The Occult Renaissance Church of Rome

by Michael Hoffman

  There is nothing that these conspirators would not say or do to advance their objective, including taking one step backward—it is “the Synagogue” that “unjustly holds” the parts of the truth that the Kabbalah contains. It is the Christians who are “the only legitimate Israelites”—in order to advance two steps forward: “…despite itself” the Kabbalah “bear(s) witness to the mysteries of Christ and his Church’… ‘with a view to confirm the sacrosanct Catholic faith.”

  In apprehending De Lubac’s doubletalk we are afforded a front row seat at the spectacle of Vatican public relations methodology. It arose in the Renaissance and hundreds of years later in the mind and spirit of De Lubac.

  He wishes us to accept that Satan’s book of black magic “confirms the Catholic faith” and bears witness to the mysteries of Christ.

  This contemptible folderol is presented by the learned Jesuit Cardinal with a reputation as a towering intellectual figure in modern Catholic theology. It is repeated later in his book (p. 295):

  “If he (Pico) is so greatly interested in the books of Kabbalah, it was on the contrary because he believes he finds there the announcement under a form more or less veiled, of precise dogmas ‘of the Catholic faith of Christians,’ above all, those of the Trinity,43 and of the divinity of Christ.”

  In the very name of Jesus, interpreted according to the method and principles of the Kabbalah, he sees these two fundamental dogmas revealed with precision. He likes to discover divers symbols of the Trinity in the ‘Orphic Theology.’ At least that was his conviction at the time of the Conclusiones, of the Apologia, and still of the Heptaplus.” 44

  Another reconciler of Christianity and paganism in Cardinal De Lubac’s syncretic pantheon is Rev. Fr. Marsilio Ficino:

  “At Florence, one knows how (John) Argyropoulos (Neoplatonic teacher and philosopher funded by Cosimo de Medici; member of the papal court of Sixtus IV from 1471 onward), attempted to unite Aristotle, Plato, Plotinus, and Proclus. The synthesis sought by Marsilio Ficino was different. He received impetus from Plethon, but he does not set out in the same direction. He does not neglect the text of Aristotle; he meditates on the works of Plato (then Plotinus), those of St. Augustine and St. Thomas, especially the Summa contra Gentiles; he adds to them all he can find of the ‘ancient theologians.’ In conformity with a tradition one of whose most eminent representatives was Olivi,45 he wants to liberate philosophy, this sacred gift of God, from ‘impiety,’ and at the same time liberate religion from an ‘execrable ignorance.’ 46

  “That’s why, in this Neoplatonic atmosphere, he undertakes to construct a ‘pious philosophy,’ which he also calls a ‘philosophical religion’…in order to oppose the incredulity of ‘the majority of peripatetics’ (followers of Aristotle) who see, he says, ‘in the common religion old wives’ tales’ [n. 2]. His Platonic Theology is a propaedeutic [introductory study], with no ambition to be more. Far from having for himself to ‘try to reconcile Christianity and Platonism’ [n. 3], he thinks he finds in the latter the better introduction to the former and its best defender: ad Christum per Platonem, as in our own century Simone Weil (1909-1943) will say. His influence was to be extensive and long-lasting.

  “It has been remarked that the term ‘philosophia perennis,’ which will later on experience a renewed fortune by changing meaning, was coined by one of his disciples ‘to denote the Christian tradition and the Platonic tradition studied in its wake.’ 47 Agostino Steuco (1497-1548), who was bishop and prefect of the Vatican, was to dedicate to Paul III in 1540 the ten books of his treatise De Perenni Philosophia, which would be republished more than once; there he constantly refers, not only to Plato and his disciples, but to Pythagoras, to Trismegistus, to the Chaldean Oracles, to Sibyls, etc., with an intention that could be called ‘ecumenical.’ 48

  “A few months after the death of his young friend (Pico), whom he doubly mourned, Marsilio Ficino knew how to show that he bore him no ill will. In the letter he addressed on 23 March 1495 to Germain of Ganay, he made a generous and tender elegy…’He is the chief of Concord since he reconciled the Jews with the Christians, the Peripatetics with the Platonists, the Greeks with the Latins.’

  “Without being complete, the enumeration at least implies that in the grand design of Pico, philosophical reconciliation was not all. It was only to be a basis, a point of departure. A real peace had to be established among men, and this could only be solidly established by religious unity.”

