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Florence

Also Known As Florentine
Italy

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Florence hosted the council of 1439 that declared a short lived union between the Latin and Greek churches, a meeting whose Greek delegation also brought Platonic texts into Italian circulation. Under Medici patronage Marsilio Ficino translated Plato and the Hermetic corpus into Latin in the city, work that shaped Renaissance magic and esotericism for centuries afterwards. The friar Girolamo Savonarola preached against that culture from San Marco, briefly governed the city, and was hanged and burned in the Piazza della Signoria in 1498.

Facts
Attributions
Tradition
Catholicism, with Dominican San Marco and Franciscan Santa Croce; the Christian Platonism of Ficino and Pico under Medici patronage; the reforming preaching of Savonarola, burned in the city in 1498; and the council of 1439, which agreed a short-lived union with the Greek church 2
Origins
Founded
A Roman colony on the Arno, a commune from the twelfth century and the leading city of the Renaissance under the Medici 1
Traditions
Sacred and Liturgical Languages
Latin for the church and for the translations of Plato and the Corpus Hermeticum, Greek brought by the delegates to the council, and Tuscan Italian in Dante and in Savonarola's sermons 3
History
Notable Development
Dominated in religious and political life from 1494 to 1498 by the Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola, who organized the Bonfire of the Vanities before his excommunication and execution. 1
Learn More
The Union That Did Not Hold

The council that moved from Ferrara to Florence in 1439 was the most serious attempt ever made to reunite the Latin and Greek churches. The Byzantine emperor came in person with his patriarch and a large delegation, because Constantinople needed western military help against the Ottomans, and the sessions worked through the points of difference: the addition of the filioque to the creed, the existence of purgatory, the use of unleavened bread in the eucharist, and the authority of the pope. A decree of union was signed in July.

It did not hold. Mark of Ephesus refused to sign at all. The patriarch died in Florence during the council. When the delegation returned home the union was rejected by most of the clergy and by the population, and the saying that it would be better to see the Turkish turban in the city than the Latin mitre belongs to that mood. Constantinople fell fourteen years later.

The council's other consequence was intellectual. The Greek delegation included men steeped in a philosophical tradition Latin Europe had lost, and one of them, Gemistos Plethon, lectured in Florence on the differences between Plato and Aristotle. Cosimo de' Medici heard him. Bessarion, who signed the union and became a cardinal, spent the rest of his life gathering Greek manuscripts and left his library to Venice. The immediate result in Florence was a decision to have Plato translated into Latin in full, which is where the next article begins.

Ficino's Hermes, and Savonarola's Fire

Cosimo de' Medici set Marsilio Ficino to translate Plato and then, when a Greek manuscript of the Hermetic writings arrived, had him put that first. Ficino and his contemporaries believed the Hermetic texts to be Egyptian and older than Moses, a wisdom given to the ancients that ran parallel to revelation, and that belief is what gave them authority. It survived until 1614, when Isaac Casaubon showed on linguistic grounds that they were composed in the early Christian centuries. By then the damage, or the achievement, was done: a philosophical magic with astrological medicine, planetary talismans and music for drawing down influences had entered European learning and would run through it for two hundred years.

Ficino set that out in his three books on life, written for scholars whose melancholy he treated as an occupational hazard. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, in the same circle, added the claim that Jewish kabbalah confirmed Christian doctrine, and offered nine hundred theses for public debate in Rome, some of which were condemned.

Into that city came Girolamo Savonarola, prior of San Marco, preaching that Florence would be scourged and then renewed. The French invasion of 1494 and the fall of the Medici appeared to confirm him, and for four years he was the dominant voice in a republic that declared Christ its king. Children were organised to collect luxuries, and the burning of the vanities in 1497 consumed books, paintings, cosmetics and instruments. He was excommunicated, a rival friar challenged him to an ordeal by fire that collapsed in farce, and in 1498 he was hanged and burned in the square where the bonfire had stood.

Cross-Tradition Connections

Associated With

This source names Florence directly: "in the Piazza della Signoria in Florence, its 1873 removal for protection and 1882 permanent installation in the Galleria dell'Accademia, the 1910 replica placed at the original outdoor site, and a..."

This source names Florence directly: "Challenges is usually credited to Florence Campbell's work of the early 1930s rather than to anything older."

Source Numerology: Or, What Pythagoras WroughtUnderwood Dudley

This source names Florence directly: "Artifact Browser catalogue entry for Florence 4209, the Francois Vase, an academic digital library maintained by Tufts University, giving the potter and painter signatures, technique, dimensions and..."

