Marsilio Ficino and the Twelve Gods of the Zodiac

Marsilio Ficino and the Twelve Gods of the Zodiac Author(s): Carol V. Kaske Reviewed work(s): Source: Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol. 45 (1982), pp. 195-202 Published by: The Warburg Institute Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/750975 . Accessed: 19/08/2012 13:55 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

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FICINO AND THE GODS OF THE ZODIAC MARSILIO FICINO AND THE TWELVE GODS OF THE ZODIAC* on N his best-known work, the Commentary

Plato's Symposium, following no summons beyond the remark that Love taught the arts to their respective gods (97), Marsilio Ficino expatiates as follows: Agathon thinks that the arts were given to humanity by the Gods because of love: the art of ruling by Jupiter; of archery, prophecy, and medicine by Apollo; bronze-work by Vulcan; the art of weaving by Minerva; and music by the Muses. Twelve gods are in charge of the twelve signs of the Zodiac: Pallas of Aries, Venus of Taurus, Apollo of Gemini, Mercury of Cancer, Jupiter of Leo, Ceres of Virgo, Vulcan of Libra, Mars of Scorpio, Diana of Sagittarius, Vesta of Capricornus, Juno of Aquarius, and Neptune of Pisces. By these all the arts are handed down to mankind. The signs infuse the powers for each of the arts into the body, and the Gods who are in charge of them, into the soul. So Jupiter, through Leo, makes a man most fit for the governing of Men and Gods, that is, fit to manage well both divine affairs and human; Apollo, through Gemini, teaches prophecy, medicine, and archery; Pallas, through Aries, teaches the skill of weaving; Vulcan, through Libra, teaches bronze-working; and the others the rest of the arts. But because the gifts of Providence are showered upon us by His beneficence, we say they are given at the instigation of Love.1

195 Ficino postulates that each of the twelve 'Great Gods' rules over one of the twelve signs of the zodiac. Of course a varying list of the great gods themselves turns up everywhere; indeed, it turns up in an astronomical context, as we shall see, as the names of the souls of the twelve spheres in Plato, Sallustius the Neoplatonist, and Ficino himself. This combination is strange, however, in that, for one thing, Saturn is absent while such non-planetary gods as Pallas and Ceres are present. Passages like this are found elsewhere in Ficino. In the Platonic Theology (published in 1482) Ficino explains that each of the twelve gods of the zodiac is the soul of the principal star in each of the twelve constellations: In the first [sphere, i.e., the highest one] we discern throughout the zodiac twelve animals made of stars. In each of these is a principal star, which is like the heart of the animal pictured in the firmament, in which heart lives the principal soul of its whole constellation. Hence it is there that Pythagoreans place the twelve divine souls. In the heart of Aries, Pallas, in the heart of Taurus, Venus...

In the Epitome to Plato's Laws (published in 1484), he speculates as to why Plato's ideal city, along with its surrounding countryside, is divided into twelve parts (745): That you may understand.., that a city ought to be administered like the celestial kingdom. The celestial city is distributed into twelve signs, as it were twelve tribes. Nor is it in vain that he dedicates his city to the Twelve Gods, since indeed the twelve *A version of this paper was first delivered at the Fourth Gods are said to rule the twelve signs. Furthermore, Triennial Congress of the International Society for Neo- they are six gods and six goddesses: Juno, Vesta, Latin Studies in Bologna, 27 August 1979. I am grateful to Minerva, Ceres, Diana, and Venus; Mars, Mercury,

the American Council of Learned Societies for a grant which enabled me to go to Italy both to deliver this paper and to see at first hand the Ferraresefrescoes cited below. I erariam fabricam et artes reliquas alii. Quia vero providenam indebted to James J. O'Donnell and Creighton Gilbert tie benignitate sua nobis munera magnifice largiuntur, of Cornell University, to Letizia Panizza of the University of amore instigante dicimus elargiri' (v. I13). Except for the Kent at Canterbury, and above all to Paul Oskar Kristeller, second sentence of the second paragraph, I use the translaProfessor Emeritus of Columbia University, for advice and tion of Sears Jayne, MarsilioFicino's Commentary on Plato's information. Symposium, University of Missouri Studies, xix, i, Columbia I 'Artes a diis propter amorem humano generi traditas Mo. 1944, p. 181. Unless otherwise noted, all translations Agathon arbitratur. Regnum ab love, sagiptandi, divi- are my own. In Latin quotations, ligatures and diacritics nandi, medendi artem ab Apolline, fabricam aerariam a are silently expanded and u-v normalized. My Latin text is surle 'Banquet,'Paris Vulcano, texendi artificium a Minerva, a Musis denique that of Raymond Marcel, Commentaire musicam. Duodecim Zodiaci signis numina presunt duode- 1956, p. 198; see also Operaomnia,Basle 1576, repr. Turin cim. Arieti Pallas, Tauro Venus, Apollo Geminis, Cancro 1959 (hereafter Opera) p. 1341. It was in July of I469 that Mercurius, Leoni Jupiter, Virgini Ceres, Libre Vulcanus, Ficino finished, though he did not yet publish, the Commentsee Raymond Marcel, Marsile Ficin, Scorpio Mars, Diana Sagiptario, Vesta Capricorno, Aqua- ary on the Symposium; rioJuno, Piscibus vero Neptunus. Ab iis artes omnes generi Paris 1958, p. 336. He finally published it with his Latin nostro traduntur. Signa illa in corpus, numina que in illis translation of Plato's Opera, ed. pr. Florence 1484. For presunt, in anima vires suas ad singulas artes infundunt. Ita Ficino's own translation of his Platonic original here, I have Jupiter per Leonem hominem ad gubernationem deorum et used Venice 1491, fol. 154, col. i; see also Platonis dialogi hominum, id est, ad res tam divinas quam humanas pre- juxta interpretationem Ficini, ed. Bekker, x, London 1826, p. clare gerendas reddit aptissimum. Apollo per Geminos 411, though Kristeller warns that this and all edd. of 1532 vaticinium, medicinam et arcus industriam exhibet, Pallas and after exhibit some revisions, Supplementum Ficinianum,I, per Arietem texendi peritiam, Vulcanus per Libram, Florence 1937-45 (hereafter SF), pp. lx-lxi. andCourtauld Institutes,Volume 45, 1982. Journalofthe Warburg

