Giovanni Pico della

Mirandola

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola

(Italian: [dʒoˈvanni ˈpiːko della miˈrandola];
24 February 1463 – 17 November 1494)
was an Italian Renaissance nobleman
and philosopher.[1] He is famed for the
events of 1486, when, at the age of 23, he
proposed to defend 900 theses on
religion, philosophy, natural philosophy,
and magic against all comers, for which
he wrote the Oration on the Dignity of
Man, which has been called the
"Manifesto of the Renaissance",[2] and a
key text of Renaissance humanism and
of what has been called the "Hermetic
Reformation".[3] He was the founder of
the tradition of Christian Kabbalah, a key
tenet of early modern Western
esotericism. His 900 Theses was the first
printed book to be universally banned by
the Church.[4]
 Pico della Mirandola

Portrait from the Uffizi Gallery, in Florence

Born 24 February 1463
Mirandola, Duchy of
Mirandola

Died 17 November 1494

(aged 31)
Florence, Republic of
Florence

Era Renaissance
philosophy

Region Western philosophy

S h l R i
School Renaissance
philosophy
Main interests Politics, history,
religion, magic

Influences
Plato, Marsilio Ficino, Aristotle, Pseudo-
Dionysius, Neoplatonism, Nicholas of Cusa,
Kabbalah

Influenced
John Colet, Erasmus, Sir Thomas More

Biography
Castle of Mirandola (Duchy of Modena) in 1976

Family

Giovanni was born at Mirandola, near

Modena, the youngest son of
Gianfrancesco I Pico, Lord of Mirandola
and Count of Concordia, by his wife
Giulia, daughter of Feltrino Boiardo,
Count of Scandiano.[5] The family had
long dwelt in the Castle of Mirandola
(Duchy of Modena), which had become
independent in the fourteenth century
and had received in 1414 from the Holy
Roman Emperor Sigismund the fief of
Concordia. Mirandola was a small
autonomous county (later, a duchy) in
Emilia, near Ferrara. The Pico della
Mirandola were closely related to the
Sforza, Gonzaga and Este dynasties, and
Giovanni's siblings wed the descendants
of the hereditary rulers of Corsica,
Ferrara, Bologna, and Forlì.[5]

Born twenty-three years into his parents'

marriage, Giovanni had two much older
brothers, both of whom outlived him:
Count Galeotto I continued the dynasty,
while Antonio became a general in the
Imperial army.[5] The Pico family would
reign as dukes until Mirandola, an ally of
Louis XIV of France, was conquered by
his rival, Joseph I, Holy Roman Emperor,
in 1708 and annexed to Modena by Duke
Rinaldo d'Este, the exiled male line
becoming extinct in 1747.[6]

Giovanni's maternal family was singularly

distinguished in the arts and scholarship
of the Italian Renaissance. His cousin
and contemporary was the poet Matteo
Maria Boiardo, who grew up under the
influence of his own uncle, the Florentine
patron of the arts and scholar-poet Tito
Vespasiano Strozzi.[7]
Giovanni had a paradoxical relationship
with his nephew Gianfrancesco Pico
della Mirandola, who was a great admirer
of his uncle, yet published Examen
vanitatis doctrinae gentium (1520) in
opposition to the "ancient wisdom
narrative" espoused by Giovanni,
described by historian Charles B. Schmitt
as an attempt "to destroy what his uncle
had built."[8]

Education

A precocious child with an exceptional

memory, Giovanni 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
(probably honorary) at the age of ten and
in 1477 he went to Bologna to study
canon law.[9]

At the sudden death of his mother three

years later, Pico renounced canon law
and began to study philosophy at the
University of Ferrara.[9] During a brief trip
to Florence, he met Angelo Poliziano, the
courtly poet Girolamo Benivieni, and
probably the young Dominican monk
Girolamo Savonarola. For the rest of his
life he remained very close friends with
all three, including the ascetic and anti-
humanist Savonarola.[10] He may also
have been a lover of Poliziano.[11] From
1480 to 1482, he continued his studies at
the University of Padua, a major center of
Aristotelianism in Italy.[9] 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 Latin and Italian which,
because of the influence of Savonarola,
he destroyed at the end of his life.

