Ficino Marsilio (1433–99), Italian Neoplatonic philosopher who played a leading role in the cultural life of Florence. Ordained a priest in 1473, he hoped to draw people to Christ by means of Platonism. It was through Ficino’s translation and commentaries that the works of Plato first became accessible to the Latin-speaking West, but the impact of Plato’s work was considerably affected by Ficino’s other interests. He accepted Neoplatonic interpretations of Plato, including those of Plotinus, whom he translated; and he saw Plato as the heir of Hermes Trismegistus, a mythical Egyptian sage and supposed author of the hermetic corpus, which he translated early in his career. He embraced the notion of a prisca theologia, an ancient wisdom that encapsulated philosophic and religious truth, was handed on to Plato, and was later validated by the Christian revelation. The most popular of his original works was Three Books on Life (1489), which contains the fullest Renaissance exposition of a theory of magic, based mainly on Neoplatonic sources. He postulated a living cosmos in which the World-Soul is linked to the world-body by spirit. This relationship is mirrored in man, whose spirit (or astral body) links his body and soul, and the resulting correspondence between microcosm and macrocosm allows both man’s control of natural objects through magic and his ascent to knowledge of God. Other popular works were his commentary on Plato’s Symposium (1469), which presents a theory of Platonic love; and his Platonic Theology (1474), in which he argues for the immortality of the soul. See also NEOPLATONISM. E.J.A.