Giovanni Pico della Mirandola: Difference between revisions

At the sudden death of his mother three years later, Pico renounced canon law and began to study philosophy at the [[University of Ferrara]].<ref name="Baird"/> During a brief trip to Florence, he met [[Angelo Poliziano]], the [[courtly]] poet [[Girolamo Benivieni]], and probably the young Dominican friar [[Girolamo Savonarola]]. For the rest of his life, he remained very close friends with all three.<ref name="bbcexhume">{{Cite news |title=Medici writers exhumed in Italy |url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/6920443.stm |access-date=2015-12-11 |periodical=[[BBC News]] |date=28 July 2007}}</ref> He may also have been a lover of Poliziano.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Death in Florence|last=Strathern|first=Paul|publisher=Jonathan Cape|year=2011|isbn=978-0224089784|location=London|pages=84}}</ref>

From 1480 to 1482, he continued his studies at the [[University of Padua]], a major centercentre of [[Aristotelianism]] in Italy.<ref name="Baird"/> Already proficient in Latin and Greek, he studied Hebrew and Arabic in [[Padua]] with [[Elia del Medigo]], a Jewish [[Averroist]], and read Aramaic manuscripts with him as well. Del Medigo also translated [[Rabbinic literature|Judaic manuscripts]] from Hebrew into Latin for Pico, as he would continue to do for a number of years. Pico also wrote [[sonnet]]s in Latin and Italian which, because of the influence of Savonarola, he destroyed at the end of his life.{{cn|date=September 2022}}

He spent the next four years either at home, or visiting [[Humanism|humanist]] centres elsewhere in Italy. In 1485, he travelled to the [[University of Paris]], the most important centre in Europe for [[Scholasticism|scholastic]] philosophy and theology, and a hotbed of secular Averroism. It was probably in Paris that Giovanni began his ''900 Theses'' and conceived the idea of defending them in public debate.{{cn|date=September 2022}}