Giovanni Pico della Mirandola

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola was an Italian Renaissance nobleman and philosopher. He is famed for the events of 1486, when at the age of 23, he proposed to defend 900 theses on religion, philosophy, natural philosophy, and magic against all comers, for which he wrote the Oration on the Dignity of Man, which has been called the Manifesto of the Renaissance, and a key text of Renaissance humanism and of what has been called the Hermetic Reformation.

Giovanni was born at Mirandola, near Modena, the youngest son of Gianfrancesco I Pico, Lord of Mirandola and Count of Concordia , by his wife Giulia, daughter of Feltrino Boiardo, Count di Scandiano. The family had long dwelt in the Castle of Mirandola , which had become independent in the fourteenth century and had received in 1414 from the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund the fief of Concordia. Mirandola was a small autonomous county in Emilia, near Ferrara. The Pico della Mirandola were closely related to the Sforza, Gonzaga and Este dynasties, and Giovannis siblings wed the descendants of the hereditary rulers of Corsica, Ferrara, Bologna, and Forl.

Source: Wikipedia