1. For young Pico della Mirandola, 1486 was a very full year. Twenty-three years old, having just finished a year of studies in Paris, he returns in March to Florence, where he finds his friends Lorenzo dei Medici, Politian and Ficino. On May 8th he leaves for Rome. Two days later, at Arezzo, he tries unsuccessfully to carry off Margherita, the wife of Giuliano dei Medici, causing a tremendous scandal. The subsequent period of isolation spent at Fratta, between Perugia and Todi, is an exceptionally fertile period for Pico. He writes a Commento in Italian to a Canzone d'amore by Girolamo Benivieni, a friend of his. He collects his theses, or Conclusiones together as far as number 900, in preparation for a public disputation to take place in Rome early the following year, with scholars from all over Europe, invited at his own expense. He composes an elegant Discourse, later called Sulla dignità dell'uomo, On the Dignity of Man, whose aim is to introduce and explain the Conclusiones. On December 7th he is in Rome, where the Conclusiones are published, provoking very negative reactions. Pope Innocent VIII will suspend the public discussion of them, and a theological commission is appointed which will condemn some of the theses. Pico will leave for Paris, quite some time after the end of 1486.
2. The difficult question which this essay sets out to answer concerns the possibility of establishing a connection between the events which occurred between the summer and autumn of 1486 and the developments in the same period in Pico's incredibly rich and productive intellectual life. First of all we have to revisit the events more analytically, beginning with the "Arezzo incident".1 In 1486 Margherita had been left a rich widow of Costante "speziale", who had kept horses for the palio, and she had remarried the far from wealthy Giuliano di Mariotto dei Medici, a tax-collector at Arezzo.2 According to Mariotto's version, in his letter to his cousin Lorenzo dei Medici, on the morning of May 10th his wife Margherita had gone with her servant to take some recreation at the old cathedral outside Arezzo, was taken against her will and placed on a horse by people in the service of the count della Mirandola, mounted with people of his own family and in the company of the said lord; who had come the evening before for this reason here to the inns of Arezzo, with around 20 horse and with crossbow men ready for anything.3
Giuliano complains of the betrayal of a young person dependent on him, who had also apparently filched over 80 florins. The letter of their lordships of Arezzo to Lorenzo dei Medici, dated May 10th, says that Margherita was "deceived", and "with armed force ...placed on the horse".4 But, according to Aldobrandino Guidoni, the lady had left the walls of Arezzo "inflamed with love for the count", being "his very beautiful mistress".5 Luigi della Stufa also refers to Lorenzo the Magnificent that the lady "as she was blind with the love of such a handsome man, voluntarily mounted the horse".6 Stefano Taverna, the Milan orator at Florence, says that the count, who had gained a divine reputation, and was in the highest graces and opinion of the whole city, was provoked by a woman who was mad with love for him, and went with his clan to take the lady off.7
The account of what follows is the same in all the sources. Filippo Carducci, Captain and Mayor of Arezzo, as he related to Lorenzo dei Medici on the same afternoon of May 10th, had the bells ring out the alarm and had the count pursued by his men, to whom were added volunteers to the number of 200. The count was caught up with near Marciano, on the Siena border, and according to Luigi della Stufa, because the Aretines had more men 18 were killed and the magnificent count badly wounded, and if it hadn't been for the horse he was riding he would have met the same fate as the other eighteen.8 Margherita was taken away from him. The ten leading lords of Arezzo ordered the count, and his secretary Cristoforo da Casale Maggiore, to remain in the custody of a certain Giovanni Nicolacci da Marciano, who had collaborated with the pursuers and had been responsible for his capture. They also ordered the things that had been left on the little battlefield to be picked up. But shortly afterwards the count was given his freedom by his guardian, who was rewarded with a hundred florins. For this Giovanni Nicolacci was fined by the Florentine authorities (Otto di Guardia), while Pico's secretary was punished as "he who was at the bottom of the whole mischief".9
3. With another protagonist, the offense given to a Medici would have been compensated for in a very different fashion. Behind this, to say the least, privileged treatment can be seen the influence of Lorenzo dei Medici himself, who wrote to the Lords of Arezzo on May 13th expressing his regret for "the offense given to Giuliano de' Medici", without even mentioning the person responsible.10 Lorenzo's desire to excuse and protect his young friend was shared by Ercole I, who replied to his orator Aldobrandino Guidoni that he was very unhappy about what had happened "because we loved the magnificent count Zohane tenderly", and begged him to take steps to get him freed as if he were "our brother", excusing him with recourse to Biblical precedents: that certainly these were things, this kind of transgression, that even Solomon, in all his wisdom, got involved with now and again, so we should feel compassion for him.11
However, the public reputation of the Count suffered a lot for the "atrocious case" of Arezzo12 Aldobrandini Guidoni wrote from Florence:
Really this is a case of such a kind that the whole city regrets it, because this count Zohanne had a name as the most learned man around for a very long time: and he was reputed to be a saint: whereas now he's lost both his reputation and situation.13
Other documents give us further, sometimes very detailed information on later events: a lot of these concern the recovery of things lost or stolen during the clash: "there remains a horse of those of the lord at the innkeeper's, a pink cloak lined with green cloth, two steel cross-bows... a quiver... a coat... a woolen jacket....".14 But of the count himself, in those days and in the months that follow, there is no news.
