Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Deprecatoria ad Deum
Deprecatoria ad Deum elegiaco carmine
Sancte Deus, da quod iubes et iube quod vis.
Our renderingHoly God, give what you command, and command what you will.
What it is
A Latin elegiac prayer poem by Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, the philosopher of the Medici Platonic Academy, included in all editions of his Opera omnia. Pico settled in Florence under Lorenzo de' Medici's personal protection in 1488 and served as one of the tutors of Giovanni de' Medici, later Pope Leo X. The poem petitions God for mercy, acknowledges both original and personal sin, celebrates the redemptive love of Christ, and asks for a heart set on fire by divine love. It circulated within the Medici intellectual circle and was later translated into English verse by Sir Thomas More as part of his Life of Pico (c.1510), giving it a remarkable afterlife in northern humanist devotion.
Why it still matters
Sir Thomas More's English verse rendering of this prayer, printed in his Works and accessible at ExClassics.com, is one of the treasures of early English devotional literature and makes the prayer fully available for personal or communal use today.
Kept alongside
The Imitation of Christ (De imitatione Christi)
De imitatione Christi
The most widely read Christian devotional work after the Bible, composed c. 1418–1427 by Thomas à Kempis at the Augustinian monastery of Mount Saint Agnes near Zwolle. Hundreds of printed editions appeared across Europe before 1600; French translations were in print from 1488 (Toulouse) and 1493 (Paris), and the text was standard reading in every Jesuit novitiate, including those that trained the French royal confessors Coton and Caussin. Its four books counsel contempt of worldly vanity, interior self-knowledge, spiritual consolation, and sacramental devotion — an architecture that moves the reader systematically from self-examination to union with Christ. While no single documented ownership record for either Medici queen has been identified, its universal penetration of Catholic court culture across two centuries makes its presence in any royal household effectively certain.
Prison Meditations on Psalms 51 and 31
Savonarola composed these meditations on Psalm 51 (Miserere, known as 'Infelix ego') and Psalm 31 (In te, Domine, speravi) in Latin while imprisoned in the Palazzo della Signoria in 1498 awaiting trial and execution, his right hand temporarily spared from further torture so he could sign his confession. Approximately 15 Italian editions appeared by 1500, making them among the most rapidly disseminated devotional texts of the early print era and ensuring pan-European reach within a decade. Savonarola had preached at San Marco — the monastery Cosimo de' Medici built and patronized — from 1482 and was the friar summoned to Lorenzo de' Medici's deathbed in 1492, giving these works an indirect but real connection to the Medici devotional world. The Miserere meditation (Infelix ego) became one of the most reprinted Latin spiritual texts of the sixteenth century.
Infelix ego (Meditation on Psalm 51 / Miserere)
Infelix ego, omnium auxilio destitutus
A profound Latin meditation on Psalm 51 (Miserere) composed in his Florentine prison cell by the Dominican friar Savonarola shortly before his execution on 23 May 1498. Despite being the Medici's principal political opponent, his text circulated in fifteen Italian editions by 1500 in the very city where Giovanni de' Medici (future Leo X) and Giulio de' Medici (future Clement VII) were formed; Martin Luther endorsed it in 1523. Josquin des Prez, Cipriano de Rore, and William Byrd set versions to polyphony, securing its place across a century of European devotional music. Its connection to Medici piety is environmental rather than by commission or documented use.