Syncretism in the West: Pico's 900 Theses (1486)

Adopta la definición del diccionario, y lo dice: «the Oxford English Dictionary’s definition of syncretism as the “attempted union or reconciliation of diverse or opposite tenets or practices, especially in philosophy or religion».

«Pico suggested that an occulta concatenatio or “hidden connection” linked theses widely scattered in his text» — .

La reserva del propio autor: «No study of a work as obscure as the nine hundred theses can possibly hope» estar libre de error.

Objeta a Yates por cronología: «Pico wrote his magical works before Ficino wrote his», y lo llama «an unfortunate chronological oversight».

«All these translations were apparently completed in 1489—the same year as the De vita coelitus comparanda and two-and-a-half years after publ» — icación de las tesis.

«virtually the only prominent priscus theologus who is not listed as a magician is Hermes Trismegistus» — en las listas de magos de Pico.

«one mechanism that does not show up in Pico’s text 1s the spiritus mundi» — [«1s», del OCR] — el que Walker y Yates ponen en el centro de la magia natural de Ficino.

Adjudica que más de cien de las novecientas tesis derivan directamente de Proclo, su fuente aislada más importante.

«Pico also drew scores of other theses without attribution from Proclus’s Platonic Theology or Commentary on the Timaeus» — .

Adjudica manipulación al sobrino editor: «Gianfrancesco badly twisted Pico's words from the Apology to make it appear that Pico himself had wished the book to go unread».

El método que el sobrino declara por carta: «but I will also add some materials: cementing the two together with my glue».

La Concordia de Platón y Aristóteles, obra perdida, iba «closely tied to his aborted Vatican debate».

Adjudica que la Concordia de Platón y Aristóteles, obra perdida de Pico, fue suprimida y plagiada por su sobrino.

Consigna que el Comentario a los Salmos, obra auténtica, fue suprimido por sus referencias cabalísticas.

Registra que el término «Cabala» no aparece en las Disputationes contra la astrología, y sospecha su eliminación.

La supresión léxica concreta: «a striking reference to “the magi” in the early draft becomes “the Persians” in Gianfran» cesco's edition.

«the unfortunately mistitled Oration on the Dignity of Man» — el título tradicional, que Farmer da por impuesto.

Sitúa la primera aparición de De hominis dignitate en la edición corrupta de Estrasburgo de 1504.

Sobre el comentario al Salmo 15: «the dimwitted moral commentary on Psalm 15 passed “under the name of ‘Pico’” in Gianfrancesco’s edition cannot in anything approximating its present form have been written by Pico».

Sobre Flavio Mitrídates: «there are reasons to suspect a sinister role for Flavius Mithridates, whose reputation in the Renaissance as something of a con man was apparently well deserved».

Registra que Pico explotó activamente los cambios de puntuación al defenderse ante la comisión papal.

«Biondi ignores the e» — ditio princeps, engañado por lo que Kieszkowski afirma del manuscrito de Erlangen.

La tesis general: «structures of traditional religious, philosophical, and cosmological systems were largely shaped by universal ways of reconciling—and hence misinterpreting—sacred or semisacred texts».

«The term is applied in this study not only to reconciliations of different writers or traditions but to attempts as well to harmonize highly stratified compilations» — amplía el uso del término más allá de la reconciliación entre autores o tradiciones: llama sincretismo también al trabajo de armonizar compilaciones muy estratificadas, como el corpus aristotélico o los textos sagrados.

«Since religious and philosophical commentators worldwide tended to apply similar reconciliative techniques to each stratum of authoritative traditions, over centuries the religious and philosophical systems that grew out of those traditions not surprisingly developed strong family resemblances East and West.» — deriva los parecidos entre sistemas de Oriente y Occidente de la técnica compartida de reconciliar estrato por estrato, no de contactos ni de préstamos.

«Indeed, it can be shown that the evolution of the correlative (or "fractal") structures commonly associated with scholastic systems in their mature forms can be simulated by the same kinds of iterative computer models used to simulate the growth of complex systems in other fields.» — el marco explicativo es suyo y de fines del siglo XX: propone modelar el crecimiento de los sistemas escolásticos maduros como el de cualquier sistema complejo, con modelos iterativos.

«It was no accident that Pico's text was the first printed book banned universally by the church.*» — lee la prohibición universal como consecuencia del contenido y no como accidente de la coyuntura romana.

«Analysis has been made more difficult by massive corruption in all accessible versions of Pico’s text, which in the past has made meaningful study of the theses next to impossible.» — sostiene que el obstáculo mayor para estudiar las tesis no fue su oscuridad doctrinal sino el estado corrupto de todas las versiones al alcance.

«The editio princeps of Pico's work carried no title, presumably because the theses were intended to be debated and not simply read.» — explica la falta de título por el destino del impreso, y marca su propia conjetura con un adverbio de reserva.

«My translation is the first based on trustworthy Latin sources;? hopefully, that translation will promote wider study of Pico’s text, which to date has only been studied in a misleadingly piecemeal fashion.» — reclama para su traducción la primacía de apoyarse en fuentes latinas fiables, y describe el estado de la cuestión como lectura fragmentaria que engaña.

«Study of Pico’s later works, reinterpreted in the light of his theses, turns up unexpected signs of massive literary fraud: Extensive evidence shows that after his death Pico’s later texts were heavily doctored by his nephew-editor Gianfrancesco Pico and other key figures in the conservative Savonarolan movement; indeed, strong evidence assigns a guiding role here to Savonarola himself, who—for reasons that remain obscure—obtained control of Pico’s papers after the latter’s sudden death in 1494.» — enuncia aquí la tesis que recorre el volumen: las obras tardías de Pico llegaron adulteradas por el sobrino editor y el círculo savonaroliano, con Savonarola dueño de los papeles desde 1494 y por motivos que se declara incapaz de aclarar.

«Extreme anti-syncretic no less than extreme syncretic tendencies tended to emerge in all traditional societies suddenly inundated by newly rediscovered or foreign texts.» — pone el sincretismo extremo y su rechazo extremo como dos reacciones a un mismo choque, la inundación repentina de textos ajenos o redescubiertos.

«The exaggerated growth of these tendencies in the early printing age can be linked to the final collapse of syncretic traditions that took place in the two centuries after Pico’s death.» — data el derrumbe de las tradiciones sincréticas en los dos siglos posteriores a Pico y lo liga al exceso que la imprenta temprana provocó en esas mismas tendencias.

«Stephen Jay Gould has labeled “the greatest intellectual transformation in modern Western thinking’°—the final demise, after two thousand years of continuous development, of the extreme kinds of correlative thought summed up so magnificently in Pico’s work.» — toma de Gould el rótulo para el proceso que quiere explicar, y sitúa la obra de Pico como el punto en que ese pensamiento correlativo llega a su forma más acabada antes de morir.

«Those parallels are not coincidental but reflect recurrent patterns of decay and revival in all premodern literate cultures.» — niega que los paralelos entre tradiciones sean coincidencia y los adjudica a ciclos de decadencia y renacimiento comunes a toda cultura premoderna con escritura.

«No study of a work as obscure as the nine hundred theses can possibly hope xii» — la reserva con que abre, y el residuo del folio en el crudo: ningún estudio de una obra tan oscura puede aspirar a estar libre de error.

«any analysis should ideally take place collaboratively, drawing on the expertise of specialists in the dozens of traditions covered in Pico’s work.» — propone el trabajo colectivo como forma adecuada de leer las tesis, por la cantidad de tradiciones que un solo lector no domina.

«No one can claim mastery over more than a small part of the traditions covered in Pico’s text, which largely explains why previous studies have focused exclusively on isolated sections of the work.» — explica por competencia, y no por descuido, que la bibliografía previa se haya limitado a secciones aisladas.

«But as Pico himself suggested, to make real sense of his theses it is necessary to attempt a reading of the whole.» — apoya en el propio Pico la exigencia metodológica de leer las novecientas tesis como un solo texto y no por secciones.

«Remarkably, other key sections of the theses, including the one that contains Pico’s promised “new philosophy” (philosophia nova)—capable of resolving “every proposed question on natural and divine things’ —have not been mentioned even in passing in five hundred years of Pico» — mide el hueco de la investigación previa: la sección de la nueva filosofía, que Pico anuncia como capaz de resolver toda cuestión natural o divina, no aparece mencionada en cinco siglos de estudios.

«This study frequently deviates from traditional paths in Renaissance studies, a result that I suspect might follow inevitably from any extended analysis of Pico’s text.» — anticipa su distancia con los estudios renacentistas al uso y la atribuye al objeto, con la reserva de que es una sospecha suya.

«Whatever value this book has for traditional Renaissance scholars will not depend on its identification of Pico’s sources (all of which he radically distorted) but on its demonstration of the systematic way in which he planned to collate those sources in his debate—the key to any comprehensive reading of Pico’s thought, which must be a collective achievement.» — sitúa su aporte en la reconstrucción del plan de colación y no en el rastreo de fuentes, y de paso deja dicho que Pico distorsionó radicalmente todas las que usó.

«Both Pico and his contemporaries made much of his title as a divine sign of his holy mission as a reconciler.» — señala que el título de conde de la Concordia se leía en su tiempo, y él mismo lo alentaba, como señal divina de una misión reconciliadora.

«Parallels have been drawn to Galileo’s fate nearly a hundred and fifty years later, and the story fits in nicely with old romantic images of the Renaissance.» — desconfía del paralelo con Galileo por lo bien que le acomoda a la imagen romántica del Renacimiento.

«I have suggested a few of the causes behind Pico's extended persecution by the church, but the issue is complex and interesting enough to justify a dedicated study.» — se abstiene de cerrar las causas de la persecución eclesiástica y las deja como asunto para un estudio propio.

«No one, however, has ever made much sense of the nine hundred theses as a whole.» — su punto de partida: el plan del debate es sabido, pero las novecientas tesis como conjunto siguen sin lectura.

«Renaissance historians cannot be blamed entirely for this.» — reparte la culpa del vacío entre los historiadores y las condiciones del texto, que aborda enseguida.

«Pico proposed his theses in part as an elaborate puzzle that he meant to solve at Rome.» — sostiene que la oscuridad de las tesis es deliberada, un rompecabezas que su autor pensaba resolver en el debate.

«The problem has been complicated by unreliable texts—bad in the sixteenth-century versions that scholars have usually relied on, worse at times in the two modern editions—that have kept hidden that occulta concatenatio between theses that Pico hinted was the key to his Roman plans.» — ordena la corrupción por grados y adjudica lo peor a las dos ediciones modernas, con la consecuencia de que la concatenación oculta quedó ilegible.

«The formal oration that Pico wrote to open his debate—the unfortunately mistitled Oration on the Dignity of Man*—is among the most read and quoted of Renaissance texts; indeed, the work has been claimed as the “manifesto of the Renaissance” by the most influential Italian scholar of the past half century.» — da el título tradicional por impuesto y consigna sin suscribirla la lectura del discurso como manifiesto del Renacimiento.

«Contemporary accounts, not all of which can be dismissed as sheer hyperbole, describe him as having astonishing study habits and powers of memory.» — acepta con reserva los testimonios sobre la memoria de Pico: no todos son hipérbole, pero tampoco los da por buenos.

«Whether or not Pico actually had an eidetic memory is another question; cf. here the evidence on how he quoted his sources, discussed later in this work.» — se abstiene sobre la memoria eidética y remite al modo en que Pico citaba sus fuentes, que examina más adelante.

«A poem discovered by Kristeller and ascribed to Pico—a very early work, if genuine—tells us that one of the young aristocrat's goals was "pugnantes pacis sub foedera sectas ducere"» — data muy temprano el propósito de llevar las sectas en pugna a un pacto de paz, con la doble reserva de la atribución y la autenticidad, y acredita el hallazgo a Kristeller.

«Pico's first reference to the underlying harmony of Plato and Aristotle, which was to be a central theme of his debate: "So that if you look at their words, nothing is more conflicting; if at the sense, nothing more concordant."» — fija la primera formulación del tema central del debate, y la fórmula entrecomillada dentro es de Pico, no suya.

«The extent of Pico's knowledge of these last three languages when he drew up his theses is still a matter of controversy.» — deja abierto cuánto hebreo, arameo y árabe sabía Pico al redactar las tesis.

«He referred to his conference as an "assembly" (consessus), "congress" (congressus), and—at least before his troubles with the pope—as a "council" (concilium).» — sigue el vocabulario con que Pico nombró su reunión y marca el momento en que el término conciliar desaparece.

«The last term is especially suggestive, since we know that the debate was to be held "in the apostolic senate"—before the college of cardinals—with Pope Innocent VIII apparently as supreme judge.» — reconstruye el escenario previsto, el colegio cardenalicio con el papa como juez, y matiza esa última pieza con un adverbio.

«The pope's projected role as the debate's supreme judge is implied in the wording of the preface to the second part of the nine hundred theses; a strong papal role is also suggested in the first lines of the Apology and in Pope Alexander VI's 1493 bull lifting Pico's excommunication.» — apoya el papel del papa en tres documentos, y en los tres el dato es implícito.

«The view that disputation was a dying medieval institution, corruptly present but alien to the creative side of Renaissance thought, rests mainly on classicist propaganda over five hundred years old.» — rechaza el lugar común de la disputación como resto medieval ajeno al Renacimiento y lo adjudica a la propaganda de los humanistas clasicistas.

«A close look at the writers who promoted this view shows that their own condemnations of disputation were far from universal or absolute.» — muestra que quienes difundieron esa condena la aplicaban con excepciones.

«Ficino later sent his thanks to Pico for his copy of the text—for reasons that will become clear later, with rather ambivalent praise; see Ficino, Opera» — lee ambivalencia en el agradecimiento de Ficino y la anuncia como pieza de su argumento posterior sobre la relación entre ambos.

«But these were clearly conceived in Pico's shadow, with their organizers mimicking him down to details in a way shocking to modern, if not to premodern, sensibilities.» — sostiene que los proyectos posteriores del género imitaron el de Pico hasta en el detalle, y advierte que lo que hoy parece plagio no lo era entonces.

«The champion in terms of sheer numbers, so far as I am aware, was Jacopo Mazzoni, who in 1576 published his list of 5197 theses for his upscaled version of Pico's project» — data en 1576 la versión más inflada del género, con la reserva de que es hasta donde él sabe.

«The impression that Pico's project made on Renaissance intellectuals is understandable when we look at the size of more typical scholastic debates.» — mide la desmesura del proyecto contra el tamaño corriente de una disputa escolástica.

«no evidence suggests that more topics were actually debated in them than in the theoretically more orderly university quodlibets.» — acota el alcance real de los quodlibets libres: en la práctica no cubrían más temas que los reglados.

«While the topics in certain variations of these debates were sometimes drawn from lists of quaestiones, conclusiones, assertiones, theses, etc., previously submitted by the respondens, no earlier examples are known that approach the scope or numbers of theses found in Pico’s text.» — reconoce el precedente formal de las listas previas y sostiene que ninguna se acerca al número ni al alcance de la de Pico.

«Pico made an appearance in the dispute in his savored role as Comes Concordiae, attempting (with amusingly scant success) to reconcile the two sides using the same strategies that he had mapped out three years earlier for his Vatican debate.» — data en 1489 una aplicación en vivo del método de concordia, con el resultado adverso incluido en la misma frase.

«who sat on the papal commission that investigated the nine hundred theses and who answered Pico’s Apology at the personal request of Pope Innocent VIII.» — identifica a Petrus Garsias por su doble papel: comisionado que investigó las tesis y refutador de la Apología por encargo personal del papa.

«Since this was a one-day affair, it is unlikely that more than a handful were actually debated—at some point, not unlike in a modern doctoral defense, the authorities declaring themselves satisfied and enrolling Garsias’s name in the book of licensees in theology.» — infiere de la duración de un día que en estas disputas se debatía un puñado de tesis, y compara el trámite con una defensa doctoral moderna.

«Critics of Pico's debate attempted from the start to associate him with this perverted quodlibetal tradition, provoking his attempts in the Oration and Apology to distinguish himself from “the many in our age” who like Gorgias of Leontini in antiquity proposed to debate not on a fixed number of questions but “on all questions on all arts» — explica los pasajes de la Oración y la Apología en que Pico se deslinda como respuesta al intento de asimilarlo a los disputadores errantes.

«Nevertheless, the fame of Pico’s project—which despite his disclaimer proposes several methods “to the investigation and understanding of everything knowable” (a point peculiarly denied by De Lubac 1974)—was apparently the largest factor in the popularity of this disputational genre in the sixteenth century.» — adjudica a la fama del proyecto la moda del género en el siglo XVI y objeta de paso la negativa de De Lubac.

«Thus one of Pico’s later imitators, Tiberio Russiliano—turning Pico's disclaimer on its head—would on occasion drop his prepared list of four hundred theses to respond “to every question, something that no one but Georgias of Leontini has done!» — sigue la deriva del género hasta el imitador que abandona la lista para ofrecerse a responder cualquier pregunta.

«The fact that Pico endorsed all the theses in this second section has never been seriously questioned.» — da por firme que la segunda sección, la de las tesis según su propia opinión, la sostiene Pico entera.

«Pico emphasizes the unorthodox nature of this section in his opening preface to the text.» — observa que el propio prefacio anuncia la heterodoxia de la sección, y no la disimula.

«Renaissance debates could be marathon affairs, but Pico’s contemporaries apparently viewed the debate of nine hundred theses to be impossible.» — sostiene, con reserva, que los contemporáneos veían materialmente impracticable disputar novecientas tesis.

«Indeed, what had become a “secret congress" by the end of the Apology—which Pico claimed was written in twenty hectic nights—in the text's opening pages is clearly announced as a “public assembly"!» — registra la contradicción entre el congreso secreto de la Apología y la asamblea pública del prefacio, sin resolverla.

«No consistent interpretation of Pico’s thought is possible until this part of his Roman puzzle is solved.» — condiciona cualquier lectura coherente de Pico a que se aclare si el debate era público o reservado.

«Pico's disclaimer was written as his relations with the church were becoming more dangerous every day, and it 1s at least reasonable to suspect in it special pleading.» — [el OCR imprime *1s* por *is*] — sospecha del descargo de responsabilidad por la fecha en que se escribió, y lo dice como sospecha razonable, no como hecho.

«Since no one has ever proposed a way to distinguish what Pico endorsed in this section from what he opposed, historians who have quoted from it indiscriminately have helped give birth to a large family of warring “Pico’s.”» — explica la multiplicación de Picos incompatibles en la bibliografía por citar sin separar lo que él suscribe de lo que solo recoge.

«All earlier studies, however, and even some later ones like Kieszkowski's, simply ignore Pico's words, portraying all nine hundred theses as equally representative of his views.» — nombra el defecto y a un editor concreto: tratar las novecientas tesis como si todas expresaran por igual el pensamiento de Pico.

«Supporting evidence can, in fact, usually be found that the opposing theses in the first part of the text were heatedly debated in one or more of the intellectual circles in which Pico moved.» — sostiene que las tesis enfrentadas de la primera parte corresponden a polémicas vivas en los círculos que Pico frecuentaba, y no a un muestrario libresco.

«The first was that his theses included “all the most ambiguous and controversial questions on which the principal schools battle.”» — recoge la primera jactancia del prefacio: haber recogido las cuestiones más ambiguas y disputadas entre las escuelas.

«Pico’s second boast was that his text brought forward many other things that were "utterly unknown and untried” (incognita prorsus et intentata).» — recoge la segunda jactancia, la de traer materia enteramente desconocida y no ensayada.

«Indeed, just one of his theses, in which he promised to reconcile Plato and Aristotle completely, could have easily been divided into six hundred headings or more.» — mide la compresión del texto: una sola tesis, la de la concordia de Platón y Aristóteles, admitiría seiscientos encabezados.

«In readying himself for this part of his debate, Pico commissioned Latin translations of an enormous body of Hebrew and Aramaic texts from one of his early Jewish tutors, the Christian convert Flavius Mithridates.» — adjudica el material hebreo y arameo del debate a un encargo de traducción a Mitrídates, converso y antiguo tutor de Pico.

«These translations were begun (but, despite Wirszubski's claims, were far from completed) in the hectic six months preceding publication of the theses—while Pico also studied original» — discute a Wirszubski sobre el estado de las traducciones: comenzadas en los seis meses previos, lejos de terminadas.

«In roughly the same period Pico had another of his Jewish informants, the distinguished philosopher Elia del Medigo, provide him with fresh Latin translations of previously known and unknown texts of Averroes and of other Arabic philosophers, which in the absence of the Arabic originals had survived in medieval Hebrew translations.» — traza la cadena por la que el Averroes de las tesis llega a Pico: del árabe perdido al hebreo medieval y de ahí al latín de Elia del Medigo.

«Pico also had Elia collect and comment on a wide range of technical conflicts in Arabic philosophy that Pico meant to resolve at Rome.» — muestra que los conflictos árabes del debate llegaron ya reunidos y comentados por encargo, no de una lectura directa.

«Pico’s most surprising use of sources came in his handling of the Platonic tradition, whose doctrines he claimed he was submitting for the first time in many centuries to public dispute.”*» — sitúa en el tratamiento de la tradición platónica el uso más llamativo de fuentes, con la pretensión de Pico de someterla a disputa pública tras siglos.

«At Rome, Pico planned to propose an interpretation of the Platonic tradition that was explicitly at odds with that of Marsilio Ficino—of whom in 1486, at any rate, Pico had an extremely low opinion as both a philosopher and Platonic commentator.» — data en 1486 la mala opinión de Pico sobre Ficino y acota la afirmación a esa fecha.

«the Greek text of Plotinus’s Enneads, which Pico thought that Ficino interpreted especially badly.*°» — precisa dónde se concentra la objeción de Pico a Ficino: en su lectura de las Enéadas.

«although in Renaissance studies as a whole Pico is still routinely miscast as Ficino’s “disci» — objeta el lugar común que hace de Pico discípulo de Ficino.

«This despite the fact that, according to Ficino, it was Pico who years earlier had first urged him to begin translating Plotinus.» — invierte la dependencia por testimonio del propio Ficino: la traducción de Plotino se emprendió a instancias de Pico.

«Pico boasted that he possessed the original “Chaldean” version of these sources, which supplied “complete and absolute” (integra et absoluta) what in Greek was “full of faults and mutilated”» — recoge la pretensión de Pico de poseer originales caldeos íntegros frente a un griego mutilado, y la presenta como jactancia.

«Both external and internal evidence, however, clearly show that» — anuncia que la evidencia externa e interna corrige esa pretensión sobre los originales caldeos.

«it can hardly be claimed that Pico's textual scholarship was substandard by Renaissance criteria, since he was consistently ranked among the best scholars of his times by contemporaries including Marsilio Ficino, Angelo Poliziano, Ermolao Barbaro, and Aldo Manuzio.» — separa el juicio sobre las fuentes de Pico del juicio sobre su competencia: por el criterio de su época estaba entre los mejores.

«Poliziano, in fact, who is often styled the "father" of modem philology, was not only Pico's best friend but—according to Poliziano himself—his philosophical disciple as well.» — usa el testimonio de Poliziano sobre sí mismo para acercar la filología naciente al proyecto de Pico.

«The suggestion is that Renaissance philology was far less "modern" than is frequently claimed.» — extrae la consecuencia y la deja en grado de sugerencia: la filología renacentista es menos moderna de lo que suele decirse.

«Adeland the Arab was Adelard of Bath, the twelfth-century Englishman!* While the exact sources of this strange metamorphosis are unknown, hints exist that fragments» — identifica al Adeland árabe de las tesis con Adelardo de Bath, inglés del siglo XII, y declara desconocido el camino por el que se volvió árabe.

«Pico’s involvement with this colorful figure—who liked to style himself as Pico’s would-be but scorned lover—constitutes one of the strangest personal stories of the period, although it is one that is still far from being completely understood.» — deja el trato entre Pico y Mitrídates como asunto sin aclarar, y consigna cómo el traductor se presentaba a sí mismo.

«It is noteworthy that at the beginning of bk. 3, chap. 15 of Pico’s posthumously published Disputations against Divinatory Astrology, we find a long passage on the tides attributed to “Adeland out of the opinions of the Saracens"—clearly drawn this time from the Latin text of the Quaestiones naturales.» — localiza en las Disputationes un segundo uso del mismo autor, esta vez tomado del latín auténtico de Adelardo y no de una versión hebrea.

«By the time that the Disputations was written, however, Flavius was long out of the picture, and Pico had presumably had time to discover his earlier embarrassing error.» — conjetura, y lo marca como conjetura, que para entonces Pico ya había advertido el error que le vino del tutor.

«We know more about Pico’s sources than about those of nearly any other major Renaissance thinker.» — sostiene que el caso de Pico está mejor documentado en materia de fuentes que el de casi cualquier otro autor del Renacimiento.

«We possess two inventories of his famous library, one of the most varied collections of the early printing age;» — cuenta entre esa documentación los dos inventarios conservados de una biblioteca que califica de las más variadas de la primera imprenta.

«The problems in deciphering the text do not arise simply from our historical distance from the work.» — niega que la dificultad del texto sea solo cuestión de distancia histórica, y prepara la explicación por corrupción y por diseño.

«Innocent VII Ts first bull on the theses, ordering temporary suspension of Pico’s debate, also complained of the text’s “new unfamiliar vocabulary” and of its “unheard of novelty of terms.”» — [el OCR imprime *Innocent VII Ts* por *Innocent VIII's*] — registra que la primera bula, la que solo suspendía el debate, se quejaba del vocabulario antes que de la doctrina.

«When Innocent VIII’s papal hammer came down, however, it came down on Pico’s project as a whole.» — distingue las dos intervenciones papales: la suspensión primero, y después la condena del proyecto entero.

«In a bull signed 4 August 1487, but not published until four months later, Innocent complained of heretical theological theses in the text presented “according to the opinion both of the count himself and of others,” and of theses that “savored” of heresy or were “offensive to pious ears.» — data la bula condenatoria y anota el desfase de cuatro meses entre firma y publicación.

«All copies of Pico’s text were to be burned within three days; excommunication was threatened for anyone presuming “to read, to copy, to print; or to have read, copied, or printed; or to hear others reading it in whatever fashion."» — detalla el alcance de la prohibición, que llega hasta oír leer el libro a otro.

«It was no accident that in the same year Innocent ordered the first universal prepublication review of printed books known.» — liga la condena de las tesis con la primera censura previa universal de libros impresos, del mismo año.

«Because of Innocent's ban on discussing the text, little external evidence has survived concerning the goals of Pico's project.» — explica por la prohibición misma la escasez de testimonios externos sobre lo que Pico buscaba.

«It is one goal of this study to show that Pico's plans can nevertheless be reconstructed, drawing on four kinds of evidence:» — enuncia el objetivo del libro: reconstruir el plan del debate pese al silencio documental, y con cuatro clases de evidencia.

«Pico was truly a noble and learned genius, but he philosophized more in the words of others than in nature.”» — la objeción es de Campanella, a quien cita: erudición sin trato con la naturaleza.

«Campanella boasted that he himself learned more from the anatomy of an ant or herb than from all the books that had ever been written.» — pone junto a esa objeción la jactancia de su autor, para medir desde dónde se hacía.

«These were the conceits of the early scientific age, and they cannot be taken literally.» — descuenta esas declaraciones como tópico de época y se niega a leerlas al pie de la letra.

«However, medieval figures like Albert were generally far more dependent on secondary and tertiary sources than Pico, who had access to a broad range of original Greek, Hebrew, and to a lesser extent Arabic texts not widely available to his medieval counterparts.» — matiza la continuidad con el sincretismo medieval por el acceso a originales, y gradúa ese acceso: menos en árabe que en griego y hebreo.

«Campanella’s magical 7 Syncretic tendencies are a diagnostic feature of all scholastic traditions, and many earlier Latins scholastics like Albert the Great might be considered no less extreme in those tendencies than Pico.» — sostiene que el sincretismo es rasgo diagnóstico de toda tradición escolástica y no una singularidad renacentista.

«No premodern syncretists outside the West are known whose projects even remotely approached the scale of Pico’s.» — acota su propia comparación intercultural: la escala del proyecto no tiene par fuera de Occidente.

«But in the sheer quantity of traditions available for synthesis, Pico and his Renaissance contemporaries won out handily over their Eastern counterparts.» — adjudica la diferencia con Oriente a la cantidad de tradiciones disponibles, no a la calidad del método.

«Henderson (1984: 41; 1991: 209), whose studies span over two thousand years of Chinese history, acknowledges the narrower range of Eastern as compared to Western syncretic traditions, explicitly invoking on this point the example of Pico’s work.» — apoya esa comparación en Henderson, su colaborador en el estudio del pensamiento correlativo chino.

«we find him claiming that he had not only read but memorized the writings of “all authorities.”» — recoge la pretensión de Pico de haber memorizado a todas las autoridades, sin suscribirla.

«The fact that Renaissance historians have routinely bypassed this passage without comment suggests how distant modern interest in the Oration has remained from Pico’s original aims in writing the text?» — mide la distancia entre el interés moderno por la Oración y el propósito con que fue escrita por lo que la bibliografía deja pasar sin comentario.

«But Pico drew not only from these texts but from what remained of their earlier Greek sources—and was the first known Latin philosopher since antiquity to approach Proclus's massive Platonic Theology in anything» — adjudica a Pico una primacía: ningún latino desde la antigüedad había abordado la Teología platónica de Proclo.

«The tide De hominis dignitate, so far as ] have been able to find, first showed up in a corrupt 1504 Strassburg reprint of Pico's Opera, edited by Jacob Wimpheling and Hieronymus Emser.» — [el OCR imprime *tide* por *title*] — data en 1504, en una reimpresión corrupta de Estrasburgo, la primera aparición del título por el que se conoce la Oración, y lo declara hasta donde alcanzó su búsqueda.

«What makes Pico’s use of these systems interesting is his heavy reliance on syncretic methods embedded in them as the grounds of his announced method “to resolve every proposed question on natural and divine things.”» — sitúa el interés del caso no en las doctrinas que Pico toma sino en que apoya su método universal en los recursos sincréticos que ya venían dentro de ellas.

«In Pico’s system, God did not create the universe directly but acted through a complex series of intermediaries.» — resume el emanacionismo que atribuye al sistema de las tesis.

«Indeed, Pico not only claimed precedence in the Oration and Apology in debating those views—a claim whose polemical intent was not lost on Ficino—but drew more than a hundred of his theses from Proclus alone, making the latter writer by far the single most important source in the nine hundred theses.» — cuantifica la deuda con Proclo, más de cien tesis, y lo declara la fuente aislada mayor del texto.

«It is well known that Cusanus was heavily influenced by Proclus’s schematic Elements of Theology, which was widely available in medieval Latin versions; despite Balbus’s translation, however, no evidence exists that Cusanus was much interested in the central exegetical and mythological concerns of the Platonic Theology, which lay at the center of Pico's theses secundum Proclum.» — separa el Proclo de Cusa del de Pico: el esquemático de los Elementos frente al exegético y mitológico de la Teología platónica.

«Invoking the so-called double-truth, “theologically speaking" Pico also referred to the first hypostasis using the plural forms “angels,” “intelligences,” or “intellects,” etc.» — describe el uso de la doble verdad como recurso de vocabulario: el mismo nivel se nombra en singular filosófico y en plural teológico.

«In the relatively simple pattern presented in Pico’s “paradoxical dogmatizing conclusions,” God created only the first hypostasis, which Pico indifferently labeled the “intellect,” “intellectual nature,” “angelic mind,” “angel,” or “first created mind,” syncretically conflating the technical terms of a wide range of traditions.» — muestra la operación sincrética en el vocabulario mismo: términos técnicos de tradiciones distintas usados como intercambiables para un solo nivel.

«Harmonizing his emanationism with the creatio ex nihilo demanded by Christian dogma presented Pico with no real problems, as one might initially expect.» — sostiene que la conciliación entre emanación y creación de la nada le resultó fácil a Pico, contra lo que cabría suponer.

«In the Commento, Pico contemptuously dismissed Marsilio Ficino’s meeker compromise between emanationism and creationism, marveling that his rival held “that according to Plato our soul is immediately produced by God, which is opposed no less to the sect of Proclus than to that of Plotinus.””» — documenta con el Commento la distancia doctrinal con Ficino, y de paso el desdén con que Pico la trataba.

«Craven's attempts (1981: 109) to dismiss this and other emanationist passages in Pico's work—on the implied grounds that Pico could not have held such unorthodox views—cannot be supported.» — discute a Craven y nombra el vicio del argumento: descartar los pasajes emanacionistas porque presupone que Pico no podía sostenerlos.

«In his Vatican debate Pico planned to use this strategy to oppose Thomas Aquinas's attacks on emanationism head on.» — adjudica al plan del debate un blanco preciso, la crítica tomista al emanacionismo.

«The concept was, in fact, a medieval commonplace, with countless parallels in non- Western scholastic traditions.» — desinfla la novedad de la penetración recíproca de propiedades: es lugar común medieval, con paralelos fuera de Occidente.

«In fact, however, part of his aim was to point to deep limitations in language.» — lee las variaciones adjetivales de Pico no como manía terminológica sino como señalamiento de los límites del lenguaje.

«Thus although correspondence of some sort exists between the soul and God, that correspondence cannot lie between individual properties in their natures—since in God these properties are indistinguishable—but only between the whole of God’s “simple” unity and the “extended” unity in the soul.» — precisa el límite de la correspondencia entre alma y Dios: se da entre unidades enteras y no entre propiedades, porque en Dios las propiedades no se distinguen.

«Pico’s belief that ordinary language could not represent the nature of things on the highest levels of reality explains his apparent endorsement of nominalistic views in a number of his theses given "according to his own opinion”—despite the fact» — explica el nominalismo aparente de algunas tesis por la desconfianza de Pico en el lenguaje ordinario para los niveles altos.

«with earlier Neo-Platonizing scholastics he claimed was only valid on the lowest levels of reality.» — inscribe en una tradición escolástica neoplatonizante la restricción del principio de no contradicción a los niveles bajos de la realidad.

«It is not difficult to show that Proclus was by far Pico’s most important single» — repite como demostrable, no como impresión, la primacía de Proclo entre las fuentes.

«The central conflict here concerned whether being or the one was ontologically "prior," meaning, as Pico tells us in On Being and the One, which of them was "simpler" and “most universal."» — reduce a términos precisos la vieja disputa entre el ser y el uno, con la definición que el propio Pico da en De ente et uno.

«It is nevertheless not surprising to find him rejecting Proclus and the Neo-Platonists on this one question:» — marca el punto donde el deudor mayor de Proclo se aparta de él, y lo presenta como consecuencia esperable de su principio.

«Indeed, one of these critics turned Ficino’s words exactly on their head and complained that on the issue of being and one, Pico was not attributing Aristotelian views to Plato but Platonic concepts to “our Aristotle.”» — recoge la queja contemporánea de que la concordia se hacía siempre a costa del mismo autor, y en este caso a costa de Aristóteles.

«In rejecting the standard Neo-Platonic view that the one was prior to being, in fact, Pico was simply out-Platonizing his rivals, by insisting on the universality of their own central metaphysical principle—that “all things exist in all things in» — lee el rechazo a Proclo como aplicación más consecuente del principio neoplatónico que los propios neoplatónicos limitaban.

«Pico’s rejection of the standard Neo-Platonic reading of that text—as Ficino complained, Pico argued that the “divine Parmenides” was simply a logical exercise—has been hailed as an anticipation of modern views of the work.’!» — consigna la lectura del Parménides como ejercicio lógico y la fama de anticipación moderna que se le dio, sin hacerla suya.

«What remains unexplained is the depth of Pico’s commitment to the principle that ‘‘all things exist in all things in their own mode,” which he upheld even when it forced him—as in this case—to abandon the most important ancient writers who supported that principle.» — declara sin explicar la adhesión de Pico al principio correlativo, que sostuvo aun a costa de romper con sus fuentes.

«It would, in fact, be difficult to name any other premodern thinker who applied this supreme correlative principle as widely—and indeed, as mechanically—as Pico did in the nine hundred theses, much as Leibniz was to do in a somewhat different way some two centuries later.» — mide el caso por su carácter mecánico, no solo por su amplitud, y pone a Leibniz como término de comparación dos siglos después.

«But even more important was the exegetical flexibility that the principle gave Pico in reconciling conflicting texts, especially those texts linked by tradition to the names “Plato” and "Aristotle.» — subordina el valor doctrinal del principio a su rendimiento exegético: sirve para reconciliar textos en conflicto.

«The concept of textual stratification that has long been taken for granted in biblical studies and analysis of the Chinese and Indian classics, however, has yet to make much of a dent in Platonic and Aristotelian studies, due in part to the lingering influence of Werner Jaeger’s and A. E. Taylor’s works.» — objeta a los estudios platónicos y aristotélicos que no hayan adoptado la estratificación textual corriente en los estudios bíblicos y orientales, y nombra a quiénes atribuye la demora.

«Disagreements between unassailable authorities can be immediately resolved if we interpret their conflicting words to refer not to the same but to corresponding concepts standing on different levels of reality, or to the same concept viewed from superior or inferior hierarchical perspectives.’°» — formula el recurso central de la concordia: repartir en niveles lo que en un solo plano sería contradicción.

