Marsilio Ficino on Plato, the Neoplatonists and the Christian Doctrine of the TrinityAuthor.pdf

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Marsilio Ficino on Plato, the Neoplatonists and the Christian Doctrine of the TrinityAuthor(s): Michael J. B. AllenSource: Renaissance Quarterly, Vol. 37, No. 4 (Winter, 1984), pp. 555-584Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Renaissance Society of AmericaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2860994

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MarsilioFicinoonPlato,theNeoplatonistsndtheChristianDoctrineofthe Trinityby MICHAELJ. B. ALLEN

e are accustomed to thinking of Marsilio Ficino (1433-499) asthe great Renaissance champion of Plato from a Christianpoint of view and the leader of those who wished to effect an accom-modation between Platonism (or more accurately Neoplatonism)and Christianity, as the most distinguished of Plato's several Medi-cean apologists. Many texts lend credibility to this interpretation ofFicino's goals, and it is essentially correct. However, it is importantthat we appreciate just where he traced the boundaries of accommo-dation between Catholic dogma and what he regarded as authenticPlatonism; and in particular that we appreciate the care and circum-spection with which he approached the problem of analyzing the re-lationship between the dogma of the Trinity and the various texts inPlato that lent themselves to a trinitarian interpretation that Platohimself could not have intended or even fully conceived.1 His enthu-siasm for Plato and the Platonic tradition did not blind him to thevarious differences with Christianity, even to their irreconcilabilityon certain fundamental issues. Indeed, his willingness openly to con-front these differences made him all the more credible and persuasiveas an apologist for Plato and for the value of the Platonic tradition as aphilosophical propaedeutic to the study of Christian theology.In a letter to Jacopo Rondoni, dated 2 Feb. 1494, Ficino takes uphis correspondent's request for clarification:Someone reportedto me that a friar-I don't know who-has insolentlyas-serted n a publicsermon thatthe mysteryof thedivineTrinityas we know itas Christianswas alreadyknown to Plato,and that the firstChristianshad be-

1SeeD. P. Walker, The Ancient Theology (London, I972), chapters I and 3. Standardhistoricalstudiesof the doctrine of the Trinity include: G.L. Prestige,Godin PatristicThought (London, I936); Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition:a History of the De-velopmentofDoctrine: Vol. I: The Emergenceofthe Catholic Tradition(Ioo-6oo AD) (Chi-cago, 1971), pp. I72-225;J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines(London, I958), pp.83-137, 223-279; and A. M. Ritter, "Dogma und Lehre in der alten Kirche," in Hand-buch derDogmen- und Theologiegeschichte,ed. Carl Andresen (Gottingen, I980-83), I:99-221.I amindebtedto FatherJamesA. Devereux, S.J., for hiskindness n advisingme ontheseand some otherreferences.

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come familiar with it from this sourcc. You have asked me, as an expert onPlatonic matters, to give you my considered opinion. It is beyond question, Imaintain, that the secret of the Christian Trinity is never to be found in thebooks of Plato. He has formulations that superficially resemble those for thedogma, but their true meaning is otherwise. Indeed, in Plato's followers therearephrases that resemble trinitarianformulations even more closely; and by hisfollowers I mean the post-Christian Platonists, Nurmenius, Ammonius,Plotinus, Amelius, Iamblichus, and Proclus. These men, since they all had ac-cess to St. John's Gospel, and some of them to the writings of Dionysius theAreopagite, gladly appropriated formulations resembling those for the trini-tarian dogmas and also derived the orders of the angels and their names fromthese sources, since they could frequently be reconciled with the words of theirPlato (who was after all a follower of Moses). Hence St. Augustine, once a Pla-tonist and now arguing from a Christian viewpoint, says that when he cameupon the Platonists' books, and recognized Christian ideas in them, ideas thatwere approved because they had been imitated, he gave thanks to God and im-mediately returned more eager than ever to accept the truths of Christianity.2This is a remarkableseries of statementsfor severalreasons,not leastof which is Ficino's suggestion that the post-Christian Platonistscould well have made use of the writings of the Areopagite,andevenof the Fourth Gospel.3In a letter to PierLeoneof Spoleto of 12 May

2OperaOmnia (Basel, 1576; repr. Turin, I959 and I983), p. 956.2: "Retulit praetereanobis fratrem(nescio quem)in declamationepublica nsolcntcrasseveravisse rinitatisapud Christianos divinae mystcrium apud Platonem ipsum extare Christianosquefamiliaria llic primos accepisse.Vos autcma me superhacre tanquammihi Platonicasint nota iudicium expectare.Ego igitur extra controversiamasserotrinitatisChris-tianae secretum in ipsis Platonis libris nunquamesse, sed nonnulla vcrbis quidermquamvis non scnsu quoquomodo similia; similiora vere in sectatoribuseius quifloruerepost Christum,in Numenio, Ammonio, Plotino, Amelio, Iamblicho,Proclo,qui, cum et omnes IoannisEvangeliumcgissentet quidam nsupcrIionysii Arcopagi-tac libros, nonnulla trinitatisimilia libenterusurpaveruntordinesqueangelorumctnomina susceperunt tanquam Platoni suo Mosis sectatori plurimum consentanea.Quamobrem AureliusAugustinusquondamPlatonicuset iam dc Christianaprofes-sione deliberans,cum in hos Platonicorum ibrosincidissetcognovissctqucChristianaperimitationemabhis probata,Deo gratiasegit redditusqueamest adChristiana eci-piendapropensior."Cf. Arnaldo dellaTorre, Storiadell'Accademialatonica iFirenze(Florence, I902), p. 592.I haveexpandedabbreviationsanddiacritics,repunctuated ndadopted he u/v dis-tinction. All translations rom Ficino aremy own.3Likemost in the Quattrocento,Ficino assumedthat the writings of the Pseudo-Areopagitewere the authenticworks of the convertof St. Paul,andthat the works ofProclus(412-485 A.D.), most notablyhisElementsfTheology,wcrcindebted o them.The dependenceof Procluson thesepscudepigraphicalworks was not seriouslyor ef-fectively contesteduntilthesixteenthcenturyandneitherwas theirauthor's dentifica-tion with the Dionysius mentionedin Acts 17. 34 (who was in turnidentifiedwith St.Denys, patronsaintof France).UntanglingtheseDionysiusesanddatingthe writingsthemselvesto the latefifthcenturywas theachievementof nineteenthcenturyscholars

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1491, Ficino praisesboth Plotinus andIamblichusand then suggeststhat perhaps they had been unwitting heirs to a Christianwisdom:Certainly no form of knowledge is more delightful to me than the Platonic,and of this none will ever be more venerable than that in Dionysius. I lovePlato in Iamblichus; I admire him in Plotinus; but I venerate him in Dionysius.Often, however, I suspect that the Platonists who preceded Plotinus, men suchas Ammonius, Eunumius [ Numenius ?] and others earlier perhaps thanthey, had read the books of Dionysius before they were hidden away as a resultof some calamity in the church we no longer know about. As a result the trulyPlatonic sparks in Dionysius were transmitted to Plotinus and Iamblichus,whence was lit such a raging fire.4This is a positive way of saying what Ficino says elsewhere more neg-atively. In his De ChristianaReligione, for instance, he states unequiv-ocally:For the Platonists made use of the divine light of the Christians to interpret thedivine Plato. Hence the great Basil and Augustine maintain that the Platonistshad appropriated the mysteries of St.John the Evangelist. I have found beyonda shadow of doubt that the principal mysteries in Numenius, Philo, Plotinus,Iamblichus, and Proclus were in fact received from St. John, St. Paul,Hierotheus and Dionysius the Areopagite. For whatever the Platonists have tosay about the divine mind, about the angels, and about other theological mat-ters that strikes one as admirable clearly they appropriated from them.5suchasJ. Stiglmayrand H. Koch. Forthedeepindebtednessof thePseudo-Arcopagiteto Neoplatonism, see H. F. Muller,Dionysius,Proklos,PlotinusMunich, 1926)and A.Roques, L'universdionysien (Paris, I954).The Fourth Gospel, according to Eusebius' Praeparatioevangelica, II. 19. I, wasused by Amelius; cf. Augustine's De Civitate Dei, 10. 29. Ficino was well aware of thistraditionas acommentin hisepitomefortheRepublicook VIdemonstrates,Opera,p.1408; cf. Opera, p. 1029, the commentary on the De divinis nominibus.4Opera, p. 925.2: "mihi certe nec ulla scicntiae forma est gratiosior quam platonica,neque forma haec usquam magis quam in Dionysio veneranda. Amo equidem Pla-tonem in Iamblicho, admiror in Plotino, in Dionysio veneror. Saepe vero suspicorantiquiores Plotino Platonicos, Ammonium atque Eunumium [sic] aut his fortepriores, legisse Dionysii libros antequam nescio qua calamitate Ecclesiae dclitcscerent.Atque illinc in Plotinum et Iamblichum Dionysii scintillas vere Platonicas fuisse trans-fusas, unde tantus sit ignis accensus." Cf. Della Torre, pp. 783-788; also n. 17 below.

50pera, p. 25. I: "Divino enim Christianorum lumine usi sunt Platonici ad divinumPlatonem interpretandum. Hinc est quod magnus Basilius et Augustinus probant Pla-tonicos Ioannis Evangelistae mysteria sibi usurpavisse. Ego certe reperi praecipua Nu-menii, Philonis, Plotini, Iamblichi, Proculi mysteria ab Ioanne, Paulo, Yerotheo,Dionysio Areopagita accepta fuisse. Quicquid enim de mente divina angelisque etcaeteris ad Theologiam spectantibus magnificum dixere manifcste ab illis usur-paverunt." Cf. Della Torre, pp. 592-593, and Walker, pp. 80-8 I. Walker identifies thereferences as being to Basil's Homilia, I6 (Migne, PC, 31. 471) and to Augustine's Con-fessiones, 7 and 9.