  Notice that De Lubac momentously states, though en passant, that “the term ‘philosophia perennis’…will later on experience a renewed fortune by changing meaning…” Is not this ‘philosophia perennis,’ under a different coloring, the genius locus of Vatican II, Pope Paul VI and his successors?

  De Lubac’s previously nuanced approach to Pico, accompanying his Kabbalism and pagan syncretism with qualifying statements and modifiers, and assertions of strict orthodoxy and sublime Catholic piety, is undercut when Cardinal de Lubac puts forth “the cosmic Christ,” the specialized term of the Hermetic Theosophists, together with his litany of syncretist eminences of the Church of Rome (p. 339):

  “Apropos the doctrine of Nicholas of Cusa, it has been asked: ‘In so far as he is the Jesus semper benedictus, an historical person, can (the Christ) become the fundamentum inconcussum of an ontology? The problem is grave. 49 It is grave, but it greatly exceeds their two cases. Is not what it expresses the central paradox of the Christian faith, the very paradox of the Incarnation? It does not only appear in subsequent theologies, but already in the texts of St. Paul and St. John.

  “The Jesus of history and the ‘cosmic Christ’ are but one. It is the same paradox that is affirmed in our century in the doctrines of the concrete personal-universal such as they are propounded by a Maurice Blondel, a Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, an Urs von Balthasar; and one must always keep oneself from confounding it with a gnosis, precisely because they always involve Jesus semper benedictus.50

  This is not to be construed as any part of the occult gnosis, De Lubac assures us, because the blessed name of Jesus is always invoked by the ecumenical syncretists. Hence, all is well.

  De Lubac takes up the definitive defense of Pico by Pope Alexander VI, after the bull Et si injuncto nobis of Pope Innocent VIII, dated August 4, 1487 (but not publicly issued until December 15), condemning seven of the conclusions in Pico’s Nine Hundred Theses, and censoring six more, which is a measure of tolerance worthy of note in that many hundreds of Pico’s other heretical conclusions in the Nine Hundred Theses were passed over without censure of any kind by Innocent VIII. His other Kabbalistic magical treatises in his other books were “overlooked” by the reputedly “stern and vigilant” pontiff. As De Lubac also points out:

  “Not for an instant does Pico endeavor to justify or to explain his exaltation of human freedom. It needed no defense because it had never been contested (by Innocent VIII). The reason is simple: the Oratio (Oration on the Dignity of Man), in which this ‘celebration’ is found, had not been examined. It was, let us repeat, totally outside the debate. Whatever one may think of the doctrine contained in this work, it must not be forgotten that it was never pronounced upon, nor subject to an examination by any censor” (p. 401). “None of the writings of Pico della Mirandola was ever listed in any catalogue of the Index of Prohibited Books” (p. 412).

  At this juncture we note that Lorenzo de Medici and Pope Innocent VIII were political allies. Lorenzo’s daughter married Innocent’s natural son. Lorenzo and the pontiff shared a grandson, the future cardinal, Innocenzo Cibo. 51

  As previously stated, Pico fled to France the next year where he was briefly imprisoned by order of the Duke of Savoy. He was soon after released by French King Charles VIII and returned to Florence and the lap of Medici luxury, a “heretic” who now lived exempt from any further interdiction by the pontiff.

  Conservative Catholics were placated by the ostentatious “dramatic moves against Pico” and hoped there would be more to come. There was
a theatrical aspect to the papal intervention, the “flight into France” and the subsequent return to the comfort and safety of Lorenzo the Magnificent’s city of Florence, where Giovanni Pico settled in a palatial villa and continued his heretical writing as before. In the summer of 1489 he published Heptaplus, his Kabbalistic falsification of the book of Genesis. De Lubac, in asserting Pico’s alleged orthodoxy, writes (pp. 401; 410 and 411):

  “…one will object, what about the Bull of Innocent VIII?… [Upon the accession of Rodrigues Borgia to the pontificate under the name of Alexander VI, Pico had delivered to him a model letter insinuating his request to be rehabilitated… ] [p. 409]. During the first year of his pontificate, Alexander VI, ratifying the conclusions proposed by three cardinals and the master of the Sacred Palace, wrapped up the whole affair by a letter addressed ‘to our dear son, the noble Giovanni Pico, Earl of Mirandola.’ Of course, it was a political gesture, ‘a homage rendered to Peter de Medici given the current political situation in Italy’; but the gesture nonetheless came at the conclusion of a seriously conducted investigation…

  “Was Alexander VI’s Brief a simple absolution granted to Pico or a rehabilitation pure and simple, which could be viewed as a retraction on the part of the Holy See? In our opinion, the truth seems to lie between the two, closer, however, to the second hypothesis. A close reading of the document is the best way to ascertain this. It is composed of two parts: an exposition of the facts that occurred under Innocent VIII, then, by reason of the new inquiry, the decision of Alexander. The exposition of the facts attenuates the rigor of the measures taken previously; it was merely a matter of protecting the faith of believers and especially of the simple, because the wording of some of the propositions could have led them into error.

