Re-evaluating Pico: Aristotelianism,

Kabbalism, and Platonism in the

Philosophy of Giovanni Pico della
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CRITICAL POLITICAL THEORY AND RADICAL PRACTICE

Re-evaluating Pico
Aristotelianism, Kabbalism,
and Platonism in the Philosophy of
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola

Sophia Howlett
Critical Political Theory and Radical Practice

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Department of Political Science
Rutgers University
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 Sophia Howlett

Re-evaluating Pico
Aristotelianism, Kabbalism, and Platonism in the
Philosophy of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola
Sophia Howlett
School for International Training
Brattleboro, VT, USA

Critical Political Theory and Radical Practice

ISBN 978-3-030-59580-7 ISBN 978-3-030-59581-4 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-59581-4

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 Preface

Pico has been an interesting journey. I had written about Pico a little
before while preparing my dissertation in the early 1990s. But then I had
understood Pico as Ficino’s disciple, and part of the Platonic Academy
of Florence. I had not spent time with the broader critical material
of what I call here, ‘Pico Studies,’ which tends to avoid Ficino alto-
gether. Coming back to Pico, everything had changed, from the Platonic
Academic concept itself to the direction of ‘Pico Studies’ away from a
focus on the ‘Dignity of Man’ (here referred to as the Oration) toward the
impact of Kabbalism. I was also confused by the level of interest in Pico
particularly in his homeland and France. As primarily a Ficino scholar, I
had understood Ficino as ‘the titan’ and Pico as a relatively minor satellite
(particularly because of his incomplete career). Of course, the Oration was
an important text, but as a short expression of philosophical optimism,
rather than the magnum opus of Ficino’s Platonic Theology. Yet it seemed
that in popular culture many had heard of Pico, not so many of Ficino.
So, part of the project became to understand Pico’s allure, introducing
the theme of exceptionalism.
After most of the research was complete, I had decided this book would
focus on the theme of syncretism. An inevitable decision, no doubt, if
trying to provide an overview of Pico’s philosophy. But then there was a
halt. I was appointed to the leadership role at the School for International
Training in Vermont. Returning to the writing process this past year, I
realized that my relationship with Pico had become rather complicated:

v
vi PREFACE

highly judgmental, if not critical. During the research, I had come to see
Pico in a very different way from our first introduction in the 1990s, and
I was now forced to build some distance into the relationship. What had
originated as a project to introduce Pico to a wider audience in the US and
UK, rapidly became a reevaluation, including a comparison with Ficino.
As with any academic endeavor, we stand on the work of others. In
Pico’s case, there has been so much interesting new work in the twenty-
first century, particularly on his use of Kabbalism and Kabbalistic sources.
The work of the Pico Project group (Pier Cesare Bori, Michael Papio,
Massimo Riva, and Francesco Borghese, among others), of those working
on Pico’s Kabbalistic Library (led by Giulio Busi and Michele Ciliberto),
and of Moshe Idel and Brian Copenhaver has been particularly inspiring.
When I started working on my dissertation in the UK, writing about
Kabbalism seemed difficult, as if one would not be taken seriously as a
scholar. Scholars such as Scholem, Idel, Wirszubski, Busi, and Copen-
haver have transformed that conversation. There are more new editions
coming soon; and a lot more to explore. Indeed, now we have moved
beyond a focus on the dignity of man, the multiplicity of Pico’s sources
combined with the brevity of his existing works makes ‘Pico studies’
even more alluring. We are faced with pages of puzzles, and the constant
promise of real answers just out of present reach. Finishing a work, writing
this preface, inevitably makes me appreciate how much more there is to
explore.
I would like to thank my friend and colleague, Prof. Stephen Bronner
of Rutgers University, for suggesting that I work on another piece for the
Critical Theory series. My thanks go to the librarians of Kean University,
where the main research for this work was conducted, and those of SIT.
And my colleagues at School for International Training, for leaving me a
few hours on a Sunday (sometimes, not always!) to put the research into
a coherent text.

Brattleboro, USA Sophia Howlett

 Contents

1 Introduction 1
A Contested Site 1
Pico’s Contribution 5

2 Life and Works 11

Family and Education 12
The Rise and Fall of a Public Life 16
A Private Life? 23
Pico’s Death 25
Building the Myth 27
Works 29

3 Pico’s Intellectual Foundations: Aristotelianism,

Platonism, and Pico’s Syncretism 53
The Question of Allegiance 55
Aristotelianism 58
Platonism 63
Humanism 72
Syncretism 74
The Prisca Theologia and Mathematical
Philosophical-Mysticism 77

vii
viii CONTENTS

4 The Third Pillar: Pico and Kabbalism 91

Introduction to Kabbalism 93
The History of Kabbalism 100
Key Texts 107
Pico and Kabbalism 109

5 Pico’s Universe 135

The Question of God 139
God’s Love 146
The Angelic Mind 149
The Active Intellect 153
Populating the Angelic Mind 155
Celestial and Natural Worlds 157

6 The Way Home 171

Mutability and Self-fashioning 173
Our Anatomy 178
Immortality of the Soul 181
Ascent 182
Love and Beauty 185
Jacob’s Ladder 190

7 Conclusion 209

Bibliography of works consulted 215

Index 233
 About the Author

Sophia Howlett obtained her M.A. from Cambridge University and her
Ph.D. from the Medieval Studies Center of York University in the United
Kingdom. Her field of expertise is Renaissance Philosophy and Litera-
ture, most recently publishing Marsilio Ficino and His World (Palgrave
Macmillan, 2016). She taught at York University, was a permanent
lecturer at the University of Teesside, and a visiting professor at the
National University of Kiev Mohyla Academy, the National University of
Kyiv, Taras Shevchenko and Kaliningrad State University, before moving
to Central European University in Budapest, Hungary, as a dean and
professor in the twin fields of literature/philosophy and comparative and
international higher education policy. During this time, she was an Open
Society Institute fellow and a visiting scholar at Harvard. In 2012, Dr.
Howlett moved to Kean University, New Jersey as associate vice-president
for academic affairs, and then in 2017 was appointed as president of
School for International Training (SIT) in Vermont.

ix
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

A Contested Site
Pico della Mirandola was a late fifteenth-century Italian nobleman-
philosopher with an interest in religious reform who died young under
mysterious circumstances. He is part of a milieu that we quickly recognize
when we think of the Italian Renaissance whether historically or within
the history of ideas. Pico lived and worked in places such as Florence,
Padua, and Ferrara. He was friends with the great Platonist Marsilio
Ficino, with the humanist and poet Angelo Poliziano, and the major Aris-
totelian reformers of his generation such as Augustino Nifo as well as the
eminence grise of Christian reform, Girolamo Savonarola. He was close to
Lorenzo de’ Medici, the Estes, the Sforzas, probably the King of France,
and famously feuded with the pope. Pico’s use of Jewish Kabbalism intro-
duced a new and ongoing strand to Christian esoterica. Obviously, Pico
is so much more than this—but beyond basic facts, the story of Pico and
his intellectual legacy is highly contested.
Indeed, the level of Pico’s fame in Italy and France both then and now
sometimes seems out of proportion to his limited output with multiple
grandiose characterizations, whether in popular culture or academia: Pico
the hero philosopher-prince,1 the count with the miraculous memory;
St. Pico, the nobleman-penitent who gave everything away to die closer
to God; in academic circles, Pico the lone genius whose work prefigures
the modern individual: the philosopher who requires us to understand

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to 1

Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
S. Howlett, Re-evaluating Pico, Critical Political Theory and Radical
Practice, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-59581-4_1
2 S. HOWLETT

‘the Renaissance’ as the precursor to ‘Enlightenment’; the shining star of

Ficino’s Platonic Academy; or, much like Coleridge in England, the last
person to know everything.
Pico’s personality2 and ambition capture the grandiosity of the Italian
Renaissance of our imagination. He loudly declared his intention to bring
together the whole history of philosophy into one ‘concordance,’ used
his wealth and status to challenge all-comers to debate him publicly at his
own expense, sought a way to reconcile the humanities with theology and
philosophy while pushing for radical religious change, and skirted danger
and intrigue (fleeing the pope’s rage, abducting the object of his desire)
eventually leading to his probable murder. He provides us with the glit-
tering physical and intellectual spectacle of the Renaissance: if others were
attempting to lead a revival of the Golden Age, Pico appears to embody
that Age in his own person and his promised work. The ‘world’ of Pico
is a place where young men are mythical demi-Gods, where the nobility
read Plato, where the learned men of the past converse easily with each
other, and where everybody has understood rationally, and through an act
of faith, that Christ is their only savior. Pico himself promoted a certain
vision of his career—self-fashioning his uniqueness, promising to be part
of every intellectual ‘camp’ while principally of none, and while others’
accounts contest his self-fashioning, they do so only to claim him for
their own. Inevitably his early death with most major projects unfinished
deepens the fascination. We cannot know what he might have done and
what marvels he may have produced.
His work centers on three major projects: a poetic theology,3 an
attempt to bring together the entire history of philosophy, and a concor-
dance between Aristotle and Plato. These could have been three separate
projects, or one to two that metamorphosed and were renamed as his
thinking developed. Each project reflects central conflicts of the period
that he wished to overcome between literary studies and philosophy;
between Plato and Aristotle; and, most importantly, between faith and
reason. He believed that a theological philosophy was possible, bringing
faith and reason together to reinvigorate Christianity. But as most of this
work was never completed, Pico’s vision must be in part assumed based
on partial glimpses—whether on the nature of the Intellect, or the place
of the human in his universe.
The combination of a partially drawn vision, our complex perceptions
of ‘Italian Renaissance,’ Pico’s unfulfilled promise, potent self-fashioning,
and early and ongoing disagreement over his legacy inevitably makes ‘Pico
 1 INTRODUCTION 3

the philosopher’ a contested domain. To re-evaluate his work and vision,

we need to set aside at least part of the glitz, test historical readings, and
re-explore his oeuvre and influences, while appreciating that there is no
neutral perspective or single truth to be found.
This work offers four related major re-evaluations. First Pico’s work
is in the main coherent and contiguous (despite the fragments and
occasional changes of direction),4 thereby making it at least possible
to delineate his partial vision of the universe and our place within
it. Secondly, Pico’s approach is based on three principle traditions—
the three pillars for his universe: Aristotelianism, Platonism, and Jewish
Kabbalism.5 Thirdly, his attempt at concordance between these three
pillars is successful when it builds on similarities/shared histories but
inevitably reveals significant difference, so that creation is complicated by
the comparison with emanation and the God of negative theology cannot
be the pleroma. Fourthly, unlike Ficino with his mission of renovatio, Pico
is an exceptionalist focused on a solitary ascetic mystical journey to a form
of henosis with God but with no plan for return. The combination of Aris-
totelianism, Platonism, and Kabbalism require something more complex
than Platonic henosis . This union is a ‘cleaving’ not with a wholly tran-
scendent One, but with its active attribute/s within our universe, starting
with those attributes associated with mind and understanding. In Pico,
henosis can also be a noetic process, where our minds touch the mind
of the Aristotelian active intellect. The nous , or mind, is reappropriated
for mystical experience. The exceptionalism of Pico’s philosophy even
excludes the importance of a knowledge network or academic entourage
that he built around himself. Pico’s philosophy is a type of theological
philosophy, similar to his colleague, Marsilio Ficino, but centered on
the exceptionalism of the individual and even more ascetically mystical,
occupying the borderlands between philosophy and mysticism.
Alongside these reassessments, we will revisit other key assumptions
around the critical reception of his work. Of these, a few examples here
suffice. From a class perspective, Pico’s social position as a noble with
a large personal fortune connected to the most prominent families in
northern and central Italy both augmented his career and has obscured
the contribution of others. Obviously, his status made his choice of career
highly unusual: he was automatically important, and his interest in being
a philosopher (rather than a statesman with scholarly hobbies) makes him
unique.6 So he reconstructed the concept of philosopher for his own
purposes arguing that a philosopher should be a gentleman who does not
4 S. HOWLETT

need to philosophize for money.7 The consequences of his social posi-

tion are many. He was able to attempt a public launch of his career in
Rome and when he came to a city, people remembered the brilliant young
count. For Pico, his self-publicity tended toward solipsism, and those who
continued the story of the brilliant count after his death utilized that
publicity, from his extraordinary breadth of knowledge, his use of previ-
ously untranslated sources, to his intellectual reach. This was to a certain
extent true but also ignores the contribution of those around him to the
body of work he produced. His wealth and social standing allowed the
purchase and fostering of translators, mentors, and teachers. Pico was not
a solitary individual; he was the center of an academic court or entourage.
Another ‘key assumption’: as part of the discourse of modernity, we
have tended to look for the ‘modern’ or at least ‘proto-modern’ in our
past in order to achieve a direct narrative (a linearity of cause and effect)
that takes us from there to here. We want our story. The Romans are part
of our conversation because they invented roads, aqueducts and concrete:
they lead to us. Those ‘in-between’ are the Dark Ages—something murky,
not understandable, to be ignored as external to the narrative of human
development. The most popular and recognizable work of Pico’s oeuvre
remains a speech that he wrote to preface his grand debate in Rome. The
speech has become known as the ‘Oration on the Dignity of Man.’ In the
twentieth century it was popularly read as a proto-modern announcement
of the modern individual: a triumphant description of a new person that
we could recognize as ourselves. But when reading Pico’s speech in this
manner, we fail to recognize that the ‘Dignity of Man’ is not even the
main topic of the speech. Rather, we are expressing a modernist desire
to reappropriate the different and the foreign, and expand our notion of
‘modern’ to the point where the Renaissance propels us into or simply
exists as the waiting room for modernity rather than as a liminal space or
a coherent moment per se. What then occurs when we reread the Oration
from multiple perspectives?
Finally, an example from his contemporaries: Pico’s relationship with
the religious reform movement led by Savonarola is a contested issue both
then and now. In particular, there is a tension between the arrogance
of young Pico in Rome and St. Pico of later years (including potentially
joining the Dominican order) as described by his nephew and biographer,
Gianfrancesco. Pico was clearly religious. He also spun daydreams of living
eventually as the itinerant penniless sage. But he did not give away all his
money or move into the religious life, and there is no evidence that he
 1 INTRODUCTION 5

would have done so. The tension between his ambitions, his religiosity,
and the mystical asceticism of his philosophy was present throughout
his career—he started by wanting a public voice and was ambitious to
make a big impact, but his philosophical approach was turned inward, was
highly personalized, and eschewed communion with others. He became
increasingly involved with religious reformers, including Savonarola, but
whatever his religious beliefs, or vision of an ascetic life, it was ‘not
yet.’ St. Pico was a construct of Gianfrancesco’s biography, Savonarola’s
attempted appropriation of his famous friend, and a history of reception
particularly through Thomas More.

