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A Humanist Confronts the Plague: Ficino's Consilio contro la
Pestilentia
Teodoro Katinis
MLN, Volume 125, Number 1, January 2010 (Italian Issue), pp. 72-83
(Article)
Published by The Johns Hopkins University Press
DOI: 10.1353/mln.0.0228
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1 I presented this paper to the Annual Conference of the Renaissance Society of 
America (Toronto, March 27–29, 2003) on the panel: Platonism under Review II (chair: 
Valery Rees). This paper has been translated by David L. Marshall (Kettering Univer-
sity, Flint, MI, USA) Among the few contributions to the study of the Consilio, those 
of G. Moraglia and P. A. Russell are especially noteworthy: G. Moraglia, introduzione, 
Consiglio contro la pestilenzia, ed. E. Musacchio (Bologna: Cappelli, 1983) 5–47; P. A. Rus-
sell, Ficino’s Consiglio contro la pestilentia in the European Tradition, “Verbum. Analecta 
neolatina” 1 (1999) 85–96. The most recent study and edition of the text can be found 
in T. Katinis, Medicina e filosofia in Marsilio Ficino. Il Consilio contro la pestilentia (Rome: 
Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2007). Regarding the editio princeps, see P. O. Kristeller, 
Supplementum ficinianum (Florence: Olschki, 1937) 2, I: LX, LXXXVI; Marsilio Ficino 
e il ritorno di Platone. Manoscritti, stampe e documenti. Catalogo della mostra alla Biblioteca 
Medicea Laurenziana, Firenze 17 maggio–16 giugno 1984, eds. S. Gentile, et al. (Florence: 
Le Lettere, 1984) 79: 104. 
2 See, Ficino, Consilio contro la Pestilentia, apud Sanctum Iacobum de Ripolis (Flor-
ence, 1481) 1r.
MLN 125 (2010): 72–83 © 2010 by The Johns Hopkins University Press
A Humanist Confronts the Plague: 
Ficino’s Consilio contro la Pestilentia
❦
Teodoro Katinis
I. 
In this paper I intend to discuss a text by Marsilio Ficino that is still 
little known and make a contribution to the study of its sources. The 
text in question is the Consilio contro la Pestilentia, composed in the 
Florentine tongue between 1478 and 1479.1 The plague had been 
endemic in Europe from the middle of the fourteenth century and in 
the late 1470s, Florence was suffering from a new outbreak. The work 
was subsequently published in that same city in 1481 and is directed, 
as the author himself indicates, to both the more and the less learned 
as an instrument useful for understanding, curing and preventing the 
plague.2 The result is a complex work in which traditional medical 
theories and practices are put to the test and, alternatively, confirmed, 
confuted or modified by the author in light of his own hypotheses 
and experiences. Ficino demonstrates for the first time—and before 
73M L N
3 See, by way of example, two texts, one composed at the beginning of the period 
in which this literary genre developed, the other at the end: the celebrated piece by 
Tommaso del Garbo, written in 1348 and published many times (among the most 
recent editions one can consult is Consiglio contro a Pistolenza [Bologna: G. Romagnoli, 
1866]), and that by Antonio Benivieni, written almost contemporaneously to Ficino’s 
(transcribed in G. M. Nardi, “Antonio Benivieni ed un suo scritto inedito sulla peste,” 
Atti e Memorie dell’Accademia di Storia d’Arte Sanitaria 4 [1938] 12–133 and 190–97). Within 
the terms of the extensive typology of medical consilia, Ficino’s Consilio ought probably 
to be classified under the sub-group “conseil-quasi-traités,” where practical discourse is 
supplemented and supported by apposite theoretical treatment. See J. Agrimi and C. 
Crisciani, Les Consilia Médicaux (Turnhout: Brepols, 1994) 33 and 54–61.
4 See Kristeller, Supplementum I: LXXXVI–LXXXVII.
5 See Kristeller, “The Scholastic Background of Marsilio Ficino,” Studies in Renaissance 
Thought and Letters (1944; Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura, 1956) 35–97 and 55–96. 
