Giovanni Pico della Mirandola has been a beacon of progress in modern times, and the Oration on the Dignity of Man has been the engine of his fame. But he never wrote a speech about the dignity of man. The prince's speech announced quite different projects: persuading Christians to become Kabbalists in order to annihilate themselves in God; and convincing philosophers that their path to saving wisdom was concord rather than disputation.
Pico della Mirandola On Trial: Heresy, Freedom, and Philosophy shows that Pico's work was in no way progressive - or 'humanist' - and that his main authorities were medieval clerics and theologians, not secular Renaissance intellectuals. The evidence is Pico's Apology, his self-defence against heresy charges: this public polemic reveals more about him than the famous speech that he never gave and that deliberately kept its message secret. The orator's method in the Oration was esoteric, but the defendant in the Apology made his case openly in a voice that was academic and belligerent, not prophetic or poetic.
Since the middle of the last century, textbooks written for college students have promoted only one Pico, a hero of progressive humanism. But his Conclusions and Apology, products of late medieval culture, were in no way progressive. The grim scene of the Apology, his report on a battle for life and honor, was the proximate medieval past where human history was despised as the annals of sin. To understand Pico's universe of dismal expectations, our best guide is his Apology, based on lessons learned from medieval teachers.
Author(s): Brian P. Copenhaver
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Year: 2022
Language: English
Pages: 285
City: Oxford
Cover
Pico della Mirandola on Trial: Heresy, Freedom, and Philosophy
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
List of Illustrations
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
1: Humanism Goes to Hell
1.1 Pico’s Scholastic Ambitions
1.2 Bread and Wine
1.3 Learned Heretics
1.4 Places in Hell
1.5 Doxastic Bondage
1.6 Defiance
1.7 Scholastic Disputes
1.8 Ethics, Logic, and Metaphysics
1.9 Thirteen Conclusions
2: What’s In a Word?: Metaphysics and Semantics
2.1 Gigantic Jokes
2.2 Old Words in Modern Times
2.3 Theodicy, Blasphemy, and Bad Spelling
2.4 Singular and Plural
2.5 Relations
2.6 Putting and Coming Under
2.7 Grammar
2.8 Logic and Theology
2.9 Terms of Art
2.10 Pico Against Humanism
3: What Can Be Taken On?: Pico’s Q4
3.1 Incarnation
3.2 Assenting and Asserting
3.3 Henry of Ghent’s Metaphysics
3.4 Henry’s Quodlibet 13.5
3.5 Pico’s Henry
3.6 Pico’s Fourth Question
Whether An Unreasoning Nature Can Be Made The Supposit by God
4: Where Is God’s Body?: Pico’s Q6, Q9, and Q10
4.1 Debating the Eucharist
4.2 Incarnation and Impanation
4.3 Pico’s Q6
4.4 A Logic for Consecration
4.5 Liturgy, Law, and Logic
4.6 Pico’s Ninth and Tenth Questions
Ninth Question: On Accidents in the Sacrament
Tenth Question: On the Words of Consecration
5: Is Heresy Willful? Pico’s Q8
5.1 Acts and Attitudes
5.2 Faith, Belief, and Opinion
5.3 The Will in Five Arguments
5.4 Holcot’s Belief
5.5 Pico’s Eighth Question
Eighth Question: On the Freedom of Believing
Conclusions: Pico Free and Unfree
C.1 Holcot’s Classicism
C.2 Pico No Humanist
Bibliography
Index
