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Florence, 1492: The Reappearance of Plotinus*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Henri D. Saffrey
Henri D. Saffrey*
Affiliation:
Paris, France
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Extract

In the western world, Plotinus was only a name until 1492. None of his treatises had been translated during the Middle Ages, and the translations dating back to antiquity had been lost. He was not totally unknown, however, thanks to scholars like Firmicus Maternus, Saint Augustine, Macrobius, and to those parts of the works of Proclus translated in the thirteenth century by William of Moerbeke. But Plotinus's own writings remained completely unknown,and as Vespasiano da Bisticci observed in his Vite, “senza i libri non si poteva fare nulla” (“without the books, nothing can be done”). This fact was to change completely only with the publication by Marsilio Ficino of his Latin translation of the Enneads.

Type
Studies
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 49 , Issue 3 , Autumn 1996 , pp. 488 - 508
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 1996

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Footnotes

*

A first draft of this paper was read as a lecture to the Warburg Institute, 10 February 1993. I want to thank Professors P.O. Kristeller and M.J.B. Allen, Dr.Hélène Bonafous-Murat, and M. Armand Mettraux for their help in many ways. Many thanks also to the readers of Renaissance Quarterly for the English version.

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