Diotimos Library · Renaissance Collection · Bilingual Edition
Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology, Volume I
Proem and Books I–IV · Latin with an independent English translation
Explore the LexiconSwipe or use the arrow keys.
Facing Pages · Branch 76 of 174
Book II · Chapter 7 · §§ 22–26
Latin
p. 154Sed cogitur res quaelibet inde tota pendere semper ut a corpore umbra. Quippe quando causa effectum efficit ipsa totum, atque effectus, si ad substantiam causae comparetur, imaginarium quiddam est et vanum potius quam substantiale, tunc sane effectus tamquam per se vanus continuo causae subsidio indiget. Et causa quae fecit totum conservat totum.
Mundus autem, si comparetur ad Deum, finitus videlicet ad infinitum, vanior est magisque umbratilis quam si finiti corporis umbra finita comparetur ad corpus. Denique summa causa rerum sic rebus penitus dominatur, si res non semel modo ab illa manaverint, sed et assidue pendeant, sicut imagines a corporibus fiunt ac servantur in speculo. Quoniam Deus agit servatque omnia, ideo in omnibus operatur, id est, causae rerum sequentes Deum nihil agunt absque virtute actioneque divina. Si Deus angelo esse actumque largitur et servat, largitur etiam agendi virtutem. Largitur et actionem atque conservat.
Ita quicquid angelus naturaliter operatur, Dei operatur virtute, tamquam instrumentum virtute agit opificis.
Ergo Deus agit non angelum solum, verum etiam ipsum angeli opus, et multo magis quam angelus opus efficit angelicum, cum ipse sit prima actionis origo. Si opus hoc quod est factum ab angelo agitet ipsum aliquid, per eandem agit Dei virtutem per quam et ipsum factum fuit ab angelo. Quamobrem Dei virtute fit quod ubique fit, a quocumque fiat.
Praesertim cum omnia quae aliquid agunt esse quodammodo suo operi praebeant. Esse, inquam, hoc aut illud.
Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology, Volume I: Book II
p. 155But each thing is compelled always to depend upon him in its entirety, as a shadow upon a body. For when a cause itself produces the effect in its entirety, and the effect, compared with the substance of its cause, is something image-like and empty rather than substantial, then surely the effect, being as it were empty in itself, requires the cause’s continual support. And the cause that made the whole preserves the whole.
The world, however, if compared with God—the finite, that is, with the infinite—is emptier and more shadow-like than a finite body’s finite shadow would be if compared with that body. Finally, the supreme cause of things has complete dominion over them only if they have not merely once flowed from it but also depend upon it continually, just as images are produced by bodies and preserved in a mirror. Because God acts and preserves all things, he therefore works in all things; that is, the causes of things that come after God do nothing without divine power and action. If God grants and preserves being and act to an angel, he also grants it the power of acting. He grants the action too, and preserves it.
Thus whatever an angel naturally does, it does by God’s power, just as an instrument acts by the craftsman’s power.
God therefore produces not only the angel but also the angel’s very work; indeed, he produces the angelic work far more than the angel does, since he himself is the first origin of the action. If this work, which was made by the angel, itself moves something, it acts by the same divine power through which it too was made by the angel. Hence what takes place anywhere takes place by God’s power, whoever may bring it about.
Especially since all things that bring about something furnish being to their work in some manner—being, I mean, as this or that.
Socrates
Reading Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology, Volume I · Book II · II.7.22–II.7.26
Ask about a concept, passage, contradiction, or connection.
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.