Marsilio Ficino, Astrology, and Renaissance Magic

In April and May we devoted a set of blog posts to looking at the emergence of printed fortune-telling books starting with Spirito’s Libro de la Ventura, first published in 1482. The prophecies forecast in such game-books relied on the use of astrology along with, generally, the cast of dice to reveal to the player-reader their future. Astrology – the “science of the stars” – was, indeed, nothing new. An ancient practice, the changes and movements of celestial bodies had long been a source of fascination for varied communities across many ages, and had obviously come to play a key role in establishing the layered rhythms of fifteenth-century life.  

Lorenzo Spirito, Libro de la Ventura, [Bologna, Caligola de Bazaleriis, 1498-1500].

The only known copy of this Bolognese incunable edition of the first fortune-telling game ever printed.

The status of astrology had risen in the Middle Ages. Already around the 1260s, the Speculum astronomaiae (“Mirror of Astronomy”) – a work of unknown authorship but generally attributed to Albertus Magnus (before 1200-1280) – presented astrology as a form of Christian knowledge. Moreover, it did so by building on the second-century work of Ptolemy, whose geocentric vision of the world nevertheless provided a highly systematic approach to its study. In particular, book II of his Tetrabiblos teaches in a critical and methodical manner all the areas of astrological technique (planets and signs, aspects, genethialogy, the art of establishing a birth theme, and calculations on the length of a lifetime).

Also in the Middle Ages we receive word of caution, as from St. Thomas Aquinas, who, in his Summa Theologica, presented astrology as a dangerous endeavour:

[I]f anyone take observation of the stars in order to foreknow casual or fortuitous future events, or to know with certitude future human actions, his conduct is based on a false and vain opinion; and so the operation of the demon introduces itself therein, wherefore it will be a superstitious and unlawful divination.

However, Aquinas also acknowledged a possibility for its correct and beneficial practice:

On the other hand if one were to apply the observation of the stars in order to foreknow those future things that are caused by heavenly bodies, for instance, drought or rain and so forth, it will be neither an unlawful nor a superstitious divination.

Beyond the foretelling of severe weather, however, astrology was also increasingly regarded as critical study for everyday medical practice in Europe. Such was the vexed position of astronomy in the Middle Ages as it came to occupy a difficult space between science and religion. The situation became still more complex with the development of “natural” magic in the later fifteenth century, a story told here through the figure of Marsilio Ficino, whose practices in astrology and magic brought the Renaissance icon dangerously close to condemnation.

Regiomontanus, Astrology, and Astronomy

The leading mathematician and astronomer of fifteenth-century Europe was Regiomontanus (born Johannes Müller von Königsberg; 1436-1476). Deeply concerned with mathematics and the mathematical basis of astronomy, he considered astrology and astronomy together within that discipline, and also averred their importance for medicine. In 1467, he had demonstrated such interrelation: King Mathias Corvinus of Hungary was falling ill with fainting spells and his advisers feared his imminent death; Regiomontanus is reported to have attributed his condition to the pernicious influence of a recent eclipse and recommended wholesome foods for the heart to be strengthened, after which the king’s condition did indeed improve. (E. Zinner, Regiomontanus: His Life and Work, New York, 1990, p. 96)

Johannes Regiomontanus, Kalendarium, Venice, Bernhard Maler, Peter Loeslein and Erhard Ratdolt, 1476.

This Venetian publication is rightly famous for bearing the earliest known example of an ornamental title-page in the history of printing.

Regiomontanus regarded astrology as divine, the heavens being the product of God’s creation and their motions the objects of his orchestration. Nevertheless, arithmetic and geometry were to be the preliminary course of study in order to accurately theoretically and practically engage with the “science of the stars.” (D. Rutkin, Sapientia Astrologica: Astrology, Magic and Natural Knowledge, ca. 1250-1800, Cham, 2019, pp. 367-373, 466). Such was the status of astrology in the fifteenth century: a mathematically based course of study intricately tied to Aristotelian natural philosophy.

Regiomontanus was also among the first to recognize the impact printing would have on the dissemination of scientific knowledge. In 1472, he established his own private press in Nuremberg for the production of his Calendar and other mathematical and astronomical works. The German astronomer “incorporated in his productions the first solutions to a host of typographical problems: tabula data [...]; pioneering printed geometrical diagrams, illustrations of eclipses and planetary models (some systematically coloured by hand under the supervision of the press); the first volvelles and sundials with built-in brass arms in a printed book” (M. H. Shank, “The Geometrical Diagrams”, p. 27). Each such innovation meant that the theory and practice of astrology could be increasingly incorporated into mainstream thought. 

