Pío Pico

“ The news brought by these gentlemen was very important— first it seems that Fremont has heard that there is a force marching from Sonora —some two thousand strong under the Command of General Castro and Pio Pico— This seems to have some foundation— as Fremont has sent a force to Warners pass of one hundred and seventy five men, and four pieces of Artillery. ”

“ For years chaos reigned at the Mission. The government drove off many of the Indians, others left and the herds of cattle became legitimate prey alike for “Gentlemen of Mexico” and Mexican bandits not claiming the distinction.
In 1846 armed invasion of California was commenced by the Americans. Governor Pio Pico in a blaze of oratory declared that at any cost the “Department of California” must be retained as property of Mexico forever and asked for authority to sell Rancho Mission de San Fernando, then known as Rancho Ex-Mission, for funds with which to equip an army. ”

“ Juan Bandini, substitute congressman from California, also wrote a reply to Victoria's proclamation, dated at San Diego October 10th, in which he refuted the charge of illegality in the elections, and argued very eloquently against the governor's right to deprive the country of the services of its diputacion on account of mere suspicions respecting the members. Pio Pico, senior vocal of the diputacion, issued a similar protest. ”

“ No lessee could be found to take the land under this act and on June 18th, 1846, Pio Pico made the final grant of all the remaining Mission lands to Julian Workman and Hugo Reid. The United States government, however, refused to confirm this last minute disposal of the Mission land and declared the property public land of the United States, first setting aside to Bishop Alemany 190 acres surrounding the Mission buildings.
34
The public land was quickly taken up by many settlers, who were eager to acquire homesteads in a country almost exclusively made up of giant ranchos. ”

“ This picturesque union of contrasts, belonging properly to the art of the close of the fifteenth century, pervades, in Pico della Mirandola, an actual person, and that is why the figure of Pico is so attractive. He will not let one go; he wins one on, in spite of one's self, to turn again to the pages of his forgotten books, although we know already that the actual solution proposed in them will satisfy us as little as perhaps it satisfied him. ”

“ A good idea of More's interests as a young man between twenty-five and thirty can be obtained from his setting himself to make a translation of Pico della Mirandola's "Life, Letters and Works." While Pico was one of the most learned men of the Renaissance, he was also one of the most pious. And more than any other he showed the possibility of being profoundly acquainted with Greek culture, and yet retaining a deep devotion to religion. ”

“ To what extent he relied upon his powers of debate as well as on his vast stores of erudition, was proved by the publication of the famous nine hundred theses at Rome in 1486. These questions seem to have been constructed in defence of the Platonic mysticism, which already had begun to absorb his attention. The philosophers and theologians who were challenged to contend with him in argument had the whole list offered to their choice. Pico was prepared to maintain each and all of his positions without further preparation. ”

“ And yet to read a page of one of Pico's forgotten books is like a glance into one of those ancient sepulchres, upon which the wanderer in classical lands has sometimes stumbled, with the old disused ornaments and furniture of a world wholly unlike ours still fresh in them. That whole conception of nature is so different from our own. For Pico the world is a limited place, bounded by actual crystal walls, and a material firmament ”

“ At last the men, to the number of ten or a dozen, had congregated for the evening lounge and pow-wow. Pio slipped into the shadow of one of the little houses whence he could issue in full view of the conclave. He settled the nightcap on his head, grasped the umbrella in one hand and the slippers and stockings in the other, and at a lull in the conversation advanced. He had decided to dispense with the "How d' ye do?" in order to play his best card at once: so as he stepped into the light of the fire he merely uttered in a loud tone the word "Kla-quitch," to catch their attention. ”

“ Giovanni was perturbed.
“But if not here, where, then, in Rome should I be safe?”
“Nowhere, I think,” answered the ironical Ascanio. “Though perhaps you might count yourself safe with Pico. Your common hate of the Holy Father should be a stout bond between you.”
Fate prompted the suggestion. Fate drove the Lord of Pesaro to act upon it, and to seek out Antonio Maria Pico, Count of Mirandola, in his palace by the river, where Pico, as Ascanio had foreseen, gave him a cordial welcome. ”

