- List of Figures*
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- I. Dignity
- 1. Vile Bodies and Naked Dignity
- 1. The Honored Dead
- 2. Missing Persons
- 3. Kant’s Dignity and Pico’s Dignitas
- 4. Manetti’s Dignitas 1
- 5. Cicero’s Dignitas
- 6. Christian Dignitas
- 7. Manetti’s Dignitas 2
- 8. Manetti’s Dignitas 3
- 9. Beyond Freedom and Dignity?
- 1. Vile Bodies and Naked Dignity
- II. Stories about Pico
- 2. Pico Dignified
- 1. Swiss Facts about Italy
- 2. Exalted Premonitions
- 3. Pico Resurgent
- 1. Yorick, Papini, and Pico
- 2. Oreglia and the Blood Libel
- 3. Festivities in Mirandola
- 4. Gentile’s Pico
- 5. Garin’s Pico
- 6. Gentile’s Pico Again
- 7. Anagnine’s Pico
- 8. Papini’s Kingdom
- 4. Pico Existentialist or Actualist?
- 1. Gentile Dead or Alive?
- 2. Actualism and Autoctisis
- 3. Existentialism and Modernism
- 4. Against ‘Humanism’
- 5. Pico Sainted
- 1. Practicing Death
- 2. Two Epistolaries and a Hagiography
- 3. Reading for a Nun
- 4. Ficino’s Letters
- 5. Savonarola
- 6. First Letters from Pico
- 7. More Letters from Pico
- 8. Last Letters from Pico
- 9. Pico Boxes
- 6. Pico Raving
- 1. Scholars and Syncretists
- 2. Judaizers and Stargazers
- 3. Schwärmer and Wound-Worms
- 7. Liberty, Enthusiasms, and Grace
- 1. Se vuol ballare Signor Contino…
- 2. Philosophy Dying
- 3. The Soul Has Wings
- 8. Pico Reviled and Redeemed
- 1. Pico with Dignity?
- 2. Pico for Philosophers and Theologians
- 9. Pippa Passes Pico
- 1. English Enthusiasms
- 2. The Italy of Savonarola Brown
- 3. Pictures of Pico
- 10. Pico across the Seas and Back
- 1. Pico Our Paladin
- 2. A Textbook Case
- 3. A Hermetic Pico
- 4. Festivities Again in Mirandola
- 2. Pico Dignified
- III. Pico’s Oration
- 11. Pico Orates
- 1. Secrets and Codes
- 2. Abulafia’s Ladder
- 3. Counting on Flavius
- 4. Oration I, 1–10
- 5. Oration II, 11–15
- 12. Pico Consults and Disputes
- 1. Oration III, 16–19
- 2. Oration III, 20–25
- 3. Oration III, 26–32
- 4. Oration III, 33–35
- 5. Oration IV, 36–45
- 6. Oration IV, 46–55
- 13. Pico Defends Magic and Kabbalah
- 1. Oration V, 56–62
- 2. Oration VI, 63–68
- 3. Oration VII, 69–72
- 11. Pico Orates
- Conclusion: Real Picos and Why They Matter
- Appendix A. Pico’s Oration
- Appendix B. Contents of Pico’s 900 Conclusions
- Appendix C. Selections from Pico’s 900 Conclusions
- Appendix D. Glossary
- Abbreviations
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Illustration Credits
- Index
- * Figures
- 1. “Dance of Death,” Nuremberg Chronicles, 1493
- 2. The Creation of Adam, Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo, 1508–1512
- 3. David, bronze by Donatello, Bargello, mid-fifteenth century
- 4. The Trent blood libel, Nuremberg Chronicles, 1493
- 5. The Bari Prefettura’s stamp on Anagnine’s book, 1937
- 6. “The Torments of Hell,” Seelenwurzgarten, 1483
- 7. “Death Takes a Nun,” Hans Holbein the Younger, 1538
- 8. “Credulity, Superstition, and Fanaticism,” Hogarth, 1762, detail
- 9. “Savonarola Brown,” Max Beerbohm, 1919
- 10. Lorenzo and Isabella, John Millais, 1849
- 11. “A Supper in the Rucellai Gardens,” Frederic Leighton, 1862
- 12. Miracle of the Sacrament, Cosimo Rosselli, 1484–1486
- 13. Miracle of the Sacrament, Rosselli, detail
- 14. Medal picturing Pico, attributed to Niccolò Fiorentino, before 1490
- 15. Three Portraits of Pico
- 16. The Childhood of Pico della Mirandola, Paul Delaroche, 1842
- 17. Ten Sefirot in the usual array
- 18. “Chameleon,” Alciato, Emblems, 1534
- 19. Abraham travels south
- 20. Ethiopic characters in a manuscript of the Oration, before 1494
- 21. Three Trinities in the Sefirot
- 22. Pico de Paperis Reads a Family Chronicle
Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library
I Tatti Renaissance Library
Loeb Classical Library
Murty Classical Library of India