Also, Gentile, Marsilio Ficino 11: 12–13.
the De Vita Libri Tres—a deep acquaintance with the Western and Arab 
medical traditions that had already produced a number of texts on the 
subject of the plague. It cannot be said that Ficino limits himself in 
the Consilio to simply giving practical instructions, for he takes it upon 
himself to present a coherent treatment of the contagion’s nature, 
its genesis and its modes of diffusion. Indeed, the title of the work is 
liable to misrepresent to the reader the Consilio’s true import: if one 
compares Ficino’s work with previous consilia against the plague, it is 
clear that what we have here, generically speaking, is a treatise more 
than a counsel.3 In fact, the Latin translation of the text, by Girolamo 
Ricci and published in Augsburg in 1518, is titled Tractatus Singularis 
Doctissimi Viri M. Ficini de Epidemiae Morbo.4
One of the notable aspects of the work—which makes it an interest-
ing case not only for the history of medicine but also for the history 
of philosophy—is its distinctive use of both Platonic and Aristotelian 
thought. Both traditions are employed for the purpose of under-
standing the nature of the disease and its operation. Ficino, who 
had been a pupil of the philosopher and physician Niccolò Tignosi, 
was educated in the 1450s, first in the Aristotelian, and then in the 
Platonic texts that were then available in Latin translation. We know 
that in this period Ficino saw substantial agreement between Plato and 
Aristotle on matters regarding physics. This position is evident in the 
youthful writings that are gathered together in manuscript Palagi 199 
of the Biblioteca Moreniana di Firenze and which were published in 
1956 with an introductory study by P. O. Kristeller.5 In these writings, 
questions of physics are treated on the basis of an authority as much 
Platonic as Aristotelian. Ficino will decisively reaffirm this syncretism 
in his Oratio de Laudibus Medicinae, which appears in the fourth book 
74 TEODORO KATINIS
6 Kristeller, Supplementum I: C.
7 With regard to that manuscript, see Kristeller, Supplementum, I: CXLVII; S. Gentile, 
Marsilio Ficino, 22: 28–31; J. Hankins, Plato in the Italian Renaissance (New York: Brill, 
1990) 2, I: 300.
8 Ficino, Opera, réimpression en fac-similé de l’édition de Bâle 1576, sous les auspices de la 
Société M. Ficin, ed. S. Toussaint (Paris: Phénix Editions, 2000) 2, I: 759–60.
9 With regard to the medieval history of these texts, one of the first studies (which 
remains useful) was conducted by R. Klibansky, The Continuity of the Platonic Tradition 
during the Middle Ages (1939; Milwood, NY: Kraus, 1984).
10 For a study of the state of medicine and its sources in Italy between the thirteenth 
and fourteenth centuries, see N. Siraisi, Taddeo Alderotti and His Pupils: Two Generations 
of Italian Medical Learning (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1981).
of the Epistolae. Kristeller is of the opinion that the Oratio is a youth-
ful composition of uncertain date.6 Ficino refers in the Oratio to a 
passage from Plato’s Charmides and we know that the Charmides was 
contained in a manuscript given to Ficino by Cosimo de’ Medici in 
1462.7 This would suggest that the Oratio was composed in or after 
1462, but it cannot be ruled out that Ficino was able to find the pas-
sage in some other author and thus cite it without direct knowledge 
of the original. Whatever the case may be, Ficino does in the Oratio 
name the major Hebrew, Arab, Egyptian, Persian, Greek and Roman 
authorities—some of which recur in the Consilio—in a substantial 
list arranged to set out from its divine origins to the modern day a 
veritable prisca medicina. Among those cited are Plato and Aristotle, 
both considered “extraordinary” and “most powerful” philosophers 
who also wrote on medical matters.8 Medicine and philosophy appear 
closely connected and a chief point ofintersection is the domain of 
physics, which constitutes the theoretical foundation on which medi-
cal praxis is based.
This syncretism is in certain respects a novelty in the area of medico-
philosophical thought. 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 transla-
75M L N
11 See Hankins, Plato I: 300–02.
12 See Ficino, Consilio 1r–4v.
13 Ficino, Consilio 47v: “Tu che governi l’infermo sappi che quanto più gli se’ propinquo 
di sangue o più simile di complesione et constelatione, più porti pericolo di contagione, 
per che da sugetto simile al simile, agevolmente si distende la qualità, come da fuoco 
tion 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. And indeed, this work, in 
which the author reprises the idea of a reconciliation between differ-
ent traditions, makes substantial use of a Platonism that is enriched 
directly by sources still little known. The peculiarity of Ficino’s Consilio 
consists, therefore, in the fact that the author proposes new argu-
ments that interact with a tradition already established. We shall now 
proceed to concentrate our attention on a few passages that speak 
to this synthetic use of sources, in order to identify with more clarity 
the author’s way of working.
