#Ficino: shan't! | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

thiswaycomessomethingwicked · 10 months ago

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yesss thank you for the work-break response (I am procrastinating at work by vibrating intensely about these two, as is my usual mode of being. The nature of transit policy does allow me to have a few pdfs open to non-work related things).

I think they were fairly mutually obsessed. They lived with one another off-and-on.

This just put the funniest thought in my head - what if there was a romantic competitor who rolls into town and Ficino is oblivious because he Loves His Giovanni but Giovanni is like: This man is FLIRTING with you!!! How dare!!! But in a very quiet and reserved fashion. Does discreet glaring and scowling. Writes fewer letters to Marsilio even though it's not Ficino's fault. Ficino is just confused.

Angelo taking bets on how long until Giovanni pushes Random Poet-Interloper Into the Arno. Lorenzo thinks this is all hilarious and just cackling in the background. Pico wishes everyone would stop gossiping about Ficino and Cavalcanti's marital problems and debate him on theology instead

&c.

anyway.

Wildly speculating, but I think Giovanni may have expected a slightly more conventional physical relationship, and this long courtship was both tantalizing and odd.

This makes sense to me! Especially given the cultural norm around "older man/younger man" dynamics in Florence. Young men in their late teens and early twenties were sort-of half-expected to have these liaisons with older men who would teach them politics and philosophy, help them meet all the right sorts, and that sort of thing. Then when they hit their thirties it was supposed to start reversing, where they would be the guide/lover for a younger man etc.

And I can see Giovanni and Marsilio meeting at exactly the right ages when that sort of thing is supposed to commence and Giovanni being like "yes, this is going to happen as normal" and then it just...doesn't. Instead Marsilio is going on about the ladder of divine love requiring their love to be non-physical.

Giovanni squints at him: Are you sure?

Poor Giovanni, like twenty years old, and Making a Move because he sees that Marsilio is into him, and he's into the weirdo too, and this is the next logical step. And Marsilio just smiles at him awkwardly, takes Giovanni's hand off his leg, sets it aside, pats it and is like "we need to discuss Plato more" and Giovanni is SO CONFUSED.

It also lends such a great extra level of confusion for everyone that their relationship continued on past the normal point when it's supposed to end. Giovanni forty years old, still with Marsilio, everyone else is like: ? you're supposed to not be together anymore. Giovanni you're supposed to be with men younger than you. Now that you're a proper adult man.

And Giovanni like: hm. shan't.

But I can absolutely see the entire dance that they do being so odd yet alluring because it's so different to the norm and Giovanni finding that attractive and enticing. (This is what happens when you become lifers with Florence's weirdest little magic priest man.)

I think there would likely have been a great many almost-conversations about it, a great many letters unsent, and a lot of working through and working around to make the theology and the relationship work. But Marsilio made Greek paganism work with his theology, so I think that would have been a confidence-booster for Giovanni.

yes! this is all excellent!

It resonates too with all of Marsilio's letters of "I don't know what I want myself" and "I am asking for X but know that what I want is something I cannot ask for".

Giovanni reads them and screams in frustration. "Just ask already!"

Marsilio, 'But what if you hate me? And worse, what if it means we cannot ascend to live in Divine Truth?'

Giovanni just stares at him in abject confusion.

(And honestly, a crisis like the Pazzi conspiracy may have kickstarted things or forced them to really come to terms with their feelings for one another, as this may have been the first serious threat that they had experienced together against not only their relationship but potentially against their lives).

ok ok ok I like this. See, I was wanting some fun drama when it came to their relationship and I wasn't sure how to make it work if they already had things figured out because I dislike Pointless Drama, only fun and/or meaningful drama.

This is both so that is great.

And I find it rather charming that Marsilio would be the emotionally besotted one who went on and on and ON about his love for Giovanni, but was hesitant physically, and Giovanni was the one who immediately wanted to fuck but didn't out of respect and is now stuck in a holding pattern without the holding, but with increasing EMOTIONS about the whole thing. They sort of work from the opposite ends of a relationship toward the old-married-couple middle ground they eventually reach.

