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Renaissance

Ficino Letters

The Letters of Marsilio Ficino Volume 1 (Shepheard-Walwyn) Problems that trouble people in heart and mind during the Italian Renaissance are much the same as today. In trying to cope with them, many leaders of the period turned to the priest, Marsilio Ficino for spiritual guidance. Through these letters he advised, encouraged, and occasionally reproved them. Fearlessly he expressed the truth of a universal religion and this wisdom influenced many. He numbered statesmen, popes, artists, scientists, and philosophers amongst his circle. As Paul Oskar Kristeller makes clear below the Letters of Marsilio Ficino represent a essential core of his thought and influence as a chief architect of the Platonic and Hermetic revival, the philosophical and revelatory center of the new learning that was revamping religious vision and humanistic enquiry Italian Renaissance. The translations and commentaries Ficino produced reshaped the contours of Western thought. His work remained central for several centuries until more critical and skeptical styles of enquiry eclipsed his achievement and its unique synthetic voice. The letters are masterpieces of spiritual direction in what we now would call, a “neoplatonic style” of spirituality. Ficino is wise, temperate, mystical, moderate, subtle, ascetic, stylish, practical, contemplative, and devoted to truth and morality. The letters show the human face of the philosopher as he struggles with this emerging spiritual vision. At the same time the letters reveal a life fully embroiled in the manifold machinations and controversies of his times. Anyone who has an interest in the Italian Renaissance, in neoplationism and the hermetic tradition, and especially in the practical application of spiritual truths to everyday life will find these volumes a unique treasure trove insight and guidance as useful today as when penned over five centuries ago.

This edition, many years in slow laborious production, is a work of devotion to translation and careful scrutiny of the text. The anonymous translators provide careful notes to each letter, identifications of the correspondents, essays to the themes of each book and necessary historical background, bibliography for each volume, and beginning in volume 5, reproduction of the Latin text and corrections.

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Excerpt from Paul Oskar Kristeller Preface to volume 1: The Letters occupy in fact a very important place in Ficino's work. As historical documents, they give us a vivid picture of his personal relations with his friends and pupils, and of his own literary and scholarly activities. As pieces of literature, edited and collected by himself, the letters take their place among other correspondences of the time and are a monument of humanistic scholarship and literature. Finally, the letters are conscious vehicles of moral and philosophical teaching and often reach the dimensions of a short treatise. This intention is made explicit in the title attached to each letter which is due to the author himself and not to a later editor.

Ficino began to collect his letters in the 1470's, gradually arranged them in twelve books, had them circulated in numerous manuscript copies, and finally had them printed in 1495. The first book contains letters written between 1457 and 1476, and its manuscript tradition is especially rich and complicated. These letters derive great interest from the time of their composition, for they were written at the same time as some of the commentaries on Plato and as the Platonic Theology, Ficino's chief philosophical work. The correspondents include many persons of great significance: Cosimo and Lorenzo de' Medici, and members of other prominent Florentine families, allied or hostile to the Medici at different times: Albizzi and Pazzi, Soderini and Rucellai, Salviati and Bandini, Del Nero, Benci and Canigiani, Niccolini, Martelli and Minerbetti. There are two cardinals, Francesco Piccolomini, the later Pius III, a famous patron and bibliophile, and Bessarion, the great defender of Platonism. There is Bernardo Bembo, Venetian patrician and ambassador, Giovanni Antonio Campano, bishop and humanist. Francesco Marescalchi in Ferrara, and Giovanni Aurelio Augurelli from Rimini. There are the friends of Ficino's youth, Michele Mercati and Antonio Morali called Serafico, and his favourite friend, Giovanni Cavalcanti. There are philosophers and physicians, and there are numerous scholars, of different generations, who occupy a more or less prominent place in the annals of literature: Matteo Palmieri and Donato Acciaiuoli, Benedetto Accolti, Bartolomeo Scala and Niccolò Michelozzi, all connected with the chancery, Cristoforo Landino, Bartolomeo della Fonte and Angelo Poliziano, Francesco da Castiglione, perhaps Ficino's teacher of Greek, and Antonio degli Agli, bishop of Fiesole and Volterra, Jacopo Bracciolini the son of Poggio, and Carlo Marsuppini, the son of the humanist chancellor of the same name, Benedetto Colucci and Lorenzo Lippi, Domenico Galletti and Francesco Tedaldi, Antonio Calderini and Andrea Cambini, Cherubino Quarquagli and Baccio Ugolini, known for their vernacular verse, and a number of Latin poets: Peregrino Agli, Alessandro Braccesi, Amerigo Corsini, Naldo Naldi and Antonio Pelotti. The book also includes several pieces that are important compositions in their own right: the dialogue between God and the soul (4), on divine frenzy (7), on humanity (55), on the folly and misery of man (57-59), on the use of time (82), on law and justice (95), on happiness (115), the theological prayer to God (116), and the praise of philosophy (123).

The translators have pursued their task with enthusiasm, and if I may judge from the sections I examined, successfully. In the absence of a critical edition, they have not relied on the 1576 edition of Ficino's works which has been recently reprinted and offers a rather corrupt text, but on the first edition of 1495, and have collated one or two of the better manuscripts, at least for some of the difficult passages. I have encouraged them to follow accuracy as their chief goal, though not at the price of clumsy style.

The translation will not replace the original Latin text for scholarly purposes—no translation ever does and, in view of present attitudes, this simple truth cannot be repeated often enough. Yet the translation will be useful for all scholars working with the text, for it will clarify obscure passages and often correct the readings found in the most accessible editions. Above all, the translation will make available to students and lay readers an important document of Renaissance thought and literature that would otherwise not be accessible to them, and thus enrich their taste, their knowledge and their outlook.

The Letters of Marsilio Ficino Volume 2 (Shepheard-Walwyn) Excerpt: Marsilio Ficino of Florence (1433-1499) seems to have been a man of this stature. The influence he had on the Renaissance, and consequently upon the culture in which we live, has been discussed in the Introduction to the translation of Book I of his Letters.' Not only did he translate into Latin all the works of Plato, but he restated the principles upon which the ancient philosopher wrote, in such a way that they took life in the hearts of many of the leading men of his time.  His letters show that his words still have the power to give these principles life today.

Ficino makes some demands on the reader of this book—perhaps more than are made upon the readers of Book I of his Letters. Ficino warns us about this in his own preface to Books III and IV of the Letters, which is a dedication to King Matthias of Hungary (letter I). He writes of these books that he seems to have been 'pregnant with a frigid seed, so to speak, and to have produced rather more austere books of letters than is becoming to literary children'. But in the King's presence . . . their 'rather gloomy countenance' may be `instantly transformed so that they may seem thereafter altogether brighter and more joyful to those who behold them. But you, I pray, most fortunate King, may you look upon the sons of Marsilio . . with the joyful and lively rays of your eyes, as you are wont to look on all other things. For thus they will owe their existence only to me, but their beauty wholly to your royal majesty.'

It is always easy to be deceived by the elegance of Ficino's com­pliments into looking no further into what he is actually saying. King Matthias was no ordinary king. After surmounting great difficulties in securing his throne in Hungary, he became one of the very few Christian leaders ever to defeat the Ottoman Turks decisively during the period of their empire's almost continuous growth from the early 1300s to the death of Suleiman I in 1566. King Matthias was also a devotee of philosophy, keenly interested in the practical study of Plato. Members of Ficino's Academy dwelt at his court and an invi­tation to visit this court was extended to Ficino himself. Ficino in fact regarded him as a model of the philosopher king referred to in Plato's Republic.

But what does Ficino mean when he writes of the 'countenance' of his 'sons' being 'instantly transformed' in the presence of the King? First of all he hoped that the philosophy contained in the letters would be given life by the actions and example of the King. But in addressing the King, Ficino is also addressing all his other readers. Clearly Ficino meant that his readers should put this philosophy into practice.

In order to understand what Ficino is saying we need to be wary in interpreting some of the idioms he used which have lost their original force. This applies particularly to the letters which Ficino writes on love. To a modern reader his language may sound fulsome. But it is important to remember that, when, for instance, he addresses his `unique friend', Giovanni Cavalcanti, as his only care and his only solace (letter 4), he is in reality addressing the principle of truth which is the real self both of Ficino and his friend. Looked at in this way such letters offer us an understanding of friendship totally different from the usual one.6 Such friendship is in no way exclusive; indeed it will be noticed that Ficino apparently addresses a number of friends in similar style. In fact he is addressing precisely the same 'unique' principle in each; a principle which he understood as embracing everybody and everything. He writes in letter 21 : 'And so by loving the beloved steadfastly in this way, the lover, as far as his arms may reach, embraces the all-embracing and is secure in possessing his own possessor.'

Ficino's Academy was consciously modelled on the philosophic schools of antiquity. It was not merely an institute of learning.' The bond between Ficino and the other members was their mutual love, based on the love of the Self in each. It was by means of this love that the soul was seized by God, drawn towards Him, and finally united with Him. In fact this love itself was also God. It was because such love was the basis of his School that Ficino could write (letter 21): 'the desire of him, who strives for anything other than love, is often totally frustrated by the event. But he alone who loves nothing more than love itself, by desiring immediately attains, and in always attaining continues to desire.'

Because the object of love is God, the manifestation of God is always the object of Ficino's praise. However abundant is his praise, it is always quite specific. He gives unbounded praise to the faithfulness in the faithful (letter 58), to the dutifulness in the dutiful (letter 53), to the piety and learning in those who are pious and learned (letter 7), and this volume abounds with other examples. Equally, when he rebukes it is the fault he censures, not the man. And his rebukes while pointed are yet given with love (see, for instance, letter 46).

Another Marsilian style of writing to which we are not so accus­tomed today is irony. Too easily may we, for instance, mistake his letter to Jacopo, the Cardinal of Pavia (letter 54) as abject humility when he writes: 'Lofty as you are, yet you have from afar seen Marsilio, so near the ground and insignificant.' He often jokes about his small physical stature, and in this letter he may be having some fun at the expense of his correspondent and possibly offering a measure of reproof to the Cardinal for his 'loftiness' in the only way a parish priest could reprove a cardinal in the 15th Century. Ficino uses a more overt irony against the opponents of Philosophy in letter 34 to Lorenzo de' Medici.

In Book III Ficino makes frequent use of the imagery of astrology. For him the movement of the heavenly bodies was a most clear demonstration of the perfect order by which the universe is gov­erned.  Each heavenly body was a representation of a quality of the angelic mind, and their relative movements illustrated the ordered interaction between the qualities. What the minds of men experience on earth is simply the counterpart of these movements in the heavenly world. These movements are wholly in accord with the Good, but most men interpret them as good or bad, basing their judgements on what their physical effects appear to be.

Ficino never carries the imagery of astrology beyond a certain point. Sometimes he appears to dismiss the astrological argument altogether." He never wishes anyone ever to believe that their hap­piness in any way depends upon the stars. Moreover, while astrology rules fortune, a man who allows divine providence to guide him is independent of fortune, even in physical terms.

Why then does Ficino use the language of astrology so frequently? In a letter to Poliziano of 1494 he writes: 'It is not so much astronomy I teach, but rather by means of astronomy I search out moral allegories and anagogues leading to the divine.' Clearly, he thought that an understanding of the principles of the divine mind through astrology could help to lead men to knowledge of themselves and of God.

What is difficult to convey in any translation of Ficino is the beauty of his language. In letter 3 he explains to Bartolomeo della Fonte that he followed the command of heaven as well as the example of Plato and many others in weaving 'poetic rhythms and numbers' into his prose. The skill with which he combines words of similar sounds, and plays with words of similar sound but different meaning are at times strangely Shakespearian. 'If you break faith with me, the strings of your lyre will sound completely out of tune to you' (letter 8) cannot convey the force of `Si fidem fregeris, fides tibi penitus dissonabunt'.

These letters give the impression that in terms of worldly prosperity the years 1476-1477 were not very easy ones for Ficino. His rela­tionship to his patron, Lorenzo de' Medici, does not seem to be as intimate as in earlier years, if one may judge by the tone of the correspondence in Book III compared to Book I. Several letters, notably 9 and 10, indicate that Ficino was being pressed for money by the papal authorities which he would have been unable to pay. Letter 17 seems to be a request for some kind of support from Antonio degli Agli, the Bishop of Volterra. During these years both Ficino and his Platonic Academy were under attack from various quarters. Perhaps the most violent of these attacks was launched by the author of the satirical poem Morgante, Luigi Pulci, whose surname (which means `fleas' in Italian) Ficino found in letter 5 to be happily appropriate to Pulci's character and talents. In spite of Ficino's counter-attacks the poet who had lampooned Ficino and the Academy remained in favour with Lorenzo de' Medici.