Marsilio Ficino and the Revival of Platonism

While Regiomontanus was reportedly healing the King of Hungary, Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499) was working on the re-introduction of Platonic thought at the Florentine Academy founded by Cosimo de’ Medici in 1462. Since 1463, Ficino had been engaged with producing the first translation of all of Plato’s work into Latin. In 1482 he published his Theologia Platonica and Plato’s translated corpus appeared two years later, in 1484. Significantly, 1484 was the year of the Great Conjunction in Scorpio; Ficino seems to have rushed his translation to print to have it appear at this propitious time, “perhaps,” as H. Darrell Rutkin muses, “to help usher in a new Golden Age” (Rutkin, Sapientia Astrologica, p. 475). Indeed, Cristoforo Landino’s 1481 commentary on Dante refers to the upcoming Great Conjunction of 1484 as the return of just such a Golden Age: 

And it is certain (certo) 44 that in the year 1484, on the 25th of November at the 13th hour and 41st minute of that day will be the conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter in Scorpio, and the 5th degree of Libra will be on the ascendant, which shows a transformation (mutatione) in religion. And because Jupiter is stronger than Saturn, it signifies that such a transformation will be positive. Since no religion can be truer than ours, I have a firm hope (ferma speranza) that the Res Publica Christiana will return to the finest life and government, in a form that we can truly say: Iam redit et virgo, redeunt Saturnia regna.” (Rutkin’s translation of Cristoforo Landino, Comento […] sopra la comedia di Dante Alighieri poeta (1481), as printed in Ficino, Lettere, Vol. I, XLI (n. 75).

Ficino’s Platonic work certainly ushered in a new framework for Christendom. Fearing that his contemporaries had an increasing tendency to separate philosophy from religion, his Platonic Theology synthesized Platonism, Neoplatonism, and Arabic philosophy along with Christianity to present a philosophical masterpiece on the immortality of the soul that offers an early effort at remedying many of the issues presented by Martin Luther some decades later.

Where the materialist Aristotelian tradition had previously been the basis for astrology (and natural philosophy in general), Ficino’s translations of Plato presented an old but new conception of the place of human beings within the cosmos based on the Platonic separation of the soul from the physical realm. In the 1480s and 1490s, Ficino also translated and provided interpretations of works by such Neoplatonist philosophers of magic as Plotinus, Porphyry, and Iamblichus.

Ficino and Hermes Trismegistus

Early in Ficino’s Platonic work, however, another extremely formative influence came to take centre stage: a body of texts attributed to the legendary Egyptian figure of Hermes Trismegistus (“Trismesgisus” meaning “thrice great,” this in the areas of king, philosopher, and priest). Alchemical texts attributed to Hermes had circulated in Europe since the thirteenth century, and more theoretical texts attributed to him but with a distinct provenance were recovered after the fall of Constantinople. In 1461, these latter were delivered to Cosimo de' Medici who found them so intriguing that he had Ficino redirect his attention toward their translation. Ficino published them in 1463 as the Corpus Hermeticum.

It is interesting to note, particularly given our recent posts on the counterfeit edition of Pietro Tomai’s Phoenix (the first case of piracy in the history of printing), the Lyonnais counterfeit of the 1501 Aldine Petrarch, and the first illustrated Aldine Dante counterfeited by a Venetian printer, that the Corpus Hermeticum first appeared as a pirate edition. The piracy may have simply been the product of an ambitious printer, or, as Paola Zambelli suggests, a “precautionary measure,” that is “a mere fiction” strategically meant to test the waters of the new ideas it contained. (P. Zambelli, White Magic, Black Magic in the European Renaissance, Boston, 2007, pp. 8-9)

In Hermes Trismegistus, Ficino located a source of pagan wisdom that allowed him to extend a long genealogy of the Platonic tradition and construct an ‘ancient theology’. Renaissance intellectuals like Ficino believed the corpus to pre-date Christianity, Plato, and even Moses. (Copenhaver, “Iamblichus, Synesius and Ficino,” p. 443) Meanwhile, a mosaic in Siena dating to the 1480s presents Hermes Trismegistus as a contemporary Pagan equivalent of Moses. In fact, the corpus is now considered to be the product of late antiquity, and already in 1614 Isaac Casaubon pointed out the impossibility of the its pre-Christian origins. Nevertheless, in Ficino’s time, the ability to tie Hermes to an important moment in the Christian past was critical.

