THE LIFE OF GIOVANNI PICO OF MIRANDOLA

The most benevolent mind and remarkable virtues of the King Referring to King Charles VIII of France, who was in Italy at the time and was a great admirer of Pico. required this of the dying man. Indeed, Pico was already very well known to him by reputation and joined to him by a certain intimacy; for he had been honorably received by the King in France when he visited Paris. Truly, just as he showed himself to be a wonder to the whole world and to many ages while he lived, so he decreed that his death should be celebrated no less famously and in an unprecedented manner. Wherefore, I think those things should be related at present which I heard with my own ears while I was in Florence—whither I had betaken myself, though not in time, upon hearing of his illness—at the sacred church which they call Santa Reparata The old cathedral of Florence, later replaced by Santa Maria del Fiore.. There I heard Girolamo Savonarola of Ferrara A charismatic and controversial Dominican friar who became the de facto ruler of Florence; he was a close friend and spiritual advisor to Pico., of the Order of Preachers, a man most learned in theology and most renowned and famous for his holiness, delivering sacred sermons to the Florentine people. But first, it is my counsel to warn those ignorant of sacred letters with the words of Apuleius: lest,

The words of Apuleius and of Brother Girolamo.

with thick ears and an obstinate heart, they think those things to be lies which seem new to the hearing, or strange to the sight, or certainly difficult beyond the reach of thought. If they explore these things a little more deeply, they will find them not only evident to the understanding but also most easy in fact. He, therefore, declaiming from the pulpit, suggested to all who were present the things I am about to say: "A secret must be revealed to you, O Florence, which is indeed so true that if it were as common among you as the Gospel of John, I would have remained silent. But I am compelled to speak; and He who can command me has ordered that I make these things public. Furthermore, I think there was no one among you who did not know Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. He was heaped with great benefits from God and great graces, and endowed with multifaceted learning; perhaps no mortal ever possessed such a celebrated genius. The Church suffered a great loss in him. I would judge that, had his span of life been prolonged further, he would have excelled all those who have died these eight hundred years past by the monuments of writing he would have left behind. He was accustomed to frequent my company to reveal his secrets, from which I knew that he was summoned by God to a religious life Meaning he felt called to join a monastic order, specifically the Dominicans. through internal stirrings. Desiring to obey these inspirations, he had proposed to comply more than once. But, being ungrateful for divine benefits or called away by his senses, he shrank from the labors—for he was of a delicate temperament—or perhaps thinking that his work was more needed by religion, he deferred it to this time. I say this not as a certainty, but as my conjecture and presumption. For this reason, for two years I threatened him with a scourge Latin: flagellum; a prophetic warning of divine punishment. if he should negligently execute the work God had proposed for him to perform. I confess I prayed to God repeatedly that, being struck a little, he might finally take up the way that had been shown to him from on high. I did not seek this by which he was struck down; I had not thought this was decreed by God: that he should leave this life and lose a part of the glorious crown prepared for him in heaven, and that he should not fully attain the fame and celebrity of name which he would have had in the highest heap if he had lived. But the most kind Judge behaved most mercifully toward him. And on account of the alms

Alms. The state of his soul.

distributed to the poor with a large and most lavish hand, and the prayers which were most insistently poured out to God, it was brought about that his soul neither burns in the bosom of the Father above the heavens yet, nor is it assigned to the underworld to be tortured with perpetual torments. Instead, committed for a time to the fire of Purgatory, he pays temporal penalties. I would most gladly say this in this place so that those who knew him—and especially those who were heaped with his benefits—might aid him with their prayers." The man of God asserted these and many other things with a clear voice. He added that it was not hidden from him that, because of lies of this sort (if any were mixed in), the preachers of the word of God are made worthy to suffer eternal punishment; adding also that for several days these things had been known to him in their entirety. But because of the words which the sick man had affirmed the Virgin had spoken to him, he had stood wavering and feared for a long time lest that had been an illusion of demons, since the promise of the Virgin was frustrated by his death.

A double death

Nevertheless, it became known to him that the deceased had been deceived by an "equivocation of death" A spiritual misunderstanding where "death" refers to the death of the worldly self rather than physical expiration, or vice versa.. Since she spoke of a second death...