Pico’s Contribution
While there is much to set aside or re-examine, re-evaluation predomi-
nantly offers a new sense of Pico’s contribution to the history of thought.
He is working at a specific time and place. This is a time of intellectual
excitement generated by an influx of new ideas and old texts. Old texts
‘return’ to the Latin world during the collapse of the Byzantine Empire.
Refugees, particularly from the Eastern Empire, bring access to Greek,
Hebrew, and Arabic language. The rise of publishing supports dissem-
ination of ideas and literacy encouraging a ‘return to text’ for biblical
sources too, rather than reliance on church doctrine. But it was also (and
it is difficult to know how much cause and effect may have been in play)
a time of general anxiety in northern and central Italy around the end of
the fifteenth century, with a consequent desire for change.8
Pico is surrounded by philosophical and spiritual revivals based on a
‘return to text’: he studies with the leaders of the Aristotelian Recovery,
works throughout his life with Marsilio Ficino, responsible for the
Platonic revival, and is friends with a variety of Christian reformers. He
is surrounded by a desire for a new world based on growing anxiety and
discontent with the old. This was not just a question of scholarship or
theology. In Pico’s time, and partly through his agency, a Christian reform
movement under the Dominican friar, Girolamo Savonarola, temporarily
took over Florentine politics. Nineteen years after Savonarola was burnt
as a heretic, Luther would publish his theses resulting in reformation and
the splintering of the Catholic Church. These movements share many of
the same characteristics and are born out of the same impetus: something
has gone wrong, or we have taken a wrong turn, and we can make it
better. For the optimistic, a new Golden Age could be born out of crisis;
6 S. HOWLETT

for the less so, the times required penitence and asceticism—a theocracy
based on our sense of sin.
Whatever his distinctive vision, Pico was also very much part of this
milieu. He spent time in environments that fostered the primary intel-
lectual movements of his era: whether the Aristotelians of Padua, the
Platonist of Florence, or the proponents of the via moderna (the new
branch of scholasticism) in Paris. He attempted a revival of both philos-
ophy and theology at the center of church power in Rome. He was
responsible for bringing Savonarola to Florence, and for unclear reasons,
he was possibly mysteriously murdered—poisoned at a crisis point in
Florence’s history as the King of France was marching into the city. But he
was never part of any of these movements, philosophical groups, or reli-
gious orders. Rather he brought together Aristotelianism, Platonism and
Kabbalism with his Christianity in a distinctive mix that set him ultimately
outside of those with whom he connected. He was on a different journey.
But characteristically, he combined Golden Age thinking, the sense of a
crisis, and the ascetic sensibility into his work.
For example, the closest point of comparison, Marsilio Ficino, is very
much part of the collective desire for change. He was on a mission to
renew the world: he sets out a blueprint for us to renew ourselves (a
mystical path) in order to reform the world (an active path as the inspired
magus ). He saw himself as at the center of this new potential community,
that he would lead. He spoke often in the plural—which is one of the
reasons why the phrase ‘academy’ is so often used in his work. Pico is
part of this desire for change too, but for him, this was a journey of
the self: an ascetic, personal journey of the individual soul developing its
relationship to God. He provided a blueprint for the journey upward,
but with no second step of return and reform. He certainly wanted, or
originally wanted, to change his world, but through the provision and
pursuit of his ideas, rather than the accrual and use of special abilities
derived from touching the mind of God.
Ficino uses the generic ‘man’ to talk about the movement upward to
God (though ‘man’ is ultimately part of a collective—groups of char-
iots, the entourage of a particular planet, riding up to the firmament).
But Ficino also has a way back. He wants to be the new Socrates: he
wants to lead everybody else. Pico describes a lonely journey upward to
God, and then…. Who knows? The end point appears to be death. His
proposed new approach was not then the rebirth of a Golden Age, though
he may have supported others’ work to this end, but the achievement of
 1 INTRODUCTION 7

his version of henosis : the route to achieve communion and finally assim-
ilation with God. He laid down the path of the mystic. An ascetic path.
He engages in the milieu of community anxiety at multiple levels, but
perhaps ultimately his anxiety is teleological: he is not looking for rebirth
or revival, but an ending.
Meanwhile, Pico worked to build his career and live up to his own
promise as the ‘prince of concord’: bringing faith and reason, theology
and philosophy, back together9 ; bringing the allegorical ‘truths’ of litera-
ture into the mix; and establishing a new foundation for philosophy. This
was an ambitious agenda especially as that sense of division (faith from
reason, for example) was very much part of the general anxiety. The next
chapter will introduce that career and his agenda through the key works
that survived him, presenting them as a mainly coherent and contiguous
oeuvre. Chapters 3 and 4 introduce his three pillars within the context of
their history and the broader intellectual movements of his day, including
an introduction to his academic entourage. Inevitably, Kabbalism, an
unusual addition to a work on philosophy, requires longer introduction.
It has also become an important focus of contemporary scholarship on
Pico. Research on Pico’s Kabbalistic sources and the introduction of
Jewish scholars, among others, to Pico criticism has allowed what used to
be a peripheral topic, difficult to touch as Christian esoterica, to become
much more central to our understanding of his work. Finally, Chapters 5
and 6 examine his vision in detail: first from a metaphysical perspective;
and secondly as the journey of the individual soul to Pico’s specific form
of henosis .
There will always be mysteries around Pico, and the contortions he
makes to bring together the three traditions on which he primarily relies
are not always persuasive. But in bringing the history of thought as he
knew it into conversation with itself, Pico challenges us and opens debate
even as he aims to resolve conflict. A story of concord is ultimately also
a story of ruptures. Perhaps this is his final contribution. He interrogated
philosophical traditions, made clear those ruptures, the disconnects, and
provoked further questions even as he attempted to consolidate. The final
piece of Pico’s legacy ironically is what is unresolved: those questions that
arise as he pushes us to look ‘otherwise.’
8 S. HOWLETT

Notes
1. For example: ‘He was the raw material of a poet, lacking in literary gift yet
possessed of an inherent poetry of mind and character that illumines his life
and breaks in veiled flashes through the inchoate clouds of his learning.’
Robb (1935, 2).
2. Garin (1972, 211) citing an eyewitness account: ‘On a trip to Ferrara in
the company of the Cardinal of Aragon, the papal legate, I saw there this
youth, who, although yet a novice, was clad in the robes of a protonotary
and, to the profound admiration of the audience, was engaged in a debate
with Leonardo Nugarolo.’
3. Pico, Commentary (1986, 80).
4. The overall narrative arc of a person’s ‘complete works’ or central vision
is normally seen from the distance of a lengthy career: what remained
important, what remained central, where did the hallmarks of an original
viewpoint begin? What occurred before that point is then juvenilia: opin-
ions that are interesting and can allow insight into the developing mind
but can also be dispensed with given later work. We can also discern stages
to the career: genuine changes of viewpoint. With Pico, we cannot tell if or
what might be juvenilia, and due to the interventions of those who shaped
his legacy, we have no definitive external evidence of whether he might
have been changing viewpoint around the time of his death. The direct
result of these problems is that we are left with a series of short pieces,
drafts, and letters, that may or may not be consistent as a body of work,
may or may not represent views that changed later, may or may not be
part of larger ambitious works. But as I will explore throughout this book,
there really is a large degree of consistency across his lifetime, sufficient to
be able to put these works together to form at least a partial picture of his
vision. Viewpoints from other critics differ, for example, Garin who argues
that ‘Attempts to unify his short and fragmented career produced “bias
and distortions” – like the “alleged supremacy” of Kabbalah.’ (according
to Copenhaver 2019, 127), or Valcke (2005, 377) who argues that Pico
died too young to have a systematic philosophy, while Papio (2012, 92)
suggests that a ‘profound change in Pico’s attitude took place after the
failure of the projected disputation in Rome,’ specifically that he is more
apologetic about his use of non-Christian sources.
5. Farmer (1998, 11 n30): Pico used the spelling, Cabala, but I will use
Kabbalah/Kabbalism throughout.
6. Pico, Oration (2012, 186–87): ‘And I say all these things (not without the
deepest grief and indignation) not against the lords of our times but against
the philosophers who believe and openly declare that no one should pursue
philosophy if only because there is no market for philosophers, no remuner-
ation given to them, as if they did not reveal in this very word that they are
 1 INTRODUCTION 9

not true philosophers. Hence insofar as their whole life has been dedicated
to moneymaking and ambition they are incapable of embracing the knowl-
edge of truth for its own sake.’ (‘Quae omnia ego non sine summo dolore
et indignatione in huius temporis non principes, sed philosophos dico, qui
ideo non esse philosophandum et credunt et praedicant, quod philosophis
nulla merces, nulla sint praemia constituta; quasi non ostendant ipsi, hoc
uno nomine, se non esse philosophos, quod cum tota eorum vita sit vel
in questu, vel in ambitione posita, ipsam per se veritatis cognitionem non
amplectuntur.’)
7. Pico, Oration (2012, 186–87 n184) Pico’s letter to Andrea Corneo:
‘Would it therefore be ignoble or wholly improper for a nobleman gratu-
itously to pursue wisdom?… No one who has practiced philosophy in such
a way as to be able or unable to do so has ever truly been a philosopher.
Such a man has engaged in commerce, not philosophy.’
8. Garin (1983, 77): ‘the atmosphere of the 1480s and 1490s… was full of
hermetic prophetism, of eschatological statements on the overthrow (de
eversione) or the approach of Antichrist (de adventu Antichristi), no less
than on renewal (de renovatio) and new eras, between conjunctions and
fatal changes. These are the years of Mercurio da Correggio’s hermetic
prediction, and of Arquato’s famous prophecy of the “destruction of
Europe”.’
9. Borghesi (2012, 62) argues that his aim was to build a new theology out
of the past: ‘This “new” theology would be superior to those already in
existence because it would give a richer understanding of Christian truths.’
 CHAPTER 2

Life and Works

The question of Pico’s family is unusually important for a Renaissance

philosopher. Pico was born into a wealthy noble family from Emilia-
Romagna and inherited title and money as well as a complex geopolitical
network of powerbrokers with whom he remained connected throughout
his life. His membership of the Italian elite also shaped his intellectual life.
It opened the door to grand enterprises that other philosophers could not
have risked or attempted, such as challenging all-comers to a debate in
front of the pope; and allowed him to conduct his own education wher-
ever intellectual curiosity took him. It also gave him immediate access
to the great courts of Europe. He did not need to climb his way up
the benefice ladder. He was able to hire scholars to work for him when
languages, for instance, were a barrier to moving forward quickly with his
studies.
The ‘Pico myth’ of the glittering young count, and the story of his
career, are made possible as much by his status and money, as his actual
output. It gave him a strong sense of entitlement and the dignity due to
a nobleman, just as awareness of his status undoubtedly colored the reac-
tions of those around him. He himself links his status and his work, taking
on the title of ‘gentleman-philosopher’ and utilizing one of his aristocratic
titles, Count of Concord, as his primary theme: he would singlehandedly
take all of philosophy and bind it together with itself and with theology
to take us back to the truth.1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to 11

Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021
S. Howlett, Re-evaluating Pico, Critical Political Theory and Radical
Practice, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-59581-4_2
12 S. HOWLETT

But there is a second network that surrounds Pico. Able to pursue his
intellectual interests wherever and with whoever he chose, Pico gathered
ideas and scholars around him. His polyphonous education and network
of scholarly relations either inspired a desire to make sense of all that he
had gathered, enjoyed, or thought important, or were part of a rapidly
developing project to bring concordance. Either way, the body of scholars
that came and went around him, summoned and used as needed, are the
second network of Pico’s story: a knowledge network or (translated into
the period) an academic entourage that facilitated his education and then
facilitated his ongoing studies and written output. In many respects Pico
remained the sum of his family and his educational parts.