I think this is such a great summary of how things could have gone! Marsilio has five million emotions, makes them all everyone's problem, and drops them all over the floor. Giovanni is like "I have fondness for him, nothing more" cue him later complaining to Angelo, "He hasn't written me! He's been at Careggi for four days and not one letter! This isn't like him!"

Angelo gives a long suffering sigh of being the mutual friend of the dumbest lovers in Florence.

I do like the idea of Giovanni thinking he has just general feelings for Marsilio. Fondness! He likes the man! Feels some warmness towards him. But head over heels in love? No.

But then he can't write letters because he has Too Many Emotions and so freezes up and wants to come off as cool and calm and can't manage it at all. So he doesn't write. Angelo calls him stupid, offers to write the letter on his behalf. Lorenzo tells him he's being a ninny. Marsilio is sad in the countryside.

god I love these idiots

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thank you thank you thank you so much for replying. It's so helpful to bounce ideas and hear what other people think. I really like your read on it a lot <3

Ok, ok, I would appreciate thoughts.

Most of this context setting stuff most will know, but I'm including it anyway. Question is down below, bolded:

So, The Magi is to take place in late 1478, I'm trying to determine what Ficino and Cavalcanti's relationship would have looked like at that time.

Ficino has been a priest for four years, now, as he is 44 in '78 and was ordained in '74 when he was 40 (an unusually late time in life to turn priest). Giovanni is 34. Ficino wrote in a letter kept in the front of the original manuscript of De Amore that he had lived 34 years without knowing true love until he met Giovanni, so he, at least, has been in love with the man for ten years at this point. They've known each other for longer, though.

(Corsi says they've known each other since Gio was 3, but that's apocryphal and rings hollow to me. It seems more likely they first met when Gio was 18/19/20-ish since Domenico Galletti, the man tutoring Gio, used to tutor Ficino and they had remained friends.)

The problem is that Giovanni is such a ghost.

In 1478 through 79 and even into 80, they were living off and on with each other, at least based on the larger than normal volume of joint letters sent from both of them. We also know Ficino wrote quite a bit of Platonic Theology, among a few other works, at Rignano at this time, which is where Cavalcanti's country home was located.

Then there are joint letters from both Celle and Careggi - so Giovanni was staying with Ficino at the house/smallhold that Cosimo gifted him in Careggi and also the family farm down in Celle.

Ficino's calling to the priesthood was earnest and true, I believe. I also agree with Peter Serracino-Inglott in his essay "Ficino the Priest" where he argues that Ficino would have viewed priesthood as the natural culmination of his being both doctor and philosopher, as well as a means to try and understand himself/doctor heal thyself sort of thing (in terms of his mental health, at least).

From the essay:

And Ficino took his calling very seriously. He attended to the more clerical duties, the boring chore-like ones that most priests would pass off onto others. No, those Ficino would see to himself. It speaks to a quality of his person.

Now, Giovanni was a statesman and politician. Second son of four boys, he was born to an old, aristocratic family which had its own political ups and downs. They had been exiled due to their Anti-Medician sympathies, yet Cosimo was the one who refranchised them and welcomed them back into the Florentine political scene.

Giovanni doesn't really kick start his career until his 40s, not unusual in Florence at that time. Those in government felt men in their 20s and early 30s were all idiots and generally not to be trusted with more senior, serious positions in government (Medici exceptionalism aside). Those in government weren't, necessarily, wrong about men in their 20s and early 30s. Who isn't an idiot at 25?

So in 1478, at 34, Giovanni wasn't yet holding senior or strenuous offices in government and therefore had more free-time on his hands. He was clearly palling around with the Platonic-circle of the Florentine humanist scene since Landino and Poliziano both consider him to be a good friend and a clear, regular attendee to whatever soirees and Platonic parties/dinners that were being held. He doesn't seem to have been close to Luigi Pulci and his crew, since Marsilio complains to Giovanni about how much he hates Gigi and the progress of the Great War Over Lorenzo's Patronage.

Around this time as well, we know he had his third daughter (he had four in total, no sons). Unclear if there was a wife or if it was with a mistress. I suspect a wife, since he was keen for a son which implies the boy would have been a proper heir.

