PICO DELLA MIRANDOLA, GIOVANNI (1463–1494), philosopher of the Italian Renaissance, was the youngest son of Francesco Pico, count of Mirandola and Concordia, a small feudal territory just west of Ferrara. He was named papal protonotary at the age of ten and was sent to study canon law at Bologna in 1477. Two years later he began the study of philosophy at Ferrara, and from 1480 to 1482 he studied at Padua, one of the main centers of Aristotelianism. He visited Paris, where he encountered Scholastic theology, returned to Florence, and then moved to Perugia, where he studied Hebrew and Arabic with several Jewish teachers. In Perugia, Pico developed an interest in Ibn Rushd (Averroës) and the mystical Jewish Qabbalah. In his late twenties, after a carefree youth, Pico's life took a more serious turn. He gave up his share of his patrimony and planned to...