In spite of all these difficulties Ficino's literary output remained prodigious. He was writing a number of theological essays (Opuscula Theologica) mentioned in letter 26. It appears from letter 37 that he was still revising his major work, the Platonic Theology (divided into eighteen books). About the same time he had also started to revise his translations of the works of Plato, and was preparing his Disputatio Contra Iudicium Astrologorum.

But more extraordinary than the volume of his writings is their range and penetration. Perhaps nowhere is this better illustrated than in his long letter on Duty (letter 53) where he defines duty as 'the action proper to each man, which keeps to what is fitting and honourable as circumstance, person, place and time require'. Taking this as his starting point he proceeds to define the duty of over thirty professions or functions of Man.

What was the principle that enabled him to see so clearly the nature of the different functions of Man and their relationship to each other and to the whole? It is the principle to which he repeatedly returns in this volume; the principle of unity. He returns to it not just as a philosophical concept but as an immediate perception. It was because he was rooted in this unity that he understood the one function of all the activities of Man—to lead the soul back to unity. In letter 3o he writes: 'Our Plato has persuaded me that I would in the end accom­plish most if I always did the same thing. . . . Assuredly a man who pursues everything achieves nothing; for many obstruct one, whereas one serves and unites many'. It was because he spoke from this point that his Academy was able to unite men of so many different pro­fessions: statesmen, poets, scholars, lawyers, musicians, priests, doc­tors and many more. It was the same spirit which inspired the Renais­sance in all its many different activities. It was thus that the 'Golden Age' could rise from the shadow of the 'Iron Age'. Ficino writes some years later to Paul of Middelburg (`distinguished scientist and astronomer'): 'Some men are endowed by nature with a bronze intel­lect, some with an iron one, some with a silver, and some with a golden one. If any age can be called a golden one it is undoubtedly the one that produces minds of gold in abundance. And no one who considers the wonderful discoveries of our age will doubt that it is a golden one. For this golden age has restored to the light the liberal arts that were almost extinct: grammar, poetry, rhetoric, painting, sculpture, architecture, music and the ancient art of singing to the Orphic lyre.'

The purpose of Ficino in writing these letters is evidently to kindle the love of truth in men and to set their minds upon its search. Whoever he may be addressing individually, each letter is written also for humanity. In fact a number of letters both in Books I and III are specifically addressed to Mankind. Nor is his address limited to the 15th Century. Because he discusses with such insight questions of unceasing interest to men, in a sense his letters are outside time.

The Letters of Marsilio Ficino Volume 3 (Shepheard-Walwyn) Excerpt: THIS is the third volume of letters translated by the Language Department of the School of Economic Science. It represents the fourth book of Ficino's Epistolae, covering mainly the period from 1st March to 1st August, 1477. A number of letters, however, fall outside this period, notably the letters in praise of philosophy (letter 13) and of medicine (letter 14), which were written as speeches, presumably to academic audiences, in Ficino's youth. The last two letters in the volume were written in 1478 and 1479 to Platonists in Hungary. They were originally included in the fifth and sixth books respectively, but were transferred when Books III and IV (volumes 2 and 3 of the present translation) were presented to King Matthias of Hungary.

The period covered by this volume of letters is that leading up to the Pazzi conspiracy against the rule of the Medici. In the conspiracy, which was followed by a war against Florence waged by a powerful alliance of states led by Pope Sixtus IV, Lorenzo de' Medici's brother, Giuliano, was murdered in Florence Cathedral and Lorenzo himself was wounded. Two of Ficino's correspondents, Francesco Salviati and Jacopo Bracciolini, were executed for complicity. Although Ficino would not have known of the plan to murder the Medici, a letter in this volume (letter 36) to Bracciolini seems to indicate that he did know of the conspirators' hostile intentions, and a further one to Pace (letter 8), written less than a fortnight before the attempt, shows that he understood that war would be the in­evitable consequence of their disaffection. In Ficino's letters to Sal­viati and Bracciolini it is clear that he is persistently and strongly discouraging them from taking any rash action.

During the period covered by the letters in this volume Ficino was working on a revision of his translations of Plato's dialogues and his commentaries on them. The whole of Book IV (volume 3) concentrates, even more than the first two volumes, on the philo­sophy of Plato. Some of the letters consist largely of passages taken from the dialogues. The largest single letter, about a quarter of the volume, is a life of Plato, based mainly on Diogenes Laertius. This life also forms the introduction to Ficino's translation of the dia­logues of Plato. It furnishes some interesting parallels with Ficino's own life, as described in the biography by Giovanni Corsi, which is included, partly for this reason, at the end of this volume. Both philosophers led celibate and ascetic lives. Both had close relations with heads of state, whom, to some extent, they influenced by their philosophy. Ficino regarded the life and character of Plato as his model. He wrote in the proem to Book 2 of De Vita Libri Tres (Opera p. 509), 'Although the spirit of our Plato lives and will live as long as the world itself shall live, yet my spirit always impels me, after worshipping the divine, to observe the life of Plato above all else.' Ficino consciously based his academy on that of Plato, as it is described by the ancient Platonic writers, and devoted his whole life to making the philosophy of Plato a living philosophy to his contemporaries.

A central theme of this volume is the liberation of Man through philosophy. Both the passages which he quotes in full from the dialogues—the analogy of the cave (letter 26) and the many-headed beast (letter 27)—relate to this. Above all, the letter on the nature and education of a philosopher (letter 18) delineates the precise steps by which a man is freed from desire, so that he may attain know-ledge of Truth.

Figure 1: Plato’s Horoscope According to Ficino

During the period covered by the letters in this volume Marsilio Ficino was working on a revision of his translations of Plato's dialogues and his commentaries on them. The whole of Volume 3 concentrates, even more than the first two volumes, on the philosophy of Plato. Included also in this volume is a biography of Marsilio Ficino by Giovanni Corsi, specifically included in fact because it demonstrates some interesting parallels with the life of Plato. Ficino regarded the life and character of Plato as his model and wrote : "although the spirit of our Plato lives and will live as long as the world itself shall live, yet my spirit always impels me, after worshipping the divine, to observe the life of Plato above all else." 

The Letters of Marsilio Ficino Volume 4 (Liber V) (Shepheard-Walwyn) Excerpt: Ficino's correspondence is extraordinary because the same letters combine the most sublime teaching for mankind with eminently practical advice for individuals. Nowhere is this more clear than in the present volume, which covers the period September, 1477 to April, 1478, months which gave rise to tragic events for the whole of Florence and in particular for a number of leading citizens who were also Ficino's correspondents. These events were the outcome of the Pazzi Conspiracy (discussed on pp. 73-91) in which Giuliano de' Medici was assassinated in Florence Cathedral, and from which his brother Lorenzo only just escaped. Immediately afterwards a large number of the Pazzi dependants, some quite innocent, were brutally executed or murdered. The real causes of this event were selfishness, greed and materialism in those places from where spiritual leadership should have come. It was symptomatic that those most involved in the conspiracy included a pope, a cardinal, an archbishop and two priests. A further cause was the breakdown of the respect for law and tradition and an absence of restraint: features usually found in times of gross materialism.

It was therefore to reawaken spirituality and, with that, respect for both divine and human law, that was Ficino's work. To a generation which had become largely disillusioned with the leadership of the higher ranks of the church the teaching of Plato, with its emphasis on the divinity of the individual soul, was the ideal means.

The theme of this volume of letters is that the truth is the unity and that only by the acknowledgement of this truth can man be freed from misery. In a letter to Michaeli (i8) Ficino writes: 'He who simply pursues the One itself, in that One soon attains everything.' In fact it is not even necessary to pursue that which is everywhere, as he reminds us in Letter 5: 'Then let us not be moved or distracted by many things, but let us remain in unity as much as we are able, since we find eternal unity and the one eternity, not through movement or multiplicity, but through being still and being one.' He reminds us again and again that when we love any individual good thing it is the One Good itself, namely God, which we really love in that thing. 'Without the love of that One we seem to love something,' he writes in Letter 19, 'but, since we try to love outside love itself, instead of loving we are bound to hate.'

Love seems to spring from these pages of Ficino's letters and it was by this love that he bound his academy and his correspondents to himself. The whole creation is a product of love and it is through love that creation returns to that One, (which, as Ficino has explained, it has never really left). He refers to this in Letter 19 when he writes, 'Just as beauty follows the light of the good as its splendour, so the ardour of love follows the rays of beauty as the reflection (or return) of those rays.' The end of love is therefore union. Friends are thus united to each other through their love of God.' This union between Ficino and his friends is frequently referred to in these letters and such references should certainly not be thought of as a stylistic flourish. The love of one friend for another is 'poured in its entirety' into the other's 'very self'. After that the lover has nothing left to give, because he has long ago given himself, and with himself all that he has.'

Such love expands to love of humanity as a whole. Indeed it is the Latin form of this word (humanitas) which Ficino uses to mean `the love of mankind'? Our use of the word humanities simply to convey studies based on Latin and Greek and a humanist as one who is versed in these studies, shows a descent in the power and meaning of language. Ficino commends Bernardo Bembo more than any of his correspondents for his humanity and speaks of its enormous power. He says that if the Venetians really wanted to conquer distant or rebellious peoples, they would not send a Pompey or a Caesar but Bembo, since he would conquer more people more effectively with his humanity than they would with their arms. The Venetians may even have taken him at his word.' Love is the principal means by which Man may discover his own nature. Another aspect of the word humanity is that it is human beings alone who have this power. In Letter 6 he writes to Cavalcanti words which seem to express the whole spirit of the Renaissance: `Men are the only beings on earth to have rediscovered their infinite nature'.

Because the love of divine beauty could be kindled by beautiful sights and sounds,' Ficino regarded the creation of works of art and music as of great spiritual importance. In particular in Letters 46 and 51 he makes it clear that there is a precise correspondence between beauty in specific parts of the body and specific mental qualities. Such qualities could be inspired by the contemplation of their physical counterpart. The description of Venus in Ficino's letter to the young Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici may have inspired Botticelli's Venus in the Primavera (See Letter 46 and notes). However that may be, the descriptions of beautiful physical beings in both Letters 46 and 51 are clearly given to inspire the appropriate qualities in Ficino's correspondents, who were intended to reflect on such forms. Ficino himself played the lyre to charm his listeners away from the concerns of the physical world. For instance, when members of his Academy were discussing in melancholy mood the Turkish threat to Europe, Ficino took up his lyre and by his playing dispelled their depression.'

The penalty for man is that if he does not set out to realise his `infinite nature', his lot is far worse than that of beasts." 'Why should we be surprised', he writes in Letter 18 to Michaeli, 'if all evils pursue us, when we ourselves, abandoning the first good, namely God, wrongly pursue individual things as good'. The first step is to stop pursuing the objects of sense as though they were good in themselves. In Letter 7 he speaks of 'the worried life of the man who serves the senses as though they were many mad masters.'

Above all, we should practise the virtue of patientia, which has been translated as patience. The word in Latin includes the meaning of sufferance, as well as suffering and is connected with the word passion, as in the passion of Christ. It also includes forbearance in the sense of forbearance to react in response to injury. But Ficino means more than this. The wise man realises that his own will cannot in reason be different from God's, so he makes those things `which fate has decreed to be inevitable . . . agreeable to his own will'. The argument with which Ficino puts this advice forward in Letter 33 is a model of clarity and logic. The letter is addressed to Francesco Sassetti, the General Manager of the Medici bank, which as Lorenzo's rule continued became involved in increasing difficulties.

The first letter in the volume is a very strongly worded letter on the need to trust in divine law. As the main troubles that took place over the period when these letters were written arose from the setting aside of the law for reasons that may have seemed eminently justifiable, this letter is very significant. The edition of the letters printed in Venice in 1495 adds the words 'most reverend' to the word 'friends' to whom the existing manuscripts have the letter addressed. If the letter was originally addressed to his 'most reverend' friends, these were probably Cardinal Raffaele Riario and Archbishop Francesco Salviati, who were involved in the Pazzi Conspiracy and for whom the letter would have been particularly appropriate.

