Abstract
Ficino had a mission. From here in the twentieth century, a mission to revive Plato seems like an ‘ivory tower’ project, exactly the type of research we might query when funds run low at a university. Where is the impact on society or real-world implications? But Ficino’s mission was meant to have such implications. He wanted to change the world using Plato. The Platonic revival did not end up being what Ficino had originally intended. But Ficino’s intention, his original mission, inevitably shaped the construction of the revival. It may not be our mission and it may not have changed the world, but understanding this mission plays an important role in showing us why we have the inheritance that we do from Ficino. Somehow we, here and now, have to build the mental bridge between Platonism and changing the world.
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Notes
- 1.
Ficino also notes Porphyry’s expertise in demons. One assumes he uses Porphyry for his discussion of daemons, as an explicator of Plotinus, for he could ‘remove for us the spirit-veil cast by his master’ Letters, VII, p. 33. Letter to Braccio Martelli.
- 2.
‘Ficino’s supreme scholarly achievement indeed was to render the 54 treatises of Plotinus into Latin, and to devote his interpretational life to arguing that Plotinian and Christian metaphysics were almost one and the same’, M.J.B. Allen (2008) ‘At Variance: Marsilio Ficino, Platonism and Heresy’ in D. Hedley and S. Hutton (eds) Platonism at the Origins of Modernity (Dordrecht: Springer), p. 38.
- 3.
Christopher Celenza asserts that Ficino knew the first four books of Iamblichus’ work on Pythagoras (we do not know how many books Iamblichus wrote on this subject, but Celenza suggests ten). C.S. Celenza (2001) Piety and Pythagoras in Renaissance Florence: The Symbolum Nesianum (Leiden: Brill), p. 19.
- 4.
Allen, ‘Two Commentaries on the Phaedrus: Ficino’s Indebtedness to Hermias’ in M.J.B. Allen, (1995) Plato’s Third Eye: Studies in Marsilio Ficino’s Metaphysics and its Sources (Aldershot, Hampshire and Brookfield, Vermont: Ashgate Publishing), p. 113.
- 5.
Celenza Piety and Pythagoras, pp. 20–1.
- 6.
Ficino ‘persistently hesitated to acknowledge his debts to him and sometimes took care explicitly to refute Proclian positions in favor of Plotinian ones.’ Allen Theologia Platonica, I, p. xii. But the Theologia Platonica was probably intended to ‘supplant Proclus’s and provide the true synthesis of Platonism and theology that had eluded his pagan predecessor.’
- 7.
Ficino says of St Augustine: ‘he states that with little change the followers of Plato would have become Christian without dissent....’ Letter to Giovanni Niccolini, Archbishop of Amalfi Letters, VI, p. 35. Anthony Levi notes that Ficino is careful only to use Augustine’s earlier works, which are inclined towards Platonism. A. Levi (2002) ‘Ficino, Augustine and the Pagans’ in Allen Marsilio Ficino, p. 103. Levi shows that Ficino is very careful to avoid any conflict between his desire to refute Aristotelianism, as it has been expressed in Western Europe, and Augustine’s work.
- 8.
So in Theologia Platonica’, Ficino uses Augustine’s De immortalitate animae (c387 CE) and Plotinus’ Enneads (c270 CE), IV.7, to establish the immateriality of the soul. In this way, ‘Ficino was able to remain faithful to Augustine while repudiating virtually the totality of what Aristotelian scholasticism had done with its Augustinian inheritance.’ Levi, ‘Ficino, Augustine and the Pagans’, p. 105 and p. 101.
- 9.
M.J.B. Allen, ‘Marsilio Ficino’s interpretation of Plato’s Timaeus and its myth of the demiurge’, in Plato’s Third Eye, pp. 433–4. Also Allen Theologia Platonica, I, p. xiii: Ficino’s mission was to ‘the ingeniosi, the intellectuals, perhaps especially youthful intellectuals, who were the Florentine counterparts to Socrates’ most gifted interlocutors and questioners, and who required intellectual conviction as a part of, if not always as a prerequisite for, their acceptance of Christianity and a fervent commitment to it.’
