by Linda Proud
‘Angelo,’ I said, ‘concentrate on your lecture.’
In the evening Pico rode up to Fiesole with his motley band of scholars. At the villa he leapt from his horse and threw his arms round Poliziano, saying how much he had missed him. Before Angelo could complain about Pico having gone off without saying goodbye, Pico was saying that it is a mark of true friendship that you don’t have to be in sight of one another to be close. ‘When two souls are joined, no amount of miles can sunder them Distance makes no difference. That is true friendship, when one is free to come and go without explanation, with no demands being made.’ He turned to embrace Maria. ‘And when the beloved is in dual form, male and female both, how blessed can a lover be?’
One of the Jewish doctors watched this scene with stark disapproval and took Pico aside for a whispered conversation. Pico beckoned to Maria and introduced her to the Jew. ‘She is my sister, Mithridates. She is my soul. I want her to hear what we have to say.’
Mithridates exchanged glances with another of the Jewish doctors, then nodded sourly. ‘It is not for the guest to say who shall be present.’
Once we were all settled in the villa’s loggia, Pico told us what he had imparted to Lorenzo and Ficino earlier, that he had discovered a system of knowledge in the Jewish tradition called Cabala, a source of wisdom that would one day unite all men in devotion of God – Jews, Christians, Muslims alike. ‘In essence,’ Pico said, unfolding some charts covered with Hebrew signs, ‘the system is a code enabling one to unlock the hidden mysteries of scripture. It shows us that everything in the history of creation, from Genesis onwards, prefigures the Son of God; that the name of the Messiah is Iesu.’
‘We know that,’ said Angelo.
‘We do, but the Jews don’t. My friends here are converts, and wish all their fellows to convert. If we were to unlock the whole Bible with this key, we could change the course of human history.’
I felt the hairs on my neck rising, and said so.
‘Tsssh,’ said Pico, ‘a fine literary conceit. Your hair lies as usual. But yes, you feel the prickle of terror, as I did once. And you feel the same wonder. Mithridates here has taught me the system of letter manipulation, which I shall now show to you.’ He unrolled a scroll showing a diagram, in shape a kind of kite with circles at its angles numbering ten in all, each with a name and called the Sephiroth. He spoke rapidly and with many Hebrew terms that were mystifying, but at the end of the demonstration he had drawn an eleventh circle and written within it the name Iesu. With that he sat back, his eyes huge and expectant, as if he had not only discovered the secret of the universe but proved it. ‘Cabala, the secret wisdom of Moses, predicts Christ. What Cabala shows us is that there is one Law, one Truth, and it informs everything: all forms, all institutions, all religions. All creation, in its infinite variety, springs from one source.’
Angelo, struggling to remain sceptical in the face of this vivid demonstration, stared at Pico as Peter the fisherman must have looked at Christ. ‘I cannot believe the truth can be so simple.’
‘Why should it be complicated, if it is true?’
Pico invited Mithridates, an expert in Oriental languages and a speaker of many tongues, to explain to us how, by manipulation of letters and the incantation of names, one may mount the heavens to the angelic realm and, beyond that, to God. This was a journey, Pico said, so blissful, so transcendent of the body, that it may only be made under the guidance of a magus, and its goal is the mors osculi, the death of the kiss. ‘According to our wise teachers, many of the ancient fathers died in a rapture of the intellect called binsica, which in Hebrew means death from kissing. They say that this is what happened to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses and Mary. This is what Solomon refers to in his song when he says, “Kiss me with the kisses of thy mouth”. This is the kind of kissing Plato refers to when he speaks of the kisses of his Agathon, and not the kind that many believe of him.’
Maria gazed at him, her mouth slightly open.
‘The question is,’ said Pico, ‘whether they are speaking of physical death, or a symbolic one.’
‘It is physical,’ said Mithridates, in a tone which invited no argument. ‘Of course it is physical. Why should a man who has found union with the Divine wish to continue living in mortal bondage? It is a physical death. You see God, you die. The end of it.’
