At 23, Pico offered to debate 900 theses and pay his rivals' travel
In December 1486 a young nobleman published 900 propositions on theology, philosophy and magic and invited scholars from anywhere to Rome to argue with him, travel costs on him. The debate never happened: his theses became the first printed book the Church banned outright. His speech for the occasion is now called the manifesto of the Renaissance.
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola was born near Modena on 24 February 1463, youngest son of the lord of Mirandola, and was a cousin of the poet Matteo Maria Boiardo. A prodigy with a phenomenal memory, he was made an honorary papal protonotary at ten and sent to study canon law in Bologna. When his mother died he switched to philosophy, first at Ferrara, then at Padua, a stronghold of Aristotle's followers, where the Jewish scholar Elia del Medigo taught him Hebrew and Arabic.
In Florence he befriended the poet Angelo Poliziano and, probably, the friar Savonarola, and in November 1484 he met Lorenzo de' Medici and Marsilio Ficino, the translator of Plato, on the very day Ficino had picked for publishing those translations. Lorenzo protected him until 1492, which proved necessary: on the road to Rome, Pico tried to elope with the wife of one of Lorenzo's cousins, was caught, wounded and jailed, and released only when Lorenzo intervened.
Recovering in Perugia, he discovered the Jewish Kabbalah and the Hermetic writings, both then believed as old as the Old Testament. His most original theses dealt with Kabbalah, making him the founder of Christian Kabbalah, a pillar of later Western esotericism. Some of his sources were forgeries: according to Brian Copenhaver, the translator Flavius Mithridates fed him doctored, Christian-sounding texts. Pico's instinct was to harmonise. He held that Plato and Aristotle expressed the same truths in different words and defended medieval Islamic commentators like Averroes and Avicenna, earning the punning nickname Prince of Harmony.
He timed the planned debate for 6 January, Epiphany, symbol of pagan sages bowing to Christ; historian Steven Farmer suggests he half expected apocalyptic signs in the Roman sky. Instead came condemnation. Because his theses anticipated many later Protestant views, he is sometimes cast as a proto-Protestant. Under Savonarola's influence he destroyed his own love sonnets, and he died on 17 November 1494, aged 31. His admiring nephew later published a book attacking the very ancient-wisdom project his uncle had built.
Source: Giovanni Pico della Mirandola
