The Figures
Marsilio Ficino
Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499) was a Florentine philosopher and priest who, at Cosimo de’ Medici’s request, made the first Latin translation of the Corpus Hermeticum (1463), then translated Plato. His version of treatises I-XIV, printed in 1471 as the Pimander, came with a preface that dated Hermes Trismegistus to about the time of Moses and made him the first of six ancient theologians ending in Plato, a chronology that held until Isaac Casaubon redated the texts in 1614.
A Greek manuscript of the Hermetic treatises, brought from Macedonia by the monk Leonardo of Pistoia, reached Cosimo de’ Medici (1389-1464) in Florence, and Cosimo set his young translator an unusual order of work: Hermes first, Plato after. Marsilio Ficino broke off the Plato he had just begun and translated what the manuscript contains, the first fourteen treatises of the Corpus Hermeticum. He finished in Florence in April 1463, more than a year before Cosimo died on 1 August 1464. Printed in 1471 as the Pimander, the translation became by far the most widespread of Ficino’s works: more than 40 manuscripts survive, and 24 printed editions appeared by the end of the sixteenth century (Campanelli 2019).
When did Ficino translate the Corpus Hermeticum?
Ficino finished his Latin version of treatises I-XIV in Florence in April 1463, and it was first printed at Treviso on 18 December 1471, without his consent. The card below dates the rest of his life and of his work on Hermes and Plato.
| Date | What happened, and the source |
|---|---|
| 19 October 1433 | Born at Figline Valdarno, south-east of Florence, son of Dietifeci Ficino, a physician who eventually served Cosimo de’ Medici. The day is known only from Ficino’s own writings. SEP §1; DBI (Vasoli) |
| 1463 | Cosimo gives him a small property with a house at Careggi, where the Medici had their villa. SEP §1; DBI (Kent) |
| April 1463 | Finishes the Latin translation of Corpus Hermeticum I-XIV, made at Cosimo’s request from the Greek manuscript Laurentianus 71.33, which contains only those fourteen treatises. The copy of his early works that he later sent to Lorenzo de’ Medici ends: “Anno 1463 mense Aprilis florentiae”. DBI (Vasoli); Scott 1924, I, pp. 20, 31; Della Torre 1902, p. 543 |
| 1464 | In Cosimo’s last months Ficino reads him his new translations of Platonic dialogues. Cosimo dies at Careggi on 1 August. SEP §2; DBI (Kent) |
| 1468-1469 | His Latin translations of Plato’s dialogues are complete in draft. SEP §2.3 |
| 18 December 1471 | First printing, Mercurii Trismegisti Liber de potestate et sapientia Dei, at Treviso by Geraert van der Leye, without Ficino’s consent and full of printers’ errors. Most later editions followed this text. DBI (Vasoli); Scott 1924, I, p. 31; Hanegraaff 2015, pp. 184-185 |
| 8 January 1472 | Second edition, at Ferrara, set from a different and much more reliable manuscript; it had little influence on later editions. Hanegraaff 2015, pp. 185-186 |
| 18 December 1473 | Ordained priest; later a canon of Florence Cathedral, Santa Maria del Fiore. SEP §§1-2 |
| 1482 | His Platonic Theology, written between 1469 and 1474, is printed. SEP §2.1 |
| 1484 | Plato’s complete works in his Latin translation are printed in Florence; SEP dates the edition to October 1484. SEP §2.3; DBI (Vasoli) |
| 3 December 1489 | De vita libri tres (Three Books on Life), written at Careggi that spring and summer, is printed in Florence by Antonio Miscomini, with Ficino’s Apologia. Its third book, De vita coelitus comparanda, grew out of his commentary on Plotinus, and a charge of suspected magic was raised against him at the Roman Curia. Glasgow Incunabula Project; SEP §2.4; DBI (Vasoli) |
| 7 May 1492 | His Latin Plotinus is printed in Florence by Miscomini. In its preface Ficino says that in 1463 Cosimo gave him “Mercurium primum Termaximum, mox Platonem” to translate: Hermes first, then Plato. DBI (Vasoli); Della Torre 1902, p. 467 |
| 1 October 1499 | Dies at Careggi, near Florence. DBI (Vasoli) |
| 1614 | Isaac Casaubon (Exercitationes I.10) argues that the Corpus Hermeticum was written about the end of the first century AD, partly from Platonic and partly from Christian sources. Scott 1924, I, p. 41 |
Checked on 31 October 2026, each line at its source. SEP is Christopher S. Celenza’s entry “Marsilio Ficino” in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (revised 28 May 2024); DBI is the Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani. Full references are under Sources.
