by Linda Proud
Some say that Pico was brash and arrogant, but it was his youth and his soaring intellect that upset them. A man of his brilliance of mature years would have been called neither brash nor arrogant, merely ‘master’. Who knows by what divine agency he was endowed with superhuman powers of study? Angelo Poliziano had the most prodigious memory of any man I knew until Pico arrived, and then he was outshone. Pico had only to hear a poem once to be able to recite it, not only forwards but backwards also. Ficino said that that was all that Pico’s learning amounted to: a prodigious feat of memory. Perhaps.
Pico always got what he wanted, not in the fashion of a spoilt child but as one who cannot see any reason, given that all his work was dedicated to world harmony, why he should be denied. To deny him was surely to act against the Will of God. He was always arriving in the homes of friends, rushing in like the west wind and asking for the loan of a book or manuscript. No matter how precious or rare, no matter that it was at that very moment being studied by its owner, he had to have it. And have it he always did. ‘I shall be back in a few days!’ he would promise as he left, and not be seen again for at least a month. Men treated him like a favourite puppy who had chewed a shoe, giving him a stroke and a word of praise rather than the slap he deserved.
When he returned from Paris, his ambition if not his powers had been infinitely increased. He was distressed by what he had found at the Sorbonne. All faiths and religions were prone, he said, to dissension amongst their doctors and theologians, but none so much as our own Christianity. At the Sorbonne every scholar was at war with his fellows.
‘What is the point of studying,’ Pico asked during a meeting of the Platonic Academy, where we had our own fair share of acrimonious debates, ‘if it is just to disprove somebody else? The only goal of study should be Truth, but she lies torn and bleeding in our universities. We come from God as an emanation: intellect from God, soul from intellect, body from soul. Likewise our philosophies all arise from one source, as an emanation of wisdom. In unity they agree; in multiplicity they disagree. We need to follow wisdom back to its source. I am working on a system by which that might be achieved.’
A system to reconcile Plato and Aristotle, Averroes and Avicenna, Thomas Aquinas and Duns Scotus: a system to reconcile everything. More, it was to be a system that replaced the doctrines of the scholastics with true philosophy. Through Cabala, Plato would become safe, acceptable, and integral to Christianity. Is it any wonder that no one could resist Pico? He was so fired by his ideas, which had come to fruition in Paris, that he wanted, quite literally, to tell the world. He was compiling a list of theses – propositions that had been controversial for centuries – which he wished to debate, to resolve, in an open arena. In Paris? we asked. Padua? Pisa? Bologna?
‘Rome.’
‘There is no university at Rome.’
‘There is the Vatican. Imagine,’ and here he addressed himself to Lorenzo de’ Medici in particular, ‘imagine a Church actively engaged in the pursuit of truth. I want to lay out my ideas before the Pope and the college of cardinals.’
Lorenzo could imagine nothing more ambitious and less likely to succeed, but if it should… ‘O Count of Concordia, how well-named you are.’
19
THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE
1486
THERE ARE TWO MAIN TRADITIONS OF CABALA, THAT OF the scientia sephirot, or knowledge of the centres of energy within a man and within the cosmos; and the tradition of the scientia semot, the knowledge of the names of God – employing techniques of gematria, where numerical values are given to letters, hidden messages and ciphers may be discerned in scripture. Pico inclined towards the scientia sephirot and by this means was, he claimed, advancing towards true knowledge. He told us that Cabala, which reveals the mysteries of the universe and of Man, is the key to knowing everything.
He expounded to us the four levels of meaning, ‘the Tetragrammaton of scriptural study’. He had discovered that the theory of the four levels, often found in Christian writers, originated in the Jewish tradition. First there is the literal level, the level of common understanding; then there is the allegorical level, where one thing signifies another; the symbolic level, where by the use of symbol things may be understood in a revelatory way; and then there is the anagogic level, where the reader and the word become one. ‘This is the union of the soul and God, and the Hebrew name for the anagogic level is “Cabala”.’