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cept, like Moses and the Hebrew Prophets, by way of anticipation,6the laterPlatonists (whom Ficino thinks of as the Platonici)were in aposition to profit from the Fourth Gospel, from St. Paul'sEpistles,from the Areopagite, and from his acknowledged teacher,the mys-terious Hierotheus. This was either becausethey had stolen directlyfrom the Areopagite;or becausethe "sparks"of divine truthpresentin the writings of the Areopagite had been transmittedto the paganPlatonic tradition before the writings themselves had been spiritedaway. But nowhere is Ficino willing to upgradethe Platonici o thelevel of Plato himself, or even to the level of Plato'sshadowy prede-cessors, the priscitheologi,who included such figures as Philolaus,Hesiod, Pythagoras, Aglaophemus, and, more distantly, HermesTrismegistus and Zoroaster. While the Areopagite is accorded su-preme authorityasthe greatChristianPlatonist,the only otherfigureconsistently praised among the various PlatoniciFicino habituallycalls to mind-Numenius, Philo, Plotinus, Amelius, Iamblichus,Proclus, Olympiodorus, Hermias, Damascius-is Plotinus, as theproem Ficino wrote for his Plotinus translationof I492 makes espe-ciallyclear.7However, it is Plotinus'accomplishmentsas a metaphy-sician, not his specifically theological insights, thatimpressedFicino(though Ficino would not have acceptedthe validity of this distinc-tion). But even here in the realmof metaphysics, Plotinus had failedto arriveata correctunderstandingof the Trinity, despitethe sugges-

Note that this passage,unlike thepassagesalreadycited from the RondoniandPierLeone letters, does not include Ammonius, the teacherof Plotinus, and also, Ficinobelieved, of Plotinus' "constant friend," the Christian Origen (Operap. I62I.2). In hisopening remarks to his commentary on Plotinus' Enneads, 2. 9 (Opera, p. I663.3), Fi-cino states quite unequivocally that Ammonius was a Christian. He must have been themedium, therefore, of the transmission of Christian wisdom to Plotinus (even thoughthe Rondoni letter lumps him together with those who appropriated fusurpaverunt]from it!); cf. Porphyry apudEusebius, Hist. Eccl., 6. I9. 7.6Ficino is more than content, of course, to ascribe a Mosaic wisdom to Plato; see,most notably, his ConcordiaMosis et Platonis in his Opera, p. 866.3. Cf. Walker, pp. 85-86.

70pera, p. I537: "Veterum autem Theologorum mos erat divina mysteria cummathematicis numeris et figuris tum poeticis figmentis obtegere ne temere cuilibetcommunia forent. Plotinus tandem his Theologiam velaminibus enudavit, primusqueet solus, ut Porphyrius Proculusque testantur, arcana veterum divinitus penetravit.Sed ob incredibilem cum verborum brevitatem, tur sententiarum copiam sensusqueprofunditatem, non translatione tantum linguae sed commentariis indiget."

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tiveness of certainformulations, and despite too his having lived inthe Christianera,his being tutored, along with the ChristianOrigen,by the ChristianAmmonius, andhis having hadaccess, therefore,tothe Christiantruths if not, of course, to their dogmatic formulationby the fourth and fifth century councils. For Ficino perceived, likeothers before him, andnotably Bessarion,thatPlotinianmetaphysicswas subordinationist,orientatedthatis, towards anontological posi-tion later identified with Arianism.8 However reasonable from apurely philosophical viewpoint, however true to the authenticallyPlatonic position, it had failedto attainan understandingof the truerelationshipbetween the threepersons in one substanceof the triuneGod, had failed, that is, to achieve the supreme insight of Christiantheology.In a brief but fascinating appendix to his distinguishedbook, Pa-gan Mysteriesn theRenaissance, dgarWind has some threepages onwhat he calls "the shadow of Arianism"where he draws our atten-tion to interalia the "characteristicmixture of enthusiasm and cau-tion" with which Ficino and his followers explored the "unmistak-ableaffinity"of the Plotiniantheory of the threeprimaryhypostases(which is expounded most comprehensively in the Enneads,5. 1.)with the orthodox dogma of the Trinity. He notes, however, thatthey repeatedlymaintainthat it would be an Arianerror "to identifythe second hypostasis with Christ, although it was not wrong to callit 'son of God' or 'the Logos.' "9He refersus to Ficino's In Parmeni-dem,c. 55, In Timaeum, . 9, and his epitome for Plato's SixthLetter,before turning to the enigma in Plato's SecondLetterand to Ficino'sanalysis in his epitome. It behooves us to take a much closer look atthese four referencesif we areto appreciate he subtletiesof Ficino'sposition; for the views expressed by Wind need considerableampli-fication and, at times, modification, I believe, given his ignoring ofFicino's chronological development as a Plato interpreter,andgivenhis failureto appreciate he very specialcomplexity of the SecondLet-ter'senigma in Ficino'seyes.

* * *

The first three texts cited by Wind concern the threeprimaryhy-postasesandmore particularly he relationshipbetween the firsttwo.

8Walker, pp. 40-4I and I4.9Rev. ed. New York, 1968, pp. 241-244.

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RENAISSANCE QUARTERLYIn Plotinian metaphysics and in Neoplatonic metaphysicsgenerally,the second hypostasis, Mind, emanatesfrom the One as a lower hy-postasis, though it is the source in turn of all subsequenthypostases,and therefore of all being since it is the first being (the One dwellsbeyond the predicationeven of being). Mind contains, or is, the Pla-tonic Ideas in their totality as Truth, and it is thus the highest think-able reality, the reality we can contemplate with our intuitive intel-lect, the mens we share with the supermundane gods ofNeoplatonism (and with the angels of Christianitythat Ficino iden-tified with them). The attributesof goodness andoneness arepartici-pated by Mind, but their source is the One, though, strictly speak-ing, nothing can be truly predicatedof the One; for Plotinus hadidentified the Idea of the Good discussed by Plato in the sixth andseventh books of the Republicwith the One, which was the supremerealityin his own metaphysical system, and which he had arrived atfrom his meditation on Plato's Parmenides.1Throughout the laterhistory and development of Neoplatonism this Plotiniandistinctionbetween the One and Mind remained the cornerstone of a systemthat was profoundly hierarchical n its assumptions, and that postu-lated as a basic principle the summation of all that was lower in thenext higher level of realityand the ultimate summation of all in theOne. The subordination of Mind to the One, andof Soul to Mind, isintrinsic to the system, and intrinsic to the notion that each lower hy-postasis emanates from its immediate superior. Since this notion inturn is predicatedon the assumption that all subsequentto the Onehad necessarily proceeded by way of Mind andthen Soul, thereis anunmistakably deterministic,dimension to this metaphysics, eventhough Plotinus was no deterministin ethicsand was a vigorous op-ponent of the Gnostic view thatgood andevil were necessarily oundtogether."ChristianNeoplatonists were faced with severalcrucialproblemswhen they set out to borrow from Neoplatonic metaphysics or toadapt t wholesale. Most obviously, they hadto rejectany suggestionthat the world or man had been necessarilycreatedby God, and to

10For he supreme importance of the Parmenides or Plotinus, see the seminal articleby E. R. Dodds, "The Parmenidesof Plato and the Origin of the Neoplatonic 'One,'Classical Quarterly, 22 (1928), 129-142."See Enneads, 2. 9; 3. 6; 3. 8; 4. 3-5; 5. 5; 5. 8; 6. 4-5; also R. T. Wallis, Neoplatonism(London, 1972), pp. 39, 45, 82-85.

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insist instead on the contingency of all things on God's will, notjustat the moment of their creationbut at every moment of their exist-ence, be it temporal or eternal. Thus the theory of emanation had tobe rejected in essence (though the images it had given rise to oftenenduredand so provided a half-life, as it were, for deterministicatti-tudes);and in its placewe have a new stress on God's personalcare ofthe world and all its creatures,seraphand sparrow alike, and on thedependency of all things on His will and so on His love. This had theeffecteventually of levelling the majordistinctionsin Plotinus' onto-logical system; for all things, whether pure minds, or impure souls,or soulless elements, now participatedn the absolutelyprimarycate-gory of contingency. Accordingly, the principlethat the lower al-ways depended on the next higher was also undermined, though itretained ts imaginative appeal n all but theological contexts, andtheprincipleof a gradateduniversalhierarchyceased to be at the centreof the system: ultimately, alldependedon God alone. The cxtraordi-narytension generatedby this attemptto accommodate Neoplatonicmetaphysics to the Hebraeo-Christian notion of an omnipotent, in-effableGod, who is much closer to being a person and a will than aNeoplatonic hypostasis, hasnot alwaysbeensufficientlyappreciated.It was often a fruitfultension, but it signaled ultimatelythe underly-ing incompatibility of the two systems, as even a philosopher asdeeply indebted to Neoplatonic metaphysicsas Marius Victorinusinthe fourth century had clearlyforeseen.12If the ontological level of Mind was thus deprivedof its role as thecreator of all subsequents and was, furthermore, linked with allthings ascontingent upon God's will, how then to interpret ts role asa second hypostasis?To begin with, it was not possiblesimply to in-terpretMind asexactly equivalentto the Hebraeo-Christianrealm ofthe angels, or even to Angelic Mind conceived of asaunifiedtotality.Occasionally, Ficino, like others, does referto the mensangelica sif itwere ahypostasis and notjust asupremebut individualangel, buttheChristian understandingof the angels as persons ratherthan as ab-stract spiritualentities, the sense too of their multitude and variety,

12SeeP. Henry, "The adversusArium of Marius Victorinus: the First Systematic Ex-position of the Doctrine of the Trinity, "Journalof TheologicalStudies,n. s. I (1950), 42-55; Pierre Hadot, Porphyreet Victorinus(Paris, 1968); Pierre Hadot, Marius Victorinus:recherches ur sa vie et ses oeuvres (Paris, 1971); and Anton Ziegenaus, Die trinitarischeAusprdgung dergittlichen Seinsjille nach Marius Victorinus Munich, 1972).