Another quality on which Ficino lays particular emphasis in this volume is that of temperance. Ficino gives the Latin temperantia for the Greek word. Socrates in the Republic" says a state or man is temperate when that part of the soul 'which is better by nature has the worse under its control' and where there is no internal conflict between the ruling element and its subjects. Temperantia is perhaps best expressed in modern English by the word restraint. Ficino ends his letter to Sebastiano Foresi (II) with the application of this virtue to music when he writes: 'May the well-tempered lyre always be our salvation when we apply ourselves to it rightly.' More specifically he writes to the young Cardinal Riario (Letter 27), shortly to come so near to execution for implication in the Pazzi Conspiracy: 'Temper both the desires of the mind and all your actions lest, when all external things are in harmony for you, the mind alone be in discord.'

His warnings to Riario and Salviati are often sharp and specific, as though he could see the nature of the schemes that were fermenting in the minds of the conspirators (it is difficult to believe the accepted view that Riario was entirely innocent. See p. 86). Again, in Letter 27 Ficino urges Riario 'not to make a start on anything' unless he can see that 'the end is both good and well-assured.' His letter (34) to both Riario and Salviati is even more pointed. One must remember that they had both recently had strokes of good fortune. Riario had been appointed Cardinal in December, 1477 and the year before Salviati had been allowed to take up his position as Archbishop of Pisa, having been previously excluded for two years by Lorenzo de' Medici (see p. 76). Ficino writes to them, with numerous examples to prove his case: 'By some foolish, or rather unhappy, fate . . . most mortals make more perverse use of prosperity than adversity'. He then explains the reason: 'Let us remember that the nature of evil is to offer itself to us daily under the guise of good'. It is then 'very easily taken in . . . and given lodging as if it were the good; but soon after, it secretly strikes down" its unwary host with a sword, as he deserves.'

In conclusion, these letters arouse our interest in a number of ways. They shed a new light on what was going on in Florence at this time, including for instance the relationship between the government of Lorenzo de' Medici and the Florentine clergy (see p. 100). They show how a non-political philosopher with no worldly ambitions yet found himself advising the two main factions' struggling for political power in Florence. Finally, they show through Ficino the noble countenance of Plato, expanding men's view of their own nature, raising their ideals and aspirations and setting in the arts, literature, education and society as a whole new standards that were to last for many centuries. 

The Letters of Marsilio Ficino Volume 5 (Liber VI) (Shepheard-Walwyn) Excerpt: IN this volume Marsilio Ficino enters upon a fascinating correspondence with some of the most powerful leaders in Europe. Following the Pazzi Conspiracy of 1478, Florence was at war with both the Pope (Sixtus IV) and King Ferdinand of Naples (Ferrante). Ficino wrote eloquent letters to all three protagonists in the war: no fewer than three letters to the Pope,' one intended for King Ferrante of Naples,2 and one to Lorenzo de' Medici, the ruler of Florence. These letters were no doubt prompted by the appalling conditions under which Florence suffered as a result of the war. There are several references to these conditions, notably in Letter 31 to Bernardo Bembo. But perhaps more important than even the relief from physical hardship was the need for Ficino's Academy to continue its work of bringing to life once more the teaching of Plato.

What is of great interest is the way in which Ficino guides the warring leaders back to peace. In all three cases he does it by reminding them of their real nature. Yet what he says is specific to each individual. To the Pope, who was the force behind the Pazzi Conspiracy and the main architect of the war, Ficino stated in magnificent terms the true work of the Pope: to fish in the 'deep sea of humanity', as did the Apostles, to whom Jesus gave the three baits of reverence for God, integrity of character and good deeds towards men. Jesus also gave them three nets: the first was ardent love, so that they would love all men as themselves; the second was loving-kindness, so that they might forgive all people as their own children; and the third was service so total that it brought good 'not only to those who do good but also to those who do evil'. This re-statement of the papal function was entirely appropriate for Sixtus, who had approved the Pazzi plot to eliminate the Medici and who, when the assassination attempt on Lorenzo failed, first put Florence under interdict and then made war upon her in the company of the King of Naples)

The fact that the three letters to Sixtus read as a supreme, perhaps intentional, irony shows the depths to which the Papacy had sunk, and illustrate both the background and necessity for a renaissance. Moreover, these letters from Ficino were to the man who later initiated the glories of the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican and after whom the Chapel was named!

King Ferdinand of Naples must be amongst the least likeable of tyrants. He spent his life in intrigue not only against other states but also against his own barons, to whom he was utterly ruthless. Yet Ficino addresses him in the words of his father, the admirable King Alfonso, whom Ficino represents as established in the 'super-celestial paradise', whither he invites his son, 'if he is willing'. 'Here, my son,! says Alfonso, 'one lives the truest, clearest, best and most joyful life, where all life is nothing but truth, clarity, goodness and joy in its fullness. Here in that immeasurable light of lights we see all the lights of the ideal forms, and in those lights we behold everything as it really is, just like someone seeing in the sun all the rays emanating from it and in those rays all the individual colours which are created from them.'

Alfonso goes on to speak of his son's destiny on earth. After observing, 'I see that you will quickly carry out my advice', he adds, `In peace alone a splendid victory awaits you, a victory full of triumphs without danger; in victory, tranquillity; in tranquillity, a reverence and worship of Minerva (wisdom). Negotiations for peace were, in fact, begun about five months later.

To Lorenzo de' Medici Ficino writes a letter of great penetration. There were two sides to Lorenzo's nature. First, there was the lover of philosophy and companion of Ficino. This was the Lorenzo through whom came some of the finest Italian poetry ever written. A good example of his philosophical poetry is Altercazione, which is based on a discussion with Ficino. This was the Lorenzo who guided the State of Florence with courage and wisdom through her greatest crises. But there was another side which distracted him into revels, romps and carnivals, while the affairs of the Medici bank, upon which not only the prosperity of the Medici but also to some extent the whole of Florence depended, went into serious decline.

Ficino presents him with 'a picture of the evil mind and the good'. This first is 'a wood dense with tangled thorns, bristling with savage beasts, infested with poisonous snakes. Or it is like a swelling sea, tossed by battling winds, waves and wild storms.'

`On the other hand, a mind endued with fine principles . . . is like a well-tended and fertile field, or a calm and peaceful sea.'

Ficino was presenting the two sides of Lorenzo's nature to him with dramatic clarity. It may have been after this letter was written that Lorenzo saved Florence's freedom from extinction by boldly crossing the enemy's siege lines and presenting himself at the court of King Ferdinand to negotiate peace. He could have perished mis­erably in a dungeon, a fate not so unusual for visitors to Ferdinand's court, but in fact the negotiations resulting from his visit brought peace to Italy.

Just as the good doctor prescribes remedies which address precisely the illness from which the patient suffers, so the real philosopher insists upon those virtues which overcome the vices he sees in front of him. In the midst of division and war Ficino insists on the reality of unity and peace. He uses a number of analogies. He speaks in at least two letters of all the colours emerging from simple white light, as all the variety of the universe issues from one consciousness. He also writes of the universal harmony, pointing out that the man who takes no pleasure in concordant sounds lacks concord within and that he is no friend of God, 'for God rejoices in harmonies to such an extent that he seems to have created the world especially for this reason, that all its individual parts should sing harmoniously to them­selves and to the whole universe; indeed the universe itself should with all its strength praise in concert the intelligence and goodness of its author.

There are powerful letters on the impure and illusory nature of this world and the call to philosophy." Letter 48 compares men on earth to actors on the stage. They 'can enjoy themselves without fear of consequence.' They can exult without being envied and take on the parts of rich men although they may be slaves. In tragedies they can grieve without being unhappy. Ficino continues, 'We would think the actors foolish and pitiful if they were so taken in by the good and bad events on the stage that they were at one moment exulting and rejoicing and at the next weeping, as though these events were real.'

What, then, is the truth? Few philosophers have ever dared to say. But when Ficino's nephew writes 'unvaryingly about the changeabil­ity of things', he receives in reply a magnificent statement about the truth." 'I consider that which does not vary to be nothing other than truth . . . Truth is eternally present and neither passes from the past into the present nor flows from the present into the future. It is certainly nothing other than the eternal unmoving itself. The mind therefore, with its natural capacity for truth, partakes of this eternal unmoving . . . Only a life dedicated by choice to the study and cultivation of truth is lived in the fullness of bliss beyond movement and beyond time.'

The last letter in the volume is an extraordinary one about the return of Dante to Florence. Dante had died in 1321 during exile in Ravenna. He had not been allowed to return to Florence in his lifetime and the citizens of Ravenna have been unwilling to give up his remains ever since. What, then, did Ficino mean? Ostensibly he was praising the magnificent commentary on Dante's Divina Comme, dia by Cristoforo Landino which had just been published. But the language of the letter seems to be speaking of something more vast.

Look up for a moment, my people, look up at the heavens. Behold now, behold! While our Dante is being crowned here, the dome of mighty Olympus is opening. The flames of the Empyrean heaven, never seen more fully, blaze before us this day in honour of Dante's coronation.

And what do you think this sound is, so fresh and so sweet, that is filling our ears? Undoubtedly, it is the sound of the nine spheres and their Muses, a sound heard in no other age and in no other place, now openly celebrating the coronation of Dante. Ah! Hear the sweet songs of the Dominions singing from the sphere of Apollo; hear now the wonderful hymns of the Archangels singing from the sphere of Mercury: 'Glory to supreme Apollo in the highest! Everlasting glory to the Muses! Glory to the Graces! To the Florentines, rejoicing in their double sun, peace, joy, and good fortune!'

This letter seems to be a celebration of the revival of all the arts in Florence at this time, and thus it is a hymn of praise to the Renaissance itself.

 

The Letters of Marsilio Ficino Volume 6 (Liber VII) (Shepheard-Walwyn) Excerpt: The letters in the present volume (Book VII in the Latin editions of Ficino's letters) were written in the years 1481-83. This was a period of major warfare in Italy. The resulting disturbance and suffering are reflected in a number of Ficino's letters.

Hardly had Pope Sixtus IV lifted the interdict imposed on Florence as a result of the war following the Pazzi Conspiracy' when his ambitious nephew, Girolamo Riario, began scheming to extend Papal control in the Romagna and the Duchy of Ferrara. In 1481 his forces took the town of Forli, which thereafter remained under papal government. It was thought that the next object of his attack would be Faenza, a town menioned twice in this volume, and one of considerable importance to Florence, as it secured her outlet to the Adriatic Sea. But in the event Riario, having seized control of For11, planned an attack on Ferrara, seat of the d'Este family, with a view to carving out from that duchy further territory for papal control. For this purpose the assistance of Venice was necessary and, as the Serene Republic was tempted by the possibility of acquiring territory in the north of Ferrara, such assistance was forthcoming. Venice, supported by Pope Sixtus IV, declared war on Ferrara in May, 1482.

Milan, Naples and Florence were all alarmed at the prospect of Venetian expansion. They therefore entered the war in support of Ferrara, and Federico, Duke of Urbino, was appointed to lead the allied forces against Venice. From this time until the end of hostilities two years later, Lorenzo de' Medici, the ruler of Florence and Ficino's patron, was actively engaged either in prosecuting war or endeavouring to bring about peace.

The Duke of Calabria, son of the King of Naples, came within a short distance of Rome before being totally defeated by the opposing general, Roberto Malatesta. The Duke of Urbino endeavoured to resist the Venetian attack on Ferrara but had little success since the Venetians acquired considerable tracts of Ferraran territory.

Ficino felt naturally drawn to Federico of Urbino since not only had he been a highly successful condottiere but he had also been much attracted to the teaching of Plato. In Letter 33 Ficino refers to Federico as 'invincible', while in Letter 23, Ficino writes to him that 'dukes and kings, confident of a happy outcome are time and again handing him the spear of Pallas and the club of Hercules, the club which rules the Italian war.' However, as has been remarked, the confidence placed in his military success by the allies and by Ficino was not justified by events. Federico died in September, 1482, on the same day as his adversary, Malatesta.3 His death made it very difficult for Ficino to recover the books that he had sent to be copied at Federico's court, as we learn from Letter 33.

Early in 1483 the Pope, alarmed at the progress of Venetian arms through Ferrara, changed sides and solemnly put under interdict those very allies on whose side he had just been fighting. It became clear that the Venetians could not resist such a powerful alliance, and peace was made at the Congress of Cremona in August, 1484.

Although the Ferraran war was never as critical for Florence as that which had followed the Pazzi Conspiracy of 1478-8o, it inevitably created difficulties for Ficino, as it did for Florentines in general. In spite of the remonstrances of his friends, as noted in Letters 6 and 8, it is clear that he spent almost all his time in the country at his estate in Careggi. Although this gave him more time for the important works he was now engaged upon, it would have meant that his contacts with the leading citizens of Florence, particularly the Medici, were reduced. The meetings of influential friends to discuss and study Plato which constituted the Academy would have been more difficult to arrange.