II.
According to Ficino, the plague is a particular poison that works against 
the “vital spirit,” which is itself a subtle body that animates an organ-
ism and is generated in the heart by the blood. Once the poison has 
reached the heart, death follows within a few days. Ficino believes that 
the plague finds its origin in the air under specific natural conditions 
and that it is communicated by contact between individuals.12 Those 
who care for the sick are the most likely to be infected by the disease 
and Ficino dedicates the whole of chapter twenty-two to a description 
of precautions that may be taken so as to avoid infection while in con-
tact with the sick. Adhering to the notion of a tight interdependence 
between theory and practice, Ficino holds it necessary to advance his 
precautionary instructions while presenting a theory of the contagion 
and he does so in the terse and synthetic style characteristic of the 
work. In the space of a few lines only, therefore, Ficino describes the 
manner in which the plague’s poison propagates itself.
You who would attend to the sick must know that the more closely you are 
related to them by blood or the more you resemble them in complexion 
or constellation, the greater will be the risk of infection, because qualities 
move easily between subjects that are similar one to another, as from fire 
to air, air to water, water to earth, and as when two zithers or two strings 
are tuned to the same pitch, the movement and sound of the one finds 
response in the other.13
76 TEODORO KATINIS
in aria, d’aria in acqua, d’acqua in terra, et quando due cithare o due corde sono 
in sulla medesima tempera, el movimento et suono dell’una risponde nell’altra.” In 
transcription, use of the upper case has been regularized, words have been separated, 
diacritical marks and punctuation have been added according to modern usage, ab-
breviations have been expanded and u and v have been distinguished.
14 See Klibansky, The Continuity 30; Gentile, Marsilio Ficino 6: 7–8 (the translation and the 
marginal notes are in manuscript S.14 sup. in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana di Milano).
15 See J. Hankins, “The Study of the Timaeus in Early Renaissance Italy,” Natural 
Particulars: Nature and the Disciplines in Renaissance Europe, eds. A. Grafton and N. Siraisi 
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1999) 77–119, and specifically 110–11. Also J. Monfasani, 
“Marsilio Ficino and the Plato-Aristotle Controversy,” Marsilio Ficino: His Sources, His 
Circle, His Legacy, A Book from the International Conference, National Gallery, London 25–26 
June 1999, eds. M. J. B. Allen and V. R. Rees (Leiden: Brill, 2002) 179–202 and specifi-
cally 202 (on the relationship between Ficino and Aristotle, see 189 passim). Ficino will 
return to the question of the elements in his Commentarium in Timaeum, the definitive 
version of which was, after various re-elaborations, included in the 1496 Commentaria 
in Opera Platonis (see Hankins, Plato II: 483), many years after the publication of the 
Consilio. Given this temporal distance, I hold that interpreting this passage in the light 
of that commentary is liable to distort the sense of the earlier text. For this reason I 
prefer not to take the later text into consideration here.
The central idea is that the contagion diffuses itself more easily between 
individuals that are by nature similar, whether that similarity be one 
of physical complexion or astrological characteristic, according to the 
rule that quality is transmitted more easily between subjects that are 
similar. In order to clarify the concept, Ficino gives the two following 
examples.
The first example is that which concerns the communication of 
quality and its distention between similar elements: between fire 
and air, air and water, water and earth. In each of these pairs, the 
two elements share characteristics and this natural proximity allows 
them to communicate qualities easily. With regard to the Platonic 
sources of this passage, Ficino would have been thinking, above all, 
of the Timaeus. That dialogue describes the necessity that underpins 
a determinate order of the elements—according to the sequence fire, 
air, water, earth—on account of which those elements that are similar 
are adjacent (31b–32c). In addition, it is asserted that elements may 
be transformed one into another, always according to a rule of prox-
imity: fire may become air, air water, water earth and vice versa, with 
the exception that earth may not be transformed into water (49c–d). 
