A Philosopher's Death

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0:31podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, this is Dana Schwartz. Just a quick note before we begin a tiny bit of housekeeping. This summer in July, I am co-leading a trip to the south of France to talk about Julia Child with an amazing program called Common Ground Pilgrimages. This is the fourth trip that I'll be leading with them, and I keep begging them to let me come back because it's just, it's amazing. You spend the better part of a week, going on long walks and talking about writing and literature and big ideas. It always makes me miss college. And I feel like as an adult, there are very few opportunities to talk about ideas and writing and literature in spaces like this.

1:15So the trips are just amazing. This one, like I said, we'll be talking about Julia Child and her writing. You don't need to read anything before you show up. We'll just be, you know, assigning certain letters and reading them out loud. But if you're interested in signing up, it's through Common Ground. I'll link to it in the show description. I'm very, very excited about it. And also, I might have mentioned this once or twice before, but I have a new book coming out in May. It's called The Arcane Arts. I co-wrote it with a friend of mine who's also a brilliant writer, and we used the pseudonym SD Coverley because this book is a little sexy.

1:53It's a little different than my other books. It was very, very fun to write. It's a dark, academic, erotic thriller, romanticy. If any of those words are exciting to you, absolutely, please, please pre-order the book. Just to be totally honest, pre-orders are kind of the most important thing you could do to help an author. They tell a publisher that books are even worth just putting in bookstores. I'm so excited about this book being out in the world. I'm so excited for readers. And so if this is a book that you are interested in, I would ask you just please pre-order it, The Arcane Arts. Thank you so much.

2:29Let's get into the episode. Welcome to Noble Blood, a production of iHeartRadio and Grim and Mild from Aaron Menke. Listener discretion advised. On November 24, 1494, the nobility of Florence gathered for the funeral of Count Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, an aristocrat and philosopher. When he was alive, he was a dazzling figure. Historian Paul Strathairn described him as a, quote, peacock at six feet tall, always cloaked in the trendiest fine wool doublets, with long auburn hair down to his shoulders. And Pico had the intellect to match his looks. He could recite Dante's divine comedy backwards by heart.

3:23At the age of 20, he had already mastered Greek, Hebrew, Arabic, Aramaic, and Shaldean, and he went on to write pioneering works of humanist philosophy. But in early November, when he was just 31 years old, Pico della Mirandola had suddenly fallen ill. He suffered in bed for two weeks, alternating between lucidity and delirium as he grew more and more fatigued. Pico's illness raised red flags across Europe. Even the king of France, Charles VII, who had diplomatic tensions with many of Pico's allies, sent over his personal physicians to try and heal the philosopher. But by the time the physicians had arrived, it was too late.

4:19Pico was on his deathbed, in a placid, contemplative mood. Quote, He asked all his servants' forgiveness, if he had ever before that day offended any of them, Thomas More wrote in 1504. During his life, Pico had indulged in the pleasures of his aristocratic intellectual upbringing, enjoying life outside of Florence, living with a mistress. But he had always flirted with a more austere godly path, expressing interest in becoming a Dominican monk. In his final days, he gave all of his possessions to the monastery at San Marco, and he pleaded with his friend, the powerful Dominican friar, Girolamo Savonarola, to accept him into the order.

5:10Savonarola complied, laying out a Dominican habit over Pico's body before Pico died on November 17th. His austere funeral a week later was in keeping with his late-in-life turn to God. Rather than celebrating his intellect or honoring his aristocratic lineage, Savonarola dwelled on Pico's salvation. Savonarola told the audience, quote, the soul of Pico could not go to heaven at once. It was subject to a time in the flames of purgatory for certain sins. Those sins he failed to name. But he reassured the audience that Pico had appeared to him in a dream, saying that he would expiate his sins in purgatory.

6:00Pico was buried in San Marco in his habit, next to his friend and collaborator, Angelo Poliziano, another Italian classical scholar in Florence. And oddly enough, Poliziano had died just a few weeks earlier under similar conditions. Just like Pico, Poliziano suffered from a mysterious acute illness that killed him quickly. Their deaths seemed so abrupt and untimely that some suspected foul play. After all, Pico and Poliziano had no shortage of enemies. The ensuing investigation into who killed Pico della Mirandola, if he had been killed at all, would last over 500 years. I'm Dana Schwartz, and this is Noble Blood.