NOTES AND DOCUMENTS

196

Jupiter, Neptune, Vulcan, Apollo. Put each one over each one: signs over our members, gods moreover over signs. In Aries and over our head, Pallas. Over Taurus, however, and our neck, Venus; Gemini and human arms, Apollo; Cancer and the breast, Mercury... Understand through this that the whole city ought to be so one made up of many citizens, as a body is one made up of many members. But some gods in this scheme are said to be male, others female, that you may know that both what pertains to matter and passivity and what pertains to forms and actions are governed by the powers above.2 In all three passages, the scheme remains exactly the same; the only differences, to be discussed later, lie in the local applications. The only well-known source for the scheme better known in the Renaissance than at present3 - occurs in Manilius's Astronomica.In 2 'In prima quidem per Zodiacum cernimus animalia siderea duodecim. In quolibet autem illorum stella quaedam est principalis, tamquam cor animalis illius in caelo picti. In quo quidem corde vitam agit anima totius sideris principalis. Illic igitur animae divinae duodecim a Pythagoricis collocantur. In Arietis corde Pallas. In corde Tauri Venus... [etc.]', Opera,p. 126; ed. Marcel, Thiologie

platonicienne, I, Paris 1964, pp. 153-54. Marcel mistranslates

the opening words of this passage, 'In prima', as 'En effet'. 'Ut intelligas. . . civitatem ad imaginem regni coelestis esse gerendam. Coelestis autem civitas in signa duodecim, quasi duodecim tribus, est distributa. Nec abs re diis duodecim civitatem commendat suam, siquidem dii duodecim signis coeli, duodecim praeesse dicuntur. Imo vero dii sex, sexque deae, Juno, Vesta, Minerva, Ceres, Diana, Venusque: Mars, Mercurius, Jupiter, Neptunus, Vulcanus, Apollo. Praepone singula singulis: Membris quidem nostris signa: signis praeterea deos. Arieti quidem, & capiti nostro Palladem. Tauro vere & nostrae cervici Venerem. Geminis & humanis brachiis Apollinem. Cancro pectorique Mercurium. . . [etc.]. Intellige per haec civitatem totam non aliter unum ex civibus multis, quam unum corpus ex multis membris esse debere. Alia vero numina masculina, alia foeminina idcirco dicuntur, ut cognoscas, & quae ad materiam passionesque, & quae ad formas actionesque pertinent, a superis gubernari,' Opera,p. 1502 on Laws,v, 745, published, according to Kristeller, SF, i, lxviii, in the 1484 translation

of Plato's Opera, Venice

1491i, fol. 187v; ed.

Bekker, x1, pp. 286 ff. As for dates of composition, the Theologia platonicawas composed some time during the years 1469-74. The date of composition of the Epitomeof the Laws is less certain, but it was undoubtedly late, pace A. Della Torre, Storia dell' AccademiaPlatonicadi Firenze, Florence (hereafter Della Torre) pp. 545-46, and G. Saitta, 1902 Marsilio Ficino e la filosofia dell'Umanesimo,3rd edn rev., Bologna 1954, p. 23, as proved by Kristeller, SF, x, cxlix, and id., 'Marsilio Ficino as a Beginning Student of Plato,' xx, 1, I966, p. 45. Scriptorium, 3 See Wolfgang Hiibner, 'Die Rezeption des astrologischen Lehrgedichts des Manilius in der italienischen undNaturwissenschaften, ed. R. Renaissance,' in Humanismus Schmitz and F. Krafft, Boppard I980, pp. 39-67, esp. pp. 39-41. Hilbner cites Ficino only as a praiser of Buonincontri, not as a follower of Manilius.

his lengthy treatment of the zodiac, Manilius says: What step must one take next, when so much has been learnt? It is to mark well the tutelary deities appointed to the signs and the signs which Nature assigned to each god, when she gave to the great virtues the persons of the gods and under sacred names established various powers, in order that a living presence might lend majesty to abstract qualities. Pallas is protectress of the Ram, the Cytherean of the Bull, and Phoebus of the comely Twins; you, Mercury, rule the Crab and you, Jupiter, as well as the Mother of the Gods, the Lion; the Virgin with her sheaf belongs to Ceres, and the Balance to Vulcan who wrought it; bellicose Scorpio clings to Mars; Diana cherishes the hunter, a man to be sure, but a horse in his other half, and Vesta the cramped stars

of Capricorn; opposite Jupiter Juno has the sign of

Aquarius, and Neptune acknowledges the Fishes as his own for all that they are in heaven. This scheme too will provide you with important means of determining the future when, seeking from every quarter proofs and methods of our art, your mind speeds among the planets and stars so that a divine power may arise in your spirit, and mortal hearts no less than heaven may win belief.4

Ficino is unquestionably employing the mythographic tradition of the twelve gods as guardians of the zodiacal signs. The scheme is so elaborate and the correspondence so exact that to consider it coincidence would outrage probability. Ficino omits from the Manilian passage only the 'mater deorum' (1. 441 ), joint guardian of Leo, who is considered to have been a mere rhetorical flourish on the part of Manilius.s 4 U.

