Marsilius Ficinus. Summi et Philosophi & Theologi, de Religione Christiana. Parisiis: Apud Gulielmum Guillard, 1559.
Translations of Plato and other classical authors by Marsilio Ficino fueled the Florentine Platonist Renaissance. Ficino's translations of Plato were finished in 1470 and printed in 1484. His purpose in doing this work was "to reinforce the worship of God and to bring about a new understanding of the nature of man." In the Theologia Platonica, his major work on the immortality of the soul, Ficino linked philosophy and theology; he condemned, (as did Petrarch), Averroism and the secularization of philosophy.
Ficino wrote De Religione Christiana (ca. 1476) to settle in his own mind the relationship between the ideas of Plato, Neoplatonism, and the Christian faith. Like other works of the period (i.e. Manetti's Contra Judeos et Gentes), Ficino asserted the superiority of Christianity over other religions in all periods of history. As he perceived Christian values in Platonic thought, he connected secular and providential views of humankind. The influence of St. Augustine in both Petrarch and Ficino reinforced the trend toward providential historical thought in humanism.
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