«Apparent disagreements between Plato and Aristotle on these issues arise from our misunderstanding of the levels of reality described in their works, not from any unthinkable real conflict dividing them.’*» — reconstruye el supuesto de fondo de la operación: el desacuerdo entre las autoridades es impensable, y el error está siempre del lado del lector.

«Pico’s method here looks suspiciously like an exegetical deus ex machina, and that is precisely what it was—one invoked in the West by pagan writers like Proclus for one set of syncretic purposes and for still others by Christian writers like Pseudo-Dionysius, from whom Pico partially derived the examples offered above.”» — llama al método por su nombre, recurso exegético de emergencia, y lo inscribe en un linaje que va de Proclo al Pseudo Dionisio.

«When these two last fortresses of traditional historiography fall, the repercussions for premodern studies in general can be expected to be profound.» — anticipa que aplicar la estratificación textual a Platón y Aristóteles cambiará el estudio de todo lo premoderno.

«Evidence suggests that paradoxical Western and Eastern views of the one, God, the absolute, etc., as simultaneously transcendent and immanent—or as a general coincidentia oppositorum—originally developed out of the repeated use of the kinds of reconciliative strategies illustrated here.» — deriva la coincidencia de opuestos de una práctica exegética repetida, y no de una intuición mística originaria.

«Dionysius's influence is especially evident in De ente et uno 5, where Pico tells us that in his own work "magna etiam aperitur fenestra legitimae intelligentiae librorum Dionysii qui De mystica theologia et De divinis nominibus inscribuntur" [a great window of legitimate understanding is opened on the books of Dionysius entitled On Mystical Theology and On the Divine Names] (Opera, 250; Garin, Seritti vari, 420).» — localiza y traduce el pasaje en que Pico declara qué abre su método sobre los libros dionisianos.

«The terms "one," "being," "good," "beauty," "unity," and so on, when used to describe any one level of reality, can be systematically linked to the same terms used to describe every other level.» — describe el mecanismo por el que un vocabulario único recorre todos los niveles y los vuelve traducibles entre sí.

«Once we acknowledge those correspondences, we find that beneath those conflicts lay a systematic element and indeed a hidden concord, reflecting the ancients’ dignity as authorities living closer than us to the ongins of the world and hence to primal truth.» — expone el supuesto que sostiene la concordia oculta: la autoridad de los antiguos viene de su cercanía al origen.

«The lesson of Pico's planned reconciliation of Plato and Aristotle can be confirmed by study of every mature scholastic and syncretic tradition known:» — generaliza el caso: lo que hace Pico se repite en toda tradición escolástica madura.

«What begins with attempts to harmonize texts or textual authorities invariably leads to increasingly correlative visions of reality.» — enuncia la tesis del libro en su forma más corta: la armonización de textos termina produciendo cosmologías de correspondencias.

«Pico repeatedly invoked the principle omnia sunt in omnibus modo suo in all his major works.» — documenta que el principio no es un recurso ocasional de las tesis sino una constante de toda la obra.

«In the Heptaplus he labeled the concept the “greatest of all” cosmic principles and discovered in it the key to decoding all sacred texts.» — registra el doble papel que Pico le da al principio: ley del cosmos y llave de lectura de todo texto sagrado.

«Pico’s general approach is beautifully illustrated in one of his theses presenting his “new philosophy” —aimed this time at reconciling Xenophanes and the Eleatics on the concept of the one:» — elige la tesis sobre Jenófanes y los eleatas como muestra del procedimiento entero.

«Joined syncretically, this successive trinity of prisci theologi unfolds the outlines of a complete correlative ontology—with Xenophanes first revealing God's oneness, then Parmenides the reflected oneness in creatures, then Melissus finally the negative oneness of nonbeing or prime matter.» — muestra cómo tres filósofos en desacuerdo, leídos en serie, quedan convertidos en los tres tramos de una sola ontología.

«Five years later, however, in De ente et uno 3 (Opera, 244; Garin, Scritti vari, 396), Pico tentatively followed Simplicius in identifying Parmenides’ one with God.» — data un cambio de posición cinco años posterior a las tesis, y lo consigna con la reserva con que Pico mismo lo hace.

«The first obvious place to search for structure in Pico’s theses, then, is in the text’s numerological design.» — declara por dónde entra a buscar el orden del texto: por su diseño numerológico.

«The fact that the printed edition of the conclusions prepared for Pico’s debating opponents was (rather perversely) unnumbered was apparently tied to Pico’s debating tactics: Cross-references in the work show that his own version was numbered.» — deduce de las referencias cruzadas que había dos versiones, una numerada para él y otra sin numerar para sus contrincantes.

«In any event, numerological symbolism shows up pervasively in the theses, much of it hinting at deeper mystical and eschatological goals underlying Pico’s project.» — sostiene que la numerología del texto apunta a fines místicos y escatológicos, y lo dice como indicio.

«The structure of the two main parts of the nine hundred theses was apparently planned around the two types of “perfect numbers" most commonly acknowledged in the West— numbers like six and twenty-eight composed of the sum of all their factors, and the Pythagorean decad, which was "perfect" and "every number,” as the Apology tells us, since beyond it we count “by repetition."» — reconstruye la arquitectura del texto sobre las dos clases de números perfectos, y apoya la definición de la década en la Apología del propio Pico.

«The decad was also said to be perfect since it was composed of the sum of the first four natural numbers (1 + 2 + 3 + 4)—the numerical correspondents of the point, line, plane, and solid, which were the geometric building blocks of the Pythagorean cosmos.» — expone la tetraktys pitagórica como el fundamento de la perfección atribuida a la década.

«the first or historical section of Pico's theses includes six "nations" of thinkers represented by twenty-eight "heresiarchs" or their sects;» — encuentra los números perfectos en la sección histórica misma: seis naciones y veintiocho heresiarcas.

«the second part of the text, presented “according to Pico's own opinion”—Jıke the On Being and the One and Concord of Plato and Aristotle after it—originally contained ten sections, apparently to emphasize the perfection of Pico» — lee las diez secciones de la segunda parte como declaración de perfección, y anota que las obras posteriores repiten el esquema.

«Since "one" was Pico's standard symbol for a coincidentia contradictoriorum, the first section of his theses given "according to his own opinion" appropriately contains his “paradoxical reconciliative conclusions.» — liga el lugar de una sección en el orden del texto con su contenido doctrinal.

«Last-minute changes in the text make it difficult to know how Pico planned to use the number symbolism planted in it, although he clearly meant to reveal that symbolism in the course of his debate.» — se abstiene sobre el uso previsto de la numerología y afirma solo que iba a revelarse en el debate.

«Pico added an eleventh section while the work was in press to replace theses apparently removed for theological reasons.» — documenta una intervención de última hora en la imprenta y la atribuye, con reserva, a un retiro de tesis por motivos teológicos.

«The final section of the work, outlining Pico’s Cabalistic plan to convert the Jews, contains seventy-two theses, the number of letters in one of the most secret of the Cabala's secret names of God» — hace coincidir el número de tesis de la sección final con el del nombre divino de setenta y dos letras.

«Similar symbolism was also apparently intended by Pico’s original inclusion of five hundred theses presented “according to his own opinion.”» — extiende la lectura simbólica al número original de tesis de opinión propia, con reserva.

«The theses, he informed Benevieni, had recently grown from seven to nine hundred and had threatened to reach a thousand.» — resume la carta a Benivieni en que Pico cuenta el crecimiento del texto y su decisión de detenerse.

«Moreover, that structure was apparently tied to some mystical and eschatological plan underlying Pico’s entire project.» — sostiene, sin cerrarlo, que la estructura numérica sirve a un plan escatológico que abarca el proyecto entero.

«Pıco’s ROMAN DEBATE meant to represent a reverse genealogy of thought—or an emanation of wisdom, as he suggests—tracing the historical flow of truth backwards in time from the warring Latins, whose theses are found at the start of Pico’s text, to the harmonious agreement of prisci theologi and Cabalists, whose doctrines appear at the end of the text’s historical part.» — explica el orden de la sección histórica como un remonte en el tiempo, de los latinos en guerra a la concordia de los teólogos antiguos y los cabalistas.

«With one of those nice symbolic touches characteristic of all his works, Pico concludes the historical part of his text with the promise to reveal the secrets of God's nature hidden in the Hebrew word Amen.» — señala que el cierre de la parte histórica está construido como signo, y no como remate casual.

«Ironically, far from stressing the autonomy of the will, as is usually argued, Pico normally emphasized its blindness and total dependence on the intellect» — invierte la lectura corriente de Pico como filósofo de la libertad de la voluntad.

«It is no accident that Pico's "emanation of wisdom" ends abruptly with the Arabs.» — lee el corte de la genealogía en los árabes como decisión de diseño y no como límite de sus lecturas.

«The first repeats the standard Renaissance complaint about corrupt texts and translations, which badly distort the wisdom of the ancients.» — identifica el primero de los dos motivos con que Pico justifica su genealogía inversa, y lo da por tópico de época.

«The second reminds us that the ancients stood closer than we do to the truth, since “we are flesh and what we know is of the earth,” “our heads damned with dizziness by the sudden fall of man from heaven.”» — da el segundo motivo, la caída que aleja al hombre de la verdad, con las palabras del propio Pico entre comillas dentro de la frase.

«On the other hand, Pico’s insistence that the structures of texts should reflect the structures of the realities they represent provides strong arguments against any such interpretation.» — usa el principio de correspondencia entre texto y realidad para descartar lecturas que hacen del orden de las tesis un accidente.

«All this suggests that Pico’s famous letter to Ermolao Barbaro that in part defends the Latin scholastics (Opera, 351—58)— written one year before the theses—demands a careful reevaluation.» — propone releer la carta a Barbaro a la luz del lugar que las tesis dan a los latinos, y lo deja como tarea abierta.

«Gianfrancesco described the Concord while surveying other of his uncle’s works-in-progress:» — introduce al sobrino como la fuente principal, y única, de lo que se sabe de la obra perdida.

«Among these above all should be numbered his Concord of Plato and Anistotle, which already begun he would have quickly perfected if he had survived a few more years.» — el testimonio es de Gianfrancesco, a quien cita: la Concordia quedaba apenas empezada a la muerte de su tío.

«The unity of thought yielding slowly to discord: The obvious parallels between the structure of the nine hundred theses and Pico's lost Concord of Plato and Anistotle suggest that the latter text was planned as a direct extension and presumably defense of his aborted Vatican debate.» — infiere del paralelo estructural que la Concordia continuaba y defendía el debate abortado.

«to suppress publication of the Concord, which evidence suggests was in fact finished, or all but finished, at the time of Pico’s death.» — contradice el testimonio del sobrino: la obra estaba terminada, o casi, cuando su editor la declaró apenas empezada.

«It also helps explain why Pico’s historical theses begin with the “heresiarchs” of the via antiqua—Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, John Duns Scotus, and so on—and omit completely the leaders of the via moderna, in whose nominalist systems, in Pico’s eyes, the crystalline proportions of the cosmos had been totally shattered.??» — explica la ausencia de los nominalistas por doctrina y no por desconocimiento: sus sistemas rompen las proporciones cósmicas que la concordia necesita.

«Professor Kristeller (1965: 59) has suggested that Pico's exclusion of the nominalists may have reflected the fact that Louis XI prohibited their teachings at the University of Paris in 1474.» — recoge la explicación de Kristeller por la prohibición parisina antes de objetarla.

«That edict was lifted in 1481, however—four years before Pico's first trip to Paris—and evidence in the Apology suggests that in Paris Pico had studied their doctrines intensely; we also find the nominalists attacked» — objeta esa explicación con la cronología del edicto y con el testimonio de la Apología sobre lo mucho que Pico estudió a los nominalistas.

«Pico claimed that methods similar to his own were used by Joachim of Fiore, the most important medieval figure in a Western tradition of numerological prophecy extending from antiquity to Newton and beyond.» — inscribe la profecía numerológica de Pico en una línea larga que llega hasta Newton, y nombra a Joaquín de Fiore como su figura medieval mayor.

«But the selection and arrangement of those sources was, of course, entirely Pico’s own.» — separa lo heredado de lo propio: las fuentes vienen de otros, el orden en que quedan dispuestas es de Pico.

«Pico drew this idea from his kabbalistic sources, but he thought that he also found evidence for it in the Hermetic Corpus and undoubtedly elsewhere, although he claimed that the doctrine was too secret to discuss at Rome.» — adjudica a la cábala el origen de la emanación siniestra y registra que Pico la reservó por secreta.

«In the theses we not only find Old Testament kings like Solomon represented as true prefigurations or “types” of Christ, but others like Zedekiah—the king of Judah when it fell to Babylon—as false types, having a “diminished correspondence” to Christ and Solomon.» — describe la tipología graduada de las tesis: junto al tipo verdadero hay tipos falsos, con correspondencia disminuida.

«False Cabalists do the same, claiming descent for their diabolical arts from the secret wisdom revealed to Moses on the mountain.» — extiende la lógica de los tipos falsos a la propia cábala, donde la genealogía mosaica también la reclaman los adversarios.

«Since after Pico’s death his nephew published only this anti-concord of sorts in the Disputations and not what remained of the Concord itself, Pico’s later thought has sometimes been represented as a “palinode” to his earlier work.» — explica la imagen del Pico arrepentido por lo que el sobrino eligió publicar y por lo que dejó inédito.

«It should be evident by this point that Pico hoped to trigger a parallel historical conversion in his Vatican debate, returning thought from its current warring state to the unity it enjoyed in the days of the ancient wisemen.» — reúne el propósito del debate en una sola frase: revertir la historia del pensamiento hasta su unidad primera.

«Pico's mysticism, despite numerous claims to the contrary, reflected standard medieval compromises balancing human responsibility against the need for divine grace.» — objeta a quienes hacen de la mística de Pico una posición excepcional: es el equilibrio medieval corriente entre mérito y gracia.

«Once we have climbed those steps, returning into the divine unity reflected in our souls, we will have "done what is in us," and God will reward us with the peace and mystical union that comes from a final quietistic infusion of grace.» — describe el final de la ascensión como una infusión quietista de gracia, con la fórmula escolástica del hacer lo que está en uno.

«The "manifold discord" and "civil wars" in this passage refer on a primary level to conflicts in the soul but analogically point just as well to the intellectual wars that Pico planned to resolve at Rome» — lee en dos planos el pasaje de la Oración sobre la discordia: el del alma y el de las escuelas en pugna.

«The discovery of such correspondences was, in fact, what Pico refers to in the nine hundred theses as the “method of secret analogizing” (via secretae analogiae).'!°» — identifica con el nombre que Pico le da, vía de la analogía secreta, el procedimiento de hallar correspondencias entre planos.

«It was discoveries like this that compelled him “by force” to take up study of Chaldean and Arabic as well as Hebrew—a burdensome task, but one promising "the true image of the future glory that will be revealed in us.”» — explica el estudio de lenguas orientales por un motivo religioso, no filológico: lo que Pico creía leer en esos textos.

«The biblical passage that inspired the “Ode to Peace” in the Oration is filled with eschatological sentiments, recalling Chnist’s words to his disciples before the Passion: “I give you peace, I leave you peace.» — sitúa la oda a la paz de la Oración en una clave escatológica, y no como un ideal humanista de concordia.

«In a letter written to Marsilio Ficino in September 1486, Pico announced his discovery of certain Chaldean and Arabic writings, filled with mysteries, that fell into his hands “clearly not by accident or fortuitously, but for the good of my studies by the plan of God and my guiding spirit.”» — data en septiembre de 1486 el anuncio del hallazgo de los escritos caldeos y árabes, que Pico atribuye a designio divino.

«The mystical frenzy that overcame Pico when he read those lines visited him more than once» — registra que el arrebato ante esos textos no fue episodio único.

«Pico was referring here to his struggles with those languages, the key to that treasure chest of holy secrets.» — precisa a qué llamaba Pico su carga: las lenguas mismas, en cuanto llave del depósito de secretos.

«Pico’s plans for his debate uniformly suggest eschatological hopes and apocalyptic urgency: his choice of the Vatican as its site; his inclusion of theses from what he viewed as all gentes and their heresiarchae—terms rich with religious overtones; the location “in the apostolic senate" of this “council,” with the pope himself as supreme judge; the inclusion in the historical theses of conclusions from six “nations” grouped in twenty-eight sections—both “perfect numbers” symbolizing perfection and completion; and so on.» — reúne los indicios del propósito escatológico del debate: sede, vocabulario, escenario, juez y números.

«The concluding section of Pico’s theses contains his grand plan for the final conversion of the Jews, last item on the medieval agenda before the coming of the millennium—that future Sabbath when all conflicts between all "nations" will be finally resolved.» — sitúa la sección final del texto en el calendario milenarista medieval, donde la conversión de los judíos es el último trámite.

«Significantly, that method was based on Pico’s rediscovery of “the true exposition of the Law” revealed by God to Moses on the mountain—binding the end with the beginning, closing the circle of time.» — describe la figura que ordena el proyecto: el final de la historia se alcanza recuperando la revelación de su origen.

«Finally, there is the clue that Pico left in the date of his debate, which was to be postponed until after the Feast of the Epiphany.» — trata la fecha misma del debate como indicio, y la nombra como tal.

«As noted earlier, the Epiphany celebrated in part the submission to Christ of the gentes in the persons of the Magi—the ideal symbol for the submission of Pico’s "nations" to a restored Chnstian philosophy and theology in his debate.» — lee la Epifanía como figura del debate mismo: las naciones que se someten en los magos son las gentes de las tesis.

«It is impossible to know for sure.» — se abstiene sobre hasta dónde llegaba la convicción escatológica de Pico.

«In the eschatological thought of the Renaissance it is often difficult to distinguish hard convictions, half-hopes, and heavy metaphorical play—although it was rarely ever simply play.» — gradúa la dificultad sin resolverla, y descarta que la escatología renacentista fuera mero juego retórico.

«As Pico recalled Scripture elsewhere, however, no one knows for certain the date of the end of the world, and we must hold ourselves in constant readiness.» — anota que el propio Pico tenía a mano la reserva escriturística sobre la fecha del fin.

«It is impossible, however, not to suspect something more here than a simple warning.» — declara su sospecha como sospecha, sin convertirla en conclusión.

«it is reasonable to assume that the Medici family's special links with the Feast of the Epiphany may have figured in Pico's choice of opening dates for his dispute.» — suma a la lectura escatológica de la fecha un motivo político doméstico, el vínculo de los Medici con la Epifanía, y lo deja en conjetura razonable.

«But as in so many other cases, Gianfrancesco chose not to publish the text, possibly because it contradicted the eschatological predictions of his mentor Savonarola.» — atribuye una supresión más al sobrino y propone el motivo: el texto estorbaba a las profecías de Savonarola.

«Even Marsilio Ficino—whose ultimate hostility towards Savonarola is well known—was hardly a stranger to eschatological thinking, and like Pico saw the divine hand guiding his own attempts to revive ancient wisdom.» — extiende la clave escatológica a Ficino, para que no se lea como rareza de Pico.

«In one famous passage, 1n fact, Ficino attributed to Pico himself—animated by the ghost of Cosimo de’ Medici—a guiding role in his own holy mission.» — documenta que el papel providencial de Pico se lo adjudicó Ficino, no la posteridad.

«Ficino makes much of the fact that Pico was born in the same year (1463) that Ficino began studying Plato in Greek under Cosimo de' Medici's patronage.» — recoge la coincidencia de fechas con que Ficino construía el relato providencial.

«Twenty-one years later, on the same day and indeed at almost the same hour that Ficino's translation of Plato was published [quo die et ferme qua hora Platonem edidi], Pico was moved by Cosimo's departed soul to travel to Florence to inspire Ficino to take up Plotinus.» — completa el relato de Ficino con la sincronía de día y hora, y lo deja consignado como lo que Ficino sostiene.

«A saintly, prophetic, or even semi-messianic role was similarly» — señala que otros contemporáneos, no solo Ficino, le asignaron a Pico un papel profético.

«the rhetorician Buoncompagni da Signa concludes: "Wherefore, after treating of assemblies, I put an end to my labor, awaiting without horrible fear the Last Assembly in which the third Angel will sound the trumpet at whose blast heaven and earth will be moved.» — la voz es del retórico Buoncompagni da Signa en 1235, a quien cita para mostrar que la disputa se pensaba desde antiguo en clave de asamblea final.

«No matter how we interpret this evidence, it can hardly be doubted that Pico pictured his Vatican council as something more than simply the largest scholastic debate in history.» — deja abierta la interpretación y cierra solo lo que da por firme: el debate era para Pico más que un ejercicio escolar.

«In the early draft of the Oration, Pico wrote that “there is no one who has ever existed, or who after us will exist, to whom truth has given itself to be comprehended in its entirety.» — trabaja con el borrador temprano de la Oración y no solo con el impreso, y de ahí saca el límite que Pico se pone al conocimiento.

«Whether Gianfracesco believed that religious prophets like his mentor Savonarola were capable of comprehending truth “in its entirety” is an open question.» — deja abierta la posición del sobrino sobre la profecía, y con ella el motivo de que ese pasaje desapareciera.

«There is no doubt that Pico was capable at will of twisting virtually any writer into the shape of any other.» — concede sin reservas la plasticidad exegética de Pico, antes de acotar que no la usaba en todos los casos.

«But Pico’s model of history predicted discord in traditions as well as harmony, as we have seen, and when it did Pico kept a sharp eye out for conflict and planned to make much of it at Rome.» — corrige la imagen de un Pico que todo lo concuerda: su modelo también predice discordia, y él la buscaba.

«The limited agreement that Pico proposed between these authonties—only Plato and Aristotle are said to be in total harmony—has often been interpreted as applying to all teachings of these writers, or even to all writers without distinction.» — acota el alcance de la concordia picoana: solo Platón y Aristóteles quedan en armonía total, y la bibliografía lo ha extendido de más.

«Pico's supposed agreement with Thomas has been especially emphasized by Catholic historians including Dulles (1941) and Di Napoli (1965);» — nombra a los historiadores católicos que hicieron de Pico un tomista y marca esa lectura como interesada.

«In defending the thesis, which attacked Thomas on the way in which Christ descended into hell (in the three days between the Crucifixion and Resurrection), Pico admitted to difficulties in interpreting Thomas’s view.» — localiza el punto doctrinal, el descenso de Cristo a los infiernos, en que Pico ataca a Tomás y reconoce la dificultad del texto.

«The extreme violence of Pico’s early polemics with the Dominicans is suggested in Pico’s defense of his first examined thesis in the Apology, in Opera, 125-50.» — mide por la Apología la dureza del enfrentamiento temprano con los dominicos, contra la imagen del conciliador.

«It is not necessary here to elaborate on Pico’s theological and philosophical disagreements with St. Thomas, which can be traced in my commentary on Pico’s text.» — declara el reparto entre la monografía y el comentario de la Parte 2, donde el detalle doctrinal queda.

«My object instead is simply to point to further evidence that Pico did not reduce all later writers to a philosophical mishmash where everyone agreed with everyone else.» — enuncia lo que su capítulo quiere establecer: que la concordia de Pico no era un acuerdo universal indiscriminado.

«The Oration and Apology provide much evidence that in his debate Pico planned to oppose many theses no matter how they were construed.» — apoya en las dos obras de defensa que muchas tesis del texto estaban puestas para ser refutadas.

«For reasons involving Pico’s model of history, conflicts between schools could be expected to be sharpest in later “nations” like the Latins, whose theses are located at the start of his text.» — deriva del modelo histórico la distribución del conflicto en el texto: máximo entre los latinos, que abren.

«Reflecting this belief, the scholastic quaestio typically began with a collation of what was supposed to be all logically possible or historically proposed solutions to a problem, summarized in the opposing sic’s and non’s at the start of the question.» — describe la quaestio escolástica como el molde del que sale la colación de tesis de Pico.

«Even when the original sources of proposed solutions to a problem were lost or forgotten, their key ideas were preserved and indexed, so to speak, in writing or memory, under quaestiones that often remained fixed for centuries.» — explica cómo la forma de la quaestio conservó doctrinas cuyas fuentes se habían perdido.

«In the majority of cases, Pico’s theses fall into broad topical series that cut across both main divisions of the text.» — propone la unidad de lectura de las tesis: la serie temática, que atraviesa las dos partes.

«In some cases, these series involve no more than two or three sharply conflicting theses; in others, a dozen or more theses may be involved.» — da la escala de esas series, de dos o tres tesis a más de una docena.

«In either case, the opposing theses in the historical part of the text can be viewed as traditional solutions to all those ambiguous and controversial questions that Pico promised to resolve in his debate.» — reinterpreta la parte histórica como el repertorio de soluciones recibidas que la segunda parte viene a resolver.

«Pico’s determination of these questions can often be located in a straightforward manner in the section of the text presented “according to his own opinion.”» — da la regla práctica para saber qué sostiene Pico: buscar la determinación en la sección de opinión propia.

«Supporting evidence that Pico meant to collate his theses in this fashion 1s found in the Apology, where he repeatedly qualifies the sense of one thesis in the light of others, and in records of contemporary disputes—including one in which we can observe Pico himself at work!?!—in which the initial theses placed in» — apoya la lectura por series en la práctica documentada de Pico, que en la Apología califica unas tesis con otras.

«Pico would have had to adjust his method only slightly in collating the warring doctrines of the later schools—letting the truth stand out from error, as he tells us, “just like the sun rising from the deep.» — sostiene que el mismo procedimiento sirve para concordar y para descartar, con un ajuste mínimo.

«If Pıco had held his dispute, the occult links that he planted between theses would have given him a great deal of control over the direction of the debate.» — atribuye a la concatenación oculta una función táctica: quien conoce los enlaces gobierna la disputa.

«Thus the first thesis begins a long series on the complementarity of the Arıstotelian and Platonic theories of knowledge;» — muestra que el texto arranca ya dentro de una serie, y no con una proposición suelta.

«Although debating the theses one by one was clearly out ofthe question, Pico seems to suggest in this passage that in some sense he meant to debate them all.» — deja en suspenso, marcándolo, si Pico pensaba disputar las novecientas o resolverlas por series.

«Thus in one such section he promises to respond to seventy-four questions to "verify" his numerological methods, and in another involving magical exegesis vows no more than hints "useful to excite the minds of contemplatives.» — contrasta dos promesas del texto, la demostrativa y la meramente sugerente, según la materia sea numerológica o mágica.

«It is reasonable to assume that Pico had similar plans for demonstrating his promised method for resolving "every proposed question on natural and divine things" —operating in this case on the theses from the warring schools collected in the historical part of his text.» — extiende por analogía, y declarándolo suposición, el plan demostrativo al resto del texto.

«Even though Pico could hardly have hoped in his debate to connect his theses in a totally predictable fashion, such links were critical to his disputing plans, and attempts to reconstruct them are a prerequisite to interpreting his text.» — acota su propia reconstrucción: los enlaces no eran un sistema cerrado, y aun así hay que rehacerlos para leer el texto.

«Since one of the key goals of Pico's debate was to reconcile Plato and Aristotle, not surprisingly both main sections of his text» — hace derivar del objetivo del debate la presencia del tema en las dos partes del texto.

«Pico boasted that his text contained all the most ambiguous and controversial questions fought over by the schools, and in his view those conflicts arose in large part from equivocal uses of technical language.» — adjudica a Pico un diagnóstico lingüístico del desacuerdo escolástico: buena parte del conflicto es equivocidad de términos.

«This view was rejected by early Christian scholastics like St. Augustine, however, who relocated the ideas directly in God, attempting this way to “save” both the eternity of the ideas and the unmediated creatio ex nihilo demanded by Christian dogma.» — reconstruye el movimiento agustiniano que traslada las ideas a Dios para salvar a la vez su eternidad y la creación de la nada.

«Location of the ideas directly in God could be interpreted as a threat to his unity, since the ideas were often represented as individual archetypes of creation; indeed, Augustine himself literally posited one idea for each created being.» — expone el costo de esa solución: una idea por criatura amenaza la simplicidad divina.

«An alternate solution, commonly associated with John Scotus Erigena (ninth century CE), attempted to get around this problem by reinterpreting the ideas as created beings located in, but not directly identified with, God’s nature.» — da la salida eriugeniana, ideas creadas en Dios pero no idénticas a él, como el otro término de la disputa que Pico hereda.

«Like dozens of other conflicts that Pico planned to resolve, the debate over the location of the ideas could boast over a thousand years of history.» — mide la antigüedad de las controversias que las tesis pretenden cerrar: más de mil años cada una.

«Scotus’s weakening of the ontological status of the ideas led a number of later Franciscans—including the so-called prince of Scotists, Francis of Meyronnes—to return to a view closer to St. Augustine’s, once again identifying the Platonic ideas immediately with God.» — sigue el vaivén de la disputa: el debilitamiento escotista del estatuto de las ideas devuelve a los franciscanos posteriores a la posición agustiniana.

«Pico’s approach to this ancient cosmological problem illustrates the enormous—and often comical—gulfs separating premodern from modern views of language.» — advierte que el desacuerdo con el lector moderno no es de doctrina sino de qué se espera del lenguaje.

«What is crucial to note at present is that Pico did not plan to argue that Francis and Scotus were in harmony on this issue but intended to construct a correlative metaphysical framework» — corrige la lectura fácil de la concordia: aquí Pico no armoniza a los dos escolásticos, construye el marco donde caben los dos.

«The extreme flexibility of that framework would have allowed Pico to reconcile virtually any authorities—including Scotus and Francis if his historical model had demanded it—simply by distinguishing the levels of reality intended by their concepts, just as he did in harmonizing Xenophanes and the Eleatics on the concept of the “‘one.”’» — señala que la concordia se aplica o se omite según lo pida el modelo histórico, no según lo que digan los textos.

«The broader reconstruction of Pico’s plans at Rome requires tortured leaps like this around the nine hundred theses—a tribute, if nothing else, to the prodigious powers of memory required in Pico’s debate.» — reconoce lo forzado de su propia reconstrucción y lo devuelve como dato sobre la memoria que el debate exigía.

«Since Pico was technically the respondens at Rome, following usual procedures his opponents would normally have had first shot in the debate—raising objections to theses to which Pico would be required to “respond.”» — precisa el papel formal de Pico en la disputa y quién llevaba la iniciativa según la costumbre.

«That normal procedure was to be followed in Pico’s debate can be inferred from the form of a handful of theses scattered about his text.» — declara la base estrecha de esa inferencia: la forma de unas pocas tesis dispersas.

«The presence of theses like this suggests that before debating a conclusion an opponens could demand an explanation of its bare sense—a declaration of its meaning ex vi verborum, to use the scholastic formula adopted by the papal commission and Pico himself.» — reconstruye un paso previo del procedimiento, la declaración del sentido literal, con la fórmula que usaron la comisión y el propio Pico.

«The requirement that a respondens provide a brief explanation of a thesis before its formal debate was apparently standard disputation practice.» — generaliza ese paso como práctica corriente, y lo marca con un adverbio de reserva.

«Once Pico argued that he did not endorse all the theses in the historical part of his text, the pope accepted his argument without known complaint.» — registra que el descargo de responsabilidad fue aceptado por el papa sin objeción conocida.

«Given these circumstances, it would be an error to try to reconstruct too rigid a set of formal procedures for his debate—procedures that Pico probably never planned and, given the chaotic nature of scholastic disputes, could not have reasonably carried out.» — pone límite a su propia reconstrucción: el debate no tenía un reglamento fino, y no lo habría soportado.

«A hint of Pico's casual attitude towards disputational procedures is further suggested by his indifferent use of the terms quaestiones and conclusiones in referring to his theses before as well as after his troubles with the church began.» — apoya en el vocabulario mismo la despreocupación de Pico por las formas de la disputa.

«Pico sometimes simply ignored the apparent conflicts in his authorities and deduced harmonious views from the purported "principles" !» — nombra el primero y más crudo de los recursos de concordia: pasar por alto el conflicto y deducir del principio supuesto.

«Pico, like syncretists in other cultures, frequently argued that apparent conflicts in authorities arose from totally superficial differences in language.» — inscribe el recurso lingüístico de Pico en un repertorio que encuentra también fuera de Occidente.

«Once we moved from the "outer bark" of words to their “inner core," these conflicts would disappear.» — da la imagen con que se justificaba ese recurso: corteza y núcleo de la palabra.

«The Commento opens with similar language: Despite conflicts in words, all ancient Platonists agree totally in sense, claiming as their principal doctrine that being exists in three “modes”—-causal, formal, and participated?» — señala que el mismo argumento abre el Commento, con la doctrina de los tres modos del ser como apoyo de la concordia.

«These could be sorted out at Rome, honoring or taxing the "tumult of the moderns partly for their merits, partly for their faults» — describe el trato previsto para los modernos en el debate: ni concordia ni condena en bloque, sino saldo por partes.

«Western medievalists invariably associate the double-truth with Averroes and his Latin commentators, but numerous variations of the technique show up as well in non-Western scholastic traditions.» — objeta la adjudicación de la doble verdad al averroísmo latino y la trata como recurso general de las escolásticas.

«Thus in his theological conclusions he invoked the method to resolve a traditional controversy over whether aevum or "aeviternity"—the durational state proper to angels—like eternity was continuous or like time had a beginning and end.» — muestra la doble verdad en funcionamiento sobre un caso concreto, la duración propia de los ángeles.

«The concept of aevum was itself a syncretic construct, arising in antiquity from reconciliations of sacred texts claiming that God alone existed in eternity with other texts placing angels or demons in that state.» — muestra que la noción misma que se discute nació de una reconciliación previa de textos en conflicto.

«Western scholastics undeniably did employ the strategy at times to mask heretical views, but it could be used just as well as part of an elaborate demonstration of the limits of reason.» — se abstiene de reducir la doble verdad a disimulo, y le reconoce un uso epistemológico.

«Most often, however, as in the passages just quoted, it simply provided a means to allow discussion of dangerous theological issues without prejudicing either religious or philosophical authority.» — adjudica a la doble verdad, en su uso más común, una función de seguridad: discutir lo peligroso sin comprometer a ninguna autoridad.

«But it cannot be denied that repeated use of the technique promoted something like that view.» — concede que el uso repetido del recurso terminaba produciendo la doctrina que en principio solo simulaba.

«It is possible to reconstruct a few of Pico’s word/number calculations in the conclusions, but for reasons of his own he left few hints as to where he meant to make them, and fewer still as to which technique he meant to use in any one thesis.» — declara el límite de lo reconstruible en la vía numérica: se sabe que hay cálculo, no dónde ni cuál.

«In one thesis he claimed that unspecified gematria-like techniques were the key to his syncretic fusion of natural magic and Cabala.» — localiza en una tesis el enlace declarado entre magia natural y cábala, con la técnica sin especificar.

«In the Apology, Pico compared this “science of the revolution of the alphabet” (scientia alphabetariae revolutionis) or “art of combination” (ars combinandi), as he variously called it, to the method known to the Latins as the ars Raymundi—that is, to the anagrammatic methods of the Christian Spaniard Raymond Lull—although he conceded that “perhaps they proceed in a different mode.» — recoge la equiparación que Pico hace entre la revolución del alfabeto y el arte luliano, con la reserva que él mismo añade.

«The aim was not to reconcile Scriptures with each other or with pagan traditions—although this was in part what Pico was after—but to transform the soul mystically through contemplation of the infinite depths of truth concealed in sacred texts.» — distingue el fin exegético del fin místico de esas técnicas, y concede que en Pico van juntos.

«The Heptaplus implies that Pico’s ars combinandi involved precise transformation rules, but in practice these reduced to more or less free permutations of letters if not indeed to automatic writing inspired by God.?» — contrasta la regla anunciada con la práctica: permutación libre, cuando no escritura por inspiración.

«Scholem points to the conviction among Renaissance Jews that six hundred thousand interpretations of the Torah existed, one for each Israelite alive when Moses received the Law.» — apoya en Scholem la creencia que vuelve ilimitada la lectura del texto sagrado.

«Pico suggests something similar when he claims that the means of reading the Law “without points”—that is, without vowel signs, in Hebrew effectively eliminating fixed divisions in words—illustrates both the manner in which sacred texts are written and God's infinite and “unial containment" of all things?» — explica qué hace la lectura sin puntos: al borrar las divisiones fijas de las palabras, vuelve el texto imagen de la contención divina de todas las cosas.

«Once again, enough of Pico’s via numerorum can be reconstructed to decide on his general approach, although not always his procedures thesis by thesis.» — separa lo que da por establecido, el enfoque, de lo que no, el procedimiento en cada tesis.

«His methods were again flexible enough to yield virtually any reading needed for any purpose.» — es su objeción de fondo a estas técnicas: sirven para obtener cualquier resultado que se busque.

«In those sections where he claims the most originality, however, he typically distinguishes concepts in the more elaborate correlative manner characteristic of his philosophia nova.» — distingue dos registros en el texto según Pico se apoye en la tradición o reclame novedad.

