Matriz de análisis de los diarios de campo

The manuscripts that I have described in this chapter contain a wide range of Greek and Latin texts, providing invaluable information on Ficino’s actvity. Ficino’s working notebooks are the product of an intensive close reading of various philosophical sources. In order to contextualize more thoroughly my study, I will now provide a brief account of the manuscript sources that Ficino had at his disposal when reading and working on Plato and the philosophers belonging to the Neoplatonic tradition. As we shall see, these manuscripts are closely connected with Ficino’s notebooks.

•Plato

As stated in the introduction, thank to his translation of Plato’s corpus, Ficino was largely responsible for the revival of Platonism in Western Europe. In the preface to his 1492 translation of Plotinus, Ficino informs us of the events leading him to translate Plato’s dialogues.71 In 1462, Cosimo De’ Medici

70 _{See Gentile, ʽNote sullo scrittoioʼ, p. 341.}

71 _{Kristeller, Supplementum Ficinianum, II, pp. 87-88: ‛Magnus Cosmus, Senatus consulto Pater}

Patriae, quo tempore concilium inter Graecos atque Latinos sub Eugenio Pontefice Florentiae tractabatur, philosophum graecum nomine Gemistum, cognomine Plethonem, quasi Platonem

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commissioned Ficino to perform this task, which the Florentine scholar performed in the years 1463-69.

According to two letters we know that Ficino had at least two manuscripts at his disposal, which he used as a textual basis for his own translation. In a letter dated 1462, Ficino thanks the Lord of Florence for providing him with a manuscript containing Plato’s opera omnia.72 In a letter to Amerigo Benci, the Florentine scholar refers to a manuscript that Benci gave to him, containing several Platonic dialogues.73 Furthermore, Ficino mentions these codices in his wills: the first is described as a manuscript in carta bona cum omnibus dialogis, whilst the latter as a codex cum certis dialogis in carta bombycina.74

alterum de mysteriis platonicis disputantem frequenter audivit. E cuius ore ferventi sic afflatus est protinus, sic animatus, ut inde achademiam quandam alta mente conceperit, hanc oportuno primo tempore pariturus. Deinde, dum conceptum tantum magnus ille Medices quodammodo parturiret, me electissimi medici sui Ficini filium, adhuc puerum tanto operi destinavit, ad hoc ipsum educavit in dies. Operam praeterea dedit, ut omnes non solum Platonis, sed etiam Plotini libros graecos haberem. Post haec autem anno millesimo quadrigentesimo sexagesimo tertio, quo ego trigesimum agebam aetatis annum, mihi Mercurium primo Termaximum, mox Platonem mandavit interpretandum. Mercurium paucis mensibus eo vivente peregi, Platonem tunc etiam sum aggressus’.

72 _{Kristeller, Supplementum Ficinianum, II, p. 88: ‛Quo tandem pro tantis muneribus referam aliud}

nihil habeo, nisi ut platonicis voluminibus que nobis porrexisti sedulus incumbam, Academiam quam nobis in agro Caregio parasti veluti quoddam contemplationis sacellum legitime colam ibique, dum spiritus hoc regit corpusculum, Platonis pariter ac Cosmi Medicis natalem diem celebrem’.

73_{Marsili Ficini Florentini Opera quae hactenus extitere et quae in lucem nunc primum prodiere}

omnia, Basel 1576, rist. an., con una lettera di Paul Oskar Kristeller e una premessa di Mario Sancipriano (Turin: Bottega d’Erasmo, 1962), p. 609 (hereafter Ficini Opera): ‛Accepi hodie tuo nomine grecos Platonis nostri dialogos, munus certe magnificum, animo tuo dignum, meo gratissimum […] imitari in hoc sicut plerisque aliis magnum Cosmum, ut arbitror, voluisti: is enim superioribus diebus bibliothecam meam graeco ornavit Platone’.