Family and Education

Pico was born in 1463 at the family castle at Mirandola in the Romagna
region of Italy as the youngest member of a minor noble family. His
father, Gianfrancesco I, was the Lord of Mirandola and Count of
Concordia, but died in 1467 when Pico was young, and his mother Giulia
Boiardo raised him.
The family’s network was both with the local Mirandola-Ferrara region
and the most important powerbrokers of Northern and Central Italy. The
Pico family was obviously close to the Este family in Ferrara, one of the
first great renaissance courts, but also to the Medici in Florence, and
the Sforzas in Milan. All three families maintained a strong interest in
Pico’s activities throughout his life. Pico’s sisters, Caterina and Lucrezia,
were both married twice into different noble families extending the
family network. The family’s humanist credentials were also strong and
strengthened during Pico’s lifetime through his own activities, through
his nephew, Alberto III Pio, his cousin, the poet Matteo Maria Boiardo,
and eventually through his nephew and executor, Gianfrancesco, also a
philosopher. Despite squabbling over the family fortune between Pico’s
two older brothers, Galeotto and Anton Maria, the relationship appears
strong between Pico and his siblings. After the death of his mother, Pico
was left under the guardianship of Anton Maria, who also had a house in
Rome tying Pico’s personal geography to the papal city. In sum, Pico did
not grow up in a lonely castle, orphaned, which he then left to become
a philosopher and live in Florence. He was part of a rich, elite network
of friends and family and continued throughout his life to move between
 2 LIFE AND WORKS 13

domiciles, including Rome, Florence, as well as his home region, with

Ferrara as a second home.
Originally destined for the church, Pico was sent to study canon law at
Bologna University. After his mother’s death at around the age of 15, he
left Bologna and started a ‘self-designed’ period of study, moving between
very different academic environments. He went first to Ferrara University,
the local center of humanism and situated next to the Este court. About
15 months later he went to Padua University, a center for Aristotelian
philosophy. From there, he went to Pavia University, renowned for logic
and mathematics. At various points, he spent time in Florence, where he
certainly studied Platonism with the leader of the new Platonic revival,
Marsilio Ficino. Finally, he spent time in Paris2 which was famous for
the via moderna branch of scholasticism, confusingly what we think of
as ‘medieval’ philosophy in this story of a Renaissance philosopher. Pico
certainly utilized scholastic methodology but was more influenced in his
work by the via antiqua and the work of Aquinas. However, he made
alliances in Paris that remained with him during his Rome troubles and
later flight to France. Pico also took classes from scholars on the periphery
of these universities.
From these academic environments, he built his first group of mentors,
teachers, and researchers. These individuals came and went, but together
they formed a loose ‘academic-court’ or entourage structure with Pico at
the center as noble-patron. He was born into a ‘power network’ but built
this second network to support his activities as a philosopher. The two
combined helped him fashion his persona as the ‘gentleman-philosopher.’
It was not necessarily unusual for the ‘great’ to have scholars around
them acting as secretaries, tutors, or some such or to be a gentleman
or woman engaged in intellectual pursuits and surrounding oneself with
interesting people. The difference with Pico was that he, not the others,
was always the central academic point of this circle. This was not ‘dab-
bling’ or patronizing or having a secretary. Pico was able to bring scholars
into his sphere specifically to support his own output. He drew on this
knowledge network to support his work throughout his career.
Pico gathered his circle as he progressed with his studies. It became
increasingly significant to his intellectual life as formal education ended,
but the network existed before that time. For instance, during the 1482
war between Ferrara and Venice,3 Pico retreated from Padua Univer-
sity and used the family castle as a personal ‘academy’ for his growing
mentor group.4 So first in Ferrara, he was working on classics and the
14 S. HOWLETT

humanities, including rhetoric and ‘medieval’ philosophy (philosophy that

uses scholastic methodology) (particularly the philosophers, Averroes,
Albertus Magnus, Thomas Aquinas, and Duns Scotus),5 studying under
Battista Guarini, the poet and dramatist, who became a close friend.6 It
was possibly also at this time that he first became friends with the Domini-
cian priest and preacher, Girolamo Savonarola (1452–1498). Both were
to play key roles in each other’s lives. At this time, he could also have
visited Florence and met Marsilio Ficino, the poet, Girolamo Benivieni,
the philologist and poet, Angelo Poliziano, and of course, Lorenzo de’
Medici, with whom he already a family relationship.7 All became lifelong
friends and colleagues.
Girolamo Benivieni (1453–1542) was also an early student of Ficinian
Platonism.8 Benivieni tried to learn Hebrew with Flavius Mithridates
while staying with Pico,9 and later, like Pico, came under the influence
of Savonarola, attending his sermons with Pico by 1490.10 Poliziano
and Benivieni may seem unlikely intellectual companions at first for a
philosopher, but in Ferrara, Pico was also producing poetry in Latin
and Tuscan, with ambitions to become an important poet, and Poliziano
‘crossed the lines’ between poetry and philosophy as a humanist philolo-
gist. The dichotomy between Pico’s interests as a poet and a philosopher
continued for at least the early part of his career, and he seemingly
belonged to a literary circle while at Padua University.11 His friend-
ship with Poliziano at the beginning included asking him for a critique.
Poliziano was not encouraging.12 Pico destroyed his efforts and turned
away from poetry to philosophy,13 though he continued to write poetry
throughout his life.14 He also clearly valued style in his prose and later,
parallel interests in philosophy and literature15 would result in one of his
declared major projects: to build a ‘poetic theology.’16 The concept of
a poetic theology was current in Pico’s day (for instance, the Byzantine
Platonist, Pletho, earlier looked to create such a work and the Florentine
humanist, Cristoforo Landino, discusses the idea in his Commento sopra
la Comedia 17 ).
Pico left the humanist milieu of Ferrara for Padua, the home of Aris-
totelianism, or rather Aristotle as seen through the lens of his most
famous medieval commentator, the Arabic philosopher, Averroes (the
Christianised name of the philosopher, Ibn Rushd, 1126–1198). But
Padua was also becoming the center of a new revolution in Aristotle
studies, eventually to be at least partially equivalent to the Platonic revival
in Florence. Pico met and worked with the leading Paduan Aristotelians
 2 LIFE AND WORKS 15

and knew some of the leaders of the revolution, Nicoletto Vernia and
Agostino Nifo. He also became close to Elijah del Medigo, a Jewish
Averroist who taught privately. All three agreed on the need to go back
to original texts—whether for Del Medigo, the original texts of Aver-
roes’ commentaries on Aristotle in their Hebrew versions, or for Vernia
and Nifo, a return to classical (rather than medieval) commentaries. Pico
also became friends with Girolamo Ramusio, a future prominent Orien-
talist (Arabic and/or Hebrew studies), another ‘new’ area of study in
the period. Ramusio learned Arabic and translated Arabic texts,18 just as
Pico later attempted. Pico also maintained his literary interests in Padua,
studying under Ermolao Barbaro, the great rhetorician,19 and taking
advantage of the new fashion for Greek studies to learn Greek from a
Cretan refugee from the Turks, Manuel Adramitteno, who was part of
the Mirandola summer accademia.
In Autumn 1482, Pico went to Pavia University where he stayed
until 1483.20 Pavia was another center of scholastic philosophy, but
with an excellent reputation in mathematics and logic. He continued to
study philosophy and rhetoric, and possibly mathematics, again with an
emphasis on Aristotle, while still studying Greek.21 In 1483, Pico inher-
ited a substantial fortune of his own. It could be at this juncture that
he went to Paris for a stay (autumn–winter 1483–84).22 Or it could
have been from July 1485 until March 1486, or he could have visited
twice, or both dates may be wrong. His time at the University of Paris
(the Sorbonne) is difficult to verify as there are no records showing his
presence.23 It could easily be that he was in Florence during 1485 and
1486 studying with Ficino, maybe also travelling home, perhaps visiting
his brother in Rome too, as well as going to Paris.24 But somewhere
between 1483 and early 1486 he did study for periods in both Paris and
Florence, while also visiting family and friends.
Pico’s relationship to the Platonic revival is complicated. After a strong
foundation in Aristotle, Pico tells Barbaro that he ‘turned recently from
Aristotle to the Academy, but not as a deserter, as that author says, but
as a scout’.25 He went to explore Platonism with the master at the center
of the Platonic revival, Ficino, but suggests that he is simply viewing
Platonism as an Aristotelian. This may have been true at the beginning,
but Platonism became a key part of his philosophical outlook. The rela-
tionship between Ficino and Pico was perplexing, inspiring for both and
often antagonistic in ways that are difficult to understand from their corre-
spondence and work. Ficino, a relentless optimist, tends to portray a deep
16 S. HOWLETT

friendship and love between the two, at least in retrospect, and Pico, the
student who soon wishes to be the teacher, sees Ficino often as his philo-
sophical archnemesis: the person to debate and prove wrong. Pico’s first
extended piece of philosophy was a commentary on Plato’s love theory,
directly challenging Ficino’s own recent work on Plato’s Symposium. But
in challenging Ficino, he becomes deeply immersed in Plotinus, choosing
as the lynchpin of his Platonism an author Ficino had only recently started
to explore.26
The Paris stay/s are a mystery but had a profound impact on his
life. Paris became part of both his knowledge and power networks. The
Sorbonne was famous at the time both for its faculty of theology and
its espousal of a branch of scholasticism known as the via moderna
(as opposed to the other main branch, the via antiqua). Pico did not
adopt this methodology, but he was obviously drawn to the Sorbonne’s
considerable reputation and was perhaps exploring the via moderna. The
approach to academic debate known as the ‘Paris style’ was also particu-
larly in vogue during Pico’s potential stays27 and had been used recently
to be critical of contemporary church doctrine: the priest, Jean Laillier,
for instance, had attempted to dispute a series of controversial conclu-
sions.28 Alongside his studies, Pico again made friends. Of particular note
was his relationship with Jean Cordier, a professor of theology (who in
1499 became Rector of the University of Paris). Cordier protected Pico
through the difficult year of his ‘coming out’ as a philosopher in Rome
and subsequent escape to France. But Pico probably also met members
of the French court who he was able to utilize during his exile as well.
These ventures in Paris and Florence mark the end of his more formal
education, and the beginning of his life as an independent ‘gentleman-
philosopher.’ This ‘turn’ is prolonged, for Pico developed an ambitious
plan to launch himself into the pantheon of the great philosophers:
those who changed their worlds.

The Rise and Fall of a Public Life

The year 1486 was Pico’s annus mirabilis : his first burst of philosoph-
ical activity. He produced a draft commentary on Plato’s love theory,
a skeleton for a grand ‘coming out’ debate (a set of assertions to be
semi-publicly debated), and an introduction to that debate known now
as the ‘Oration on the dignity of man’ (after the first section of the
speech). Prior to 1486, the output we know today had been limited to
 2 LIFE AND WORKS 17

several extended letters setting out his views on the relative merits of style
and substance. There was also a pivotal life experience in early 1486: an
attempt in the spring to abduct a (probably willing) woman in Perugia.
This is the only record of any connection to a woman and was clearly
a traumatic and profoundly humiliating experience. The commentary
on Plato—a commentary emphasizing heavenly, non-physical, love—
followed quickly after. The ‘skeleton’ of the debate project is known as
Conclusions. It is unclear whether it was simply one of several grand ideas
in development that year or the central project. He speaks of a variety of
large-scale ideas from now until the end of his life including the poetic
theology and a concordance of Plato and Aristotle, but Conclusions is the
only ‘completed’ piece of Pico’s three grand projects.
It was also Pico’s entry into his profession. Going out into the world
anxious to make a mark can be replete with false starts and mistakes that
mark us profoundly and may even impact the rest of our lives. Up until
the proposed Rome debate, Pico seemingly dazzled those around him. He
had enormous ambition, the financial means, and potentially the brains to
match most of that ambition. He had a network of scholars around him,
and a network of family relationships that could open doors. Ambitious to
prove his superior talents and ready to change the world, he embarked on
probably the most ambitious project in the history of philosophy.29 He
tried to offer a new approach to the study of that history which would
reveal the underlying ‘truth’ from which all philosophy springs, thereby
transforming the study of philosophy and theology. This approach worked
backward from present times with its multiple strands of scholastic debate,
resolving historical and doctrinal contradictions as it proceeded, to reveal
gradually the commonalities, until he reached Plato and Aristotle, and
then beyond to arrive at ‘the truth’ underlying all philosophical ideas30 :
the theological underpinnings of the universe. By doing so, he would
reconnect philosophy to theology, and renew both.
His Conclusions was a ‘skeleton’ because the publication is a series of
900 theses or conclusions rather than the actual summa or argument. The
theses were to be debated with the whole complex argument emerging
orally (the ‘Paris Style’). To add even more gravitas to this audacious
project, he challenged the great and the wise (preferably both) to attend
and debate him, and to do so in Rome at a special elite gathering of the
pope, at that time Pope Innocent VIII, and his cardinals.
We find a surprise as we proceed backward in time to ‘the truth.’
Understandably, the history of philosophy moves backward to Aristotle
18 S. HOWLETT

and Plato who had been key figures in Pico’s formal education, and
he had worked with scholars revolutionizing Latin European under-
standing of classical philosophy. But then we have more unusual choices
including Orphic Mysteries and Zoroastrianism; and at some point,
Pico had also been introduced, perhaps through Del Medigo in Padua
(despite Del Medigo’s apparent lack of interest in the field), to Jewish
mysticism known as Kabbalism. In 1486, he had begun to understand
Kabbalism, together with aspects of Aristotle and Plato, as the foundation
of his theological-philosophical universe. Consequently, he also turned his
attention in 1486 to Kabbalistic texts and to studying Hebrew. A series
of Kabbalistic conclusions are the first result.
Pico started 1486 primarily living in Paris or Florence. By March it is
clear he is in Florence. At least one individual that he met in Paris was with
him in Florence.31 There he probably met the Florentine, Margherita
de’ Medici, and in May abducted her in Arezzo.32 He was caught,
Margaret rescued, and Pico at least partially disgraced.33 The incident was
commented on across his power network with Aldobrandino Guidoni, the
Estes’ envoy to Florence, for example, providing an extended account of
the ‘poor Count’ for Ferrara, and Stefano Taverno, the envoy of Milan
to Florence, commenting that Pico had been ‘provocato da una femina
formosa impazita di luy’ (‘provoked by a shapely woman who was mad
about him’).34 But despite the support of his friends and family, Pico was
disgraced by the incident and felt it keenly.
Pico spent the rest of the year moving his household between Fratta
and Perugia (avoiding plague in Perugia) until heading to Rome in late
November. He worked, as usual, with his entourage of scholars, for
instance in July his old teacher, Elijah Del Medigo came to him,35 but
most famously he now had in his employ a new secretary, Flavius Mithri-
dates, a convert to Christianity from Judaism, translator, and scholar with
a healthy sense of ironic skepticism of his employer. Flavius was set to
a major translation project of Kabbalistic texts so that Pico could read
them, and he taught Pico Hebrew. By September Pico had advanced
sufficiently to write a letter in the language.36 Pico did attempt some
Arabic,37 and worked with Arabic texts (though it’s unclear whether he
did all the translation work himself).38
The incident with Margherita, alongside his age, added a certain
urgency to Pico’s work beyond his obvious ambition. He had pursued his
studies for a long time. He had made an impact at various courts, such
as Florence and Ferrara, potentially also the French royal court while in
 2 LIFE AND WORKS 19