Mosaic at the Cathedral of Siena dating to the 1480s and presenting Hermes Mercurius Trismegistus as a contemporary of Moses. (Public domain)

Hermes Trismegistus, who spoke of the son of God, presented a way to unite the history of Judao-Christianity with the Greek philosophical tradition; because of his connection with Moses, the legendary Egyptian figure offered a single source of origin for what had been considered divergent paths, with Aristotelian philosophy regarded as pagan and impious.

Essentially, the Hermetic corpus held that through self-knowledge human beings could ascend to the divine: “that by mystical regeneration it was possible for man to regain domination over nature which he had lost at the Fall” (K. Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth Century, London, 2003, p. 60). The primary message of the Hermetica was thus ultimately on point with the Christian message, and its incorporation provided an important element of Ficino’s synthetic worldview. At the same time, it contained passages relating to magic. The text referred to as Asclepius, for example, includes an exposition on the use of herbs, gems, and odors to animate statues with demonic and angelic souls. This, too, proved influential for Ficino.

“Equipped with [the Corpus Hermeticum] and other Neoplatonic texts Ficino positioned man as an intermediary between the divine and the natural, the macrocosm and microcosm, and he presented natural magic as a theologically legitimate vehicle for man to achieve divine enlightenment and to become a magus. Like Hermes, a magus literally permeated the mundane, celestial, and supercelestial spheres. Hermes embodied inspired knowledge of the secrets of nature and hermeticism was more than the ideas expressed in the writings bearing his name” (L. Kassell, Medicine and Magic in Elizabethan London, Oxford, 2007, p. 55).

Ficino’s Magic and Medical Astrology

The eldest son of the physician to the Medici family and a Platonist “doctor of the soul,” Ficino’s most celebrated astrological work is his De vita libri tres, published in 1489, which offers rich insight into his amalgamation of medical astrology and neoplatonic philosophy. We are pleased to offer a fine, wide-margined copy of the first edition of this great work with the first lines of text exceptionally printed in gold. This technique was first introduced by the leading Augsburg printer Erhard Ratdolt, who moved to Venice in 1476, for printing the prefatory epistle in two dedication copies of his Euclid of 1486. Gold, for Ficino, was a solar metal, and he would use it in recipes and recommend it just as he would other solar energies like red wine and white sugar. Furthermore, in Ficino’s Hermeticism the sun is worshipped as the ‘visible god’ “leading upwards to the supreme Lux Dei, and as such takes a central place” (M. Mertens, Magic and Memory in Giordano Bruno: The Art of a Heroic Spirit, Boston, 2018, p. 8). The brilliant inclusion of gold text therefore makes this copy an especially remarkable testament to Ficino’s influential medical astrological position.

Marsilio Ficino, De vita libri tres (De triplici vita); Apologia; Quod necessaria sit ad vitam securitas. Add: Poem by Amerigus Corsinus, Florence, Antonio di Bartolomeo Miscomini, 3 December 1489.

Ficino’s De Vita libri tres is divided into three books (Lib. I. De vita sana; Lib. II. De vita longa; Lib. III. De via coelitus comparanda). The first two books were uncontroversial, building as they did on the inherited tradition of medieval medical astrology. The first, “On Healthy Life” was completed around 1480 and includes remedies for melancholic, “Saturnine” scholars on the order of recipes and dietary regimes as well as personal habits to be incorporated for a healthy lifestyle. The second book, completed in 1489, was dedicated to “A Long Life,” and is written with a similar approach, though directed this time toward senescence. 

However, the third book, De vita coelitus comparanda, presents Ficino’s own theory of magic and proved more controversial. Written sometime between the other two works of De vita libri tres, “On Obtaining Life from the Heavens” derives especially from Ficino’s commentary on Plotinus, the founder of Neoplatonism, but is also informed by the Hermetic corpus, and involves numerous preparations for magical talismans imbued with astral energy. 

