give me a detailed summary of each chapter of this book, starting with the introduction. go one chapter per response
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Here is a detailed summary of the Introduction of Pico della Mirandola on Trial: Heresy, Freedom, and Philosophy by Brian P. Copenhaver:
Would you like the summary of Chapter 1 ("Humanism Goes to Hell") next?
continue
Here is a detailed summary of Chapter 1: Humanism Goes to Hell from Pico della Mirandola on Trial: Heresy, Freedom, and Philosophy by Brian P. Copenhaver:
🔍 Key detail: Pope Innocent condemned 13 of Pico’s theses within weeks and ordered an inquisition, showing how seriously theological disputes were taken.
🧠 Important point: These are not idiosyncratic ideas but grounded in a deep engagement with scholastic theology and metaphysics, especially via Jean Cabrol and Pierre de la Palud.
🔗 Key insight: The core theme is the metaphysics of divine embodiment and presence—how God can be body, how bodies can be in Hell or on altars, and what it means to believe these things.
Would you like a summary of Chapter 2: What’s In a Word? Metaphysics and Semantics next?
give me an overview of the apology as discussed in the text
Here’s an overview of Pico’s Apology as it is discussed throughout Brian P. Copenhaver’s Pico della Mirandola on Trial: Heresy, Freedom, and Philosophy:
Pico della Mirandola’s Apology (1487) is a large and technical defense of his earlier work, the 900 Conclusions, which had drawn accusations of heresy from Pope Innocent VIII. The Apology is structured as a point-by-point rebuttal of the Pope’s condemnation of 13 theses selected from the Conclusions. These rebuttals are organized into 13 “Questions” (Q1–Q13) in scholastic format.
📌 Copenhaver’s Claim: The Apology is Pico’s most revealing philosophical work—not the Oration, which he never gave and which was deliberately esoteric.
Copenhaver repeatedly emphasizes that the Apology is not a humanist text:
🚫 Humanist styles and values—eloquence, philology, civic rhetoric—are largely absent.
Each section of the Apology responds to a condemned thesis. While all 13 Questions are covered, Copenhaver focuses on six, namely:
| Question | Topic | Central Theme |
|---|---|---|
| Q1 | Christ’s Descent into Hell | How a bodiless Christ can be “in” Hell |
| Q4 | Incarnation | Divine embodiment and metaphysics |
| Q6, Q9, Q10 | Eucharist | Real presence, transubstantiation, semantics of liturgical words |
| Q8 | Belief and Heresy | Is heresy willful? Can belief be coerced? |
The rest of the Apology touches on:
Copenhaver shows that the Apology is a work of scholastic philosophy, not rhetoric or mysticism:
While highly technical, the Apology is also:
Copenhaver’s core argument is that the Apology dismantles the image of Pico as a humanist hero of modernity or Enlightenment.
Instead, he is:
Pico’s Apology, as analyzed by Copenhaver, is:
Would you like a breakdown of a specific Question (like Q4 or Q6)? Or shall I continue with Chapter 2 next?
continue with chapter 2
Here is a detailed summary of Chapter 2: What’s In a Word? Metaphysics and Semantics from Pico della Mirandola on Trial: Heresy, Freedom, and Philosophy by Brian P. Copenhaver:
This chapter delves into the philosophical vocabulary and logical framework Pico uses to defend himself in the Apology. Copenhaver argues that without understanding the medieval language theory Pico draws on—especially the theory of supposition—modern readers will completely misread the text. This is the chapter that opens up Pico’s philosophical method and is crucial for understanding the rest of the book.
💡 Key insight: Supposition is not grammar—it’s a logical system for how words relate to reality in propositions.
Words had the power to damn or save.
For Pico, a single misinterpreted term could lead to charges of heresy, and so he built his defense with meticulous attention to how language works in logic, philosophy, and theology. Copenhaver’s chapter unlocks this forgotten linguistic universe, revealing Pico not as a prophet of modernity, but as a master of medieval semantics.
Would you like to continue with Chapter 3: What Can Be Taken On? Pico’s Q4 next?
give me a deep dive on Pico's treatment of angels and its scholastic contexts
Pico della Mirandola’s treatment of angels is one of the most philosophically sophisticated and theologically loaded components of his thought, woven through his 900 Conclusions, the Apology, and his broader metaphysical and cosmological vision. Brian P. Copenhaver, in Pico della Mirandola on Trial, touches on this primarily in Question 1 (Q1) of the Apology, where the issue of angels intersects with debates about the incarnation, Christ’s descent into Hell, and bodiless spatiality.
What follows is a deep dive into Pico’s angelology in its scholastic context, synthesizing Copenhaver’s treatment with some necessary background:
In Q1 of the Apology, Pico confronts a metaphysical problem:
How can a bodiless Christ descend into a spatial location like Hell after the crucifixion but before the resurrection?
This leads to an analogous question:
How do angels, also immaterial beings, move through space or appear in space?
The problem of angelic location and motion was a classic problem in scholastic metaphysics, dealt with by:
Pico links the metaphysical behavior of angels to the behavior of Christ’s soul:
“The angelic example serves as a metaphysical justification for how Christ can be said to be in Hell without a body” (Copenhaver, Ch. 1.4).
