Some Unpublished Notes by Marsilio Ficino on Plato's Parmenides In MS Laur. 89 SUP. 71

Abstract

I t is well established that Marsilio Ficino's already be found in his autograph notes account of Plato's Parmenides depends on on Proclus's Platonic Theology in Florence, the onto-theological reading of it endorsed Biblioteca Riccardiana MS 70 (folios ir by Proclus and other Neoplatonists. Already 4V), copied by Matthaeus Camariota; this in antiquity, this approach stood opposed manuscript contains Proclus's Platonic to that of Albinus and Alcinous, who both Theology, Elements of Theology and Elements held that the Parmenides should be interof Physics, as well as Ocellus Lucanus's preted as a logical treatise.1 It was Proclus's On the Nature of the Universe, which Ficino commentary on the dialogue which Ficino studied and probably translated before had on his desk, as his main source, while 1463.3 Moreover, in the argumentum to his working on his own full-scale commentary, translation of the dialogue, dedicated to written between 1492 and 1494 and Cosimo de' Medici before August 1464— published in 1496.2 The work was the fruit one of his earliest attempts at an interpre of Ficino's reflections on the Parmenides tation of the Parmenides—Ficino already over thirty years, developing from his early sides with the theological reading, stating reading of Proclus. References to the theothat Plato 'included the entirety of theology logical interpretation of the Parmenides can in the Parmenides' ('universam in Parmenide