“ To form commonplace books of phrases culled from the 'Tusculans' and the 'Orations,' to choose some trivial theme for treatment, and to make it the occasion for verbal display, became their business. In the coteries of Rome and Florence scholars measured one another by their ingenuity—in other words,-385- by their aptness for producing Ciceronian and Virgilian centos. Few indeed, like Pico, raised their voices against such trifling, or protested that what a man thought and felt was at least as important as his power of clothing it in rhetoric. ”

“ It was a wild ride and there were thirty wild men riding. Pico, half crazed by the horror of his daughter’s possible fate, urging on with brief, inflammatory appeals the already excessive ardor of the pursuers; Cady, silent and alert, rode a rod or two in advance, followed by Kenneth, Pico’s foreman, a gigantic Scotchman, a violent man of great physical power and energy. I rode with Pico when the exigencies of the trail permitted. ”

“ Approaching the Bible in the simple literary way indicated by classical study, Pico really rediscovered some of the teachings of the New Testament, while in dealing with the Old he was forced to adopt an ingenious but unsound allegorical interpretation. "Philosophy seeks the truth," he wrote, "theology finds it, religion possesses it." His extraordinary personal influence extended through {52} lands beyond the Alps, even though it failed in accomplishing the rehabilitation of Italian faith. ”

“ I said, "who is Pio?"
"Oh, hang it all, Pio is Italian, it's short for Pius. He tries to get Fra Fraliccolo and Carlo Carlotti the Condottiere to steal the document from...let me see; what was he called?...Oh, yes...from the Dog of Venice, so that...or...no, hang it, you put me out, that's all wrong. It's the other way round. Pio wasn't clever at all; he's a regular darned fool. ”

“ Pius, applied at first to faithful filial love, as in the case of Æneas, assumed a higher sense with Christianity, and from being an occasional agnomen, became the name of a martyr Pope, under Antoninus Pius, and thus passed on to be one of the papal appellations most often in use, called Pio at Rome, and generally left to the pontiffs, though the feminine Pia is occasionally used in Italy. ”

“ In talk with Pico he set forth his intent, elaborating what already he had told the Cardinal Vice-Chancellor.
“He is a father—this Father of Fathers,” he said once. “A tender, loving father whose life is in his children, who lives through them and for them. Deprive him of them, and his life would become empty, worthless, a living death. There is Giovanni, who is as the apple of his eye, whom he has created Duke of Gandia, Duke of Benevento, Prince of Sessa, Lord of Teano, and more besides. ”

“ He printed, in 1489, in defence of his philosophical theories, certain theses which were condemned as heretical by Innocent VIII. In 1493, the ban of heterodoxy was renewed by a brief of Alexander VI. Pico’s enquiring mind and scholarly ardour covered a wide range of research, including the philosophy of the Platonists, the mysteries of the Cabbala, and the system and theories of Aquinas, Scotus, Albertus Magnus, and Averrhoes, and he proposed to devote his learning and his life to the task of reconciling classical traditions with the Christian creeds. ”

“ It is thus that Sir Thomas More translates the words of the biographer of Pico, who, even in outward form and appearance, seems an image of that inward harmony and completeness, of which he is so perfect an example. The word mystic has been usually derived from a Greek word which signifies to shut, as if one shut one's lips, brooding on what cannot be uttered; but the Platonists themselves derive it rather from the act of shutting the eyes, that one may see the more, inwardly. ”

“ Italian philosopher and writer, the youngest son of Giovanni Francesco Pico, prince of Mirandola, a small territory about 30 Italian miles west of Ferrara, afterwards absorbed in the duchy of Modena, was born on the 24th of February 1463. The family was illustrious and wealthy, and claimed descent from Constantine. In his fourteenth year Pico went to Bologna, where he stud1ed for two years, and was much occupied with the Decretals. ”

