Complete Works

If that young man, abounding in the gathered wealth of his ancestors and in much learning like a luxuriant and fertile field, in the premier city of the world, did not fear to put his learning and talent to the test concerning things natural and divine, and concerning many matters inaccessible to our people through many centuries; and when his detractors perceived that they could attempt nothing against his learning with true engines of argument, they brought into the open the engines of calumny, and cried out that thirteen questions out of nine hundred were suspect regarding the right faith. To these men, some perhaps joined themselves who—since those questions were unusual to their ears—might attack them (piously perhaps, but less learnedly) out of zeal for the faith and under the pretext of religion; which questions, however, not a few and indeed celebrated doctors of theology had previously approved as pious and pure, and had subscribed to them.

Among which company Bonfranciscus, Bishop of Reggio, was numbered: a man illustrious for every kind of learning, for the sharpest judgment, and for gravity of character, who was serving at Rome at that time as legate to the Supreme Pontiff on behalf of the Duke of Ferrara. Bonfran. Bishop of Reggio Against him, however, those babblers attempted nothing, since perhaps they feared his reputation could not be shaken by them, because whatever he treated he had submitted to the correction of Mother Church and the Pontiff. But he [Pico], not enduring these losses to his reputation, published an Apology—certainly a varied and elegant work, filled with knowledge of many things worth knowing—yet composed in twenty nights of study. Apologia

By this publication, it was given to be seen more clearly that it was not so much that the conclusions could receive Catholic meanings, as that those who had previously barked at them were to be convicted of insolence and ignorance. He submitted the book itself and what he was to write in the future to the judgment of Mother Church and her most holy presiding officer, in the manner of a most Christian man. For he was most persuaded that this ought to be done either expressly or tacitly, as if he were bringing forward that saying of Augustine: "I can err, but I cannot be a heretic," since the one is proper to a man, the other to a perverse and obstinate will.

But when the Supreme Pontiff Innocent VIII Innocent VIII, Pontiff understood through the publication of the Apology that those conclusions, which had previously been infested with calumnies, were interpreted in a Catholic sense and relieved from the mark of crime; yet some to whom the examination of the conclusions had been entrusted reported that snares could be set for the faithful if some of those questions (which lay in the manner of crude and unexplained disputes) were to wander everywhere, he forbade the reading of the booklet in which they were contained. All of these things are clearly seen through the Decree (which they call a Brief) of the Supreme Pontiff Alexander VI, Alexander VI under whom we now live, which we have thought to hand over to the printers to be transcribed along with the Apology itself.

Indeed, at the very end of the Apology, he had previously endeavored by whatever reasons he could that which the Pontiff afterwards granted by authority. Note. He had indeed besought friends and enemies, learned and unlearned alike, to read the Apology, but to pass over the booklet of the unexplained conclusions unread, since in it were contained many things that he had undertaken not to be published everywhere in the public streets, but to be disputed in secret assembly among the learned and the few. And intending a Scholastic exercise in the manner of the academies, he had proposed many impious dogmas of the ancient philosophers—namely Alexander and Averroes and many others—which he had always asserted, professed, and proclaimed both publicly and privately to deviate no less from the paths of true and right philosophy than from the faith. Alexander, Averroes And speaking in this manner about that booklet of the nine hundred conclusions, he concluded his Apologetic work: "Therefore, let those who hate me not read them because they are mine; let those who love me not read them because from those things which are mine, they might think many things which are not ours."

Furthermore, he judged (as he reported to me) that it was brought about by the immense goodness of God, which elicits even good from evil, that the calumny... Goodness of God