Considering the historical circumstances, Pico almost seems predestined to discover Jewish cabala for the purposes of Christian neoplatonism and to try to integrate its magic into the expanding system of Renaissance occult- ism. During the Middle Ages not only was the cabala basically hidden from gentile scholars, but so were traditional rabbinic teaching, and even, by and large, the Hebrew language. This happened partly because Christians did not trust the Jews, even suspecting that they consciously forged those passages of the Old Testament that were suitable for Christological expla- nations and Christian typological symbolism. Because of this atmosphere, those who became interested in the Hebrew language could not expect much support from Church institutions or the universities. Although in 1311 Pope Clement V encouraged the study of Hebrew, Arabic, and Sirian languages, even at the time of the Synod of Basel in 1432, Hebrew depart- ments were not present within strongholds of Christian learning such as the universities of Paris, Oxford, Bologna, and Salamanca (Lloyd Jones 1983, iv ff.). Another cause hindering the development of Hebrew studies in Europe was the attitude of the Jews themselves who considered it to be sacrilegious to share sacred knowledge with gentiles.
The spread of humanism and the new ideas of the Renaissance finally changed this situation. The humanist slogan “Back to the Sources” gen- erated efforts to research Hebrew and all the available texts surviving in this language. The study of the Bible was continued on the basis of new,
philological methods with the aim of cleaning the Holy Writ of the distortions of the previous centuries. From this time on the “three sacred tongues” (Latin, Greek and Hebrew) were of equal importance.
Two Renaissance popes, Nicholas V and Sixtus IV, accumulated significant collections of Hebrew manuscripts and encouraged translations from Hebrew to Latin. The Florentine neoplatonists rejoiced concerning this incentive since it fully coincided with their efforts to widen syncretically the theological and philosophical background of Christianity.17
In summing up the motivations behind the heightened interest in Hebrew studies, the following reasons ought to be taken into consider- ation: primarily there was a Christian-humanist motivation to incorpo- rate the third sacred language in the humanistically enlarged Christian tradition. Another important aspect was that until the Reformation froze the boundaries of religious thinking, many humanists had hopes about a new universal religion in which Christianity, Islam, and Judaism could be merged. I shall soon discuss the questions of these heterodox ideas, which strongly characterized the works of Christian cabalists from Pico through Reuchlin to Postel, since traces of them can be found among Dee’s angelic prophecies, too. Last but not least, the attention of the Florentine neoplatonists and their followers were turned toward Jewish culture because of certain similarities between the cabala and the her- metic doctrines of exaltatio.18
We should remember that Renaissance humanists thought the her- metic writings were as old as the books of Moses. While calling the
Corpus hermeticum “a book about the power and wisdom of God,” Ficino
became interested in certain rabbinical texts for the sake of comparison. But he did not know Hebrew and was unaware of the full system of the cabala. Pico, on the other hand, took the decisive step of bridging the separate traditions. In 1485, during a journey in Germany, Rudolf Agricola praised him as a “man who is well versed in all languages, in Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Chaldean, Arabic, and furthermore he is a theologian, a philosopher, a poet and in all excellent” (quoted by Secret 1985, 25). Although modern scholarship has doubts about the perfection of Pico’s knowledge of Hebrew (for example, Lloyd-Jones 1983), his familiarity with the cabala enabled him to develop hermetic-neoplatonic magic by infusing a cabalistic cosmogony into the hermetic mythology. From a parallel analysis of the two, he concluded that according to Trismegistus as well as the cabala God created the world by means of words.