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militated against the notion of accommodation with the PlotinianMind, asdid the limitations of the angels'cosmic role ascomparedtothe absolutely fundamentalontological function of Mind, the sourceof all intelligible and therefore of all sub-intelligible reality. For theangels never occupied the same critical position in Christianmetaphysics-or for that matter in psychology or ethics-as Minddid in Neoplatonism: they were merely the first of the contingentworld, whereas Mind was the first knowable realityfrom which allthings had emanated and to which they must allnecessarilyreturn.13Ficino attempted what was perhapsthe only acceptablesolutionwhen, in effect, he distinguished between the various attributes ofMind, and redistributedthem to God on the one handand to Soul onthe other. For, although there areproblems in identifying or at leastequating the Neoplatonic One with the Christian God, and evenmore problems in identifying the Neoplatonic hypostasis Soul withthe Christian notions of soul, these problems admit of satisfactorysolutions in a way thataccommodating Nous with the notion of An-gel or the angels does not. In the main, as Kristellerwas the first tonote,14 Ficino followed Augustinian precedentand transferredmostof the attributesand functions of Mind to God Himself: its role increating the animate and materialuniverse;its statusas the supremeentity andthe highest truth; ts dual statusasthe supremethinkerandthe supreme thought, as the Platonic Ideas and the Mind that con-templates them. Indeed, Mind thus transferredsupplied Ficino andother apologists with a number of useful concepts for discussingthenature of God's immanence, and thus of His relationshipwith thecreated world. Contrariwise, some of Mind's attributesand func-tions were attributedto Soul andhelpedto account for the specialsta-tus and importance of Soul and the soul in Ficino'smetaphysics andtheology. What was left over after this double transferencewas thenattributedto the angels. In brief, the ChristianNeoplatonists andFi-cino in particulareffectively disintegratedthe originalPlotinian con-cept of Mind and in doing so transformedthe entire metaphysical

13Michael J. B. Allen, "The Absent Angel in Ficino's Philosophy," Journal of theHistory of Ideas, 36 (I975), 219-240 at 224ff. and 227ff.14Paul Oskar Kristeller, The Philosophy of Marsilio Ficino (New York, 1943), pp.164-170. See also Michele Schiavone, Problemifilosoficiin MarsilioFicino (Milan, 1957),p. 65; and Allen, pp. 227-228.

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system that was dependenton it. That is, they assaulted he subordi-nationist model that Plotinus haddevised by destroyingits keystone,Mind. With the second hypostasis thus removed the One's utteroth-erness was enhanced, but its relationshipto all subsequentswas ren-dered contingent and mysterious and no longer a matter of emana-tion or of the determinism that emanation implies. We can thusrealize that the Plotinian hypostases could never be identified withthe Christian Trinity by anybody thoroughly conversant with thephilosophical problems they posed for a Christian, and particularlywith the problems posed by the second hypostasis, Mind.* * *

Let us turn now to the passagescited as evidence for Ficino'scau-tious enthusiasm for what Wind describesas the "unmistakableaf-finity" of the Plotiniantheory of the threehighest hypostasesto "theTrinitariandogma." In chapter55 of his ParmenidesCommentary Fi-cino discusses the first two hypostases: "Along with Plotinus andParmenides[orthe Parmenides],we thus describe the first as the Onethat is over all, but the second as the one that is all. As the offspringofthe most perfect father, the second is the most perfect of all things.However, although in Christiantheology we treat of the Fatherandthe Son as if they were one, Plato, who is our concern at the mo-ment, seems to have thought of them as two."15Even more reveal-ing, however, is a passage that Wind does not cite in chapter94, achapterwhich serves as anepilogue for Ficino'sdiscussion of the sec-ond hypothesis in the dialogue'scelebratedsecond part,the hypothe-sis specifically concerned with the second hypostasis. He writes:"The Platonistsbelieve in the trinityof the Good, of Intellect,andofthe World-Soul; but our [Christian]Trinity, as we have argued sooften, is incompatible with these principlesin any order. The Plato-nists often call the Good 'the father,' Intellect 'the son,' and theWorld-Soul 'spirit'-'Spirit nourishes all' [Aeneid6. 726]. But ifthey mean their trinity to be of the same substance, they are, as it

O50pera,p. II69: "Dicimus itaque cum Plotino simul atque Parmenide primumquidem esse unum super omnia, secundum vero unum omnia; ut perfectissimi geni-toris progenies sit omnium perfectissima. Quando autem genitor genitumque situnum in Christiana Theologia tractamus, Plato quem nunc interpraetemur duo pu-tavisse videtur."

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were, Catholic Christians;but if they meanit to be threesubstances,they are Ariansvirtually."16Quite apartfrom the interestingproblem ofFicino's decision, in-evitable in the light of his understandingof the Timaeus, o identifyPlotinus' third hypostasis, Soul, with the World-Soul, which inPlotinus (Enneads,4.3.2,4) is simply the prime individualinstanceinthe generic category of Soul, severalpoints areof note. First, Ficinounequivocally rejects the possibility of reconciling the two trinities:however we establish the order of the first three Plotinian hypo-stases, the resulting trinity can never be made compatible with the

ChristianTrinity.17Given this basic incompatibility, still those Pla-tonists who postulate one substancefor theirthreehypostasesarees-pousing a Catholic position, while those who think of them as threeseparatesubstances are espousing an Arian one. We should not bemisled, moreover, by the Platonists' habitualuse of such terms as"father," "son," and "spirit." These certainlyevoke the persons ofthe Trinity but only becauseof the associationsthe termshave for us.Obviously, Ficino is not strainingto reconcilethe two systems: they16Opera, p. I94.3: "Trinitatem, quam saepe diximus principiorum ordinibus nullisconnumerabilem esse, Platonici putant ipsum bonum, ipsum intellectum, mundi ani-mam. Bonum quidem saepe patrem nominant, intellectum vero filium, animammundi spiritum: Spiritus intus alit. Si trinitatis huius eandem volunt esse substantiam,

quasi Christiani sunt [*] Catholici, si tres substantias, ferme sunt Ariani." (*The editioprincepsadds "sunt.")17And this is despite the fact that the "divine sparks" struck by the works of theAreopagite had ignited "such a huge fire," meaning, I take it, such a blaze of inspira-tion and insight for the later Neoplatonists, Ficino's Platonici.

One of those most obviously inflamed was Iamblichus. Towards the close of hisepitome for the Republicbook VI (Opera, p. 1408), for a moment Ficino seems to enter-tain the possibility that Iamblichus might have been sympathetic to the Catholic ratherthan the Arian position: "Although some Platonists, in the manner of the Arians, dis-tinguish God the Son of God the Father by way of substance from the Father, cspe-cially Julian in his book The Sun, yet Iamblichus, Julian's teacher, draws our attentionto the mysteries of the Egyptians; for in those mysteries the reason of the Father seemsto be different from that of the Son, but the substance seems to be the same (diversaquidemratio, sed eadem videtur esse substantia)." Ficino then cites the "mystery" fromIamblichus' De mysteriis, 8. 2 (ed. Des Places, Paris, I966, pp. I95-196). Notice his cir-cumspect wording and the fact that it is an Egyptian, and only indirectly an Iambli-chean, possibility that he adduces. A few years later, however, Ficino added a note tothis same "mystery" in the body of his Latin translation of the De mysteriis(Opera, p.1903). He now explains Iamblichus' comments in terms of Proclan distinctions, explic-itly so, and he has dropped the "Catholic" possibility without a word. The question ofthe consubstantiality of the third person of the Trinity he never raises, logically sogiven the Platonists' invariable subordination of Soul.

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areincompatible, "aswe have arguedso often," he says, andonly ifwe reinterprettheir trinity in terms of the Nicene formulation thatGod consists of the same substancethough of three persons can weaccommodate it to Christian dogma as defined by the CatholicChurch.18Ficino's wording is certainly ambiguous since it intro-duces the "Catholic" Platonists alongside the "Arian" Platonists.But the reference must be to the Areopagite and his teacherHierotheus, and perhapsto Ammonius and Origen too, since else-where he makes it clear thatneitherPlatonorhis paganfollowers, thePlatonici,had espoused the notion that their trinity consisted of thesame substance. Rather, they had expounded the subordinationistview that an absolutely fundamentalontological gulf separatedtheOne from Mind and Mind from Soul. To suppose the Platonic tradi-tion had arguedotherwise would only indicateanunfamiliaritywiththe Parmenidess it had been interpreted n the Neoplatonic tradition.Since this was the most importanttext in that tradition,and the ob-ject of sustainedmeditation andanalysisby allPlatonists,this wouldsuppose in turn a fundamentalignorance, from Ficino'sviewpoint,of Platonism itself. We are eft, in short, with the suggestively similarformulations of the Parmenides'presentationof the hypostatic trinityand of the earlyChristiancouncils'definition of the Trinity, but not,in Ficino's mind, with any grounds for the delusion that the hypo-static trinity was the same as the Christian. Plato and the paganPla-toniciwere all committed to what the Church would identify as infact the Arian position: Plato necessarilyso, given his role as one ofthe great gentile prophets of Christiantheology if not of Christhim-self; his followers unnecessarilyso, since they could have turned tothe revealed truth in St. John, in St. Paul, in the Areopagite and inother early fathersof the Church.

