:: PICO · PRAEFATIO ::
Conclusiones Nongentae
Giovanni Pico della Mirandola · nine hundred conclusions, publicly to be disputed · Rome, 1486
He was twenty-three, and he wanted to argue with everyone. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola printed nine hundred theses on logic, magic, the Kabbalah, the whole quarrelsome inheritance of human thought, and then did something close to reckless. He invited every scholar in Europe to Rome, at his own expense, to dispute any one of them they pleased. Picture the dare: nine hundred separate claims, each one a door he was holding open, daring you to walk through and tell him he was wrong. The debate never happened. The Church took fright and condemned thirteen of the propositions before a single word could be spoken aloud. But the offer still stands on the page, that astonishing young confidence that every door in the house of knowledge could be opened at once. Would you have answered him? This is the book where he flung them all wide.
Before the book is opened, let the terms be plain.
This room keeps no till. I do not sell this edition, and I never will; it carries no gate and no advertisement. I set it down for one reason only: the dissemination of knowledge, and the plain love of the game.
Pico della Mirandola died in 1494, and the editio princeps of his nine hundred theses was printed at Rome in 1486. It is so far out of copyright that the word scarcely applies. The source is an image-only incunable with no text layer, so every line here was transcribed afresh from the facsimile, the period abbreviations silently expanded, and given a literal modern English translation with a short plain-English gloss for each of the forty named blocks. It is a small labour set against Pico's nine hundred: one hand, copying out and carrying over what one mind once flung at all of Europe. That work is mine, and I give it away. Read it freely, carry it wherever you like, only never sell it.
Provenance & Thanks
- The work
- Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–1494), Conclusiones nongentae: nine hundred theses in dialectic, moral, physical, mathematical, metaphysical, theological, magical and Kabbalistic matters, offered for public disputation at Rome. Public domain by some five centuries.
- The printing
- Rome: printed by Eucharius Silber (alias Franck), 7 December 1486, under Pope Innocent VIII. This is the editio princeps.
- The digitisation
- The Württembergische Landesbibliothek Stuttgart copy, Inc.fol.12999: 89 scan leaves including binding and end-leaves. The shelfmark and library watermark are visible in the supplied facsimile; its PDF metadata records the persistent source URN. The 1486 text is public domain. The library’s digitisation terms describe scholarly reuse as free of charge and commercial reuse as subject to fees. The reader preserves that credit and does not assign a new blanket licence to its facsimile images.
- This edition
- Fresh transcription (abbreviations expanded, 1486 orthography kept), a literal modern English translation, a per-block gloss, apparatus, and interactive setting all mine, released for non-commercial use in the spirit of the open inheritance it draws from. Block sequence and the printed NVMERO counts are preserved as printed; editorial divergences are recorded in place.
To the librarians, scanner-operators, and archivists whose patient, unglamorous work makes a 1486 incunable openable on a screen in the present — this edition bows. You are the reason any of this is possible. Thank you.