Marsilio Ficino
Italian philosopher and theologian
born Oct. 19, 1433, Figline, republic of Florence [Italy]
died Oct. 1, 1499, Careggi, near Florence
Main
Italian philosopher, theologian, and linguist whose
translations and commentaries on the writings of Plato and
other classical Greek authors generated the Florentine
Platonist Renaissance that influenced European thought for
two centuries.
Ficino was the son of a physician who was acquainted with
the Florentine ruler and patron of learning Cosimo de’
Medici. After being trained in Latin language and
literature, Ficino studied Aristotelian philosophy and
medicine, probably at Florence. He was introduced to the
Latin versions of the works of Plato and the Neoplatonists
by such Western writers as Augustine of Hippo (5th century)
and the leading medieval scholastic Thomas Aquinas. He then
acquired a thorough knowledge of Greek in order to read and
interpret the classical philosophers in their original
texts. Supported by Cosimo de’ Medici and his successors, he
devoted the remainder of his life to the translation and
interpretation of Plato and the succeeding Platonic school,
whose thought he attempted to integrate more closely with
Christian theology.
In 1462 Ficino became head of the Platonic Academy of
Florence. Situated at the Medici villa at Careggi, outside
Florence, the academy with its endowment of Greek
manuscripts became one of the foremost intellectual centres
of Europe. Ficino’s numerous translations from Greek into
Latin include some Neoplatonic and early Christian writings
and, above all, the complete works of Plato and the
3rd-century Neoplatonist Plotinus. Finished about 1470 but
not printed until 1484, Ficino’s was the first complete
translation of Plato into any European language. His
versions of both Plato and Plotinus remained in general use
until the 18th century.
Ficino was ordained a priest in 1473 and later was named
a church official of Florence Cathedral. He was closely
identified with the Medici family as protégé and tutor, and
he retired to the Tuscan countryside after the expulsion of
the Medici from Florence in 1494.
Noteworthy among Ficino’s commentaries are those on
Plato’s Symposium (1469), also called De amore (“On Love”),
and on various treatises of Plotinus. Of his original
writings the Theologia Platonica (1482; “Platonic
Theology”), actually a philosophical study of the soul, and
the Liber de Christiana religione (1474; “Book on the
Christian Religion”) are the most significant. His thought
also was expressed in a collection of letters and in De vita
libri tres (1489; “Three Books on Life”), a series of tracts
on medicine and astrology.
Ficino revised the thought of Plato in a Renaissance
perspective. In conceiving the universe as a hierarchy of
substances that descends from God to matter, he was strongly
influenced by Neoplatonic and medieval views. Yet in
assigning to the human soul a privileged, central place in
this hierarchy and stressing that the soul through its
universal, infinite aspirations and thoughts links the
highest with the lowest beings and acts as a bond and knot
of the universe, Ficino reveals his affinity with the
thought of Renaissance humanism, which gave special emphasis
to man and his dignity. Seeing a parallel in the Platonic
and Christian concept of love, he explained in his
commentary on the Symposium that the highest form of human
love and friendship is a communion based ultimately on the
soul’s love for God. This theory of spiritual, or
“Platonic,” love dominated European poetry and literature
during the 16th century.
Ficino’s interpretation of Platonism greatly influenced
subsequent European thought. His teaching that man naturally
tends toward religion, distinguishing him from the lower
animals, and that all religions have a measure of truth,
appears to have inspired 17th-century deist thought as
exemplified in Edward Herbert, 1st Baron Herbert of
Cherbury. Not only the 17th-century Cambridge Platonists but
similar movements in France and Italy reflect Ficino’s
original Platonist revival.