Even before the war had broken out it is clear that the Feast Day of Cosmas and Damian was not being celebrated as it had been previously. These celebrations had been of especial importance to Cosimo de' Medici and Ficino had promised that they would continue after Cosimo's death. As is shown in Letter 7, one of the very few letters written to Lorenzo in this period, this promise was not being fulfilled. This letter was written before the formal declaration of war, for it was composed on the Feast Day of Cosmas, 27th th September, 1481. This suggests that Lorenzo was already distracted by the grave political situation.

The war must also have cut Ficino off from the members of his Academy who were in Venice. The strong misgivings Ficino had about the war are reflected in Letter 26, written to Pietro Molin of Venice shortly after the declaration of hostilities between Venice and Ferrara. He writes: 'God ever save you, beloved Pietro, and may your saving presence ever continue to keep us safe. As long as you do us this honour, so long shall we think ourselves worthy of honour. We shall be pleased with our city if we know that you are pleased with it. May what we do be more to your liking each day; then each day we, too, shall be more to our own liking.' In the event the Venetians found what the Florentines were doing was very far from their liking. In many ways Lorenzo was the architect of the alliance against Venice, just as he later became the architect of the peace.

From Ficino's letter to the Papal Commissioner at Forli, dated 15th June, 1483 (letter 41), it is clear that the clergy had suffered grave financial hardship as a direct result of war. Ficino writes: 'every day the property of religious men is being carried off to the men of Mars'. He is no doubt writing for all the clergy of Florence when he continues: `would that the heavenly rule were established anew so that, just as Jupiter once yielded to Mars, Mars may in time be compelled to give way to Jupiter! Not until Jupiter reigns supreme can we expect good men to prevail.' Ficino may have been hoping that the burden of tax might soon be lightened for, now that he was fighting on the same side as Florence, the Pope was presumably to receive again the proceeds of the taxes due to him. The next two sentences of the letter may look forward to the removal of Sixtus IV as Pope, or at least to a total change in his attitude. Ficino continues: 'It so happens that within two years ... a great planetary conjunction will bring this about or, to speak more accurately, will show that it is happening.' By August, 1484 Sixtus was dead and had been succeeded by the peace-loving Innocent VIII.

The increasing time that Ficino was spending at his country villa in Careggi may have been partly because the Academy might no longer be able to meet regularly in Florence (because of the war and the plague), but it certainly furnished an opportunity for completing some of his most important books. In Letter 27 he writes to his 'unique friend' Giovanni Cavalcanti in the summer of 1482: 'At dawn today I was totally absorbed in completing the Theology,  the sacred work which I have been labouring over for a long time. No one, not even those closest to me, dared to interrupt me then.' Clearly, he was working flat out on this, his greatest work, very close to the time of publication in November, 1482. He was also working on a number of short treatises, one of which, the Star of the Magi, appears as an appendix in this volume. This enormous workload may have had an adverse effect on a constitution that was never very strong. He appears to be writing of himself when he says to Giovanni Cavalcanti in Letter I: 'But how will you acquire wisdom from a man who has never had a sound body or a sound mind within it?' ... Recently, since he was suffering not a little from weakness, firstly of spirit, then of stomach and lastly of all parts of his body, he had a change of air but not of soul.'

Ficino may have been led by this experience to completing the first of his Three Books on Life[see below], a major work dealing with the care of the health of those who study philosophy. As his preface makes clear, he initially intended the first book to appear as the first letter in this volume, but it had grown too large and thus had to be published as a separate work.

In the midst of the troubles that Northern Italy was undergoing it seemed appropriate to Ficino to restate the kernel of Plato's teaching. It is perhaps no coincidence that the title of Letter I is 'Wisdom comes from God alone'. Certainly it was not coming from Sixtus, the spiritual head of Christendom. Ficino writes: 'All the sacred writings of the Jews and Christians proclaim that wisdom cannot be learnt unless God be the teacher.'

Ficino, like Plato, constantly speaks of the unreality of the material world, which is just a shadow or reflection of a divine world. Ficino insists that we should flee from the one to the other, a message that must have been particularly appealing in the harsh times of the early 148os. Perhaps this was particularly so, in relation to Sarzana, a town which had been seized from Florence by petty lordlings, the Fregosi brothers, during the War of the Pazzi Conspiracy and was not returned to Florence until 1486. In Letter 5 Ficino writes with approval to Antonio Ivani of Sarzana: `I observe that you judge the very best way of living to be one that is far removed from this dead life in which the mortal continues to live and the immortal somehow dies. This is so, as long as the heavenly soul is joined to the earthly body, not only once, initially by nature, but in being given over to it every day by desire.'

The fact that the soul is heavenly, that is divine, is fundamental both to Plato and to Ficino. The soul is of course one's very self. He writes about 'a friend' to Bernardo Bembo of Venice in Letter 4. This friend may be Bernardo, Ficino or perhaps Venice herself. Ficino claims to have addressed the friend thus: 'From whom are you fleeing, unhappy Narcissus? Foolish man, you are fleeing from yourself to follow another who is fleeing even faster than you, and whom you will never be able to catch once you have forgotten your own self Alas, foolish Narcissus, what are you losing? Unhappy man, you are totally losing your own self by which you might reach the shadow, albeit a fleeting shadow which you cannot embrace. But since love has a habit of transforming the lover into the beloved, loving a shadow, Narcissus, you will shortly be turned into a shadow!'

The analogy Ficino gives for the substance of this divine soul is that of pure light. This is why in Letter 36 he addresses his 'fellow philosopher,' Lotterio Neroni, as 'a man of pure light.' By 'pure light' he means 'pure consciousness'. However much this substance is given to others, it can never be diminished; rather it grows more intense. This is the message he is sending to Lotterio Neroni in Letter 29.

How, then, does the soul seem to forget its divine nature? Ficino answers this question in Letter 4o to Jacopo Antiquari, Secretary to the Duke of Milan, by reference to the three parts of the soul described by Plato in the Republic: understanding, anger and desire. But Ficino divides 'understanding' into 'contemplation' and 'action'. He then writes that the Platonists 'refer to mind which simply contemplates by the name of Saturn, and they call mind occupied in actions Jupiter. They consider a heart hardened by anger to be Mars, and one softened by pleasure to be Venus.' Everything depends upon which principle the mind is turned towards. Ficino concludes: 'For those who unreservedly subject desire, anger and action to contemplation, events turn out every

day as they would wish.' Ficino makes it abundantly clear that there are two ways (in reality one way) by which the soul may come to realise its own divine nature: religion and philosophy.

The letter written to Antonio Zilioli of Venice (Letter 18) has the title, 'Philosophy and Religion are true sisters'. By emphasising both here and in other letters how the ancient philosophers such as Pythagoras and Plato gave thanks and praise to God, he shows that they were also religious. In Letter 10, written to Lorenzo de' Medici, he seems to explain how this works in astrological or mythological terms: `Jovian Mercury [that is a Mercury well aspected to Jupiter], always there with his quickening movement, urges you to inquire unremittingly into the truth of things. Then the Sun by his light opens the way to every discovery for you who seek. Lastly, Venus with her gracious charm always makes whatever has been revealed beautiful.' Such beauty, of course, inspires love and praise, which are the very essence of religion.

Letter 18, which has already been referred to, throws similar light on the complementary nature of religion and philosophy. Here Ficino writes: 'It is the work of the true philosopher always to search out the particular principles and causes both of the parts and of the whole, and also to teach them; then in finding the real principles and causes of things he should finally ascend to the highest principle and cause of all.' Then he must 'lead everyone else with him to the realms above'. Of religion he simply writes: 'The whole universe in every part cries out that we should acknowledge and love God'. How closely the poet George Herbert echoed this view in the seventeenth century: let all the world in every corner sing, My God and King!'

Ficino ends this book, as he ends Books Three to Six, with a paean of praise and love. It is in the end through Love that one find union with God: 'I, like fire, illumine men's understanding and set their wills on fire. But you can become divine, not because you seek my light for the sole purpose of understanding, but because you seek out my heat with a burning will.'

One aspect of this volume is the relatively large proportion devoted to astrology. The longest letter, Letter 17, is devoted to this subject, and the even longer appendix, The Star of the Magi, covers much of the same ground. Ficino seems at pains in these short treatises to show that the stars cause nothing in the universe. This is especially true in relation to the nativity of Christ and to all events of a religious significance. Such events arise directly from the will of God Himself, and God is above the heavens and totally independent of them. What, however, the configurations of the stars may do for those who have a true understanding of them is to indicate what is happening in the celestial world and therefore what is happening or about to happen on earth. One seems to be arriving at an Hermetic image of the universe where all events are inter-related; every detail has macrocosmic significance. Every minute detail is the will of God and as such takes place in the heavens but is mirrored upon earth. Ficino says many times in previous volumes that the wise man makes his own will conformable to the will of God and that, for him, events which are inevitable become voluntary. In times when Florence was for so long at war with the Pope, Ficino no doubt also desired to show that his views on astrology were not heretical.

It remains to consider an aspect of Ficino's writing which appears particularly in this volume. This is the allegorical style in which he clothes much of his wisdom. Eight letters are entitled Apologus, which has been translated as 'fable', and there are others of an allegorical nature. The six fables which run from Letters i i to 16 have been illustrated specially for this volume. They seem to have a common theme: the dangers of falling into bad company and being consequently corrupted. The first note to letter II explains how the form of the fable was being revived in the fifteenth century and how Ficino thought it was important that fables should be used for a spiritual purpose. But a fable by definition has more than one level. It could certainly bear a political as well as a spiritual interpretation. Letters 11 to 16 were written between October, 1481, and January, 1482. This was while Riario was negotiating to bring Venice into a war for the purpose of partitioning the Ferraran territory between them. Riario was certainly bad company for Venice to keep!

Ficino had important Venetian friends who might have had an influence on the direction that Venetian foreign policy took. The most influential was Bernardo Bembo, a previous ambassador to Florence, and now the Podesta in Ravenna. There was also Ermolao Barbaro, the distinguished scholar and diplomat, who was shortly to become a Venetian senator.

In moments of crisis Ficino did not neglect the interests of his country as his letters to the enemies of Florence clearly show before and after the Pazzi Conspiracy (see note on 'The Pazzi Conspiracy and Ficino' in Letters 4, and Historical Note in Letters 5). Yet if he wrote a letter to Venetians openly pleading the cause of Florence and the letter fell into the wrong hands, he could injure rather than help the cause and perhaps endanger the position of his correspondents themselves.

Yet would not these dangers be obviated if Ficino could conceal his message within the terms of a fable that only he and his correspondents would fully understand? This would be especially the case if the fables were written without an addressee. The fables composing Letters 1 1 to 16, which seem particularly relevant to the political situation, have no addressees, whereas Letters 22 and 23, which are fables, are addressed to the Duke of Urbino.

However, the letters in this volume do have a strong Venetian element. Apart from the correspondence with Bernardo Bembo, there are letter to Antonio Zilioli and Pietro Molin. Letter 2 to Bernardo Bembo is particularly significant. In it Ficino writes that 'the longer he [Ficino] keeps his own counsel and says nothing, the more clearly he discerns it is better to be silent than to speak. He also understands that there are very few things that we can give worthy expression to, that we should say in honesty or may say in safety.'

In letter 11, the first fable, Ficino explains how Apologus wanders away from his guardian, Apollo, into the woods, which in Ficino's writings can symbolise darkness and ignorance 7 and partakes of coarse food given to him by certain 'shepherds'. He would have become coarse himself had not his guardian Apollo led him back to the Pythian Gardens. Significantly, in the fable Ficino mentions that the Pythian Gardens are now called Pinthian' by the people of Florence. These gardens belonged to Bartolomeo Scala, who had a house in the Borgo Pinti, in whose gardens Ficino's Academy sometimes met. The patron of the Academy was, of course, Lorenzo de' Medici. There were other clear allusions to Lorenzo. The emblem of Lorenzo was the laurel, as his name was derived from the word laurus, meaning 'laurel' in Latin. It seems clear that Apollo in this fable stands for Lorenzo. It was Lorenzo who could lead the Venetians back to their erstwhile ally Florence, from the darkness of war to the light of peace. The following five fables could all be given a similar interpretation: they were advice to the Venetians, or in the case of Letter Is, to the citizens of Faenza, to support Lorenzo rather than Riario.

