Pico Della Mirandola

THE LIFE OF PICO DELLA MIRANDOLA BY 

HIS NEPHEW GIOVANNI PICO DELLA MIRANDOLA

TRANSLATED BY 

THOMAS MORE

EDITED WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY 

J.M.RIGG

WITH AN INTRODUCTORY ESSAY BY 

WALTER PATER

Bibliographic Note

The Life of Pico Della Mirandola was originally written in Latin by 

his nephew Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and translated into English 

by Thomas More in 1504. This Ex-Classics version is taken from an 

edition edited with intriduction and notes by J. M. Rigg, published 

by David Nutt in 1890. The spelling has been modernised.

The essay by Walter Pater is from The Renaissance: Studies in 

Art and Poetry (1873).

Title Page

GIOVANNI PICO DELLA MIRANDOLA: 

HIS LIFE BY HIS NEPHEW GIOVANNI FRANCESCO PICO: 

ALSO THREE OF HIS LETTERS; HIS INTERPRETATION OF PSALM XVI.; HIS 

TWELVE RULES OF A CHRISTIAN LIFE; HIS TWELVE POINTS OF A PERFECT 

LOVER; AND HIS DEPRECATORY HYMN TO GOD. 

TRANSLATED FROM THE LATIN 

BY 

SIR THOMAS MORE.

EDITED WITH INTRODUCTION AND NOTES 

BY 

J. M. RIGG, ESQ., 

OF LINCOLN S INN, BARRISTER-AT-LAW. 

LONDON: 

PUBLISHED BY DAVID NUTT IN THE STRAND. 

MDCCCXC.

PICO DELLA MIRANDOLA 

By 

Walter Pater

No account of the Renaissance can be complete without some 

notice of the attempt made by certain Italian scholars of the 

fifteenth century to reconcile Christianity with the religion of 

ancient Greece. To reconcile forms of sentiment which at first sight 

seem incompatible, to adjust the various products of the human mind 

to each other in one many-sided type of intellectual culture, to give 

humanity, for heart and imagination to feed upon, as much as it could 

possibly receive, belonged to the generous instincts of that age. An 

earlier and simpler generation had seen in the gods of Greece so many 

malignant spirits, the defeated but still living centres of the 

religion of darkness, struggling, not always in vain, against the 

kingdom of light. Little by little, as the natural charm of pagan 

story reasserted itself over minds emerging out of barbarism, the 

religious significance which had once belonged to it was lost sight 

of, and it came to be regarded as the subject of a purely artistic or 

poetical treatment. But it was inevitable that from time to time 

minds should arise, deeply enough impressed by its beauty and power 

to ask themselves whether the religion of Greece was indeed a rival 

of the religion of Christ; for the older gods had rehabilitated 

themselves, and men's allegiance was divided. And the fifteenth 

century was an impassioned age, so ardent and serious in its pursuit 

of art that it consecrated everything with which art had to do as a 

religious object. The restored Greek literature had made it familiar, 

at least in Plato, with a style of expression concerning the earlier 

gods, which had about it much of the warmth and unction of a 

Christian hymn. It was too familiar with such language to regard 

mythology as a mere story; and it was too serious to play with a 

religion.

"Let me briefly remind the reader"--says Heine, in the Gods in 

Exile, an essay full of that strange blending of sentiment which is 

characteristic of the traditions of the middle age concerning the 

pagan religions--"how the gods of the older world, at the time of the 

definite triumph of Christianity, that is, in the third century, fell 

into painful embarrassments, which greatly resembled certain tragical 

situations of their earlier life. They now found themselves beset by 

the same troublesome necessities to which they had once before been 

exposed during the primitive ages, in that revolutionary epoch when 

the Titans broke out of the custody of Orcus, and, piling Pelion on