life of john picus earl of mirandola - The Center for Thomas More ...

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Life of John Picus
things strange and to all folk (except right few special excellent men)
before that day not unknown only but also unheard of. 1 All which
questions in open places (that they might be to all people the better
known) he fastened and set up, offering also himself to bear the costs
of all such as would come thither out of far countries to dispute. But
through the envy of his malicious enemies (which envy, like the fire,
ever draweth to the highest) he could never bring about to have a day
to his disputations appointed. For this cause he tarried at Rome an
whole year, 2 in all which time his enviers never durst openly with open
disputations attemptº him, but rather with craft and sleight and as it
were with privy trenchesº enforced to undermine him, for none other
cause but for malice and for they were (as many men thought) corrupt
with a pestilent envy.
This envy, as men deemed, was specially raised against him for
this cause, that where there were many which had many years, some
for glory, some for covetousness, given themselves to learning, they
thought that it should haply defaceº their fame and diminish the opinion
of their cunning if so young a man, plenteous of substance and
great doctrine¦, durst in the chief city of the world make a proof of
his wit and his learning, as well in things naturalº as in divinity and in
many such things as men many years never attained to. Now when
they perceived that they could not against his cunning anything openly
prevail, they brought forth the serpentines 3 of false crimeº and cried
out that there were thirteen of his nine hundred questions suspect of
heresy. 4 Then joined they to them some good simple folk that should
of zeal to the Faith and pretence of religion impugn those questions
as new things and with which their ears had not been in use. In which
impugnation, though some of them haply lacked not good mind, yet
lacked they erudition and learning–which questions notwithstanding,
10 attempt try, put to the test / 11 privy trenches hidden tunnels / 17 deface discredit / 20 things
natural natural philosophy / 23 false crime charge, accusation
¦19 More omits quasi fertilis ager, “like a fertile field” (CW 1: 300, 301).
1. things strange...unheard of: With these words More replaces seven lines of Latin, wherein we are
told that Picus also interlaced “many points from the Cabala...many points concerning natural
magic...72 new propositions on physics and mathematics...[and] a new system of philosophizing
by numerology” (CW 1:299).
2. That is, until November 1487.
3. serpentines: the Latin tormenta calumniae “makes it clear that More is refering to a kind of cannon,
the sixteenth century equivalent of the Roman catapult” (CW 1:214).
4. On 5 March 1487, seven of Picus’ theses were explicitly condemned by an examining comission;
the orthodoxy of six others was deemed dubious.
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Envy
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