«Thus one thesis drawn from St. Thomas tells us that the true body of Christ exists "locally" in heaven but “sacramentally” on the altar, and so on.» — ilustra con la eucaristía la distinción escolástica binaria de la que parte la multiplicación correlativa.

«While the standard scholastic distinction typically led to binary divisions of concepts—substance or accident, real or intentional existence, speculative or practical science, and so on—once organized in correlative series these could be multiplied in a nearly endless fashion, limited only by a commentator’s ingenuity in inventing verbal modifiers for some base term.» — describe cómo una distinción binaria, puesta en serie correlativa, crece sin más límite que el ingenio del comentarista.

«Thus Cassirer (1927; Eng. trans. 1963: 84), echoing Giovanni Gentile, found in Pico “the modern pathos of thought";» — consigna la lectura modernizadora de Cassirer y Gentile sin hacerla suya.

«Pico most often invoked extreme correlative distinctions like these to unveil the secret concords in the ancients—his apparent object here was to harmonize ideas in the Platonic corpus with elements of his own system?®—but these methods could be used just as well to effect full or partial reconciliations of more recent traditions.» — anota que el mismo instrumento sirve para los antiguos y para las escuelas recientes, con concordia total o parcial.

«The assumption was that occult messages hidden collectively in those texts, and even “everything knowable,” could be uncovered once those passages were combined in a syllogistic or quasi-syllogistic fashion.» — expone el supuesto del silogismo sincrético: el mensaje no está en un texto sino en la combinación de varios.

«Thus the syncretic fusion of biblical references to “Wisdom, God's darling and delight," made “at the beginning, long before the earth itself" (Wisdom 9:1—18; cf. Prov. 8:22-31) with Christ’s characterization in Paul and elsewhere as “the power and wisdom of God” (I Cor. 1:25), eventually led to Jesus’ literal identification with God’s creative wisdom and power.» — reconstruye una doctrina cristiana como resultado de fundir pasajes bíblicos distantes, es decir por el mismo procedimiento que estudia en Pico.

«From here it was a simple step to his identification with the Logos or Word of God—Jinked to wisdom and creation in Wisdom 9:1—18, etc. — and to his eventual elevation to the “mind of God” in the» — continúa la cadena hasta la identificación de Cristo con el Logos y su elevación a la mente de Dios.

«The peculiar anthropomorphization of God’s Logos or Word was prepared by Hebrew exegetes long before it appeared in its Christian form in the Gospel according to John.» — data la antropomorfización del Verbo antes del evangelio de Juan y la adjudica a los exegetas hebreos.

«Thus in a famous passage in the Book of Wisdom (18:14-17), we find the anthropomorphized Word leaping in judgment from the heavenly throne, bearing God's “inflexible decree" as his sword—“his head touching the heavens, his feet on earth.”» — da el pasaje del Libro de la Sabiduría donde esa figura ya está formada.

«Pico’s text contains a number of theses that combine unrelated fragments of biblical, Talmudic, kabbalistic, and pagan texts in this syncretic manner—harmonizing Plato and Aristotle and the prisci theologi, battling the Jews, and reading out secret messages hidden collectively in Scriptures using the tools of medieval logic developed precisely for exegetical ends like these.”» — sostiene que la lógica medieval no se aplica aquí desde fuera: se había hecho para esto, para leer mensajes ocultos en textos combinados.

«The passage syncretically conflates the Virgin Mary with Miriam of Num. 20:1.» — señala una fusión concreta de personajes, la Virgen con la Miriam del libro de los Números.

«Evidence for such tendencies can also be found in the Egyptian pyramid texts, dating from the mid-third millennium BCE.» — remonta las mismas tendencias hasta los textos de las pirámides, a mediados del tercer milenio antes de la era.

«The exegetical functions of medieval logic have unfortunately been obscured by the mathematical formalism that has dominated studies of that field for the past sixty years.» — objeta a los estudios de lógica medieval haber borrado su función exegética al traducirla a formalismo matemático.

«Even Moody, however, who was the first scholar to translate medieval logic routinely into modern symbolic notation, was forced to acknowledge profound differences between the theoretical aims of symbolic logic and the exegetical goals of its medieval predecessor.» — apoya esa objeción en la concesión del propio Moody, iniciador de la traducción a notación simbólica.

«Thus while modem logic is an “axiomatic derivation of the principles of mathematics, Medieval logic functioned as an art of language (sermocinalis scientia) closely associated with grammar, to be used as a means of construing authoritative texts of Sacred Scripture and of the Church Fathers and of establishing interpretations of such texts that would be logically coherent and free from contradiction” (1975: 373-74).» — la definición es de Moody, a quien cita: la lógica medieval como arte del lenguaje al servicio de la interpretación de textos autoritativos.

«More recent scholarship has suggested that medieval interest in logical paradoxes or insolubilia—the most modern appearing elements of medieval logic—did not derive from speculative motives, as Moody and his followers argued, but from pedagogical ends that once again involved disputational needs.» — recoge la corrección posterior a Moody: hasta las paradojas lógicas venían de necesidades de la disputa.

«This finding further undermines the outward parallels between modern and medieval logic that have driven studies of the latter field since the 1930s.» — extrae la consecuencia para el campo: el parecido entre las dos lógicas es de superficie.

«Pico's troubles over the nine hundred theses caused him to abandon work on both these texts, which were planned as part of his broader polemics against Ficino.» — adjudica al proceso romano el abandono de dos obras concebidas contra Ficino.

«The syncretic functions of this method are suggested in the following thesis proclaiming the syncretic agreement of six separate traditions:» — presenta la tesis de las seis tradiciones como el ejemplo mayor de lo que el método rinde.

«No divine inspiration is needed to see that this "mystery" refers to the intellectual nature or angelic mind, the first created hypostasis in Pico's cosmology.» — descifra el misterio anunciado y lo devuelve a un lugar corriente del sistema, la primera hipóstasis creada.

«As the Heptaplus tells us of Moses' secrets in the Law, we must not expect to learn there anything that we did not already know but instead to recognize that which "gathered and concealed in a few words is scattered in the immense volumes of theologians and philosophers.'?» — usa el Heptaplus para fijar qué prometía este saber oculto: no doctrina nueva, sino reconocimiento de lo ya disperso.

«Thus when he announced the occult agreement between the Neo-Platonic henads and kabbalistic sefirot he stood on solid ground, although he would have angrily rejected modern explanations of their connections.» — le concede a Pico el parentesco entre henadas y sefirot y le disputa la causa: hay vínculo histórico, no revelación común.

«The sefirot, or emanated states of God's being, originated in ancient speculation on God's secret names and properties—systematic collections of his proper names (like his “ineffable name" YHVH in Hebrew), or attributes like his power, beauty, majesty, wisdom, compassion, love, justice, and so on—gathered up from casual references in unrelated Scriptures in deference to the secret harmonies hidden there.» — deriva las sefirot de una recolección exegética de nombres y atributos dispersos en las Escrituras.

«To form the sefirot, these were syncretically fused by medieval Hebrew exegetes with the gnostic aeons, Neo-Platonic henads» — adjudica a los exegetas hebreos medievales la fusión de esos nombres con eones gnósticos y henadas neoplatónicas.

«Scattered evidence survives that would permit a detailed reconstruction of Pico's methods in his Poetic Theology, which unlike earlier Renaissance works in that genre (like Boccaccio's Genealogia deorum) was motivated by highly systematic goals.» — separa la Teología poética de Pico del género mitográfico anterior por el propósito sistemático, y declara reconstruible su método.

«Pico’s identification of the sefirot with the henads was not thus simply the wild fantasy of a Renaissance syncretist.”» — defiende a Pico de la acusación de arbitrariedad en este punto concreto.

«Similarly, when Pico suggested that Proclus’s “guardians” (a henadic order) and Pseudo-Dionysius’s “powers” (an angelic order) were the same, he was on track again.”» — da por acertada otra de las identificaciones, la de guardianes proclianos con potestades dionisianas.

«The fight over Dionysius’s authenticity, while onginating in late antiquity, was not settled until near the end of the nineteenth century.» — data el cierre de la disputa sobre el Areopagita a fines del siglo XIX, muy después de Pico.

«Without close study of Pico’s system and his sources, it is not often easy to force his theses to yield up their secrets, not even those that eventually disclose their commonplace character.» — advierte que la oscuridad de una tesis no anuncia doctrina extraordinaria: muchas resultan lugares comunes.

«Even Jesus, Pico tells us, instructed his disciples not to write down but only to communicate in secret the deepest mysteries to the most worthy.*» — recoge la justificación con que Pico ampara su propio secreto, puesta en boca de Jesús.

«Thus on occasion he unveils a minor mystery in full, on others concedes a bare hint to "excite the minds of contemplatives,” and on still others alludes vaguely to mysteries too sacred to reveal in public.» — gradúa los niveles de ocultamiento del texto, de la revelación completa a la alusión.

«Pico attributes guardians in that thesis to Orpheus, but he was clearly interpreting the Orphic Hymns through Proclus’s Platonic Theology, in which the guardians represented an order of henads.» — corrige la atribución: lo que Pico da por órfico le llega leído por Proclo.

«Following Pico’s views of history, not only Zoroaster, Homer, Orpheus, Pythagoras (and the other pre-Socratics), Plato, Jesus, Dionysius—and of course Moses and the Cabalists—hid their deepest secrets in obscure symbols, but so too did Aristotle, who “disguised and concealed the more divine philosophy, which the ancient philosophers veiled under tales and fables, under the mask of philosophical speculation and in the brevity of words.» — extiende el ocultamiento simbólico hasta Aristóteles, con lo que ningún texto queda fuera del alcance de la exégesis alegórica.

«Thus when all other methods failed, Pico was ready to interpret even the dense Greek of the Anistotelian corpus allegorically—whatever that might mean in this case—to bend Anstotle to agreement with that “divine Plato.» — nombra el último recurso de la concordia y marca con un inciso su propia perplejidad ante él.

«The progressive view of history implied in typology was obviously partially at odds with the regressive models of time suggested in the nine hundred theses and in Pico's lost Concord of Plato and Aristotle—leaving aside, that is, the final historical conversion that he hoped would be triggered by his system.» — consigna una tensión interna del sistema, entre el tiempo que degrada y la tipología que progresa, sin armonizarla.

«Even the successive incarnations of Hindu deities and Buddhas can be shown to have close genetic links to “types” in Hebrew and Christian thought—as can invocations of the Greek ages of gold, silver, bronze, and iron, or of the Chinese five phases» — extiende la tipología a las tradiciones orientales y reclama para el parecido un vínculo genético.

«if the blood sacrifices described by Moses or similar sages are not demanded in later texts, this is because times have progressed and what is needed now are spiritual sacrifices prefigured in those ancient rites;» — describe cómo la tipología disuelve un conflicto entre estratos convirtiendo lo abolido en prefiguración.

«In various pagan esoteric sources, in the Kabbalah, and in the Latin tradition stemming from Joachim of Fiore—whose wnitings we have seen Pico knew— typology was combined with numerology and prophecy in a highly systematic fashion.» — reúne las tres tradiciones donde la tipología se vuelve cálculo profético, y recuerda que Pico las conocía.

«In the nine hundred theses and Heptaplus Pico demonstrated his deep interests in prophetic numerology of this sort.» — sitúa el interés profético de Pico en las obras del periodo del debate, no solo en textos tardíos.

«He also composed a special treatise dealing in part with the subject, his De vera temporum supputatione (On the True Calculation of the Ages), now lost.» — registra una obra perdida sobre el cálculo de las edades, con su título y su materia.

«Thus the Mahayana Buddhists routinely claimed that Hinayana doctrines foreshadowed their own views— paralleling exactly Christian or Islamic typological reconciliations of the Torah with the New Testament or Quran.» — pone el caso budista junto al cristiano y al islámico para mostrar que la prefiguración es un recurso general de las tradiciones letradas.

«The historical significance of these methods lies here, since they illuminate otherwise mysterious parallels in the evolution of traditions.» — declara qué valor le da a estos métodos: explican parecidos entre tradiciones sin contacto.

«iations of literate traditions, however, required the use of formal syncretic methods like those planned by Pico for his Vatican debate.» — [el OCR parte *Reconciliations* y la herramienta devuelve el tramo desde la segunda mitad] — distingue la fusión espontánea de cultos de la reconciliación de tradiciones escritas, que exige método formal.

«But the exaggerated scale of Pico’s Vatican project lets us watch some of them at work shaping his system and provides a forum for discussing their historical origins and some of their broader effects in premodern thought.» — justifica la elección del caso: la desmesura del proyecto vuelve visible lo que en otras obras opera sin verse.

«Every compromise lıke this made in earlier strata of a tradition was at least potentially retained in its later stages—although the influence of a strong authority or the use of Ockham’s razor might occasionally sweep an older set of distinctions aside.» — describe la acumulación de compromisos como el motor de la complejidad, y admite el mecanismo contrario que la poda.

«Thus from attempts to unveil the secrets collectively hidden in the outwardly casual utterances of canonical works complex theologies were born.» — hace nacer las teologías complejas de un trabajo de lectura, y no de la especulación.

«Indeed, it is often possible to estimate the relative age of traditions simply by comparing the complexities of these constructs, which emerged, so to speak, out of the fossilized remains of more primitive stages of thought.» — propone la complejidad de los constructos como reloj relativo para datar tradiciones.

«The fact that reconciliations like this occurred repeatedly in premodern traditions helps explain prominent entropic features in those traditions as well as convergent patterns in their structural growth.» — explica por la repetición de reconciliaciones tanto la pérdida de sentido original como el parecido de las estructuras resultantes.

«Thus in the second century CE, Apuleius invoked this technique to muster religious support for the cult of Isis, just as Buddhist or Christian missionaries would later do for their religions by identifying native gods with their foreign ones or with subordinate orders of demons or saints.» — data en Apuleyo un uso misional de la identificación de dioses, y lo empareja con el de los misioneros posteriores.

«Syncretic identifications of this sort had been occurring in literate traditions for thousands of years.» — quita al sincretismo renacentista todo carácter inaugural.

«Correlations like this were not systematically “neutral.” They were a powerful force in the progressive movement towards transcendentalism» — sostiene que la correlación no es un registro neutro de semejanzas sino que empuja hacia el trascendentalismo.

«Thus in Japanese traditions we altemately find various Buddhas or bodhisattvas as avatars of Shinto gods, or Shinto gods as avatars of Buddhas or bodhisattvas;» — da un caso donde la jerarquía de la identificación se invierte según quién la haga.

«The bonds between their original concrete and later abstract manifestations were regularly spotted by later religious commentators, leading to their systematic arrangement ın hierarchical or temporal series— providing added support this way for the principle of correspondence.» — describe el circuito que se realimenta: el comentario ordena en series lo que él mismo produjo, y con eso vuelve a apoyar el principio.

«Havelock has underlined the importance of processes like these in the original development of abstract philosophy in Greece, arısing from attempts by the early pre-Socratics— viewed more accurately as exegetes than as speculative thinkers—to integrate conflicting ideas and strata in the Homeric corpus and related texts.» — apoya en Havelock una lectura de los presocráticos como exegetas de Homero antes que como especuladores.

«Protomonotheistic tendencies in premodern India are routinely traced by Indologists to integrations of diverse or conflicting strata in early works like the Vedas;» — suma el caso indio, donde la tendencia al dios único se rastrea hasta la integración de estratos védicos.

«a similar thesis finds widespread support among Mesoamericanists, following Thompson’s classic study of the syncretic growth in the Maya classic period of the high god Itzam Na (Itzamna)» — suma el caso maya, con Itzamná como dios alto de formación sincrética.

«Much evidence, some of it discussed later, similarly suggests chat Jewish monotheism and related universalistic concepts arose from attempts to reconcile conflicting strata in early Hebrew traditions, which undeniably retained numerous traces of polytheistic beliefs.» — deriva el monoteísmo hebreo de una reconciliación de estratos, y no de una revelación originaria.

«Nineteenth-century anthropologists including Tylor and Frazer clearly perceived the evolutionary path linking polytheism to monotheism, if not the precise mechanisms involved in the transformation of one set of traditions into the other;» — reconoce a Tylor y Frazer el trayecto y les niega el mecanismo, que es lo que él quiere aportar.

«The impact of such claims on comparative religious studies is still evident in anthologies of world religious traditions like Eliade’s (1967), whose selections place undue stress on so-called high gods in preliterate religions and in other ways obscure evidence of literate evolutionary processes in religious history.» — objeta a las antologías de Eliade que el peso dado a los dioses altos preliterarios oculta el papel de la escritura.

«Strictly speaking, Havelock did not claim that the pre-Socratics were attempting to "reconcile Homer with Homer"; indeed, he correctly emphasized that the later pre-Socratics, and, even more strongly, certain parts of the Platonic corpus, represented Homer as an adversary.» — corrige su propio uso de Havelock antes de apoyarse en él, y le da la razón en lo que los separa.

«But Havelock's main thesis—that the abstract language of Greek philosophy was exegetically “wrung out" of the mythopoeic language of Homer (pp. 289-90)— fully supports the views I have developed here.» — declara qué toma de Havelock: que el vocabulario filosófico griego se extrajo por exégesis del lenguaje mítico.

«Havelock's early stress on the importance of literacy in ancient philosophy has on the whole been received with hostility by Western classicists, who unlike specialists in Eastern traditions have been slow to acknowledge the importance of commentarial processes as an engine of religious and philosophical change.» — reprocha a los clasicistas occidentales, frente a los orientalistas, su resistencia a ver el comentario como motor del cambio doctrinal.

«This was one reason why he claimed that the ancients hid their deepest secrets in obscure symbolic language.» — enlaza la doctrina del secreto antiguo con la necesidad exegética que la sostiene.

«What seems to have been critical, however, was not literacy per se, which long antedated the mid-first millennium, nor alphabetism, which never reached the Far East, but the rapid expansion in the mid-first millennium of the use of these lightweight materials—bamboo strips or silk in China (later rice paper), palm leaves or birch bark in India, and parchment or papyrus in the Mediterranean (the latter exported from Egypt on a large scale for the first time in this period)—which allowed the first broad collections of previously disparate oral and written traditions.» — desplaza la causa del surgimiento simultáneo de filosofías abstractas: no la escritura ni el alfabeto, sino los soportes ligeros que permitieron reunir tradiciones dispersas.

«Limitations as to who had access to lightweight writing materials—a critical issue in respect to Egyptian and Mesoamerican traditions—must be taken into account in evaluating these developments.» — acota su propia hipótesis con el problema del acceso desigual a esos soportes.

«A number of Western scholars have claimed that the origins of abstract thought lay in the introduction either of the alphabet (e.g., Havelock 1963, 1982; Goody and Watt 1963; Goody 1986, 1987; Logan 1986) or of literacy in general (Goody 1977).» — nombra las dos explicaciones que su hipótesis viene a desplazar y a quiénes las sostienen.

«The old-world diffusion of lightweight writing materials has not yet been discussed in a dedicated study, nor has it been previously linked to these parallel developments.» — declara la novedad y la fragilidad de su propuesta: no hay estudio dedicado de esa difusión.

«Thus he sometimes used different symbols to express the same idea or explained the meanings of the same symbols differently in different contexts.» — advierte que el simbolismo de Pico no es un código fijo, y que un mismo símbolo cambia de sentido según el lugar.

«At times, in fact, he argued that those meanings were built directly into the structure of the cosmos.» — registra la pretensión que quita arbitrariedad al símbolo: su sentido está inscrito en el cosmos.

«Thus in his clearest statement of his exegetical theories, in the Heptaplus, we find that the symbols of the patriarchs were not arbitrary but were based on that “greatest of all” cosmic principles—the idea that everything on every level of reality is reflected “in some mode” on every other.» — localiza en el Heptaplus la formulación más clara de la teoría exegética, apoyada en el principio correlativo.

«By repeatedly correlating those symbols, however, Pico in effect stripped them of their metaphorical senses and transformed them into philosophical abstractions—tuming them indeed into “an empty shell into which another content is poured.”» — describe el costo de la correlación repetida: el símbolo pierde su sentido metafórico y queda como cáscara.

«Premodern syncretists could organize their systems in a wide range of cosmological frameworks, but all these in one way or another involved the construction of elaborate cosmic proportions and correspondences, whose exegetical functions we have already analyzed at length.» — sostiene que los marcos cosmológicos varían pero la construcción de proporciones y correspondencias no falta en ninguno.

«So long as he posited his correspondences horizontally—that is, on a single plane of reality—the main problem we face is the philological violence that he inflicted on his sources.» — separa dos clases de correspondencia y dice qué se pierde en la horizontal: la fidelidad a las fuentes.

«When in doubt, Pico's text, and not the correspondence, had to go.» — fija el orden de prioridades: ante el conflicto, se ajusta el texto y se conserva la correspondencia.

«Here Pico would undoubtedly have argued that the ten sefirot and ten operations of the soul did not correspond in a one-to-one fashion but proportionally as different multiples or powers of ten—suggesting this way the different levels of unity in the two sets of concepts.» — reconstruye la defensa que Pico daría: la correspondencia entre sefirot y operaciones del alma es proporcional, no término a término.

«In his passion for constructing correspondences, however, Pico often lost sight of this view.» — anota que el propio Pico olvidaba con frecuencia esa distinción y trataba las correspondencias como identidades.

«Syncretic systems could be organized in either hierarchical or nonhierarchical frameworks, but due to the long-range influence of the principle of correspondence, whenever hierarchy appeared in any major component of those systems, that form of organızation eventually tended to be imposed on all other components.» — describe un efecto de contagio: basta que una parte del sistema sea jerárquica para que el principio de correspondencia jerarquice el resto.

«magic in all periods in the West differed little from the primitive correlative magic practiced universally in preliterate societies.» — sostiene que la magia occidental letrada no rompe con la magia correlativa preliteraria, y que la diferencia es de organización, no de principio.

«The magical power of the nonliterate shaman or sorceress was limited only by his or her ability to imagine correlative bonds between any two objects in nature.» — sitúa el límite de la magia preliteraria en la imaginación del operador, sin sistema que la restrinja.

«Starting in the Hellenistic era, these networks were progressively tightened and systematized, eventually fusing with the broader hierarchical cosmologies of late Greek Neo-Platonism and related traditions.» — data en el helenismo el momento en que esas redes se aprietan y se sueldan a la cosmología jerárquica neoplatónica.

«The magus tapped these powers by calling on some version of the ancient correlative principle that “like turns to like,” the idea, to adopt Agrippa's formula, that “everything moves and converts to that which ıs similar" (unaquaeque res movet et convertit ad suum simile)—1in one common variation using material or symbolic charms or baits (illecebrae or illices) to draw down higher powers into the sublunary world.» — da la ley de semejanza en la formulación de Agrippa y el mecanismo del señuelo que atrae hacia abajo las potencias superiores.

«Again, the same evolutionary argument can be made for Eastern magical traditions, which were systematically elaborated (e.g., in so-called Neo-Taoist traditions) in the first few centuries of the common era.» — extiende su modelo a las tradiciones mágicas orientales, con la misma cronología de sistematización.

«The hypothesis that I want to introduce here is that the rigidly hierarchical forms characteristic of traditional Western thought did not originate from a mechanical fusion of Platonic and Aristotelian principles, as Lovejoy argued in The Great Chain of Being long ago,’ nor from so-called speculative motives, as has been claimed more recently, but from the Greek Neo-Platonists’ own extensive reconciliative needs.» — enuncia su hipótesis contra Lovejoy: la jerarquía occidental no viene de fundir a Platón con Aristóteles, sino de la necesidad de reconciliar textos.

«This is not to deny that Neo-Platonic systems fulfilled numerous nonsyncretic functions, nor to ignore the preliterate roots of hierarchical and correlative thought, which can be shown to reach deep into neurobiological soil.» — acota su propia hipótesis: la reconciliación de textos no agota las funciones del neoplatonismo ni el origen del pensamiento jerárquico.

«Pico likewise found it in Anaxagoras, “later interpreted by the Pythagoreans and Platonists,” and not surprisingly thought that he discovered it in Moses as well.» — rastrea la genealogía que Pico le da a su principio, de Anaxágoras a Moisés.

«It was no accident that the fullest ancient development of the principle came in Numenius and these later writers—who were all deeply concerned with reconciliative problems—and not in Plotinus, for whom such issues were of far less importance.» — apoya su hipótesis en un reparto: el principio se desarrolla donde hay problema de reconciliación, y no en Plotino.

«using no fixed system and with no pressing syncretic goal, endorsed the principle that “all things exist in all things in their own mode” but did not elevate it to a central position in his ontology.’”» — precisa el caso de Plotino, que suscribe el principio sin volverlo eje de su ontología.

«Starting with Iamblichus, however, the principle became increasingly important to pagan Neo-Platonists of the Christian era, who invoked it repeatedly in defending the integrity of their dying pagan gods.» — data desde Jámblico el ascenso del principio y le da un motivo apologético: sostener a los dioses paganos en retirada.

«Thus Proclus believed “that the special task of the Platonic philosopher [was] the exact classification of deities,” something involving “the splitting of each god into a series of gradually weakening forces, so that Zeus, for example, appears as five different gods each of whom symbolizes the ‘jovial’ principle on a different plane of reality.”’*» — describe con palabras ajenas, entrecomilladas por él, la operación de desdoblar cada dios en una serie escalonada de potencias.

«Pico planned to exploit this part of Proclus’s system extensively in his proposed Poetic Theology,» — anuncia que la Teología poética proyectada iba a apoyarse en ese desdoblamiento procliano de los dioses.

«But what modern historians represent as “excess baggage” was, in fact, the main burden of Proclus’s system.» — invierte el juicio corriente sobre Proclo: la mitología que los modernos descartan es el asunto del sistema, no su lastre.

«Through this transformation, however, their lifetimes were extended by over a thousand years, giving them time to give birth to a family of metaphysical systems that did not reach their highest level of abstraction until Leibniz’s Monadology, where almost nothing but correspondence remained and virtually no traces of the exegetical origins of those systems.» — traza el destino largo de los dioses convertidos en principios: mil años más de vida y, al final, la Monadología, donde solo queda la correspondencia.

«Dodds, who notes with faint interest the ability of the henads “to reconcile irreconcilable texts," makes light of the fact that» — señala que Dodds registró la función reconciliadora de las henadas y no le dio importancia.

«A. C. Lloyd complains that “the reader may have less patience than Proclus had gods,» — recoge la impaciencia de Lloyd ante la multiplicación de dioses como muestra de lo que la historiografía no supo leer.

«Laurence Rosan— who painfully translates the mythology of the Platonic Theology into a totally abstract ontology—gives scarcely a clue as to why in developing his system Proclus wasted so many thousands of pages on all those dead or dying pagan ροάς 6» — objeta a Rosan haber traducido la mitología procliana a ontología abstracta sin explicar por qué estaba ahí.

«Dodds acknowledges that older scholars like Zeller viewed the religious functions of the henads as primary, however.» — concede que la lectura religiosa de las henadas tuvo defensores anteriores, y que Dodds lo reconoce.

«It is not difficult to see how in Jewish thought the gradual accumulation and canonization of conflicting oral and literate traditions, including many of foreign pagan origins, eventually gave birth through abstractive syncretic processes to more universal religious and ethical concepts that were “read back” interpolatively into those earlier traditions.» — describe el circuito de la abstracción religiosa hebrea, que termina proyectando hacia atrás en los textos lo que salió de reconciliarlos.

«Hence it is no accident that monotheism and universal ethical concepts first clearly appeared in Hebrew thought in the period of rapidly expanding literacy at the time of the later prophets, and more clearly still following the wider collections and disseminations of Hebrew canon following the so-called Babylonian captivity.» — hace coincidir la aparición del monoteísmo con la expansión de la escritura y la formación del canon.

«It is hence obvious why later Hebrew exegetes found typological strategies, and hence linear models of time, more useful than the Greeks as tools in reconciling texts.» — deriva la preferencia hebrea por el tiempo lineal de una necesidad exegética, y no de una intuición religiosa distinta.

«The syncretic forces operative here were essentially identical to those that led to the simultaneous development of abstract thought in Greece, with the crucial difference that in their syntheses Hebrew exegetes confronted a far more temporally diverse set of sources than did the Greeks, for whom the Homeric corpus provided the main if not exclusive textual base for early exegetical thinking.» — iguala las fuerzas y separa los materiales: el exegeta hebreo trabaja sobre fuentes de épocas muy distintas, el griego sobre Homero.

«No matter what their specific contents or origins, traditional religious, philosophical, and cosmological systems tended to become increasingly complex and formal over time, to make much of proportions and correspondences, and to favor hierarchical organization or its temporal analogues.» — formula la regularidad que su modelo quiere explicar, con independencia del contenido de cada tradición.

«The universality of these tendencies provides strong arguments against picturing those systems as products of unconditioned "speculative" thinking.» — usa la universalidad del patrón contra la idea de que estos sistemas nacen de especulación libre.

«Pico provides a useful forum for discussing this thesis since his exaggerated syncretism illustrates so clearly the systematic consequences of those processes.» — declara el papel que Pico cumple en el libro: caso extremo donde el proceso general se ve entero.

«Certainly few premodern thinkers anywhere approached the past with the reconciliative passion that we find in Pico.» — mide la singularidad de Pico en la intensidad, no en la naturaleza, de su impulso reconciliador.

«If his system was an extreme one, however, his general approach was anything but unique.» — separa lo extremo del caso de lo común del método.

«The goal of harmonizing texts and traditions was a perennial theme in all traditional literate societies; the syncretic products of earlier levels of tradition were typically fiercely defended even by those religious conservatives and classical purists who most violently opposed syncretic tendencies in their contemporaries.» — observa que los adversarios del sincretismo defendían con encono los productos sincréticos de generaciones anteriores.

«The historical resilience of those tendencies, no matter what forces opposed them, ensured that in the long run their systematic effects evolved in a more or less predictable fashion.» — atribuye a la resistencia de estas tendencias la regularidad de sus efectos en el tiempo largo.

«This was not universally the case, however, as we find in the highly systematic cycles-within-cycles of Chinese, Indian, or Mesoamerican views of time or in the equally systematic linear schemes found in Joachim of Fiore and related Western and Arabic writers.» — acota su propia generalización con los casos donde el tiempo cíclico o lineal está tan sistematizado como la jerarquía.

«Neurobiological evidence has accumulated in the past two decades that the neural assemblies underlying all perceptual and cognitive systems are organized in multilayered correlative (or topographical) maps—that hierarchical and correlative processes are fundamental to all human thinking.» — apoya el modelo en neurobiología de fines del siglo XX; es marco suyo y no tiene relación con las tesis de 1486.

«Once sacred traditions began to accumulate in literate form, the application of these processes to reconciling conflicting textual traditions—which were paradoxically thought to hide unified meanings or even the "secret thoughts of God"—helped lift thought by its bootstraps, so to speak, to exaggerated hierarchical and correlative levels not attainable in the less stable ebb and flow of oral traditions.» — explica el salto de nivel: procesos mentales comunes, aplicados a textos acumulados, producen jerarquías que la oralidad no alcanza.

«Many of Werner's ideas on abstract symbol formation can be supported by modern selectionist or "Darwinian" models of neurobiological function.» — enlaza la formación de símbolos abstractos con los modelos selectivos de función neuronal.

«A written source “forces one to consider contradiction”; it “can be inspected in much greater detail, in its parts as well as in its whole, backwards as well as forwards, out of context as well as in its setting.”®?» — el efecto amplificador de la escritura lo formula Goody, a quien cita: lo escrito se deja comparar consigo mismo y así vuelve visible la contradicción.

«The cumulative pressures of thousands of years of reconciling books and traditions eventually led to the elevation of the ultimate syncretic strategy as “the greatest of all” cosmic principles.» — hace del principio correlativo el resultado sedimentado de milenios de reconciliación, y no un axioma de partida.

«Exegesis had completed its metamorphosis into cosmology; correspondence now lay at the very essence of reality: "Whatever exists in all worlds is contained in each one”!» — enuncia el punto de llegada de su argumento: lo que era regla de lectura terminó proclamado como estructura del mundo.

«It was at this heightened level of literate awareness that conflicts in sacred traditions first gave rise to demands for extensive formal reconciliation, resulting in the birth of the abstract philosophical, theological, and cosmological systems that began to emerge with the first widespread dissemination of lightweight writing materials in the middle of the first millennium BCE.» — data el nacimiento de los sistemas abstractos en la difusión de los soportes ligeros a mediados del primer milenio antes de la era.

«These developments were followed over the next two thousand years by wave after wave of commentarial traditions, most with strong reconciliative tendencies, which added cumulatively if somewhat unevenly to correlative religious, philosophical, and cosmological systems whose complexities reached the same order of magnitude, East and West, by the later Middle Ages.» — describe la acumulación por oleadas de comentario y la convergencia de complejidad entre Oriente y Occidente al final de la Edad Media.

«The existence of cross-cultural parallels in the growth of correlative systems has profound implications for emerging mathematical and computer models of cultural evolution.» — dirige su hipótesis hacia el modelado matemático de la evolución cultural.

«If that rate remains similar in two isolated streams of tradition, mathematical models predict that the systematic complexities of those traditions will remain similar in successive historical periods—as was roughly the case when we compare Eastern and Western cosmological constructs in each period following the middle of the first millennium BCE.» — formula una predicción contrastable: a igual velocidad de circulación de información, complejidades semejantes en tradiciones sin contacto.

«Mandelbrot himself was fascinated by the fractal-hke systems that he found in Leibniz and in the so-called great chain of being (Mandelbrot 1983: 405ff., 419).» — registra que el propio Mandelbrot había reparado en el carácter fractal de la cadena del ser.

«Misled by older historical studies (above all, Lovejoy’s), Mandelbrot apparently viewed those correlative systems as unique and accidental products of Western thought; he hence failed to search for the iterative mechanisms that his own work suggests might drive the growth of such systems.» — atribuye a la historiografía de Lovejoy que Mandelbrot no buscara el mecanismo iterativo detrás de esas estructuras.

«Once those mechanisms have been identified in repetitive exegetical processes, the possibility arises of simulating the structural evolution of those systems using standard models of fractal growth.» — propone simular la evolución de estos sistemas con modelos de crecimiento fractal, una vez identificado el mecanismo exegético.

«The obvious tuning parameter in building such models is the rate of information flow within and between traditions, which is sensitively dependent on developments in communication technologies and related demographic and institutional factors.» — nombra el parámetro de su modelo: la velocidad de circulación de la información dentro de cada tradición y entre ellas.

«Mathematically related models of self-organized criticality (Bak, Tang, and Wiesenfeld 1988; Bak and Chen 1991) have interesting applications in modeling the collapse of correlative cosmologies in later periods of the Eastern and Western printing revolutions, when rates of information flow increased by several orders of magnitude over» — propone la criticalidad autoorganizada para modelar el derrumbe de las cosmologías correlativas cuando la imprenta multiplica el flujo de información.

«Syncretic processes and developments in literate technology were not the only forces that affected the evolution of premodern traditions.» — acota su propio modelo antes de sacar conclusiones.

«The growth of these traditions was regulated as well by institutional constraints on information flows, by attacks by religious conservatives and classical purists, by empirical discoveries, and by accidents in textual preservation and related factors.» — enumera los demás reguladores del crecimiento, incluidos el azar de la conservación de los textos y los ataques de los puristas.

«The progressive tendency towards abstractness and proportion in later strata of these traditions, moreover, was often countered by injections of more primitive preliterate and anthropomorphic levels of thought—as witnessed in the complex interplay of abstract philosophy and folk religion in popular Taoism, in Mahayana Buddhism, and in Western and Eastern cults of the saints.» — describe la corriente contraria: la religión popular reinyecta antropomorfismo en sistemas que tendían a la abstracción.

«Havelock has argued that the pre-Socratics’ integration of conflicting concepts in the Homeric corpus led them to take “the vital step of expressing the idea of integration itself, as a governing principle of their method”—projecting into the structure of the cosmos (as in the Heraclitan Logos) those abstract mental processes brought to consciousness by their own exegetical acts.» — toma de Havelock el paso decisivo: el procedimiento de integrar se vuelve él mismo principio del cosmos.

«In the far broader commentarial systems that evolved over the next two thousand years, we find correlative models of reality that increasingly reflected not just isolated acts of textual exegesis but the cumulative history of many centuries of such acts—with the abstract cosmological principles and transcendent gods of Eastern and Western scholastics, born out of repeated syncretic inbreeding, suggesting in a sense the furthest limits of those acts.» — extiende ese paso a dos milenios de comentario, donde el modelo del mundo refleja la historia acumulada de la exégesis.

«And one thinks here of the Aristotelian image of God as “thought thinking thought"—but here it was man trapped in this vicious circle, cogitating and recogitating his earliest anthropomorphic projections in texts and in attempting to harmonize those texts building ever more complex hierarchical and correlative models of reality that as traditions grew and further inbred came to reflect nothing more clearly than the nature of his own neurological processes.» — cierra su tesis con la figura del círculo: las cosmologías correlativas terminan reflejando la estructura de la mente que las produjo.

