Marsilio Ficino

Italian philosopher and Catholic priest (1433–1499)

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Lived 1433–1499, aged 66Italy

Italy AcademicsAcademic

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Era
1433–1499
Aged 66

Summary

Updated 2026-06-08

He brought Plato back from the dead — not metaphorically. Ficino translated the complete works into Latin for the first time, cracked open Neoplatonism for a Europe that had forgotten it, and ran the Florentine Academy like a Renaissance think tank that bent the arc of philosophy itself.

Biography

About

Born in October 1433, Ficino was a Catholic priest with a side interest in astrology and a central obsession with ancient thought. He became the first scholar to translate all of Plato's surviving works into Latin, making the Greek philosopher legible to a continent that had lost him. His Florentine Academy — an attempt to resurrect Plato's original school — became the nerve center of early Renaissance humanism, pulling in the major academics of his era and shaping how European philosophy would unfold for centuries. He died in October 1499, a month shy of sixty-six, having spent his life makin…

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In their own words

Sourced, dated quotes from Marsilio Ficino

Marsilio Ficino

said1495

The intellect is prompted by nature to comprehend the whole breadth of being. ... Under the concept of truth it knows all, and under the concept of the good it desires all.

— p. 199

Marsilio Ficino

said1495

The inquiry of the intellect never ceases until it finds that cause of which nothing is the cause but which is itself the cause of causes.

— p. 201

Marsilio Ficino

said1495

The rational soul in a certain manner possesses the excellence of infinity and eternity. If this were not the case, it would never characteristically incline toward the infinite.

— p. 202

Marsilio Ficino

said1495

When the object of sense is very violent, it injures sense at once, so that sense, after its occurrence, cannot immediately discern its weaker objects.

— p. 205

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