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[[File: Pico1.jpeg|right|260px|thumb|Portrait from the Uffizi Gallery, Florence]]

'''Giovanni Pico della Mirandola''' (1463–94) is one of the best-known philosophers of the Renaissance: his <i>Oration on the Dignity of Man </i> is better known than any other philosophical text of the fifteenth century. Pico was also remarkably original—indeed, idiosyncratic. <ref>Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. <i>Giovanni Pico della Mirandola</i>. Jun 3, 2008; revised May 15, 2020. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pico-della-mirandola/ Accessed on 3/25/22</ref>
Pico’s reverence for ancient wisdom drew him to the Florentine Platonic Academy established by Marsilio Ficino.  His awareness of the universality of truth led him to reject such humanist tendencies as the emphasis upon oratorical style over philosophical reason and the exclusive dependence on ancient Greece for inspiration. Pico studied the mystical writings ascribed to Hermes Trismegistus, Zoroaster and Moses, Orpheus and Pythagoras, Christian theology, Islamic philosophy, and the Hebrew Qabalah. <ref>Hesselink, Katinka. <i>Pico della Mirandola</i> http://www.katinkahesselink.net/his/PicoDellaMirandola.htm Accessed on 3/25/22</ref><ref>Encyclopedia.com. <i>Pico della Mirandolla, Giovanni</i>https://www.encyclopedia.com/people/philosophy-and-religion/philosophy-biographies/giovanni-pico-della-mirandola Accessed on 3/25/22</ref>


==Life==

Pico was born on February 24, 1463, to a noble Italian family, the counts of Mirandola and Concordia near Modena in the Emilia-Romagna north of Tuscany. <ref>Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. <i>Giovanni Pico della Mirandola</i>. Jun 3, 2008; revised May 15, 2020. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pico-della-mirandola/ Accessed on 3/25/22</ref> His father, Giovanni Francesco Pico, prince of the small territory of Mirandola, provided for his precocious son a thorough humanistic education at home. Pico then studied canon law at Bologna, leaving home at the age of fourteen, and Aristotelian philosophy at Padua and visited Florence and Paris, where he learned Italian, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic. <ref>Britannica. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, count di Concordia
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Giovanni-Pico-della-Mirandola-conte-di-Concordia Accessed on 6/14/22</ref> <ref>Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. <i>Giovanni Pico della Mirandola</i>. Jun 3, 2008; revised May 15, 2020. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pico-della-mirandola/ Accessed on 3/25/22</ref> Pico's reverence for <i>prisca theologia</i>, ancient wisdom, drew him to the Florentine Platonic Academy established by Marsilio Ficino under the aegis and encouragement of Cosimo dei Medici. Pico studied Zoroaster and Moses, Orpheus and Pythagoras, Christian theology, Islamic philosophy, and the Hebrew Qabalah. Ficino translated Plato into Latin and Pico studied his works avidly. When agents of the Medicis brought the Hermetic writings to Florence, Pico urged Ficino to translate them, holding that they contained the root of wisdom and the synthesis of philosophy, science, and religion. Pico himself single-handedly brought the Qabalah into the heart of the Renaissance.
<ref> Hesselink, Katinka. <i>Pico della Mirandola</i>. http://www.katinkahesselink.net/his/PicoDellaMirandola.htm# Accessed on 6/14/22</ref>

Except for short trips to Ferrara, Pico spent the rest of his life in Florence. Toward the end of his life he came under the influence of the strictly orthodox Girolamo Savonarola, martyr, and enemy of Lorenzo de’Medici. <ref>Britannica. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, count di Concordia
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Giovanni-Pico-della-Mirandola-conte-di-Concordia Accessed on 6/14/22</ref>

Pico della Mirandola died in the autumn of 1494 at the age of just thirty-one under mysterious circumstances and it took almost two weeks for him to die. In 2007, his remains, together with those of the man who may have been his lover, the scholar-poet Angelo Poliziano, were disinterred from the Dominican Convent of San Marco, in Florence. Both contained toxic levels of arsenic and this result confirmed the suspicions of the doctors who examined the bodies in 1494. 
<ref> Slattery, Luke. <i>A Renaissance Murder Mystery</i>. July 22, 2015. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/a-renaissance-murder-mystery Accessed on 6/14/22</ref>


==Works and Reputation==

In 1486, at the age of 23, Pico published nine hundred theses. He became the first Christian scholar to use Kabbalistic doctrine in support of Christian theology. <ref>Britannica. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, count di Concordia
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Giovanni-Pico-della-Mirandola-conte-di-Concordia Accessed on 6/14/22</ref> He planned to defend these theses that he had drawn from diverse Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, and Latin writers and invited scholars from all of Europe to Rome for a public disputation. For the occasion he composed his celebrated opening address, Oratio de Hominis Dignitate, <i>On the Dignity of Man,</i>. A papal commission, however, denounced thirteen of the theses as heretical, and the assembly was prohibited by Pope Innocent VIII. Included among the heresies were the propositions that 

(1) Origen, the Christian co-disciple of Plotinus under Ammonius Saccas and head of the Alexandrine Catechistic School, having been excommunicated for teaching reincarnation, should be thought to lie in heaven rather than hell,

(2) the science of magic and the Qabalah prove the divinity of the Christos. 

