ABSTRACT
The Renaissance is the name given to the great European epoch of the rebirth of classical learning, but it is an epoch whose birth and death have been assigned to different times and figures, according to different scholarly interpretations. The most far-reaching and profound influence on the novel speculations of the Renaissance thinkers was the rediscovery, translation and dissemination of Platonic and Neo-Platonic works. Eckard Kessler also draws attention to the noticeable change in fortunes of the great medieval summations, such as those by Thomas Aquinas, Albert the Great, Duns Scotus and William of Ockham, after the 1520s. Ficino's scholarly studies into Platonic, Neo-Platonic, and Hermetic sources were not solely concerned with standard philosophical issues about the nature and functions of the human soul. To some degree, the cumulative effects of the skeptical challenge, ecclesiastical condemnations and natural scientific progress were to drive the heterodox currents of occult philosophy underground.