- 10.
Allen, ‘At Variance’, p. 37.
- 11.
Between 1088 and the death of Aquinas in 1274 (for instance), the Universities of Bologna, Salamanca, Oxford, Paris, Toulouse, Cambridge, Padua, Naples, Siena and what is now the University of Modena and Emilia Romagna were all formally founded. Paris was particularly well known for its Theology Faculty, and became the home of scholasticism.
- 12.
See Hankins Humanism and Platonism, II, p. 20, for a more extensive discussion.
- 13.
See A. Faivre (1998) ‘Renaissance Hermeticism and the Concept of Western Esotericism’, in Gnosis and Hermeticism from Antiquity to Modern Times, R. van den Broek and W.J. Hanegraaff (eds), (Albany: State University of New York Press), p. 111. Also further, Hankins ‘Galileo, Ficino’, p. 213.
- 14.
For a more expansive discussion of the conflict, see Hankins Plato in the Italian Renaissance, I, p. 275, and Hankins Humanism and Platonism, II, p. 34 and p. 288.
- 15.
Letters, VII, p. 22, Letter to John of Hungary.
- 16.
‘Well aware of the differences between Plato and Aristotle, Ficino chose to ignore them in order to win the contemporary philosophical world over to Plato. Perforce, Averroes, not Aristotle, became Ficino’s bête noire.’ J. Monfasani (2002) ‘Marsilio Ficino and the Plato-Aristotle Controversy’ in Allen Marsilio Ficino, p. 192.
- 17.
Hankins cites a late letter to Martinus Uranius: ‘I have always been reluctant to publish the literal translations I made in my youth, for my private use, of the Argonautica and Hymns of Orpheus, Homer and Proclus as well as the Theology of Hesiod – the ones you saw when you were recently my guest. I didn’t want readers to think I was trying to bring back the ancient worship of the gods and demons, now for so long rightly condemned. For just as the Pythagoreans of old were careful not to reveal divine things to the vulgar, so I have always been careful not to make profane things common property. Hence, I did not even spare the little commentary I prepared (somehow or other) on Lucretius when still a boy, but consigned it to the flames, as Plato did with his tragedies and elegies.’ (trans Hankins, late letter to Martinus Uranius, Opera, p. 933, in Hankins Plato and the Italian Renaissance, II, pp. 456–7) In J. Hankins (2011) ‘Monstrous Melancholy: Ficino and the Physiological Causes of Atheism’, in Clucas Laus Platonici, p. 34, Hankins argues that Ficino’s ‘whole interpretation of the Christian religion is shaped by the need to make it impregnable to the Lucretian critique of religion.’
- 18.
Hankins reports a friend of Ficino’s, Zanobi Acciaiuoli, who said that Ficino ‘very often’ told him of the ‘providential intervention of St Antoninus (d. 1459) during a period of Ficino’s life when he had fallen into a pernicious heresy owing to his unregulated study of Plato.’ Reading Aquinas was an ‘intervention’ before going on with his study of Plato—to set Plato in the right context, perhaps—though Hankins also notes that Antoninus was generally hostile to humanism. Plato in the Italian Renaissance, II, pp. 455–6.
- 19.
Allen and Hankins note that Ficino uses Aquinas’ Contra Gentiles, and argue that ‘he was clearly interested in aligning sections of his own work with that of the saint who was already emerging as the ultimate scholastic authority.’ Theologia Platonica, I, p. xi. See also Hankins Plato in the Italian Renaissance, I, p. 276. Hankins argues that this Dominican school of Aristotelians was not the dominant group when Ficino was a student, becoming more important later. So Ficino is embracing the ‘alternative’ track to Aristotle, but one that is all about making that link between the philosophy and Christianity.
- 20.
Hankins Humanism and Platonism, II, p. 39.
- 21.