433-52. Translation and text where quoted are that of

G. P. Goold, Loeb Library, Cambridge, Mass. 1977. I have consulted also the edd. of A. E. Housman, London 1903, as well as the Commentarius in M. Manilii 'Astronomica,' ofJacob van Wageningen,

Amsterdam

i921I,

and among Renais-

sance edd., those of Lorenzo Buonincontri, Rome 1484, and J. J. Scaliger, Paris 1579. The very same scheme is the organizing principle of the topmost band of the frescoes of the Sala dei Mesi of the Palazzo Schifanoia in Ferrara (begun in 1469, finished in 1471). Warburg, 'Italienische

Kunst und internationale Astrologie im Palazzo Schifanoja

zu Ferrara,'

Gesammelte Schriften, i,

Leipzig

1932, pp.

459-81, especially pp. 469-70, 476, and his followers trace it unhestitatingly to Manilius on the grounds that its putative designer, Pellegrino Prisciani, elsewhere cites Manilius, and that it copies even his idiosyncratic 'mater deorum' (1. 441, on which see next note). For another artistic example, see E. H. Gombrich, 'The Sala dei Venti in the Palazzo del Te,' this Journal, xIii, 1950, pp. 182-20 i; and id., Symbolic Images, London 1972, pp. 10o9-I. s The words 'cum matre deum' there (1. 441), are

explained by G. P. Goold, the work's most recent editor, as follows: 'Cybele, the great mother-goddess, who is regularly attended by lions; she is mentioned only for rhetorical ornament, and the poet does not mean that she shares

FICINO AND THE GODS OF THE ZODIAC Only four of the twelve pairings occur together in any other mythographic arrangement.6 Is Manilius the direct source, the ultimate source or one of several sources? In literature, at least, the more precise one can be about sources, the more precise one can often be about those fine discriminations between text and subtext which reveal an individual author's emphasis. Only when that proves impossible, as it usually does, must one rest content with identifying motifs, commonplaces, topoi, or traditions. Either project will reveal some of the overtones a motif would have had for the author and his immediate audience. The question of Ficino's use of Manilius is especially important both because the major books on Ficino do not cite Manilius, except, of course, to note where Ficino cites him; and because errors have been made, on the one hand, by speculation that Ficino knew him only in fragments (Schiavone) and, on the other, by the assumption that Manilius was available throughout the Middle Ages (Thorndike).7 While our arrangement is not unique to Manilius, the analogues, as we shall see, are either partial, jejune, or very recherch6. Manilius is the locusclassicusfor it, being credited with it, for example, by Gyraldus.8 Ficino's last and again unacknowledged use of the arrangement in the Epitome of the Laws, Book V, quoted above (Opera, p. 1502), has an additional Manilian feature in that it conflates with the twelve gods and signs the twelve parts of the body corresponding to the signs - a topic found elsewhere, to be sure, but one which immediately follows that of the gods of the zodiac in AstronomicaII, 453-65. Elsewhere and in other connections, to be explored below, Ficino cites Manilius six times, once in this very Commentary on the Symposium.9 Jupiter's guardianship of Leo', p. i I6, n. a; see also van Wageningen, p. 132, n. i, on 1. 441; Housman, p. 45, n. on 1.441. 6 Venus is similarly paired with Taurus and Mars with

Scorpio as but one of their two respective zodiacal houses. Some pairs which recurwill be noted below. This Olympian scheme should not be confused with those Egyptian gods of the Zodiac, the decans. 7 M. Schiavone, ed., Teologiaplatonica,i, Bologna 1964, p. 78, n. I on I.i; Lynn Thorndike, A Historyof Magic and

Experimental Science, I, New York 1923, 'Latin Astrology and

Divination', p. 691. 8 Housman traces the analogues most exhaustively, Preface to Book 1I, I, xvi-xvii; L. G. Gyraldus, Dedicatory Epistle to Historiaedeorum syntagma,Basle 1568, p. 14. 9 Opera, p. 1333; Marcel, Commentaire(n. I above), p. 175.

In addition, he cites him in Opera,pp. 79, 85, 339, 851, I6Io, see Kristeller, II pensierofilosofico di MarsilioFicino,Florence

I97 So far, we have in some places citations of Manilius, and in three other places precise correspondences to an elaborate scheme; channels of transmission too can be readily established. Besides his general popularity just then, Manilius was represented in Florence by several manuscripts and editions and by at least two devotees who were also friends of Ficino's. The Astronomicahad been rediscovered by the Florentine Poggio Bracciolini, and his manuscript of it remained in Florence at least until In I461, Pellegrino Agli, a friend Ficino 1475.-10 had known since his youth, had already hastily transcribed at Ferrara another manuscript of Manilius," and he came back to Florence in Ficino, during his composition of I463-64.12 the Commentaryon the Symposium in 1468-69, could have used either or both of these. During the composition of the Platonic Theology, two printed editions appeared - the first, edited by Regiomontanus, at Nuremberg in I472 or soon after, the second at Bologna in 1474. Then Lorenzo Buonincontri, another friend, lectured on Manilius in Florence for three years and finally produced the third (1475-78) printed edition of the Astronomica(Rome I1484), accompanied by the first commentary. Buonincontri brought with him not only the Bologna edition but still another manuscript of Manilius.13 Indeed, in the later Renaissance 1953, 'Indice degli autori', on which all subsequent lists of citations will be based, p. 457. 10 R. Sabbadini, Lescoperte deicodicilatinie grecinelsecolixive xv, nii, Florence

1914 (hereafter Scoperte), p.

192;

L. D.

Reynolds and N. G. Wilson, Scribesand Scholars,Oxford 1974, pp. 90,

122.

