Fifteenth-century Italy was a battleground for philosophical, religious, and political dominance. Orthodox identities, formed and maintained in the force field of the Catholic church, were haunted by other options with the return of long-lost Platonic texts, Greek Hermetic tractates, and Latin translations of Arabic Hermeticist writings. At the epicenter was Marsilio Ficino, Florentine priest and polymath, who translated many of these works from Greek into Latin. He strained to place Hermetic/Neoplatonic wisdom within the strictures of Catholic doctrine and found himself in the Inquisition's crosshairs due to his book De Vita Coelitus Comparanda (1489). In this work he hints at unorthodox human potentials, claiming that musicians who follow his system can birth a daemonic life-form, in deifying (and possibly heretical) mimicry of Genesis.

Trouble in Rome

Marsilio Ficino had a lot on his mind in the autumn of 1489. Imagine him pacing the hallways and gardens of the Villa Careggi, an estate in the hills near Florence and his home for decades under the patronage of the Medici family. Marsilio was worried, and rightly so. He was soon—that very December—to publish a radical work. Word of its contents had reached the Holy Office of the Inquisition in Rome. Someone there was unhappy. Ficino was in trouble, and knew it. He had pushed to the limit, and the Church’s antibodies were stirring.

All our evidence for his concern lies in his own writings—nothing has turned up in any Vatican archive. The text in question was part of a larger work called De Vita Libri Tres (“Three Books about Life”). The first two volumes gave uncontroversial advice on health and longevity. The third Book about Life was different. Its title—De Vita Coelitus Comparanda (De Vita 3, henceforth DV 3)—has been translated as “on obtaining life from the heavens.” A draft version had been shared and must have reached eyes in Rome. Before turning to the book's content and the background we need to make sense of the ruckus, let us look at the signs in the text that clouds were gathering over the Villa Careggi.

Most telling are two postscripts issued with the published work. Each addresses Ficino's elite friends by name, asking for help in dramatic terms. One is described as a “Hercules” called to defeat “the hundred heads of the hydra threatening our books.”