ficino ← the digital glebe

Who Killed Pico? 4

Nov

2012

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola 24 February 1463 – 17 November 1494 In 2007 it was discovered that Pico was poisoned under mysterious circumstances, together with his close friend Angelo Poliziano -who it was found had also died as a result of arsenic poisoning just seven weeks before, on the 24th September 1494. Pico was interred ...

Discendi et loquendi ratio

Feb

2012

Marsilio Ficino to Luca Fabiano, his scribe: greetings. NATURE endows us with many instruments through which we may learn: eyes, ears, noses, taste and touch. But she gave only a single instrument by which we may teach, namely the faculty of speaking. She has certainly warned us that we should use the service of learning ...

De Libertate et Servitute 11

Dec

2011

Marsilio Ficino to Marchionne Donati of the Council of Eight: greetings. You ask, my friend, why I am bound to no man; because I have no desire for power. But then why do I not want power? To avoid perpetual bondage. Most men buy a false power at the price of perpetual bondage, and when ...

The folly and misery of men 4

Sep

2011

Letter 58 – Stultitia et miseria hominum The folly and misery of men Marsilio Ficino to Plero Vanni, Cherubino Quarquagli, Domenico Galletti: greetings. You have seen painted in my academy a sphere of the world; on one side Democritus laughing, and on the other Heraclitus weeping. Why is Democritus laughing? Why does Heraclitus weep? Because ...

Giordano Bruno: a Spy in London 1583-85 8

Dec

2010

Giordano Bruno [born 1548] was an Italian philosopher, memory specialist & recusant Dominican, who was burned at the stake as a heretic in Rome, in the year 1600. He was born in Nola, in Campania, the son of Giovanni Bruno, a soldier. In 1565 he took the name Giordano on becoming a Dominican friar at ...

The Fugger Newsletters: Renaissance Cables Part 2 7

Dec

2010

Detail from ‘The Ambassadors’ Hans Holbein the Younger. It is unfashionable these days to see History as a glittering record of wars [heroic & unheroic], of royal deeds & misdeeds, of Courts & Court intrigues; this view of History has given way to somewhat dry investigations of social impacts, it has surrendered to ‘TV-lite edu-tainment’ ...