However, it is at the spiritual level now that these fables are most significant. They seem to convey the most important message that human souls should turn from the coarse pleasures of the material world to the serenity of the spirit; that they should remember the true good which they once knew and find their way back to it through the light of the divine sun.

The Letters of Marsilio Ficino Volume 7 (Liber VIII) (Shepheard-Walwyn) This seventh volume of Marsilio Ficino's letters sheds new light on the life and intellectual development of one of the Renaissance's leading figures. As head of the Platonic Academy in Florence, Ficino helped set the intellectual and spiritual foundations of the Italian Renaissance, the reverberations of which were felt throughout Western Europe for centuries to come. Ficino's letters offer key insights into this philosophical and artistic movement and into the lives of the extraordinary people who led it. Noted correspondents include Giorgio Antonio Vespucci, uncle of the navigator and explorer Amerigo Vespucci, after whom America is named.

Excerpt: THE letters in this volume were written between 1484 and 1488. These were particularly busy years for Marsilio Ficino. In November 1484 his translation of Plato's Dialogues from Greek into Latin was published, together with his commentaries upon these works. Immediately he turned his attention to the translation of Plotinus, undertaken, he claims, at the instigation of his friend Pico della Mirandola. By January 1486 he had translated the whole of Plotinus' work (see Biographical Note on Plotinus and Letter 24). However, he continued to write commen­taries on Plotinus, and the translation with the commentaries was published in 1492.

The speed with which he worked was partly due to his gift of being able to attend to any project he was engaged upon with single-minded attention. One gets some sense of this from the number of letters which apologise for his not having written at greater length, and which give as a reason that `Plotinus calls' or 'will be calling soon'. During much of this time he seems to have been utterly absorbed in the thought, perhaps even the vision, of Plotinus. In Letter 29 he is not using purely figurative speech when he writes to Braccio Martelli, 'Recently, when I was staying at the home of Filippo and Niccolo Valori in the countryside at Maiano and investigating the nature of daemons (spirits) in a secluded place, suddenly Plotinus was present.' Ficino writes that Plato himself is faithfully represented in Plotinus alone (Letter 36). Perhaps he felt that he had a similar relationship with Plotinus: that he understood him, as it were, from within; even though in the letter just quoted he uses the words of Porphyry to explain the 'dark, pithy statements' of Plotinus!

What makes Ficino's achievement more remarkable is that many other things also presented themselves in this period requiring his urgent attention. He was most concerned that his interpretation of Plato should be accepted in papal circles. This concern is expressed in a number of letters written to Cardinal Marco Barbo at the Curia asking him, either directly or indirectly, to speak up for Plato to Pope Innocent VIII and to those in a position of influence. The life-work of Ficino, which was to reintroduce Plato as an authority the Church could accept, hung in the balance. Besides writing to Barbo, Ficino also sent a number of letters on the same theme to his old friend Antonio Calderini, who was a secretary to the Cardinal. These printed letters must have been but the tip of the iceberg. Much work must have gone on behind the scenes unrecorded and now forgotten.

It made matters more difficult still that at this time Ficino's financial circumstances, never favourable, became worse. One of Ficino's brothers had died and Ficino was looking after his brother's children in his own house (Letter 24). He felt diffident about writing to Lorenzo de' Medici for help and asked his friend Pier Leone to ask for help on his behalf. It appears that Pier Leone never did this, or was unsuccessful, and finally Ficino himself had to write (Letter 38).

The situation was awkward for Lorenzo, as the Medici bank was not now doing well and he could not meet Ficino's needs on the same generous scale as his grandfather had done. It was significant that Lorenzo did not pay for the printing of Ficino's Plato in 1484. The money, apparently after some indecision, was put up by Filippo Valori (see Preface, dedicating this book of letters to Filippo Valori, and Letter 20). However, Lorenzo had one very valuable asset: his friendship with Pope Innocent VIII. In 1487 Lorenzo's daughter Maddalena was betrothed to Pope Innocent's son, Franceschetto Cibo (see Biographical Notes under Innocent VIII). The same year Lorenzo's son Giovanni was promised a place in the College of Cardinals. Such cementing of the ties between the papacy and Florence gave Lorenzo much more influence in matters of ecclesiastical patronage than he had enjoyed under the previous pope, Sixtus IV. In 1487 Ficino was made a canon of Florence Cathedral. The Medici had to make some sacrifice for this, as it was Giovanni's seat as canon to which Ficino succeeded. Ficino wrote a moving letter expressing his gratitude (Letter 39), and he made a powerful oration on love when he became a canon (Letter 41). While Ficino's new dignity alleviated his financial difficulties and gained him more authority in Florence, it also provided other duties to fulfil which must have added a further necessary diversion from his work on Plotinus.

At about this time he also gave addresses to the Camaldolese order at the Church of Santa Maria degli Angeli. It is possible that it is these addresses which are summarised as letters 53-56 in this volume. They are strongly devotional in character.

Ficino's international reputation and consequent responsibilities were also growing. Members of his circle were spreading to Poland and Hungary in greater numbers and within the last decade of the century to France, Germany and England as well. A certain Paolo (probably Paolo Attavanti, see Letter 72) wrote that Ficino had 'brought the whole of Europe to a loving subjection' to himself. Ficino writes a typically humorous reply to this obvious exaggeration. However, even this does give significant evidence of the growing respect in which he was held both in Italy and beyond.

His influence over King Matthias of Hungary is particularly remark­able. It reveals both the King's desire for a Platonic renaissance in his country and his great respect for Ficino as the fountain-head of Platonic wisdom. Matthias was one of the most inspired leaders and generals of the fifteenth century. He held the formidable Ottoman Turks at bay throughout his reign (1458-1490), winning several notable victories over them. He also defeated the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick III (see Biographical Notes under Matthias Corvinus).

Ficino had dedicated his third and fourth books of letters to Matthias, which had been beautifully illuminated by Attavanti dei Attavante. What the King wanted above all was that Ficino himself should come to his court. However, Ficino did not feel he could take this step; but he was perhaps at least partly responsible for the fact that his friend and fellow Platonist, Francesco Bandini, was able to promote Platonic studies in Hungary from soon after his arrival there in 1476, at least until Matthias' death in 1490. Bandini was also useful to the king in other ways (see Biographical Notes and Letter 57). However, the latter continued to press Ficino to come himself and Ficino continued to decline the invitation. Ficino tried repeatedly, but unsuccessfully, to persuade his cousin Sebastiano Salvini to go instead (Letter 48). Not surprisingly he felt that he might have lost some influence with the king (Letter 37).

However, the opposite proved to be the case, as the affair of the priest Vincenzo Nicolai shows. It is not known what Ficino's connection with Vincenzo was. He appears to have been arrested when trying to cross the Hungarian border, carrying a large sum of money without appropriate documents. Ficino pleaded with the King for his release, which was obtained. However, at the time of his arrest his money had been confiscated and was not returned to him. Ficino interceded again to ask that his money should be given back (Letter 61). Once again Ficino's request was granted.

In all the books of Ficino's letters there are requests for help to be given to acquaintances of his. Throughout his life he had a deep concern for those who had fallen upon difficulties or misfortune, and tried to help them. In this respect he followed Christ's teaching in deed as well as word. Other letters in this volume which reveal his concern include one to the lawyer Vittorio of Siena (Letter 60), where Ficino pleads for him to help Salvini (who had disappointed Ficino by not taking up Matthias' invitation for him to go to Hungary, see Letter 53). In addition he puts the case of Matteo Cini to Ermolao Barbaro, as Cini had got into some kind of difficulty (Letter 71). We do not know what this difficulty was.

Of all the letters in Ficino's correspondence those between Pico della Mirandola and himself seem to reveal most about Ficino's nature. He admired enormously Pico's spirit, energy, courage and intellectual penetration (Letter 66). Above all, perhaps, he admired his magnificent aim of finding the unity that underlay all the great religions and philosophical systems known to him. Ficino felt his kinship with Pico was affirmed in the heavens (Letter 62). But this friendship was much tested. Pico, who became the Count of Concordia at a young age, received an Aristotelian education (see Biographical Note on Aristotle) at the universities he attended: Ferrara, Padua, Pavia and Paris. For a long time Ficino cherished hopes that Pico would become a Platonist. But Pico never regarded himself as a Platonist. His aim was to find the unity underlying both Plato and Aristotle. In Ficino's first recorded letter to Pico in December, 1482 (Letters, 6, 31), he addresses Pico as `his fellow Platonist', but this reflects the hope of Ficino rather than the position of Pico. Two years later Pico wrote that he wanted to compare Plato with Aristotle and Aristotle with Plato. He would also be grateful if Ficino could send him his book on the Immortality of Souls (Appendix A). At about this time Pico also wrote to the Aristotelian Ermolao Barbaro: 'I am distancing myself from Aristotle to direct myself to the Academy, not as a deserter but as an explorer.' Pico had persuaded himself that Plato and Aristotle were fundamentally in agreement (Historical Note on Pico).

Although Pico came to Florence to study with Ficino in 1484 his earlier viewpoint does not seem to have much changed. It must always have been a disappointment to Ficino that Pico never seemed to appreciate what to him was obvious: that Plato's transcendental mysticism soared beyond the logical reasoning of Aristotle.

In the spring of 1486 Pico visited Florence again on his way to Rome to present his 90o propositions. Shortly after leaving Florence he abducted the young wife of Giuliano Mariotto de' Medici (with her willing consent). Before Pico could cross the border into Siena an armed party collected by the aggrieved husband caught up with Pico. In the ensuing affray there were significant casualties and Pico himself was wounded. He was captured and conducted to prison, from which he was released only when Lorenzo de' Medici himself paid a fine on Pico's behalf.

Pico was disgraced in the opinion of many, apparently including that of the friend of Pico and Ficino, Pier Leone, Lorenzo's physician. Yet Ficino wrote two pieces in his defence (27 and 28). The second of these, and perhaps the first, was sent to Pier Leone and no doubt to others. Only Ficino's love for the man could have led him to make such glorious attempts to defend the indefensible. However, the two pieces were wisely not included in the first printed edition of the letters which appeared in 1495, when the power of the fundamentalist Dominican monk, Savonarola, was at its height in Florence.

While Pico was convalescing from his wounds at Fratta he gave further cause for annoyance to Ficino. Ficino had lent him certain books, including the Koran, which Pico needed for the preparation of his 900 Propositions (see Historical Note on Pico). Ficino now needed the book back, particularly for a work by Avicenna which was included in the book, but Pico continued to keep it. His excuses were not very plausible. It was as though he could not see the problem. What could be more important than his own 90o Propositions to be debated in the presence of the pope at a gathering to which all the clergy of Italy had been invited? Pier Leone and Mithridates, an assistant to Pico, appear to have had similar difficulties with Pico (see Letters 31 and 46), although in the case of Mithridates there were other problems as well (see Biographical Notes under Mithridates). Ficino wrote to Pico telling him that he would not let him have his work on Plotinus until he had received back the Koran (Letter 31). Later Pico replied airily that Ficino could not have asked for his Latin Mahomet back at a more convenient time as he was now hoping to hear Mahomet speaking in his mother tongue as he was studying Arabic, as well as Hebrew and Chaldean (Appendix B).

Although both Pico and Ficino supported a religious and philosophical unity their views differed on a number of issues. These differences came to a head over a commentary Pico wrote in 1486 on a poem of Girolamo Benivieni which summarised what Ficino had written about love in De Amore, his commentary on Plato's Symposium. Pico's Commentary made criticisms of a number of things Ficino had said. The criticisms did not at first mention Ficino by name, but simply attributed such statements to 'a Platonist' or 'a great Platonist' etc. The Commentary was sent to Ficino who returned it with such comments as, 'This is a terrible mistake' and 'This is a serious mistake.'

Pico responded by adopting some of Ficino's criticisms, but beside other comments he would add such remarks as: 'I am surprised that Marsilio holds that according to Plato souls are created directly by God, a view that is as much opposed by the School of Proclus as that of Plotinus'. He also wrote, 'You can imagine, reader, how many mistakes our Marsilio makes in the first part of the Banquet (De Amore); on this one score (of inadequate definition of terms) he completely confuses and invalidates what he says about love. But in addition to this, he has made mistakes on every subject in every part of his treatise.' 1 Pico then capped it all by threatening to write his own commentary on Plato's Symposium. However, this never happened and not even his Commen­tary on Benivieni's Canzone was published in his life-time. All this was happening when Pico was an unknown man of 23, having just completed his studies at the Sorbonne; Ficino was a man of 52 and the leading living authority on Plato. For the friendship to have continued is a remarkable tribute to Ficino's power of detachment, and his concern for the good of his friend.

