- Lived:
- 1433–1499 · Florence and the villa of Careggi, Italy
- Tradition:
- Renaissance Neoplatonism; translator, priest, physician of souls
- The Big Idea:
- All the world's ancient wisdom is one golden chain that ends in Plato and points to God — and the human soul, hungry for the infinite, is the knot that ties the whole universe together.
- In their words:
- "The soul is the greatest of all miracles in nature."
- If you remember one thing:
- One frail, melancholy scholar, bankrolled by the Medici, translated the entire works of Plato into Latin for the first time in Western history — and invented the idea everyone still uses without knowing his name: Platonic love.