DAVID MESSER LEON
In an earlier post, I said that Yohanan Alemanno, the Platonic Jewish philosopher whom Pico knew at least by 1488, was "perhaps" in Padua the same time Lazzarelli was, c. 1468-1469, based on the degree of influence of Alemanno on Lazzarelli, even though Moshe Idel locates him first in Mantua and then Florence.
It Klaus Herrmann, "The Reception of Hekhelot-Literature in Yohanan Alemanno's Autograph MS Paris 849" (pp. 19-88 of Studies in Jewish Manuscripts, edited by Joseph Dan and Klaus Herrmann, 1999), pp. 27-28 (see http://books.google.com/books?id=AO6dzM ... ri&f=false). There we learn, based on a 1973 article in Hebrew by Daniel "Capri" (actually spelled "Carpi"; it was republished in English, 1974), that a Messer Leon "granted a doctorate in liberal arts and medicine to Alemanno during the latter's sojourn in Padua on February 27, 1470." A footnote cites Carpi. This "Messer Leon" was born Yehuda ben Yehiel, between 1420 and 1425, but changed his name to "Messer Leon" upon being knighted by the Emperor in 1452. Messer Leon composed a book while Alemanno was his student, published in Mantua 1475/6 as one of the first inculabula; it attempted to show that the classical principles of rhetoric, as articulated by Aristotle and Quintillian, were also found in the Hebrew Bible. Herrmann in his essay attempts to show how this work influenced his pupil Alemanno.
As I reported earlier, Idel has "R. Yehuda Messer Leon" as being in Mantua (p. 177), without mentioning Padua:
Idel cites a 1989 article by Daniel "Carpi", in Hebrew, but not the 1973/1974 one.The young Yohanan studied with a famous figure in Mantua, R Yehudah Messer Leon, and received the title of doctor. 3
Here is Herrmann, on p. 28 of his essay, from the English version of Carpri's article, p. 50, n. 43:
Since 1974 and 1989, there has been much literature on the Messer Leon family. On JSTOR there are numerous reviews of Between Worlds: The Life and Thought of Rabbi David ben Judah Messer Leon by Hava Tirosh-Rothschild, 1991. The book is partially online at http://books.google.com/books?id=7FmF14 ... &q&f=false. It says Judah moved to Padua by the mid-1460s, where he was awarded a doctorate in 1469 by the Emperor, giving him also the privilege of awarding doctorates himself, which he did in February of 1470 (p. 29). He then moved to Venice for a short time, despite the city's prohibition then on Jewish settlement. Although the next page, p. 30, is not included in Google Books, on p. 34 we learn that his son was born in Venice about Dec. 10, 1471, according to most scholars. Carpi, she says, argues for antedating the birth by at least ten years, but that suggestion conflicts with other data. She concludes that the birth was sometime between 1469 and 1471.]In view of the hitherto unknown fact that Rabbi Johanan Alemanus studied at Padua with Judah Messer Leon, there is a need to examine the extent of the latter's influence on his thinking and his connections with Christian scholars and cultured men of the Renaissance.
Another author, Mauro Zonta in "New Data on Judah Messer Leon's Commentaries on the 'Physics'", (Aleph, no. 1, 2001, pp. 307-323) says on p. 308:
Zonta also tells us that Judah Messer Leon was born around 1425, possibly at Montecchio Maggiore near Vicenza.Indeed, from the few known biographical facts about him, we can surmise that Messer Leon stayed in Padua for a while, probably before 1552 and certainly in the period 1456-1470.
Tirosh-Rothschild confirms Judah's birthdate and birthplace. She says he became a practicing physician, but makes no mention of where he practiced or lived at the time of his knighting. She says that he moved around 1452, not to Padua but to Ancona, where he was invited to open a yeshiva, or Jewish academy. There he provoked controversy by issuing rulings that he considered binding in other areas: one, addressed to yeshivas in northern Italy, to ban the study of Kabbalah, the other, addressed to central and southern Italy, to replace local rules about female purity with Ashkenazi rules . Other rabbis thought he was overstepping his authority, which only applied to his own locality. He moved to Bologna in the early 1460s, then to Padua in the mid-1460s.]
On the other hand, Heinrich Graetz in 1887 called Messer Leon "the learned rabbi from Mantua" (quoted in Robert Bonfil, "The 'Book of the Honeycomb's Flow' by Judah Messer Leon: The Rhetorical Dimension of Jewish Humanism in Fifteenth-Century Italy", Jewish History 6:1/2, 1992, p. 22).
In this connection Tirosh-Rothschild says that Judah Messer Leon (c. 1420-25 - c. 1498) issued a ruling in the 1450s banning Gersonides' Perush al-ha Torah and Kabbalah (p. 26). (On the Internet at least, nobody calls Gersonides a Kabbalist; he is an Aristotelian, but departs from Aristotle in ways that could have been seen as objectionable. I can find nothing out about the particular work in question.)
Judah Messer Leon's son, David ben Judah Messer Leon (c. 1470-c. 1526), wrote that he had been forbidden to study Kabbalah by his father, but nonetheless, since the year of his marriage when he was 18, he studied it secretly (Tirosh-Rothschild, p. 41). That would have been in 1489, the year his father sent him to Padua to study the Ashkenazi legal tradition in the yeshiva of Judah Minz (pp. 40-41). Despite the ban on Kabbalah, Judah Messer Leon apparently supported a Renaissance education in other respects, including the Aristotelian-oriented part of the humanism that young Christian gentlemen were taught. Alemanno apparently received the same.
Given that Alemanno was born c. 1435, he could have studied with Messer Leon in both places. Herrmann, p. 25f, cites Cassuto (1918) for when Alemanno was in Florence: first, from 1455 to 1462, and second, starting in 1488. In 1452 Alemanno, still presumably in Mantua, would have been 17 years old and Messer Leon, presumably also still there, 27.
Since Alemanno left Florence in 1462 and got a doctorate in Padua in early 1470, he was most probably in Padua in 1468-69, too. This is a time when Lodovico Lazzarelli was also in and around Padua, a coincidence of some significance later on. If Alemanno's son David was indeed Venice-born in c. 1470, then perhaps they knew each other in Venice, too.
CASSUTO, 1918, ON ALEMANNO (c. 1435 - after 1504)
Much has been written, often conflicting, about Yohanan Alemanno, Pico's colleague in 1488 Florence. I start with Cassuto, in one long passage, pp. 301-304. I do not give the original Italian as it is readily available online (http://sammlungen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/f ... nfo/749012); the English below is my own. I also do not include his quotes written in Hebrew letters, nor do I attempt to translate them; instead, I put "Hebrew" in brackets. Anyone wishing to see them can easily go to the original. They are all in the footnotes, preceded by his paraphrase in Italian. In what follows, I put the part specifically about Alemanno in bold. The rest is about who he stayed with and the intellectual environment, going back as far as when that family was in Pisa. Also, I have put all the footnotes at the end. Since Cassuto renumbers them on every page, I have used the expedient of identifying them by two numbers, first the page number and then Cassuto's footnote number. Please remember that this is only one source out of several, all different in one way or another. I will give others in a later post.