During Pico's difficult sojourn in Rome in 1487 and after his flight from there, Ficino continued to support him both in letters and by speaking up for him to Lorenzo de' Medici in Florence (see Historical Note on Pico). To escape arrest by papal emissaries Pico had fled to France, but probably through Lorenzo's good offices he obtained permission to live within the boundaries of Florence, though not within the city. It was Ficino, in Letter 54, no doubt with Lorenzo's prior approval (or prompting), who wrote on 3oth May, 1488, inviting Pico back to live on Florentine soil. Letters 57 and 58 are witness to the good terms which existed between the two after Pico's return. Although their philosophical differences persisted, their friendship appears to have remained unbroken. After Pico's death in 1494 Ficino wrote: 'In age he was like a son to me, in familiarity like a brother, and in affection like a second self '

Ficino considered himself a follower of the 'divine' Plato and of Plotinus. But these great philosophers were only the culmination of a line of philosophers who had realised the truth of an Ancient Theology and passed it on to their disciples, who in turn passed it on to their successors. As Plato himself explained in his Seventh Epistle, such knowledge cannot be learnt from writing, however sublime. Indeed, it cannot be learnt at all in the ordinary sense; it has to be conveyed by word of mouth, reflected upon, and assimilated into the being. That is why the Academy in both ancient and Renaissance times was so important. It provided an opportunity for this oral communication between the philosopher and his helpers, and with those who came to listen.

Ficino seems to have changed his mind about the original head of the ancient teaching. In his preface to the translation of the newly discovered Poimandres, attributed in Renaissance times to the Egyptian sage Hermes Trismegistus (Thoth in Egyptian), Ficino put Hermes at the head of the tradition. In the 1469 Commentary on the Philebus Ficino replaces Hermes with Zoroaster. However, in his letter to John of Hungary (Letter 19), he states that the same divine revelation came to Zoroaster in Persia and Hermes in Egypt independently. This order he repeats in his preface to Plotinus, published in 1492. Zoroaster and Hermes therefore became joint heads of the tradition.' The remaining line of succession consisted of Orpheus, Aglaophemus, Pythagoras, Philolaus and Plato. Poimandres was the first work Ficino translated when in 1462 he was installed by Cosimo de' Medici in a villa which Cosimo gave him near his own at Careggi. It was this work (now known as the Corpus Hermeticum) that inspired Ficino with a number of concepts that he came to associate with the Ancient Theology: the unreality of the sensory world; the single reality of the One; the capacity of the human soul to consciously merge with that One; the immortal and god-like nature of the human soul; the sleepy, 'drunk' and ignorant condition in which it customarily lives. These ideas Ficino also found in Plato, although not always so explicitly and clearly stated.

Ficino is particularly concerned that Marco Barbo should speak up for his commentaries and translation of Plato and that the pope should accept them, not just because the great Cosimo had given him a task which had now been fulfilled; not because he had spent such time, care and labour on the task, but because he felt that if this teaching were imbibed, in Plato's sense, it could lead to a renaissance of the human soul. He had written in 1477 (Letters, 4, 6): 'It was not for small things but for great that God created men, who, knowing the great, are not satisfied with small things. Indeed, it was for the limitless alone that He created men, who are the only beings on earth to have rediscovered their infinite nature and who are not satisfied by anything limited, however great that thing may be'.

In this volume Ficino asks Barbo and Bandini to be protectors of Plato and he saw himself in this role too. He could not accept Pico's propositions that Aristotle and Plato were saying almost the same thing. Aristotle on many occasions attacks Plato's statements on ideal forms (see Biographical Notes under Plato and Aristotle). Ficino regarded as an essential part of the ancient teaching the notion that reality is beyond the senses and beyond that part of the mind which deals with sensory perception. It was reflections of this real world in the sensory one that reminded the soul of its spiritual homeland and filled it with the desire to return there. The last letter in this volume, which discusses the quality of the notes of the octave in great detail, reflects the importance Ficino attached to good music as a reminder to the listener of the real homeland. There is a relationship between Ficino's musical scale and the proportions and intervals which Plato says God used in creating both body and soul.

Some of the points about which Ficino and Pico disagreed seem relatively trivial, but their implications are far from trivial. Pico, in a passage already quoted, criticises Ficino for saying that souls are directly made by God. But if there is an intermediary then the soul cannot be divine in an absolute sense. In that respect Pico had 'made a serious mistake' — even if Plotinus did support him!

Plotinus sometimes, however, provides a clearer statement of the principles of the Ancient Theology than Plato does. In Ficino's terms, he explains things that Plato leaves veiled. It was partly for this reason that Ficino felt drawn to translate him. Pico, both in the Benivieni Commentary and in his book De Ente et Uno (On Being and the One), argues that 'Being' and the 'One' are synonymous terms, and he adds that if Plato appears to say the opposite in Parmenides that is because that dialogue is a dialectical exercise and does not represent what Plato thought. In his commentary upon Parmenides Ficino spends significant time expounding the principle that the 'One' is beyond 'Being'. The principle again appears of little importance; but again the opposite is the case. For the 'One', if it is to be absolute, must be absolutely non-dual. It must be beyond all pairs of opposites such as being and non-being. Plotinus leaves the matter in no doubt when he says: 'The One is not all things because then it would no longer be One. It is not the Intelligence, because the Intelligence is all things, and the One would then be all things. It is not Being because Being is all things'.

Plotinus also provides much imagery that appeals strongly to the emotions. Some of this imagery is taken up directly by Ficino. For instance, Plotinus likens the life of man on earth to taking a part in a play. Ficino draws on this in a moving letter to Ugolino Verino on the death of his son, of whom he writes (Letter 49): 'He has gone back, not from life, but from a particular play in life, into the very substance of life'. Ficino also follows Plotinus (and Hermes) in his praise of beauty. Like Plato, Plotinus speaks of levels of beauty, but they all lead back to the beauty of the Good, from which their beauty comes. Plotinus ends a disquisition on beauty by saying: 'What is beyond the Intelligence we affirm to be the nature of the good, radiating beauty before it'.6 Ficino believes that it is a reflection of this beauty in physical bodies that attracts all human beings back to their source.

Finally, Plotinus' description of an experience of unity bears a marked resemblance in tone to some of Ficino's experiences. Plotinus writes: `Many times it has happened: lifted out of the body into myself; becoming external to all other things and self-centred; beholding a marvellous beauty; then, more than ever, assured of community with the loftiest order, enacting the noblest life, acquiring identity with the divine, stationing within it ...' Reading this passage must have confirmed Ficino's own experience and confirmed his view of the unlimited potential of man.

Pico and Ficino lived in very different mental worlds, even though they shared the common aim of finding a unity in different religions and philosophical traditions. Pico was an Aristotelian from education and probably also by nature. He looked for unity through symbolism and attributing special meanings to words which differed from the common understanding of them. Ficino had also had an Aristotelian education and was able to present his original works in a framework of Aristotelian logic and definition of terms. But in Pico's view Ficino was not very good at this. Ficino was in essence a visionary whose inner knowledge came through revelation. He thought that the oneness of Christianity and Platonism was based not on the fact that the Christian scriptures were identical in meaning to the dialogues of Plato, but because what was expressed in both traditions was totally compatible. What underlay both traditions was their common origin, which was, as he thought, the wisdom of Hermes Trismegistus, who, according to St Augustine, was coeval with Moses. Both traditions were therefore heirs to the Ancient Theology.

Ficino sometimes makes disparaging references to 'logicians' in his letters, and his attitude to Callimachus is revealing. Callimachus was an Italian, Filippo Buonaccorsi, who had lived in Poland for some time. He had sent a letter to Ficino asking him how daemons (spirits) could possibly take possession of a body which was already completely filled by the soul, which would therefore leave no room for it (Appendix F). At the time Ficino was most interested in the nature of spirits. His De Vita Libri Tres (Three Books on Life) was published in 1489, the year after the last letters in this volume were written, and the third book was originally intended as a preface to Plotinus. This book makes many references to daemons. The longest letter (29) in this volume is mainly a translation of part of a work of Porphyry (De Abstinentia) which deals entirely with daemons.

However, Ficino replies to Callimachus with a humorous comment. He says 'While you assert that a man cannot be possessed by a spirit, at the same time you are demonstrating that you are completely possessed by a spirit which is indeed divine.' Then he says he is too busy with Plotinus to send a fuller reply (Letter 16). He sends a similarly short reply to Pico (Letter 35) when he receives from him the 900 Propositions. He merely makes one proposition: that so much learning in one so young is 'the mark of some one remembering rather than learning', which is a direct allusion to a Platonic rather than Aristotelian theory of knowledge. While undoubtedly Ficino was preoccupied with Plotinus during this period, one feels that on both occasions there is another unspoken comment, an intimation that one does not arrive at the truth through discursive or analytic thinking.

Many times in his books of letters Ficino tells us that final union with God is reached through love. In his inaugural speech to the College of Canons and the people of Florence he preaches on three aspects of love: God is love; he that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God; and God in him. It seems probable we have only a summary of what he said; but the summary is powerful; and again he makes the point that he emphasises many times. 'Because God Himself is love and also because the soul, set on fire with the flames of love, loves the most high God within herself, and indeed loves men in God, the soul is wonderfully moved by God Himself, who is love, and the soul becomes God' (Letter 41).

Ficino delivered other orations in the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli, which belonged to the Camaldolese order. One oration (Letter 53), or part of an oration, gives this instruction to everyone entering the Church: 'Know thyself'. It continues, 'It is therefore our bounden duty first to acknowledge our own soul, through which as in a mirror we can look in bliss upon the adorable face of our Father.' Here Ficino is speaking of the divine soul within every human being. Later he asks `What does it profit you, theologian, to ascribe eternity to God, unless you ascribe the same to yourself, so that through your own eternity you may enjoy the divine eternity?' (Letter 54).

According to Ficino, on seeing a reflection of your own eternity in another you fall in love with the image of yourself in the other. It was this divine love that in Ficino's words bound the members of the Academy together and also bound Ficino and his correspondents. There are constant references to this throughout the letters. This equal love was purely spiritual; it was not a polite form of words, still less a reference to homosexual love. It was a love that was all-embracing.

In conclusion it might be said that the work of Ficino was an attempt to restore to Christianity a number of features, associated with Christianity in its first two centuries, some of which were afterwards driven out of the church. These features are associated with the Gnostic and Hermetic movements. They include an acceptance of the non-duality of the universe (although this was not accepted by the Syrian Gnostics), and of the immortality and thus divinity of the soul, so that all humans were potentially Christ-like. They include a belief in angels and demons, and the belief that the fall of man was not occasioned by Adam and Eve's disobedience but by the ignorance arising from the pursuit of sensory objects. It was a Christianity that was much closer in spirit to the religions of the East, and far more tolerant and less dogmatic than the Christianity that possessed both the Catholic and Protestant churches in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. --Clement Salaman, Editor

The Letters of Marsilio Ficino Volume 8  by Marsilio Ficino, edited, translated by Clement Salaman (Shepheard-Walwyn)

This volume casts a new light on Marsilio Ficino, an extraordinary Renaissance man. Sometimes he has been thought of as an ivory-tower philosopher, who retired from the hurly-burly of life to contemplate God in the seclusion of his academy. It is true that he was a man of devotion; but when the need was there he could be a highly effective man of action. We see him using his significant influence in Florence and beyond to defend his philosophy against opposition from the Church. In this he was successful.

The collected letters were first printed in Venice in 1495. This may have been because the fundamentalist priest Savonarola and the party opposed to the Medici, Ficino's patrons, were then powerful in Florence - Lorenzo's son and heir, Piero, had been expelled the previous year. Some material that would have been in this book on chronological grounds may also have been excluded for the same reason. This material has been included here in the Appendix together with some letters to Ficino and prefaces added to his work published at this time.

The letters cover topics from friendship to healthy living and from the ancient philosophical tradition to biblical scholarship and medicine; there is discussion of the influence of the stars on human life, recommendations for reading books related to the Platonic tradition and reflections on the art of good writing and speaking.

His correspondents in this book include Lorenzo de' Medici and his sons Piero and Giovanni, Filippo Valori, Pico della Mirandola, Pier Leone of Spoleto, Angelo Poliziano and the Venetian scholar-diplomat, Ermolao Barbaro. There are also letters to Germany and Hungary.

Wherever he found divisions between people, Ficino endeavoured to bring them to unity: he sought to create harmony among his brothers, to show that the way of philosophy was not different from the way of religion, and that the Aristotelians and Platonists were in fundamental agreement. The basis of this unity for him was to recognise the unity of the divine soul in everyone.

