" Joannes jacet hie Mirandula : eastern nornnt
Et Tagus, et Ganges ; forsau et Antipodes."
The greater part of his immense fortune he gave over
in his last days to his friend, tlie mystical poet Beni-
vieni, to be spent by him in works of charity, chiefiy in
the sweet charity of providing marriage-do-\\Ties for the peasant girls of Florence.
Short as his life was, Mirandula composed a great number of works, which have olten been printed sepa- rately and together. They have been printed together at Bologna (1490), at Venice (1498), at Strasburg (1504), and at Basle (1557, 1573, 1601)— all in folio. The prin- cipal works in the collection are, Heptaplus, id est de Dei creaioi-is opere sex dierum libri septem (Strasburg, 1574, fol. ; translated into French by Nicolas le Fevre de la Boderi, under the title L^JIepiaple, ou en sept /ci^ons et autant de llvres est exposee Vhistoire des sept jours de la creation du monde [Florence, about 1480; Paris, 1578, fol.]). " Pico de la INIirandula," says Matter, " convinced that the books of Moses, interpreted with the aid of the Cabala and of Neo-Platonism, would appear as the source of all speculative science, wrote an exposition of Genesis according to the seven meanings given to it by some of the exegetes of that period. But this work, rather short for such a subject and such a purpose, is really but a weak imitation, even in regard to its title, of the works of some of the fathers. Here is a specimen of his manner of interpretation. The words ' God created the heav- ens and the earth,' are made by him to signify that God created the soul and the body, which can very well be considered as represented by heavens and euiih. The waters under the heavens are our sensitive faculties, and their being gathered together in one place indi- cates the gathering of our senses in a common senso- rium. This allegorical manner, borrowed from Origen, or rather from Philo, is probably anterior even to the latter; and it is evident that this could not afford the means of reconciling philosophy and theology. Gener- ally speaking, ^Mirandula, whose genius was so preco- cious, so brilliant, and so comprehensive, wrote too young and too fast, and with too much confidence in second- hand learning, while his imagination was too vivid not to prevent his giving full satisfaction to the claims of reason. All his works bear the marks of that general kind of knowledge one possesses in leaving the schools, but nowhere do they evince that depth and originality which are the fruits of meditation and of patient re- search. He was a prodigy of memory, of elocution, of dialectics; he was neither a writer nor a thinker." The reader may do well to compare with this estimate of IMirandula, Pater's enthusiastic tribute to the author of the " Heptaplus :" — Conclusiones philosophicce, cabalisti- ccB et iheolofficm (Rome, 148G, fol.) ; these are the fa- mous theses which made such a sensation at the time, but are now looked upon only as curiosities: — Apologia J. Pici Mirandulani, Concordim comitis (1489, ft)l., very scarce); it is JMirandula's defence against the charge of heres}'; the writer corrects some singular instances of ignorance on the part of his accusers : one of them, for instance, took Cabala for the name of a man, and asserted that it was a scoundrel who had written against Christ: — Dispiitationes adversus asti-ologiam di- vinatricem libri xii (I?ologna, 1495, fol.) : — Anrece adfa- miliares epistolce (Paris, 1499, 4to; Venice, 1529, 8vo ; re- printed by Cellariiis, 1682, 8vo) : — Elegia deprecatoria ad Deum (Paris, 1620, 4to) : — De Ente et Uno opus, in quo plurimi loci in Moise, in Platone et Aristotele expUcan- tur ; De hominis dignitute (Basle, 1580, 8vo) : — Commento del signor Giovanni Fico sopra una canzone de, amove, compostu da Girolamo Benivieni, cittadino Fiorentino, sls- cundo la mente ed opinione dei Platonici (Florence, 1519, 8vo; Venice, 1522, 8vo), a commentary in the manner of Plato's Banquet, and very readable. " With an am- bitious array of every sort of learning, and a profusion of imagery borrowed indifferently from the astrolo- gers, the Cabala, Homer, Scripture, and Dion)'sius the Areopagite, he attempts to define the stages by which the soul passes from the earthly to the unseen beati- tudes." It has been well said that the Renaissance of the 15th century was in many things great rather by what it designed than by what it achieved. The same may be appropriately appUed to Mirandula's efforts.
MIREPOIX
330
MIR OX
" He had sought knowledge, and passed from system to system, and hazarded miicli; but less for the sake of positive knowledge than because he believed there was a spirit of order and beauty in knowledge, which would come down and unite what man's ignorance had di- vided, and renew what time had made dim. And so while his actual work has passed away, yet his own
seemly dread of losing her influence and position, and led her into complaints of and dangerous reflections upon Closes, in which Aaron joined (see Kitto's iJuily Bible Illusli: ad loc). See Zippohaii. Their question, " Hath Jehovah spoken by Closes ? Hath he not spoken also by usV" (Numl). xii, 1, 2), implies that the prophetic gift was exercised by them ; while the answer implies that