«What was needed to overthrow the views of books, traditions, and authorities underlying these developments was not the rediscovery of particular ancient traditions, as is sometimes suggested, but the unprecedented opportunities for disseminating and comparing those traditions that emerged in later stages of the printing revolution.» — adjudica el fin de ese régimen a la comparación masiva que la imprenta hizo posible, y no al redescubrimiento de tal o cual texto antiguo.

«al. 1990) suggests that hierarchically linked brain maps reorganize themselves in ways that are strikingly similar to those pictured in premodern correlative systems, in which all “higher” and “lower” realms of reality were believed to change in harmony.» — apoya el paralelo entre mapas cerebrales y cosmologías correlativas en trabajos experimentales de neurofisiología.

«When this evidence is combined with detailed models of how these concepts were successively transformed in literate traditions, we possess the foundations for the first testable cross-cultural model of the evolution of premodern religious and philosophical systems.» — declara la ambición del programa: un modelo intercultural contrastable de la evolución de los sistemas premodernos.

«the claim that such models can add nothing to our understanding of systems as complex as those found in premodern religious and philosophical traditions is groundless; indeed, those systems, if anything, are significantly less complex than those systems already being modeled by theoretical biologists.» — responde a la objeción de complejidad comparando con lo que la biología teórica ya modela.

«We will return to this problem at the end of this study in reviewing certain radical shifts—or apparent ones—in Pico’s later thought.» — anuncia el tema del final del libro y ya lo marca con su reserva: los cambios tardíos de Pico pueden ser aparentes.

«The nine hundred theses are loaded with ambiguities that Pico meant to resolve in the course of his debate.» — sostiene que la ambigüedad del texto es deliberada y estaba destinada a resolverse en la disputa, no en la lectura.

«Linguistic reversals like this, as we have seen, were one of Pico’s favorite devices for representing the idea of cosmic proportion or correspondence.» — identifica la inversión de términos como recurso habitual con que Pico expresa la proporción entre planos.

«The thesis simply restates, if in rather unusual terms, the conventional Neo-Platonic view that the “true” substance of any object lies in the intellectual realm (“the first world”), while the material realm informed by soul (“the second world”) contains only secondary images of that substance.» — devuelve a doctrina corriente lo que la formulación paradójica hacía parecer novedad.

«Support for this reading shows up in the Heptaplus, where we find that the Platonists, “imitators always of Hebrew learning," maintained that every species that exists in matter should be attributed more to the condition of an accident than to that of a true substance.» — apoya su lectura en el Heptaplus, donde Pico da además a los platónicos por imitadores de la enseñanza hebrea.

«The implication here is that, depending on the situation, the same nature can be viewed as either a substance or an accident—an idea with obvious reconciliative uses.» — señala el rendimiento reconciliador de volver relativa la distinción entre sustancia y accidente.

«The intellectual part of the soul is rightly viewed as the soul’s substance; but in respect to the angel’s superior intellect, the soul’s intellective power, which derives from the angelıc intellect, has only an accidental status.» — deshace la contradicción aparente entre dos tesis señalando que sustancia y accidente se predican según el nivel de referencia.

«Medieval theologians like St. Thomas argued that in special cases, at least, accidents could exist independently from their substances.» — sitúa la doctrina de los accidentes separables, que sostiene la explicación tomista de la eucaristía.

«Since Pico viewed accidents as inferior images of substance, however, he was forced to reject the doctrine of separable accidents in its usual form.» — deriva de la ontología de Pico, y no de una intención polémica, su choque con la doctrina eucarística recibida.

«Pico’s wording here was obviously tentative, something that he stressed heavily in defending—and sometimes bending—his views on this issue in the Apology.» — anota que Pico defendió esas tesis torciendo a veces lo que había escrito.

«In general, the more narrowly a writer identified with the Aristotelian tradition, the more apt he was to argue that intelligible images were necessary to thought, while wnters like Pico associated more closely with the Platonic tradition tended to take the opposite position.» — ordena la disputa sobre las especies inteligibles por adscripción de escuela.

«Since in Pico's thought faculties and properties progressively interpenetrate as we ascend the hierarchy of being, in the intellectual nature we expect to find a close union between the intellect and the intelligible—between what does the thinking and what is thought.» — deduce la posición de Pico sobre el intelecto de su principio de penetración recíproca.

«The implication is that intelligible images cannot exist in the intellect (or "intellective soul") in any distinct fashion, nor can they be interpreted as mere accidents of its substance.» — extrae la consecuencia: en el intelecto no hay imágenes distintas ni accidentes de la sustancia intelectual.

«Pico did not deny a place for sensual abstraction or even intelligible images in his epistemology: as we shall see in a moment, his syncretic theory of knowledge predictably made room for both Aristotelian and Platonic approaches to this problem.» — impide leer a Pico como platónico puro: su teoría del conocimiento hospeda las dos tradiciones.

«Pico planned to reconcile the conflicting theories of knowledge found in the Arıstotelian and Platonic canons using an age-old compilational or hierarchical» — nombra el recurso con que Pico concuerda las dos teorías del conocimiento, que no es suyo sino antiguo.

«Belief in the complementarity of the Platonic and Aristotelian theories of knowledge can be traced in antiquity to middle Platonism and found numerous Renaissance adherents like Ficino, who claimed that Aristotelian studies were preparatory to the inner mysteries of Platonism.» — data en el platonismo medio la idea de complementariedad y anota que Ficino la sostenía en la forma del estudio preparatorio.

«Daily knowledge depends on the abstraction of universal images (species universales) from sensible images or phantasmata—a process in which both the “exterior” and "interior" senses play a part—which are in turn utilized by the “rational part of the soul,” which Pico syncretically identifies with the Aristotelian possible intellect.» — describe el tramo aristotélico de la epistemología de Pico y la identificación sincrética que le sirve de bisagra.

«In discussing daily knowledge, however, Pico meticulously avoids the phrase “intelligible images"!! and, in fact, denies that acquisition of these more elevated universals involves the rational part of the soul;» — repara en una omisión deliberada de vocabulario y la lee como toma de posición.

«Pico’s broader theory of knowledge can be reconstructed from close study of the nine hundred theses, supplemented by scattered clues in his other works; that theory depends heavily on the views of substance and accident that we looked at in the previous section.» — declara la base de su reconstrucción y la subordina a la doctrina de sustancia y accidente ya expuesta.

«In the Apology, we find that the soul has no intrinsic knowledge except an intelligere abditum or "hidden understanding" of itself.» — fija el punto de partida del conocimiento en Pico: el alma solo se sabe a sí misma, y de manera oculta.

«In defending this position before the papal commission, Pico invoked the authority of St. Augustine and Henry of Ghent.» — registra a qué autoridades acudió Pico ante la comisión al defender esa posición.

«Following Pico’s view of the substance/accident distinction, however, these images are then completely absorbed in the soul’s undivided substance and can hence no longer be considered distinct entities or “accidents”» — explica qué pasa con las imágenes una vez dentro del alma: se disuelven en su sustancia indivisa.

«The transformational processes involved here explain why in the following series of theses Pico can claim that the soul, whose initial knowledge is limited to self-consciousness, through self-inspection can eventually attain a knowledge of all things.» — muestra cómo el sistema permite pasar del solo conocerse a sí misma al conocimiento de todo.

«The apparent contradictions in these theses were clearly intended as debating traps for Pico’s opponents:» — lee las contradicciones aparentes de esa serie como trampas puestas para la disputa.

«Thus, wielding Ockham’s razor, Pico deemphasized, although predictably enough he did not fully repudiate, a complex series of interior mental faculties introduced by earlier writers to harmonize conflicting references in Aristotle, Galen, and their expositors to the soul's powers.» — muestra a Pico podando facultades internas que a su vez habían nacido de una armonización anterior, y sin llegar a suprimirlas.

«The apparent aim of these theses was to maintain the maximum possible symmetry between the exterior and interior senses—a view tied again to Pico's correlative views of reality.» — atribuye la simplificación de las facultades a una exigencia de simetría, no de economía.

«Pico could heighten the correspondences between the "outer" and "inner" senses, while leaving his options open if these faculties were upheld by an unassailable authority.» — anota la prudencia táctica del procedimiento: refuerza la correspondencia sin cerrarse la retirada.

«One of his theological conclusions was, in fact, judged “erroneous and savoring of heresy” by the papal commission precisely for claiming that not even religious dogmas could be accepted by a pure act of will, but first had to pass intellectual tests.!?» — localiza una de las condenas de la comisión en el intelectualismo de Pico sobre la aceptación del dogma.

«The will is indeed “free” —we will look later at ambiguities in Pico’s use of the term—but the will cannot love or judge what it does not know, it is for this that we must study philosophy, directing the will in its mystical ascent or worldly rule.» — subordina la libertad de la voluntad al conocimiento, y anuncia que el término mismo tiene ambigüedades en Pico.

«Pico even attributed similar views, which were linked closely to the Platonic tradition, to the Aristotelian whom he most regularly attacked in the theses—St. Thomas Aquinas:» — muestra la concordia trabajando sobre el adversario preferido: al mismo Tomás se le atribuye la posición platónica.

«As is common in syncretic systems, however, things do not end here so simply, and Pico cannot any more be classified as a simple intellectualist than as a voluntarist.» — se abstiene de clasificar a Pico en cualquiera de los dos bandos, y da la razón: así funcionan los sistemas sincréticos.

«A broader perspective on his views comes in a series of theses that deals with the traditional theological question of whether man’s greatest “felicity” (or happiness) exists in the intellect or the will.» — remite la cuestión a la serie de tesis sobre la felicidad, donde el problema se plantea entero.

«Since faculties interpenetrate as we rise in the hierarchy of being, at the top of that hierarchy distinctions between the intellect and will are devoid of meaning; man’s "greatest happiness" is achieved only when the participated unity of the soul is fully absorbed into the absolute unity of God.» — sostiene que la disputa entre intelecto y voluntad se disuelve: en la cima ninguna de las dos se distingue.

«In fact, however, the thesis refers only to the soul’s state at the height of mystical union.» — acota el alcance de esa tesis, que fuera de la unión mística no dice lo que se le hace decir.

«Many of their criticisms of this tradition have been valid; unfortunately, the result of their works has been the creation of an image of an orthodox or even Thomistic Pico that is no less distant from the historical reality.» — concede razón a los críticos católicos en lo que corrigen y les objeta el Pico ortodoxo que pusieron en su lugar.

«In contrast, one other Catholic historian, Englebert Monnerjahn (1960), argued for the opposing view that Pico’s unorthodox views helped pave the way for the Protestant Reformation.» — consigna la posición contraria dentro de la propia historiografía católica, sin arbitrar entre ellas.

«What is clear in all this is that historians of many persuasions have been able to hang their hats on Pico’s work—in large part because of the inherent ambiguities in the nine hundred theses.» — explica la multiplicidad de lecturas por una ambigüedad que está en el texto y no solo en sus lectores.

«“pilgrim’’—distinctions between the intellect and will were real ones, and Pico believed that they had to be considered in the mystical ascent.» — precisa que en el estado de vía las facultades sí se distinguen, y que la disolución vale solo arriba.

«As the soul climbs upwards, however, and faculties begin to interpenetrate, Pico’s position becomes increasingly difficult to classify.» — vuelve a declarar la imposibilidad de encasillar la posición, y esta vez por razones internas al sistema.

«In fact, however, the compromise that Pico struck on this issue placed him squarely in the mainstream of medieval theology, which was forced on dogmatic grounds to uphold the conflicting beliefs that God was omnipotent and omnibenevolent but that man was nonetheless» — devuelve el compromiso de Pico sobre la gracia a la corriente central de la teología medieval, obligada a sostener creencias en conflicto.

«It is interesting to note that such readings of Pico became especially popular between the World Wars; like Sartre's views of freedom, the popularity of such claims can partially be considered a reaction to historical events that shattered traditional beliefs in human dignity.» — data la moda del Pico filósofo de la libertad en el periodo de entreguerras y la explica por su circunstancia.

«Pico’s views here do not depart significantly even from those of St. Thomas Aquinas, whose wonderfully ambiguous formula can be recalled from the Summa:» — mide la distancia con Tomás en este punto y la encuentra mínima, con la ambigüedad puesta del lado de la Summa.

«The mystical ascent takes place in seven steps, corresponding to the seven days of creation, seven ages of cosmic history, and seven grades of beauty that Pico found in the universe.» — muestra la ascensión mística construida como correspondencia: siete pasos que replican los días, las edades y los grados de belleza.

«Ascent of these steps involves a progressive interiorization of knowledge—“reflexive knowledge,” in Pico’s terms— with a steplike shift in the soul from the sensual to rational to intellectual faculties.» — describe la ascensión como una interiorización por escalones, con el término que Pico le da.

«Pico’s inclusion of exactly nine hundred theses, it will be remembered, was meant to symbolize this general movement of the “excited soul turning back into itself through the frenzy of the muses"—that is, through the guidance of philosophical studies.» — enlaza el número de tesis con el movimiento del alma que el libro describe, y traduce el furor de las musas como estudio filosófico.

«In the Commento, Pico distinguishes seven stages of the mystical ascent, presenting his interpretation» — remite al Commento como la exposición donde los siete grados quedan detallados.

«Many Latin Aristotelians, Pico tells us, believed that so long as the soul was attached to the body it could not achieve a more perfect knowledge than this.» — sitúa el límite que los aristotélicos latinos ponían al conocimiento en esta vida, y contra el cual Pico proyectaba argumentar.

«debate—he would demonstrate that this view was “alien from the mind of Aristotle and from almost all Arabic and Greek Peripatetics.”*°» — recoge la promesa de Pico de mostrar que ese límite no es de Aristóteles ni de sus comentaristas.

«The implication is that the Sabbath of the soul refers to a final quietistic union with God that comes to us once we have “done what is in us” and can achieve no more through our own powers.”*» — lee el sábado del alma como el punto en que cesa el esfuerzo propio y comienza la gracia.

«There the soul is "drawn," “possessed,” “intoxicated,” “consumed,” “inspired,” “illuminated,” “perfected,” or even—as we found earher—‘felicitated” by God.» — reúne los verbos en voz pasiva con que Pico describe ese estado, donde el alma ya no obra sino que es obrada.

«Modern scholars have interpreted these lines more literally, however, with Edgar Wind, for one, making much of Pico’s supposed “doctrine of mystical self-annihilation” or “self-destruction.”» — consigna la lectura de Wind sobre la autoaniquilación mística y la marca como atribución supuesta.

«Although not explicitly presented as Pico’s own opinion, the views expressed here go far beyond anything found in Averroes’s own wnitings, and judging from Pico’s wording, his personal endorsement of these views appears to be certain.» — adjudica a Pico, por el modo en que redacta, unas tesis que formalmente atribuye a Averroes y que exceden lo que Averroes escribió.

«No evidence has survived as to how Pico planned to reconcile this view with the orthodox Christian concept of personal immortality.» — se abstiene sobre el modo en que Pico habría conciliado la unidad del intelecto con la inmortalidad personal.

«By this point, however, it should be clear that if pressed on this point, Pico had available an extensive arsenal of syncretic techniques that would have allowed him harmonize the most flagrant doctrine of self-annihilation with what he would claim was a wholly orthodox concept of personal immortality.» — observa que el arsenal reconciliador vuelve indecidible la posición: cualquier doctrina podía presentarse como ortodoxa.

«While other sides of Yates's reading of Renaissance magic have been heavily criticized by other scholars (especially the role she assigned in it to so-called Hermetism), her views of Pico's magic and its links to Ficino's work have» — delimita su propia disputa con Yates: no la del hermetismo, ya discutida por otros, sino la de Pico y su relación con Ficino.

«The fullest interpretation of Pico’s magic to date is found in a key chapter of Frances Yates’s classic study, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition (1964).» — reconoce a Yates la exposición más completa de la magia de Pico antes de discutirla.

«One of my subsidiary aims will be to provide evidence that we will need in chapter 4, which discusses Pico’s apparent repudiation of magic in his posthumously published Disputations against Divinatory Astrology.» — anuncia que la discusión con Yates prepara el examen del repudio tardío de la magia, y ya lo llama aparente.

«Yates's view of Pico’s magic is accepted without question in frequently cited studies of Renaissance occultism like Keith Thomas’s (1971) and in numerous textbook accounts of Renaissance thought.» — mide la difusión de la lectura que va a objetar: de los estudios de referencia a los manuales.

«The fact that after more than three decades any serious analysis of Pico’s magic must still begin with a discussion of Yates’s views is a tribute to the importance of her work.» — le reconoce a Yates la fijación del terreno aun cuando su propósito es corregirla.

«Plessner underlined a number of peculiarities in Yates’s reading of the De vita coelitus comparanda, including some serious mistranslations.» — recuerda que la crítica filológica a esa lectura ya la había iniciado Plessner.

«As Ficino’s disciple, Pico “imbibed from Ficino his enthusiasm for magia naturalis which he accepted and recommended much more forcibly and openly than did Ficino,” adding to this his own “Cabalistic magic,” which tapped forces “beyond the natural powers of the universe,” invoking “angels, archangels, the ten sephiroth which are names or powers of God, God himself, by means some of which are similar to other magical procedures, but more particularly through the power of the sacred Hebrew language.”» — reproduce la posición de Yates que va a discutir: un Pico discípulo que recibe de Ficino la magia natural y le suma la cabalística.

«By fusing Ficino’s natural magic with his own Cabalistic magic, in Yates s eyes, Pico completed the basic arsenal of the Renaissance magician.» — resume la tesis de Yates sobre el papel de Pico: no iniciador sino consumador del repertorio mágico.

«Pico’s Oration—his preface to his Roman debate—was, in fact, “the great charter of Renaissance Magic, of the new type of magic introduced by Ficino and completed by Pico.”» — recoge la fórmula de Yates sobre la Oración como carta magna de la magia renacentista.

«In the same place, they also endorse the view that following his troubles with the church “Pico soon renounced magic and such astrology as he had ever believed in.”» — consigna la lectura corriente del repudio tardío, que su capítulo cuarto pondrá en duda.

«He it was who first boldly formulated a new position for European man, man as Magus using both Magia and Cabala to act upon the world, to control his destiny by science.» — la formulación es de Yates, a quien cita: Pico como el primero en definir al hombre europeo como mago que gobierna su destino.

«And in Pico, the organic link with religion of the Magus can be studied at its source.» — completa la cita de Yates, donde el mago aparece unido a la religión y no enfrentado a ella.

«Analyzing Yates's claims more closely will help us define the precise nature of Pico’s magic, preparing us for a fresh look at his magical texts.» — declara el uso que le da a la polémica: precisar qué clase de magia es la de Pico.

«The fact that no one has made much of it in the thirty years of debates over Yates's work underscores the power of the traditional view that Pico was Ficino's disciple:» — señala que el dato cronológico estaba disponible y que la imagen del discípulo impidió verlo durante treinta años.

«One might argue that Pico learned his magia naturalis from Ficino through their personal contacts in Florence.» — formula la objeción más obvia a su propia cronología antes de responderla.

«But in the period in which Pico composed his three magical texts, in the fall and winter of 1486-1487, he was not near Florence, nor had he spent more than a month there at the most since mid-1485.°!» — responde con el itinerario: al redactar sus textos mágicos Pico llevaba más de un año lejos de Florencia.

«If Pico did learn his natural magic from Ficino, then, he must have done so at a minimum some four years before Ficino wrote his only magical work.» — reduce la hipótesis del magisterio a una consecuencia incómoda: la enseñanza habría precedido cuatro años a la obra del maestro.

«Assuming that Ficino's views on magic were the same in 1485 as in 1489—a doubtful assumption, given his well-known vacillations on the subject””—from what we know of relations between the two writers, the last thing we would expect in 1486 would be to find Pico endorsing those views.» — añade dos reservas contra el magisterio: las vacilaciones de Ficino y el estado de la relación entre ambos en 1486.

«Walker, whose opinions Allen endorses, tells us flatly (1975: 53) that the De vita coelitus comparanda “is the only work where [Ficino] recommends magic that he evidently practiced himself.» — apoya en Walker que la magia practicada por Ficino se limita a esa obra tardía.

«It should be noted that the views that Pico endorses here, which were written while he was trying to repair his relations with the church, are in no way incompatible with the magic discussed in the nine hundred theses, which (Yates's claims aside) did not involve astrological talismans.» — sostiene contra Yates que la magia de las tesis no incluía talismanes astrológicos, y que por eso no hay contradicción con los textos posteriores.

«If Pico and Ficino triggered a magical revival in this period—a claim that we will look at shortly—then it must have been Pico and not Ficino who started it.» — invierte el orden habitual con una condicional: si hubo revival, lo empezó Pico.

«We can leave aside the question here, which has been discussed by other scholars, of how far Ficino’s own magic was Hermetic, except to note the large number of non-Hermetic magical sources cited in the De vita coelitus comparanda (Galen, al-Kindi, Albumasar, Thabit, Haly, Avicenna, Albert the Great, Arnald of Villanova, Peter of Abano, etc.) or to recall that Ficino claimed that his work was part of his commentary-in-progress on Plotinus—a work that Ficino tells us was begun at Pico’s urging.» — mide por sus fuentes cuánto de hermética tiene la magia de Ficino, y recuerda de quién partió el comentario a Plotino en que se aloja.

«Given Pico’s ongoing troubles with the church—Innocent VIII made it clear in that year that he viewed the Heptaplus as no less heretical than the nine hundred theses—it is impossible to miss the irony in Ficino’s words.» — lee ironía en el agradecimiento de Ficino por el contexto: ese mismo año el papa declaraba herético también el Heptaplus.

«Thus in the Apology (Opera, 180-81), Pico boasts that he was “first among the Latins” to mention Cabala, which he linked with magic, and in the nine hundred theses claimed that he was the first to discover magic in the Orphic Hymns.» — recoge las dos primacías que Pico se atribuye, la de la cábala latina y la de la magia en los himnos órficos.

«In the Oration and Apology Pico provides us with a long list of magicians who might be reasonably viewed as the sources of this side of his thought.» — remite a las listas de magos de la Oración y la Apología como el inventario de fuentes que el propio Pico declara.

«By September of that year, Ficino, like Pico two-and-a-half years earlier, was writing his own ecclesiastical Apology for his magic— printed at the end of the De vita—which concludes in part with a mock plea for help from his “Phoebus” Pico, who he knew could slay this “poisonous Python” (Ficino’s ecclesiastical opponents) rising from the swamp “with a single shot” (p. 186).» — muestra a Ficino defendiéndose de la Iglesia dos años y medio después que Pico, y pidiéndole auxilio en clave mitológica.

«The one clear reference to Hermetic magic in Pico’s early works—a negative one—shows up in the Apology, where Pico repeats a complaint from William of Auvergne’s De universo concerning the Egyptians’ use of illegal magic invoking demons.» — localiza la única mención clara de magia hermética en los textos tempranos y la halla condenatoria.

«Significantly, none of the ten conclusions that Pico attributes in his theses to Mercury Trismegistus contains any of the astrological magic that Ficino associated with that figure.» — cuenta las diez conclusiones herméticas del texto y no encuentra en ninguna la magia astrológica ficiniana.

«This is the most amusing evidence that we have of the Pico-Ficino rift: Pico was not prepared to acknowledge Hermes Trismegistus, whom Pico closely linked with Ficino, as a real magician.» — lee la exclusión de Hermes de las listas de magos como gesto dirigido contra Ficino.

«it was Pico and not Ficino who must be credited with having started it.”» — cierra la inversión cronológica atribuyendo a Pico el comienzo del renacimiento mágico.

«This interpretation is confirmed by the enormous popularity in the later Renaissance of the same medieval Arabic and Latin magical treatises that lay at the foundations of much of Pico’s and Ficino's magical systems— works attributed to al-Kindi, William of Paris, Albert the Great, Roger Bacon, and so on— which apart from the absence in them of Cabala are virtually indistinguishable from Renaissance magical texts.» — sostiene que la magia del Renacimiento continúa la medieval y que la cábala es lo único que la distingue.

«Ficino, who knew no Hebrew, defers to Pico on matters related to Jewish thought in the De vita coelitus comparanda, chap. 22 (repr. 1978: 168).» — documenta que en materia hebrea la dependencia va en sentido contrario al que supone la imagen del discípulo.

«The mechanisms of Pico’s natural magic differed from Ficino’s. Another part of Yates’s model involves the mechanisms that she associated with natural magic— above all, given the stress she put on Ficino’s text, mechanisms of a celestial sort.» — abre el segundo frente de su objeción a Yates, ya no la cronología sino el mecanismo.

«Following Walker, Yates pointed to the spiritus mundi or “world spirit” as the medium by which celestial powers flowed into the terrestrial realm.» — expone el mecanismo que Yates, siguiendo a Walker, pone en el centro de la magia natural.

«But the spiritus mundi was only one of a large number of mechanisms used to explain these interactions.» — le quita al espíritu del mundo el carácter de llave única de la magia renacentista.

«Numerous ancient, medieval, and Renaissance magical tracts refer vaguely to stellar rays (radii) or influences (influxus) without mentioning the spiritus mundi at all.» — da la primera alternativa documentada, los rayos e influjos estelares sin medio intermedio nombrado.

«Others ignore the problem of transmission completely, considering the mere existence of cosmic correspondences as a sufficient explanation for the magical powers found in the world.» — da la segunda: textos donde la sola correspondencia basta y el problema del medio no se plantea.

«In other texts, interactions between the celestial and terrestrial worlds are depicted in a quasi-mechanical fashion, with direct contact between the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic spheres, ending in the derived motion of the lunar orb, “churning” the four sublunary elements and hence transmitting celestial effects into the material world.» — da la tercera, mecánica: el contacto entre esferas que agita los elementos sublunares.

«Still other works, tied less directly to astrological models, invoke the Neo-Platonic “vehicle” (or “body of the soul”) as a magical bond between man and the Platonic “world soul” (anima mundi), which penetrated the whole of the created realm.”» — da la cuarta, el vehículo neoplatónico que enlaza al hombre con el alma del mundo.

«Those terms are a bit misleading, since in Renaissance magical texts the words “spiritual magic” or "spiritual science" generally referred to magic involving angels and demons and not to magic transmitted through the spiritus mundi.» — corrige el uso moderno de magia espiritual, que en las fuentes nombra el trato con ángeles y demonios.

«Walker (1975: 13 n. 1) concedes that Ficino was “somewhat inconsistent” on the nature of the spiritus mundi but nonetheless, like Yates after him, treats Ficino’s doctrine of celestial influences as a product of systematic rather than syncretic processes.» — objeta que Walker y Yates lean como sistema lo que él lee como acumulación sincrética, pese a reconocer la inconsistencia.

«It is doubtful that this omission throws light on the Pico-Ficino rivalry: The spiritus mundi, as we have seen, was only one of many alternate magical mechanisms, and nothing suggests that in 1486 Pico associated it specifically with Ficino.» — se abstiene de convertir la ausencia del espíritu del mundo en un gesto polémico contra Ficino.

«Once we recognize that the text is a compilation, as Ficino himself tells us, the inconsistencies in the work become totally understandable.» — explica las inconsistencias del De vita por su carácter de compilación, declarado por el propio Ficino.

«Walker himself, however, whom Yates miscites on this point, noted a critical distinction between Pico’s caelestis spiritus and Ficino’s spiritus mundi—a distinction that in Walker’s eyes, at least, rendered Pico’s version of that concept useless in magic.» — señala que Yates cita mal a Walker, quien había distinguido el espíritu celeste de Pico del espíritu del mundo de Ficino.

«My object here is not to claim that Pico repudiated all forms of celestial magic—we will later see that he did not—but to provide further evidence that his concept of magia naturalis was significantly different from the magia naturalis discussed in Ficino's later work.» — acota su propia tesis: no niega magia celeste en Pico, sostiene que su magia natural es otra cosa que la de Ficino.

«Walker writes: One could not, therefore, on [Pico’s] view, say that any particular herb, sound or food was more solarian or venereal than any other, nor use [Pico s caelestis spiritus] to transform one’s own spirit, as Ficino proposed; nor could one consider oneself as specially subject to the influence of any one planet?» — cita a Walker para mostrar qué operaciones quedan fuera del alcance del espíritu celeste de Pico.

«Pico did distinguish the powers of Cabala from those of natural magic, but that distinction did not involve a simple identification of magia naturalis with astrological powers or Cabala with higher ones.» — corrige el reparto que Yates hace de las dos artes: la línea que Pico traza no coincide con la de lo celeste y lo angélico.

«Yates tells us that “what exactly he meant by this amazing statement is nowhere fully explained," although she speculates that the thesis might be tied to a concept “of the Eucharist as a kind of Magia.”» — consigna que Yates dejó sin explicar la tesis sobre magia y cábala y arriesgó una conjetura eucarística.

«The fact that Pico onginally planned to defend his thesis on Chnist’s divinity in this pedestrian fashion—and was not backtracking in the Apology to save his skin— is confirmed by the wording of the two theses that immediately precede it in his magical conclusions.» — defiende que la explicación de la Apología no fue una retirada táctica, apoyándose en la redacción de las tesis vecinas.

«The second of these (the orthodoxy of the first was never questioned) was reluctantly admitted by the papal commission to be “true and tolerable,” although it complained that the thesis could easily “be taken to a bad sense, since 1t is connected with magical things’’:» — documenta el juicio de la comisión papal sobre esa tesis, admitida a regañadientes por su vecindad con la magia.

«One final problem in Yates’s interpretation of Pico’s magic lies in her picture of its goals and historical significance.» — abre el tercer frente de su objeción: no ya la cronología ni el mecanismo, sino el fin que la magia perseguía.

«But she also claimed that Pico “formulated a new position for European man” in his magic, endorsing operational views of nature that paved the way for modern science.» — resume la tesis de Yates que va a discutir: la magia de Pico como antesala de la ciencia moderna.

«And here we can recall that for Pico, natural philosophy—of which natural magic was the "apex and summit" (apex et fastigium)—was the third of the four types of studies (moral philosophy, dialectic, natural philosophy, and theology) that prepared man for the mystical ascent.» — sitúa la magia natural dentro del plan de estudios que prepara la ascensión mística, y no fuera de él.

«A great deal of evidence suggests that much of Pico’s magic—probably most of it—concerned this contemplative magic rather than any crass material operations in the world.» — inclina el peso hacia la magia contemplativa y marca la estimación como probable, no como cierta.

«This notwithstanding, Pico does suggest that certain parts of natural magic involve material operations—including, as was true of one part of Cabala, operations of an astrological kind:» — no suprime el lado operativo: concede que hay partes de la magia natural, y de la cábala, con operación material y astrológica.

«Taken together, these theses seem not only to condone but to require us to work magic in the world.» — lee la serie mágica como una obligación y no como un permiso.

«But it is a mistake to think that such operations have much in common with modern science.» — separa la operación mágica de la operación científica, contra la lectura que las emparenta.

«The answer to this question underlines a profound difference between typical premodern and modern attitudes towards nature.» — sitúa la diferencia en la actitud ante la naturaleza y no en el grado de conocimiento.

«The magus, as Pico pictured him, was not a transformer of nature but its “minister.”» — da la fórmula que separa al mago picoano del técnico moderno: ministro de la naturaleza, no su transformador.

«Following the principle that “every inferior nature is governed by whatever is immediately superior to itself,” mankind, according to Pico, 1s ruled by the lowest order of angels and in turn is entrusted with governing the material world.» — deriva el ministerio del mago de la jerarquía: gobierna lo material porque a él lo gobiernan los ángeles inferiores.

«Once the soul has been elevated by philosophical studies to the contemplative seat of the Cherubim, it is prepared to rise to God like the Serafim and descend to the world like angelic Thrones, “well instructed and prepared, to the duties of action.”» — describe el doble movimiento del alma preparada: subir a Dios y bajar al mundo a obrar.

«Just as the whole universe was corrupted by the fall of man-—a result of the cosmic correspondences in the “man the microcosm” concept—so following his mystical purification homo magus receives the power to raise fallen nature with himself, to “actuate” and "unite" the cosmos, “to marry the world”—just as Christ “marries” the soul prepared by philosophy for the mystical ascent.» — enlaza la caída cósmica con la reparación por el mago, y hace de la operación mágica un matrimonio con el mundo.

«The suggestion is that the operative side of Pico’s magic was linked to a general plan for cosmic salvation—a view fitting in perfectly with the eschatological goals of his Vatican debate.» — propone que la magia operativa forma parte del mismo plan escatológico que el debate, y lo marca como sugerencia.

«Whether it is useful to speak with Yates of a Renaissance magical revival at all is an open question.» — deja abierto si la categoría misma de renacimiento mágico sirve para describir el periodo.

«It is no paradox that it was at nearly the same time that correlative systems like Pico’s reached their height of complexity that their historical importance began to decline.» — hace coincidir el apogeo del pensamiento correlativo con el comienzo de su derrumbe, y niega que sea paradoja.

«Indeed, Pico's Renaissance and early-modern admirers, from Reuchlin, Agrippa, and Steuco in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries to Fludd and Kircher in the seventeenth, in many ways lived in the greatest Western period of syncretic and correlative thought ever.» — traza la posteridad de Pico, de Reuchlin y Agrippa a Fludd y Kircher, como el momento más alto del pensamiento correlativo occidental.

«One can recall here the part played by correlative thinking in Kepler's or Newton's works.» — recuerda que el pensamiento correlativo sigue operando dentro de la obra de Kepler y de Newton.

«But as these same writers illustrate, by the 1600s correlative thought had become increasingly open to empirical correction and its motives tied less narrowly to "saving" texts.» — data en el siglo XVII el cambio de función: la correspondencia deja de servir para salvar textos y se somete a corrección empírica.

«If correlative systems had not yet evolved into the purely heuristic models of modern science, from the early seventeenth century on those systerns retreated steadily» — describe una retirada gradual y no una ruptura, con los sistemas correlativos todavía lejos de ser modelos heurísticos.

«Insofar as early-modern philosophers like Vico, Herder, or Hegel can be classified as syncretists, their aim was less that of harmonizing conflicting texts than of systematizing a rapidly expanding body of historical knowledge judged independently of textual authority.» — distingue el sincretismo moderno del premoderno por lo que ordena: conocimiento histórico y no autoridades textuales.

«The decline of correlative systems was obviously tied to the growth of those mechanistic models of reality that, starting in the sixteenth century, increasingly challenged and eventually displaced them.» — reconoce la causa habitual, el mecanicismo, antes de añadir la suya.

«Printing also provided opponents of correlative systems with the tools needed to dismantle those systems permanently on philological grounds.» — añade la causa filológica: la imprenta puso en manos de los adversarios el instrumento para desmontarlos.

«Despite the obvious dependence of those systems on books and exegesis, their long-range survival paradoxically depended on the relative inaccessibility of books.» — enuncia la paradoja que sostiene su modelo: los sistemas nacidos del libro vivían de que los libros fueran escasos.

«How often the “texts” that Pico set out to reconcile were inventions of reconstructive memory—a situation obviously» — señala que buena parte de lo que Pico concordaba eran textos recordados, no textos leídos.

«It is important to distinguish the successful assault launched on syncretic traditions once the printing revolution was well on course from those more vocal, but far less fundamental, attacks made on them by Renaissance classicists and religious» — separa el ataque ruidoso de los humanistas del ataque eficaz que vino después con la imprenta madura.

«The premodern intellectual’s tedious work of memorization encouraged correlative and syncretic tendencies in more than one way.» — añade la memorización a las causas del pensamiento correlativo, junto a la escasez de libros.

«Conversely, the diminished role played by memorization as the printing revolution progressed contnbuted to the freer and less bookish views of reality that became increasingly common in the early modern period.» — completa el argumento por el reverso: al ceder la memorización, cede también la sujeción al libro.

«Neurobiological evidence too suggests that the rote memorization at the heart of traditional education would encourage the stereotyped trains of ideas, dampened originality, and general adhesion to textual authority typical of traditional thinkers.» — vuelve a apoyar el argumento en neurobiología del siglo XX, que es marco suyo y no de las fuentes.

«The periodic emergence of textual revivals aimed at purifying sacred or sernisacred traditions of purported imperfections was a diagnostic feature of all traditional societies.» — trata los renacimientos textuales como fenómeno recurrente de toda sociedad tradicional, y no como rasgo del Renacimiento.

«In general, however, the philological polemics hurled by religious reformers and textual purists at their opponents were invoked for highly selective religious and professional ends—and rarely if ever with the simple goal of unraveling the historical meanings of texts.» — niega a la filología polémica del periodo un propósito histórico y le atribuye fines religiosos y profesionales.

«Anyone tempted to stress the “modermity” of Renaissance philology is encouraged to review the motley band of fictional authorities paraded through the nine hundred theses, which summed up what in Pico’s acutely educated opinion were the major traditions known in his day.» — usa el elenco de autoridades ficticias de las tesis como medida de lo que la mejor erudición del momento daba por auténtico.