He spent the next four years either at

home, or visiting humanist centres
elsewhere in Italy. In 1485, he travelled to
the University of Paris, the most
important centre in Europe for scholastic
philosophy and theology, and a hotbed of
secular Averroism. It was probably in
Paris that Giovanni began his 900 Theses
and conceived the idea of defending
them in public debate.

900 Theses

Lorenzo de' Medici by Giorgio Vasari, c. 1533-1534

THE CONCLUSIONS will not be
disputed until after the
Epiphany. In the meantime
they will be published in all
Italian universities. And if any
philosopher or theologian,
even from the ends of Italy,
wishes to come to Rome for the
sake of debating, his lord the
disputer promises to pay the
travel expenses from his own
funds.
 — Announcement at the
end of the 900 Theses[12]

During this time two life-changing events

occurred. The first was when he returned
to settle for a time in Florence in
November 1484 and met Lorenzo de'
Medici and Marsilio Ficino. It was an
astrologically auspicious day that Ficino
had chosen to publish his translations of
the works of Plato from Greek into Latin,
under Lorenzo's enthusiastic patronage.
Pico appears to have charmed both men,
and despite Ficino's philosophical
differences, he was convinced of their
Saturnine affinity and the divine
providence of his arrival. Lorenzo would
support and protect Pico until his death
in 1492. Without Lorenzo's support, it is
doubtful that Pico would have survived
the Inquisition coming after him.

Soon after this stay in Florence, Pico was

travelling on his way to Rome where he
intended to publish his 900 Theses and
prepare for a "congress" of scholars from
all over Europe to debate them. 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. Giovanni 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 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."[13] It was also in
Perugia that Pico was introduced to the
mystical Hebrew Kabbalah, which
fascinated him, as did the late classical
Hermetic writers, such as Hermes
Trismegistus. The Kabbalah and
Hermetica were thought in Pico's time to
be as ancient as the Old Testament. The
most original of his 900 theses
concerned the Kaballah. As a result he
became the founder of the tradition
known as Christian Kabbalah, which went
on to be a central part of early modern
Western esotericism.[4] Pico's approach
to different philosophies was one of
extreme syncretism, placing them in
parallel, it has been claimed, rather than
attempting to describe a developmental
history.[14]
Pico based his ideas chiefly on Plato, as
did his teacher, Marsilio Ficino, but
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, such as Averroes and
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 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).[15] Similarly, Pico believed that
an educated person should also study
the Hebrew and Talmudic sources, and
the Hermetics, because he thought they
represented the same concept of God
that is seen in the Old Testament, but in
different words.

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
together in December 1486 as
"Conclusiones philosophicae,
cabalasticae et theologicae", and offered
to pay the expenses of any scholars who
came to Rome to debate them publicly.
He wanted the debate to begin on 6
January, which was, as historian Steven
Farmer has observed, the feast of
Epiphany and "symbolic date of the
submission of the pagan gentes to Christ
in the persons of the Magi". After
emerging victorious at the culmination of
the debate, Pico planned not only on the
symbolic acquiescence of the pagan
sages, but also the conversion of Jews
as they realised that Jesus was the true
secret of their traditions. According to
Farmer, Pico may have been expecting
quite literally that "his Vatican debate
would end with the Four Horsemen of the
Apocalypse crashing through the Roman
skies".[16]

Innocent VIII, 15th century

In February 1487, Pope Innocent VIII

halted the proposed debate, and
established a commission to review the
orthodoxy of the 900 Theses. Although
Pico answered the charges against them,
thirteen of them were condemned. Pico
agreed in writing to retract them, but he
did not change his mind about their
validity. Eventually all 900 theses were
condemned. He proceeded to write an
apologia defending them, Apologia J. Pici
Mirandolani, Concordiae comitis,
published in 1489, which he dedicated to
his patron, Lorenzo. When the pope was
apprised of the circulation of this
manuscript, he set up an inquisitorial
tribunal, forcing Pico to renounce the
Apologia, in addition to his condemned
theses, which he agreed to do. The pope
condemned 900 Theses as:
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', favour arts [i.e.,
magic[4]] that are enemies to
the Catholic faith and to the
human race.[17]
This was the first time that a printed
book had been banned by the Church,
and nearly all copies were burned.[4] Pico
fled to France in 1488, where he was
arrested by Philip II, Duke of Savoy, at the
demand of the papal nuncios, and
imprisoned at Vincennes. Through the
intercession of several Italian princes –
all instigated by Lorenzo de' Medici –
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.
The experience deeply shook Pico. He
reconciled with Savonarola, who
remained a very close friend. 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
(Of Being and Unity, 1491). It was here
that he also wrote his other most
celebrated work, the Disputationes
adversus astrologiam divinicatrium
(Treatise Against Predictive Astrology),
which was not published until after his
death. In it, Pico acidly condemned the
deterministic practices of the astrologers
of his day.

After the death of Lorenzo de' Medici, in

1492, Pico moved to Ferrara, although he
continued to visit Florence. In Florence,
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 the wholesale destruction of books
and paintings. Nevertheless, Pico
became a follower of Savonarola.
Determined to become a monk, he
dismissed his former interest in Egyptian
and Chaldean texts, destroyed his own
poetry and gave away his fortune.[18]

Death

Angel Appearing to Zacharias (detail), by Domenico

Ghirlandaio, c. 1486-90 - showing (l-r) Marsilio
Ficino, Cristoforo Landino, Angelo Poliziano and
Demetrios Chalkondyles
In 1494, at the age of 31, Pico was
poisoned under mysterious
circumstances along with his friend
Angelo Poliziano.[19] It was rumoured
that his own secretary had poisoned him
because Pico had become too close to
Savonarola.[17] He was interred together
with Girolamo Benivieni 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.[17]

In 2007, the bodies of Poliziano and Pico

della Mirandola were exhumed from St.
Mark's Basilica in Florence. Scientists
under the supervision of Giorgio
Gruppioni, a professor of anthropology
from Bologna, attempted to determine
the cause of the two men's death using
modern technology.[10] In February 2008
they announced their results, which
showed that both Poliziano and Pico had
died of arsenic poisoning, probably at the
order of Lorenzo's successor, Piero de'
Medici.[20]

Writings

Opera quae exstant omnia (1601)

In the Oratio de hominis dignitate (Oration
on the Dignity of Man, 1486), Pico
justified the importance of the human
quest for knowledge within a
Neoplatonic framework.

The Oration also served as an

introduction to Pico's 900 theses, which
he believed to provide a complete and
sufficient basis for the discovery of all
knowledge, and hence a model for
mankind's ascent of the chain of being.
The 900 Theses are a good example of
humanist syncretism, because Pico
combined Platonism, Neoplatonism,
Aristotelianism, Hermeticism and
Kabbalah. They also included 72 theses
describing what Pico believed to be a
complete system of physics.

Pico's De animae immortalitate (Paris,

1541), and other works, developed the
doctrine that man's possession of an
immortal soul freed him from the
hierarchical stasis. Pico believed in
universal reconciliation, as one of his 900
theses was "A mortal sin of finite
duration is not deserving of eternal but
only of temporal punishment;" it was
among the theses pronounced heretical
by Pope Innocent VIII in his bull of 4
August 1487.[21] In the Oration he writes
that "human vocation is a mystical
vocation that has to be realized following
a three stage way, which comprehends
necessarily moral transformation,
intellectual research and final perfection
in the identity with the absolute reality.
This paradigm is universal, because it
can be retraced in every tradition."[22]

A portion of his Disputationes adversus

astrologiam divinatricem was published
in Bologna after his death. In this book
Pico presents arguments against the
practice of astrology that have had
enormous resonance for centuries, up to
our own time. Disputationes is influenced
by the arguments against astrology
espoused by one of his intellectual
heroes, Augustine of Hippo, and also by
the medieval philosophical tale Ḥayy ibn
Yaqẓān by ibn Tufail, which promoted
autodidacticism as a philosophical
program.[23]

Pico's antagonism to astrology seems to

derive mainly from the conflict of
astrology with Christian notions of free
will. But Pico's arguments moved beyond
the objections of Ficino, who was himself
an astrologer. The manuscript was edited
for publication after Pico's death by his
nephew Giovanni Francesco Pico della
Mirandola, an ardent follower of
Savonarola, and may possibly have been
amended to be more forcefully critical.
This might possibly explain the fact that
Ficino championed the manuscript and
enthusiastically endorsed it before its
publication.

Early in his career, Pico wrote a

Commento sopra una canzone d'amore di
Girolamo Benivieni, in which he revealed
his plan to write a book entitled Poetica
Theologia:[24]

It was the opinion of the

ancient theologians that divine
subjects and the secret
Mysteries must not be rashly
divulged... the Egyptians had
sculpted sphinxes in all their
 temples, for no other reason
than to indicate that divine
things, even when they are
committed to writing, must be
covered with enigmatic veils
and poetic dissimulation...
How that was done... by Latin
and Greek poets we shall
explain in the book of our
Poetic Theology.

— Commento, Libro Terzo,

Cap. xi, Stanza Nona[25]

Pico's Heptaplus, a mystico-allegorical

exposition of the creation according to
the seven Biblical senses, elaborates on
his idea that different religions and
traditions describe the same God. The
book is written in his characteristic
apologetic and polemic style:

If they agree with us anywhere,

we shall order the Hebrews to
stand by the ancient traditions
of their fathers; if anywhere
they disagree, then drawn up
in Catholic legions we shall
make an attack upon them. In
short, whatever we detect
foreign to the truth of the
Gospels we shall refute to the
 extent of our power, while
whatever we find holy and true
we shall bear off from the
synagogue, as from a wrongful
possessor, to ourselves, the
legitimate Israelites.

— Heptaplus, Proem to 3rd

exposition[26]

On Being and the One (Latin: De ente et

uno), has explanations of several
passages in Moses, Plato and Aristotle. It
is an attempted reconciliation between
Platonic and Aristotelian writings on the
relative places of being and "the one" and
a refutation of opposing arguments.
He wrote in Italian an imitation of Plato's
Symposium. His letters (Aureae ad
familiares epistolae, Paris, 1499) are
important for the history of
contemporary thought. The many
editions of his entire works in the
sixteenth century sufficiently prove his
influence.