Paris, and with various members of the political elite. He had now also
achieved a ‘reputation’ through the Margherita incident.39 His friends
were wondering about his future. At least one, Andrea Corneo, thought
he should be finding a major powerbroker as a patron and preparing
for a public life in the complex geopolitical world of quattrocento Italy.
Pico replied that he prefered the contemplative life of a philosopher to
the active life. He was very aware of his status and the potential conflict
between that status and his chosen career. He is not to be a ‘paid professor
of philosophy’ but a gentleman scholar ‘as a man of his class, a prince.’40
But he cannot hold back his excitement and belief in the work he is about
to bring into the public domain. He broadly hints that he is about to do
great things. The pride and ambition are very clear.
These hints rapidly develop in the fall into comments on the produc-
tion of a grand list of Conclusions (theses) that he intends to debate with
the cardinals and other philosophers in Rome. The number of theses kept
growing reflecting the grandeur or hubris of the enterprise (depending on
your perspective), and an overall vision emerged as he worked toward the
mystical number of 900, finally arriving there in November.41 He stated
he could have included more (unsurprisingly), but the mystical signifi-
cance of 900 provided a frame for the entire enterprise.42 Having finished,
he departed for Rome. In early December, the conclusions were published
with an open invitation to take part in his planned great debate.
He envisaged the debate as taking place at an assembly or congress, by
which he may have meant the apostolic senate of cardinals with the pope
as the judge.43 It was supposed to be a private–public affair—open to the
elite of the church and the philosophical community—though no doubt
everybody important in Pico’s world would hear about it through ambas-
sadors and their own networks. He challenged all-comers for January 6th
(Epiphany), 1487: ‘And if any philosopher or theologian, even from the
ends of Italy, wishes to come to Rome for the sake of debating, the
disputing lord himself promises to pay the travel expenses from his own
funds’.44 Epiphany is the feast of the kings or magi, when the pagan
world symbolically submitted to Jesus.45 Pico saw his argument as trans-
formational to philosophers, Christians, and also to Jews, who would be
brought back to the people of God. This was Pico’s ‘coming out’ as a
philosopher, but he also had organized his debate as a revelatory and revo-
lutionary enterprise to be enacted in the heart of the troubled powerbase
of the Latin Church.
20 S. HOWLETT

Inevitably very soon after he arrived, the papal authorities took

notice.46 In early January the pope suspended the event and appointed a
commission of cardinals to review the conclusions for potential heretical
sentiments. Consequent to this commission’s advice, Innocent appointed
a ‘magisterial’ commission (made up of masters of theology) in February
charging the Bishop of Tournai, Giovanni (Jean) Monisart, to review the
conclusions more formally, in particular 13 of the 900 that increasingly
seemed heretical.47 The commission consisted of at least one member
of Pico’s knowledge network, Jean Cordier from Paris, who represented
Paris’ point of view (the via moderna branch of scholasticism) and inter-
estingly defended all the conclusions considered.48 Others were not
sympathetic, particularly Pedro Garcia, Bishop of Ussel, and Marco de
Miroldo, master of the Apostolic Palace.49
In early March, the commission found seven of the 13 conclusions
problematic with Pico attending the meeting. After this he was not
allowed to attend. In later March, they declared the remaining six under
consideration censored, and the first seven now absolutely condemned.50
The published list of conclusions, Conclusiones, was pronounced to
‘deviate from the straight path of orthodox faith’.51 Garcia seems to have
led much of the condemnation including the accusation of heresy,52 and
wrote a review of the commission’s findings published in 1489.53
Pico’s ‘coming out’ had turned into an increasingly hostile debacle,
leaving Pico angry, frustrated but still pursuing his scholarly activities in
Rome.54 Pico’s attitude toward the commission complicated the situa-
tion55 : he published an Apology in late May which was largely a defence
of the 13 assuming that if he clarified and explained more deeply, the
commission would be enlightened.56 The proemium of the Apology was
mainly taken from the oration he had originally prepared as an introduc-
tion to his public debate, but with added precise argumentation as to why
the commission was wrong. Just like his Conclusions, the Apology uses
the ‘Paris Style’ to argue his case. The work antagonized the pope further.
Innocent was also increasingly hostile to the academic milieu in Paris57
and was inclined to see the Apology as a direct attack on his authority.58
It took less than a week after publication for Innocent to move the case
over to the Inquisition.59
In late July, Lorenzo de’ Medici’s new ambassador, Giovanni Lanfre-
dini, informed Lorenzo that 200–300 conclusions were now in question
and that Pico ‘is so upset that he stays in bed, since he thinks they have
 2 LIFE AND WORKS 21

imposed a huge burden on him’.60 At the end of July, when the Inqui-
sition was bringing its own review to an end,61 Pico signed an act of
submission, abjuring his work and allowing the publication to be burned
at the stake. Innocent issued a Papal Bull, Et si ex iniuncto nobis, on
August 4th condemning the whole book, but not the author.62 All copies
were to be burned within three days. Anybody who now tried to print or
copy the book, or even read the theses, could be excommunicated.63 For
some reason, Innocent chose not to publicize his Bull for four months.
Perhaps he had decided not to act directly but rather to leave the threat
against Pico’s work ready and waiting, or perhaps there were a series of
political manoeuvres that eventually failed.64 Whatever the reason, Inno-
cent did issue the Bull publically in December and at the same time, in
an apparent change of heart, issued a warrant for Pico’s arrest.65
Finally understanding his danger, Pico had fled Rome in November
heading toward Paris in the company of Jean Cordier.66 Papal nuncios
were dispatched to pursue and finally caught him between Grenoble and
Lyons. The Count of Bresse arrested Pico on their behalf, he was impris-
oned in Savoy and then taken to Paris. But the young King, Charles VIII,
was sympathetic to Pico, and they may have already been acquainted. The
Law Faculty of the University of Paris reviewed his case with Pico’s friend
the jurist, Robert Gaguin, recording their response to the nuncios.67 Pico
was subsequently ‘imprisoned’ at the royal palace of Vincennes, away
from the papal nuncios.68 Pico’s power network of family and friends
came to his aid, including Lorenzo de’Medici,69 Gian Galeozzo Visconti,
the Duke of Milan, and his uncle, Ludovico Maria Sforza,70 and Ercole
I d’Este (who asked his envoy to intercede for Pico as ‘nostro fratello’
(‘our brother’), expressing his sorrow ‘perche teneramente amamo epso
magnifico conte Zohane’ (‘because I tenderly love this magnificent count
Giovanni’) ‘che certo le sono cose che anche Salamone, che fuetanto sapi-
entissimo, incorse anchora lui alcuna volta in simile trasgressione; si che,
il gli è da havere compassione’ (‘for, in truth, even Solomon, for all his
wisdom, sometimes committed similar misdeeds; thus, one should have
compassion for him’).71
Lorenzo had followed the case throughout and used his ambassador to
Rome to intervene on multiple occasions. In March 1488, the ambassador
finally gained Innocent’s agreement that Pico could return to Italy with
impunity.72 In May, Lorenzo sent word through Marsilio Ficino to the
returning Pico that he should come and live in Florence, lending him
a villa at Querceto near Fiesole.73 The next step was to try and obtain a
22 S. HOWLETT

pardon from the pope. Lorenzo never succeeded. Innocent died. Lorenzo
died. Alexander VI finally absolved Pico in 1493.
Pico found himself back and ‘at home’ in Florence but excommuni-
cated and formally a heretic. What started as a private-public action with
potentially severe consequences, became highly public, and then a long-
standing feud between Innocent and Pico who exchanged insults with
each other.74 However, none of this seems to have impacted his rela-
tionship with either his power or knowledge networks,75 and Innocent’s
attempt to assert the authority of the church over Pico clearly shows the
limitations of religious authority over a member of the elite. Alexander
was more sympathetic perhaps because he needed new power relations for
his own dynastic ambitions, but he also shared some of Pico’s interests in
non-Christian sources, including Kabbalism.76
Why did Pico’s grand project fail so dramatically, and why has the
whole venture lived on in popular myth? Conclusions was not the first
printed book to be banned by the Catholic Church, but it was the first
general ban and was the start of the Inquisition’s infamous Index of
Prohibited Books.77 Perhaps it was the ambition of the enterprise or
Pico’s personality, or his reputation as the dazzling young gentleman-
philosopher or simply his social class that makes the event stand out.78
It was also a large-scale act of either hubris or naivety: he took revolu-
tionary non-Christian learning into the heart of papal power to confront
the ideas that underpinned Christianity using a new debating method
from the troublesome alternative power locale of France (even though
this was not how he would have described the project!).
By the time of Innocent VIII, papal power was attempting to resta-
bilize after centuries of confrontation and schism. Innocent’s task was
threefold: to ensure the position of the pope in Rome as the head of the
Catholic Church (after an earlier period of schism), including power over
dogma and theology; to consolidate the political power of the papacy
in the Christian European arena; and finally, to build his own personal
dynasty.79 Pico’s activities, as a member of both the Italian nobility and
a problematic intellectual milieu, was a relatively minor irritant in the
power games. But the situation was no doubt exacerbated by Pico’s deci-
sion to debate at the center of papal power and his attitude toward the
commission’s questions: unwittingly or no, he directly challenged Inno-
cent’s conservative views on the new learning80 that was emerging, and
his papal power.81 Innocent had also recently issued the first major papal
bull against witches.82 Pico’s intertwining of various philosophical and
 2 LIFE AND WORKS 23

mystical traditions with an added hint of magical enterprise to show the

commonalities between non-Christian and Christian wisdom was unlikely
to please. Pico must have found these reactions confusing: his goal was to
show that Christianity was the one true religion by taking theological and
philosophical dispute back to its distilled mystical essence. But by doing
so, he made himself (wittingly or not) a member of the groups and indi-
viduals around the Christian Church seeking to challenge, reform, and
renew.

A Private Life?
In 1489 Lorenzo wrote to Innocent saying that Pico was now living like
a monk. It is hard to know what this might mean for a young nobleman
with estates, money, and an entourage, but the return from Paris is the
beginning of the story of St. Pico, the young man who chastened by his
experiences turns to God and lives an increasingly religious lifestyle. Pico’s
return to Florence is certainly the beginning of a new phase. In 1486 he
saw himself choosing the contemplative life as a gentleman-philosopher
but expressed this commitment by acting semi-publicly. His aim was to
be an immediate star in his field through the production of an argument
that could change philosophy, the Church, and theology, and that could
be used as a tool for conversion. Having failed, he withdrew back into this
‘contemplative life’ as a more localized affair: studying, writing, moving
around with his entourage, debating, and spending time with his network
of friends and power relations. This is not living like a monk. He is simply
keeping a relatively ‘low profile.’Much really did not change. Pico made
a home in Florence upon his return but at least eventually he traveled
and lived elsewhere too. For instance, in 1491 Poliziano and he went
on a trip to the Romagna and Veneto buying for the Medici Library
on Lorenzo’s behalf. While they were in Padua, Lorenzo asked them
to bring Nicoletto Vernia to Florence.83 Gianfrancesco della Mirandola
records that Pico sold him his patrimony in Mirandola and Concordia
three years before his death (probably April 1491).84 With the money,
Pico instead bought an estate in Corbala just outside of Ferrara, and close
to Mirandola itself. According to Gianfrancesco, Pico never had a perma-
nent home, but moved between Corbala, Ferrara, and Florence. He was
a friend and neighbor of the court in Ferrara, and active within Loren-
zo’s circle in Florence.85 His philosophical views do not substantially
change either. In 1489 while apparently living as a monk, he published
24 S. HOWLETT

Heptaplus, which utilizes the same worldview as the Oration and relies on
the same non-Christian sources, especially Kabbalism. Meanwhile Inno-
cent had laid out terms to pardon Pico. In a letter to Lorenzo just
after Heptaplus came out, Pico rejected them.86 Unsurprisingly, Inno-
cent decided also to condemn Heptaplus to Lorenzo’s even more intense
frustration.87
The St. Pico myth also suggests a repentant young man increasingly
turning to religion. Pico was a religious individual and was increasingly
inclined toward a religious life at various times in his short life. There
were certainly no more women after Margherita (though Pico’s sexual
identity is unclear) and intellectually at least he pursued, above all, the
individual mystical experience of oneness with the divine. But Pico’s
nephew, Gianfrancesco, introduces us to St. Pico in his Life of his uncle,88
with an important narrative of Pico’s strengthening religious conviction
and call to religious orders, which may have culminated in him joining
the Dominicans while sick and dying. He admits that Pico’s religiosity
was never entirely conventional commenting that Pico was not fond of
religious ceremony and the trappings of religious life: ‘But he pursued
God with interior feelings of the most burning love.’89 Indeed, in his
Commentary on the Psalms, Pico speaks of ‘the tepid people of our
time who, under the pretext of ceremonies and devotion, feign holiness,
distract the simple and honest at heart from the spirit and the truth and,
bustling about, draw them into their own vanity.’90 Unsurprisingly then,
Pico also continued to be engaged with Christian reformers most notably
with his friend, Girolamo Savonarola, but also with the Carmelite Battista
Spagnuoli, and later was increasingly in retreat in Fiesole with Matteo
Bossi, the Abbot of the Badia.91
Gianfrancesco recalls walking in an orchard in Ferrara and Pico telling
him a secret: once he had finished all his work, he would give his
remaining wealth to the poor, and become a wandering barefoot preacher
armed only with a crucifix. We cannot know if this was an earnest
daydream or genuine intent for old age. But despite a growing interest
in the religious life and a consistent engagement with mystical experi-
ence and Christian reform ideas, the story of St. Pico is at least partially
a smoke screen for a privileged life that continued to be privileged. He
most probably did defer joining religious orders even at his death and
continued to place his writing and scholarship above whatever religious
calling he might have felt he had. He clearly had ‘enthusiasms’ where he
would be carried away by the vision of a penitential life and he lived an
 2 LIFE AND WORKS 25

unusual existence for a wealthy nobleman dedicating himself primarily to

scholarship and to a household not built on excess. He clearly was reli-
gious, and he clearly believed in personal noesis / henosis , but not to the
extent, as yet, of completely changing his life.
During these years, Pico was also part of the intellectual and cultural
milieu of Lorenzo’s Florence. He published, continued working on
his concord of Aristotle and Plato and the poetic theology, welcomed
mentors and colleagues to his home, attended debates at Lorenzo’s
house, and generally participated in both his family and knowledge
networks. For instance, one well-sourced event was a disputation held
at Lorenzo’s house in 1489 between a Franciscan theologian, Benigno
Salviati, and the Dominican, De Mirabilibus with Pico, Ficino and
Lorenzo apparently siding with the Franciscan.92 The next year, Pico
became increasingly interested in seeing his old Dominican friend, Giro-
lamo Savonarola, back in Florence and began to petition Lorenzo, even
meeting with the Dominicans in Ferrara in 1492 to facilitate the return.93
But of everybody, his closest relationship seems to have been with
Angelo Poliziano, the humanist, philologist, and poet, who had also
studied with Ficino, and who also had a strong background in Aristotle.
Poliziano and Pico are tied together intellectually, by their friendship and
by their deaths.

