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Marsilio Ficino (; Latin name: Marsilius Ficinus; 19 October 1433 – 1 October 1499) was an Italian scholar and Catholic priest who was one of the most influential humanist philosophers of the early Italian Renaissance. He was an astrologer, a reviver of Neoplatonism in touch with the major academics of his day, and the first translator of Plato's complete extant works into Latin. (2025). 9781556435607, North Atlantic Books. ISBN 9781556435607 His Florentine Academy, an attempt to revive Platonic Academy, influenced the direction and tenor of the Italian Renaissance and the development of European philosophy.
Among his many students were Niccolo Valori family Nuovo Dizionario Istorico, Va = Uz, vol. 21, transl. from French, Remondini of Venice (1796); p. 51.Niccolo Valori (died 1527) wrote a biography of Lorenzo de' Medici the elder and published posthumously in 1568. and Francesco Cattani da Diacceto. The latter was considered by Ficino to be his successor as the head of the Florentine Platonic Academy. Marsilio Ficino, entry by Christopher Celenza in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Diacceto's student, Giovanni di Bardo Corsi, produced a short biography of Ficino in 1506. Annotated English translation of Corsi's biography of Ficino
Writing in 1492 Ficino proclaimed:
Ficino's letters, extending over the years 1474–1494, survive and have been published. He wrote De amore (Of Love) in 1484. De vita libri tres (Three books on life), or De triplici vita (The Book of Life), published in 1489, provides a great deal of medical and astrological advice for maintaining health and vigor, as well as espousing the Neoplatonist view of the Anima mundi and its integration with the human soul:
One metaphor for this integrated "aliveness" is Ficino's astrology. In the Book of Life, he details the interlinks between behavior and consequence. It talks about a list of things that hold sway over a man's destiny. Regardless, in his later extensive commentary on Plotinus's Ennead III, he actively and systematically repudiated the Neoplatonic account of the soul, the hypostasis Soul's unity, as well as the transmigration of the soul, the soul's eternity as opposed to mere imperishability, and the notion that the soul was created by intermediaries and not by God directly. Instead he preferred to interpret all of these more pagan Neoplatonic points, as Stephen Gersh comments in his Analytic Study of the same work, as moral allegories―in keeping with his general tendency towards concordance between Platonism and Christianity.
Medical works
Probably due to early influences from his father, Diotifeci, who was a doctor to Cosimo de' Medici, Ficino published Latin and Italian treatises on medical subjects such as Consiglio contro la pestilenza (Recommendations for the treatment of the plague) and De vita libri tres (Three books on life). His medical works exerted considerable influence on Renaissance physicians such as Paracelsus, with whom he shared the perception on the unity of the microcosmos and macrocosmos, and their interactions, through somatic and psychological manifestations, with the aim to investigate their signatures to cure diseases. Those works, which were very popular at the time, dealt with astrological and alchemical concepts. Thus Ficino came under the suspicion of heresy; especially after the publication of the third book in 1489, which contained specific instructions on healthful living in a world of demons and other spirits.Marsilio Ficino. Biography and introduction to The Letters of Marsilio Ficino, Volume 1 1975 Fellowship of the School of Economic Science, London. Retrieved 26 April 2014.
Platonic love
Notably, Ficino coined the term Platonic love, which first appeared in his letter to Alamanno Donati in 1476. In 1492, Ficino published Epistulae (Epistles), which contained Platonic love letters, written in Latin, to his academic colleague and life-long friend, Giovanni Cavalcanti, concerning the nature of Platonic love. Because of this, some have alleged Ficino was a homosexual, but this finds little basis in his letters or his general works and philosophy. In his commentary on the Republic, too, he specifically denies to his readers that the homosexual references made in Plato's dialogue were anything more than to bemuse the audience, "spoken merely to relieve the feeling of heaviness".Ficino, Marsilio, "The Commentary of Marsilio Ficino to Plato's Republic", in Arthur Farndell, ed. and transl., When Philosophers Rule: Ficino on Plato's Republic , Laws , and Epinomis (Shepheard-Walwyn, 2009), p. 24. Regardless, Ficino's letters to Cavalcanti resulted in the popularization of the term Platonic love in Western Europe.
Death
Ficino died on 1 October 1499 at Careggi. In 1521 his memory was honored with a bust sculpted by Andrea Ferrucci, which is located in the south side of the nave in the Cathedral of Santa Maria del Fiore.
Works
Commentaries
Other translations of commentaries
Other works
See also
Further reading
External links
Categories: 1433 Births, 1499 Deaths, 15th-century Astrologers, 15th-century Italian Philosophers, 15th-century Italian Roman Catholic Priests, 15th-century Italian Roman Catholic Theologians, 15th-century Translators, Book And Manuscript Collectors, Catholic Philosophers, Christian Humanists, Latin Commentators On Plato, Greek–latin Translators, Italian Astrologers, Italian Male Non-fiction Writers, Italian Renaissance Humanists, Italian Roman Catholic Writers, Medieval Occultists, Neoplatonists, People From The Metropolitan City Of Florence, Roman Catholic Mystics, Figline Valdarno
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