Levi, ‘Ficino, Augustine and the Pagans’, pp. 99–100. Levi argues that ‘Ficino was to provide Christianity with an alternative form of doctrinally orthodox moral and mystical theology which also allowed a greatly elevated view of natural human potential.’ Hankins suggests that Ficino thought the Medieval project to consolidate Christianity and Aristotle had ‘ended in intellectual disaster’, Humanism and Platonism, II, p. 433. The effort for syncretism did not begin with Ficino and Pico, obviously, but this was a renewed effort. An earlier famous (and non-Aristotelian) syncretist, for instance, was Ramon Lull who tried to bring all three Peoples of the Book (Muslims, Jews and Christians) together within one philosophical theology. See C. Lohr (2010) ‘Ramon Lull’ in Blum Philosophers of the Renaissance, p. 13.
- 22.
Hankins Plato in the Italian Renaissance, I, p. 273.
- 23.
Hankins Humanism and Platonism, II, p. 21.
- 24.
P. Schulz (2010) ‘The Controversy between Platonists and Aristotelians in the Fifteenth Century’, in Blum Philosophers of the Renaissance, p. 24.
- 25.
Pier Candido translated The Republic in 1439 for the Duchess of Gloucester, and George of Trebizond translated Laws, but both translations were restricted to a narrow audience. See S.R. Jayne (trans. and ed.) (1944) Marsilio Ficino’s Commentary on Plato’s ‘Symposium’, (Missouri: University of Missouri, Columbia), p. 21, n. 35. Further, Meno and Phaedo were translated in the twelfth century by the Sicilian, Henricus Aristippus. William of Moerbeke, who translated for Aquinas, translated Proclus’ Commentary on Plato’s ‘Parmenides’ in which part of Parmenides was preserved. See C.S. Celenza ‘The revival of Platonic philosophy’, in Hankins Cambridge Companion, p. 73.
- 26.
Hankins Humanism and Platonism, II, p. 17.
- 27.
See, for instance, Hankins Humanism and Platonism, II, p. 18.
- 28.
Hankins, Humanism and Platonism, II, p. 9. Hankins also remarks that Plato was not consistently studied, or ‘in trend’.
- 29.
E. Bréhier (1965) The History of Philosophy: The Middle Ages and the Renaissance (trans.) W. Baskin (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago), p. 221.
- 30.
Schulz, ‘The Controversy’, p. 26.
- 31.
Hankins argues that this debate gave the Latins ‘a channel for the introduction to the history of Byzantine study and interpretation of Plato.’ This also started the discussion on how Aristotle might be synthesized with Plato. Humanism and Platonism, II, p. 22
- 32.
Schulz says that George ‘described in apocalyptic terms the Platonist conspiracy in which he believed Bessarion and his circle were engaged.’ ‘Controversy’, p. 27.
- 33.
Hankins Humanism and Platonism, II, p. 407.
- 34.
Schulz, ‘Controversy’, p. 27.
- 35.
Hankins, Humanism and Platonism, II, p. 34. The speech is known as Oratio dogmatica de unione.
- 36.
Ficino ‘studiously avoided’ attacking the Byzantine Aristotelians, ‘He was just not going to be dragged into the Plato-Aristotle controversy started by the Greeks.’ Monfasani, ‘Marsilio Ficino and the Plato-Aristotle Controversy’, p. 188. See also Hankins Plato in the Italian Renaissance, II, p. 440.
- 37.
Hankins Cambridge Companion, p. 4. Hankins argues that later humanism was an ‘educational programme meant to produce, not well-trained civil servants, but virtuous rulers and citizens. They saw, in short, the invention of the humanities, the studia humanitatis.’ Humanism and Platonism, I, p. 428.
- 38.
Hankins suggests that Cosimo needed to maintain the leading position of Florence in the humanities to keep the populace happy, Humanism and Platonism, I, pp. 440–1. Interestingly, he asks if the popularity of humanism was due to the potential access it gave the Florentine middle classes to the higher echelons of city life, Humanism and Platonism, I, p. 449.
- 39.
Hankins Humanism and Platonism, I, p. 263.