He prepared an opening address, <i>Oratio de Hominis Dignitate</i>, "On the Dignity of Man," but abandoned the project in the face of papal censure. He prepared an opening address, Oratio de Hominis Dignitate, "On the Dignity of Man," but abandoned the project in the face of papal censure. <ref> Hesselink, Katinka. <i>Pico della Mirandola</i>. http://www.katinkahesselink.net/his/PicoDellaMirandola.htm# Accessed on 6/14/22</ref> In the <i>Oratio</i> he praises man and explains that his dignity is not based on common places, such as the idea of man endowed of speech and reason, and not even of a man as microcosm, ruler of the universe, but rather on the fact that man, having no fixed attributes, enjoys the free capacity of sharing in the properties of all other beings. <ref>Bori, Pier Cesari. <i>The Italian Renaissance: An Unfinished Dawn? – Pico della Miroandola</i> https://web.archive.org/web/20071229231307/http://didattica.spbo.unibo.it/pais/bori/articolo010.html. Accessed on 8/27/22</ref>

Pico wrote a lengthy <i>Apologia</i> in which he defended his views, but he was forced to flee Rome under threat of persecution from the pope. Though arrested in France by Charles VIII at the request of papal envoys, Pico returned to Florence under the personal protection of Lorenzo dei Medici and spent the last few years of his life writing and spreading the teachings which were the pivot of the Renaissance.<ref> Hesselink, Katinka. <i>Pico della Mirandola</i>. http://www.katinkahesselink.net/his/PicoDellaMirandola.htm# Accessed on 6/14/22</ref>

<br>Because he died so young, Pico finished very little and published less: the vernacular  <i>Commento </i> was neither completed nor published in his lifetime; the <i>Conclusions</i> are just bare statements of theses; half of the preface to the rushed <i>Apologia</i> was lifted from the unpublished <i>Oratio.</i> <i> On Being and the One </i>is a small piece of a larger effort to harmonize Plato and Aristotle; and Gianfrancesco found the unfinished <i>Disputations Against Astrology</i> bundled with his dead uncle’s papers. Pico had only three works printed in his lifetime: the <i>Conclusions</i>, the <i>Apologia</i> and the <i>Heptaplus</i>.<ref>Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. <i>Giovanni Pico della Mirandola</i>. Jun 3, 2008; revised May 15, 2020. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pico-della-mirandola/ Accessed on 8/26/22</ref></br>

In the <i>Heptaplus,</i> Pico took up Origen's doctrine that scripture has three keys to interpretation – literal, allegorical, and celestial or occult. The <i>Heptaplus</i> is an account of the <i>Genesis</i> creation story, in the form of a sevenfold understanding of evolution and Nature, from the elemental kingdoms through the supramundane worlds. <ref>Hesselink, Katinka. <i>Pico della Mirandola</i> http://www.katinkahesselink.net/his/PicoDellaMirandola.htm Accessed on 8/27/22</ref>

== Pico della Mirandola and the Jewish Kabbalah==

Pico della Mirandola became the first Christian scholar to use Kabbalistic doctrine in support of Christian theology. <ref>Britannica. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, count di Concordia
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Giovanni-Pico-della-Mirandola-conte-di-Concordia Accessed on 6/14/22</ref> In 1486 he moved to Perugia, where he studied Hebrew and Arabic under the guidance of several Jewish teachers, including the mysterious Flavius Mithridates, and this period marked the beginning of his interest in the Jewish mystical and magical system, the Jewish Kabbalah. This medieval Jewish Kabbalah was based on the ten sephiroth and the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet and interpreted the sephiroth as powers of God arranged in a specific structure.

Pico discerned a wonderful symmetry between the Kabbalah and Hermeticism. The Egyptian lawgiver Hermes Trismegistus had revealed mystical teachings, including an account of Creation which hinted at his knowledge of Moses’ wisdom. In Pico’s view, the Kabbalah offered a further body of mystical doctrine, supposedly derived from the Hebrew lawgiver, and a parallel view on cosmology. Having greater knowledge of Hebrew than any other non-Jewish scholar and with his interest in the Kabbalah, Pico set down a new synthesis of Hermetic-Cabalistic magic in twenty-six “Magical Conclusions.”
He praised “natural magic” as a legitimate establishment of links between heaven and earth by the proper use of natural substances as recommended by the principles of sympathetic magic and recommend Orphic incantations for magical purposes. He further argued that whereas natural magic aims no higher than the terrestrial world and the stars, Cabala can be used to operate beyond in the supercelestial spheres of the angels, archangels, the sephiroth, and God. <ref> Goodrick-Clarke, Nicholas. <i> Pico della Mirandola and the Cabala</i>From pp. 41 - 46 of The Western Esoteric Traditions: A Historical Introduction, “Italian Renaissance Magic and Cabala” by Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, 2008. Reprinted with permission of Oxford University Press (www.oup.com). https://f151aef42a498ae456d4-1ef8579ca901739d2f09804e4c534da2.ssl.cf5.rackcdn.com/07_g-clarke.pdf Accessed on 8/26/22</ref>