4. After some months of silence, from September of the same year, the correspondence begins to give us news once more.15 The first letters show Pico having withdrawn to Fratta, between Perugia and Todi (at Perugia there is the plague). Ficino had written to him there on September 9th 1486, begging him to give him back his Arab Coran. Pico replies (letter xx) telling him of his linguistic studies and of his conversations with Flavio Mitridate and Pier Leone da Spoleto, and of the Roman disputation he was preparing himself for. The future disputation is constantly in his thoughts. Pico attaches enormous importance to the event: he was probably expecting a triumph there which would cancel out the dishonor he had done himself at Arezzo. The theme is often repeated in other letters of the period. He talks about it even in the short epistle VIII to Taddeo Ugolini, undated, but addressed "ex Fracta": "Romam propero..."16
In October '86 he writes to Baldo Perusino: he sends him a Carmen de pace, just written under the influence of news of war. He tells him he has also composed in Tuscan "etrusca lingua", a "de amore carmen", rather hard to grasp because full of esoteric references: he must doubtless mean the Commento alla canzone d'amore by Benivieni. For the rest, he does nothing but dedicate himself to literary leisure. The final joking allusion:
your warnings will follow, not to go too often to bathe at Fratta, in case I should by chance see a Diana, and what Callimachus wrote of Tiresias should happen to me deserves an explanation. The hymn In lavacrum Palladis by Callimachus had recently been translated by Politian and tells how Tiresias, having desired to see Athena bathing, was blinded as a punishment; he was granted, through the intercession of the nymph her mother, as a sort of recompense, the gift of divination (see v. 75 ff.).17 Placing his amorous adventures in a mythological context, Pico seems to suggest that the misadventure contains some consolation, or rather that most precious of gifts, knowledge.
5. Writing a long letter to Andrea Corneo (della Cornia) on October 15th, number xxxvi in the collection, Pico talks about the events of that May. He rejects his friend's invitation to devote himself more to the active life, with a protest in favor of the contemplative life and of the practice of philosophy as just exactly right for a man of his class, a noble, a prince, and not a paid professor of philosophy; his friend would soon see the extraordinary results, even in public, and even sensational, of Pico's studies in retirement. And finally, "de re uxoria".
You have felt obliged to excuse your friend for his troubles over love in the vicinity of Floreano [Arezzo]. It would be easy to find examples in history and in the poets and even in philosophy to excuse him with, or to defend him with, citing the authority of great men, among the greatest David and Solomon, to say nothing of Aristotle, who while often passionately involved even with prostitutes made no mention of this in his Ethics at all when he was sacrificing to his mistress as to Ceres Eleusina. But your friend, rather than embrace and appreciate this kind of excuse or defense of his crime, hates it, and rejects it; he cries for what he has lost, and doesn't try to detach himself from his mistake. He is sorry for having sinned, and doesn't defend himself. Others will be able to excuse him for what he himself cannot excuse at all. Nothing is weaker than man, and nothing is more powerful than love. While Jerome's invincible mind which nothing could shake adhered entirely to heaven, it took part in the dances of girls. If this plague was able to attack someone like him, who else could it not place in subjection? If love could obtain so much from one who slept on the bare ground of the hermitage and fasted for eight days, what could it not do with one who slept in feather beds, in the shade, and lived in all manner of plenty and delight? You may add that he has fallen for the first time, not having had any knowledge of such disastrous falls from grace. He who has been shipwrecked only once can well complain of Neptune. If he falls again and strikes the same stone, may no one have any pity for him. He who repents of what he has done, believing himself unworthy of being excused, cannot justly be exculpated: so much the more your friend does not only want to trust the record of that event to a letter, but wishes that the whole of the rest of his life makes it forgotten.18
Indeed there were those who had laughed over the affair, like Alessandro Cortese, his friend, who had written to his brother" we have laughed over Paris and Helen; sometimes even the philosophers act crazily".19 There were those who had wanted to make excuses for Pico, like Ercole I, who quoted Solomon, and the Andrea Corneo we have just met. Ficino had written a short "apology for the carrying off of the Nymph Margherita, the work of the hero Pico", using mythological arguments (Paris and Helen, Theseus and Arianna, Hercules and Iole, Pluto and Persephone, and Jove and Europa) and from the Bible ("inventa pretiosa margarita"). In his apology to Pietro Leone he had also affirmed that It has nothing to do with rape when you accept the advances of a nymph in love, who desires to be carried off, but rather a liberation from the real rapists.20
But the road Pico had taken was that of a complete change in his way of life, in which illustrious precedents are of no use when he accepts full responsibility for his actions. He feels sorrow for his sin, which he hates; he publicly recognizes his guilt, he makes repentance, and has decided never to fall again: "dolet quod peccavit, non defendit", "facti paenitet". This is the terminology of conversion, of confession and repentance, Christian repentance, which imbues Pico's humanistic Latin with a special kind of sincerity.
