5 4 The second Plotinian section The birth of Eros and the twin Venuses

The second Latin section of MS Riccardianus 92 concerns Plotinus’s treatise on love, Enn. III 5, more specifically the episode of Poros (Resource) and Penia (Poverty), generating Eros in the garden of Jupiter.

Figure 7. Detail of fol. 114r_{. Incipit of the second Plotinian section}

In his interpretation of this famous passage from Plato’s Symposium (203b-c), the Florentine scholar draws upon Plotinus’s Enn. III, 5 (De Amore VI, 7).153 The tight connection between the De Amore and Plotinus’s treatise is

153 _{See, Wolters, ʽFicino and Plotinus’, pp. 194-95. Concerning Ficino and the relevance of the}

theme of love in his philosophy, see James A. Devereux, ʽThe Object of Love in Ficino’s philosophyʼ, Journal of the History of Ideas 30 (1969), 161-70; Kristeller, Il pensiero filosofico, pp. 274-310; Jill Kraye, ʽThe Transformation of Platonic love in the Italian Renaissance’, in

Platonism and the English Imagination, ed. by Anna Baldwin and Sarah Hutton (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1994), pp. 76-85; Bernard Mc Ginn, ʽCosmic and Sexual Love in Renaissance Thought: Reflexions on Marsilio Ficino, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and Leone Ebreoʼ, in The Devil, Heresy and Whichcraft in the Middle Ages. Essays in Honor of J. B. Russel, ed. by Alberto Ferreiro (Leiden: Brill, 1998), pp. 191-209; Katherine Crawford, ʽMarsilio Ficino,

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confirmed by Ficino himself in his commentary on Enn. III, 5, where Ficino informs Lorenzo de’Medici that his main discussion concerning love is already included in the book De Amore.154

When mentioning this section of MS Riccardianus 92, scholars have described it as a summary of Enn. III, 5. However, my analysis demonstrated that the section does not contain an excerpted translation or paraphrase of the treatise, but a hitherto unidentified draft of two chapters of Ficino’s commentary (De Amore VI, 7 and VI, 8). I will provide a transcription of the whole passage in the Appendix.

In the first part of the second section (fol. 114r-114v l. 11), Ficino refers to Plato’s account of the mythical birth of Love as the son of Poros and Penia. Penia is described as indiga informitas, indigentia and prima informitas, Poros as the ray containing the concepts of all things in a unitary way (radius in quo infunditur communis ratio rerum). Through a process of intellectual illumination, described as notio, the undistinguished reason of things (confusa ratio rerum) is given form. As a result, an innate desire is set alight (innatus appetitus accenditur). This

Neoplatonism and the Problem of Sexʼ, Renaissance and Reformation / Renaissance and Reform

28 (2004), 3-35; Achim Wurm, Platonicus Amor: Lesarten Der Liebe Bei Platon, Plotin Und

Ficino (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2012).

154 _{When introducing his commentary, Ficino explains why this work does not comment on the}

Plotinian text more in detail, thus being considerably shorter than the other commentaries: ʽArbitror equidem, Magnanime Laurenti, te non longam De Amore disputatione a Marsilio tuo nunc exacturum: tum quia multa de hoc in Symposio disputavimus, tum maxime quoniam tu plurima De Amore divinitus invenisti, elegantibusque carminibus cecinisti. Ergo, summa sequar fastigia rerumʼ. Plotini Opera Omnia, ed. by Toussaint, p. 287. ʽI judge, magnanimous Lorenzo, that you are not going to require from your Marsilio a long discussion of love. This is both because we have discussed this at lengh in the Symposium, and especially because you yourself have discovered much concerning love by divine inspiration, and sung of it in elgant poems. Therefore I will only touch upon the high pointsʼ. Trans. by Wolters, ʽFicino and Plotinusʼ, p. 195. In addition, when concluding the commentary, Ficino states that ʽCaetera quae De Amore diisque disputantur, in libro De Amore satis confirmavisse videmurʼ. Plotini Opera Omnia, ed. by Toussaint, p. 290.ʽThe remaining matters which are discussed concerning love and the gods, seem to us have been sufficiently established in the book De Amoreʼ. Trans. by Wolters, ʽFicino and Plotinusʼ, p. 195.

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innate desire is love, son of Poros and Penia (accensio apetitus est amor, qui ut ab indigentia nascitur).

The opposition between Penia and Poros is ultimately connected with Venus, representing the power of understanding. In the passage, Ficino draws a distinction between the heavenly Venus (Venus Caelestis), daughter of Uranus, and the vulgar/earthly Venus (Venus Vulgaris), daughter of Jupiter and Dione (quae est ex Iove a Dione).

