Egidio da Viterbo’s Book on Hebrew Letters

Christian Kabbalah in Papal Rome

Datos Bibliográficos

ID10414710
AutoresBrian Copenhaver, Brian P Copenhaver (University of California, Los Angeles, autor de correspondencia), Daniel Stein Kokin (0000-0002-8540-1676, University of California, Los Angeles)
Año2014
Volumen67
Número1
Páginas1-42
Fecha de publicación2014-03-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaRenaissance Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0034-4338 • E-ISSN: 1935-0236
EditorialUniversity of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1086/676151
OpenAlexW2332638471
IdiomaNL
Citas recibidas5
Referencias citadas18

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

Art · Hebrew · Judaism · Kabbalah · Literature · Politics · Theology · Victory · Byzantine Studies and History · Classics · Historical and Linguistic Studies · History · Law · Medieval and Classical Philosophy · Philosophy