hankins Humanism and Platonism, I, p. 436 and II, p. 196.
- 40.
Hankins Humanism and Platonism, II, p. 246.
- 41.
This was the first draft of his Commentary on ‘Philebus’, which was a rough draft provided for Cosimo in 1464, shortly before his death. This Commentary was revised first between 1477–1482, and then again in 1483. The third and final version printed was probably completed in 1492, and published in Ficino’s 1496 edition of Plato.
- 42.
For instance, Bartolomeo Scala. Brown Return of Lucretius, p. 22.
- 43.
Hankins Plato in the Italian Renaissance, I, p. 268.
- 44.
See Hankins Plato in the Italian Renaissance, I, p. 300.
- 45.
Hankins Plato in the Italian Renaissance, I, p. 301.
- 46.
Hankins Humanism and Platonism, II, p. 105. He argues that Ficino connected Timaeus with Pythagoras, and calls the 1496 edition a ‘major watershed’ in the study of Timaeus (2002) ‘Galileo, Ficino and Renaissance Platonism’ in J. Kraye and M.W.F. Stone (eds) Humanism and Early Modern Philosophy (London and New York: Routledge), p. 213.
- 47.
M.J.B. Allen (trans. and ed.) (2008) Commentaries on Plato vol 1: ‘Phaedrus’, and ‘Ion’ Marsilio Ficino (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press), p. xv.
- 48.
Hankins Plato in the Italian Renaissance, I, p. 302.
- 49.
It was then published four times over the next century as part of his complete works, with his second edition of Plato, and then in the Basel and Paris edition of the Opera Omnia. M.J.B. Allen and J. Hankins (trans. and eds) (2001) Theologia Platonica de Immortalitate Animae, Marsilio Ficino I (2001), II (2002), III (2003), IV (2004), V (2005), VI (2006) (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press), I, p. xi.
- 50.
Hankins Humanism and Platonism, II, p. 250.
- 51.
F. Ames-Lewis, ‘Neoplatonism and the Visual Arts at the time of Marsilio Ficino’ in Allen Marsilio Ficino, pp. 330–1.
- 52.
Allen Synoptic, p. 115.
- 53.
Hankins Humanism and Platonism, II, p. 288 for a definition of Ficino’s ‘Averroist’.
- 54.
Hankins Humanism and Platonism, II, p. 250.
- 55.
Hankins Humanism and Platonism, II, p. 251.
- 56.
See, for instance, his letter to Cardinal Marco Barbo of the Curia asking him for his intercession with Pope Innocent VIII, cited by Letters, VII, p. xv.
- 57.
Hankins argues that Ficino was a client of Sixtus IV and Innocent VIII as well as a number of other important Romans around the Pope. Humanism and Platonism, I, p. 487.
- 58.
Valery Rees suggests that Ficino supported Charles VIII: he praised Charles as a saviour and tamer of the Turks, ‘Aspects of Praise in Ficino’s Writing’, in S. Clucas, P.J. Forshaw and V. Rees (eds) (2011) Laus Platonici Philosophi: Marsilio Ficino and His Influence (Leiden and Boston: Brill), p. 54.
- 59.
N. Terpstra (2014) ‘Savonarola and savonarolism’, The Catholic Historical Review, 100, 3, pp. 604–5. Proquest 2015d, http://search.proquest.com/ accessed 2 January 2015. Allen argues that Ficino’s denunciation of Savonarola was what he really believed, especially given Savonarola’s death: Socrates shows us the art of death (ars moriendi), and that did not include being sent to the pyre. Allen Synoptic Art, p. 146.
- 60.
‘...for I shall count him among the members of my Academy...’ Or ‘In this situation, a certain master of logic from the Academy heard that we were being rebuked because such a long silence….’ (spirit of Plato) to Girolamo, Ambassador of Duke of Urbino, Letters, VII, p. 4 and 6.
- 61.
Hankins Humanism and Platonism, II, p. 352.
- 62.
N.A. Robb (1935) Neoplatonism of the Italian Renaissance (London: Allen Unwin), p. 57.
- 63.
Hankins tells us that Ficino understood from Diogenes Laertius and others that Plato’s Academy was a ‘small suburban property’ outside of Athens where he both lived and taught, but ‘he did not know, or chose not to think, that Plato’s Academy had been a formal school with regular lessons; he thought of it rather, in a looser sense, as a collective name for Plato and his disciples.’ Plato in the Italian Renaissance, I, pp. 296–7.