  “Pico is always shown in a good light: the fact that the Nine Hundred Conclusions (Theses) had been proposed for the discussion of the learned under the pope’s control is advanced in his favor, and that their author always showed himself to be disposed toward an entire submission. The Apologia is presented entirely to Pico’s credit: with a sincere faith he interprets the contested propositions in a Catholic way. 52 Then the pope pronounced his judgment. He begins by conditionally absolving Pico from every censure he may have incurred by reason of perjury, in order to bring to his soul perfect tranquility. Then he declares ‘extinct (motu proprio et ex certa scientia), all the grounds for complaint [grievances] raised against him by the previous commission. He assures him that he committed no fault, has incurred no penalty, has not fallen under suspicion of heresy ‘propter editionem Declarationum et Apologetici.’53 Finally, he forbids anyone from picking a quarrel with him over any of these past events. The Brief was skillfully drafted. Without contradicting Innocent, Alexander did more than absolve Pico.54 He praised him, and basing himself on his Apologia, he approved his doctrine. That is why John-Francis (his nephew, Gianfrancesco) was able to have a new edition of his uncle’s Apologia published in 1495…”

  De Lubac herewith follows the trail of Pico’s influence in the Church of Rome in the centuries that followed his death, including with Reuchlin (notice his dig at Hoogstraeten [below] as guilty of “petty…provincialism” like Pico’s alleged adversary Pedro Garsias), though he omits Francesco Giorgi and Agrippa. Nonetheless, De Lubac adds to our knowledge of the Neoplatonic-Hermetic-Kabbalistic Catholic personnel, and the “clean slate” that constituted Pico’s Catholic status:

  “Thus it is in complete security that the hot-headed defender of Pico’s Christian Kabbalism, Archangelus de Borgo Novo (Angiolo Pozzi, author of Interpretationes in Cabalistarum selectiora dogmata of 1569), will in 1564, in the preface of a book directed against Pedro Garsias,55 contrast the grandeur of his hero with the petty, pretentious provincialism of those who had wanted to stifle his voice. ‘Fallen,’ he wrote, ‘into the nets set out for him by the clever folly of his judges, Pico, the noblest of the learned and the most learned of the nobles, more eloquent than the ancient wise men, more illustrious, holy, and of a purer taste in every genre of life and of doctrine, poured into his Apology, a small book of immense erudition, gems more precious than gold.’

  “Such will be, in the following century, the opinion of the renowned Jesuit Kabbalist Athanasius Kircher, who will include Pico della Mirandola among the sources of his monumental Oedipus Aegyptiacus. 56 He will adopt his interpretations of Orpheus and will cite them in commenting ‘according to their legitimate sense’ in order to give an ‘anakephalaiosis’ of his own thought, seven of the effata mystica, chosen among the conclusiones secundum Proclum (Nos. 2, 8, 11, 15, 49), secundum propriam opinionem de modo intelligendi hymnos Orphei (No. 28) and cabalisticae (No. 13).57

  “There is no mention of him in the fourteen books Adversus omnes haereses published under Paul III at Venice in 1546 by Alphonsus de Castro Zamorensis, O.M.

  “The Treatise of Heresies published in 1661 by Louis Abelly, which aims at a complete inventory century by century and which does not spare Raymond Lully, breathes not a word about the (Nine Hundred) Conclusions or the Apologia. One would also seek in vain the name of Pico in the Istoria di tutte l’eresie of Domenico Bernino in the chapter that relates the errors condemned under the pontificate of Innocent VIII.”

  As Cardinal De Lubac attests through his sources, Pico’s rehabilitation by the papacy was complete. His diabolic slate had been wiped clean, even by the “Counter-Reformation Pontiff” Paul III. It has remained so over the centuries, up to the present. Alleged “counter-occult” popes of the post-Renaissance Church of Rome, such as Leo X and Pius X, had not a word of disapprobation for this preeminent worker of iniquity. “Conservatives” and “traditionalists” likewise view him as benign. His syncretic occult religion has been a smashing success. His dream of a public fusion between Catholicism, Hermeticism and Judaism has come to fruition. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola is the true father of the Second Vatican Council and the “post-Conciliar Church.”