- 40.
Anthony Levi argues that that the humanist chancellors were the direct heirs of Petrarch’s project: ‘disinterring and disseminating a series of new liberal and humane personal and social attitudes which they derived from authors of pagan antiquity.’ The project was then handed over to the formal institution of the studia and its professors. ‘Ficino, Augustine and the Pagans’, p. 104. So humanism became ‘institutionalised’.
- 41.
Hankins Humanism and Platonism, I, p. 281.
- 42.
Celenza ‘The revival of Platonic philosophy’, p. 75.
- 43.
P. Botley (2010) ‘Chapter 3: Student Texts’, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, C, 2, pp. 71–113, 195–231. Proquest 2015f, http://search.proquest.com, accessed 2 January 2015.
- 44.
See Hankins Humanism and Platonism, I, p. 284 for more details.
- 45.
Hankins, Humanism and Platonism, I, p. 285.
- 46.
Hankins Humanism and Platonism, I, p. 285.
- 47.
Hankins argues that it was easier to recognize the value of Byzantine culture once there was no longer any threat involved from the Eastern Empire, Humanism and Platonism, I, p. 278. He also asserts that ‘It was certainly widely believed in the West during the Quattrocento that when Byzantium fell, its demise would spell the end of the Greek literary tradition as well.’ The death of Homer and Plato ‘as the inevitable consequence of the collapse of Greece as a political entity.’ Humanism and Platonism, I, p. 264. We might then think of the rise of Greek studies in Italy as an emergency act of antiquarianism.
- 48.
P. Botley (2010) ‘Epilogue’, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, C, 2, pp. 115–117, 231–232. Proquest 2015g, http://search.proquest.com, accessed 5 January 2015.
- 49.
Hankins Humanism and Platonism, I, p. 286.
- 50.
Botley, ‘Chapter 3’.
- 51.
Botley, ‘Chapter 3’.
- 52.
Hankins, Humanism and Platonism, II, p. 72.
- 53.
Hankins Humanism and Platonism, II, p. 72.
- 54.
Ironically the same could be said to be true of the study of Renaissance thought. Sarah Hutton argues that the history of Renaissance Platonism is ‘a textual enterprise, supplemented by doxography’, whereas ‘The history of modern philosophy, by contrast, is dominated by system analysis, where agenda for the philosophical interest is often set by modern concerns. The challenge is to bring these two approaches together.’ D. Hedley and S. Hutton (eds) (2008) Platonism at the Origins, p. 3.
- 55.
Letters, VI, p. 33, Letter to Antonio Zilioli. See also, Ficino, Theologia Platonica, Allen, I, pp. 8–9: ‘And that is why he [Plato] has been considered indisputably divine and his teaching called “theology” among all peoples. For whatever subject he deals with, be it ethics, dialectic, mathematics or physics, he quickly brings it round, in a spirit of utmost piety, to the contemplation and worship of God. (‘Quo factum est ut et ipse sine controversia divinus et doctrina eius apud omnes gentes theologia nuncuparetur, cum nihil usquam sive morale sive dialecticum aut mathematicum aut physicum tractet, quin mox ad contemplationem cultumque dei summa cum pietate reducat.’) (Proem to Lorenzo).
- 56.
P.O. Kristeller, ‘Renaissance Platonism’ in W.E. Werkmeister (ed.) (1963) Facets of the Renaissance, (New York: Harper and Row), p. 109, cited by M.J.B.Allen (ed. and trans.) (1975) Marsilio Ficino: The ‘Philebus’ Commentary, (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press), pp. 1–2.
- 57.
M. Domandi (trans.) The Individual and the Cosmos, Cassirer, p. xi.
- 58.
Hankins Plato in the Italian Renaissance, II, p. 441.
- 59.
Letters, VII, p. 22. Letter to John of Hungary.
- 60.
‘...Plato non suo sensu tractavit, sed ex quorundam Aegyptiorum opinione recensuit, quorum opinionem Augustinus Aurelius reprobavit.’ Ficino (2004) Theologia Platonica Allen and Hankins, IV, pp. 60–1.
