Many current Ficinian scholars would agree with Ioan Couliano’s remark that "Ficino redefines spirit in every treatise" (Eros and Magic 28). Gary Tomlinson notes, however, that the "crucial features of Ficino’s doctrine recur throughout the body of his writings....[The spirit] conveys the animating force of the soul to the [passive] body and the stimuli received by the corporeal senses back to the soul" (Music in Renaissance Magic 106). In a discussion of spiritus, Marsilio Ficino himself states that "Spiritus communicates life to the nerves and flesh" and that "it is an instrument of the soul and senses" (Opera 1819).³ In his commentary on Synesius, he explains that there are four primary activities associated with spiritus; they are life, sensation, memory, and conveyance of the passions (Opera 1920). In De vita 2.18, they are identified as life, sense, motion, and affections (225).⁴ In a chapter entitled "Coelum est Spiritus," the spiritus is described as the life (vita), act (actus), and image (imago) of the soul (Opera 1595-96). Most scholars agree that Ficino adheres to this very general description of spiritus, yet charges of incoherency persist when individual works are examined separately.⁵ I would like to suggest that Ficino’s concept of spiritus is not re-invented (although, as Couliano asserts, it may be redefined) but rather that different activities of the tripartite spiritus are emphasized in different Ficinian treatises.

This dissertation will challenge the traditional view that Ficino’s theory of spiritus is incoherent. Textual evidence will be offered in order to support the claim that the theory is coherent. Textual analysis, based on a consideration of some of Ficino’s sources, will be offered as a means of also reducing the charge of inconsistency. Some of the confusion surrounding his notion of spiritus is largely caused by Ficino’s loose and unscientific terminology, but the majority of this confusion can be dispelled through a broad examination of the theory within his own works. Thus, the nature of the argument in this paper is to examine the textural evidence in order to challenge the traditional view that Ficino’s theory of spiritus is incoherent.

Before we can fully demonstrate that Ficino does in fact have a generally coherent theory, we must first question and then establish which "spiritus" is "the" spiritus he is discussing when, for example, he says in De vita that we need to make the spirit more celestial (DV 3.19, 349).⁶ By examining this one problem initially, the reader will quickly be able to see why Ficino’s theory of spiritus is more complicated than initially supposed. At the close of the first book of De vita, the chapter title is "Care for the Corporeal Spirit; Cultivate the Incorporeal; and Lastly, Venerate the Truth. Medicine Takes Care if the First, Moral Disciple the Second, but Religion, the Third" (DV 1.26, 161; title).⁷ Ficino begins the chapter by saying,

Clearly, this passage demonstrates that Ficino has at least two types of spiritus in mind. One is connected to the body and can be treated with medicine; the other, which is incorporeal, is connected with morality and cognition. The chapter continues:

The underlying notion is that the purpose of medicine is to restore the medical spirit – the corporeal spirit – to a healthy state in order to eliminate physical distractions of the body that might prevent the incorporeal spirit from functioning properly in its capacity as an instrument of the mind and soul.⁹

Key to the above passage (and a detail which some scholars seem to have overlooked) is there are in fact (at least) two spirits: the traditional corporeal medical spirit associated with the body and the incorporeal spirit associated with the soul. The tripartite division of bodily spirits (animal, vital, and natural) that constitute the traditional medical spirit are merely gradations within the pre-Cartesian concept of the medical spirit which is constituted from the four humors of the body.¹⁰ On this point, Ficino is an ancient and medieval thinker, not modern. However, the incorporeal spirit, which can be cultivated through moral discipline and is a tool of the intellect, should not – because of its incorporeality – be confused with the corporeal medical spirit. Michael Allen, in his Platonism of Marsilio Ficino, warns, "In particular we should be aware of transposing Ficino’s extensive and important account [of the corporeal spirit] in his De Vita...to other, very different contexts...." (102, note #28).

My argument, however, is that scholars have tried to do exactly that. By not recognizing that Ficino has (at least) two different notions of spiritus in the De vita and by conflating the two and trying to make the incorporeal spirit of the third book of De vita function in exactly the same way as the corporeal medical spirit of the first two books, they have concluded that Ficino’s theory of spiritus is confusing, incoherent, and inconsistent. When it is regarded piecemeal, Ficino’s theory does, admittedly, appear to be inconsistent. What I would like to propose is that his theory is generally quite and coherent, but in order to demonstrate this thesis, his concept of spiritus will have to be examined broadly and in a way which includes not only the medical and magical role of spiritus as it is found in De vita, but also its role in the platonic ascent, in his metaphysics of light, in his cosmology (both macro- and micro-), in his psychology, and in his theology in De vita as well as in his other writing.¹¹ Only when the theory of spiritus is reconstructed inclusively will the theory appear relatively uniform and coherent.