6. In his commentary on Psalm 10, speaking perhaps in the spirit of Savonarola, Pico will condemn those lukewarm spirits of our time, which under the pretext of ceremonies and devotion pretend to be holy and turn away the simple and the honest from the spirit and from truth, attempting to attract them to their own forms of vanity.21
This passage is echoed by Giovanfrancesco in the Life that prefaces Pico's writings from the first Bologna edition of 1496, describing Pico himself:
as far as external religious observances were concerned he was not particularly diligent: I'm not referring to that which the Church prescribes (we saw him practice them with our own eyes) but to those ceremonies to which some people devote themselves, neglecting the real cult of God who should be adored in spirit and truth.22
Probably the penitential attitude of the autumn of 1486 was accompanied by corresponding sacramental practices, but we know nothing about this. It is certain, however, that he committed himself to reading a page of the New Testament every day.
7. It is striking, and I think has hitherto gone unnoticed, the way one of the last pages of the Commento alla canzone d'amore that Pico probably finished at the same time as the letter to Corneo,23 reflects an analogous state of mind: sorrow, repentance, the firm desire to change his way of life. In the Commento, following Benivieni's verses, Pico goes back to the "scala amoris" of Plato's Symposium, having in mind, even polemically, the recent De Amore by Marsilio Ficino. Indeed, as Pico explicitly says, the Commento alla canzone must be followed by a comment on the Symposium.24 He talks of the first, and lowest, step of this ladder or scale, remarking that it is however superior to the "bestial frenzy", which is not love, and of which he speaks with a bitterness and sharpness that reminds us of the letter to Corneo, just as of this, almost literally, there are echoes of the rejection of easy consolations that may be had from the contemplation of illustrious sinners, David, Solomon, Jerome and Aristotle:
He who is at the first step or stage, is happy when the loved one is present; {when he's thinking of} in any case a considerably better condition than that of bestial frenzy which is not love, whose good can only remain for a very short time and can only leave behind a lengthy period of bitterness and repentance; this should be a sufficient stimulus to escape rapidly from this shameful voluptuousness and run gladly to that heavenly love where there is no vestige of wretchedness, but where every plenitude of happiness may be found. Nor should anyone be tempted by this wretched voluptuousness because so many famous men, whether famed for their holiness, their doctrine or their wisdom, have been captive to it; on the contrary this must be an excellent reason for everyone else to flee from it with every means at their disposal. Furthermore, this evil is so poisonous, is such a plague, that it has been able to generate almost incurable infirmities in such strong and perfect spirits, and this must convince everyone that it would cause a lethal or mortal sickness in their own; from which we might well conclude, whoever falls from such a precipice, of his own and badly formed thoughts, deserves from God correction and paternal punishment, and from man deserves not less pity and compassion than condemnation.25
A propos of "bestial frenzy", another passage from the Commento deserves to be mentioned:
The opposite is in heavenly love, in which this danger doesn't exist, but everything tends to make for spiritual beauty in both soul and intellect, which is to be found in much more beautiful form in men than women, as can be seen likewise with every other perfection. However, all those who have been fired with this divine love have for the most part loved some young person of generous temperament whose virtue has been so much the more grateful to someone for being in a beautiful body, and have not become effeminate behind a herd of whores, which not only do not foster the slightest amount of spiritual perfection in man but, like Circe, transform him entirely into a beast.26
On this passage, which recalls the description of the proteiform character of man at the start of the Discourse, Erwin Panofsky27 has remarked that Ficino, faithful to the Symposium, with the two Venuses (earthly Venus, human love; heavenly Venus, divine love) does not attribute any Venus to "amor ferinus", considered on a par with folly or madness. Pico on the other hand splits up the heavenly Venus, so as to attribute the evils described above to the vulgar Venus. Could this choice, as well as reflecting different theoretical orientations (as maintains Panofsky) be a consequence of Pico's recent experience, which had led him to misogyny and to prefer male friendships, above all that of Benivieni?28
However, the impassioned tone of these passages allows us to get a good idea of how much Pico was involved in the reading of Benivieni's Canzone d'amore (which also means, in the re-reading of the Symposium itself). Of course, the Commento is composed "according to the mind and opinion of the Platonists", through the explicit choice of the author, and finds its pattern in the upheaval (periagogé) of the spirit (Republic) and in its ascent, anagogé (Symposium), whereas in the letter to Corneo the idea of repentance prevails, the idea of metànoia, of the "conversio mentis ad Christum". In the first linguistic and theoretical pattern, the conversion is towards Christ; in the second it is towards beauty, personified in the heavenly Venus. In any case the substance is the same: Pico is speaking, starting from himself, of moral transformation, alternating two religious, cultural and linguistic patterns.
