Giovanni Francesco Pico della Mirandola

Who was Giovanni Francesco Pico della Mirandola?

Giovanni Francesco Pico della Mirandola was an Italian philosopher and nephew of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola.

Like his uncle he devoted himself chiefly to philosophy, but made it subject to the Bible, though in his treatises, De studio divinæ et humanæ sapientiæ and particularly in the six books entitled Examen doctrinæ unitatis gentium, he depreciates the authority of the philosophers, above all of Aristotle. He wrote a detailed biography of his uncle and another of Savonarola.

Having observed the dangers to which Italian society was exposed at the time, he sounded a warning on the occasion of the Lateran Council: Joannis Francisci Pici oratio ad Leonem X et concilium Lateranense de reformandis Ecclesiæ Moribus.