observed. This is the case with Marsilio Ficino, one of the best-known
writers of the Renaissance. In hisCommentary on Plato’s Symposium,
often entitledDe amore, Ficino employs Bernard of Clairvaux and
Thomas Aquinas.^124 The work is nevertheless highly original; it is not
a commentary in the ordinary sense, but a fragmentary series of
dialogues and lectures on love. The concept of recognition, mostly
expressed by the verbrecognosco, plays a significant role in this work.
The passages in which this concept appears describe intellectual
love between two men. However, Ficino employs the vocabulary of
medieval bridal mysticism, conspicuous in Bernard of Clairvaux, as
well as medieval love lyrics. For this reason, the passages can also be
read as depicting heterosexual (or homosexual) erotic love. The
widespread influence ofDe amore, one the early bestsellers of book
printing, is due to this feature.^125
Ficino teaches that love emerges in our seeing each other as
physical persons. ‘All love begins with sight.’^126 Falling in love
means giving one’s own soul to the beloved. As the separation of
soul and body means death,‘anyone who loves is dead in himself’.^127
While Ficino’s views are playful, they also lead towards an epistem-
ology of love. In the normal course of love, the beloved responds to
love. Ficino describes this exchange of souls in phrases that stem from
love lyrics and medieval theology:‘O wondrous contract (mirum
commertium) in which he who gives himself for the other has the
other.’^128
In such an exchange, the lovers live in one another:
Whenever two men embrace each other in mutual affection, this one
lives in that; that one, in this. Such men exchange themselves each
other...How they give themselves up while they forget themselves,
I see. But how they receive the other I do not understand.^129As one’s own soul only lives in the other, it is difficult to understand
how one can receive the other. The lovers preserve one another
(^124) For the use of Aquinas inDe amore, see Jayne 1985, 4–7. For Bernard, see
Laurens 2012, notes on pp. 267–8 and introduction, lii.
(^125) For the influence of medieval love lyrics, see Kristeller 1987 and Laurens 2012,
li–liv.
(^126) De amoreVI, 8. Ed. Laurens, p. 151. Trans. Jayne, here p. 119.
(^127) De amoreII, 8, Laurens, 45; Jayne, 55.
(^128) De amoreII, 8, Laurens, 47; Jayne, 56.
(^129) De amoreII, 8, Laurens, 45; Jayne, 55–6.
80 Recognition and Religion