Why did Hermes come before Plato?
Hermes came first because Ficino and his readers believed he was much older than Plato. In the preface to his translation Ficino called Hermes Trismegistus “the first author of theology” and placed him in Moses’ time by a genealogy: Atlas the astrologer flourished when Moses was born, and Hermes belonged to a later generation of Atlas’s family. Orpheus, Aglaophemus, Pythagoras and Philolaus followed, and the line of six ended in Plato (Scott 1924, I, p. 31): the idea historians call prisca theologia, the ancient theology. After 1469 Ficino moved Zoroaster to the head of that line (Celenza 2024, §3.1). The Hermetica seemed to anticipate Genesis and the Gospel of John precisely because they were thought to predate both. The whole edifice rested on a chronology, and the chronology was wrong, as Isaac Casaubon proved philologically in 1614. The story of what Ficino actually revived begins at Path step 01.
What is documented, and what is legend?
The translation, its dates and Ficino’s belief in an ancient Hermes are documented; the deathbed order, the Platonic Academy as an institution and Ficino the Hermetic magician are later embellishments or contested readings. The table sets each popular claim against what the sources show.
| Claim | Verdict |
|---|---|
| Cosimo, dying, ordered Plato set aside for Hermes. | The order of work is documented, though only by Ficino; the deathbed is an embellishment. |
| What the sources show: Ficino is the only witness. His dedication of the translation to Cosimo says he translated “cum tuis exhortationibus provocatus”, at Cosimo’s urging; his Plotinus preface (1492) says Cosimo gave him Hermes first, then Plato, and that he finished Hermes in a few months “eo vivente”, while Cosimo was alive. Cosimo died on 1 August 1464; what Ficino read to him in his last months was Plato. | |
| Ficino thought Hermes lived about the time of Moses. | Documented. |
| What the sources show: His preface dates Hermes to Moses’ time by a genealogy. Walter Scott (1924) notes that everyone who wrote on the subject followed him, in outline, to the end of the sixteenth century. | |
| Casaubon proved in 1614 that Hermes never existed. | Half true: he redated the texts, not the man. |
| What the sources show: He dated the book to about the end of the first century AD and called it falsely ascribed, but he did not deny that a Hermes may have lived before Moses. | |
| Cosimo founded a Platonic Academy in 1462, with Ficino at its head. | Contested; no evidence of an institution. |
| What the sources show: Ficino used the word: a letter of 1462 to Cosimo speaks of “the Academy you arranged for us on the estate in Careggi” (SEP’s translation), and the Plotinus preface says Cosimo conceived an academy after hearing Gemistos Plethon at the Council of Florence. Arnaldo Della Torre (1902) traced the formal academy, founded by Cosimo with Ficino at its head, to sixteenth-century readers of that preface and called their reading false. Arthur Field (1988) still defended an Academy rooted in Florence’s intellectual life; James Hankins (1991) called it a myth. | |
| The Academy was a secret initiatory order. | Legend. |
| What the sources show: None of the sources cited on this page speaks of rites, oaths or secrecy. The Stanford Encyclopedia (2024) does not find even a formal school with regular meetings, and describes Ficino teaching Florence’s young elite instead. | |
| Ficino’s magic came from the Hermetica. | Weak: the Corpus he translated contains no magic. |
| What the sources show: Frances Yates (1964) built her Hermetic Tradition on this. Wouter Hanegraaff (2015) notes that the treatises Ficino translated contain nothing magical, while the passages read as magic, in the Picatrix and on animating statues in the Latin Perfect Discourse, had been known throughout the Middle Ages. The third book of De vita (1489) grew out of his commentary on Plotinus. | |
How Hermetic was Ficino?
Less than the legend says: he translated the Hermetica, but he read them as a Platonist. His model in translating them was the Latin Perfect Discourse, the Hermetic dialogue Latin readers had known since Augustine, and his Latin blurs the treatises’ central claim that knowledge of God goes beyond reasoned discourse (Hanegraaff 2015, pp. 189-195). Frances Yates made the Hermetica the engine of Renaissance thought; critics led by Brian Copenhaver (1988) showed that Ficino’s astrological magic owes far more to Proclus and Neoplatonism than to the Corpus he translated, which contains no magic (Hanegraaff 2015, p. 181). That debt shows in his own output: in 1497 Aldus Manutius printed in Venice Ficino’s Latin paraphrase of Iamblichus’ great defence of theurgy, the Reply of Master Abamon to Porphyry’s Letter to Anebo. Ficino gave his version the title De mysteriis Aegyptiorum, Chaldaeorum, Assyriorum, and the name the work still goes by, De mysteriis, comes from it. In his writings, as in Pico’s and Agrippa’s, historians also trace the influence of the Latin Picatrix, a handbook of astral magic that reached Latin Europe through the court of Alfonso X of Castile (Komorowska 2015, pp. 147-148; Pingree 1986, prologue and p. xv). Wouter Hanegraaff (2015, pp. 205-206) concludes that Ficino understood little of the Hermetica’s own religious message and found a close equivalent of it in Platonic philosophy, so Hermes mattered to him chiefly as an authority for the ancient theology, less as a source of doctrine. Even the order of work, Hermes before Plato, is known only from Ficino himself.
