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INITIATION INTO MYSTERIES IN PICO’S WORKS
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MONIKA FRAZER-IMREGH
ABSTRACT
After the Synod in Florence in 1439, a new call arose in Italy for the renewal
of the Christian religion as an effect of the presence of Greek theologians and
philosophers like Gemistos Plethon and Ioannes Bessarion. According to
Ficino, Platonic philosophy was one possible tool with which to give back to
Christianity the depth and significance which it had lost because of the lack
of a philosophical background in the Church’s everyday life. Pico agrees with
Ficino’s ideas about the so-called prisca theologia and the docta religio. In his
work On the Dignity of Man, he shows how to get closer to God until the
final step, when the human soul is allowed to become the dwelling of God.
In this essay, I examine the different stages through which a person has to
go in cleansing and elevating their mind. The source of these steps and their
sequence is partly Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, partly the contemporary
Greek thinkers: Plethon and Argyropulos. Obviously, there can be no doubt
about Pico’s originality in how he builds up this amazing construction of self¬
educating when finding the way to proper initiation. The same issue can also
be found in Pico’s Heptaplus, especially in the Fourth Exposition, in which he
explains the nature of man, and in the Seventh Exposition, the topic of which
is bliss, i.e., eternal life.
In the first half of this paper, I define Pico’s sources on the topic. In the second
half, I examine his ideas about initiation into mysteries.
When speaking about Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s concept of
mysteries and initiation, we have to mention his older friend and predecessor,
Marsilio Ficino, whose Platonic Theology, published in 1482,' was basically
1 Marsilio Ficino, Theologia Platonica de immortalitate animorum (1468-1474), Firenze 1482,
Opera omnia, Basel, Peter Heinrich, 1576, 78-424. Reprinted by P. O. Kristeller and M.
Sancipriano, Torino, w. p., 1959. Critical edition: Marsilio Ficino, Platonic Theology, I-VI,
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