Jean Peak of Mirandole

Jean Peak of Mirandole ( Giovanni Pico della Mirandola ) (born the February 24th 1463, dead the November 17th 1494) was a Italian Humaniste, third wire of an old family comtale.
Young heir to a considerable fortune, it had the leisure to study and travel to his own way, to devote his life to the knowledge. Néoplatonicien and follower of the natural Philosophy, he was pupil of Ficin. For the philosophers of today, Pic of Mirandole is that which turned the back on the Scolastique and wanted to reconcile the opposites by joining together the sublunary world of Aristote and that of the ideas of Plato, or by reconciling sciences, philosophy and religion, which was worth to him to be regarded as Hérétique by the pope Innocent VIII.

Historically, Pic is the first thinker external with the Judaïsme to have introduced the Kabbale into the philosophical studies, in particular in its Heptaple , devoted to seven days the kabbalistic interpretation of the Création. To have conceived the cabal like a system of interpretation able to clear up the mysteries of the Christianity, it is regarded as the founder of the Christian Kabbale (or philosophical cabal of the Rebirth).

Harrowing Yves, presenting his translation of the work Of the dignity of the man , us says this: When he writes Oratio of hominis dignitate , which should have introduced its Last nine hundred theses philosophical, theological and cabalistic , Pic of Mirandole is twenty-four years old. Quite conscious owing to the fact that “its ways answer neither its age, nor with its row”, it is however a new philosophy which he proposes with his elder; opened philosophy, accommodating all that, since the ancient Mysteries until the revealed religions, emanates from what one could call the “will of truth”.
The man is in the center of this philosophy, in what the divine one deposited in him this “to want”, this will of which it uses with his own way, creating it “creative itself”.

Biography

Jean Pic of Mirandole is born with Fossa, near Modena. He is youngest wire of the family of the counts of Mirandola and Concordia, feudal lords of a small field in the area of Emilie-Romagna. Early child endowed with an amazing memory, it makes very young studies in Latin, perhaps even in Greek. His/her mother intending it for the Church, it is named protonotaire apostolic at the ten years age, and will study the canonical Droit to Bologna in 1477.

When his/her mother dies suddenly two years later, Pic gives up the canonical right to undertake studies of Philosophie to the Université of Ferrare. During a short stay with Florence, it becomes acquainted with Ange Politien, the Poète of court Girolamo Benivieni and probably of the young person Dominican monk Savonarole. There will remain all its life very attached to his three friends, including in Savonarole, with the ascetic temperament and violently anti-humanistic. Peak was probably the lover of Politien.

Of 1480 with 1482, it pousuit its studies with the University of Padoue, a major center of philosophy aristotelician in Italy. Already very at ease in Latin and Greek, he studies in Padoue the Hebrew and the Arab near Élie del Medigo, a Jewish averroïste , which also makes him read manuscripts Araméen S. Del Medigo also translates for Pic of the handwritten Jews of Hebrew to Latin, as he will continue to do it during several years. In Padoue, Pic writes also Sonnet S - as well in Italian as in Latin - which it will destroy however at the end of its life.

Sometimes it spends the four following years at his place, sometimes to attend the humanistic centers of Italy. In 1485, it goes to the Université of Paris, the most important center of Théologie and Philosophie Scolastique of Europe - and a culture medium of the Latin Averroïsme. It is probably with Paris that Pic undertakes the drafting of its 900 Thèses and conceives the idea to defend them during a public debate.

In 1486, of return to Florence, it becomes acquainted with Laurent de Médicis and Marsile Ficin, the very same day where this last finishes its translation in Latin of works of Plato, under the enthusiastic patronage of Laurent. Both are subjugated by the charm of Peak. Laurent, until the day of his death, will support and protect Pic during the very difficult periods that this last will know. In fact, without Laurent, it is not very probable that the work of Peak had survived to him.

Peak leaves for Rome, with the intention to publish its 900 Thèses and to organize a meeting where scholars of all Europe will be able to discuss it. But in way, at the time of a halt with Arezzo, it is muddled in a business in love with the wife with one of the cousins of Laurent de Médicis. That costs him almost the life. Peak tries to flee with the lady, but it is caught up with, wounded and makes throw in prison by the husband. It should be slackened only with the intervention of Laurent himself. This incident illustrates well the often daring temperament of Peak, at the same time as honesty and the affection which it could nevertheless inspire.

Peak spends several months to Perugia and Fratta, located near, where it recovers from its wounds. It is there, like it writes it in Ficin, that it discovers “certain books who, by divine Providence, fell to me between the hands. They are chaldaïques pounds… of Esdras, Zoroastre and Nickel silver, oracles of the magi where an interpretation is, short and arid, philosophy chaldéenne, but full with mystery”. It is still in Perugia that Pic initiates with the mystical Jewish of the Kabbale, which it fascine, just like last classic authors of the Hermétisme, such Hermes Trismégiste. At that time, it was thought that the Cabal and Hermetism were as old as the Old Testament, so that Pic grants almost as much to them value than to the Écritures. Peak always proposed to make the full rotation of a subject and to consider it as much as possible under several angles, in order to have of it an idea which was in conformity possible with reality. For Peak, the Syncrétisme consisted in observing the same absolute from several different points of view, an approach scholastic with very modern resonances.

