IV. MORE STUDIES PICO’S LIFE AND WORKS. HIS MARRIAGE (1505).

IV. MORE STUDIES PICO’S LIFE AND WORKS. HIS MARRIAGE (1505).

More appears to have been influenced in the course he had taken, mainly by two things:--first, a sort of hero-worship for the great Italian, Pico della Mirandola; and, secondly, his continued reverence for Colet.

[Sidenote: More translates the life and works of Pico.]

[Sidenote: Pico’s warm piety and zeal.]

[Sidenote: A layman to the end.]

The ‘Life of Pico,’ with divers Epistles and other ‘Works’ of his, had come into More’s hands. Very probably Lilly may have brought them home with him amongst his Italian spoils. More had taken the pains to translate them into English. He had doubtless heard all about Pico’s outward life from those of his friends who had known him personally when in Italy. But here was the record of Pico’s inner history, for the most part in his own words; and reading this in More’s translation, it is not hard to see how strong an influence it may have exercised upon him. It told how, suddenly checked, as More himself had been, in a career of worldly honour and ambition, the proud vaunter of universal knowledge had been transformed into the humble student of the Bible; how he had learned to abhor scholastic disputations, of which he had been so great a master, and to search for truth instead of fame. It told how, ‘giving no great force to outward observances,’ ‘he cleaved to God in very fervent love,’ so that, ‘on a time as he walked with his nephew in an orchard at Ferrara, in talking of the love of Christ, he told him of his secret purpose to give away his goods to the poor, and fencing himself with the crucifix, barefoot, walking about the world, in every town and castle to preach of Christ.’

It told how he, too, ‘scourged his own flesh in remembrance of the passion and death that Christ suffered for our sake;’ and urged others also ever to bear in mind two things, ‘that the Son of God died for thee, and that thou thyself shall die shortly;’ and how, finally, in spite of the urgent warnings of the great Savonarola, he remained a layman to the end, and in the midst of indefatigable study of the Oriental languages, and, above all, the Scriptures, through their means, died at the early age of thirty-five, leaving the world to wonder at his genius, and Savonarola to preach a sermon on his death.[269]

[Sidenote: The Works of Pico.]

And turning from the ‘_Life_ of Pico’ to his ‘_Works_,’ and reading these in More’s translation, they present to the mind a type of Christianity, so opposite to the ceremonial and external religion of the monks, that one may well cease to wonder that More, having caught the spirit of Pico’s religion, could no longer entertain any notion of becoming a Carthusian brother.

It will be worth while to examine carefully what these works of Pico’s were.

[Sidenote: Pico’s letter to his nephew.]

The first is a letter from Pico to his nephew--a letter of advice to a young man somewhat in More’s position, longing to live to some ‘virtuous purpose,’ but finding it hard to stem the tide of evil around him. To encourage his nephew, he speaks of the ‘great peace and felicity it is to the mind when a man hath nothing that grudgeth his conscience, nor is appalled with the secret touch of any privy crime.’... ‘Doubtest thou, my son, whether the minds of wicked men be vexed or not with continual thought and torment?... The wicked man’s heart is like the stormy sea, that may not rest. There is to him nothing sure, nothing peaceable, but all things fearful, all things sorrowful, all things deadly. Shall we, then, envy these men? Shall we follow them, forgetting our own country--heaven, and our own heavenly Father--where we were free-born? Shall we wilfully make ourselves bondmen, and with them, wretched living, more wretchedly die, and at the last most wretchedly in everlasting fire be punished?’

[Sidenote: Pico’s faith in Christianity.]

Having warned his nephew against wicked companions, Pico proceeds to make evident allusion to the sceptical tendencies of Italian society. ‘It is verily a great madness’ (he says) ‘not to believe the Gospel, whose _truth_ the blood of martyrs crieth, the voice of Apostles soundeth, miracles prove, _reason confirmeth_, the world testifieth, the elements speak, devils confess!’[270] ‘But,’ he continues, ‘a far greater madness is it, if thou doubt not but that the Gospel is true, to live then as though thou doubtest not but that it were false.’

[Sidenote: Its reasonableness and harmony with the laws of nature.]

