ABSTRACT
Once regarded as a fascinating feature of middling importance, the Renaissance debate on astrological belief has in a generation or two come to hold a modest but firm place in the front rank of scholarship. The polemics which were fought, often bitterly, during the closing years of the fifteenth and the opening decades of the sixteenth centuries have received particular attention. Although the problem of Ficino's apparent vacillation and hesitancy with regard to the commoner type of astrological belief has received considerable critical attention, it has never been satisfactorily resolved. In its simplest expression it can be perceived as the paradox of his conscious, if sporadic, stance as an anti-astrological campaigner, seen against a background of deep-rooted, lifelong conviction. Sebastiano Gentile argues convincingly that Ficino was consciously influenced by George Gemistos Plethon's proposed vast reform which included a return to the worship of the ancient gods as a last defence of spiritualism.
