Religious Confessions and the Sciences in the Sixteenth Century (Studies in European Judaism, Volume 1)

RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS AND THE SCIENCES IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY

STUDIES IN EUROPEAN JUDAISM Editor GIUSEPPE VELTRI University of Halle-Wittenberg

Advisory Board Rachel Elior (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) Bruno Chiesa (University of Turin) Alessandro Guetta (INALCO, Paris) Eleazar Gutwirth (Tel Aviv University) Moshe Idel (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) Hanna Liss (Hochschule fur Jiidische Studien, Heidelberg) Paul Mendes-Flohr (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) Reinier Munk (Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam) David Ruderman (Pennsylvania University) Peter Schafer (Free University, Berlin) Stefan Schreiner (University of Tubingen) Israel Yuval (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) Jonathan Webber (University of Oxford) Moshe Zuckermann (Tel Aviv University)

VOLUME 1

RELIGIOUS CONFESSIONS AND THE SCIENCES IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY EDITED BY

JURGEN HELM &

ANNETTE WINKELMANN

BRILL LEIDEN • BOSTON • KOLN 2001

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Die Deutsche Bibliothek - CIP-Einheitsaufhahme Religious confessions and the sciences in the sixteenth century / ed. by Jurgen Helm & Annette Winkelmann. - Leiden ; Boston ; Koln : Brill, 2001 (Studies in European Judaism ; 1) ISBN 90-04-12045-9

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is also available

ISSN 1568-5004 ISBN 9004 120459

© Copyright 2001 by Koninklijke Brill NV Leiden, The Netherlands Cover design: Cedilles / Studio Cursief, Amsterdam All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permissionfrom the publisher. Authorization to photocopy itemsfor internal or personal use is granted by Brill provided that Hie appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910 Danvers MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. PRINTED IN THE NETHERLANDS

CONTENTS Foreword to the Series Preface Contributors and Editors Introduction

VII VIII IX XI SECTION ONE

CHRISTIAN CONFESSIONS AND THE SCIENCES GUNTER FRANK Melanchthon and the Tradition of Neoplatonism PAUL RICHARD BLUM The Jesuits and the Janus-Faced History of Natural Sciences

3 19

MICHAEL G. MULLER Science and Religion in Royal Prussia around 1600

35

ANDREW CUNNINGHAM Protestant Anatomy

44

JURGEN HELM Religion and Medicine: Anatomical Education at Wittenberg and Ingolstadt

51

SECTION TWO WAYS OF TRANSMISSION MAURO ZONTA The Influence of Hasdai Crescas's Philosophy on Some Aspects of Sixteenth-Century Philosophy and Science

71

ELEAZAR GUTWIRTH Language and Medicine in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire

79

SECTION THREE JUDAISM BETWEEN TRADITION AND SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERIES GlANFRANCO MlLETTO

Tradition and Innovation: Religion, Science and Jewish Culture Between the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries

99

VI

CONTENTS

SAMUEL S. KOTTEK Jews between Profane and Sacred Science in Renaissance Italy: The Case of Abraham Portaleone

108

GIUSEPPE VELTRI Science and Religious Hermeneutics: The 'Philosophy' of Rabbi Loew of Prague

119

JOHANN MAIER The Relevance of Geography for the Jewish Religion

136

Index of Names

159

FOREWORD TO THE SERIES Studies in European Judaism Judaism played an important role in the making of Europe. In the period extending from the Arabic conquest until the expulsion from Spain, Judaism became the vector of adab, the Arabic paideia, which made possible the translation, adaptation, and interpretation of Greek sciences (medicine, astrology-astronomy, philosophy), thus mediating them anew to European cultures. In the humanist and early modern period almost forced migrations of Jews from country to country, from Mediterranean regions to northern and eastern lands, contributed to a living communication of ideas and traditions in the whole of Europe. A further factor was the direct influence of mystical (Kabbalah) traditions on Christian thought and literature, from the Renaissance until the German romanticism. In the age of emancipation and enlightenment Jews were called to take part in the respublica. However, their contribution to society was not always welcome and their exact place in society not always clear or established; it was also often obstructed by anti-Jewish and antisemitic tendencies and propaganda. The nineteenth and twentieth centuries were marked by the attempt to become citizens with equal rights and the hope for full membership in the respective wider societies. This hope was ended by the Nazis' rise to power and the tragic consequences of their racist policies for the Jews of Europe. The Editor of Studies in European Judaism aims to present a wide spectrum of Jewish life (history, thought and everyday life) across Europe, Judaism in interaction with those cultures that form the background of European culture. The series therefore intends to publish studies concerned with the contribution of Jewish culture and history to the making of Europe. Studies dealing with the interaction of Judaism, Christianity and Islam in the European discourse and their multifaceted encounters and often contradictory intentions will therefore be preferred. The series intends to touch the following areas: history of European Judaism, philosophy, liturgy, sciences, arts, biblical exegetic traditions, commentaries to philosophical and exegetical works, and studies in Kabbalah and in the Christian reception of it.

