In a remote
medieval village, a child is born. Unfortunately, the local priest
soon claims him to be destined to an afterlife in Purgatory; no
amount of virtuous action, charity, or veneration can save the
child from his fate. While certainly a hyperbole, such an event is
not a far cry from the religious beliefs of medieval Europe. During
this period, the prevailing belief of the time was a deterministic
and cynical view of human nature. Pope Innocent III describes how
...man was formed out of earth, conceived in guilt, born to
punishment
he will become fuel for eternal fires food for worms, a
mass of rottenness (De Segni 1). Under the belief of the time,
humans were thought to be predestined to their fate; this
deterministic view of human potential or lack thereofwas
characteristic of the medieval era. The turning point in this
belief was the emergence of humanism in the 14th and 15th
centuries. As the name suggests, humanism emphasized the
malleability and perfectibility of man, as well as a rediscovery of
antiquity. Determinism became
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Neoplatonismrepresented a turn away from the practical concerns
of civic humanists to an exploration of the grand ideals of truth
and perfection (Chambers 397). Pico della
Mirandolabelieved the universe to be ordered in a hierarchy,
with every being in the universe holding a compulsion to seek
perfection. These ideals, along with other ideals of Neoplatonism,
were extremely prevalent within Pico della Mirandolas work. One of
Pico della Mirandolas most influential works, Oration on the
Dignity of Man, promoted many of his ideas and those of
Neoplatonism; Picos Oration is commonly referred to as ...the
Manifesto of the Renaissance' [and] is widely regarded as a
beautiful declaration of the greatness of human freedom and
ability (Truglia 158). Two ideas are central to the Oration: free
will and the deification of
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