Marsilio Ficino.
De Christiana Religione.
Guido Bartolucci, ed.
Pisa: Edizioni della Normale, 2019. 356 pp. €30.
De Christiana religione has always been one of the most fascinating and elusive texts in the production of the Platonic philosopher Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499). The recent critical edition by Guido Bartolucci offers therefore a crucial contribution to clarify many questions related to the work itself and its relationship with other writings of the philosopher from Figline, going “nei meandri dell’officina di Ficino” (11). He does so through a patient comparison between the variants of the text and a painstaking recognition of its several sources.
Originally composed and published in the vernacular (1474), De Christiana religione was subsequently re-elaborated multiple times and in multiple ways, with a revised vernacular version (1484), which also takes into account the additions Ficino made in two Latin rewritings. The printed Latin version (1476), the one Bartolucci had selected for his edition, survives in several exemplars enriched by handwritten additions and corrections by Ficino himself or by some of his collaborators. The collation of these different variants represents certainly one the most remarkable contributions offered by Bartolucci, but the conclusions he is able to draw from considering the treatment made by Ficino of his sources, by cherry-picking and omitting, is particularly relevant from the perspective of intellectual history.
In terms of quotations, the lion’s share in De Christiana religione belongs to Eusebius of Caesarea. Ficino shares several of his main tenets with the Church Father, about divine justice, the logos, etc. And yet, as Bartolucci notes, Ficino removes from his Eusebian borrowings passages and motifs that would have been too harsh against ancient pagan philosophers, who are instead associated by Marsilio with the Biblical Patriarchs. Eusebius plays nonetheless a pivotal role in the delicate passages on the naturality of religion, that Bartolucci analyzes suggesting their complementarity with sections of the Platonic Theology. Bartolucci devotes then his attention to a newly discover source of the work, the Contra Judeos by Gerónimo de Santa Fe (fl. 1400-1430), an anti-Judaic text which relies on an allegorical reading of the Scriptures. This kind of approach contributes to form Ficino’s articulate reflection on Judaism, in which he emphasized the ancient Jewish tradition as the holder of the true natural religion and the witness of the early appearances of the logos. This allows Ficino to remark the continuity between ancient wisdom, not only pagan but also Jewish, and Christianity. In other cases, Ficino intervenes on his text not by adding or adjusting sources, but by taming and removing some of his own potentially controversial doctrines. This happens in a passage on the original sin and the terrestrial paradise, that Bartolucci puts in connection with Origenes, that Ficino ended up to remove. The topic was of course insidious, and involved – among others – the larger question of the salvation of the pagans, more specifically of the virtuous pagan philosophers, that he endorsed (see more generally, on this long-lived debate, John Marenbon, Pagans and Philosophers, PUP 2015, not mentioned by Bartolucci, who offers nonetheless a satisfying picture of the traditional theological positions with which Ficino was in contrast). And yet the salvation of the pagans, was not completely obliterated in De Christiana religione, since Ficino re-used material taken away from the main text in a letter accompanying the vernacular 1484 edition. In this letter Ficino used, appropriately, an authority that would have resonated strongly with his vernacular readers: Dante, who posed the question without solving it. Since the letter focuses on both those who lived before Christ, but also of those who could not know Christ after His coming, Kristeller was probably right in suggesting that Ficino is referring to a passage from Paradiso 19, in which the destiny of the man “born along the shoreline of the Indus River” (Par. 19.70-71) is discussed, but without a resolution. Bartolucci rightly notes that another possible reference is not only the obvious Inferno 4, but also the Monarchia, a text that Ficino knew very well, having translated it in the vernacular. In any case, the mention of Dante in this crucial and difficult passage certainly inspires further investigation on Ficino’s views on vernacular philosophy and its deep connection with the Sommo Poeta, also thinking of the well-known Dantean subtext in El libro de amore.
Bartolucci’s analysis, in sum, has the merit to restore De Christiana religione to its actual role within the corpus of Ficinian work: not a mere apologetic tool, but a mirror of his ongoing philosophical, social and religious concerns. And his edition will certainly represent a precious reference for future scholarship.
Eva Del Soldato, University of Pennsylvania