Poggio's MS is now lost, albeit recon-

structable through a copy, Codex Matritensis 3678. Goold calls it the archetype, Introduction, p. cvi. It was still in Florence as late as 1475, since Buonincontri tells us in his Preface, fol. iiv-iii, that he used it. 11 It is now cod. 20 (G 38.46) in the Boston Public Library;

see Kristeller, SF,

322-23.

It was to Pellegrino when they

both were young, n, writes Ficino to Pietro Dovizi (Opera,p. 927), i.e., in 1457 or 1458, that Ficino wrote the famous epistle 'De divino furore,' Opera, pp. 612-15.

12 M. E. Cosenza, Biographical andBibliographical Dictionary of ItalianHumanists,New York 1955, s.v. 'Pellegrino Agli.' 13 Preface to his own edn, fol. iii; Della Torre (n. 2 above), pp. 681-87, especially 685-86. A fifteenth-century MS of Manilius survives at Florence in the Laurenziana as Cod. Plut. xxx.xv, see A. M. Bandini, Cataloguscodicumlatinorum ... nii,Florence 1775, cols 75-76. Bandini's next item (Cod. Plut. xxx.xvi) represents Buonincontri's personal copy of the second edn of Manilius (Bologna 1474) and reprints his autograph note, again telling us that he had possessed his own MS of Manilius from his pre-Florentinedays. As for his friendship with Ficino, he cites 'Ficino marceilo' on Book I, 1. 2 (fol. iv); and Ficino is writing to him even before his readmission to Florence (Opera,p. 655).

198

NOTES AND DOCUMENTS

generally, as Hiibner has shown, our poet's popularity was at its height, partly on the grounds that he was like Lucretius - another newly discovered scientific poet - but more pious. 14 Conversely, the then recent rediscovery of Manilius means that intermediary sources for knowledge of him are fairly unlikely, and that even a mediated borrowing would still have about it the freshness of the New Learning. Manilius was still new in 1475 when Buonincontri became, as he later boasted, the first to lecture on him after his long oblivion.15s There are no citations of his content before Ficino's Commentaryon the Symposium (1469), only one large-scale plagiarism which does not contain our arrangement and one approximate epigraphical analogue. To begin with, the Astronomica was cited in antiquity by no one, and in the Middle Ages only bibliographically and by a single writer. The only recorded identifiable borrowing of more than a phrase occurred when its fifth book was plagiarized by the always well known Firmicus Maternus for the last book of his Mathesis.16 There remains but the relatively short span of about fifty years from Poggio's discovery in 1416-17 for a hypothetical intermediary to have cited or simply borrowed this motif from Manilius and passed it on to Ficino in I468-69. To survey all the literature of that half-century at first-hand would be beyond the scope of this paper, since much remains in manuscript; but Hiibner, with the help of Soldati, has combed the astrological poetry of the Quattrocento for Manilian influence, and none appears until 1469. While Buonincontri could have directed Ficino to the Manilian passage, he does not seem to have anticipated him in his use of it. 17 14

'Die Rezeption' (n. 3 above), pp. 39-41, and nn. 6-7; 46-47, and nn. 25-28; 66 and n. 92. 1is Preface, fol. iiv-iii; Della Torre (n. 2 above), p. 686, n. i. 16 There are possible 'faint echoes' of Manilius in classical

times, then Firmicus's plagiarism, then nothing until Poggio, Goold, pp. xiii-xiv; see also xcvi-xcvii and van Wageningen, 'Prolegomena: De Manilii imitatoribus', pp. 20-22. In the Middle Ages, there is a cluster of three bibliographical references to him, by or associated with Gerbert, later Pope Sylvester II; but they show no particular acquaintance with content and are sketchy and inaccurate at that, Goold, pp. cviii-cix. For an antique but not particularly close version of our motif, see n. 19 below. 17 The first astral poetry to show Manilian influence, Hiubner finds, is the two poems of Buonincontri (best distinguished by their dedications, to Lorenzo the Magnificent and to Ferdinand of Aragon, respectively), for the earliest of which the terminusa quois precisely 1469. Giovanni Gioviano Pontano's Uraniais the second, and it was

In the visual arts too, our arrangement emerges in its full Ficinian and Manilian dress only in 1469 or after. The frescoes on the walls of the Sala dei Mesi in the Palazzo Schifanoia at Ferrara are obviously based on Manilius, but they were only begun in I469 and not finished until 1471I; and their putative designer, Pellegrino Prisciani, wrote his astrological works after 1469.18is Ficino did not simply hop on this bandwagon; he seems to have been driving it. True, a version of our arrangement exists in the form of the fourth-century calendar known as the Menologium rusticum Vallense, inscribed on a block of marble, found at Rome and listed by Mommsen as still in private hands there.19 Pomponio Leto, a distinguished contemporary of Ficino (1428-97) was collecting inscriptions in Rome and discussing them in his first Academy from around 1465 to the summer of 1467; the Menologium may have been among them;20 and Ficino may have received reports of it. But even if all these conditions were satisfied, its signs come one god and month later than in Manilius and Ficino, so that, for example, Capricorn has January and January's guardian Juno rather than December and its guardian Vesta.21 Besides this comprehensive if skewed and esoteric analogue, Mommsen, BoucheLeclercq, Boll, Weinreich, and the editors of Manilius list about six (depending on what exactitude of correspondence one demands) extant Graeco-Roman verbal sources for the twelve gods of the zodiac which Ficino could

not written until 1479 or I480, 'Die Rezeption' (n. 3 above),

pp. 45-46. See also B. Soldati, La poesia astrologicanel Quattrocento,Florence I9O6,pp. io,

154 f., 254-58, 276-85.

a18See n. 4 above, and Eberhard Ruhmer, Francescodel

Cossa, Munich

1959,

pp.

