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Pythagoras in the Renaissance: The Case of Marsilio Ficino*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Christopher S. Celenza
Christopher S. Celenza*
Affiliation:
Michigan State University
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Abstract

This article discusses the manner in which Ficino employs the figure of Pythagoras and various aspects of the Pythagorean tradition in the philosophical areas of psychology, moral philosophy, and ontology. It also argues that the figure of Pythagoras as prophet was particularly appealing to a Ficino situated in the cultural environment of late fifteenth-century Florence. Text, culture, and ideology interacted in a complex way: spurred on by his early appreciation of Iamblichus's soteriological presentation of Pythagoras, Ficino helped create an ideology in Florence which was receptive to a prophetic figure. The piece thus suggests that Ficino viewed a certain segment of the history of thought through late ancient, Iamblichean eyes.

Type
Studies
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 52 , Issue 3 , Autumn 1999 , pp. 667 - 711
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1999

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Footnotes

*

Abbreviations: DK = Diels and Kranz, 1951; Op. = Ficino, 1576. TP = Ficino, 1964-1970; Suppl. = Kristeller, 1937. Classical texts are abbreviated according to the abbreviations in Hornblower and Spawforth, xxix-liv. Unless otherwise noted, translations are my own. I would like to thank Michael J. B. Allen, Ken Gouwens, Stiphane Toussaint, and especially the two readers for this journal, without whose criticisms and erudite suggestions this would be a much poorer piece. I began work on this study and first presented it as a Fellow of the American Academy in Rome, 1993-1994; I gratefully acknowledge that institution's support.

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