PICENARDI, ELISABETTA, BEATA.
Mystic, born at Mantua in 1428, died there on 19 February 1468. She was admitted as a young girl to the local convent of the
PICONARDI ELISABETTA - PICO DELLA MIRANDOLA
("the phoenix of wits" of his time), born at Mirandola (Modena) on 23 February 1463, died at Florence on 17 November 1464. GIOVANNI, in Bologna, Ferrara, and Florence, formed friendships with some of the leading scholars of the day and took a lively interest in literary and philosophical disputes. At Padua (1480–82) he was introduced to the study of Aristotelian philosophy and came under the influence of Averroism (v.), of which the champions were Nicoletto Vernia in the official teaching, and, among the tutors and pedagogues, the Cretan Jew Elia del Medigo, who composed for him treatises on the unity of the intellect and on the possibility of the conjunction of the human intellect with the agent intellect. But at Padua he had also formed close ties with Thomists such as Domenico Grimani and Antonio Pizzamanno, and had become familiar with the disputes between Thomists and Scotists.
The need to know Aristotle’s Greek commentators (Alexander of Aphrodisias, Themistius, Simplicius, Philoponus) directly and to penetrate the Platonic world led him to study Greek, to procure numerous Greek texts, and, after leaving Padua in 1482, Ficino (v.), whose *Theologia platonica* he read. His knowledge of Plotinus (v.) aroused in him a lively speculative ardor, far deeper than the rhetorical humanism of Ermolao Barbaro. Spurred by this ardor and by the example of the Neoplatonists, he believed it possible to reconcile not only Plato and Aristotle but even Alexander of Aphrodisias and Averroes and all the great thinkers from the most remote antiquity to his own time, by penetrating to the heart of their thought.
By about 1484 he was in Florence, at the center of the revived Platonism, where Ficino had made it a preparation for Christianity. Daily conversations with the author of the *Theologia platonica* and *De christiana religione*, with Lorenzo the Magnificent, Poliziano, and Girolamo Benivieni left an indelible mark on his spirit. In July 1485 he went to France. In March 1486 he returned to Florence. A love affair forced him to take refuge in Perugia and then in Fratta, where, joined by Elia del Medigo, he resumed discussions with him on Averroism and was assisted Cabala (v.), to which he was introduced by Flavio Mitridate, a Sicilian Jewish convert. With the latter’s help he learned Hebrew and Chaldean. The Cabala, through its allegorical interpretation of Scripture, seemed to remove many of the difficulties obstructing the agreement of philosophies with sacred texts. Moreover, the Cabala was steeped in Neoplatonic doctrines and esoteric mysticism. Through cabbalistic speculation, Zoroaster and the Chaldeans, the fabulous Hermes Trismegistus—already regarded by Ficino as the father of the most ancient Egyptian wisdom—met with Moses, and all together with Plato, Plotinus, Iamblichus (v.), and the Arab Neoplatonists, so that the agent intellect of the Aristotelians came to be identified with the Metatron of the cabbalists, the chief of the angels set over the world of creation.
This philosophical panorama, which now captivated PICO’s mind, is clearly revealed in the commentary on the *Canzone d’amore* composed for Hieronymo Benivieni of Florence according to the mind and opinion of the Platonists, dictated during his retreat at Fratta, and it is displayed in all its breadth and complexity in the contemporary *Conclusiones nongentae*, which were to be the subject of a public disputation in Rome, and for which the *Oratio de hominis dignitate* was to serve as a preface.
Drawn from Aristotle and his Greek and Arab commentators, from Plato, Plotinus, and the other Neoplatonists, from Jewish and Christian thinkers, from Albert the Great, St. Thomas, Duns Scotus, and other masters of scholasticism, and from cabbalistic and Hermetic writings, they