Marsilio Ficino on Plato, the Neoplatonists and the Christian Doctrine of the Trinity

Abstract

We are accustomed to thinking of Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499) as the great Renaissance champion of Plato from a Christian point of view and the leader of those who wished to effect an accommodation between Platonism (or more accurately Neoplatonism) and Christianity, as the most distinguished of Plato's several Medicean apologists. Many texts lend credibility to this interpretation of Ficino's goals, and it is essentially correct. However, it is important that we appreciate just where he traced the boundaries of accommodation between Catholic dogma and what he regarded as authentic Platonism; and in particular that we appreciate the care and circumspection with which he approached the problem of analyzing the relationship between the dogma of the Trinity and the various texts in Plato that lent themselves to a trinitarian interpretation that Plato himself could not have intended or even fully conceived.