In fifteenth-century Florence a slight man, of delicate health and melancholic temperament, changed the way Europe read ancient philosophy. Marsilio Ficino was the first to translate into Latin the entire corpus of Plato, the Corpus Hermeticum and the Enneads of Plotinus, and he gathered around him a circle of friends and disciples that went down in history as the Platonic Academy. Without him the esoteric Renaissance would not have taken the form we know.
The son of Cosimo's physician
Ficino was born in 1433 in Figline Valdarno. His father was a physician who enjoyed the trust of Cosimo de' Medici. The young Marsilio studied philosophy and medicine and soon showed a passion for Plato, at a time when university philosophy was still dominated by Aristotle.
Cosimo saw in him the right person for an ambitious project: making Platonic thought available in Latin. Plato had been much discussed during the Council of Florence in 1439, when Byzantine scholars such as George Gemistos Plethon had stirred great enthusiasm. Cosimo gave him Greek manuscripts and, in 1463, a house near his villa at Careggi, in the hills outside Florence.
Hermes first, then Plato
The order of the translations says a great deal about the mindset of the age. Ficino had already started work on Plato when a manuscript of the Corpus Hermeticum arrived in Florence. The elderly Cosimo asked him to give Hermes priority. The translation, the Pimander, was finished in 1463; Cosimo died the following year.
Ficino then translated all of Plato's dialogues, published in 1484, and later Plotinus, printed in 1492. He also translated or paraphrased texts by Iamblichus, Proclus, Porphyry and Pseudo-Dionysius.
The prisca theologia
Behind this work lay a precise idea, which Ficino called prisca theologia, the "ancient theology". In this view divine truth had been revealed since antiquity to a series of sages who passed it from one to the next:
- Zoroaster or Hermes Trismegistus;
- Orpheus;
- Aglaophemus;
- Pythagoras;
- Philolaus;
- Plato.
Christianity, for Ficino, did not contradict this tradition but fulfilled it. Platonic philosophy thus became a kind of preparation for faith, and the study of ancient texts a religious act.
The Platonic Theology and the immortality of the soul
Ficino's main philosophical work is the Theologia platonica de immortalitate animorum, printed in 1482. The title states its aim: to prove by philosophical argument that the soul is immortal.
Ficino describes the universe as a ladder of degrees, from God to the angels, from soul to quality and body. The human soul stands at the centre of this ladder: it is the "knot" that binds the spiritual and material worlds, and it can turn upward or downward. This central position gives it a special dignity.
Platonic love
In 1469 Ficino wrote a commentary on Plato's Symposium, known as De amore. In it he described love as the desire for beauty, which leads the soul from the beauty of bodies to that of souls and finally to divine beauty. This text is the source of the expression "Platonic love", which originally meant a spiritual friendship directed toward God.
De vita and natural magic
In 1489 Ficino published the De vita libri tres, three books on the health of scholars, who were often prone to melancholy. The third book, De vita coelitus comparanda, is the most famous and the most debated. Ficino describes in it how a person can attune their spiritus, a subtle substance mediating between soul and body, to the spirit of the world.
To do so he suggests concrete means: music, the singing of hymns, scents, colours, the choice of bright places. He himself sang the Orphic hymns to the lyre. This "natural magic", careful not to invoke demons, aroused suspicion, and Ficino had to defend himself with an apology.
Ficino became a priest in 1473 and never saw a contradiction between his faith and the study of ancient sages. He died at Careggi in 1499.
What the Academy really was
For centuries the Platonic Academy was imagined as an institution with regular sessions and official members. More recent studies, particularly those of James Hankins, have shown that it was rather a network of friendships, lectures, letters and conversations around Ficino. Figures such as Angelo Poliziano, Cristoforo Landino and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola belonged to it or moved in its orbit.
For Studio Esoterico Cornelio this more sober picture is also more interesting: the transmission of spiritual knowledge often travels through personal bonds and free conversation rather than formal structures.
In short
- Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499) translated Plato, the Corpus Hermeticum and Plotinus into Latin.
- Cosimo de' Medici had him translate Hermes before Plato, a task completed in 1463.
- The prisca theologia linked Hermes, Orpheus, Pythagoras and Plato in a single chain of wisdom compatible with Christianity.
- The 1489 De vita proposed a natural magic based on music, scents and harmony with the world spirit.