MARSILIO FICINO

When I had decided to write a letter to you to congratulate you on the Cardinal’s dignity original: Cardinea dignitate recently conferred upon you, and was thinking about to whom I should best give it to deliver to you—someone who would make our congratulation all the more pleasing—I suddenly betook myself to the Academy The Platonic Academy of Florence, an informal circle of scholars supported by the Medici family., hoping that in its inner sanctums, at least, some messenger most acceptable to you would not be lacking. There, by a certain divine fate, the first to meet me was Iamblichus A 4th-century Neoplatonist philosopher whose work on Egyptian and Chaldean mysteries Ficino was translating., known among the Academicians by the name The Divine, and a great priest there. To whom indeed I said: “Hail, Iamblichus, great priest. For the present (as you see), I have congratulated Giovanni de' Medici, a new high priest original: antistiti; a term used here to emphasize the religious authority of the young Cardinal. of the Christian religion; I pray you, if I ask what is right, that you make our congratulation—otherwise meager—fuller with your divine words and mysteries.” He nodded to my prayers, and with this sentiment, “Oh great priest Giovanni, that great priest comes.” Therefore, receive such a messenger joyfully, and after the first greeting, after the letter has been read, listen more attentively, if you please, to what that divine man says; for he promised that, so that he might speak things worthy of both his character and yours, he would express to you in brief what the Egyptian and Assyrian priests Ficino believed in a prisca theologia (ancient theology), a single thread of divine truth shared by ancient civilizations and perfected in Christianity. thought concerning religion and divine matters.