Another notorious text by Giovanni Pico

della Mirandola is De omnibus rebus et de
quibusdam aliis, "Of all things that exist
and a little more" which is mentioned in
some entries on Thomas More's Utopia
and makes fun of the title of Lucretius'
De rerum natura.
Cultural references
In James Joyce's Ulysses, the
precocious Stephen Dedalus recalls
with disdain his boyhood ambitions,
and apparently associates them with
the career of Mirandola: "Remember
your epiphanies written on green oval
leaves, deeply deep...copies to be sent
if you died to all the great libraries of
the world...Pico della Mirandola
like."[27]
Of minor interest is a passing
reference to Mirandola by H. P.
Lovecraft, in the story The Case of
Charles Dexter Ward (1927). Mirandola
is given as the source of the fearsome
incantation used by unknown evil
entities as some sort of evocation.
However, this "spell" was first depicted
(as the key to a rather simple form of
divination, not a great and terrible
summoning) by, and in all likelihood
created by, Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa
von Nettesheim in his Three Books of
Occult Philosophy. This was written
several decades after Mirandola's
death and was the first written
example of that "spell", so it is almost
impossible for Mirandola to have been
the source of those "magic words".
Psychoanalyst Otto Rank, a rebellious
disciple of Sigmund Freud, chose a
substantial excerpt from Mirandola's
Oration on the Dignity of Man as the
motto for his book Art and Artist:
Creative Urge and Personality
Development, including: "...I created
thee as a being neither celestial nor
earthly... so that thou shouldst be thy
own free moulder and overcomer...".[28]
In Umberto Eco's novel Foucault's
Pendulum the protagonist Casaubon
claims that the idea that the Jews were
privy to the enigma of the Templars
was "a mistake of Pico Della
Mirandola" caused by a spelling
mistake he made between "Israelites"
and "Ismaelites."
In Irving Stone's novel about
Michelangelo, The Agony and the
Ecstasy, book 3, part 3 contains a
paragraph's description of Mirandola
as part of the scholarly circle that
surrounded Lorenzo di Medici in
Florence. Mirandola was described as
a man who spoke 22 languages, was
deeply read in philosophy, and
someone who made no enemies.
Philosopher of social science René
Girard mentions Mirandola passingly in
his book Des choses cachées depuis la
fondation du monde (Things Hidden
Since the Foundation of the World),
Girard writes in a disparaging tone,
"People will accuse us of playing at
being Pico della Mirandola—the
renaissance man—certainly a
temptation to be resisted today, if we
wish to be seen in a favourable light."
(p. 141, 1987)
In Roberto Bolaño's novel 2666, the
philosophy professor Oscar Amalfitano
begins his three-columned list of
philosophers with Pico della
Mirandola. Adjacent to Mirandola,
Amalfitano writes Hobbes, while
beneath him he writes Husserl (p. 207,
2008).
In Frédéric Lenoir's novel L'Oracle della
Luna (2006) the philosophy of Pico
della Mirandola forms one of the major
teachings acquired by the protagonist,
Giovanni, from his main spiritual
Master. The year is 1530. The major
mentions are:
at the end of Chapter 21 the sage
– a fictitious character – says he
has personally met Pico della
Mirandola and discusses
Mirandola's disagreement with the
pope about the 900 Theses (with
Lenoir stating that only 7 of them
had not been accepted) and the
philosopher's later fate. In the
words of the sage, the main goal
of Ficino and Pico della Mirandola
was to acquire universal
knowledge, free from prejudice
and from linguistic and religious
barriers;
at the end of Chapter 24, having
discussed Luther's concept of free
will, the sage wants the acquaint
Giovanni with Mirandola's ideas on
this issue and lets him read "De
hominis dignitate"; Giovanni
peruses the book with great
interest in Chapter 25;
at the beginning of Chapter 26,
with Giovanni having now read the
Oration on the Dignity of Man, the
sage discusses two issues from
the book with him. One is Pico
della Mirandola's attempt to form
 one unified and universal
philosophy and the difficulties
thereof. The other one is
Mirandola's concept of free will.
Giovanni has learnt one passage
from the book by heart, about God
addressing man and telling him,
that He has made him neither a
heavenly nor an earthly creature
and that man is the forger of his
own fate. This passage is quoted
in the novel.
English composer Gavin Bryars makes
use of the texts of Pico della Mirandola
in his musical production; most
notably in pieces like "Glorious Hill", for
vocal quartet/mixed choir, and "Incipit
Vita Nova", for alto and string trio.
Pico della Mirandola appears as the
character Ikaros in Jo Walton's novels
The Just City and The Philosopher
Kings.
In the book Dying for Ideas; The
Dangerous Lives of the Philosophers
(2015) by Romanian philosopher
Costica Bradatan, Mirandola's life and
work is taken as an early or even first
example of taking human life as a
project of 'self-fashioning', relating this
to Mirandola's heretic idea of man
being part of creation with 'an
indefinite nature'.
See also
Platonic Academy (Florence)

References
Footnotes

1. "Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni, Conte"