The papal commission was not convinced:
Outside the Apology, especially in the Oration and 900 Conclusions, Pico famously:
| Aspect | Role in Pico's Thought |
|---|---|
| Apology | Angels provide a model for how bodiless souls can be in space—used to justify Christ’s descent into Hell |
| Scholastic Tradition | Follows Aquinas, Ockham, and Henry of Ghent in analyzing presence, motion, and action of spirits |
| Philosophical Stakes | Helps resolve logical contradictions in key doctrinal claims using semantic and metaphysical tools |
| Political Stakes | Pico’s defense rests on understanding angels correctly—his accusers' failure to do so reflects theological incompetence |
| Broader Vision | In Oration and 900 Conclusions, angels represent stages of intellectual ascent—humans can rise above them through divine knowledge |
Would you like a companion summary of how angels function in the 900 Conclusions or Oration, or a closer look at Pico’s engagement with Pseudo-Dionysius?
continue with the next chapter
Here is a detailed summary of Chapter 3: What Can Be Taken On? Pico’s Q4 from Pico della Mirandola on Trial: Heresy, Freedom, and Philosophy by Brian P. Copenhaver:
This chapter examines Question 4 (Q4) of Pico’s Apology, which addresses the incarnation: specifically, how Christ “took on” human nature. The central issue is the metaphysics of divine embodiment—how an eternal, immaterial being can unite with a temporal, material nature without change, error, or heresy.
Copenhaver uses this chapter to show Pico’s dependence on scholastic metaphysics—especially Henry of Ghent—and how he uses semantic distinctions to defend orthodoxy in the face of accusations of heresy.
Pico’s original thesis that prompted papal condemnation (from 900 Conclusions) stated:
“Christ did not take on human nature, but rather assumed a man.”
This wording triggered alarm because it appears to separate Christ’s divinity from his humanity—a classic Nestorian heresy.
But Pico argues in Apology Q4 that this is a semantic misunderstanding, and that his phrasing is orthodox if interpreted correctly.
A central scholastic distinction is at stake here:
🧩 This is extremely subtle: Pico is not denying the unity of Christ’s person, but insisting on precision in how we describe that unity.
Pico draws directly from Henry of Ghent, a scholastic theologian who developed a rich vocabulary for analyzing personhood and nature.
Copenhaver identifies Henry’s influence in:
This is Pico’s line, too.
Pico’s defense is technical:
Using this machinery, Pico tries to show that:
Copenhaver emphasizes that Pico is not being poetic or mystical here—he is being a rigorous scholastic logician, defending himself with the tools of semantic analysis.
The papal commission read Pico’s conclusion literally and simplistically, and saw Nestorian heresy:
Pico uses creedal and scriptural formulas to support his claims:
Copenhaver highlights that Pico’s defense is:
Q4 of the Apology shows Pico at his most metaphysical and scholastic. He enters the thorniest debates of Christology—how divine and human natures are united—and defends himself using:
Would you like to continue with Chapter 4: How to Mean the Body of Christ? Pico’s Q6 next?
tell me more about Pico's engagement with Dionysius
Pico della Mirandola’s engagement with Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite—or simply Dionysius—is both central and multifaceted, spanning his mystical theology, angelology, metaphysics, and even aspects of his rhetoric and cosmology. Though Copenhaver’s Pico della Mirandola on Trial focuses primarily on Pico’s Apology and its scholastic logic, Dionysius is a crucial background figure, especially for understanding Pico’s intellectual formation and the mystical hierarchy that underlies even his more scholastic arguments.
Here is a detailed account of Pico’s Dionysian engagement—both textual and philosophical, based on Copenhaver's framework and extended by Pico’s other writings (like the Oration, Heptaplus, and 900 Conclusions).
Pseudo-Dionysius, a Christian Neoplatonist writing under the pseudonym of the Athenian convert of Paul (Acts 17:34), was considered authoritative in medieval Christian theology, especially for:
📌 Dionysius stood at the intersection of Christian revelation and Neoplatonic metaphysics, a space Pico loved to explore.
Copenhaver notes (especially in Ch. 1 and in footnotes across the book) that:
In 900 Conclusions, several theses (especially in the theological and mystical sections) refer to the angelic hierarchies and the soul's return to God, core Dionysian themes.
Pico’s angelology, which plays an important role in both the Apology and 900 Conclusions, is inspired by Dionysius’s Celestial Hierarchy.
⚠️ Caution: Though Pico celebrates angelic order, he also proposes that philosophical and Kabbalistic insight allows the human soul to exceed even angelic knowledge—a tension with Dionysius’s more conservative ordering.
Dionysius is famous for advocating apophatic (negative) theology:
🔍 In this light, Pico sees Kabbalah as a kind of Dionysian mysticism, where the true names of God dissolve into silence and unity.
Dionysius sees all knowledge of God as mediated by signs, symbols, and sacramental realities.
Pico takes this seriously:
Dionysius inherits from Plotinus and Proclus the idea that:
💡 Pico radicalizes the Dionysian system by emphasizing human freedom and self-fashioning, but the metaphysical architecture is thoroughly Dionysian.
| Theme | Dionysian Idea | Pico’s Engagement |
|---|---|---|
| Angelic Hierarchy | Triadic celestial orders mediate divine light | Embraced and integrated into mystical anthropology (esp. in Conclusions) |
| Negative Theology | God beyond being and knowledge; mystical union in darkness | Deeply influential in Oration and Kabbalistic synthesis |
| Symbolic Mediation | Reality reveals divine truth through signs and sacraments | Seen in Pico’s allegorical readings (e.g., Heptaplus) and in magic |
| Emanation and Return | Exit from and return to the One through hierarchical ascent | Foundational to Pico’s model of human perfectibility and philosophical striving |
| Mystical Unity | The final goal is a union with God that transcends knowledge | Echoed in Pico’s blending of Platonic eros, Kabbalah, and Dionysian mysticism |
Would you like a comparison between Dionysius and Kabbalah in Pico’s synthesis, or a close reading of Dionysian themes in the 900 Conclusions or Oration?
give me a reading of Pico's treatment of Dionysius in De Ente et Uno Chapter III. From the testimony of Parmenides, of Dionysius, and of Simplicius, we conclude the convertibility of unity and being.
