Diotimos Library · Renaissance Collection · Bilingual Edition
Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology, Volume I
Proem and Books I–IV · Latin with an independent English translation
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Facing Pages · Branch 55 of 174
Book II · Chapter 2 · §§ 12–14
Latin
p. 112Quorum alter sufficiet; superfluus erit alter. Sin alter totum valet, alter vero solummodo partem, qui non valet totum conficere non est Deus; et frustra generabit mundi partem quam alter simul cum toto fabricat mundo. Si autem uterque ad dimidiam mundi partem creandam vim habet, neuter cunctorum erit principium. Et quia illae partes in uno toto ad unum finem concurrunt communione naturae, oportebit binos illos deos ad Deum unum referri superiorem, ut motus ad unum, qui fit per duos, ducatur ex communione duorum ab uno quodam superiore deducta.
Quod si quis asserat a diis geminis duos construi mundos omnino inter se diversos atque dissimiles, cogetur fateri tum deos illos tum mundos nullo modo inter se convenire. Quo igitur pacto aut uterque illorum est, atque est Deus unus, vivit, intelligit, operatur? Aut uterque istorum est mundus unus, opus et corporale? Itaque convenient mundi gemini invicem. At una natura in qua conveniunt ab uno tandem principio trahitur, non duobus. Rursus, si dii ambo eundem semper finem appetant, aut alter erit ab altero.
Aut uterque ab uno superiore, aut saltem in una substantia ambo. Nisi enim ita congruerent, ad eundem finem minime conspirarent. Utcumque sit, unus solus est Deus. Sin opus idem semper alter vult, alter non vult, sequitur opus illud et fieri simul et non fieri, esse atque non esse, si modo aeque valet huius Dei velle atque illius nolle. Ille enim solus esset Deus cuius semper praevaleret affectus. At si modo consentiant invicem, modo dissentiant, et nunc huius, nunc illius conatus exsuperet, est uterque mutabilis. Neque assentiendum est Manichaeis Gnosticisque philosophis duos esse deos asseverantibus.
Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology, Volume I: Book II
p. 113One of these worlds will suffice; the other will be superfluous. But if one god has power over the whole and the other only over a part, the one who cannot fashion the whole is not God; and he will fruitlessly generate a part of the world which the other fashions together with the whole world. If each has the power to create half the world, neither will be the principle of all things. And because those parts converge within one whole upon one end through a communion of nature, those twin gods will have to be referred to one higher God, so that the movement toward unity which comes about through the two may be derived from their communion, itself drawn from some one higher principle.
But if anyone asserts that the twin gods construct two worlds wholly diverse and dissimilar from one another, he will be compelled to admit that neither those gods nor those worlds agree with one another in any way. By what means, then, does each of those gods exist, and exist as one God, live, understand, and act? Or how is each of these worlds one world, a work, and corporeal? The twin worlds will therefore agree with one another. Yet the one nature in which they agree is ultimately drawn from one principle, not two. Again, if both gods always desire the same end, either one will be from the other.
Or both will be from one higher principle, or at least both will be in one substance. Unless they agreed in this way, they would by no means conspire toward the same end. Whatever the case, there is only one God. But if one always wills the same work and the other does not, it follows that the work both comes to be and does not come to be, both exists and does not exist—provided this God's willing and that God's unwilling are of equal force. For only the one whose desire always prevailed would be God. But if they sometimes agree and sometimes disagree, and now the effort of one, now that of the other, prevails, each is mutable. Nor should we assent to the Manichaean and Gnostic philosophers who assert that there are two gods.
Socrates
Reading Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology, Volume I · Book II · II.2.12–II.2.14
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Socrates will begin with this book and its sources.About This Reading Edition
Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology places the immortality of the soul at the center of an extended philosophical ascent through body, soul, angel, and God. This exact page-aligned Renaissance edition presents the authorial Proem and Books I–IV in a newly established Latin reading text with an independent English translation prepared by Diotimos Editions.
Historical Text and Translation
The Latin reading text is based on the Florence editio princeps printed by Antonio Miscomini on 7 November 1482 and principally collated against the Paris 1559 printing, with a 1641 Opera printing used only as a late control and OCR aid. Abbreviations are expanded, spelling and punctuation are conservatively normalized, and substantive departures among the witnesses are documented in the edition’s apparatus.
About Diotimos Editions
Diotimos Editions prepared this independently worded English translation in house. It aims for a dignified but readable modern register while preserving Ficino’s argumentative sequence, metaphors, technical distinctions, repetitions, conditions, purpose clauses, and direct appeals; long periods are divided only where clarity requires it.
Rights
Ficino’s Latin source work is in the public domain. The 2026 English translation and Diotimos editorial matter are original to this edition and remain © 2026 Diotimos.