Renaissance magic
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola
The founder of Christian Kabbalah, dead at thirty-one, who argued that magic and Kabbalah properly understood confirmed Christianity.
- Dates
- 1463 – 1494
- Dating
- documented dates
- Born
- Mirandola
- Died
- Florence
The life
He studied philosophy, languages and Jewish Kabbalistic material while trying to bring them into one Christian synthesis. In 1486 he announced that he would defend 900 Conclusions in Rome; church authorities condemned a number of the propositions.
Place in the tradition
Here Christian Kabbalah takes a recognisable form, reading Jewish mystical material through Christian theology.
a note on the record
History and later legend
The Oration's later reputation as 'the manifesto of the Renaissance' oversimplifies it: the text presents humanity as uniquely capable of self-transformation within a metaphysical hierarchy, which is a narrower and stranger claim.
the written record
Principal works
-
1486
900 Conclusions
Propositions covering philosophy, theology, magic and Kabbalah, arguing among other things that properly understood magic and Kabbalah confirm Christianity.
-
written 1486
Oration on the Dignity of Man
Originally conceived as an introduction to his proposed disputation.
-
1487
Apology
His defence of the condemned theses.
-
1489
Heptaplus
An elaborate sevenfold interpretation of the biblical creation narrative.
-
unfinished at his death
Disputations against Divinatory Astrology
Attacks deterministic judicial astrology, despite his earlier enthusiasm for other forms of occult philosophy.