This passage informs us[301]: Jochanan ben Izchak Alemanno, from a family of French origin, was probably born in Italy (301-3) between 1435 and 1438 (301-4), [302] and was raised and educated in the house of Jechiel da Pisa, in Florence. In the da Pisa family, which we have already seen to be the most well known among the Jewish banking families not only of Florence, but of the whole of Tuscany, and certainly one of the most well known in Italy, the cultivation of literature and the sciences, and writers and scholars; the da Pisas were always proponents as generous as they were educated and intelligent. At the dawn of the quatrocento the first of the da Pisas, Jechiel ben Mattathia, while directing in Pisa his banking company, which even then had assumed an importance of first rank, also had a way of occupying himself with competence in literature and poetry, making himself a liberal patron of their devotees. The fame of Jechiel was widely known even outside of his city, and the grammarian Prophiat Duran Ephodi had occasion to sing his praises in the presence of his disciple Joseph ben Jehuda Zark, who in 1413 wanted to travel to Pisa and ask to be put under Jechiel’s protection. They welcomed him with the most kind donations, and held him close to them as a welcome guest for several months, during which Joseph Zark several times took the occasion in various circumstances to compose verses in honor of his patron, and to offer as gifts his literary works and those of others (302-1). The son or successor of Jechiel, Izchak ben Menachem da Pisa, by which the seat of the family and home bank passed to Florence, was a worthy successor of his father also in the intellectual field, by his love of study as attested by the numerous manuscripts that belonged to him,containing literary and philosophical, historical and scientific works (302-2). With his son Jechiel, who, living in the era of Lorenzo de’ Medici, wanted somehow to be the Lorenzo the Magnificent of the Jewish community in Florence, these noble family traditions reached their peak. From the pain and bitterness from which his life was often saddened, Jechiel sought comfort in study and in conversation with scholars and men of letters, to whom his doors were always hospitably open. Well bestowed with fortune’s goods, he provided a vast and solid culture, welcomed by Lorenzo de’ Medici, and bound by intimate friendship with well known personages, such as Don [303] Izchak Abravanel, the wise counselor to the king of Portugal and the King of Spain, Jechiel da Pisa united in himself all the conditions necessary for him to be the Jewish patron of the Florentine Renaissance. And indeed, his house was, according to Don Izchak Abravanel, a "place of meeting for the wise". On every side he loved to procure books of Jewish literature, biblical exegesis, and religious philosophy, to read and to meditate on in the hours that his extensive business left him free; and also Abravanel chooses for him several works not easy to find in Italy. So he once received from Abravanel the comments of David Kimchi on the Agiographa, some writings of Abravanel himself, and exegetical studies of other Spanish authors; another time Don Izchak sent him the writings of Prophiat Duran Ephodi and Joseph ibn Shem Tob, asking in return for a copy of the biblical commentaries of Immanuel da Roma (1). In the munificent house of Jechiel da Pisa, where were gathered together "wisdom and greatness" (2), Jochanan Alemanno was lovingly raised and carefully educated and instructed (3). He was thus able, when grown up, to be able to devote himself to teaching, and later lived in various [304] Italian cities as tutor at wealthy Jewish families (4). We know here that around 1470 he was in Mantua, and that he was welcomed at the Gonzaga court, where once, as he himself tells us in passing, he heard a skilful blind German musician (5). After many years of the wandering life, and, apparently not very happy despite the esteem with which he was surrounded and the honors that had attained for his erudition, in 1488 he came back to Florence, and shortly after his arrival at the beginning of autumn in [304] the same year, 1488, he returned to be hosted by the same da Pisa family (1), with whom he seems to have continued to dwell in Florence, until the termination of Jewish moneylending in 1497. What is certain is that by an act of the Eight of the Guard and the Balia his presence in Florence is attested even in 1494 (2). As his noble character induces him to avoid resorting to the aid of his patrons, he prefers rather to pawn in times of need even his most expensive books, as a Florentine document in Hebrew lets us know that he once did (3); however, it is certain that in Florence, under the direct protection of the da Pisa, he was able to enjoy a tranquility which he hardly would have shared elsewhere, and could devote sufficient serenity to the drafting of the multiple works which he had long begun or at least designed.
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301-3. In Chapter 19 of his Chaj ha-'Olamim he says he belongs to 'Italian Judaism’ but adds that France was his homeland [patria], that his surname was “tedesco” or ‘Alemanno’ cf. Mortara, Catal, dei mss., ebr. della bibl. della communita della Israel, di Mantova, Livorno 1878, p. 28. In the preface to diesiteli Slielomò, published in Rev. de 'ét. juiv., XII, p. 265-266. he presents himself to the reader with the name of Jochanan ben Izchak from Paris, which suggests that his father was born in Paris and at a very tender age had been conducted from France into Italy, as a result of the last deportation of Jews from France, which occurred in the year 1394. I say at a very early age, because our Jochanan was born about forty years later. As for the German surname, that may be explained by assuming that the family had gone to France from Germany. --- By an erroneous interpretation given to a passage by Gedaliah ibn Jachia, Shaisheleth, ed. Venice 1687, c. 63b, he was alleged by some (e.g., Zunz, Ges, Schr. III, p. 189, and Reggio Bikkuve ha’-illim, 5580, p. 13) that Jochanan was from Constantinople; see on this Steinschneider, at Salfeld, in Das Hchelied bei den jued. Erklaerern des Mittelalters, in Magazin fuer d. Wissensch. d, Judenthums, VI (1879), p. 134, n. 2 (estr. p. 117).
301-4. As Jochanan hints more than once in his writings about his age, it is not easy to determine the year in which he was born, because the composition of each of these works will attest, as we will see later, lasted many years, so that there lacks a single point of departure. Mortara (Catalogue del ms. Mantova cit., p. 23) does indeed have him born in the year 1435, because in Chaj ha 'Olamim, the introduction of which has the date of 1470, he says (chap. 19) he is 35 years old. But consider that in 1488 the Chaj ha-'Olamim was not yet finished (preface. Cheshek Shelemo [Desire of Solomon, publ. in rev. d. ét. juiv., XII, p. 256), and that other passages of the same work contain dates as far as 1500 (chap. 8 § 4) and 1508 (ibid., in the autograph in the appendices), so that we must recognize that the date of 1435 is by that less uncertain. For similar reasons, little can be gained by the passages of Cheshek Shelomo (the drafting of which was begun in 1488 on a sketch-front, and in 1492 was not yet over) attesting to an 'author about fifty years' (ms. Steinschneider, c. 76a), and rgR he had certain dreams several times since forty years earlier (ibid., c. 50b; see. Hebr. Bibl.,V, p. 28). On the other hand, in a passage of his Miscellany, published in He-chaluz, II (1853), p. 23, n. 1, and dated 1478, Jochanan speaks of the books that his ideal type of perfect man must study “not before arriving at forty years”; and this can make us reasonably assume that when he wrote these words, he must at least have reached this age. As with the other aforementioned chapter 19 of Chaj ha’-Olamim, which forbids us to go back beyond I485, we can conclude with some verisimilitude that Jochanan Alemanno was born between 1435 and 1438.
302-1. La familia da Pisa, p. 14). for more information about Jechiel ben Mattathias
and others see La familia da Pisa, passim, which has a large family tree of the da Pisa and related families.
302-2. Ibid., p. 20-21.
303-1. Ibid., p. 80.
303-2. Prefac. to Cheshek Schelomò by Jochanan Alemanno, publ. in []Rev. d. et. juiv.[/i] , xii, p. 256: [Hebrew follows]
303-3. [Hebrew writing] (Jechiel) [Hebrew writing] On his education in Florence Jochanan also touches on more above, speaking precisely of the city of Florence (p. 254): [Hebrew writing].
303-4. Ibid., p. 254: [Hebrew writing]
303-5. Sha'ar ha-Cheshek, introduc., c. 6b. It is no doubt that German of which Bertolotti speaks in Musicians at the Gonzaga court in Mantua from the fifteenth to eighteenth century, Milan [1890], pp. 8-9, and he was certainly in Mantua in 1470 and perhaps in 1475. The “Prince” of whom Jochanan speaks is certainly Ludovico Gonzaga III, and not Pico, as has been repeatedly supposed (e.g. by Steinsohneider, Hebr, Bibl. XXI, p. 182, or by Perles, Beitraege cit., p. 191).
304-1. Prefaz. cit. to Chesek Shelomo, p. 253 [Hebrew]; ibid., p. 256: [Hebrew].