- 64.
Field Origins, p. 200.
- 65.
Hankins argues that Ficino was trying to be the Socrates of Florence, particularly in his attempt to ‘convert’ the young ingeniosi, Plato in the Italian Renaissance, I, p. 298.
- 66.
Black, ‘The Philosopher and Renaissance Culture’, Hankins The Cambridge Companion, pp. 20–1.
- 67.
See D.F. Lackner, ‘That Camaldolese Academy: Ambrogio Traversari, Marsilio Ficino and the Christian Platonic Tradition’ in Allen Marsilio Ficino: His Theology, p. 29.
- 68.
Lackner ‘Camaldolese Academy’, pp. 29–30. Lackner is one of those critics who, despite the different uses of the term ‘Academy’ and the complexity that has arisen out of the term’s interpretation, believes that ‘Ficino’s revived “Academy” did indeed give rise to a group of philosophical friends, united by a shared enthusiasm for Platonic philosophy and mystical Christianity.’ p. 29.
- 69.
See A. Field, ‘The Platonic Academy of Florence’ in Allen Marsilio Ficino: His Theology, p. 367 and p. 376.
- 70.
Black, ‘The Philosopher and Renaissance Culture’ p. 23.
- 71.
Members Letters, VIII, Letter 8. See also Field, ‘The Platonic Academy of Florence’, p. 368.
- 72.
Letters, VII, p. 9.
- 73.
Field ‘The Platonic Academy of Florence’, p. 368.
- 74.
K. B. Moore (2010). Ficino’s idea of architecture: The ‘mind’s-eye view’ in quattrocento architectural drawings. Renaissance Studies, 24(3), 332–352. Wiley Online Library 2015. doi:http://dx.doi.org. Accessed 2 Jan 2015, pp. 58–9. Moore thinks this also, at least partially, explains the recurring theme of architectural creativity in Ficino’s writings.
- 75.
A. Chastel (1954) Marsile Ficin et l’Art (Geneve: Libraire E. Droz and Lille: Libraire R. Giard), p. 25.
- 76.
Field Origins, p. 181.
- 77.
See, for instance, Black’s comments on Landino and the Braccesi circle, ‘The Philosopher and Renaissance Culture’, p. 29, n. 39.
- 78.
For more on Landino’s status, see Field, ‘The Platonic Academy of Florence’, p. 369.
- 79.
Robb Neoplatonism, p. 97.
- 80.
Field suggests that he ‘lectured on philosophers as if they were poets and on poets as if they were philosophers’, Origins, p. 231.
- 81.
Hankins Plato in the Renaissance, II, p. 450.
- 82.
R. Cody (1969) Pastoralism and Platonic Theory in Tasso’s ‘Aminta’ and Shakespeare’s Early Comedies (Oxford: Clarendon Press), p. 6.
- 83.
Hankins Humanism and Platonism, II, pp. 282–3.
- 84.
See Hankins Plato in the Italian Renaissance, II, p. 451.
- 85.
So Jacopo Antiquari asks Ficino to commend him to Pico and Poliziano, as does Bernardo Michelozzi. Whatever the disagreements, the external perception was certainly that they had a close relationship. Ficino also passes on Pico’s commendations to his correspondents.
- 86.
Members Letters, I, p. 56.
- 87.
Members, Letters, I, p. 56.
- 88.
V. Rees (2011) ‘Quo vertam oculos ut te laudem: aspects of praise in Ficino’s writing’ in in Clucas, Forshaw and Rees Laus Platonici, p. 64, n. 72.
- 89.
E. Cassirer (1963) The Individual and the Cosmos in Renaissance Philosophy (trans. and introd.) M. Domandi (Oxford: Blackwell), p. 2. Cassirer tells us that Pico was awarded the title ‘Princeps Concordiae’ by the Academy.
- 90.
Pico has inspired extraordinary enthusiasm amongst various critics, for example, Nesca Robb says of Pico: ‘He was the raw material of a poet, lacking in literary gift yet possessed of an inherent poetry of mind and character that illumines his life and breaks in veiled flashes through the inchoate clouds of his learning.’ Robb Neoplatonism, p. 2.
- 91.