6:56When 21-year-old Pico della Mirandola arrived in the Florentine court in 1484, he had no idea that he would soon be at the center of a political crisis. He was already a celebrated intellectual across Europe, famous for his work connecting Christianity, Judaism, and the ancient Greek philosophers. One of his mentors brought him back to the court of Lorenzo de' Medici, the leader of the Republic of Florence and Medici Bank. While in Florence, Pico met Angelo Poliziano, who was the Medici court poet at the time. Poliziano was dazzled by Pico, but it seems that everyone in Florence was, particularly by Pico's writings on the Greek philosophers.

7:47Lorenzo de' Medici, Poliziano, and other Florentine intellectuals had become enamored with the works of Plato. They were particularly interested in how Plato emphasized virtue, love, and individual dignity, suggesting that cultivating these qualities in the earthly world could lead to divine truths. One member of this group, Marsilio Ficino, coined the term platonic love, a term Plato himself never used, to describe the ideal bond between specifically male friends. The Medici intellectuals sharing poetry and talking about love couldn't have been more different from the dominant intellectual tradition in schools across Europe at this time, scholastic Aristotelianism, where scholars spent their days writing rigorous logical proofs of Christian theology.

8:46While the Florentine set embraced Pico as one of their own, they didn't know that he was not as hostile to scholastic Aristotelianism as he may have seemed. In 1485, Pico wrote in a letter that he had come to Florence not as a, quote, deserter of academic tradition, but rather, quote, as a spy. Pico didn't want to be pinned down to any particular intellectual school. Behind the Medici crowd's back, Pico met up with an old acquaintance, Girolamo Savonarola, a Dominican friar who hated the Platonic humanists and the Medici court. Savonarola thought that the humanists' encouragement of cultivating virtue and philosophical contemplation on an individual level would turn people away from the church.

9:46Pico was not just well-versed in the classics, but also had a deep theological knowledge. He was able to pull from obscure Jewish and Christian texts alike. Savonarola and Pico spent long hours at the monastery of San Marco, quote, piously philosophizing. While these philosophical differences may seem abstract or pedantic, they were slowly becoming more politically divisive. Savonarola had a cult-like following for his sharp intellect. and his commitment to ascetic life. One monk described that he had spent his nights weeping during the night-long vigils and hours of fervent meditation. Even with his eyes swollen from being up all night, he wrote, quote,

10:46In Savonarola's weekly sermons across Florence, he railed against the Medici elite, arguing that the Medici's sponsorship of Platonic philosophy, of lavish festivals, and of classical art and poetry was evidence of the excesses of luxury and pagan moral decay. This struck a nerve. Savonarola made the Neoplatonists seem elitist and out of touch. Since the common people of Florence couldn't spend all day pursuing their own moral education, of course not, they had to work. Worse economic anxiety simmered underneath the Medici's seeming abundance as taxes rose and wealth inequality intensified. Savonarola blamed the elite for this economic precarity, suggesting that God was punishing Florence for their sins.

11:49And Pico was only making things harder for Lorenzo de' Medici. In early 1486, Pico had an affair with a young woman named Margarita. The problem was she already had a husband. When her husband died, her in-laws compelled her to remarry a local tax official who was a distant relative of Lorenzo de' Medici's. In May, Pico and 20 armed men set out towards Margarita's hometown, Arezzo, 40 miles outside of Florence. They met up with Margarita at the city gate and rode off together. The local authorities chased them down, and a battle ensued, killing 15 men. Pico, his secretary, and Margarita all managed to escape, but another village detained them and threw them in prison.

12:46Lorenzo de' Medici was not happy to have to bail Pico out of prison, especially since Pico had humiliated Margarita's fiancé, who was a member, after all, of the Medici family. Lorenzo declared that Margarita had not been unfaithful and should be returned to her husband, and he ordered Pico to be released. He blamed the entire thing on Pico's secretary. But an even bigger scandal was yet to come. Pico had nearly completed his intellectual opus, 900 theses, that he claimed answered every question in philosophy and theology. He combined ancient Egyptian, Greek, Latin, and Hebrew sources in order to create a universal system of beliefs.

13:38Pico even mined alchemy, astrology, and mysticism for metaphysical truths alongside the traditional teachings of the Bible. He was particularly interested in the Jewish mysticism of the Kabbalah, writing, quote, No science affords better evidence of Christ's divinity than magic and Kabbalistic practices. Pico arrived in Rome in November 1486 to publish his 900 theses and conduct a public debate, defending his work against any possible argument. He assumed that his work would be uncontroversial, maintaining that everything he had written would be quote, approved by the Catholic Church and her chief pastor, Innocent VIII, end quote.