The programme did not stop with Ficino. His younger friend in Florence, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, pushed the same ancient-wisdom argument further, added Jewish Kabbalah to it, and in 1486 printed the result as 900 theses for public debate.
Was Ficino’s Platonic Academy a secret lodge?
No, and it was probably not even an institution. Pop-esoteric histories cast Ficino as head of a secret initiatory “Platonic Academy.” The sources show something smaller. Ficino himself used the word: in a letter of 1462 for his circle at Careggi, and in his preface to Plotinus for an academy Cosimo had conceived. Sixteenth-century writers turned this into a formal academy founded by Cosimo with Ficino at its head. Arnaldo Della Torre called that reading false as early as 1902, and James Hankins titled his 1991 study “The Myth of the Platonic Academy of Florence”. The Stanford Encyclopedia entry (Christopher Celenza, revised 2024) concludes that the surviving sources do not show a formal school with regular meetings, and that Ficino preferred to teach Florence’s young elite. What Ficino actually did needs no embellishment: one translator’s decision, made for an ageing patron, put a late-antique Egyptian-Greek corpus at the head of the ancient theologians for a century and a half, and gave every figure that follows on this site, from Hermes Trismegistus himself to Bruno and Dee, their common text. The corpus owed that place to a false antiquity, which Isaac Casaubon took apart in 1614 by reading the Greek of the treatises closely.
| Born | 19 October 1433, Figline Valdarno, near Florence |
|---|---|
| Died | 1 October 1499, Careggi, near Florence |
| Key work | Pimander: Latin Corpus Hermeticum I-XIV (finished April 1463; printed at Treviso, 18 December 1471) |
| Patron | Cosimo de' Medici, who ordered Hermes translated before Plato |
| Core idea | Prisca theologia: Hermes as "the first author of theology" |
| Other translations | Plato, complete works (printed 1484); Plotinus (1492); Iamblichus' De mysteriis (1497) |
| Why he matters | His translation launched Renaissance Hermeticism |
Fair questions
Who was Marsilio Ficino?
A Florentine philosopher and priest (1433-1499), son of a physician who served Cosimo de’ Medici. He made the first Latin translation of the Corpus Hermeticum (1463), translated all of Plato (printed 1484) and Plotinus (1492), and wrote the Platonic Theology (printed 1482) and the Three Books on Life (1489).
Why did Ficino translate Hermes before Plato?
Because Cosimo de’ Medici asked for Hermes first. In the preface to his Plotinus, printed in 1492, Ficino says that in 1463 Cosimo gave him Hermes Trismegistus to translate first and Plato after; both believed Hermes far older than Plato and the source of the ancient theology Plato inherited. The account comes from Ficino alone.
Did Ficino translate the whole Corpus Hermeticum?
No. His Greek manuscript, Laurentianus 71.33, contains only treatises I-XIV, so his Pimander stops there. Lodovico Lazzarelli (1447-1500) later translated XVI-XVIII, and the Greek text was first printed by Adrien Turnèbe in Paris in 1554.
Did Ficino believe the Hermetica were really ancient Egyptian?
Yes. His preface makes Hermes an Egyptian sage and ruler who lived about the time of Moses, and Plato his distant heir. The dating held until Isaac Casaubon’s analysis of 1614 placed the texts at about the end of the first century AD.
Was Ficino’s Platonic Academy a secret society?
No. Ficino called his circle of friends and pupils an academy, but the surviving sources do not show even a formal school with regular meetings, let alone an initiatory order (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2024). The formal Academy was built later: Della Torre traced it to sixteenth-century writers in 1902, and Hankins called it a myth in 1991.
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Sources & further reading
- Christopher S. Celenza, “Marsilio Ficino”, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (first published 2011, substantive revision 28 May 2024); online.