304-2. O. G. vol. 98, c. 12b (July 11, 1494): "Mag.r Jochanam."
204-3. Cod. Laurent. Plut. 88, 12, c. 7b; see Appendices, document XLVIII.
(1) Alemanno's father was probably born in France and lived in Paris; he himself was born in Italy around 1435-1438.
(2) the da Pisas raised and educated Alemanno, after which he went on to teach and tutor.
(3) he spent time in Mantua around 1470, hearing there a blind musician.
(4) he returned to Florence in 1488 and stayed again with the da Pisas, until sometime between 1494, and 1497. There he had the leisure and tranquility to write most of his works.
Then there are Alemanno's writings:
Cassuto continues discussing Alemanno for ten more pages, but this is enough for now. What is of interest for us is that his writing on the Song of Songs, begun twenty years before 1488, was one of many works on the subject of love following the publication of Ficino's commentary on the Symposium published, Cassuto tells us, in 1474-5 (although the autograph manuscript was dated 1469 according to the translator's introduction, p. 3, at http://books.google.com/books?id=c9DWAA ... ume&q=1469). Surely the Symposium and Phaedrus, with their comments on physical love as the first step on the ladder toward divine love, would already been discussed by Ficino and other young men, then in their adolescence or shortly after in the 1450s.The works of Jochanan Alemanno are composed of great energy, vast in design and size, and testify in the author manifold and admirable erudition, a vigorous intellect and clear reasoning. In each of his works he waited for long years, with constant and assiduous work collecting the material, processing, extending and renovating, dedicating his activity often to several at once, so that the it was possible to quote several times one to another and vice versa. Large in his writings is philosophical speculation about love, by which he connects closely with everything addressed by Italian thought starting from Ficino, with his commentary on the Platonic Symposium, which was widely followed at the end of the quatrocento and into the following century. In Jochanan Alemanno, whose conversation and writings exerted considerable influence on Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, and in whose thought in turn resounded the influence of Italian contemporary thought, we come to have an effective example of the mutual relations that are wont to pass between Jewish literature and the individual countries where it flourished, also making [305] it impossible to fully understand a Jewish author if we ignore the literary and philosophical movement of the environment around him that is not Hebrew, and conversely likewise making of the works of Jewish writers so many useful sources of information for the knowledge of the manner of thinking and feeling of their age. To understand Jochanan Alemanno, who flourished in the last decades of the fifteenth and in the early sixteenth century, it is necessary to note that between 1474 and 1475 Ficino performed the definitive preparation in his comments on the Symposium, that in 1486 Benivieni composed his Canzone d’amore [song of love] and soon after Giovanni Pico commented on it, and in 1495 Equicola wrote his Libro di Natura d’Amore [Book of the nature of love], that Bembo began before 1498 his Asolani and performed it around 1502, that in the same year of 1502 were written the Dialoghi d’amore [dialogues of love] by Leone Abravanel, and that shortly after, Francesco Cattani da Diacceto dictated his treatise De Amore and Baldassare Castiglione his Cortigano [Courtesan], all works - apart from anything else minor or later – with which Jochanan presents numerous points of contact.
Especially connected with the name of Pico is, among the writings Jochanan, that of the Cheshek Shelomo (The Love of Solomon), which will be presented as a commentary on the Song of Songs, but which contains considerably more. Already in his young years Jochanan had planned to illustrate this interesting Biblical poem, and had put in writing something about it, never ceasing, later, over the course of twenty years, to collect material on the subject. When he arrived in 1488 in Florence, nearly contemporaneously with Pico, he felt rather, as he himself tells us, the ardent desire to approach this man so wonderfully gifted with intelligence and wisdom, and entered into relationship with him. In one of the talks he had then with Pico, questioned by him if he knew some perspicuous expositions of the Song of Songs, he said that there were many comments by expert commentators, but that no one in his opinion had managed to penetrate the intimate sense of the sacred text, and added that he himself had in the past composed something on this subject. He was requested by Pico to give him to read what he had written on the subject; he joined with pleasure, and Pico was so strongly interested in this first draft of Jochanan’s exegetical work, that he soon urged the author to occupy himself with alacrity to complete it...
Since Ludovico ruled Mantua from 1444-1478, it may be inferred that for Cassuto, Alemanno was in Mantua at some point in the 1470s. Whether Alemanno influenced Equicola is a question to be pursued further. Equicola seems to have composed his poem in Mantua in 1494-6, after being with Ficino in Florence (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Equicola, http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/mar ... rafico%29/ ). It seems reasonable to me that Alemanno would have moved back to Mantua in 1494 after the deaths of Pico and Poliziano under suspicious circumstances (Pico's exhumed body was recently found to contain high levels of arsenic, according to Wikipedia). Later Isabela d'Este lent out Equicola to her brother Alfonso in Ferrara in 1511, where he wrote the program for Alfonso's celebrated commissions of paintings by leading artists on Dionysian themes (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Equicola). I have attempted to connect the theme of these paintings and some in Mantua to the tarot, starting at http://www.letarot.it/page.aspx?id=317, part A4, and the following part, A5.
ARTHUR M. LESLEY ON ALEMANNO, 1976
Next chronologically is Arthur Lesley, who says that based on the numerical value 194 of a particular expression in Alemann's work (he cites it in Hebrew only), he was born in the Hebrew year 5194, i.e. a1433-34 (notes, p. 261). Alemanno stated that he was born in France (Lesley p. 4). However the Jews were expelled from the French crown in 1394. Lesley considers that he may have meant a French-speaking territory, outside the French crown, such as Provence, Savoy, Avignon, Comtet Venaissin ,Alsace, or Lorraine (notes, p. 260). Alemanno also states that his father was named Isaac b.. Elia Ashkenazi, who changed his name to Alemanno, the Italian equivalent. The father died whenYohanan was 1 or 2 years of age. Lesley observes that the last rabbis of Paris before the 1394 expulsion were R. Matatya and R. Yohanan. This Yohanan could well have had a son named Elia, born before 1394 in Paris. Then this Elia could have had a son Isaac b. Elia. (p. 262). Lesley also notes that Cassuto pp. 24-5 mentioned an Elia Ashkenazi, physician to the Duke of Burgundy, who went to Florence and Rome to ask Pope Martin V to intercede on behalf of the Jews. Lesley objects that this Elia was considered "Spanish", as opposed to French. However this objection seems to me not well taken. If after being expelled from France, Chief Rabbi Yohanan went to Spain, and his son grew up there, and his son became physician to the Duke of Burgundy, it all could be true. Elia could have been raised in Spain but then as an adult had Burgundy as his home base. Burgundy was independent of the French crown for the period, until1477. Then shortly after the birth of his son, he could have moved to Italy but died shortly thereafter. If Yohanan was writing after that date, then indeed he might have been born in what was then France.
Another piece of biographical information that Lesley includes is Alemanno's unabashed endorsement of divination even without benefit of Kabbalah. His notebooks record that he went to a palm-reader, who told him his past and future, and also went to a reader of physiognomy, who told him his character and how it would play out. The account of these readings, since Alemanno apparently agrees with them, says something about his life.
The palm reader was "one of the servants of the most perfect man" (p. 6). Lesley says that the "most perfect man" was Pico. For the past, the palm reader said it "indicated a grievous pang on the occasion of great honor without much use." That might be the doctorate he was awarded. Also
For the future (the last entry in the notebooks is in 1505):two wives. Love of my wife before I married her. Knows how to do everything for others, not for myself. Bad impression on women. Many promise to benefit me, but they did not keep their promise.