GIUSEPPE VELTRI

PREFACE Transliteration and Names Hebrew is transliterated according to the general transliteration rules of the Encyclopaedia Judaica (Jerusalem), with exception of the letters n (rendered as h) and X (rendered as ts). The letters s and y are not transliterated. A separator (') between vowels indicates that they do not form a diphthong and are to be pronounced separately. Biblical names and biblical place names are rendered according to the Bible translation of the Jewish Publication Society of America. Post-biblical names are transliterated. Contemporary Hebrew names are transliterated or rendered as used by the bearer. Place names are transliterated or rendered by the accepted spelling. Names and some words with an accepted English form are usually not transliterated. With the exception of Hebrew first names (for which the above rules apply), first names are rendered as preferred by the author (i.e., Jean, Johann, Johannes, John, etc.). However, a particular person will always bear the same first name throughout the volume. A cknowledgements The editors wish to thank Professor Giuseppe Veltri for kindly accepting this book for publication in his new series, Studies in European Judaism. It was typeset by Marco Torini (Berlin). Johanna Hoomweg (Berlin) translated the essay by Giuseppe Veltri and assisted in the English-language editing of the other texts.

CONTRIBUTORS AND EDITORS

PAUL RICHARD BLUM

JURGEN HELM

Professor of Philosophy, Peter Pazmany University Budapest/Piliscsaba. Publications: ed., Philosophen der Renaissance (Darmstadt, 1999); Philosophenphilosophie und Schulphilosophie — Typen des Philosophierens in der Neuzeit (Wiesbaden, 1998).

Assistant Professor, Institute for the History of Medicine, University HalleWittenberg. Publications: Tradition und Wandel der arztlichen Selbstverpflichtung: der Gottinger Promotionseid 1737-1889 (Gottingen, 1992).

ANDREW CUNNINGHAM

SAMUEL S. KOTTEK

Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow in History of Medicine, Cambridge University. Publications: The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Religion, War, Famine and Death in Reformation Europe (with O. P. Grell) (Cambridge, 2000); The Anatomical Renaissance. The Resurrection of the Anatomical Projects of the Ancients (Aldershot, 1997).

Emeritus, Harry Friedenwald Chair of History of Medicine, The Hebrew University-Hadassah Medical School, Jerusalem. Publications: ed. (with M. Horstmanshoff et al.), From Athens to Jerusalem: Medicine in Hellenized Jewish Lore and in Early Christian Literature (Rotterdam, 2000); Medicine and Hygiene in the Works ofFlavius Jostphus (Leiden, 1994).

GUNTER FRANK

JOHANN MAIER

Director, Melanchthonhaus (Bretten); Lectureship in Philosophy, Free University of Berlin. Publications: ed. (with S. Rhein), Melanchthon und die Naturwissenschaften seiner Zeit (Sigmaringen, 1998); Die theologische Philosophic Philipp Melanchthons (1497-1560) (Leipzig, 1995).

Emeritus, Professor of Judaic Studies, University of Cologne. Publications: Kriegsrecht und Friedensordnung in judischer Tradition (Stuttgart, 2000); Die Qumran Essener: die Texte vom To ten Meer, 3 vols. (Munchen, 1995-1996).

ELEAZAR GUTWIRTH

Habilitation project, University HalleWittenberg. Publications: L'Antico Testamento Ebraico nella tradizione babilonese. Iframmenti della Genizah (Torino, 1992).

Professor of Jewish History, Tel Aviv University. Publications: ed., Ten Centuries of Hispano-Jewish Culture (Cambridge, 1992); Social Tensions Within FifteenthCentury Hispano-Jewish Communities (London, 1978).

GlANFRANCO MlLETTO

X

CONTRIBUTORS AND EDITORS

MICHAEL G. MULLER

ANNETTE WINKELMANN

Professor of East European History, University Halle-Wittenberg. Publications: Zweite Reformation und stddtische Autonomie im Koniglichen Preufien. Danzig, Elbing und Thorn in der Epoche der Konfessionalisierung, 1557-1660 (Berlin, 1997); Die TeilungenPolens, 1772-1793-1795 (Munchen, 1984).

Project Manager, Leopold Zunz Centre for the Study of European Judaism, Wittenberg. Publications: ed., Directory of Jewish Studies in Europe (Oxford, 1998).

GIUSEPPE VELTRI Professor of Jewish Studies, University Halle-Wittenberg; Director, Leopold Zunz Centre for the Study of European Judaism, Wittenberg. Publications: ed. (with R. Markner), Friedrich August Wolf. Studien, Dokumente, Bibliographic (Stuttgart, 1999); Magie und Halakha (Tubingen, 1997).

MAURO ZONTA Professor, History of Jewish Philosophy, University of Rome 'La Sapienza'. Publications: Lafilosofia antica nel Medioevo ebraico (Brescia, 1996); La "Classificazione delle scienze " di al-Farabi nella tradizione ebraica (Torino, 1995).