Elia del Medigo, a professor of philosophy at Padua, disagreed, saying that the mystic death was but the death of the false self, the selfish person with whom we identify, usurper of the throne of the intellect.
We Florentines listened agog to such occult, Jewish speculations.
Maria sat staring out into the night and the winking fireflies. ‘We should not speak of death so lightly,’ she said. ‘To welcome death is to misunderstand the nature of life.’
‘Go on,’ said Pico, encouraging her to speak her thoughts. ‘Life is God,’ she said. ‘Life is eternal. Our bodies die, and we should not mourn them; but we should not shun life.’
Mithridates looked down his long nose at her. ‘My lord,’ he appealed to Pico, ‘it is not acceptable to have a woman arguing with us.’
Maria apologised and said she had not meant to argue, only to offer her point of view.
‘She speaks as she finds,’ Pico said, ‘and, when she does, it is worth listening to her.’
The man with the scarred face, an Italian called Mercurio, put out his hand and rested it on Maria’s head. ‘She has the sight,’ he said, speaking out of one side of his mouth, for the other was frozen by the scarring.
‘A woman? It is not possible,’ said Mithridates. He rose in agitation and began pacing the loggia.
Pico looked up at the stars. ‘Pray, continue your discourse about the heavens.’
Mithridates looked at Maria is if she were polluting the purity of the intellect but then he sighed and acquiesced. He stepped outside the loggia, threw up his arms to the sky and called on us to look on the spheres of the planets. We could identify those of Mercury, Mars and Venus, but Jupiter and Saturn were not visible. ‘And yet we know that they are there,’ said Mithridates. ‘Likewise we go beyond the senses to proceed on this journey. We go beyond the planets, to the spheres of the angels – thrones, cherubim and seraphim. This is beyond the senses, but still part of the intelligible world. But beyond the nine spheres is the tenth, which is motionless and beyond human knowledge.’ He spoke in symbols and allusions, of the seraphic fire of love, the cherubic fire of knowledge, and by such words we were drawn far from the world of the body and its carnal concerns, our souls travelling by Jewish maps, sphere by sphere, through the circles of the planets to the outer limits of the cosmos and the tenth sphere, where nothing moves but all is still: absolute peace.
‘So if it is beyond knowledge,’ said Angelo, ‘how do we know about it?’
‘By becoming it,’ said Elia del Megido. ‘When all movement ceases, mental and physical, when you find that stillness within yourself, then you know not by the mind but by the being, by experience.’
‘This is the truth of Hermes,’ said Mercurio.
‘It is the truth of the Cabala,’ said Mithridates.
‘It is the truth of Plato,’ said I.
Pico told us it was the truth of all wisdom. ‘This is where all the divergent faiths and systems of the world meet in harmony: at the source.’
Although Angelo threw his hands up and muttered about angels and fairies, saying we would all be burnt for heresy just listening to such things, he allowed Pico to use his house as a cabalistic academy on Fiesole. Lorenzo de’ Medici came frequently, and his Pierfranceschi cousins. Men came from much farther off, from places such as England, Portugal and Germany, ostensibly students of Poliziano, but the best of them, such as the mature Grocyn and the young Linacre, were drawn into our academy. I was a keen student, for I believed in this Jewish system of understanding the cosmos and shared Pico’s desire to int
roduce it into Christianity. Although Angelo disapproved, saying it would ‘excite her brain’, Maria joined me each day to study and practise Hebrew letters. With her heavy, black hair tied in its knot, in which were often stuck a couple of spare quills, she was a distracting fellow student and sometimes I sat back from my studies to gaze at this woman bent over her books and breathing through her mouth. If she had been a man, I would have worked in silence, keeping my knowledge to myself until such times that I could devastate him with a display of brilliance. Instead I found myself asking for her help when I needed it, and she always gave it in a way that did not diminish me in my own eyes. I called her my sister, but even sisters can be competitive, and she was not. Every now and then we took a line from the Bible and translated its letters into their numerical equivalents to find the deeper, hidden message. Each time we were startled by what we found.
