Abstract
This brief entry is on Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499), the most famous Platonic philosopher of the Renaissance. It provides a brief biography for Ficino and introduces readers to essential features of his Platonic scholarship, commentaries, and philosophy.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
References
Primary Literature
Ficino, Marsilio. 1576. Opera omnia. Basel. = Facsimile. 2000. Stéphane Toussaint. Enghien: Les Éditions du Miraval.
Ficino, Marsilio. 1956. Commentaire sur le Banquet de Platon. Ed. and Trans. Raymond Marcel. Paris: Les Belles Lettres.
Ficino, Marsilio. 1975–2015. The letters of Marsilio Ficino, 10 Vols. London: Shepheard-Walwyn.
Ficino, Marsilio. 1981. De la lumière (De lumine, 1492). Ed. Sylvain Matton. In Lumière et Cosmos. Courants Occultes de la Philosophie de la Nature, Les Cahiers de l’Hermétisme, 55–75. Paris: Albin Michel.
Ficino, Marsilio. 1984. Über die Liebe oder Platons Gastmahl. Trans. Karl Hasse with an intro. by Paul Richard Blum. Hamburg: F. Meiner.
Ficino, Marsilio. 1985. Commentary on Plato’s symposium: On love. Trans. Sears Jayne. Dallas: Springer.
Ficino, Marsilio. 1987. El Libro dell’Amore. Ed. Sandra Niccoli. Florence: Olshki.
Ficino, Marsilio. 1990–2010. Lettere I-I. Epistolarium familiarum. Ed. Sebastiano Gentile. Florence: Olschki.
Ficino, Marsilio. 1994. De amore: Commentario a El banquete de Platon. Trans. Rocío de la Vila Ardura. Mardrid: Tecnos.
Ficino, Marsilio. 1996. O livro do Amor. Trans. Ana Thereza Basilio Vieira. Niterói: Club de literatura Cromos.
Ficino, Marsilio. 2001–2006. Platonic theology, 6 Vols. Ed. and Trans. Michael J.B. Allen, and James Hankins with William Bowen. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Ficino, Marsilio. 2002a. The Philebus commentary. Ed. and Trans. Michael J.B. Allen. Tempe: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies.
Ficino, Marsilio. 2002b. Commentaire sur Le banquet de Platon, De l’amour. Trans. Pierre Laurens. Paris: Les Belles Lettres.
Ficino, Marsilio. 2002c. Three books on life. Ed. and Trans. Carol V. Kaske and John R. Clark. Tempe: Arizona Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies with the Renaissance Society of America.
Ficino, Marsilio. 2004. Dante. Monarchia. Trans. Marsilio Ficino. Milan: Mondadori.
Ficino, Marsilio. 2007. Théologie platonicienne de l’immortalité des âmes. Ed. and Trans. Raymond Marcel. Paris: Les Belles Lettres.
Ficino, Marsilio. 2008. Métaphysique de la lumière: Opuscules, 1476–1492. Ed. Julie Reynaud and Sébastien Galland. Chambéry: L’Act mem.
Ficino, Marsilio. 2011a. Mercurii Trismegisti: Pimander sive de potestate et sapientia dei. Ficinus Novus 1. Trans. Marsilio Ficino and Ed. Maurizio Campanelli. Turin: Nino Aragno editore.
Ficino, Marsilio. 2011b. Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. In De mystica theologia, De divinis nominibus. Trans. Marsilio Ficino and Ed. Pietro Podolak. Naples: D’Auria.
Ficino, Marsilio. 2012a. Commentary on Plato’s Parmenides. Ed. and Trans. Maude Vanhaelen, Commentaries on Plato. Vol. 2, 2 parts. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Ficino, Marsilio. 2012b. Commento al ‘Parmenide’ di Platone. Ed. and Trans. Francesca Lazzarin. Firenze: Olschki.
Ficino, Marsilio. 2014. Predicationes. Ficinus Novus II. Ed. Daniele Conti. Torino: Nino Aragno Editore.
Ficino, Marsilio. 2015. On Dionysius the Areopagite, 2 Vols. Ed. Michael J.B. Allen. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Ficino, Marsilio. 2017–2018. Commentary on Plotinus, Vols. 4–5. Ed. and Trans. Stephen Gersh. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Ficino, Marsilio. 2018. Commentarium in Epistolas Pauli. Ficinus Novus III. Ed. Daniele Conti. Torino: Nino Aragno Editore.