These are not unusual expectations for a Jew. Wealth may have eluded him, and honor except from a few. As for long life and dying away from his homeland, there is the report, which Idel believes, of a wise and very old man who turns up in the Holy Land in 1522 (Idel, p. 177):Grief in the breast. Long life. Wealth and honor. At the end of my life, fear of the prior death of my wife, since at the end of my life I shall be very lonely and shall become very pious. To die away from my place and my homeland.
"Ashkenazi" is the Hebrew form of the Italian "Alemanno", meaning "German".And it may be that a scholar in Jerusalem, writing to Italy in 1522, referred to him when he mentioned that a certain "very old man," ha-Yashish, named Yohanan Ashkenazi, a "universal man," hakham kolel, had come to Jerusalem. 5 I am inclined to accept this identification not only because of the complete correspondence in names and age but especially because of the epithet he-hakham fia-kolel, the Hebrew form for uomo universale, which accords perfectly with Alemanno's vast culture.
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5. See the letter written in Jerusalem by the Spanish Kabbalist R. Abraham ben Eliezer ha-Levi to R. Abraham of Perugia, extant in Ms. Florence, Laurenziana-Medicea Plut. II, 35, fols. 3ob-3ib, printed and discussed by Abraham David, "A Jerusalemite Epistle from the Beginning of the Ottoman Rule over the Land of Israel," in Chapters in the History of Jerusalem at the Beginning of the Ottoman Ages, ed. Yehudah ben Porat (Yad ben Zvi, Jerusalem, 1989) , pp. 3 9-60 (Hebrew); and Frabrizio] Lelli, "Biography and Autobiography [in Yohanan Alemanno's Literary Perception", in [i]Cultural Intermediaries: Jewish Intellectuals in Early Modern Italy, ed. David B. Ruderman and Giuseppe Veltri (University of Pennsylvania Press, Philadelphia, 2004), pp. 25-38. On hakham kolel or uomo universale see also Lelli, "Umanesimo Laurenziano [nell'opera di Yohanan Alemanno," in La cultura ebraica all'epoca di Lorenzo il Magnifico, ed. Dora Liscia Bemporad and Ida Zatelli (Leo S. Olschki, Florence, 1998), pp. 49-67], pp. 50 n. 3, 58 n. 26.
The physiognomist was a gentile in Bologna who knew absolutely nothing about him, Alemanno avers. The list of his findings, since Alemanno agrees with them, say something about his life. Many things could be written off as flattery, but there are also these:
This evidence of Alemanno's temper and outspokenness is to me evidence of the break between him and his teacher that I have hypothesized happened in the 1470s. If you want to see more of the content of these readings, I have uploaded my scan of the two pages with the reports at http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-cdvuOqDZMo4/V ... sley06.JPG and http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-5EdTZVLomIw/V ... sley07.JPG.2. In your youth you were hot-tempered to those who had authority over you and to those who wronged you. You would hit them with a stone or with your fist. But now if you injure your adversary you do not touch him with your hand, but instead you refute him in public, in writing or in speech.
3. You have suffered many injuries as a result of having revealed your ways and manners to intimates and sympathizers, for that is your way: not to hide anything you do from your acquaintances and well-wishers. ...
10. You know how to think profound thoughts, but not to put them into effect and bring them from potentiality to actuality.
I had not noticed this before, but there is apparently evidence that Alemanno was in Florence sometime between his two extensive stays, the one early on (c. 1456 and years before or after) and the one 1488-1494 or after. This third period was "1481", according to a source that Idel cites in footnote 4 to p. 178:
Lesley does include in his dissertation a translation of a portion of Hesheq Shlomo, i.e. The Desire of Solomon, but the reference to Pico that Idel cites is not in it. As Lesley explains (p. 12), he only includes the part that seems to be a slightly rewritten version of what he had written in 1468 pertaining to the "literal meaning" of the Song of Songs.For documents related to Alemanno's stay and activity in Florence see Michele Luzzatti, "Documenti inediti su Yohanan Alemanno a Firenze (1481 e 1492-1493)," in Bemporad and Zatelli, La cultura ebraica, pp. 71-84. In the introduction to his Hesheq Shlomo, Alemanno pointed out the affinity between his first name, Yohanan, and Pico's, Giovanni.
To me, reading this account, it is clear that Alemanno already had in mind a certain allegorical meaning before writing this account of the "literal meaning", because this "literal meaning" often does not correspond very closely to the words of his text. It is a reworking of the story that keeps to the level of men and women and their mutual romantic involvement. He was already a kind of Neoplatonist at that time.
NOVAK ON ALEMANNO
This is the article "Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and Jochanan Alemanno", by B. C. Novak, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, Vol. 45 (1982), pp. 125-147.
First, Novak agrees with Lelsy as to Alemanno's year of birth, 1433-34 (p. 126), explaining that it is based on a piece of gemantria found in his book Hai-ha Olamim (Eternal Life), in which apparently there is a brief autobiography (p. 125). Novak also agrees that Alemanno was not born in Italy, because of he says he is "da Francia"; if true, he must be from France or some "French-speaking territory" (p. 126). At the same time, he was called "de Mantua" in the document describing the award of his doctorate in 1470. Novak attaches little weight to this document: two researchers have found "no reference to either Alemanno or his family in the usually informative records of the Mantuan Jewish archives" (p. 126 n. 8). His father died "a year or two before the boy could read the Bible," which began, we learn, at age 4 (n. 9). (If that happened before they reached Italy, it would not be surprising if the archives had no record of the family, it seems to me.) His youth was spent "from house to house, and from city to city" acquiring a Jewish education, until (still p. 126):
The reasoning is that (note 11:Sometime after 1456, he left France and arrived in Florence, staying at the house of Yehiel da Pisa, a Jewish banker and man of letters.
Alemanno in his program of study divided it into periods of 7 years each. The period from age 21-28 corresponds to the study of Plato. All of this is from Hai-ha Olalim. The reason for 1456-1462 in Florence is now clear: Alemanno divided his life into seven year periods, and this is one of them.1456 is the beginning of the fourth period of seven years. Alemanno says that during this period he went to a different country and a different nation which did not know his language.
He then spent "some time in the country" (Novak's words) before studying for "some years" in Padua under Judah Messer Leon, getting his doctorate from him in 1470. His son Isaac was born in that city, we learn; but in 1470 he was in Mantua, because his doctarate calls him "de Mantua" (note 14), listening to the blind German musician, an organist named Konrad Paumann (p. 127). (It was apparently carelessness on Cassuto's part not to record the exact year that happened.) Various manuscripts are cited.
For the period between 1470 and 1488, there are only brief allusions in his works. Novak (p. 127) mentions an encounter in Bologna, and apparently some time on Venetian territory, which he deduces from a reference to the gold ducats of "the Italy of Greece". But it cannot be ruled out that he spent all or most of this time in Mantua, where his teacher, Judah Messer Leon, is known to have set up a studio "in the second half of the 15th century". Presumably he means the yeshiva that other sources say was first in the Ancona area and then in Mantua.
In Florence he was the tutor to Yehiel da Pisa's two sons. After Florence, which he left sometime between July of 1494 and the year of the Jews' expulsion, 1497, "There is reason to believe that he returned to Mantua", because he mentions being acquainted with a "Pardia Cesario Mantuano" who has been identified as Paride da Cerasara, a Mantuan humanist, poet, astrologer, and student of magic, also interested in Hebrew and alchemy. Paride's whereabouts in Mantua have been traced back as far as 1494, aged 28. Novak cites Lesley and a manuscript. Paride is unlikely to have been known by Alemanno before then, Novak reasons, because he would have been too young 25 years earlier. (However Novak has just said that he may have been in Mantua most of the time before 1488. In 1487 Paride would have been 21. Is that too young? I would note here also that Equicola, the Mantuan humanist I mentioned earlier in connection with Estense paintings, was 24 in 1494 and hence close to Paride in age.) It is possible that Alemanno spent some time after 1497 in Ferrara, where he might have met Pico's nephew Alberto Pio, Novak says, citing Lesley. The last dated note by Alemanno is in 1503-4.