Ficino knew the Timaeus very well and it had interested him since his 
youth: in the 1450s he had copied and annotated the partial transla-
tion of Calcidio.14 In his notes regarding matter and the elements, 
now published by James Hankins, Ficino asserts that a number of 
ancient authors, Plato and Aristotle among them, held concordant 
views.15 This agreement is similar to that identified in the treatises on 
77M L N
16 See Gentile, Marsilio Ficino 2: 2–3.
physics published by Kristeller (see n. 5) and in the Oratio de Laudibus 
Medicinae (see n. 8) and speaks to an issue tightly connected to the 
passage just now cited from the Consilio.
It will be useful, therefore, to consider alongside these passages 
from Plato the relevant passages from Aristotle, which are traceable 
to On Coming-to-be and Passing-away and reprised in the Meteorologica. 
Ficino must have known these works from the studies of his youth: 
they are present, together with others, in a medieval Latin miscel-
lany that we have good reason to believe belonged to Ficino and 
that is conserved in manuscript 524 of the Biblioteca Riccardiana di 
Firenze.16 In On Coming-to-be and Passing-away (330b–331b), Aristotle 
repeats the assertion that the elements are adjacent, according to the 
order fire, air, water, earth, but, differing in this respect from Plato, 
he statesthat the sequence takes a cyclical form, by virtue of which 
earth and fire are also proximate. In this account the four elements are 
able to transform themselves one into another in a variety of modes. 
More precisely, Aristotle asserts, in contradistinction to the Timaeus, 
that any of the elements may transform itself into any of the others, 
although it will be easier for an element to transform itself into one 
of the two to which it is proximate rather than opposite. This is the 
case because with elements that are adjacent, only one of its two quali-
ties need change: for fire, which is dry and hot, to be transformed 
into air, which is hot and wet, it is enough that the dry become wet. 
Meanwhile, in the Meteorologica, I (339a–b) we find it stated simply 
that the four elements are generated one from another.
The example of the transference of quality between the elements, 
set out in the Consilio, is produced by a fusion of different sources. 
Or better, Ficino makes use of what, despite various differences, is 
common to the two authors: similar elements are easily subjected to 
the transformation of the one into the other precisely on account of 
their similarity. Ficino uses this example, culled from the discipline 
of physics, as a explanatory device by means of which to convey a 
theory of contagion that is new, or at least not so well known as others. 
The idea of infection by similarity is clarified by a reading of these 
sources together and this syncretism could well have been useful to 
those who possessed the intellectual tools required to establish the 
connection existing between the two terms of the comparison. In 
sum, the “poisonous quality” (“qualità velenosa”) of the plague, as 
Ficino terms it in other parts of the text, passes more easily from the 
78 TEODORO KATINIS
17 Ficino, Consilio 28r.
18 I have already identified the Timaeus as source in, “Medicina e astrologia nel Consilio 
contro la Pestilentia di Ficino,” Bruniana & Campanelliana 7/2 (2001) 635–42. In this essay 
I also indicate a possible interpretation of the passage. I now believe that the integration 
of the Aristotelian sources helps to further clarify the meaning of the passage.
19 See Hankins, Plato II: 388–94, 468–70. A Latin version of the dialogue had already 
been prepared in the twelfth century in Sicily by Henricus Aristippus (See Klibansky, 
The Continuity).
20 For the translation of Plotinus, see Kristeller, Supplementum I: CLVII–CLIX; Gentile, 
Marsilio Ficino 114–16: 146–51. For the translation of Porphyry (De Occasionibus sive 
Causis ad Intelligibilia non Duecentibus), see Kristeller, Supplementum I: CXXXV; Gentile, 
Marsilio Ficino 95, 98: 122–23, 126–28; this translation is republished in the Appendix 
to Porphyry, Sentenze sugli intelligibili, ed. G. Girgenti (Milan: Rusconi, 1996) 169–200.
sick to the healthy when they share similar natures.17 In a way it is 
analogous to the transference of quality between similar elements—
transferring to the second that unhealthy state which was already 
present in the first.18
Yet Ficino finds it helpful to offer a second explanatory device, that 
of the two strings or two zithers, where in order to make one vibrate it 
is sufficient, if the two be tuned to the same pitch, to strike the other. 