13,

73, pls

18-44;

Antonio

'Pellegrino Prisciani,' Rinascimento, xI, i960, p. 98. Rotond6, 19 CIL, I, Inscriptiones 2nd edn, Part I, latinaeantiquissimae, Berlin I893, XXIII, pp. 280-82; T. Mommsen, Die romische bisauf Caesar,2nd edn, Berlin 1859, pp. 306-o08. Chronologie italiana,xx, 2o R. Sabbadini, 'Leto, Pomponio,' Enciclopedia pp. 976-77. Pomponio made a sketch of the Calendar which Vladimir

Zabughin,

Pomponio Leto, I, Rome

Igog, pp.

263-65, locates in the last fifteen years of Pomponio's life, ontheSymposium. too late to have influenced the Commentary 21 Mommsen, Rbmische Chronologie,pp. 306-o08; A. grecque,Paris 1899, pp. 183-84 Bouch6-Leclercq,L'astrologie

and n. i; F. Boll, Sphaera, Leipzig 1903, repr. Hildesheim

1967, pp. 472-78; O. Weinreich, 'Die griechisch-r6mischen

12 G. in Beziehung aufdie

12 Monate und die 12 Tierkreis-

undriimischen zeichen', in W. Roscher, Lexikondergriechischen Mythologie, vi, Leipzig 1924-37, cols 820-27; see also Rupert

Gleadow, who depends heavily on Weinreich, TheOriginof the Zodiac, London I967, ch. 5, 'The Twelve Gods', esp. pp. 78-82.

FICINO AND THE GODS OF THE ZODIAC

199 possibly have known, but they are all partial or sources, Pythagorean or otherwise, possible or jejune.22 No source contains any Ficinian acknowledged, has failed to substantiate this details not also found in Manilius; and Mani- ascription,s at least in the specific form in lius remains the only source wherein Ficino which it appears shortly after our passage: 'Sed could have found every detail of what he satis hactenus cum Pythagoricis confabulati actually wrote. From the evidence presented, sumus. Ad institutum iam Platonicum ordinem Ficino was among the first to make imaginative redeamus' (Marcel ed., I, p. I55). The casual use of our arrangement, perhaps even the first tone of the word confabulati(cf. its use in the to make imaginative use of Manilius. opening sentences of the playful chapters xiv Far from crediting Manilius with our and xv of De vita, ii) indicates that Ficino is arrangement, however, Ficino ascribes it, if at treating his alleged Pythagoreans with poetic all, only to 'the Pythagoreans' (PlatonicTheology, licence, thus mitigating his apparent disIv.i). Although little was known of them, they honesty. His clear distinction between them were among Ficino's privileged sources, espe- and Plato, however, further confounds their cially Pythagoras himself and his disciple Philo- identity by ruling out the principal Pythalaus who formed part of Ficino's oft-repeated gorean he could be thinking of- Plato himself, No Ficino scho- who was said to have learned much from Pythapedigree of the priscatheologia.23 lar has as yet traced the source of any of these goras and who in Laws (viii, 828) could have three passages;24 and with good reason, as it provided Ficino with at least an alignment of turns out. My extensive research in Ficino's the gods with the months. The naming of the souls of the twelve spheres after a vague and varying list of 'the great gods' in Phaedrus246E 22Partial are the isolated pairings of Ceres with the sign and in Ficino himself undoubtedly provided Virgo unenthusiastically reported by Hyginus, Astronomica, Ficino with some sort of precedent, as he shows xxv, 'Virgo' (ed. B. Bunte, Leipzig 1875, p. 67); and of by cross-referencing from his commentary Pallas with the sign Aries, which is quite common, appear- thereon to our chapter of Platonic Theology ing even in Servius on Aeneid, XI, 259 (ed. G. Thilo and H. This vertical Hagen, ui, Leipzig 1884, p. 508, see Boll, pp. 473 f.); and the (Opera, p. I373 citing PT, Iv.i). quadruple pairing mixed into the quite different scheme of arrangement, at least in the version of Sallustius Vettius Valens (Boll, pp. 474-75).Jejune are Plato's unela- the Neoplatonist, would have been compatible borated equation of the 'twelve gods' with the twelve with our circular one, yielding the same twelve months, Laws, vin, 828C; and Diodorus Siculus's unelaboboth down and across.26For some reason rated statement 'that the principal gods are twelve in gods number, to each of whom they allot one month and sign of the zodiac,'

Historical Library, I.

