Fourteen

GIOVANNI PICO DELLA MIRANDOLA

1. Life of Pico. G. Donato and . Conflict with Barbaro. The Defense of Philosophy Giovanni Pico of the Counts of Mirandola was born on 24 February 1463. In the early infancy, he was under the influence of his mother, Giulia Boiardo. At the age of fourteen, he went to study Canon Law at the university in Bolo- gna, beginning those travels throughout Italian and foreign learning centers that greatly contributed to a cultural formation, in part at least, unconnected with the Italian situation. “He went to examine not only the literary centers of Italy but also those of France in order to inquire most carefully about the illus- trious teachers of his time” (non tantum Italiae sed et Galliarum literaria gymnasia perlustrans, celebres doctores tempestatis illius scrupulosissime perquirebat). From the study of jurisprudence, starting with a compilation of the Decretals, he acquired a concrete sense of human rapports, but soon showed himself seriously interested in the knowledge of nature: “he was a covetous inquirer of the secrets of nature” (secretarum naturae rerum cupidus explorator). An episode that he later narrated shows that during the period at Bologna together with Pandolfo Collenuccio he cared for astrological issues. This proves how very early in life he was inclined to a variety of interests. After his mother died in 1478, Giovanni moved to Ferrara. In 1479, during a trip to Florence that has been clearly documented, Pico encountered Politian and, perhaps, Ficino. At the time of this first Florentine visitation, the young prince left with Politian some love elegies that later on he wanted to destroy or to be returned for corrections. Antonio Benivieni, in the Bucolica, pub- lished in 1482, but written between 1478 and 1480, already mentioned affec- tionately the one who was going to become his inseparable friend: “Only for you, O friend, the mind inflamed, / only for you it lighted up. In you finds / aliment the fire that sometime shines / blissfully reflected in me” (Per te s’infiamma sol per te s’accende, / signor, la mente, in te si nutre el foco / che talhor lieto in me reflexo splende). These first Florentine contacts should not be interpreted as meaning a preponderant initial Platonic influence; Platonism actually continued to re- main extraneous to Pico. Undeniable instead is his strong propensity to write poetry. Politian saw Pico as a poet when Pico presented him with the five 296 HISTORY OF ITALIAN PHILOSOPHY books de amoribus of 1483, which most wisely Pico thereafter threw to the fire. Many verses, on the other hand, on other themes and of other peri- ods survived. In Ferrara, Pico met Savonarola, of whom he became an intimate friend, and had frequent contacts with Battista Guarini. To conjecture, as it has been done, a precocious influence of Savonarola in a Thomistic sense is out of place. Savonarola, later on in Florence, influenced the spirit of the young prince, who at that time was involved in philosophical inquiries and juvenile experiences that colored his verses with bitterness: “No stable thing can be found under the moon. / And given that among so few and frail goods / a long life is cause to meeting with many evils, / happy then is he whose life is out at the cradle” (Cosa ferma non è sotto la luna. / E poi che fra sí pochi beni e frail / cagione è un viver lungo a tanti mali / felice chi di vita è spento in cuna). Back to Padua during the academic years of 1480 and1482, Pico audited Niccoletto Vernia, and probably made acquaintance with Nifo, in whom he felt the same efficacious energy of Elia del Medigo. These are the years of the contacts with Girolamo Donato and Girolamo Ramusio, Domenico Grimani and Antonio Pizzamanno, Antonio of Faenza, and Niccolò Leoniceno. The letters of Pico or those addressed to Pico from this time on are the mirrors of these relationships. Thomists were Grimani and Pizzamanno; an orientalist and translator of Arabic texts was Ramusio; and Donato, who had for a long time cultivated familiarity with Pico, was a remarkable politician, the transla- tor into elegant Latin of Alexander of Aphrodisias. Donato’s version of Alex- ander is of great interest because Donato expressed the intention of bringing to conciliation the contrasting tendencies. After the observation that if some- one were to read carefully Averroès (et suis quaeque locis singulatim singula contulerit), he would become aware that it is a kind of thought originated from the purest of sources (eius doctrinam ab optimis authoribus prodisse comperiat), Donato attacked animatedly the “titillating witticism” of the mod- erns, placing on the first place the Englishmen, and having in mind the logi- cians of Oxford:

The moderns … in England, France, and Italy … have philosophized with great acuity, but on the basis of their own convictions instead of on the doctrine of Aristotle. And when they have followed Aristotle, they did it not with argumentations but with titillating witty remarks, handing down to us a philosophy that proceeds by way of cavils and ir- relevant short questions (Recentiores … in Britannia, et Gallia atque Italia, … magis ex religione quam ex Aristotelis doctrina acutissime philosophati sunt, et qua parte Aristotelem secuti sunt, non tam inter- pretationibus, quam titillantibus argutiis, quippe qui per cavillamenta et quaestiunculas philosophiam tradidere).