Grammar of Angels: A Search for the Magical Powers of Language in Renaissance Italy

by Edward Wilson-Lee

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.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Renaissance, Italy, Biography, Linguistics, Audiobook

288 pages, Hardcover

First published January 30, 2025

Reviews

[Thomasin · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was weird in the best way possible - enlightening about the seemingly "woo woo" preoccupations of pre-enlightenment thinkers and the enduring appeal of rhythmic nonsense words. There's also a lot in this book to interest anyone who's interested in how Renaissance Europeans viewed classical mythology or the intellectual output of distant cultures.

I still can't be persuaded to believe in the sublime, but the conclusion about the tension between individualism and a yearning for oneness is compelling. I disagree that the Western belief in individuality is so dogged, though. If anything, I think the overwhelming political current of recent years has been the desire to subvert individuality within the nation or the community. I don't think there's enough reckoning here with the fact that a desire for "oneness" can be very exclusionary of minorities.

[History Today]

From Giorgio Vasari’s The Lives of the Artists (1550) to Jacob Burckhardt’s The Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy (1860), the Italian Renaissance has been viewed as the age of the lone genius. Alongside Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and the eccentric goldsmith Benvenuto Cellini, the philosophical prodigy Giovanni Pico della Mirandola had proven a pre-eminent example of the type.

Born into nobility in 1463, Pico displayed a precocious talent for learning. As a child he could reportedly recite Dante’s Commedia both forwards and backwards. He enjoyed a meteoric rise to fame in Lorenzo de’ Medici’s Florence, where he caught the attention of luminaries including Marsilio Ficino and Angelo Poliziano. Aged 24, he arrived in Rome with a list of 900 theses, which he offered to defend against all challengers. Some of Pico’s theses proved too much for the papal authorities, and he fled to Paris. Returning to Florence, he settled down to a life of study, but could not help but get caught up in the political upheavals that followed Lorenzo’s death in 1492. Pico helped bring the controversial Dominican friar Girolamo Savonarola to Florence, before dying from a sudden and mysterious illness, aged 31.


Read the full review at https://www.historytoday.com/archive/...

Eloise Davies is Assistant Professor of Humanities at the University of Florida.

[Richard Hakes · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was hoping for better, I like most things Renaissance, I never really understood what the book was about or where it was going?

[Tim Pendry · Rating 4 out of 5]

After the last two 'serious' books I had bought, I thought I had finally reached an ideology-free zone with 'The Grammar of Angels' but it was not to be, albeit that the 'opinion' as opposed to evidenced research was nicely delayed until the final chapter. If I want opinion, I think I will rely on X.

The search for books that do not try to persuade me to think along expected contemporary tramlines is proving rather expensive. I am starting to wonder whether I should just give up and watch movies instead ... but of this example more later. At least these tramlines went to a new destination.

In fact, the core of the book remains a well researched, highly learned account of the life and influence of the Renaissance polymath Pico della Mirandola. It contains many insights into the ways of thinking and culture of the fifteenth century Italian Renaissance.

The 'hook' is the idea derived, not merely from the re-discovery of Platonism, that language could contain what would later be called the 'sublime' and that it had power beyond what it denoted to move minds for good or will and, albeit implicitly, to change material reality.

This is not a stupid idea once you do not take it too literally. Observe language (broadly defined) in the world today and in history. You can see how it frames how we perceive reality. Tens of millions spent on state psychological operations and 'narrative' tell us something of its relationship to power.

Since power includes taxation, regulation, the deployment of the monopoly of force and so forth, the link between narrative and material reality is a real one to the extent of us possibly seeing the whole process as a form of performative magic. You do not need Hitler here. NATO will do.

In Pico's day, this was thinking at the intersection between philosophy as we understand it, spirituality beyond conventional religion and magic and its incantations. It binds the Platonic mind-set with dissenting Catholicism, 'Hermeticism' and the Kabbalah if not always well understood.

Pico actually comes across as a somewhat over-excitable if highly intelligent young man operating in an almost heroic environment of well-heeled individuals connected to the world of the Medicis and in Rome who were prepared to think new thoughts that might be absurd but that moved culture forward.

This also became the age of Savonarola who might epitomise what Wilson-Lee identifies as the problematic of language as tool or weapon - it is not necessarily true or good but it can be used (like nuclear science) for dark forces and downright evil.

It is the potentiality of such 'learning' or 'magical thought' for the Good that is the point where Wilson-Lee and I would part company. I suspect its use can never be intrinsically good. The good in my opinion can be defined as the ethical struggle against the demands of the human 'hive'.

The Good, in effect, is either the good of the species (effectively survival along Darwinian lines) or of classes, tribes and interest groups within it or it is what an individual ethically thinks is good (which is problematic for society because individuals all think differently).

Magical manipulation takes place either when the species creates its own ruthless leadership (like the ant colony) that submerges the individual into the whole or an individual emerges to impose (as Savonarola did) an imagined good on the human 'hive' (usually to the destruction of the whole).