“ Mus.) It was translated from the Latin of Pico's nephew, Giovanni Francesco Pico (Venice, 1498) . More's dedication was addressed to his ‘sister in Christ, Joyeuce Leigh,’ possibly a nun. At the close is a paraphrase in English verse, from Pico's Latin prose, of ‘Twelve Rules of a Christian Life.’ An admirable reprint, edited by J. M. Rigg, esq., appeared in Nutt's Tudor Library in 1890. ”

“ And just then John Reuchlin, German mystic and scholar, found Pico. He was older in years but younger in mind. He had studied philology in Paris, law in Orleans, and he had lectured on Greek in Tübingen; he was then on his second visit to Italy, with all the mystic in him alive and unsatisfied. The God whom he wanted, the logic of the Schools could not give him; by their help he might transcend created existence, though even then what they led him to was only the boundless sea of negation. In Aristotle the impossible, in Plato the incredible, was emphasised ”

“ Another Alberto Pio (1475–1551) , who was French ambassador in Rome, won fame as a man of learning, and Cardinal Rodolfo Pio (1516–1564) was a trusted adviser to Pius III. and helped to establish the Inquisition at Milan Ascanio Pio (d. 1649) was a dramatic poet of some merit. Spain conferred the title of prince on the family, and one branch of it is to this day established in Spain. ”

“ But Pico was not born for pleasure. By no man was the sublime ideal of humanity, superior to physical enjoyments and dignified by intellectual energy, that triumph of the thought of the Renaissance, more completely realised. ”

“ Pico waylaid her litter as she was going to a villa of her father's, and carried her to his castle near Mirandola, where he respectfully pressed his suit; insisting that he had a right to consider her as his wife. But the lady escaped by letting herself into the moat by a rope of sheets, and Giovanfrancesco Pico was discovered stabbed in the chest, by the hand of Madonna Medea da Carpi. He was a handsome youth only eighteen years old. ”

“ Let all men know this Borgia brood for what it is.”
“Are you mad?” cried Pico. “Will I put my neck under the knife?”
“You took him here in the night, and yours was the right to kill. You exercised it.”
Pico looked long and searchingly into the other's face. True, all the appearances bore out the tale, as did, too, what had gone before and had been the cause of Antonia's complaint to him. Yet, knowing what lay between Sforza and Borgia, it may have seemed to Pico too extraordinary a coincidence that Giovanni should have been so ready at hand to defend the honour of the House of Mirandola. ”

“ We ought to make a point of doing something for him quickly, else we run a risk of losing him.” Madame d’Etampes answered: “I will be sure to remind you.” Then they departed, and in addition to the things I had begun, I now took the model of the fountain in hand, at which I worked assiduously.
Note 1. Anguillara and Pitigliano were fiefs of two separate branches of the Orsini family. The house of Pico lost their lordship of Mirandola in 1536, when Galeotto Pico took refuge with his sons in France. His descendants renewed their hold upon the fief, which was erected into a duchy in 1619. ”

“ That a man so pure in his life and so earnest in his piety should have been stigmatised as a heretic,-241- and then pardoned, by two such Popes, is one of the curious anomalies of that age.
To harmonise the Christian and classical tradition was a problem which Manetti had crudely attempted. Pico approached it in a more philosophical spirit, and resolved to devote his whole life to the task. The antagonism between sacred and profane literature appeared more glaring to Renaissance scholars than to us, inasmuch as they attached more serious value to the teaching of the latter as a rule of life. ”

“ He next appeared at Florence, the most brilliant of all the brilliant throng that was gathered in the court of Lorenzo de’ Medici, and was admitted to the closest friendship of that prince, and his favourite scholars Ficinus and Politian. Young, gifted in mind and person, and possessed of all the fairy favours of rank, wealth, and an honourable fame, Picus of Mirandola yielded at first to the fascinations of the world, which perhaps never assumed a more bewitching guise than in the court of the Medici. ”