30.7,

on which

see

Bouch&-Leclercq,op. cit., p. 43, n. 4; Boll, pp. 476 f. Poggio 25 It is in neither the Pythagorean works Ficino translated, had discovered Diodorus and translated the first six books namely, the 'Aurea verba,' also called 'Aureum Pythaof him as well; see LucianusSamosatensis veraehistoriae,Venice goreorum carmen,' on which see below, and 'Symbola' 1493 (a repr. of the ed. princeps, Naples 1475), fol. xviii; (Opera,pp. 1978-79); nor Ficino's commentary thereon, SF, and Ficino cites him twice. Complete but not yet discovered I, cxlvii; n, 100-o3; nor lamblichus's De sectaPythagorica libri in Ficino's time were the instances in the CenaTrimalchionis, IV, on which see SF, I, cxlv-cxlvi. the Ara Gabiana,and the Menologium RusticumColotianum. 26Ficino also collectively mentions the gods of the twelve 23 He cites them oftener than he does Aristotle and almost spheres later in the Phaedruscommentary, Summaxix, p. as often as he does both Aristotle and his Peripatetics 1376; and in one of our three passages, on Laws 745, Opera, combined. For examples of the lists, see Opera,pp. i and 25, p. 1502. I am grateful to MichaelJ. B. Allen for allowing me to see in MS his edn of the Phaedruscommentary, Marsilio i.e., De Christianareligione,Proem and c. xxii; and p. 872, Letter to John of Hungary. For Pythagoreanism in the Ficino and the PhaedranCharioteer,Berkeley and London, Renaissance, see S. K. Heninger, Jr., Touchesof SweetHar- 1981. For a survey of the twelve gods of the twelve spheres, mony: PythagoreanCosmologyand RenaissancePoetics, San see Weinreich, op. cit. n. 21 above, cols 836-38. As there Marino, Calif. I974. explained, Sallustius - probably about 363 A.D. - works 24 Marcel has no notes on the twelve gods of the zodiac in Athene/Pallas in by assigning her the aether common to all his edition of either the Commentary on theSymposium or the the spheres and Kronos/Saturn by making him the husPlatonicTheology. Jayne in his translation of the Commentary band of Demeter/Ceres. He leaves the starry sphere comon theSymposium c. theGodsandtheUniverse, (n. I above) equates the twelve gods of the mon to all of the twelve (Concerning zodiac in v. 13 with the mundane gods in Timaeus41-42. vi, ed. A. D. Nock, Cambridge 1926, p. 12). Proclus, who is The Timaeuscertainly helped to authorize the general cited and used by Ficino, even to his title PlatonicTheology, notion that the heavenly bodies were alive, rational, and makes much of the twelve gods (e.g. vi. xxii), and he divine; but Ficino in his commentary thereon gives no believes that heavenly bodies are animated (e.g. xviii); but specific bodies or names, confining himself to the gloss, he has so little interest in the visible world that he does not, 'animabus sphaerarum stellarumque et daemonum, vel so far as I can see, connect these gods with the zodiac, even etiam inferioribus angelis', SummaXLI,Opera,p. I463, see denying (as did Plotinus and lamblichus) that the twelve also Summae xxvi-xxvm, p. 1471. gods in Phaedrus246-48 are mundane, Iv. iv; vi. xix; xxii.

NOTES AND DOCUMENTS

200

Ficino's 'chat with the Pythagoreans' seems to have taken the form of digesting this plurality to dodecality under the sole but unacknowledged guidance of Manilius. Finally, what did Manilius and the twelve tutelary gods of the zodiac contribute to Ficino's thought? In general, they reinforced his beliefs, first, that the heavens are alive and second, I maintain, that the Olympian gods are real. First and most particularly, they helped Ficino in his attempts at once to make Plato practical and astrology poetically pious if not exactly orthodox. Now Ficino called Buonincontri poeta astronomusque;the same title applies both to Manilius and, because of his poetic mode of thought and his often belletristic style, to Ficino himself. The following sounds like a typically Ficinian petitio principi: the heavens must be alive because without their gracious aid we could not understand them so well as we obviously do (Astronomica, ii. 6o-66; I15-29). Into the geography of Plato's Laws, our passage and what follows it (11. 453 ff.) allow Ficino to read a classic threefold analogy of body politic to both microcosm and macrocosm: he explains that the wards of the ideal city are apportioned among the twelve gods because the parts of the body are so apportioned among the twelve signs and because the twelve signs are so apportioned among the twelve gods (Opera, p. 1502). As for piety, Ficino the priest would have shared with his contemporaries the feeling that Manilius shone by contrast with his counterpart Lucretius. In the Platonic Theology,where Ficino is more on his own, the scheme is part of an argument that the visible heavens are alive - a belief that Ficino proudly shared with Manilius. The entire book in which it occurs, the fourth of the eighteen, is devoted to the souls in the visible heavens. The twelve gods of the zodiac are representatives of 'the souls of the living creatures which are contained in the individual a group comprising the third echespheres' 27 St Photius I, Patriarch of Constantinople (c. 8oo-c. 891), lon after the Anima Mundi and the souls aniMyriobiblon,ed. D. Hoeschel, transl. A. Schott, Geneva mating respectively each of the individual 1611, ch. CCLIX [sic, for CCXLIX], 'Vita Pythagorae spheres themselves. Of the six places where excerpta', col. 1315. I quote the English translation of this Ficino explicitly cites Manilius, the three passage by S. K. Heninger in his Touchesof SweetHarmony approving ones are in support of this notion (n. 23 above), p. 120.

this apparently did not appeal to Ficino. He never cites Sallustius; and in the Phaedruscommentary he follows his Platonic original in assigning the starry sphere to Jupiter alone, leaving the planetary sphere of Jupiter seemingly unguarded. Indeed, the two arrangements appear to be incompatible for Ficino, as he shows later in our chapter of the Platonic Theologyby naming also the twelve spheres, but here after a totally different set of gods (iv.i, Marcel ed., pp. 164-65). I can offer one admittedly vague explanation for the attribution. To begin with, the Pythagorean writings are in Greek and more ancient than Manilius; and they extol numerological symmetries. In addition, Pythagoreans were sometimes credited with two notions which variously influenced our arrangement, namely that there are twelve spheres and that at least the first or outermost of them, the starry heaven, is inhabited by certain subordinate divinities. Photius, for example, says in his life of Pythagoras: Pythagoreans assert that there are twelve spheres in the heavens above. The first and most remote from the center is the firmament where, as Aristotle says, reside the highest god and the other deities endowed with intelligence. Although not cited by Ficino, the work in which this appears was owned by his correspondent Cardinal Bessarion (d. 1472).27 Again, Hierocles in his Commentary,which had already been translated by Aurispa (d. 1459 or 146o), on the ever-popular AureumPythagoreorumCarmen(itself translated by Ficino) paraphrases its first commandment thus: Honor the Gods which are in the world, according to that intimate order which the Law of Creation has interwoven with their Essences, having assign'd the first Sphere to some, the second to others, and so on, till all the Celestial circles be fill'd up.28

28 Aurispa's transl., which also formed the ed. pr. of Hierwas published posthumously in Padua ocles's Commentary, 1474, Rome

1475,

1493, 1495,

and Basle 1543.

