A Humanist Confronts the Plague: Ficino's Consilio contro la Pestilentia

Before 1400, of course, few Platonic texts were known, one of the few being the Timaeus in the partial translation of Calcidius (17a-53b).9 The physical theories contained in that work enjoyed a certain currency, but were then replaced, in the thirteenth century, by the physics described in the Aristotelian texts that came to reassume a powerful position in the universities of Europe. Because it was so tightly connected to physics, medicine was duty bound to take account of this development and in texts regarding the plague, which became more common after 1300, it is difficult to find much use of Platonic sources.10 Plato and the Neo-Platonists were to become a force once more thanks in large part to Ficino, who by the time of the first draft of the Consilio, had already completed both his translation of the entire Platonic corpus and his Theologia Platonica.11 Already famed as the restorer of Platonism, Ficino was in a sense bound to reiterate that commitment in the Consilio. [...] this work, in which the author reprises the idea of a reconciliation between different traditions, makes substantial use of a Platonism that is enriched directly by sources still little known.