page_title: Giovanni Pico della Mirandola
section_title: Cultural references
hierarchical_section_title: Giovanni Pico della Mirandola / Cultural references
context_page_description: Giovanni Pico della Mirandola was an Italian Renaissance nobleman and philosopher. He is famed for the events of 1486, when, at the age of 23, he proposed to defend 900 theses on religion, philosophy, natural philosophy, and magic against all comers, for which he wrote the Oration on the Dignity of Man, which has been called the "Manifesto of the Renaissance", and a key text of Renaissance humanism and of what has been called the "Hermetic Reformation". He was the founder of the tradition of Christian Kabbalah, a key tenet of early modern Western esotericism. The 900 Theses was the first printed book to be universally banned by the Church.
context_section_description: The beardless young man in Raphael's fresco The School of Athens (1509–11) is thought to be Pico della Mirandola (or maybe Francesco della Rovere). Christiane Joost-Gaugier described Pico della Mirandola as "a major philosophical inspiration of the fresco's program, especially insofar as he was the most outspoken proponent of the harmony of Plato and Aristotle."
  In James Joyce's Ulysses, the precocious Stephen Dedalus recalls with disdain his boyhood ambitions, and apparently associates them with the career of Mirandola: "Remember your epiphanies written on green oval leaves, deeply deep...copies to be sent if you died to all the great libraries of the world...Pico della Mirandola like."
  Of minor interest is a passing reference to Mirandola by H. P. Lovecraft, in the story The Case of Charles Dexter Ward (1927). Mirandola is given as the source of the fearsome incantation used by unknown evil entities as some sort of evocation. However, this "spell" was first depicted (as the key to a rather simple form of divination, not a great and terrible summoning) by, and in all likelihood created by, Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim in his Three Books of Occult Philosophy. This was written several decades after Mirandola's death and was the first written example of that "spell", so it is almost impossible for Mirandola to have been the source of those "magic words".
  Psychoanalyst Otto Rank, a rebellious disciple of Sigmund Freud, chose a substantial excerpt from Mirandola's Oration on the Dignity of Man as the motto for his book Art and Artist: Creative Urge and Personality Development, including: "...I created thee as a being neither celestial nor earthly... so that thou shouldst be thy own free moulder and overcomer...".
  In Umberto Eco's novel Foucault's Pendulum the protagonist Casaubon claims that the idea that the Jews were privy to the enigma of the Templars was "a mistake of Pico Della Mirandola" caused by a spelling mistake he made between "Israelites" and "Ismaelites."
  In Irving Stone's novel about Michelangelo, The Agony and the Ecstasy, book 3, part 3 contains a paragraph's description of Mirandola as part of the scholarly circle that surrounded Lorenzo di Medici in Florence. Mirandola was described as a man who spoke 22 languages, was deeply read in philosophy, and someone who made no enemies.
  Philosopher of social science René Girard mentions Mirandola passingly in his book Des choses cachées depuis la fondation du monde (Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World), Girard writes in a disparaging tone, "People will accuse us of playing at being Pico della Mirandola—the renaissance man—certainly a temptation to be resisted today, if we wish to be seen in a favourable light." (p. 141, 1987)
  In Roberto Bolaño's novel 2666, the philosophy professor Oscar Amalfitano begins his three-columned list of philosophers with Pico della Mirandola. Adjacent to Mirandola, Amalfitano writes Hobbes, while beneath him he writes Husserl (p. 207, 2008).
  In Frédéric Lenoir's novel L'Oracle della Luna (2006), the philosophy of Pico della Mirandola forms one of the major teachings acquired by the protagonist, Giovanni, from his main spiritual Master. The year is 1530. The major mentions are:
  at the end of Chapter 21 the sage – a fictitious character – says he has personally met Pico della Mirandola and discusses Mirandola's disagreement with the pope about the 900 Theses (with Lenoir stating that only 7 of them had not been accepted) and the philosopher's later fate. In the words of the sage, the main goal of Ficino and Pico della Mirandola was to acquire universal knowledge, free from prejudice and from linguistic and religious barriers;
  at the end of Chapter 24, having discussed Luther's concept of free will, the sage wants the acquaint Giovanni with Mirandola's ideas on this issue and lets him read "De hominis dignitate"; Giovanni peruses the book with great interest in Chapter 25;
  at the beginning of Chapter 26, with Giovanni having now read the Oration on the Dignity of Man, the sage discusses two issues from the book with
caption: Figure from Raphael's The School of Athens, possibly Pico della Mirandola.
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