Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rcrh6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-30T15:22:22.410Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Egidio da Viterbo’s Book on Hebrew Letters: Christian Kabbalah in Papal Rome*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Brian Copenhaver  and
Daniel Stein Kokin
Brian Copenhaver
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles Ernst-Moritz-Arndt-Universität Greifswald
Daniel Stein Kokin
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles Ernst-Moritz-Arndt-Universität Greifswald
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Egidio da Viterbo (1469–1532) wrote his Book on Hebrew Letters (Libellus de litteris hebraicis) in 1517 to persuade Pope Leo X to reform the Roman alphabet. Behind this concrete, if farfetched, proposal was a millenarian theology that Egidio revealed by introducing his Christian readers to Kabbalah, whose first Christian advocate, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, had done his pioneering work only a few decades before. Inspired by Pico and by Johann Reuchlin, Egidio also absorbed the Platonism of Marsilio Ficino, applying it in the Libellus to a Kabbalist analysis of the Aeneid, which he reads as a prophecy of papal victory over the Jews at the end of time, while also seeing Pope Leo as a modern-day Etruscan. But the main source of Egidio’s apocalyptic theology is a medieval Hebrew book, the Sefer ha-Temunah, which in Italy was new to Jews at the time Egidio read it.

Type
Research Article
Information
Renaissance Quarterly , Volume 67 , Issue 1 , Spring 2014 , pp. 1 - 42
Copyright
Copyright © Renaissance Society of America 2014

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

We thank Michael Allen, Crofton Black, Fabrizio Lelli, John Monfasani, Brian Ogren, John O’Malley, Ingrid Rowland, Erika Rummel, and the RQ readers for their advice. For citations of sacred texts, especially Hebrew and Aramaic, see Alexander et al.

References

Alexander, Patrick, Kutsko, J., Ernest, J., Decker-Lucke, S., et al., eds. The SBL Handbook of Style for Ancient Near Eastern, Biblical and Early Christian Studie. Peabody, 2011.Google Scholar
Alighieri, Dante. Tutte le oper. Ed. L. Blasucci. Florence, 1965.Google Scholar
Allen, Michael J. B. “Sending Archedemus: Ficino, Plato’s Second Letter, and Its Four Epistolary Mysteries.” In Sol et Homo: Mensch und Natur in der Renaissance: Festschrift zum 70. Geburtstag für Eckhard Kessle., ed. Ebbersmeyer, S., Pirner-Pareschi, H., and Ricklin, Thomas, 405–20. Munich, 2008.Google Scholar
Allen, W. Sidney. Vox latina: A Guide to the Pronunciation of Classical Latin. Cambridge, 1989.Google Scholar
Ambrose, . Opera. In Patrologia Latin. 14–16, 18, ed. J-P Migne. Paris, 1845–48.Google Scholar
Aquinas, Thomas. Opera omnia. 48 vols. Rome, 1882–.Google Scholar
Augustine, . Opera. In Patrologia Latin. 32–47, ed. J-P Migne. Paris, 1841–49.Google Scholar
Aulus, Gellius. Attic Night. Ed. Marshall, P. K.. 2 vols. Oxford, 1968.Google Scholar
Bartolucci, Guido. “Marsilio Ficino, Yohanan Alemanno e la ‘Scientia divinum nominum.’” Rinasciment. 48 (2008): 137–63.Google Scholar
Black, Crofton. “From Kabbalah to Psychology: The Allegorizing Isagoge of Paulus Ricius, 1509–41.” Magic, Ritual and Witchcraf. 2 (2007): 136–73.10.1353/mrw.0.0081CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chaldaean Oracles. Oracles chaldaïques. Ed. E. des Places. Paris, 1971.Google Scholar