«Pico’s intimate ties with Lorenzo de’ Medici, Marsilio Ficino, Ermolao Barbaro, Angelo Poliziano, and Aldo Manuzio, as well as the admiration expressed for Pico’s scholarship by Reuchlin, Erasmus, More, Zwingli, and dozens of later classicists and religious reformers, suggests that Pico’s brand of textual scholarship was much closer to the best of the penod than Renaissance scholars like to concede.» — apoya en la estima de sus contemporáneos que la erudición de Pico no era inferior a la de los filólogos que se le oponen.

«Despite their wide reading of ancient texts and early development of scientific editing tools, the classicists’ views of traditions, books, and authorities were far more similar to those of their scholastic opponents than their own propaganda claimed.» — acerca a clasicistas y escolásticos en lo que creían sobre los libros, por debajo de la polémica entre ellos.

«Thus the case of bibliomancy—divination by randomly opening sacred books—in Petrarch’s famous account of his ascent of Mt. Ventoux is rarely mentioned, with the message that Petrarch gleaned from Augustine’s Confessions at the summit (“And men go to admire high mountains ... and desert themselves") mistaken for a mere literary device.» — señala que la adivinación por apertura del libro en el relato del Ventoux se lee como recurso literario y no como lo que era.

«But extensive evidence shows that throughout his life Petrarch believed that he was in direct contact through this and other esoteric means with St. Augustine, his guardian saint.» — sostiene que Petrarca tuvo por real ese contacto con Agustín, y por medios que llama esotéricos.

«In formal religion, leaving aside the obvious magic in the Mass, in saint worship, etc., one can finally point to the implied magic in the shared belief of classicists, scholastics, and religious reformers that grace passed literally into the elect on hearing the Word.» — encuentra magia implícita en una creencia común a las tres partes en pugna: la gracia que pasa literalmente al oír la palabra.

«the philological weapons that Valla, Erasmus, or Luther launched with such fury against their scholastic opponents were never applied to the pseudo-Pauline and patristic sources on which their own religious ideas were based.» — muestra el uso selectivo de la crítica de fuentes: las armas no se volvían contra los textos propios.

«what tended to separate classicist, reformer, and scholastic views of texts, besides professional disagreements and matters of style, was not the issue of whether or not all wisdom could be located somewhere in the past—that was a truth few premodern intellectuals anywhere questioned—but where exactly in the complex labyrinths of history that truth was found.» — reduce la disputa entre los bandos a un desacuerdo sobre el lugar de la verdad en el pasado, no sobre si está en el pasado.

«Even Erasmus marveled at how truth might arise from a collation of holy texts like sparks from the striking of flint.» — muestra al propio Erasmo confiando en la colación de textos como fuente de verdad.

«Pico died in Florence at the age of thirty-one on 17 November 1494, the same day that the armies of Charles VIII of France entered the city, ending sixty years of Medicean rule and ushering in the violent Savonarolan era in Florentine history.» — data la muerte de Pico y la hace coincidir con la entrada de Carlos VIII y el fin del gobierno mediceo.

«This was a period of nearly continuous struggle with Pope Innocent VIII, ending only when Innocent's successor—Alexander VI,» — describe los años entre el debate y la muerte como un litigio continuo con el papado.

«If the exaggerated correlative tendencies in Pico’s theses represent a reductio ad absurdum of the syncretic impulse—an early product of the marriage of the printing revolution to Western thought—it would not be surprising to find in Pico’s later works a marked decrease in those tendencies, given the obvious philological weaknesses of his system, the heavy cnticism hurled at that system by his enemies, and the breadth of Pico’s own philological and textual resources, which arguably exceeded those of any other intellectual of his day.» — plantea en condicional lo que su modelo haría esperar de la obra tardía de Pico: menos sincretismo, por debilidad filológica del sistema y por presión de sus enemigos.

«Pico’s mastery of Semitic languages, and especially Hebrew, advanced in this period far beyond the levels he reached under Flavius Mithridates’ strange tutorship preceding the publication of the nine hundred theses.» — data una mejora real en el hebreo de Pico después del debate, ya sin la tutela de Mitrídates.

«Both the syncretic attitudes that helped shape correlative traditions and the philological views that helped destroy them depended on a systematic companson of texts and authorities.» — hace nacer del mismo gesto, la comparación sistemática de textos, tanto el sincretismo como la filología que lo destruyó.

«Pico’s answer to that question does not differ in the Disputations from the answer given in his early works: Due to the elevated nature of the caelum and to the material corruption of the lower world, detailed astrological predictions are not possible.» — sostiene la continuidad doctrinal entre las Disputationes y las obras tempranas en materia de predicción astrológica.

«Pico never doubted that influences of some sort flowed from the heavens to the earth.» — acota qué es lo que Pico rechaza y qué no: niega la predicción detallada, no el influjo celeste.

«One of Pico’s theses (7a>74) suggests the possibility that in the heavens “all things are described and signified to anyone knowing how to read them”;» — localiza en las tesis la afirmación de que el cielo es legible para quien sepa leerlo.

«the text’s final thesis (11>72) informs us that “true astrology” teaches us to read the secrets in nature or the “book of God.”» — cierra el argumento con la última tesis del texto, que hace de la verdadera astrología una lectura del libro de Dios.

«The central arguments against divinatory astrology in the Disputations are based, in fact, on the same cosmological principles that Pico had planned to introduce at Rome.» — sostiene que el ataque tardío a la astrología se apoya en la cosmología del debate romano, y no la contradice.

«What the astrologers represent as occult powers descend to the earth through celestial “motion,” “light,” and “heat”—-archetypal principles that should not be confused with ordinary motion, light, and heat.» — advierte que movimiento, luz y calor son aquí principios arquetípicos y no los fenómenos físicos del mismo nombre.

«Enfolding in a unitary fashion all inferior natures, the caelum (like God himself) may be said at once to correspond with everything and simultaneously with nothing—letting Pico “save” his correlative system while denying the one-to-one correspondences needed for predictive astrology.» — explica cómo Pico conserva su sistema de correspondencias y a la vez le quita a la astrología la base que necesita para predecir.

«The difference between the occult virtues of one or another celestial body—for despite what Pico says about the unity of the caelum, he clearly acknowledges in it hierarchical distinctions—is that superior bodies contain these powers "in a far more united and elevated fashion» — señala una tensión en la doctrina del cielo: se lo declara unidad y se lo trata como jerarquía.

«We have seen that numerological correspondences run through every side of Pico’s works.» — recuerda que la numerología no es un apéndice de las tesis sino un rasgo de toda la obra.

«The Disputations, however, hesitates to speculate even on whether eight, nine, or ten celestial spheres exist.”» — mide el cambio de tono en la obra tardía por una abstención elemental sobre el número de esferas.

«Early in the work, Pico attacks the talismanic astral magic that Ficino had endorsed, but Pico had already rejected that brand of celestial magic early in his career.» — quita valor de conversión al ataque tardío contra los talismanes, que Pico ya rechazaba desde el principio.

«Pico’s work argues that the unitas multiplex of the heavens is not distributed uniformly on the earth but “in succession” (ex serie), producing in inferior things “an order among themselves rather than a diversity” —another position that could be easily turned to magical ends.» — encuentra en la obra antiastrológica posiciones que sirven igual de bien a la magia.

«Another passage, again recalling Pico’s early magical writings, argues that Saturn and Jupiter “do the same thing, but one in one mode, the nobler in a nobler and more elevated mode.» — localiza en las Disputationes la misma fórmula correlativa de las tesis tempranas.

«But the work's arguments leave plenty of room, if Pico wanted it, to allow him to support both the astrological and nonastrological types of magic that he endorsed in his early works.» — sostiene que la obra tardía no cierra la puerta a la magia que Pico había defendido antes.

«Historians have long argued over whether or not Pico’s thought changed radically in his later years.» — enuncia la disputa historiográfica que su capítulo final aborda.

«No firm answer to this question was possible until a clearer picture existed of the nine hundred theses, Pico’s most important philosophical text.» — condiciona la respuesta a que se lea primero el texto que la bibliografía no había leído.

«Anyone comparing Pico’s theses closely with the Disputations is forced to admit the appearance of profound intellectual changes in the latter work—profound enough to support Di Napoli's claim, aimed against Garin and others, that the Disputations contained a virtual “palinode” to Pico’s early work.» — concede la apariencia del cambio y se la reconoce a Di Napoli contra Garin, cuidando la palabra apariencia.

«Curiously, those changes left untouched the basic principles of Pico’s philosophia nova, which remained essentially the same in the Disputations as in his theses.» — mide el cambio por lo que no cambió: los principios de la nueva filosofía siguen intactos en la obra tardía.

«For the early Pico, as we have seen, the magus was not an astrologer but a cosmic priest, intent on redeeming all of fallen nature with himself.» — recuerda qué era el mago para el Pico temprano, y por qué el ataque a la astrología no lo alcanza.

«Pico to abandon magic implied a major shift in what earlier generations of historians liked to refer to as his “philosophy of man.”» — señala lo que estaría en juego si el abandono fuera real: no una opinión sobre las estrellas sino toda una antropología.

«Hints can be found in the Disputations of Pico’s growing sophistication on textual questions, including questions on which he had blundered spectacularly in his early career.» — concede una explicación alternativa del cambio: Pico había aprendido crítica de fuentes.

«Similarly, evidence suggests that Flavius’s forgeries probably lay behind Pico’s boast that he possessed the onginal “Chaldean” text of the Chaldean Oracles, which he attributed to Zoroaster.» — adjudica a las falsificaciones de Mitrídates el supuesto original caldeo de los Oráculos, con la reserva de lo probable.

«The claim that an opponent’s texts were corrupt, his translations distorted, and his authorities spurious was standard fare long before the advent of Renaissance classicism; the fact that a Renaissance writer made such complaints should never be naively mistaken for evidence» — advierte que la queja filológica es tópico polémico antiguo y no prueba de método crítico.

«It would be possible to argue that the Disputations was a pseudopalinode of sorts—similar to that reputedly found in Agrippa von Nettesheim’s antimagical De vanitate scientiaram—aimed at deflecting criticism of Pico’s eagerly awaited (and clearly far more dangerous) Concord of Plato and Aristotle, which we know was closely linked to his aborted Vatican» — propone leer las Disputationes como retractación aparente destinada a proteger la Concordia, y lo formula como posibilidad.

«While from a theoretical perspective it would be attractive to imagine Pico’s system bursting apart here at its philological seams, other possibilities must be considered.» — se resiste a la lectura que más convendría a su propio modelo y abre otras explicaciones.

«as Pico himself tells us in the text, following the conventions of the disputation it was his job to raise every conceivable weapon against his opponents, even denying positions that he might normally concede.» — recuerda una convención del género que vuelve dudosa cualquier lectura literal de las Disputationes.

«In any case, while a growth in Pico’s philological sophistication may explain some of the conceptual shifts in the Disputations, the text’s adherence to disputational conventions must also be taken into account.» — deja las dos explicaciones en pie, sin elegir entre madurez filológica y convención polémica.

«According to Pico’s nephew, the Seven Enemies was meant to attack the enemies of the church “with their own weapons.”» — el dato sobre la obra perdida viene del sobrino, a quien cita, y no de fuente independiente.

«The claim that Pico meant to attack the enemies of the church “with their own weapons"—-an idea repeatedly suggested in the nine hundred theses, Oration, and Apology in reference to the Jews and the Cabala—implies that despite the polemical tone of its title, the Seven Enemies may not have differed as much from the nine hundred theses or Concord of Plato and Aristotle as Gianfrancesco would like us to believe.» — usa el propio testimonio del sobrino contra la imagen que ese testimonio quería fijar.

«leads me to doubt whether anything ever existed of the former text besides the extant portions of the Disputations and whatever Gianfrancesco possessed of Pico’s works on the Cabala.» — llega a dudar de que la obra anunciada existiera alguna vez fuera de lo que el sobrino tenía en la mano.

«As Pico tells us in the Apology, “This name ‘magic’ is an equivocal name.» — apoya en el propio Pico que el término magia es equívoco, con lo que su repudio tardío no dice por sí solo qué repudia.

«Anyone doubting that Pico was capable of intentional duplicity of this sort only needs to recall the subtle debating traps planted on virtually every page of the nine hundred theses.» — apoya la hipótesis de la doblez tardía en la doblez comprobada de las tesis.

«The fact that Gianfrancesco’s Vita was transparently based on hagiographical models does not by itself invalidate that interpretation.» — se niega a descartar la conversión de Pico solo porque su relato sea hagiográfico.

«Nor can Pico’s links to Savonarola be minimized.» — reconoce el vínculo con Savonarola como dato firme, cualquiera sea el juicio sobre la conversión.

«We know that it was Pico himself who persuaded Lorenzo de’ Medici to recall the fiery Dominican preacher to Florence a final time in 1490, an event that ironically contributed heavily to the Medicis’ fall from power.» — data en 1490 la intervención de Pico que devolvió a Savonarola a Florencia, con la consecuencia política que siguió.

«Contemporary accounts show us Savonarola praising Pico as the only intellectual of the period equal to St. Jerome, St. Augustine, and other church fathers, debating with him over the value of pagan philosophy, and ultimately burying him in Savonarola’s San Marco, wrapped in death, at least, in the habits of the Dominican order.» — reúne el testimonio del trato entre ambos y cierra con el hábito dominico, marcando que la pertenencia fue póstuma.

«The evidence we have of Pico's later religious views and his interactions with Savonarola is, however, far from unambiguous.» — declara ambigua la evidencia sobre la religiosidad tardía y no la fuerza en ninguna dirección.

«Unfortunately, these questions cannot be answered in a simple fashion.» — se abstiene otra vez, y esta vez sobre el conjunto de las preguntas sobre el Pico tardío.

«The problem lies in textual problems even more serious than those found in the nine hundred theses, one of the most difficult of Renaissance works.» — sitúa el obstáculo en el estado de los textos tardíos, peor todavía que el de las tesis.

«The story of how and why that doctoring took place has more twists and turns than any fictional mystery faced by Umberto Eco’s scholastic-detective William of Baskerville.» — anuncia con una comparación novelesca la reconstrucción de la adulteración del corpus.

«It also involves at least one conspirator with a twisted psychological profile—Pico’s nephew—and a coverup as outrageous as any in recent political memory.» — nombra al responsable de la adulteración y describe el caso como encubrimiento, no como descuido editorial.

«His motive, or so he claimed one year later, was simply to prevent the destruction of Pico’s works:» — consigna el motivo que el sobrino se atribuyó, marcando que es su versión y que llegó un año después.

«This did not deter Gianfrancesco from his editonal ambitions, however. Over the next three years he apparently had unlimited access to Pico’s unpublished papers, which, to the permanent detriment of Pico’s literary fortunes, fell for unknown reasons into the hands of Savonarola and the Dominican friars at San Marco in Florence.» — fija el hecho decisivo de la transmisión, el acceso sin control a los papeles, y declara desconocido el motivo por el que llegaron a San Marco.

«There is nothing in Pico's will or codicil suggesting that Pico’s books and papers be held at San Marco, but we know that that is where they were when Antonmaria’s agents sold them in 1498.» — contrapone el testamento con el paradero comprobado de los libros al venderse en 1498.

«Calori Cesis’s claim, based on an anonymous chronicler of the Pico family, that the books were willed to the Dominicans of San Marco is in clear conflict with the evidence in Pico’s will;» — objeta la versión de Calori Cesis por apoyarse en un cronista anónimo contra el testamento.

«There are a number of unsolved mysteries involving Pico’s will, books, and unpublished papers that call for closer scrutiny, especially given what we know about posthumous tampering in Pico’s works.» — deja abierta la cuestión del testamento y los papeles, y la señala como tarea pendiente.

«Raspanti (1997) has recently claimed, without evidence, that the second volume of Pico’s collected works, which contains the Disputationes, was, in fact, published one year before the first volume.» — objeta a Raspanti una datación que altera el orden de la edición póstuma y que no viene apoyada.

«Given what they knew of Pico’s literary output, more than one of Pico’s friends hinted at their deep disappointment in Gianfrancesco’s edition.» — apoya en la reacción de los allegados la insuficiencia de la edición póstuma.

«The omissions in the 1496 edition are extensive—the nine hundred theses and Commento are only the most obvious examples—but despite promises made for decades, Gianfrancesco never published another line under his uncle’s name before his own death some four decades later.» — mide la supresión por lo que faltó y por lo que nunca llegó: cuatro décadas de promesas sin una línea más.

«Although the elder Pico was only nine years Gianfrancesco’s senior, from their letters it appears that Pico took a paternal if distant interest in his nephew, to which Gianfrancesco initially responded with something akin to open hero-worship.» — reconstruye por las cartas la relación entre tío y sobrino antes de la ruptura doctrinal.

«While Gianfrancesco liked to boast of his close personal ties to his uncle, the evidence suggests that at Pico’s death Gianfrancesco was far from qualified to act as either his biographer or editor.» — separa la cercanía que el sobrino proclamaba de la competencia que el cargo requería.

«The reprints of Pico’s works that Gianfrancesco later saw to press added no new texts to the original 1496 edition.» — registra que las reimpresiones posteriores no incorporaron nada de lo prometido.

«Zambelli’s claim (1977a, 1977b) that the nine hundred theses were included in the 1518 Venetian edition published by Gianfrancesco is in error.» — corrige a Zambelli en un punto de hecho: las tesis no entraron en la veneciana de 1518.

«before Pico’s death, Gianfrancesco admitted that he only knew by “rumor” of his uncle’s book, despite the fact that it had circulated widely in manuscript for several years.» — documenta con palabras del sobrino su desconocimiento de la obra que iba a editar.

«In continuing Pico’s polemics with Antonio, Gianfrancesco showed no real understanding of his uncle’s views, adding to them mainly “many things as testimony from great authorities” for the benefit of unnamed critics and the unlearned.» — muestra al sobrino continuando una polémica de su tío sin entender el argumento, y engordándola con autoridades.

«Again, shortly after his uncle’s death, Gianfrancesco wrote excitedly to Pico’s friend and spiritual advisor, the Carmelite General Baptista Spagnuoli of Mantua, of a translation of Ptolemy’s Centiloquium with an anti-astrological commentary that he found in Pico’s papers, only to be gently admonished by Baptista that the texts were presumably simply the well-known works of Giovanni Pontano—which were pro-astrological to boot.» — narra un error de identificación del sobrino que además invertía el signo del texto encontrado.

«Pico’s historians have universally agreed with Baptista, but Gianfrancesco did not bother to correct his claim in his Vita of his uncle: hardly a propitious start for his editorial career.» — anota que el error, ya señalado en su momento, quedó sin corregir en la Vita.

«Dozens of errors in Gianfrancesco’s Vita, many of them apparently intentional, others rooted in blatant ignorance, have misled historians for five centuries: Gianfrancesco falsely claims that Pico stayed a year in Rome waiting to start his debate, never mentioning his humiliating flight to France or imprisonment (Opera, fol. 3v);» — abre el inventario de errores de la Vita y separa los que atribuye a ignorancia de los que da por deliberados.

«transforms the vehemently anti-Thomistic Pico into the Dominican’s pious defender (fol. 5v);» — señala la inversión doctrinal más consecuente de la Vita, que hace de Pico un devoto de Tomás.

«is off by several years as to when Pico wrote the Heptaplus, which was then his best-known work (fol. 4r);» — añade un error de datación sobre la obra entonces más conocida de su tío.

«and falsely claims that Pico abandoned poetry, burning his Italian and Latin poems after a sudden religious conversion (fol. 4r).» — da por falso el episodio de los poemas quemados, pieza central del relato de conversión.

«It is especially revealing that the Vita nowhere mentions Pico’s close personal ties with Lorenzo de’ Medici or the Medici family—something to be kept in mind when we consider the political motives behind Gianfrancesco’s editorial hatchetwork.» — señala un silencio de la Vita y lo conecta con el motivo político de la edición.

«The stories in the Vita of Pico’s miraculous birth and childhood feats are borrowed directly from the lives of the saints (especially St. Ambrose).» — adjudica los prodigios de la infancia al molde hagiográfico, y nombra el modelo.

«Charles Schmitt, who has written the fullest account yet of Gianfrancesco’s work, notes that despite Gianfrancesco’s claims to being a simple defender of Pico» — se apoya en Schmitt, el mayor estudioso del sobrino, para caracterizar la distancia entre lo que decía ser y lo que era.

«Despite lavish words concerning his uncle’s genius, the work violently attacks the ancient philosophers whose reconciliation with Chnistian thought was Pico’s lifelong goal.» — muestra al editor elogiando al autor y atacando el proyecto que ese autor había dedicado su vida a sostener.

«But the skeptic label is extremely misleading, as is evident when we scan the long list of Gianfrancesco’s supplications to the saints, the Virgin Mary, and his own guardian angel, or his treatises on witchcraft or on the powers of supernatural prophecy, which along with his Savonarolan propaganda make up the vast bulk of his work.» — objeta que se llame escéptico a quien escribió sobre brujería, profecía y devociones, y propaganda savonaroliana.

«nor, given his virulent defense of the authority of Christian philosophers like Pseudo-Dionysius or St. Thomas, can he even be said to have “invoked reason to destroy reason,” as has been claimed of other medieval» — descarta también la fórmula del escepticismo fideísta para describir al sobrino.

«Although Gianfrancesco fluctuated wildly on this point, there is no doubt that when he wrote these lines he had far more than fragments of Pico’s unpublished works in his hands.» — fija un punto contra las declaraciones cambiantes del sobrino: en 1496 tenía mucho más que fragmentos.

«He confided to Strozzi: “I believe that I can draw out not a little (nonnulla) of the Concord of Plato and Aristotle, and likewise many things against heretics, against the Hebrews, and many things on the Psalms, which are collected in order, where you can recognize Pico's incredible genius.» — la enumeración es del propio Gianfrancesco, a quien cita, y es el inventario de lo que tuvo en la mano.

«None of these fragments, however, let alone the longer texts mentioned by Gianfrancesco, ever made it into print—at least not under Pico's name.» — pone el resultado junto a la promesa, y deja abierta la salida que el capítulo siguiente explora: bajo otro nombre.

«Predictably, Gianfrancesco started with a chapter entitled De discentium erroribus (About the Errors of Those Learning), where Mainardi would find nothing substantial left out, "or certainly little according to my opinion, but you will discover many and various things added, not so much in regard to the style or to explain those matters, but to augment and amplify them» — documenta el método declarado por carta: no suprimir sino añadir, para aumentar y amplificar el original.

«In an important letter to Giovanni Mainardi (G. F. Pico, Opera, 2:1299-1300), we find that it was the older and more capable Mainardi who originally made the excerpts from Pico's works, which by the time of Gianfrancesco’s letter, which was written in 1495 or 1496, Gianfrancesco had already begun to polish for publication.» — reparte el trabajo entre los dos editores: Mainardi extracta, Gianfrancesco pule.

«In the decades to come, Gianfrancesco blatantly equivocated about which of these texts he had in his hands.» — hace de las contradicciones del sobrino sobre lo que poseía un dato del caso, no un descuido.

«In an undated letter written to Emperor Maximilian I, who had asked about Pico’s Cabalistic writings, Gianfrancesco complained—despite his earlier boasts about transcribing Pico’s works—that of these he possessed not a single fragment, citing as an excuse his uncle Antonmaria’s sale of Pico's original papers years earlier.» — contrapone la jactancia anterior con la negativa dada al emperador, y consigna la excusa.

«Gianfrancesco complained repeatedly in these years of Pico's difficult hand and of manuscripts that he repeatedly portrayed as being torn, riddled with corrections, and nearly illegible.» — recoge la coartada material que el sobrino repetía: papeles rotos y letra ilegible.

«Considering the enormous mass of Pico's texts that Gianfrancesco admits that he and Mainardi had transcribed by 1496, it is difficult not to view these complaints as a mask for other motives for not publishing Pico's works in their original form.» — desarma esa coartada con lo que el propio sobrino admite haber transcrito.

«The same year that edition appeared, the ever-dour Gianfrancesco bragged that he himself had not opened a book of secular poetry in nearly five years.» — sitúa al editor y su gusto: el mismo año de la edición se jactaba de no abrir un libro de poesía profana.

«Gianfrancesco reluctantly published the Oration only following “the repeated urgings of the most famous men,” burying it deep in the 1496 edition with Pico’s other “works of lesser care,” as he called them, without once mentioning in his foreword the spectacular Roman debate for which the text was composed.» — muestra cómo la Oración se publicó a regañadientes y desligada del debate para el que fue escrita.

«Gianfrancesco claims in the Vita that Pico told his readers “to read the Apology, but to pass over unread the little book of unexplained conclusions"» — recoge la instrucción que el sobrino pone en boca de su tío para que las tesis no se lean.

«Predictably enough, Gianfrancesco never published such a translation, although one manuscript—reportedly copied from one of Savonarola’s personal notebooks—has survived that contains Latin excerpts from the Commento; whether these were made from the Italian original or from a lost Latin translation is unknown.» — registra un manuscrito de extractos latinos del Commento ligado a Savonarola y declara desconocido su origen.

«Interestingly enough, Benivieni dedicated the work to Pico’s nephew and editor, who had apparently encouraged Benivieni in his plagiarized use of Pico’s text®°» — señala que el editor alentaba el uso ajeno del texto que él mismo no publicaba.

«In 1519 Benivieni’s publisher—not surprisingly, rather over Benivieni’s objections—printed Pico’s original version of the Commento in Benivieni’s collected works, with a number of references to the Cabala and other theological topics, as well as repeated criticisms of Ficino, removed by an unknown hand.» — data en 1519 la aparición del Commento ya expurgado de cábala y de las críticas a Ficino, por mano que no identifica.

«Whether or not Savonarola was, in fact, the translator of these excerpts probably cannot be known for certain, although to my knowledge the attribution has not been questioned.» — se abstiene sobre la autoría de esos extractos y anota que nadie la ha discutido.

«Gianfrancesco suppressed his uncle’s most important unpublished texts does not mean that he found no use for them himself.» — enuncia el giro del argumento: lo suprimido no quedó ocioso.

«Garin has called attention to Gianfrancesco’s use in the De rerum praenotione of anti-magical writings that Pico's nephew claimed were found in Pico’s papers; whether Gianfrancesco’s representation of Pico’s views here was faithful is far from clear®?» — recoge de Garin el dato y le añade su reserva sobre la fidelidad de esa representación.

«It can be shown that Gianfrancesco’s attack on the gentes drew at length from Pico’s defense of the gentes in his lost Concord of Plato and Aristotle!» — sostiene que la refutación de las gentes se construyó con el texto en que Pico las defendía.

«Gianfrancesco gives us a long account of Pico’s “modal” view of the Platonic theory of ideas, discussed earlier in this study, which Gianfrancesco uses to attack Aristotle—exactly reversing his uncle's views”» — muestra el procedimiento en detalle: la doctrina del tío usada para el fin contrario.

«Gianfrancesco claimed that Pico's early endorsement of magia naturalis hinged on his acceptance as a youth of divinatory astrology—a kind of astrology that Pico supported in none of his early works—and that he hence must have withdrawn that endorsement once he rejected astrology in the Disputations.» — desarma el argumento con que el sobrino construyó el repudio de la magia: parte de una premisa falsa sobre el joven Pico.

«A deeper flaw in Gianfrancesco’s argument lay in his assumption that for Pico magia naturalis exclusively meant celestial magic, which we have again seen was not the case.» — señala el error de fondo del argumento: identificar magia natural con magia celeste.

«Gianfrancesco in fact admits here that he is drawing from the Concord of Plato and Aristotle—of which decades earlier he had boasted that he possessed "not a little."» — apoya el plagio en la propia admisión del sobrino, contrastada con su jactancia anterior.

«The textual evidence is incontrovertible: Gianfrancesco plagiarized extensive materials from his uncle’s lost Concord of Plato and Aristotle to produce his anti-concord in the Examination of the Vanity of the Doctrine of the Gentes— providing an ironic twist on his boast that he would “perfect” the work his uncle had begun.» — da por establecido el plagio de la obra perdida y su reutilización invertida en la refutación de las gentes.

«My uncle had a mild and serene disposition, Gianfrancesco wrote in the Vita, and he told me once that only one thing could move him to anger—that certain book chests (scrinia) should perish that were stuffed with the results of his night labors and vigils.» — el testimonio es del sobrino en la Vita: lo único que podía enojar a su tío era que se perdieran sus papeles.

«He held human glory for nothing and would often tell me that fame was of some use to the living but of little to the dead.» — continúa el testimonio del sobrino, que prepara la justificación de no publicar bajo el nombre del autor.

«Indeed, I even sensed that he had reached that height of perfection that he cared little if his Commentationes [the title that Gianfrancesco gave to the 1496 edition of Pico’s works] were not made public under his own name—but only that that which was brought out under the name of “Pico” should bring some benefit to men.» — cierra la cita con la frase que autoriza al editor a poner o quitar el nombre de Pico según convenga.

«Gianfrancesco himself tells us that he and Mainardi "repaired" the Disputations, which was “called back from destruction” from a manuscript that Gianfrancesco claimed was so illegible that it often seemed to be written in some language other than Latin.» — recoge la declaración de que el texto fue reparado, y la ilegibilidad alegada para justificarlo.

«Even Garin, who in general pictured Gianfrancesco as Pico’s faithful editor, was forced to admit that the 1496 Bologna edition did not appear without “some probable revisions” (qualche probabile ritocco).» — usa la concesión de Garin, defensor del sobrino, como piso mínimo de lo admitido.

«But Zambelli too has explicitly denied that Mainardi or Gianfrancesco meant to change the sense of Pico’s texts.» — consigna la posición contraria a la suya, que niega intención de alterar el sentido.

«It will be remembered that for decades after Pico’s death Gianfrancesco claimed that he possessed and might someday publish “many things” on the Psalms “collected in order” in his uncle’s papers.» — recuerda la promesa sobre el comentario a los Salmos antes de mostrar por qué no se cumplió.

«It is not necessary to read very far into these fragments before recognizing why Gianfrancesco suppressed them.» — anuncia que el motivo de la supresión está a la vista en los fragmentos conservados.

«Pico’s Commentary on the Psalms, like all his other works before it, is filled with admiring references to the prisci theologi and to Hebrew and Chaldean wisdom.» — da el contenido que hacía impublicable el comentario para el editor savonaroliano.

«Its exegetical methods are closedly linked to the Cabalistic methods dealt with in the nine hundred theses, a work that Gianfrancesco wholeheartedly loathed.» — enlaza el método del comentario con el de las tesis y nombra la aversión del editor.

«When we recall the claim in the Apology that the traditional numbering of the Psalms reflected their efficacy “in spiritual and celestial science"—that is, in magic?’—we need hardly guess why Gianfrancesco left Pico’s Commentary on the Psalms “to the judgment of the dust” (in arbitrio della polvere), as Girolamo Benivieni tells us was his aim» — remata el motivo de la supresión con la numeración mágica de los Salmos, y con la frase que Benivieni atribuye al editor.

«The commentary on Psalm 15 includes no discussion of the original Hebrew text; the surviving manuscript fragments of Pico's commentary are full of such discussions and contain as well long analyses of Greek, Arabic, Aramaic, and Latin linguistic questions.» — compara lo impreso con los fragmentos manuscritos y encuentra ausente todo el trabajo lingüístico.

«The manuscripts of Pico's Commentary are packed with symbolic readings of a Cabalistic or quasi- Cabalistic type like those found in the nine» — señala la segunda ausencia del texto impreso: las lecturas simbólicas de tipo cabalístico.

«In his Vita, Opera, fol. 5r, Gianfrancesco mentions a commentary by Pico on the Lord's Prayer and "around fifty rules for living well" that he claims that Pico would have expanded into many chapters had he lived.» — registra otra obra anunciada por el sobrino, con la salvedad de que quedaba por desarrollar.

«Even if these works were by Pico, the evidence would point to an earlier date for all of them than the early 1490’s, undermining the traditional view that they illustrate shifts that took place in Pico’s thought “under the influence of Savonaτο δ.» — quita a esos escritos devocionales el valor probatorio que se les daba: aun siendo auténticos, serían anteriores a la supuesta conversión.

«Ironically, due to Pico’s enormous reputation as a philosopher, these spurious works were the most popular writings ascribed to Pico throughout the Reformation period, when virtually any text sounding the ancient contemptus mundi theme found an enthusiastic audience.» — anota la ironía de la transmisión: lo espurio circuló más que lo auténtico, amparado en la fama del autor.

«Until an exhaustive analysis of all these works is made it will not be possible to pinpoint their exact sources, but these stylistic features of the works, as well as their total lack of linguistic learning, clearly demonstrate that in their final form they cannot be ascribed to Pico.» — separa lo que da por establecido, que en su forma actual no son de Pico, de lo que deja pendiente, sus fuentes.

«Given the close linguistic and conceptual ties between the commentary on Psalm 15, Commentary on the Lord's Prayer, and Twelve Rules, etc., even if we assumed that these works were legitimate, we would have to date them around the same time as the Heptaplus as well.» — agrupa esos textos por rasgos comunes y los data, en el mejor de los casos, en la época del Heptaplus.

«It is important to remember that while Pico's papers were being edited they were held by Savonarola and the Dominicans at the Convent of San Marco in Florence.» — insiste en la circunstancia material de la edición: los papeles estaban en manos dominicas mientras se editaban.

«Apparently, the Dominicans eventually got more than their fair share of revenge on Pico for his attacks on them in the nine hundred theses and Apology.» — lee el destino del corpus como desquite de la orden a la que Pico había atacado en vida.

«the possibility must be left open—although it seems a slim one indeed—that the latter work and the closely related Twelve Rules, Twelve Arms, Twelve Conditions, and even more suspicious Commentary on the Lord’s Prayer in some earlier form reflected something from Pico’s hand.» — deja abierta, y gradúa como remota, la posibilidad de un núcleo auténtico en esos opúsculos.

«But considering their simplistic Latin and total lack of linguistic learning, we can be certain that if they did onginate with Pico, by the time they made it through Gianfrancesco’s editorial sieve they were as far removed from Pico’s thought as any forgeries could be.» — cierra el punto: aun con origen auténtico, lo publicado equivale a una falsificación.

«Raspanti is forced to argue that the Psalm 15 commentary "enjoys an indisputable authority, since it was taken directly from the autograph" [gode di indubbia autorità, perché tratta direttamente dall'autografo] (Raspanti 1997: 31)—a claim made despite the fact that no autograph has survived.» — objeta a Raspanti que apoye la autoridad del texto en un autógrafo que no se conserva.

«Gianfrancesco plagiarized extensive portions of those writings, including key sections of the Concord of Plato and Aristotle, for purposes diametrically opposed to his uncle’s, and encouraged Girolamo Benivieni’s similar plagiarized use of the Commento.» — resume el doble movimiento del editor: plagiar para el fin contrario y alentar que otro hiciera lo mismo.

«Unfortunately, this explanation does not tell us why the commentary on Psalm 15 differs so radically from the surviving manuscript fragments.» — señala lo que la hipótesis contraria deja sin explicar: la distancia entre lo impreso y los fragmentos manuscritos.

«Raspanti therefore proposes another tentative hypothesis: Perhaps the commentary on Psalm 15 was not originally part of Pico’s Commentary on the Psalms at all, but in Pico’s mind belonged more to wnitings of an “edifying” (edificante) and “exhortatory” (parenetico) sort.» — expone la salida que Raspanti ensaya, y la presenta como lo que es, una hipótesis tentativa.

«What is missing in Raspanti’s analysis is any discussion of the duplicitous ways in which Gianfrancesco treated all his uncle’s texts— a problem that we have seen extends far beyond the Commentary on the Psalms.» — objeta que la discusión se haga sin considerar el trato que el editor dio al corpus entero.

«Raspanti never asks the obvious question: If the surviving manuscripts of Pico’s Commentary were careful copies of the original made at Gianfrancesco’s court—as Raspanti argues on good grounds was the case—and Gianfrancesco was Pico’s faithful editor, why did he renege on his repeated promises to publish those fragments?» — vuelve contra la tesis del editor fiel su propia premisa: copias cuidadas que nunca se publicaron.

«it is important to note that Raspanti’s assignment (1997: 37) of an earliest date of 1520 to the extant manuscripts of Pico’s Commentary, following suggestions in a letter to Lilio Gregorio Giraldi in Gianfrancesco’s Opera (1365-69), is clearly mistaken, since Schmitt long ago (1967: 1288) noted other versions of Gianfrancesco’s works that place that letter as early as 1514.» — corrige una datación de manuscritos apoyándose en el hallazgo anterior de Schmitt.

«To justify his editorial tampering, moreover, from the start Gianfrancesco argued that any use of Pico’s works was justified so long as those works served some religious end.» — enuncia el principio con que el editor se autorizaba a intervenir los textos.

«By now, it should be evident that no text of Pico’s that Gianfrancesco printed or reprinted can be assumed to be free of adulterations of some kind.» — extiende la sospecha a todo lo publicado por el sobrino, sin excepción declarada.

«If in this case Gianfrancesco was restrained by the fact that the most controversial sections of the Oration, dealing with magic and the Cabala, were printed in the Apology long before Pico’s death, much evidence shows that he did not exercise the same restraint in handling Pico’s previously unpublished texts.» — explica por qué la Oración salió menos alterada: lo comprometedor ya estaba impreso en vida del autor.

