§ 65. GREEK TEACHERS AND ITALIAN HUMANISTS. 597
Ciceronian Dialogues on Lust, written perhaps 1431, are an indirect attack upon Christian morality. Valla defended the Platonic community of wives. What nature demands is good and laudable, and the voice of nature is the voice of God. When he was charged by Poggio with having seduced his brother-in-law's maid, he admitted the charge without shame.
Pico_della Mjrandola, the most precocious genius that^had arisen since^Duns^Swjtu^ was cut down when he was scarcely 30 years of age. The Schoolman was far beyond him in dialectic subtlety, but was far inferior to him in independence of thought and, in this quality, Pico anticipated the coming age. He studied canon law, theology, philosoxjhy and the humanities in Ferrara and learned also Hebrew, Chaldee and Arabic.^ Tli Tiis twenty-third year, he went to Rome and published 900 theses on miscellaneous topics, in which he anticipated some of the Protestant views ; for example, that no image or cross should be adored and that the words " This is my body " must be understood symbolically, — significative, — not materially. He also maintained that the science of magic and the Cabbala confirm the doctrine of the Trinity and the deity of Christ. These opinions aroused suspicion, and 13 of his theses were condemned by Innocent VIII. as heretical ; but, as he submitted his judgment to the Church, he was acquitted of heresy, and Alexander VI. cleared him of all charges.
To his erudition, Pico added sincere faith, and ascetic ten- ^ncies. , In the last years of his short life, he devoted himself to the study of the Bible with the purpose of preaching Christ throughout the world. He was an admirer of Savonarola, who blamed him for not becoming a full monk and thought he went to purgatory. Of all Humanists he had the loftiest conception of man's dignity and destiny. In his De dignitate hominis, he
coarse controversial language, common to many of the Humanists, unfortunately Luther and Luther's Catholic assailants shared, and also Calvin.
1 The Theses of Pico, Rome, 1486, and Cologne. His Opera, Bologna, 1496, and together with the works of his nephew, John F. Piro, Basel, 1572, and 1601. — G. Dreydorfp : Das System des Joh. Pico von Mir., Marb., 1858. — Geiger, 204 sqq. — His Life, by his nephew, J. Fr. Pico. Trsl. from the Latin by Sir Thos. More, 1510. Ed., with Introd. and Notes, by J. M. Rigg, Lond., 1890.
598 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1204-1517.
maintained that God placed man in the midst of the world that he might the more easily study all tliat therein is, and endowed him with freewill, by wliich he might degenerate into the condition of the beast or rise to a godlike existence. He found the highest truth in the Christian religion. He is the author of the famous sentence : PMlosopMa veritatem qucerit, theologia invenit, religio possidet, — philosophy seeks the truth, theology finds it, religion has it.
Mirandola had a decided influence on John Reuchlin, wlio saw him in 1490 and was persuaded by him of the immense wisdom hid in the Cabbala. He also was greatly admired by Zwingli. He was the only one, says Burckhardt, " who, in a decided voice, fought for science and the truth of all the ages against the one-sided emphasis of classic antiquity. In him it is possible to see what a noble change Italian philosophy would have undergone, if the counter-Reformation had not come in and put an end to the whole higher intellectual movement."^ Giordano Bruno, one of the last representatives of the philosophical Renaissance, was condemned as a heretic by the Roman Inquisition and burnt on the Carapo de' Fiori in 1600. To the great annoyance of Pope Leo XIII., his admirers erected a statue to his memory on the same spot in 1889.
§ Q6. The Artists. Hcec est Italia diis sacra. — Pliny.
Italian Humanism reproduced the past. Italian art was original.^ The creative productions of Italy in architecture, sculpture and painting continue to render it the world's chief centre of artistic study and delight. Among Italian authors, Dante alone has a place at the side of Michelangelo, Raphael and Lionardo da Vinci. The cultivation of art began in the age of Dante with Cimabue and Giotto, butwlien Italian Humanism was declining Italian painting and sculpture were celebrating their highest triumphs, ^cli a combination and succe^P.a j^raen of genius in the fine arts as Italy produced, in a period extending_oyer thret^ cpJijjixi!:^JiiigJJi23lLigJIS-gi^ bean known. 1 1. 217. See also II. 73, 306 sq.