Marsilio Ficino
Marsilio Ficino (Figline Valdarno, Florence, October 19, 1433, - Villa Medicea de Careggi, Florence, October 1, 1499) was an Italian Catholic priest, philologist, physician and Renaissance philosopher. A protégé of Cosimo de' Medici and his successors, including Lorenzo de' Medici (called 'the Magnificent'), he was also the architect of the Neoplatonist renaissance and headed the famous Florentine Platonic Academy.
Biography
He was the son of Diotifece, a surgeon in the service of the Medici. His name "Ficino" probably comes from the abbreviation of his father's name. He used it for the first time in 1456. Between 1448 and 1451 he studied Medicine at the University of Pisa-Florence, as his father wanted him to have the same profession. However, although Marsilio published some medical works (such as De triplice vita libri tres and Epidemiarum antidotus ), he did not pursue that career. He became interested in Neoplatonic philosophy thanks to the influence of characters such as Jorge Gemisto Pletón and Basilio Bessarión. In 1459 he founded the Florentine Platonic Academy with Cosimo de' Medici and devoted himself intensely to learning Greek.
In 1473 he was ordained a priest. He then receives two communities as perks by Lorenzo de' Medici and is later named canon of the Florence Cathedral.
He translated from Greek into Latin the dialogues of Plato (1484), Plotinus (1492), the Corpus hermeticum (1471) and some treatises and letters written by an unknown monk of the V, the Areopagite Pseudo Dionysus. He wrote – apart from a huge epistolary – a famous Commentary on Plato's Banquet and Platonic Theology . He aspired to a fusion of Platonism and Hermeticism with Christianity, and in De Vita he came to have problems with the Inquisition for his statements that could be understood as a return to paganism and as favoring astrological determination (something which he never did, actually, since his use of astrology was only to "harmonize" life with the heavens).
Mentor and friend of Pico della Mirandola, he definitively modified the approach to melancholy, making it characteristic of the literary and creative genius, thus exerting enormous influence. His philosophy contributed to the emergence of artistic creations such as La Primavera and The Birth of Venus, by Botticelli, and its influence spread throughout the Renaissance, affecting such diverse personalities like Dürer, Agrippa von Nettesheim, Paracelsus, Milton and Pico della Mirandola.
In the difficult times of the Medici he became more attached to them and even supported Savonarola although he kept out of the problems that led to his death. The last years of his life were dedicated to writing a commentary on the Pauline Epistles, although he did not manage to finish it.
Thought
Philosophy
At the center of Ficino's philosophical thought is the metaphysics of Plotinus. He assumed the theory of divine emanations, typical of Neoplatonism. Although he keeps man's possibility of knowing God open, he affirms that this can only be achieved through an interior purification typical of Stoic morality. Thus even Christ becomes an idea of virtue:
What else was Christ but a kind of manual of ethics, that is, of divine philosophy, living as the envoy of Heaven being himself a divine Idea of virtues, manifests in the eyes of men?From Christiana religione, chap. 4
Another element that Ficino highlights is that the divine Word or Logos is the complement of a process initiated in the Ancient Age, from Hermes Trismegistus, Orpheus, Pythagoras, Plato; according to this historical series, he speaks of the pia philosophia that is identified with the docta religio , complex and mysterious that cannot be divulged to everyone.
Theology
In the theological field, Ficinio's theories had a great influence in the XV century: from the religious point of view It can be said that his thought can be interpreted as a sign of religious tolerance, a strong mysticism without undermining the humanist ideal of man as the center of the universe and the conception of art as an expression of the idea towards the absolute.
Perhaps the most important aspect of his thought is the theory of Platonic love in which sensual love is differentiated from spiritual love as a participation in Eros, which brings together everything the universe and moves all creatures towards God.
Works
In addition to the aforementioned translations and his medical works, the following ones on philosophy and theology can be counted:
- Institutions ad Platonicam disciplinam (1456)..
- Of moral virtutibus (1457).
- De quattuor sectis philosophorum (1457).
- Back off (1457-58).
- De Christiana religione et fidei pietate (1474).
- Theologia planica de immortalitate animorum (1474).
- Liber de Sole (Edit by Enrique Petrina, Basel 1576, according to Tomas Kuhn).
- In Epistolas Pauli commentaria (1491).
- Amore. Commentarium in Convivium Platonis (according to the manuscript used for the Castilian edition of Tecnos - translated by De la Villa Ardura, Rocio- 1594).
- Of vita libri three containing: From healthy vita, Long vita and Of vita coelitus comparnda (1489)
External links
Wikimedia Commons hosts a multimedia category Marsilio Ficino.- Works by Marsilio Ficino in Latin Archived on 27 October 2015 at Wayback Machine..
- Voz Marsilio Ficino in Philosophica: Online philosophical Encyclopedia