Copenhaver, Brian. “Number, Shape and Meaning in Pico’s Christian Cabala: The Upright Tsade, the Closed Mem and the Gaping Jaws of Azazel.” In Natural Particulars: Nature and the Disciplines in Renaissance Europ., ed. Grafton, A. and Siraisi, N., 25–76. Cambridge, 1999.Google Scholar
Corpus Hermeticum. Ed. Nock, A. D. and Festugiè, re. 4 vols. Paris, 1972.Google Scholar
Dan, Joseph. Kabbalah: A Very Short Introductio. Oxford, 2006.Google Scholar
Davis, Natalie Zemon. Trickster Travels: A Sixteenth-Century Muslim between World. New York, 2007.Google Scholar
Diodorus, Siculus. Historical Librar. Ed. Vogel, F. and Fischer, K.. Leipzig, 1888–1906.Google Scholar
Diogenes, Laertius. Lives of the Philosopher. Ed. H. S. Long. 2 vols. Oxford, 1964.Google Scholar
[Dionysius, Areopagite]. the Oper. Ed. and trans. I. Ramelli and P. Scazzoso. Milan, 2009.Google Scholar
da Viterbo, Egidio. Libellus de litteris hebraicis. Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (BAV) MS Lat. 5808, fols. 1v–50v (cited as Lib.).Google Scholar
da Viterbo, Egidio. Libellus de litteris hebraicis. Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (BAV) MS Lat. 3146, fols. 1r–26v (cited as Lib. α).Google Scholar
da Viterbo, Egidio. Scechina e Libellus de litteris hebraici. Ed. François Secret. 2 vols. Rome, 1959.Google Scholar
da Viterbo, Egidio. The Commentary on the Sentences of Petrus Lombardu. Ed. and trans. Daniel Nodes. Leiden, 2010.Google Scholar
Eusebius, . Preparation for the Gospe. In Werke, ed. K. Mras, vol. 8. Berlin, 1954–56.Google Scholar
Eustathius of Thessalonica. Commentaries on Homer’. Iliad. Ed. van der Valk, M.. 4 vols. Leiden, 1971–79.Google Scholar
Ficino, Marsilio. The Philebus Commentary: A Critical Edition and Translatio. Ed. and trans. Michael J. B. Allen. Reprint, Tempe, 2000.Google Scholar
Friedman, Jerome. The Most Ancient Testimony: Sixteenth-Century Christian Hebraica in the Age of Renaissance Nostalgi. Athens, OH, 1983.Google Scholar
Galbiati, G. “La Prima stampa in Arabo.” In Miscellanea Giovanni Mercat., 6:409–13. Rome, 1946.Google Scholar
Gersonides, . Commento al Cantico dei Cantici nella traduzione ebraico-latina di Flavio Mitridat. Ed. and trans. M. Andreatta. Florence, 2009.Google Scholar
Grafton, Anthony. Forgers and Critics: Creativity and Duplicity in Western Scholarshi. Princeton, 1990.Google Scholar
Grafton, Anthony. “Traditions of Invention and Inventions of Tradition in Renaissance Italy: Annius of Viterbo.” In Defenders of the Text: The Traditions of Scholarship in an Age of Science, 1450–180., 76–103. Cambridge, 1991.Google Scholar
Grafton, Anthony, and Joanna Weinberg. “I Have Always Loved the Holy Tongue”: Isaac Casaubon, the Jews, and a Forgotten Chapter in Renaissance Scholarship. Cambridge, 2011.Google Scholar
Grafton, Anthony, and Williams, Megan. Christianity and the Transformation of the Book: Origen, Eusebius and the Library of Caesare. Cambridge, 2006.10.4159/9780674037861CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Green, Arthur. A Guide to the Zoha. Stanford, 2004.Google Scholar
Hippolytus, . Kleinere exegetische und homiletische Schrifte. Ed. H. Achelis. Leipzig, 1897.Google Scholar
Holdenreid, Anke. The Sibyl and Her Scribes: Manuscripts and Interpretation of the Latin Sibylla Tiburtina c. 1050–150. Aldershot, 2006.Google Scholar
Homer, . Odysse. Ed. T. Allen. 2 vols. Oxford, 1917.Google Scholar
Horace, . Oper. Ed. Wickham, E. and Garrod, H.. Oxford, 1901.Google Scholar
Iamblichus, . On the Mysteries. Ed. E. des Places. Paris, 1966.Google Scholar
Idel, Moshe. Kabbalah: New Perspective. New Haven, 1988.Google Scholar
Idel, Moshe. Messianic Mystic. New Haven, 1998.Google Scholar