Here “Ficino goes beyond the common medical-astrological astral influence. Building on the Platonic tripartite division of intellect, soul and body, Ficino introduces the originally Stoic concept of 'spiritus mundi' which is composed of the four earthly elements plus the divine 'aether', or cosmic spirit” (M. L. Ford, Christ, Plato, Hermes Trismegistus, Amsterdam 1990, 1, p. 179).

While the medieval tradition held that planets operate only via the body and thus could not directly affect the intellect and will, the human soul, Ficino animates the planets, imbuing them with the possibility of celestial souls, and for those to influence the human soul directly. The spiritus mundi thus offers a primary energetic link between humans and the heavens. In Ficino’s work, it is “beamed to the earth by the stars and planets, potentially understood and controlled by magic. Stones and metals with stellar characteristics could be positioned on one’s body; medicine infused with appropriate properties ingested; words and songs could invoke heavenly powers” (Kassell, Medicine and Magic in Elizabethan London, p. 9).

Within this framework, Ficino maintained that the power of magic was independent of the invocation of spirits and he claimed not to make use of ‘daemones’ (acting spirits). Nevertheless, one of the most obvious examples of Hermes’ influence in De vita coelitus comparanda is in a section on statue animation, that is, the making of “living gods through human intervention in the cosmos.”

Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola, Kabbalah, and the Importance of “Natural” Magic

Of course the term “magic” points up a large body of beliefs regarding the manipulation of supernatural powers, and certain Renaissance magicians considered it quite apart from astrology. Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola (1463–1494) was one such notable dissenter. Ficino’s contemporary, Pico – whose famous mnemonic talents were later recalled in Francesco Cancellieri’s curious Dissertazione of 1815 – was responsible for incorporating Jewish Kabbalah into the evolving amalgamation of the Hermetic corpus with Christian mysticism.

Francesco Cancellieri (1751-1826). Dissertazione... intorno agli uomini dotati di gran memoria ed a quelli divenuti smemorati. Con un’Appendice delle Biblioteche degli scrittori, sopra gli eruditi precoci, la memoria artificiale, l’arte di scegliere e di notare, ed il giuoco degli scacchi. Rome, Francesco Bourlie, 1815.

See the complete description here.

Regarding astrologers as ignorant and incompetent, Pico claimed that magic and Kabbalah were the best proof of Christian truths. Through them, he believed, one could gain a deep enough understanding of creation to ascend toward a mystical union with God. This is essentially the same message as that received in the Hermetic texts, which provide the steps for man to climb toward the divine. What makes this magical is the way the practice of Kabbalah opens up channels to God that are normally hidden from regular humans. Pico could thus likewise claim the possibility of a “natural” magic as opposed to demonic magic, which he and Ficino both did in 1486.

It was important that they did so. Although magic itself was not forbidden, its close connection with theology made it potentially dangerous or heretical. In 1484, Pope Innocent VIII issued his infamous bull against witches, Summis desiderantes affectibus. The bull was induced by two Dominican inquisitors, Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger who, in 1487, included it in their preface to Malleus maleficarum, thus spreading the Pope’s official word and marking the beginning of a horrific era of witch-hunting. The subsequent persecution was far reaching and long lasting, to wit, the first victim of the Salem witch trials, Bridget Bishop, was hanged on this very day in 1692, over two centuries after Innocent VIII’s initial decree.

Making claims for “natural” magic as opposed to demonic magic was an effort to get around such possible dangers. Yet despite Ficino’s claims to avoiding demons, his theurgy clearly does rely on them, and he therefore had to rationalize their use. “Ficino and his followers admitted the existence of spiritual beings (demons, angels and devils, anthropomorphic movers of astral bodies etc.) to whom it was possible to address prayers, hymns or innocent spells, thus making their influence beneficial….The magic which Ficino defined as natural promised to make men capable of working many wonders, but it claimed to exclude the invocation of demons. At that particular time it was necessary to state this in view of the fact that demonologists accused witches of these very invocations and tributes, and that mass persecution of witches had begun at the end of the fifteenth century and, unlike the Medieval period, no longer observed the restrictions imposed by the Canon episcopi but accepted accusations obtained under torture from suspected accomplices” (Zambelli, White Magic, Black Magic in the European Renaissance, pp. 3, 7).

Nevertheless, in February 1487, Pico’s 900 Theses – which included his claims for magic and Kabbalah’s importance for Christian truths – became the subject of investigation on the orders of Innocent VIII and all 900 theses were ultimately condemned. It was the first printed book to be banned by the Church, and nearly all copies were burned. 