74 _{Kristeller, Supplementum Ficinianum, II, p. 195: ʽItem mandavit librum Platonis in greco in}

carta bona cum omnibus dyalogis existentem in domo sui habitationis consignari debere Magnifico Laurentio Pierfrancisci de Medicis tanquam de se bene merito et ob certas iustas causas animum et conscientiam suam moventes. Item similiter mandavit librum Platonis in greco cum certis dyalogis in carta bombycina existentem penes prudentem virum Franciscum Zenobii de Ghiacceto restitui debere heredibus Amerigi de Bencis, ostendendo dicti heredes per scritturas fide dignas dicti Amerigi dictum librum donatum vel comprestitum fuisse ad tempus dicto testatori. Alias ipsum eundem librum legavit eidem Francisco amico suo et de se bene meritoʼ.

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To date, Benci’s manuscript has not been identified. The codex in carta bona, could be one of two Florentine manuscripts containing Plato’s opera omnia: a fourteenth-century paper codex, MS Laur. 59. 1 (Laur. a) and a fifteenth-century parchment one, MS Laur. 89. 5 (Laur. c). Interpreting in carta bona as referring to paper, Raymond Marcel and Martin Sicherl identified the codex that Ficino received from Cosimo de’Medici, as MS Laur. a.75 At a later stage, Diller and Sebastiano Gentile in turn demonstrated that carta might indicate both paper and parchment: as a result, they identified Ficino’s manuscript as MS Laur. c.76

As I will mention in more detail in Chapters V and VI, several philological studies demonstrated the text of Plato’s Symposium in MS Ricc. 92, as well as most excerpts contained in MS Ambr. F 19 sup., derive from MS Laur.c.

•Plotinus

As mentioned above, we know that as early as September 1462, Cosimo de’Medici provided Ficino with MS Laur. 89.5 (Laur. c), containing Plato’s corpus, from which Ficino was to translate Plato into Latin. Cosimo de’ Medici also gave Ficino a manuscript containing Plotinus’s Enneads, now registered as MS Laurentianus 87. 3. The Florentine scholar used this manuscript, along with a copy produced by Johannes Scoutariotes, MS Parisinus graecus 1816, for his

75 _{Raymond Marcel, Marsile Ficin, pp. 253-55; Martin Sicherl, ʽNeuentdeckte Handschriften von}

Marsilio Ficino und Johannes Reuchlinʼ, Scriptorium 16 (1962), 50-61 (pp. 51-53 and 59).

76 _{Aubrey Diller, ʽNotes on History of Some Manuscripts of Platoʼ, in Studies in Greek Manuscript}

Tradition, ed. by Aubrey Diller (Amsterdam: Hakkert, 1983), pp. 251-58 (p. 257); Marsilio Ficino

e il ritorno di Platone. Mostra di manoscritti, pp. 28-31; Sebastiano Gentile, ʽNote sui manoscritti

greci di Platone utilizzati da Marsilio Ficinoʼ, in Scritti in onore di Eugenio Garin, ed. by Giancarlo Garfagnini (Pisa: Scuola Normale Superiore, 1987), pp. 51-84 (p. 55).

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translation of Plotinus (1484-86).77 In Chapters II and IV, I shall focus more extensively on Ficino’s translation.

As far as MS Laur. 87. 3 is concerned, Ficino provided the text of the Enneads with a chapter division, which he noted in the codex. Such a division was adopted in the 1492 printed edition that Ficino produced and is still in use in modern critical editions. Through his philological analysis, Henry identified the Florentine manuscript as the model for the excerpta contained in MS Ambr. F 19 sup. According to Henry, Ficino transcribed the Plotinian texts in the Milan manuscript before noting the chapter division in MS Laur. 87. 3.78 Indeed, if one is to except two cases, these texts are not provided with any chapter division.

•Proclus

Several studies have identified some of the Proclean manuscripts that Ficino read and used during his scholarly activity. More specifically, the texts contained in MSS Ambr. F 19 sup. and Borg. gr. 22, provide further insight into Ficino’s study of Proclus’s Elements of Theology, which the Florentine scholar read in MS Ricc. 70. In Chapters III and IV, I will focus in detail on these texts.

77 _{For a detailed account, see Christian Förstel, Christian, ʽMarsilio Ficino e il Parigino Greco}

1816 di Plotinoʼ, in Marsilio FicinoFonti, testi, fortuna, pp. 65-88.

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Chapter II

‛Selecta colligere’: Marsilio Ficino

and Renaissance reading practices

L’umanesimo è, tra tante cose, un mondo di antologie.

Agostino Sottili79