During the Middle Ages a synthesis had existed between Nature and God, but gradually this cosmic view disintegrated until God was perceived as separate from both His creation and mankind. Philosophy and theology became divided. However, with the rediscovery in the fifteenth century of many previously unknown Platonic writings, as well as the ancient principles of the arts, this division was halted and a new cultural vision emerged grounded in the ancient wisdom teachings of unity. This renaissance began in Florence and quickly spread across the rest of Italy and Europe.

This course of lectures will reflect upon a period when the relationship between the material and spiritual worlds, the temporal and the eternal, and the source of all in the One was re-established. In particular the Platonic ideal of Absolute Beauty emanating through the created order and awakening Divine Love in the soul restored the link between the visible and the eternal realms. It was an ideal that gave birth to a flowering of the classical perfection of the arts that lasted until the late sixteenth to the early seventeenth century when the unity between God and Nature was again lost and a mechanistic age of empiricism was established that has lasted to this day.

During the Renaissance it is well known that the conception of the universe underwent radical change. Less well known is that this change came about through a renewal of ancient metaphysical conceptions of God and Nature. From Cusanus at the beginning of this period to Bruno at the end, there emerged what might be called a 'divine cosmology' in which the universe was understood to embody or reflect the nature of God in every aspect of the created order. Joseph Milne will trace the main outline of this transformed vision of reality that inspired the thinkers and artists of the Renaissance until it was clouded over by the mechanistic vision of the Enlightenment.

The golden age described by Hesiod and Plato's myth of the true earth in the Phaedo are both visions of reality in which the ideal form of the earth is seen as a divine unity. This world overflowing with goodness and beauty has continued to inspire the poetic imagination and been given many names. It was first called Arcadia by Virgil and it was under this name that the poets of the Florentine and the later English Renaissance, notably Sir Philip Sidney, wrote of an earthly heaven. In her lecture on Arcadia Jill Line will explore the profound meaning of this place of beauty and harmony and also show how Shakespeare's plays and poems always balance the earthly with the true heavenly world.

As the reality of the world is divine so is mankind. In her lecture on the Dignity of Man, Linda Proud will explain that one of the key psychological and spiritual transformations that brought about the Renaissance was the realisation of inner divinity. The translation of the works of Plato and Plotinus brought forth within medieval man an illumination of his purpose in the universe. Pico della Mirandola absorbed the new learning as well as the old, drawing on every written source he could find with the aim of harmonising all the world's faiths. The Oration on the Dignity of Man is seen by many to be the manifesto of the Renaissance.

The leader of the Florentine Renaissance to which Pico belonged was arguably the most notable figure of the Renaissance - Marsilio Ficino. Not only a scholar and priest, astrologer and musician, Ficino was also the translator and commentator of many hitherto unknown classical writings. He drew Christianity together with the writings of the Platonists, Hermes Trismegistus and other ancient teachers, realising that they all contained the same knowledge of the divine and the immortal principles within mankind. A prolific letter writer he wrote with great love to many friends and prominent figures of the Renaissance.

Seven volumes of these letters have already been translated from the Latin by the Language Department of the School of Economic Science in London and Clement Salaman, the leader of this dedicated team, will be giving a series of seminars on a selection of these letters.

In his Book of Life, Ficino uses a strange and unusual metaphor to describe the relationship between body and soul. In his commentaries on Plotinus he applies the same idea to the experience of transcendence, suggesting that there is something in the individual that is just waiting to be kindled, and if it comes into contact with the flame it will flare fully and fill everything with its presence. In her lecture Valery Rees will explore how these ideas are developed further in Ficino's last work, his unfinished commentary on the Epistles of St Paul.

As an astrologer Ficino knew that the interpretation of symbols could lead to a deepening of perception, a meeting of inner and outer worlds that revealed the workings of the divine mind. In his Book of Life, he attempts to describe the invocation of spiritual presences as part of a scheme of purely `natural' cosmic correspondence, but this is not entirely convincing. Angela Voss will explain that it is only in his Book of the Sun that he finds a solution in moving through the four hermeneutic levels from literal to spiritual knowledge, thereby demonstrating that the metaphoric and symbolic mode of understanding that informs the Platonic tradition is a necessary step towards the ultimate mystery of true religion.

A Florentine painting of Tobias and the Angel portrays a transformative encounter between human and divine. The story, taken from the Apocrypha, may be read as an initiatic adventure involving trials by water and fire. The picture that condenses this narrative into a single captivating image will be the subject of a lecture by Julia Cleave. While its richness of detail and beauty of form make an immediate appeal to the senses, its talismanic power derives more subtly from an interplay of hermetic symbolism, drawing on the traditions of alchemy and astrology, and a remarkable matrix of Platonic geometries.

Since the Renaissance the understanding of the unity between God and Nature, the divinity of man and his world, has been progressively lost. The artists, poets and philosophers who inspired that great period of renewal would surely be dismayed at the ravages wrought by materialism to our planet and to our souls. In an attempt to cast new light on the Renaissance, this series of lectures seeks to rekindle its flame of true enlightenment and to show how its principles may be re-established in the hearts of mankind.

Lecture Venue
The Lincoln Centre
18 Lincoln's Inn Fields London WC2

Doors open 6.15pm (refreshments available)
Lecture 7pm Concludes 8.15pm

Seminar Venue
The Essex Unitarian Church
112 Palace Gardens Terrace London W8

Time 7-8.30pm