Each Venus has a corresponding form of love. Both aim at procreating beauty, but each in its own way (In prima Venere est amor et in secunda modo suo). The former represents the desire to contemplate intelligible beauty (Ibi est nixus ad intelligendam pulchritudinem). The latter is the desire to procreate and produce beauty in the physical world (Hic ad gignendam pulchritudinem). Finally, Love directed to intelligible beauty is defined as a deus, whilst love connected with procreation is a daemon.

As we will see, the text from Ficino’s notebook represents a draft of De Amore VI, 7. As shown in the following table, there is a tight connection both in the terminology and in the main philosophical argument:155

Table 4

Text of the Second Plotinian Section in MS Ricc. 92

De Amore, Oratio Sexta, Caput VII

Omnem animam Venerem dicimus. Mundi

animam primam Venerem. Illa anima a Saturno est castrante caelum, id est a mente

quae trahit ab ipso bono. Anima haec a

mente manans illi cohaeret ut soli lumen.

[…] Habet insuper intelligendi potentiam

quam esse Venerem arbitramur. Potentia

huiusmodi sua natura informis est et

obscura, nisi a deo illuminetur,

quemadmodum oculi vis ante solis

155 _{The comparative table includes sentences from the Florentine manuscript (left column) and}

passages from De Amore VI, 7 (right column). I emphasized in bold all terms and sentences that provide evidence of the connection existing between these two texts.

102 Innato apetitu in illam convertitur.

Qui apetitus ab indiga eius informitate nascitur, conversa inradiatus.

In illo radio communis et confusa quaedam rerum ratio illi tribuitur, per quam notionem appetitus accenditur. Accensus inhaeret vehementius per quam inhaesionem distractius cognoscendo rationibus omnibus formatur. Accensio appetitus est amor qui ut ab indigentia nascitur semper naturam sequens suam et

re presente desiderat. Prima illa

informitas πενία est, communis ratio πόρος, radius in quo infunditur communis ratio

In prima Venere est amor et in secunda modo suo. Ibi est nixus ad intelligendam pulchritudinem. Hic ad gignendam. Immo ibi ad gignendam intellectuali modo. Hic sensibili.

adventum. Hanc obscuritatem Peniam, quasi inopiam et luminis defectum esse putamus. Ceterum vis ea intelligendi

naturali quodam instinctu ad suum reflexa

parentem, divinum ab eo radium, qui

Porus est et affluentia, suscipit. In quo

veluti semine quodam rationes rerum

omnium includuntur. Huius radii flammis naturalis ille instinctus accenditur. Hoc incendium, hic ardor ex obscuritate priori et accedente scintilla exoriens, amor est ex inopia natus et affluentia.

[…] ex indigentia quadam et affluentia

mixtus est amor. Hac utique ratione Venus

illa superna, per primam ipsam divini

radii gustationem accensa, amore fertur ad integram totius luminis plenitudinem,

hoc nixu parenti efficacius herens

plenissimo statim illius fulgore coruscat,

rerumque rationes ille confuse, que in radio quem Porum dicimus ante fuerant implicate, explicantur iam in potentia illa

Veneris inherente et clarius distincte

lucescunt.

[…] Venerem hic geminam rursus aspicimus. Alteram sane vim anime huius ad superna cognoscenda; alteram vero vim eiusdem inferiorum procreatricem. Illa quidem non est anime propria, sed contemplationis angelice imitatio, hec autem nature anime propria. Ideo quotiens unam in anima Venerem ponimus, vim eius peculiarem et Venerem eius propriam intelligimus. Quotiens duas, alteram communem cum angelo, alteram ipsius anime propriam. Sint igitur due in anima Veneres: prima celestis, seconda vero

vulgaris. Amorem habeant ambe, celestis

ad divinam pulchritudinem cogitandam. Vulgaris ad eamdem in mundi materia generandam. Qualem enim videt illa decorem, talem vult ista pro viribus mundi

machine tradere. Immo vero utraque

fertur ad pulchritudinem generandam sed suo utraque modo. Celestis Venus

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Et utrobique est hypostasis aeterna amor et

daemon,

sed in prima est deus

in secunda daemon solus.

intelligentia sua effingere in seipsa exactissimam supernorum pulchritudinem nititur, vulgaris divinorum seminum ubertate conceptam, apud se divinitus pulchritudinem in mundi materia parere. Amorem illum quandoque deum iccirco vocamus quoniam ad divina dirigitur, utplurimum demonem, quoniam inter inopiam copiamque est

medius. Amorem alterum semper

demonem, quoniam affectum aliquem ad corpus habere videtur et ad inferiorem mundi plagam esse proclivior. Quod quidem a deo alienum est, demonum nature conveniens

In Ficino’s commentary, Poros and Penia are described, first, as respectively affluentia et egestas and secondly, as respectively dei radius and obscuritas.