  1 Susan K. Wood, Spiritual Exegesis and the Church in the Theology of Henri de Lubac (1997), p. 5.

  2 Introduction to the Vatican Council Notebooks I of Henri de Lubac (Ignatius Press, 2007), pp. 10-11.

  3 David Grumett, De Lubac: A Guide for the Perplexed, p. ix.

  4 Ibid., pp. ix and 8.

  5 Aidan Nichols, O.P., Divine Fruitfulness: A Guide through Balthasafs Theology (Catholic University of America), pp. 72-73.

  6 In the theory of the desiderium naturale, “At issue is whether a natural desire to see the divine essence can be reconciled with the necessarily supernatural and gratuitous manner of this desire’s fulfillment. The 16th century Dominican, Cardinal Cajetan strove to mollify the problem by proposing a duplex ordo in which the hypothetical state of pure nature would have its own natural end distinct from man’s supernatural end. This ostensible solution to the issue was regnant until the broad-ranging criticisms of the Nouvelle Theologie in the 20th century (represented especially by Henri de Lubac). The theologies of grace, which emerged after this critique—most notably that of Karl Rahner—sought to remedy the Neoscholastic separation of nature and grace…” Alexander S. Rosenthal, “The Problem of the Desiderium Naturale,” Verbum, vol. 6, no. 2.

  7 Hans Urs von Balthasar, The Theology of Henri de Lubac (1991).

  8 Pedro Garcia (also: “Garsias”), Master of the Papal Chapel, Bishop of Ales (Uselli) Italy, and later of Barcelona, Spain. He was Giovanni Pico’s occasional antagonist. He died in 1505.

  9 Pico’s Apologia was a bold justification, and in no way a recantation, of his theology.

  10 Cardinal Henri de Lubac, S.J., Theology in History (1996), p. 42.

  11 Paolo Moneglia, Doctor of Theology at the University of Pavia and Chair of Thomistic Theology (ad lecturam operum beati Thomae). On June 6, 1490 he was elevated to the curia by Pope Innocent VIII. He was Dominican inquisitor in Genoa from April, 1494 to February, 1497. In 1498, the pope named him Inquisitor of Rome.

  12 Cf. Giovanni Di Napoli, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola e la p
roblematica dottrinale del suo tempo (Rome, 1965), for an account of the commission’s investigation (pp. 81-137), and the text of Pope Alexander’s Ominum Catholicorum (pp. 116-118).

  13 De Lubac, Theology in History, op.cit., p. 43.

  14 Giovanni Pico della Mirandola: Symbol of his Age. Modern Interpretations of a Renaissance philosopher (Librairie Droz, 1981), p. 18.

  15 The English translation of Henri de Lubac’s Pic de la Mirandole in these pages is by our translator, A.M. Stinnett. Except for the note below, all of the other footnotes linked to this English translation are original to De Lubac’s French text. In this section, they are his footnotes; not ours.

  16 Pico’s Heptaplus interprets the Book of Genesis through the prism of the Kabbalah.

  17 Here begin’s de Lubac’s own notes: Giuseppe Barone justly ranks it, as do the older publishers, among the three Opere maggiori, with the De onte et uno and the Disputationes adversus astrologos: Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, (Milan-Rome, 1948) ch. 2.

  18 Dell’Acqua, 162166. On the friendship of Pico and Jochanan, see infra, III, 7.

  19 N. 4: “There is evidence that he continued to study the Kabbalah long after his so-called conversion.” Dulles, 23.

  20 Biblioteca sancta, 1, 4; t. 1, Lyons, 1575, 292: “…Additur veluti pro coronide specimen quoddam octavae explanationis Kabalisticae… quae non solum ex singulis sententiis ac dictionibus multos sensus elicit, sed ex singulis Hebraicis literis uniuscujusque syllabae mysteria pene infinita deducit.”

  21 “Praeter spem meam, praeter opinionem, inveni quod neque inveniens ipse credebam, neque credere alii facile potuerunt, universam de mundi rerumque omnium creatione rationem in una ea dictione apertam et explicatam…” 376.

  22 1937, 39: “…non rappresentava certo una dimessa palinodia rispetto al precedente atteggiamento… Quanto l’opera piacque ai dotti, altrettanto dispiacque alla Chiesa che vi trovo piuttosto della pertinacia che della sottomissione….” 1963, 50.