INTRODUCTION This first volume of Studies in European Judaism presents the results of an international and interdisciplinary conference held at the Wittenberg LEUCOREA Foundation in December 1998, home of the Leopold Zunz Centre for the Study of European Judaism. The Centre was founded in 1998 with the explicit goal of researching the interdependence of religious, social, political and cultural aspects in Jewish history and the importance of Jews and Judaism in the making of Europe. The conference was generously supported by the Ministry of Culture of Sachsen-Anhalt, the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg and the LEUCOREA Foundation. Scholars from Israel, Italy, Great Britain, the U.S.A. and Germany discussed how religious confessions and the development of natural sciences and medicine in the sixteenth century influenced each other. Contrary to the still widespread opinion that the relations between religion and sciences at the beginning of the 'scientific revolution' can only be described as intense fights on several battlefields (which the sciences finally won by breaking off their ties with religious dogmas), the contributions to this book give a more refined picture. It is true, there was no lack of conflicts in the process leading from the traditional view of philosophia ancillafidei to autonomous sciences, and it is also true that traditions and dogmas held by religious leaders occasionally gave grounds for suppressing scientific facts and persecuting their authors. But overemphasizing these conflicts may result in the misleading idea that religion and sciences were located on the opposite extremes of the spectrum of sixteenth-century thought. Instead, the papers in this volume show that scientists in the sixteenth century were pious men well aware of religious traditions and teachings. And not one of them, no matter whether Jewish, Catholic or Protestant, abjured his faith to attain supposed intellectual freedom. Taking for granted that scientists in the sixteenth century adhered to a certain religious confession, the conference asked two main questions: (1) To what extent was scientific thought influenced by religious traditions and beliefs, and (2) did the achievements of sixteenth-century natural sciences and medicine have an effect on religious ideas? Considering these questions, the contributions to the present volume deal - some of them in great detail with Jewish, Protestant and Catholic scientists and their specific ways of pursuing their studies on nature and medicine. The first section (Christian Confessions and the Sciences) aims at painting a picture of Protestant, Catholic and Calvinist views of the sciences and their influence and importance in academic life. Giinter Frank (Bretten) and

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INTRODUCTION

Paul Richard Blum (Budapest) draw attention to both Protestant and Catholic views of the sciences. Frank's contribution deals with Philipp Melanchthon, whose influential synthesis of religion and science was made possible by the Lutheran distinction between Gospel and Law. According to Frank, Melanchthon's theological philosophy, including also his natural philosophy, was not purely Aristotelian, but obviously influenced by Neoplatonic thought, made possible by the Greek edition of Plato's writing by Simon Grynaeus. Blum's paper presents Jesuit scientists, for whom the opposition of science and faith - carefully avoided by Melanchthon - was inevitable. The Jesuit strategy implied that secular philosophy and the sciences were pursued not for intrinsic values, but exclusively for the sake of supporting theology and evangelization. As a consequence, Jesuit scientists were in more than one quandary when scientific discovery and religious dogma contradicted each other. Under these circumstances it is hardly astonishing that only infrequently could Jesuits gain importance in the recent 'progressist' history of the sciences. Michael G. Midler (Halle-Wittenberg) deals with the impact of Protestantism and especially of Calvinism on Royal Prussia around 1600. Miiller argues that the confessional re-orientation at the beginning of the seventeenth century and the decline of Protestant sciences were coinciding processes. While academic life benefited from 'Calvinist hegemony' in the Prussian Protestant Church, the Lutheran reconquista cut the confessional links between Prussia and most of Protestant Central Europe, and it brought about an anti-academic turn in urban culture. An important and peculiar part of the evaluation of science in the sixteenth century is the 'confessional' attitude to medical science (the present volume deals mainly with anatomy). Andrew Cunningham (Cambridge) argues that there were three ways in which anatomy became 'Protestant' in the first half of the sixteenth century. The first dimension was that Melanchthon and his book De anima made anatomy fundamental to philosophical study in Protestant universities. The second aspect concerns Andreas Vesal's approach to anatomizing, which was Protestant in its structure: just like Martin Luther, who rejected all authorities other than the word of the Bible, Vesal rejected all ancient authors and based his anatomy on the sole authority of the body. The third dimension of 'Protestant anatomy' was Paracelsus's total rejection of the tradition of anatomizing a dead body in favour of a spiritual and intuitive anatomy of inner revelation. Some of Cunningham's assertions induced Jtirgen Helm (HalleWittenberg) to compare anatomical education at Wittenberg and Ingolstadt universities. His paper comes to the conclusion that in substance there was at least in the second half of the sixteenth century - no difference between

INTRODUCTION

XIII

anatomy at the Protestant University of Wittenberg and the Catholic University of Ingolstadt. But, nevertheless, anatomical education played different roles in the curricula of these universities. While at Ingolstadt anatomy was regarded as belonging only to medical education, it was taught at the Wittenberg Arts Faculty and was therefore part of the basic training of future Protestant theologians, lawyers and scientists. The papers of the second section (Ways of Transmission) deal with the transmission of Jewish texts to Christianity and within Judaism itself. The article by Mauro Zonta (Rome) on the influence of Hasdai Crescas's philosophy is a link to the first section. Much has been written on the Jewish transmission of sciences and philosophy in the Middle Ages. However, very little is known about the direct or indirect knowledge of medieval Hebrew philosophical (non-cabbalistic) texts by Latin Renaissance authors. Zonta gives examples of the influence of Crescas's physical theories on Giordano Bruno, mediated probably by Leone Ebreo. The importance of Iberian Jews in the transmission of the medical tradition in the Ottoman Empire is the main topic of Eleazar Gutwirth's (Tel Aviv) contribution. He discusses medical texts and manuscripts, almost all of which come from the so-called Cairo Genizah (a famous storeroom for discarded Hebrew manuscripts going back more than 1000 years) and reconstructs the historical context for the reading culture of Iberian Jews. The third section (Judaism Between Tradition and Scientific Discoveries) is devoted to the Jewish approach to science. Gianfranco Miletto (HalleWittenberg) outlines the attitudes of Jewish intellectuals to the sciences against their religious and historical background. Studying works by Abraham Portaleone and Azariah Figo, Miletto shows the oscillation between acceptance and rejection of science (often seen as 'gentile wisdom') and concludes that what these Jewish authors object to is not the study of the sciences as such, but the study of the sciences without the enlightenment of the Torah. Two specific Jewish positions to the sciences are presented by Samuel S. Kottek (Jerusalem) and Giuseppe Veltri (Halle-Wittenberg). Kottek paints a portrait of the Jewish physician Abraham Portaleone, who in his Shiltei hagibborim, an 'encyclopaedia of science', combines descriptions of sacred and profane sciences. This work, written in Hebrew and addressed to an educated Jewish readership, blends knowledge about contemporary science and technology (e.g., zoology, botany, mineralogy, warfare, chemistry, music) with detailed scholarship in Jewish antiquities. For Portaleone, there was no doubt that 'modern' natural sciences could be freely used in explaining religious truth. According to Velrri's contribution, Rabbi Judah Loew of Prague is a typical example of how the achievements of the sciences were accepted and