Novak turns then to Pico (p. 128). We learn what work del Medigo did for him in Padua, 1480-82: he translated some works by Averroes that had hitherto been available only in Arabic or Hebrew. He also wrote two treatises on Averroes' view of the Intellect, at Pico's request. In 1485 del Medigo visited Pico in Florence and participated in a debate with the converted Jew Flavius Mithradites on whether the Old Testament prophecies referred to Jesus. Their final meeting was in May, 1486, in Perugia, where del Medigo, as Pico later wrote in a letter, told him that Kabbalah was based on Neoplatonism and he, del Medigo, preferred Aristotle and Averroes to Plato and Kabbalah. Del Medigo also supplied Pico with a copy of Recanati's Commentary on the Torah, which scholars have "recently" seen as Pico's major source for his knowledge of the Kabbalah.
We also learn from Novak about Pico's other main Jewish contact, Flavius Mithridates (p. 129). He was the son of a learned Sicilian Jew and lived in Rome 1477-1483, when he left "for some unspecified crime" (Sholem suggested perhaps for secretly practicing Judaism). He preached a Good Friday sermon in 1481 to the Pope, arguing from supposed Jewish sources that the Crucifixion had been foretold in the Old Testament (but based more on medieval anti-Jewish polemists, Novak says). In 1484-5 he studied in Germany in Cologne and Tuebingen. 1485 has him in Florence and then working for Pico in Perugia, teaching him Hebrew, Aramaic ("Chaldean"), and Arabic, and translating many Jewish Kabbalist works. He also drew up a glossary of Kabbalist names and expressions for the ten sefirot, which proved to be an important source for Pico's Conclusiones (p. 130)
The rest of Novak's article is devoted to examining Pico's and Alemanno's relationship. He starts with a delightful account of how they met, based on Alemanno's comments (p. 130f):
And that is all he ever says about Pico. On his part, Pico says only, in his Commento sopra una canzona d'amore(p. 131:He had come to Florence in the Hebrew year 5248, or 1488. The virtues of the Florentines, which he found to be seven in number, 3 led his heart to be filled with the thought of coming before Pico, who was unique among his nation and generation; perhaps his soul might be favoured by some of Pico's splendour. The vagueness of this description, combined with the somewhat embellished style of the Hebrew, leaves some doubt as to Alemanno's exact motives, but as he does not say that he was summoned by Pico, he must have gone of his own accord. In all likelihood he would have known of Pico's interest in Hebrew learning, and was perhaps hoping to find employment with him as a teacher; but it is also possible that his position at the house of Yelhiel da Pisa was sufficient for his needs, and he sought out Pico from pure intellectual [131] curiosity, something he had no lack of. Pico apparently asked him if he knew of any commentary on the Song of Songs that would properly elucidate its textual difficulties, as he, Pico, had not been able to find one among the many Greek and Latin commentaries he had consulted. Alemanno replied that he too had been unsatisfied with what had been written on the Song, but twenty years earlier had, through the grace of God, himself arrived at some solutions. Pico asked to hear what Alemanno had written, and found it so much to his liking that he asked him to resume work on his commentary.
"Manaen" is Manahem Recanati, and "Jonathan" is Jonathan ben Uzziel. It is likely but not certain that the "Johanan" here is Alemanno.Solomon spoke excellently of one and the other, of common (love) in Ecclesiastes, as natural philosophy, and of divine and celestial (love) in his Song, and therefore Johanan and Menaen the Hebrews and Jonathan the Chaldaean say that of all the songs of the sacred scriptures, this one is the most sacred and the most divine.54
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54 Oratio de hominis dignitate, Heptaplus, De Ente et Uno e scritti vari, ed. Eugenio Garin, Florence 1942, p. 535. In fact the last statement about the Song of Songs being the most sacred was by Rabbi Akiva in Mishna, Yad. 3, 5.
Novak holds that their relationship was mainly one of Alemanno teaching Pico rather than the other way around. He starts with a quote from Pico's nephew Gianfrancesco, in a letter (p. 132):
This reflects, Novak argues, not only that Alemanno taught Pico but that it lasted for some time, because Gianfrancesco knew about it. The rest of the essay is an attempt to show, by comparing Pico's Haptaplus with Alemanno's work of that time, that Pico was much influenced by Alemanno. The problem is that in every case where he finds a parallel with Alemanno, the same idea can be traced to the Jewish sources that Mithridates translated for Pico. Novak says that Pico probably used both resources. This may be true, but if so it is a striking series of coincidences.I am learning Hebrew (letters) thoroughly, having hired Isaac, the son of that Jochanan whom my uncle Giovanni Pico took for himself as master, and I employ him as my teacher.
IDEL ON ALEMANNO
Moshe Idel writes extensively about Alemanno in Kabbalah in Italy. He says that Yohanan was born in Italy, but was of an Ashkenazi family that had spent much time in Spain, and his father made a living selling old manuscripts. So some of these manuscripts, whatever they were, might have influenced young Yohanan. Idel observes, p. 155:
Yohanan was educated by R Yehudah Messer Leon, a famous but by all accounts quite conservative writer. Idel writes, contrasting the older generation with that of Yohanan (p. 159):According to some evidence, which needs detailed investigation, the arrival of
R Yohanan Alemanno's family in Italy from Aragon in the 1430s was instrumental
in bringing some speculative literature from Spain.
Idel says nothing about where Alemanno got his education from Judah Messer Leon, before or after the latter awarded him his doctorate in 1470. If before 1452 Alemanno received a conventional education under someone like Judah Messer Leon (who if not his teacher certainly would have carried much weight in Mantua), and after around 1465 was definitely with Judah Messer Leon, where did he get his Platonism? And what, despite everything, motivated his turn toward the Kabbalah?The earlier authors, R. Moshe ben Yoav (Datillo), Moshe Rieti, R. Elijah del Medigo, and R. Yehudah Messer Leon, were much more conservative, closer to medieval Jewish philosophy, and unaware or suspicious of both magic and Kabbalah.
But Cassuto (1918) has told us that he was there sometime around his 21st birthday until age 28 (based on his study program). We might wonder if that first period might have led him toward both the Kabbalah, from Jewish sources, including ones his family might have already had, as well as Platonism, from Christian sources.
The first period would have been during the lifetime of Cosimo the Elder (1389-1464), leading up, in 1462, to his entrusting his Plato manuscript (probably Plethon's earlier, Hankins surmises; see http://books.google.com/books?id=CX06ds ... 3F&f=false, p. 29) to Ficino (1433-1499) to translate.
This was the time of the controversies over who was superior, Plato or Aristotle, a debate to which the Neoplatonist Plethon had added fuel in 1438; his way had been prepared by the early translators, Bruni and Decembrio, and now Filelfo, Cusano, Bessarion, and many others were joining in (Hankins p. 196, not in Google Books).
Ficino, like Alemanno, had been trained in Aristotelian scholasticism, and like him (at least later) was breaking away from that tradition in a Platonic direction, with Cosimo's hearty approval. According to Hankins (Plato in the Renaissance, (http://books.google.com/books?id=BLgfAA ... no&f=false, p. 276), Ficino in the 1450s was influenced mainly by an Augustinian monk and teacher named Lorenzo Pisano, who was from an aristocratic Pisan family. Through him he came in contact with a Platonizing theology and the writings of pseudo-Dionysius (as translated by Traversari, perhaps). Although he was long familiar with the extant Latin translations of Plato, he wrote his own first Platonizing work in 1456 (no longer extant, but it upset his spiritual advisers, Hankins says). Ficino, born 1433, was about two years older than Alemanno, born c. 1435.