Ficino, Marsilio. 2019. De Christiana Religione. Ed. Guido Bartolucci. Pisa: Edizioni della Normale.
Secondary Literature
Allen, Michael J.B. 1977. Ficino’s lecture on the good? Renaissance Quarterly 30: 160–171.
Allen, Michael J.B. 1980. Two commentaries on the Phaedrus: Ficino’s indebtedness to Hermias. Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 43: 110–129.
Allen, Michael J.B. 1981. Marsilio Ficino and the Phaedran Charioteer. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Allen, Michael J.B. 1984. The platonism of Marsilio Ficino: A study of his Phaedrus commentary, its sources and genesis. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Allen, Michael J.B. 1998. Synoptic art: Marsilio Ficino on the history of Platonic interpretation. Florence: Olschki.
Celenza, Christopher S. 1999. Pythagoras in the Renaissance: The case of Marsilio Ficino. Renaissance Quarterly 52: 667–711.
Celenza, Christopher S. 2002. Late antiquity and Florentine Platonism: The ‘post-Plotinian’ Ficino. In Marsilio Ficino: His theology, his philosophy, his legacy, ed. Michael J.B. Allen, Valery Rees, and Martin Davies, 71–97. Leiden: Brill.
Celenza, Christopher S. 2007. The Platonic revival. In The Cambridge companion to Renaissance philosophy, ed. James Hankins, 72–96. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Celenza, Christopher S. 2017. Marsilio Ficino. In Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ficino/
Copenhaver, Brian. 1984. Scholastic philosophy and Renaissance magic in the De vita of Marsilio Ficino. Renaissance Quarterly 37: 523–554.
Copenhaver, Brian. 1986. Renaissance magic and Neoplatonic philosophy: ‘Ennead’ 4.3–5 in Ficino’s ‘De vita coelitus comparanda’. In Marsilio Ficino e il Ritorno di Platone, 2 Vols, ed. Gian Carlo Garfagnini, 351–369. Florence: Olschki.
Davies, Jonathan. 1992. Marsilio Ficino: Lecturer at the Studio fiorentino. Renaissance Quarterly 45: 785–790.
Della Torre, Arnaldo. 1902. Storia dell’Accademia Platonica di Firenze. Florence: Tipografia G. Carnescchi e Figli.
Ebgi, Raphael. 2019. Voluptas. La Filosofia del Piacere nel Giovane Marsilio Ficino (1457–1469). Pisa: Edizioni della Normale.
Festugière, André-Jean. 1941. La philosophie de l’amour de Marsile Ficin et son influence sur la littérature française au XVIe siècle. Paris: Vrin.
Field, Arthur. 1998. The origins of the Platonic Academy of Florence. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Field, Arthur. 2002. The Platonic Academy of Florence. In Marsilio Ficino: His theology, his philosophy, his legacy, ed. Michael J.B. Allen, Valery Rees, and Martin Davies, 359–376. Leiden: Brill.
Förstel, Christian. 2006. Marsilio Ficino e il Parigino Greco 1816 di Plotino. In Marsilio Ficino, Fonti, Testi, Fortuna, ed. Sebastiano Gentile and Stéphane Toussaint, 65–88. Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura.
Garin, Eugenio. 1960. Le ‘elezioni’ e il problema dell’astrologia. In Umanesimo e esoterismo, ed. Enrico Castelli, 17–37. Padua: CEDAM.
Garin, Eugenio. 1976. Lo zodiaco della vita. Roma: Laterza.
Gentile, Sebastiano. 1983. In margine all’epistola “De divino furore” di Marsilio Ficino. Rinascimento 23: 33–77.
Gentile, Sebastiano. 1990. Sulle prime traduzioni dal greco di Marsilio Ficino. Rinascimento 40: 57–104.
Gentile, Sebastiano. 2013. Ficino, Epicuro e Lucrezio. In The rebirth of Platonic theology, ed. J. Hankins and F. Meroi, 119–135. Firenze: Olschki.
Gentile, Sebastiano, et al., eds. 1984. Marsilio Ficino e il ritorno di Platone. Florence: Le Lettere.
Gersh, Stephen. 2019. Marsilio Ficino as commentator on Plotinus: Some case studies. In Plotinus’ legacy: The transformation of Platonism from the Renaissance to the modern era, ed. S. Gersh, 19–43. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hankins, James. 1990a. Plato in the Italian Renaissance, 2 Vols. Leiden: Brill.
