Marsile Ficin

Marsile Ficin (in Latin Marsilius Ficinus , in Italian Marsilio Ficino ), born with Figline Valdarno in Tuscan the October 19th 1433 and died in Careggi close to Florence on October 1st, 1499, is a poet and Italian philosopher.

It is one of the humanistic philosophers most influential of the First Italian Rebirth. It is also an astrologer, at the origin of the revival of the thought neoplatonician, in liaison with the first thinkers of its time.

Biography

Childhood

Wire of a famous doctor, it follows his father to Florence when this one will exert at the hospital Santa Maria Nuova . It is intended for medicine, but its studies make him discover the philosophy, towards which the growth humanistic the Cristoforo Landino.

It accepted its first instruction in its birthplace and made its studies with Bologna. He studied as of his first youth with heat the Greek language and the philosophy of Plato, to which he dedicated, for the remainder of its life, a true worship. Of return to Florence, it could make share its enthusiasm for the large philosopher of Antiquity, with his guard Cosme de Médicis.

Very early studied of Galien, of Hippocrates, Aristote, Averroès and Avicenne, it is very young still, as he tells it itself in the forewords with the De Vita and with the edition of Plotin, than Ficin had found a second father “according to Plato” in Cosme de Médicis, banker, well-read man and founder of dynasty which was going to reign on Florence.

The return to the Greek thought and neoplatonism

Following the Council of Florence, convened in 1439 by the pope Eugene IV, to bring closer the Churches of the East and Occident, several Greek scientists, come for this event, was fixed in Tuscany. Cosme de Médicis and its intellectual circle knew, on this occasion, the philosopher neoplatonician Gemiste Pléthon whose speeches on Plato and mystics of Alexandria had so much fascinated the company well-read woman of Florence that it had been called second Plato.

In 1459, Marsile Ficin became the pupil of Jean Argyropoulos which taught the language and the Greek literature.

Author and fertile translator, endowed with a direction of the ancient thought so much out of the commun run that today still its interpretations can sometimes guide the modern scholarship, Marsile Ficin thus published in Latin, i.e. restored with the Occident, Plato, Plotin, Porphyre of Tyr, Jamblique, Synésios, Proclus, Priscien of Lydie and Hermes Trismégiste; it knew to give an entirely new voice and a thought to the humanistic studies, in works inspired, such its Platonic Théologie of the Immortality of the hearts , or impressed heresy and occult sciences, such its Of vita libri very .

When Cosme de Médicis decided to make reappear the Platonic Academy with Florence, it chooses to put Marsile Ficin at its head. This one had with its credit several translations:

traditional translation of Plato of the Latin Greek (edition of 1482)
a translation of the manuscript comprising fourteen of the fifteen treaties of the Corpus Hermeticum (name which one now gives to the whole of the philosophical dialogs allotted to Hermes Trismégiste, in other words Mercure Three times Grand )
writings of many neoplatonicians, such as for example Porphyre of Tyr, Jamblique, Plotin

Its work of translator and exégète of the platonism had a considerable importance in Europe of the Rebirth. Its personal work is an effort of conciliation between the Christian revelation and “Platonic theology”. On the traces of Gemiste Pléthon, Marsile Ficin tried a synthesis of the Christianisme and Platonisme. He is thus opposed to the aristotelism schools of his time that he shows to destroy the religion. Ficin, while being based on the Platonic tradition, works out a news apologetic, founded on a “pia philosophia” and a “docta religio”.

The principal work of Marsile Ficin is its treaty on the immortality of the heart, Theologia Platonica of immortalitate animae .

In the search of the return to the Antiquité, Marsile Ficin carried a great interest to the Astrologie, which led it to enter in conflict with the Roman Église. In 1489, it was shown of Sorcellerie by the Pape Innocent VIII and escaped from little from the rigors from the Inquisition.

Marsile Ficin wrote in 1492: “ This century, like a golden age, restored the light of the liberal arts which had almost disappeared: grammar, poetry, rhetoric, painting, sculpture, architecture, music… This century seems to be that which made it possible astrology to have established among. ” He dies in 1499.

Its disciples

Marsile Ficin was the tutor of the grandson of Cosme de Médicis, Laurent de Médicis, and Jean Pic of Mirandole, the Italian humanistic philosopher, was one of its pupils.

Works

Translation

Him the translation is owed:

Latin of Plato, Venice, 1491;
of the Ennéades of Plotin, Florence, 1492;
of Hermes Trismégiste;
several treaties of Jamblique, Porphyry of Tyr, Venice, 1497;
of Denys Aréopagite, Cologne, 1536.

Works

It moreover composed itself a great number of works, inter alia:

Theologia Platonica of immortalitate animae , (1482), 3 volumes, Beautiful letters
Of triplici vita (the life triples), Belles letters
Of vita libri very (1489)
De Amore or " Comentarium in Convivium Platonis, of amore " , translated and annotated by Pierre Laurens, Beautiful Letters - Paris, 2002.
Its correspondence between 1474 and 1494 survived to him and was published

Its Œuvres was gathered in 2 folio volumes, Paris, 1641.

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