Medicine, astrology, and self-censorship : translating Marsilio Ficino in Muscovy (ca. 1580-1620)

This essay traces the history and intellectual context of a unique source: the late 16th-century Russian translation of several chapters of the De vita libri tres by Marsilio Ficino (1433-1499). Through a meticulous reconstruction of the trajectory of Ficino's text toward Moscow and the subsequent translation commission, this article sheds light on a particular features of the reception of foreign learning in the 16th- and early 17th-century Muscovite state. The essay also provides an annotated edition of the Russian fragments of Ficino's renowned treatise. [Publisher's text]