This word being, concerning which there is doubt whether it is equal to the concept unity, can be taken in two senses. The first is this: When we say 'being' we may mean anything that is outside of nothing. This is the sense of the word with Aristotle, wherever he makes being equivalent to unity. And this meaning is not unreasonable, for, as it is truly said, we ought to think with the few, but talk like the many. We think and judge for ourselves; we speak for the multitude, and we speak so that we may be understood. The vulgar, then, the unsophisticated, so understand being that they call anything 'being' (ens) which does not lack existence (esse), and which cannot properly be called nothing. But do we not find that those who are considered the wisest among the opposition22 have not understood being in any other way? 22. I.e. the Neo-Platonists who make unity superior to being.
When Parmenides the Pythagorean said that the one is that which is, he meant God, if we credit Simplicius23 and all the many others who want to defend Parmenides against those who falsely accuse him of saying that all things are one.24 For they all agree in answering that, in employing the word 'one', Parmenides never believed that division, multiplicity, and plurality do not attach to things, since in other passages of his poems he himself openly affirms the contrary. But, they say, when he said 'one' what he meant is that to which the name of being truly applies, and which is truly the one being (esse), which one is God. Thus, for Parmenides and his defenders, even the 'Platonists,' the one cannot be above being unless it be above God. However, far from denying that God is being, it is to God alone that Parmenides accords, as is in truth fitting, the name of being. And so we solve the first difficulty of the 'Platonists.' 23. Simplicius, In Phys., (ed. H. Diels, Berlin, 1882) t. I, p.147, 12.
24. The universe -- a pantheistic interpretation, the only legitimate one, Cf. Cornford, op. cit., 29: "This One Being is not a mere abstraction; it proves to be a single continuous and homogeneous substance filling the whole of space."
As regards Dionysius the Areopagite,25 whom our opponents invoke in favor of their opinion, he will not deny that God verily said to Moses: 'I am who am,' which reads in Greek: egw eimi o wn, that is, 'I am being' (ens). Of a truth, they themselves, when they say that nothing, or non-being is opposed to being as the many to the one, concede that of necessity that which is not being is nothing or non-being, in just the same way that what is not one is multiple or plurality. However, if they observe the same manner of speaking, they must say either that God is nothing, which appalls the ears, or that He is being. But to understand being in this fashion is to return to that which we have established as the first axiom and universal proposition, namely, that concerning anything it is necessary to say that it is or is not, and that concerning anything it is impossible to say or think both together at the same time. Since, therefore, outside of everything there is nothing but nothingness itself, if being understood in this sense excludes nothing but only nothingess, it is evidently necessary that being encompass all that is. Therefore the extension of unity cannot be greater unless it included nothingness itself, a possibility which Plato denies in the Sophist when he says that non-being or nothing cannot be called one. Besides, if unity cannot have less extension than being, it follows that being and unity must be convertible concepts. 25. Cf. The Divine Names, I, paragraph 6 (Patrologia Graeca, vol. III, 596 A-B). A convenient English translation of this work as well as of the Mystical Theology may be found in C. E. Rolt, Dionysius the Areopagite, (Macmillan, 1920).
Chapter IV. In what sense one can say that something is superior to being.
We have explained one of the senses which we said could be given to being. Understanding it so, -- a perfectly legitimate usage of the word -- one affirms most truly that there is nothing more common than being. It remains to explain the second sense, according to which it will be manifest that one can no less justly say that there is something that surpasses in eminence being itself.
Words are either concrete or abstract. Concrete are, for example, hot, bright, white, man; abstract: heat, light, whiteness, humanity. This is their power and diversity: that what is called abstract connotes that which is such by itself (a se), not by another (ab alio), while concrete signifies that which is what it is not by itself, but by virtue of another. Thus the luminous is such in virtue of light, the white is such through whiteness, and man is man by virtue of his humanity. Moreover, since there is nothing which participates in itself, and since the same thing cannot possess the same quality at the same time by itself (a se) and by participation in another thing, it follows that the abstract cannot take its denomination from the concrete. Wherefore it is incongruous to say that whiteness is white, blackness black. Indeed, it is ridiculous to speak thus, not because whiteness is black or heat cold, but because such is the distance of the one from blackness and of the other from coldness, that all that is white is so by participation in the first, and all that is hot is so by participation in the second. When, then, we refuse to attribute such or such qualities to such or such an object, it is either because that object does not possess them, for example in the expression "black is not white," or because we want to signify that it possesses them in a more excellent and more perfect way than we do: as when we deny that whiteness is white, not because it is black, but because it is whiteness itself.
But let us return to the subject. The word 'being' (ens) has the aspect of a concrete word. For to say 'being' (ens) and to say 'that which is' (id quod est) is to say the same thing. The abstract of this would seem to be the word esse, in that one calls ens that which participates in esse, in the same way that one calls luminous that which participates in light.26 If we look at this meaning of being which we have thus defined, we shall have to deny being not only to that which is not, and to that which is nothing, but also to that which is so that it is that being (esse) itself which is of itself (ex se) and by itself (a se), and by participation in which all things are: just as we not only deny that that is hot which lacks heat, but also that which is heat itself. Now, such is God, the plenitude of all being, the sole being a se, and from Whom alone, without the intervention of any intermediary, all things have come to be. 26. The language here is Platonic.
We have, therefore, the right to say that God is not being but is above being, and that there is something to being, namely God Himself. If we give to God the name of the One, it follows that we avow the one to be above being.
However, in calling God the One, we do so less to indicate what He is than to show in what manner He is all that is, and how other beings are through Him, 'God is called the One,' says Denys, 'because He is in a unique way all things,'27 and again: 'God is called the one because He is the principle of all things, just as unity is the principle of all numbers.28 Wherefore if (as the Academy pretends) Plato, in the first hypothesis of the Parmenides, affirms that the one is superior to being, that one will be nothing else than God. They (the Academy), indeed, themselves recognize this, since they admit by universal consensus that Plato here treats of the first principle of all things.29 27. The Divine Names, I, paragraph 7. (P. G., III, 596 D).
