Thesis 9>8
Latin
Miracula Christi non ratione rei factae, sed ratione modi faciendi, suae diuinitatis argumentum certissimum sunt.
Copy-text Farmer 1998 (farmer1998:25204-25205), where the OCR prints the number as '9-8'; u/v as Farmer prints them. Wirszubski quotes the same text from the Basel Opera (page 105) as magical conclusion 8 (wirszubski1989:6283-6285). The title of Garcia's determination on the thesis, as printed by Edelheit, reads 'facte' and 'sue' and has the order 'argumentum sunt certissimum' (edelheit2022:20927-20928). Collation with the Rome print of 7 December 1486 (farmer1998:28040-28042) is outstanding.
English
It is by reason of the manner in which they were done, not of the deed itself, that Christ's miracles are the surest proof of his divinity.
'argumentum' is rendered 'proof' in the sense of a ground for assent, graded here as the most certain. 'ratione rei factae' and 'ratione modi faciendi' set the thing produced against the manner of producing it; Pico's own restatement in the Apology speaks of certainty 'ex modo faciendi miracula' (wirszubski1989:6271-6272), and Farmer's parenthesis gives the key phrase (farmer1998:7107).
Condemnation
Q11 in the order of the Apology: Christ's miracles. Printed 7 December 1486; censured by the papal commission in February-March 1487; the work as a whole condemned by the bull of 4 August 1487.
Judged 'true and tolerable', with the complaint that it could be taken in a bad sense because connected with magical things (farmer1998:7080-7084), citing Dorez and Thuasne 1897, p. 136 (farmer1998:7095); Blum's translation of the same record, 'Can be taken wrongly being presented among the magic theses' (dougherty2008:2183, 2243).
Doctrine
The thesis places the evidential force of Christ's miracles in the manner of their working (modus faciendi), not in the thing done (res facta), and ranks them as the most certain proof of his divinity (farmer1998:25204-25205). It stands between 9>7, which denies that Christ's works could have been done by the way of magic or of Kabbalah, and 9>9, which makes magic and Kabbalah the sciences that best assure us of that divinity (farmer1998:25200-25209). The run opens with 9>6, which refers every wonderful work, magical, Kabbalistic or other, principally to God (farmer1998:25194-25197). Defending 9>9 in the Apology, Pico cited the present thesis as 'the preceding conclusion': certainty of Christ's divinity comes only from the manner in which he worked miracles, and that he worked them, and worked them so, is known only from Scripture (wirszubski1989:6268-6273, 6283-6285). He then named two things one must know for the miracles to testify to that divinity: that they were done by no natural power but only by the power of God, and that Christ had that power from himself and not from anything else (farmer1998:7063-7067). Natural magic serves the first step, being the human science that best knows what natural agents can and cannot do by their own power (farmer1998:7067-7075; wirszubski1989:6294-6300). On the editor's reading, the second condition is what the thesis calls the manner of working: a wonder done by a power received from another would show the power of its giver, so only working by one's own power points to the worker's divinity (editor's inference from farmer1998:7063-7067 and farmer1998:25204-25205). Copenhaver glosses the thesis in a related way: Christ was no stage wizard like Simon Magus, who manipulated nature, and as First Cause he needed no magic, Kabbalah or other secondary cause (copenhaver2019:17635-17642).
Context
The thesis belongs to the twenty-six magical conclusions that Pico offered according to his own opinion (farmer1998:25106-25107). Farmer notes that Pico, with his debate planned at the Vatican, went to great lengths to deny the magus direct access to God's power, except in the sense that God is the ultimate source of all magic (farmer1998:7020-7023). Its neighbour 9>9 was, in Farmer's judgment, the most notorious thesis of the text in Renaissance times, and it was judged false, erroneous, superstitious and heretical (farmer1998:7024-7026). Blum suggests that the theologians tolerated magic so long as it was kept clear of theological and above all Christological implications, a border between natural philosophy and theology that Pico crossed (dougherty2008:2259-2263). He observes that 9>8 was listed only because it might lead to magic, while none of the other twenty-four magical propositions was listed (dougherty2008:2256-2259). In the Apology the Question on this thesis is titled 'De miraculis Christi', the eleventh of thirteen (edelheit2008:14872-14876; fornaciari2010:1043). Copenhaver lists it by topic alone, in an order of Questions that nearly follows the commission's order of inquiry (copenhaver2022:841-848).
Reception
The commission did not censure the thesis as stated: it reluctantly admitted that it was 'true and tolerable', while complaining that it could easily be taken in a bad sense because it was connected with magical things (farmer1998:7080-7084, 7095). Blum's translation of the record renders the verdict 'Can be taken wrongly being presented among the magic theses' (dougherty2008:2179-2183, 2240-2243). Edelheit counts it among the seven theses declared suspect, as against six condemned (edelheit2008:14877-14883). Blum reports that the list of incriminated theses in Pico's Opera leaves this thesis and 9>9 unmarked (dougherty2008:2181-2182). Pico's reply is a short Question of the Apology, a single page in Fornaciari's edition (fornaciari2010:1043-1044). Pedro Garcia (Garsia), who answered the Apology in his Determinationes magistrales of 1489, gave the thesis its own determination at f. o3v, after his long treatment of magic and Kabbalah at ff. h4r-o3r (dougherty2008:2377-2378; edelheit2022:20820-20822, 20927-20928). There he argued that a wayfarer cannot by natural light evidently tell true miracles from false ones, or miracles from illusions (prestigia) (edelheit2022:20899-20902, 20929-20930). The objection strikes at the step for which Pico had enlisted natural magic, knowing what natural agents can and cannot do (editor's inference from edelheit2022:20929-20930 and farmer1998:7067-7075). Edelheit sees in the exchange the theological antecedents of the dispute over true and false prophecy that Savonarola's claims provoked in Florence in the 1490s (edelheit2022:20903-20911).