* * *

Wind'ssecond text is chapter9 of Ficino's In Timaeum.Ficinocon-cludes this chapter by arguing that the majorityof Platonistsmain-tain that from the divine unity andgoodness emanatesan intelligibleand intellectual world that possesses in turn the exemplary modelsfor all thatcomes to be in the visibleworld; and thisintelligibleworld

18SeeWalker, pp. 39-40, with further references. Walker observes that the Fathersof the Eastern Church generally were more subordinationist than their Western broth-ers; the Arian position, that is, was very much an Eastern heresy.

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RENAISSANCE QUARTERLYthe Platonists call "the divine intellect, thatis, not the Good itself, butthe son of the Good." Ficino continues: "Ifwe understand his intel-lect to be of one substancewith the firstGood, we shall be in the po-sition of effecting more of a reconciliationbetween Plato and Chris-tiantheology, but the rest of Plato'sinterpreterswill object."19AgainFicino acknowledges the similarity of nomenclature, and particu-larly, of course, the use by both partiesof the term "son." The "ma-jority" of Platonists, and this leaves room again for a Catholic mi-nority, espouse the emanation theory and thereforenecessarilythesubordination of Mind, the intelligible-intellectualworld of the ex-emplars, to the One. Plato's wording does allow us to readthe one-substance theory into his system-and in that sense he can be readtypologically like the Prophetsandlike the Old Testamentin generalas anticipatingthe truthof revelation;thatis, he hadadducedformu-las and images whose connotations transcendedhis intentions, andover whose anticipatoryforce he could not have exercisedfull con-scious control. But to suppose that he had fully intended the threeprimary hypostases to be of the same substancewould be an error;andthe objections of the Platoniciwould bejustified. Only aminorityof Platonists, the Catholic Platonistsinspiredby the Areopagite, hadbeen able to rise from Plato's subordinationismto the dogma of con-substantiality. Plato, like the Prophets, had arrived n the Parmenidesand the Timaeusat the threshold of understandingthe Trinity, butbeen unable to effect the ultimate comprehension. In retrospectwecansee how close he had come in thesedialogues, the two masterdia-logues in the later Neoplatonists' teaching cycle.20But for Ficinotheirtruths signified a Mosaic rather han a truly Christianwisdom.The situation with the enigmas in the Secondand Sixth Letterssmore interesting and more complex in light of Ficino'sexpressopin-ion that it was only in the Laws (which for him included theEpinomis)21nd in the Letters that Plato had elected to speak in his

19Opera, p. 1442.1: "Quem quidem divinum intellectum nominant non ipsumbonum, sed optimum boni filium, quem si unius cum primo substantiae esse intelliga-mus Platonem Christianae theologiae magis conciliabimus, sed caeteri Platonis in-terpretes reclamabunt."20For this teaching cycle, see L. G. Westerink, Anonymous Prolegomenato PlatonicPhilosophy (Amsterdam, 1962), pp. xxxvii-xxxviii; also Bent Dalsgaard Larsen,Jambliquede Chalcis: Exegete etphilosophe (Aarhus, I972), pp. 333-334.21At the end of his preface to his Platonis Opera Omnia of 1484, Ficino lists theEpinomis as one of the "thirteen" books of the Laws, while in the title for its epitome herefers to it as the "appendix" for the Laws (Opera, p. 1525.2).

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own person. Elsewhere he had deliberatelychosen to speakthroughthe voices of others, principallyof the Pythagoreans, presenting,Fi-cino argues, their opinions and not his own.22In the prefaceto hisgreatPlato translationof 1484, Ficinoobserves, thatit was only in hisLaws and Letters,"when he uses himself as the speaker, that he in-tendsus to take what he says as the truth, whereaswhat he says in theother dialogues . . . he intends us to take as only resembling thetruth."23In this regard, the Letters mbody Plato's views more truly,if not necessarily more straightforwardly, than such Pythagoreandominated works, albeit masterpieces,as the Parmenidesnd the Ti-maeus.Even so, we should beara caveatin mind. Inthe same chapterin the PlatonicTheology,book 17which also toys with the notion thatthe Lawsand Lettersalone embody Plato's personal,as contrasted totraditionalPythagorean, views, Ficino stressesthe fact that "havingarrivedat extreme old age, Plato wrote in his letter to King Diony-sius [i.e. Letter Iat 3I4C] thathe hadnever written himself on divinematters, and that none of his works had saidor would ever say any-thing about such matters, since his intention was not to reveal hisown thoughts but those of another." He goes on to say that "in hisletter to the Syracusans [i.e. LetterVII at 34IC], which he wrotewhen he was older still, Plato repeatedthe same opinion but addedthat none was alive then, or would be born to posterity, who mightdiscover Plato'smind concerningdivine matters.He could saythis inalljustice, since he never wrote about them."24Nevertheless, Platohad certainly testified to three truths: that God's providence rulesover all;that the soul is immortal;andthat God rewardsvirtueeven-tually and punishes sin. Furtherthan this, he had not chosen to go.Even so, the two letters, the second and sixth, presentus with three

22PlatonicTheology, 17. 4 (ed. Raymond Marcel as Marsile Ficin: Theologie platoni-cienne de l'immortalitedes ames, 3 vols. [Paris, I964-1970], 3: I68-I69). I shall refer toFicino's work in English and reserve the Latin title for Proclus' magnum opus of thesame name.23"Que in epistolis vel in libris de legibus et Epinomi[de] Plato ipse suo disserit orecertissima vult haberi; que vero in ceteris libris Socratis, Timei, Parmenidis, Zenonis

ore disputat, verisimilia" (sub LibriPlatonis). He repeats the idea in a letter to Bandini,Opera, p. 766.2.24"Et n epistola ad regem Dionysium, cum esset admodum senex, inquit nihil se derebus divinis umquam composuisse neque esse Platonis opus de iis ullum neque um-quam fore, quasi non suam mentem aperuerit, sed narraverit alienam. In epistolaquoque ad Syracusanos, quam postea scripsit senior, eadem repetivit, ubi adiunxitneminem exstare tunc aut fore in posterum, qui mentem Platonis de huiusmodi rebusintelligat. Merito, quia non scripsit" (ed. Marcel, 3: I68-I69).

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tantalizingly difficult enigmas, ones that had challenged interpretersfrom the Middle Platonists down to Ficino's older contemporary,Gemistus Pletho. All, furthermore,are trinitarian.At the very end of the Sixth Letter,which Ficino frequentlyrefersto as the letter to Hermias, Platowrites at 323D, "Taketo witness the

god who is the leaderof all things, presentandfuture;also the fatherand lord of the leader, and of the cause."25In his introductionto thisletter, which owed its fame solely to its enigma, Ficino follows hisNeoplatonic predecessors,andnotably Proclus, in arguingthatPlatois once again adducing the threeontological principles.Thus Plato isdistinguishing between the World-Soul, "the leader of all thingspresent and future" (and elsewhere identified by Ficino and all theNeoplatonists with Zeus), and the "father"of this leader, the fatherbeing identified with the One and the Good. However, as Plotinushad demonstrated in the Enneads,5.8.10-I3, the Good was not somuch the "father"as the grandfatherof Zeus; for Soul hadnot ema-nated directly from the One and we must recognize the existence ofthe second hypostasis, Mind, between them, the "son" of the Goodand yet the "father" of Soul and thus, in Ficino's opinion, of theWorld-Soul. But to the superficialeye the enigma makesno mentionof Mind. To the Neoplatonists and Ficino, however, Plato musthave acknowledged Mind when he wrote that the One was not onlyfather "of the leader" but also "of the cause." Thus Plato seems toinsert as a mean between the two, that is, between the fatherand theleader, "a certain divine mind." Ficino'sjustification for this subtlereading is his sense of Plato's terminological practiceelsewhere. Henotes that "king" (and hence presumably "father")often stands forthe Good, "cause" signifies Mind, and "leader"refersto Soul; andthat "sincePlato refers causeto Mind, the Platonistsarguethatin theTimaeus ntellect, the son of the Good, was thereforethe immediate(proximus) rchitectof the world. This architect he Epinomis eferstoas 'the most divine reasonor the most divine word, who adornedthevisible world' "26 (the Epinomis s the dialogue, we recall, that he

25The Greek reads: xaci TOV T()V IdvToWv e6v iYEt6vOa TOWV E OVTOVxai TOV IEk-X6VTOV, TOVTEiyr76vog xalt a(XTLO)v3TaTEQC@QLOVotvUVTa;g.26Opera, p. 1533.4: "Sed mediam inter duo haec mentem quandam divinam videturinserere, quando dum repetit ducis, subiungit et causae. Nam apud Platonem saepe rexsignificat ipsum bonum, causa vero mentem, dux denique animam. Et quoniamcausam refert ad mentem, ideo in Timaeo Platonici disputant intellectum, ipsius bonifilium, mundi architectum proximum extitisse; de quo in Epinomide scribitur: Ratio

