PICO, GIOVANNI FRANCESCO, signore della MIRANDOLA. — Nephew of Giovanni, born ca. 1469 and assassinated, due to family disputes, in 1533. An admirer of his great uncle, he wrote his life and defended his *De ente et uno*.
A man of vast learning, he failed to master it; instead of reconciling philosophy and faith, he defended the primacy of the latter, relying on the *Hypotyposes Pyrrhonianae* of Sextus Empiricus (v.), which he appears to have been the first to use in the Renaissance. His most important works are: *De rerum praenotione*, in defense of true prophecy against false; *De studio divinae et humanae philosophiae*; and *Examen vanitatis doctrinae gentium et veritatis disciplinae christianae*, which, together with other writings, form the volume of *Opera omnia* in the Basel edition of 1573 and subsequent ones. He also wrote a *Life of Savonarola* (v.). A literary curiosity is the little book *La strega*, inspired by the extravagant literature flourishing around witch trials, in which he believed.
— Apologist and cardinal, born at Pontenin (diocese of Chartres) on 26 Sept. 1815, died at Poitiers on 18 May 1880. A student of Saint-Sulpice, he was ordained priest in 1839, bishop of Poitiers from 28 Sept. 1849, and cardinal from 12 May 1879.
His oratorical and pastoral works, in *Oeuvres* (Paris 1887, 9th ed., 9 vols.), excel in force of reasoning and majestic eloquence.
An anti-Gallican in the manner of the first Lamennais (v.), he was recognized as the leader of militant French Catholics gathered around *L'Univers*. He restored the Roman liturgy in his diocese (1856), after having secured its adoption by his fellow bishops at the Provincial Council of Bordeaux (1850).
PICO, GIOVANNI, CONTE DELLA MIRANDOLA - Final part of an autograph letter by P. d. M., addressed to Lorenzo de' Medici (27 Aug. 1489) - Florence, State Archive.
of arch., 3rd series, 4 [1938, 11], p. 101 ff.). A Greek inscription, perhaps Justinianic, found among the ruins of the aqueduct of Jerusalem, recalls the edict of a Flavius Aeneas, silentiary of the Eastern Empire, which forbids the sowing and cultivation of the ground within a space of 15 p. from the aqueduct; it reproduces a p. in the measure intended by him. The model, with the modern metric system, is m. 0.308-0.309, that is almost equal to the Attic p. (F. M. Abel, Inscription grecque de l'aqueduc de Jérusalem avec la figure du pied byzantin, in Rev. bibl., 35 [1926], pp. 284-88).
PIEDIMONTE D'ALIFE, DIOCESI di: ALIFE, DIOCESI di.