The 'good person' imposing their imagined good cannot be trusted because that good is still their good as it is imposed on that of their fellows and risks damage to the whole out of ignorance of all the facts. The intellectual who thinks he has the answer to the Good is a dangerous insect.

The incantations and rhythms of language can certainly sink the individual into the mass. This might be interpreted as some magical transformation analogous to being drawn into the One that is God or it might simply be the human 'hive' losing its reason to the magician-manipulator.

The book, although it does not perhaps have the depth that it thinks it has, with its anthropological references (giving us a common human aspect of 'hive' being) and philosophical anecdote (with just about the best explanation of the meaning of Plato's 'Phaedrus' I have come across) is 'suggestive'.

And yet it seems not to draw the conclusions that I would have assumed the facts 'suggest' - this is that there is a terrible balance to be had between humans as 'hive' (easily led without thought as if Quatermass IV was documentary) and individual observation and resistance to their condition.

At one extreme, we have defensive super-individualists living in rational theory and unable to comprehend the raw matter of humanity in which they have perforce to survive and at the other the 'sehnsucht' of the contemporary 'spiritual' liberal for immersion in this sea only that it be 'good'.

The balance lies in being an individual with a realistic understanding of how 'hive' humanity operates sufficient to survive within it and with no neurotic desire to bend it to its will and accepting that the 'hive' is there because it is essential to the survival of the species and its gene pool as a whole.

Towards the end Wilson-Lee has a jarring reference to the ant colony as if we should be impressed with it as a thing to be admired (rather than accepted) and that leads immediately to a nervousness about where his final chapter's ideologising is leading. Ants do not act 'willingly'.

The point is missed that the sea of humanity cannot be good or evil by its very nature - it just 'is'. And, similarly individuals are what they are and the sea will tend to have the bad individuals direct its waves to bad ends while the good (if they have any will or intelligence) withdraw to shore and safety.

Wilson-Lee (like many of a contemporary anthropological turn) seems to transfer the appreciation of the sublime from the Kantian (the individual observing) to this sea of humanity, more in hope than evidenced knowledge, so that we are left with a last chapter of newly fashionable romanticism.

This is that turn against the Enlightenment which has 'gone too far' in recent decades in frustration that it cannot deliver some abstract utopia that it was never intended to deliver. The happy-clappy rationalists needed taking down a peg or two but so do the exponents of the 'sublime'.

This is more serious than we might think because it represents something potentially quite dark - the turn of the Western liberal intellectual to a form of magical thinking that, in despairing of the fate of university liberalism in the post-Trump world, is drawn to an incipient Platonic authoritarianism.

There is an inability still (Wilson-Lee is not by any means more than a hint of this problem) to see the human 'hive' for what it is - as what we are collectively - and still to hope for some reassertion of the authority of theory to turn us into angels drawn to the One (Good).

The romantic aspect becomes clear in the final sentences. There is the bow towards Hinduism and then the assertion that the author would not want to live in a world that was entirely fixed, known and without mystery. Well, he may not speak for humanity when he says this.

Suddenly, we are forced to look back through the 221 pages of the text we have read and realise that everything was centred on this negative messaging, this romantic 'sehnsucht' for belief, this text-based and word-based desire for meaning where there may be none.

And yet 206 pages are well researched and intelligent descriptions of the facts of the matter, bringing the late fifteenth century Renaissance to life and certainly improving my understanding of the social and intellectual dynamics of the period and culture.

Unfortunately ideology and opinion makes me start to doubt what I am reading, much as (since I probably know more about some things than its journalists) I came to doubt the BBC on Ukraine and for a long period on Gaza. It is best to give us facts and then let us decide on meaning ourselves.

Anyway, my trick of checking forewards and epilogues for giveaway references to Trump, Putin, Farage, Brexit, climate change, imperialism, intersectionality, colonialism, feminism, gender failed me a bit this time around (none of those terms appeared here). I will have to try harder.

[Radka · Rating 4 out of 5]

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola wasn’t just a Renaissance philosopher—he was the Renaissance philosopher. A prodigy, a rebel, a man so convinced that all human knowledge could be woven into one grand, mystical truth that he tried (and failed) to prove it to the Pope. When I picked up The Grammar of Angels, I expected a dense academic slog, but Wilson-Lee turns Pico’s life into something far more electric—equal parts intellectual adventure and cautionary tale.

Pico was the kind of scholar who didn’t just read everything—he wanted to unify it all. Plato, Aristotle, Kabbalah, Christian theology, Persian mysticism—if it existed, he believed it fit somewhere in the grand cosmic puzzle. And he wasn’t just theorizing in a dusty library; he was traveling across Renaissance Italy, collecting books like they were rare weapons, challenging theologians to debates, and generally making a name for himself as the most ambitious thinker of his time. Wilson-Lee captures this energy brilliantly, pulling you deep into a world where philosophy, magic, and politics were all tangled together.

