PICO, GIOVANNI, conte della MIRANDOLA e di CONCORDIA. – Philosopher and man of vast erudition
(“the phoenix of intellects” of his time), b. at Mirandola (Modena) on 23 February 1463, d. at Florence on 17 November 1494. While still very young, at Bologna, Ferrara, and Florence he formed friendships with some of the leading scholars of the time and took a keen interest in literary and philosophical disputes. At Padua (1480–82) he was initiated into the study of Aristotelian philosophy and Averroism (v.), whose 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 union of the human intellect with the agent intellect. But at Padua he had also established close relations with Thomists, such as Domenico Grimani and Antonio Pizzamanno; and he had likewise become familiar with the disputes between Thomists and Scotists.
The need to know directly the Greek commentaries on Aristotle (Alexander of Aphrodisias, Themistius, Simplicius, Philoponus) and to penetrate the Platonic world led him to study Greek, to acquire quite a number of Greek texts, and to draw closer (after leaving Padua in 1482) Ficino (v.), whose Theologia platonica he read. Plotinus (v.) awakened in him a lively speculative ardour, far deeper than the rhetorical humanism of Ermolao Barbaro. Driven by this ardour and by the example of the Neoplatonists, he thought that it might be possible to reconcile, by penetrating to the heart of their thought, not only Plato and Aristotle, but even Alexander of Aphrodisias and Averroes, and all the great thinkers from the remotest antiquity to his own time.
Around 1484 he was in Florence, the centre of the renewed Platonism which Ficino had adopted as a preparation for Christianity. The daily conversations with the author of the Theologia platonica and the De christiana religione, with Lorenzo il Magnifico, with Poliziano, and with 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; there, joined by Elia del Medigo, he resumed his discussions with him on Averroism and was assisted by him ABBA (v.), into which he was being initiated by Flavio Mitridate, a converted Sicilian Jew. With the latter’s help he learned Hebrew and Chaldean. Through its allegorical interpretation of the Bible, the Cabbala seemed to remove many of the difficulties that stood in the way of an accord between philosophy and the sacred texts. Moreover, the Cabbala was thoroughly imbued with Neoplatonic doctrines and esoteric mysticism. Thanks to cabbalistic speculation, Zoroaster and the Chaldeans, the fabulous Hermes Trismegistus, already regarded by Ficino as the father of the most ancient Egyptian wisdom, meet with Moses, and all together with Plato, Plotinus, Iamblichus (v.), and the Arab Neoplatonists, so that the Aristotelian agent intellect comes to be identified with the cabbalists’ Metatron, chief of the angels appointed over the world of creation. This philosophical panorama, which by now captivated the soul of P., is already clearly revealed in the commentary on the Canzone d'amore composta per Hieronymo Benivieni fiorentino secondo la mente e opinione de' Platonicini, composed during his retreat at Fratta, and appears in all its breadth and complexity in the contemporaneous 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
embrace the entire rich philosophical-theological encyclopaedia of the second half of the fifteenth century; and while some concern his particular way of understanding the thought of the authors mentioned and of others, others point towards an independent line of thought, the fruit of his own modifications—at times extremely bold—concerning the most delicate and difficult problems, arousing astonishment not so much on account of his “prodigious memory” as because of the breadth of his knowledge and the maturity of judgment he had attained as a young man barely twenty-three years old.
The disputation that was to have taken place in the winter of 1487 did not occur, because certain theological theses were indicted and condemned (5 March). P. defended himself with the Apologia, dedicated to Lorenzo (v.) il Magnifico. But Innocent VIII ordered that he be tried for heresy and on 6 August condemned the booklet of the Conclusiones, because theses “Catholic and true” had been mixed together with theses deserving censure. The Mirandolan attempted to avoid arrest by fleeing to France. But, imprisoned in January 1488 in the fortress of Vincennes, he was released two months later through the intervention of several Italian princes. Expelled from France, he settled in Florence under the protection of il Magnifico, and in 1489 completed the Heptaplus de septiformis sex dierum Geneseos enarratione, dedicated to Lorenzo. In 1491 he renounced part of his possessions in favour of his nephew Giovanni Francesco (v. below) in order to devote himself entirely to the study of Christianity, with the intention of preparing a vast apology for it, into which he would bring together all his uncommon learning. The De ente et uno, dedicated to Poliziano, also dates from that year. While pursuing his purpose of reconciling Aristotle with Plato, relying on Plotinus against Ficino, he did not abandon the great project of demonstrating—as he wrote to Aldo Manuzio on 11 February—that “philosophy seeks the truth, theology finds it, religion possesses it” (Ep., I, 6). Of the seven categories of opponents of the Christian faith whom he intended to combat one by one, he first took aim at the astrologers, whose charlatan science annihilated human freedom and was the most pernicious because it ensnared the consciences of the learned no less than those of the common people in prejudices and superstitions. After il Magnifico died in 1492, he drew increasingly closer to Savonarola, whose view of the need for reform he shared, although P. understood this reform in a much broader sense; and he remained faithful to the Dominican even when some had already begun to doubt that he was a true prophet. Death overtook him unexpectedly in the full vigour of his promising youth, before he had completed the work whose outlines, however, can be discerned.
Compared with Ficino’s thought, that of P. is distinguished by its broader range of information, by the greater complexity of the elements assembled, and by a more audacious effort at synthesis. While the Aristotelians lingered over particular problems which, because they were badly posed, proved insoluble, and the Averroists, by opposing what is true according to reason to what is true by faith, shattered the unity of human consciousness, P. sought to reconstitute it by recovering the higher Parmenidean and Platonic unity of being.
di Simplicio al « De anima » nelle controversie del sec. XV ecc., nel vol. Testi umanistici ined. sul De anima, dello stesso Ist., ivi 1951, pp. 142-54.