- 61.
Jayne claims that ‘his contribution, both in volume and significance, to the stream of thought whose channels were literature and philosophy were vastly greater than that of any other figure of his age’ Jayne, Commentary, p. 27.
- 62.
Hankins Plato in the Italian Renaissance, II, p. 479.
- 63.
For Ficino therefore Plato was ‘la portion centrale d’un vaste édifice doctrinal et poétique qui, des Hymnes homériques au Pimandre, emergeait comme un bloc du monde antique’, Chastel, Marsile Ficin, p. 40.
- 64.
This is what Agostino Steuco later calls the ‘perennial wisdom’.
- 65.
See, for instance, Hankins Plato in the Italian Renaissance, I, p. 283.
- 66.
Hankins argues that Ficino is far more light-hearted and literary-minded in his approach to interpreting Plato’s secrets than the Late Neoplatonists. Plato in the Italian Renaissance, I, p. 338 and p. 341.
- 67.
Hankins divides the period of inspiration and that of interpretation into subdivisions ‘successive epochs of religious wisdom and epochs of “veiling”.’ In the period of inspiration ‘religion and philosophy are conjoined, while in the latter they are sundered, and religion is allowed to decline into corrupt superstition and error.’ This is part of Ficino’s contention that we are now living in an age of iron, in part due to the division between philosophy and theology in the universities, and the growth of Averroism. Plato in the Italian Renaissance, I, p. 284.
- 68.
‘Cum haec theologi prisci cognoscerent, philosophiae studium semper cum religiosa pietate iunxerunt. Principio Zoroastris philosophia (ut testatur Plato) nihil erat aliud quam sapiens pietas cultusque divinus. Mercurii quoque Trismegisti disputationes omnes a votis incipiunt et in sacrificia desinunt. Orphei etiam Aglaophemique philosophia in divinis laudibus tota versatur. Pythagoras a matutino hymnorum sacrorum cantu philosophiae studia incohabat. Plato non in dicendo solum, sed etiam in cogitando exordiri a deo praecipiebat in singulis atque ipse semper exordiebatur a deo.’ Ficino Theologia Platonica, Allen, IV, pp. 24–5.
- 69.
Celenza argues that Ficino’s overall view is post-Plotinian rather than Plotinian. ‘Late antiquity and Florentine Platonism: The “Post-Plotinian” Ficino’ in Allen Marsilio Ficino, p. 73.
- 70.
Allen Nuptial Arithmetic, p. 50.
- 71.
Hankins argues that there is ‘no reason to suppose that Ficino’s original versions of the ancient theology are derived from Pletho…. Ficino’s doctrine of the ancient theology is not then a matter of Plethonian influence, but of independent invention from patristic and doxographic sources.’ J. Hankins (1994) Plato in the Italian Renaissance, II (New York: Brill), p. 463.
- 72.
Allen, ‘At Variance’, p. 35.
- 73.
Allen argues that Ficino found Zoroaster’s prior claim particularly convincing, as Hermes had only invented Egyptian Hieroglyphs (providing a symbolic writing based on the natural world), but Zoroaster had invented astrology (a language that uses the heavens). M.J.B. Allen (1995) ‘Marsilio Ficino, Hermes Trismegistus and the Corpus Hermeticum’ in Allen Third Eye, p. 41. So in the Commentary on ‘Philebus’ (1469), Hermes replaces Zoroaster, see Letters VII, p. xi.
- 74.
See Monfasani, ‘Marsilio Ficino and the Plato-Aristotle Controversy’, p. 186.
- 75.
B.P. Copenhaver (trans. and ed.) (1992) Hermetica: The Greek ‘Corpus Hermeticum’ and the Latin ‘Asclepius’ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), p. xlviii.
- 76.
Letters, VII, p. xxi.
- 77.
Hankins Plato in the Italian Renaissance, II, p. 464.
- 78.
Hankins Plato in the Italian Renaissance, I, p. 283.
