De Arte Cabalistica

REUCHLIN, JOHANNES

Thomas Anshelm

Hagenau

1517

FIRST EDITION. Large woodcut device on title. Text in Latin with extensive use of Hebrew type. Broad-margined copy. Hebrew vocalized in an old hand, Latin marginalia

Adams R-381; Scholem, Bibliographia Kabbalistica (1933), p.127

A FINE COPY OF A CLASSIC OF CHRISTIAN KABBALAH Born in Pforzheim, Baden in 1455, Johannes Reuchlin was one of the formost figures of German humanism and the pioneer of Greek and Hebrew scholarship in Germany. He first turned to the study of Jewish literature in 1473 and his main interest was Kabbalah. Reuchlin sensed an affinity between the neo-Platonic elements in Kabbalistic teaching and the basic conceptions of the great German Platonic philosopher, Nicholas of Cusa, whom he deeply admired. It was no doubt Reuchlin's devotion to his Kabbalistic studies that was the motivating factor behind his defence of Jewish literature against the apostate Johannes Pfefferkorn during the so called “Battle of the Books.” De Arte Cabalistica is written in the form of a Socratic diologue between “Simon,” a Jewish Kabbalist, “Marannus,“ a Muslim and “Philolaus,” a Pythagorean mystical philosopher. Parts One and Three of the book discuss the Kabbalah at considerable length, with a fair amount of sympathy. Part Two contains a long dialogue on Pythagoras’ philosophy. See EJ, Vol. XIV, cols. 108-11