When Pico came to the villa, attended by his oriental companions, he often kept us up late into the night discussing his multitudinous and often obscure ideas, filling us with awe and wonder as if we were children listening to the tales of a spiritual adventurer. He was twenty-three and at his boldest, lavishing his wealth on books and scholars who could translate cabalistic texts for him. He was inflamed with the idea that, now that we had brought back from obscurity the works of the ancient Romans and Greeks, the next step was to become familiar with the wisdom of the East, of the Hebrews, the Persians and the Indians.
On one particular evening celebrated in the Jewish calendar, at the Palazzo de’ Medici Mithridates performed a rite, intoning certain chants and swinging a censer to fill the room with dense clouds of fragrant smoke in which we might see angels. What angel did we raise that night? I saw nothing myself, although others claimed to have seen shapes or figures of light in the billowing smoke of frankincense and storax. I grew frightened – what if we raised a demon and not an angel? I reminded myself that, according to the Neoplatonists, daemons are agents of the Divine, and may probably be equated with angels. Even so, some more primitive fear took hold of me and I dreaded seeing anything in the smoke. Therefore I was not sorry when I saw nothing, and later, riding home with Angelo, agreed with him that it had been an interesting experiment producing no results. But as I write this, I begin to think that our ill-fortune began on that night, was coalesced, made strong and focussed. Not a man there who wasn’t touched by it in some way, the Angel – or demon – of Death.
Am I saying that Mithridates purposely summoned that dark angel? No, I am not. But such magic may only be performed by the pure. What I am saying is that Mithridates was not pure.
London, January 9th, 1506
‘Hmmm,’ said Linacre, taking my pulse in five places. ‘Ha.’ Sitting on a low stool in front of me, he went down between the sharp angle of his knees to look at the blue bruises on my toes. ‘Oh, dear.’
‘What is it?’
‘Sssh. Be quiet. I am having a conversation with your body. Hmmm. Not been looking after ourselves too well, have we?’
‘Are you expecting a reply from me or my feet?’
‘Too much vinegar. Wine should be drunk where it is grown, you know.’
‘You want me to drink that horse pee from English vineyards?’
He sat up and tapped his fingers together under his nose, many times and quickly. The draught lifted his fringe. ‘It is good. Good wine,’ he said, rising from the stool. ‘How are your joints?’
‘Supple! I am only forty-eight.’
‘And your pene?’
‘Pendulous.’
‘How come?’
I was surprised by the question. ‘By my will, of course.’
Linacre laughed. ‘Who do you think you are? A saint? Perhaps Saggy Annie was right.’ He went to the bench to make a note in his patients book. While I put my hose and shoes back on, he stood tapping his quill against his lips.
‘I came to see you because I’m short of breath,’ I grumbled.
‘Hmmm?’ He dipped his nib and wrote more notes. ‘Ah, well, you rarely find a cause in the area of the symptoms.’ Inhaling loudly, he turned and leaned against the bench with his arms folded.
‘Melancholia,’ he pronounced, with that joy of a man to whom knowledge has dawned in all its glory.
If this annoyed me it was because I could have recognised it myself and not have troubled a busy friend with something so obvious. Melancholia – the excessive influence of the planet Saturn – is a disease so common amongst scholars that Ficino wrote a whole book on it, and I copied it out twice. Why have I not been able to see it for myself? I thanked Linacre and, when he began to prescribe remedies, interrupted to say that I know them off by heart. ‘In short I need the influence of Jove and should wear gold, eat honey and drink mead.’
‘Far from it. You need the moisture of Venus: peaches, pears, figs, grapes and olives. And coral.’ He went to a small drawer in a great chest and took out a handful of red pills made he said, from Sardinian coral, and dropped them into a pouch. ‘Take three of these twice a day until they are finished. Of course, the best remedy of all would be the sea; a journey on the sea, even a short one, would do.’