Poros, described as the ray of God, who is the truth and goodness of all things, contains the concepts of all things (rationes rerum omnium). The opposition formed by Penia, i.e. the deficiency of light (inopia et luminis defectum) and Poros, summi dei scintilla, is connected with Venus, representing the power of understanding (potentia intelligendi). When describing the power of understanding, Ficino states that is informis et obscura nisi a deo illuminentur. That power of understanding receives the divine ray and as a result instinctus accenditur. This instinct is love, son of Poros and Penia.

When the power of understanding, i.e. Venus, is illuminated by god, the disordered Reasons of things (rerumque rationes ille confuse), which before were entangled in the ray of God, are put in order and shine out more clearly (clarius distincte lucescunt). In both the notebook and the commentary, this process of

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intellectual illumination is described by the word inhaesio and the corresponding verbal form inhaerere.

In De Amore II, 7 and VI, 7, Ficino draws a similar distinction between the ʽTwo Venusesʼ or ʽTwin Venusesʼ.156 The Venus Caelestis, that is the celestial/heavenly Venus, is daugther of Uranus and has no mother. The Venus Vulgaris, that is the vulgar Venus, is daughter of Zeus-Jupiter and Dione-Juno. The former Venus represents the vis intelligendi, that is, the power of understanding superior things, whilst the latter is the vis generandi.157

Each Venus has a corresponding Eros. The former represents the desire to contemplate the intelligible splendour of divine beauty, the latter stirs men to procreate, thus producing a likeness of divine beauty in the physical world. Ficino explains that the former Love is a deus, as it is directed towards divine things

156 _{See Ficino, Commentaire, ed. by Marcel, p. 154: ʽVeneres autem duas commemorat [Plato],}

quas itidem gemini cupidines comitentur. Venerem, alteram quidem celestem ponit; alteram vero vulgarem. Celestem illam celo sine matre natam. Vulgarem ex Iove et Dione genitam. […] Venus prima, que in mente est, celo nata sine matre dicitur, quoniam mater apud Physicos materia est. Mens autem illa a materie corporalis consortio est aliena. Secunda Venus, que in mundi anima ponitur, ex Iove est et Dione genita. Ex Iove, id est, ex ea virtute ipsius anime que celestia movet. Ea siquidem istam creavit potentiam que inferiora hec generat. Matrem quoque illi ideo tribuunt, quia materie mundi infusa cum materia commertium habere putatur. Denique ut summatim dicam, duplex est Venus. Altera sane est intelligentia illa, quam in mente angelica posuimus. Altera, vis generandi anime mundi tributa. Utraque sui similem comitem habet amorem. Illa enim amore ingenito ad intelligendam dei pulchritudinem rapitur. Hec item amore suo ad eamdem pulchritudinem in corporibus procreandamʼ. ʽHe [Plato], mentions two Venuses, whom twin Cupids likewise accompany. One Venus he certainly calls Heavenly, but the other Vulgar. That Heavenly Venus was born of Uranus, without mother. The Vulgar Venus was born of Jupiter and Dione. […] The first Venus, which is in the Mind, is said to have been born of Uranus without a mother, because mother, to the physicists, is matter. But that Mind is a stranger to any association with corporeal matter. The second Venus, which is located in the World Soul, was born of Jupiter and Dione. Born of Jupiter‒ that is, of that faculty created the power which moves the heavenly things since that faculty created the power which generates these lower things. They also attribute a mother to the second Venus, for this reason, that since she is infused into the Matter of the world, she is thought to have commerce with matter. Finally, to speak briefly, Venus is twofold. One is certainly that intelligence which we have located in the Angelic Mind. The other is the power of procreation attributed to the World Soul. Each Venus has as her companion a love like herself. For the former Venus is entranced by an innate love for understanding the Beauty of god. The latter likewise is entranced by her love for procreating the same beauty in bodiesʼ, trans. by Jayne in Ficino, Commentary, ed. by Jayne, p. 53.

157 _{The Venus Vulgaris, i.e. the power to create inferior things, ʽlike Lucretius’ Venus Genetrix,}

gives life and shape to the things in nature and thereby makes the intelligible beauty accessible to our perception and imaginationʼ: Panofsky, Studies in Iconology, p. 142.

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(quoniam ad divina dirigitur). By contrast, the latter Love is a daemon, since it is ʽmore inclined toward the lower region of the worldʼ (ad inferiorem mundi plagam […] proclivior).

This crucial passage of the De Amore had a tremendous influence, either directly or indirectly, not only on poets and writers, but also on major Renaissance artists.158 Thus the study of the preliminary material contained in Ficino’s notebook, provides invaluable insight into the process of elaboration of these images and doctrines.