28. Ibid., II, paragraphs 4 and 11; V, paragraph 6.
29. Plotinus, Ennead V, I, 8. The Parmenides of Plato distinguishes the First One, or the one in the proper sense of the word; the second, which he calls the One-Many; and the third, or 'One-and-Many.' The First One is for the Neo-Platonists God Himself.
But, some will say, on this point at least Aristotle differs from Plato, for Aristotle never understands being as subordinate to the one and as not including God in its extension. Those who speak in this way have not read Aristotle, for he does this very thing, and much more plainly than Plato.
In the sixth book of his Metaphysics30 he divides being into being-by-itself (per se) and being-by-accident (per accidens). When being-by-itself (per se) is divided into ten categories, there is no doubt on the part of good interpreters of the philosopher that God is not included under this being, since He is neither being-by-accident nor is He contained under any one of the ten classes into which being per se is divided. Nothing is more of a commonplace among the Peripatetics than that division of being into substance and accident. Since this is so, we understand being so that God is above being and not below it, as St. Thomas himself teaches in the first book of his Commentaries on the Theological Sentences.31 I shall add that certain Platonists do wrong in vaunting themselves as if they possessed a secret unknown to Aristotle, when they say that God has two proper appellations, namely, the One and the Good, as if the good and the one were superior to being. Just as we have demonstrated that it did not escape the Peripatetics in what sense God can be understood as superior to being, so we are able to show that it was particularly these two names, the Good and the One, that Aristotle gave to God. 30. Metaphysics, E, 2, 1026 ff.
31. Commentum in libros IV. Sententiarum Magistri Petri Lombardi I, dist. xix, q. 4, ad 2 and esp. dist. xxiv, q. I, a. 1.
In the second book of the Metaphysics,32 after having treated of being in its totality and of separate minds,33 he asks finally (as if, after all the rest, he wanted to turn to the investigation of the attributes of God alone), if, besides the good which is in the universality of things as in an army, there were some separate good like the person of the chief of this army, and he answers that this good exists, and that it is God. Of this God, in the same chapter, he demonstrates the unity, citing in testimony of this, after strong arguments, the phrase of Homer; eiz koiranoV estw, eiV basileuV.34 Where then is his error? Where is Aristotle at odds with Plato? Wherein is he profane? Wherein does he fail to give God the honors which are due to Him? 32. Metaphysics, A.
33. This book of the Metaphysics first studies sensible substance in its elements and its structure (ch. 1 to 5), then incorporeal immobile substance (ch. 6 to 10). The complex problem of the different first movers is touched on in ch. 8. The comparison with the army occurs in ch. 10, 1075 a 11 ff.
34. 10, 1076 a 4. Cf. Iliad II, 204. Pico misquotes Aristotle, who quotes Homer correctly: ouk agaqon polukoiranih: eiV koiranoV estw.
Chapter V. In which is shown why the Peripatetics attribute to God many qualities which the Platonists deny Him, and how one may ascend through four degrees even to the cloud which God inhabits.35
35. This entire chapter is inspired by the Mystical Theology of the Pseudo-Denys.
Let us respond now to the arguments which the Platonists invoke to sustain against Aristotle -- not in the sense with which we agree, but absolutely speaking -- the superiority of the one over being. We have, I think, already answered adequately the first of these arguments by which God is considered one and nevertheless is not being, but it is worth the labor to pursue the discussion in order to show that not only with the Platonists and Peripatetics, who disagree with one another, but often in the same single writer, there can be, with respect to the divine attributes, many affirmations and many negations equally just.
God is everything, and he is everything in the most eminent and perfect way. Now, He would not be this unless He included in Himself all perfections in such a manner that He rejected all that has to do with imperfection in things. However, one must distinguish two kinds of imperfection. On the one hand, that is imperfect which in its class does not attain the perfection of that class or type. On the other, that is imperfect which, although perfect of its kind, is not absolutely perfect, because it has only the perfections of its kind, and there exist outside of it a number of kinds of things enriched with perfections that are proper to them and which, on its part, it does not include. As an example of the first case consider sense-knowledge, the imperfection of which comes not only from the fact that it is merely knowledge, and not appetition, but also from the fact that it is an imperfect kind of knowledge, both because of the organs which it must use, and which are brute and corporeal, and because it attains only to the superficial aspects of things and does not penetrate to the innermost reality, namely, the substance. So likewise is that human knowledge which one calls rational an imperfect knowledge, being vague, uncertain, mobile, and laborious. Even the intellectual knowledge36 of those divine intelligences called angels by the theologians, is nothing but an imperfect knowledge, if only because of the obligation it is under to seek without that which it does not possess within, at least in plenitude, namely, the light of truth which it needs for its actuation. 36. 'Intellectualem cognitionem,' (Mirandola) This is the classical distinction between discursive thought, logoV dianoia, and intuitive thought, nomsiV According to the Mystical Theology, ch. 3, It is necessary to pass beyond both before attaining God.
Take another example: life. The life which resides in plants, indeed that which moves every body, is imperfect not only because it is life and not appetition, but because it is not pure life, but rather an influx of life derived from the soul in the body, constantly flowing, constantly mixed with death, fitter indeed to be called death than life. Are you unaware of it? We begin to die as soon as we begin to live, and death extends along with life, so that we stop dying only at that instant when corporeal death delivers us from the body of this death.37 But even the life of the angels is not perfect: unless the unifying ray of the Divine light incessantly vitalized it, it would slip completely into nothingness. So for all the rest. When therefore you make God knowing and living, attend first to this, that the life and knowledge which you ascribe to Him be understood as free from all these detriments. 37. Cf. I Corinthians XV, 31; Romans VII, 24.