14:30As it turns out, Pope Innocent VIII was not a fan of Pico's project. He thought that Pico's unquestioning citations of the Kabbalah, which most Christians at the time considered heresy, was a direct threat to the Church and a challenge to his authority. Pope Innocent VIII shut down Pico's proposed public debate and decided that his 900 theses were, quote, heretical, rash, and likely to give scandal to the faithful. Pico was determined to defend himself, writing an apologia to back up his arguments and dedicating it to Lorenzo de' Medici. But Pico's apologia only made things worse. In it, he proposed a reading of the Bible which suggested that humans had free will to pursue the lives of their choosing, which stood in direct contrast to the Church's insistence at the time that God was the ultimate authority.

15:37Pico escaped Rome and fled to France, and Innocent VIII called for his arrest. Authorities in France detained Pico for heresy and threw him in prison. Worse, it's unclear whether Pico had asked Lorenzo de' Medici's permission to dedicate his apologia to him, and so Lorenzo had been dragged into the scandal as well, possibly against his will, an international incident involving the Pope. Lorenzo now had to choose whether to let his friend Pico suffer the heresy charges, serious charges since a common punishment for heretics was to burn them at the stake, or to save Pico and put his own reputation at risk.

16:29After days of deliberation, Lorenzo de' Medici decided to try and rescue Pico. While this was diplomatically tricky, his friendship with Pope Innocent and the French regent slightly improved his chances. Lorenzo requested that Pico be freed, and both Pope Innocent VIII and the French royalty agreed. Lorenzo brought Pico back to Florence and set him up at a villa just north of the city. While Innocent didn't prosecute Pico, he wasn't totally in the clear. The Pope refused to pardon Pico. Lorenzo was now worried that the rest of his intellectual squad of Neoplatonists could be convicted of heresy as well.

17:21Lorenzo realized he could be targeted by the Vatican for his irreverent, extravagant festivals, and what historian Paul Strathen called, quote, his lax attitudes toward religion. Lorenzo asked Pico for advice. Pico suggested that he hire his old friend Savonarola to teach his son Giovanni, which would signal to the church that he, Lorenzo, was taking Catholicism more seriously. In 1490, Savonarola agreed to the job, moving from Bologna back to the monastery in San Marco. After Pico's run-in with the church, he was, quote, somewhat beaten, as Savonarola put it at the time. Savonarola convinced him to abandon his 900 theses and pursue a more godly life.

18:17Pico had given away his villa at Mirandola and flirted with joining in the footsteps of St. Francis of Assisi, walking barefoot across Italy. He even considered joining the Dominican Order of San Marco. But even as he spent hours arguing with Savonarola about theology, he couldn't quite bring himself to renounce his intellectual and worldly pleasures. But while Pico was still trying to endear himself to both Savonarola and Lorenzo de Medici simultaneously, their feud had intensified. Lorenzo had supported a rival of Savonarola's, Fra Mariano, in giving a sermon taking Savonarola down. Lorenzo, Poliziano, the poet, Pico, and the rest of the Medici intellectual scene attended that fateful sermon, as Mariano lambasted Savonarola for being a false prophet, aiming to stir the people of Florence into a rebellion.

19:24But Mariano took things a little too far, mocking Savonarola's accent, calling him, quote, a worm, a snake, a clown who is ignorant of the Bible, and an inept priest who is not even capable of conducting a mass in proper Latin, end quote. Pico, Lorenzo, and Poliziano and the rest of the congregation were horrified at the vitriol. Three days later, Pico, Poliziano, Lorenzo de Medici, and the other Florentine congregants reconvened to hear Savonarola's response. Unlike Mariano, Savonarola was calm and collected. He complimented Mariano's biblical interpretations and emphasized that they had been cordial in the past.

20:14He alleged that someone intervened and convinced Mariano to, quote, change his mind and attack him. Even though Savonarola kept things vague, everyone knew this culprit he was alluding to. Who had changed Mariano's mind and caused him to attack Savonarola? Well, Lorenzo de' Medici. Mariano was so devastated by his defeat in the Popular Forum that he fled to Rome. Meanwhile, Savonarola had never been more popular. He was elected prior to the Monastery of San Marco. Because the Medici family built San Marco and even referred to it as their monastery, the newly elected friar was expected to pay a visit to the Medici Palazzo.

