Giovanni Pico Della Mirandolla was born in 1463 on the twenty fourth of February. Kristeller states that he was a scholar, philosopher, humanist and neo-Platonist whose main aim as he progressed through his life was to resolve differences between philosophy and religion (62). He was the youngest son of Francesco Pico Giovanni, The price of Mirandolla, which is a small country thirty miles west of Ferrara.
Giovanni Mirandolla lived in Rome and thatâs where he finally flourished in the year 1486. He went onwards for public disagreement by coming up with a list of nine hundred questions and answers in all branches of philosophy and religion.
While he was fourteen years of age, Giovanni went to Bologna where he studied for two years, and was mostly engaged with the Decrials. âWhile still in Bologna, he was disgusted with the traditional studies of the place so he spent other seven years roving through all the schools of Italy and France, in the process gathering a valuable collection for his researchâ Corazzol (33).
His Hebrew teachers; Eliah Del Medigo, Leo Abarbanel and Jochanan Alemansee introduced him to the Kabbalah which was a Jewish mythical theology. It had great fascinations for one who loved all mystic and theosophical assumption.
In 1486, Giovanni made an astonishing statement that Kabbalah could prove the holiness of Christ through the Oration on the Dignity of Man. In 1487, Giovanni , was ready to debate, in a non- sectarian sermon titled “On the Dignity of Man,” his view was that human nature has no limits; unfortunately the debate was never held. On the 16th of
In August 1492, he dispatched a letter of congratulation to Alexander VI, which was full of hopeful anticipations. According to the Oration on the Dignity of Man he justified the significance of the human pursuit for knowledge according to the neo-Platonic structure. He noted that after God finished creating all creatures, he was conceived with the desire for another conscious being that would be grateful for all the work God has done.
To Pico’s 900 theses he used the Oration as an introduction, he believed it could provide an absolute and adequate basis for the finding of all knowledge; hence itâs a form for mankind’s rise of the sequence of being.
In a section of his âDisputationes adversus astrologiam divinatricem,â Pico addressed against the practice of astrology which had enormous significance for centuries. His opposition to astrology seemed to be drawn mainly from the disagreement between astrology and Christian ideas of free will (Cassirer 231).
Picoâs Heptaplus, which was a mystico-allegorical explanation of creation according to the seven Biblical senses, that elaborates on his idea that different traditions and religion end up to describe the same God (Stephen 22).
Most people do not find Giovanni’s works to be interesting; however they find his personality to be interesting. âThis is due to influence on Reuchlin and to a certain extent from the display of a truly devoted mind in the bright circle of half-pagan scholars of the Florentine renaissance,â says Stephen (23).
Work Cited
Cassirer, Ernst, et al. The Renaissance Philosophy of Man. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. 1948. Print.
Corazzol, Giacomo. Commentary on the Daily Prayers: The Kabbalistic Library of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. Torino: Nino Aragno Editore. 2008. Print.
Kristeller, Paul Oskar. Eight Philosophers of the Italian Renaissance. California: Stanford University Press. 1964.
Stephen, Farmer. Syncretism in the West: Pico’s 900 Theses (1486): The Evolution of Traditional Religious and Philosophical Systems. San Francisco: Renaissance Tapes. 1998. Print.