==Pico della Mirandola and H.P. Blavatsky==

Just as [[Helena Petrovna Blavatsky|Mme. Blavatsky]] collected and diffused a knowledge of the laws which govern the Universe incorporating Eastern and Western philosophy, and writing about the harmony between and synthesis of science, philosophy, and mysticism and religion, Pico attempted to establish a universal religion and system of knowledge based on a synthesis of Christianity, Platonism, Aristotelianism, Averroism, Stoicism, Hebrew thought, Jewish Kabbala, and many other fields of knowledge, all incorporated into a single all-embracing religious and philosophical system, and publishing his 900 theses on all possible subjects, "Conclusiones philosophicae, cabalasticae et theologicae". <ref> <i>Ken Wilber, Pico della Mirandola, and H.P. Blavatsky</i>http://malankazlev.com/kheper/topics/Wilber/historical_parallels.html Accessed on 6/14/22</ref>

According to [[Helena Petrovna Blavatsky|Mme. Blavatsky]] he was a [[chela]] of the [[Masters of Wisdom|Masters]]:

<blockquote>For centuries the selection of [[Chela|Chelas]] — outside the hereditary group within the gon-pa (temple) — has been made by the Himalayan Mahatmas themselves from among the class — in Tibet, a considerable one as to number — of natural mystics. The only exceptions have been in the cases of Western men like Fludd, Thomas Vaughan, [[Paracelsus]], Pico della Mirandola, [[Count de Saint Germain|Count de Saint-Germain]], etc., whose temperamental affinity to this celestial science more or less forced the distant [[Adept|Adepts]] to come into personal relations with them, and enabled them to get such small (or large) proportion of the whole truth as was possible under their social surroundings.<ref>Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, ''Collected Writings'' Vol. IV (Wheaton, IL: Theosophical Publishing House, 1991), 607.</ref></blockquote>

== Pico della Mirandola and Astrology==

The development of the astrological ideas of Pico dell Mirandola remains one of the most intriguing aspects of his legacy. Even though he analyzed astrology in depth only in the last treatise, the <i>Disputationes adversus astrologiam divinatricem</i> (1493-94), his views on the subject can be found in many of his texts and there are apparent paradoxes in his writings about it. He seems to endorse astrology in some of his writings and condemns them in others. <ref>Akopyan, Ovanes. <i>Debating the Stars in the Italian Renessance: Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola’s Disputationes Adversus Astrologiam Divinatrisem and the Reception. Brill Publisher, 2020-10-08</ref>

Pico's antagonism to astrology seems to derive mainly from astrology's conflict with Christian notions of free will. The last treatise was edited for publication after Pico's death by his nephew Giovanni Francesco Pico della Mirandola, and possibly amended more critically, <ref>ENYKLOPÄDIE. <i>Pico della Mirandola</i> https://wiki.edu.vn/wiki29/2021/10/29/giovanni-pico-della-mirandola-wikipedia/ Accessed on 8/27/22</ref> and thus, problematic in its textual history. <ref>Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. <i>Giovanni Pico della Mirandola</i>. Jun 3, 2008; revised May 15, 2020. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pico-della-mirandola/ Accessed on 8/27/22</ref>

This view of Pico against the practice of astrology have had enormous resonance for centuries, up to our own time. 

==Conclusion==

According to Frances Yates, the profound significance of Pico della Mirandola in the history of humanity can hardly be overestimated. He was the first who boldly formulated a new position for European man, man as Magus using both Magia and Cabala to act upon the world, to control his destiny by science. <ref>Hesselink, Katinka. <i>Pico della Mirandola</i> http://www.katinkahesselink.net/his/PicoDellaMirandola.htm Accessed on 8/27/22</ref> Thus, he became formative for the cultural development of the Occident by placing man at the center of the world. <ref>Grün, Clemens. <i>Giovanni Pica della Mirandola</> Seminar Paper, 1998. https://www.grin.com/document/107580 Accessed on 8/27/22</ref> Pico's science is a science of Nature, rooted in the love of wisdom, and a science of Spirit, a true religion which draws us back to the Ancient Source. 
<ref>Hesselink, Katinka. <i>Pico della Mirandola</i> http://www.katinkahesselink.net/his/PicoDellaMirandola.htm Accessed on 8/27/22</ref>


==Online resources==
===Articles===
*[http://www.katinkahesselink.net/his/PicoDellaMirandola.htm# Pico Della Mirandola] at KatinkaHesselink.net

== Notes ==
<references/>

[[Category:Kabbalists|Pico della Mirandola]]
[[Category:Western Esotericism|Pico della Mirandola]]
[[Category:Chelas|Pico della Mirandola]]
[[Category:Nationality Italian|Pico della Mirandola]]
[[Category:Philosophers|Pico della Mirandola]]
[[Category:People|Pico della Mirandola]]