Hankins, James. 1990b. Cosimo de’ Medici and the ‘Platonic Academy’. Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 53: 144–162.
Hankins, James. 1991. The myth of the Platonic Academy of Florence. Renaissance Quarterly 44: 429–475.
Hankins, James. 2013. Ficino’s critique of Lucretius. In The rebirth of Platonic theology, ed. J. Hankins and F. Meroi, 137–154. Firenze: Olschki.
Katinis, Teodoro. 2007. Medicina e filosofia in Marsilio Ficino. Il Consilio contro la Pestilentia. Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura.
Klibansky, Rayond, Erwin Panofsky, and Fritz Saxl. 1964. Saturn and melancholy: Studies in the history of natural philosophy, religion, and art. London: Nelson.
Klutstein, Ilana. 1987. Marsilio Ficino et la Théologie Ancienne: Oracles chaldaïques, hymnes orphiques, hynes de Proclus. Florence: Olschki.
Kraye, Jill. 1994. The transformation of Platonic love in the Italian Renaissance. In Platonism and the English imagination, ed. Anna Baldwin and Sarah Hutton, 76–85. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kristeller, Paul O. 1937–1945. Supplementum ficinianum, 2 Vols. Florence: Olschki.
Kristeller, Paul O. 1938. Per la biografia di Marsilio Ficino. Civiltà Moderna 10: 277–298.
Kristeller, Paul O. 1944. The scholastic background of Marsilio Ficino. Traditio 2: 257–318.
Kristeller, Paul O. 1966. Marsilio Ficino as a beginning student of Plato. Scriptorium 20: 41–54.
Kristeller, Paul O. 1985. Marsilio Ficino and the Roman Curia. Humanistica Lovaniensia 34A: 83–98.
Kristeller, Paul O. 1988. Il pensiero filosofico di Marsilio Ficino. Florence: Le Lettere.
Leinkauf, Thomas. 2014. Marsilio Ficinos Platon-Kommentar. In Cusanus, Ficino, Patrizi: Formen platonischen Denkens in der Renaissance, ed. T. Leinkauf, 189–226. Berlin: Trafo.
Lines, David. 1990. Faciliter Edoceri: Niccolò Tignosi and the audience of Aristotle’s Ethics in fifteenth-century Florence. Studi Medievali. 3rd series 40: 139–168.
Marcel, Raymond. 1958. Marsile Ficin (1433–1499). Paris: Les Belles Lettres.
Monfasani, John. 2002. Marsilio Ficino and the Plato-Aristotle controversy. In Marsilio Ficino: His theology, his philosophy, his legacy, ed. Michael J.B. Allen, Valery Rees, and Martin Davies, 179–202. Leiden: Brill.
Neschke-Hentschke, Ada. 2008. Platonisme et tournant herméneutique au début du XIXe siècle en Allemagne. In La Naissance du paradigme herméneutique de Kant et Schleiermacher à Dilthey, second édition revue et augmentée, ed. André Laks and Ada Neschke-Hentschke, 109–131. Villeneuve d’Asque: Presses Universitaires du Septentrion.
Podolak, Pietro. 2011. Un’orazione filosofica di Marsilio Ficino nel Vat. Lat. 5953, edizione di un testo parzialmente pubblicato. Accademia: Revue de la Société Marsile Ficin 13: 85–109.
Robichaud, Denis J.-J. 2006. Marsilio Ficino’s De vita platonis, apologia de moribus platonis, against the Poetasters and Cynics: Aristippus, Lucian, Cerberus and other Dogs. Accademia: Revue de la Société Marsile Ficin 8: 23–59.
Robichaud, Denis J.-J. 2014. Marsilio Ficino’s ‘Si Deus Fiat Homo’ and Augustine’s ‘Non Ibi Legi’: The Incarnation, and Plato’s Persona in the Scholia to the Laws. Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 77: 87–114.
Robichaud, Denis J.-J. 2016a. Fragments of Marsilio Ficino’s translations and use of Proclus’ Elements of theology and elements of physics: Evidence and study. Vivarium: A Journal for Medieval and Early-Modern Philosophy and Intellectual Life 54 (1): 46–107.
Robichaud, Denis J.-J. 2016b. Marsilio Ficino and Plato’s divided line: Iamblichus and Pythagorean Pseudepigrapha in the Renaissance. In Pythagorean knowledge from ancient to the modern world: Askêsis-religion-science, ed. A.-B. Renger and A. Stavru, 437–452. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz.