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at same time relativized by Jewish authors. For Judah Loew the sciences — as ancillae theologiae - were dangerous because of the autonomy they claim. He was aware that scientific discoveries cannot be questioned, and thus tried to interpret them in such a way that they could be integrated into traditional Jewish thought without denying rabbinical hermeneutics. Medieval as well as humanist scholars followed the same path in their interpretation of geographical data. The contribution ofJohann Maier (Weilheim) gives a detailed picture of different approaches to geography in Jewish scholarship. Although in certain Jewish circles of the late sixteenth and beginning seventeenth centuries new attitudes to secular learning were beginning to emerge, these did not determine the worldviews and historical outlooks of the majority of contemporary Jews. New discoveries were interpreted according to old schemata. And when information about the (re-)discovery of America spread among Jews, many of them assumed that the socalled "Indians" might be descendants of some of the mythical "ten lost tribes". In summing up the results of the conference, it is evident that the questions posed above still yield no definitive answers. What has become clear, however, is that no serious study of the history of sixteenth-century sciences and medicine can ignore the role of contemporary religion or simply presume its general oppositional stance to the sciences. The convenors of the conference, members of the Leopold Zunz Centre for the Study of European Judaism (Wittenberg), the Department of Jewish Studies (Halle) and the Institute for the History of Medicine (Halle), express their hope that the papers presented will stimulate future research on this complicated aspect of the history of sciences and medicine. JURGEN HELM and ANNETTE WINKELMANN Halle and Wittenberg, April 2001

SECTION ONE CHRISTIAN CONFESSIONS AND THE SCIENCES

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MELANCHTHON AND THE TRADITION OF NEOPLATONISM

GUNTER FRANK

/ It may come as a surprise to consider Philipp Melanchthon (1497-1560), the great German humanist, not only as a Reformer alongside Martin Luther and as the first Aristotelian philosopher among Protestants, but also and - when it comes to metaphysics - above all, as a Neoplatonist.' Any scholar who examines Melanchthon's numerous commentaries on disciplines like natural philosophy, anthropology, moral philosophy and dialectics has to deal with this prevailing and general interpretation. Indeed, since he proclaimed himself a "homo peripateticus"2 and since Johann Jacob Brucker,3 the first historian of philosophy in Germany in the eighteenth century, celebrated him as the greatest Aristotelian at the time of the Reformation, Melanchthon has been considered as nothing other than an Aristotelian philosopher. Finally, basic studies around the turn of the century, such as those by Wilhelm Dilthey4 and Ernst Troeltsch,5 and most major contributions of the twentieth century6 seem to have conclusively confirmed this general interpretation. 1 This paper was also presented at the international conference of the American Academy of Religion in Orlando, Fl. in November 1998. 2 Thus he confessed in a letter in 1537: "Mihi tamen concedant homini Peripatetico, et amanti mediocritatem, minus Stoice alicubi loqui", in Philippi Melanchthonis opera quae supersunt omnia, vols. 1-28 [= Corpus Reformatorum = CR], eds. K. G. Bretschneider, H. E. Bindseil (Halae Saxonum, Brunswigae, 1834-1860), vol. 3, col. 383. 3 J. J. Brucker, Historia critica philosophiae 4 (Lipsiae, 1743), pp. 102-116. 4 W. Dilthey, 'Das natiirliche System der Geisteswissenschaften im 17. Jahrhundert', in W. Di\they,Aufsatzezur Philosophic, ed. M. Marquardt (Berlin, 1986). 5 E. Troeltsch, Vernunft und Offenbarung bei Johann Gerhard und Philipp Melanchthon (Gottingen, 1891). 6 To name only few: P. Petersen, Geschichte der aristotelischen Philosophic improtestantischen Deutschland (Leipzig, 1921); H. E. Weber, Reformation, Orthodoxie und Rationalismus, 1/1: Von der Reformation zur Orthodoxie (Giltersloh, 1937); J. Pelikan, From Luther to Kierkegaard (St Louis, Mo., 1950); A. Agnoletto, 'La Filosofia di Melantone', in Grande Antologia Filosofica 8 (Milano, 1959), pp. 1149-1234; E. Rudolph, Zeit und Gott bei Aristoteles aus der Perspektive der protestantischen Wirkungsgeschichte (Stuttgart, 1986). For a discussion of this Aristotelian tradition and its problematic approach see G. Frank, Die theologische

