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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 (14151487), 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