21:07But Savonarola balked at that request, saying to his fellow monks, quote, who made me prior, God or Lorenzo? The monks responded, God. And Savonarola said, quote, thus it is the Lord God who I will thank. And he returned to his cell. Even when citizens and allies like Pico warned him about making such a powerful enemy, Savonarola refused to back down. He said, The prophecy was well-timed. Lorenzo's health had been failing, as he suffered from congenital gout that left him weak and understandably cranky. It continued to worsen over the rest of the year, and he retired to a villa outside of Florence to convalesce.

22:13By spring of 1492, it seemed the end was near. On April 5th, two of Florence's lions, the city's mascots, had mauled each other to death in their cave, And later that night, a lightning bolt struck the Florence Cathedral, causing pieces of marble to collapse around the building. These events seemed like catastrophic omens, and even Lorenzo was not immune from superstition. When he heard of the cathedral's collapse, he said, It means that I shall die. On his deathbed, Lorenzo de' Medici had a surprising visitor. Savonarola. While it's unclear while Lorenzo had invited his frenemy over, and even less clear why Savonarola accepted it, some historians suggest that Pico della Mirandola may have leveraged his friendship with both of them to arrange the meeting.

23:17Pico and his friend, the poet Poliziano, were there for this fateful meeting. Poliziano recalled that Savonarola asked him if he had faith in God and would be willing to renounce his ill-gotten wealth and live a blameless life. Lorenzo said yes. According to rumor, Lorenzo told Savonarola that his son, Piero, would rule over Florence after his death, and begged Savonarola not to preach against him. Savonarola reluctantly agreed. At the end of his visit, right as Savonarola turned towards the door to leave, Lorenzo asked him to give him his benediction, and he did. Shortly thereafter, on April 8th, 1492, Lorenzo died.

24:09Piero took over Florence, and true to his word, Savonarola did not undermine him in his sermons. But Savanarola considered capitalizing on the growing political instability for his own aims. Florence had fallen into financial chaos. Late in his life, Lorenzo attempted to increase taxes, a hugely unpopular move given the gulf between the Medici's fabulous wealth and the widespread poverty of the rest of the population. At the time, around 30 % of the taxable population, which was almost 10 ,000 people, were so impoverished that they paid no tax at all, while 50 % of the working population paid little more than a florin each.

25:02Savonarola balked at the luxury of the Medici lifestyle and wanted to bring a spirit of austerity to Florence. Pico was not on the same page. His heresy charges had been all but forgotten, so he returned to writing and even lived with a mistress, an evident sin. Even though some sources suggest that Savonarola knew about Pico's sex life, contrary to his doctrinaire and hard-headed nature, it seems that Savonarola just looked the other way when it came to his friend. Savonarola wanted to use his brilliant friend Pico to spread his theological agenda. He had Pico write an anti-astrology screed, with a jab that astrologers were so inept that they couldn't even predict the weather.

25:57Bullied by the church and swayed by Savonarola, Pico had abandoned his more forward-thinking Renaissance humanism and instead started promoting strict obedience to God's authority. Meanwhile, in Milan, a duke, Lorenzo Sforza, was suffering a power struggle of his own as he fought with various aristocrats for control of the region. Sforza asked for support from Charles VIII, the new young king of France, and at that time the most powerful nation in Europe. In return, Sforza promised to back Charles if he chose to take control of Naples. Because Charles' grandmother's family had had control over the Napoli's territory in 1266, he believed that Naples rightfully belonged to him.

26:55In 1494, the king of Naples died, giving Charles the perfect opportunity to invade. With Sforza's backing, he led his army into Milan, aiming to take Naples by force. Piero de' Medici had initially decided to use Florence's resources to defend Naples against Charles. But Piero's reputation was beginning to fall apart. Piero had become infamous for being hot-headed, arrogant, entitled, and dumb. Even his own late father had called him a fool. Various Florentine officials contrasted Piero with his cousin, apologies another Lorenzo de' Medici, who was more moderate and even-keeled, deeply embedded in civic institutions and educated in humanist philosophy.

27:54This cousin Lorenzo had been in contact with the French army and promised to offer them safe passage, even if Piero refused. And he even agreed to back Charles VIII's invasion financially. Piero, feeling that he had no choice because he was being undermined and possibly usurped by his cousin, decided to tacitly allow the invasion. At the end of August 1494, Charles VIII and an army of 40 ,000 marched into Tuscany. By September 21st, the citizens of Florence were terrified about the future of their city. Hundreds of people, including Pico della Mirandola, crowded into the cathedral to hear Savonarola's latest sermon.

