Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7czq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T15:40:32.175Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Florence, 1492: The Reappearance of Plotinus*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Henri D. Saffrey
Henri D. Saffrey*
Affiliation:
Paris, France
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

In the western world, Plotinus was only a name until 1492. None of his treatises had been translated during the Middle Ages, and the translations dating back to antiquity had been lost. He was not totally unknown, however, thanks to scholars like Firmicus Maternus, Saint Augustine, Macrobius, and to those parts of the works of Proclus translated in the thirteenth century by William of Moerbeke. But Plotinus's own writings remained completely unknown,and as Vespasiano da Bisticci observed in his Vite, “senza i libri non si poteva fare nulla” (“without the books, nothing can be done”). This fact was to change completely only with the publication by Marsilio Ficino of his Latin translation of the Enneads.

Type
Studies
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 49 , Issue 3 , Autumn 1996 , pp. 488 - 508
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1996

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

A first draft of this paper was read as a lecture to the Warburg Institute, 10 February 1993. I want to thank Professors P.O. Kristeller and M.J.B. Allen, Dr.Hélène Bonafous-Murat, and M. Armand Mettraux for their help in many ways. Many thanks also to the readers of Renaissance Quarterly for the English version.

References

Allen, M.J.B. The Platonism of Marsilio Ficino. Berkeley, 1984.Google Scholar
Allen, M.J.B. Icastes: Marsilio Ficino's Interpretation of Plato's Sophist. Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1989.Google Scholar
Allen, M.J.B. “Summoning Plotinus: Ficino, Smoke, and the Strangled Chickens.” In Reconsidering the Renaissance, ed. Di Cesare, M.A., 63–88. Binghamton, 1992.Google Scholar
Allen, M.J.B. Nuptial Arithmetic: Marsilio Ficino's Commentary on the Fatal Number in Book VIII of Plato's “Republic”. Berkeley, 1993.Google Scholar
Berenson, Bernard. The Italian Painters of the Renaissance. Oxford, 1950.Google Scholar
Bidez, J. Catalogue des manuscrits alchimiques grecs. Vol. 6. Brussels, 1928.Google Scholar
Bisticci, Vespasiano da. Le Vite. Ed. Greco, Aulo. Vol. 2. Florence, 1976.Google Scholar
Bullard, M.M. “Marsilio Ficino and the Medici. The Inner Dimensions of Patronage.” In Christianity and the Renaissance, ed. Verdon, T. and Henderson, J., 467-92. Syracuse, NY, 1990.Google Scholar
Chastel, A. Marsile Ficin et l'art. Geneva, 1954.Google Scholar
Copenhaver, B.P. “Renaissance Magic and Neoplatonic Philosophy: ‘Enneads’ 4.3-5 in Ficino's ‘De vita coelitus comparanda.’” In Marsilio Ficino e il Ritorno di Platone: Studi e documenti, ed. Garfagnini, G.C., 2:351-69. Florence, 1986.Google Scholar
Copenhaver, B.P. “Hermes Trismegistus, Proclus and the Question of a Philosophy of Magic in the Renaissance.” In Hermeticism and the Renaissance: Intellectual History and the Occult in Early Modern Europe, ed. Merkel, Ingrid and Debus, Allen G., 79–110. London and Toronto, 1988.Google Scholar
De La Mare, A.C. “Cosimo and His Books.” In Cosimo “il Vecchio” De Medici 1389-1464, ed. Ames-Lewis, F., 115-56. Oxford, 1992.Google Scholar
Diller, A. “The Greek Codices of Palla Strozzi and Guarino Veronese.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 24 (1961): 313-21. Rpt. in Studies in Greek Manuscript Tradition, 405-13. Amsterdam, 1983.Google Scholar
Erasmus, Desiderius. Opera Omnia Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami. Vol. 1:3, Colloquia, Convivium religiosum. Amsterdam, 1972.Google Scholar
