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...he might report back what he could restore. For he had delegated this duty to him so that he might more easily, as if through a faithful intermediary, relieve the calamities and miseries of the citizens which would otherwise have remained hidden from him. He very often—a fact I think should not be passed over in silence—gave alms from his own body. We know that many (to use the words of Jerome) Hiero. have extended a hand to the needy while yet being overcome by the pleasure and allurements of the flesh. But he used to scourge his own flesh, especially on those days which represent the torments and death of Christ for the sake of our salvation, in memory of that supreme benefit and for the expiation of his sins; and with my own eyes—let all things return to the glory of God—I often saw the scourge. He was always of a cheerful and placid countenance, and of so mild a nature that He used to scourge his own body he testified, in the hearing of many, that he had never been troubled. I recall him saying to me during a conversation Cheerful countenance that he believed he could not be moved to anger by any event (even should things turn out for the worst), unless certain chests were to perish in which his lucubrations and the products of his secret night-watches were stored. But when he considered that he was laboring for God, the Best and Greatest, and for His Church, and that he had dedicated all his works, studies, and actions to the same, and that this could not happen except by His command or permission, he was confident that he would not be saddened. O happy mind, which could now be cast down by no adversities of the soul, and likewise (as will become clear) could be extolled by no advantages.

Certainly, his mastery of universal philosophy, his knowledge of the Hebrew and Chaldean and Arabic languages beyond Latin and Greek, had not rendered him puffed up. Ample riches had not inflated him, nor nobility of lineage, nor the beauty and elegance of his body. Not even a great license for sinning could recall him to that soft and broad way of the many. What, therefore, could be so remarkable as to overturn his quiet mind? What, I ask, could be above him who (to use the words of Seneca) Seneca was above fortune? Since he looked upon her, whether swollen with favorable winds or humble with adverse blasts, in such a way that his mind might be joined to Christ and the citizens of the heavenly fatherland with a spiritual glue—a fact clearly perceived from this evidence: that while he saw not a few in our time (alas!) seeking, demanding, sighing for, and most strenuously bargaining for the offices and dignities of the Church, which are put up for bid and auctioned off, he himself—most weighty witnesses are present, and I am a witness Dignities offered by two kings—responded that he did not wish to be initiated into holy orders and rejected those offered by two kings through intermediaries. Indeed, when a certain other person had promised that he would give him secular dignities and ample revenues if he would approach his king, Pico, seeing that no corner was left in which he might hide himself and that all refuges had been taken away, gave him such an answer that he might understand he did not seek dignities or riches, but rather neglected them as things rejected so that he might be free for God and his studies.

Also at Ferrara, when certain friends had persuaded Pandolfo Collenuccio of Pesaro—a jurisconsult of penetrating genius and a man of manifold reading, whose friendship he enjoyed most familiarly—to lead him by whatever means he could to seek the dignity of the cardinalate, or certainly to embrace it if the Pontiff should offer it (as it seemed to many would happen), and Pandolfo had attempted this somewhat hesitantly, since he was not ignorant that Pico preferred anything to being entangled in honors of this kind, he, with his characteristic greatness of soul, immediately ordered that prophetic response to be given by letter: "My thoughts are not your thoughts." He perhaps considered, concerning the goods of the Church (the greatest part of which is owed to the poor by hereditary right), that it was not fitting to maintain magnificent displays. Likewise, he had placed before his eyes the examples of the holiest men—Ambrose, Augustine, Martin, and the others Ambro. Augusti. Martinus Celestinus—who fled from the offered dignity of the episcopate and for a long time refused that office before they undertook it. What of the fact that he had read that the most holy Celestine had abdicated not only from the cardinalate itself, but even from the supreme power of the High Pontificate? Riches neglected for the sake of God and studies