Pico’s Death
‘Last November, on the day when great King Charles of France entered
our city of Florence our Mirandola left us, afflicting the learned with
grief nearly as great as the joy that the King meanwhile provided. It was
with joy, then, that the guardian spirit of the place repaid the learned
for their lament and, to replace a philosophical presence that had been
extinguished, in the meantime he lit a royal light, lest Florence seem
the darker on that day when, as I say, the light of Mirandola was put
out on earth and returned to heaven. For Pico went happy from this
shadow of a life, with this surety: that he seemed clearly to be returning
from a kind of exile to his fatherland in heaven.’94 Pico died in 1494.
He was probably murdered. By whom and to what purpose remains a
mystery, but Florence had become a very complicated environment in
which to live. Religious change had become bound up even further with
politics and power,95 and Lorenzo’s heir and Pico may no longer have
been ‘on the same side.’ Meanwhile, King Charles, Pico’s old ally, drew
26 S. HOWLETT

nearer. Poliziano died shortly before Pico, also probably murdered by

hands unknown, potentially as part of the same plot.
The Medici dynasty was in trouble. Lorenzo had died and his heir,
Piero, was finding political management of Florence profoundly diffi-
cult eventually absconding under the pressure of Charles of France’s
impending arrival. He had loosened Florence’s old ties with France, at
a time when Charles of France was invading Italian lands to take on the
Kingdom of Naples. Savonarola was Pico’s idea and obviously was not a
friend to Piero. Savonarola supported Florence’s relationship with France.
Pico knew Charles, who had helped him escape Innocent’s authority.
Piero was surrounded by potential traitors including his cousins, Lorenzo
and Giovanni di Pierfrancesco de’ Medici who were in league with
Charles. Piero’s own brother, the more able Giovanni (the future Pope
Leo X), may not have been on his side either.96 The times were deeply
unsettled,97 and Pico may have been seen as part of the problem.
Savonarola had become increasingly influential politically as he advo-
cated for a religious reformation based on penitence and poverty. He was
able to exploit pre-existing frictions, for instance, the ongoing argument
between church and university expressed in the faultlines of the ‘double
truth’; new frictions among the populace which led to a crisis of faith;98
and ongoing very concrete power and land tensions as powerful families
tried to solidify control over civic life while popes attempted to build indi-
vidual dynastic interests.99 Savonarola had failed once to make a name for
himself as a preacher in Florence, but his oratorical powers and the force
of his message had improved dramatically since.100 In the final years of
Pico’s life and after his death, Savonarola became the dominant political
and religious force of Florence until 1497. He made himself Florence’s
conscience, its prophet, and the eminence grise of its civic life, leading a
city of sinners to penitence, and a city of penitents toward a great change.
Savonarola dominated life. He usurped the Platonist Marsilio Fici-
no’s attempt to obtain a Golden Age based on love, and the broader
notion of a Golden Age based on a civic republican ideal, replacing this
idealism with a Christian asceticism based on sin, self-denial, and punish-
ment. Savonarola’s crusade does share much with other movements of
the time including a call to return to original texts (in this case, reading
the Bible), and a desire to move away from old dynastic powers. The
difference is that he is trying to build an ascetic theocracy rather than the
Golden Age of enlightened revivification, or the marriage of the sacred
and profane. No wonder Ficino disliked him so much.101 But leaving
 2 LIFE AND WORKS 27

aside Gianfrancesco’s St. Pico, the extent to which Savonarola exerted

influence over Pico’s thought and actions before or during Savonarola’s
return to Florence remains an open question.
All of Pico’s movable items were left to his brother, Anton Maria,
including his famous library. Cardinal Domenico Grimani bought many
of his books, some of which were then left to the monastery of San
Antonio di Castello in Venice.102 Meanwhile, the month of Pico’s death
was a turning point for Savonarola. The arrival of Charles fulfilled a
prophecy that Savonarola had made.103 This was the crucial final piece
of his self-fashioning as a prophet104 and thereby ordained leader to a
new vision of Christianity based on scripture.105 As a prophet he accrued
to himself the sole right to speak truth and foretell the future. From then
onwards, he spoke for God.106 All those who disagreed were clearly in the
wrong whether they were philosophers, poets, or astrologers.107 Despite
Pico’s reputation in Florence, Savonarola was able to preach days after
Pico’s death that he was consigned to purgatory, rather than in heaven.108
He even admitted that he had wanted God to strike Pico, so that he might
re-examine his life. Savonarola thought that Pico had been given a mission
by God to use his talents for the greater good, and he had not listened.109

Building the Myth

Pico’s executor and primary heir was Gianfrancesco who acted as the
trustee of Pico’s philosophical and literary estate. Given that much of
Pico’s work is, according to Pico himself, fragments of larger projects
that may or may not have been going on in the background, the role of
trustee was complicated. Gianfrancesco was interested in theology intel-
lectually and became a devotee of Savonarola, far more clearly so than
Pico himself. He saw the revival of classical philosophy, especially the
revival of Aristotle, as antithetical to the renewal of the Christian reli-
gion.110 His view of Plato was much less severe, perhaps having more
sympathy for Ficino’s marriage of Platonism and theology.111 This was
the individual now in charge of shaping Pico’s legacy.
Gianfrancesco edited and published Pico’s collected works and frag-
ments,112 finishing at least one important work himself (Disputations),
leaving out the Conclusions and related works from Pico’s first great
project completely,113 and writing a biography for the first volume that
celebrated ‘St. Pico’: mythologising Pico’s life including adding mira-
cles that supposedly occurred from his birth onwards.114 Obviously
28 S. HOWLETT

Pico’s argument with the pope, his heretical views, and the incident
with Margherita, over-complicated his vision. Instead he tells a story that
Savonarola would have approved. He tells us a story of slander, but also
penitence and a turn to the religious life.115 The biography was popu-
larized in England and beyond by Thomas More, who certainly seems
to have treated it as a holy life. Gianfrancesco also starts the story of
Pico as the man of prodigious memory,116 as well as underlining Pico’s
originality. He portrays Pico’s work as a personal and solitary intellectual
victory. Those around him that provided material, that debated with him,
translated works so that he could use them, are absent.117
He was not the only one of Pico’s circle to want to control reception
of his work. Ficino was busy editing out or ameliorating disagreements,
for instance on Platonic love theory as outlined in Pico’s Commentary:
‘When still young and passionate, he wrote something about love, but he
condemned it when his judgment ripened, and he wanted it completely
effaced: it cannot be published without damage to him. For my part, I
know what this pious man wanted in the end, for Pico was a a son to me
in age, a brother in kinship and in love really another self’.118 Poliziano
may have disagreed but was not there to help shape the legacy.
So the issue of what was ‘canonical’ to Pico’s thought was immedi-
ately contested ground amidst a series of manuscripts that were never
published, or apparently never finished, or that may have been embar-
rassing to his reputation, or outside of the framework of the Pico that
Gianfrancesco or his friends wished to shape. This contestation over what
is mainly a series of studies and skeletons of larger projects, together with
the brevity of his life, has remained the hallmark of Pico Studies: what
is Pico’s legacy, did his views change over time, is it possible to assess a
philosophical legacy with this level of published output?
Gianfrancesco’s influence shaped several centuries of reception: the
most popular pieces of Pico’s work, until the ‘rediscovery’ of the Oration
in the early twentieth century were the Letters that emphasized Pico’s
religiosity.119 Ficino’s assertion of his close relationship also partially
impacted reception for good and bad. Until recently, Pico Studies was
divided into those researching Ficino and his ‘Academy,’ with Pico as Fici-
no’s intellectual lieutenant; and those writing about Pico alone with little
to no mention of Ficino. There has been little middle ground. Meanwhile,
the role of those around Pico—the entourage of translators, philosophers,
commentators, mentors—was lost.
 2 LIFE AND WORKS 29

Works
Gianfrancesco’s volumes were the first attempt to produce a canon. They
included works published or distributed by Pico during his lifetime such
as Heptaplus, other pieces that were only published for the first time
in these posthumous forms (and were therefore edited to some degree
by Gianfrancesco) and excluded problematic publications such as the
Conclusions.
Whatever Gianfrancesco’s preferences, the task was difficult. Pico’s
work is a mixture of significant letters, finished exercises, fragments of
larger projects, and considered pieces that may have been planned as
part of something more ambitious, such as the poetic theology and
the concord of Aristotle and Plato. It is a difficult oeuvre to categorise
conceptually into a coherent body. His output starts in 1485 with an
extended letter on rhetoric and philosophy which was part of a debate
with his friend, Ermolao Barbaro, but then comes the annus mirabilis
of 1486 with the Commentary on a Canzone by Girolamo Benivieni
(the commentary on Plato’s love theory which was not published in his
lifetime or Gianfrancesco’s first edition), another such letter to Lorenzo
de’ Medici on the relative merits of his poetry, and letters to friends
such as Andreas Corneo and Marsilio Ficino, that show his intellectual
journey during the year. The Conclusions followed, which Pico himself
had published, with the Oration as his last work of 1486 written as a
prologue to his debate. These are all very different types of text, but they
already share certain fundamentals: particularly a belief that certain tradi-
tions provided a pathway for personal ascent to the divine.120 They also
all lean on the work and support of his entourage of thinkers and trans-
lators whether from the texts translated by Flavius, to the poem of Pico’s
friend, Benivieni, amended as necessary to fit Pico’s goals.
In 1487 while in Rome, Pico wrote his Apology taking from the
Oration for its introduction. This is a specific case of cannibalization of
writing, but throughout his career he tended to repeat ideas or fragments
from one work to another, perhaps because his career is so condensed,
or because short pieces were supposed to be parts of greater works
and also so much was unpublished and therefore not edited by Pico
himself.121 There was then, unsurprisingly, a hiatus during his flight
to France, but finally in 1489, settled back in Florence, Pico had a
second productive phase. He first wrote possibly his most complete work,
Heptaplus, a commentary on the first creation story in Genesis, which
30 S. HOWLETT

was published at that time. Heptaplus is also his first work on cosmology,
providing an alternative or addendum (depending on your perspective)
to Ficino’s description of the universe in his Commentary on Plato’s
‘Philebus’. Heptaplus was followed by his last full work, On Being and
the One (1490), which seems to be more of a pamphlet, circulated
rather than published, and again possibly meant as part of a larger work.
On Being and the One was focused on a specific metaphysical point of
contention between Plato and Aristotle. Alongside these writings, he was
also drafting a Commentary on Psalms probably from 1488,122 part of
a series of short spiritual pieces written in his last few years including a
Commentary on the Lord’s Prayer, Twelve Rules for the Spiritual Battle,
and a Commentary on Job.123 These liturgical and biblical commentaries
are devotional in nature rather than philosophical per se and were all
published for the first time by Gianfrancesco after Pico’s death. But they
do provide insight into Pico’s intense experience of his Christian iden-
tity. It is an intensely ascetic experience wherein he appears to deny the
sensual life, just as he turns away from physical love in his Commentary
(suggesting again that Pico’s beliefs also did not fundamentally change
from the beginning of his career until the end). These pieces suggest
an ascetic personality or perhaps rather a desire for the ascetic life seem-
ingly at odds with his position, wealth and lifestyle. Finally, at least for
the last year of his life, he was also working on a piece against astrology
(Disputations). Not a complete work, it remains contentious, including
the extent of Gianfrancesco’s role in editing the notes he found on Pico’s
death.
Pico’s two extended letters (to Barbaro in 1485 and Lorenzo in 1486
respectively) deal with the same debate: the question of style versus
content. In his letter to Barbaro he formally opposes Barbaro’s defence of
rhetoricians over philosophers.124 Pico sides with the philosophers against
the hyperbole of rhetoricians (what is said is more important than how
one says it). But his argument is itself expressed with considerable rhetor-
ical flourish, carefully crafted beneath the veneer of rhetorical naivety.
Pico proclaims the supremacy of the philosopher while at the same time
extolling the virtues of the rhetorician through his style. As a philoso-
pher who also had ambitions as a poet, the juxtaposition suggests that
his argument is ironic.125 Pico always wanted to excel at both. Then in
July 1486126 Pico wrote a letter to Lorenzo about his poetry: specifically,
who is the better poet: the stylist, Petrarch, or the poet with profound
 2 LIFE AND WORKS 31

content, Dante? Unsurprisingly, Lorenzo is found to have both style and

content and therefore surpasses both Petrarch and Dante.
Pico’s Commentary on a Canzone goes further than his letters,
combining philosophical commentary with poetry. The Commentary is
also in many respects a counterpoint to Ficino’s Commentary on Plato’s
‘Symposium.’ It highlights Pico’s approach to Platonism, based rather
more on Plotinus than Ficino’s at that period, and outlines for the
first time his signature combination of Platonism, Aristotelianism, and
Kabbalism. The Commentary is based on Benivieni’s Canzone dell’Amor
Divino (‘Song of Divine Love’) also apparently inspired by Ficino’s work,
but based on a poem by Guido Cavalcanti, ‘Donna me prega’ written
around 1285. Cavalcanti was the ancestor of a friend of Ficino’s featured
in his own Commentary. But as with so much else he produced Pico
saw his own commentary simply as part of something grander he was
planning.127

My little commentary is nothing to get excited about. I wrote it when

I was bored and had nothing else to do, as a way of relaxing my mind,
not of exciting it. It is only a prologue to the Commentary on Plato’s
Symposium which I am planning to write.128

The Commentary reads like both an apprentice piece and the first strike
of the student against the teacher, Ficino. He apparently never returned
to this project. As an apprentice piece, the argumentation is careful and
labored. However, Pico lays out his methodology in detail, and it is the
methodology that he will use throughout his career, providing an essential
insight into Pico’s approach. As a strike against Ficino, Pico was setting
himself up as a new, rival expert on Platonism to the father of the Platonic
revival. He is suggesting he has an alternative, ‘truer’ understanding of
Platonism (based on Plotinus). Pico is very clear that his work is at least
in part a critique of Ficino. He even mentions Ficino throughout his text,
and hardly in flattering terms:

You can imagine, reader, how many mistakes our Marsilio makes in the
first part of The Banquet; on this one score alone he completely confuses
and invalidates what he says about love. But in addition to this, he has
made mistakes on every subject in every part of his treatise, as I expect to
show clearly later on.129
32 S. HOWLETT

He even requested Benivieni to change his poem so that he could

score points against Ficino,130 with the commentary sometimes assuming
changes to the poem that Benivieni never completed.
Pico’s primary disagreement with Ficino in this text is with Fici-
no’s view of physical love and beauty. Gianfrancesco did not include
the Commentary in his edition, perhaps to assuage Ficino’s feelings or
Benivieni’s (who had become a devotee of Savonarola and was perhaps
uncomfortable with love commentaries) or just simply because he viewed
it as a piece of juvenilia. Benivieni stated that Pico and himself both
rejected it in later life.131 It did though have a prominent later history
in Italy, France, and England, rivalling Ficino’s philosophy of love,132
and Pico used aspects of the work for Heptaplus. There is also consis-
tency between the Commentary and the Oration. The introduction to
the debate has the same methodological approach and primary interests
(mixing Platonism, Aristotelianism and a variety of non-Christian sources
especially Kabbalism).
The Conclusions consist of 900 theses divided into two main sections,
with thematic groupings within each section. Section one consists of 402
conclusions or theses to be debated. They are organized historically, or at
least in the history of thought as Pico understood it, beginning with the
most recent philosophical schools and key scholars of the medieval period,
and then moving back in time to ‘core thought’ from the past, as if philos-
ophy is a palimpsest, and we remove the layers piece by piece until we are
left with the underlying ‘truth’ or point of origin. Section two consists
of 498 statements according to Pico’s own opinion (secundum opinionem
propriam). They begin with the underlying ‘truth,’ move through a series
of variations on the theme taking us finally to Kabbalism and related
esoterica: keys to the religious mystery of the divine—not philosophy
but a theological philosophy, secrets that will lead us to oneness with
the divine. The Conclusions end with a practical application for this key
to the mysteries: an attempt to convert the Jews with their own religious
teachings. This is not simply an interesting byproduct of Pico’s argumen-
tation. Traditionally, the conversion of the Jews was the precursor to the
world’s end and the coming of God’s Kingdom.133
A list of assertions is a difficult structure to analyse.134 They are orga-
nized in the very particular scholastic tradition of quaestiones.135 There are
also an overwhelming number.136 How do we know what Pico’s attitude
was to each? Can we assume that all conclusions reflect Pico’s opinion
or, at least, the position he intended to argue?137 But the Apology and
 2 LIFE AND WORKS 33

Oration are available to support our understanding. He tells us in the

Apology, for example, that the proposals are more than simply pieces for
debate. They are meant to weave together and thereby resolve traditional
historical disagreements or complexities of theology and philosophy,138
revealing to us step by step, a new understanding of both, made up of a
union of Aristotle and Plato, and the mystical ‘truth’ of Kabbalism.
The Oration is a formal introductory speech,139 both to his debate
and to Pico himself as a prominent new philosopher on the stage of Latin
Europe. Pico did not circulate it, nor was it given a title. In the later
1504 edition of his works it was first given the subtitle de hominis digni-
tate, referring to the apparent topic of the first part of the speech.140 As
with the Commentary, the Oration became highly influential later, this
time in the twentieth century when more than 50 versions were produced
into the twenty-first century.141 It was probably written in four stages,
beginning in September 1486 during the writing of the Conclusions,
and finished in Rome awaiting the debate. The Oration contains sepa-
rate themes including a substantial section defending philosophy and the
contemplative life which could then be made into the Apology in May
1487 when a rapid defense of his work was needed.142
The Apology or Apologia tredecim quaestionum is not an apology
per se, but in terms of its timing looks like a rapid, but extensive
attempt to defend his work in the light of specific accusations.143 In
his Life, Gianfrancesco claimed it as a major work (as opposed to the
Oration)144 and recent scholarship has suggested that the Apology may
be more important than a quick defence. Amos Edelheit has suggested
that the Apology provides the rationale for Pico’s whole Rome project
as a critique of contemporary scholastic methodology and its ongoing
division of philosophy and faith.145 But the Apology, with its focus on
defending the 13 (out of 900) theses questioned by the papal commis-
sion, is a restricted lens given Pico’s attention to so many other topics
beyond scholasticism throughout his work. In the Apology, Pico asserts
his belief that his Conclusions are orthodox suggesting that he knows
things that the commission does not (the elitism of the esoteric symp-
tomatic of his career), as if these people could not possibly understand
what he is attempting and had missed the point.146 He dedicated the
piece to Lorenzo, who accepted the dedication after having it checked
for orthodoxy with his ‘tame theologian,’ Benigno Salviati.147
34 S. HOWLETT

After his return to Italy, Pico published Heptaplus in 1489,148 and

wrote On Being and the One (as a manuscript for sharing) shortly after-
ward. Heptaplus is an intricate interpretation on multiple levels of the
story of creation using the same core approaches as his earlier works. On
Being was dedicated to Poliziano as part of an ongoing debate between
Aristotelians and Platonists.149 On Being seems likely to have been part of
the proposed concord between Aristotle and Plato. It was also a response
to Ficino’s writing on Being and the One. But Pico’s ‘polemic’ was
disputed not only by Ficino (from the Platonic perspective) but also by his
friend, the Aristotelian, Antonio de Cittadini.150 Over a series of letters
with Cittadini, Pico argues that he is genuinely attempting to do some-
thing new between Aristotle and Plato, leaving neither ‘side’ content.
What both Heptaplus and On Being and the One show is that Pico’s
philosophical views and his methodology do not significantly change pre
and post his Roman adventure. The combination of specific forms of
Platonism, with Aristotelianism and Kabbalism, found in the Commentary
and Conclusions continues.
His final work, the Disputations, was a major piece Pico was writing
when he died. He had apparently composed 12 out of 13 books,151
though Gianfrancesco put much of it together.152 It appears to be a
polemic against the use of astrology with a strong dose of religious sanc-
timony that could be connected to the Savonarolan movement, and the
first time that Pico seems to contradict at least some of his earlier philo-
sophical positions: ‘Let us not be deceived, as I was once deceived, when
I was young, by the wisdom of the Egyptians and Chaldeans, which was
renowned amongst the ancients, Plato included.’153
The critical debates around Disputations focus on its potential Aris-
totelianism (suggesting Pico to be at heart an Aristotelian), its antagonism
toward Ficino, its religiosity, and the question of Gianfrancesco’s manip-
ulation of the text.154 One of his peers, Lucio Bellanti, seemed to think
Pico would have changed his mind had he lived,155 that he was under the
influence of Savonarola and that the edition Gianfrancesco produced was
even more under this influence.156 But it could be argued, for instance,
that Pico was simply disputing against some forms of astrology, natal
charts or prognostications of political events, that is judicial astrology,
rather than Ficino’s magical astrology.157 Indeed, this critique of the use
of astrology for political prognostication was an interesting and remark-
ably timely argument in a year when Savonarola was preparing his role as
God’s anointed (and only) prophet. Pico was also connecting to a history
 2 LIFE AND WORKS 35

of anti-astrology writings, like those of Nicolas Oresme and Henry of

Hesse, the fourteenth-century physicists.158 Pico’s Aristotelianism here is
linked to his interest in science and the lack of a scientific approach in
some types of astrology. But Poliziano, who probably knew Pico best,
thought that Pico’s views would contradict Ficino’s and the work could
be read as part of an ongoing debate on the legitimacy of astrology and
star magic that Ficino began in his Three Books on Life (De vita libri
tres ).159
Astrology was partially promoted by Ficino. Savonarola also later wrote
his own piece against astrology, Trattato contra li astrologi (1497).
His views and Pico’s writing seem to go hand in hand. Pico began
Disputations around 1493, and Savonarola gave his first sermon against
astrology at Advent 1493.160 Savonarola is juxtaposing the false prophecy
of astrologers with himself as the true prophet of Christianity.161 It is
entirely consistent that Pico would have written a text arguing against a
major work by Ficino, just as Ficino would have been in opposition to
Savonarola (though wisely relatively silent on the subject).162 However
there is no evidence that Pico was moving away from his other projects in
preference for a new Savonarolan inspired agenda. He was still working
to bring Aristotle and Plato together,163 and there is no evidence that he
was rejecting Kabbalism. His final work may be problematic as a finished
piece, but also shows considerable consistency with his primary ‘finished’
work.
This is a small body of works, just as Pico’s life was foreshortened.
Both life and works were fashioned by himself and his heirs as unique. He
is the golden youth who became St. Pico, or the gentleman-philosopher
dazzling with his abilities and ambition. More recently, it has been easy to
read Pico as the ‘exceptional’ individual: the young genius, the last person
who knew everything. This reading is encouraged by Pico’s writing
which promotes the uniqueness of the individual (unique) experience: the
journey of the mystic on a path to oneness with the divine. He outlines in
fragments the shape of this pathway. Here too the lure of modern rein-
terpretation has been strong: we read the Oration and see there our own
vision of human dignity—the freedom and ability of the individual to be
whoever and whatever we wish.
But in life and his work, Pico’s history is the product of a larger set
of relations: groups that supported his ambitions as a scholar and actor
in complex times. The work he produced with their support was also
the product of multiple traditions, a combination of classical revivals, and
36 S. HOWLETT

non-Christian ideas. Most particularly, his pathway to oneness is made up

of a signature combination of Platonism, Aristotelianism and Kabbalism.
Pico brings people together to support his studies, and he brings ideas
together to create a syncretic164 vision of the universe and the history
of philosophy. This bringing together of philosophy and theology, this
bringing together of scholars and translators, supports his life’s work as
expressed in the Conclusions, his efforts to produce a concord of Aristotle
and Plato, and a poetic theology.
To understand Pico’s syncretic vision and the pathway toward God that
he builds, we therefore need to understand those scholars and traditions
that contribute to his vision. Pico was part of a long history of research
on Aristotelianism. The history of Platonism had only re-emerged more
recently. Pico focused on Plotinus and several later Platonists but was
always mindful of the positions of his former teacher, Marsilio Ficino.
Kabbalism was new to the Christian world. Often thought of as Pico’s
especial contribution to the history of thought, we find under the
surface an extraordinary story of scholarly engagement from his academic
entourage. In the next chapter we will begin to explore these scholars
and traditions beginning with the Aristotelian and Platonic elements,
including his intellectual point and counterpoint with Ficino, his most
important scholarly friend and rival.

Notes
1. S. Farmer (1998, 1 n1): Concordia was near Mirandola and part of the
family’s holdings and ‘Both Pico and his contemporaries made much of
his title as a divine sign of his holy mission as a reconciler.’
2. L. Valcke (1994, 378). Valcke notes the different approaches to
scholastic thought each of these institutions provided at the time.
3. G. Busi and R. Ebgi (2014, xii) suggest spring–summer 1483.
4. Busi and Ebgi (2014, xi–xii). Ebgi calls it an ‘accademia pichiana’ and
notes the presence of Pico’s Greek teacher, Manuel Adramitteno, as well
as the humanist and publisher, Aldo Manuzio.
5. P.O. Kristeller (1993a, 245).
6. C. Trinkaus (1987, 82). Kristeller (1993, 229 and 229 n3) notes Baptista
Guarinus as a mentor and teacher, citing Garin on letters between Pico
and Guarinus.
7. E. Garin (2008, 295). The Medici did business with Pico’s father, Gian-
francesco I, and his brother, Galeotto. Garin thinks Pico made a trip to
Florence in 1479 and argues that Pico left Poliziano some of his poetry
Another random document with
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 "Then 'tis waste of time to be rude to Him. Civility costs nought
anyway. My old father said to me when I was a child, 'Always touch your
hat to a pair of hosses, William, for you never know who's behind 'em.'"

"I puzzle a good deal upon the subject, and life often flings it
uppermost," answered Bullstone. "In fact so are we built, through education
of conscience, that it's impossible to go very far without being brought up
against God. How often in my secret times of pain do I catch the Name on
my tongue? How often do I say 'My God, my God, what have I done?' I ask
Him that question by night and day. A silly question, too, for I know what
I've done as well as God can. But I know what I've suffered far better than
He can. I went on hoping and hoping, as you bade me, last year. I went
hoping, with one eye on God, like a rat that creeps out of his hole with one
eye on the dog hard by. But the game had to be played out by inches. He
knew that Margery was dying, a few miles away, and He kept it secret from
me and didn't let me hear till it was too late. He planned it, so that I should
just be there after the very last breath was breathed, should touch her before
she was cold, should miss her by seconds. And she longing—longing to
come back to me—to save me. What should we call that if a man had done
it—eh, William?"

"Come and look at my bees, Jacob. A brave swarm yesterday, and poor
Sammy Winter took 'em for me with all the cleverness of a sane man."

"Mysteries everywhere. People pity Samuel. I don't—not now, I did

once, because it's the fashion to think anybody's lacking reason is a sad
sight. Why? Brains are like money—poison so often as not. My brains have
poisoned me—fretted and festered and burnt out my soul like an acid. The
more I see of the wild, innocent creatures, the more I feel that reason's not
all we think it, William. You can't fetter the soul down to reason. What has
reason done for me? The little comfort I get now is outside reason. Reason
only goads me into wanting to end it and make away with myself. That
would be the reasonable thing. What happened yesterday? Auna found a
rhyme book that belonged to my wife. And in that book was a sprig of
white heath I picked for her on a wonderful day we had, just after she had
promised to marry me. There it was faded to brown—more than twenty
years old. And what else did Auna find? Between the pages she found the
crumbs of a little sweet biscuit—a sort of a little biscuit, William, that
Margery loved. Where's the reason when a crumb of wheat can stab the soul
deeper than a sword? And what then? What did Auna say? Nothing in
reason, God knows. 'Father,' she said, 'you and me will eat these crumbs—
then we'll have shared the biscuit with dear mother.' A holy sacrament—
yes, faith—'holy's' not too strong a word. We ate the crumbs, and there was
a strange, mad comfort in it; and the child smiled and it made her happier
too. You could see it in her face. Why? Why? All darkness—no answer.
And the little verse book, with the heather bloom, will be in my breast
pocket now till I die—never out of reach of my hand—warmed daily by my
warmth. Why? Can reason tell me? No—it's only because I'm gone below
reason, William."