8. What has been said so far throws light on Pico's most important contemporary text, the Discourse on the Dignity of Man. According to a previous analysis of mine of this text,29 it should not be read as a hymn to human liberty, nor to philosophy, but as a proposal for human completeness to be pursued spiritually, starting from moral self-discipline, passing via intellectual research into an ecstatic dimension. Human dignity is fully realized where the creature of undefined image realizes or becomes aware of its proper vocation., which is to cross the world of images in contemplation to make oneself become as Him who is without image. This paradigmatic route, according to Pico, is borne out by comparison with various traditions, - Hebrew, Arabian Islam, Mesopotamian, and Egyptian.
If this analysis of the first part of the Discourse is correct, if, that is, the first part of the Discourse is dominated by a Platonic-Dionysian pattern of upheaval-ascent, then the Discourse must be read alongside the Commento, and what is true for the Commento is all the more true of the Discourse. The Discourse should be read taking into account in the first place Pico's personal experience, who speaks about it starting from himself, from the awareness he has by now acquired of the dangerous ambiguity, but also the extraordinary constructive power of eros ("nihil amore potentius", he had written to Corneo): eros, once turned into a disciplined force, will be able to drive one onto more arduous intellectual explorations, leading eventually to that extreme end desired, the identity with a non representable absolute.
7. That Pico in his Discourse was in some way talking of himself, describing (or prescribing) something that above all concerned himself, is clear from the letter of November 12th to Girolamo Benivieni.
The theses to be discussed before your departure were of the number of 700. After your departure they increased to the number of 900 and would have grown to a thousand if I had not sounded the retreat. But I wanted to stop at that number, because it is mystical. If our doctrine of numbers is true, it is the symbol of the soul that withdraws into itself when struck by the stimulus of the Muse. To the oration has been added that which I send you. Having promised myself that not a day would pass without my reading something from the New Testament teachings, the day after you left I came across what Christ said: "I give you my peace, I give you my peace, I leave you peace". Straightaway, in a state of great excitement, I dictated some things on peace, in praise of philosophy, and so rapidly that I ran ahead of and confused the hand of my secretary. I would have wished, (I always do, but above all at that moment), that you had been with me, so that you could listen benevolently to that new text, as a baby issuing all of a sudden from the womb.30
You will recall that Pico read the New Testament every day. And from the Gospel of John 14,27 a new passage of the Discourse springs forth. Pico speaks about it with extraordinary emotion, just like a new birth. This passage is probably linked to the mention, in the previous edition, of the struggle between love and hate, over whose dispute Empedocles complains of being "as if dragged like a madman into the depths, in exile from the gods".31 The addition probably begins from Without doubt, o Fathers, many-sided is the discord within us, we have at home serious internal struggles, worse than civil wars...
Pico knows what war in the outside world is like, for Italy is going through one (he wrote a prayer not many years earlier: "Ad Deum deprecatio, ut bella tollat, quae per totam fremunt Italiam"), his family practices it more or less as a career, and practices it ever within the family (his brothers Galeotto and Antonmaria struggle ferociously to get hold of the family property, while Pico has given up his own rights to Giovanfrancesco).32 His mother wanted him to be preserved, and he himself managed to keep out of the way, until the moment when, a few months before, he had been nonetheless the cause of a great deal of blood being spilt. Pico now knows, through direct experience, that at the origin of everything lies his interior disposition. Peace, he says, must first of all be pursued by self-discipline, "which establishes an inviolable pact between the flesh and the spirit". On this basis then, scientific rigor on the subject of the philosophy of nature "will calm down the arguments and differences of opinion that afflict, divide and lacerate the unquiet spirit". But since nature, according to Heraclitus, was generated by war, the long yearned for peace will come only from the embrace with wisdom, according to the Discourse, which shouts out: come to unto me, you who are tired, come unto me and I shall give you rest. Come unto me, and I shall give you that peace that the world and nature cannot give you.33
Through an operation exegetically correct, indeed subtle and refined, Pico transforms the New Testament words on peace (Mt 11, 28 and John 14, 27) to superimpose on the figure of Christ that of the Wisdom personified in the Proverbs, suggesting at the same time the way that wisdom is the same as the sophia that eros strenuously pursues and who is Beauty and heavenly Venus.