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consideredanintegralpartof theLawsandwherePlatowas at lastspeaking inpropria ersona27).Next, Ficinoproceeds o glossPlato'sreferenceo "thefather ndlord"of Soul andof Mind.Inhisview, Plato'sdoublingof the termssignifiesthe dual statusof the Good as both "father" f Mind and"lord"of Soul.Inotherwords,theparallelermsmerelyconfirmFi-cino'sNeoplatonic nterpretationf the enigmaas concernedwiththethreeprimaryhypostases.Butheadds,significantly, this s per-chance he interpretationf the majorityof the Platonists; ndthistoo is the interpretationf a Platonistwho is a Christian ut anAr-ian."Specifically,he is referringo the description f the Good as"father" f Mindand"lord"of Soul, sincehe proceeds"someonecouldunderstand y the 'leader' lsotheHoly Spirit,andby 'Mind'the SonHimself. ForwhenPlatosaysthe 'father' eequallympliestheSon."28Onceagainhe is worriedby theissueof consubstantial-ity, for his gloss concludes"But whoever maintainshat the threehave one essencewill be flying,it seems,in the faceof manyof thePlatonists;yet he will not be in obvious disagreementwith Platohimself. "29Again,we must move cautiously.Nowhereis Ficinosuggestingthatthe SixthLetter dumbrateshedogmaof theTrinity;butratherthattheenigmasignifies hehypostaticriadof theGood,MindandSoul, and thatthe majorityof Plato's nterpretersee thistriad n asubordinationist, rianwayascomposedof three ubstanceshatarenot the same.One can,of course, nterpretheenigma,asperhapshad theAreopagiteandhis followers,assignifyinga consubstantialtriad: he words, if not Plato'sintention, lend themselvesto thisalter-divinissima,sive divinissimumverbum,mundumvisibilem exornavit."TheEpinomisreference s to 986C.27Cf.PlatonicTheology,4. I (ed. Marcel, I: I65). Accordingto LeonardoTarin,Academica:lato,Philipof Opus,and hePseudo-Platonicpinomis,AmericanPhilosophi-cal Society vol. 107(Philadelphia,1975),pp. 133-139, the Epinomiswas probablythework of Philipof Opus or of anothermemberof theearlyAcademy.280pera,p. 1533.4: "Appellatautemhic ipsumbonumtur patrem um dominum,ut per primum quidem designaret mentis patrem, per secundum vero animaedominum. Ita forsitanPlatonicusnumerusexponet;itaquoquePlatonicusChristianussed Arianus. Poteritet quispiam perducem sanctumspiritum ntelligere,permentemvero filium;nam ubi Platopatremdicit, filiumpariter ubintelligit."29Ibid.: Ac siquisunam triumponatessentiamPlatonicisquidemmultisvidebituradversari,Platoni[*] tamen manifestenon repugnabit." * "Platoni" s the reading nthePlatoeditionsof 1484and1491; heOperaOmnia eads"Platonicis"which is clearlywrong as Wind perceived [p. 242].)

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native reading. Whereas the majority of interpretershave read thePlotinian triad into the enigma, it is entirely possible to hold that theterms should signify that the "leader" s the Holy Spirit, the "cause"the Son, and the "father" God the Father. But while such a readingmay not "be in obvious disagreementwith Platohimself," andis thereading that will be ultimately revealedby Christ and upheld as theorthodox and truly Catholic dogma, Ficino is careful not to claimthat Plato intended or even imaginatively intuitedthis "true"mean-ing. There is an anticipatory, prophetic ambiguity in the terms of theenigma that in retrospecta Catholic canmarvelat;anambiguity thatPlato shares with the Hebrew Prophets and that vindicates his rightto be classed with them as apriscus heologus nd his works to be ac-corded the status almost of the Old Testament Scriptures.Even so,he had almost certainly intended the "Arian" triad that Plotinus,whom Ficino revered as the sublimest of Plato's interpretersandeven at times as deeper in his communication of philosophical in-sights than Plato himself, had elucidatedfrom this text, as from oth-ers, and placedat the centre of his metaphysicalsystem.

Ficino'sown understandingof andacquaintancewith the later his-tory of ancient Platonism and its intricatetexts did not lead him tosuppose, moreover, that the Platonicihadever embracedthe Areopa-gitian position that the hypostatic triad was consubstantial. In thismatter the Platonicihad been "Arians"-may indeed have been a for-mative element in the elaboration of the actualArian movement ofthe fourth century-and Ficino was quite prepared o face up to thisfact and to proceed with his work as an apologist for Plato with thepersistence of this major heresy in mind. Significantly, both Plethoand Bessarion, Ficino's two guides in so many Platonic matters,were equally insistent on keeping the Catholic Trinity separate romthe threeprimaryhypostases of Platonism.30And this would suggestthat those who were thoroughly familiarwith Plato's texts and thePlatonic tradition, like Ficino himself, were never under the illusionthat the hypostatic triad could be wholly accommodated to the or-thodox dogma. Only neophytes andenthusiastswould hasten to in-voke Plato's testimony in this matter.31

30Wind, p. 242; Walker, pp. 41, 101-103, 114.31Asfor instance had S. Justin Martyr in his First Apology, 59 and 60, as contrastedwith Cyril of Alexandria in his ContraJulianum, I. 34A-E (Migne, PG 76. 553B-D).See H. D. Saffrey and L. G. Westerink, Proclus: Theologie Platonicienne,4 vols. so far(Paris, 1968-), 2: xxxix-xl, 1-lii, for further references.

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If we cast our minds backfor a moment to our initial review of thePlotinian ontology, it will become clear why the hypostatic triadcould not be accommodated satisfactorily: he One, Mind and Soulmust translate nto the ChristianGod, Angel andSoul;for the secondhypostasis, asPico dellaMirandolamakesespeciallyclear n his Com-mento . v, is "the firstand most noble angel createdby God" and notthe Son: "And everyone should take great care to understandthatthis ['son' of the ancientphilosophers]is not the one whom our The-ologians call the Son of God; because we understandby the Sonsomeone of the same essence with the Father, equal to Him in allthings, the Creator and not a creature;but you should compare theone whom the Platonists call the 'son' of God to the first and mostnoble angel createdby God."32Ficino in his PhilebusCommentary1.26 is even more specific for there he writes of the divine intelligenceas that "which the Hebrews call the seraphim," that is, the highestchoir in the nine celestial choirs of angels.33The Platonists' habitualuse of the image of the "son" or of the terms "wisdom" or "theword" (logos)for this angelic hypostasis may mislead the unwary.But Plato's leading interpretersin the Quattrocento were not onlyaware of such misleading usage, they took great care, as the quota-tions from Pico and Ficino both illustrate,to alert others to it and toreinforce the distinction between the Platonic "son" and the Chris-tian Son.

* * *

The caseof Plato's SecondLetter s even more fascinating;andin hisinterpretationFicino achieves a breakthroughthat Wind, though heprovides us with a brilliantsummary introduction to the situation,does not fully perceive. Plotinus had referred o the famous seriesofenigmas at 3I2E on several occasions as had his successors;eventu-ally it received its most detailed andcomprehensiveanalysis n antiq-uity in Proclus' TheologiaPlatonica,2.8ff.34 Since Ficino knew this

32Ed. Eugenio Garin, G. Pico della Mirandola:De Hominis Dignitate, Heptaplus, DeEnte et Uno, e scrittivari (Florence, I942), pp. 466-467: "Ed abbi ciascuno diligente av-vertenzia di non intendere che questo sia quello che da' nostri Teologi e detto figliuolodi Dio, perche noi intendiamo per il figliuolo una medesima essenzia col padre, a lui inogni cosa equale, creatore finalmente e non creatura, ma debbesi comparare quello chee' Platonici chiamano figliuolo di Dio al primo e pii nobile angelo da Dio creato."330pera, p. 1232: "mentem ipsam divinam, quam Seraphin Hebraei nuncupant."34For a comprehensive history of the exegesis of the SecondLetter in antiquity, seeSaffrey and Westerink, 2: xx-lix.

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great work in detail and had mastered its complexities,35he musthave been familiar with Proclus' analysis. Even so, we can watchhim changing and refining his ideas over the space of a workinglifetime-a chronological dimension that Wind ignores-andachieving a definitive analysisonly at the very end of his career.Ficino first approachesthe enigma in his De amore,2.4 with theZoroastran trinity of Oromasis, Mithris and Arimanis in the fore-front of his mind, Pletho being his guide here. He does not hesitatetorefer this trinity to the Plotinian trinity, which for him was the Pla-tonic trinity of the One, Mind and Soul.36He translates he Greek ofthe enigma into Latin thus: "Circaomnium regem cuncta sunt. Ip-sius gratiaomnia. Ipse causaest pulchrorumomnium. Secunda circasecundum. Tertia circa tertium" (Around the king of all are allthings. All exist because of him. He is the cause of all beautifulthings. Second things exist around the second; third things aroundthe third).37 n his analysishere and in other works Ficino assertsthatsecunda irca ecundumefers to the existence of "reasonsaround themind" (rationes ircamentem),and that tertiacirca ertium efersto theexistence of "the seeds of things aroundthe soul" (semina erum ircaanimam).Logically, therefore, Plato intends us to understand thatthere areprimacirca rimum, hat is, "Ideas aroundGod"; for, he ob-serves, "the Ideas are granted by God to the mind, and arebroughtback to the same mind they were given to." One would expect theenigma to have gone on to speak of quarta ircaquartum,hat is, of"the forms around nature," since, Ficino maintains, Plato every-where worked with the seriesof the Ideas,reasons, seeds and forms.The forms must not be included here in the enigma, therefore, be-causePlato was referringsolely to the threehigher, incorporeal evelsof being and deliberately excluding consideration of the materialforms.38

35Saffrey and Westerink, I: lxxiii-lxxiv; also Saffrey's "Notes Platoniciennes deMarsile Ficin dans un manuscrit de Proclus, cod. Riccardianus 70," Bibliothequed'Hu-manismeet Renaissance,21 (1959), I8o-I8I.36Both Marcel in his edition, Marsile Ficin: Commentaire sur le Banquet de Platon(Paris, 1958), p. IS5, and Wind, p. 243, refer us to Plutarch's De Iside (Moralia, 369Dff.) for the Zoroastran link. Walker, pp. 85-86, draws our attention to the trinity inter-preters read into Deuteronomy 6. 4, and which some supposed was the source, or oneof the sources, for Plato's trinity.37Ed. Marcel, p. I5o. The Greek of 3I2E reads: HlEQ'TOvjndvtov p3caoiXcadvT'EoTi xaClEXELvov vexa JrdvaT, xaCCtiXco CiLTOV&JrdvITv TCOVaXkCv6OrTEQOV6E JTEQLa oEEQea, Xal TQLTOVTEQL TQLTa.38Ed. Marcel, p. 15I: "Sed eas [forme in materia] Plato in ordine posito non connu-

