Pico della Mirandola

Pico was the youngest son of the count of Mirandola and a prodigy. At fourteen he went to Bologna for canon law, then studied philosophy at Ferrara, Padua and Paris, learning Greek, Hebrew, Arabic and Aramaic. In Florence he met Ficino and Lorenzo de' Medici and joined the circle of the Platonic Academy.

In 1486 he published nine hundred theses drawn from every tradition, Greek, Arabic, Jewish and Christian, and invited the scholars of Europe to Rome to debate them at his expense. Pope Innocent VIII halted the debate and appointed a commission, which found thirteen theses heretical. He wrote an Apology; the whole book was banned; he fled to France and was arrested, then freed through Lorenzo's intervention and spent his remaining years in Florence. Under Savonarola's influence he turned to piety, and at thirty-one he died of poison, probably administered by his secretary.

The Oration on the Dignity of Man was meant to open the debate. God tells Adam that he has been given no fixed place, form or function, and may determine his own nature by his own will, sinking to the beasts or rising to the divine. Later ages read the passage as the manifesto of Renaissance humanism. Pico also wrote a long attack on astrology, arguing that the stars cannot govern beings with free will; the work influenced Kepler.