Numerous works were composed by Marsilio Ficino, who occupied himself not only with philosophy but with theology, medicine, and music, and was wont to say that they belonged to each other like body, soul, and spirit in nature. His book on Christian doctrine, begun after his entrance into the priesthood, seems to have been finished in the beginning of 1475, and appeared in the following year, with a declaration that the author submitted himself in all things to the judgment of the Church. He presented his work to Lorenzo de’ Medici. Rather more than two years later he seems to have finished his translation of Plato’s works from the manuscripts given him by Cosimo and by Amerigo Benci. These he submitted to the revision of Demetrius Chalcondylas, Antonio Vespucci, and Giovan Battista Buoninsegni, and also sought advice from Angelo Poliziano, Landino and Bartolommeo Scala. Filippo Valori bore the expenses of the printing, which seems to have been completed at the end of 1482—a proof how men of high Florentine families assumed the character of Mæcenas. Meanwhile, the industrious writer had concluded his great work on the Platonic doctrine of immortality (‘Theologia Platonica de immortalitate animarum’), which came out at the same time with the translation of the writings on which it was founded. The Laurentian library possesses the parchment manuscript which was given to Lorenzo. It contains ideas new and old blended together, and comprising the philosophic system of its author and the defence of the supernatural against Materialism and Pantheism, which at that time numbered many disciples, in opposition to the Platonic school. The scientific value of this work, in which the doctrines of Plato and the teachings of his most dissimilar scholars in ancient and modern times are not easy to distinguish, must rest on its own merits, as must the validity of Lorenzo’s remark that the Materialists, for whom there is no life in the next world, are already dead in this. But we cannot deny the importance of Ficino’s great work in the history of civilisation, nor question its beneficial influence on the time.