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GUNTER FRANK

However, there are important indications in the way Melanchthon discussed significant theological questions such as the notion of God, the creation of the world and the worldview itself and the idea of the immortality of the human soul which belong without any doubt to the Neoplatonic legacy. By emphasizing this Neoplatonic legacy in addition to some elements of Neopythagoreanism Wilhelm Maurer7 opposed the basic assumption of Melanchthon's so-called Aristotelianism. Maurer's approach has not been recognized by the scholarly community. His arguments turned out to be too artificial. Maurer argued that Melanchthon's Platonism derives from Marsilio Ficino's Neoplatonism as mediated by his relative Johannes Reuchlin. But in the complete works of Melanchthon, there are only few references to Ficino's Neoplatonism or Hermeticism, and thus the former director of the Melanchthon-Forschungsstelle in Heidelberg, Heinz Scheible, concluded: there are no Neoplatonic influences or inclinations in Melanchthon.8 And even the previous director of the Melanchthon-Haus in Bretten came to the same conclusion, although he at least knew about the commentary of Plato's Timaios, an important item in Melanchthon's private library.

Philosophic Philipp Melanchthons (1497-1560) [Erfurter theologische Studien 67] (Leipzig, 1995), pp. 16-23. 7 W. Maurer, Melanchthon-Studien (Giitersloh, 1964), pp. 22-25; W. Maurer, Derjunge Melanchthon zwischen Humanismus und Reformation 1 (Gottingen, 1967), pp. 84-98. For a discussion of this Platonic background see Frank, Philosophic, pp. 25-30. 8 H. Scheible, 'Reuchlins EinfluB auf Melanchthon', in Melanchthon und die Reformation, eds. G. May, R. Decot (Mainz, 1996), pp. 71-97, on p. 92. - There is no doubt that Melanchthon knew the tradition of Hermeticism and its great figure Hermes Trismegistos; see his Ennaratio Metamorphoseon Ovidii (CR 199, cols. 497-654, in col. 504). For a further discussion of Melanchthon's commentary see K. Meerhoff, 'Philippe Melanchthon aux Pays-Bas et en France: quelques sondages', and J.-C. Moisan, M.-C. Malenfant, 'Une lecture melanchthonienne des Metamorphoses d'Ovid: le commentaire de Barthelemy Aneau'; both papers will be published in Melanchthon und Europa, 2nd sub-volume: Westeuropa, eds. G. Frank, K. Meerhoff (Stuttgart, 2001). It is worth noting that Melanchthon also knew Johannes Annius of Viterbo's publication of the famous five books of Berosus, a Chaldean astronomer, DeAntiquitatibus totius orbis (CR 12, cols. 779, 795; CR 13, cols. 885 f., 889; Melanchthons Briefwechsel, ed. H. Scheible, vols. 1-8 [Stuttgart 1977-1995] [= MBW], here: vol. 5, col. 506; CR 17, col. 622). For a further examination see S. Rhein, '"Italia magistra orbis terrarum". Melanchthon und der italienische Humanismus', in Humanismus und Wittenberger Reformation. Festgabe anlafllich des 500. Geburtstages des Praeceptor Germaniae Philipp Melanchthon am 16. Februar 1997, eds. M. Beyer, G. Wartenberg (Leipzig, 1996), pp. 367-388, on p. 378. Viterbo's main thesis was his attempt to prove that the origin of all wisdom is to be found not in Christian but in pagan sources. It is known that Viterbo's commentaries became the starting point of one of the most influential intellectual traditions in early modernity, the philosophia perennis. For this see W. Schmidt-Biggemann, Philosophia perennis. Historische Umrisse abendlandischer Spiritualitat in Antike, Mittelalter und Neuzeit (Frankfurt a. M., 1998), pp. 665-667; G. Frank, Philosophic am Anfang der Moderne. Die Ursprunge der neuzeitlichen Religionsphilosophie (unpubl. habilitation thesis, 2000), pp. 244-247. However, Melanchthon's systematic approach to this Platonic tradition has not yet been examined seriously.

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5

In any case, there is no known announcement, copy of notes or other reference to this or any other lecture by Melanchthon on Plato [...]. Plato is a literary model, but not a philosophical author for the classroom.9

As I have shown elsewhere10 it does not make any sense to compare Aristotle and Plato (Cicero) with each other in the writings of Melanchthon or to count how often the humanist argues within an Aristotelian or Platonic framework. In order to understand his concept of philosophy and natural philosophy one has to broaden the focus by looking at the history of theology and natural science in early modern times and at the same time by realising the significant role Plato played in establishing the early modern worldview. Last but not least, one has to take into account the theology of the Reformation in its ramifications for philosophy an natural sciences; to name just one, but the most important consequence: the rejection of Aristotelian metaphysics and its theology, i.e., the genuine twelve books of Metaphysics, which Melanchthon" like Luther excluded from all of the scientific curriculum. In this rejection of Aristotle's metaphysics or - to be precise in refusing Aristotle's doctrine of the "prime mover" and the world of substances presented in the twelve books of Metaphysics, Melanchthon completely agreed with Luther. However, there is a significant difference between them: While Luther in his effort to renew a genuine theology of revelation seems to have excluded all philosophy from the scientific curriculum, Melanchthon adopted Luther's distinction of "gospel" and "law"12 in order to describe the relation between theology and philosophy and to make all fields of philosophy and natural science possible - i.e., whatever the human mind knows of God, of the world and of it - and according to Melanchthon, the human mind is able to know more of God's existence and essence than any scholastic author ever could have taught; all knowledge has nothing to do with men's salvation and is in principle incomplete so that it must be complemented by revelation.

