PICO DELLA MIRANDOLA, GIOVANNI, COUNT Italian philosopher and writer, the youngest son of Giovanni Francesco Pico, prince of Mirandola, a small territory not far from Ferrara, afterwards absorbed in the duchy of Modena, was born on Feb. 24, 1463. In his fourteenth year Pico went to Bologna, where he studied for two years, and was much occupied with the Decretals. He then spent seven years wander ing through Italy and France and collecting a precious library. Besides Greek and Latin he knew Hebrew, Chaldee and Arabic ; and his Hebrew teachers introduced him to the Kabbalah. He settled in 1486 at Rome, where he set forth for public disputa tion a list of nine hundred questions and conclusions in all branches of philosophy and theology, but the pope prohibited them, and Pico had to defend the impugned theses in an elaborate Apologia. His personal orthodoxy was subsequently vindicated by Alexander VI. Pico was the first to seek in the Kabbalah a proof of the Christian mysteries and it was by him that Reuchlin was led into the same delusive path.
In his 28th year Pico published the Heptaplus, a mystical exposition of the Creation. Next he planned a great seven-fold
work against the enemies of the Church, of which only the section against astrology was completed. After leaving Rome he again lived a wandering life, often visiting Florence, to which he was drawn by his friends Politian and Marsilius Ficinus, and where also he came under the influence of Savonarola. Three years before his death he parted with his share of the ancestral princi pality, and designed, when certain literary plans were completed, to give away all he had and wander barefoot through the world preaching. But these plans were cut short by a fever which ended in his death at Florence on Nov. 17, His works were published at Bologna in 1496 by his nephew, with a biography, which was translated by Sir Thomas More as Life of John Picus, Earl of Mirandola, in 151o. See Walter Pater's Renaissance (1878) ; the study by J. Rigg, prefixed to the reprint of More's Life in the "Tudor Library" (189o). Mortetani, La filosofia cabbalistica di Pico della Mirandola (Empoli, 1898) ; and A. Levy, Die Philosophie Picos della Mirandola (1908).