Giovanni Pico della Mirandola: Encyclopedia II - Giovanni Pico della Mirandola - Biography

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola - Biography

Pico was a younger son of the family of the Counts of Mirandola and Concordia, feudal lords of a small region in the province of Emilia-Romagna. A precocious child with an amazing memory, he was schooled in Latin, and possibly Greek, at a very early age. Intended for the Church by his mother, he was named a papal protonotary at the age of ten and in 1477 he went to Bologna to study canon law.

At the sudden death of his mother two years later, Pico renounced canon law and began to study philosophy at the University of Ferrara. During a brief trip to Florence, he met Angelo Poliziano, the courtly poet Girolamo Benivieni and probably the young Dominican monk Savonarola. He would be very close friends with all three, including the ascetic and violently anti-humanist Savonarola, for the rest of his life.

From 1480 to 1482, he continued his studies at the University of Padua, a major center of Aristotelianism in Italy. Already proficient in Latin and Greek, he studied Hebrew and Arabic in Padua with Elia del Medigo, a Jewish Averroist, and read Aramaic manuscripts with him as well. Del Medigo also translated Judaic manuscripts from Hebrew into Latin for Pico, as he would continue to do for a number of years. Pico also wrote sonnets in Padua--both in Latin and in Italian—which he would destroy at the end of his life.

He spent the next four years either at home, or visiting humanist centers in Italy and in 1485, he traveled to the University of Paris, the most important center for Scholastic philosophy and theology in Europe--and a hotbed of secular Averroism. It was probably in Paris that Pico began his ‘’900 Theses’’ and conceived the idea of defending them in a public debate.

In 1484, he returned to Florence and met Lorenzo de' Medici and Marsilio Ficino, on the very day that Ficino completed his translations of the works of Plato from Greek into Latin under Lorenzo’s enthusiastic patronage. Pico charmed them both immensely. Until the day Lorenzo died, he would support and protect Pico through some very difficult times. Indeed, without Lorenzo, it is doubtful that Pico’s work would have survived.

Pico left for Rome, with the intention of publishing his ‘’900 Theses’’ and setting up a “Congress” to debate them. But on the way, stopping in Arezzo, he became embroiled in a love affair with the wife of one of Lorenzo de’ Medici’s cousins. It almost cost him his life. Pico attempted to run off with the woman, but he was caught, wounded and thrown into prison by her husband. He was released only upon the intervention of Lorenzo himself. The incident is wholly representative of Pico’s often audacious temperament and of the loyalty and affection he nevertheless could inspire.

Pico spent several months in Perugia and nearby Fratta, recovering from his injuries. It was there, as he wrote to Ficino, that “divine Providence […] caused certain books to fall into my hands. They are Chaldean books […] of Esdras, of Zoroaster and of Melchior, oracles of the magi, which contain a brief and dry interpretation of Chaldean philosophy, but full of mystery.”^[2] It was also in Perugia that Pico was was introduced to the mystical Hebrew Kabbalah, which fascinated him, as did the late Classical Hermetic writers, such as Hermes Trismegistus. The Kabbalah and the Hermetica were thought to be as ancient as the Old Testament in Pico's time, and for that reason, he accorded them an almost scriptural status.

Pico based his ideas chiefly on Plato, as did his teacher, Marsilio Ficino, but Pico retained a deep respect for Aristotle. Although he was a product of the studia humanitatis, Pico was constitutionally an eclectic, and in some respects he represented a reaction against the exaggerations of pure humanism, defending what he believed to be the best of the medieval and Islamic commentators (see Averroes, Avicenna) on Aristotle in a famous long letter to Ermolao Barbaro in 1485. It was always Pico’s aim to reconcile the schools of Plato and Aristotle, since he believed they both used different words to express the same concepts. It was perhaps for this reason his friends called him “Princeps Concordiae,” or “Prince of Harmony” (a pun on Prince of Concordia, one of his family’s holdings.^[3]) Similarly, Pico believed an educated person should also study the Hebrew and Talmudic sources, and the Hermetics, because he believed they represented the same view seen in the Old Testament, in different words, of God.

He finished his Oration on the Dignity of Man to accompany his 900 Theses and traveled to Rome to continue his plan to defend them. He had them published in December 1486 (Conclusiones philosophicae, cabalasticae et theologicae, Rome, 1486) and offered to pay the expenses of any scholars who came to Rome to debate them publicly.

In February 1487, Pope Innocent VIII halted the proposed debate, and established a commission to review the orthodoxy of the Theses. Although Pico answered the charges against them, thirteen of the Theses were condemned. Pico agreed in writing to retract them, but he did not change his mind about their validity, and proceeded to write an Apologia ("Apologia J. Pici Mirandolani, Concordiae comitis" published in 1489) defending them, dedicated to Lorenzo. When the Pope was apprised of the circulation of this manuscript, he set up an inquisitorial tribunal, forcing Pico to renounce the Apologia as well--which he also agreed to do.

Nevertheless, the Pope condemned all 900 Theses to be destroyed, calling them “in part heretical, in part the flower of heresy; several are scandalous and offensive to pious ears; most do nothing but reproduce the errors of pagan philosophers…others are capable of inflaming the impertinence of the Jews; a number of them, finally, under the pretext of “natural philosophy,” favor arts that are enemies to the Catholic faith and to the human race.”^[4] One of Pico’s detractors maintained that “Kabbala” was the name of an impious writer against Jesus Christ.

Pico fled to France in 1488, where he was arrested by Philippe de Savoie, at the demand of the papal nuncios, and imprisoned at Vincennes. Through the intercession of several Italian princes—all instigated by Lorenzo—King Charles VIII had him released, and the Pope was persuaded to allow Pico to move to Florence and to live under Lorenzo’s protection. But he was not cleared of the papal censures and restrictions until 1493, after the accession of Alexander VI (Rodrigo Borgia) to the papacy.

Pico was deeply shaken by the experience. He reconciled with Savonarola, who remained a dear friend, and it was at Pico’s persuasion that Lorenzo invited Savonarola to Florence. But Pico never renounced his syncretist convictions.

He settled in a villa near Fiesole prepared for him by Lorenzo, where he wrote and published the Heptaplus id est de Dei creatoris opere (1489) and De Ente et Uno (1491). It was here that he also wrote his other most celebrated work, the Disputationes adversus astrologiam divinicatrium, which was not published until after his death. In it, Pico acidly condemned the practices of the astrologers of his day, and shredded the intellectual basis of astrology itself. Pico was interested in high magic, that enhanced man's dignity and strengthened his will, and there was no room in such a concept for the determinism of the stars.

After the death of Lorenzo de' Medici, in 1492, Pico moved to Ferrara, although he continued to visit Florence, where political instability gave rise to the increasing influence of Savonarola, whose reactionary opposition to Renaissance expansion and style had already brought about conflict with the Medici family (they eventually were expelled from Florence), and would lead to wholesale destruction of books and paintings. Nevertheless, Pico became a follower of Savonarola, destroying his own poetry and giving away his fortune, with the determination of becoming a monk. However, he never did decide to make this final commitment.

Pico died under very mysterious circumstances in 1494 (it was rumored that his own secretary had poisoned him, because Pico had become too close to Savonarola^[5]). He was interred at San Marco and Savonarola delivered the funeral oration. Ficino wrote: “Our dear Pico left us on the same day that Charles VIII was entering Florence, and the tears of men of letters compensated for the joy of the people. Without the light brought by the king of France, Florence might perhaps have never seen a more somber day than that which extinguished Mirandola’s light.”^[6]

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Biography", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki