1463

On 24 February, Giovanni Pico dei Conti di Mirandola e Concordia was born in the castle of Mirandola. On that day – according to the tale related by his nephew Gianfrancesco – a circle of fire appeared for a split second over his mother’s bed. Of his two sisters, Caterina and Lucrezia, the first married Lionello Pio da Carpi in 1473 and the second Pino Oderlaffi da Forlì in 1475. His brothers, Galeotto and Anton Maria, were perpetually fighting over the estate, nurturing a family feud that would one day cost Gianfrancesco his life.

Giovanni’s father died soon after his birth, and he was raised by his mother, Giulia Boiardo, who wanted him to pursue an ecclesiastical career.

1477

Pico departed for Bologna at the age of fourteen to study canon law in accordance with the wishes of his mother, who died in August 1478.

1479

Uninterested in the political and financial squabbles that divided his brothers after his mother’s death, Pico decided to pursue activities that were more in line with his own budding interests. In late May, he found himself in Ferrara, where he began to study philosophy at the faculty of arts and also to learn ancient Greek. It was in Ferrara that Pico met two important figures: Battista Guarini, who later became his teacher, and Girolamo Savonarola, whom Pico impressed with his erudition in the public debate that, as protonotary, he held with Lorenzo Nogarola.

1480

Fifteen months later, in 1480, Pico, barely eighteen, was in Padua, broadening his knowledge of philosophy at what was then Italy’s most famous university. He remained there for two academic years, making important contacts and studying Aristotle and his commentators, especially Averroes. It was this discovery of Arabo-Judaic thought that led to his close ties to a group of intellectuals who were actively disseminating such ideas throughout Italy, including Girolamo Ramusio and, particularly, Elia del Medigo.

Another noteworthy individual whom Pico met in Padua was the Aristotelian Nicoletto Vernia, a scholar of Averroes who, unlike Elia del Medigo, could only read his works in Latin translation.

1482

Pico spent the summer of 1482 in his castle in Mirandola, departing in the fall for Pavia, where he decided to dedicate himself to the study of philosophy, Greek, and rhetoric. There he also studied late Aristotelian texts, such as those of the calculatores (the students and theorists of logic and language and some of the followers of Richard Swineshead, the fourteenth-century theological master at Oxford). Pico’s reading of the calculatores is still evident in one of his late works, the Disputationes adversus astrologiam divinatricem.

Through Angelo Poliziano, whom he met in Mantua in 1472, Pico began to take an interest in the Florentine literary movement; indeed, it was then that he asked Marsilio Ficino for a copy of his Theologia Platonica. Once again, under the influence of Elia del Medigo, he read and meditated on the work of John Philoponus and revised the amorous lyrics that he had begun composing several years earlier.

1483

In 1483, an agreement on the division of the family estate having been reached between his brothers, Pico at the age of twenty became one of the wealthiest men in Italy and free from all petty worries.

While dedicating himself to philosophy in Padua and Pavia, Pico had carried on with his poetry. In May, he sent some of his compositions to Poliziano, who subsequently invited him to Florence. A new and decisive stage in the intellectual life of the Count of Mirandola and Concordia was initiated in the city of Lorenzo the Magnificent.

1484

In 1484, Pico read the Theologia Platonica of Ficino, who later recalled how Pico, seized by enthusiasm, had forced him to tackle Plotinus shortly after he had published his translation of Plato. Nevertheless, Pico took pains to assure his friends that he had not deserted the Aristotelian school but was simply an explorer (explorator) of new territory who was still dedicated to the ideas of the ancients. A crowd of various characters gathered around Pico: physicians and Jewish philosophers, Aristotelians, Platonists, and poets, as well as scholars of Dante and Petrarch. Chief among all these relationships was the protective and generous friendship of Lorenzo de’ Medici. Even Elia del Medigo followed Pico to Florence, where he continued to work for him, translating from Hebrew Averroes’s paraphrase of Plato’s Republic as well as some of his logical quaestiones. One of Ficino’s letters likewise informs us that Elia often held debates in Pico’s house on philosophical and religious matters with another converted Jew, Guglielmo Raimondo de Moncada, also known as Flavius Mithridates. The latter soon began teaching Hebrew to Pico, who was impatient to learn the language of the Bible. It appears that Mithridates was a rather peculiar character with a difficult personality. In fact, he once demanded that Pico, if he wished to continue his lessons in Aramaic (Pico’s “Chaldean”), serve as a go-between with a youth from Faenza called Lancillotto, whom Mithridates desired as a lover.

1485

Emphasis is often placed on Giovanni Pico’s “official” entrance on the Italian cultural scene in 1485 with his polemic against Ermolao Barbaro, who taught Aristotle in Padua. Toward the end of 1482, Pico wrote Barbaro a letter expressing his admiration for the man’s learning and his own regret that he had not had a chance to meet him during his sojourn in Padua (Barbaro had been in Venice at the time). The two began exchanging letters, which led to Barbaro’s critique of the so-called barbarous philosophers, who used plain, overly technical, and dry language. Nowadays, Pico’s response, in the celebrated letter entitled De genere dicendi philosophorum, is viewed as one of the greatest examples of Renaissance rhetoric. In it Pico proclaims that philosophical research need not conform to a single, harmonious style if such an approach impedes the pursuit of truth.

Pico likewise dealt with the relationship between content and form in a long missive to Lorenzo the Magnificent, praising him for a collection of poems written in the vernacular. Having exalted the poetic works of the young prince, Pico set up a comparison between Dante and Petrarch. Inasmuch as Petrarch was lacking in content and Dante in form, the author of the letter clearly expressed his preference for Dante. Indeed, Petrarch comes across as a virtuoso, an artist, but not as a thinker; he was too self-satisfied, whereas Dante, who exhibited a very different nature, presented his material with great vigour. Initially fascinating, Petrarch’s poetry ultimately proved less satisfying than Dante’s profundity. Pico’s argument appeared to be based on the philosophical leanings of all three authors. Pico praised Lorenzo not so much for his poetry, however, as for his ability to expound Aristotle’s Physics, Ethics, and De anima and the ideas of the Platonists. In addition, Pico laid stress on the analytical aspects of Lorenzo’s annotations in prose that appeared in the margins of his sonnets, which were meant not so much to delight as to heighten consciousness.

1485–1486

Constantly on the move, Pico appeared in Paris in July 1485 at the Sorbonne, where he remained until the beginning of the following year. Although information on this period is scarce, the experience of studying in the most important university in the world was no doubt a positive one, so much so that Pico often boasted of his skill at using the disputative style of the “celebratissimorum Parisiensium disputatorum.” It is not unreasonable to assume that it was in Paris that Pico came up with the idea of putting his own philosophical and theological positions – as well as his political project – to the test in a public debate, even though such an event would have differed from traditional university debates in scope and significance.

1486

Pico’s reentry into Florence marked what could be called the most tormented period of his brief life. In fact, 1486 was an extraordinary year for the young scholar. Having just completed his studies in Paris, the twenty-three-year-old returned in March to Florence, where he stayed among his friends (Lorenzo de’ Medici, Angelo Poliziano, Marsilio Ficino, and Girolamo Benivieni) until 8 May, when he left for Rome. Two days later, he caused a remarkable scandal in Arezzo when he attempted to abduct Margherita, wife of Giuliano di Mariotto de’ Medici, from her home. Distraught by the experience, he retired to Perugia, whence he proceeded to Fratta on account of the plague. There he finally managed, through work and penitence, to overcome the bitterness and shame of the deplorable affair.

He wrote a commentary on a canzone written by his friend Girolamo Benivieni, collected nine hundred theses, or Conclusiones, meant to be discussed at a conference on philosophical peace that was to be held in Rome in January 1487 (to which scholars would be invited at his own expense), and composed an introductory Oration to the Conclusiones. By 7 December, he was in Rome, where the Conclusiones were set in print. At this point, another scandal erupted: the commission appointed to examine the theses condemned some of them, and Pope Innocent VIII cancelled the upcoming conference. Pico defended himself in the Apologia, into which he incorporated large sections of the Oration. By this time, however, the momentous year of 1486 had drawn to a close.

1487

It is clear that Pico felt he had much to offer to the Church of Rome and believed that his theorizing in no way ran counter to the principles of Christian theology. Fortified by these convictions and by the confidence of youth, Pico rededicated himself to the preparation of the Roman event.

By November 1486, the Conclusiones had been prepared. The text was published on 7 December in Rome at the press of Eucharius Silber. Pico, as stated previously, invited theologians and philosophers for the days following the Epiphany of 1487. Nevertheless, his arrival in Rome was immediately complicated by voices of dissent that definitively convinced the pope to suspend the debate. The papal brief, Cum injunctio nobis, of 20 February 1487, encharged Giovanni Monisart, Bishop of Tournai, with the task of organizing a commission of seven bishops (among whom was Pedro Garcia), two generals of religious orders, and eight theologians and canons. The commission convened from the second to the thirteenth of March 1487. Pico was present at the debate, but only for the first five days. After that, he was no longer allowed to participate. Seven theses were immediately condemned, then another six. After a more thorough analysis, the first seven were condemned absolutely, while the other six were only censored. The secretaries of the trial, Johannes Cordier, a theologian from the Sorbonne, and the ailing Marco de Miroldo, were not favourably disposed to Pico.

Exasperated and convinced of the correctness of his own reasoning, Pico quickly drafted an apologia in which he treated and clarified the thirteen contested theses. Once again, the effect was not what he had hoped for, and the Roman Curia viewed the publication of the Apologia on 31 May 1487 as an act of insubordination. In a brief dated 6 June, Innocent VIII summoned the tribunal of the Inquisition, and on 31 July Giovanni signed an act of submission that granted permission for the copies of the Conclusiones to be burned at the stake, but the bull Et si injuncto nobis, dated 4 August, absolved him personally of all condemnation. It is interesting that the bull was not publicized until 15 December, together with the warrant for his arrest. Pico saw no alternative but to flee from Rome.

1488

Pico was seized at the beginning of 1488 between Grenoble and Lyon, whence he was escorted to Paris under the supervision of papal nuncios. All the same, he was protected by the king, who confined him in the castle of Vincennes lest he be turned over to the Vatican. In the end, Pico was able to leave France unharmed, thanks to a special royal permit. He returned to Florence in April of the same year.

After Pico returned to Florence, we come across another erudite Jew, R. Yohanan Alemanno, a physician raised in Tuscany in a family of bankers. Many scholars consider Alemanno one of the most widely learned Jewish intellectuals among Pico’s circle of collaborators, capable, among other things, of reading Arabic sources in Hebrew. Pico found himself writing his commentary on the Song of Songs in a thoroughly homogeneous intellectual climate: Ficino had written his commentary on Plato’s Symposium and Girolamo Benivieni his Canzone d’amore, afterward annotated by Pico.

1489

With his return to Florence, Pico entered an extremely productive period that would result in the publication of the Heptaplus and De ente et uno as well as the composition of the Disputationes adversus astrologiam divinatricem and the great moral letters to his nephew Gianfrancesco. Most likely, this new impetus in his studies was motivated by his need to overcome the bitter vicissitudes of Rome and perhaps also by his desire for spiritual redemption. Both in a letter to Andrea Corneus of 1489 and in the preface to the Heptaplus, he announced that he was working on a systematic commentary on the Psalms, which, however, he never carried to completion. The Heptaplus came out in print in summer 1489 and was financed by Roberto Salviati. The idea behind this work is that “the seven days of creation” contain all of nature’s secrets and that in his books Moses had revealed all of human wisdom and all that the spirit of God had told him.

In this same period, Pico also conceived and wrote De ente et uno, which circulated in Florence in manuscript form. This work was dedicated by Pico to his friend Poliziano, who had insistently asked him to intervene in a dispute between the Platonists – in the persons of Lorenzo de’ Medici and Marsilio Ficino – and the Peripatetics or those who, like Poliziano, had always studied the texts of Aristotle. In reality, Pico seemed to disagree with the very principles of the debate and used the invitation as an occasion to articulate in public his theories on concord. To set Plato against Aristotle had long been one of the most arduous intellectual tasks, so much so that the ideology of humanism had come up with two diverse cultural strategies for dealing with, and certainly two different models of understanding, the two philosophers. Pico did not succeed in bringing the enterprise to a conclusion, but he left in De ente et uno a very interesting model of how he would have proceeded.

Final Years

In 1492, Giovanni wrote important moral letters to his nephew Gianfrancesco, the first from Ferrara, dated 15 May, and the second written on 2 July, which was followed by a third on 27 November. In these letters, Pico laid out the balance of existence itself and attempted to summarize all its precepts: it was not the world that was the adversary here but those things in it, such as ignorance, insanity, and greed, that needlessly wear out man’s soul. One had to know how to liberate oneself from these afflictions. This, essentially, was his advice to his nephew.

In the final years of his life, Pico seems to have directed his intellectual energy toward theological and spiritual studies, the mystery of life and grace, and the figure of the cross. He followed the sermons of Savonarola, toward whose arrival in Florence he himself had contributed. Pico’s final work was conceived in the silence and solitude of his villa in Fiesole. This was the unfinished Disputationes adversus astrologiam divinatricem, the most comprehensive of all his projects. Published posthumously by his nephew Gianfrancesco in the 1496 edition of Pico’s works, the Disputationes did not fail to arouse interest and stimulate much discussion. The subject was at the centre of the period’s cultural debates: Girolamo Savonarola immediately prepared a compendium in Italian, and Giovanni Mainardi and Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa praised it; however, others, such as Giovanni Pontano, Luca Bellanti, Girolamo Torrella, Pietro Pomponazzi, and Jean Bodin, criticized it in various ways, sometimes severely. The Disputationes appeared just as interest in astrology was being reawakened.

Death

Giovanni Pico died amid uncertain circumstances in Florence on 17 November 1494, with Girolamo Savonarola at his side. By this point, his estate had been granted to charitable institutions and his nephews, and his well-stocked library to his brother Anton Maria. On the same day, Charles VIII entered Florence.