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Man and Cosmos in the Renaissance: ‘The Heavens Within Us’ in a Letter by Marsilio Ficino

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2024

Ornella Pompeo Faracovi
Ornella Pompeo Faracovi*
Affiliation:
Centro Studi Enriques, Livorno
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Abstract

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In a letter to Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco dei Medici, dating from 1477 to 1478, the Platonist philosopher Marsilio Ficino develops the classical theme of the correspondence between man and cosmos on the basis of the astrological techniques. The inner heaven, a term of the relationship between macrocosm and microcosm, takes the form of what astrologers call the birth theme: the series of astral positions at the moment of birth and related to its place. Taking up Origen's theme of the inner heavens, he systematically applies the theory of planet-signs to deciphering underlying themes of individual personality.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 52 , Issue 3 , August 2005 , pp. 47 - 53
Copyright
Copyright © ICPHS 2005

References

Notes

1. ‘Seek those victims in yourself, and you will find them within your soul’, in Origen, Homilies on Leviticus, V.

2. Ibid., p. 213.

3. A Festugière (1950), La Révélation d’Hermès Trismégiste. I: L’astrologie et les sciences, Paris, J. Gabalda, p. 92.

4. H. De Lubac (1974), Pic de la Mirandole, Paris, Aubier Montaigne, pp. 160-9.

5. Isidore of Seville, De natura rerum, IX, 2.

6. On this subject see the recent study by P. Dronke (2004), ‘Sole e Luna nell’immaginario poetico dal II al IX secolo’, Micrologus, XII, Il Sole e la Luna, Florence, Sismel-Edizioni del Galluzzo, pp. 275-90.

7. ‘La iatromatematica di Ermete Trismegisto ad Ammone egizio’, in G. Bezza (1995), Arcana Mundi. Antologia del pensiero astrologico antico, vol. I, Milan, Rizzoli, p. 695.

8. For technical terms (birth theme, transit, aspect) see G. Vitali (1668), Lexicon mathematicum astronomicum geometricum. Anastatic reproduction, in G. Bezza (ed.) (2003), preface by O. P. Faracovi, Sarzana, Agorà Edizioni.

9. See the fine essay by A. J. Long (1982), ‘Astrology: arguments pro et contra’, in J. Barnes, J. Brunschwig, M. Burnyeat, M. Schofield (eds), Science and Speculation. Studies in Hellenistic Theory and Practice, Cambridge/Paris, Cambridge University Press/Éditions de la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, where the author reminds us that direct references to astrology are not frequent in stoic philosophers. Which has not prevented a whole strand of astrological studies from finding in stoicism, via the theme of astral fatalism, a philosophical framework that has strongly influenced discussions on astrology, and not only in the ancient world.

10. For a classic formulation of this idea, see Festugière, La Révélation, op. cit., pp. 89 et seq.

11. See A. Bouché-Leclercq (1899), L’Astrologie grecque, Paris, Leroux.

12. Origen, Philocalia, XXIII, 20; Commentary on Genesis, in Eusebius of Caesarea (1971), La Préparation évangélique, book VI, 11, Paris, Éditions des Places, ‘Sources chrétiennes’, Éditions du Cerf, no. 266, p. 268.

13. In Latin astronomical vocabulary the word stella is used as much for comets as for the fixed stars: ‘Dicitur autem promiscua tam de erraticis quinque… quam de fixis in firmamento’ (G. Vitali, Lexicon mathematicum, op. cit., p. 468). Its ‘juxtaposition’ to the Sun and Moon shows how Origen means to refer in this passage to the group of seven heavenly bodies that are at the centre of ancient astronomy.

14. That is the date suggested for the letters by P. O. Kristeller in Book V of Ficino’s letters: see Supplementum ficinianum, Florence, 1937, vol. I, p. ci. For the text of this letter, Marsilio Ficino (1576), Opera omnia, Bâle, ex oficina Sanctipetrina, vol. I, pp. 805-6; for a translation into a modern language, M. Ficino, ed. O. P. Faracovi (2001), Scritti sull’astrologia, Milan, Rizzoli, pp. 229-31. On this letter see the English translation and commentary by E. H. Gombrich (1945), ‘Botticelli’s Mythologies. A Study in the Neoplatonic Symbolism of His Circle’, Journal of the Warburg & Courtauld Institutes, VIII, pp. 7-60.

15. ‘Igneus est nobis vigor et caelestis origo’, Virgil, Aeneid, VI, 730.

16. Liber de voluptate, in Ficino, Opera omnia, op. cit., p. 994; De christiana religione, XXXV, ibid., p. 72. But see too Epistolarum, VIII, in Opera omnia, p. 866.

17. On the dissemination of Origen’s themes throughout Florentine culture in the second part of the 15th century see the classic study by E. Wind (1954), ‘The Revival of Origen’, in D. Miner (ed.), Studies in Art and Literature for Belle da Costa Greene, Princeton, NJ, Princeton University Press, pp. 412-24. (Reprinted in E. Wind [1983], The Eloquence of Symbols. Studies in Humanist Art, ed. J. Anderson, Oxford, Clarendon Press, pp. 42-55).

18. Scritti sull’astrologia, p. 230. English trans. E. H. Gombrich, in ‘Botticelli’s Mythologies’, op. cit., p. 16.

19. Ibid., p. 231; ‘Botticelli’s Mythologies’, op. cit., pp. 16-17.

20. Ibid., p. 230; ‘Botticelli’s Mythologies’, op. cit., p. 17.

21. The theme is taken up again in the letter to the young man’s tutors, Antonio Vespucci and Naldo Naldi, ibid., p. 232.

22. Ibid., pp. 230-1; ‘Botticelli’s Mythologies’, op. cit., p. 16.

23. Plotinus (1966), Enneads, II, 3, 8, with an English translation by A. H. Armstrong, Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, pp. 72-73.

24. On these matters see G. Bezza (2004), ‘ “Liber vivus”. Antecedenti astrologici della metafora galileiana del libro dell’universo’, Bruniana & Campanelliana, X, 2, pp. 481-7.

25. For a study of the different images of astrology, may I refer the reader to my 1996 essay, Scritto negli astri. L’astrologia nella cultura dell’Occidente, Venice, Marsilio.

26. Marsilio Ficino elaborates on the same topic in his De vita, III, xxiii.

27. Scritti astrologici, op. cit., p. 231. For a study of the relations between the soul and destiny in Ficino’s astrology, see O. P. Faracovi (2004), ‘Destino e fato in alcune pagine astrologiche di Marsilio Ficino’, in O. P. Faracovi (ed.), Nella luce degli astri. L’astrologia nella cultura del Rinascimento, Sarzana, Agorà Edizioni, pp. 1-29.