Giovanni Pico della Mirandola

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola lived from 24 February 1463 to 17 November 1494 and was an Italian Renaissance nobleman and philosopher 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, writing for the occasion 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 termed the Hermetic Reformation. He was the founder of the tradition of Christian Kabbalah, a key tenet of early modern Western esotericism; the 900 Theses was the first printed book to be universally banned by the Church, and Pico is sometimes seen as a proto-Protestant because his theses anticipated many later Protestant views.