Innocent III and Mirandola

Compare and Contrast Pico della Mirandola's Writings With Those of Pope Innocent III's

The humanist tradition was founded on the value of human proportion and perspective. Pico della Mirandola's" Oration on the Dignity of Man" in comparison with Pope Innocent III's writings on the "Miserable... Human Condition" deliberately contrasts what had become the traditional view of the Church with his own Neoplatonist, humanist perspective that man is the summit and purpose of God's creation.

Whereas the Pope wrote that man was most vile; "he offends God, his neighbor, and himself" with shameful acts, defiling with vain acts, ignoring important, useful and necessary things, Mirandola wrote that everything that human beings think, imagine and create are expressions of divinity.

Whereas the Pope wrote that the destiny of damned humankind is dire, whose every idle word renders an "account... that will be exacted to the last penny," facing in the end all sorts of unutterable torture and calamities, Mirandola wrote that each human being becomes a "small universe" or parvus mundus with the potential to become any aspect of the universe, that human beings could occupy any position whatsoever in the "chain of being," including becoming the "equivalent of God, at least in understanding." (Hooker)

The Pope's purpose, of course, was to emphasize the concept of original sin and the importance of the Church's priests in reconciling sinful man with God's mercy. In order to do this, he downgraded the condition of man in his writings, emphasizing how demeaned, pitiful and degraded is the state of the human soul, which could only be saved from eternal damnation by the pardon obtained by prayers and petitions offered through the Catholic Church. Mirandola's viewpoint, synthesizing the Platonist view with Aristotelianism, Averroism (a form of Aristoteleanism) and mysticism (the Kabbalah and the Hermetica), which elevated the concept of humankind, in religion, as well as in other ways, believing that religious truth was freely available and "in part revealed to all, both Christian and non-Christian." (Hooker 1)

Hooker, Robert. (6 Jun 1999) Pico Della Mirandola. World Civilizations. Retrieved January 15, 2007 at http://www.wsu.edu/~dee/REN/PICO.HTM