The Platonic Academy in Florence and its ideological leader

It was not an official legal institution and was not tied to a state or church. Plato's Academy in Florence - a free community of free people, formed from different backgrounds, having different professions, come from different places who are in love with Plato, Neoplatonism, Filosofia Perennis.

The spiritual representatives (bishops, canons) also came here, and secular persons, and poets, and painters, and architects, and republican rulers, and the so-called businessmen of that era.

The Platonic Academy in Florence (pictured below) acted as a kind of brotherhood of versatile talented individuals who later became famous. These include: Marsilio Ficino, Cristoforo Landino, Angelo Poliziano, Michelangelo Buanarotti, Pico de la Mirandola, Lorenzo the Magnificent, Francesco Catania, Botticelli and others.

So, in this article, we will speak directly about the fraternity of geniuses, which was called the "Platonic Academy in Florence" (leader - Ficino).

Prerequisites for its creation

The impulse to revival was brewing for a long time. Despite the fact that the temporary borders of that era are considered to be the XII - the middle of the XVII centuries, still its culmination, the apotheosis is in the XV-XVI centuries. The center was Italy, more precisely, Florence.

At this time, she was in the very depths of European secular and cultural life. It was there from Germany who came to study art and science. In Paris, innovations from Florence captured the attention of the Sorbonne professors, who regarded them almost as a "new gospel."

An important role played by this city in this era, described R. Marcel. He believed that it was necessary to recognize the absence of conditions for this kind of revival elsewhere. It was Florence - as the center of humanism, the hearth of the world - that could attract all, without exception, the wealth of the human spirit. This was the place where the most precious manuscripts were gathered, where one could meet outstanding scholars. In addition, Florence was identified with a giant art workshop, where everyone contributed the existing talent.

Thus, there are no questions as to why it was the Platonic Academy in Florence, whose leader, Ficino, showed the world unique geniuses, whose works have brought incomparable contribution to the most diverse areas of our life.

Athens of the West

So called Florence because after the conquest by the Turks of Constantinople there flowed the cultural and spiritual wealth of the ancient world. From a single "mystical stem" a unique phenomenon appeared both in the history of Italian culture and in Europe as a whole, called the "Platonic Academy in Florence". Ficino, a Platonist philosopher, led it. Another name for the Academy is the "Platonic family", it had a short but brilliant enough history of its existence. Significantly helped by this famous rulers of Florence - Cosimo de 'Medici and his grandson Lorenzo.

A Brief History of the Platonic Family

The Platonic Academy in Florence was founded in 1470 by the aforementioned Cosimo. The peak of prosperity falls on the time of the reign of his grandson Lorenzo de 'Medici, who acts as its member. Despite the brief flourishing of the Academy (10 years), it has had a significant impact on the culture and thought of Europe. The Platonic Academy in Florence inspired the most famous thinkers, artists, philosophers, scientists, politicians, poets of their era. It was not just a meeting place for highly spiritual, talented and intelligent people. One can say with certainty that the Platonic Academy in Florence is a brotherhood of like-minded people, the criterion of which was the dreams of a new, better world, a man, a future, so to speak, a golden age worthy of revival attempts. Many call it philosophy, and sometimes even a way of life. Specific state of consciousness, soul ...

The Platonic Academy in Florence, whose ideological leader is Ficino, creates a new spiritual climate, thanks to which models (ideas) were developed and deployed, still recognized as the main ideas of the era. The property left by the Platonic family is colossal. The Platonic Academy in Florence is the bearer of what is called the Renaissance myth. We can say that her story is the story of the Great Dream.

Plato's Academy in Florence: M. Ficino

He was both a philosopher, a scientist, a theologian, and an outstanding thinker of the Renaissance, which had a significant influence on the evolution of philosophy in the 17th-18th centuries.

Marsilio was born near Florence (19.10.1433). He studied Latin and Greek, medicine, philosophy. Early enough, he showed interest in Plato (his school). The patronage of Cosimo de 'Medici and his successors played a significant role in the fact that Ficino devoted himself entirely to scientific knowledge.

In 1462 he was recognized as the ideological leader of the Platonic Academy in Florence, and in 1473 became a priest, held a number of high-ranking church posts. His life was interrupted in Carege, near Florence (01.10.1499).