But this is not enough. There remains the second kind of imperfection, of which the following is an example.38 Imagine the most perfect kind of life possible, a life completely or perfectly alive, having in it nothing mortal, nothing mixed with death, a life which needs nothing outside or itself by means of which to remain stable and permanent. Imagine likewise a kind of knowledge which perceives everything at once and perfectly. Add this: that he who thus knows all things, knows them in himself and need not search outside himself the truth to be known, but be himself the very truth. Nay, to whatever high degree of perfection this life and this knowledge have attained in their proper natures, and though one could find them nowhere except in God, if, even in this degree of perfection one divides the one from the other, they are unworthy of God. 38. On this point cf. the Mystical Theology, chapters 4 and 5.
For God, in short, is perfection in all its modes and in an infinite manner, but He is not such perfection merely because He comprehends in Himself all particular perfections and those in infinite number. For in that case, neither would He Himself be perfectly simple, nor would the perfections which are in Him be infinite; but He would be nothing more than a unique infinite, composed of many things infinite in number but finite in perfection.39 Now, to think or speak so of God is blasphemous. However, if the most perfect life possible is nonetheless only life, and not knowledge, and the same for all other similar perfections which are assembled in God, there will manifestly ensue a divine life of finite perfection, since it will have the perfection which pertains to life and not that which pertains to knowledge or to appetition. Let us then take from life not only that which makes life imperfect, but also that which makes it life merely, and do the same as regards knowledge and the other qualities which we have ascribed to God. Then what remains of all this will necessarily correspond to the idea which we want to have of God, namely, a Being one, absolutely perfect, infinite, altogether simple. And since life is a certain particular being, and wisdom likewise, and justice, if we remove from them this condition of particularity and limitation, that which remains will not be this or that being, but being itself, simple being, being universal, not with the universality of attribution but with the universality of perfection.40 Similarly wisdom is a particular good, because it is that good which is wisdom, and not that other which is justice. Take away, says St. Augustine,41 this, and take away that, that is to say, this limitation of particularity by which wisdom is that good called wisdom, and not that good called justice, and by which, similarly, justice has the particular goodness of justice and not that of wisdom; then only will you see in an obscure way42 the face of God, i.e. all good in itself, simple good, the good of all good. So also as life is a particular thing, it is one particular thing. For it is a certain perfection; and similarly wisdom is a certain perfection. Cast off the particularity, and there remains, not this or that unity, but the one itself, the absolute One. Since therefore God is that being which, as we said in the beginning, when the imperfections of all things are removed, is all things, certainly that which remains when you have rejected from all things both that imperfection which each one possesses in its kind, and that particularity which reduces each to one kind, will assuredly be God. God is, then, Being itself, the one Himself, the Good, and the True. 39. On this distinction between the quantitative infinite and the infinite of perfection, cf. St. Thomas, Summa Theologica, I, q. 7, a. 1 to 4.
40. That is to say, not abstract analogous being, but this concrete infinite being which is God.
41. Cf. Enarrationes in Psalmos, (Migue Patrologia Latina vols. XXXVI-XXXVII, 1490, 1741) in Ps. cxxxiv: "Dixit (Deus) Ego sum qui sum . . . non dixit Dominus Deus ille omnipotens, misericors, justus . . . Sublatis de medio omnibus quibus appellari posset et dici Deus, ipsum esse se vocari respondit et tamquam non esset ei nomen, hoc dices eis, inquit, qui est misit me."
42. 'In enigmate' (Mirandola). Cf. the Mystical Theology on this matter of the Divine darkness.
In thus purifying the Divine names of all the stains that come from the imperfection of the things signified by them, we have already moved two steps in the ascent to the cloud which God inhabits. There remain two more, one of which indicates the deficiency of language, the other the weakness of our intelligence.
These terms: being (ens), true, one, good, signify something concrete and as it were participated; wherefore we say again of God that He is being (esse) itself, truth itself, goodness itself, unity itself. Thus far indeed we are in the light, but God has placed His dwelling in the shadows.43 We have then not yet come to God himself. So long, in short, as that which we say of God is fully understood and entirely comprehended, we are in the light. But all that we say and perceive thus is a mere trifle, considering the infinite distance which separates Divinity from the capacity of our minds. In climbing to the fourth step we enter into the light of ignorance,44 and, blinded by the cloud of the Divine splendor, we cry out with the Prophet: 'I have fainted in Thy halls, O Lord,'45 finally declaring this one thing about God, that He is incomprehensibly and ineffably above all that we can speak or think of most perfect, placing Him pre-eminently above that unity and that goodness and that truth which we had conceived, and above being (esse) itself. Thus Denys the Areopagite, when he had written his Symbolic Theology, his Theological Institutes,46 the treatise on the Divine Names, and the Mystical Theology, and come to the end of the last-mentioned work, like a man already, so to speak, standing in the darkness and trying to find words most adequate to God, after some essays exclaimed: 'He is neither truth nor kingdom, nor unity, nor divinity,47 nor goodness, nor spirit, as we know it; one cannot apply to Him the names of son or of father or of any other things in the world known to us or to any other being. He is nothing of that which is not, nothing of that which is. Things which are do not know Him as He is, nor does He know things as they are.48 of Him there is no definition, neither is there a name nor a science of Him. He is neither darkness nor light, neither error nor truth,49 in short, every affirmation and every negation in regard to Him is equally impossible.' This is how that divine man expresses it. 43. Psal. XVII, 12: 'Et posuit tenebras latibulum suum, in circuitu ejus tabernaculum; tenebrosa aqua nubibus aeris.'