9

S. Rhein, 'Melanchthon and Greek Literature', in Philipp Melanchthon (1497-1560) and the Commentary, eds. T. J. Wengert, M. P. Graham (Sheffield, 1997), pp. 149-170, on pp. 165f. 10 For a discussion of all these interpretations see Frank, Philosophie (cited above, n. 6), pp. 15-30. 11 For Melanchthon's rejection of Aristotle's Metaphysics which remained constitutive in all his commentaries on Philosophy see Frank, Philosophie, pp. 52-60. 12 For Melanchthon's adaption of Luther's distinction between "gospel" and "law" in its consequences for the concept of Philosophy see H. Scheible, 'Melanchthon zwischen Luther und Erasmus', in Renaissance - Reformation. Gegensatze und Gemeinsamkeiten [Wolfenbutteler Abhandlungen zur Renaissanceforschung 5], ed. A. Buck (Wiesbaden, 1984), pp. 155180, on pp. 172 f.; Frank, Philosophie (cited above, n. 6), pp. 64-71.

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//

Before coming back to the question of whether and to what extent Melanchthon is influenced by the Neoplatonic legacy, I shall examine three metaphysical doctrines which are constitutive for any kind of metaphysics or those which transcend ex definitione human experience: the concept of the creation of the world and the worldview, the idea of God, and the idea of the immortality of the human soul. As I mentioned before, Melanchthon never commented in writing on Aristotle's twelve books of Metaphysics except for his general rejection of this type of Metaphysics at the beginning of his career in Wittenberg. On the other hand he wrote commentaries on all other Aristotelian disciplines: natural science, anthropology, ethics, dialectics. His commentary on Aristotle's book De physica (Initia doctrinae physicae), 1549, contains his philosophical doctrine of the creation and the worldview. Aspects of this concept are also to be found in some prefaces to Luther's commentaries on books of the Old Testament. The Philosophical Doctrine of Creation and the Worldview13 Melanchthon himself claims his natural philosophy14 is Aristotelian. Occasionally he calls it in short "Aristotelica" or "Initia Aristotelica".15 In Aristotle we can find the "true doctrine" because he sees that all "generationes" cannot be caused by matter but is brought about by a first "causa efficiens".16 As with Aristotle motion is the basic phenomenon of the nature: "Ignorance of motion fails to recognize nature".17 However, for Aristotle's understanding of nature, it is crucial that his doctrine is not - strictly speaking - a doctrine of motion but rather a doctrine of rest. What must be explained, therefore, is the cause of motion. Here Aristotle's ontological doctrine of causes, "causa efficiens, fmalis, materialis, formalis", unfolds its real function. There is no motion without cause; if motion is no longer caused by any of those four causes motion comes to rest. Melanchthon does not show any interest in this ontological concept of Aristotle. Particularly Melanchthon's argument of motion shows that he replaces the ontological 13

For a detailed discussion of Melanchthon's commentary "Initia doctrinae physicae" see G. Frank, 'Gott und Natur - Zur Transformation der Naturphilosophie in Melanchthons humanistischer Philosophic', in Melanchthon und die Naturwissenschaften seiner Zeit. Schriften zur Melanchthonpreisverleihung 1994 [Melanchthon-Schriften der Stadt Bretten 4], eds. G. Frank, S. Rhein (Sigmaringen, 1998), pp. 43-58. 14 CR 13, cols. 181-412. 15 CR 7, col. 475; CR 13, cols. 183f. 16 CR 13, cols. 183 f.: "Loquor autem non de Democriti atomis, sed de vera doctrina, qualis est Aristotelica [...]. Nam Aristoteles videt materiam non odiri generationes, sine aliqua agente sen efficiente causa, quae turn cieat, turn vero cohibeat, ne in infmitum dissipetur." 17 CR 13, col. 355: "Ignorato motu ignorari naturam."

