Giovanni Francesco Pico della Mirandola (1470–1533) was an Italian nobleman and philosopher, the nephew of

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (24 February 1463 – 17 November 1494) was an Italian Renaissance nobleman and philosopher. He is famed for the events of 1486, when, at the age of 23, he proposed to defend 900 theses on religion, philosophy, ...

. His name is typically truncated as Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola.

Biography

Gianfrancesco was the son of Galeotto I Pico, lord of Mirandola, and Bianca Maria d'Este, the daughter of

Niccolò III d'Este Niccolò is an Italian male given name, derived from the Greek Nikolaos meaning "Victor of people" or "People's champion". There are several male variations of the name: Nicolò, Niccolò, Nicolas, and Nicola. The female equivalent is Nicole. The f ...

. Like his uncle he devoted himself chiefly to philosophy, but made it subject to the Bible, though in his treatises, ''De studio divinæ et humanæ sapientiæ'' and particularly in the six books entitled ''Examen doctrinæ vanitatis gentium'', he depreciates the authority of the philosophers, above all of

Aristotle Aristotle (; grc-gre, Ἀριστοτέλης ''Aristotélēs'', ; 384–322 BC) was a Greek philosopher and polymath during the Classical period in Ancient Greece. Taught by Plato, he was the founder of the Peripatetic school of ph ...

. He wrote a detailed biography of his uncle, published in 1496, and another of

Girolamo Savonarola Girolamo Savonarola, OP (, , ; 21 September 1452 – 23 May 1498) or Jerome Savonarola was an Italian Dominican friar from Ferrara and preacher active in Renaissance Florence. He was known for his prophecies of civic glory, the destruction of ...

, of whom he was a follower. Having observed the dangers to which Italian society was exposed at the time, he sounded a warning on the occasion of the Lateran Council: ''Joannis Francisci Pici oratio ad Leonem X et concilium Lateranense de reformandis Ecclesiæ Moribus'' (Hagenau, 1512, dedicated to

Willibald Pirckheimer Willibald Pirckheimer (5 December 1470 – 22 December 1530) was a German Renaissance lawyer, author and Renaissance humanist, a wealthy and prominent figure in Nuremberg in the 16th century, imperial counsellor and a member of the governing City ...

). He died at

Mirandola Mirandola ( Mirandolese: ) is a city and ''comune'' of Emilia-Romagna, Italy, in the Province of Modena, northeast of the provincial capital by railway. History Mirandola originated as a Renaissance city-fortress. For four centuries it was ...

in 1533, assassinated by his nephew Galeotto, along with his youngest son, Alessandro. His other son Giantommaso was ambassador to

Pope Clement VII Pope Clement VII ( la, Clemens VII; it, Clemente VII; born Giulio de' Medici; 26 May 1478 – 25 September 1534) was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 19 November 1523 to his death on 25 September 1534. Deemed "the ...

. Charles B. Schmitt wrote:

Whereas Giovanni Pico had often argued that all philosophies and all religions have attained a portion of the truth, Gianfrancesco said, in effect, that all religions and all philosophies – save the Christian religion alone – are mere collections of confused and internally inconsistent falsehoods. In holding such a view, he sided not only with Savonarola, but with certain of the Fathers and with the Reformers as well. On this point, he was insistent. Christianity is a self-subsistent reality and it has little if anything to gain from philosophy, the sciences and the arts. This central thesis diffuses itself through nearly the whole of Gianfrancesco’s literary output. He writes not to praise or extend the realm of philosophy but to demolish it.

Selected works

* ''De studio divinae et humanae philosophiae'' (1496) *
Ioannis Pici Mirandulae Vita
' (1496) * ''De imaginatione'' (1501) * ''De providentia Dei'' (1508) * ''De rerum praenotione'' (1506-1507) * ''Quaestio de falsitate astrologiae'' (ca. 1510) * ''Examen vanitatis doctrinae gentium, et veritatis Christianae disciplinae'' (1520) *
Libro detto strega o delle illusioni del demonio
(1524) * ''Opera Omnia'' (1573)

Sources

* * Burke, Peter. (1977). "Witchcraft and Magic in Renaissance Italy: Gianfrancesco Pico and His ''Strix,''" in Sydney Anglod, ed. ''The Damned Art: Essays in the Literature of Witchcraft,'' pp. 32-48. London. * Herzig, T. (2003). "The Demons' Reaction to Sodomy: Witchcraft and Homosexuality in Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola's Strix." ''The Sixteenth Century Journal'', 34, 1, 53. * Kors, Alan Charles and Edward Peters. (2001) ''Witchcraft in Europe, 400-1700: A Documentary History.'' Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press (Excerpts from the Pico's ''Strix'', pp. 239-44) * Schmitt, C. B. (1967). ''Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola (1469-1533) and his critique of Aristotle.'' The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. * Pappalardo, L. (2015). "Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola: fede, immaginazione e scetticismo" (Nutrix, 8), Turnhout: Brepols Publishers.

References

External links

* *
Giovan Francesco Pico: Biographic overview at the Centro Internazionale di Cultura "Giovanni Pico della Mirandola"
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni Francesco 1470 births 1533 deaths Giovanni Francesco Italian philosophers 16th-century philosophers Demonologists Assassinated Italian people Witchcraft in Italy 16th-century murdered monarchs Murder in 1533