Pico had a favourite story he had found in his oriental books. ‘There were some blind men travelling in a group who came upon a horse. One touched its head, the other its ears, one its back, another its flanks, one its mane and another its tail. Asked what a horse was, the blind men, convinced that they knew, said, “It is a warm hide; it is rough hair; it is a like a waxy flower; it is a breathing box.” Each man knew only part of it but, believing he knew all of it, he went to war with his fellows. To know the truth we must lose our blindness. This is the pass we have come to: we are trying to understand by use of the mind what is beyond the mind, and it is impossible. Only through Cabala may the blind begin to see.’
I fell in love with the alphabet of God, and devoured any translation as soon as it was made by Pico’s Jewish scholars. These were mysterious texts, not revealing very much to the uninitiated. Such was my longing to be an initiate that I even had a dream in which Pico appeared and invited me to a secret chamber. There Mithridates invested me with a parchment jerkin and hat on which were inscribed the names of God in Hebrew characters. After a fast of four days, I went by night to a lake and called out the Name over the water, and I watched to see if a green or a red form appeared in the air. Then I waded into the water and put on the garment and the Name, and was invested with terrible strength and the power to invoke angels. I called the Name. There was a great beating of wings and agitation of air. In terror, I woke up.
What I did not know was that, at this time, Pico himself was not yet initiated. One evening at the Villa Bruscoli he raised the subject, saying that Cabalistic initiation was like baptism – a required stage in the spiritual life. I grew shivery with my imaginings, but Pico discussed it as freely as a trip to market. He said his was to happen on the eve of the Feast of Weeks on the fiftieth day after Passover when, in a rite to be performed by Mithridates, he would be married to Lady Truth. He did not say more or explain what he meant but glanced at Maria with such effulgent eyes that she dipped her head to hide her blushes. Why did she blush? Could she not see his meaning? If Pico equated Poliziano’s sister with his divine beloved, it was an allegorical equation, for he retained his doubts that a woman could truly love platonically. Women, he said, unlike men, have no control over their passions.
The initiation was to take place in Rome.
‘You are leaving again?’ Angelo asked.
Pico ignored the plaintiveness in his friend’s voice. ‘Will you let me borrow Tommaso?’
‘No.’
‘There is so much copying to be done; truly I need a whole scriptorium.’
‘No! I need him.’
‘I shall only be away a month.’
‘A month! No. Definitely not.’ Poliziano was engaged in a series of lectures and essays proving that poetry was the mother of civilisation; I was helping him find the sources for remembered quotations.
‘He is not your slave,’ said Pico. ‘May he not answer for himself? Tommaso, what do you say? I have more than a lifetime’s work to do. Will you lend your skills to the service of my work? However much he pays you, I will double it.’
I looked from Pico to Poliziano and back again, so often that in the end Angelo threw his hands up in resignation. ‘Go with him if you like. What do I care?’
Pulled between two such strong forces, one for going and one for staying, I still hesitated.
Maria put her hand on my arm. ‘Go,’ she said. ‘And then come back.’
‘One month,’ Angelo grumbled. ‘No more.’
Hearing of the plan, Ficino called me to see him. He greeted me solemnly and when he bade me sit, the request was formal. This was not my friend or my master: this was my spiritual guide, and he was angry.
‘I hear you are throwing everything aside to follow Pico della Mirandola.’
I gasped. ‘I am going because he asked me to, and I have nothing to throw aside. It is work, Marsilio, that is all.’
‘When one meets a wall, one has to be patient. You have had this experience before. The one you seek to escape is yourself.’
‘Who speaks of escape? It is merely a journey.’
‘An adventure.’ He peered at me when I refused to agree. ‘An adventure, yes? You want the oblivion of new impressions.’
‘It is an excellent opportunity to visit my family in Rome.’
‘Beh! Confronted by a wall, you will follow anything that moves, even if it is a will o’ the wisp crossing a marsh.’
‘Is that your view of Pico?’
