[8] The family had long dwelt in the Castle of Mirandola (Duchy of Modena), which had become independent in the fourteenth century and had received in 1414 from the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund the fief of Concordia.

The Pico della Mirandola were closely related to the Sforza, Gonzaga and Este dynasties, and Giovanni's siblings wed the descendants of the hereditary rulers of Corsica, Ferrara, Bologna, and Forlì.

[8] Born twenty-three years into his parents' marriage, Giovanni had two much older brothers, both of whom outlived him: Count Galeotto I continued the dynasty, while Antonio became a general in the Imperial army.

His cousin and contemporary was the poet Matteo Maria Boiardo, who grew up under the influence of his own uncle, the Florentine patron of the arts and scholar-poet Tito Vespasiano Strozzi.

[12] Already proficient in Latin and Greek, he studied Hebrew and Arabic in Padua with Elia del Medigo, a Jewish Averroist, and read Aramaic manuscripts with him as well.

And if any philosopher or theologian, even from the ends of Italy, wishes to come to Rome for the sake of debating, his lord the disputer promises to pay the travel expenses from his own funds.

It was an astrologically auspicious day that Ficino had chosen to publish his translations of the works of Plato from Greek into Latin, under Lorenzo's enthusiastic patronage.

Pico appears to have charmed both men, and despite Ficino's philosophical differences, he was convinced of their Saturnine affinity and the divine providence of his arrival.

Pico's "tutor" in Kabbalah was Rabbi Johannan Alemanno (1430s – c. 1510), who argued that the study and mastery of magic was to be regarded as the final stage of one's intellectual and spiritual education.

Although he was a product of the studia humanitatis, Pico was constitutionally an eclectic, and in some respects he represented a reaction against the exaggerations of pure humanism, defending what he believed to be the best of the medieval and Islamic commentators, such as Averroes and Avicenna, on Aristotle in a famous long letter to Ermolao Barbaro in 1485.

[19] Similarly, Pico believed that an educated person should also study Hebrew and Talmudic sources, and the Hermetics, because he thought they represented the same concept of God that is seen in the Old Testament, but in different words.

He wanted the debate to begin on 6 January, which was, as historian Steven Farmer has observed, the feast of Epiphany and symbolic date of the submission of the pagan gentes to Christ in the persons of the Magi.

After emerging victorious at the culmination of the debate, Pico planned not only on the symbolic acquiescence of the pagan sages, but also the conversion of Jews as they realised that Jesus was the true secret of their traditions.

When the pope was apprised of the circulation of this manuscript, he set up an inquisitorial tribunal, forcing Pico to renounce the Apologia, in addition to his condemned theses, which he agreed to do.

Ficino wrote: Our dear Pico left us on the same day that Charles VIII was entering Florence, and the tears of men of letters compensated for the joy of the people.

[24] Forensic tests showed that both Poliziano and Pico likely died of arsenic poisoning, possibly at the order of Lorenzo's successor, Piero de' Medici.

[26] In the Oratio de hominis dignitate (Oration on the Dignity of Man, 1486), Pico justified the importance of the human quest for knowledge, masterfully blending Neoplatonism and Aristotelian Scholasticism.

[27] The Oration also served as an introduction to Pico's 900 theses, which he believed to provide a complete and sufficient basis for the discovery of all knowledge, and hence a model for mankind's ascent of the chain of being.

Pico's De animae immortalitate (Paris, 1541), and other works, developed the doctrine that man's possession of an immortal soul freed him from the hierarchical stasis.

Early in his career, Pico wrote a Commento sopra una canzone d'amore di Girolamo Benivieni, in which he revealed his plan to write a book entitled Poetica Theologia:[31] It was the opinion of the ancient theologians that divine subjects and the secret Mysteries must not be rashly divulged... the Egyptians had sculpted sphinxes in all their temples, for no other reason than to indicate that divine things, even when they are committed to writing, must be covered with enigmatic veils and poetic dissimulation... How that was done... by Latin and Greek poets we shall explain in the book of our Poetic Theology.

Pico's Heptaplus, a mystical-allegorical exposition of the creation according to the seven Biblical senses, elaborates on his idea that different religions and traditions describe the same God.

The book is written in his characteristic apologetic and polemic style: If they agree with us anywhere, we shall order the Hebrews to stand by the ancient traditions of their fathers; if anywhere they disagree, then drawn up in Catholic legions we shall make an attack upon them.

In short, whatever we detect foreign to the truth of the Gospels we shall refute to the extent of our power, while whatever we find holy and true we shall bear off from the synagogue, as from a wrongful possessor, to ourselves, the legitimate Israelites.