‘Princeps aliorum’ and his followers: Giovanni Pico della Mirandola on the ‘Astrological Tradition’ in the Disputationes adversus astrologiam divinatricem Ovanes Akopyan INTRODUCTION Pico’s Disputationes adversus astrologiam divinatricem has been referred to as ‘the most extensive and incisive attack on astrology that the world had yet seen’. 1 The text was never completed due to Giovanni Pico’s sudden death in 1494 and was published posthumously by his nephew Gianfran- cesco Pico della Mirandola in 1496. 2 Though this large treatise, which consists of twelve books, is stylistically less than perfect, Pico is consistent in pursuing his argument through the whole work, in an attempt to dis- credit astrology as a dangerous superstition. 3 One of the main polemical strategies against astrology used by Pico was to find contradictions within astrological writings, analysing different sources in detail. This formed the basis for Giovanni Pico’s attack: his analysis of astrological practices came ex principio, that is, from studying Claudius Ptolemy’s writings on 1 Steven Vanden Broecke, The Limits of Influence: Pico, Louvain, and the Crisis of Renaissance Astrology (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2003), 55. For Pico’s biography and philosophical studies see three major monographs: Eugenio Garin, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola: vita e dottrina (Florence: Le Monnier, 1937); Fernand Roulier, Jean Pic de la Mirandole. Humaniste, philosophe, th eologien (Geneva: Slatkine, 1989); Louis Valcke, Jean Pic de la Mirandole. Un itin eraire philosophique (Paris: Les belles lettres, 2005). 2 In Bologna by Benedictus Hectoris. 3 Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Disputationes adversus astrologiam divinatricem, 2 vols, 2 edn, ed. E. Garin (Turin: Nino Aragno, 2004). On the structure of the Disputationes: Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science, 8 vols (New York: Columbia University Press, 1923–1958), IV (1934), 529–43; Giancarlo Zanier, ‘Struttura e significato delle Disputationes pichiane’, Giornale critico della filosofia italiana 1, 1 (1981), 54–86. For an analysis of Pico’s anti-astrological views see first of all: Brian Vickers, ‘Critical Reactions to the Occult Sciences During the Renaissance’, in Scientific Enterprise. The Bar-Hillel Colloquium: Studies in History, Phi- losophy, and Sociology of Science, ed. E. Ullmann-Margalit, vol. 4 (Dordrecht: Springer, 1992), 43–92; Ornella Pompeo Faracovi, Scritto negli astri: l’astrologia nella cultura dell’Occidente (Venice: Marsilio, 1996), 224–33; Anthony Grafton, Commerce with the Classics: Ancient Books and Renaissance Readers (Ann Arbor: The University of Michigan Press, 1997), 93–134; Steven vanden Broecke, The Limits of Influence: Pico, Louvain, and the Crisis of Renaissance Astrology, 55–80. V C 2017 The Society for Renaissance Studies and John Wiley & Sons Ltd Renaissance Studies Vol. 32 No. 4 DOI: 10.1111/rest.12335