"Or it might be above it, my son."

"Such things make your head whirl. If there's to be happiness in heaven,

we mustn't be built like we are here. Fear must be left out of us and the
power of remembering. We must be suffered to forget earth, William; yet,
what would that make of heaven? Nothing. It all tumbles to pieces
whichever way you think of it, for reason, whether it is a good or evil thing,
makes heaven a wilderness."

"Don't you fret your wits with such stuff, for it won't help you to
patience or wisdom."

"No, it won't bring the dead to life, or lift the brand from me. But I
thresh it out by night and see great things heave up in my mind. Then, when
I jump to put them into words, they fade and I lose them. Reason may be
the work of the devil—his master-stroke to turn us from salvation. You can't
be damned without it; but you can be saved without it. Or would you say a
man can't have a soul to be saved, until he is a reasonable creature, built to
separate good from evil and choose the right? No doubt it's well understood
by deep men. My mind turns in and feeds on itself, William, because there's
nothing left outside to feed on."

"You must come back to your appointed task. You must keep doing
good things. You must do more and think less."
 "I'm going up to Huntingdon with Auna this afternoon."

"And let her talk to you. Don't think her words are worthless. You've got
a nice bit of your wife left in Auna. Always remember that."

"I do. I shall live on for Auna. There's one beautiful thing left for me—
beautiful, and yet a living wound, that grows painfuller every day I live.
And that's Auna—Auna growing more and more and more like Margery—
bringing her back, even to the toss of her head and the twinkle of her eye.
She laughs like her mother, William; she cries like her mother; she thinks
like her mother. So my only good will be my first grief. The things still left
to care about will torture me more than all the hate of the world can torture
me. They'll keep memory awake—stinging, burning, till I scream to Auna
to get out of my sight presently, and leave me with the foxes and the carrion
crows."

Then Bullstone limped away. He soon grew calmer, as he was wont to

do when alone with nobody to whet his thoughts upon.

During the later part of this day he ascended the moors with Auna and
walked to the empty Warren House. They talked of those who had dwelt
there, for that morning a letter had come from Mrs. Veale for Margery,
giving her news of the Veale family—Benny and the children.

"You must answer it, Auna, and tell the woman that your mother passed
away last winter," said Jacob. "If I was a younger man, I might go out to
Canada myself and take you with me; but we'll stop here. You'll like
Huntingdon, won't you?"

"Yes, father."

"Your mother's dead," he told her; "but we shan't be without a lot of

treasures to remind us of her."

"All the things she specially cared about you'll have round you, father."

"I know them all," he answered, "because, so long as I felt hope that she
might come back, I was specially careful for them and set them aside out of
harm's way. She had a great liking for little things that she coupled with the
thoughts of friends."

He spoke the truth, for many trifles that had sustained some faint
fragrance of hope while Margery lived—trifles that her heart had valued
and her hands had held—were now subject to a different reverence, set
apart and sanctified for ever.

"We might take a few of her favourite flowers too," suggested Auna,
"but I doubt they would live up there in winter. You can always come down
and see them at the right time, father."

"Everything shall be just as you will, Auna. You'll be mistress and I'll be
man."

She laughed and they tramped forward. Jacob could now walk all day
without suffering for it, but he was lame and his pace slower than of old.

He brought the key with him and opened the silent house. A week rarely
passed without a visit, and Jacob always awoke to animation and interest
when he came. The melancholy spot and mean chambers, though they had
chilled not a few human hearts in the past, always cheered him. To a
dwelling whence others had thankfully departed for the last time, he now
looked forward with satisfaction; and Auna, seeing that only here came any
peace to her father, welcomed Huntingdon already as her future home. Not
a shadow clouded her eyes as she regarded it, and not one regret before the
receding vision of Red House and her own life therein. For her father was
her world, as he had always been, and when he turned against his home, she
echoed him and loved Red House no more. She knew that for Jacob the
death of her mother had destroyed Red House; she understood that he
desired to begin again and she felt well content to begin again with him. His
influence had come between her and normal development in certain
directions. She was old for her age, but also young. No instinct of sex had
intruded upon her life, and little interest in any being outside her own home
circle. Even within it her sister and brothers were nothing compared to her
father, and impulses, fears, suspicions that might have chilled a girl's
forward glance under the walls of forlorn Huntingdon, never rose in Auna's
mind to darken the future. Her father willed there to dwell and her welfare
and happiness as yet took no flight beyond him.

They wandered through the stone-paved kitchen and climbed to the

little chambers above, while for the twentieth time, Jacob planned how
things should be.

"I'll have this room," he said, "because the sun sets upon it; and you will
bide here, Auna, because it's fitting the sun shall rise where you wake."

She was happy when he spoke thus tenderly sometimes.

"My sun set, when mother died," continued Jacob. "What's left is
twilight; but you'll be the evening star, Auna, as it says in mother's little
book. You can read it if you want to. I'll let it touch no other hand but yours.
I've read every word many times, because I know her eyes rested on every
word once."

"I'm afraid I don't understand about poetry, father."

"You'll come to understand it when you're older, perhaps. She

understood it and got pleasure from it."

The desolation of the warren house soothed Jacob, and having wandered
through it he sat for a time outside the enclosures before starting to return
home. He rolled his melancholy eyes over the great spaces to a free horizon
of the hills folding in upon each other.

"Will time speed swifter here, Auna?"

"I hope it will, father," she answered, "but the days will be very like
each other."

"Days too like each other drag," he told her. "We must change the
pattern of the days. It shan't be all work for you. We'll do no work
sometimes, and now and then you'll go for a holiday down to the 'in
country,' and I shall be alone till you come back."
 "I'm never going to leave you alone," she said. "If you think upon a
holiday for me, you've got to come too, or have Peter up here for a bit."

"There's only one other thing beside the moor that's good to me; and
that's the sea; and you well love to be on the sea, so we might go to it now
and again."

Auna's eyes sparkled.

"I'd like that dearly," she told him.

"To know the sea better may be a wise deed for me," he said. "Some it
hurts and cannot comfort—so I've heard. Not that it could ever be a friend
to me, like the hills."

"You'd love it better and better, specially if you'd sail out on to it, same
as I did with Uncle Lawrence."

Her father nodded and this allusion did not banish his placid mood. The
sun rays were growing slant and rich as they set out for home. Auna
laughed at their shadows flung hugely before them. Then they descended
and she walked silently for a long way with her hand in her father's hand.
But she was content despite their silence, for she knew that his mind had
passed into a little peace. She often wondered why the desert solitudes
cheered him, for they cast her down. She liked to leave it behind her—that
great, lonely thing—and descend into the kindly arms of the Red House
trees and the welcome of the river. For the river itself, in Auna's ear, sang a
different song beside her home, than aloft, in its white nakedness, and
loneliness. There it was elfin and cold and silvery, but it did not seem to
sing for her; while beneath, at the feet of the pines, under the bridge of logs,
in the pools and stickles she knew to the last mossy boulder—there her
name river had music for her alone and she understood it. It was a dear
friend who would never pass away out of her life, or die and leave her to
mourn. A time was coming when she would know it better still, see it aloft
nigh its cradle, learn its other voices, that yet were strange to her. In the
valley the river was old and wise; perhaps aloft, where it ran nigh
Huntingdon, it was not so wise or tender, but younger and more joyous.
 "It'll have to be my friend," thought Auna, "for there won't be no others
up there but father."

An incident clouded the return journey, and though neither Jacob nor his
daughter was sentimental, death confronted them and made them sorry. An
old goat, one of the parents of the Red House flock, had disappeared during
the previous winter, and they had fancied that he must have fallen into the
stream and been swept away in a freshet that happened when he vanished.
But now, in a little green hollow rimmed with heath and granite, they found
all that was left of the creature—wisps of iron-grey hair, horns attached to
his skull, a few scattered bones picked clean by the carrion crows and the
hollow skeleton of his ribs with young grasses sprouting through it.

"Oh, father—it's 'Beardy,'" whispered Auna.

"So it is then. And I'm glad we found him. A very dignified thing, the
way the creatures, when they know they're going to die, leave their friends
and go away all alone. A fine thing in them; and there's many humans
would do the same if they had the strength I dare say."

Auna descended among the bones and picked up "Beardy's" horns.

"Peter will like to have them for a decoration," she said. "I hope he
didn't suffer much, poor old dear."

"Not much, I expect."

"And I hope the carrion crows didn't dare to touch him till he was gone,
father."

"No, no. There's unwritten laws among the wild things. I expect they
waited."

"Did his wives miss him, should you think?"

"We don't know. They can't tell us. Perhaps they wondered a bit. More
likely they knew he'd gone up to die and wouldn't come back. They know
deeper than we think they know among themselves, Auna."
 "I've often been sorry for that poor Scape-goat in the Bible, father. I
read about him to grandmother long ago, one Sunday, and never forgot
him."

"And so have I been sorry for him, too."

They tramped on together and presently Jacob spoke. He was thinking

still of her last speech and his mind had turned dark.

"The Scape-goat in the wilderness was a happy beast compared to me,"

he said suddenly. "He went to his doom a clean thing—a harmless creature,
pure as Christ's self under his filthy load of human sins. For a foul burden
doesn't make the carrier foul. He'd done no wrong and wondered, perhaps,
in his brute mind, why the scarlet thread was tied upon him and he was
driven into the unkind desert, far from his bite of green grass and the
shadow to guard him against the burning sun. But I'm different. I'm a goat
caked and rotted with my own sins. The sins of the world are white and
light against mine."

"I won't hear you say things like that, father. I won't live with you if you
say things like that."

"Bear with me, bear with me. It comes in great waves, and I'm a
drowning man till they roll over and pass. You'll sweeten me presently. Who
could live with you and not grow sweeter, you innocent?"

He broke off.

Venus throbbed upon the golden green of the west, and as they
descended, the valley was already draped with a thin veil of mist under
which the river purred. From the kennels came yapping of the dogs; and
when they reached home and entered the yard, half a dozen red terriers
leapt round Auna and nosed with excitement at "Beardy's" horns.
 CHAPTER V

THE AUTUMN WIND

On a rough day of autumn, when the river ran high and leaves already
flew upon half a gale of wind, a little crowd of men gathered up the valley
beyond Red House, and with crow-bars and picks sought to lift up the block
of granite whereon aforetime Margery Bullstone so often sat. Jacob had
long ago dug down to the foundation, that he might satisfy himself to its
size; and it had proved too great beneath the soil, where twice the bulk of
the visible part was bedded. Now, therefore, having heaved it from the
ground, they were busy to drive four holes in it, where the cleft must take
place. Then they inserted four cartridges, set the slow match, lighted it and
retreated beside a cart that already stood out of harm's reach.

There had come Peter and Auna, Adam and Samuel Winter and Jacob
Bullstone; and Adam had lent his pig-cart to convey the stone to the
churchyard.

They watched silently; then came a flash, a puff of white smoke,

whirled instantly away on the wind, and a dull explosion that reverberated
from the hill above. The great stone was sundered and they returned to it,
bringing the horse and cart with them.

The block had split true and a mass accordant with its memorial purpose
was presently started upon the way. Jacob directed great care, and helped to
lift the stone, that none of the native moss in its scooped crown should be
injured.

"Whether it will live down in the churchyard air I don't know," he said,
"but the grave lies in shade most times and we can water it."

Samuel was regarding the boulder with a puzzled face.

"Where be her name going?" he asked.

 "The name goes on the side, Sammy," explained Jacob. "Blake, the
stone-cutter, was up over a bit ago and took my meaning."

They went slowly away under the rioting wind, and near Red House
Peter and his sister left them, while at Shipley Bridge Samuel also returned
home.

Jacob walked beside Adam at the horse's head. It was a bad day with
him and the passion of the weather had found an echo in his spirit. The rain
began to fall and Winter drew a sack from the cart and swung it over his
shoulders.

"You'd best to run into Billy Marydrew's till the scat's passed, else you'll
get wet," he said.

But the other heeded not the rain.

"A pity it isn't my coffin instead of her stone you've got here," he said.
"I'm very wishful to creep beside her. No harm in that—eh?"

"There's every harm in wishing to be dead afore your time, Jacob; but
none I reckon in sharing her grave when the day's work is ended."

"Truth's truth and time can't hide truth, whatever else it hides. I killed
her, Adam, I killed her as stone-dead as if I'd taken down my gun and shot
her."

"No, no, Bullstone, you mustn't say anything like that. You well know
it's wrong. In one way we all help to kill our fellow-creatures I reckon; and
they help to kill us. 'Tis a mystery of nature. We wear away at each other,
like the stone on the sea-shore; we be thrown to grind and drive at each
other, not for evil intent, but because we can't help it. We don't know what
we're doing, or who we're hurting half our time—no more than frightened
sheep jumping on each other's backs, for fear of the dog behind them."

"That's all wind in the trees to me. I wasn't blind: I knew what I was
doing. I don't forget how I hurt you neither, and took good years off your
life."
 "Leave it—leave it and work. Think twice before you give up work and
go to Huntingdon."

"My work's done, and badly done. Don't you tell me not to get away to
peace if I'm to live."

"Peace, for the likes of us, without learning, only offers through work."

They had reached Marydrew's and Adam made the other go in.

"I'll stop under the lew of the hedge till this storm's over," he said. "Tell
Billy I'd like to see him to-night if he can drop in. The wind's turning a
thought north and will go down with the sun no doubt."

He went forward, where a deep bank broke the weather, and Jacob
entered William's cottage. Mr. Marydrew had seen them from the window
and now came to the door.

"A proper tantara 'tis blowing to-day," he said. "My loose slates be
chattering, like a woman's tongue, and I'm feared of my life they'll be
blowed off. The stone's started then? That's good."

Jacob, according to his habit, pursued his own thoughts and spoke on, as
though Adam still stood beside him.

"To talk of peace—to say there's any peace for a red-handed man. Peace
is the reward of work and good living and faithful service. Red hands can't
earn peace."

