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INITIATION INTO MYSTERIES IN PICO’S WORKS ee 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 selfeducating 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, + 197 + Daréczi-Sepsi-Vassänyi_Initiation_155x240.indb 197 6 2020.06.15. 11:04:20
