Magic and Religion in the Renaissance: A Study of the Biblical Exegesis of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and R. Yohanan Alemanno.

Abstract

In 1488, Rabbi Yohanan Alemanno (c.1435-1504) arrived in Florence to tutor the renowned philosopher, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (c.1463-1494), in Hebrew. Despite the pair’s shared interest in natural magic, this final period of Pico’s life (1488-1494) is increasingly concerned with biblical exegesis, where Pico generally refrains from citing the diverse sources emblematic of his youth in favour of more common Christian interpreters. By paying attention to the influence of Alemanno in this period of Pico’s life, this thesis will suggest that Pico’s supposedly religious turn is completely consistent with his philosophical interest in magical literature. Comparing the pair’s biblical commentaries, written while they were in direct contact, we can see a cosmological consistency between them, developed within a shared allegorical mode of interpreting the Bible. In Alemanno’s work, the place of magic in this allegorical structure is explicit, and although Pico does not directly allude to natural magic in his own commentaries, there is evidence to suggest that the place of magic is one of the many consistencies between the pair’s allegorical models. In light of this comparison with his Hebrew tutor, one of Pico’s least-studied works, his Expositiones in Psalmos, takes on a new significance in studies of Renaissance magic, allowing for a reassessment of the later years of his life and his intellectual legacy.