in Grolier Encyclopedia of Knowledge,
volume 15, copyright 1991. Grolier Inc.,
ISBN 0-7172-5300-7
2. Oration on the Dignity of Man (1486)
wsu.edu Archived 4 January 2011 at the
Wayback Machine.
3. Heiser, James D., Prisci Theologi and
the Hermetic Reformation in the Fifteenth
Century, Malone, TX: Repristination Press,
2011. ISBN 978-1-4610-9382-4
4. Hanegraaff p.54
5. Marek, Miroslav (16 September 2002).
"Genealogy.eu" . Pico family. Retrieved
2008-03-09.
6. Schoell, M. (1837). "VIII" . History of the
Revolutions in Europe . Charleston: S.
Babcock & Co. pp. 23–24. ISBN 0-665-
91061-4. Retrieved 2008-03-09.
7. "Trionfi.com" . Boiardo's Life: Time
Table. Archived from the original on 6
August 2009. Retrieved 2008-03-09.
8. Hanegraff p.80
9. Baird, Forrest (2000). "Giovanni Pico
della Mirandola (1463–1494)" .
Philosophic Classics. Prentice Hall.
Archived from the original on 2
December 2008. Retrieved 2009-01-28.
10. "Medici writers exhumed in Italy" .
BBC News. 28 July 2007. Retrieved
2015-12-11.
11. Strathern, Paul (2011). Death in
Florence. London: Jonathan Cape. p. 84.
ISBN 978-0224089784.
12. Farmer p.ix
13. "Bibliographie Giovanni Pico della
Mirandola" . lyber-eclat.net. Retrieved
2016-03-21.
14. Hanegraaff p.59
15. Paul Oskar Kristeller, Eight
Philosophers of the Italian Renaissance.
Stanford University Press (Stanford,
California, 1964.) P. 62.
16. Hanegraaff p.57
17. Lyber-eclat.net op.cit.
18. Borchardt, Frank L. (1 January 1990).
"The Magus as Renaissance Man". The
Sixteenth Century Journal. 21 (1): 70.
doi:10.2307/2541132 . JSTOR 2541132 .
19. Ben-Zaken, Avner, "Defying Authority,
Rejecting Predestination and Conquering
Nature", in Reading Hayy Ibn-Yaqzan: A
Cross-Cultural History of Autodidacticism
(Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011),
65–101 .
20. Moore, Malcolm (7 February 2008).
"Medici philosopher's mysterious death is
solved" . The Daily Telegraph. London.
Retrieved 2008-02-07.
21. "Apocatastasis ". New Schaff-Herzog
Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, Vol.
I.
22. Prof. Pier Cesare Bori. "The Italian
Renaissance: An Unfinished Dawn?: Pico
della Mirandola Archived 29 December
2007 at the Wayback Machine.". Accessed
2007-12-05.
23. see Ben-Zaken, Avner, "Defying
Authority, Rejecting Predestination and
Conquering Nature", in Reading Hayy Ibn-
Yaqzan: A Cross-Cultural History of
Autodidacticism (Johns Hopkins
University Press, 2011), pp. 65–100.
24. Butorac p.357
25. Hanegraaff p.64
26. Hanegraaff p.58
27. Source: ebooks.adelaide.edu.au
Archived 9 January 2010 at the Wayback
Machine. (accessed: 15 September 2010)
28. Rank, Otto, Art and Artist: Creative
Urge and Personality Development, Alfred
A. Knopf, New York, 1932.