But underneath these complex constructions, there is the nucleus of Giovanni Pico's experience on the morning of November 12th 1486: there is, after months of "very long bitterness and repentance" the establishing of a feeling of healing and reconciliation:
This is the peace that God actuates in his heavens; that the angels descending to the earth announced good will to all men, so that men too, through that, ascending up to heaven become angels. This peace, let us hope for in our time, for this century, in every house we enter, let us invoke it for our own soul so that it thus becomes itself a home for our Lord.34
8. Giovanfrancesco, in his biography, has good reason to interpret the terms of the letter to Andrea Corneo in Christian terms, and talk about a "conversion to Christ" on the part of Pico, who had allowed himself to be a little sidetracked by luxury and pleasures. And yet, passing over the Arezzo incident, he attributes the maximum effect on Pico's soul concerning his conversion to the "simultas", to the animosity of the Roman environment, through which his dreams of glory evaporated: it was only at that point, and not after the Arezzo incident, that, according to Giovanfrancesco, Pico woke up and understood the vanity of human glory...
... before, ambitious for glory and burning with vain loves, he had allowed himself to be moved by female attractions, also because very many women were very much in love with him, given the handsomeness of his appearance and the beauty of his physique, to which may be added his education, his great wealth, and the nobility of his family. By not rejecting such advances, he had gone rather soft, and had neglected to follow the true way. But on waking up through this hostility, he rejected the spirit that languished in pleasure and converted it to Christ, exchanging feminine blandishments for the bliss of a celestial home. No longer interested in the small worldly glories which he had so eagerly sought after, he bent the entire force of his mind to seeking the glory of God and the good of the Church, and to behaving himself in such a way as to gain the approval even of those biased people who might have wanted to judge him negatively.35
If you remember what I suggested previously, that Pico probably attributed such extraordinary importance to the success of the disputation for the rehabilitation of his reputation, you can understand just how much the failure also of this enterprise weighed on him, and how much it might become the reason for further maturing, for that completed "conversion" of which Giovanfrancesco speaks. This latter, however, as has been said, for apologetic reasons, avoids mentioning either the "appalling case" of Arezzo or its important inner influence on Pico's life and work.
9. My thesis has already been stated in the course of this talk, when I spoke of just one content: the above all personal experience of moral transformation formulated through two cultural and linguistic patterns: that of platonic periagogé-anagogé and that of the biblical metànoia. Adding together these two humanistic themes is different from the synthesis of biblical culture and ancient culture in Augustine and in Dionysius the Pseudo-Areopagite. In the fifteenth century the ancient synthesis is no longer available: Anders Nygren's great book, to which we owe so much (also in a negative sense: how long it took to get back to humanism and the Renaissance, because of Eros and Agape!) is right on this score. A symptom of this is the search for a "philosophical peace" which marks the whole of Pico's life, an effort which in fact reveals an acute perception of the multiplicity of the cultures in conflict among themselves: "multiplex in nobis discordia". The solution pursued by Pico doesn't seem to me to be described properly by E. Cassirer, according to whom it was only the category of symbolic thought which allowed Pico to unite the one and the many, and allows us to find the meaning of an achievement like that of the 900 Conclusiones.36 This description can't be applied to Pico, containing as it does an element of conscious cultural relativism that in reality cannot yet be found in his vision of the world.
We could perhaps say that Pico's attitude, and that of humanism in general, can be explained in terms of a split between interior experience on the one hand, and on the other hand the traditional linguistic formulation, within a new subject which in this way becomes aware of being able to give to the same content, its own intellectual and emotional content, different linguistic expressions equally valid, sincere and convincing.
It is in this way that Pico's subjectivity seems to form an ellipse around two expressive patterns, one constituted by traditional biblical-theological culture (the commentary on the Psalms will be the most important testimony to this) and another "philosophical", an aggregate of various contributions, from the "theologia prisca" to Platonism, to the cabbala, to the Bible itself, insofar as it can be a philosophical source. We have wanted to verify all this by following him for a while on his difficult path to moral transformation, and sometimes, through the different languages and styles practiced even for the sake of virtuosity, notwithstanding the distance, it has still been possible to perceive an extraordinary warmth of emotions and of feelings.
Pier Cesare Bori
This text can be found at:
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Notes
1 The documents concerning these events have been collected and published by M. Del Piazzo, Nuovi documenti
sull'incidente aretino del Pico della Mirandola, Rassegna degli archivi di stato, 23 (1963): 271-290. D. Berti, Intorno a
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. Cenni e documenti inediti, in Rivista contemporanea Torino, 7, anno XVI, 1859 in still
useful. I am also recalling H. De Lubac, Pico della Mirandola, tr. it. Jaka Book, Milano 1994, 398 ff.