In 1486 Pico went to Rome and advertized his nine hundred theses, in which he called for a public scholarly discussion of the possibility of
creating a syncretic theory that could accommodate all religions and philo- sophical schools in order to make the Christian doctrines even more per- fect. The theses were not unanimously approved, and a year later Pico had to defend himself from charges of dangerous heterodoxy. This polemical material nevertheless shows the twenty-three-year-old philosopher to have been a broad-minded humanist, interested in a wide range of topics, in- cluding mathematics, geography, medicine, and other sciences.19
The theses, or theorems, were divided into larger sections, the first few of which dealt with Christian, Arabic, Aristotelian, and Platonic philoso- phers: “Conclusiones secundum doctrines latinorum philosophorum et theologorum,” “Conclusiones secundum doctrinam Arabum,” “Conclusiones secundum grecos, qui peripateticam sectam profitentur,” “Conclusiones secundum doctrinam philosophorum, qui Platonici dicuntur.” In the next section Pico offered his own arguments for the reconcilability of Aristotelism and Platonism (“Conclusiones numero quingentae secundum opinionem propriam”). Most startling was the last section—“Questiones ad quas pollicetur se per numeros responsurum”—in which he included subsec- tions dealing with the mysticism of Zoroaster and the Chaldeans, magic in general, the mystical hymns of Orpheus, and, finally, seventy-one theses on the Hebrew cabala: “Conclusiones cabalisticae numero 71, secundum opinionem propriam, ex ipsis Hebreorum sapientium fundamentis Christianam Religionem maxime confirmantes.”
Pico advertised twenty-six theses on magic, which scholarship refers to as the Conclusiones magicae. In the first thesis Pico employs the ma- neuver of his mentor, Ficino, separating himself from the outset from black, diabolic magic. “Magia naturalis licita est, et non prohibita . . .” states the second thesis (Pico 1973, 78), and in the third he claims that magic is part of science. The following theses deal with questions of magic and the cabala, and claim that there are no more suitable means for proving the divinity of Christ than these: “Nulla est scientia que nos magis certificet de divinitate Christi, quam Magia et Cabala”(Conclusiones
magicae 9, in Pico 1973, 79).
The nine hundred theses were to be introduced by a preface, an oration on the dignity of man. Although the theses were never published, the Oratio . . . was permitted to appear in 1487. This pamphlet is the peak of Pico’s early career, perhaps his whole scholarly output. The views expressed in it became emblematic images of Renaissance ideology.20
According to the Oratio . . . there are two kinds of magic: one is harmful and is the work of demons, while the other is pure natural philosophy. The latter helps man to extend and exploit his potential to
the ultimate limits. The treatise starts with the famous saying of Hermes Trismegistus, “Magnum, o Asclepi, miraculum est homo,” and this is the maxim that urged Pico to venture into his philosophical investigation concerning the divine nature of man:
When I weighed the reason for these maxims, the many grounds for the excellence of human nature reported by many men failed to satisfy me—that man is the intermediary between creatures, the intimate of the gods, the king of the lower beings, the interpreter of nature, but little lower than the angels. [. . .] Admittedly great though these reasons be, they are not the principal grounds, that is, those which may right- fully claim for themselves the privilege of the highest admiration. For why should we not admire more the angels themselves and the blessed choirs of heaven? At last it seems to me I have come to understand why man is the most fortunate of creatures and consequently worthy of all admiration and what precisely is that rank which is his lot in the universal chain of Being—a rank to be envied not only by brutes but even by the stars and by minds beyond this world. (Section 1; Pico 1948, 223)
In the following sections he argues that the divine nature of man has roots in God’s desire to have a creature of universal potential who can fully appreciate the work of creation:
When the work was finished, the Craftsman kept wishing that there were someone to ponder the plan of so great a work, to love its beauty, and to wonder at its vastness. Therefore, when everything was done (as Moses and Timaeus bear witness), He finally took thought concerning the creation of man. [. . .] He therefore took man as a creature of indeterminate nature and, assigning him a place in the middle of the world, addressed him thus: “Neither a fixed abode nor a form that is thine alone nor any function peculiar to thyself have we given thee, Adam, to the end that according to thy longing and according to thy judgement thou mayest have and possess what abode, what form, and what function thou thyself shalt desire.” (Sections 2–3, 224)
This special status, the concentration of potential and possibilities, then ordain man to shape his fate with full freedom and even elevate himself directly to God:
We have made thee neither of heaven nor of earth, neither mortal nor immortal, so that with freedom of choice and with honor, as though
the maker and molder of thyself, thou mayest fashion thyself in what- ever shape thou shalt prefer. Thou shalt have the power to degenerate into the lower forms of life, which are brutish. Thou shalt have the power, out of thy soul’s judgement, to be reborn into the higher forms, which are divine. (section 3, 225)