Alemanno's sponsor (then or later, I'm not sure) Yehiele/Vitale da Pisa, of course, was a member of one of the four banking families invited to Florence from Pisa in 1430. Thus Alemanno's early Jewish sources, apart from Aristotelian ones, might have included those that Trevarsari's Jewish source knew. This possibility is strengthened by footnote 27 at the bottom of page 25 in Studies in Jewish Manuscripts (http://books.google.com/books?id=AO6dzM ... sa&f=false), in which Alemanno in a post-1488 work cites the same Aramaic work, the Targum Esther ha-Sheni, that seems to have been the source of the bird in Ghiberti's Solomon and Sheba panel. Only now it is not the Pope who is the new Solomon (in Krautheimer's interpretation, with Sheba as the Greek Church), but the "typical nobleman" (Idel's quote from Alemanno) of Alemanno's day, who allocates money to the idols worshiped by his wives, even though he doesn't believe in them. (The post-1488 work is Alemanno's Hesheq Schlomo, in English, The Desire of Solomon; according to Idel, p. 177, Alemanno says in it that Pico encouraged him to write it.)
Another clue is in other "of Pisa"'s that Idel gives: Alemanno's patron was "the grandfather of R. Yehi'el Nissim of Pisa"; his student was "the latter's uncle, R. Yitzhaq of Pisa" (Idel p. 179). The da Pisas were not only bankers but rabbis. And all of them, to some extent, can be assumed to be friends of the Medici.
At the same time, Judah Messer Leon was always in the background, even in Florence. in the 1450s one of Judah's students married Yehiel da Pisa's daughter Hannah (Tirosh-Rothschild, p 28f). This gave Judah an entree into Jewish high society, so to speak, the society of wealth and power--"the most prominent Jewish family in Italy", Tirosh-Rothschild says--rather than knighthood and service, one that a yeshiva director in Ancona both needed and sought. There is no reason why Alemanno would not have welcomed the association as well. It might have been how Alemanno came under Yehiel's wing. But there were things going on then, the late 1450s and early 1460s, in Florence just as there would be in Padua in the 1480s, that the man in Ancona could not prohibit.
Novak, it will be recalled, compared Pico with Alemanno. Idel does the same, comparing the Kabbalistic sections in Pico's 900 Theses with Alemanno's writings. The result is the same as with Novak's comparison: they are quite in agreement. Here there would seem to be no question of Alemanno influencing Pico, because the 900 theses were published in Dec. 1486, and to all appearances they didn't meet until 1488. Idel's explanation is that there was so much interchange between Jews and Christians then that there was a kind of "osmosis" and a "zeitgeist", spirit of the times (both p. 196), pointing them in the same direction, with a resulting duplication of ideas. If so, it would have extended beyond the borders of Florence, because Alemanno really does not seem to have been in that city, apart from in his youth, until 1488. (This seems dubious to me.) In fact Florentine ideas did extend beyond its borders--although chiefly to the cities where Florentine or Florentine-educated humanists went.
Novak did identify one major difference between the "Florentine humanists" and Alemanno, which to him showed that Alemanno was not influenced by either Ficino or Pico. Alemanno has no "ladder" of discreet steps to the divine; there is earthly love and divine love, bit that is all (p. 146) . However later studies on Alemanno do find discreet steps, even if they do not ascend in precisely the same way as in Ficino. One example is "'Prisca Philosophia'" and 'Docta Religio': The Boundaries of Rational Knowledge in Jewish and Christian Humanist Thought, by Fabrizio Lelli, Jewish Quarterly Review, New Series, Vol. 91, No. 1/2 (Jul. - Oct., 2000), pp. 53-99). But I will stick with Idel, 2011. He has a quote in which Alemanno gives ten levels--the sefirot, of course--and even that is not the top (p. 178).
The work Alemanno calls ha-'Atzamim ha-'Elyonim is that usually known as Liber de Causis, Book of Causes. As Idel says, that book was actually written by Proclus. (I would note that the 5th century Neoplatonist Proclus was also the inspiration for pseudo-Dionysius's celestial hierarchy.) According to Wikipedia, this book was attributed to Aristotle rather than Plato (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liber_de_Causis). However Alemanno at least gives it to the right tradition. In a part of Alemanno's text that Idel omitted, he justifies the attribution to Plato by a remark of Aristotle's in Book XIII of the Metaphysics, ( Idel, "The Magical and Neoplatonic Interpretations of Kabbalah in the Renaissance", 1983, in Cooperman, ed. Jewish Thought in the Sixteenth Century, 1983, on p. 241, n. 217). There Aristotle says that Plato considered the individual numbers to be separate archetypes. As to their being ten basic ones, Aristotle only says that is "as some say" (http://www.classicallibrary.org/aristot ... book13.htm). That is a Neopythagorean idea that the Neoplatonists incorporated in their systems.The ancients believed in the existence of ten spiritual numbers. ... It seems that Plato thought that there are ten spiritual numbers of which one may speak, but one may not speak of the First Cause, because of its great concealment. However, they [the numbers] approximate its existence to such an extent that we may call these effects by a name that cannot be ascribed to the movers of corporeal bodies. However, in the opinion of the Kabbalists, one may say so of the sefirot. . . . This is what Plato wrote in the work ha-'Atzamim ha-'Elyonim" as quoted by Zekhariyahu in the book 'Imrei Shejer.' 12 From it follows that in Plato's view, the first effects are called sefirot because they may be numbered, unlike the First Cause, and therefore he did not call them movers. 13
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11. This is a passage from an otherwise unknown Hebrew translation of Liber de Causis, as adduced already by Abraham Abulafia. On this work of Abulafia's, his quotation from Liber de Causis, and the latter's reverberations see Idel, "The Magical and Neoplatonic Interpretations," pp. 216-217, 220-221, 223, and the pertinent notes there. Neoplatonic influences are more dominant in theosophic-theurgical Kabbalah than in ecstatic Kabbalah. In the latter, some Neoplatonic motifs came to the fore in the second stage of the development of this school, in the works of R. Yitzhaq of Acre and in R. Nathan Harar's Sha'arei Tzedeq, whereas they are negligible in the writings of Abulafia, where the Aristotelian influence is predominant. See more in chap. 11.
12. 'Imrei Shejer is Abulafia's last work, composed in Sicily in 1291. The passage is found in Ms. Munich 285, fols. 3a-b.
13. Alemanno, Sefer Hesheq Shlomo, Ms. Berlin, Or. Qu. 832, fols. 83a-b. See also chap. 15, sec. 4.
Proclus was for Pico the most important of the Neoplatonists, devoting more of his Theses to him than to any other. One might say that Pico came to his ideas from Ficino, Plato, and Proclus, whereas Alemanno came to his from Proclus, mistaken for Plato, via Jewish sources. The results are strikingly parallel, so much so that Idel thinks they must be explained by "reciprocal osmosis" and the "zeitgeist". In other words, he has no idea how the two thinkers happened to come up with similar ideas, but there are many possibilities, all undocumented.
There are many parallels between Alemanno and Pico. I will focus on those suggesting a ladder. The sefirot are like rungs on a ladder. In one place Alemanno speaks of Moses having reached the level of tiferet, the sixth sefira (Idel 1983, p. 206f in Cooperman volume, the brackets are Idel's):
And in a commentary on the ten sefiroth, he puts Moses even higher, in the third sefira, Bina (Idel 2011, p. 187f):For our master Moses, peace be with him, was empowered in this matter, as the verse says, "That caused his glorious arm [zroa' tif' arto - literally, the arm of His Beauty and here the Sefira Tiferet] to go at the right hand of Moses" [Isaiah 65:12]
This can be compared to Pico:and the third [sphere] is that of Saturn . . . and it is a supreme and noble one, higher than all the other planets, which is the reason that the ancient sages said about it that it generated all the other planets. . . . And they say that [188] Saturn is the true judge and the planet of Moses, peace be with him.
for which Farmer comments, in his note to his translation (in Syncretism in the West, 1998):28.43 No one knew the tomb of Moses, because he was raised in the superior jubilee, and over the jubilee he set his roots.