Idel, Moshe. Absorbing Perfection. New Haven, 2002.10.12987/yale/9780300083798.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Idel, Moshe. “Kabbalah, Hieroglyphicity and Hieroglyphs.” Kabbalah: Journal for the Study of Jewish Mystical Texts11 (2004): 11–47.Google Scholar
Idel, Moshe. Kabbalah and Eros. New Haven, 2005.Google Scholar
Idel, Moshe. La Cabbalà in Italia (1280–1510. Florence, 2007.Google Scholar
Idel, Moshe. Kabbalah in Italy, 1280–1510: A Surve. New Haven, 2011a.10.12987/yale/9780300126266.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Idel, Moshe. “The Kabbalah in Byzantium: Preliminary Remarks.” In Jews in Byzantiu., ed. Bonfil, R., Irshai, Oded, Stroumsa, Guy G., Rina Talgam, et al., 659–709. Leiden, 2011b.10.1163/ej.9789004203556.i-1010.106CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Idel, Moshe. Saturn’s Jews: On the Witches’ Sabbat and Sabbateanis. London, 2011c.Google Scholar
Jerome. Opera. In Patrologia Latina 22–30, ed. J-P Migne. Paris, 1845–46.Google Scholar
Josephus, . Oper. Ed. B. Niese. 7 vols. Berlin, 1955.Google Scholar
Kristeller, Paul Oskar. The Philosophy of Marsilio Ficin. Trans. V. Conant. Gloucester, MA, 1964.Google Scholar
Lamberton, Robert. Homer the Theologian: Neoplatonist Allegorical Reading and the Growth of the Epic Traditio. Berkeley, 1986.Google Scholar
Landino, Cristoforo. Disputationes camaldulense. Ed. Lohe, P.. Florence, 1980.Google Scholar
Lelli, Fabrizio. “Biography and Autobiography in Yohanan Alemanno’s Literary Perception.” In Cultural Intermediaries: Jewish Intellectuals in Early Modern Ital., ed. D., Ruderman and Veltri, G., 25–38. Philadelphia, 2004.Google Scholar
Levita, Elia. The Massoreth ha-Massoreth of Elias Levit. Ed. and trans. Ginsburg, C. D.. London, 1867.Google Scholar
Macrobius, . Oper. Ed. Willis, J.. 2 vols. Leipzig, 1994.Google Scholar
Marti, Ramon. Pugio fidei adversus mauros et iudaeo. Leipzig, 1687.Google Scholar
Martin, Francis X. Friar, Reformer and Renaissance Scholar: Life and Work of Giles of Viterbo, 1469–153. Villanova, 1992.Google Scholar
Matt, Daniel. The Essential Kabbalah: The Heart of Jewish Mysticis. New York, 1995.Google Scholar
Monfasani, John. Nicolaus Scutellius, O.S.A., as Pseudo-Pletho: The Sixteenth-Century Treatise Pletho in Aristotelem and the Scribe Michael Martinus Stell. Florence, 2005.Google Scholar
Ogren, Brian. “The Forty-Nine Gates of Wisdom as Forty-Nine Ways to Christ: Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s Heptaplus and Nahmanidean Kabbalah.” Rinasciment. 49 (2009a): 27–43..Google Scholar
Ogren, Brian. Renaissance and Rebirth: Reincarnation in Early Modern Italian Kabbala. Leiden, 2009b.10.1163/ej.9789004177642.i-322CrossRefGoogle Scholar
O’Malley, John. Giles of Viterbo on Church and Reform: A Study in Renaissance Though. Leiden, 1968.Google Scholar
Origen, . Homilies on Isaiah. In Patrologia graeca 13, ed. Migne, J-P. Paris, 1862.Google Scholar
Origen, . Vier Bücher von den Prinzipie. Ed. Görgemanns, H. and Karpp, H.. Darmstadt, 1976.Google Scholar
Penkower, Jordan. “A New Examination of Elijah Levita’s Sefer Massoret ha-Massoret .” Itali. 8 (1989): 7–73.Google Scholar
Persius, and Juvenal, . Satura. Ed. Clausen, W.. Oxford, 1992.Google Scholar
Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni. [Conclusiones]. Rome, 1486.Google Scholar
Plato, . Oper. Ed. Burnet, J., Duke, E., Hicken, W., Nicoll, W., et al. 5 vols. Oxford, 1963–95.Google Scholar
Pliny, . Natural History. Ed. Rackham, H. and Eichholz, D.. 10 vols. Cambridge, 1938–62.Google Scholar
Vergil, Polydore. On Discover. Ed. and trans. Copenhaver, Brian. Cambridge, 2002.Google Scholar