For instance, Pico appears to have been an avid borrower and ‘non-returner’ of valuable books. In a letter to Pico, Ficino begs him to return his copy of the Koran: ‘But if you are going to keep him [Mohammed] as your guest a few days more, at least send Avicenna straight away....’, Letter to Pico, Letters, VII, p. 41.
- 92.
Brian Copenhaver argues that in 1493, Pico, Poliziano and Landino ‘are still three stalwarts defending Ficino against attacks on his astrological medicine, but by the summer of 1494 Ficino writes defensively to Poliziano, laboring to assure him that Pico’s assault on the astrologers really is a good thing….’ B.P. Copenhaver (2011) ‘Readers of Pico’s Letters’ in Clucas Laus Platonici, p. 172.
- 93.
For Pico’s studies and interests, see Stephane Toussaint (2010) ‘Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola’ in P. R. Blum (ed.) Philosophers of the Renaissance (trans.) B. McNeil (Washington: The Catholic University of America Press), p. 72.
- 94.
Cassirer The Individual and the Cosmos, p. 2.
- 95.
Historically, there have been a number of views on Pico’s philosophical proximity to Ficino. There is an ‘older if now minority view that Pico was a Neoplatonist’ despite his Aristotelian education. After a key study by Eugenio Garin in 1937, Pico’s Aristotelianism came to the fore. Allen cites Kristeller who first took Pico as a Neoplatonist, and Garin’s alternative view: ‘Pico was an eclectic preeminently committed to the Scholastics – notwithstanding his engagement with the Cabala – and by way of them to Aristotle and to Aristotle’s Greek and Arab commentators, especially Averroes.’ E. Garin (1937) Giovanni Pico della Mirandola: vita e dottrina, cited in M.J.B. Allen (1997) ‘Cultura Hominis Giovanni Pico, Marsilio Ficino and the idea of man’ in G.C. Garfagnini (ed.) Giovanni Pico della Mirandola: Convegno internazionale di Studi nel Cinquecentesimo Anniversario della Morte (1494–1994) (Florence: Olschki), p. 177.
- 96.
Toussaint ‘Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola’, p. 76. Toussaint cites a number of problematic areas including his views on the descent of Christ to the underworld, the Eucharist, the justification of Origen, magic, the Kabbalah, the nature of the divine intellect and freedom of belief.
- 97.
W.J. Hanegraaff (2012) Esotericism and the Academy: Rejected Knowledge in Western Culture (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press), p. 54, citing S.A. Farmer (trans. and ed.) (1998) Syncretism in the West: Pico’s 900 Theses (1486) the evolution of traditional religious and philosophical systems, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies: Tempe), p. 57.
- 98.
Hanegraaff Esotericism and the Academy, p. 83.
- 99.
Toussaint ‘Giovanni Pico’, p. 76.
- 100.
S.R. Jayne (trans. and ed.) (1987) Commentary on a Canzone of Benivieni (New York, Berne, Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang), p. 58, n. 11.
- 101.
Letters, VIII, p. 13, Letter to Filippo Valori,‘...our Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, that admirable man… discusses in great detail the views of all the philosophers on any conceivable matter and demonstrates admirably that Plato and Aristotle have concordant views on the soul.’
- 102.
Letters, VIII, p. 22, Letter to Pico.
- 103.
Jayne Commentary on a Canzone, p. 6.
- 104.
Jayne Commentary on a Canzone, p. 3.
- 105.
Jayne Commentary on a Canzone, p. 7, also p. 59, n. 24. Jayne is citing Pico (Opera, 1572, I, p. 406 and also Letter to Germain de Ganay, 23 March 1494, cited in P.O. Kristeller (1937) Supplementum ficinianum.
- 106.
U.I. Aasdalen (2011) ‘The First Pico-Ficino Controversy’ in Clucas Laus Platonica, pp. 74–5, citing E. Garin.
- 107.
Hankins Plato in the Italian Renaissance, I, p. 348.
- 108.
Hanegraaff Esotericism and the Academy, p. 80.
- 109.
Letters, IX, Letter 5, 4 January 1490, to Bernardo Rucellai provides the first mention of La Mammola.
- 110.
Members (2012) Letters, IX, p. 40, Letter to Paolantonio Soderini.
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Howlett, S. (2016). The Myth Reconsidered. In: Marsilio Ficino and His World. Critical Political Theory and Radical Practice. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-53946-5_1
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