¶ … Man? Giovanni Pico della Mirandola asks the question as to what is man's highest calling. He finds it in the deepest of religious beliefs and offers rational spirituality as the way to perfection. He believed that man was the greatest of God's creations, the highest form of life, even rivaling the angels. His reason was based on his firm belief in God and man's relationship with God as the creator and father of all men. He pointed out that man was the intermediary between God and the lower animals. He based this on the fact that Man has reason and intelligence. He is the one to interpret nature, and use nature. Giovanni writes from the premise that man is created by God, and that there is a Divine order to the Universe. His belief is agreement with other religious leaders including the writings of Teresa of Avila, and Saint Augustine. Man has an immortal soul imbued with life by God. After God created the world he then created man and gave him something none of the other creatures had, that is free will.

This free will can be used by man to raise him to the highest spiritual level and commune with God, or to sink to brutish forms of life. Unlike other theologians who believed man's hands were dictated...

He had the ability to chance and cultivate himself to walk tall among God's creatures. Of course, the free will also allows people to go against the Creator. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola believed that the person who goes against the will of the Father is like a lowly animal, while those who seek to walk in the light are close to the divine. He admitted there should be a balance between the high spiritual intellect, and the highest good of the body he felt that those who devote themselves to the highest spiritual thought have reached a higher plane of existence.
Petrarch finds his highest plane of existence in his love for a woman. Yet this love is transient at best. He asks if a woman's love can make a man feel divine. His discovery in sadness is that no matter how much a person loves another it can never compare with the spirituality that St. Augustine or Pico Della Mirandola find. His poetry is filled with self loathing over frustrated desire. He writes of the baser love and lust that contemplated without resolution leaves a man is desperate despair and hopelessness. It isn't whether this form of…