Books Projects in Process

Controversies over God and Being in the Italian Renaissance: religion, philosophy, and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s De ente et uno. (tentative title): Controversies over God and Being in the Italian Renaissance is a new book on Giovanni Pico’s De ente et uno. I will include the first full translations of the works involved in its controversies. Pico’s debate with friends over the nature of God and reality at a Medici villa quickly spread like storms not just over Christianity, but also Judaism, Islam, paganism, and religion per se. Many intervened: university professors and poets, like Cittadini and two Benivieni brothers; Savonarola and Dominicans in Florence; the philologist Poliziano; Pico’s polymath nephew Gianfrancesco; the expert of Arabic and Jewish philosophy del Medigo; and Ficino, whose Platonism Pico first targeted. Nota Bene:This project is supported by Harvard University’s I Tatti Center for Italian Renaissance Studies.

The Marsilio Ficino Editions Project is supported by a three-year Faculty Research Support Regular Grant from the Office of Research, University of Notre Dame ($73,796). I am the principal investigator, editor, and author of Marsilio Ficino’s Latin translations of Iamblichus’s De secta pythagorica and Theon of Smyrna’s Mathematica. The editions (De secta Pythagorica and Mathematica) are under contract with Aragno Editore (Turin) in their Ficinus Novus series, directed by Maurizio Campanelli, Professore di filologia, Sapienza, Università di Roma, Christopher Celenza Dean of Georgetown College, Georgetown University, and Sebastiano Gentile, Professore Ordinario, Università degli Studi di Cassino. The editions will be accompanied by a long and detailed study that aims at examining the following four items: i) the development of Ficino’s translations and the place of these translations in his oeuvre; ii) the place of these works in the history of Neoplatonism and Platonic traditions in general; iii) comparing these translations to a brief typology of Greek to Latin translations of philosophy in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance; iv) a brief study of the fortune of these works.