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Soon after this stay in Florence, Pico was travelling on his way to Rome where he intended to publish his ''900 Theses'' and prepare for a congress of scholars from all over Europe to debate them. Stopping in [[Arezzo]] he became embroiled in a love affair with the wife of one of Lorenzo de' Medici's cousins, which almost cost him his life. Giovanni attempted to run off with the woman, but he was caught, wounded and thrown into prison by her husband. He was released only upon the intervention of Lorenzo himself. The incident is representative of Pico's often audacious temperament and of the loyalty and affection he nevertheless could inspire.
Pico spent several months in [[Perugia]] and nearby Fratta, recovering from his injuries. It was there, as he wrote to Ficino, that "divine Providence ... caused certain books to fall into my hands. They are [[Chaldean Christians|Chaldean]] books ... of [[Esdras]], of [[Zoroaster]] and of [[Biblical Magi|Melchior]], oracles of the magi, which contain a brief and dry interpretation of Chaldean philosophy, but full of mystery."<ref name="lyber-eclat">{{cite web|url=http://www.lyber-eclat.net/lyber/mirandola/picbio.html |title=Bibliographie Giovanni Pico della Mirandola |publisher=lyber-eclat.net|access-date=2016-03-21}}</ref> It was also in Perugia that Pico was introduced to the mystical Hebrew ''[[Kabbalah]]'', which fascinated him, as did the late classical Hermetic writers, such as [[Hermes Trismegistus]]. The ''Kabbalah'' and ''Hermetica'' were thought in Pico's time to be as ancient as the Old Testament. Pico's "tutor" in Kabbalah was [[Yohanan Alemanno|Rabbi Johannan Alemanno]] (1435/8–c. 1510), who argued that the study and mastery of magic was to be regarded as the final stage of one's intellectual and spiritual education.<ref name=":0">{{Cite journal|last1=Chajes|first1=J. H. (Yossi)|last2=Harari|first2=Yuval|date=2019-01-02|title=Practical Kabbalah: Guest Editors' Introduction|url=https://brill.com/view/journals/arie/19/1/article-p1_1.xml|journal=Aries|language=en|volume=19|issue=1|pages=1–5|doi=10.1163/15700593-01901001|doi-broken-date=
Pico based his ideas chiefly on Plato, as did his teacher, Marsilio Ficino, but retained a deep respect for Aristotle. Although he was a product of the ''studia humanitatis'', Pico was constitutionally an [[Eclecticism|eclectic]], and in some respects he represented a reaction against the exaggerations of pure humanism, defending what he believed to be the best of the [[Middle Ages|medieval]] and Islamic commentators, such as [[Averroes]] and [[Avicenna]], on Aristotle in a famous long letter to [[Ermolao Barbaro]] in 1485. It was always Pico's aim to reconcile the schools of Plato and Aristotle since he believed they used different words to express the same concepts. It was perhaps for this reason his friends called him "Princeps Concordiae", or "Prince of Harmony" (a pun on Prince of Concordia, one of his family's holdings).<ref>Paul Oskar Kristeller, Eight Philosophers of the Italian Renaissance. Stanford University Press (Stanford, California, 1964.) p. 62.</ref> Similarly, Pico believed that an educated person should also study Hebrew and [[Talmudic]] sources, and the Hermetics, because he thought they represented the same concept of God that is seen in the [[Old Testament]], but in different words.
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