Robichaud, Denis J.-J. 2016c. Platonic questions: Ficino’s Latin and Schleiermacher’s German. Historia Philosophica: An International Journal 14: 155–170.
Robichaud, Denis J.-J. 2017a. Plato’s persona: Marsilio Ficino, Renaissance humanism, and Platonic traditions. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
Robichaud, Denis J.-J. 2017b. Ficino on force, magic, and prayer: Neoplatonic and hermetic influences in Ficino’s Three books on life. Renaissance Quarterly 70 (1): 44–87.
Robichaud, Denis J.-J. 2017c. Working with Plotinus: A study of Marsilio Ficino’s textual and divinatory philology. In From Florence to Europe: Teachers, students, and scholars of Greek in the Renaissance, ed. Federica Ciccolella and Luigi Silvano, 120–154. Leiden: Brill.
Robichaud, Denis J.-J. 2018. Competing claims on the legacies of Renaissance humanism in the histories of philology. Erudition and the Republic of Letters 3: 177–222.
Robichaud, Denis J.-J. 2020. Ficino and the Nodus Divinus: Timaean and Iamblichean mean terms and the soul in Platonic Theology 1–4. Bruniana & Campanelliana 16.2. forthcoming.
Sheppard, Anne. 1980. The influence of Hermias on Marsilio Ficino’s doctrine of inspiration. Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 43: 97–109.
Snyder, James G. 2011. Marsilio Ficino’s critique of the Lucretian alternative. Journal of the History of Ideas 72: 165–181.
Sorokina, Maria. 2015. Une Source Inconnue de la Disputatio contra iudicium astrologorum de Marsile Ficin: La Summa de astris de Gérard de Feltre. Bruniana & Campanelliana 21 (1): 169–189.
Toussaint, Stéphane. 1999. L’Influence de Ficin à Paris et le Pseudo-Denys des Humanistes: Traversari, Cusain, Lefèvre d’Étaples, Suivi d’un Passage Inédit de Marsile Ficin. Bruniana & Campanelliana 5 (2): 381–414.
Toussaint, Stéphane. 2004. Plotin chez les moines. En marge des Ennéades: Marsile Ficin dans une lettre de Pietro Delfino camaldule? Accademia: Revue de la Société Marsile Ficin 6: 47–61.
Toussaint, Stéphane. 2013. De dialogorum congrua successionis serie: retour sur Ficin, Cosme et Platon. In Lire les dialogues, mais lesquels et dans quel ordre? Définitions du corpus et interprétations de Platon, ed. Anne Balansard and Isabelle Koch, 133–147. Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag.
Toussaint, Stéphane. 2014a. Jamblique, Pic, Ficin et Mithridates Platonicus. Accademia: Revue de la Société Marsile Ficin 16: 79–110.
Toussaint, Stéphane. 2014b. Pic, Hiéroclès et Pythagore. Accademia: Revue de la Société Marsile Ficin 16: 111–120.
Vasoli, Cesare. 1997. Ficino, Marsilio (Marsilius Feghinensis). In Dizionario biografico degli italiani, 47, coll. 378a–395a. Roma: Istituto dell’Enciclopedia Italiana.
Vasoli, Cesare. 2003. Le Predicationes di Marsilio Ficino. In Letteratura in Forma di Sermone: i rapporti tra predicazione e letteratura nei secoli 13–16, ed. G. Auzzas, G. Baffetti, and C. Delcorno, 9–27. Firenze: Olschki.
Walker, Daniel P. 1958. Spiritual and demonic magic from Ficino to Campanella. London: Warburg Institute.
Walker, Daniel P. 1972. The ancient theology, studies in Christian Platonism from the fifteenth to the eighteenth century. London: Duckworth.
Weill-Parot, Nicolas. 2002. Les “images astrologiques” au Moyen Âge et à la Renaissance. Paris: Honoré Champion.
Yates, Frances. 1964. Giordano Bruno and the hermetic tradition. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Section Editor information
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this entry
Cite this entry
Robichaud, D.J.J. (2021). Ficino, Marsilio. In: Sgarbi, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Renaissance Philosophy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02848-4_96-1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-02848-4_96-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-02848-4
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-02848-4
eBook Packages: Springer Reference Religion and PhilosophyReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Humanities