I do not get the sense that he was a particularly devoted or besotted father or husband/lover. Ficino mentions the third daughter's birth and is basically like "a) why didn't you tell me? and b) I know you wanted a son but rejoice regardless because children are good and daughters are gifts from god too" (yay 15th century misogyny)

We have letters from Ficino to friends who were clearly much more devoted fathers and husbands and he will make mention of his friend's children and such. He would reflect the level of care and love that person shows to their family back at them. This doesn't happen with Giovanni.

Granted, Ficino was clearly an over-thinker and probably prone to being nervous about whether or not Giovanni loved him. There's a sense of insecurity that comes through the letters.

The one letter from Gio to Ficino that Ficino printed is very even in tone, very calming. I think Giovanni was the grounded, earthy person to Ficino's madness.

We also know that Giovanni borrowed books regularly from Ficino and seemed infamous in not returning them in a reasonable time-frame. Ficino wrote his more dangerous political complaints to Giovanni about Lorenzo and literally no one else.

(I suspect he would verbally complain to Bernardo Bembo, but he didn't write to him on it.)

Ficino also wrote to Cavalcanti about his medical problems more than anyone else. I think the other person who gets the regular Marsilio Ficino Health Updates is Bernardo Bembo, who was one of his favourite correspondents/friends after Giovanni so that makes sense.

Giovanni knew Ficino well, was the one who seemed to be able to leverage Marsilio out of his deeper depressions. He also seemed perfectly comfortable pushing back on Ficino - something we see in the one letter from him that is printed and also something Ficino references in letters to Gio.

He was not a consistent correspondent. Was this just with Ficino or was it an across-the-board thing? Maybe he just wasn't a letter writer. If it's just Ficino was it because Ficino wrote 500 letters a minute to people or because there was a lack of warmth or, perhaps, too many feelings? (Thinking of Darcy here, if I felt less I would speak more.)

That said, he clearly expected regular correspondence from Ficino and would pester him when he didn't get his due.

He seemed to have had a bit of a temper and maybe a personality that bore grudges and grievances--maybe for himself, maybe just on behalf of others. Marsilio wrote him that big long letter on why Vengeance is Bad Giovanni, Tell Your Cousin to Calm Down.

That said, Ficino valued his opinion and when he wrote letters to people that might have been a bit savage he asked Giovanni to vet them and make sure he wasn't about to piss someone off too much. So Gio had political acuity and a sense of tact that Ficino might have been aware was not his strongest suit, personally. Giovanni also turned to him for advice, so it was a mutual thing of turning to each other when they know the other would have valuable insight.

Giovanni was a bit of a sportsman, it seems. Certainly jousted and did sword play. So he was classically trained as a landed gentleman in that regard alongside his stellar education.

He might have been poetic. We know he was a good public speaker, this is mentioned by people other than Ficino. He is just as well read as Ficino on all things Platonic and Greek and esoteric. Ficino references the conversations they have and the topics are all over the place. Unclear if he was musical or not. Ficino doesn't mention it, and so I suspect not. If Cavalcanti had played an instrument Ficino would be in seventh heaven about it.

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All of this leads me to: What was their relationship??

Was it physical or not? Was it returned in equal measure or not? Were they an old married couple or not? Did they go back/forth on these things?

I can see Ficino being very conflicted - not that their love was bad or anything (Ficino did not believe any love that was good in intent could ever be bad. He was "love is love" before that was a thing), but wanting that pure Platonic, non-physical love since he thought that was the ideal for all forms of love. Man to man, woman to woman, man to woman - the ideal love was non-physical.

At the same time, Ficino thought physical desire was helpful in understanding Beauty which would lead a man to Truth then to God. So he really was trying to reconcile these things and struggling. He wanted his love for Giovanni to meet his ideal and he kept having those annoying, distracting bodily desires!

But what were Giovanni's views on all of this? Did he align with Marsilio or did he have different thoughts? If he differed I doubt he would have hidden it - they seemed very comfortable disagreeing with one another. Though Marsilio seems the one more willing to capitulate on things. Did they argue about how they thought they should be performing their love? What shifted, if anything, after Marsilio was ordained? Did the uncertainty of the Pazzi Conspiracy and subsequent Pazzi wars bring them closer together? Put a strain on them? I need to know~~~~~~

#marsilio ficino #giovanni cavalcanti #the magi #writing #marsilio blogging

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