In the Hai-ha Olalim Alemanno has another sort of "ladder", namely, the step by step study program in groups of seven years each, ending at age 35 (probably the age he was when he wrote it). There are only 4 steps--the first is from age 4 to 13, then 14 to 21, 21 to 28, and finally 28 to 35 (Appendix 3 in Idel's 2011 book, pp. 339-342, at http://archive.org/stream/MosheIdelKabb ... y_djvu.txt)--but he kept working another 35 years; so probably there were more, without a reading list. Idel reports that his last written note was dated 1505.28.43: "superior jubilee/jubilee" are apparent references to the third sefira (Binah, intelligence) and the sixth (Tiferet, beauty, the "great Adam". Cf. here 23.13 and the hints in 28. 17. On Binah as the great or superior jubilee, see further Scholem (1974:120).
This ladder seems to me fairly simple to account for. If he spent six years when he was a young student in Florence, surely he would have come into contact with Florentine Platonism. This is especially true if he was there during his third seven-year period, 21-28, to which he assigns, among other things, "the political philosophy of Aristotle and Plato" (Idel p. 341). In his writing, it is true, he is less influenced by Ficino's writings than he is the medieval tradition of Jewish Neoplatonism. But Florentine Platonism did not start with Ficino, and perhaps if the two knew each other, Ficino's ideas weren't as developed as they became.
AN APPLICATION TO THE TAROT
Where does all this lead, in relation to the tarot? For one thing, it is nice to see that what some have called the "Christian Kabbalah" has many features in common with "Jewish Kabbalah" in the period of the Renaissance.
Also, for a few Jewish thinkers in Florence, and for those Christian thinkers interacting with them, I see a persistent interest in the "ladder of ascent", a medieval theme that after having been eclipsed for a couple of centuries among Christians (but not Jews) is coming back It begins with Bruni's translation of the "Charioteer" myth of Plato's Phaedrus and gets developed by Traversari in his translations of pseudo-Dionysius. We see it next in Ficino's De Amore of 1469 (published 1474). Then it gets repeated by Pico, in terms that try to bridge Judaism and Christianity in a series of works 1486-1489, and in Jewish terms by Alemanno, 1489-1490s.
In Alemanno, there are clear references to ascent when he speaks of the seferot, which are in numerical sequence. It is a matter of receiving the power of a particular sefira. Thus (p. 185):
And (p. 187):"A prophet has the power to cause the emanation of divine efflux from 'Ein Sof upon the hyle [hylic matter] by the intermediary of the sefirah Malkhut. In this way the prophet performs wondrous deeds, impossible in nature." 36
Likewise the righteous cleave to Yesod, which is one of the names of that sefira. Speaking of another Kabbalist, Idel says (p. 246):"...Malkhut is the source of oral law, which explains all the secrets of the Torah and details of the commandments." 42
We have already seen how Moses had the power of Tiferet in his arm, and also Binah.I assume that the Kabbalist understands the powers that the operators achieve as
the result of the cleaving of the human righteous to the supernal righteous, the
sefirah Yesod.
Similarly, I think it is possible to see the tarot sequence as descent and ascent through the sefirot, with the Fool and the World both referring to the En Sof, which is outside the sefirot. I have elaborated this at http://latinsefiroth.blogspot.com/, in my introduction. The first 10 cards are the descent, each associated with a different name of God. The direction starts to reverse at the Wheel card, with the 11th and 12 cards as more names of God but also preparations for ascent. The ascent proper begins with the Death card, which is where Dummett (1980 and 1992) had the third section of the sequence begin.
Besides the sefirot, there is in Alemanno at least one hint of a corresponding ascent through the planets and above. in relation to Saturn, which in remarks about Moses he correlates with Bina, the third sefira. I have given one quote already, which I will repeat (Idel 2011, p. 187f):
At the end of that same passage Alemanno writes (p. 188; I include Idel's notes):and the third [sphere] is that of Saturn . . . and it is a supreme and noble one, higher than all the other planets, which is the reason that the ancient sages said about it that it generated all the other planets. . . . And they say that [188] Saturn is the true judge and the planet of Moses, peace be with him.
Since Saturn is the seventh planet, and Binah is the eighth sefira from the bottom, presumably there is a descent through the planets, until Yesod is the Moon. That leaves Malkhut as something below the moon, where the medievals put the four elements. And above Saturn are the Fixed Stars, corresponding to Hochma, and the Primum Mobile, corresponding to Kether. Finally the Empyrean would be above the sefirot in the En Sof. I have not found any of this, however, in a Jewish source. It is, however, quite explicitly presented in Agrippa's Three Books on Occult Philosophy, Book III ch X (http://www.hermetics.org/pdf/magic/Agrippa3.pdf), which is surely where the Golden Dawn took their planetary correspondences for interpreting the number cards. Whether Agrippa got this from a Jewish source is unknown....And the astrologers who have described Saturn say that it endows man with profound thought, law, and the spiritual sciences [holdimot ruhaniyyot], 49 prophecy [neuu'ah], 50 sorcery [kishshuf], 51 and prognostication and the Shemittot and Yovelot. 52 ... But if they [the Jews] do not keep the way of God, it will spit forth everything that is bad: prophecy will occur to fools and to babies in an insufficient manner, and to women and to melancholies, 54 and to those possessed by an evil spirit and maleficent demons that obliterate the limbs, 55 and bad counsels and sorceries, and anxieties and erroneous beliefs. 56
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50. For this nexus see already R. Joseph ben Shalom Ashkenazi's Commentary on Sefer Yetzirah (Epstein, Jerusalem, 1961), fols. 5ib~52a.
51. This understanding of sorcery as related to Saturn stems, in Jewish sources, from R. Abraham ibn Ezra, Reshit Hokhmah, chap. 4. 1 combined the version found in a passage of this book as explicitly quoted in R Joseph Bonfils, Tzajhat Pa'aneah, ed. David Herzog, vol. 1 (Krakow, 1912), p. 49, with the commonly used edition of the book (cited just below). See also ibid., p. 270. The common version of this passage, as edited and translated by Raphael Levi and Francisco Cantera, The Beginning of Wisdom: An Astrological Treatise by Abraham ibn Ezra (Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore; Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1939), pp. xlii-xliv, does not contain the reference to incantation and sorcery.
52. These are terms for cosmical cycles according to Kabbalists, which interpreted biblical practices of cessation of agricultural works. The nexus between these two practices and Saturn is manifest already in the passage of Abraham Abulafia and even more in R Joseph ben Shalom Ashkenazi's influential Commentary on Sefer Yetzirah. See Moshe Idel, "Saturn and Sabbatai Tzevi: A New Approach to Sabbateanism," in Toward the Millennium: Messianic Expectations jrom the Bible to Waco, ed. Peter Schaefer and Mark Cohen (Brill, Leiden, 1998), pp. 179-180. See also above, chap. 12, note 39.
...
54. On Saturn and melancholy see the important study by Raymond Klibansky, Erwin Panofsky, and Fritz Saxl, Saturne et la melancholie, trans. L. Evrard (Gallimard, Paris, 1989).
55. Apparently hemiplegia.
56. Alemanno, untitled treatise, Ms. Paris, BN 849, fols. 940-958, which is part of a passage dealing with the sefirah of Binah. See also Idel, "The Magical and Neoplatonic Interpretations," p. 209.