44. Cf. the 'superessential light of the Divine darkness' in the Mystical Theology, ch. I, paragraph 1, and the De Docta Ignorantia of Nicholas Cusanus. The latter work is available in a new critical edition by E. Hoffmann and R. Klibansky (Leipzig, 1932).
45. Psal. LXXXIII. 3: 'Deficit anima mea in atria Domini.'
46. I.e. the Hypotyposes theologicae. Cf. the Mystical Theology, ch. 3, where all these works are named.
47. Cf. C. E. Rolt's note (Dionysius the Areopagite, N.Y., 1920, p. 200, No. 2): "Godhead (divinity) is regarded as the property of deified men, and so belongs to relativity."
48. Cf. Rolt (ibid., 200, No. 3): "It (God) knows only Itself, and there knows all things in their Super-Essence-sub specie aeternitatis."
49. Rolt (200, No. 4): "Truth is an object of thought. Therefore, being beyond objectivity, the ultimate Reality is not Truth. But still less is it Error." I should rather say that truth is a relation or quality, and that since God transcends all relationship and all quality, He is not truth but THE TRUE.
Let us gather up our conclusions. We learn, then, in the first degree, that God is not body, as the Epicureans say, nor the form of a body, as those say who affirm that God is the soul of the sky and of the universe -- the opinion of the Egyptians, according to the testimony of Plutarch50 and Varro the Roman theologian,51 whence they draw great nourishment for idolatry. Yet there are some even among the Peripatetics52 so stupid as to hold this the true doctrine and moreover as the teaching of Aristotle. How far they are from knowing God truly! They rest in the starting-place as if they had already reached the goal, and believe themselves already come to the heights of the Divinity while in fact they are lying on the ground and have not even begun to move a foot towards Him. For from this point of view God could be neither perfect life nor perfect being nor even perfect intelligence. But we have elaborately confuted these profane opinions in the fifth section of our Concordia.53 50. De Iside et Osiride, 49. Osiris is the nouV of the world-soul, Typhon its paqhtikon, seat of the passions.
51. De lingua latina, V, 10.
52. Allusion to the Averroist school at Padua.
53. I.e. the Symphonia Platonis et Aristotelis described in my Introduction, p. 4, above.
We learn, in the second degree, a truth which few men understand correctly, and in regard to which we risk deceiving ourselves the more however little we deviate from true intelligence, namely, that God is neither life nor intelligence nor intelligible, but something better and more excellent than all these. For all these names state one particular perfection, and there is nothing of the sort in God. Mindful of this, Denys54 and the Platonists have denied God life, intellect, wisdom, and the like. But since God unites and gathers up in Himself by His unique perfection which is His infinitude, in short, Himself, the totality of perfection which is found is these divided and multiplied, and because He does this not as a unity composed of these multiple perfections, but as a unity anterior to them, certain philosophers, especially the Peripatetics,54a imitated insofar as is permissible on almost all these points by the theologians of Paris,54b concede that all these perfections are in God. We agree with them, and we believe that in so doing we are not only thinking justly but that we are at the same time in agreement with those who deny these same perfections, on condition that we never lose sight of what St. Augustine says,55 namely, that God's wisdom is not more wisdom than justice, His justice not more justice than wisdom, nor His knowledge more knowledge than life. For all these things are in God one, not by confusion of mixture, or mutual penetration of distinct entities, but by a simple, sovereign, ineffable, and fundamental unity in which actuality, all form, all perfection, hidden as if in the supreme and pre-eminent jewel in the treasury of the Divine Infinity, are enclosed so excellently above and beyond all things that it is not only intimate to all things, but rather united with all things more closely than they are with themselves. Assuredly words fail us, altogether unable to express this concept. 54. Mystical Theology, chapter 5.
54a. Pico is no doubt referring here to the authentic Aristotelian tradition of Alexander and Thimistitis (the latter lately edited by Ermolao Barbaro) which found itself opposed, in the 15th century, to the Arabianizing tradition and to the Averroism of Padua.
54b. Especially St. Albert and St. Thomas.
55. Cf. Sermo CCCXL, I, ch. 5 (P. L. 38, 1482); ch. 7 (ibid., 39, 1498).
But see, my dear Angelo, what folly possesses us! While we are in the body we are able to love God better than we can know or describe Him. In loving there is for us more profit, and less labor , the more we obey this tendency. Nevertheless, we prefer constantly to seek through knowledge, never finding what we seek, rather than to possess through love that which without love would be found in vain. But let us return to our subject. You already see plainly by what convention one can call God spirit, intelligence, life, wisdom, and on the other hand place Him above all these determinations, both having good proofs to witness to their truth and their accord. Nor does Plato dissent from Aristotle, because when, in the sixth book of the Republic,56 he calls God "the idea of the Good" which surpasses intelligibles, he shows Him giving to Intelligence the power of intellection, and to intelligibles their intelligibility,57 while the latter of them (Aristotle) defines God as the being who is at once intelligence, intellect, and intelligible.58 Denys the Areopagite, also, though he talks like Plato, is nevertheless obliged to affirm with Aristotle that God is ignorant neither of Himself nor of other beings; wherefore, if He knows Himself, it is because He is both intelligence and intelligible; for he who knows himself is necessarily both knower and known. And yet, if we consider these perfections as particular perfections, as I have said, or if, when we say intelligence, we mean to signify that nature which tends to the intelligible as to something exterior to itself, there is no doubt that Aristotle, like the Platonists, would firmly deny that God is intelligence or intelligible. 56. Republic VI, 509 b, where God is called, not an essence, but something far above essence in dignity and in power.
57. "Et intelligibilia statuat dantem illis quidem ut intelligant, his autem ut intelligantur." (Mirandola.)