Sources and further reading

Ben-Zaken, Avner, "Defying Authority,
Rejecting Predestination and Conquering
Nature", in Reading Hayy Ibn-Yaqzan: A
Cross-Cultural History of Autodidacticism
(Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011),
pp. 65–100. ISBN 978-0801897399.
Borchardt, Frank L. "The Magus as
Renaissance Man." Sixteenth Century
Journal (1990): 57–76.
doi:10.2307/2541132 .
Busi, G., "'Who does not wonder at this
Chameleon?' The Kabbalistic Library of
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola", in "Hebrew
to Latin, Latin to Hebrew. The Mirroring of
Two Cultures in the Age of Humanism.
Colloquium held at the Warburg Institute.
London, October 18–19, 2004", Edited by G.
Busi, Berlin-Torino: Nino Aragno Editore,
2006: 167–196.
Busi, G. with S. M. Bondoni and S.
Campanini (eds.), The Great Parchment:
Flavius Mithridates’ Latin Translation, the
Hebrew Text, and an English Version, The
Kabbalistic Library of Giovanni Pico della
Mirandola – 1. Torino: Nino Aragno Editore,
2004.
Danielle Layne; David D. Butorac (6
February 2017). Proclus and his Legacy . De
Gruyter. ISBN 978-3-11-047162-5.
Campanini, S. The Book of Bahir. Flavius
Mithridates' Latin Translation, the Hebrew
Text, and an English Version, with a
Foreword by G. Busi, The Kabbalistic Library
of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola – 2. Torino:
Nino Aragno Editore, 2005.
Campanini, Saverio. "Talmud, Philosophy,
Kabbalah: A Passage from Pico della
Mirandola’s Apologia and its Source." In The
Words of a Wise Man’s Mouth are Gracious.
Festschrift for Günter Stemberger on the
Occasion of His 65th Birthday, edited by M.
Perani, 429–447. Berlin & New York: W. De
Gruyter Verlag, 2005.
Cassirer, Ernst, Paul Oskar Kristeller, and
John Herman Randall, Jr. The Renaissance
Philosophy of Man. Chicago: The University
of Chicago Press, 1948.
Corazzol, Giacomo (ed.), Menahem
Recanati, Commentary on the Daily Prayers.
The Kabbalistic Library of Giovanni Pico
della Mirandola – 3. 2 volumes. Torino: Nino
Aragno Editore, 2008.
Dougherty, M. V., ed. Pico della Mirandola.
New Essays. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2008.
Dulles, Avery, Princeps Concordiae: Pico
della Mirandola and the Scholastic Tradition
—The Harvard Phi Beta Kappa Prize Essay
for 1940, Cambridge, MA, 1941.
Farmer, S. A. Syncretism in the West: Pico's
900 Theses (1486): The Evolution of
Traditional Religious and Philosophical
Systems. Temple, AZ: Medieval &
Renaissance Texts & Studies, 1998.
(Contains the Latin text of the 900 theses,
an English translation, and detailed
commentary.)
Gilbhard, Thomas. "Paralipomena pichiana:
a propos einer Pico–Bibliographie". In
Accademia. Revue de la Société Marsile
Ficin VII (2005): 81–94.
Hanegraaff, Wouter (2012). Esotericism and
the Academy: Rejected Knowledge in
Western Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press. ISBN 9780521196215.
Heiser, James D., Prisci Theologi and the
Hermetic Reformation in the Fifteenth
Century, Malone, TX: Repristination Press,
2011. ISBN 978-1-4610-9382-4.
Kristeller, Paul Oskar. Eight Philosophers of
the Italian Renaissance. Stanford, CA:
Stanford University Press, 1964.
Jurgan, Susanne, Campanini, Saverio, The
Gate of Heaven. Flavius Mithridates' Latin
Translation, the Hebrew Text, and an English
Version. Edited with Introduction and Notes
by S. Jurgan and S. Campanini with a Text
on Pico by Giulio Busi, in The Kabbalistic
Library of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola 5,
Nino Aragno Editore, Torino 2012.
ISBN 978-8884195449
Pater, Walter. "Pico Della Mirandola." In The
Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry, 24–
40. New York: The Modern Library, 1871.
 Quaquarelli, Leonardo, and Zita Zanardi.
Pichiana. Bibliografia delle edizioni e degli
studi. Firenze: Olschki, 2005 (Studi pichiani
10).
Robb, Nesca A., Neoplatonism of the Italian
Renaissance, New York: Octagon Books,
Inc., 1968.
Martigli, Carlo A., "999 L'Ultimo Custode",
Italia: Castelvecchi, 2009.
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, "Apologia.
L'autodifesa di Pico di fronte al Tribunale
dell’Inquisizione", a cura di Paolo Edoardo
Fornaciari, Firenze, Sismel – Edizioni del
Galluzzo, 2010 (it:Società internazionale
per lo studio del Medioevo latino)

External links
Wikiquote has quotations related to:
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola

Works by or about Giovanni Pico della

Mirandola at Internet Archive
Works by Giovanni Pico della
Mirandola at Project Gutenberg
Works by Giovanni Pico della
Mirandola at Open Library
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola at
Goodreads
The Pico Project at the University of
Bologna and Brown University is a
project to make accessible a complete
resource for the reading and
interpretation of the Dignity of Man.
Disputationes adversus astrologiam
divinatricem [1]
Syncretism in the West Overview of
the 900 Theses, with some
downloadable texts
Pico in English: A Bibliography , the
works of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola
(1463–1494), with a List of Studies
and Commentaries.
Edition of the complete translations by
Flavius Mithridates On Flavius
Mithridates' Hebrew-Latin Translations
of kabbalistic works for Giovanni Pico
della Mirandola
(in French) Biography
 Pico della Mirandola by Richard
Hooker, 6 June 1999.
 Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913).
"Giovanni Pico della Mirandola".
Catholic Encyclopedia. New York:
Robert Appleton Company.
Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). "Giovanni Pico
della Mirandola" . Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Life of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola

 This article incorporates text from a

publication now in the public
domain: Herbermann, Charles, ed.
(1913). "Giovanni Pico della Mirandola".
Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert
Appleton.
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