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dimension of this Aristotelian argument by a theological interpretation. It is •true that at first he follows Aristotle by arguing: "there exists a prime and eternal mover, infinite of power and immobile."18 So already the natural reason recognizes that the whole world depends on and is created by a prime cause, an architectural mind, but reason cannot find out in what way and when the world came into being.19 This argumentation makes clear that Melanchthon reinterprets Aristotle's understanding of motion. The Aristotelian concept was in no way concerned with the idea of creation and, therefore, it rather tended within the Aristotelian tradition towards the idea of the eternity of the world. For Melanchthon, the question of the prime mover is actually the question of the beginning of the world. In his view, motion is not the basic ontological phenomenon of nature which is brought about by causality according to Aristotle; motion is a quality which is inherent in what is moved. Motion does not come to its natural rest; it goes on as long as it is caused by its inherent quality. And Melanchthon illustrates this idea of motion through an argument of Averroes: Motion as an "accidens" has to be understood like a seaman getting a vessel to move by means of the vessel's inherent quality - i.e., "per accidens".20 The connection of all motion is caused by God as the "prime cause" but in the way of being the first architectural mind - by the way "mens architectatrix" is the Latin translation of the Greek ^T^/otigyo?. There is much more evidence that Melanchthon shows no interest in ontology which is fundamental for Aristotle's understanding of nature. To name only a few:21 Causality in the view of Aristotle means a reflection on being as finite, contingent being insofar as any being must be caused in order to exist; causality is not a revealing or description of causal connection of all motion in nature. According to Aristotle the prime cause (causa prima efficiens) must transcend the order of all causes and must found it as a whole. Particularly Melanchthon's argumentation of causality, which was one of the main arguments for the existence of God in the Greek-Latin tradition, shows again that he is not interested in the ontological dimension of causality.22 He simply identifies the existence of the prime cause with the 18

CR 13, col. 372: "[...] unicum esse primum motorem aeternum, infinitae potentiae, et immobilem." 19 CR 13, col. 373: "Ratio naturalis deducit mentes ad hoc, ut agnoscant hunc mundum visibilem ab aliqua causa, et quidem a mente architectatrice pendere, et formatum esse, sed quomodo, aut quando ab ilia prima causa ortus sit, non potest ratio statuere." 20 CR 13, col. 360. For the scholastic discussion of this argument see A. Maier, Studien zur Naturphilosophie der Spiitscholastik \ (Rom, 1949), pp. 9-25 and pp. 53-78; A. Maier, 'Ergebnisse der spatscholastischen Naturphilosophie', in Scholastik 35 (1960), pp. 161-187. 21 For details see Frank, 'Gott und Natur' (cited above, n. 13). 22 To present just one argumentation from his commentary on Paul's letter to the Romans (Commentarii in epistolam Pauli ad Romanes, 1540): "Causae sunt in natura ordinatae, ita ut necesse sit perveniri ad unam primam, quae non aliunde movetur, sed movet caeteras. Si est

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Christian idea of God.23 To give another significant example for Melanchthon's theological approach which everywhere overlaps what was crucial for Aristotle's ontological understanding: his use of teleology. In the view of Melanchthon, teleology is not inherent in nature as the immanent causality of determination. After having made the traditional distinction between "finis", the destination of something that is not yet real, like a house which an architect is about to build,24 and "causa finalis", the intention or cogitation of an intellect25 which moves the architect to build the house, he declares: Thus the architectural mind cogitates the intentions of destinations and the things themselves strive for certain destinations.26

All these theological reinterpretations show that Aristotle's ontological concept of nature does not play a role in the worldview of Melanchthon. This does not mean that his worldview is less intelligible than the Aristotelian understanding of nature. This is the place where Melanchthon, like Augustine, interprets the generation of the world in a Christianized version of the Platonic myth of creation as presented in Plato's Timaios. Augustine27 - and before him already Philo of Alexandria - had identified the Platonic ideas with God's inner cogitations when he created the world in six days. So they were able to transform Plato's natural philosophy into a Christian natural theology. This is what Melanchthon has in mind at the beginning of his commentary on natural philosophy: "It is known that in the beginning Aristotle speaks about the matter of elements. But we should begin with the prime cause and the celestial bodies as did Plato in the Timaios.,"28 prima, necesse est earn ex sese habere vim movendi. Ergo est infinitae potentiae. Et esse aliquam primam necesse est: alioqui enim nullus esset ordo causarum, si sparsae essent infinitum."(CR15,col. 568). 23 CR 13, col. 682: "Ex hac regula Physici erudite ratiocinantur, unum esse Deum, mentem aetemam, immensae potentiae, causam universae naturae, ac boni in natura [...]." This argumentation is different from the Argument of Thomas Aquinas. For Thomas it was clear that the existence of an immaterial being cannot be proved in the Natural Philosophy but only regarding its impacts. His argument came only to the proof of being-a-principle in the way of being present as impact. For a detailed discussion see W. Kluxen, 'Der Obergang von der Physik zur Metaphysik im thomistischen Gottesbeweis', in At the Heart of the Real: Philosophical Essays in Honour of Dr Desmond Connell, Archbishop of Dublin, ed. F. O'Rourke (Dublin, 1992), pp. 113-121. 24 CR 13, col. 308: "Finis est propter quod efficiens agit, seu a quo movetur efficiens ad agendum, ut habitatio est finis aedificanti." 25 CR 13, col. 308: "Nam causa finalis proprie est cogitatio de fine in efficiente, movens ad agendurn, ut cogitatio de futura habitatione movet aedificantem." 26 CR 13, col. 346: "Ergo mens ordinans cogitavit fines, et res ipsae appetunt certos fines." 27 Augustine, De diversis Quaestionibits octoginta tribus liber unus, 46, 2, in Patrologiae cursus completus. series Latina, ed. J. P. Migne (Lutetia Parisiorum, 1841-1842) [= MPL], vol. 40, p. 30. 28 CR 13, col. 195: "Notum est, Aristotelem initio dicere de materia elementorum. Sed nos ordiemur a prima causa efficiente, et a corporibus coelestibus, ut Plato in Timaeo".