2 Letter by the "estensis orator" in Florence, Aldobrandino Guidoni, in Del Piazzo, Nuovi documenti, 279.
3 "Colla serva pigliare recreatione al Duomo Vecchio da fuori d'Arezzo, fu da gente del signore della Mirandola, contra sua
volontà, presa e messa a cavallo et in groppa a gente di sua famiglia colla quale era il decto Signore; che per questo era venuto
la sera dinanzi qui agli alberghi d'Arezo, con circa 20 cavagli et con balestrieri acti a far male", Del Piazzo, Nuovi documenti,
276 f.
4 "...fu a tradimento, et armata manu" ... et per forza messa a cavallo", ibid. Ivi, 274 f.
5 "...infogata de lo amore del Conte", being "una sua amorosa bellisima", ibid., 279.
6 "come innamorata e cieca di sì bel corpo, volontariamente montò a cavallo". Ibid. 277. Costanza Bentivoglio writes the same
to fra' Girolamo di Piacenza, from Concordia: "...which woman was following him voluntarily" ("la qual femina lo seguiva
volontariamente").
7 "..cun tanta gratia et opinione in tutta questa cità che era existimato divino, provocato da una femina impazita di luy...andò con
la famiglia sua per levare questa femina", ibid. 281.
8 "... perché gli aretini hebono più gente n'amazorno XVIII et il magnifico signore fu ferito malamente et se non su fussi stato il
buon cavallo che haveva sotto, rimaneva anche lui in compagnia de' 18", ibid. 281.
9 Guidoni could already foresee on May 12th that the count would not be affected by negative consequences, while "'l
canzelero ne farà male, perché è reputato che 'l fusse uno capesto, da cui sia processo ogni male", ivi 280.
10 Ibid. 282.
11 "...che certo le son cose che anche Salamone, che fue tanto sapientissmo, incorse anchora lui alcuna volta in simile
trasgressione, sì che il gli è da havere compassione..." ibid. 284.
12 See the letter of the Signoria di Arezzo to Lorenzo, cit.
13 "Et veramente questo caso è di natura che a tutta questa città rencresce perché questo conte Zohanne havea in questa cità
uno nome del più docto homo che fusse uno buon pezo: et era reputato uno sancto; ora ha perso la reputatione et conditione
sua", Del Piazzo, Nuovi documenti, 279 s.
14 "...restaci un cavallo di quelli del Signore appresso l'oste, una cappa rosata foderata di panno verde, due balestre
d'acciaio...un turchasso...una cappetta,... un giacho di maglio......" ibid.
15 On Pico's correspondence, see in general E. Garin, La cultura filosofica del Rinascimento italiano, Sansoni, Firenze
1961, 261. Owing to the absence of a recent edition, I read the letters on the Bologna incunabulus of 1496, checking the text
on the Basilea edition of 1573, except for those published by L. Dorez, Lettres inédites de Jean Pico de la Mirandole
(1482-1492), in "Giornale storico della letteratura italiana" 25 (1895): 353-359.
16 "Romam propero ubi de nostris studiis periculum vel cum periculo faciemus. Siquid profecerimus dei est munus: illi laudes et
gratiae. Si quid defecerimus, nostra est imbecillitas nobis imputato". See also ep. 42 a G. Benivieni.
17 "Cecidit et per hos dies etrusca lingua de amore carmen, quod cum illo venit, a paucis, nisi fallor, intellengendum: est enim
pluribus ex secretiori antiquorum doctrina mysteriis refertum. Ego quid hic agam, scribam ad te non oportet. Scis enim quid
semper agam, quod mihi perpetuum sit negocium, otio scilicet litterarium. Quod me admones ne fratense balneum frequentius
visitem, faciam quod mones, ne, si quam forte Dianam viderim, quod de Tirhesia scrivit Callimacus mihi eveniat. Tu cura ut
valeas, et me, quod facis, ama. Vale", Dorez, Lettres inédites, 357 s.
