Giovanni Pico della Mirandola,   b. Feb. 24, 1463, d. Nov. 17, 1494, was a well-known Neoplatonist philosopher of the Italian Renaissance. After studies in Bologna, Ferrara, Padua, and Pavia, in 1484 he went to Florence, where Marsilio Ficino converted him to Neoplatonism. In 1486, Pico published Conclusiones nongentae in omni genere scientiarum (900 Conclusions in Every Kind of Science), covering logic, natural philosophy, metaphysics, theology, ethics, and the Kabbalah. A proposed disputation, in which Pico was to defend his theses, was forbidden by Pope Innocent VIII when 13 of them were declared heretical. Pico fled to France, where he was briefly imprisoned (1488), but later returned to Florence. Pico's thought is an eclectic attempt to reconcile Judaism, Christianity, and Greek philosophy. He classifies all things in three categories: super-celestial, God and the angels; the celestial, the Sun, Moon, planets, and stars; and the terrestrial, material things below the Moon. Mediating all categories is humankind, "the Divine Masterpiece," whose special dignity is in its freedom and its power to shape its own destiny.