Historiography
Farmer uses the thesis to show that Pico's defence of 9>9 in the Apology was his original plan and not a retreat, since 9>7 and 9>8 already tie certainty about Christ's divinity to the manner of his miracles (farmer1998:7077-7080, 7104-7107). Wirszubski identifies 9>8 as the 'preceding conclusion' to which the Apology appeals (wirszubski1989:6283-6285). Copenhaver finds that the notorious 9>9 'seems less outrageous in context' once read with 9>6-9>8 (copenhaver2019:17618-17642). Blum reads the listing of 9>8 beside 9>9 as evidence that the commission policed a border between magic and Christology, not magic as such (dougherty2008:2256-2263). Edelheit reads Garcia's reply as restoring the sharp distinction between natural and divine light (edelheit2022:20896-20899). Copenhaver's trial study names the Question only by topic (copenhaver2022:848, 13623). Of the thirteen this is the thesis the judges called true: what brought it before them was its place among the magical conclusions, which shows the commission reading a proposition by its neighbours as well as by its words (editor's inference from farmer1998:7080-7084 and dougherty2008:2243).
Pico's sources
- No source for the thesis is identified in the material consulted; Pico's own gloss is in the fifth Question of the Apology, which cites it as 'the preceding conclusion': the author's later restatement, not a source of the thesis (wirszubski1989:6271)
- Theses 9>6, 9>7 and 9>9, which frame 9>8 in the magical conclusions: immediate context; Farmer uses 9>7-8 to read 9>9 (farmer1998:25194)
Quotations cited
- “true and tolerable” — Stephen A. Farmer, Syncretism in the West: Pico's 900 Theses (1486) (farmer1998:7081)
- “the orthodoxy of the first was never” — Stephen A. Farmer, Syncretism in the West: Pico's 900 Theses (1486) (farmer1998:7080)
- “Can be taken wrongly being presented among the magic theses” — M. V. Dougherty (ed.), Pico della Mirandola: New Essays (dougherty2008:2243)
- “the eleventh thesis is mentioned only because it may lead to magic” — M. V. Dougherty (ed.), Pico della Mirandola: New Essays (dougherty2008:2257)
- “ut in praecedenti diximus conclusione” — Chaim Wirszubski, Pico della Mirandola's Encounter with Jewish Mysticism (wirszubski1989:6271)
- “non habemus nisi ex modo faciendi miracula quae fecit” — Chaim Wirszubski, Pico della Mirandola's Encounter with Jewish Mysticism (wirszubski1989:6271)
- “Christ was not a stage wizard like Simon Magus” — Brian P. Copenhaver, Magic and the Dignity of Man: Pico della Mirandola and His Oration in Modern Memory (copenhaver2019:17635)
- “seems less outrageous in context” — Brian P. Copenhaver, Magic and the Dignity of Man: Pico della Mirandola and His Oration in Modern Memory (copenhaver2019:17621)
- “Miracula Christi non ratione rei facte sed ratione modi faciendi” — Amos Edelheit, A Philosopher at the Crossroads: Giovanni Pico della Mirandola's Encounter with Scholastic Philosophy (edelheit2022:20927)
- “viator non potest in lumine naturali” — Amos Edelheit, A Philosopher at the Crossroads: Giovanni Pico della Mirandola's Encounter with Scholastic Philosophy (edelheit2022:20929)
- “De miraculis Christi” — Amos Edelheit, Ficino, Pico and Savonarola: The Evolution of Humanist Theology 1461/2-1498 (edelheit2008:14875)
- “Quaestio XI de miraculis Christi” — Paolo Edoardo Fornaciari (ed.), Apologia conclusionum suarum (front matter and contents only in the corpus) (fornaciari2010:1043)
- “Miracula Christi non” — Sophia Howlett, Re-evaluating Pico: Aristotelianism, Kabbalism, and Platonism in the Philosophy of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (howlett2021:2028)
Not established
- The text of the Apology's eleventh Question (Fornaciari, p. 190, fornaciari2010:1043) was not consulted; Pico's defence of this thesis is known here only through his cross-reference to it in the fifth Question.
- The Latin of the commission's verdict (Dorez and Thuasne 1897, p. 136) is not in the corpus; the verdict is known through Farmer's and Blum's English.
- A scholastic source for the contrast between 'res facta' and 'modus faciendi' is not established by the sources consulted.
- What Copenhaver's own translation of the Apology says in the eleventh Question is not established by the sources consulted; his note 14 gives thirteen Apology pages in the order of the Questions (copenhaver2022:871-872), the eleventh being p. 106 on the editor's reading of that order.
- Collation against the 1486 Rome print.
Discussed in
- Brian P. Copenhaver, Pico della Mirandola on Trial: Heresy, Freedom, and Philosophy (2022)
- M. V. Dougherty (ed.), Pico della Mirandola: New Essays (2008)
- Amos Edelheit, A Philosopher at the Crossroads: Giovanni Pico della Mirandola's Encounter with Scholastic Philosophy (2022)
- (unidentified), Knots and Spirals I: Pico della Mirandola (n.d.)
- Chaim Wirszubski, Pico della Mirandola's Encounter with Jewish Mysticism (1989)
Farmer's cross-references
- 1>6 De distinctione ex natura rei non debent discordare Thomistae et Scotistae, si suos doctores fundamentaliter intelligant.
- 9>10 Quod magus homo facit per artem, fecit natura naturaliter faciendo hominem.
- 9>7 Non potuerunt opera Christi uel per uiam magiae uel per uiam cabalae fieri.
- 9>9 Nulla est scientia quae nos magis certificet de diuinitate Christi. quam magia et cabala.