The best part? The book makes Pico’s mind feel thrilling. His ideas weren’t just abstract—they were dangerous. He tried to defend 900 philosophical theses in Rome, which earned him a papal condemnation (whoops), got tangled up with Medici power struggles, and spent time on the run before dying mysteriously at 31. Wilson-Lee doesn’t just recount the facts—he makes you feel the stakes. Renaissance Florence is alive with intrigue, books are more than just books, and philosophy can literally get you killed.

That said, The Grammar of Angels sometimes gets as lost in the intellectual weeds as Pico himself. Wilson-Lee clearly loves his subject, but at times, the sheer volume of references and philosophical deep dives can feel overwhelming. There were moments when I had to pause, reread, and remind myself that I was, in fact, still following along. The structure meanders a bit, much like Pico’s boundless curiosity—fitting, but occasionally frustrating.

If you’ve ever devoured Stephen Greenblatt’s The Swerve or felt an irrational urge to disappear into a library for a few months, this book is for you. Wilson-Lee doesn’t just tell Pico’s story—he makes you want to step into his mind, even if just for a moment. By the end, I wasn’t just fascinated by Pico—I was rooting for him, despite knowing full well how his story ends.

[Brian Hanson · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fine and stimulating read. Occasionally the author's style will be flowery or jokey, but he underpins this with some profound observations. Those who have heard of Pico della Mirandola as one of a number of early Renaissance humanists who opened up the ancient thought-world by discovering and translating Greek texts will find their views much widened by following him into Hebrew, Arabic and "Chaldean" manuscripts - Wilson-Lee calls him "one of the last people to attempt a truly global philosophy". And the sheer effort involved in travelling to great libraries and spending weeks searching in them for treasures is well conveyed here. The central theme of the book, which is fully developed in the Epilogue - more of a personal commentary by the author - is the power of language, and rhythm, to move crowds; to dissolve the individual in the mass. The notorious preacher Savonarola - whose move to Florence was largely instigated by Pico - represented the dark side of this power, but in his Epilogue Wilson-Lee wonders if our fear of this kind of power - represented not just by Savonarola but also Hitler - has blinded us to its potential benefits. Is our suspicion of the kind of rhetoric that moves masses due to a "discomfort with the idea of collective action more generally"? Are the "sublime" and transcendental experiences of our lives - marginalised by our sciences and rationality - "remnants of a mechanism that was developing towards our integration in a superorganic entity"? By resisting collective action, and calls to it, are we cutting ourselves off from a higher state of being? Strong stuff, and it's good to come across a respected academic willing to ask such questions.

[Benji · Rating 4 out of 5]

Anyone who spends all their time reading, as Pico did in this period, is bound to find hidden worlds opening up inside the sentences of the books.

Indeed, we know that the books and the relics were kept side by side because a scandal was created when one free-thinking librarian, a man named Molla Lufti, used the same cradle of Jesus as a step-tool to reach a book on a high shelf.

[Cathal McGuinness · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was deadly but a bizarre "biography", almost as much about a man as about a thought process. Does make you want to live in 15th century Florence and stand in town squares declaiming and imbibing and all collectively going insane, though

[Caomhghain · Rating 4 out of 5]

Renaissance philosophy gets short shrift in the history of philosophy. Pico was attempting, among other things, to reconcile Plato and Aristotle, an impossible task, to create a new synthesis. Wilson-Lee weaves his attempts into a fascinating overview of the history and personalities of this period

[Karen Carlson]

Giovanni Pico della Mirandola,
questions that he traced through the depth and breadth of human thought, from the ancient Greeks and Egyptians to the medieval Arabs and Jews

[MR STEPHEN · Rating 2 out of 5]

Well - that was weird! Reading this felt like stepping into a Vincent Price movie.

[ANTHONY CUTLER · Rating 4 out of 5]

Plenty has been written about Quattrocento Florence: Donatello, Brunelleschi, Michelangelo, Fra Angelico, Poliziano, the Medici ... . What should be obvious, after thinking about it a bit, is that those household names were the triumph of a broad intellectual and artistic ferment, not all of whose participants left so marked a cultural legacy.

One such was Giovanni Pico dei conti della Mirandola e della Concordia. "Pico" had many pretentions but ultimately settled that his contribution to posterity would be to discover and account for the language of angels (sic), a tongue in which all hidden truths could be revealed. Indulging in Procrustean biblical exegesis, Pico claimed to have understood the angels' discourse and went on to publish 900 propositions that he had derived. Naturally, this got him into a little local difficulty with the Pope.

Nevertheless, Pico was very much a part of Florentine intellectual life in that miraculous century. His face turns up in a number of paintings you can see today, most famously Raphael's The School of Athens in the Vatican.

Wilson-Lee sets this all out very elegantly. It's an account that could easily be "worthy but dull". But the author writes briskly and engagingly, setting out the narrative and the context. Lively text without resorting to sensationalism. A very satisfying and entertaining book, adding some context to that most pivotal of places and times.