This translation of Pico della Mirandola's famed "Oration," hitherto hidden away in anthologies, was prepared especially for Gateway Editions, making it available for the first time in a single volume.The youngest son of the Prince of Mrandola, Pico lived during the Renaissance--an era of change and philosophical ferment. The tenacity with which he clung to fundamental Christian teachings while crying nut against his brilliant though half-pagan contemporaries made him exceptional in a time of exceptional men. While Pico, as Russell Kirk observes in his introduction, was an ardent spokesman for the "dignity of man," his devout nature elevated humanism to a truly Christian level, which makes his writing as pertinent today as it was in the fifteenth century.