Ways to learn, ways to reshape knowledge: Pico della Mirandola and the students’ handbooks

The paper will explore the influence of textbooks used by students to practice in disputes as possible sources for the 900 Conclusiones of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (the book whose famous introduction was the so-called Oratio de hominis dignitate - Discourse on the Dignity of Man). This is a decisive topic in Pico’s scholarship that has not been directly investigated before. I argue that at least some of its «scholastic» theses can be traced back to these texts, in particular to the Promptuarium argumentorum, a textbook used in the teaching of philosophy in universities with the aim to reconcile the disagreement between philosophical schools. The book was intended to provide students with a collection of arguments and counterarguments that could be used in debates and discussions. The arguments were presented in a systematic manner, making it easy for students to memorize them. Beyond the philological data, this finding has several implications for understanding the processes of learning, transmission and reworking of knowledge in Renaissance.