«The text of the Disputations is obviously difficult, and no definitive answer can be currently given to this question.» — se abstiene sobre el alcance de la intervención en las Disputationes.

«Similarly, clear associations between rational or celestial souls and demons found in the early draft of the Oration are missing from the version of that text printed by Gianfrancesco;» — documenta una supresión concreta comparando el borrador de la Oración con el impreso.

«But the question of whether or not longer interpolations are found there is susceptible to hard scientific test.» — propone someter la sospecha de interpolación a prueba estilométrica, y no dejarla en impresión de lectura.

«But in the case of the Disputations, political motives alien to everything else known of Pico’s thought also played a part.» — introduce el motivo político como factor propio de esta obra y ajeno al pensamiento de su autor.

«Against these arguments Savonarola and his followers could cite the claims in the Disputations that astrology and all natural forms of prophecy were inspired by evil demons, who hoped to undercut the supernatural prophecy that lay behind Savonarola's claims to political power.!?» — muestra para qué servía el texto en la disputa florentina: dejar en pie solo la profecía sobrenatural del predicador.

«The argument that astrological or other “natural” means of prophecy existed became the rallying point of Savonarola’s enemies, especially those stragglers left in the largely depopulated Medicean camp.» — sitúa la controversia astrológica como frente político y no como debate académico.

«Even before Pico’s death, Savonarola had cited Pico’s unfinished Disputations in support of his polemics with the astrologers, which had long preceded his takeover of Florence.» — data el uso de la obra inconclusa ya en vida de Pico, antes del poder savonaroliano.

«Whatever truth (if any) lay in these claims, there is no doubt that after the Disputations was printed, the work was repeatedly used to support Savonarola’s Florentine political agenda.» — separa lo que no puede resolver, la verdad de las acusaciones, de lo que da por firme, el uso político del libro.

«Considering the enormous political stakes involved in this controversy, it is not surprising that Gianfrancesco Pico and his fellow piagnoni suppressed or altered as many of Pico’s works as possible that contradicted their claims.» — hace de la supresión una consecuencia esperable de lo que estaba en juego políticamente.

«Through Gianfrancesco’s editorial manipulations, the eminently apolitical Pico was posthumously made to join Savonarola’s camp.» — resume el efecto de la edición: un autor sin política acaba alistado después de muerto.

«We know from Gianfrancesco’s own testimony, moreover, that in the period in which he was editing (and doctoring) his uncle’s works that he repeatedly sought Savonarola’s advice:» — documenta con el propio editor la intervención de Savonarola en el trabajo editorial.

«The evidence that survives reveals the elder Pico as Savonarola’s aristocratic patron and debating opponent, but for the younger Pico the Dominican was the infallible spokesman and prophet of God.» — separa las dos relaciones con Savonarola, la del tío que lo protegía y discutía y la del sobrino que lo tenía por profeta.

«Nor can there be any doubt that while Gianfrancesco edited Pico’s papers that Savonarola also consulted them and tried to enlist their help in his political cause.» — da por firme que Savonarola trabajó él mismo sobre los papeles con fines políticos.

«It was presumably in this period that Savonarola (if Garin is correct that the latter was the transcriber) made his Latin excerpts from Pico's unpublished Commento—excerpts that, interestingly enough, break off abruptly at passages of an astrological cast.» — señala dónde se interrumpen los extractos, y deja la atribución condicionada a que Garin tenga razón.

«It was at this time as well that Savonarola composed his fiery Trattato contra li astrologi (Treatise against the Astrologers), which while represented by Savonarola as a simple epitome of Pico's work, went much further—for obvious reasons—than the Disputations in attacking all “natural” forms of prophecy.» — muestra que el epítome declarado excede a su original justo donde al predicador le convenía.

«Savonarola claimed in his proem was written after the Disputations went to press; an internal reference in the text further suggests a composition date in 1497, the year following Gianfrancesco’s publication of Pico's text!!/ Savonarola's word has been accepted at face value by Villan, Schnitzer, Ridolfi, and more recently by Garfagnini and Garin, coeditors of the critical edition of the Trattato.» — registra que la datación del Trattato descansa en la palabra de su autor y que la crítica la aceptó sin examen.

«Against this long-held view, the unambiguous evidence exists that Gianfrancesco already referred to the Trattato as a completed work in his De studio divinae et humanae philosophiae, which was written in 1496.!?» — opone a esa datación un testimonio del propio sobrino que sitúa el Trattato terminado en 1496.

«Years ago, moreover, Zambelli noted potential evidence in an ancient manuscript catalog, acknowledged but not explained by the recent editors of the Trattato, that at least two manuscripts of Savonarola's epitome may have existed as early as 1495 — the same year that Gianfrancesco Pico and Mainardi reportedly transcribed the Disputations, but long before the work apparently went to press.!?!» — suma el indicio que Zambelli halló en un catálogo antiguo y que los editores del Trattato dejaron sin explicar.

«Until recently, the publication date of the Disputationes has been universally given as 16 July 1496.» — fija la fecha recibida antes de examinar lo que la pone en duda.

«The first edition of the work, published in Bologna by Benedictus Hectoris, gives us a date one year earlier— anno salutis mcccclxxxxxv die vero xvi Julii"—but this has generally been considered a misprint, since» — consigna que el propio incunable trae una fecha un año anterior, tenida por errata de imprenta.

«Moreover, the first volume of that collection, which was published on 20 March 1496, promises the imminent future publication of the Disputationes.» — apoya la fecha recibida en la promesa que hace el primer volumen de la colección.

«External evidence for a 1496 publication date is also contained in a letter from Gianfrancesco Pico to Thomas Wolf, dated 24 November 1505, which states that Pico's book against divinatory astrology was "repaired" (reparata) and published by Gianfrancesco nine years earlier (G. F. Pico, Opera, 1344).» — añade evidencia externa y de paso el verbo con que el editor describía su trabajo.

«CHAPTER FOUR of the Trattato remains uncertain, the evidence clearly suggests that the treatise was completed well before the end of 1496, and possibly a full year before Pico’s text was printed; moreover, this fact was intentionally obscured ın Savonarola’s “epitome” of Pico’s work—as we would expect if, in fact, Savonarola was involved in doctoring the original.» — sostiene que el epítome se antedató a propósito, y toma ese ocultamiento como indicio de intervención en el original.

«Given the sum of evidence—Savonarola’s enormous political stakes in the astrology controversy, his control of Pico’s papers and profound influence over their editors, his distorted use of the Disputations, and the apparent postdating of the Trattato—the question that remains is not whether or not, but how deeply, Savonarola was involved in doctoring Pico’s works.» — cierra la acumulación de indicios desplazando la pregunta del si al cuánto.

«In apparent opposition to these views, in his recent edition of Pico’s Commentary on the Psalms, Antonino Raspanti (1997: 35) states without qualification that the Disputationes was published on 16 July 1495, adding that the rest of Pico’s works were printed the following year.» — consigna la datación contraria de Raspanti, dada sin matices.

«Since Raspanti makes these claims without discussing the problem of the printer’s privilege, Gianfrancesco Pico’s letter to Thomas Wolf, or the works of these earlier scholars, it is impossible to know whether his dating is a simple slip or is backed by new but uncited evidence.» — se abstiene de juzgar esa datación por falta de argumento en la fuente que la propone.

«Given the problem of Savonarola’s postdated Trattato, the question of the publication date of the Disputationes is not a trivial one.» — explica por qué una fecha de imprenta importa aquí: de ella depende el cargo contra Savonarola.

«While assignment of a putative 1495 date to the text—long before Pico’s other collected works—might render the postdating of the Trattato somewhat less incriminating, the same evidence would also further underscore the Savonarolan motives behind Gianfrancesco’s editorial work, given what we know of the political importance of the astrology issue in Savonarolan Florence.» — examina la hipótesis contraria y muestra que, aun aceptada, refuerza el motivo político de la edición.

«Such an early publication date—scarcely eight months after Pico’s death—would also throw into further doubt Gianfrancesco’s complaints concerning the nearly illegible nature of the massive manuscript on which that work was supposedly based.» — vuelve la fecha temprana contra la coartada de la ilegibilidad del manuscrito.

«given the other evidence discussed in this chapter, it is clear that any revision of the accepted publication date of the Disputationes must be backed by solid evidence,» — pone la carga de la prueba del lado de quien quiera mover la fecha recibida.

«In August 1497, at the exact height of the astrology controversy, a group of Medicean sympathizers tried to wrest control of Florence out of Savonarola’s hands.» — data el intento medíceo de recuperar Florencia en el punto más alto de la polémica astrológica.

«Late that month the Venetian patrician and diarist Marin Sanudo, who had close contacts with Gianfrancesco and the piagnoni, repeated the claim from his secretary in Bologna that “among the other things that [Cristoforo] confessed under torture was that he had hastened the death of his patron, since he poisoned him—something that up until now had not been known.”» — recoge la confesión bajo tortura del secretario de Pico tal como la transmite Sanudo, y señala su cercanía a los piagnoni.

«edition of Poliziano's collected works published the following year—interestingly enough, underwritten by Sanudo himself—flattering references to Cristoforo and his brother Martin, another of Pico’s longtime retainers, were clumsily removed by an unknown hand.» — señala una supresión torpe de menciones a los criados de Pico en una edición patrocinada por el mismo diarista.

«If one Poliziano scholar is right, that hand belonged to none other than Gianfrancesco Pico,» — consigna, condicionada a otro estudioso, la atribución de esa supresión al sobrino.

«Whether his reported confession did occur—let alone whether Pico was poisoned, and by whom and why—remains an open question.» — se abstiene sobre el envenenamiento de Pico y sobre la confesión misma.

«were no longer any known hostile witnesses to the extraordinary literary fraud perpetrated by Gianfrancesco Pico, Savonarola, and their associates.» — cierra el capítulo señalando qué cambió con la desaparición del secretario: no quedaban testigos hostiles del fraude.

«Kibre (1936: 16-17 n. 28)—apparentiy misreading Dorez (1898, 1899)—tells us that “suspicions that Pico had been poisoned have been shown to be groundless.”» — corrige el estado de la cuestión: la negativa que suele citarse descansa en una mala lectura de Dorez.

«Any determination of what changes, if any, actually occurred in Pico’s later thought would shed new light on the Savonarolan years» — devuelve la pregunta del Pico tardío a la historia política de Florencia.

«Conflicts over these territories involved the papal court (where Pico’s brother Antonmaria spent many years in exile), the imperial court (which backed Galeotto and Gianfrancesco against Antonmaria and the papacy), and even the Florentine government, since Antonmaria, who by right inherited Pico’s papers, was employed as a condottiere fighting Florence in the same year that Gianfrancesco and his Savonarolan associates were doctoring Pico’s works for their own political purposes.» — sitúa el pleito por los papeles dentro de una guerra familiar y territorial con la curia, el imperio y Florencia de por medio.

«The role that Giovanni Pico played in these political conflicts before his death is worth close study, as is his part in the conflict between Savonarola and the Medici after the death of Lorenzo de’ Medici.» — deja como tarea abierta el papel político de Pico, que su libro no resuelve.

«We may end by recalling the advice given to Pico’s nephew five hundred years ago by the Carmelite General Baptista Spagnuoli of Mantua—who had a far better understanding of the scope of Pico’s thought than modern scholars studying the mangled remains of his works: “Collect everything! Let us hear the dead man talking! We may learn more from him who is silent than from those» — cierra la monografía con el consejo que Baptista dio al editor y que el editor no siguió.

«There is much interesting work left to be done.» — deja el caso abierto en su última línea, sin darlo por resuelto.

«Evidence exists that Pico himself made extensive changes in the text shortly before, and apparently while, the work was in press.» — sostiene que el propio autor intervino el texto hasta durante la impresión.

«The conceptual nature of key emendations of errors listed at the back of the 1486 edition suggests that Pico also had a hand in correcting the text after it was printed, pointing to the editio princeps again as our final authority for the work.» — deduce del carácter doctrinal de las erratas que Pico corrigió el impreso, y de ahí que la princeps sea la autoridad última.

«Kieszkowski’s claim that the manuscript that served as the model for that edition is extant is based on spurious evidence, to which» — niega que se conserve el manuscrito que sirvió de modelo a la edición.

«The editio princeps became exceedingly rare immediately after Innocent VIII’s orders to burn the work the following year.» — explica la rareza del incunable por la orden de quema, no por la escasez del tiraje.

«The work has traditionally been assigned to 1487, presumably before the publication of the papal ban.» — data la reimpresión de Ingolstadt con la reserva de lo tradicionalmente aceptado.

«The edition's obvious errors suggest that Pico did not play a role in its publication, nor could the text have possibly derived» — descarta la participación de Pico en esa reimpresión por los errores mismos del texto.

«The nine hundred theses were not printed again until 1532, in an edition that De Pina Martins identified with a Parisian press.» — data en 1532 la siguiente impresión y sigue a De Pina Martins en la identificación del taller.

«The classicist and antischolastic leanings of the 1532 editors—extremely poor editorial credentials in this case—are illustrated in their preface to the short extract from the Apology reprinted in their edition, where they complain that in the omitted parts Pico “only spars scholastically with his adversaries” [tantum scholastice cum adversariis agit].» — muestra con su propio prefacio que los editores de 1532 despreciaban lo que estaban editando.

«The influence of the 1532 edition on the later history of Pico’s text is suggested by the fact that this numbering system was adopted by all later editors of the work.» — hace notar que la numeración con que se citan las tesis viene de esa edición y no del autor.

«Both these editions closely follow the corrupt 1532 edition, with a few speculative changes added by their own classicist editors.» — traza la cadena de dependencia por la que la corrupción de 1532 pasa a las ediciones posteriores.

«In the Basel edition, this led on occasion (as with the addition of a spurious non) to an exact reversal of Pico’s sense.» — da el caso extremo de la conjetura editorial: un non añadido que invierte la tesis.

«Reprints in 1572 and 1601 of the Basel edition until recently remained the most commonly cited versions of Pico’s text.» — señala que el texto más citado por la bibliografía era justamente el de esa rama corrupta.

«The theses are not included in Garin’s standard editions of Pico’s works, which were issued in 1942 and 1946-1952.» — anota la ausencia de las tesis en la edición canónica de Garin.

«Close study of these manuscripts demonstrates, as Garin suggested over a half century ago, that all of them are posterior to the 1486 text?» — sostiene que los cuatro manuscritos completos derivan del impreso y no lo preceden.

«The manuscript’s marginalia provide no evidence, as Kieszkowski claims in his edition, that this manuscript contains a prepublication copy of Pico’s text sent to a fifteenth-century theologian; indeed, those marginal notes include quotations from printed sources that were not published until after Pico’s death.» — objeta la datación de un manuscrito con sus propias notas marginales, que citan impresos posteriores a la muerte de Pico.

«But the manuscript throws no independent light on the text as Pico conceived it.» — descarta el valor de ese testimonio para reconstruir el texto original.

«Again, however, on intemal evidence it can be quickly demonstrated that the Erlangen manuscript derived from, and was not the model for, Silber’s 1486 edition—as Garin and Kristeller both noted long before Kieszkowski’s edition went to press.» — invierte la relación entre el manuscrito de Erlangen y el incunable, y recuerda que Garin y Kristeller ya lo habían advertido.

«It was on the grounds of this spurious evidence that Kieszkowski claimed that the manuscript contained Silber’s personal copy of the text.» — localiza el error que sostiene toda la edición de Kieszkowski.

«These problems cannot all be blamed on Kieszkowski’s erratic choice of the Erlangen manuscript as the basis for his edition.» — reparte la responsabilidad: no todo lo malo de esa edición viene de haber elegido mal el testimonio.

«All in all, Kieszkowski's edition, which (despite earlier critiques by De Pina Martins and Wirszubski) is still often cited as the standard text,!? is far more corrupt than the sixteenth-century editions that it was meant to replace.» — concluye que la edición moderna empeoró las del siglo XVI, y que aun así se cita como estándar.

«also remains alive in Albano Biondi’s recent version of Pico’s text, which was published in 1995.» — sigue la corrupción hasta la edición de Biondi de 1995.

«Misled by Kieszkowski’s claims about the Erlangen manuscript, Biondi ignores the editio princeps and adopts Kieszkowski’s text as the grounds of his edition, attempting to emend Kieszkowski’s errors using the corrupt version of the theses found in the 1557 Basel Opera.» — describe el vicio de método de Biondi: corregir un texto corrupto con otro corrupto, sin consultar el incunable.

«Biondi’s attempted "compromise" (compromesso)'” between Kieszkowski and the Basel edition has predictable results.» — juzga el resultado como consecuencia previsible del método, y no como accidente.

«Corruption due to Kieszkowski’s misreadings of the Erlangen manuscript and other derivative texts, to speculative emendations in the Basel edition, or to errors transmitted from the 1487 reprint to the 1532 edition, on which the Basel version was based, are passed on in silence by Biondi, whose edition does not provide a critical apparatus or even minimal explanatory notes.» — inventaria las capas de corrupción heredadas y anota que la edición nueva las transmite sin aparato que las declare.

«Biondi also adopts without discussion Kieszkowski’s erroneous claims concerning the Greek words omitted from the 1486 edition (as in theses 22.10 and 5>18) and the speculative conjectures concerning missing Hebrew made by the sixteenth-century Christian Cabalist Archangelus de Burgonovo.» — señala que las restituciones de griego y hebreo pasan a la edición moderna como si fueran texto.

«One thesis (1>11) drops out of Biondi's edition completely; others (like 1>10 and 2>33) are misreported due to Biondi’s failure to consult the list of errors provided at the back of the editio princeps.» — mide la falla en pérdidas concretas: una tesis desaparecida y otras mal transcritas por no leer las erratas del incunable.

«Biondi’s Italian translation introduces further misreadings of Pico’s text, especially in those sections employing symbolic language or scholastic terms.» — extiende la objeción a la traducción, y localiza el daño donde el texto es simbólico o técnico.

«Thus in thesis 2>34 Biondi mistranslates the technical scholastic phrase minima naturalia, which refers to lower limits of divisibility in nature, as “Piccoli Trattati naturali" — the Italian title of Aristode's Parva Naturalia or “Minor Natural Works.» — da el caso: un término técnico sobre los límites de la divisibilidad leído como el título de una obra de Aristóteles.

«The mistranslation obscures an important occulta concatenatio between Pico's thesis and one in opposition earlier in the text from St. Thomas.» — muestra el costo de ese error: se pierde el enlace de la tesis con la tomista que la contradice.

«In the opening preface to the theses, Pico's gentes and heresiarchae, referring to the "nations" and "sect leaders" whose theses are collected in the first part of his text, are transformed by Biondi into pagani filosofi (pagan philosophers) and maestri stessi dell'eresia (teachers of heresy or heads of heresies)—despite the fact that the first of the gentes we meet are not pagans but Latin scholastics, and the first heresiarchae are not heretics but Albert the Great, Thomas Aquinas, Duns Scotus, and other orthodox Christian theologians.» — corrige la traducción de los dos términos que ordenan el texto, y lo hace con el contenido mismo de la primera sección.

«When the punctuation in Kieszkowski's edition or the Basel version is corrupt (as in theses 24.18 and 24.55 from Proclus), Biondi badly misreads Pico’s sense, showing that he did not check ambiguous readings against Pico’s sources or use the clues to the meaning of the theses found in closely related conclusions.» — nombra los dos controles que faltaron: cotejar con las fuentes y leer las tesis en serie.

«Because of the occulta concatenatio that links theses in the text, however, even minor errors in one thesis can throw off the interpretation of large parts of Pico’s texid*— reinforcing the old view that the nine hundred theses are a hodgepodge of disconnected doctrines and that Pico had nothing systematic 1n mind in his meticu-Jously planned Vatican debate.» — explica cómo un error puntual se propaga por la concatenación y termina confirmando la imagen del texto como amasijo.

«The fact that by gentes Pico had "nations" and not pagan philosophers in mind is suggested at the start of his preface, where he announces his plan to debate his own opinions and those of the "wise Chaldeans, Arabs, Hebrews, Greeks, Egyptans, and Latins”—the latter clearly referring to Latin scholastics, not to Latin pagans, whom are rarely alluded to in Pico's text.» — apoya la lectura de gentes como naciones en la enumeración del propio prefacio.

«Besides other problems with Biondi's translation (e.g., his interpretation of the phrase per satyra), this reading conflicts with the existing organization of Pico's text, which groups pagan and Christian philosophers in the same manner (by “nation” or “sect”) and contains no divisions at all that refer to maestri dell'eresia.» — objeta la traducción contrastándola con la organización efectiva del texto, que no distingue paganos de cristianos.

«Thus in theses 25.13-14, which refer to number symbolism in the cosmos, Biondi translates the mathematical terms "numerus planus aequilaterus" (square number) and "numerus piano equilatero" (prime number) literally—using the Italian equivalents of “equilateral plane number” and “linear number"—which makes it impossible to interpret Pico's sense.» — muestra cómo traducir literalmente un término técnico de aritmética antigua deja la tesis ilegible.

«In thesis 3>66, for example, Kieszkowski’s misrepresentation of a single word (replacing intrinsicam for extrinsecam) prevents interpretation of a complex series of “paradoxical dogmatizing conclusions” that are critical to reconstucting Pico’s theory of knowledge.» — mide en una palabra el daño: cambiar intrínseco por extrínseco arruina toda una serie sobre el conocimiento.

«The use of punctuation was not standardized in the late fifteenth century, making the interpretation of even printed texts at times an arduous task.» — recuerda que en el incunable la puntuación no es un dato firme del que partir.

«This problem is especially troublesome in the nine hundred theses, where the shift of a single comma can radically alter Pico's sense?» — agudiza el problema para este texto, donde una coma decide el sentido de la proposición.

«The fact that Pico himself did not have total control over final punctuation of his text is suggested at numerous points in the editio princeps, where the punctuation seems at times to have been I?» — sostiene que ni el autor gobernaba la puntuación de su propio impreso.

«Pico actively exploited this fact in defending himself before the papal commission, changing the punctuation of his theses as it suited the needs of his defense.» — muestra la ambigüedad convertida en recurso de defensa ante los jueces.

«The work does not carry a title, apparently because the theses were meant to be debated and not simply read.» — repite en la introducción a la edición la explicación de la falta de título por el destino del texto.

«36r contains the Emendationes errorum, which evidence suggests were at least in part drawn up by Pico himself; on this, see passim in my commentary to the text.» — adjudica a Pico, al menos en parte, la lista de erratas del incunable.

«Predictably, the worse cases of mispunctuation show up in those sections of the text that contain Pico’s most obscure technical and symbolic language!» — anota que la puntuación falla justo donde el texto es más difícil, y no al azar.

«Given this problem, in scores of cases I have been forced to trace Pico’s exact sources before punctuating or translating his theses; indeed, as the corruptions in Biondi’s edition suggest, it is not possible to produce any reliable edition or translation of Pico’s text without first tracking down hundreds of his direct and indirect sources.» — declara el método de su edición: no se puede puntuar ni traducir sin identificar antes la fuente de cada tesis.

«I have also (sparingly) changed lower-case letters into capital letters, or vice versa, when inconsistencies in the 1486 text seriously detract from Pico’s sense.» — declara y acota sus intervenciones sobre las mayúsculas del incunable.

«Every alteration made in the punctuation of the editio princeps is signaled in my text by the use of special symbols (see the transformation rules on page 209) or by notes in my apparatus, allowing readers to check my punctuation against the original.» — hace verificable su propia edición marcando cada cambio de puntuación.

«With few exceptions, I have left orthography in my edition as it stands in the onginal, acting on the assumption that useful evidence may lie buried there.» — conserva la ortografía del incunable por si guarda evidencia, en vez de normalizarla.

«Supporting this view, study of otherwise trivial shifts in the text’s orthography provides good evidence of major alterations made in Pico’s text while it was already in press.» — justifica esa decisión con lo que la ortografía reveló: cambios mayores hechos con la obra en prensa.

«Outside of using those sources as a guide to punctuating Pico’s text, it would be an error for any modern editor to follow the same course, since we know that Pico frequently distorted his sources for polemical and reconciliative purposes (see, e.g., thesis 27.9 and note).» — pone un límite al uso de las fuentes: sirven para puntuar, no para corregir a Pico, que las distorsionaba a propósito.

«These transformations, in fact, constitute some of the most interesting sides of Pico’s work.» — declara que la distorsión de las fuentes es materia de estudio y no defecto a enmendar.

«Some of the text's variant spellings and transliterated forms also throw light on Pico’s esoteric thought; on this, see, e.g., thesis 11>57 and note.» — sostiene que hasta las grafías variantes dicen algo del contenido esotérico.

«It is not always easy to distinguish intended quotations in the editio princeps, although the 1486 edition occasionally indicates a presumed direct quotation by capitalizing its initial letter.» — advierte que el incunable apenas marca las citas, y con qué recurso lo hace.

«Study of Pico’s sources, however, suggests that even these passages were more often than not loose paraphrases rather than exact quotations; the implication is that Pico frequently quoted from memory, a common practice until well into the modem era.» — concluye del cotejo con las fuentes que Pico citaba de memoria y parafraseaba.

«This evidence also puts to rest the old claim that Pico had an eidetic memory.» — cierra con esa misma evidencia la leyenda de la memoria eidética.

«The nine hundred theses are a translator’s nightmare—helping explain why five hundred years passed before any complete translation made it to print.» — explica por la dificultad del texto que su traducción completa haya tardado cinco siglos.

«Pico’s scholastic language, unlike his classical Latin, was not meant to be eloquent but precise;» — distingue los dos latines de Pico y el propósito de cada uno.

«Any translation that adheres narrowly to Pico’s literal sense sounds absurdly alien in English; any translation that deviates even normal distances from the literal threatens to obscure the occulta concatenatio linking different parts of Pico’s text.» — enuncia el dilema de la traducción, donde la fidelidad literal y la legibilidad se estorban.

«My highest priority at all times has been to make the intellectual content of the theses as transparent as possible.» — declara el criterio con que resolvió ese dilema.

«It is Important to recognize that not all or even most of the nine hundred theses can be traced unambiguously to single sources.» — acota el alcance de su propio trabajo de adjudicación de fuentes.

«Given sufficient space, it would be possible to say a great deal more about the origins of a number of theses in the historical part of Pico’s text.» — declara que el comentario está podado por razones de espacio y no por falta de material.

«In my translation I have often had to settle for an uneasy balance between the unusual demands for consistency imposed by the text and the goal of putting Pico’s scholastic prose into something remotely resembling modern English.» — reconoce el compromiso incómodo entre consistencia terminológica y prosa legible.

«Evidence also exists that Pico drew some of his theses from epitomes, anthologies or florilegia, or even wholly from oral sources.» — advierte que no toda tesis viene de una obra leída: hay epítomes, florilegios y hasta fuentes orales.

«This was the case in many of the theses that Pico drew from his Neo-Platonic sources, where he often compressed ideas spread out over dozens of pages in Proclus’s Platonic Theology and similar texts into the exaggerated correlative forms characteristic of his own thought.» — describe la operación que vuelve difícil rastrear la fuente: decenas de páginas de Proclo comprimidas en una fórmula correlativa propia.

«Note the interplay between the two “perfect numbers” 28 and 10, which played a central role not only in Pico’s emanational theories but in his syncretic model of history and in the eschatological structure of the nine hundred theses.» — hace ver el mismo par de números perfectos operando a la vez en la emanación, en la historia y en la arquitectura del texto.

«LeFévre sums up the fractal principles underlying Pico’s system with words traditionally though imprecisely credited to Anaxagoras: “All things exist in all things, and all individuals in all individuals.”» — atribuye a Le Fèvre la formulación del principio y marca como imprecisa la adjudicación tradicional a Anaxágoras.

«The numerological scheme here should be compared with theses 25.12 and 5>1 (see also the notes to those theses) —which too deal with the geometrical progressions found in the cosmological descent of the one to the many.» — muestra en acto el método del comentario: leer cada tesis contra las que la concatenación le asocia.

«The beginning of Codex Vindobonensis Palatinus 5516, the best of several surviving manuscripts of the nine hundred theses copied» — identifica el mejor de los manuscritos conservados de las tesis.

«Kieszkowski's claims concerning the corrupt Erlangen manuscript were accepted by Albano Biondi, who based his 1995 Latin and Italian versions of Pico's text on Kieszkowski's edition.» — traza en el pie de una lámina la dependencia de la edición de 1995 respecto de la anterior.

«The handwritten insertion in the text is a correction by an early reader following the Emendationes errorum at the end of the edition.» — identifica una corrección manuscrita del incunable como aplicación de su propia lista de erratas.

«The blank spaces in the middle of the page are for non-Latin terms (in this case Greek) to be filled in later by hand.» — explica los blancos del impreso: el taller no podía componer griego y se dejaba para la mano.

«The space was apparently left to be filled in later with an Aramaic term, suggesting that Pico may indeed have used, as he claimed, a “Chaldean” text in drawing up his theses on the so-called Chaldean Oracles.» — extrae de un blanco tipográfico un indicio a favor de que hubo un texto arameo a la vista, y lo deja en conjetura.

«In my commentary, I argue that forgeries by Pico’s tutor Flavius Mithridates were probably involved here (see note» — matiza ese indicio con su propia adjudicación: el texto arameo existía, pero probablemente falsificado por el tutor.

«The historical structure of this part of the text, as shown in» — remite a la tabla donde la estructura histórica de la primera parte queda desplegada.

«Pico announces his rediscovery of the secret wisdom revealed orally to Moses on the mountain.» — señala el punto del texto donde Pico proclama recuperada la tradición oral mosaica.

«No sect leaders are identified among the most ancient “nations,” which are largely in agreement.» — observa que la sección histórica deja sin heresiarcas a las naciones más antiguas, porque allí ya no hay disputa.

«This section precedes Ficino’s magical writings by sev9> 26 eral years and is sharply distinguished from them.» — repite en el aparato de la edición la doble tesis sobre la magia: es anterior a la de Ficino y distinta de ella.

«In order to establish his views on any one issue, topically linked theses in the historical part of his text need to be collated with the theses given "according to his own opinion."» — da la instrucción de lectura del volumen: ninguna tesis histórica dice qué sostiene Pico hasta cotejarla con las de opinión propia.

«Pico’s “nations” are not listed in his preface in reverse historical order, as they appear in the text itself.» — registra un desajuste entre el prefacio y el cuerpo del texto en el orden de las naciones.

«Other discrepancies show up in the preface to Pico’s theses presented “‘according to his own opinion,” suggesting that both prefaces were written before a final revision of the text.» — infiere de esas discrepancias que los prefacios quedaron desfasados por una revisión posterior del texto.

«Albert the Great, unlike St. Thomas Aquinas, is generally treated sympathetically in all Pico's works.» — separa el trato que Pico da a los dos grandes latinos, favorable a Alberto y hostil a Tomás.

«Pico's title lists the Latin heresiarchae here in chronological order, they are presented differently in the text, apparently to heighten contrasts between “warning schools."» — nota que el orden del cuerpo altera el del título para poner las escuelas en contraste.

«In line with Pico's views of history, doctrinal conflicts are sharper and more numerous in the Latins than in the more ancient gentes we encounter as we move backwards in time through Pico's text.» — hace del reparto de conflictos en el texto una consecuencia del modelo histórico que lo ordena.

«More precise sources are difficult to pinpoint due to Pico's habit of turning Albert's views on their head.» — declara el límite de la adjudicación de fuentes cuando Pico invierte lo que toma.

«Pico believed that from the limited standpoint of human knowledge it was legitimate to view species and genera as having independent existences, but viewed from a higher perspective, these were mere “beings of reason.”» — reconstruye la posición de Pico sobre géneros y especies como doble según el punto de vista, y no como nominalismo simple.

«In medieval debates, this thesis was usually tied to broader issues involving sensual abstraction.» — sitúa una tesis aislada en la controversia medieval de la que proviene.

«For Albert, the greater “intentionality” (or "spintuality") of light as compared to sound was shown by the fact that sounds are affected by winds but colors are not; all sensual images become “spiritual” once they pass through the senses, however.» — expone el argumento de Alberto sobre luz y sonido y añade el matiz que lo acota.

«Pico here often opposes Thomas's views to those attributed in other sections to Albert, Scotus, Giles of Rome, and Averroes.» — muestra el procedimiento del texto: enfrentar a Tomás con las secciones de los demás autores.

«Pico's theological conclusions (theses 4>1-29) and numerous other conclusions presented “according to his own opinion" are highly anti-Thomistic—clearly one of the reasons behind Pico's troubles with the Domunican order and the church.» — adjudica al antitomismo de las conclusiones teológicas buena parte del conflicto con los dominicos.

«Pico’s view of distinctions in the divine nature was extremely problematic.» — señala el punto doctrinal más expuesto de las tesis, el de las distinciones en Dios.

«he tned to distance himself from such distinctions, arguing (in line with his philosophia nova) that God’s nature was indivisible.» — explica la salida de Pico por su propio principio: en la naturaleza divina no hay distinciones.

«he was constrained on dogmatic grounds to accept the basic notion of the Trinity» — señala el límite dogmático que ese principio no podía traspasar.

«Pico’s own views on grace, free will, and salvation are expressed in 4>21-23 and are discussed above, pp. 39, 108-110. In general, Pico posited hierarchical distinctions between different levels of necessity and freedom; see the theses listed in 24.2 note.» — resume la posición de Pico sobre gracia y libertad como escalonamiento de niveles, y remite a las tesis donde la desarrolla.

«Thomas, Scotus, and other Latins adhering to what Pico referred to as the “common way of theologians” held that everything was in God's power that did not involve a logical contradiction.» — fija la regla que los latinos llamaban vía común de los teólogos: el poder divino alcanza todo lo que no encierre contradicción.

«Pico himself dispensed with the principle of noncontradiction in respect to the divine nature» — anota que Pico se sale de esa regla al suspender el principio de no contradicción para la naturaleza divina.

«Pico planned to resolve conflicts here by positing hierarchical distinctions between different “modes” of the virtues.» — muestra el procedimiento aplicado a las virtudes: los conflictos se resuelven distribuyéndolos en modos jerarquizados.

«First of a long series of theses on the relative powers of intellect and will in achieving mystical happiness» — identifica el comienzo de la serie sobre intelecto y voluntad en la felicidad mística.

«Pico represents St. Thomas as an intellectualist again in 2.19, 2.28, 2>74, and 5>46.» — registra que Pico presenta a Tomás como intelectualista en varias tesis dispersas.

«This view was attacked by Scotus, who argued that judgment belonged to Christ more as God than as man.» — sitúa la tesis tomista sobre el juicio final dentro de su polémica con Escoto.

«The thesis pertains to emanationism, which Thomas viewed as heretical.» — señala que la tesis toca el emanacionismo, que para Tomás era herejía.

«On the syncretic origins of aevum or "aeviturnity"—an intermediate state between time and eternity» — recuerda que el aevum es una construcción sincrética y no una noción recibida.

«Since Thomas insisted on the total immatenality of angels, and since matter in his system provided the principle of individuation (thesis 2.26), each angel was necessarily a unique species unto itself.» — reconstruye por qué en el sistema tomista cada ángel es una especie: sin materia no hay principio de individuación.

«Pico rejected these views on the grounds of cosmic correspondence, arguing that matter existed in the angelic nature no less than in lower natures.» — muestra a Pico rechazando esa doctrina por la correspondencia cósmica: si hay materia abajo, ha de haberla arriba.

«Pico’s Basel editors emended plunificatio in 2.21 to the more classically sounding purificatio, making it impossible to reconstruct Pico's views in this series.» — da un caso donde la enmienda de un editor clasicista, hacia una palabra de mejor sonido, vuelve ilegible la serie.

«A propria passio = a property that is not part of the essence or formal definition of a subject or substance; it nevertheless belongs “inseparably” to that subject since it is in that subject alone that the property exists» — define el accidente propio con el ejemplo escolar de la nariz chata.

«On metaphysical grounds, Pico rejected all distinctions between "separable" and “inseparable” accidents» — adjudica el rechazo de los accidentes separables a razones metafísicas y no a la disputa eucarística.

«Thomas denied that limits to divisibility, or “natural minima,” existed in qualities. He therefore claimed that alteration took place in a single movement without passing through a successive series of states.» — expone la posición tomista sobre los mínimos naturales contra la que Pico escribe.

«Thomas, who believed that matter could not exist without form (cf. 2.25, 2.43), and who posited only one substantial form in each created nature, claimed that the generation of any new substance necessitated the destruction of any previous form found in its matter.» — reconstruye el argumento tomista sobre la generación sustancial y la destrucción de la forma previa.

«held the opposing view that matter had a distinct form of its own preceding the substantial form.» — da la posición contraria de Pico, con una forma propia de la materia anterior a la sustancial.

«Whether Thomas in fact posited a “real distinction” between essence and existence was hotly debated since the late thirteenth century.» — recuerda que la propia posición de Tomás sobre esencia y existencia estaba en disputa desde el siglo XIII.

«The essence/existence controversy was especially difficult due to the many inconsistencies that existed in the use of these terms.» — adjudica la dificultad de esa controversia a la inconsistencia terminológica de las fuentes.

