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Liber XX · Kabbalah

Liber XX · Kabbalah · Chapter II: Christian & Hermetic Qabalah

De arte cabalistica (1517): Reuchlin's Art of the Kabbalah

Reuchlin's De arte cabalistica (1517) explained: the dialogue of a Jew, a Muslim and a Pythagorean, its sefirot and angel names, and its influence on occultism.

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De arte cabalistica ("On the Art of the Kabbalah"), published at Hagenau in 1517, is Johannes Reuchlin's mature account of Jewish Kabbalah and the most important Christian book on the subject in the first half of the sixteenth century. Written as a dialogue between a Jewish kabbalist, a Muslim and a Pythagorean philosopher, it presented the sefirot, the divine names, the angels and the letter techniques of Kabbalah to Latin readers, and argued that Kabbalah and the philosophy of Pythagoras were one ancient wisdom. It appeared in the year Martin Luther posted his theses, and it shaped Christian and occult ideas of Kabbalah for centuries.

A Book for Pope Leo X: Context and Publication§

By 1517 Reuchlin was in his sixties and had spent seven years defending himself against the Dominicans of Cologne, who accused him of favouring the Jews after he opposed the confiscation of Jewish books; the story is told in Johannes Reuchlin and De verbo mirifico. His case had been appealed to Rome. De arte cabalistica, printed by Thomas Anshelm at Hagenau, was dedicated to Pope Leo X, the son of Lorenzo de' Medici, and the dedication recalls the Florentine Platonists whom Reuchlin had known in his youth.

The dedication also states the book's purpose. Marsilio Ficino, Reuchlin writes, had given Plato to Italy, and Jacques Lefèvre d'Étaples had restored Aristotle in France; Reuchlin would complete the task by giving Germany Pythagoras, whose philosophy could not be understood without the Kabbalah of the Hebrews. The book was thus both a work of learning and a plea: it showed the pope that the Jewish books Reuchlin had defended contained truths useful to the Church.

Since De verbo mirifico in 1494, Reuchlin had become one of the best Christian Hebraists in Europe. He had published a Hebrew grammar in 1506 and had collected Hebrew manuscripts, and his knowledge of Kabbalistic literature was now far deeper than Pico della Mirandola's had been. Scholars have identified among his main sources the writings of the thirteenth-century Castilian kabbalist Joseph Gikatilla, especially his early work Ginnat Egoz ("Garden of Nuts"), the Torah commentary of Menahem Recanati, and the Sefer Yetzirah.

Three Speakers at Frankfurt: The Form of the Dialogue§

The setting is an inn at Frankfurt, a city of fairs where travellers from many lands met. Philolaus the Younger, a Pythagorean philosopher named after the ancient Pythagorean Philolaus, and Marranus, a Muslim, have come to learn about Kabbalah from Simon ben Eleazar, a Jewish scholar. The choice of speakers mirrors that of De verbo mirifico, but the roles have changed: this time the Jew is the teacher, and the Christian author speaks only through his characters.

The work is in three books. In the first, Simon explains what Kabbalah is, how it was received and transmitted, and how it tells the story of Adam's fall and of the redemption to come, a hope that Simon describes in Jewish terms and that the Christian reader is invited to see fulfilled in Christ. In the second book, Simon is absent because he is keeping the Sabbath, and Philolaus and Marranus discuss Pythagorean philosophy, finding in its numbers, symbols and silence a parallel to what they have just heard. In the third book, Simon returns and explains the techniques and the symbolic universe of Kabbalah in detail.

The dialogue is courteous throughout. Simon is portrayed as wise and devout, and the conversation ends with mutual respect rather than conversion. Historians have noted how unusual this was in an age of polemic, though the book's underlying argument remains Christian: Reuchlin believed that Kabbalah, properly understood, confirmed the Christian faith.

What Reuchlin Meant by Kabbalah§

For Reuchlin, Kabbalah was "symbolic theology": a received tradition, handed down from Moses, that used letters, numbers and names as symbols through which the mind could rise from sensible things to the contemplation of God. Its goal was the salvation and deification of the soul, not power over the world. Simon distinguishes Kabbalists, who contemplate divine things through symbols, from Talmudists, who are concerned with the law, and he insists that Kabbalah is reached by purity of life and study rather than by ritual operations.