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Furthermore,Plato had not chosen to writeprimacircaprimumbutrathercirca mnium egem unctaunt;andhis reasonmust have been asfollows. Had he written primumand not omniumregem"perhapshewould appearto be placing God in some sort of numericalorder orestablishing a parity of condition between Him and the leaders whofollow Him." Likewise, had he written primaand not cuncta"wemight think of God as the governor of some single order andnot ofall things."39In other words, Ficino sees Plato wording the enigmavery carefully in order to refer on the one hand to the three hypo-stases, the "governors," but also to ensurethat we think of the firstgovernor as of a differentorder than the other two and of a different"condition." In this respecthe was following the Neoplatonic tradi-tion, and Proclus in particular, who had always insisted on theunique natureand status of the firsthypostasis.40Later, in his TimaeusCommentary 8, and in his epitome for theSecondLetter,Ficino explores an interesting variation in his analysisof the enigma. He reduces the seriesof four he had adduced n his Deamoreo three:"there arethreeordersin the world, that of the forms,that of the reasons, and that of the Ideas. The orderof forms whichare evident to the senses is led back to the World-Soul. As the princi-ple of motion, the World-Soul generates the forms in matter;else-where, however, it generates with reasons and with seeds. But theorder of reasons in Soul we lead back to Mind which is higher thanSoul: Soul receives the reasons for governing things from the IdeasofMind. Finally, the order of the Ideas comes down into Mind fromthe immense and uncompounded splendour of the Divine Good.Since there is only one Ideaof all good men, God Himself, the Ideasof other things God pours into the Angelic Mind. Accordingly, thethreeordersareled back to theirthreeprinciplesor fountains:the or-der of forms to the World-Soul, the orderof reasons to the AngelicMind, and the order of Ideas finally to the Good itself."41Clearly,merat, quia de divinis a Dionysio interrogatus tres ordines ad incorporales speties per-tinentes tamquam divinos induxit; formas autem corporum pretermisit."

39Ibid.: "Noluit autem deum regem primum vocare, sed omnium regem, ne, si pri-mum diceret, eum una cum sequentibus ducibus in aliqua numeri spetie conditionisqueparitate collocare forsitan videretur. Neque dixit prima circa illum, sed cuncta, ne cre-deremus eum ordinis alicuius potius quam cunctorum gubernatorem."40TheologiaPlatonica, 2. 8-9 (ed. Saffrey and Westerink, 2: 5I-6I).

41Opera, p. I53I: "Tres ergo in universo sunt ordines, formarum scilicet et ra-tionum et idearum. Ordo quidem formarum, quae patent sensibus, ad animam ipsammundi reducitur; quae utique velut principium motus formas in materia generat,

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RENAISSANCE QUARTERLYFicino has now linked (though not equated) forms with seeds, anddistinguished between seminal reasons and the higher reasons.Forms, seeds, and seminal reasons return to the World-Soul, thehigher reasons to Mind, and the Ideasto the Good. There is no needto postulate nature;andthus no need to expect any reference o quartacircaquartum.The enigma is complete as it stands, anduniversal;for,Ficino writes, "since all arereferredto the Good via the Ideas,Platosays 'Around the king of all areall things,' that is, around the Goodare the Ideas and via them all things; 'Around the second,' that is,around Mind, 'are the second things,' thatis, the reasonswhich fol-low the Ideas;'Around the third arethe thirdthings,' that is, aroundthe World-Soul are the forms."42This later interpretation s bothmore satisfactoryandmore elegantand furnishesus with anexcellentexample of how Ficinokept returningto certainkey passages n Platoin order to refinehis understandingof them.Thus far we have been concerned with the hypostatic triad. Butthe Second Letterpresented Ficino with an even more perplexingenigma, one hidden, he felt, in the opening of the largerand moreobvious enigma of 3I2E, that is, in the three clauses"circa omniumregem cuncta sunt; ipsius gratia omnia; ipse causa est pulchrorumomnium." In the De amoreFicino had glossed these at some length:"By 'aroundthe king' Plato means not within but outside the king,for there can be no composition within God. Plato explains themeaning of the term 'around'when he adds 'becauseof him allthingsexist; he is the cause of all beautiful things'; for he is saying, as itwere, 'therefore all things arearoundthe king, for all areturned backto him as to their principle.' " Ficino's gloss then continues, "Platomeans by 'of all beautifulthings' the beauty which radiates rom thevarious circles I mentioned earlier;for the forms of bodies via thegenerat autem alias aliis rationibus atque seminibus. Hunc vero ordinem in anima ra-tionum ad mentem redigimus anima altiorem, a cuius ideis anima gubernandarum re-rum suscipit rationes. Ordo denique idearum in mentem ab immenso et simplici diviniboni splendore descendit. Siquidem una hominum idea bonorum, id est, ipse Deus,alia aliorum bonorum menti angelicae ideas infundit. Quamobrem tres rerum ordinesad tres principes fontesque reducuntur: ordo quidem formarum ad mundi animam,ordo vero rationum ad mentem angelicam, ordo denique idearum ad ipsum bonum."42Ibid.: "Et quia per ideas cuncta referuntur ad bonum, ideo Plato inquit 'Circa om-nium regem cuncta sunt,' id est, circa ipsum bonum sunt ideae, perque ideas omnia;'Circa secundum,' id est, mentem, 'sunt secunda,' id est, rationes quae sequunturideas; 'Circa tertium vero tertia,' id est, circa animam mundi formae."

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seeds, and the seeds via the reasons, and the reasonsvia the Ideas areall led back to God in the same stages as they arebrought forth fromHim. But when Plato takescare to write 'all' he means the Ideas;forall the subsequent ordersareincludedin them."43Here Ficino is obviously intrigued by the significance of Plato'sword choices and notably by his selection of peri(circa) nd of heneka(eiusgratia).But he has not yet explored all the interpretativepossibil-ities of this opening, and not yet arrived at a definitive resolution ofits difficulties. As the problem with "seeds"and "reasons"has dem-onstrated already, the De amorefrequentlyhazardswhat turn out tobe preliminarysolutions to certainproblems, both interpretativeandphilosophical. It frequently gives indications, in other words, of itsbeing an early work in the Ficino canon. Here we have a case inpoint, for later, and notably in his epitome for the SecondLetter,hearrivedat a more complex but more systematic explanationof Pla-to's enigmatic phrasing, one thatpresentsus with a new perspectiveon his final understandingof the master'santicipationof the dogmaof the Trinity.Before turning to this argumentum,et us pause for a moment toconsider his note in the revised TimaeusCommentary 8. He is espe-cially concerned here with the question of universal causality, andwith the One and Good as the prime cause and the cause that tran-scends all other causes. Thus Platohadeschewed in theenigma apar-allel structure and not written of "the first things around the first"precisely becausehe wished to ensurethatwe think of the first causeas occupying a category of its own, as being qualitativelybeyondsubsequent causes. With equal acuity he focuses on Plato's tripleuseof "all";"thrice he repeatedthat the One is the universalprincipleorcause, in order to demonstrate that individual things emanate morefrom it than from other causes."44And he concludesby emphasizing

43Ed.Marcel, p. 150: "Circaregem,non intra regem sed extra significat. In deo enimnulla est compositio. Quid vero dictio illa circasignificet, exponit Plato cum addit: Eiusgratia omnia. Ipse causaestpulchrorumomnium,quasi dicat, ideo circa regem omnia sunt,quia ad illum tamquam ad finem pro natura sua omnia revolvuntur, quemadmodumab illo, tamquam principio, producta sunt omnia. Pulchrorumomnium, id est, totiuspulchritudinis que supra dictis in circulis emicat. Forme enim corporum per semina,hec per rationes, he per ideas reducuntur in deum et iisdem a deo gradibus producun-tur. Proprie vero cum dicit cuncta,ideas intelligit, nam in his reliqua includuntur."44Opera, p. I441.2: "Ut autem ostenderet singula ab ipso magis quam ab aliis causisemanare, ter replicavit ipsum omnium esse principium."

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RENAISSANCE QUARTERLYthe One's triple function as effector, xemplarandfinis of all things,without, however, tying this definitioninto his analysisof the letter'senigma.But this is precisely what he achieves in his epitome. Wind arguesthat here Ficino "fully exercised the gentle art of piloting thesethoughts [of Plato] into a Christianhaven"by turningto Proclus' Ti-maeusCommentary IC-D, with its introductionof the threeprimarycauses, the efficient, the exemplary and the final;and by using it toderive the same triad of causes from the opening phrases of theenigma at 3I2E by "teasing and twisting" the words aition,periandheneka.45 ut Ficino's actualanalysisis as follows: "That God is theexemplary cause Plato signified by the term 'around'[peri];ikewise,thathe is the final causeby the phrase'becauseof Him' [heneka]; ndagain, that he is the efficientcausewhen he added'He is the cause[ai-tion]of all beautiful things,' for the fact that some things areugly isnot because they derive from Him but becausethey degeneratefromHim."46At last Ficino has unravelled a triad concerning the primehypostasis from the opening phrasesof the enigma, namely a triadofcauses derived from the terms circa,eiusgratiaand causa,causabeingadded to those he hadalreadyglossed in the De amore.He has arrivedat a triad within a triad: first, at the triad of the three hypostaseswhich the Platonici f antiquityhadlong ago identifiedwith the enig-ma's threeparts;andsecond, within thatlargertriad,ata more subtleset of triple distinctions concerning the One itself as exemplary, ef-ficient and final cause of all things. Even so, Ficinostill remains con-cerned in the main with the largertriad;for he hastens to add, "Weshould not be surprisedthatthe Platonistsapparently ake it that herePlato has named eachof the threeprinciples; or indeedhe hasnamedthem, although as similar to each other not as equals."47 n otherwords his concern is still with the major triadof principlesin their"Arian"order, the heart of the enigma for the Neoplatonists. At thesame time he has arrived at a new and higher triad concerning the

45P.243. See A.J. Festugiere, Proclus:Commentaire urle Timee, 5 vols. (Paris, 1966-68), 1:25.

