'Ingenious... a glorious portrait of the great 15th-century prince of learning' Daily Telegraph
'A deeply fascinating sui generis book by a brilliant scholar-writer which uses the life
story of a Renaissance prodigy to summon an angel-host of ideas people and stories all
circling the question of language's ability to transcend the mortal realm' Robert Macfarlane
bestselling author of Underland ________________________________ Does there exist a form of
speech so powerful as to allow the speaker to control the listener taking over their thoughts
and even their will? Renaissance prodigy and polymath Giovanni Pico della Mirandola - the
uncontested marvel of an age of true wonders - believed that there was. The Grammar of Angels
tells how Pico dedicated his short brilliant life to finding a philosophy that would settle
the most important questions about human existence. This philosophy would he believed provide
tools by which man could transcend his mortal limitations and join the ranks of the angels. At
the heart of Pico's ideas were questions that he traced through the breadth and depth of human
thought from the ancient Greeks and Egyptians to the medieval Arabs and Jews. He made use of
everything at his disposal from Europe's broadening horizons and asked primal questions of
himself and the world. Why is it that we can be astonished by beauty? That the hairs on the
backs of our necks can be made to stand by intoxicating rhythms and harmonies? That we can be
provoked to ecstatic experiences by the simple means of an incantation? In 1486 when he was
just twenty-three he declared his intention to defend 900 theses on religion philosophy
natural philosophy and magic against all comers and for which he wrote a speech that is often
deemed the 'manifesto of the Renaissance even though the ideas it introduced were subject to
an unprecedented ban by the Church. He died mysteriously aged only thirty-one. The implications
of his thought were dangerous in the Europe of his day suggesting as they did that the notion
of the individual might be just as much of an illusion as a flat earth or a geocentric
universe. Pico's tempestuous life at the heart of the Renaissance was a testament to
intellectual daring to a human dignity founded in the willingness to think the unthinkable and
to peer over the edge of the abyss in search of answers.
