Angel and messenger

Use in the book

The survey lists angels separately from gods, daimons, and heroes among higher kinds. It then describes a Platonic position that does not classify descents by those divisions. The hierarchy is cited as a possible framework, not endorsed by the alternative account under discussion.

Places to read

1. I.49.39.4Angels appear as one kind within a listed hierarchy of higher beings.

Translation in this edition

“Angels” fits the named class, without importing an entire later religious angelology.

Use in the book

Angels are not ornamental additions to a human world. They belong to the world's full extent and serve as companions in the enjoyment of God. Their intellectual feeding on an acorn makes visible the difference between consuming an object and comprehending the relations that sustain it: sun, moisture, root, and created end become a world of joys within the one thing. Human spiritual growth is repeatedly called angelical because the soul can know across distance and love beyond bodily appetite. The distinction between human beings and angels remains, however. Bodily life offers certain advantages and conditions peculiar to humanity; likeness is not an assertion that the reader has changed species. Angels also prevent inherited treasure from becoming solitude: heavenly intelligence includes fellowship.

Places to read

1. I.18Angels are included in the full extent of the world given for enjoyment.
2. I.26Their spiritual feeding on an acorn comprehends its relations and end.
3. I.67The speaker rejoices in angelic happiness while valuing his own created likeness to God.
4. III.1The recovery of childhood apprehensions is promised as an angelical enlargement.

In this edition

“Cherubims” is the supplied text's plural form alongside “Cherubim.” Such forms should be retained in quotation rather than silently made evidence of a different order of beings.

Use in the book

Angel names the fourth level of the ascending hierarchy: above soul and below God. In the Platonist account developed in Book I, the angel is indivisible and immutable in essence, power, and operation. Its understanding apprehends its objects together rather than through the soul's successive thoughts, and it can move a body without itself being moved with that body. Ficino explicitly marks this complete immobility as what the Platonists say, with other positions deferred.

Immobility does not make the angel absolutely simple or self-sufficient. It is an immobile multiplicity, containing essence, being, the power and act of understanding, and numerous understood forms. IV.2.6 further qualifies its stability: the angel can be called mutable insofar as it depends on another, yet its immediate origin from God and return to divine stability make it stable. Angelic immutability thus differs from divine independence. The imagined transformation of an entire soul into pure mind illustrates angelic cognition; it is not an account of a human soul literally changing into an angel.

Ficino calls the separate minds discussed through Aristotle 'angels and messengers,' presenting that terminology as Hebrew and later philosophical usage. He argues for very many, virtually innumerable, angelic species and questions counting them solely by celestial motions. Not every angel is assigned to move a sphere. Nor is an angel the sphere's immediately indwelling life. That role requires soul, which resembles angel in indivisibility and freedom from place but resembles body through changing activity and a relation to time. Soul mediates the angelic forms and order into divisible matter.

The distinction remains important within celestial psychology. A sphere's soul has an intellectual part that can hold its ideas simultaneously, and that part is called a mind. Consequently, not every mens is an independently subsisting angel: mind within soul, soul animating its body, and angelic mind above soul remain different levels and functions.

Further passage references. I.1.5–I.1.723; I.5.14–I.5.2823456789101112131415; I.6.1–I.6.623456; IV.1.29–IV.1.332345; IV.1.64–IV.1.67234; IV.2.6–IV.2.1123456; I.6.9

Places to read

1. I.5.19–22234Unmoved minds are distinguished from bodily movers and from a fixed census based only on motions.
2. I.6.1–623456Angelic stability coexists with intellectual multiplicity and dependence on a higher unity.
3. I.6.8–1023The enlarged-eye and pure-mind analogies distinguish an angel’s reception of truth from identity with truth.
4. IV.1.31Angelic life is intellectual alone, unlike sphere-souls’ intellectual and animating powers.

Translation in this edition

I.5.20 expressly calls “angels and messengers” Hebrew and later philosophical names for the minds under discussion. I.6.1 marks complete angelic immobility as Platonist doctrine and defers other opinions. The hypothetical pure mind in I.6.9 is an explanatory comparison, not literal human metamorphosis.

angelus

angelus. Printed forms: angeli; angelo; angelum; Angelus; angelus.

Angel as a separate intellectual being subordinate to God. The angel is not pure necessary being and acts with power continually bestowed by its first cause. References: II.1.1, II.7.12, II.7.24. See Angel.

Angel, the stable intellectual grade below God. Angelic reception and multiplicity distinguish this grade from pure divine act without giving it bodily extension. References: III.1.4, III.1.10, III.1.12. See Angel.

angelus / nuntius

angelus / nuntius. Printed forms: angelos; nuntiosque.

Angel and messenger. Ficino presents these as Hebrew and later philosophical names for the separate minds discussed through Aristotle, rather than Aristotle’s original vocabulary. References: I.5.20. See Angel.

fecunditas / amplifico

fecunditas / amplifico. Printed forms: amplificatae; fecunditate.