- Cesare Vasoli, “Ficino, Marsilio”, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 47 (Rome: Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, 1997): the date of birth from Ficino’s own letter, the translation finished in April 1463 from cod. Laur. 71.33, the Treviso printing of 18 December 1471, De vita and the charge of magic, the Plotinus of 7 May 1492, death on 1 October 1499; online.
- Dale Kent, “Medici, Cosimo de’”, Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani, vol. 73 (2009): Cosimo’s death at his villa at Careggi on 1 August 1464; online.
- Walter Scott, Hermetica, vol. I (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924): p. 20 (Laurentianus 71.33, Corp. I-XIV, brought from Macedonia), pp. 31-33 (the Treviso edition, Ficino’s preface, later editions), p. 41 (Casaubon, 1614); scan at the Internet Archive.
- Arnaldo Della Torre, Storia dell’Accademia platonica di Firenze (Florence: G. Carnesecchi e figli, 1902): p. 18 (the sixteenth-century reading of a formal academy), p. 467 (Ficino’s preface to Plotinus), p. 543 (his dedication to Cosimo and the date of April 1463); scan at the Internet Archive.
- Wouter J. Hanegraaff, “How Hermetic was Renaissance Hermetism?”, Aries 15 (2015), pp. 179-209, at p. 181 (no magic in the treatises Ficino translated), pp. 184-186 (the editions of 1471 and 1472), pp. 189-195 (Ficino’s reading; Lazzarelli), pp. 205-206 (conclusions); PDF, DOI.
- Maurizio Campanelli, “Marsilio Ficino’s portrait of Hermes Trismegistus and its afterlife”, Intellectual History Review 29:1 (2019), pp. 53-71: the translation made in 1463 at Cosimo de’ Medici’s request, more than 40 manuscripts and 24 printed editions of the Pimander to the end of the 16th century (abstract); DOI.
- James Hankins, “Cosimo de’ Medici and the ‘Platonic Academy’”, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 53 (1990), pp. 144-162, DOI; “The Myth of the Platonic Academy of Florence”, Renaissance Quarterly 44:3 (1991), pp. 429-475, DOI.
- Arthur Field, The Origins of the Platonic Academy of Florence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988); publisher’s description.
- Glasgow Incunabula Project: Marsilio Ficino, De vita libri tres, with the Apologia (Florence: Antonio di Bartolommeo Miscomini, 3 December 1489), ISTC if00158000; catalogue entry.
- Marsilio Ficino, preface (Argumentum) to the Pimander: Hermes at the time of Moses, ruler of the Egyptians and first author of theology; opening quoted in Scott 1924, I, p. 31; a fifteenth-century printing, digitised by the Source Library.
- Florian Ebeling, The Secret History of Hermes Trismegistus (Cornell UP, 2007), pp. 59-60.
- Brian P. Copenhaver, “Hermes Trismegistus, Proclus and the Question of a Philosophy of Magic in the Renaissance”, in I. Merkel and A. Debus (eds.), Hermeticism and the Renaissance: Intellectual History and the Occult in Early Modern Europe (Washington, D.C.: Folger Books, 1988), pp. 79-111. Copenhaver’s own summary of the argument, that the Hermetica Ficino translated are not about magic and that the philosophical basis Ficino gave to magic came from Neoplatonists such as Plotinus and Proclus: interview with Peter Adamson, History of Philosophy without any gaps, episode 367 (28 February 2021); transcript.
- Joanna Komorowska, “Picatrix Latinus: kilka słów wprowadzenia”, Terminus 17, no. 1 (2015), pp. 147-199, at pp. 147-148: influence of the Picatrix on Ficino, Pico and Agrippa (p. 147), the Latin version and the court of Alfonso X (p. 148); open access.
- David Pingree (ed.), Picatrix: The Latin Version of the Ghayat al-Hakim (London: Warburg Institute, 1986; Studies of the Warburg Institute 39): the Latin prologue (the book was translated from Arabic into Spanish at the order of King Alfonso and finished in 1256); introduction, p. xv n. 7 (its influence on the Italian Renaissance, with a reference to V. Perrone Compagni, 1977); free PDF at Warburg Library Commons.
- Riccardo Chiaradonna and Adrien Lecerf, “Iamblichus”, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (first published 2019, substantive revision 7 November 2023), section 1.2; online.
- Emma C. Clarke, John M. Dillon and Jackson P. Hershbell (trans.), Iamblichus: De mysteriis (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2003), Introduction, pp. xiii and xlviii; PDF on the publisher’s site.
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: Marsilio Ficino.