Now it was Ficino who refused to answer. ‘Stay here. Be patient. Patience is a virtue, let us not forget. Patience is not the restraint of impatience; it is an absolute quality. Let patience fill your heart.’
‘What is it that I am waiting for?’
‘What is it that you want? Truly, what is your desire?’
It is for that which I cannot have, I thought. ‘I do not know. It seems I want nothing, other than to practise my art. Writing notes and letters for Angelo is all very well, but… I want to be copying and improving my skills. I’ve had no commission since the Hermes for Lorenzino. Will he commission me again, do you think, or was he disappointed?’
‘Disappointed? Far from it. He often extols you. A commission will come soon, I am sure, from someone if not Lorenzino himself.’
‘Call it impatience if you like, but Pico is offering me secretarial work with responsibility and more… more…’
‘Adventure?’ Ficino leaned forward, his papery face softening. ‘Tommaso, do not go. This is not advice, it is an instruction. Stay here and let the universe have charge of your destiny. Adventures court danger and at the end nothing is attained that could not have been found at home.’
This was the philosophy of an old man! Even as he spoke, I made my mind up: I would go with Pico. Pico, I thought, may be impulsive, but at least he had the courage and faith to follow his impulses. He was god-driven, and I wished to follow the god. It seemed to be my chance of living again, of having life throb in my veins. To stay meant getting too comfortable with the Poliziani. I wanted the large horizon of an unknown, unpredictable future. I wanted to transcend the stars, to be a lion and not a sheep.
If I had listened to Ficino and stayed, I would still be a scribe and quite possibly remarried. But I went and, thinking I had nothing to lose, lost everything, including my destiny. Is that possible? How can you lose such a thing? What is fate and destiny? Ficino would have said it is what is in you to be fulfilled; Pico would have said it is what is. Every path forks. I chose to follow the one who believed we may carve our own future, the man of will.
This time the Poliziani insisted on their right to say goodbye. As Angelo embraced his friend, I encouraged Maria to present herself. Nervous in her shyness, she curtsied before Pico and fumbled at her purse.
‘Oh dear, oh Mother of God,’ she muttered, tugging at the knot in the purse strings. Pico took the purse from her; as he picked at the knot, his head bent forwards and rested lightly against hers. Maria stopped trembling then and became calm.
Pico drew a medal from the purse. ‘What is it, Maria?’
‘It is a gift,’ she said. ‘From Angelo and me. We’ve been looking for an occasion to present it to you.’
Angelo had had the medal struck at the time when he became a professor. On one side of it was his image and, on the other, Maria’s. The likenesses, made by the elderly sculptor Bertoldo, were excellent. Pico closed his fist round it, kissed Maria gratefully on the top of her head, rested there a moment, and then turned to throw his arms round Angelo.
‘I wish you would come with me,’ he said. ‘Truly without you I am only half myself.’
Angelo nodded. ‘My duties at the university… Tommaso will be our eyes and ears. We shall want letters daily,’ he said to me.
20
VENUS LAYS A TRAP
1486
I HAD HAD EVERYTHING I EVER WANTED IN LIFE AND HAD lost it. According to Pico, I was to look on that as a blessing. ‘Only a man released from earthly concerns is free to purify his soul, and there is nothing quite like marriage to keep a man earth-bound. Instead of contemplating God, he worries about the future; instead of studying scripture, he works on his ledgers. You have been freed, Tommaso: be grateful.’
His words were thoughtless and hurtful; I said nothing in reply.
‘Then should we not enter a monastery?’ asked his secretary, Cristoforo.
‘Oh, do not be deceived. It is harder, not easier, to be pure when enclosed. No, our work is to be both in the world and yet celibate.’
That is what he said to us as we rode to Arezzo.
Over the years I had been, and continued to be, the object of attention from several ladies of minor families, all of them married. They sent me messages, made themselves obvious at public festivities. I ignored them. My fondness for Maria lay in this, that she was not a sexual woman. She liked to play, to talk, to learn, and was always straight with me, never practising the art of allurement. Such a thing would have struck her as absurd and dishonest.