The illustration on the front of the jacket shows the right-hand half of a double-page frontispiece illuminating the finely produced copy of Ficino's translation of Synesius, On Dreams, discussed in this volume.

The manuscript (Codex Guelf 2 Aug. 40) was prepared for King Matthias of Hungary by Filippo Valori, as mentioned in this volume, and also contains Books III and IV of the Letters, as replacement for the copy lost earlier. The king's emblem of the raven holding a ring can be seen in the top border, held by cherubs. In the bottom border is his coat of arms. The illumination is attributed to Attavante degli Attavanti. It is reproduced by kind permission of the Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbiittel.

THIS eighth volume of letters casts a new light on Marsilio Ficino, an extraordinary Renaissance man. Sometimes he has been thought of as an ivory-tower philosopher, who retired from the hurly-burly of city life to contemplate God in the seclusion of his academy. It is true that he was a man of devotion; but when the need was there he could be a highly effective man of action. According to Ficino, to combine both roles was difficult.Yet in this book we see him boldly preparing to defend his philosophy against opposition in the papal curia. His defence was successful. On another front we find him still practising as a doctor in the late 1480s, caring for the body as well as the spirit and soul of others. Thus he united the function of doctor, musician, and priest. He had also taken on the care of his nephews and nieces, whose father had died and who evidently had less frugal tastes than he did.'

Yet his literary output remained undiminished. Perhaps for that reason this book is the shortest of the twelve books in the collected volume of letters first printed in Venice in 1495. It contains only twenty-five letters. The reason that the collected letters were published in Venice may have been that the fundamentalist priest Savonarola and the party opposed to the Medici, Ficino's patrons, were then powerful in Florence. Lorenzo's son and heir, Piero, had been expelled the previous year. Some material that would have been in this book on chronological grounds was probably excluded for the same reason, or because it had already been published in the De vita libri tres in 1489. This material has been included here in the Appendix together with some letters written by others, either to Ficino, or as prefaces added to Ficino's work published at this time. The Appendix is of no less importance than the twenty-five letters printed in the Venice edition, and in some cases the more interesting for having been excluded from it.

The letters cover topics from friendship to healthy living and from the ancient philosophical tradition to new advances in biblical scholarship and medicine; there is discussion of the influence of the stars on human life, recommendations for reading books related to the Platonic tradition and reflections on the art of good writing and speaking.

His correspondents in this book include Lorenzo de' Medici and his sons Piero and Giovanni: to all of these he dedicates important works. There are several letters to his other patron and great friend, Filippo Valori, and to his fellow philosophers Pico della Mirandola, Pier Leone of Spoleto, Angelo Poliziano and the Venetian scholar-diplomat, Ermolao Barbaro. There is also a new friend and follower in Germany, Martin Prenninger of Constanz, and there are several letters to Hungary, both to Francesco Bandini and to the King, Matthias Corvinus, as well as to the king's librarian, another Italian, Taddeo Ugoleto of Parma.

The great majority of the contents of this volume was written within a period of just over a year, from September 1488 to October 1489. During this period Ficino was exceptionally busy, even by his standards. He had finished his translation of Plato's dialogues (published in 1484) but was still working on the commentaries to some of these. He was also working on De vita (published in December, 1489). This was the book which seemed to some to cross the bounds of Christian dogma. In addition he had embarked on the enormous task of translating Plotinus' Enneads and was now writing commentaries on these. But he had also been engaged on translating a number of the works of other neo-Platonic writers including Porphyry, De occasionibus, Iamblichus, On the Mysteries of the Egyptians and Assyrians, Priscian of Lydia, On Theophrastus, concerning the Soul, Proclus, On Sacrifice and Magic, and Psellus, On Daemons.

What impelled Ficino to undertake this great task? Like many others of his time, he felt that the key to knowledge lay in the tradition of the ancient past. Ficino believed that the common basis of true philosophy and religion lay in a prisca theologia, a venerable teaching that came from God and was passed down through a number of teacher/disciple relationships (the disciple in one generation becoming the teacher in the next). He felt that knowledge of this ancient teaching is the highest happiness for mankind for it leads to the knowledge of the soul, that divine self lying at the heart of every human being, and constituting the unity between man and man. Knowledge of that common root must be the best hope for reconciling the various branches of religion and philosophy. Since the soul was at the mid-point of creation, in coming to know the soul one would come to know all things. Hence the instruction on the temple of Apollo at Delphi, 'Know Thyself'.

For Ficino, the Universe was one living whole, but in this whole were different levels. Surely human life on earth could be greatly assisted if one could use substances belonging to a higher level to assist life at a terrestrial level: for instance, by wearing solar metals or gems or eating solar food one could attract to oneself the qualities of the Sun. Even making images of the planetary gods might similarly be of assistance. These issues are raised in De vita libri tres. Originally the three books constituting De vita had not been intended to form a single volume. The first book, On a healthy life, was going to be a preface to Book VII of the Letters. But it became too long. The head was going to grow bigger than the body! The second, On a long life, was partly inspired by Martin Prenninger, Ficino's illustrious friend from Germany (Letter 18). The text was influenced by Arnald of Villanova, and perhaps by Roger Bacon, but the Arnald text was difficult to read and in a corrupt state. There appears to have been no Church opposition to these first two sections of De vita. But the third was a different matter. The title of this was On obtaining life from the heavens.

For Ficino, to make use of substances and forms carrying celestial influences could in no way abrogate the omnipotence ofAlmighty God. God was simply working through such agencies, as He might work through individual men and women. Ficino would have considered astrological indications or causes in a similar way: God manifests His will through the stars. What God wills is instantly effected.

However, Ficino was well aware that others would not see the matter in the same light. In his letter to 'the three Peters' (Appendix B), he states the kind of questions he anticipates, or indeed has already encountered. 'One person will say, "Is not Ficino a priest? What business have priests with medicine? Or what business with astrology?" Similarly another person will say,"What business has a Christian with magic or talismans?" Yet another, himself unworthy of life, will deny that there is life in the heavens. 'These charges are summarised by the 'severe ecclesiastical prelate' referred to in De vita, III, 25: he condemns 'whatever detracts from our free will, whatever derogates from the worship of the one God.' Ficino answers, 'With you I not only condemn these things but even bitterly curse them?' Strong language!

However, predictive astrology does appear to take away at least partially the free will of humans and, for that matter, of God. Ficino seems to imply prediction. For instance, in Appendix D he predicts a 'sufficiently long life' for King Matthias of Hungary, but the king died within the year. Ficino also predicted a long life for Ermolao Barbaro, who died in 1493 when he was still in his thirties. But Ficino did predict accurately that Lorenzo de' Medici's son, Giovanni, would become Pope, which he did in 1513. One does wonder how seriously Ficino and his addressees took such predictions. Perhaps they were rather given and received in the spirit with which Persian courtiers in ancient times used to greet the Great King, '0 King, live for ever!'

Ficino's philosophical consideration of astrology does seem to be moving towards a more semiological interpretation. In his letter to Ficino in this volume Poliziano, the poet and grammarian, expresses his pleasure that Ficino's views on astrology are now the same as Pico della Mirandola's (Appendix L). Pico was increasingly influenced at the time by the views of the reforming Dominican monk, Girolamo Savonarola, and he therefore would not accept any form of predictive astrology in relation to human affairs.

Another serious accusation made against Ficino was that of worshipping daemons. A Christian was not allowed even to address them, yet Ficino had recently summoned Porphyry, now a spirit himself, to elucidate what he had just heard from the spirit of Plotinus. Could Ficino have passed off these and similar references as mere metaphor? Porphyry had actually written a treatise of fifteen books against Christianity!

Ficino successfully avoided trouble. In a later book of letters (Book X) he acknowledges his gratitude to Rinaldo Orsini, the Archbishop of Florence. Ermolao Barbaro, the expert on Aristotle and soon to become Patriarch of Aquileia, also claims to have helped his cause in Rome and even states that Pope Innocent VIII would like to see him. Perhaps Ficino might have been wary of such a meeting, bearing in mind the persecution inflicted by the Pope on Ficino's friend, the scholar Pico.

Ficino might not have got off so easily if he had not had substantial support from within Florence; and he was very active in mobilising this. The three Peters that Ficino summoned in Appendix B were all distinguished men. Pietro del Nero was a classical scholar and, perhaps more to the point, a lawyer. Piero Soderini in 1502 was given the post of Gonfaloniere for life, and Piero Guicciardini was a member of one of the most influential families in Florence. Guicciardini is asked to 'fetch' Poliziano. Ficino often addresses Poliziano as 'Hercules,' much to Poliziano's annoyance, as he was of small stature, but Ficino really did need a Hercules now! Nero was asked to go to the poet Cristoforo Landino: 'That Amphion of ours with his wonderful charm will swiftly soften the stony hearts of our enemies.'

Ficino also sends a letter to the three 'Cs' (Appendix C): Bernardo Canigiani, Giovanni Canacci, and Amerigo Corsini. These were all leading citizens. A phrase has been added in the printed edition which, if it was actually used, is of some interest. In this addition Ficino addresses 'the three Cs' as 'keen-scented hounds of the Academy'. This seems to indicate that the Academy had some special role to play in supporting Ficino against the Dominican Savonarola; the Dominicans themselves were known as Domini canes, hounds of the Lord. Canigiani was a close friend of Ficino, and Corsini had been his pupil.

Another interesting feature of this letter is that, while he needed a vigorous response to the anticipated charge of heresy, he did not want an over-response. Canacci, in particular, seems to be reminded that 'those who consider their studies and business too precisely and always break them down into the smallest possible particles are at the same time wearing away their own life.' A little earlier in the same letter he writes to all of them, 'I now entrust you the tasks I wish you to undertake, but not the cares attendant upon them.' Ficino then invites them, if they hear any 'wolves howling', to put the matter to Benigno Salviati, the notable Franciscan preacher, for he 'will easily put all the wolves to flight ... and at a stroke, relieve me of anxiety and you of trouble.' In both letters (Appendix B and C) Ficino is not only asking for the support of his friends but he is asking them to obtain help from specific influential individuals. It is a campaign.

In his defense, Ficino made good use of the books he had recently worked on, or was still working on. In fifteen of the twenty-five letters in this book the translations of these works are mentioned, or promised to the recipients. By reading these Platonic works they could be expected to gain a clearer understanding and greater sympathy with Ficino's philosophy.

The most powerful person in Florence was Lorenzo de' Medici. Ficino still regarded him as his patron, although due to a deteriorating financial position he had not for some time paid for Ficino's books to be published.

 In Appendix A Ficino writes to Lorenzo largely in allegories relating to rebirth. 'Rebirth' was a term used by the early Christians to mean a spiritual rebirth in the wisdom of God. It is not a term employed much by Ficino. It refers to a very profound experience described in the first book that Ficino ever translated from the Greek. This work, ascribed to the legendary Egyptian Hermes Trismegistus, was entitled The Poimander; now known as the Corpus Hermeticum. In this the disciple is beside himself because Hermes has not bestowed upon him second birth. Hermes tells him:

'O Son, spiritual wisdom lies in the womb of silence and the seed is truth and the supreme good...'
'What kind of man is born, 0 Father?'
'He who is born from God is of a different kind; he is a son of God, and himself God, in all he is the All, composed of all powers.'

Towards the end of this letter to Lorenzo, Ficino writes these words: 'Accept therefore, most worthy Lorenzo, after those books on the soul, these books on the body also, and graciously breathe life into those earlier ones.' Ficino had already sent Lorenzo the translations of Plato and the work on The Immortality of the Soul. Now Lorenzo is to breathe life into The Book on Life. Given the opening topic of the letter, the implication is that the De vita will have its full power only if Lorenzo breathes upon it and it gains second birth. As well as deliverance from the immediate threat, Ficino is hoping for a rebirth of wisdom among the Florentines led by a re-inspired Lorenzo.

Ficino was an arch-syncretist, both from his nature and from his philosophy. He always worked to bring people to harmony following the words of Psalm 133 quoted in Letters, 4, 42 and the Preface to Letters, 6 , 'How good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity.' In Letter 6 of this volume he stresses the importance of unity.According to Giovanni Corsi, his contemporary biographer, he practised what he spoke. He had no desires to accumulate possessions and left the whole of his inheritance to his brothers. 'He would take great pains to reconcile friends. He was a model of dutiful conduct towards parents, relatives, friends and the dead, but particularly towards his mother Alessandra, whose life he prolonged by remarkable care and attention, to her eighty-fourth year, even though she was an invalid.' (Letters, 3, 'The life of Marsilio Ficino by Giovanni Corsi,' p.145). In his collected letters there is hardly a request for himself but many commendations for others.

