Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni (1463-1494)

Italian astrologer and Kabbalist born February 24, 1463. His family played a prominent part in a number of the civil wars which convulsed medieval Italy; they owned extensive lands in the neighborhood of Modena, the most valuable of their possessions being a castle bearing their own name of Mirandola. It was here that Giovanni was born.

He appears to have been a versatile student. According to tradition, before he was out of his teens he had mastered jurisprudence and mathematics, had studied philosophy and theology, and had dabbled in occultism.

As a young man, Mirandola soon left his brothers in charge of the family estate and proceeded to various universities in Italy and France. While in the latter country, his interest in astrology and related subjects deepened, thanks partly to his making a close study of the works of alchemist Raymond Lully. In 1486 Giovanni went to Rome, where he delivered a series of lectures on various branches of science.

While thus engaged, his erudition won high praise from some of his hearers, but certain members of the clergy suspected him of heresy, reported his doings to the Inquisition, and even sought to have him excommunicated. The pope, however, was rather averse to quarrelling with a member of so powerful a family as the Mirandolas, and accordingly he waived violent measures, instead appointing a body of church leaders to argue with the scientist.

A lengthy dispute ensued. Mirandola published a defence (under the title Apologia ) of the ideas and theories promulgated in his lectures and in 1493 the pope, Alexander VI, brought the affair to a conclusion by granting him absolution.

Thereupon Mirandola went to live in Florence, and stayed there until his death in 1494, occasionally experimenting with alchemy, but chiefly busy with further study of the Kabala. He died November 17, 1494, in Florence.

Apart from the Apologia Pici Mirandoli cited above, Giovanni was author of several books of a theological nature, the most important of these being his Conclusiones Philosophicae, cabalisticae et theologicae, published in 1486, and his Disputationes adversus Astrologiam Divinaticum, issued in 1495. His works appear to have been keenly admired by those of his contemporaries who were not averse to speculative thought, and a collected edition of his writings was printed at Bologna in 1496, and another at Venice two years later.