A Renaissance philosopher’s treatise on health, longevity, and the care of the learned
The Three Books on Life (De vita libri tres, also known as De vita triplici) is a Latin prose treatise by the Florentine Platonist Marsilio Ficino, composed in the 1480s and first printed in 1489. It belongs to the Renaissance genre of writings on the preservation of health and the prolongation of life, but it is distinctive for combining medicine, natural philosophy, astrology, and Neoplatonic metaphysics within a single work. The treatise is divided into three books: the first, De vita sana (“On a Healthy Life”), concerns the health of scholars and intellectuals, who were thought especially vulnerable to melancholy and to the bodily harms of intense mental exertion; the second, De vita longa (“On a Long Life”), treats the means of extending life, drawing on medical and astrological learning; the third, De vita coelitus comparanda (“On Obtaining Life from the Heavens”), deals with the influence of the stars and with practices for drawing down celestial benefits.
The work’s central themes are the interdependence of body, soul, and spirit, the role of the “spirit” as a subtle intermediary, and the care owed by those devoted to study to their own physical and mental well-being. Ficino wrote it partly out of concern for his own health and that of fellow scholars, and it reflects his effort to reconcile Christian and Platonic thought with the medical and astrological knowledge of his time. It is among his most widely read Latin works and a notable example of Renaissance natural magic and learned medicine.