‘Coitus is so repetitive,’ Pico said. ‘Always the same. Make a dessert of apples from a thousand recipes – all taste of apples.’
There were about twenty-five men in Pico’s entourage, half of them on foot, half of them mounted, two of them armed. The footmen had left hours ahead of us and we did not catch them up until we reached our night’s lodgings. We were a relatively small party but an impressive one in outlandish head gear: tall Byzantine columns, French peaks, Jewish hoods and Paduan caps. When we reached Arezzo on the following day, the Aretines opened their gates to the Count of Concordia, whom they knew well enough from his previous visits. Accommodation had been arranged with relatives and the learned men of the city gathered to dine with this young man who would know everything. Our host gave a banquet and among the guests was a distant relation of Lorenzo de’ Medici accompanied by his new wife. Pico, with his wide-eyed and boyish enthusiasm, and his habit of treating all women as embodiments of Aphrodite, paid court to the bride accordingly.
Why was this woman, called Margarita, different? Yes, she wore a low-cut gown, tightly-laced to make her breasts swell and, as she breathed, the thin covering of fine, hide-nothing lawn – a whore’s attempt at modesty – fluttered and trembled. But who of us had not seen that before? It was a common-enough sight, besides which breasts are just swollen mounds of flesh. No one gets excited by udders on a cow. Yet I could not draw my eyes from this breathing flesh that exuded the scent of musk roses. As for Pico, he went pale with desire. He who knew better than anyone how to capture attention was himself held fast. Cupid had shot his dart.
I have often wondered. I think it was because, apart from being beautiful, she had a will to match Pico’s own. She had seen him on previous visits, had become inflamed with love for the Count of Concordia and arranged that he should sit beside her. By the end of the evening Pico, having been drawn from the lofty conversation with the man on his right to the very personal details of the lady on his left, was utterly caught in the web of Margarita’s lust. She was, she told him, the widow of a wealthy man; her new husband, although a Medici, was a mere tax collector and she was now confined to a small and empty house.
‘Love,’ Pico told her, ‘will furnish the house.’
‘I have loved no one, my Lord,’ she said so that none but he could hear, ‘since my eyes looked on you.’
Pico was used to w
omen falling at his feet like ripe pears. Why could he not step adroitly past this one as he had with most of the others? It is said that demons come in the most beautiful guises and it is the only explanation that fits, that it was not a woman seducing the Count but a devil. Or Venus, in revenge for Pico’s preference for Minerva. Pico was drawn into Margarita’s desire as a man falls into a fever; one moment he is healthy, the next he is sweating and delirious. In a secret and whispering discourse they devised a plan between them for Margarita to escape her husband and Arezzo.
It has been said since that it had all been pre-arranged on an earlier visit. Not true. Even Pico was not so mad as to plan to hold a great debate and elope with a married woman at the same time. No, it all happened on this one night, the desire, the impulse and the act.
‘You are insane!’ his secretary, Cristoforo, exploded later when Pico told him what he intended for the morning.
Pico looked at him with those amused eyes that seemed to be in constant wonder at the world and its inhabitants. ‘Who was it who said that there is no law for lovers?’
‘A fool.’
‘Come, Cristoforo, we’ll send the footmen off early. No one will miss Margarita until, when? Night time? We can be in Siena by then.’
‘Siena? I thought we were going to Rome!’
‘We only have to cross the river to be under the jurisdiction of Siena and out of that of Arezzo. We shall go on to Rome later. Trust me. Aphrodite and Apollo will attend us.’
I was so familiar with the tales of Ovid in which gods snatch mortal beauties that half of me believed this adventure could be successful, at least for the god. Margarita would of course be turned into a white daisy or a pearl, but so be it. Mithridates and Elia del Megido, however, were so outraged that they left the city with the other scholars and arranged to meet us in Perugia, warning Pico that he was sacrificing his great, ambitious project to mere lust. ‘And for a woman!’ said Mithridates in a bitter mixture of distaste and disappointment.