Marsilio Ficino’s ascendancy was the result of an unlikely meeting of minds. In 1439, Florentine banking magnate Cosimo de’ Medici started attending philosophical lectures by Gemistos Plethon, a Byzantine Platonist. Although Plethon was part of an official envoy of Greek officials who had been meeting to discuss the future of the Christian church, he might have also been one of history’s first pagan revivalists. His alleged polytheism was supposedly the reason why his main treatise The Laws was destroyed. Cosimo however, was more interested in the ideas that Platonism and Christianity shared and hoped to found a revitalised Platonic Academy in Florence.
Not long after Constantinople fell to the Turks in 1453, Cosimo recruited Ficino, the precocious son of his personal physician. As Ficino translated Greek magical, philosophical, and theological texts into Latin, he also began to attract admirers from all parts of society (such as Sandro Botticelli and Girolamo Savonarola) who were inspired by his aesthetic interpretations of love and the nature of humankind. By the time the Medici family purchased a country villa for him, Ficino had essentially become Florence’s own Dumbledore. In his ‘self-help’ series, The Three Books on Life, Ficino eloquently argues that the ritual usage of talismans, herbs, and music had beneficial effects on the human mind and spirit.
The philosopher also used his singing voice and lyre to comfort his students and friends. Because he was also a priest, Ficino kept his private rituals secret, but his disciple (and his successor at the Academy) writings suggest that Ficino’s practices might have included donning a white robe, burning incense, and singing hymns to the sun. This description paints a brilliant picture of Ficino as the stereotypical benevolent sage. Ficino’s mystical reputation probably also contributed to later authors such as Paracelsus and Heinrich Agrippa viewing him as one of the most important messengers of a ‘prisca theologia’, an universal theology which connected all the legendary founders of major religions, like Moses and Zoroaster.
What’s probably most appealing about Ficino is his ability to define love in ways that are poetic and unique. To him love itself is the greatest magician:
Why do we think love is a magician? Because the whole power of magic consists in love. The work of magic is the attraction of one thing by another because of a certain affinity of nature.
According to Ficino, one of the reasons why it is so hard to fall out of love is because it is literally an infection of the blood transmitted through the eyes:
But the fact that a ray which is sent out by the eyes draws with it a spiritual vapour and that this vapour draws with it blood, we observe from this, that bleary and red eyes, by the emission of their own ray, force the eyes of the beholder nearby to be afflicted with a similar disease.
To gain further insight on Ficino, I caught up with Dr Angela Voss, a senior lecturer at Christ Canterbury Church University and specialist on the history of Renaissance music, magic, and astrology:
C: Did Ficino’s Platonic Academy convene in an official meeting place, or was it more an informal reading group?
A: There is some uncertainty about the meeting place, but it could have been the Villla Careggi which is now a hospital.
C: Ficino had many unique ideas about musical theory. What did he think about the connection between music and education?
A: I don’t know of any writings that explicitly deal with this. But I am sure he would have upheld Plato’s guidelines in The Republic, that harmonious music in the Pythagorean sense has a profound effect in aligning the human soul with the soul of the world. Also that different musical modes have different ethical and psychological effects.
C: Behind closed doors, Ficino may have believed and done things that would have gotten him thrown into prison..or worse. I’ve even heard he had a theory of reincarnation…
Yes, he managed to tread a fine line between orthodoxy and heresy! He was a very wise man, and could see exactly what he needed to say in ways that his various readers could accept and understand. Even so, in the dangerous climate of the early 1490s he felt obliged to disavow any interest in astrology and magic. As for reincarnation, it is difficult to know what he really believed as he would always uphold Christian orthodox doctrine as a bottom line, despite his sympathy with Plato. He had to of course.
C: Why do you think Ficino remains such an popular figure in contemporary studies on the Renaissance? Was there always a huge scholarly interest in him?
A: I think he is popular because he mirrors and prefigures much modern New Age thought and practices which understand the power of metaphor and symbol to heal. His wisdom is universal and timeless, wide-ranging and compassionate. His letters are very accessible and readable, and his astrology is humanistic and empowering unlike a prevalent determinism in his day. He has deep psychological insights and writes beautiful prose, is humble, and pious. He champions the role and power of the imagination in the raising of consciousness, and I think this is something precious in today’s utilitarian world. I don’t think he has always been popular, but now his work is more understood in its holistic breadth, not just by philosophers and theologians.
You can learn more about Ficino’s philosophy of the soul by following the links below:
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy