Seite 200 [200]
MONIKA FRAZER-IMREGH
an introduction to and reference book for Platonic thinking for Pico. Ficino
himself proclaimed a totally new way of Christian thinking not only by
looking back at the Church Fathers and the great Scholastics but also by trying
to reconcile Platonism with Christianity.? Ficino’s main sources, apart from
Plato, are the Neoplatonic Plotinus from the 3" century A.D. and Proclus from
the 5'* century, whose greatest work has the same title as Ficino’s: Platonic
Theology. Ficino’s choice in giving an identical title to his work was clearly
deliberate.” How did Ficino learn of Proclus’s masterwork? How did he get
the idea of pursuing a new Platonic and Hermetic evangelising?
After the Council in Florence of 1439,*a new call arose in Italy for the renewal
of the Christian religion as an effect of the presence of Greek theologians and
philosophers like Gemistus Plethon, his ex-pupil Basilios Bessarion, and, later
(from 1453 on), John Argyropoulos.® Sebastiano Gentile proves in his preface
to the first book of Ficino’s Letters that Cosimo de’ Medici, Ficino’s protector,
gave him all the works of their Greek contemporary, Gemistus Plethon.°
Plethon came to Italy with the Greek emperor and Patriarch to discuss
a proposed union of the Roman and Greek Churches in Florence. Plethon was
a politician and a thinker. In his book entitled Laws, he offers a vision of the
ideal state (clearly following Plato’s great attempt) in which the principles of
policy come from Platonic philosophy.’ He also urges fundamental reforms
in religion, recommending not only simplifying the ceremonies and taking
away superstition, but also abolishing the power of the Greek Church and
ending monasticism. Indeed, he even suggested a return to the cult of ancient
English translation by M. J. B. Allen with John Warden; Latin text edited by J. Hankins with
W. Bowen; Cambridge, Mass., London, Harvard University Press, 2001-2006.
Ficino’s main argument is that every ancient religion had a philosophical background and
the priests were also philosophers. See his De christiana religione, in Opera omnia I, 1.
3 Paul Oskar Kristeller, Marsilio Ficino and His Work After Five Hundred Years, Quaderni di
Rinascimento 7, Firenze, Istituto Internazionale di Studi sul Rinascimento, 1987, 7.
The Council began in Ferrara, but because of many problems, the Pope accepted Cosimo de’
Medici’s help, and they moved it to Florence.
5 Gemistus Plethon (1355-1452), Basilios Bessarion (1403-1472). John Argyropulos (1415¬
1487), born in Constantinople but driven out by the Turks in 1453, found refuge in Florence,
in the cultivated circle of the Medici, whose guest he was for fifteen years. He had held
the professorship of Greek at the university of Florence, and Lorenzo il Magnifico made
him a citizen of Florence, which had become the city of his choice. When Argyropulus was
called to Rome by Sixtus IV, he continued to regard himself as a Florentine, and Domenico
Ghirlandaio portrayed him as such.
Sebastiano Gentile, Introduzione, in Marsilio Ficino, Lettere I. Epistolarium familiarium
liber I, acura di S. Gentile, Firenze, Olschki, 1990, XVI-XXVI.
Giorgio Gemisto Pletone, Trattato delle leggi, o raccolta dei frammenti, in parte inediti, di
questa opera: Nomon Sungraphé ta sozomena; testo verificato sui manoscritti, preceduto da
una prefazione storica e critica corredato da appendici raccolte da C. Alexandre; versione
italiana a cura di A. Pellissier; con un saggio introduttivo di L.M.A. Viola. Forli, Victrix,
2012. See also François Masai, Pléthon et le Platonisme de Mistra, Paris, Les Belles Lettres,
1956, 393-404.
+ 198 +
Daréczi-Sepsi-Vassänyi_Initiation_155x240.indb 198 6 2020.06.15. 11:04:20