This emphasis matters for the book's later history. Reuchlin's Kabbalah is primarily contemplative and exegetical. He was aware of the use of divine names for practical effects, and he regarded the power of the holy names as real, but he did not present Kabbalah as a manual of magic; that step was taken more fully by Agrippa a few years later. For the Jewish background to these themes, see What Is Kabbalah? and Practical Kabbalah.

Sefirot, Paths and Angelic Names in the Dialogue§

The third book was, for many Christian readers, their first systematic introduction to Kabbalistic doctrine. Simon lists the ten sefirot, the attributes or emanations through which God acts, with their Hebrew names and Latin equivalents and the divine names attached to each, explained in The Ten Sefirot and the Tree of Life. He describes the fifty gates of understanding, a rabbinic idea that Moses was granted forty-nine of the fifty gates, and the thirty-two paths of wisdom from the opening of the Sefer Yetzirah, made up of the ten sefirot and the twenty-two Hebrew letters.

Reuchlin also printed the seventy-two three-letter names derived from three verses of Exodus 14, with the names of angels formed from them by adding the endings -el or -iah. This table, described in The 72 Names of God, was taken up by Agrippa and passed into later Christian angel magic. Simon explains the techniques of letter interpretation: gematria, the calculation of numerical values; notarikon, the reading of words as acronyms; and temurah, the exchange of letters by fixed rules. These are the methods described in Gematria, which Reuchlin presented as ways of opening hidden levels of scripture.

Pythagoras and the Kabbalah§

The Pythagorean book is the most original part of the work. Philolaus and Marranus compare the Pythagorean tetractys, the sacred number ten made of one, two, three and four, with the ten sefirot and the four-letter name of God, and they discuss Pythagorean symbols and the discipline of silence. Reuchlin accepted a view common since antiquity, repeated by Jewish and Christian writers, that Pythagoras had learned from the Hebrews, so that Greek philosophy at its best was a reflection of the wisdom given to Moses.

This placed Kabbalah within the Renaissance search for a single ancient theology, the prisca theologia described in Prisca Theologia, and linked it to the number mysticism surveyed in Pythagoras and Pythagorean Number Mysticism. Modern historians regard the supposed dependence of Pythagoras on Moses as a legend, but it gave Reuchlin a way of presenting Jewish mysticism as part of the shared heritage of European philosophy.

Reception: Agrippa, the Reformation and the Occult Tradition§

The book's appearance coincided with the start of the Reformation. Reuchlin's cause had already been linked by many humanists with the fight against scholastic theologians, and the struggle over Luther soon overshadowed it; in 1520 Leo X condemned Reuchlin's earlier pamphlet in defence of Jewish books. De arte cabalistica nevertheless became the standard Latin source on Kabbalah. Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, who had lectured on De verbo mirifico at Dole in 1509, drew heavily on it in Three Books of Occult Philosophy, and it influenced the Venetian friar Francesco Giorgi, whose De harmonia mundi appeared in 1525.

In 1587 Johannes Pistorius reprinted it in a large collection of Kabbalistic writings published at Basel, alongside the translations of Paulus Ricius and other Christian Cabalists, ensuring its availability to seventeenth-century readers. Through Agrippa, Kircher and the Kabbala Denudata, its terms and tables entered the occult literature that culminated in the Hermetic Qabalah of the nineteenth century, surveyed in Christian Cabala and Hermetic Qabalah. An English translation by Martin and Sarah Goodman appeared in 1983.

Frequently asked questions§

What is De arte cabalistica about?§

It is a dialogue in three books in which a Jewish kabbalist explains Kabbalah to a Pythagorean philosopher and a Muslim. It covers the meaning and transmission of Kabbalah, the sefirot, the divine and angelic names, letter techniques and the relationship between Kabbalah and Pythagorean philosophy.

Who are the speakers in De arte cabalistica?§

Simon ben Eleazar, a Jewish scholar; Marranus, a Muslim; and Philolaus the Younger, a Pythagorean philosopher. They meet at an inn in Frankfurt, and Simon is absent from the second book because he is observing the Sabbath.

Why did Reuchlin dedicate the book to Pope Leo X?§

His trial over the defence of Jewish books was pending in Rome, and the book showed the pope that Jewish mystical writings could serve Christian truth. Leo X was also the son of Lorenzo de' Medici, patron of the Florentine Platonists whom Reuchlin admired.

How did De arte cabalistica influence occultism?§

Agrippa used it as a main source for the Kabbalistic sections of his Three Books of Occult Philosophy, and its tables of sefirot and the seventy-two angelic names passed through him into later magical and Hermetic literature.

Sources and further reading§