Pico's assignments of sefiroth to planets is different, but that difference also in some respects reflects Jewish sources, at least in that Malkut is often identified with the Moon. Also, it may be that some sources put all the planets below the first three sefirot. Saturn in its astrological characteristics does not fit the next lower sefira, Hesed, which traditionally was associated with the love of Abraham for his son and for God. Jupiter fits Hesed better. If Saturn were associated with Binah, everything would be fine. Pico solves the problem by putting Saturn with Netzach, i.e. between the sefiroth associated with the Sun and that associated with Venus. Here is what he says (Farmer, Syncretism in the West, p. 541. and my explanatory comments in brackets):
Farmer comments in his note (p. 540) that assigning the empyrean to the tenth "was probably a slip", since he's already given the tenth to the moon. It should have been "first".Whatever other Kabbalists say, I say that the ten spheres correspond to the ten enumerations [i.e. sefirot] like this: so that, starting from the edifice [i.e. the separation of the upper three from the lower seven], Jupiter corresponds to the fourth, Mars to the fifth, the sun to the sixth, Saturn to the seventh, Venus to the eighth, Mercury to the ninth, the moon to the tenth. Then, above the edifice, the firmament in the third, the primum mobile [first moved] in the second, the empyrean heaven to the tenth.
Another possibility would have been to associate Saturn with Hod, the option that Kircher took in his famous diagram of the sefirot (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... f_Life.png ; find the astrological symbols next to the sefirot). Unlike Kircher, Pico does not attribute his to a Jewish source, because he begins his thesis with "Whatever other Cabalists say..."
If planets are assigned to sefiroth, that also implies ascent, because the belief was that the soul at birth descends through the planets, being imprinted at that moment with a particular horoscope, and will ascend again after death, as in the famous "Dream of Scipio" by Cicero and its interpretation by Macrobius in his Commentary. Moreover, the medieval cosmograph was designed as an aid to meditation, by which one ascends in contemplation from one planet to the next.
Whether there is such a Ptolemaic progression of the planets in the tarot sequence is a matter for discussion. It is not essential for what I have said here, which is primarily about the sequence of sefirot. Their associations with the Ptolemaic order of planets, more or less, merely reinforces the idea of mystical descent and ascent through the sefirot, which I do see as a realistic possibility for how some may have seen the tarot sequence by the end of the 15th century.
LODOVICO LAZZARELLI
Lazzarelli is best known these days for incorporating many of the "Tarot of Mantegna" images into a long poem he finished in around 1470, as is known from his original dedication, scratched out, to Borso d'Este, Duke of Ferrara, who died in that year. He therefore serves as an upper limit to the time when these images were produced and sold. His biographer says that he picked them up in Venice.
He was originally from San Severino in the Marches, i.e. east-central Italy. At some point early on he learned Hebrew and became acquainted with Kabbalist literature. Hanegraaff takes up this issue, in two places. Hanegraaff begins (p. 76f):
Their immediate neighbors were Jews, and his father had even bought his house from a certain Jacobus Levi. Lancillotti writes in his biography that Lazzarelli learned Hebrew while he was staying with Campano in Teramo, from 1464 to 1466. Since Filippo Lazzarelli makes no reference to Hebrew in that period, presumably the information is from the lost Vita of Lazzarelli's nephew, Fabrizio Lazzarelli, Hanegraaff says. All Filippo says in his Vita is that Ludovico learned Hebrew, "so that he might be able better to investigate all things, while already grown up" (p. 77). Is he "grown up" at age 17-19? It is unclear.Maria Paola Saci has argued forcefully that Lazarelli was exposed to Jewish influences from an early age, and calls attention in this context to the presence of what seems to have been a significant Jewish community in San Severino.
Another event is one at which Filippo says he was present (p. 78), in the city of Teramo, which is in a valley between mountains about 90 miles east of Rome:
Lazzarelli is said to have confronted the rabbi with a quotation, repeated in the Crater Hermetis, supposedly from the midrash Bereshit Rabba of Moses Adersan. Hanegraaff adds:Filippo writes that he himself was present at the occasion when, in Teramo, Lazarrelli engaged in a private debate with a learned Jewish astrologer and physician: a certain Vitale, about whom nothing more is known. Sacci reasonably suggests that this event must have taken place in the period 1464-1466; since we know that Lazzarelli was living in Teramo at the time and that Filippo was present as well.
Teramo, the capital of Abruzzo, had been part of the old Norman Kingdom of Naples and so probably still the home of many Jews from whom Lazzarelli could have studied Hebrew; and "Vitale" is no doubt a common Jewish name. Probably coincidentally, it was the name of the Roman family that established a branch in Pisa in c. 1400 and then Florence after 1430, the same family that was Alemanno's benefactor there.The importance of the Vitale debate is that if it indeed took between 1464 and1466, and if Lazzarelli was quoting first hand from Kabbalist sources, this would make him a pioneer of Christian kabbalah who precdes Pico della Mirandola's kabbalistic theses of 1486 by twenty years.
But whoever "Vitale" is, Hanegraaff doubts that Lazzarelli's quote comes from an authentic Hebrew source. It cannot be found in the extant manuscript of Bereshit Rabba nor any source that quotes from it (p. 85). It speaks of God the Father and God the Son as being one, conveniently close to Christian doctrine, but unthinkable in a Jewish one (p. 86). Hanegraaff notes that there were many forgeries of Hebrew works at that time. He quotes Abraham Farissol, a contemporary Jewish writer (1452-1528?) who says (p. 87):
These forgeries got extensive circulation throughout Spain and Italy. Lazzarelli could have obtained such a forged quotation, in Hebrew or Latin.This day I have heard in the city of my residence, Ferrara...that but a little while ago there arose in Spain a small band of evil-minded Jewish youths about twelve in number and headed by one...who composed a small pamphlet congtaining blasphemous Midrashim that they had themselves invented, that works were composed employing the idiom of the Zohar, Bereshit Rabba, and midrashic compilations in which they proclaimed the incarnation of God, his nativity, glorification, and resurrection, and several other aggadic expositions relating to their Messiah...but when I searched, I could not locate even one.[
It was only later, when 30-33 (and so 1477-1480), that Lazzarelli cited authentic Jewish material, namely his description of Jewish feasts in the Fasti (p. 78); it shows his grasp of Hebrew, including Hebrew script, but there is nothing Kabbalistic. It is only in the Crater Hermetis, of the early 1490s, that this material appears, although rarely even there. When it does, it is in places that the likely source is Alemanno: first, Enochian material, but such material also appeared in Christian sources (p. 83); second and most critically, the commentary on the Sefer Yetzirah by Eleazar of Worms, to passage which appears also and more fully in the Collectanea of Alemanno (p. 87), of uncertain date. I will take up that issue in a later post.
Before leaving the subject of Lazzarelli, I need to say that the year 1466, when Lazzarelli left Teramo, is of some significance. Italy Jewish Travel Guide says of Abruzzo, p. 187:
There is nothing specific about Teramo, but of L'Aquila, closer to Rome but still in Abruzzo, it notes, p. 188:In the 1400s there was a period of tranquility in the region...The second half of the 15th century was a period of continuous harassment. The Jews of Abruzzo were the first to abandon their homes and choose exile.
In checking the biography of Jacopo, whom I find under "James of the Marches", I see that Wikipedia says he served a little before 1416 as a "judge of sorcerers" in Florence (Italian Wikipedia says Bibbiena, Tuscany). I do not know about these "sorcerers".This city was one of the greatest hotbeds of anti-Semitic intolerance in the 15th century. These intolerances were perpetuated by Giovanni da Capistrano, Jacopo da Monteprandone (1466) and Bernardino da Feltre (1488).
Jacopo's activities in l'Aquila seem verified in the Bollettino della Deputazione abruzzese di storia patria, http://books.google.com/books?id=ktkYAA ... ne&f=false, p. 207. The anti-Jewish activities of other "Friars Minor" around that time are documented on preceding pages.
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