PICO DELLA MIRANDOLA. 57 g be found in the case of Matteo Palmiere of Pisa, reported to have been burned in 1433 for maintaining in his poem, the Ctttd di Vita, that the souls of men are the angels who stood neutral in the revolt of Satan. In reality, however, although the Inquisition dis- approved his book, the author was not persecuted ; he was honor- ably buried in Florence, and his portrait by Sandro Botticelli was placed over the altar of San Pietro Maggiore.* That it was not, however, always safe to presume on this favor shown to humanism is evident by the case of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, the wonder of his age, who in 1487, when but twenty- four years old, published a series of nine hundred propositions which he offered to defend in Rome against all comers, paying the expenses of scholars who might travel for the purpose from distant lands. The list was virtually de omni scibili, comprising everything recognized as knowable in theology, philosophy, and science, even including the mysteries of the East. It was doubt- less the pretentiousness of the young scholar which provoked enmity leading to animadversion on his orthodoxy, and it was not difficult in so vast an array of conclusions to find some thirteen which savored of heresy. To us it might appear a truism to say that belief is independent of volition ; we might hesitate to affirm positively whether Christ descended into hell personally or only effectively ; we might even agree with him that mortal sin, limited and finite, is not to be visited with chastisement unlimited and infinite ; and we might hesitate to embark with him in investigat- ing too narrowly the mysteries of transubstantiation ; but these speculative assumptions of the self-sufficient thinker were con- demned as heretical by the theologians appointed for their exami- nation by Innocent YIIL, who quietly remarked : " This youth wishes to end badly, and be burned some of these days, and then be infamous forever like many another." Pico was urged to resist and raise a schism, but nothing was further from his thoughts. His few remaining years were passed in the assiduous study of Scripture ; he designed, after completing certain works in hand, to wander barefoot over Europe preaching Christ ; then, changing his purpose, he intended to enter the Dominican Order, but his projects were cut short, at the age of thirty-two, by the fever
- D'Argentre 1. 11. 250.— Cantu, 1. 182, m. 699-700.
