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