- 79.
Ficino would have found many connections between the Chaldean Oracles and the rest of his prisca theologia. So, for example, there are ‘Inextricable links’ between number theory, geometry, harmonies and Chaldean–Ptolemaic cosmology, Allen Nuptial Arithmetic, p. 30.
- 80.
See Allen Synoptic Art, p. 36.
- 81.
See C. Salaman (2002) ‘Echoes of Egypt in Hermes and Ficino’ for a discussion of the roots of Hermes’ work in Egyptian and Graeco–Egyptian thought, in Allen Marsilio Ficino, pp. 115–36.
- 82.
Copenhaver Hermetica, p. xlvii.
- 83.
Copenhaver Hermetica, p. xliv.
- 84.
Faivre, ‘Renaissance Hermeticism’, p. 109.
- 85.
Copenhaver Hermeticum, p. xlviii.
- 86.
Allen Synoptic Art, p. 122.
- 87.
This was true both contemperaneously and later. So Celenza tells us that Iamblichus portrays Pythagoras as a prophet. Ficino saw him as ‘vatic’ (priestly). C.S. Celenza (1999), ‘Pythagoras in the Renaissance: the case of Marsilio Ficino’, Renaissance Quarterly, 52, 3, pp. 667-711. Proquest 2015j. http://search.proquest.com. Accessed 5 Jan 2015.
- 88.
Hankins Plato in the Italian Renaissance, I, p. 340.
- 89.
‘Therefore, because divine Providence wills to recall all people to herself in a wonderful way according to their individual natures, it happened that a certain holy philosophy was born in times past both among the Persians under Zoroaster and among the Egyptians under Hermes, her sound true to herself in both peoples. She was subsequently nurtured among the Thracians, under Orpheus and Aglaophemus, and soon grew to maturity, under Pythagoras, among the peoples of Greece and Italy. But it was by the divine Plato in Athens that she was finally brought to perfection.’ Letters, VII, p. 22, Letter to John of Hungary.
- 90.
Paul II (1464–71), for instance, who was deeply ‘anti-humanist’ just when Ficino was writing his translation of Plato, see Hankins Humanism and Platonism, I, p. 485.
- 91.
M.J.B. Allen (1995) ‘Marsilio Ficino on Plato, the Neoplatonists and the Christian doctrine of the Trinity’ in M.J.B. Allen Third Eye, p. 557.
- 92.
‘…his philosophical theory of magic is a tour de force of caution and evasion’, B.P. Copenhaver (2011) ‘How to do magic and why: philosophical prescriptions’ in Hankins Cambridge Companion, p. 164.
- 93.
Letter from John of Hungary: ‘… I remember hearing from two of your astrologers that you were going to revive the ancient philosophical teaching in accordance with a particular configuration of the heavens....while you were still a youth, you had no anxiety about publishing some philosopher, or poet, of antiquity; but later, trusting to better judgement, you suppressed him, and so I did hear, did your best to expunge him.... Indeed, I advise you, my friend, to take care that your revival of the ancient authors does not perhaps prove to be mere curiosity rather than religion.’ Letters, VII, pp. 20–1.
- 94.
Letters, VIII, p. 24, Letter to Pico (1489). Plotinus’ view of astrology in Enneads is relevant to understanding Ficino’s view: ‘the stars are elements in a complex organic and coordinated structure, the universe. He spoke of there being a sympathy and correspondence between its parts, and of the wise man as being able, from one part of the chain, to read another.’ J. North, ‘Types Of Inconsistency In The Astrology Of Ficino And Others’ in MacDonald Christian Humanism, p. 286. It should be noted that Ficino was only interested in a particular type of astrology and understanding of astrology.
- 95.
Allen, ‘Two Commentaries’ in Third Eye, p. 128, though he did write a translation/adaptation of De Mysteriis Aegyptiorum (attributed to Iamblichus).
- 96.
Members (2010) Letters, VIII, p. xiv.
- 97.
Allen, ‘At Variance’, p. 32.
