An account of the astrological controversies that arose in Renaissance Italy in the wake of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola's Disputationes adversus astrologiam divinatricem, published in 1496.
This volume provides a comprehensive presentation of the philosophical work of the fifteenth-century Renaissance thinker Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. In essays specially commissioned for this book, ...a distinguished group of scholars presents the central topics and texts of Pico's literary output. Best known as the author of the celebrated 'Oration on the Dignity of Man', Pico also wrote several other prominent works. They include an influential diatribe against astrology, an ambitious metaphysical treatise attempting to reconcile Platonic and Aristotelian metaphysical views, and writings on a range of subjects such as magic, Kabbalah, the Church, philosophy of religion, and philosophy of knowledge. The first volume of its kind in English, this collection of essays will be of value not only to advanced students and specialists of late medieval and Renaissance thought, but also to those interested in Italian humanism and Renaissance Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism.
The library of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494) contained over 1,200 volumes (both manuscripts and incunabula). Two separate inventories exist, both known about but published in inadequate ...editions, but the library has not received the same attention given to other humanist libraries since for a long time it was thought that it had been destroyed. The present article focuses on the printed books in the collection. As the examples cited in the article show, the mark which Pico added to his volumes and which is recorded in the two inventories enables us in many cases to identify a specific edition (or small group of editions) from differing and often discordant inventorial descriptions. Since Pico used to leave a mark consisting of a thin scratch with two points written above against the passages which had attracted his attention, recognising this sign and other annotations in Pico’s hand can lead to the identification of hitherto unknown copies from his library.
Pico della Mirandola, one of the most remarkable thinkers of the Renaissance, has become known as a founder of humanism and a supporter of secular rationality. Brian Copenhaver upends this ...understanding of Pico, unearthing the magic and mysticism in the most famous work attributed to him,The Oration on the Dignity of Man.
This book presents a detailed account of Ficino's De Christiana religione and of Pico's Apologia, in the context of the evolution of a humanist theology. Focusing on the relations between humanism, ...theology, and politics, it concludes with the Savonarola affair.
This study shows how Giovanni Pico della Mirandola used Neoplatonic and kabbalistic ideas to develop an innovative theory of biblical allegory. Based on epistemology and intellectual ascent, his ...theory relates to scholastic debate over the action of the intellect.
Cum ipsis sensibus labor et pugna Huß, Bernhard
Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie,
3/2015, Letnik:
131, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s poetry is contextualized by his own poetological statements, negotiating the tension between vernacular Petrarchism and the metaphysical and theological tenets of ...Renaissance philosophy. Although Pico’s poems are overshadowed by his philosophical writings in existing research, poetry plays a far more important role within his oeuvre than most critics are ready to admit. Pico’s demand is for a poetic discourse charged with doctrinal subtexts. In the Quattrocento, poetry and rhetoric are not yet sharply distinguished in terms of theory – a systematic poetics of genre emerges only later, during the Cinquecento. If «eloquence» in general is to be compatible with philosophy in the 14th century, this must equally apply to poetry. On its linguistic surface, Pico’s vernacular poetry clearly exhibits the influence of Petrarchism. Yet while his poems deploy the established patterns of the Petrarchan tradition, Pico attempts to invest these texts with a metaphysical dimension. This attempt yields varying results – towards the end of his poetic production (his poetry does not in fact constitute mere juvenilia, as has frequently been assumed), Pico appears to be disillusioned with vernacular poetry, negating the ability of poetic discourse to master «cum ipsis sensibus labor et pugna».
The development of the astrological ideas of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola still remains one of the most intriguing aspects of his legacy. Although Pico explicitly dedicated only his last ...philosophical treatise, the Disputationes adversus astrologiam divinatricem, to the study of astrology, his views on the subject can be found in nearly all his texts. The current article aims to show the evolution of Pico's philosophical outlook from 1486 to 1493, the year in which he started writing the Disputationes. This focus on his astrological views will illustrate the development of his itineraire philosophique from early Neoplatonic writings and ambitious theological projects to the later biblical commentaries.
In the summer of 1486, Pico came into possession of what he regarded as the original Chaldean text of the Chaldean Oracles, whose Greek text thus came to appear to him as an incomplete and flawed ...translation. The now-lost purported original Chaldean Oracles were a back translation infused with kabbalistic elements produced by Flavius Mithridates. In his Conclusiones nongentae (Rome, 1486), however, Pico devoted to them fifteen conclusions. Through an overall analysis of these conclusions, the first part of the article points out the kabbalistic themes and symbols that Pico descried in the original Chaldean Oracles. In the second part, an in-depth analysis of one of these conclusiones demonstrates that Pico's reading of the oracle quoted therein implied that the Greek translator had missed the kabbalistic purport of the original. The article shows that Pico's Conclusiones aimed at pointing out that the transmission of kabbalah to Zoroaster and from Zoroaster (although not without misinterpretations) to the Greek world - in other words, the existence of a divinely revealed prisca theologia transmitted through the ages - could be demonstrated on the basis of philological analysis and that, according to Pico, insofar as they provided a philological reconstruction of that science and its transmission, the Conclusiones should be reckoned as the culmination of the studia humanitatis.
The Origen of Pico’s Kabbalah Terracciano, Pasquale
Journal of the history of ideas,
07/2018, Letnik:
79, Številka:
3
Journal Article
Recenzirano
The importance of Origen of Alexandria’s legacy for Giovanni Pico della Mirandola has been widely debated for its role in Pico’s trial, its possible reverberations on the entire “Apology,” and its ...assonance with the Pichian idea of the dignity of man. This article aims instead to show the substantial role of Origen in shaping the Pichian construction of the Christian Kabbalah’s tradition. This scrutiny, by clarifying the extent of the Origenian influence as well as Pico's rhetorial strategies, helps to put the Pichian idea of the freedom of man in a new framework.
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