Peak based its ideas mainly on Plato, just like his Master Ficin, but it kept a deep respect for Aristote. Although it was itself produces it study of the Humanités (the studia humanitatis ), Pic was by nature an eclectic , and represented in certain connections a reaction against the exaggerations of the pure humanism; thus, in 1485, in long and celebrates letter with Hermolao Barbaro, it defends what there was the best in its eyes in the medieval and Arab commentators of Aristote, like Averroès and Avicenne. It was always the objective of Peak which to reconcile the partisans of Plato and those of Aristote, because it was convinced that one and the other expressed the same concepts, but with different words. Here is perhaps reason for which his/her friends called it “ princeps concordiae ”, i.e. “prince of the harmony”, (a word game, “Concordia” being one of the Fief S of its family). In the same way, Pic thought that an educated person was to also study the hébreuses sources and talmudic, as well as Hermetism, because it was convinced that they presented, in other words, the same image of God as the Old Testament.

It finishes its Discours on the dignity of the man , whom it proposes to attach to his 900 Thèses , then it goes to Rome to give following its project to defend them. It makes them publish in Rome in December 1486 under the title Conclusiones philosophicae, cabalasticae and theologicae and offers to defray the expenditure of any scholar who would come to Rome to discuss it publicly.

In February 1487, the pope Innocent VIII prohibits the debate suggested, and charges a commission with checking the Orthodoxie theses. Although Pic answers the charges whose they are the object, thirteen of them are condemned. Peak is committed in writing withdrawing them, but does not change an opinion as for their validity, and undertakes, to defend them, to write a Apologie ( Apologia J. Pici Mirandolani, Concordiae comitis , published in 1489), that it dedicates to Laurent. Informed of the circulation of this manuscript, the pope institutes a court of Inquisition, forcing Pic to also give up the Apology - what he once again agree to do.

Nevertheless, the pope declares his theses nonorthodoxe, affirming: “They are to some extent heretics, and to some extent fleurent the heresy; of aucunes are scandalous and offensive for pious ears; the majority do not make that to reproduce the errors of the pagan philosophers… others are likely to excite the impertinence of the Jews; number of them, finally, under pretext of natural philosophy want to support enemy arts of the catholic faith and mankind”

Peak of Mirandole and Voltaire

Voltaire was thus interested in Pic of Mirandole, in the final analysis to establish of it an overall negative assessment in its Essai on manners and the spirit of the nations :

It is even more extraordinary than this prince, having studied so many languages, could at twenty-four years support in Rome of the theses on all the objects of sciences, without excluding only one of them. One finds with the head of his works fourteen hundred general conclusions on which it offered to dispute. A little elements of geometry and the sphere were in this immense study the only thing which deserved its sorrows. All the remainder is only used to show the spirit of time. It is the Somme of holy Thomas; it is the precis of the works of Albert, called the Large one; it is a mixture of theology with the peripatetism. It is seen there that a Ange is infinite secundum quid : the animals and the plants are born from a corruption animated by the productive virtue. All is in this taste. It is what one learned in all the universities. Thousands of schoolboys filled the head with these dreams, and attended up to forty years the schools where they were taught. One did not know better in the remainder of the ground. Those which controlled the world were quite excusable then to scorn sciences, and Peak of Mirandole quite unhappy to have consumed its life and summary its days in these serious insanities (...) the history of the prince of Mirandole is only that of a schoolboy full with genius, traversing a vast career of errors, and guided as a blind man by Masters aveugles.

Even the apparent gift of Peak for the languages leaves it skeptic:

It is said that at the eighteen years age, it knew twenty-two languages. That is certainly not in the ordinary course of nature. There is language which does not take approximately a year for good to know it. Whoever in a so great youth knows twenty-two of them, can be suspected of knowing them well badly, or, rather it knows the elements of them, which is nothing savoir.

Bonds

http://agora.qc.ca/mot.nsf/Dossiers/Jean_Pic_de_la_Mirandole
Of the dignity of the man , Latin and French texts, translation of Harrowing Yves: http://www.lyber-eclat.net/lyber/mirandola/pico.html
an emission of France Culture on Peak of Mirandole: http://www.radiofrance.fr/chaines/france-culture2/emissions/vie_oeuvre/fiche.php?diffusion_id=42822
Paul Lejay, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola , Catholic Encyclopedia (1913). This article (to read in line) Catholic Encyclopedia was the starting point of the English version of this article.

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