460pera, p. 1531: "Significavit autem Deum esse rerum causam exemplarem ubidixit 'circa'; item finalem ubi ait 'eius gratia'; rursus efficientem quando subiunxit 'ipsecausa est pulchrorum omnium'; quod enim nonnulla sint deformia non ob id habentquod ab ipso sunt, sed quatenus ab eo degenerant."

47Opera, p. 1531: "Neque mirum Platonici videri volunt quod Plato quodlibet il-lorum trium principium nominaverit; nominasse enim similiter sed non aeque."

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first monad in the enigma anddone so asa resultof his explorationofthe problem of causality, occasioned perhapsby his work on the Ti-maeus.48 * * *

The final stage in Ficino's understanding of the SecondLetter'senigma occurs in a very late, probably his last, work, the commen-tary on the Pauline Epistles.49In actuality this commentary dealsonly with the Epistle to the Romans, andonly with the firstchaptersat that.50But it is precisely in this epistle at I 1.36 (Vulgate)thata fa-mous line occurs: Quoniam ex ipso, et per ipsum, et in ipso sunt omnia,for which Ambrose had proposed a variantreadingQuoniam x ipso,etper ipsum, et in ipsum omnia. The original Greek reads hoti ex autoukaidi autoukai eisautontapanta;eisauton s more properly renderedhere in ipsum, particularly f we recall the eis autonof I Corinthians8.6.51The sentence in Romans would certainlysuggest to someonefamiliar with Neoplatonic terminology the circularityof the emana-tive process embodied in "out from," "through,"and "backto" andthe Ambrosian renderingpreservesthis sense of movement backto-wards, or back into, the source of allmovement. Inhis commentaryon the line Ficino adopts the Ambrosian reading, as Wind acutelyperceives, an adoption that must have been deliberate, I believe,given Ficino's theological and philological learning and expertise.Christian theologians, following Augustine and Aquinas, had be-come accustomed to interpretingthe sentencein the Vulgate render-ing as referringto the Father,Son andHoly Spirit,52 ndto theirtrin-itarian relationship, ex Patre,per Filium, in Spiritu Sancto.Ficino seeks to interpret the Pauline dictum by referenceto thethree causes associatedwith the world demiurge in Plato's Timaeus.To these causes arelinked the three prime attributesof Power, Wis-

48Thelong Commentary on the Timaeus was published, substantially complete, asearly as 1484 in the Platonis Opera Omnia and again in the second edition of 1491. For adescription of the various stages through which the Commentary seems to have passedand for its publication history, see Paul 0. Kristeller, SupplementumFicinianum,2 vols.(Florence, 1937), I: Ixi.

49Forthe dating, see Kristeller, Supplementum,I: lxxxi-lxxxii.50Ithas been extensively studied by Walter Dress, Die Mystik des Marsilio Ficino(Berlin and Leipzig, 1929).51But contrast Colossians I. I6-17.

52Wind, p. 243, refers us to Augustine's Sermonesdescripturis,I. 5, and to Aquinas'Super epistolasPauli, II. 36 (i.e. to Aquinas' analysis of the Epistle to the Romans I I.36, to be found in his Opera Omnia [Parma, 1862], 13: 118-119).

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RENAISSANCE QUARTERLYdom and Goodness. It is at thispoint in his exposition that he refersatchapter7 to the SecondLetter, he letterto Dionysius: "As the theolo-gians have deemed appropriate,these threeattributesof Power, Wis-dom and Goodness seem to represent the Father, Son and HolySpirit. The divine Power we call preeminently the world's efficientcause;Wisdom next the exemplarof this work; andfinallyGoodnessthe end. In his letter to the king Dionysius, our Plato declaredthatthis tripleorderof causalitydwelt in God, when he wrote, 'allthingsare from him, and through him and into him,' meaning by 'fromhim' the efficient cause, by 'through him' the exemplary cause, andby 'into him' the final cause."53Ficino goes on to explain why Paulhad introduced the exemplary cause before the efficient and to ad-duce the testimony of a number of ancientphilosophersto the effectthatgoodness was the final cause. The syntax of partof the passageisobscure; but Ficino seems to be attributingthe famous Pauline dic-tum to Plato himself in the SecondLetter,where it nowhere appears.But we cannot accept Wind's suggestion that Ficinohad "persuadedhimself that the same phrasehad alreadybeen used" in that letter (p.243), for Ficino knew what he was about, and, particularlyon a mat-ter of such criticaland obvious significance,would never have com-mitted such a lapse. Rather, he was linking Paul's dictum with Pla-to's deployment of the terms circa, iusgratia nd causa: ircas parallelto per, eiusgratiato in and causa o ex, as the following clausewith itsreference to the three kinds of cause makes clear. This is why headopted the Ambrosian rendering rather than the Vulgate's. Wemight reprimandhim for being overly succinct or too cursory butnot for being muddled.Moreover, Ficino is not saying thatPlato'sletterhad the same sta-tus and meaning as the Paulinedictum, but rather hatPlato hadinti-mated the triple causalityhe had alreadyexplored in the Timaeus nthe SecondLetter,but this time inpropria ersona ndnot through themouth of a Pythagorean. Certainly, if we think of the same triple

530pera, p. 437: "Tria haec igitur, Potentia, Sapientia, Bonitas, ut placet Theologis,attributa patrem et filium sanctumque spiritum repraesentare videntur. Divinamquidem potentiam praecipue dicimus mundi causam effectricem, sapientiam conse-quenter operis huius exemplar, bonitatem denique finem. Triplicem hunc ordinemcausae penes Deum Plato noster regi Dionysio declaravit, exemplar quidem dum in-quit 'ex ipso et per ipsum et in ipsum omnia': ex ipso efficientem, per ipsum exem-plarem, in ipsum finalem causam nobis exprimens." Note the crux at "exemplarquidem dum inquit"; Wind silently omits "exemplar quidem."

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causalityas applyingto God the Creator,then we canagreethat Platohadcanticipated or intuited a truth concerning the nature of God.However, while Ficino could rejoice that Plato had intuited a truthabout the Divinity, this is not to say that he had intuited the Trinityper se. We are dealing with arguments that should be kept distinct.God possesses power, wisdom and goodness: on the one hand theycan be associated with the three persons of the Trinity; on the otherhandthey canalso be associated with the notion of the threesupremecauses that Plato had referred o in his SecondLetter nd had discussedat some length earlierin his Timaeus.These associations, neverthe-less, were not the steps in a sorites, and Ficino never takes the uncriti-cal step of interpreting the letter's three causes as referring to theTrinity, while he does argue that the Trinity can be approached,asthe Pauline sentence indicates, in terms of the primary causes, andthat the letter's testimony can thus be indirectly, but not directly,brought to bear.Even so, the distinctions aresubtle, and the firstpartof Plato's fa-mous enigma in the SecondLetterhad come within a hair'sbreadthofanticipatingone aspectof the Trinity, its roleasthe universalcause. Itis true thatPlato hadwritten of the three causesin the Timaeus,but hehad keyed his study to his presentationof the demiurge, whom thePlatonists had usually identified with the second hypostasis, Mind,and whom ChristianPlatonists, including I believe Ficino himself,54had identified with God in his role as Creatorandso with the God ofGenesis rather than the God of latertrinitarianspeculation.The spe-cial achievement of the SecondLetter,written after the Timaeusn Fi-cino's view and in Plato's own person, was to predicatethe triplecausality which the Timaeushad also entertained,but strictly in thecontext of the demiurge and the world's creation, of the prime hy-postasis in its eternity and transcendence.It had done so, as we haveseen, by postulating two triads:the more manifest triadconcerningthe threehypostases, and the more secrettriadconcerningthe causesassociated preeminently with the "father" and "lord". It was thismore secret triad within a triad that could be said to anticipatetheTrinity. For, whereas the enigma of the three "governors" had no

54E.N. Tigerstedt's contention in his "The Poet as Creator: Origins of a Meta-phor," ComparativeLiteratureStudies, 5 (I968), 460-46I, that Ficino repudiated the in-terpretatioChristiana of the Timaeus is very misleading as I shall try to demonstrate onanother occasion.

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RENAISSANCE QUARTERLYrealbearing on the Christiandogma, as St.Justin, for instance, hadtoo precipitately believed, and as St. Cyril of Alexandriahad longago forewarned,55he enigma ofaition,periandheneka,anenigma Fi-cino sees as centered on the prime hypostasis alone, had indeedachieved something truly prophetic. It could bejuxtaposed with thefamous Pauline sentence in Romans and seen to be fulfilled, as itwere, by that sentence.