The Pontiff pronounced the following judgment:

In part heretical, in part the flower of heresy; several are scandalous and offensive to pious ears; most do nothing but reproduce the errors of pagan philosophers... others are capable of inflaming the impertinence of the Jews; a number of them, finally, under the pretext of 'natural philosophy', favour arts [i.e. magic] that are enemies to the Catholic faith and to the human race.

Girolamo Savonarola and the Bonfire of the Vanities

Pico’s only work in Italian was a prose commentary on the mystic poet Girolamo Benivieni's Canzoni e sonetti dell’amore e della bellezza divina, con comment. Benivieni’s Neoplatonic verse summary of the Libro dello amore, was a commentary on Plato's Symposium that was strongly influenced by the Ficinian theory of love, making Pico’s commentary an interesting meeting point for these two pillars of Renaissance magic. 

Indeed, already in Ficino’s De amore, magic finds its way into certain passages, “which had been written when the author was already considered an ‘alter Plato’ and a disciple of Trismegistus. His translations of Plotinus, Porphyrius, Jamblichus, Proclus, Dionysius, and Psellus, however, were not yet planned. Therefore, when Pico arrived in Florence, he enjoined Ficino most urgently to undertake that task. Yet De amore remains Ficino’s richest philosophical work and together with De vita coelitus his most magical work” (Zambelli, White Magic, Black Magic in the European Renaissance, p. 46).

Girolamo Benivieni (1453-1542), Canzoni e sonetti dell’amore e della bellezza divina, con commento, Florence, Antonio Tubini, Laurentius (Francisci) de Alopa, Venetus and Andrea Ghirlandi, 7 September 1500.

Benivieni’s Canzoni e sonnetti is also famous for containing the first eye-witness account ever printed of Girolamo Savonarola’s famous Bonfire of the Vanities, held in the Piazza della Signoria during the Carnival on 7 February 1497. This Canzone (fols. oo6r-oo7r) offers a detailed list of the 'lascivious, vain and detestable objects' that were thrown on the fire, including paintings, musical instruments, feminine ornaments, dice, cards, and other such works of Satan, including, notably, books of divination, astrology, and magic.

Benivieni, Ficino, and Pico were all contemporaries of Savonarola and ardent admirers and supporters of his reform ideas, as were the three printers Tubini, Alopa, and Ghirlandi (notably, this is one of only three publications to state the trio by name during their short partnership in 1499-1500). This is despite the fact that Savonarola had published a treatise against astrologers, a “popularized version” of Pico’s own unfinished treatise against predictive astrology, Disputationes adversus astrologiam divinicatrium (D. Weinstein, Savonarola: The Rise and Fall of a Renaissance Prophet, New Haven, 2011, p. 142). It is also despite the fact that Savonarola himself preached of the apocalypse. But even given Savonarola and Pico’s shared resentment of astrology, it was only Savonarola, the Dominican friar, that wanted heretics burned at the stake.

So why was Ficino not more thoroughly condemned? Politics and personal friendships were evidently at play. In fact, Pico, Savonarola, and Benivieni were great friends, as were the latter two with Pico’s nephew, Giovanni Francesco Pico (1469-1533), who would publish his uncle’s treatise against astrology in 1494 after the elder Pico’s death. The amiable Ficino was close to his fellow humanists. Moreover, he had become a staple of Florentine culture, a priest and canon of the Florentine cathedral, and he proceeded very cautiously with his work. Nevertheless, Innocent VIII did become interested in having him investigated on charges of magic and necromancy in 1489 and 1493. Though the situation remains somewhat vague, it is clear that Ficino was able to enlist the support of powerful friends in his defense, including the wealthy Florentine nobleman Filippo Valori, to whom the De vita libri tres is dedicated at the beginning of the second Book. (M. Jurdjevic, Guardians of Republicanism: The Valori Family in the Florentine Renaissance, Oxford, 2008, pp. 14, 49).

Ficino’s later followers did not fare as well. Increasingly there were efforts to move astrology away from magic, as in Girolamo Cardano’s translation into Latin of Ptolemy's Tetrabiblos. In his commentary to this work on world astrology, Cardano included a horoscope of Jesus Christ, not, he cautioned, to show that His miracles and divinity could be attributed to the stars, but rather to make it known that His birth “was admirable, with the most grandiose concourse of all the heavens that signify pity, justice, faith, simplicity and charity.”