For an

accessible edn of the Greek text with a Latin transl. see Mullach,

Frag., I, 417 ff. I quote from an anonymous

English translation of the Greek, really by John Norris, London Hieroclesupon the GoldenVersesof the Pythagoreans, 1682, p. 2. On Aurispa see also SF, I, cxxxviii, no. xxvi. The

recent editor of the Teubner Hierocles,F. W. Koehler (Stuttgart 1974), lists two fifteenth-century MSS of the Commentary -

cod. plut. ix. xxxii and LVIII.xxxiii -

in the Lauren-

ziana, pp. xiv, xx, xxxii; see also Bandini, Cataloguscodicum graecorum,Florence I795, i, 444, 1, 480.

FICINO AND THE GODS OF THE ZODIAC

201

if Ficino (IM. 3). One small question remains: regarded the twelve gods of the zodiac as not just symbols but agents, why did he not specify them in that very practical work, De vita? He does allow for them there, as in the Timaeus commentary, by frequent sweeping gestures toward 'the souls of the stars'. He may have seen, as did Buonincontri, that too practical an application would lead to prohibited magic. The pervasive difference of Manilius from other his apparent neglect of the astrologers planets - would have struck no responsive chord in Ficino, the victim-devotee of Saturn. For these or whatever reasons, by the late date at which Ficino wrote De vita, (1489), his Ill to have enthusiasm for the scheme seems cooled. Such reification brings up in the mind of the reader the suspicion of heresy and idolatry. In regard to the Symposium commentary, for example, the orthodox view of astral influence bars it from the soul. Ficino employs the twelve gods to bridge the gap between the matter of these stars and the soul by asserting thatjust as their heavenly bodies influence our bodies towards a particular vocation, so their tutelary deities influence our souls. He thus steers around the heresy of materialism, but thereby runs into that of idolatry. On a larger scale, both Ficino's affirmation in the Platonic Theology that each sign has a real star-soul which is an Olympian god, and his assertion in the Symposiumcommentary that this 29 For the Neoplatonists as for Plato and others the god influences our souls, are striking instances heavenly bodies have souls, as does the universe at large, of the polytheism of Ficino's language in genand the former are low-ranking gods who eventually eral. Even outside our three passages, this priest acquired the names of certain Olympians; see Plato, and scientist drags the Olympian gods in everyTimaeus41-42; Aristotle, De Caelo, n. xii. 292a, on which see W. K. C. Guthrie, ed. and transl., Loeb Library, London where; it is one of the habits which make his 1939, pp. xxix-xxvi; lamblichus, De mysteriis/Egyptiorum, style so rich and strange. As Scaliger illustrates, i.v, xvii, cf. Ficino's very free (Dedication, Opera, p. 1873) the standard interpretation of Olympians in translation of the latter, Opera,pp. 1877-78, and viii.iv; see Renaissance literature is as personifications. for Proclus and Sallustius, loc. cit. n. 26 above. On the But Ficino's habit, deriving from the later Neodoctrine in Neoplatonism generally, see R. T. Wallis, the Neo-Platonism,New York 1972, p. 137; B. Rosin, ThePhilos- platonists (for some of whom, e.g. Plotinus, ophyof Proclus:TheFinal PhaseofAncientThought,New York gods were rhetorical, for others, e.g. Iambli1949, PP. chus, idolatrously real) is, I believe, both more f. 30 On p. 17I 339, PlatonicTheologyxv.v, Marcel iii, p. 37, and than personification and less than idolatry. also in Opera,pp. 851 and 161o, he cites him respectfully in These zodiacal Olympians, at least, while they support of this notion; in Opera, pp. 79 and 85, Ficino do personify, also have their own scientific recondescendingly credits Manilius with at least realizing the ality. Ficino of course abjures idolatry (Opera, logical necessity of soul and some of its properties. 31 IV.5, Opera, p. 1333, Marcel, p. 175. P- 559), clarifying that he uses the term 'gods' 32 'I believe the poet has interposed another magic notion, for angels and celestial souls only in the sense eliciting from a given sign what god one should sacrifice to, that they are divine or superhuman (Opera, p. which is that "care to know the guardians"', fol. li on in these souls but subor13I1o). Ficino believed 11.433-34; he proceeds to denigrate the character of almost God. Presumably dinated them to one supreme li-liv cites every god mentioned by Manilius, but then on the gods of the zodiac are also angels, as Ficino Varro to the effect that these many gods are all aspects of the one God! Contrast Scaliger (n. 4 above), p. 97, on 1. 436. says of the souls of the planets a bit later in the

common to Plato, the Neoplatonists, and many others29 but especially dear to both our authors the notion that the heavens and the stars have rational souls.30 Even his citation of Manilius in the Commentaryon the Symposium, which happens to be condemnatory, condemns Manilius not precisely for believing in a world-soul but for seeing no higher god beyond it.3 Manilius says that 'nature' allotted the gods to the signs and 'gave to the great virtues the persons of the Gods . . . in order that a living presence might lend majesty to abstract qualities'. Among his editors, Buonincontri somewhat disapprovingly accepts the reality of these 'presences', unlike the later and more 'enlightened' Scaliger and his successors, who equate with invented them humanly personifications.32 The introduction of Manilius's twelve gods of the zodiac works the greatest change in the Symposium, where by also bringing in both the zodiac and human beings it brings Plato's mythical statement down to astrological 'fact' a typically neoplatonic extension of Plato. Here each god not only personifies an art as in Plato but also transmits the practical, vocational influence of each sign to its native. The influence of love is here upstaged by astrological influence - perhaps because it has already been explained in literal psychological terms how practitioners of the arts are guided by love