18 "Quod amicum illum tuum, cui in amorem res male cessit, apud Florianum nostrum excusaveris, ex officio fecisti: Habet ille
quidem et ex historiis et ex poetis, ex ipsa etiam philosophia unde se a nota criminis vendicet, habet unde magnorum se
hominum preiudiciis Davidis praesertim Salomonisque tutetur: ut Aristotelem tacem. qui dum nonnullas etiam meretrices sepe
deperibat; suorum de moribus preceptorum nil meminit quando amatae feminae uti Cereri eleusinae sacra fecit. Sed ille haec
tutamenta et quasi propugnacula sui facinoris non amplexatur modo vel amat, sed odit et reiicit et recusat; iacturam queritur
suam non culpam deprecatur, dolet quod peccavit, non defendit. Et mihi quod vel hoc nomine videtur caeteris excusandus quod
ipse se nil excusat. Nihil in homine imbecillius, nihil amore potentius. Hieronymi illa invicta et inconcussa mens dum caelo tota
inheret puellarum choris intererat. Quae illum pestis potuit vel infestare quem non edomabit? Si hoc amor in heremo in humo
collisis membris in ebdomadarum potuit inedia. Quid in pluma, in umbra, in omni delitiarum affluentia non poterit? Accedit quod
ille nunc primo cecidit ruine huius alioquin insolens et ignarus. De neptuno conqueri potest qui semel tantum naufragium fecit. Si
ad eundem iterum offenderit lapidem nemo manum porrigat nemo misereatur: nunc non excusari iure non potest. Quem ita facti
paenitet ut favorem excusationis se dignum ipse non existimet. Sed haec etiam nimis quando amicus tuus huiusmodi facti
memoriam non solum aliquo modo litteris tradi sed quod sequens vita eius faciat abliterari cupit".
19 Garin, Cultura, 262. Verif.
20 Supplementum ficinianum, ed. P.O. Kristeller, Olschki, Firenze 1937, 1, 56s.
21 "Eundem psalmum exponere possumus de nostris temporis tepidis qui sub caerimoniarum religionisque praetextu sanctitatem
mentiuntur et semplices et rectos corde a spiritu et veritate deterrentes, ad propriam vanitatem trahere satagunt", commenting
on Ps 10, 8 ("Quoniam iustus Dominbus et iustitias dilexit; aequitaem vidit vultus eius"): Ioannis Pici Mirandulae, Expositiones
in Pslamos, A. Raspanti ed., Olschki, Firenze 1997, 92.
22 "Esterioris latriae cultus non multum diligens fuerat; non de eo loquimur, quem observandum praecepit Ecclesia (gestasse
hunc quippe prae oculis eum vidimus) sed de his ceremoniis mentionem facimus, quas nonnulli posthabito vero cultu Dei, qui in
spiritu et veritate colendus est, prosequuntur et provehunt. At internis affectibus ferventissimo Deum amore prosequebatur;
interdum etiam alacritas illa animi propemodum elanguescebat et decidebat, maiori quandoque nixu vires assumens, adeoque in
Deum exarsisse memini...". Giovanfrancesco Pico della Mirandola, Vita Pici Mirandulae viri omnia disciplinarum genere
consumatissimi vita per Ionanne Franciscum illustris principis Galeotti Pici filium conscripta, a cura di T. Sorbelli,
Modena 1963. See also De Lubac 420 s.
23 Pico replies on November 10th to Benivieni who had thanked him for having sent him the Commento, see following
footnote.
24 "Commentariolum nostrum non est quod admireris otiosi cum esse voluimus et omnino nihil agere id egimus animum
remittentes potiusquam intendentes. Omnino preludium est commentariorum quae in platonis symposium meditamur. Erit in illis
quod tu saltem ames et laudes qui omnia nostra amas et laudas".
25 "Chi è nel primo grado tanto è felice quanto l'amato gli è presente, condizione in ogni modo assai migliore di quello bestiale
furore e non amore, el cui bene non può se non per piccolo tempo durare e non può non lassare dopo sé se non con longissima
amaritudine e penitenzia; il che doverebbe essere a ciascuno sufficiente stimulo a farlo con celerrima fuga da questa essecranda
voluttà rimuovere e con festinatissimo corso a quel celeste amore ove niuno vestigio di miseria, ma ogni plenitudine di felicità si
truova. Né debbe allettare veruno a questa misera voluttà l'essere stati molti e per santità e per prudenzia e per dottrina
celebratissimi uomini da quella presi, anzi questo debbe essere a ciascuno invece di ragione efficacissima a mostrare che quella
in tutto si debba con ogni ingegno fuggire. Perocché se questo male è sì pestifero e velenoso che abbia in sì forte e perfette
anime potuto generare egritudini quasi incurabili, debbe ciascuno indubitamente persuadersi che nella sua abbia a partorire
letale al tutto e mortifero morbo; di che meritamente si può concludere, chiunque in tale precipizio ruina, di sé medisimo e de'
suoi mal composti pensieri, da Dio correzione e paterna punizione, dagli uomini forse non meno pietà e compassione che
biasimo meritare": Commento dello illustrissimo signor conte Joanni Pico Mirandolano sopra una canzona de amore
composta da Girolamo Benivieni cittadino fiorentino secondo la mente et opinione de' platonici, in G. Pico della
Mirandola, De hominis dignitate, Heptaplus, De ente et uno e scritti vari, E. Garin ed., Vallecchi, Firenze 1942, 578.
