![]() ![]() One metaphor for this integrated "aliveness" is Ficino's astrology. Now if those little men grant life to the smallest particles of the world, what folly! what envy! neither to know that the Whole, in which 'we live and move and have our being,' is itself alive, nor to wish this to be so. There will be some men or other, superstitious and blind, who see life plain in even the lowest animals and the meanest plants, but do not see life in the heavens or the world . De vita libri tres (Three books on life), or De triplici vita (The Book of Life), published in 1489, provides a great deal of medical and astrological advice for maintaining health and vigor, as well as espousing the Neoplatonist view of the world's ensoulment and its integration with the human soul: His Florentine Academy, an attempt to revive Plato's Academy, influenced the direction and tenor of the Italian Renaissance and the development of European philosophy.įicino's letters, extending over the years 1474–1494, survive and have been published. He was an astrologer, a reviver of Neoplatonism in touch with the major academics of his day, and the first translator of Plato's complete extant works into Latin. Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499) was an Italian scholar and Catholic priest who was one of the most influential humanist philosophers of the early Italian Renaissance. ![]() Marsilio Ficino from a fresco painted by Domenico Ghirlandaio in the Tornabuoni Chapel, Santa Maria Novella, Florence Marsilio Ficino Plethon may also have been the source for Ficino's Orphic system of natural magic. As revealed in his last literary work, the Nomoi or Book of Laws, which he only circulated among close friends, he rejected Christianity in favour of a return to the worship of the classical Hellenic Gods, mixed with ancient wisdom based on Zoroaster and the Magi. He was a chief pioneer of the revival of Greek scholarship in Western Europe. 1355/1360 – 1452/1454) was a Greek scholar and one of the most renowned philosophers of the late Byzantine era. Late Middle Ages to early Renaissance Georgius Gemistus Pletho ![]() To them it was suggesting that while science may explain reason, magic could explain "unreason". The people during this time found that the existence of magic was something that could answer the questions that they could not explain through science. Intellectual and spiritual tensions erupted in the Early Modern witch craze, further reinforced by the turmoils of the Protestant Reformation, especially in Germany, England, and Scotland. There was great uncertainty in distinguishing practices of vain superstition, blasphemous occultism, and perfectly sound scholarly knowledge or pious ritual. Portrait of Gemistus Pletho, detail of a fresco by acquaintance Benozzo Gozzoli, Palazzo Medici Riccardi, Florence, Italyīoth bourgeoisie and nobility in the 15th and 16th centuries showed great fascination with the seven artes magicae, which exerted an exotic charm by their ascription to Arabic, Jewish, Romani, and Egyptian sources. ![]()
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