And it is worth notice, that the perception of the reasonableness of Christianity, and its harmony with the laws of nature, breaks out again a little further on. Pico writes to his nephew: ‘Take no heed what thing _many_ men do, but [take heed] _what thing the very law of nature_, what thing _very reason_, what thing _our Lord himself showeth thee to be done_.’

[Sidenote: Pico on prayer.]

[Sidenote: Pico on the Scriptures.]

A little further on Pico points out two remedies, or aids, whereby his nephew may be strengthened in his course. First, charity; and secondly, prayer. With regard to the first he wrote:--‘Certainly He shall not hear thee when thou callest on _Him_, if thou hear not first the poor man when he calleth upon _thee_.’ With regard to prayer, he wrote thus:--‘When I stir thee to prayer, I stir thee not to the prayer that standeth in many words, but to that prayer which, in the secret chamber of the mind, in the privy-closet of the soul, with very affect speaketh unto God, and in the most lightsome darkness of contemplation, not only presenteth the mind to the Father, but also uniteth it with Him by unspeakable ways, which only _they_ know that have assayed. Nor I care not how long or how short thy prayer be, but how effectual, how ardent.... Let no day pass, then, but thou once at the leastwise present thyself to God by prayer, and falling down before Him flat to the ground, with an humble affect of devout mind, not from the extremity of thy lips, but out of the inwardness of thine heart, cry these words of the prophet: “The offences of my youth, and mine ignorances, remember not, good Lord, but after thy goodness remember me.”

What thou shalt in thy prayer ask of God, both the Holy Spirit, which prayeth for us and eke thine own necessity, shall every hour put into thy mind, and also what thou shalt pray for thou shalt find matter enough _in the reading of Holy Scripture_, which that thou wouldst now (setting poets, fables, and trifles aside) take ever in thine hand I heartily pray thee; ... there lieth in _them_ a certain heavenly strength quick and effectual, which with marvellous power transformeth and changeth the readers’ mind into the love of God, if they be clean and lowly entreated.’ Lastly, he said he would ‘make an end with this one thing. I warn thee (of which when we were last together I often talked with thee) that thou never forget these two things; that both the Son of God died for thee, and that thou thyself shalt die shortly!’[271]

This, then, was the doctrine which Pico, ‘fencing himself with a crucifix, barefoot, walking about the world, in every town and castle,’ purposed to preach!

* * * * *

The next letter is a reply to a friend of his who had urged him to leave his contemplative and studious life, and to mix in political affairs, in which, as an Italian prince, lay his natural sphere. He replied, that his desire was ‘not _so to embrace Martha as utterly to forsake Mary_’--to ‘love them and use them both, as well study as worldly occupation.’ ‘I set more’ (he continued) ‘by my little house, my study, the pleasure of my books, the rest and peace of my mind, than by all your king’s palaces, all your business, all your glory, all the advantage that ye hawke after, and all the favour of the court!’

[Sidenote: Pico’s study of Eastern languages.]

Then he tells his friend that what he looks to do is, ‘_to give out some books of mine to the common profit_,’ and that he is mastering the Hebrew, Chaldee, and Arabic languages.[272]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Another letter to his nephew.]

Then follows another letter to his nephew, who, in trying to follow the advice given in his first letter, finds himself slandered and called a hypocrite by his companions at court. It is a letter of noble encouragement to stand his ground, and to heed not the scoffs and sneers of his fellows.

These letters are followed by an exposition of Psalm xvi., in which Pico incidentally uses his knowledge of the Hebrew text and of Eastern customs.[273]

* * * * *

[Sidenote: Pico’s verses.]

All the foregoing are in prose; after them come More’s translations of some of Pico’s verses.

The first is entitled, ‘Twelve rules, partly exciting and partly directing a man in spiritual battle,’ and reminds one of the ‘Enchiridion’ of Erasmus. The second is named, ‘The twelve weapons of spiritual battle.’ The striking feature in both these metrical works is the holding up of Christ’s example as an incentive to duty and to love. Thus:--

‘Consider, when thou art movèd to be _wroth_, He who that was God and of all men the best, Seeing himself scorned and scourgèd both, And as a thief between two thievès threst, With all rebuke and shame; yet from his breast Came never sign of wrath or of disdain, But patiently endurèd all the pain!’