Distinguished works of Ficino

Marsilio own incomparable translations into Latin for Plato and Plotinus. Their complete meetings in Western Europe (publication in 1484/1492) were widely in demand up to the XVIII century.

He also translated other Neoplatonists, such as Iamblichus, Porphyry, Proclus Diadoch, etc., treatises of the Hermetic Vault. His outstanding comments on Plato's and Plotinov's works were also popular, and one of them (to the Platonic dialogue called "Feast") became the source of a large number of arguments about love among thinkers, writers, and Renaissance poets.

According to Marsilio, Plato regarded love as a spiritual relationship between the so-called human beings, which is based on their original inner love for the Lord.

Plato's theology of the immortality of the soul

This is the most important philosophical work of Ficino (1469-74, 1st edition - 1482). It is a metaphysical treatise (sophisticated), where the teachings of Plato and his followers are presented in accordance with the existing Christian theology. This work (the highly systemic work of Italian Platonism for the entire Renaissance) brings the entire universe to five fundamental principles, namely:

• God;
• The heavenly spirit;
• Centered intelligent soul;
• quality;
• body.

The main theme of the treatise is the immortality of the human soul. Ficino believed that the task of our soul is contemplation, which concludes with the direct vision of God, but in view of the rare achievement of this goal within the Earth, its future life must be accepted as a postulate where it reaches its destination.

Famous works of Ficino in the field of religion, medicine and astrology

Widespread popularity received such a treatise as "The Book of the Christian Religion" (1474). Correspondence Marsilio is a rich source of historical, biographical information. Most of the letters are in fact by philosophical treatises.

If we consider other works that are devoted to medicine, astrology, then we can distinguish "Three books on life" (1489). Marsilio Ficino is one of the leading thinkers of the nascent Renaissance, significant representatives of Renaissance Platonism.

Perception of God from the position of Ficino

According to Erwin Panofsky, his system is somewhere in the middle between scholasticism (God as transcendence of the finite universe) and the latest pantheistic theories (God is the identity of the infinite world). Like Plotinus, he understands the Lord as an ineffable One. His perception of God boils down to the fact that the Lord is uniform, all-encompassing. He is a reality, but not a primitive movement.

According to Ficino, God created our world, "thinking of himself," because within it, to exist, to think, to desire is all one. The Lord is not in the whole universe, which has no boundaries, and therefore is infinite. But God at the same time in it, because he fills it, while not filling himself, because he is the fullness itself. So writes Marsilio in one of his dialogues.

Ficino: the last years of his life

In the 1480-90's. Marsilio continues to study "pious philosophy." He translates into Latin and comments on the damned Enneads (1484-90, published in 1492), porphyrian writings, as well as Iamblichus, Areopagite, Proclus (1490-92), Psellus and others.

He shows a strong interest in such an area as astrology. In 1489, Ficino publishes a medical-astrological treatise entitled "On Life", after which a conflict with the higher priesthood of the Catholic Church, more precisely, with Pope Innocent VIII, is brewing. And only a serious patronage rescues Ficino from accusations of heresy.

Then in 1492, Marsilio wrote a treatise titled "On the Sun and Light," which is published in 1493, and next year concludes the interpretation of the dialogues of Plato. The life of the leader of the "Platonovka family" ended in commenting on the work "The Epistle to the Romans" (Apostle Paul).

Plato's Academy in Florence: Landino

He was a professor of rhetoric. Even in his youth, Cristoforo showed himself in a poetic contest (1441). Landino was a friend and adviser to Ficino. Cristoforo is recognized as the first of the most famous commentators of Virgil, Dante, Horace. Directly he publishes the great Dante, thanks to him the world learns about another dream of the Academy: to rehabilitate this poet, to do everything so that people recognize him as one of the incomparable poets, geniuses, who are worthy of veneration just like Virgil, Other creators of the ancient world.

Cristoforo records a series of conversations in the Platonic Academy, in view of which they have come down to our times.

Landino, with his outstanding treatises, brings an incomparable contribution to such a problem as "the relation of active life to contemplative life" - the first of the main issues that were actively discussed by the Renaissance philosophers.

Finally it is worth recalling that the article considered an outstanding community of like-minded Renaissance people, known as the Platonic Academy in Florence (ideological leader - Marsilio Ficino).