«Thomas argued that to predicate contradictions in a single object would eradicate all distinctions between separate beings. In Pico’s view, however, contradictions coincided on higher levels of reality, partially invalidating the law of contradiction.» — enfrenta las dos posiciones sobre el principio de contradicción sin armonizarlas: Tomás lo defiende, Pico lo suspende en los niveles altos.

«The question involved whether the matter of created beings was Or was not part of their formal essence or definition—an issue on which Pico sided with Thomas, Averroes, and Alexander of» — muestra a Pico alineado con Tomás en un punto, contra la imagen de un antitomismo indiscriminado.

«The thesis was apparently meant as a challenge to the Thomist school, since the formula homo est risibilis was Thomas’s standard example of the “second mode of speaking.”» — lee en una tesis de apariencia técnica un desafío dirigido a la escuela tomista por su propio ejemplo de manual.

«Except in special cases like the Eucharist, Thomas argued that accidents drew their existence and unity from the substances in which they inhered. Hence to speak of two identical accidents in a single unifying subject implied a contradiction.» — expone la doctrina tomista de los accidentes y señala la excepción eucarística que la sostiene.

«First of a series of theses on the Aristotelian principle that “everything that moves is moved by» — identifica el comienzo de la serie sobre el principio de que todo lo movido es movido por otro.

«In his conclusiones conciliantes (theses 1>1ff.) Pico suggests that the conflicts between Thomas and Scotus were exaggerated by their disciples, so Francis’s placement between the two in Pico’s theses has apparent symbolic significance.» — lee la colocación de Francisco de Meyronnes entre Tomás y Escoto como signo: los conflictos los exageraron los discípulos.

«Pico apparently planned to correlate God's "essence" with the kabbalistic Ein-Sof and similar concepts in pagan traditions.» — adjudica a Pico el propósito de hacer corresponder la esencia divina de los escolásticos con el Ein-Sof cabalístico.

«In a more conventional sense, however, Pico denied that God had an “essence”; see note to 2>47-48.» — consigna la tensión sin resolverla: en otro sentido Pico niega que Dios tenga esencia.

«Pico’s Basel editors added a gratuitous non to this thesis (“The will is not able not to enjoy”), turning Francis into an intellectualist.» — da otro caso de enmienda editorial que invierte la doctrina, aquí volviendo intelectualista a Francisco.

«Other common scholastic uses of “quiddity” referred to material essences (e.g., 2.42) or to the ideas reflected ın “intelligences” (e.g., 7.36). Pico intended to distinguish these senses hierarchically in his debate.» — muestra el método frente a un término equívoco: los sentidos de quididad no se eligen, se jerarquizan.

«Theses here are opposed to others from Francis, Henry of Ghent, and especially St. Thomas. Pico meant to resolve some of these conflicts in his “paradoxical reconciliative conclusions."» — declara la función de las conclusiones paradójicas reconciliativas dentro de la arquitectura del texto.

«ists attacked Scotus on this issue, arguing that distinctions between Persons could only be characterized as “relations.” Pico planned to reconcile the two schools on this issue in 1>2.» — localiza la disputa sobre las propiedades absolutas en Dios y la tesis con que Pico proyectaba conciliarla.

«Since Chnst united two natures or distinct essences in one Person, did he possess two esse or existences as well? Pico planned to reconcile Scotists and Thomists on this problem in 1>5.» — plantea la cuestión de los dos esse de Cristo como uno de los conflictos que el debate iba a cerrar.

«“haecceity” = the “thisness” of something, a “formal distinction” that differentiates each created individual from all others.» — define la ecceidad escotista como distinción formal que individúa a cada criatura.

«Reflects the most important Thomist-Scotist conflict that Pico planned to resolve at Rome. Scotus interpreted Thomas as holding that metaphysics dealt exclusively with “individual quiddities"—a view that for Scotus undercut all metaphysical knowledge, which for him concerned being qua being. Scotus consequently argued that the being of God and creatures was “univocal” (identical) and not merely “analogical,” as Thomas claimed.» — reconstruye el conflicto mayor entre tomistas y escotistas, el del ser unívoco o análogo entre Dios y la criatura.

«Pico’s rejection of Scotus’s reading of Thomas is suggested in 2.42 and 2>5, and in 1>14 he planned to reveal the hidden agreement of the two theologians.» — muestra la doble operación de Pico: rechaza la lectura escotista de Tomás y anuncia la concordia oculta de ambos.

«The thesis illustrates what from a modern perspective can be considered the word magic in the Euchanst. For Pico's views on the magical power of language» — nombra como magia verbal, desde la mirada moderna, la eficacia que la tesis atribuye a las palabras de la consagración.

«The thesis begins an elaborate series on the nature of "relations" in scholastic philosophy.» — identifica la serie sobre las relaciones, que atraviesa latinos y árabes.

«CONCLUSIONS ACCORDING TO HENRY OF GHENT. Pico’s library contained both major works of Henry (d. 1293)—his Summa theologica and Quodlibeta—and apparently a compi» — apoya en el inventario de la biblioteca de Pico la disponibilidad de las obras de Enrique de Gante.

«A habitus connaturalis = a habit or infused property created simultaneously with a nature but not included in its formal definition or» — define el hábito connatural, término técnico del que depende una serie de tesis.

«Pico boasted that he would resolve this issue in his Roman “council” and in his planned commentary on Plato’s Symposium.» — registra que Pico prometía resolver esa cuestión tanto en el concilio romano como en un comentario al Banquete que no llegó a escribir.

«Giles or Aegidius of Rome (ca. 1247-1316), official theologian of the Augustinians. Pico here draws directly or indirectly from Giles's commentary on the Sentences and from several of his Aristotelian commentaries, most of which were found in Pico's library.» — identifica a Gil de Roma y las obras suyas que Pico tenía a mano.

«A number of these conclusions oppose St. Thomas, whose lectures Giles reportedly attended at the University of Paris from 1269 until 1272.» — explica la presencia de Gil en el texto por su oposición a Tomás, cuyas lecciones había oído.

«How much Arabic Pico knew when the nine hundred theses were published is uncertain, although he was then studying that language, along with Hebrew and Aramaic, with Flavius Mithndates.» — deja abierta la competencia de Pico en árabe al publicarse las tesis, y nombra a su tutor de entonces.

«primary expert on Arabic thought was Elia del Medigo, who supplied Pico with much of the material for this sec» — adjudica a Elia del Medigo el suministro del material de la sección árabe.

«In line with his views of history, Pico found less harmony in Arabic thought than in more ancient gentes, as we find in the many conflicting theses in this section.» — hace derivar del modelo histórico la abundancia de conflictos en la sección árabe.

«The order of “sect leaders” given here was apparently intended to underscore internal conflicts in the Arabic “nation.”» — lee el orden de los autores árabes como recurso para acentuar sus discrepancias.

«Although Pico on the whole admired Averroes, earlier historians like Nardi who labeled Pico an Averroist seriously overstated the case.» — objeta a Nardi y a los suyos haber hecho de Pico un averroísta.

«Most of the theses in this section involve well-known “doubtful points” ansing out of interpretation of Averroes’s Aristotelian commentaries, most of which Pico knew in medieval» — sitúa las tesis averroístas en los puntos dudosos que la tradición escolar discutía.

«John of Jandun" (1286—ca. 1328) = the most important commentator on the Commentator.» — identifica a Juan de Jandún, blanco de Pico, como el comentarista mayor del Comentador.

«Long after Pico's death, Nifo attributed to Pico a resolution of the unity of intellect problem linked to the works of Albert the Great» — consigna una atribución póstuma de Nifo y anota enseguida su distancia con el texto de las tesis.

«The issue throughout the series is whether “God himself,” “separate intelligences,” or "celestial souls” were responsible for the motion of the heavens. In 2>19 and 2>36 from his own theses Pico not surprisingly makes room for all three views.» — muestra el procedimiento en un caso: ante tres explicaciones del movimiento celeste, Pico las acomoda las tres.

«The point of 7.9, drawn from Averroes De substantia orbis 1-2 (or from Elia del Medigo’s commentary on that work, which was written for Pico), is not to deny a material or formal element to the caelum but to claim that their fusion is too close for us to speak of them as separate entities.» — precisa la doctrina del cielo como cuerpo simple: no se niegan materia y forma, se niega que puedan separarse.

«It is again noteworthy that Pico included no theses from Latin scholastics on this issue.» — repara en un silencio del texto: ningún latino aparece en la serie sobre la existencia de Dios.

«Nycticorax is a Latin transliteration of the» — advierte que el ave del ejemplo aristotélico llega al texto por transliteración, y que la elección de traducirla es suya.

«I have settled for metaphorical reasons (since the series deals with wisdom) on "owl."» — declara y justifica una decisión de traducción tomada por razones de sentido y no de literalidad.

«It is noteworthy that Pico again included no theses on this topic from the Latins, whose views on logic he sharply criticized. Serious study of “higher” matters—numerology, theories of celestial motion, proofs of God, etc.—nghtly began only with the Arabs, as Pico suggested in the Oration.» — explica esas ausencias por doctrina: para Pico el estudio serio de lo alto empieza recién con los árabes.

«In Columbus's notes on Pierre d'Ailly's Ymago mundi, which Columbus was reading about the time of Pico's proposed debate, we find that the discovenes of the Portuguese below the equator were just then beginning to be recognized even in maritime circles—a suggestion of how slowly information could travel in the late fifteenth century.» — fecha por una nota de Colón lo lento que viajaba la información, y de paso data la tesis sobre la zona ecuatorial.

«The first of a large number of theses involving the theory of numbers and proportions. Pico again included no theses on these topics from the Latins, whom he felt paid too little attention to the proportional structure of reality.» — adjudica la ausencia de latinos en las tesis numéricas a un reproche de Pico: no atendieron la estructura proporcional de lo real.

«Pico would have denied any strong form of this thesis, following an emanationist distinction that he makes later in the text between “formal numbers” (belonging to the intellectual realm) and “material numbers.”» — acota la adhesión de Pico a la doctrina de los números distinguiendo los formales de los materiales.

«Pico himself posited different grades or “modes” of matter on different levels of reality.» — resume la posición propia de Pico sobre la materia: no una sola, sino grados según el nivel.

«The Oration and Apology speak of “something divine and Platonic” in Avicenna, and Pico’s theses “according to his own opinion” endorse a number of Avicenna’s most characteristic doctrines. In De ente et uno 8, however, Pico complains that Avicenna “in many places interpolated the philosophy of Aristotle, leading to» — consigna a la vez el elogio y la reserva de Pico sobre Avicena, que interpola a Aristóteles.

«Pico claims to have argument for this view superior to Avicenna's. In the same passage, he ridicules Ficino for claiming that Plato believed that the soul was created immediately by God rather than through emanational processes.» — muestra a Pico corrigiendo a Avicena en emanación y ridiculizando de paso la lectura de Ficino.

«Much discussion of the “converübility" of propositions (see note 3>48) passed between Pico and Elia del Medigo in 1486, as we see in Elia’s letter to Pico written on the eve of Pico’s debate.» — documenta con la correspondencia que la técnica lógica de las tesis se discutía con Elia del Medigo en vísperas del debate.

«In the proem to Heptaplus 7 Pico tells us that al-Farabi dealt exclusively with “natural” and not “supernatural” happiness.» — apoya en el Heptaplus la lectura de al-Farabi que las tesis suponen.

«Anagnine, Di Napoli, and Kieszkowski identify Isaac with Isaac Israeli the Elder (d. ca. 955 CE), whose De definitionibus and De elementibus were known to Pico in medieval Latin translations. Isaac, however, was normally referred to as an Egyptian, leaving the tag “of Narbonne" here something of a puzzle.» — discute la identificación de Isaac y deja el gentilicio de Narbona como enigma no resuelto.

«“Abumaron” (or “Abhomeron”) = Abu Marwan Ibn Zuhr = Avenzoar (d. 1161/62), a well-known physician-philosopher of the twelfth century. Kieszkowski’s edition falsely identifies him with the ninth-century astrologer Abu Ma 'shar (Albumasar), misciting Munk and Steinschneider.» — corrige una identificación errónea de Kieszkowski, que confundió al médico con un astrólogo.

«In a famous essay, Cassirer (1942, repr. 1968: 26) represented 11.2 as Pico's own opinion, not bothering to mention the conflicting thesis found just five theses earlier (in 10.1). Cassirer's essay illustrates the problems that arose in older studies that cited Pico's theses out of context: Taking both 10.1 and 11.2 as equally representative of Pico's views, we would have apparent evidence of his atheism!» — usa un descuido de Cassirer para mostrar adónde lleva citar las tesis fuera de su serie.

«The fact that Pico could casually group the most famous Jewish philosopher in history with the Arab "nation" is of historical interest.» — repara en que Maimónides aparezca sin más entre los árabes, y lo señala como dato de época.

«In 11263 we find Pico claiming that Cabalistic mysteries lay hidden underneath Maimonides' philosophical prose.» — registra que Pico lee misterios cabalísticos bajo la prosa filosófica de Maimónides.

«Di Napoli peculiarly identified Mohammed with the Persian mathematician al-Khwarismi, Kieszkowski with Meir ben Todros Abulafia (a different figure from Abraham Abulafia, from whom Pico drew his revolutio alphabetariae). Pico’s actual source is unknown.» — descarta dos identificaciones ajenas de Mohammed de Toledo y declara desconocida la fuente.

«Writing to Ficino a few months before publication of the nine hundred theses, Pico spoke of letters in Arabic of this writer falling into his hands» — data por una carta a Ficino la llegada de unas cartas árabes que estarían detrás de esa sección.

«In line with his model of history, Pico viewed Aristotle’s Greek commentators far more sympathetically than either the Latin or Arabic scholastics.» — hace corresponder el trato favorable a los comentaristas griegos con el modelo histórico que ordena el texto.

«From this midpoint in the historical part of Pico’s text, suggestions emerge more frequently of the cosmic proportions developed in his so-called philosophia nova.» — señala que a partir de la mitad del recorrido histórico empiezan a asomar las proporciones cósmicas de la nueva filosofía.

«Suggestively, Pico gives a highly Platonized view of the epistemology of Arıstotle’s most important disciple.» — observa que hasta al discípulo directo de Aristóteles se le atribuye una epistemología platonizada.

«Sixth-century commentator on Aristotle. Pico was apparently drawing from the original Greek text of Simplicius's commentary on De anima, a copy of which was in his library» — adjudica las tesis de Simplicio a la lectura del griego original que Pico tenía en su biblioteca.

«Pico reverses the usual reading of Alexander's views as reported by Averroes.» — señala que Pico invierte la lectura corriente de Alejandro de Afrodisias, transmitida por Averroes.

«Books 6ff. of Alexander's commentary on the Metaphysics, from which Pico apparently drew this and the next three theses, are usually viewed as spurious.» — anota que las tesis atribuidas a Alejandro salen de una parte del comentario tenida por espuria.

«commentators, it is difficult to know whether to label Themistius as an Aristotelian or Platonist. Pico heatedly rejected the latter view in his polemics with Antonio da Faenza» — deja sin resolver si Temistio es aristotélico o platónico, y recuerda que Pico rechazó con calor la segunda etiqueta.

«Adumbrates the cosmic correspondences typical of Pico’s “new philosophy.” Metatron = orıginally a demonic power (cf. Scholem 1974: 377-81), syncretically transformed by Pico into a philosophical principle.» — adjudica a Pico la transformación de Metatrón, que en su origen era una potencia demónica, en principio filosófico, y sigue en esto a Scholem.

«Pico's emphasis in his tide on the diverse geographical origins of the Platonists was an apparent attempt to skirt this problem by representing Platonism as a universal school of sorts independent of any one "nation."» — lee el título de la sección platónica como maniobra: presentar el platonismo como escuela universal y no como una nación más.

«By this point in the text, the lines between Pico's views and those of his sources are thinning, but we» — advierte al lector que desde este punto se vuelve difícil separar la voz de Pico de la de sus fuentes.

«Pico drew up these theses six years before Ficino published his translation of the Enneads, which Pico had urged the older philosopher to undertake in 1484.» — vuelve a datar la relación con Ficino: las tesis plotinianas preceden en seis años a la traducción que Pico le había pedido.

«Sears Jayne (1984: 180) claims that Pico read Ficino's translation in 1486— which parts and under what circumstances Jayne does not say.» — objeta a Jayne una afirmación sin precisar, y añade la evidencia epistolar que la contradice.

«The fact that the theses here are often Neo-Platonic commonplaces makes it difficult at times to pinpoint their exact sources.» — declara el límite de la adjudicación cuando la doctrina es lugar común de la escuela.

«Latin scholastic terminology syncretically imposed on Plotinus by Pico.» — señala el anacronismo deliberado: vocabulario escolástico latino puesto sobre Plotino.

«Reflects the quietism that Pico himself found at the height of the mystical ascent» — enlaza una tesis plotiniana con el quietismo que Pico sitúa en la cima de la ascensión.

«Pico's source here was apparently a loose Hebrew adaption of Adelard of Bath's twelfth-century Quaestiones naturales» — adjudica las tesis de Adeland a una adaptación hebrea libre de las Cuestiones naturales de Adelardo de Bath.

«The fact that Pico believed that Adeland was Plotinus's fellow student (third century CE) is confirmed by the placement of these theses between the sets ascribed to Plotinus and his disciple Porphyry.» — apoya en la ubicación de las tesis dentro del texto que Pico tenía a Adeland por condiscípulo de Plotino.

«Pico would probably have known Thabit’s approximate dates, and we can only assume that in his confusion over Adelard he confused Thabit as well with some earlier figure.» — conjetura, marcándolo, que el error sobre Adelardo arrastró un segundo error sobre Thabit.

«Kristeller (1937: 1:cxocxi f£) argued that all of Ficino’s translations of Iamblichus, Porphyry, and Proclus dated from 1488, two years after publication of Pico’s theses. Marcel (1956: 4876) claimed that Ficino’s translation of Porphyry dated from 1486, but even if that date were correct, no evidence suggests that Pico had read it.» — enfrenta las dataciones de Kristeller y Marcel sobre las traducciones de Ficino y se queda con la falta de evidencia de que Pico las leyera.

«Translations of none of the Greek Neo-Platonists covered in this section were pubhshed by Marsilio Ficino before the nine hundred theses went to press, supporting Pico's boast in the Oration and Apology that he was the first philosopher in centuries to publicly debate their views.» — apoya en la cronología de las traducciones la primacía que Pico se atribuye sobre la tradición platónica: ninguna estaba publicada al imprimirse las tesis.

«thy that the theses that Pico ascribes to Plotinus are much more perfunctory than those that he gives us from Proclus, underlining the deeper systematic affinities between Pico's thought and the latter writer's—rather the reverse of the situation with Ficino.» — mide por el cuidado desigual de las tesis la mayor afinidad de Pico con Proclo que con Plotino, al revés de lo que pasaba con Ficino.

«The proportional form of the thesis too goes far beyond Porphyry, at least as Proclus represents him.» — advierte que la forma proporcional de la tesis es de Pico y no de la fuente que dice seguir.

«De mysteriis purports to answer a polemical letter from Porphyry to Iamblichus’s disciple Anebo, providing evidence of “civil warfare” in the Platonic camp that predictably caught Pico’s eye.» — explica el interés de Pico por el De mysteriis: documenta una guerra civil dentro del propio campo platónico.

«The striking proportions in these theses, like those in the preceding section from Porphyry, again go far beyond what we find in Pico’s sources.» — repite la advertencia: las simetrías llamativas de estas tesis no están en las fuentes.

«Saffrey and Westerink (1978: 3:ix ff.) claim that the henads originated with Proclus's master Syrianus, but cf. Dodds (1963: 346) and Dillon (1973: 412), who trace them back much earlier. Dillon, like Pico, finds evidence of the henads in Iamblichus.» — recoge la disputa sobre el origen de las henadas y anota que Dillon coincide con Pico al hallarlas ya en Jámblico.

«“Binah” = “intelligence,” the third of the kabbalistic sefirot or “numerations,” which are of late-medieval origins and are obviously not mentioned by Iamblichus.» — marca el anacronismo con claridad: la sefirá que la tesis atribuye a Jámblico es de origen medieval.

«Kieszkowski, followed by Biondi, fills in the blanks from Proclus’s Elements of Theology with the impossible triad Sv, ζωή, νοῦς (“being,” “life,” “intellect”)— valid concepts in later Greek Neo-Platonism, as we see in 20.6 and 24.46, but clearly not the three worlds intended here.» — rechaza la restitución con que dos editores llenaron un blanco del incunable, por no corresponder a lo que la tesis pide.

«terms that Pico had in mind, however, are unknown.» — se abstiene de restituir esos términos y declara desconocido lo que Pico escribió allí.

«All but a handful of these theses were drawn from Proclus's massive syncretic masterpiece, his Platonic Theology.» — adjudica la sección procliana casi entera a la Teología platónica, que llama obra maestra del sincretismo.

«Pico was apparently working from the Greek text; in any case, his technical translations differ markedly from those found in the one known fifteenth-century translation of the text, made by Petrus Balbus for Nicholas of Cusa» — sostiene que Pico leía a Proclo en griego porque su terminología difiere de la única traducción latina conocida.

«Most of this section concerns the complex orders of deanthropomorphized gods or henads at the center of Proclus's system, which Pico planned to correlate with the kabbalistic sefirot and similar syncretic concepts in other esoteric traditions.» — resume qué hay en la sección procliana y qué buscaba Pico con ella: correlacionar las henadas con las sefirot.

«Proclus’s goal was to demonstrate that every line of Platonic Scriptures was in total harmony with every other» — enuncia el propósito exegético de Proclo, que es el mismo que Pico aplicará a un corpus mucho mayor.

«As in his theses from Porphyry and Iamblichus, Pico went far beyond Proclus in the symmetnes and proportions of his language, compressing dozens of pages of Proclus’s thought into his own rigid correlative forms.» — describe la operación de compresión: decenas de páginas de Proclo reducidas a formas correlativas rígidas.

«Pico nevertheless gives us a surprisingly rich and accurate picture of Proclus’s "gods," whose symbolism often surpasses in obscurity even the symbolism of Pico’s Cabalistic theses.» — concede que, pese a la distorsión, el retrato de los dioses de Proclo es rico y exacto.

«The punctuation in the editio princeps and all later editions of Pico’s text is especially corrupt. I have reconstructed Pico’s sense in the light of nearby theses and the extended text from Proclus from which the thesis was» — declara cómo reconstruyó una tesis cuya puntuación está corrupta en todas las ediciones.

«Pico expresses Proclus’s views in very alien Latin scholastic terms.» — señala el trasvase de vocabulario: Proclo dicho en términos escolásticos latinos que le son ajenos.

«Drawn from Theologia Platonica 6 (p. 344), in this rare case a near quotation.» — marca como excepción el caso en que Pico está casi citando y no reformulando.

«The “barbarians” in Proclus and Pico normally refer to the “Chaldeans.”» — fija a quién nombran los bárbaros en este vocabulario, y evita la lectura despectiva del término.

«Reflecting Pico’s claım that he possessed the Chaldean Oracles in an original Chaldean text.» — enlaza una tesis procliana con la pretensión de Pico de tener los Oráculos caldeos en su lengua original.

«The fact that Pico inserted them here shows how closely he followed Proclus’s system.» — toma la inserción de unos órdenes menores como prueba de cuán de cerca seguía Pico el sistema de Proclo.

«In Pico’s source, "faith" is represented as a quietistic mystical power that imparts a “unial silence" to the soul—a position in harmony with Pico's own mystical views.» — muestra que la fe suprasustancial de las tesis viene de Proclo y coincide con la mística propia de Pico.

«Pico himself would not agree in any absolute sense that the “one” was superior to “being.”» — recuerda que Pico no suscribe en términos absolutos la primacía procliana del uno sobre el ser.

«Predictably finds in Proclus six steps in the mystical ascent.» — anota que la escala mística aparece contada de seis pasos también en Proclo, y marca lo previsible del hallazgo.

«numerology and emanation theory found in these theses suggests that Pico was drawing from late Greek sources—once again, primarily Proclus—and not from more common Latin numerological sources like Nichomachus, Boethius, Isidore of Seville, or Rabanus, etc.» — adjudica la numerología de esta sección a fuentes griegas tardías y no a la tradición numerológica latina.

«On the number 7 as a symbol of the “beatifying power of the intellect,” see also 11>55—illustrating how consistent Pico’s symbolism was throughout the theses.» — sostiene que el simbolismo numérico del texto se mantiene constante de una sección a otra.

«The correlation of virtues with musical harmonies was a premodern commonplace.» — desinfla la novedad de la correspondencia entre virtudes y armonías musicales.

«Copenhaver (1997: 234ff.) speculates that the thesis may also involve the closed mem in Hebrew, the letter equivalent of 40. Pico conceivably may have planned such a correlation, although the only mention of the closed mem in the theses (11>41) is in a non-numerological context.» — recoge la conjetura de Copenhaver sobre la mem cerrada y la acota con el único lugar donde el texto la menciona.

«where we find that the square number 900 (30 x 30) symbolized “the excited soul turning back into itself through the frenzy of the muses"—which explains why Pico included exactly 900 theses in his text.» — cierra el círculo del número: novecientas tesis porque novecientos es cuadrado y símbolo del alma que vuelve sobre sí.

«Pico was drawing here from Ficino's translation of the Corpus Hermeticum, which was first printed in 1471.» — adjudica las tesis herméticas a la traducción de Ficino del Corpus Hermeticum, impresa en 1471.

«Twelve “punishers” in the Hermetic Corpus and the editio princeps, which Pico reduced to ten ın his Emendationes errorum» — documenta que Pico bajó de doce a diez los castigadores herméticos, y dónde consta el cambio.

«All these theses were drawn from late-medieval texts, although Pico believed that they derived from oral traditions traceable back to Moses.» — separa el origen real de las tesis cabalísticas, textos bajomedievales, del origen que Pico les atribuía.

«The late Chaim Wirszubski (1989) argued that Pico took all but ten or so from Flavius Mithridates! Latin translation of Menahem Recanati’s Hebrew Commentary on the Pentateuch (early fourteenth century). Wirszubski claimed that the rest came from up to seven other kabbalistic texts translated for Pico by Mithridates» — expone la tesis de Wirszubski sobre la dependencia de Pico respecto de las traducciones de Mitrídates.

«The sources that Wirszubski prints in his study are useful tools in helping us decode this part of Pico’s text; however, Wirszubski’s claim about Pico's dependence on Mithridates’ translations is seriously flawed.» — concede el valor documental del trabajo de Wirszubski y rechaza su conclusión central.

«included references to Pico's real or rumored troubles with Innocent VIII (see Gaffarel 1651: 5-6), demonstrating that Mithridates! translation was not completed until many months after Pico's theses went to press» — fecha la traducción de Mitrídates por sus propias alusiones al proceso romano, y con eso la vuelve posterior a las tesis.

«The same evidence also shows that Mithridates did not accompany Pico to Rome (wisely, since Flavius was a criminal fugitive from the papal court) and hence could not have been involved in Pico's final preparations for his debate.» — deduce de esa misma evidencia que el traductor no estuvo en Roma ni participó en los preparativos del debate.

«All these findings seriously undermine Wirszubski’s central argument, which would be unlikely on any grounds, that the huge mass of translations that Flavius reportedly made for Pico (according to Wirszubski, some 5,500 folio-sized pages) was written almost entirely in the six months between May and November 1486—exactly in time to provide Pico's exclusive sources for his Cabalistic theses.» — mide lo inverosímil de la tesis contraria por el volumen de traducción que exigiría en seis meses.

«Also undercutting this thesis are the Obvious discrepancies between the translations or transliterations of technical terms in Pico's text and those found in the surviving translations by Mithridates» — añade la evidencia terminológica: los términos técnicos de Pico no coinciden con los de las traducciones conservadas.

«There is no doubt that Pico drew on Recanati’s commentary in some form in the present section, as has been known since Gaffarel’s day.» — da por firme lo que sí está establecido, el uso del comentario de Recanati, sin la forma que Wirszubski le supone.

«But, despite three-and-a-half centuries of discussion, the question is far from settled as to what extent in compiling these theses Pico relied on Mithridates’ translations; on Pico’s first-hand readings of Recanati and other Hebrew manuscripts that he owned, read with the help of Mithridates or Pico’s other Jewish contacts; on extracts made by Mithridates or others, including Elia del Medigo (who is not mentioned in Wirszubski’s book); or on oral instruction, which we know played a big role in Pico’s intellectual life.» — declara abierta la cuestión y enumera las vías por las que la cábala pudo llegarle a Pico, la instrucción oral incluida.

«The intriguing story of Pico, the Kabbalah, and Pico’s early Jewish tutors deserves a full reexamination, drawing more carefully than has been the rule in the past on the rich but treacherous mass of evidence that has accumulated on this topic over the past five centuries.» — deja el asunto como tarea pendiente y advierte del carácter traicionero de la evidencia acumulada.

«in large part lay in the correspondences that Pico found there with closely related symbolism in Proclus and other late ancient and medieval sources (e.g., the correspondences between Proclus’s henads and the kabbalistic sefirot» — explica el interés de Pico por el simbolismo cabalístico por las correspondencias que le halló con Proclo.

«Unfortunately, this comparative side of Pico’s work has largely been ignored in the five hundred years of studies of Pico’s Cabalistic theses, which have generally been analyzed in isolation from the rest of his text.» — reprocha a cinco siglos de estudios haber leído las tesis cabalísticas aisladas del resto del texto.

«The flexibility of kabbalistic symbolism, coupled with Pico’s extreme syncretic tendencies, warn us against identifying Pico’s reading of that symbolism too closely with that found in his sources.» — advierte contra identificar la lectura de Pico con la de sus fuentes, por la plasticidad del simbolismo y la suya propia.

«Conversely, the fact that many kabbalistic symbols show up in a wide range of medieval texts underlines the difficulty of pinpointing Pico’s exact sources even when we find parallels to his use of those symbols in one or more kabbalistic texts.» — anota el problema inverso: el paralelo con un texto cabalístico no basta para fijar la fuente.

«Past studies of Pico and the Kabbalah, including Wirszubski’s, have regularly confused Pico’s intentions with those found in his purported sources, leading to gross misinterpretations of his objectives in his Roman debate: In some ways, there is much less to Pico and the Kabbalah than meets the eye.» — resume su objeción de método y su conclusión: se confundió lo que Pico quería con lo que decían sus fuentes.

«Pico gives nine rather than the usual ten hierarchies of kabbalistic angels, undoubtedly to correlate them with Pseudo-Dionysius's nine orders of Christian angels.» — muestra el ajuste numérico con que Pico hace calzar las jerarquías angélicas hebreas con las dionisianas.

«The point is Pico’s standard one that all divine properties exist in some way on every hierarchical level—a view that allows him later in the theses to associate Christ with no less than four or five different sefirot.» — señala el rendimiento del principio correlativo dentro de la cábala: permite asociar a Cristo con varias sefirot a la vez.

«Adam's "severing of the shoots”—cutting off the lowest sefirah ("kingdom") from the higher ones—was a standard symbol for the origins of sin.» — traduce el símbolo cabalístico del corte de los brotes como figura del origen del pecado.

«But Wirszubski (1989: 25) is correct in suggesting that the “great north” or "great north wind” (magnus aquilo) in this» — le da la razón a Wirszubski en un punto concreto, después de haberle objetado lo general.

«Wirszubski (1989: 26) cites two texts from Mithridates that mention the “green line,” but neither of these throws light on Pico’s sense in these linked conclusions.» — descarta dos paralelos propuestos por no aclarar el sentido de las tesis enlazadas.

«The passages from R ecanati cited by Wirszubski help us interpret Pico’s text, but they cannot be claimed as Pico's direct sources.» — distingue el paralelo útil de la fuente directa, y niega el segundo estatuto a los textos que Wirszubski aduce.

«The principal allusion is to the animated chariot in Ezek. 1:4ff., rendered plural in antiquity by centuries of attempts to harmonize earlier commentaries on that text with each other and with other Hebrew and pagan chariot myths (including the famous charioteer myth in the Phaedrus» — muestra que la merkabá cabalística es ella misma producto de siglos de armonización, con el mito del Fedro incluido.

«Pico would have presumably tied this thesis to his belief that language cannot adequately describe the highest levels of reality.» — enlaza una tesis cabalística con la desconfianza de Pico en el lenguaje para los niveles altos.

«thirty-two paths of wisdom" = idea found in the proto-kabbalistic Sefer Yetzirah (Book of Creation) and later texts that God created the world using the combined magical power of the twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet and ten sefirot.» — explica los treinta y dos senderos como el poder combinado de las letras y las sefirot en la creación.

«The thesis symbolically correlates isolated texts from Hebrew Scripture just as Pico’s theses from Proclus (e.g., 24.8)» — señala que la operación con los textos hebreos es la misma que Pico aplica a los pasajes de Proclo.

«For a beautiful example of Pico’s Christian Cabalism—and of the systematic links between widely separated theses in Pico’s text—this thesis should be read with 11>22 and 11>27.» — indica dónde se ve mejor el enlace sistemático entre tesis distantes de la cábala cristiana de Pico.

«Pico's thesis resolves the problem in typically syncretic fashion by distinguishing hierarchical "modes" of fear.» — muestra el recurso habitual aplicado a una disputa cabalística: la jerarquía de modos disuelve la alternativa entre temor y amor.

«lord of the nose" in the Zohar (the most important medieval kabbalistic text) = the fifth sefirah, one of whose alternate names was Gevurah» — descifra el símbolo del señor de la nariz y nombra al Zohar como el texto cabalístico medieval mayor.

«Whatever Pico’s source, the main idea here ıs that different grades of souls derive from different levels of the sefirot system, as we also find in 28.6.» — se abstiene sobre la fuente y fija en cambio la idea: los grados del alma vienen de niveles distintos del árbol sefirótico.

«Like other theses ın this section, theses 28.42-43 derive from Recanati’s commentary, but no evidence exists for Wirszubski’s claim (1989: 50) that Pico was using Mithndates’ translation of the work, which was not completed until after Pico’s text was published.» — repite la distinción decisiva: la fuente es Recanati, no la traducción de Mitrídates, que es posterior.

«Both texts that Wirszubski (1989: 51) proposes as potential sources emphasize the favorite Pichean theme» — reconoce que los textos propuestos coinciden con un tema caro a Pico, aunque no los admita como fuente.

«Reflecting the general idea that mystical secrets lay hidden in the primal language, Hebrew.» — resume el supuesto de toda la sección: los secretos están guardados en la lengua primera.

«not ten sections that contain 498 theses, suggesting again that the text was altered shortly before and/or while in press» — vuelve a leer una discrepancia numérica como señal de que el texto se alteró en la imprenta.

«But cf. 11>63, where we find that Aristotle’s deepest truths lay hidden beneath his philosophical prose.» — deshace la aparente inconsistencia sobre Aristóteles remitiendo a la tesis donde su verdad queda bajo la letra.

«Fine lines were drawn between God's “properties,” “relations,” "attributes," "notions," etc., when needed to harmonize authorities or texts.» — muestra el origen práctico de las distinciones teológicas: se afinaban cuando hacía falta armonizar textos.

«The 1487 reprint of Pico's text, followed by every later editor (including Kieszkowski and Biondi) misread the emendation of errors in the editio princeps and switched key portions of 1710-11. Biondi's edition (1995) in addition omits the Latin text of 1>11 entirely.» — sigue un error de la reimpresión de 1487 hasta las ediciones modernas, con una tesis perdida por el camino.

«Cf. the related question in thesis 4>8, which was attacked by the papal commission.» — enlaza una cuestión angélica con una de las tesis que la comisión papal censuró.

«theses do not develop the "new method" promised in Pico's philosophia nova, which is presented in the next section.» — acota qué contiene cada sección: las conclusiones disidentes no traen todavía el método nuevo.

«The implied nominalism here is clarified in 3>2-7.» — remite el nominalismo aparente de una tesis a las que lo precisan.

«Closer than any other thesis in this section to the proportional forms of Pico’s “new philosophy.” The Neo-Platonic inspiration of this thesis is apparent when we compare 22.12 from Porphyry.» — localiza la tesis de esta sección más cercana a las formas proporcionales de la nueva filosofía.

«I have not translated intellectus agens here as "active intellect" since Pico rarely used that phrase in respect to his own theory of knowledge.» — declara y funda una decisión de traducción: Pico casi no usa ese término para su propia teoría.

«Suggesting against Aquinas that a forma corporeitatis or material form precedes the sub» — adjudica a Pico la forma de la corporeidad contra Tomás, con la reserva de una sugerencia.

«Arguably, he intended for debating purposes to leave his sense ambiguous.» — propone que la ambigüedad de una tesis era deliberada y estaba puesta para la disputa.

«“later Latins” in Pico’s theses = medieval scholastics in general, not just the so-called moderni or nominalists.» — corrige una lectura corriente del vocabulario: los latinos posteriores no son solo los nominalistas.