A chart has been provided at the end of the introduction that includes some relevant passages and each of the passages will be discussed more fully. However a visual representation may be useful for consideration of some commonalities (and differences). From looking at the main chart (and the subsequent ones) and by following the fourth line down in each column, a concept of spiritus begins to emerge which suggests that, although the terminology may vary, there is an underlying theory which remains the same. The location of "quality" in the first column may at first appear questionable, but Ficino has stated in the Philebus Commentary that "...quality is incorporeal" (I.18, 184),¹² and, thus, it seems to make more sense to place it higher than natura, or the vital complexion, which remains connected to the body and then disappears when the body dies (see Theo. plat. 18.4; Opera 289 and 334)¹³ and which functions as the irrational soul (Opera 250) while the soul is in the body.¹⁴ The notion of whether or not quality is related to spirit (and how if it is) will be considered more thoroughly in a later chapter.

A further difficulty will concern the connection between spiritus, as the celestial vehicle of the soul, and the idolum, which Ficino defines as a "vivifying act" imparted to the vehicle by the soul (Theologia platonica 18.4; qtd. in Allen’s MFPC 234).¹⁵ Because he clearly distinguishes between the idolum and the natura (Theo. Plat. 13.2; Marcel 2:206), it makes more sense to associate spiritus in some way with the idolum and its three faculties (fantasy, sense perception, and vital force) rather than with the natura, even if this tentative association may need to be developed more fully. The connection between spiritus and the activities of internal sensation, the imagination, and opinion seem to be less problematic than the other associations, but they too will be considered. The relationship between spiritus and the heavens also will be considered with regard to the three heavens (fiery, airy, and vaporous). We will also be discussing spiritus as it relates to the three vehicles (fiery, airy, and vaporous), the triple imagination, the triple light (fiery, airy, and vaporous) emanating from the World-Soul, and the triple powers which pertain to Ficino’s magic and medicine.

With regard first to the notion of at least two different kinds of spiritus mentioned in the passage from De vita 1.26 and then second to its placement and consideration as indicated by the charts, it would not seem to be a far stretch to suggest that Ficino’s theory of spiritus depends on the likelihood that there are actually three levels of spirit – a corporeal one, an incorporeal one, and one that is between them. A slight revision in the last few lines of the charts might be useful.¹⁶

Another probable cause for recent charges of incoherency is that Ficino does (admittedly) interchange words with similar meanings as well as follow the medieval tradition of having many meanings for the same word. While modern scholars attempt to be very precise with their terminology, that was not the case with authors in the Medieval and early Renaissance periods. Ficino himself admits that his terminology is imprecise at times. In De vita 1.7, as he is describing the nature of the phantasia, he warns against distractions which can upset the "phantasy [phantasia] or imagination [imaginatio] or apprehension [cogitatio] or whatever name it seems it ought to be called," thereby indicating to his readers that he does not particularly care about precise terminology at that moment (129). Most modern readers, however, immediately react to those three words, believing that they have very definite (and quite different) meanings. But at the time Ficino was writing (and he does tend to be much more precise in other works which were not written to be read by the masses), strict technical meanings for words were rarely followed. Thus, calling his entire theory of spiritus inconsistent and incoherent is an anachronistic imposition of verbal precision on a writer whose own time period did not demand it. However, some of the terminological confusion created by Ficino himself will be addressed as we examine his overall concept of spiritus.

In the first chapter, an overview of some recent scholarship concerning the topic of spiritus is presented. The overview is intended to be representative rather than definitive. Because De vita is Ficino’s primary treatise dealing with the spiritus, a summary of this work is provided in the second chapter. The third chapter examines the tripartite spiritus within the context of Ficino’s positions regarding cosmology, light, and vehicles of the soul. His notion of the triple powers in objects (as they are discussed in De vita) is considered in the fourth chapter, and this chapter also looks at the relationship between spiritus, quality, and changing the forms in objects. Ficino’s psychological theory (with his triple demon of the imaginative process) and his indebtedness to Augustine are the focus of the fifth chapter. The role of animus and its relationship to spiritus is examined in the sixth chapter, and his notions concerning a triple-layered intelligence are also be considered. Finally, the importance of Ficino’s concept of spiritus with regard to music, divine ecstacy, and eternity is discussed in the seventh chapter.

I will demonstrate that Ficino does in fact have a coherent theory of spiritus, but it will become abundantly clear that much of the confusion regarding his theory stems from the reality that his terminology is inconsistent. A second source of confusion is largely related to the problem that most scholars pay little attention to the fact that Ficino himself makes a distinction between the corporeal spirit and the incorporeal spirit (DV 1.26), although many of those are willing to concede that Ficino has three levels in mind. Thus, identifying "which" spirit he is discussing in a certain passage makes it problematic at times. Couliano may in fact be correct when he says that "Ficino redefines spirit in every treatise" (Eros 28), but re-defining does not necessarily mean "re-inventing." It is my intention to demonstrate that Ficino has a relatively consistent and generally coherent theory of spiritus in his head, even if it does not always immediately appear to be that way on paper.