- 98.
See further, Allen, ‘Marsilio Ficino on Plato’, p. 555.
- 99.
‘IN OMNIBUS QUAE AUT HIC AUT ALIBI A ME TRACTANTUR, TANTUM ASSERTUM ESSE VOLO QUANTUM AB ECCLESIA COMPROBATUR.’, Ficino (2006) Theologia Platonica, Allen and Hankins VI, pp. 218-9.
- 100.
’...you too must rise up, powerful Guicciardini, and reply to meddlesome minds that magic or talismans are certainly not being given approval by Marsilio but are being reported by him in interpreting Plotinus, which the written words also clearly show, if read with an impartial mind. No word of support is given here to black magic, which relies on the worship of demons, but mention is made of natural magic which seeks to obtain the benefits of the heavenly bodies through natural means to promote good physical health.’ [Ficino defending Book Three of Three Books on Life] Letters, VIII, p. 39, ‘Appendix B to the three Peters, Nero, Guicciardini and Soderini. Or also see, Theologia Platonica, I, pp. 294-7: ‘All which pertains to the souls of the spheres and here set forth from the point of view of the Platonists will be confirmed only when a council of Christian theologians, after careful examination, agrees upon them.’ ‘Haec omnia quae ad sphaerarum animas pertinent, ex Platonicorum opinione narrata, tunc demum affirmentur, cum Christianorum theologorum concilio diligenter examinata placuerint.’
- 101.
‘For his audacious attempt to reconcile Platonism with Christianity in the event went far beyond Platonism: it became a life-long ecumenical quest to introduce into orthodoxy an encyclopedic range of unorthodox… beliefs’, Allen, ‘At Variance’, p. 43.
- 102.
‘Constant sense of crisis characterizes the last decades of fifteenth century Italy; in that respect, it is not a specific crisis, but rather more general and widespread feeling which affected every aspect of life in the peninsula.’ The West needed to ‘re-establish the relations between the human and the divine’. Edelheit Ficino, Pico, p. 26.
- 103.
Hankins Plato in the Italian Renaissance, I, p. 288ff
- 104.
Edelheit Ficino, Pico, p. 28.
- 105.
Edelheit Ficino, Pico, p. 135.
- 106.
Allen cites Ficino as saying, ‘In this way the Saturnian ages may return to us some day, and our dispositions (ingenia) – as Plato fervently wishes here – may be transformed from iron into silver and gold.’ (‘…ut quandoque secula nobis Saturnia revertantur atque [ut Plato hic vehementer optat] ingenia ex ferreis in argentea et aurea transformentur.’) Nuptial Arithmetic, pp. 230–3.
- 107.
Allen Synoptic Art, p. 17.
- 108.
‘Sic quod igitur saeculum appellandum nobis est aureum, illud est proculdubio tale quod aurea passim ingenia profert. Id autem esse nostrum hoc saeculum minime dubitabit qui praeclara saeculi huius inventa considerare voluerit. Hoc enim saeculum tanquam aureum liberale, disciplinas ferme iam extinctas reduxit in lucem.... sapientiam coniunxit cum eloquentia...’ Ficino, cited from a letter by Allen Synoptic Art, p. 12. The papacy from Nicholas V (1447–1455) onwards had started to think of the need for a return to a Golden Age too. See Hankins Humanism and Platonism, I, p. 480. The crisis was at all levels.
- 109.
Letters, IX, p. 43, letter to Braccio Martelli.
- 110.
‘… et Plato noster hoc nostro erga te officio gratulaturus admodum videatur, quoniam, quod ille in magnis quondam viris potissimum exoptabat, ipse philosophiam una cum summa in rebus publicis auctoritate coniunxeris.’ Theologia Platonica, I, pp. 12–13.
- 111.
Hankins argues that ‘it is difficult to believe that the appearance... was not related to Ficino’s millennial hopes for a renewal of Christianity through the pia philosophia of Platonism’. The conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter ‘signified the conjoining of wisdom and power, the precondition of a Golden Age’. Plato in the Italian Renaissance, I, pp. 302–4.
