Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/588

 572 INTELLECT AND FAITH. dise in the Elysian Fields, and Purgatory in Hades. Zoroaster, Orpheus, Hermes Trismegistus, Socrates, Plato, and Yirgil were prophets on whose evidence he relies to prove the divinity of Christ. The Crito confirms the Evangel and contains the founda- tion of religion. Even the JNeo-Platonists, Plotinus and Proclus, and Iamblichus, are shown to have been supporters of the faith which they so earnestlv combated while alive. For teachings far less dangerous than this hundreds of men had been forced to the alternative of recantation or the stake, but Marsilio was honored as a light of his age. It is true that he avoided the errors of Averrhoism, but as these were likewise tolerated his impunity is not to be ascribed to this. ^Vhile admitting the importance of astrology, he held that the stars have no power of themselves ; they can merely indicate, and their indication of the future by their regular revolutions shows that affairs are not abandoned to chance, but are ruled by Providence. So, while human character is affected by the position of the stars at the hour of birth, it is much more the result of heredity and training. Perhaps the most curious illustration which Marsilio gives us of the confusion and upturning of religious ideas in the Eenaissance is a letter ad- dressed to Eberhard, Count of Wirtemberg, in which he seriously proves that the sun is not to be worshipped as God. In one respect he was more orthodox than most of his brethren of the Xew Learning, for he believed in the immortality of the soul, and maintained it in a laborious treatise, but he could not convince his favorite pupil, Michele Mercato, and made with him a compact that the one dying first should return, if there was a future life, and inform the other. One morning Mercato was awakened by the trampling of a horse and a voice calling to him : on rushing to the window the horseman shouted, " Mercato, it is true !". Mar- silio had that moment died.* An exception to this prevalent tolerance is commonly said to 962-3); De Christ. Relig. c. 11, 13, 22, 24, 26 (I. 15, 18, 25, 29); De Vita Coelitus comparanda Lib. in. c. 1, 2 (I. 532-33); In Platonem (II. 1390); In Plotinum c. 6, 7, 12, 15 (II. 1620-22, 1633, 1636).— Cantu, I. 179. Yet we find him attributing a fever and diarrhoea to the influence of Saturn in the house of Cancer, for Saturn had been in his geniture from the beginning; and his cure he ascribes to a vow made to the Virgin. — Epistt. Opp. I. 644, 733.
 * Marsil. Ficin. Epistt. Libb. vin., xi., xn. (Opp. Ed. 1561, 1. 866-7, 931, 946,