Priscian, . Institutiones grammatica. Ed. Hertz, M.. 2 vols. Leipzig, 1855–59.Google Scholar
Proclus, . Commentary on Plato’. Timaeus. Ed. Diehl, E.. Leipzig, 1903–06.Google Scholar
Proclus, . Teologia platonic. Ed. Abbate, M.. Milan, 2005.Google Scholar
Quintilian, . The Orator’s Education. Ed. Russell, D. A.. 5 vols. Cambridge, 2001.Google Scholar
Rashi, . Commento al Cantico dei Cantici: Introduzione, traduzione e not. Ed. Mello, A.. Magnano, 1997.Google Scholar
Reeves, Marjorie. Joachim of Fiore and the Prophetic Futur. London, 1976.Google Scholar
Reeves, Marjorie, and Hirsch-Reich, Beatrice. The Figurae of Joachim of Fior. Oxford, 1972.Google Scholar
Reuchlin, Johann. Sämtliche Werke. Band I.1, De verbo mirifico, Das wundertätige Wort (1494). Ed. Ehlers, W., Roloff, H., and Schafer, P.. Stuttgart-Bad Canstatt, 1996.Google Scholar
Rowland, Ingrid. The Culture of the High Renaissance: Ancients and Moderns in Sixteenth-Century Rom. Cambridge, 1998.Google Scholar
Rummel, Erika. The Case Against Johann Reuchlin: Religious and Social Controversy in Sixteenth-Century German. Toronto, 2002.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Scholem, Gershom. On the Kabbalah and Its Symbolis. Trans. Mannheim, R.. New York, 1965.Google Scholar
Scholem, Gershom. Kabbala. Jerusalem, 1974.Google Scholar
Scholem, Gershom. Origins of the Kabbalah. Ed. Zwerblowsky, R.. Trans. Arkush, A.. Princeton, 1987.Google Scholar
Scholem, Gershom. Major Trends in Jewish Mysticis. New York, 1995.Google Scholar
Secret, François. Les Kabbalistes chrétiens de la renaissanc. Paris, 1964.Google Scholar
Sefer ha-Bahir. The Book of Bahir: Flavius Mithridates’ Latin Translation, the Hebrew Text and an English Version. Ed. S. Campanini. Torino, 2005.Google Scholar
Sefer ha-Temunah(Il Libro della figura). In Mistica ebraica: Testi della tradizione segreta del giudaismo dal III al XVIII secolo, ed. and trans. G. Busi and E. Loewenthal, 245–346. Torino, 1995.Google Scholar
Sefer ha-Zohar. Ed. Reuven Margoliot. Jerusalem, 1956–57 (cited as Zohar).Google Scholar
Sefer yetzirah. The Book of Creation. Ed. and trans. A. Kaplan. York Beach, ME, 1993.Google Scholar
Seneca, . Letter. Ed. Reynolds, L.. Oxford, 1965.Google Scholar
Servius, . Servii Grammatici qui feruntvr in Vergilii carmina commentarii. Ed. Thilo, G. and Hagen, H.. Hildesheim, 1961.Google Scholar
Stein Kokin, Daniel. “The Hebrew Question in the Italian Renaissance: Linguistic, Cultural, and Mystical Aspects.” PhD diss., Harvard University, 2006.Google Scholar
Stein Kokin, Daniel. “Entering the Labyrinth: On the Hebraic and Kabbalistic Universe of Egidio da Viterbo” In Hebraic Aspects of the Renaissance: Sources and Encounters, ed. Zinguer, Ilana, Melamed, A., and Shalev, Z., 39–46. Leiden, 2011.10.1163/ej.9789004212558.1-308.10CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Suetonius, . Praeter Caesarum libros reliquiae. Ed. Reifferscheid, A.. Leipzig, 1860.Google Scholar
Suetonius, . Lives of the Caesar. Ed. Ihm, M.. Leipzig, 1933.Google Scholar
Sybilline Oracles. Ed. J. Geffcken. Leipzig, 1902.Google Scholar
Tacitus, . Annals. Ed. Fisher, C. D.. Oxford, 1963.Google Scholar
Toledot Yeshu (ושי תודלות) sive Liber de ortu et origine Jesu. Ed. and trans. L. Edman. Uppsala, 1857.Google Scholar
Virgil, . Oper. Ed. Mynors, R. A. B.. Oxford, 1969.Google Scholar
Weil, G. E. Élie Lévita, humaniste et massorèt. Leiden, 1963.Google Scholar
Wilkinson, Robert. Orientalism, Aramaic and Kabbalah in the Catholic Reformation: The First Printing of the Syriac New Testamen. Leiden, 2007.10.1163/ej.9789004162501.i-224CrossRefGoogle Scholar