- 112.
Paul of Middleburg, Ficino’s friend, determined that 1484 was a Great Year: a conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter ‘which heralded mighty changes for the Christian religion. On the basis of the same conjunction Ficino’s fellow-Platonist Cristoforo Landino had predicted the return of Dante’s Veltro in 1484 to reform the Christian religion. And the Hermetic prophet Mercurio da Careggio had also chosen the year 1484 to appear on the streets of Florence urging repentance before the coming millennium, and announcing (like Pletho?) the appearance of a new unified world religion.’ See Hankins Plato in the Italian Renaissance, I, pp. 303–4.
- 113.
Allen argues this is not through Savonarola, but through the ‘generation and the birth of a Florentine Platonism that would restore the fabled golden age and reunite religion with philosophy, Themis with Pallas. In that hallowed time both goddesses would exercise a sovereign, a jovian sway over the just state, its wise ruler or rulers in their nocturnal council, and its tempered offspring.’ Nuptial Arithmetic, p. 82.
- 114.
Allen Nuptial Arithmetic, p. 26. In 1498, Ficino used astrology to prove that Savonarola was possessed by a devil, from a letter to the College of Cardinals that he never sent. North, ‘Types of inconsistency’, p. 284. I think he felt personally let down by Savonarola, but at the same time I do not think he was ever part of the fervent group of the monk’s converts, like Pico. Ficino had his own ‘religion’.
- 115.
In Florence, there was ‘a perceived need for a divinely inspired earthly guide, and there was a thinker, Ficino, who sincerely believed he was that person, and who, perhaps in a circular fashion, helped create and further the very eschatological environment which he needed, as holy man, to have’. Celenza Piety and Pythagoras, p. 21.
- 116.
‘Rather, the law orders the soul who has seen most to be born as the man who is going to be a philosopher, or a devotee of beauty or music, or a lover. It orders the soul in second place, however, to descend into a lawful king, a man who is a warrior or great ruler…’ (‘...sed iubet eam que plurima viderit in genituram viri futuri philosophi aut pulchritudinis cupidi aut musici atque amatorii. Eam vero que secundo loco in regem legitimum ut bellicosum virum et imperatorium descendere....). Ficino in Allen Commentaries on Plato I, pp. 14–15 (from Phaedrus).
- 117.
‘The whole universe in every part cries out that we should acknowledge and love God. The true philosopher, intermediary between the universe and God, carefully points out and exhorts us to the same.’ Letters VI, p. 32. Letter to Antonio Zilioli.
- 118.
Letters, VII, p. 14. Letter to Paolo Ferobanti.
- 119.
Hankins Humanism and Platonism, I, p. 256.
- 120.
M.J.B. Allen (1977), ‘Ficino’s Lecture on the Good?’, Renaissance Quarterly, XXX, pp. 162–3.
- 121.
Allen, ‘Ficino’s Lecture’, p. 163 or ‘une sorte de jeu érudit’, Chastel Marsile Ficin, p. 10.
- 122.
Celenza Piety and Pythagoras, p. 22. Also Hankins Plato in the Italian Renaissance, I, p. 278: Ficino ‘evidently believed himself to possess the “gift of interpretation” of which St Paul had spoken in I Corinthinans.’
- 123.
See for instance, Letter to Giovanni Niccolini, Archibishop of Amalfi, where Ficino sends a prophecy to Pope Sixtus IV via Niccolini, or his ‘prophecy’ of King Alfonso, the father of King Ferdinand of Naples to Ferdinand himself. In this prophecy he claims that it was presented in the angelic tongue and then translated into human language by himself, Letters, V, p. 21.
- 124.
Letter to Lorenzo warning him of a bad astrological situation, Letters, V, p. 59.
- 125.
Hankins Humanism and Platonism, II, p. 35.
- 126.
Hankins Plato in the Italian Renaissance, I, p. 295.
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Howlett, S. (2016). A Sense of Mission. 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_2
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