Symphorien Champier on Medicine, Theology, and Politics

The key role played by Plotinus’ metaphysics in shaping the Platonic project undertaken by Marsilio Ficino (1433-99) is now recognised by historians of Renaissance philosophy. This is particularly evident in Book III of De vita libri tres (“Three Books on Life,” 1489), where Ficino established a discipline that we could dub “medico-theology.” In sixteenthcentury France, especially in Lyon, the physician and polymath Symphorien Champier (1471?–1538) had a prominent place in articulating the principal guidelines of this Plotinian-Ficinian project. As witnessed by such texts as De quadruplici vita (1507) and De triplici disciplina (1508), Champier wished to present this discipline as an integral part of the university curriculum, to be added to the system of the seven liberal arts (trivium and quadrivium). His main contribution in embedding Plotinus’ philosophy in Renaissance culture lay in popularising and making accessible to a wider public certain aspects of Plotinian metaphysics. This occurred especially in three areas: the Christianisation of Plotinus’ philosophy, through paying special attention to the afterlife of the soul and its undergoing cycles of purification and expiation (Hell, Purgatory and Paradise); the emerging of a more robust sense of the individual self; and, finally, the attempt to free a set of characteristically late Platonic notions (such as the Soul of the World, sympathetic attractions, astral divination and demonic influences) from their most troublesome implications of magic and theurgic rituals