Marsilio Ficino was an Italian scholar and Catholic priest who was one of the most influential humanist philosophers of the early Italian Renaissance.
Background
Marsilio Ficino was born at Figline near Florence on October 19, 1433, the son of a prominent physician.
Ficino was born at Figline Valdarno. His father Diotifeci d'Agnolo was a physician under the patronage of Cosimo de' Medici, who took the young man into his household and became the lifelong patron of Marsilio, who was made tutor to his grandson, Lorenzo de' Medici. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, the Italian humanist philosopher and scholar was another of his students.
Education
Marsilio received a traditional education in humane letters at the universities of Florence and Pisa and studied medicine briefly at Bologna.
Marsilio studied Latin, Greek, philosophy, and medicine at Florence, showed an early interest in Plato and his successors and was enabled by the patronage of Cosimo de' Medici and his successors to devote himself entirely to his studies.
After 1462, Marsilio was the recognized leader of the Platonic Academy of Florence, a place of informal teaching, discussions, and social gatherings, which became one of the most important intellectual centers of the Renaissance.
Career
At the behest and with the support of Cosimo de' Medici he rapidly mastered Greek and began an ambitious program of translation: Homer, Hesiod, Proclus, the Corpus Hermeticum, Plotinus, and Plato. Begun in 1463, completed about 1470, and printed in 1484, Ficino's was the earliest complete translation of Plato into a Western tongue and was used for several centuries. His spiritual bent had been demonstrated from an early age by such writings as the Dio et anima (1457) and the De furor diving (1457), and on December 18, 1473, he was admitted to holy orders.
By his explication of Platonic doctrines, he hoped to persuade Jews, rationalists, and skeptics (among the last principally the Aristotelians, who rejected the immortality of the soul) to approach the true faith of Christianity. Ficino argued that in Platonic doctrine he found the rational philosophical arguments to buttress Christian theology. Ficino's last years were troubled by the fall from power of his patrons, the Medici, and the narrow fanaticism of the followers of Savonarola.
Religion
During the sessions at Florence of the Council of Ferrara-Florence in 1438–1445, during the failed attempts to heal the schism of the Orthodox and Catholic churches, Cosimo de' Medici and his intellectual circle had made acquaintance with the Neoplatonic philosopher George Gemistos Plethon, whose discourses upon Plato and the Alexandrian mystics so fascinated the learned society of Florence that they named him the second Plato.
Views
Marsilio Ficino The Italian philosopher and humanist Marsilio Ficino influenced Renaissance thought through his translation and explication of the works of Plato.
Ficino's religious concerns are emphasized by Charles Edward Trinkaus, In Our Image and Likeness: Humanity and Divinity in Italian Humanist Thought (2 vols. , 1970).
Although his teacher of philosophy at Florence was the celebrated Aristotelian Nicolo di Tignosi da Foligno, Ficino soon turned to Platonism.
Personality
Marsilio was of a tranquil temperament, sensitive to music and poetry, and debarred by weak health from joining in the more active pleasures of his fellow students.