  The Platonic Theology represented in some ways a turning point for Ficino: a summing up of the work he had done until then and a way forward to other projects, which he completed soon after 18 December 1473, when he was ordained a priest. As he was completing the Platonic Theology, he wrote his On the Christian Religion, a treatise that, in its lapidary beginning, synthesized much of his life-long commitment to the centrality of religion to human experience. He begins the work’s first chapter: “We do observe, at times in some animals, some individual gifts of the human race, with one exception: religion” (Ficino 1576, 2). And he had already written, in the preface to Lorenzo de’ Medici, that God’s wisdom had established that the “divine mysteries,” which is to say religion, should be handled by “those who were true lovers of true wisdom,” in short by true “philosophers.” Humanity’s uniqueness with respect to religion also demanded that religion should be watched over by members who adhered to its highest calling: the love of wisdom, or philosophy. Ficino produced both a vernacular and a Latin version of this work; the vernacular version was published in 1474, whereas the Latin came out in 1476, even as Ficino seems to have published two later, different redactions (Kristeller 1938, 1: lxxviii).