Festugière, A.J. La philosophie de l'amour de Marsile Ficin. Paris, 1941.Google Scholar
Ficino, Marsilio. Opera omnia. Basel, 1576.Google Scholar
Ficino, Marsilio. Three Books on Life. Ed. and trans. Kaske, C.V. and Clark, J.R.. Binghamton, 1989.Google Scholar
Fiocco, G. “La biblioteca di Palla Strozzi.” In Studi di bibliografia e di storia in onore di Tammaro de Marinis, 2:289–310.Google Scholar
Garfagnini, G.C., ed. Marsilio Ficino e il Ritorno di Platone: Studi e documenti. 2 vols. Florence, 1986.Google Scholar
Gentile, S. “Note sui manoscritti greci di Platone utilizzati da Marsilio Ficino.” In Scritti in onore di Eugenio Garin, ed. Cesa, C., 51–84. Pisa, 1987.Google Scholar
Gentile, S. “Note sullo ‘scrittoio’ di Marsilio Ficino.” In Supplementum Festivum: Studies in Honor of P.O. Kristeller, ed. Hankins, J., Monfasani, J. and Purnell, F. Jr., 339-97. New York, 1987.Google Scholar
Gentile, S., Niccoli, S. and Viti, P.. Marsilio Ficino e il ritorno di Platone: Mostra di manuscritti, stampe e documenti. Florence, 1984.Google Scholar
Gregory, H. “A Further Note on the Greek Manuscripts of Palla Strozzi.” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 44 (1981): 183-85.Google Scholar
Hankins, James. Plato in the Italian Renaissance. 2 vols. Leiden, 1990.Google Scholar
Hankins, James. “Cosimo de’ Medici and the ‘Platonic Academy.’” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 53 (1990): 144-62.Google Scholar
Henry, P. Études Plotiniennes. Vol. 2, Les manuscrits des Ennéades. Brussels, 1948.Google Scholar
Kristeller, P.O. Supplementum Ficinianum. Vol. 2. Florence, 1937.Google Scholar
Kristeller, P.O. The Philosophy of Marsilio Ficino. New York, 1943.Google Scholar
Kristeller, P.O. Il pensiero filosofico di Marsilio Ficino. Florence, 1953.Google Scholar
Kristeller, P.O. “Marsilio Ficino and His Works after Five Hundred Years.” In Marsilio Ficino e il Ritomo di Platone: Studi e documenti, ed. Garfagnini, G.C., 15–195. Florence, 1986.Google Scholar
Marchini, Giuseppe. “La Cappella Maggiore.” In Santa Maria Novella: La Basilica, il Convento, i Chiostri monumentali, ed. Baldini, Umberto, 163–213. Florence, 1981.Google Scholar
Masai, F. Pléthon et le Platonisme de Mistra. Paris, 1956.Google Scholar
Mercati, G. “Minutie 45,” Bessarione 38 (1925): 139. Rpt. in Opere Minori, 4: 173-74. Vatican City, 1937.Google Scholar
Nolhac, P. de. Pétrarque et l'humanisme. Vol. 2. Paris, 1907.Google Scholar
O'Meara, Dominic J. “Plotinus.” In Catalogus Translationum et Commentariorum: Mediaeval and Renaissance Latin Translations and Commentaries, 7:55–73. Washington, DC, 1992.Google Scholar
Plotinus, . Plotini Opera Omnia. Ed. Creuzer, F.. Vol. 1. Oxford, 1835.Google Scholar
Plotinus, . Plotini opera. Ed. Henry, P. and Schwyzer, H.-R.. Vol. 3. Paris, 1973.Google Scholar
Plotinus, . Enneads. Trans. Armstrong, A.H.. Cambridge, MA, 1984.Google Scholar
Sicherl, M. Die Handschriften, Ausgaben und Ubersetzungen von lamblichos De mysteriis. Berlin, 1957.Google Scholar
Ullman, B.L. and Stadter, P. A.. The Public Library of Renaissance Florence: Niccolò Niccoli, Cosimo De’ Medici and the Library of San Marco. Padua, 1972.Google Scholar
Wolters, A.M. “The First Draft of Ficino's Translation of Plotinus.” In Marsilio Ficino e il Ritomo di Platone: Studi e documenti, ed. Garfagnini, G.C., 1:305-29. Florence, 1986.Google Scholar
Wolters, A.M. “Ficino and Plotinus's Treatise ‘On Eros’.” In Ficino and Renaissance Neoplatonism, ed. Eisenbichler, Konrad and Pugliese, Olga Zorzi, 193–219. Ottawa, 1986.Google Scholar
Woodhouse, C.M. Gemistos Plethon. Oxford, 1986.Google Scholar
Yates, Frances A. Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition. Chicago, 1964.Google Scholar