Additions to the Afterlife of Marsilio Ficino’s De vita How Did De vita Get to England?

Abstract

This study seeks to contribute to the survival of Marsilio Ficino’s work De vita libri tres with new additions. After a brief review of its text editions and translations, previous findings are mentioned in the literature on survival in Germany, France, and Switzerland. Then some French authors’ works are referred to that have not been included in the research so far. However, my main question is how and when did De vita get to England? To answer this, the paper examines the three years after the editio princeps (1489), when three Oxford scholars were in Florence as guests of Lorenzo de’ Medici, students of Angelo Poliziano and Demetrios Chalkokondyles. These scholars were William Grocyn, Thomas Linacre, and William Latimer, who, after deepening their knowledge of Greek and classical literacy, returned home to become the defining personalities of their homeland. Since Ficino also belonged to the Medici Circle and was in close contact with the said Florentine scholars, as evidenced by Ghirlandaio’s frescoes painted in 1488–1489, it cannot be ruled out that Latimer began to take an interest in humanistic medicine because of Ficino’s De vita. Latimer continues his medical studies in Italy on the path by which Ficino begins his book: reading Galen’s works, of which later on Latimer published several translations in Latin. Thus, it is almost certain that De vita first came to England shortly after its first release, by Latimer and his associates.