‘Such as crossing the English Channel? This is not a remedy, it’s a conspiracy. By a not very subtle method you are telling me to obey Colet and go home.’
‘Your body is telling you that. Do not take these symptoms lightly. If you continue in this fashion, always working, over- indulging in study, leading a secluded life in damp lodgings, your heart will kill you.’
‘Then it is a choice between death and death, for if I am to find what I have lost, then it is to Hades I must go.’
‘Florence is not hell, my friend. There are many fine things there still, including that wine you love. Remember how that tastes under a hot sun? Nectar! I do not understand why you do not wish to return home.’
‘I am tired of travelling and long to settle.’
‘Open your mouth and put out your tongue.’ His spare, bony face came close to mine. ‘Hoo – too much garlic last night! But it looks alright.’
‘What did you expect?’
‘Rows of bright red pimples: the tell-tale sign of a liar. No one would choose to live in England in preference to Italy.’
‘Here you do not have Cesare Borgia, laying waste to cities.’
‘So Cesare Borgia himself chased you out of Italy, did he? Well, you can go back now since Cesare himself has fled to Spain.’
‘He has?’
‘I heard it last night at court.’
I sighed. ‘There is a more practical difficulty: I cannot afford the journey.’
‘You could sell me your copy of Plato.’
I looked at him in horror, unable to believe what he had said.
Linacre shrugged. ‘Is it not true that, to find God, we have to give up our most cherished possession? Indeed, it would speed your ascent if you were to give it to me rather than sell it.’ He grinned suddenly. ‘I am only teasing.’
I turned my head this way and that to loosen the muscles that had gone into spasm.
‘I have a commission for you. The king is still anxious to obtain plans of Santa Maria Nuova, to build a hospital on its model at Savoy on the Strand. He has learnt considerable detail from the Florentines in his court, and from the Portinari family in Bruges. But what he cannot find is a drawn plan. He was asking me recently what I could remember of the building but I could only say how it is shaped like a church and has courtyards and cloisters. “Oh, for a plan!” the King complained. When I told him you were preparing to go to Italy with Erasmus –’
‘– What?’
‘– he offered to pay your expenses. And there will be a reward on your return. Tommaso, you have drawing skills and are adept in the science of proportion. You must return to Italy, if only to visit this hospital and measure it for me. Pace it out so that we know its distances.’
&nbs
p; I told him that I have no intention of making any journey. I am tired. Let me rest. God, let me rest.
London, January 12th, 1506
God has joined the conspiracy. This morning I received a letter from the Prior of Blackfriars demanding to see me. I went there straightaway; better that than dwelling on it. The interview was short. Either I return to the habit and go back into a Dominican house, or I must go to the pope in person to request absolution of my vows. There is to be no more running.
‘One more thing, brother,’ he said, as I was about to leave. ‘I have heard rumour that the Dean of St Paul’s is a Platonist and Cabalist. Is it true?’
‘I have never met a more authentic, ardent Christian.’
‘You were once a servant of Pico della Mirandola, I believe. If I find that it is you who is sowing seeds of heresy in this land, I shall not hesitate to report you. The burnings have not stopped, you know.’
‘The Count of Concordia was absolved of heresy.’
‘By a Borgia pope for a considerable amount of Medici money. That is not the kind of absolution heaven recognises.’
I wanted to ask if heaven would recognise absolution from my sins by a della Rovere pope but the Prior is not a man to argue with. Hypocrisy – is it any wonder I suffer from it when it is so rife?
18
PICO AIMS TO CURE THE WORLD OF IGNORANCE
1486
THE HUMAN MIND TENDS NATURALLY TO METAPHOR – some would say that life itself is a metaphor, that somehow creation is a semblance of a divine truth. Certainly it seems that we can hardly speak without likening one thing to another. But Pico della Mirandola defies analogy. He was unique. I did not understand him then; I do not understand him now, even with the benefit of hindsight and the wisdom of age. There was and is no one like him. Except perhaps Phaeton, who fell to his death while riding the chariot of the sun.