26 "L'opposto è nello amore celeste, nel quale non è questo pericolo, ma tutto tende alla bellezza spiritale dell'animo e dello
intelletto, la quale molto più perfetta si truova ne' maschi che nelle donne, come d'ogni altra perfezione si vede. Però tutti coloro
che di questo divino amore sono stati accesi hanno la maggior parte amato qualche giovani di indole generosa, la cui virtù è
stata ad alcuni tanto più grata quanto l'è stata in un bel corpo, e non si sono effeminati drieto ad un armento di meretrice, le
quali non solo non inducono l'uomo a grado alcuno di spirituale perfezione, ma, come Circe, al tutto lo trasformano in bestia",
ibid. 537 s.
27 The Neoplatonic Movement in Florence and North Italy, in Studies in Iconology, Harper, New York 1962, 144 s.
28 Pico - unlike Marsilio - declares "che in Dio non sia bellezza, perché la bellezza include in sé qualche imperfezione". Could
this depend on the same experience? Commento, 495, cf. S. Toussaint, Le formes de l'invisible. Essai sull'ineffabilité au
Quattrocento, introduction to G. Pico della Mirandola, Commento, L'âge de l'homme, Lausanne 1989, 56 s.
29 I tre giardini nella scena paradisiaca del De hominis dignitate di Pico della Mirandola, in Annali di storia dell'esegesi
13.2 (1996): 551-564.
30 "Dispuntanda per me publice dogmata ante tuum a me discessum 700is claudebantur. Postquam abisti, ad 900a excreverunt
progrediebanturque, nisi receptui cecissem, ad mille. Sed placuit eo numero, utpote mistico, pedem sistere. Est enim (si vera est
nostra de numeris doctrina) symbolum animae in se ipsam oestro Musarum percitae recurrentis. Accessit et orationi id quod ad
te mitto. Cum enim statutum sit mihi ut nulla praetereat dies quin legam ex Evangelica doctrina, incidit in manus, postridie quam
decesseras, illud Christi: "Pacem meam do vobis, pacem meam do vobis, pacem relinquo vobis". Illico subita quadam animi
concitatione de pace quedam ad philosophiae laudes facentia tanta celeritate dictavi, ut notarii manum precurrerem saepe et
invertirem. Desideravi, quod et semper desidero, vel tunc maxime [te] mecum esse, ut recens opus auribus, quasi e gremio
editum infantem, benignius auditor exciperes. Sed quando coram non licuit, fer quod licuit per litteras. Vale. 12 novembris
1486". Letter to Girolamo Benivieni, da Fratta, Vaticano Capp. 235, published da L. Dorez, Lettres inédites de Jean Pico de
la Mirandole (1482-1492), in "Giornale storico della letteratura italiana" 25 (1895): 358
31 According to F. Bausi, Neque rhetor neque philosophus. Fonti, lingua e stle nelle prime opere latine di Giovanni Pico
della Mirandola (1484-87), Olschki, Firenze 1996, 96, the addition goes from " Multiplex..." to "sapientes" (ed. Tognon, pp.
16, 21-20, 12).
32 F. Ceretti, Il conte Antonmaria Pico della Mirandola.Memorie e documenti raccolti dal sac. Felice Ceretti, in Atti e
memorie delle rr.Deputazioni di storia patria per le provincie dell'Emilia, n.s. III, II, Moderna 1878.
33 "Venite, inclamabit, ad me qui laborastis; venite et ego reficiam vos; venite ad me et dabo vobis pacem quam mundus et
natura vobis dare non possunt".
34 "Haec illa pax quam facit Deus in excelsis suis, quam angeli in terram descendentes annuntiarunt hominibus bonae voluntatis,
ut per eam ipsi homines ascendentes in caelum angeli fierent. Hanc pacem amicis, hanc nostro optemus seculo, optemus
unicuique domui quam ingredimur, optemus animae nostrae, ut per eam ipsa Dei domus fiat"
35 "Prius enim et gloriae cupidus et amore vano succensus, mulieribusque illecebris commotus fuerat: foeminarum quippe
plurimae, ob venustatem corporis orisque gratiam, cui doctrina amplexaeque divitiae et generis nobilitas accedebant, in eius
amorem exarserunt; ab quarum studio non abhorrens, parumper via vitae posthabita, in delicias defluxerat; verum simultate illa
experrectus, diffluentem luxu animum retudit et convertit ad Christum, atque foeminea blandimenta in superna patriae gaudia
commutavit, neglectaque aura gloriae, quam affectaverat, Dei gloriam et ecclesiae utilitatem tota coepit mente perquirere,
adeoque mores componere, ut post hac vel inimico iudice comprobari posset.", Giovanfrancesco Pico della Mirandola, Vita,
40-42.
36 Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. A Study in the History of Renaissance Ideas, in Journal for the History of Ideas 3
(1942): 123-144, 319-346.