View source for Giovanni Pico della Mirandola

[[Image:Pico Della Mirandola.jpg|thumb|Copy of an unknown original, Uffizi, Gioviana Collection, ca. 1491.]]
'''Giovanni Pico della Mirandola''' (1463-1494) was an [[Italian]] [[polymath]]. He is considered the most influential [[The Renaissance|Renaissance]] Neo-Platonist. Pico also is one of the first thinkers to consider the capacity of ''freedom'' to be hallmark of being human. He developed a [[philosophy]] known as ''syncretism''.

''In 1486 Pico drew up a list of nine hundred true theses (or propositions), using various [[Greek]], [[Arabic]], [[Hebrew]], and [[Roman]] thinkers who summarized his views. He invited scholars from all over Europe to come to Rome, where he would defend his positions against all challengers. '' [http://www.whitworth.edu/Core/Classes/CO250/Italy/Data/fr_pico.htm]

::: ''I have read in the records of the Arabians, reverend Fathers, that Abdala the Saracen, when questioned as to what on this stage of the world, as it were, could be seen most worthy of wonder, replied: "There is nothing to be seen more wonderful than man." In agreement with this opinion is the saying of Hermes Trismegistus: "A great miracle, Asclepius, is man."'' [http://www.whitworth.edu/Core/Classes/CO250/Readings/pico.htm Oration on the Dignity of Man]

::: ''[[Human]] vocation is a mystical vocation that has to be realized following a three stage way, which comprehends necessarily moral transformation, intellectual research and final perfection in the identity with the [[absolute reality]]. This paradigm is universal, because it can be retraced in every tradition.'' ([[Ibidem]])


== Books ==
* Heptaplus. 
* Oration on the Dignity of Man.
* Conclusiones philosophicae, cabalisticae et theologicae. 
* Apologia J. Pici Mirandolani, Concordiae comitis.
* Disputationes adversus astrologiam divinatricem.
* De ente et uno.
* Aureae ad familiares epistolae (letters)

== See also ==

*[[Florence]]
*[[Leon Battista Alberti]]

== External links ==

*[http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10352a.htm Giovanni Pico della Mirandola] Catholic Encyclopedia. 
*[http://www.authorama.com/renaissance-3.html The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry]

{{DEFAULTSORT:Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni}}
[[Category:Philosophers]]
[[Category:Renaissance]]