From the book
Marsilio Ficino’s Platonic Theology, Volume II
Marsilio Ficino · Diotimos Editions · 2026
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At a Glance
- The wordVestis is clothing, testa a hardened earthen crust, gleba a clod.
- In the Platonic TheologyVI.2.2 imagines the soul’s faculties as covered by bodily conditions.
- In this editionThe edition preserves the distinct body parts, humours, fat, clothing, mud, crust, clods and flesh.
- A place to readThe garment and mud-clad child distinguish acquired covering from nature.
Meaning
Vestis is clothing, testa a hardened earthen crust, gleba a clod. Umbra is shadow, distinguishable from the thing casting it. Abluere and abstergere mean washing away and wiping off; their force is to remove an accretion without destroying the underlying thing.
Use in the book
VI.2.2 imagines the soul’s faculties as covered by bodily conditions. The natural power is submerged in four humours and smothered by fat; imagination is overlaid with borrowed shapes. Ficino’s striking comparison is a child coated in mud from birth who mistakes the crust for his own flesh. Washing exposes what was there beneath the accretion. The purpose is epistemic and ethical: a condition acquired in bodily life need not reveal the soul’s essence. The humoral language is historical physiology and the mud story an analogy, not a medical account.
The next images shift from coating to projection. Body is appositional to “your shadow”: the soul mistakes the low location of its bodily image for its own mode of being. A boy above a well imagines himself at its bottom; a bird flying in air thinks itself on earth because its shadow is there. These compact cases make the direction of dependence visible. Return into oneself consequently leads to amplitude rather than confinement. They prepare the cave’s shadows, but each comparison has its own point and source unit.
Places to read
Translation in this edition
The edition preserves the distinct body parts, humours, fat, clothing, mud, crust, clods and flesh. These are not interchangeable metaphors for “matter.” The apparatus emphasizes corpus as an apposition to umbram tuam and the independence of the well and bird units.
abluere; abstergere; caro
abluere; abstergere; caro. Printed forms: Ablue; absterge; carnes; Carneum.
To wash and wipe clean; flesh or fleshly. Removing the clods reveals the underlying body in the analogy for stripping away misleading psychic accretions. References: VI.2.2. See Garment, mud and misleading shadows.
avis; volare
avis; volare. Printed forms: avis; volans; volare.
Bird and flying. The bird’s shadow lies on earth while it flies in air, illustrating the same error of self-location without repeating the well’s setting. References: VI.2.5. See Garment, mud and misleading shadows.
humor; tabes; pinguedo
humor; tabes; pinguedo. Printed forms: pinguedine; quattuor humorum; tabe.
The four humours, corrupt matter and fat in the historical physiological picture. These describe the natural power’s entanglement and should not be treated as modern medical mechanisms. References: VI.2.2. See Garment, mud and misleading shadows.
lutum; testa; gleba
lutum; testa; gleba. Printed forms: glebis; lutea testa; luteum; luto.
Mud, an earthen crust and clods. A child encrusted from birth mistakes the acquired mud-covering for his body’s own flesh. References: VI.2.2. See Garment, mud and misleading shadows.
mergere; suffocare
mergere; suffocare. Printed forms: mergitur; suffocatam.
To submerge and smother. The verbs intensify the picture of bodily conditions obscuring the soul’s power without becoming its essence. References: VI.2.2. See Garment, mud and misleading shadows.
parvipendere; horrere
parvipendere; horrere. Printed forms: horres; parvipendis.
To value lightly and recoil in aversion. Disdain for temporal things and ugliness supplies signs in the fourfold exhortation toward greatness, goodness, beauty and eternity. References: VI.2.3. See Garment, mud and misleading shadows.
puteus; fundus
puteus; fundus. Printed forms: fundo putei; puteum.
A well and its bottom. The boy standing above mistakes his shadow below for his own position; the direction of dependence drives the analogy. References: VI.2.4. See Garment, mud and misleading shadows.
revertere; respicere
revertere; respicere. Printed forms: respice; revertere.
To return and look back or beyond. The exhortation moves attention from bodily shadow toward the soul itself, not toward a larger bodily interior. References: VI.2.3, VI.2.6. See Garment, mud and misleading shadows.
umbra
umbra. Printed forms: umbrae; umbram; umbram tuam.
A shadow, a derivative image of a higher source. Visible circuits shadow spiritual ones; irrational life is pictured as an outflowing shadow, not as absolutely nonexistent. References: V.1.5, V.14.8, V.15.3. See Image, shadow and ranked truth.
A shadow dependent on what casts it. Body is called the soul’s shadow, and the well and bird examples expose mistaken identification with its location. References: VI.2.3, VI.2.4, VI.2.5. See Garment, mud and misleading shadows.
vestis; involvere
vestis; involvere. Printed forms: corporali veste; involutam.
A bodily garment; being wrapped or enveloped. Mind sees the soul under bodily accretions and may mistake that appearance for its nature. References: VI.2.2. See Garment, mud and misleading shadows.