"Now don't you begin that noise. Let the wind blow if it must. No call
for you to blow. Take my tarpaulin coat for the journey. A thought small,
but it will keep your niddick dry."

"Give me a dram," said Jacob, "and listen to me."

Mr. Marydrew brought his spirit from a cupboard while the other
rambled on.
 "We've just hacked the stone for her grave out of the earth. Torn up by
the roots, like she was herself. She dies and her children lose a father as
well as a mother, because they know the stroke was mine; and what honest
child shall love a father that killed a mother? That's not all. Think of that
man now helping me to get the stone to her grave. Think of the suffering
poured on Winter's head. A very good, steadfast sort of man—and yet my
hand robbed him of much he can never have again. Three out of four
children lost, and that saint underground. And all allowed by the good-will
of a watchful God."

He nodded, emptied the glass his friend offered him and looked out at
the rain.

"You're dark to-day and don't see very clear, my dear," said Billy. "You
put this from your own point of view, and so 'tis very ugly I grant; but every
thing that haps has two sides. You've bitched up your show here, Jacob, and
I'm not going to pretend you have not. You've done and you've suffered a
lot, along of your bad judgment; and you was kindiddled into this affair by
the powers of darkness. But 'tis the way of God to use men as signposts for
their fellow-men. He sees the end of the road from the beginning, and He
knows that the next scene of your life, when you meet Margery, will belike
be full of joy and gladness."

"It's your heart, not your head, that speaks that trash, William,"
answered the younger. "Can future joy and gladness undo the past? Can the
sunshine bring to life what the lightning killed an hour afore? How shall
understanding in Heaven blot out the happenings on earth? Things—awful
things—that God's self can't undo? And answer me this: if some live happy
in this world and go happy to the next, as well we know some do; then why
should not all? If some are born to live with their minds clear, their tempers
pure, their passions under control, why should such as I am blot the earth?
Would a man make maimed things? Would a decent man bring living
creatures to the birth short of legs or eyes, when he could fashion them
perfect? Where's the boasted mercy of your God, William? Where's His
eternal plan, and what's the sense of talking about a happy eternity if a man
comes to it poisoned by time? I'm calm, you see—a reasoning creature and
honest with myself. My everlasting inheritance would be nothing but one
undying shame and torture at the ruin I have made; and I know that I cannot
stand up in the next world among those I have spoiled and wronged and feel
a right to do so. And if my Creator has built me to gnaw my heart out in
agony through a life without end—what is He? No, the only poor mercy left
for me is eternal night—endless sleep is what I'd pray for if I could pray;
because another life must be hell wherever it is spent. Let Him that made us
unmake us. 'Tis the least and best that He can do for nine men out of ten."

The storm had swept past and a weather gleam flashed upon the rain.
The red beech trees before William's home shone fiery through the falling
drops and shook off little, flying flakes of flame, as the leaves whirled in the
wind.

Mr. Marydrew did not answer, but followed Jacob to the wicket gate
and watched him as he rejoined Winter. William waited until the cart had
disappeared and was turning to go in, when a neighbour came up the
shining road from Shipley.

It was Amelia Winter in her pattens.

"Did Adam tell you he's wishful to see you to-night?" she asked and
Billy answered that he had not.

"Well he is," she said, and put down the big umbrella under which she
had come. "He's lending a hand with a heathen lump of stone just now. That
forgotten man up the valley be going to put it on poor Margery Bullstone's
grave; and for my part I'm a good deal surprised that parson will suffer such
a thing in a Christian burial ground."

"They've just gone round the corner—Adam and him and the cart. He
was in here storming against his fate a minute agone."

"Not Adam? He don't storm against nothing."

"No—t'other. My old friend. He ain't through the wood by a long way

yet, Amelia. His thoughts and griefs crowd down on him like a flock of foul
birds, and shake the roots of his life something shocking."
 "'Tis well if the Lord's Hand is heavy," she answered.

"So it should be, if there's justice in the world."

"Try to think kindly on the man. He's suffered much."

"I live with Adam Winter," she answered and went her way.

CHAPTER VI

THE CHILDREN

Accident sometimes invoked a strange spectre of the old jealousy in

Jacob Bullstone—that quiddity of his nature responsible for his ruin. It
flashed now—a feeble glimmer of the ancient emotion—and involved
Auna. She alone in his opinion cared any longer for him, or felt interest in
his fortunes; therefore he was quick to resent any real, or fancied, attempts
on the part of others to weaken the bonds between them. Such a task had in
truth been impossible, yet there came hints to his ear that the girl should not
be dragged with him into the fastness of the moor. He had to some extent
lost sight of her natural demands and requirements. He little liked her to be
overmuch interested in affairs that no longer concerned himself; but she
was intelligent in this matter and, helped by advice, kept in closer touch
with her relations than Jacob knew. With her grandmother Auna had indeed
broken, for Judith declined to see her any more, and the younger did not
pretend sorrow; but with Barlow Huxam, and with her Uncle Jeremy and
Aunt Jane, she preserved a friendship they did not report to Mrs. Huxam;
while despite harsh sayings against them from her father, Auna continued to
love John Henry and Avis. She was loyal, would not hear a word against
Jacob, and set him always first. She regarded the coming life at Huntingdon
as no ordeal, but a change of infinite promise, because it might bring him
nearer peace. Meantime, behind Bullstone's back others were busy in hope
to change his plans, and these alternatives were placed before him by his
children.

The occasion found him fretful after a period of comparative

contentment. He was unaware that time cannot stand still, and in the usual
parental fashion continued to regard his family as anchored to childhood.
He was smarting under grievances on a day that he met Adam Winter and
walked with him from Brent to Shipley.

"There's nothing so cold as the chill of your own flesh," he said. "A
child's a fearful thing, Adam, if it turns against a parent, especially when
you've kept your share of the bargain, as I have."

"No doubt there is a bargain," admitted Winter. "I speak as a childless

man and my word's of no account; but you've been quick to see what you
owed your own, and I hope they do the like. If they don't, so far, that's only
to say they're young yet. They will get more thoughtful with years."

"Yes, thoughtful for themselves. Young and green they are, yet not too
young to do man and woman's work, not too young to know the value of
money. Something's left out of them, and that is the natural feeling there
should be for their father. Hard, hard and ownself they are."

"Your eldest is born to command, and that sort play for their own hand
by reason of the force that's in 'em. Time will mellow John Henry's heart,
and experience of men will show him the manner of man his father is."

Jacob grew calmer.

"He loved his mother more than he loved anything, and it may be out of
reason to ask them, who loved her, to spare much regard for me. That I
grant and have always granted. Yet I've striven to show him now, with all
my awful faults, I'm a good father."

"He can't fail to know it."

"John Henry comes of age in a minute and I've made over Bullstone
Farm to him. A great position for one so young—eh, Winter?"
 "A wondrous fine thing, and what makes it finer is that he's a born
farmer and will be worthy of it."

"Kingwell's lease is up ere long, and then my son will reign and be the
head of the family in the eye of the nation."

"You mustn't say that. You're the head of the family, not your son."

"He had scarce a word to answer when I told him how I'd been to
Lawyer Dawes and turned it over. As for Dawes himself, he feels a thought
doubtful whether I should part with my own so freely; but 'no,' I said, 'I
understand what I'm doing.' A bit of bread and a cup of water is all I shall
ever ask from my children. Let them do what I've failed to do and carry on
the name in a proper way. I want to be forgot, Adam; and yet, because
they're quite agreeable to take all and let me be forgot, I smart. Such is
man."

"Nature and order can't be swept away," answered Winter. "Your

children are very orderly children, and no doubt they'll do as you wish; but
you mustn't think to go out of their lives and deny them your wisdom and
advice. You've got your bargain to keep still, while you're in the land of the
living. You mustn't wash your hands of 'em. You must show 'em that you're
part of 'em yet, and that their good is yours and your good is theirs."

"They care not for my good—why should they? They don't want my
wisdom, for well they know my wisdom is foolishness. Who'd seek me
now? Who'd listen to me now, but a few such as you and William, who
have the patience of those who grow old and can still forgive all and laugh
kindly? No: they are children, and wisdom they need and experience they
lack—the more so because the world has run smooth for them. But they
don't look to me and they never did. All but Auna were set against me from
their short coats. They began to doubt as soon as they could walk. Their
grandmother was their god, and they'll live to find she was a false god.
They didn't get their hard hearts from Margery, or me."

"Trust to that then," urged the other. "Be patient and wait and watch,
and you'll see yourself in them yet, and your wife also."
 "You have a great trust in your fellow-creatures, Adam Winter."

"You must trust 'em if you're going to get any peace. What's life worth if
you can't trust? 'Tis to people the world with enemies and make yourself a
hunted creature."

"'Hunted' is a very good word," answered Jacob, "that's the state of most
of us. As to my children," he continued, "Peter will carry on here with
Middleweek, and he's very well able to do it—better already at a bargain
than ever I was, and likely to be more popular with customers than I. But
my sons have got to make me payments. That's fair—eh?"

"Certainly it is."

"And Auna must be thought upon also. She's first in my mind, and
always will be, and she needn't fear, when I go, that she'll be forgot. I've
managed pretty cleverly for her, well knowing that she'd not think of such
things when she grows up."

"Don't you force her to grow up too quick, however," urged Adam.
"Such a far-seeing man as you must not come between her and her own
generation, and keep her too close pent if you really go to the moor. Youth
cleaves to youth, Jacob; youth be the natural food of youth."

"You're wrong there," answered the elder. "Youth's hard, narrow,

ignorant and without heart. I want to get her away for her own sake. She's a
flower too fair to live with weeds. She's her mother again. The rest are dross
to her—workaday, coarse stuff, wishing me dead as often as they trouble to
think on me at all."

Adam argued against this opinion and indeed blamed Bullstone heartily.

"Don't you be poisoned against your own," he said. "The hardness of

youth isn't all bad. It often wears out and brings tenderness and
understanding with experience. I'd never fear a hard youngster: it's the
hardness of middle age that I'd fear."
 And no distant day proved Adam to have spoken well. A certain thing
fell out and Jacob remembered the other's opinion, for it seemed that
Winter's prophecy came true quicklier than even he himself might have
expected it to do so. On a certain Sunday in February their father received a
visit from John Henry and Avis. The latter did not bring her husband, since
the object of their visit proved purely personal to the family.

John Henry drove his sister in a little market cart from Bullstone Farm
and they surprised their father walking by the river. Auna accompanied him
and they were exercising some puppies. He had just pointed out to the flat
rock by the river where Margery was wont to sit, when she took vanished
generations of puppies for their rambles; then Auna cried out and the cart
stopped beside them.

John Henry alighted to shake hands with his father and Avis descended
and kissed him. He was astonished and asked the meaning of their visit.

"You'll catch it from Mrs. Huxam, playing about on Sunday," he said.

"We're not playing about," answered John Henry, "we've come on a very
important, family matter—our affair and not grandmother's at all. And we
thought we might stop for dinner and tea."

"Come and welcome; but I've done all I'm going to do, John Henry—all
for you and all for Avis. You're not going to squeeze me any more."

"We haven't come to squeeze you, father—quite the contrary," declared

Avis.

"Leave it till after dinner," directed the young man. "I heard you were
fixed beyond power of changing on Huntingdon; but I do hope that's not so,
father; because I think there's a good few reasons against."

"What you think is no great odds," answered Bullstone. "And why

should you think at all about it?"

"I'll tell you after dinner."

 He changed the subject and began talking of his farm. Already he had
new ideas.

"I don't see no use in that copse up the valley," he said. "'Tis good
ground wasted—only a place for badgers to breed, and we don't want them
killing the poultry. But if it was cleared to the dry-built wall—cleared
slowly and gradual in winter—it would give a bit of work and some useful
wood, and then offer three good acres for potatoes and rotation after. It's
well drained by nature and worth fifty pounds a year presently if not more."

"It's yours, John Henry. You'll do as you think best."

Jacob was in an abstracted mood and the sight of all his children met
together gave him pain rather than pleasure. They accentuated the empty
place and their spirits jarred upon him, for they were cheerful and noisy. He
thought that Auna was the brighter for their coming and resented it in a dim,
subconscious fashion.

They found him silent and absorbed. He seemed to withdraw himself

and pursue his own thoughts under their chatter. They addressed him and
strove to draw him into their interests, but for a time they failed to do so.
Once or twice Avis and Auna whispered together and Auna was clearly
excited; but Avis quieted her.

"I'll tell him myself come presently," she said.

When dinner was done, John Henry spoke.

"Light your pipe and listen, father. You must wake up and listen. I've
got a very big idea and I'm very wishful you'll think of it, and so is Avis."

He looked at them dreamily.

"What big idea could you have that I come into?" he asked.

"Why, you yourself and your future."

"Who's put you up to thinking about me at all? You weren't used to."
 "God's my judge nobody put me up to it; did they, Avis?"

"Nobody," answered Avis. "It was your own thought, and you asked me,
and I said it was a very fine thought."

"Nothing about Auna?"

"No, father. It's just this. I know you don't want to stop here. That's
natural. But there's other places beside the moor. And I'm very wishful
indeed for you to come and live with me at Bullstone—you and Auna. Then
you'd be near Peter, and Avis too; and she could come and go and look after
you."

Jacob took it ill. He believed that selfish motives had prompted John
Henry, nor did he even give him credit for mixed motives. Then, as he
remained silent, another aspect of the proposal troubled him. This woke
actual anger.

"To 'look after me'? To 'look after me'? God's light! what do you take
me for? D'you think my wits are gone and my children must look after me?
Perhaps you'd like to shut me up altogether, now you've got your farms?"

They did not speak and he took their silence for guilt, whereas it only
meant their astonishment.

"Where the hell did you scheming devils come from?" he shouted.
"Where's your mother in you? Are you all your blasted grandmother?"

Avis flushed and John Henry's face also grew hot. Auna put her arms
round her father's neck.

"Don't, don't say such awful things," she begged him; "you know better,
dear father."

Then John Henry spoke without temper.

"You wrong us badly when you say that, father. We meant no such thing
and was only thinking of you and Auna. You must have stuff to fill your
mind. You're not a very old man yet, and you're strong and active. And I