«Pico was prepared to invoke a double-truth in denying the eternity of the world “theologically speak» — muestra la doble verdad usada para sostener a la vez la eternidad filosófica del mundo y su negación teológica.

«Pico's text is in doubt due to problems in the Emendationes» — declara dudoso el texto de una tesis por el estado de la lista de erratas.

«Pico claimed that in man’s highest state “everything knowable" could be acquired without sensual input» — enlaza una tesis técnica con la pretensión mayor del proyecto: en su estado más alto el hombre conoce sin los sentidos.

«Semprini (1920) solemnly declared that this thesis was "an anticipation of modern scientific theory."» — recoge con distancia la lectura de Semprini, que hacía de una tesis de Pico una anticipación científica.

«Pico himself would have rejected the conditional realist premise of this thesis; cf. on this point 2>2-3 (see notes), 3>2ff.» — advierte que Pico no suscribe la premisa realista de una tesis que sin embargo firma.

«Pico would again emphatically deny the premise of these theses, which he accepts momentarily only to draw a controversial conclusion from the "common way.”» — señala una táctica de disputa: aceptar por un momento la premisa ajena para sacarle una consecuencia incómoda.

«Further evidence is found in this thesis of Pico's disdain for medieval Latin logical traditions.» — suma una prueba más del desdén de Pico por la lógica latina medieval.

«Pico’s formula here would allow him, e.g., to reconcile texts attributing total transcendence to God or the intellectual nature with other texts claiming that the existence of lower beings depended wholly on their relations with these higher entities.» — muestra el rendimiento de un tecnicismo lógico: la proposición exclusiva concilia trascendencia y dependencia.

«Since Pico restricted the use of the word “formal” or related terms to the intellectual nature, he would deny vs. the Scotists the reality of “formalities” ın God.» — deriva de un uso restringido del término formal la posición de Pico contra los escotistas.

«There was nothing modern in Pico’s view, which can be traced back to De caelo 1.1£f. Pico’s view also found support in a number of late-ancient commentators including John Philoponus and Averroes.» — rastrea esa continuidad hasta Aristóteles y sus comentaristas tardíos, contra la lectura anticipatoria.

«The first lines of the Commento (Garin, Scritti van, 461)» — remite al Commento para el arranque del sistema.

«first thesis of this section can thus be considered, in both the literal and figurative senses, as the first principle of Pico’s system, which he tells us was “thought out in Anstotelian and Platonic» — llama a la primera tesis de la nueva filosofía el primer principio del sistema, en sentido literal y figurado.

«Denies the sharp break between the sublunary and celestial worlds afırmed by many Latin scholastics.» — sitúa la continuidad entre lo sublunar y lo celeste, y le quita todo aire de modernidad.

«sumably no accident that in the final version of Pico’s text as a whole this is the five hundredth thesis, a number that for Pico symbolized completion and return» — anota que la primera tesis de la nueva filosofía es la quingentésima del texto, y que ese número significaba plenitud y retorno.

«recently by Wirszubski) as evidence of the influence on Pico of Nicholas of Cusa’s coincidentia oppositorum. In fact, the idea expressed both by Pico and by Cusanus was a scholastic commonplace; its syncretic origins are discussed above» — discute la atribución a Cusa de la coincidencia de opuestos en Pico: era lugar común escolástico.

«homoeomeria” = the original homogeneous state of things in Anaxagoras, the Western prototype of the principle that “all things exist in all things in their own mode.» — identifica en la homeomería de Anaxágoras el prototipo occidental del principio correlativo.

«Pico’s reference to the demiurge in 3>21 and his phrasing in 3>22 suggests that he was drawing from some Neo-Platonizing commentary on Aristotle Physics» — infiere de la letra de dos tesis que Pico leía a Anaxágoras por un comentario neoplatonizante y no directamente.

«The problem lay in harmonizing what Plutarch said about 184 worlds (183 in the standard edition) with Timaeus 31b-c, which claimed that the demiurge created only one world.» — muestra el problema exegético concreto que la tesis de los ciento ochenta y cuatro mundos viene a resolver.

«How Pico planned to debate this astonishing piece of numerological exegesis, which has little in common with conventional scholastic questions» — declara que no sabe cómo iba a disputarse una exégesis numerológica que nada tiene que ver con las cuestiones escolares.

«Pico would typically have claimed that the real subjects of these passages were “intelligences” or “celestial souls” and not God.» — da la salida habitual de Pico ante los pasajes aristotélicos incómodos: hablan de inteligencias, no de Dios.

«Since, as we discovered in the last thesis, God is not discussed until Metaphysics 12.10, the order of those books violates the natural order of reality and hence cannot be correct.» — reconstruye el argumento con que Pico reordena la Metafísica: el orden de los libros debe seguir el orden del cosmos.

«One of the thirteen theses attacked by the papal commission.» — identifica una de las trece tesis censuradas por la comisión papal.

«In his formal reply to the commission, P1co argued that the thesis conformed to the "mode of speaking of Dionysius [i.e., Dionysius's ‘negative way'], who claimed that it should not be said of God that he is either ‘intellect’ or the ‘intelligible’ or similar things." The commission responded that the thesis was “false and can be taken to a heretical sense."» — recoge la defensa de Pico por la vía negativa dionisiana y la respuesta con que la comisión la rechazó.

«Privation is rejected as a natural principle since it implies a sharp break in the proportions of the universe (see the next thesis). Pico hence posits that matter exists in some “mode” on every level of reality.» — explica por qué Pico rechaza la privación: rompería la proporción del universo, y por eso pone materia en todos los niveles.

«Pico’s rejection (on the grounds of cosmic correspondence) of the idea of total immatenality constitutes one of his main breaks with the Platonic tradition and with Latin scholastics like Thomas Aquinas.» — señala en la negativa a la inmaterialidad total una de las rupturas mayores de Pico con el platonismo y con Tomás.

«Pico’s distinctio inadequationis can be interpreted via theses 3>2-7, which suggest that distinctions that are deemed "adequate" objects of knowledge for lower cognitive faculties might be "inadequate" for higher ones.» — descifra la distinción de inadecuación como relativa a la facultad que conoce.

«Nine of the thirteen theses attacked by the papal commission came from this section, which was immediately suspect since it was composed by a layman—and a twenty-three-year-old layman at that—and not a licensed theologian.» — concentra en la sección teológica nueve de las trece censuras, y explica la sospecha por la condición laica del autor.

«Much evidence shows that in his formal replies to the commission and in the Apology Pico backtracked on the more dangerous views expressed in his theses; in any event, the evidence in the Apology and in the notarial record of Pico's verbal and written replies to the commission must be approached with greater caution than shown in past analyses of these texts, e.g., by Di Napoli (1965) and Craven (1981).» — advierte que Pico se retractó ante la comisión y que la Apología, por eso, no puede leerse como su posición.

«Once again, we find Thomas Aquinas in this section as Pico's prime opponent.» — vuelve a poner a Tomás como adversario principal, ahora en las conclusiones teológicas.

«The lack of punctuation in the editio princeps in the last part of Pico's thesis (insertion of a comma after remanere, as found in many later editions, radically alters the sense of the original) leaves Pico's views ambiguous—apparently intentionally so.» — sostiene que la ambigüedad de puntuación en una tesis eucarística era deliberada.

«Pico almost surely believed that the substance of the bread did not remain after the Consecration. When attacked on this point, however, in the Apology he argued that this part of his thesis (1.e., without a comma after remanere) only took issue with the specific manner in which the “common way” said that the substance remained.» — adjudica a Pico una posición eucarística heterodoxa y muestra cómo la acotó al ser atacado.

«It is interesting that the papal commission let this anti-Scotist thesis pass without comment, unlike Pico’s anti-Thomistic conclusions.» — repara en la asimetría de la censura, indulgente con lo antiescotista y dura con lo antitomista.

«In his oral response to the papal commission, Pico first argued that since it was only the soul of Christ that descended into hell—his body remained in the tomb» — sigue el primer argumento oral de Pico sobre el descenso de Cristo a los infiernos.

«The commission (p. 127) unanimously ruled that Pico’s thesis was “false, erroneous, heretical, and against the truth of Sacred Scriptures.”» — da el veredicto unánime de la comisión sobre esa tesis.

«Pico shifted tactics by claiming that he did not reject the notion that Christ as a “real presence” descended into hell—as his thesis seemed to say—but only claimed that the cause (ratio) of Chnist’s “real presence" was his operation and not what Thomas claimed.» — muestra el cambio de táctica en la Apología, donde la tesis pasa a decir otra cosa.

«Pico’s response on this question in the Apology contains his most violent attacks on the Thomists» — localiza en esa respuesta los ataques más duros de Pico a los tomistas.

«Evidence that Pico recognized the theological dangers in 4>8 as he originally proposed it. The papal commission ignored Pico’s disclaimer, however.» — anota que Pico previó el peligro de esa tesis y que la comisión no atendió su descargo.

«The commission’s hostility towards Pico is reflected in its judgment that this apparently innocuous thesis was “scandalous and contrary to the common opinion of» — mide la hostilidad de la comisión por haber condenado una tesis en apariencia inocua.

«It should be recalled that Pico himself did not hold the “common way” on attaining God, which for him transcended an ordinary act of» — recuerda que Pico no suscribía la vía común sobre la unión con Dios, lo que altera el sentido de sus tesis teológicas.

«Pico argued on the authority of Henry of Ghent that his thesis was not true because of any insufficiency in God but because natures below the rational nature were not "assumable" (suppositabilis). The commission found that the thesis “derogates from divine omnipotence, and this savors of heresy.”» — recoge la defensa de Pico ante la comisión y el fallo que la declaró contraria a la omnipotencia divina.

«papal commission, after interrogating Pico at length, found that his response added “error to error” and unanimously judged his thesis and response to be “false, erroneous, and heretical” (pp. 127-28).» — registra el veredicto en que la propia defensa de Pico agravó el cargo.

«Pico breaks here with Augustine, Hilarius, and Ambrose (as cited in Sentences 1, d.» — localiza una ruptura de Pico con los padres latinos sobre la distinción de las Personas divinas.

«As in the previous conclusion, Pico’s position again reflects the views of the Greek as opposed to Latin fathers, breaking with the complex theology of Latin scholasticism concerning the "generation" and "procession" of» — adjudica esas posiciones trinitarias a los padres griegos frente a la escolástica latina.

«The double-truth illustrated in this thesis was too common a strategy to provoke any cnticism from the papal commission.» — anota que la doble verdad pasó sin censura por ser recurso corriente.

«In his oral response to the papal commission, Pico claimed that since Origen (third century CE) was not known to have erred “out of a pertinacity of will,” it was probable and pious to believe that he was saved (Dorez and Thuasne 1897: 124-25). The commission declared that Pico’s thesis was “rash and savoring of heresy, since it is opposed to the determi» — sigue la defensa de Pico sobre la salvación de Orígenes y el fallo que la declaró temeraria.

«Excerpted from the Apology, Pico’s response gained considerable popularity in the sixteenth century, admired by classicists for its analysis of problems of textual attribution and by church reformers for the limits it imposed on ecclesiastical authority.» — sigue la fortuna posterior de esa defensa entre filólogos y reformadores, por motivos distintos.

«There is a personal ring to Pico’s claim that Origen was not condemned for his heresies but for “the glory of his eloquence and knowledge.» — oye un tono personal en la explicación que Pico da de la condena de Orígenes.

«Pico apparently consulted Ficino's translations of Plato as well as the Greek text, but his quotations are not taken verbatim from Ficino's versions, and a number of theses here are aimed polemically at his older rival.» — sitúa la sección platónica como texto polémico dirigido contra Ficino.

«Since 6 and any of its multiples by 10 had numerological significance for Pico (both are “perfect numbers”), it is difficult to believe that it is an accident that his first Platonic thesis is the 600th thesis in his final version of the text.» — encuentra otra coincidencia numérica: la primera tesis platónica es la seiscentésima del texto.

«Cf. Proclus In Timaeum 1 (here I used Taylor, trans. 1:128), which Pico interprets to agree with the Celestial Hierarchies of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite. Given the historical links between Proclus’s henads and Pseudo-Dionysius’s orders of angels, Pico’s thesis has a basis in fact.» — concede fundamento histórico a la correlación entre las henadas de Proclo y las jerarquías dionisianas.

«including Kieszkowski’s and Biondi’s) omit the blank-space after sibiipsi, rendering the last part of Pico’s thesis meaningless.» — muestra cómo suprimir un blanco del incunable deja sin sentido el final de una tesis.

«Given Pico’s disclaimer at the beginning of this thesis (“Whatever other Platonists say”), we cannot be certain what Greek» — se abstiene de fijar la fuente griega de una tesis porque el propio Pico se distancia de los demás platónicos.

«Reading Timaeus 34c ff. to conform to Pico's system.» — dice sin rodeos qué hace la tesis con el Timeo: acomodarlo al sistema.

«Aimed polemically at Ficino, who in his commentary on the Critías (Ficino Opera, 1576: 1486) equates the “five parts”» — localiza una tesis dirigida contra la lectura ficiniana de las cinco partes.

«Wirszubski (1989: 190-91) claims that Pico took the concept of the “world to come" from Flavius Mithridates! translation for Pico of the Bahir, or possibly from two other translations by Mithridates that quote the Bahir, but the concept was also discussed in many other texts known to Pico.» — discute otra adjudicación de Wirszubski señalando que la noción circulaba en muchos textos al alcance de Pico.

«It Is interesting to note Pico's sharp criticism here of the Platonic exegeses of these late-ancient scholastics.» — repara en que Pico critica con dureza a los mismos exegetas neoplatónicos de los que depende.

«sense of nature" = magical medium (discussed, e.g., in the De legibus of William of Paris [William of Auvergne]) through which telepathic powers» — descifra el sentido de la naturaleza como medio mágico, con la fuente medieval donde se discute.

«Pico's point is that love carnes us to our mystical goal but should not be confused with the goal itself.» — precisa el lugar del amor en la ascensión: lleva al fin sin ser el fin.

«It is interesüng that Pico does not closely associate himself with Plato's view (as Pico represents it) that the greatest happiness lies in contemplation or an act of intellect» — anota que Pico no hace suya la tesis platónica que pone la felicidad en la contemplación.

«In the Apology (Opera, 175), Pico tells us that in the Cratylus Plato claimed that names had magical powers if they were "rightly imposed.”» — apoya en la Apología la doctrina del poder mágico de los nombres rectamente impuestos.

«In general, for Pico, that meant in Hebrew or languages “closely derived” from it» — acota el alcance de esa doctrina: solo el hebreo y lo derivado de él tienen ese poder.

«Here and in 5260 we see Pico's most direct way of harmonizing Plato and Aristotle.» — señala dónde se ve con más claridad el procedimiento de concordia entre Platón y Aristóteles.

«This myth provided one of the main sources for the famous opening section on man in Pico’s Oration.» — adjudica al mito del Protágoras el arranque célebre de la Oración sobre el hombre.

«plausible variation of that name that I can think of is given as an author or translator of the text in any known manuscript.» — declara no haber hallado a Abucaten Avenan como autor ni traductor en ningún manuscrito conocido.

«This section of the nine hundred theses is not listed in Pico's second preface and was apparently hastily added to replace other theses that Pico struck out when the book was in press.» — apoya en el prefacio y en el título sin numeral que esa sección se añadió con el libro ya en prensa.

«It is interesting that Pico's choice for a replacement text was again based on Proclus's work.» — anota que hasta el texto de reemplazo salió de Proclo.

«This trivial shift becomes noteworthy when we realize that it reflects changes starting near (and, in all probability, at exactly the same point) where Pico inserted these ten theses» — muestra cómo un cambio menor de ortografía delata el punto exacto de la inserción tardía.

«Pico’s numerological system fused the emanationist metaphysics of Neo-Pythagoreanism and Neo-Platonism» — adjudica la numerología de Pico a la fusión de la metafísica emanacionista neopitagórica con la neoplatónica.

«In the sixteenth century Pico’s promise in this section to debate “everything knowable” through numbers was hilariously» — anota la recepción burlesca que tuvo en el siglo XVI la promesa de resolverlo todo por números.

«thought and was drawn on heavily by Agrippa von Nettesheim, John Dee, Giordano Bruno, Robert Fludd, Athanasius Kircher, and scores of lesser-known writers.» — traza la descendencia de esta sección numerológica en Agrippa, Dee, Bruno, Fludd y Kircher.

«One of three or four methods mentioned in Pico’s text that lead to knowledge “of everything knowable"—something that De Lubac (1974) denies that Pico claims anywhere.» — cuenta los métodos que el texto ofrece para el conocimiento de todo lo cognoscible, y objeta a De Lubac que lo niegue.

«usually simple enough to guess Pico’s answers to the questions in this section, it is not possible to reconstruct his arguments thesis by thesis; in most cases, in any event, he had several strategies available.» — acota lo reconstruible: se adivinan las respuestas, no los argumentos, porque Pico tenía varias vías a mano.

«Latin scholastics sometimes labeled God as intellectus, intelligens, et intelligible—e.g., in Latin translations of Maimonides’ Guide for the Perplexed 1:68—but Pico normally reserved terms like these for the intellectual nature, claiming that God totally transcended the realm of under» — separa a Pico del vocabulario escolástico sobre Dios: reserva esos términos para la naturaleza intelectual.

«Is there numerological significance in the fact that 7a>18 is Pico’s 700th thesis?» — deja como pregunta abierta si la posición de una tesis en el conteo tiene sentido numerológico.

«Probably involves the kinds of “good” and “bad” numbers that Pico discusses, citing patristic authorities, in the Apology, in Opera, 173.» — remite a la Apología para la distinción entre números buenos y malos que estaría en juego.

«A question repeatedly raised but left unanswered in Pico’s surviving works.» — señala una pregunta que Pico plantea una y otra vez sin responderla en lo conservado.

«On the grounds of cosmological proportion Pico would answer that in some “mode” this is true.» — muestra cómo la proporción cósmica permite anticipar la respuesta aunque el argumento falte.

«In the Apology, in Opera, 174, Pico sings a paean to the number seven, one “worthy of great attention because the Lord rested on the seventh day, because of the seven gifts of the Holy Spint, the seven seals in Revelation, the seven trumpets, seven eyes, seven angels, seven churches, seven stars, seven evil spints, seven vices in Solomon, and seven days that the prophet David sang to God.”» — recoge el elogio del número siete que Pico hace en la Apología y las razones que le da.

«Inexplicably, however, this standard review does not discuss Pico, whose influence on later interpreters of the Oracles was critical.» — reprocha a la bibliografía de referencia sobre los Oráculos caldeos haber omitido a Pico, que fue decisivo para su lectura posterior.

«In that letter, Pico boasts of possessing books containing the oracles of "Ezre [“Ezte” in the Basel Opera], Zoroastris, and Melchiar of the magi» — recoge, con la fecha de la carta a Ficino, la jactancia de poseer oráculos de Esdras, Zoroastro y Melchior.

«it is noteworthy that this section of the nine hundred theses does contain material not found in Psellus or Pletho; nor does Pico's numbering of the Orades coincide with the order found in those earlier collections.» — halla en la sección material que no está en Pselo ni en Pletón, con una numeración propia.

«The issue of what commentaries Pico consulted in this section is as mysterious as what version of the Oracles he had in hand.» — declara igualmente oscuros el texto y los comentarios de que Pico dispuso.

«explanations: (1) Either Flavius Mithridates, Pico’s first tutor in Semitic languages, forged Chaldean materials based on those sources and represented them to Pico as genuine; or (2) Pico’s claim of possessing a Chaldean version of the Oracles was his own fabrication, meant again to distinguish his work from that of Ficino, who years earlier had translated the Oracles from Pletho’s Greek version and had added his own commentary.» — plantea las dos explicaciones posibles del caldeo de Pico: falsificación del tutor o invención propia frente a Ficino.

«From what we know of Flavius’s character, the forgery thesis seems by far the likeliest; nor would forging these texts be a difficult task, given Pico's slight knowledge of Aramaic in 1486 and the brevity of the Oracles as they exist in other forms.» — se inclina por la falsificación, y la funda en el carácter del tutor, en el escaso arameo de Pico y en la brevedad del texto.

«Strong evidence for the forgery thesis appears in the Aramaic quotation found in the early draft of the Oration, whose strange mix of Semitic languages and alphabets fits exactly what has long been known of Flavius’s “Chaldean”» — apoya la hipótesis en la cita aramea del borrador de la Oración, cuya mezcla de lenguas coincide con la del tutor.

«Hosea the Chaldean = Mithridates! invenuon?» — sospecha, y lo deja en pregunta, que uno de los comentaristas caldeos citados sea invención del traductor.

«A space exists here in the editio princeps—it is omitted in all later editions—which was apparently left for insertion of an Aramaic word (see Plate 5). It is not likely that the space arose from sloppy typesetting, since no similar end-of-page breaks exist anywhere else in the 1486 edition. Assuming that this space was left intentionally, as seems to be the case, we have prima facie evidence that Pico did have some kind of Aramaic text in hand when he compiled this section—for reasons discussed earlier, most likely a forgery by Mithri» — toma un blanco del incunable, borrado por los editores posteriores, como indicio de que había un texto arameo a la vista.

«Scholem remarks that Flavius Mithridates began his translation of these fragments on the same line that he ended his version of the Bahir (in Cod. Vatic. 191), possibly leading to Pico’s confusion concerning their source. Scholem’s conjecture is a reasonable one; however, it is not known whether Mithridates’ translation of that text was finished before Pico published his theses, leaving it uncertain whether the confusion was Pico’s or his tutor’s» — sigue a Scholem en el origen de una confusión de fuentes y se abstiene sobre a quién adjudicarla.

«To develop a full understanding of that magic, a number of theses outside this section—especially, but not exclusively, in Pico’s conclusions from Proclus (24.1-55) and the Cabala (28.1-47) in the first part of his work and in sections 5>, 8>, 10>, and 11> given “according to his own opinion” —must be» — advierte que la magia de Pico no se entiende leyendo solo la sección mágica.

«gery thesis holds up, another fascinating chapter can be added to the story of Pico and his strange tutor.» — deja su hipótesis de falsificación en condicional y anuncia lo que añadiría a la historia de Pico y su tutor.

«Given the fact that Pico distinguished a number of different types of magic and of Cabala (see above, pp. 126-28), it is not possible to know for certain his meaning here. In general, I take it that Pico’s primary sense is that since the rational part of the soul (which is pertinent to “natural magic”) derives from the intellectual part of the soul (which is pertinent to “pure Cabala”), Cabala is implicit in any magical act.» — ofrece una lectura de la tesis que liga magia y cábala, y la marca como interpretación propia ante la imposibilidad de certeza.

«Again drawn from De mystenis 7.4, with Pico replacing barbarian languages, and in particular Egyptian, as Iamblichus had it, with Hebrew!» — muestra la sustitución con que Pico convierte la doctrina de Jámblico sobre las lenguas bárbaras en doctrina del hebreo.

«In the Apology (Opera, 172, 175), Pico tells us that "characters" and "figures" refer to words and numbers (not to figures on astrological talismans, as Yates» — corrige a Yates sobre los caracteres y figuras de la tesis mágica: son palabras y números, no signos de talismán.

«Thomas Aquinas and the authors of the infamous Malleus Maleficarum, which was published shortly before Pico's text, explicitly associated magic using "characters" and "figures" with demonic magic, as Pico was surely aware.» — recuerda que ese vocabulario estaba asociado a la magia demoníaca por Tomás y por el Malleus, publicado poco antes.

«I suspect that no matter how innocent his underlying meaning, Pico intentionally chose his language for its provocative effect.» — sospecha, y lo dice como sospecha, que Pico eligió a propósito un vocabulario que sonaba a magia prohibida.

«Here again characters = magical words in general, not words on astrological talismans, as Yates argued.» — repite la corrección a Yates y explica que la equivalencia entre palabras y números pasa por la gematría.

«Pico interpreted the Hymns in part through the further Orphic fragments embedded in Proclus and similar figures, collected today in Orphicorum Fragmenta, ed. Kern (1922). His interpretations were also conditioned by his understanding of the Kabbalah and by his own cosmological and magical systems.» — describe la triple mediación por la que Pico lee los himnos órficos: fragmentos en Proclo, cábala y sistema propio.

«Few sections of the nine hundred theses illustrate better than this one the complexity of Pico's symbol» — señala la sección órfica como la más compleja del texto en materia de símbolos.

«In the Apology (Opera, 172), Pico cites St. Hilary’s view (fourth century CE) that the traditional numbering of the Psalms reflected their magical “power and efficacy.”» — recoge la autoridad patrística con que Pico defendía la eficacia mágica de la numeración de los Salmos.

«It would be interesting to know how much of this idea survived in the original version of Pico’s Commentary on the Psalms, which was suppressed by his Savonarolan editors and which today only survives in fragmentary form.» — enlaza esa doctrina con el comentario a los Salmos suprimido, del que solo quedan fragmentos.

«Unfortunately, what these numbers were, as well as what Pico meant by “the number with which the threefold god created the world,” are unknown» — declara desconocido el cálculo que sostiene una de las tesis órficas.

«Readings like this illustrate the dangers of approaching Pico’s work exclusively through a single tradition; indeed, no evidence suggests that thesis 10>5, which Wirszubski labels the “most Kabbalistic of all Orphic theses,” involves Cabala in any way.» — advierte contra leer a Pico desde una sola tradición, y niega que la tesis en cuestión sea cabalística.

«However we read these particular symbols, the point is clear that magical operations on each lower level of reality depend on the forces flowing from higher ones.» — separa lo que queda oscuro de lo que da por firme: la magia opera siempre desde arriba hacia abajo.

«Wind (1965; cf. 1968) provides long interpretations of this thesis, although not in the context of Pico’s Roman plans.» — reconoce las lecturas de Wind sobre una tesis órfica y les objeta ignorar el plan del debate.

«Wirszubski (1989: 141ff.) ignores the obvious links between 10221 and the preceding thesis and conjectures that the phrase quantitas formalis continua et discreta (formal quantity, continuous and discrete) in 10221 might be a symbol of one of the sefirot—illustrating the dangers of reading Pico's theses in isolation.» — objeta una conjetura de Wirszubski por leer una tesis fuera de su serie, que es el vicio que su edición quiere corregir.

«Medieval texts throw far less light on these theses than on Pico’s first set of Cabalistic conclusions, since his explicit aim here was to break from earlier tra» — explica por qué las fuentes medievales sirven menos aquí: la segunda serie cabalística rompe con ellas a propósito.

«Pico presumably meant to associate his final count of theses in this section with. God's "name of seventy-two letters" (11>56)—a probability that has given rise to one of the most interesting claims ever made about any medieval or Renaissance text.» — anuncia la conjetura sobre las setenta y dos tesis y el nombre divino, y la afirmación llamativa que se derivó de ella.

«In a recent paper, Brian Copenhaver (1997: 229ff.) argues that Pico may have intended these seventy-two theses (taken collectively and linked to God's secret name) as an "angelic amulet" meant to call down the angel Metatron (actually a symbol for Pico of the abstract intellectual nature; see 112510 and note) and to repulse the evil demon Azazel (thesis 11213» — expone la lectura de Copenhaver, que hace de la sección cabalística un amuleto angélico.

«While nothing in Pico's text suggests such a spectacular reading, which derives from Copenhaver's interpretation of medieval kabbalism, we are told (p. 232) that Pico's silence may have simply reflected his esoteric concerns.» — consigna que esa lectura no tiene apoyo en el texto y el modo en que su autor explica ese silencio.

«Interesting as this speculation is, the evidence that amulets (or talismans) are nowhere mentioned in the nine hundred theses, the fact that Pico attacks their use in the Heptaplus (p. 119 n. 55 above), and the fact that the Apology angrily denounces those who “say they have the secret names of God and the powers by which they bind demons" (Opera, 181; cf. 175) argue strongly against this claim.» — opone tres evidencias a esa lectura: ausencia de talismanes, ataque a ellos en el Heptaplus y denuncia en la Apología.

«The only theses that mention “characters” and “figures” in Pico’s text also clearly suggest that they are not talismanic symbols but words and numbers translated back and forth via the word/number equations of gematria (see 9>24-25 and notes» — insiste en que caracteres y figuras se traducen a números por gematría y no a signos de talismán.

«Finally, the claim that any part of Pico’s text was intended as an “angelic amulet” to draw down the intellectual nature would conflict with Pico’s religious views, which emphasized that philosophical studies were needed in any mystical ascent to that nature» — añade una objeción doctrinal: un amuleto contradiría la exigencia de estudio filosófico para la ascensión.

«As we have seen earlier, the tendency to confuse Pico’s thought with medieval kabbalism— usually with the most spectacular parts of that tradition—has distorted a great deal of Pico scholarship in the past five centuries.» — resume el defecto que atribuye a la bibliografía: confundir a Pico con la cábala medieval que transformaba.

«far from passively abandoning himself to medieval kabbalism, Pico radically transformed it by extensively correlating it with pagan and Chnistian ideas—finding in this syncretic fusion the ultimate Christian tool needed “to pierce the Jews with their own weapons» — sostiene que Pico no se entrega a la cábala sino que la reconstruye para volverla instrumento cristiano.

«Since in medieval traditions “divine names” and “practical Kabbalah” were associated with magic, Scholem and Wirszubski (followed now by Copenhaver [1997: 217#])}—reversing the natural order of Pico’s thesis—tried to identify Pico’s "science of sefirot" with speculative science and his “science of names” with practical science or magic. However, given Pico’s disclaimer at the start of this thesis (“Whatever other Cabalists say . . .”), as well as the content of the theses that follow, no justification exists for inverting his sense» — discute a Scholem, Wirszubski y Copenhaver la inversión de la división de Pico entre cábala práctica y especulativa.

«Practical science for Pico was the “science of sefirot” and speculative science the “science of names,” and not the reverse.» — fija la división tal como el texto la enuncia: práctica es la de las sefirot, especulativa la de los nombres.

«As so often in syncretic systems, however, such distinctions were not absolute: Since most of Pico’s magic» — acota su propia corrección recordando que en estos sistemas las divisiones nunca son tajantes.

«the claim of Wirszubski (1989: 144) that the phrase refers exclusively to the sefirot is in error, since in the same section Pico speaks at length of “that part of the Cabala that concerns the powers of celestial bodies”» — corrige otra lectura restrictiva con un pasaje de la Apología que la contradice.

«Wirszubski’s interpretation of the chariots as symbols of triadic divisions in the sefirot system may coincide with medieval usage, but it conflicts sharply with Pico’s thesis, whose Latin Wirszubski misreads» — rechaza una interpretación de los carros por chocar con la letra de la tesis, que su autor lee mal.

«Kieszkowski's edition fills in the blanks with three Hebrew names, none of which have four letters.» — descarta una restitución de nombres hebreos porque ninguno cumple la condición que la tesis pide.

«Pico's caution in producing such calculations should be noted» — subraya la cautela con que Pico presenta su cálculo del fin del mundo.

«Given the flexibility of Pico’s Cabalistic symbolism, it is possible to generate several plausible readings of the thesis.» — declara indecidible una tesis porque el propio simbolismo admite varias lecturas plausibles.

«a typological bond is thus established between the Old and New Testaments via Pico’s Cabalistic symbolism.» — muestra la operación de fondo de la sección: la tipología entre los dos Testamentos pasa por el simbolismo sefirótico.

«Whether Pico knew parts of it directly or only through Recanati, as Wirszubski and others have suggested, is unknown.» — se abstiene sobre si Pico leyó el Zohar de primera mano o solo por Recanati.

«The implication here, also hinted at in a number of other theses, is that in Pico’s mind the kabbalistic sefirot were more naturally correlated with distinctions in the Neo-Platonic intellectual nature» — sostiene que en la cabeza de Pico las sefirot se correlacionan más naturalmente con las distinciones neoplatónicas que con la cábala medieval.

«Wirszubski (1989: 176-77) again discusses this conclusion from the point of view of medieval kabbalism, but by ignoring its links to Pico’s non-Cabalistic theses, he misreads its sense in Pico’s thought.» — repite su objeción de método: leer la tesis desde la cábala medieval y no desde el resto del texto la desfigura.

«Pico here is correlating three unconnected passages from the Old Testament to read out their collective Christian message.» — describe la técnica del silogismo sincrético aplicada a tres pasajes bíblicos sin relación entre sí.

«The reference here is to Pseudo-Dionysius's Divine Names, where the names of God and his "attributes" mentioned in Scripture are assigned to different Persons in the Trinity, just as they are assigned to different sefirot in the Kabbalah.» — hace ver el paralelo estructural que autoriza la correlación: nombres divinos repartidos entre Personas y entre sefirot.

«Pico's thesis is meant to provide a commentary on John 8:56, where Christ declares that Abraham in his day rejoiced when he prophesized Chnst's coming.» — localiza el versículo que una tesis cabalística comenta.

«The thesis conforms to Pico's views on prophecy expressed in the series beginning at 7.1.» — señala la coherencia de esa tesis con la doctrina de la profecía sostenida en otra serie.

«In the Heptaplus, second preface (Opera, 6; Garin, Scritti vari, 188), Pico interprets the tearing of the veil as a sign that following Christ's 536» — apoya en el Heptaplus la lectura del velo rasgado como reunión de los mundos, inversa al corte de los brotes.

«mystery of the closed mem” = reference to the fact that mem has both open (N) and closed (D) forms, the latter used at the end of a word.» — explica el misterio de la mem cerrada por la doble forma de la letra en hebreo.

«who took Pico’s inferior chariot as a symbol of a lower triad of the ten sefirot, sees 11250 as an example of magical use of the sefirot system. But as Pico tells us clearly in 1122, for him the “inferior chariot" referred to the realm of "sensible natures"; thus the magical “petitions” in 11250 are not directed immediately to the seventh and eighth sefirot but either to the astrological bodies corresponding to them in 11-248 (Saturn and Venus) or to lower sensible natures.» — corrige la lectura de Wirszubski sobre el carro inferior apoyándose en la definición que el propio Pico da.

«Pico’s correlation in 11248 of the empyrean heaven with the tenth sefirah—rather than with the first, as we would expect— was probably a slip.» — adjudica a un descuido de Pico, y no a doctrina, una correlación que no encaja con su sistema.

«Copenhaver (1997: 224) discusses two ways that such calculations were made in medieval kabbalism, but we have no textual evidence concerning Pico’s methods.» — consigna las dos vías posibles del cálculo del nombre de setenta y dos letras y declara que no hay evidencia sobre cuál usó Pico.

«Pico’s transliteration was picked up by countless later Renaissance syncretists like Agrippa von Nettesheim.» — sigue una transliteración de Pico hasta los sincretistas posteriores, Agrippa entre ellos.

«Wirszubski's reading (1974: 150-51; 1989: 164-65) of this obscure thesis seems plausible. Counting as two letters those five consonants that change forms at the end of a word, medieval kabbalists could claim twenty-seven letters for the Hebrew alphabet. The first was alef, the middle nun, the last two were shin and tav. Combining (as Pico suggests) bet with the first letter gives us av, "Father." Combining it with the middle letter, we get ben, "Son." Combining it with the last two letters we get shabbat, "Sabbath." All these correspond neatly with 99 66 “indwelling,” “procession,” and “reversion and beatific reunion” in Pico’s thesis.» — acepta una lectura de Wirszubski, con reserva, y reconstruye la combinación de letras que da Padre, Hijo y sábado.

«An important thesis that tells us as much about Pico’s views of Arıstotle as about his views of Maimonides.» — señala que la tesis sobre Maimónides dice tanto de él como de la lectura que Pico hace de Aristóteles.

«How the thesis pertains to Christianity is not clear, however.» — declara oscura la conexión cristiana de una tesis que se presenta como confirmación del cristianismo.

«Pico explains this thesis in the Heptaplus, second proem (Opera, 5; Garin, Scritti vari, 184), invoking some traditional folk etymology: “The caelum is called asciamaim [shamayim] by the Hebrews, as though composed of es and maim [mayim], that is, out of fire and water.”» — apoya la explicación de una tesis en una etimología popular que Pico recoge en el Heptaplus.

«be a further allusion here to automatic writing, which was often said to be conducted in a trance.» — sugiere que la lectura sin puntos alude a una escritura en trance.

«book of God" /"book of the Law" = nature/Torah.» — descifra los dos libros de la última tesis: la naturaleza y la Torá.

«Innocent VIII’s bull ordering the destruction of the nine hundred theses complains that Pico had his text “affixed in diverse public places of the holy city, in which we» — documenta por la bula misma que las tesis se fijaron en lugares públicos de Roma.

«Nor do we know how many philosophers or theologians, real or would-be, showed up at Rome demanding from Pico their traveling expenses.» — se abstiene sobre si alguien acudió a cobrar los viáticos que Pico ofrecía.

«Scattered second-hand reports of Pico’s Roman adventures, real and apocryphal, exist that warrant closer study, however.» — deja como pendiente el examen de los testimonios de segunda mano sobre la estancia romana.

«The specialized literature on Pico is large and notoriously unreliable.» — juzga la bibliografía especializada sobre Pico abundante y poco fiable, y por eso limita la suya a lo citado.