This example, in contrast to the first, is only Platonic and Neo-Platonic 
and this makes its presence in a text on the plague particularly interest-
ing. Plato elaborates this example in the Phaedo (85e–86d), where an 
interlocutor uses it in order to argue against the theory of the soul’s 
immortality advanced by Socrates. The interlocutor maintains that 
the relation between soul and body is comparable to that between 
harmony and the strings (or lyres) that produce it: harmony ceases 
to exist when there are no bodies to produce it. The example reap-
pears in Plotinus’s Enneads (IV, 4, 41), where it is used to describe 
the sympathy that reigns in the natural world between things that are 
distant from one another, on account of which the one responds to the 
“vibrating” of the other. Lastly, Porphyry, in his Sentences on Intelligibles 
(sentence 18), asserts that the soul moves the body without suffering 
change, just like the harmony that moves the strings; however, in this 
example the theme of similitude is less evident.
Ficino would naturally have known all three of the texts here named. 
The Phaedo was, even before reading it in the Greek, already know to 
him in the Latin translation of Leonardo Bruni.19 Ficino translated 
the Enneads and a number of the Sentences—the eighteenth among 
them—in the 1480s, after the publication of the Consilio, but that does 
not necessarily mean he was not acquainted earlier with these pas-
sages.20 In any case, no mention is made of medical concerns in these 
three passages and the conceit in question is used for the purpose 
79M L N
21 See Ficino, Opera II: 1403, 1748, 1930.
22 Ficino, Consilio 48v: “Debbesi viver lieto, perché la letitia fortifica lo spirito vitale; 
vivere continente et sobrio, perché la sobrietà et continentia del vivere è di tanto va-
lore che Socrate philosopho, con questa sola, si conservò in molte pestilentie extreme 
che furono nella citta d’Athene; però Aristotele et Galieno dicono ch’e corpi puri 
of clarifying issues quite different from the problem of contagion. 
Nor, in fact, does Ficino make any reference to medicine when he is 
commenting on these passages in other contexts.21 He does, however, 
make use of the example of consonant strings in two other places: in 
the De Vita (III, 17 and 21), where Ficino is concerned with how to 
attract the celestial virtues by using the rules of universal sympathy, 
and in the Theologica Platonica (XII, 4), where the example illustrates 
the relationship between mind and God. Yet even in these cases there 
is no clear relationship to the pages of the Consilio.
In light of these textual comparisons, the use that Ficino makes 
in the Consilio of the Platonic and Neo-Platonic figure would appear 
at least unusual, both with respect to the ancient sources and with 
respect to his own work. This usage of a famous conceit in a new 
context is an event of a certain importance, not least because it uses 
a particular philosophical perspective—one that sees in universal 
sympathy a fundamental principle of movement in the world—to 
discuss the dynamics of contagion. Indeed, just as it happens with 
the consonant strings, the sick man transfers his own sickness, almost 
as if it were a sound, to him among those who are closest who has a 
similar constitution.
III.
In the twenty-second chapter of the Consilio, one finds another interest-
ing case of the confection of diverse sources. Shortly after the passage 
discussed above, Ficino, having given other key indications of how the 
poison operates in the human body, offers several ways of preserving 
oneself against the disease and advocates, among other things, a par-
ticular style of life that renders one immune to the plague.
One must live happy, because happiness fortifies the vital spirit; likewise 
with living continent and sober, because sobriety and continence in living 
is of such great value that Socrates the philosopher conserved himself with 
this alone against the many dangerous plagues that there were in the city of 
Athens. Aristotle and Galen, moreover, say that pure bodies are such that 
it is almost impossible for them to be affected by the plague and indeed if 
they are affected by it, at least they do not die from it.22
80 TEODORO KATINIS
sono tali che quasi è impossibile sentino peste, et invero, sella sentono, almeno non 
ne periscono.”
23 See the index in C. Galen, Opera omnia, ed. C. G. Kühn (Leipzig: Cnobloch, 
1823−1831) 20, XX: 471–72. In combination with the aforementioned text, also see 
the places indicated by R. J. Durling, A Dictionary of Medical Terms in Galen (New York: 
Brill, 1993) 225.
