PICO DELLA MIRANDOLA, &VIA nV.-riin' di'cla, GIOVANNI, Count (14(13-94). An Italian philosopher and theologian. Ile was born Febru ary 24, 1463, the son of the sovereign prince of Mirandola and Concordia. From his fourteenth to his sixteenth year lie studied at the Univer sity of Bologna, and afterwards visited the prin cipal schools of Italy and France, everywhere distinguishing himself by his extraordinary facil ity of acquisition. He is said to have known more than twenty languages; he was familiar with the different phases of the scholastic philosophy, and was also versed in mathematics, logic, and physics. At the ague of twenty-three he returned to Rome, when Innocent VIII. was pontiff, and immediately sought an opportunity of showing his learning in the most striking,' manner, by publicly posting up no fewer than 900 theses or propositions in logic, ethics, physics. mathe matics, theology, science. and cabalistic magie, drawn from Latin, Greek, .hewish, and Arabic writers, offering to maintain an argument on eat]] against all the scholars of Europe, and un dertaking to pay the expenses of those who came from a distance. Pico presumptuously entitled
his theses De Omni lie Scibili (On Everything that can lie Known). Pope Innocent V111, re fused to allow Pico to carry on this discussion, inasmuch as some of his theses were deemed heretical. But Alexander VI. cleared him of the charge of heresy. He died November 17, 1494, at the early age of thirty-one. A complete edi tion of his works was published at Bologna in 1496; it has since been frequently reprinted. In philosophy Pico was a Neo-Platonist, though his thoughts are tinged with cabalism. Consult: Dreydorff, Dots System des Johannes Pico con. Hirandola -and Concordia (Marburg, 1858) ;Vita di Giovanni Pico della Ilirandola, filosofo platonico (Florence, 1882) ; l'ater, Stud ies in the History of the Renaissance (London, 1873) ; also his Life by his nephew, translated by T. More (ib., 1890).