And again, after speaking of the shortness of life--

‘How fast it runneth on, and passen shall As doth a dream or shadow on a wall.’

he continues:--

‘Think on the very lamentable pain, Think on the piteous cross of woeful Christ, Think on his blood, beat out at every vein, Think on his precious heart carvèd in twain: Think how for thy redemption all was wrought. _Let him not lose, what he so dear hath bought._’

There is another poem in which the feelings of a lover towards his love are made to show what the Christian’s feelings ought to be to Christ; and lastly, there is a solemn and beautiful ‘Prayer of Picus Mirandola to God,’ glowing with the same adoration of

... ‘that mighty love Which able was thy dreadful majesty To draw down into earth from heaven above And crucify God, that we poor wretches, _we_ Should from our filthy sin yclensèd be!’

and the same earnest longing

‘That when the journey of this deadly life My silly ghost hath finished, and thence Departen must,’ ... ‘He may Thee find ... In thy lordship, not as a lord, but rather As a very tender, loving father!’

[Sidenote: Pico’s enlightened piety.]

I have made these quotations, and thus endeavoured to put the reader in possession of the contents of this little volume, which More in his seclusion was translating, because I think they throw some light upon the current in which his thoughts were moving, and because, whilst the name of Pico is known to fame as that of a great linguist and most precocious genius, his enlightened piety and the extent of the influence of his heroic example have scarcely been appreciated.

This little book, indeed, has a special significance in relation to the history of the Oxford Reformers. Whatever doubt may rest upon the direct connection between _their_ views and those of Savonarola, there is here in More’s translation of these writings of a disciple of Savonarola, another _in_direct connection between them and that little knot of earnest Christian men in Italy of which Savonarola was the most conspicuous.

[Sidenote: Position of the Neo-Platonic philosophers of Florence.]

The extracts made and translated by More from Pico’s writings may also help us to recognise in the Neo-Platonic philosophers of Florence, by whose writings Colet had been so profoundly influenced, a vein of earnest Christian feeling of which it may be that we know too little. Like their predecessors of a thousand years before, they stood between the old world and the new. They were the men who, when the learning of the old Pagan world was restored to light, and backed against the dogmatic creed of priest-ridden degraded Christendom, built a bridge, as it were, between Christian and Pagan thought. That their bridge was frail and insecure it may be, but, to a great extent, it served its end. A passage was effected by it from the Pagan to the Christian shore. Ficino, the representative Neo-Platonist, who, as has been seen, had aided in its building, had himself passed over it. Savonarola too had crossed it. Pico had crossed it. It is true that these men may, to some extent, have Platonised Christianity in becoming Christian; but it will be recognised at once that the earnest Christian feeling found by More in Pico, so to speak, rose far above his Platonism.

[Sidenote: More calls Savonarola a ‘man of God.’]

That the life and writings of such a man should have awakened in his breast something of hero-worship[274] is, therefore, not surprising. That he should have singled out these passages, and taken the trouble to translate them, is some proof that he admired Pico’s practical piety more than his Neo-Platonic speculations; that he shared with Colet those yearnings for practical Christian reform with which Colet had returned from Italy ten years before. That a few years after this translation should be published and issued in English in More’s name was further proof of it. For here was a book not only in its drift and spirit boldly taking Cole’s side against the Schoolmen, and in favour of the study of Scripture and the Oriental languages, but as boldly holding up Savonarola as ‘a preacher, as well in cunning as in holiness of living, most famous,’--‘a holy man’--‘a man of God’[275]--in the teeth of the fact that he had been denounced by the Pope as a ‘son of blasphemy and perdition,’ excommunicated, tortured, and, refusing to abjure, hung and burned as a heretic![276]

[Sidenote: Colet’s influence on More.]

And if the fire of hero-worship for Pico had lit up something of heroism in More’s heart--something which yearned for the battle of life, and not for the rest of the cloister--so the living example of Colet was ready to feed the flame into strength and steadiness.

[Sidenote: More marries under Colet’s advice.]

The result was that, in 1505,[277] in spite of early disappointments, and, it is said, under Colet’s ‘advice and direction,’[278] More married Jane Colt, of New Hall in Essex, took a house in Bucklersbury, and gave up for ever all longings for monastic life.