Continence in living, then, which ought not to be distinguishedfrom 
“happiness” (“letitia”), is a particularly good defense against the dis-
ease. Evidence of this is that Socrates survived the various epidemics 
that afflicted Athens, including the terrible plague of approximately 
430 BCE, of which Ficino could have had news from Thucydides’s 
account of it in The Pelopennesian War (IV, 45–58). This work was, in 
fact, already available in the 1450s in the Latin translation executed 
by Lorenzo Valla on the request of Pope Nicholas V. In his famous 
description, Thucydides connected the diffusion of the plague with 
the deepening of moral and civil disorder. The idea that there is a 
connection between contagion and moral behavior was to have a 
long history in the West, beginning with Lucretius who concludes 
his De Rerum Natura with a tragic depiction of natural and social dis-
order. One detects an echo of the idea in Ficino, who not by chance 
recommends continence as a way of life that will serve as a defense 
against the disease and proposes Socrates, “the philosopher,” as the 
chief example of such a disposition. Elsewhere, Plato presents in his 
dialogues the image of a Socrates temperate, continent and sober: the 
philosopher par excellence. He embodies the man who avoids excess in 
all things in favor of an ideal equilibrium, both psycho-physical and 
moral. Elsewhere again, looking for a closer connection between Ficino 
and Plato, we find once more in the Phaedo (83b-3) a short discussion 
of how the philosopher keeps himself free from disease by means of 
the practice of continence.
Ficino reinforces his assertion with the opinions of Aristotle and 
Galen, who affirm that “pure” bodies are not affected by the plague 
or if they are, they at least do not die from it. Ficino’s Aristotelian 
source is probably On the Heavens, I (269b–270b), another of the texts 
concerning physics that ought to have been in Ficino’s library and 
one included in manuscript 524 of which something was said above 
(see note 16). Aristotle affirms that simple body, the fifth celestial 
element or ether, is incorruptible, inalterable and consequently unaf-
fected by disease. With regard to Galen, one looks in vain for the 
reference in those places where he discusses plague,23 but in the De 
81M L N
24 See Galen, Opera XIX: 222–345, especially 273.
25 See K. Park, Doctors and Medicine in Early Renaissance Florence (Princeton, NJ: Prince-
ton UP, 1985) 243–48.
26 Fundamental is the contribution of A. Perosa, “Codici di Galeno postillati dal 
Poliziano,” Studi di filologia umanistica. I: Angelo Poliziano, ed. P. Viti (Rome: Edizioni 
di storia e letteratura, 2000) 185–217, especially 185–96. See also S. Gentile, “Pico 
filologo,” Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. Convegno internazionale di studi nel cinquecentesimo 
anniversario della morte (1494–1994), Mirandola 4–8 ottobre 1994, ed. G. C. Garfagnini 
(Florence: Olschki, 1997) 2, II: 465–90, especially 475–76. With regard to the more 
general question of the relationships among different bodies of knowledge in the four-
teenth century, see E. Garin, “Gli umanisti e le scienze,” Giornale Critico della Filosofia 
Italiana 82/3 (1991): 341–56.
Historia Philosophica, a work thought by C. G. Kühn to be spurious, 
Galen cites Aristotle’s opinion that celestial bodies are eternal and 
cannot be corrupted.24 Ficino ought to have had the works of, or 
attributed to, Galen in front of him given that in that period Galen 
was one of the chief authorities on medicine. Suffice it to say that at 
least from the beginning of the fifteenth century the works of Galen 
occupied the greater part of the medical curriculum offered by the 
University of Bologna, which was the model on which was based the 
curriculum at the University of Florence.25 Further, these are the two 
educational centers with which Ficino might have been in contact. 
In any case, Ficino’s father, Dietifeci and his first philosophy teacher, 
Niccolò Tignosi, both of whom were physicians, ought to have put 
the young Ficino in contact with the strongly Galenic medical culture 
of the period. Recall also that Galen’s texts were the objects of great 
interest in the humanist and medical circles of that time, evidence 
of which is to be found, for example, in several epistolary exchanges 
between Ficino and Pietro Leoni of Spoleto or in the curiosity for 
Galenic manuscripts shown by Paolo Dal Pozzo Toscanelli and Angelo 
Poliziano.26
However, it remains unclear, at least for a modern reader, how the 
diverse sources indicated above can be articulated together such that 
they form a coherent position. In just a few words, Ficino intends 
to say something that is not immediately clarified by the exposition 
of the texts to which he refers. His position is, in fact, the result of 
a composition of diverse traditions that are subjected to a notable 
 re-elaboration. This work of re-elaboration remains hidden to the 
non-expert reader on account of the synthetic style that characterizes 
the work as a whole. Let us try, therefore, to understand the passage 
on the basis of other loci in Ficino.