58. Cf. Meta., A, 7, 1072 b 20.
In the third degree, the more we approach the darkness, the more light we have to see that not only is God not (impious to say!) something imperfect or a mutilated being, as He would be if we called Him a body, or the soul of a body, or an animated being composed of soul and body, nor some particular genus however perfect, which human wisdom can fashion,59 like life, or spirit, or reason, but that we ought to conceive of Him as superior to all that these universal terms which include in their extension all things, i.e., the one, the true, the good, and being, signify. 59. Cf. I Corinthians II, 13: "Quae et loquimur non in doctis humanae sapientiae verbis sed in doctrina Spiritus, spiritualibus spiritualia comparatites."
In the fourth degree, finally, we know Him as superior not only to these four transcendentals, but also to every idea which we could form, to every essence which we could conceive Him to be. Then only, with this total ignorance, does true knowledge commence.
From all this we conclude that God is not only the being than which, according to St. Anselm,60 nothing higher can be conceived, but the being who infinitely transcends all that can be imagined, as David the prophet put it in the Hebrew: "Silence alone is Thy, praise."61 60. Proslogion, ch. xv (P. L., 158, 235): "Domine, non solum es quo majus cogitari nequit; sed es quiddam majus quam cogitari possit."
61. Psal. LXIV, 2: "Tibi silentium laus" (St. Jerome's translation).
So much for the solution of the first difficulty. The window is now wide open for a true understanding of the books composed by Denys the Areopagite on Mystical Theology and The Divine Names. Here we must avoid two mistakes: either to make too little of works whose value is great, or, seeing that we understand them so ill, to fashion for ourselves idle fancies and inextricable commentaries.
Pico della Mirandola’s treatment of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite in De Ente et Uno—especially in Chapter III and IV and culminating in Chapter V—reveals a profound synthesis of Dionysian apophatic theology with Platonic metaphysics, Aristotelian logic, and a nuanced grasp of scholastic theological method. This engagement is not merely rhetorical: it demonstrates Pico's attempt to reconcile Dionysian Neoplatonism with scholastic realism and integrate Dionysian negation into a comprehensive metaphysical system.
Below is a deep reading and interpretation of Pico’s use of Dionysius:
Pico opens Chapter III with a metaphysical question:
Are unity (unum) and being (ens) convertible—that is, do they apply equally to all that exists?
This question is ancient, central to both Platonic and Aristotelian traditions, and foundational in scholastic ontology. To answer it, Pico invokes Parmenides, Dionysius, and Simplicius as authorities for a traditional metaphysical intuition: what is, is one—and that to be is to participate in unity.
He is writing against unnamed opponents (likely Platonizing theologians) who hold that unity is higher than being—a common reading of Dionysius, and one that appears in the first hypothesis of Plato’s Parmenides. But Pico carefully distinguishes two senses of “being” to resolve the issue.
1. Being as Existence (Aristotelian/common usage):
- This is the inclusive, “vulgar” sense—ens is anything that is not non-being.
- Dionysius himself accepts this when citing the divine name in Exodus (“I am that I am” / Ego sum qui sum / ἐγώ εἰμι ὁ ὤν).
2. Being as Participation in Esse:
- This is a more abstract and metaphysical sense: ens is that which receives being (esse).
- Just as a luminous thing receives light, a “being” participates in esse.
- By this model, God does not participate in being—He is Being Itself (ipsum esse per se subsistens), and therefore, above being in the participial sense.
🔁 Dionysius is both affirmed and transcended—his language is accommodated to a scholastic and Thomistic metaphysics of participation.
In Chapter IV, Pico makes the key Dionysian move:
"God is not being, but above being."
This apophatic turn is directly inspired by Dionysius’s Mystical Theology. Pico explains it with Platonic linguistic analysis:
📖 Dionysius’s formula, cited by Pico:
“God is called the One because He is in a unique way all things” (Divine Names I.7).
This enables Pico to explain how:
In Chapter V, Pico formalizes the Dionysian mysticism as a four-step ascent toward the divine cloud:
| Step | Description | Source |
|---|---|---|
| 1️⃣ Negation of corporeality | God is not body or soul, not the world-soul. | Anti-Epicurean, anti-Stoic, anti-Averroist |
| 2️⃣ Negation of particular perfections | God is not even life, intellect, or being. | Dionysius, Augustine |
| 3️⃣ Negation of transcendentals | God is above unity, truth, goodness, being. | Mystical Theology I–III |
| 4️⃣ Total unknowing | God is beyond any concept or name; only silence is fitting. | Dionysius, Psalm 64:2: “Tibi silentium laus.” |
Pico quotes Dionysius directly on the impossibility of affirming or denying anything of God:
“He is neither truth nor unity nor being… not father or son or spirit… neither darkness nor light… every affirmation and every negation is equally impossible.”
This mirrors the conclusion of Mystical Theology, where Dionysius unwrites theology through a final negation.
Pico balances Dionysius with Thomistic realism:
At the end of Chapter V, Pico turns personal and spiritual:
"We are able to love God better than we can know or describe Him."
