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Syncretism in the West : Pico's 900 Theses (1486) : The Evolution of Traditional Religious and Philosophical Systems : With a Revised Text, English Translation, and Commentary

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Syncretism in the West: Pico's 900 Theses (1486): The Evolution of Traditional Religious and Philosophical Systems With a Revised Text, English Translation, and Commentary by Stephen A. Farmer, Giovanni Pico Della Mirandola (MRTS: Medieval and Renaissance Texts & Studies) Born to the noble family of the Counts of Miran¬dola and Concordia near Modena, Pico lived on the edge of two distinct cultural periods, the former rooted in medieval scholasticism, the latter charac¬terized by the humanistic revival of classical thought. Pico's bright intellectualality and strong curiosity led him to study thoroughly both medieval and classical traditions in the most renowned cultural centers of learning of his time.. His multifaceted interests in all kinds of knowl¬edge, his peculiar life, as well as his precocious death constituted the basis for the rapid flourishing of his fame and for the spreading of his legendary biography also beyond Italian borders.
The myth of the "phoenix of his time", as the young Count was designated already by his con¬temporaries, has affected scholarly interpreta¬tions of Pico's intellectual speculation. Throughout the centuries, Pico's system of thought has been viewed as one of the earlier, more faithful, and most complete expressions of humanism. But his true originality actually becomes in Christianizing the Jewish kabbala and beginning a long line of Christian kabbalaistic speculation and magic.
Of scrupulous significance in this regard is the role played by hermetic theosophy in Pico's attempt to create an all-inclusive system of comprehension, deliberate to embrace and merge the most diverse philosophical and theological authorities. His plan of launching a concurrent syncretism (concordia) between a variety of religions and philosophical canons was unquestionably based upon scholarly fundamentals of his day.
Pico realized he had found in Jewish kabbala one of the major links between rational and religious systems of thought.
In 1486, while composing his famous 900 Theses, he resorted for the first time to a wide range of Jewish kabbalistic works, which had been trans¬lated on his request by the Jewish convert Flavius Mithridates (ca. 1450-1489). Pico plan was to submit and discuss all his Theses (which he had printed at the end of 1486) during a conference to be held in Rome early in 1487. A committee appointed by Pope Innocent VIII stopped Pico's plans, declaring that six of the the¬ses were suspect and condemning seven others. Most of the condemned Theses deal with Kabbalah. Pico immediately wrote his Apology in order to declare his innocence, but the result of this further attempt was that the Pope eventually denounced all the theses.
In one of the Conclusions condemned by the Church, Pico affirmed that 'no knowledge gives us more certainty about Christ's divinity than magic and Kabbalah'. In order to defend this ambiguous claim, Pico made an effort in his Apology to distin¬guish a good from an evil form of magic, as well as a positive from a negative Kabbalah. Accord¬ing to this distinction, the term Kabbalah was employed by the Jews to point out two distinct hidden disciplines, one dealing with a method for combining letters of the Hebrew alphabet (such a device, according to Pico, was not dissimilar from Ramon Llull's Ars), the second dealing with an investigation of the celestial beings dwelling above the sphere of the Moon; this second discipline was considered by the humanist as the higher form of natural magic. Thus, if investigation of supernal entities could be carried out by means of natural magic, this sort of kabbalistic magic would cer¬tainly allow the initiate to penetrate the mysteries of the divinity of Christ. In of the many ways his 900 Theses was a work that never received the explication it deserved and was planned, because it was aborted by the church, suspicious of syncretic systems as corrosive to dogma, and hence, to faith.
Farmer has come a long way in reconstructing the probable systems that Pico would have used to synthesize all knowledge as represented by these Theses arranged historically. Besides being the first full and only modern translation of the 900 Theses, using the special numbering system and a computer analysis of the language, Farmer makes a strong case for a much more original synthesis than has been conjectured by other modern scholars who have tended to look at the 900 Theses in a piecemeal fashion.
According to Farmer, `By the time of Pico's proposed the Vatican debate, the cumulative effects of over 2000 years of syncretistic processes had reached their most extreme levels ever. In the 900 Theses scores of earlier correlative principles of the warring subtraditions of Latin, Arabic, and Hebrew scholasticism, of Greek neo-Platonism and Aristotelianism, and of a wide range of esoteric traditions - Neo-pythagorean numerology, "Chaldean" and "Orphic" magic, pseudo-Hermetic mysticism and Pseudo-Mosaic Cabbalism - each a product of the repeated inbreeding of traditions of a still greater antiquity, emerged to give birth to the abstract concept of cosmological correspondents at the center of Pico' "new philosophy." The cumulative pressures of thousands of years of reconciling books in traditions of eventually lead to the elevation of the ultimate syncretic strategy as "the greatest of all" cosmic principles. Exegeses had completed its metamorphosis into cosmology; correspondents now lay at the very essence of reality: "whatever exists in all worlds is contained in each one"!'

The most important book ever published on the most gifted philosopher of the Italian Renaissance has been given to us by Stephen A. Farmer. His superb introductory essay is followed by a masterful translation of Pico's most significant writings. How lucky we are to be the beneficiaries of this truly marvelous scholarship!

This book is an excellent source for the study of Pico della Mirandola, his works, and his ultimate impact on cultural and intellectual thought. I am currently using it as a major source for my thesis involving Pico. Farmer's research sheds new light on aspects of Pico's life and the legacy of his works that were never considered before.