Fecundity and enlargement in multiplicity. The unrestricted intellectual kind is said to unfold into virtually innumerable species; the generative image concerns abundance of forms, not sexual reproduction. References: I.5.23. See Angel.

informis / ornatus

informis / ornatus. Printed forms: informis; ornatum.

Unformed / adornment or ordered array. Angel’s essence is described as receptive before illumination in an explanatory order, receiving the ornament of forms and ideas. References: III.1.12. See Angel.

mens angelica

mens angelica. Printed forms: mentem angelicam.

Angelic mind, distinguished from rational soul. Its announced indivisibility and immutability are later qualified by its difference from divine simplicity and by explicit Platonist attribution. References: I.1.5. See Angel.

pendere / converti

pendere / converti. Printed forms: convertitur; pendet.

To depend upon; to turn back toward. Angel's received stability is qualified by dependence, yet secured through immediate return to God. References: IV.2.6. See Angel.

ratio naturalis and usualness

ratio naturalis and usualness. Printed forms: convenire; generi; ut plurimum.

What accords with a kind’s nature and is found for the most part. Ficino infers that minds separate from bodies should be more abundant because separation better accords with incorporeal nature; the abundance claim depends on this naturalness premise. References: I.5.17. See Angel.

receptaculum

receptaculum. Printed forms: receptacula; receptaculum.

Receptacle or that which receives. Angel contains forms as immovable multiplicity, so receptivity does not imply bodily extension or temporal change. References: III.1.4. See Angel.

A receptive seat or recipient. Elemental globes become fitting recipients of rational souls through their place within the whole cosmic order. References: IV.1.91. See Fitting and correspondence.

Intellectual immovable rulers (Greek quotation)

νοερούς ἀνοχῆας ἀκαμπεῖς

Ficino attributes the saying to Zoroaster and immediately glosses its rulers as intellectual and immovable. It supports the transition from souls, which are partly mobile, to angels, which move other things without being moved in the same way. The source apparatus preserves a difference in Greek word order between its witnesses; this lexicon follows the supplied reading and its Latin gloss.

Place. I.5.19. See Angel.

Anaxagoras and Hermotimus (authorities and cited works)

Anaxagoras and Hermotimus. Ficino presents them as reaching angelic mind but stopping below the final ascent to God. I.1.5; I.6.1. See Ascent; Angel.

Aristotle and the Peripatetics (authorities and cited works)

Aristotle and the Peripatetics. Ficino invokes their arguments concerning forms, unmoved movers, ends, cosmic order, possibility, and celestial animation. He also distinguishes their accounts from Platonist positions. His titles, book numbers, and attributions are retained as part of his exposition. I.3.19, I.3.27; I.5.20–2223; II.9.21; II.12.17; II.13.8–122345; IV.1.88–9323456. See Cause; Angel; Order and harmony; Spheres and stars.

Avicenna (authorities and cited works)

Avicenna. Named in the discussion of the principal angelic minds and their number, and with Algazeles in support of celestial animation. I.5.20; IV.1.88. See Angel; Number; Spheres and stars.

Daniel (authorities and cited works)

Daniel. The prophetic saying concerning innumerable attendants supplies support for angelic abundance. Ficino places it beside discussion of Dionysius and angelic orders. I.5.27. See Angel; Number.

Dionysius the Areopagite (authorities and cited works)

Dionysius the Areopagite. Cited concerning the abundance of separate intellectual species and the numerical orders of angels. Ficino's account connects these classifications with Iamblichus and Proclus. I.5.27. See Angel; Number.

Hermotimus (authorities and cited works)

Hermotimus. See Anaxagoras and Hermotimus above; I.1.5; I.6.1.

Iamblichus (authorities and cited works)

Iamblichus. Appears with Proclus in the account of angelic numerical orders and among the named authorities for universal mental presence. I.5.27; II.6.14–24234567891011. See Angel; Mind.

Peripatetics (authorities and cited works)

Peripatetics. See Aristotle and the Peripatetics above, especially I.3.19; II.12.17; IV.1.88–9323456.

Proclus (authorities and cited works)

Proclus. A source for classifications of bodies and forms, arguments for incorporeal substance with Syrianus, and angelic numerical orders with Iamblichus. I.3.28–31234; I.5.27. See Form; Incorporeal and immaterial; Angel.

Metaphysics; divine philosophy; books on divine things (authorities and cited works)

Metaphysics; divine philosophy; books on divine things. Ficino uses these designations in arguments about unmoved movers, the good of universal order, and the world's relation to its governor. His book numbers should not silently be treated as modern critical references. I.5.20–2223; II.9.21; II.13.8; IV.1.88. See Angel; Cause; Order and harmony.