From this statement Cassirer postulated the novelty of the Renaissance world picture in comparison with that of the Middle Ages: the so-called man-centered ideology is nothing but the idea of man capable of exaltatio, of moving upward along the Great Chain of Being and becoming the partner of the Creator. Pico himself must have felt rapture from his own thoughts because the following passages reach an exalted poetical intensity:
O supreme generosity of god the Father, O highest and most marvelous felicity of man! To him it is granted to have whatever he chooses, to be whatever he wills. [. . .] And if, happy in the lot of no created thing, he withdraws into the center of his own unity, his spirit, made one with God, in the solitary darkness of God, who is set above all things, shall surpass them all. (section 4, 225)
After corroborating his thesis about the privileged place of man by citing the Bible and classical authors, he poses the question: “what ought we to do to achieve ascension?” Following the Apostle Paul and Dionysius the Areopagite he suggests that the first step is purification (cf. Völker 1958, passim). This will lead to illumination and perfection. Pico’s argu- mentation is quite eclectic: the variety of his sources indicates that the new theology will have to be an amalgamation of the great world reli- gions and that Christianity will have to be renewed with the help of classical philosophy. He refers to Jacob’s ladder and the example of Job from the Old Testament, then he mentions the Egyptian mythology of Osiris to which he adds a few thoughts from Empedocles.
Then he outlines the hierarchy of human learning, setting up the following triad: moral philosophy—natural philosophy and dialectics— theology. This threefold division corresponds to the neoplatonic concept of sensual, rational, and intuitive knowledge. On the highest level one finds the Peace that springs from the understanding of the One and Primordial Truth, no matter whether it is the result of Christian, Pythagorean, or cabalistical meditation:
This is that peace which God creates in his heavens, which the angels descending to earth proclaimed to men of good will, that through it
men might ascend to heaven and become angels. Let us wish this peace for our friends, for our century. (section 14, 232)
Pico draws a parallel between the process of initiation in Moses and in the Greek mysteries before he comes to a conclusion by restating the program of ultimate sacred exaltatio:
Who would not long to be initiated into such sacred rites? Who would not desire, by neglecting all human concerns, by despising the goods of fortune, and by disregarding those of the body, to become the guest of the gods while yet living on earth, and, made drunk by the nectar of eternity, to be endowed with the gifts of immortality though still a mortal being? (section 16, 233)
The second part of the Oratio . . . , after having introduced the state of rapture through sacred illumination, is devoted to a detailed method- ology of achieving the desired ascension to God. Here Pico supports Apollo’s precepts derived from the oracle of Delphoi (“Nothing too much,” “Know thyself,” “Thou art” [i.e., the theological greeting, ⑀_]); then he offers an imposing outline of various philosophical schools, beginning with the teachings of Pythagoras, Socrates, Chaldean magic, and Zoroaster, continuing with Christian philosophers (Augustinus, John Scotus Erigena, Thomas Aquinas, Albertus Magnus), the Arabs (Averroes, Alfarabi, Avicenna), and finishing with the Greek platonists (Theophrastus, Ammonius, Porphyry, Iamblichus, Plotinus, Proclus, and others). At this point he openly attests syncretism:
I have so prepared myself that, pledged to the doctrines of no man, I have ranged through all the masters of philosophy, investigated all books, and come to know all schools. Therefore, I had to speak of them all. (section 26, 242)
[. . .] This has been my reason for wishing to bring before the public the opinions not of a single school alone but rather of every school. (section 28, 244)
After this methodological introduction, Pico discusses in a detailed way his sources belonging to heterodox or apocryphal philosophical trends, such as the hermetic writings, Pythagorean mysticism, and the Jewish cabala. Finally he adds his own conclusions:
I have not been content to add to the tenets held in common many teachings taken from the ancient theology of Hermes Trismegistus,
many from the doctrines of the Chaldeans and of Pythagoras, and many from the occult mysteries of the Hebrews. I have proposed also as subjects for discussion several theses in natural philosophy and in divinity, discovered and studied by me. (section 29, 245)
Hereafter Pico summarizes his nine hundred theses which he orders in six groups: the first group covers the correspondences between Plato and Aristotle whom Pico does not see as irreconcilable as many of his contem- poraries thought (section 29). The second group offers seventy-two new propositions concerning natural philosophy and metaphysics derived from the parallel study of both Plato and Aristotle (section 30). The third great topic is Pythagorean number mysticism (section 31); the fourth is the area of magic (sections 32–33); the fifth touches upon the cabala (sections 34– 37); and, finally, in the sixth group Pico explains his own ideas concerning the prophetic verses of Orpheus and Zoroaster (section 37).
