Marsilio Ficino, Opinioni de Philosophi di Dio e de l’Anima, in Italian, manuscript on paper

Estimate

2,000 - 3,000 GBP

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Description

16 leaves (3 blank), 200mm. by 135mm., complete, a single gathering, c.34 lines, written in brown ink in a flamboyant and perhaps notarial cursive, headings throughout in pale red, first and last words in capitals, blank space left for an initial on first page, negligible wear, modern limp vellum

Provenance

provenance

The watermark is apparently Briquet 3390 (Florence 1487-90).

Catalogue Note

text

Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499), Florentine Platonist and philosopher, was, without question, one of the most learned and most breathtakingly original thinkers in the history of philosophy and one of the supreme writers of the Italian renaissance. “Ficino was voyaging through the straits of unorthodoxy out into the open seas of the ancient Gnostic heresies, including Manichaeism …Ficino bequeaths us both the venerable Christian emblem of man as viator and the pagan emblems of him as a cicada, an Orpheus with his lyre strung to the planetary modes, a Hermetic seal, a Zoroastrian magus, a spark struck from the flint of dionysian matter, a starry charioteer in the biga of the soul. For his audacious attempt to reconcile Platonism with Christianity went far beyond Platonism: it became a life-long ecumenical quest to introduce into orthodoxy an encyclopedic range of unorthodox spiritual, magical, and occult beliefs keyed to the theme of the soul’s ascent from the cave of illusion” (M. Allen in Dictionary of Gnosis and Western Esotericism, ed. W.J. Hanegraaff, 2005, p.366).

The present manuscript is one of Ficino’s earliest texts, addressed to Francesco Capponi in 1457. It is an attempt to summarise the beliefs of all ancient philosophers on God and the human soul. The text was edited by P. Kristeller, Supplementum Ficinianum, II, 1937, pp.128-58, recording 13 manuscripts. Cf. also, M.J.B. Allen, The Platonism of Marsilio Ficino, 1984; P.O. Kristeller, Marsilio Ficino and his Work after 500 Years, 1987; A. Field, The Origins of the Platonic Academy of Florence, 1988; S. Gentile and C. Gilly, eds., Marsilio Ficino and the Return of Hermes Trismegistus, exhib., Florence, 1999, with the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica, of Amsterdam; R. van den Broek and C. van Heertum, eds., From Poimandres to Jacon Böhme: Gnosis, Hermeticism and the Christian Tradition, 2000; A. and V. Rees, eds., Marsilio Ficino, His Theology, His Philosophy, His Legacy, 2002; J. Hankins, ed., Humanism and Platonism in the Italian Renaissance, 2003-4; all with very extensive bibliographies.

The text opens on fol.1r, “Opinioni de philosophi di dio e del anima …da marsilio ficino fiorentyno a francesco chapponi, [L] nostra singulare amitcizia amicho charissimo …”, and it ends on fol.13v, “… alle lucenti stelle, Queste opinioni amicho … finis, AMEN”.