Allen - Studies in the Platonism of Marsilio Ficino and Giovanni Pico

Also in the Variorum Collected Studies Series:

MICHAEL J. B. ALLEN

Platos Third Eye: Studies in Marsilo Ficinos Metaphysics and its Sources

NELSON H. MINNICH

The Decrees of the Fifth Lateran Council (151217)

Their Legitimacy, Origins, Contents, and Implementation

THOMAS MORRISSEY

Conciliarism and Church Law in the Fifteenth Century

Studies on Franciscus Zabarella and the Council of Constance

H. LAWRENCE BOND AND GERALD CHRISTIANSON

Reform, Representation and Theology in Nicholas of Cusa and His Age

TIMOTHY J. WENGERT

Philip Melanchthon, Speaker of the Reformation

Wittenbergs Other Reformer

THOMAS M. IZBICKI

Reform, Ecclesiology, and the Christian Life in the Late Middle Ages

F. EDWARD CRANZ

Reorientations of Western Thought from Antiquity to the Renaissance

PAUL F. GRENDLER

Renaissance Education Between Religion and Politics

JAMES D. TRACY

The Low Countries in the Sixteenth Century

Erasmus, Religion and Politics, Trade and Finance

ANTHONY BLACK

Church, State and Community: Historical and Comparative Perspectives

MORIMICHI WATANABE

Concord and Reform

Nicholas of Cusa and Legal and Political Thought in the Fifteenth Century

F. EDWARD CRANZ

Nicholas of Cusa and the Renaissance

VARIORUM COLLECTED STUDIES SERIES

Studies in the Platonism of Marsilio Ficino and Giovanni Pico

Michael J. B. Allen

First published 2017

by Routledge

2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN

and by Routledge

711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017

Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business

2017 Michael J. B. Allen

The right of Michael J. B. Allen to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data

A catalog record for this book has been requested

ISBN: 978-1-4724-4838-5 (hbk)

VARIORUM COLLECTED STUDIES SERIES CS1063

This second volume of Ficino essays consists of eighteen pieces written over the last two decades. Except for the introductory account of Renaissance Platonism and more particularly of Ficinos formative role in its articulation in the first essaywhich is, alas, misattributed in the Columbia History of Western Philosophythe other seventeen essays are specialized studies of aspects of Ficinos thought, or in the case of essays II and X of Picos thought. They were variously written for conference or commemorative volumes or for collections devoted to a particular work or theme as in the case of XVIIIs concern with the Epinomis. I cannot here do full justice to the cascade of essays by other scholars that have appeared since my first Variorum volume of 1995. Instead I must refer interested readers to the Ficino bibliography that appears periodically in Accademia. I would like to take this occasion, however, to mention the interpretive and historical work of a catena aurea of scholars who have enriched my own understanding of Ficino: James Hankins, Valery Rees, John Monfasani, Chris Celenza, Jacomien Prins, Stphane Toussaint, Pasquale Terracciano, Maude Vanhaelen, Carlos Steel, Guido Giglioni, Wouter Hanegraaff, Guido Bartolucci, A. Neschke-Hentschke, Sebastiano Gentile, Fosca Mariani Zini, Sergius Kodera, Paola Megna, Anna Pace, Thomas Leinkauf, Anna Corrias, James Snyder, James Coleman, Denis Robichaud, Teodoro Katinis, Simone Fellina,Valerio Sanzotta, Grantley Macdonald, Tamara Albertini, Dilwyn Knox, Stephen Clucas, Peter Forshaw, Sarah Hutton, Douglas Hedley, Jill Kraye, Paul Richard Blum, Letizia Panizza, and for both Ficino and Pico, among other Piconians, my beloved colleague Brian Copenhaver. Secondly, I must adduce the important editorial work by Sebastiano Gentile on the second book of Ficinos Letters; by Maurizio Campanelli on Ficinos Hermetic Pimander; by Daniele Conti on Ficinos sermons, and, forthcoming, on the St. Paul Commentary; and by Maude Vanhaelen and separately by Francesca Lazzarin on Ficinos In Parmenidem. For Ficinos Commentaries on the Mystical Theology and Divine Names, see the editorial work of Pietro Podolak along with my own work on the 2 vols I Tatti edition with accompanying translation. Of signal importance to the Anglo-phone world has been the succession of stimulating sessions on Ficino at the annual Renaissance Society of America meetings lovingly organized by Valery Rees, who has herself written authoritatively on Ficinos angelology and on various issues raised in and by Ficinos letters.

I am hopeful, given friends encouragement, that these essays continue to stand on their own merits, or at least that they retain some of their original vigor and interest. Gathering them together, certainly, means in a number of instances that they now reference and serve each other. Eight more essays not included here for various reasons are:

Life as a Dead Platonist, in Marsilio Ficino: His Theology, His Philosophy, His Legacy, ed. Michael J. B. Allen and Valery Rees, with Martin Davies, Brills Studies in Intellectual History, vol. 108 (Leiden: Brill, 2002), pp. 159178.

Platos Gorgias, Ficino and the Poets, in Commenter et philosopher la Renaissance: Tradition universitaire, tradition humaniste, ed. Laurence Boulgue (Villeneuve dAscq: Presses universitaires du Septentrion, 2014), pp.135147.

The Proclus of Marsilio Ficino (14331499), in Interpreting Proclus: from Antiquity to the Renaissance, ed. Stephen Gersh (Cambridge: CUP, 2014), pp. 353379.

Pythagoras in the Early Renaissance, in A History of Pythagoreanism, ed. Carl A. Huffman (Cambridge: CUP, 2014), pp. 435453.

Marsilio Ficinos Last Great Achievement: his Commentaries on the Mystical Theology and Divine Names of Dionysius the Areopagite, Rinascimento 54 (2014/16), pp. 5167.

Attica and Atlantis: Marsilio Ficinos Interpretations of the Menexenus & Critias of Plato, Rinascimento 55 (2015), pp. 333.

Glory, Transfiguration and the Fire Within: Marsilio Ficino on the Metaphysics and Psychology of Light in Lux in Tenebris. Selected Essays from the Third Conference of the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism, ed. Peter Forshaw, Boaz Huss & Gyrgy E. Sznyi (Leiden: Brill, in press).