For our present concern, we should concentrate on the propositions relating to magic and the cabala. He continually emphasizes the difference between white and black magic, that is mageis and goétia. Here he cites Porphyry to assert that the word magus in Persian means the interpreter of the gods. From the history of white magic he mentions the ancients (Zalmoxis, Zoroaster, Plato, Apollonius, Hostanes, and Dardanus), the Arab Al-Kindi, and medieval authorities (Roger Bacon and Villiam of Auvergne). All of them practiced a magic that “rouses [the magus] to the admiration of God’s works which is the most certain condition of a willing faith, hope, and love” (section 33, 249). Pico uses a metaphor that reminds one of Ficino: “As the farmer weds his elms to vines, even so does the magus wed earth to heaven, that is, he weds lower things to the endowments and powers of higher things” (ibid.). Pico’s image suggests an ambition to join the sypathetic magic of the Middle Ages with the new, hermetic theology. But how to avoid the mixing of the two magics, white and black? How can the magus preserve his purity during the concrete operations? This is to be achieved with the help of the mystical lore of the Jews, the cabala.
I come now to the things I have elicited from the ancient mysteries of the Hebrews and have cited for the confirmation of the inviolable Catholic faith. [. . .] Not only the famous doctors of the Hebrews, but also from among men of our opinion Esdras, Hilary, and Origen write that Moses on the mount received from God not only the Law, which he left to posterity written down in five books, but also a true and more occult explanation of the Law. (section 34, 250)
[In it t]here is the mystery of the Trinity, there the Incarnation of the Word, there the divinity of the Messiah. . . . (section 36, 252)
Although the Oratio . . . does not say more about the connection of magic and the cabala, from the Conclusiones magicae one can see that for Pico it was the cabala that could ensure the safe handling of magic. The reason for this was that the cabala dealt only with the sacred names of God and the angels, with the sacred letters of the “holy tongue,” and so because of its medium could not turn in any dangerous direction.
As we know, John Dee had an 1532 edition of Pico’s nine hundred theses (R&W 974, B121). What could he have found crucial in them and in the introductory Oratio . . . ? To begin with, certainly the bold and daring spirit advocating philosophical and theological syncretism and at the same time fervently rejecting the charges that his experiments could be termed as black magic. Dee also might have been attracted by the lofty, sometimes nearly poetical diction of the introduction in de- scribing the exaltatio—a style toward which he himself often tended. As for the theses, they were written in Dee’s favorite scientific genre, a series of theorems such as he used to express his ideas in the Propaedeumata
aphoristica and the Monas hieroglyphica. Furthermore, in Pico’s work he
could find references to a mix of classical, Arabic, and Christian authors, and he also could gain inspiration to look into the hermetic writings as well as the cabala. Last, but not least, in the Oratio . . . one finds some of Dee’s crucial iconographical-ideological motifs, like the mention of Jacob’s ladder and several references to Enoch’s translation from earth to the throne of God and his conversations with angels.
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To summarize, in the magical ideology of the Florentine neoplatonists, we can see that the texts I have reread as Dee’s possible sources were rich in theoretical observations and programmatic recommendations, although they provided little in the way of technological advice in practical direc- tions. This could follow because of several reasons, including the natural caution of theologians and the fact that natural science in fifteenth- century Italy was not in the forefront of investigations. Thirdly, the neoplatonist orientation, in fact, worked against the pursuit of systematic experimentation, since Platonism always favored theoretical speculations and metaphoric expression as opposed to more rationalistic Aristotelianism. In this respect even Pico, who tried to reconcile Plato and Aristotle, is