Girolamo Cardano, In Cl. Ptolemaei de astrorum iudiciis..., Basel, Heinrich Petri, September 1578.

A magnificent copy – bound for the French cardinal Charles de Bourbon – of the third edition of this compilation of astrological works by the renowned physician, natural philosopher, mathematician, and astrologer from Milan Girolamo Cardano, including his Latin translation of Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos, along with his commentary.

The first edition of Cardano's collection issued from Heinrich Petri's press appeared in 1554; the 1557 publication, presented here, is the first to be supplemented with commentary by the mathematician Conradus Dasypodius (1532-1600), who suppressed, from the section Genitura exempla devoted to individual horoscopes of great men, Cardano’s famous horoscope of Christ. Dasypodius inserted instead a short description of the clock in the cathedral of Strasbourg, which he himself had constructed in collaboration with the Habrecht brothers from Schaffhausen.

Despite Cardano’s qualifications and motivations, De astrorum iudiciis... lib. iiii commentaria was officially condemned and placed on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum issued in 1596. After this date, Cardano’s astrological works could be printed, sold, bought, and read only outside Italy’s boundaries.

The climate was ever-worsening. By the time the former Dominican friar Girolamo Bruno (1548-1600) was accused of plagiarizing Ficino at Oxford in the 1580s, the situation was dire. The brilliant polyglot – whose mnemonic powers were considered just as “magical” as Pico’s – also took pride in making contentious theological claims about magic. He was burnt at the stake in Rome at Campo de’ Fiori in 1600, “shortly after he had written and read out his clandestine magical works to a small number of adepts.” (Zambelli, White Magic, Black Magic in the European Renaissance, p. 7). 

The rare second and definitive edition of a series of lectures given by Bruno in Zurich. The work aims to provide a lexicon of philosophical terms, divided here into fifty-two concepts according to the model of Aristotelian Metaphysics, among other systems of logic.

Giordano Bruno, Summa terminorum metaphysicorum... Accessit eiusdem praxis Descensus, seu applicatio Entis ex manuscripto, per Raphaelem Eglinum Jconium Tigurinum, Marburg, Rudolph Hutwelcker, 1609.

In 1586, John Dee (1527-1608), advisor to Queen Elizabeth, ardent promoter of mathematics and a highly respected astronomer with deep scientific interests, performed his famous evocation of spirits at the court of Rudolph II using Trithemius’ Steganographia. Dee was a student of Ficino, whose translations of Plato he also annotated, and like Ficino, Dee’s work and worldview were highly learned and complex. The magus’ copy of the rare first Latin edition of the first four books of Apollonius of Perga's Conic points up the confluence of erudition, curiosity, and intellectual rigor that supported his endeavors. It also stands as a testament to the ease with which all these qualities can be forgotten when considered misaligned with intolerant hegemonic perspectives. He was deemed “a conjuror, a caller, or invocator of devils” and, on June 5, 1604, pleaded unsuccessfully with James I to protect him from such calumny (L. Spence, An Encyclopaedia of Occultism, Cosimo, 2006, p. 117). Up against the institutional forces that now deemed him silly, the brilliant Dee fell from grace and was practically ignored for two centuries after his death.

An extraordinary association copy, the rare first Latin edition of the first four books of the famous Apollonius of Perga's Conics, once belonging to John Dee. After Dee's death, the volume was acquired, in 1631, by John Winthrop Jr. (1606-1676), who in the same year crossed the ocean and brought his notable scientific library to Massachusetts Bay, including the Apollonius with the celebrated hieroglyphic monad invented by John Dee. This is the first recorded scientific book to reach the New World, and among the earliest books with an American provenance.

Apollonius Pergaeus (late 3rd century BC - early 2nd century BC). Apollonii Pergei Philosophi, Mathematicique excellentissimi Opera. Per Doctissimum Philosophum Ioannem Baptistam Memum Patritium Venetum, Mathematicharum Artium in Urbe Veneta Lectorem Publicum. De Graeco in Latinum Traducta, & Nouiter Impressa.... Venice, Bernardino Bindoni for Giambattista Memmo, 1537.

How to cite this information

Julia Stimac, “Marsilio Ficino, Astrology, and Renaissance Magic” PRPH Books, 10 June 2020, https://www.prphbooks.com/blog/ficino-astrology-magic. Accessed [date].

This post is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.