14

NOTES AND DOCUMENTS

202

Symposiumcommentary, and angels can legitimately influence our souls.33 It is no heresy (since Aquinas himself, Ficino's 'leader in theology', did so) to believe that the spheres are moved by Intelligences as secondary causes and to admit the possibility that the Intelligences or movers are so united with their spheres as to constitute their souls.34 The same degree of personality which the planets had long possessed, especially in the star-crossed Renaissance, Ficino would want to extend to these

other heavenly bodies.3s The minor question as to whether it is orthodox for the fixed stars to have their own angels,36 as Ficino affirms that they do, seems not to be insoluble if one keeps in mind that the main point for Ficino is not the names of the heavenly bodies, but their nameability, their personal nature. In this way, Ficino's style embodies his vision; his apparent polytheism expresses his animism. CAROLV. KASKE CORNELL UNIVERSITY

3s This is the interpretation put on the twelve gods of the zodiac in the Sala dei Mesi by both F. Saxl, 'Il Rina33D. P. Walker, Spiritualand DemonicMagicfrom Ficinoto scimento dell' Antichita', in RepertoriumfiTr Kunstwissenschaft, London 1958, repr. Notre Dame, Indiana 1975, XLIII, I922, pp. 227-36, and Jean Seznec, TheSurvivalof the Campanella, PP. 45 ff. PaganGods,transl. Barbara Sessions, New York 1953, P. 76 34Ficino calls Aquinas, 'dux noster in theologia,' in Opera, and p. 77, fig. 25. The phrase 'masters of the months' for the p. 558. He cites the SummacontraGentiles,ii, 70, in support of gods of the zodiac is not in Manilius, as Seznec claims, p. 74; the notion that the stars have souls in PlatonicTheology,Iv. but Diodorus, 11.30, calls them 'xup'oug,' and Warburg ad fin.; Marcel, p. 163, n. 7. According to Thomas Litt, 'Monatsregenten,' Gesammelte Schriften,Ii, pl. LX,no. 10o7. 36 Boll traces the twelve angelic Watchers of the Egyptian OCSO, Aquinas believed firmly that the spheres are moved by spirits; he saw little difference for theology whether or Zodiac in the Gnostic Pistis Sophia, ch. 126 (ed. Carl not the movers are so united with their spheres as to Schmidt, Leipzig 1905, p. 207) to the Hellenistic twelve constitute their souls, Les corpscilestesdansl'universde Saint tutelary gods of the Zodiac, F. Boll, C. Bezold, and W. Thomasd'Aquin,Philosophes Medievaux, vi, Louvain 1963, Gundel, Sternglaube undSterndeutung, 5th edn, Stuttgart 1966, pp. I08--09. pp. I90-9I.

BOTTICELLI'S

'PRIMA VERA':

CHE VOLEA S'INTENDESSE* HERE IS a passage in Alberti's Della Pittura,

IIn, liv, that has not been exploited in the

understanding of Botticelli's so-called 'Primavera'in the Uffizil (Pl. 29a). Having narrated, after Lucian, the Calumny of Apelles, Alberti says that he would like to see painted those three sisters to whom Hesiod gave the names of Egle, Eufronesis and Talia - he means the Three Graces. He then describes them - as *My thanks are due in particular to Elizabeth McGrath and Charles Hope. This article never could have been without f Bernice Rothwell. 1 Cf. A. Warburg, Die Geburtder Venus,1893, reprinted in Gesammelte Schriften,Berlin-Leipzig 1932, in which the 'Primavera' is discussed pp. 26-44, 312-2I; E. H. Gombrich, 'Botticelli's Mythologies' (this Journal, viii, 1945, pp. 7-60)

reprinted with a preface noting intervening comment in

Symbolic Images, Oxford 1972,

pp. 31-81,

201-i9;

Edgar

1968, pp. 251-73.

Hence-

Wind, Pagan Mysteriesin the Renaissance,London 1958, revised 1968, especially pp. 113-27 in the latter edition; C. Dempsey,

this Journal, xxxI,

forward, 'Warburg', 'Gombrich', 'Wind', 'Dempsey'. andCourtauld Institutes,Volume 45, 1982 Journalof the Warburg

taking each other by the hand, smiling, and in loose, diaphanous drapery. He explains that by this should be understood liberality, because one gives, the next takes, the third returns the kindness, and these stages are necessary to any complete liberality. This amounts to a fourfold analysis of the content of a picture - who the figures are; what are their attributes; what are they doing; what is meant to be understood by it. It offersa convenient model in the interpretation of a work that correspondswell with Alberti's notion of an istoria.2It also so happens that the Graces appear in Botticelli's picture, and it is virtually certain that the text from Seneca, De Beneficiis,I, iii, from which Alberti borrowed all the material in his example was again used for the 'Primavera'.3 2 It seems a better model than that offered by Erwin Panofsky, Studiesin Iconology,New York 1939, reprinted 1972, PP. 3-17. It also eases the methodological difficulties raised by Gombrich (pp. 55-62). 3 Cited, after Janitschek, by Warburg. It is virtually certain because ancient texts in which Mercury accompanies the Graces are so rare. The only other obvious one is Horace, Carmina,I, xxx, quoted at the end of this article.