* * *

We can now appreciatethat there are substantial differencesbe-tween the passages Wind adduced in his brief appendix on "theshadow" of Arianism. Not only do Ficino's own thoughts becomemore refinedandhis treatmentof the texts more discriminating,buta fundamentaldifferenceemerges in his mind between the hypostatictriad he sees Plato referringto in a number of texts, particularlyofcourse and definitively in the Parmenides,nd the causalitytriad con-cerning the first hypostasis, which he sets forth in one text alone (theproduct of his old age) as a triad within a triad, a mystery within amystery. But Ficino had only managedto arriveat this insight him-self after a series of attempts to unravel the mysteries of the SecondLetter.In this regardwe can see once again that it often took a longtime, sometimes as here or in the case of the Phaedrus'Charioteermyth a lifetime almost, for Ficino to perfect his understandingofPlato, to initiatehimself fully into the master'soccultedwisdom.With regardto the largercontext we arestill left with some chal-lenging questions. Whereas the later Platonists had had access toChristian truths as a result of their disseminationin the writings ofthe Areopagite, but had propounded the "Arian" doctrine of thesubordinationof Mind to the One while denying their consubstanti-ality, Plato himself, possessed only with the Mosaic wisdom of theprisca heologia,hadneverthelessarrivedatinsights into the triplecau-sality associated with the One that he had managed to formulate interms open later to a Christianinterpretation.This is not to say thatPlato had arrived at the dogma itself of the Trinity-the letter toRondoni with which we began is quite explicit on this matter-butthat he had produced statements that could be seen, from Ficino'sretrospective viewpoint, to anticipatethe truthsof revelationand to

55Seen. 31 above.

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adumbratethe mystery of the Trinity. In a similar way Moses andthe Ilebrew prophets had given voice to utterances hat latergenera-tions could see were anticipationsof the truths of revelation.Indeed,to the Florentine these anticipations were essentially of the samekind: Plato was after all the Attic Moses and the theology he had in-herited from the priscitheologiwas in all essentialscompatible withthe theology Moses had brought down from Sinai both in the writ-ten tablets of the law and in the secret wisdom he had transmittedorally to the chosen andwhich, accordingto Pico, was stillpreservedin the Kabbalah.56

Plato's anticipations,not only of the dogma of the Trinity but ofother dogmas such asthose of the IncarnationandRedemption, werethus of more pressing concern to Ficino than similar formulationsinthe writings of the majority of the post-Christian Platonists, evenone as sublime as Plotinus. Forjust as the Mosaic wisdom had beenfulfilled and transcended n Christ, so too had the poetic theology ofthe ancients, the theological wisdom of the non-Jews which had cul-minated in Plato. After Christ the perfectedwisdom hadbeen trans-mitted by St.John, St. Paul, and the Areopagiteto Augustineand theother Fathers,thence to the Scholastics,andeventuallyto Ficino andthe Renaissance;but this Christian wisdom was the perfection ofboth the Mosaic wisdom of the Hebrews and the Platonicwisdom ofthe Greeks.57From Ficino'sviewpoint the ChristianPlatonismof theAreopagite, of Origen, of Augustine and of Henry of Ghent was thetrue heir to Plato, not the pagan Platonism of the later Platonici.While these Platonici,and preeminently Plotinus, had penetratedtomany of the secrets of the Platonic text, were guides to the solutionof most of its hermeneuticalmysteries, andin generalwere venerated

56Pico, Oratio (ed. Garin, pp. I54-8); cf. Heptaplus, proem to Expositio II (ed.Garin, p. 222). Pico's views on the Platonists and the Trinity, particularly as expressedin the Heptaplus, are a fascinating study in their own right.57Ficino has a very interesting letter to Martin Prenninger, dated June I ith or I2th1489 (Opera, p. 899), where, interalia, he gives a list of Platonists writing in Latin up tohis own contemporaries, Cusanus and Bessarion, as well as of Platonic works in theGreek tradition but available in Latin translations including his own. The letter testifiesto his consciousness of being the inheritor of a continuous Latin Platonic tradition thatreached back through Scotus, Henry of Ghent, Avicenna and Avicebron to Boethius,Augustine and Apuleius. See Kristeller, Philosophy, pp. 26-27; Raymond Klibansky,The Continuity of the Platonic Traditionduringthe Middle Ages (London, 1939; reissuedwith another essay and some additions, Munich, 198I), pp. 36, 42-47; and RaymondMarcel, Marsile Ficin (I433-I499) (Paris, 1958), pp. 606-607.

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RENAISSANCE QUARTERLYteachersof its metaphysics and mythology, in the finalanalysistheywere an hereticaleddy from the mainstreamwhich after Plato hadbecome wholly Christian;no longer could they be saidto occupy theposition of being prisci heologi,or even of being theirlegitimate suc-cessors.Just as God hadgrantedto the pre-Christianworld in general(and not just to the Hebrews) poets, priests and philosophers whohad anticipated,however partially,the truthsof the Christianrevela-tion, and ust as He had bestowed on allmen some meansof access totheprisca heologia ndto the wisdom of or like the wisdom of Moses,so He hadjust as certainlywithdrawn this gift after the Incarnation,though arguably in gradual stages depending on geographicalandother circumstances.PaganPlatonism had beenasirrevocablysuper-seded asJudaism, that is, by the true Platonismof Christianity.Theproof was in the "theft"of the Platonicwisdom contained n St.Johnand in the Areopagite by the Platonici f succeedingcenturies.Thus, for all his scholarlyand philosophicalfascinationwith, andindeed daunting masteryof, the writings of the Platonici, ndnotablyof Plotinus and Proclus, the two greatest thinkersof late antiquity,Ficino's primary commitment was to Plato himself, not to his fol-lowers. For he approachedhim as the Church still approachestheHebrew Prophets, as the priscus heologuswho stood at the culmina-tion of the "theology" of the Greeks and had preparedthem, assurely as the Prophets had preparedthe Hebrews, for the coming ofChrist.

Though Ficino was fascinatedby the extent to which the ancienttheology and its master had arrivedat anticipationsof the ultimaterevelation, he was under no illusions that the truths perceived byPlato, even those perceivedby the "thirdeye" of his intuitive intelli-gence as compared to those graspedin an inferiorway by the discur-sive reason, could ever be accordedthe dogmatic statusof the Chris-tian truths;in this respect they sharedin the incomplete nature of thevisions and prophecies of Moses and the Prophets. Thus it was im-perativethat an interpretermove circumspectly, that he takeAugus-tine as his guide, whose "divine footsteps" Ficino would follow tothe best of his ability.58For the pathof the RenaissancePlatonist wasalways to be Augustine's and Ficino had no interest in reviving an-cient Platonism for its own sake, as Pletho seems to have had.

58Cf. Opera, p. 731; and della Torre, p. 593.

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Augustine hadused the Platonists but only as steppingstones;and hehad come fully to recognize the heretical Arian subordinationismatthe heartof their metaphysics, and thus to rejectthem, and to rejectPlato himself, without denying, at least earlier n his career,the enor-mous effectiveness of Plato as a propaedeuticto Christian conver-sion.59Ficino's concern with Plato is unmistakable, and he could neverbring himself to accept the later Augustine's decision to breakradi-cally with pagan philosophy. Though one might legitimately rejectthe Platoniciand their Arianism, Plato's position as a pre-Christiantheologusboth protected him from the censures one could bring tobearagainst the Platoniciand vindicatedhis right to prophesy and toserve as an adumbrator of Christian truths. Thus the value of theenigma in the SecondLetterlay in its preliminary,anticipatorynature.Necessarily, it could not have arrived at the truth itself, since it waswritten before Christ, but it was an authenticforeshadowing of thetruth, and Plato had approachedas close as the Prophets, as close,that is, as it was possible, to a revelation not yet revealed, to a truthnot yet tellable.60By the same token Ficino couldlargely dismiss theformulations of the post-ChristianpaganPlatonists,even though, asa resultof their "theft" from St.John andothers, they might come attimes closer to the truths of Christianity. No longer anticipations,their partialwisdom had alreadybeen wholly revealed;at best, theywere prophesying after the event, at worst fallingaway into heresy.To neglect these majorreservationson Ficino'spartwith regardtoPlato himself and even more so with regardto the Platonicis to seehim through a distorted lens. To have claimed too much for Plato orfor Platonism would have been as disastrous for Ficino'sgoals as anapologist as claiming too little;andit would have flown in the face of

59See, among many studies, Michele Federico Sciacca, Saint Augustin et le neopla-tonisme:lapossibilite d'unephilosophie chretienne Louvain, 1956);Jean Pepin, Ex Platoni-corumpersona: etudessur les lecturesphilosophiquesde Saint Augustin (Amsterdam, 1977);and Alfred W. Matthews, The Development of Saint Augustinefrom Neoplatonism toChristianity, 386-39I AD (Washington, 1980).For Augustine's views on the Trinity specifically, see Michael Schmaus, Die psycho-logische Trinitatslehredesheiligen Augustinus(Munster, 1927; repr. 1967), and Olivier duRoy, L'Intelligence de lafoi en la Triniteselon saint Augustin,genese de sa theologiejusqu'en391 (Paris, 1966).60Cf. Ficino's observation in his commentary on the Republicbook VIII: "[Plato]quem solum temporis intervallum prohibuit esse Christianum" (Opera, p. 5io).

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584 RENAISSANCE QUARTERLYthe Church's fascination for a thousand years with the story of St.Augustine and with the elusive possibility of achievinga satisfactoryaccommodation with Platonism. The extent to which Plato hadfailed to intuit the true relationship between the hypostases, eventhough he had glimpsed the nature of the Godhead by way of ananalysisof divine causality, was an importantindex rather o the im-perfection (in the sense of incompleteness) of all pre-Christian, in-cluding Mosaic, theology. And Ficino had no intention of denyingthe uniqueness andperfectionof the Christianrevelation-he was af-ter all an ordained priest. In the SecondLetter,however, Plato hadcome nearerperhapsthanany other of the gentilesto anticipating hetriune causality, if not the consubstantiality,of the Father,Son andHoly Spirit.UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES

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