This source names Florence directly: "Publishing's own biographical note on Florence Campbell, author of the 1931 numerology text Your Days Are Numbered, printed as front matter in the publisher's own edition of her work."

Source Florence Campbell (publisher biographical note)Newcastle Publishing editorial staff

This source names Florence directly: "Wikipedia's article on Florence Li Tim-Oi documents her 25 January 1944 ordination as a priest at Shaoqing by Bishop Ronald Hall, her prior ordination as a deaconess in Macau in 1941, her 1946..."

John King, Figures

This source names Florence directly: "Katie King, the best documented spirit associated with the medium Florence Cook, was presented as his daughter."

Source Man, Myth and MagicRichard Cavendish (ed.)

This source names Florence directly: "with versions at the Uffizi Gallery, Florence, and the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich."

Marsilio Ficino translated Plato and the Hermetic corpus into Latin under Medici patronage in Florence.

This source names Florence directly: "The primary version is held at the Uffizi Gallery, Florence; a second version is held at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich."

This source names Florence directly: "of Canada's liturgical propers for Florence Li Tim-Oi document her recognition across the Anglican Communion as its first woman priest, her ministry in China and later in Canada, and the Church's..."

This source names Florence directly: "Home and Florence Cook, in which he reported observing phenomena he could not explain by ordinary means."

This source names Florence directly: "chiefly in fifteenth century Florence, staged by lay confraternities, often ones organized specifically for boys and young men, on civic and religious feast days."

Source Sacra Rappresentazione (Wikipedia)Wikipedia contributors

This source names Florence directly: "of Fra Filippo Lippi, Italian (Florence), ca."

This source names Florence directly: "Isabel Florence Hapgood's compiled and translated service book has been used as a standard English-language Orthodox liturgical reference for well over a century, a documented track record of..."

Source Service Book of the Holy Orthodox-Catholic Apostolic ChurchIsabel Florence Hapgood (compiler and translator)

This source names Florence directly: "Walter Fleming and actor William J. Florence, its adoption of Arabian-themed pageantry, and its growth into a charitable organization built around Shriners Hospitals for Children, beginning with the..."

This source names Florence directly: "under accession 1993.477.2, a gift of Florence and Herbert Irving, 1993."

This source names Florence directly: "(34.3 cm), the credit line Gift of Florence and Herbert Irving, 1993, the department as Asian Art and the classification as Sculpture."

This source names Florence directly: "It met, with a break and a relocation to Ferrara and then Florence for part of its later sessions, until 1449, and its history is really the history of a rupture: Pope Eugene IV attempted to..."

Source The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, 3rd revised editionF. L. Cross and E. A. Livingstone (eds.)

The Council of Florence declared a short lived union of the Latin and Greek churches in 1439.

This source names Florence directly: "Hall's The Medium and the Scientist, The Story of Florence Cook and William Crookes, published by Prometheus Books in 1984, is a scholarly historical study of the Victorian medium Florence Cook and..."

This source names Florence directly: "and location in the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence."

This source names Florence directly: "di Cosimo I of the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence, part of a larger decorative programme of mythological and allegorical scenes commissioned by Cosimo I de' Medici."

This source names Florence directly: "Hall's The Spiritualists: The Story of Florence Cook and William Crookes, published by Duckworth in 1962, is a critical historical study reassessing the celebrated Victorian mediumship of Florence..."

This source names Florence directly: "The panel was bought in Florence by the English collector Alexander Barker and passed to the National Gallery, London, at auction in 1874, the only recorded open-market sale of one of Botticelli's..."

This source names Florence directly: "Are Numbered, published in 1931, is Florence Campbell's own presentation of a system of numerology she taught and popularized, assigning meanings to numbers derived from names and birth dates as a..."

Source Your Days Are NumberedFlorence Campbell

Contained In

Italy, Countries
Sources
1. Encyclopaedia Britannica (online academic reference)
Encyclopaedia Britannica editors, Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc., 2024View the Source
2. Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition
Frances A. Yates, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1964View the Source
3. The Oxford Dictionary of World Religions
John Bowker (ed.), Oxford University Press, 1997View the Source
The Oxford English Dictionary, 3rd edition
Oxford University Press, Oxford University Pressdemonym / adjectival formView the Source
Spiritual and Demonic Magic from Ficino to Campanella
D. P. Walker, Warburg Institute, 1958
Marsilio Ficino: Three Books on Life
Carol V. Kaske and John R. Clark (eds.), Renaissance Society of America, 1989
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