This final insight is thoroughly Dionysian and mystical:
| Theme | Dionysian Concept | Pico’s Interpretation |
|---|---|---|
| Being vs. Unity | Unity is above being; God is beyond being | Pico accepts this if “being” is participial, but insists that in common sense, being and unity are convertible |
| Negative Theology | God is beyond affirmation and negation | Pico elaborates this into a fourfold mystical ascent, ending in silence and ineffability |
| Divine Names | God is all things in a unique way | Pico aligns this with scholastic simplicity: God is the unity of all perfections, not a composition |
| Mystical Cloud | True knowledge is darkness, not light | Pico quotes Dionysius and Augustine to affirm that divine simplicity transcends all our concepts, even the transcendentals |
Would you like a similar analysis of how Pico incorporates Dionysius in his Oration on the Dignity of Man or the 900 Conclusions? Or perhaps a comparison between Dionysius, Cusanus, and Kabbalistic sources in Pico’s mystical epistemology?
tell me more about how Pico brings in Thomistic realism
Pico della Mirandola’s synthesis of Thomistic realism—particularly the metaphysical and theological framework of Thomas Aquinas—is one of the most subtle and distinctive features of his intellectual project. In De Ente et Uno, as well as in the Apology, 900 Conclusions, and the Concordia, Pico neither blindly follows Aquinas nor breaks with him in a polemical spirit. Rather, he draws deeply on Aquinas’s metaphysical grammar, especially his doctrine of divine simplicity, participation, and the convertibility of being and unity, while filtering these through a Platonic and Dionysian lens.
Below is a close reading of how Pico engages and adapts Thomistic realism, especially in De Ente et Uno, but also across his corpus.
A key feature of Thomistic realism is the distinction between essence and existence:
“Ens is that which participates in esse, just as the luminous participates in light.”
This is a clear Thomistic metaphor—found also in Summa Theologiae, I, q. 3, a. 4:
“In God, essence and existence are the same, whereas in creatures they differ.”
Pico reaffirms Aquinas’s core metaphysical insight: all beings are beings by participation in God’s act of being. This view grounds his affirmation that:
Aquinas insists that:
“God’s wisdom is not more wisdom than justice… all these things are in God one… by a simple, sovereign, ineffable unity.”
He echoes Aquinas’s rejection of real composition in God:
Aquinas defines “transcendentals” (being, one, true, good) as properties that are convertible with being—they apply to all things that are.
“Being and unity must be convertible concepts.”
Pico’s affirmation of the convertibility of unity and being is pure Thomism. His difference lies in how he negotiates Dionysius’s idea that God is “above being”:
📌 This is Aquinas’s doctrine of analogy, though Pico doesn’t name it directly: names of God are not univocal (same meaning), nor equivocal (totally different), but analogical.
Pico draws heavily on Thomistic logical and metaphysical terminology:
While Pico draws on Aquinas, he does not remain within the strict bounds of Thomism. He innovates or inflects it in several ways:
| Theme | Thomistic View | Pico's Position |
|---|---|---|
| Mystical Theology | Apophatic, but less central | He amplifies Dionysius, making unknowing the highest knowledge |
| Unity and Being | God is Being Itself | God is above being when being is participial; dialectical maneuver allows him to affirm both |
| Names of God | Analogical predication | Pico moves more easily between analogy and negation, often affirming and denying simultaneously |
| Love vs. Knowledge | Knowledge is exalted, but love is not excluded | Pico puts love above knowledge in mystical ascent—closer to Dionysius and Augustine |
| Feature | Thomistic Source | Pico’s Use |
|---|---|---|
| Essence–Esse Distinction | ST I, q. 3, De Ente et Essentia | Essential to his account of participation |
| Divine Simplicity | ST I, q. 3, q. 13 | Affirms unity of all perfections in God |
| Transcendentals | ST I, q. 5, De Veritate | Uses them as a ladder to God, then negates them |
| Analogy | ST I, q. 13 | Implied in his treatment of divine names |
| Realism of Universals | Aristotelian/Thomistic via Avicenna | Accepted, though enriched by Platonic participation |
| Mysticism | Secondary in Aquinas | Central in Pico—especially via Dionysius and Cusanus |
Would you like a summary of Pico’s Concordia and how he tries to reconcile Plato and Aristotle, including Thomism and Platonism? Or a breakdown of how Pico’s use of Avicenna and Aquinas plays out in his 900 Conclusions or Kabbalistic writings?
let's move on to the next chapter of Copenhaver
Here is a detailed summary of Chapter 4: How to Mean the Body of Christ? Pico’s Q6 from Pico della Mirandola on Trial: Heresy, Freedom, and Philosophy by Brian P. Copenhaver:
This chapter is devoted to Pico’s treatment of Question 6 (Q6) in his Apology, which addresses one of the most theologically delicate and metaphysically complex topics in Christianity: the Eucharist. Specifically, it focuses on the real presence of Christ’s body in the consecrated bread and wine of the Mass, a doctrine that had long been a site of controversy, precision, and peril.
Copenhaver shows that Pico’s approach in Q6 is a model of scholastic philosophical theology: a dense, exacting argument that draws on theories of metaphysics, semantics, and sacramental theology, particularly concerning the words of consecration—“This is my body.”
The key dogma in question is transubstantiation:
How can the words “This is my body” be true if the bread remains in any form?
One of Pico’s 900 Conclusions stated:
“The body of Christ is not really and truly in the sacrament.”
This is shocking on its face—a direct challenge to the Church’s teaching. But Pico insists in Q6 of the Apology that:
Copenhaver shows that Pico’s defense turns on the medieval theory of supposition:
🧵 In short: The sentence “This is my body” is true, but not in the ordinary sense of language. It is true sacramentally, not semantically.
Copenhaver traces Pico’s logic to Jean Cabrol and Pierre de la Palud, both of whom had proposed subtle alternatives to the standard Thomist interpretation of transubstantiation.
Copenhaver clarifies Pico’s strategy:
💡 This makes the sacrament unique in the structure of language: it is a theological event rather than a normal linguistic proposition.
Copenhaver emphasizes that Pico’s argument has deep philosophical consequences:
Despite his careful distinctions, Pico’s position was politically and theologically dangerous:
In Q6, Pico confronts the doctrine of transubstantiation not with denial but with philosophical precision:
Would you like to continue with Chapter 5: Doxastic Voluntarism—Pico’s Q8 next?