Elsewhere in the Consilio, Ficino states that the disease works by 
82 TEODORO KATINIS
27 See Ficino, Consilio 1v, 4r–v.
28 See Ficino, Three Books of Life, eds. and trans. C. V. Kaske and J. R. Clark (Bingham-
ton, NY: Renaissance Society of America, 1989) 259–60.
carrying putrefaction into the body, attacking the vital spirit, the 
humors (from which that spirit is generated), and the heart (which is 
the organ in which it is produced). But if the body is not predisposed 
to putrefaction, says Ficino, the disease will not touch it. The ideal 
state is that of pure air and of fire, which not being the compound of 
different elements, and therefore “pure,” is not corruptible (here the 
reference to Aristotle seems to recur). At the other extreme, the body 
most predisposed to infection is that which is full of fetid vapors, full 
of foods and superfluous humors, and in which the heart has been 
weakened by an excessive indulgence in coitus and overmastering 
passions.27 Evidently, one falls into this worst of psycho-physical states 
by leading a life excessive in every sense, without rule or measure. 
Conversely, the practice of continence and of a moderate happiness 
brings the body to a certain level of purity and fortifies it thus against 
the disease. Elsewhere, Plato’s Socrates confirms Ficino’s conclusions: 
his continence and sobriety always protect him from the contagion. 
These and other comments in the Consilio will return in the De Vita Libri 
Tres, although in somewhat different contexts. We find, for example, 
a precise reference to the epidemic in the De Vita, at Book III, chap-
ter 4, where Ficino repeats that in order to defend oneself against 
the disease one should avoid excess, breath a pure air, have a happy 
soul and steer clear of unhappy or troublesome things. Such conduct 
revives and fortifies the spirit, placing it under the beneficial influence 
of the sun—another element quite prominent in the Consilio—and 
rendering it immune from putrefaction and thus from infection.28
IV. 
I would argue that the passages discussed above from the Consilio are 
examples of the way in which Ficino contributed to the creation of 
a new medico-philosophical line of inquiry and which subsequent 
authors explored further. Ficino’s Consilio will come to have a consider-
able fortuna, a history of uptake that is testified to by the number of 
editions that followed the first. The Latin translation of 1518, better 
adapted for a foreign public, also went through a number of editions, 
some of which had the Consilio appear alongside the De Vita, thereby 
cementing what we might term their common project. Moreover, 
83M L N
29 The vernacular text was to be republished in Florence in 1522, 1523, 1713; in Siena 
in 1522; in Venice in 1530, 1556, 1576. See Kristeller, Supplementum I: LX; Kristeller, 
Marsilio Ficino and His Work after Five Hundred Years (Florence:Olschki,1987) 113. 
The Latin translation was to be republished under the title Epidemiarum Antidotus on 
numerous occasions together with the De Vita (Basel 1529, Venice 1548, Paris 1550). 
On this, see A. Tarabochia Canavero, “Il De tripilici vita di Marsilio Ficino, una strana 
vicenda ermeneutica,” Rivista di filosofia neo-scolastica 47 (1975) 422–31. This translation 
was then united in the collected works (Basil, 1561, 1576; Paris, 1641). For the other 
translations, see Kristeller, Marsilio Ficino and His Work 150.
in the course of the sixteenth century the text was translated into 
other European languages, which contributed further to its diffusion 
throughout the continent.29 Such a quantity of editions and translations 
is evidence of a notable interest in the text in the following centuries, 
an interest that is confirmed by the more or less explicit presence of 
the text in the works of physicians and philosophers up to the begin-
ning of the seventeenth century. That presence is also visible in the 
uptake of the Platonic arguments put forth in Ficino’s text and that 
he had introduced into the medical literature of the fifteenth century. 
However, the fortuna of the Consilio cannot be adequately indicated 
in this paper, which has instead focused on a few passages from the 
work, attempting to specify the way in which the author was moving 
between maintaining traditional positions and overcoming them.
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