28:45While he never made a direct attack on Piero, Savonarola had apocalyptic warnings about Florence's future. He castigated the gamblers, blasphemers, and sodomites that would lead to Florence's downfall, saying that the, quote, scourge of God had arrived. Upon hearing those words, Pico della Mirandola began to shake as the rest of the crowd wept and moaned in hysterics. Just three days after that apocalyptic sermon, one of Pico Mirandola's closest friends, the poet, Angelo Poliziano, died. He had suffered a mysterious illness that took his life in just two weeks. Pico had no idea how soon his own death would follow.

29:40While Poliziano's sudden death would normally have raised suspicions, the population of Florence was far too preoccupied with a potential French invasion to delve into an investigation about the death of a poet. By the end of September 1494, Piero felt trapped. Charles VIII's vast army was moving quickly with advanced artillery that could easily destroy Florence's meager defenses. Moreover, all of Florence's allies were aligned with Charles VIII. But capitulating to the French would humiliate Florence and throw the city into an even deeper crisis. At the end of October, Piero went to Charles' camp in Tuscany to negotiate with him, using the same diplomatic tactics that his father had pioneered.

30:34Piero figured that he could allow the French army to pass through Florence in the short term and regain control over the city after the fact. But he arrived at the camp realizing he was at a huge disadvantage. He had gone alone, with no army or political muscle to back him up. Charles had no interest in negotiating with Piero, regarding him as a, quote, nothing, according to a contemporary. He told Piero that he needed the immediate surrender of the fortresses surrounding Florence for as long as he wanted. Piero, in shock, agreed immediately and even offered the king 200 ,000 florins. When the population of Florence heard what happened, they were incensed.

31:23Pierrot's conduct at that meeting seemed to confirm the worst rumors about him. He acted rashly and unilaterally, capitulating to Charles' demands without consulting any of his advisors. Even though Florence was ostensibly a republic, Pierrot was acting more like a dictator. Piero finally returned to Florence on November 8th. The city was silent, with no celebrations welcoming him home. He approached the Piazza della Signora, which housed the Florentine government, but the main door was slammed in his face. An official shouted to him that he could only enter by way of the Sportello, the tiny side gate intended for servants and delivery boys.

32:16As Piero contemplated what to do, the city's bell rang out, the traditional call alerting citizens to an emergency. A crowd gathered in the piazza, at first heckling Piero and pelting him with trash and stones. The mob chased him and his men through the city back to the Palazzo Medici. The next day, Piero fled the city. Over the next week, the city was in chaos. Anticipating the French army's invasion, mobs broke into the palazzo and burned down registry files to clear their debts. A real fight club move. Meanwhile, Pico della Mirandola had fallen suddenly ill, just like his late friend Poliziano.

33:05While he continued to attend his friend Severola's increasingly grim and over-the-top sermons, Pico had been feverish and weak. Finally, on November 17th, he died. At age 31, the French marched into Florence that very day, occupying the city without a fight. The army sacked Florence and left the city in ruins as it continued on to Naples. Pico and Poliziano's deaths seemed to signal the end of the Medici era and the Renaissance humanism that had flourished. Though Savonarola buried the two men together in San Marco, he treated their deaths slightly differently. In his sermons, he portrayed Pico della Mirandola as a devout Christian and a symbol of the power of repentance.

34:03He emphasized that at the end of his life, Pico had renounced his philosophical heresies and joined the Dominican order. While this was technically true, Pico's religious commitments were a bit of wishful thinking on Savonarola's part. Most historians interpret this late-in-life conversion as a last-minute attempt to get into heaven, and probably wouldn't have occurred if Pico wasn't on his deathbed. In contrast, Savonarola said nothing about Poliziano. Savonarola considered Poliziano a friend and had been deeply affected by his death, but the poet was a more controversial figure than Pico was.

34:49Unlike the distant and reclusive Pico, Poliziano was known to the public as a teacher and was more closely associated with Piero de' Medici, since he remained on the Medici payroll long after Lorenzo, the first original Lorenzo's, death. Moreover, Pico's work was dense and difficult to access, given that his 900 theses were banned by the church, while Poliziano's poetry, praising the beauty of young boys in the classical style, was accessible and widely available to the public. His poetry and his role as a teacher to the elite sparked rumors that he was sleeping with his male students. He was even arrested on charges of sodomy before he died, but he didn't end up being charged.