There are frequent references to the work of Theophrastus and that of Priscian of Lydia who strove to discover the essential unity of view held by both Aristotle and Plato. It is also interesting that in this volume he speaks highly of a leading Dominican, Niccolo de Mirabilibus and also of a leading Franciscan, Benigno Salviati (Letters 3 and 19). This was at a time when there was considerable rivalry between the two orders (as there was between the Aristotelians and Platonists).

Ficino also saw a link between Christianity and the teachings of Zoroaster. He points out that the three wise men who came to the infant Christ were in fact the first three Christians! Even more, that they had been led by the very kind of white magic that Ficino advocates (Appendix B). In the preface to Plotinus, Zoroaster is actually honoured as the first founder of the prisca theologia.

Ficino also sought to resolve the differences between those who took the spiritual path through religion, who primarily worked through the heart, and those who worked through the head and took the path of philosophy. Back in the 1470s he had written,lawful philosophy is no different from true religion and lawful religion exactly the same as true philosophy.' (Letters, 1, 123). He asserts in Letters, 7, that philosophy is necessary for 'men with keen and philosophically inclined minds.' He says that reason will lead them to the same place as faith has led those of a religious nature. He points out in this volume in Letter 12 that amongst the early sages there had been exemplars of both the religious and the philosophic life. Plato had gloriously combined them both.

The idea of Platonic Love has passed into common parlance as a love independent of physical attraction, a love central to Ficino's concept of friendship. In this volume we are presented with a clear picture of how such friends lived and what was the basis of their friendship. Angelo Poliziano, a famous poet and grammarian in his day, writes to him (Appendix L):

I hope you will not disdain this little country cottage of ours at Fiesole when your place at Careggi gets too hot in August. For here we have many streams, as in a valley, very little sun and a breeze that never fails us.Then the secluded little house itself, although almost hidden by a small wood, commands a view of the whole of Florence. And although there is a great throng nearby, in my house there is always pure solitude, such as detachment indeed loves.

Then he mentions that Ficino's friend, Pico della Mirandola, often drops in and takes him with him 'for the kind of supper you are familiar with, a supper that is frugal but witty, and always full of cheerful conversation and jokes.'

They thought of themselves as doing the same work. Poliziano writes in the same letter, 'What of the fact that we all devote ourselves to promoting true studies each in our own way? And we always do this encouraged not by any reward, but by love of the work itself; yet the duties are divided among us in such a way that absolutely no part of them is left out. For Pico ... is expounding all the scriptures.., and he arrives bearing the olive branch between Aristotle, who is currently mine, and Plato, who is ever yours.'

Ficino writes not infrequently that he works to express the glory of the age. There is a universality of view about these fifteenth-century humanists. It is not surprising that this volume of Ficino's letters dwells so much upon the One. He was working on the Plotinus Commentaries during the period in which these letters were written, and Plotinus dwells on the One even more consistently than Plato does. It is the unity of God recognised in the human being that constitutes the basis of friendship.

Those who have the same guiding spirit and listen to it have a single mind and single will. 'If mind and will are one there is always but one man' (Letters, 6, 10).When Ficino writes to King Matthias of Hungary, having earlier declined the king's invitation to visit his country, it is not just a rhetorical flourish for him to say that he will be visiting it in the body of Filippo Valori, who is Ficino's new patron and his alter ego (Letter 6). The mind which is common to friends seems to relate to the mind of God, who is always the third friend.'

It is a quality of some of the humanists that Ficino corresponds with in this volume that they seem to move closer to each other in their thought as though they were not bound to their opinions. Poliziano writes to Ficino in 1494 (Appendix L): `So far as concerns astrologers, about whom you have written me a most beautiful letter, I rejoice greatly because you also are now for the first time taking a stand with our Pico, or have already taken this stand in the past ... Changing one's view is not a disgrace for a philosopher.' But Poliziano also seems to be modifying his own views. Having been a staunch Aristotelian, he now writes as a 'neophyte' in Ficino's philosophy. Ermolao Barbaro, another famous Aristotelian, shortly to be appointed Patriarch of Aquileia by the pope, writes (Appendix J), 'We are aligning part of our philosophy to some extent with yours: we are giving ourselves encouragement and turning what is given man as a punishment into praise.'

In surveying the letters in this volume one realises what a master Ficino was of the now almost forgotten art of letter writing. There does not seem to be a word out of place. In Letter 11 Ficino replies to a letter from Andrea Cambini, who has sent Ficino three speeches written by a relative of Cambini's. Ficino praises them highly. He writes: 'The qualities I look for above all others in speeches are these: meanings that are clear and not hidden, fullness without excess, brevity without defect, but whole and measured, and lastly appropriate and fine choice of words.' Ficino might have been describing the qualities of his own letters. These qualities point to the Plotinian mean, the mid-point in creation, the still centre. They reflect the words which formed part of the inscription written on the walls of his Academy: 'Avoid excess, avoid activity. Rejoice in the present'. Such advice leads to the fulfilment of human life.  Clement Salaman Editor

THIS volume contains Ficino's ninth book of letters, comprising letters written in 1488 and 1489, with a preface added in the summer of 1490. In addition, four important letters were written in 1489 which were not included in the printed edition of his letters published in 1495. This is no doubt because they concern Ficino's Three Books on Life (De vita) and were in fact published with it, together with a note to the reader printed there. These four letters were included in the one extant manuscript (Mo2), and the reader's note is alluded to there, but not given in full. All five of these items have now been appended to the present volume (Appendices A to E) as they help to complete the record of Ficino's engagement with other scholars at this period.

In addition, some letters have been provided from his various correspondents: Appendix F is Poliziano's reply to a request for help, G is a letter from Valori, and H is the covering letter Ficino wrote at the time he composed Book I of De vita, which had originally been intended as a letter, but outgrew its context (see our previous volume, Letters, 7). Appendix letters I to K are from Ermolao Barbaro, presenting the other side of the correspondence between him and Ficino. They date from 1484, 1488 and 1491 but are given together here for the sake of convenience. Appendix L presents another letter from Poliziano to Ficino, and M to P are letters of dedication written by Filippo Valori for presentation copies of Ficino's work discussed in this volume. Valori personally paid for these presentation copies and for the publication in print of De vita.

One of the more slimmer books of the Letters, the text being only 35 pp, the critical apparatus of the volume remains excellent, including biographies of Ancient, Medieval, and contemporary personages, bibliographies of works, indexes and appendices as described elcewhere.  

Textual Sources

For Book IX, besides the printed edition of Venice, 1495, there is only one manuscript. It is not known who wrote this manuscript or under what circumstances. It contains all of the letters from this book, and the following books, stopping early in Book XII, and these are followed by some letters of Bartolomeo Scala from an earlier period.

The 1495 printed edition was published in Venice by Matteo Capcasa of Parma. The copy in the library of the University of Durham (SR. 2.C.22), used here, has some corrections in the hand of Ficino Ficini, Ficino's nephew.

The manuscript, siglum Mo2, is Munich, Staatsbibliothek, MS lat. 10781.This manuscript also served as the main textual source for the Appendix letters connected with De vita (A to E, and H), collated with the earliest printed editions of this work:

• 1489, Antonio Miscomini, Florence
• c. 1492, Georg Wolf, Paris
• 1498,Venice.

The Latin texts of the remaining Appendix letters are all found in Paul Oskar Kristeller, Supplementum Ficinianum, 2 vols., Florence, 1937, volume II, for which page numbers are given in each case. THE TRANSLATORS

 

The Letters of Marsilio Ficino Volume 9 (Shepheard-Walwyn)

The Letters of Marsilio Ficino Volume 10 (Shepheard-Walwyn)

The Letters of Marsilio Ficino Volume 11 (Shepheard-Walwyn)

The Letters of Marsilio Ficino Volume 12 (Shepheard-Walwyn)

 

 

 

 

Other reviews of Ficino

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The Letters of Marsilio Ficino Volume 1 (Shepheard-Walwyn) Problems that trouble people in heart and mind during the Italian Renaissance are much the same as today. In trying to cope with them, many leaders of the period turned to the priest, Marsilio Ficino for spiritual guidance. Through these letters he advised, encouraged, and occasionally reproved them. Fearlessly he expressed the truth of a universal religion and this wisdom influenced many. He numbered statesmen, popes, artists, scientists, and philosophers amongst his circle.

The Letters of Marsilio Ficino Volume 2 (Shepheard-Walwyn) Excerpt: Marsilio Ficino of Florence (1433-1499) seems to have been a man of this stature. The influence he had on the Renaissance, and consequently upon the culture in which we live, has been discussed in the Introduction to the translation of Book I of his Letters.' Not only did he translate into Latin all the works of Plato, but he restated the principles upon which the ancient philosopher wrote, in such a way that they took life in the hearts of many of the leading men of his time.  His letters show that his words still have the power to give these principles life today.

The Letters of Marsilio Ficino Volume 3 (Shepheard-Walwyn) Excerpt: THIS is the third volume of letters translated by the Language Department of the School of Economic Science. It represents the fourth book of Ficino's Epistolae, covering mainly the period from 1st March to 1st August, 1477. A number of letters, however, fall outside this period, notably the letters in praise of philosophy (letter 13) and of medicine (letter 14), which were written as speeches, presumably to academic audiences, in Ficino's youth. The last two letters in the volume were written in 1478 and 1479 to Platonists in Hungary. They were originally included in the fifth and sixth books respectively, but were transferred when Books III and IV (volumes 2 and 3 of the present translation) were presented to King Matthias of Hungary.

The Letters of Marsilio Ficino Volume 4 (Liber V) (Shepheard-Walwyn) Excerpt: Ficino's correspondence is extraordinary because the same letters combine the most sublime teaching for mankind with eminently practical advice for individuals. Nowhere is this more clear than in the present volume, which covers the period September, 1477 to April, 1478, months which gave rise to tragic events for the whole of Florence and in particular for a number of leading citizens who were also Ficino's correspondents. These events were the outcome of the Pazzi Conspiracy (discussed on pp. 73-91) in which Giuliano de' Medici was assassinated in Florence Cathedral, and from which his brother Lorenzo only just escaped. Immediately afterwards a large number of the Pazzi dependants, some quite innocent, were brutally executed or murdered. The real causes of this event were selfishness, greed and materialism in those places from where spiritual leadership should have come. It was symptomatic that those most involved in the conspiracy included a pope, a cardinal, an archbishop and two priests. A further cause was the breakdown of the respect for law and tradition and an absence of restraint: features usually found in times of gross materialism.

The Letters of Marsilio Ficino Volume 5 (Liber VI) (Shepheard-Walwyn) Excerpt: IN this volume Marsilio Ficino enters upon a fascinating correspondence with some of the most powerful leaders in Europe. Following the Pazzi Conspiracy of 1478, Florence was at war with both the Pope (Sixtus IV) and King Ferdinand of Naples (Ferrante). Ficino wrote eloquent letters to all three protagonists in the war: no fewer than three letters to the Pope,' one intended for King Ferrante of Naples,2 and one to Lorenzo de' Medici, the ruler of Florence. These letters were no doubt prompted by the appalling conditions under which Florence suffered as a result of the war. There are several references to these conditions, notably in Letter 31 to Bernardo Bembo. But perhaps more important than even the relief from physical hardship was the need for Ficino's Academy to continue its work of bringing to life once more the teaching of Plato.

The Letters of Marsilio Ficino Volume 6 (Liber VII) (Shepheard-Walwyn) Excerpt: The letters in the present volume (Book VII in the Latin editions of Ficino's letters) were written in the years 1481-83. This was a period of major warfare in Italy. The resulting disturbance and suffering are reflected in a number of Ficino's letters.

The Letters of Marsilio Ficino Volume 7 (Liber VIII) (Shepheard-Walwyn) This seventh volume of Marsilio Ficino's letters sheds new light on the life and intellectual development of one of the Renaissance's leading figures. As head of the Platonic Academy in Florence, Ficino helped set the intellectual and spiritual foundations of the Italian Renaissance, the reverberations of which were felt throughout Western Europe for centuries to come. Ficino's letters offer key insights into this philosophical and artistic movement and into the lives of the extraordinary people who led it. Noted correspondents include Giorgio Antonio Vespucci, uncle of the navigator and explorer Amerigo Vespucci, after whom America is named.

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