Everything about Marsilio Ficino totally explained
Marsilio Ficino (
Latin name:
Marsilius Ficinus;
Figline Valdarno,
October 19 1433 -
Careggi,
October 1 1499) was one of the most influential
humanist philosophers of the early Italian
Renaissance, an
astrologer, a reviver of
Neoplatonism who was in touch with every major academic thinker and writer of his day, and the first translator of
Plato's complete extant works into
Latin. His
Florentine Academy, an attempt to revive Plato's school, had enormous influence on the direction and tenor of the Italian
Renaissance and the development of European
philosophy.
Biography
During the sessions at Florence of the
Council of Ferrara-Florence in
1438-
1445, during the failed attempts to heal the
schism of the Orthodox and Catholic churches,
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 learned society of Florence that they named him the second Plato. In
1459 John Argyropoulos was lecturing on Greek language and literature at Florence, and Marsilio became his pupil. When Cosimo decided to refound
Plato's Academy at Florence, his choice to head it was Marsilio, who made the classic translation of
Plato from
Greek to
Latin (published in 1484), as well as a translation of a collection of Hellenistic Greek documents of the
Hermetic Corpus - particularly the "Corpus Hermeticum" of Hermes Trismegistos, and the writings of many of the Neoplatonists, for example
Porphyry,
Iamblichus,
Plotinus,
et al. Following suggestions laid out by
Gemistos Plethon, Ficino tried to
synthesize Christianity and
Platonism.
Marsilio Ficino's main original work was his treatise on the immortality of the soul (
Theologia Platonica de immortalitate animae). In the rush of enthusiasm for every rediscovery from Antiquity, Marsilio exhibited a great interest in the arts of
astrology, which landed him in trouble with the
Roman Church. In
1489 he was accused of magic before
Pope Innocent VIII and needed strong defense to preserve him from the condemnation of
heresy.
His father 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.
Marsilio Ficino, writing in
1492, 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."
His letters, extending over the years 1474 – 1494, survive and have been published. He also wrote
De amore and the influential
De vita libri tres (
Three books on life.)
De vita, published in 1489, provides a great deal of curious contemporary 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 don't 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 Book of Life, Marsilio details the interlinks between behavior and consequence. It talks about a list of things that hold sway over a man's destiny.
His memory has been honored with a bust in the north side of the nave in the cathedral of
Santa Maria del Fiore in
Florence.
Further Information
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