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Melanchthon criticizes Aristotle's doctrine of principles because he conceives "form" as being a principle only inherent in matter, whereas Plato realizes the idea as the image of the world machine in the divine mind; to illustrate this motive he continues: like an architect who first imagines what he wants to design, thus God first imagines in his mind the whole world machine and the bodies and living beings of the universe and then creates the world machine, the bodies, the motions of the stars and the living beings according to these images.29 This more Neoplatonic concept of nature - to be precise: the Neoplatonic overlapping with an Aristotelian natural philosophy - is not only obvious in his commentary on Aristotle's Dephysica, published in 1549. There is more evidence in some introductions and prefaces to Luther's biblical commentaries. In 1544 Melanchthon wrote the preface to his commentary on the book Genesis.30 He started by praising God for the creation: Created are these wonderful bodies of the world, heaven, constellation, elements, plants, living beings and they are organized in an admirable art in order that we recognize God as eternal architect and realize that he gave us the law of life and who wants that we take care of this creation.31

Melanchthon continues by quoting Plato: Plato says: the souls are convinced by the laws of motions of celestial and other testimonies, so that they are urged to confess that this world is created by an eternal architectural mind. 32

Of course, after the fall, mankind has lost this complete knowledge, and philosophers like Epicurus, Aristotle and the Stoics came to doubt and erred about God, his providence and will of salvation. Against these philosophical traditions, Melanchthon favours Plato in a fictitious dialogue, asking his op29

CR 13, col. 294: "Addit autem Plato ideam, quod est adfine Aristotelis sententiae, qui addit formam materiae. Sed Aristoteles tantum intelligit formam, quam induit materia. Plato vero ideam intelligit imaginem operis in mente divina, iuxta quam, ut ita dicam, exculpitur forma, quae in corporibus conspicitur, ac sicut architectus imaginem aedificii prius in mente pingit, ita Deum cogitat imaginem totius opificii mundi, et ordinis corporum et animantium in sua mente prima quasi delineasse, ad quod exemplum deinde universam machinam et corpora, motusque stellarum et animantia fabricavit." See also CR 13, col. 376: "Aristotelis opinio restringitur ad formationem mundi. Hanc formationem mundi ex idea mentis divinae esse, et cum non sit alia idea, necessario talem esse mundi formam dixit, nee posse aliam esse." 30 Epistola nuncupatoria a Melanthone Vito Theodoro praescripta et praemissa Tomo I commentarii Lutheri in primum librum Mosis, a Vito Theodoro 1544, ineunte anno editum (CR 5, cols. 258-268). 31 CR 5, col. 259: "Condita sunt haec pulcherrima mundi corpora, coelum, sydera, elementa, plantae, animantia, et mira arte distributa, ut Deum aetemum opificem agnosceremus, et intelligeremus, ab ipso nobis vitae legem insitam esse, cuius officiis coli velit." 32 CR 5, col. 259: "[...] vere et sapienter Plato inquit: convinci animos legibus motuum coelestium et aliis testimoniis, ut, hunc mundum ab aeterna mente opifice conditum esse, fateri cogamur; [...]."

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ponent whether even Plato misunderstood God although he leads the mind away from general opinions and defines God as the eternal mind, cause of the good in Nature, which is obviously the idea of God as presented in Plato's Timaios.*3 What Plato like Muhammad did not know is whether God accepts and hears the unworthy and why he accepts them. And as Melanchthon continues: Platonists were not only searching in what way God reveals himself in the creation of things, which he impressed as traces in nature, but also whether (God's) voice in other testimonies is known and in what way it is propagated.34

Beside this appreciation of Plato and the Platonists owing to their idea of God, Melanchthon compares the Christian idea of creation as presented in the Book of Genesis and the Platonic myth of creation of Plato's Timaios. He points out that there are people who believe there is no difference between the Book of Genesis and Plato's Timaios in which is also to be found a description of the construction of the world.35 Of course as a theologian, he refuses to equate both traditions of creation. What is more important for Melanchthon is to introduce the reader into the Christian doctrine of creation and the Theology of revelation as Luther presents in his commentary on the book Genesis. However, on the other side it is clear: when it comes to a philosophical understanding of creation alongside the Theology of revelation he refers to Plato's Timaios and not to Aristotle's Natural Philosophy. This preface is not the only one where Melanchthon presents Neoplatonic statements about the creation and the idea of God. One year after his commentary on Aristotle's book Dephysica and four years after the death of Luther, he edited his commentary De novissimis verbis Davidi again and gave it its own preface.36 Melanchthon considers Luther's commentary as the true doctrine of the church containing all main aspects of his theology of revelation. In order to emphasize the superiority over and independence of the revelation from all human attempts to take possession of God by believing to have a true knowledge of him he first points out the fundamental distinction between Gospel and reason. He argues that the true doctrine of the church contains the "true knowledge and invocation of God, the father, the 33

Plato, Timaios, 29d-30b. CR 5, cols. 260 f.: "Nee Plato nee Mahometes novit, an recipiat ac exaudiat Deus indignos, et cur recipiat. Sed Platoni quaerendum erat, non solum quomodo Deus in creatione rerum se patefecerit, quae vestigia naturae impresserit, sed etiam utrum vox aliqua certis testimoniis edita et quomodo propagata fuerit." 35 CR 5, col. 261: "Fons est autem primus liber Moisi, cuius titulus est Genesis, quem fortassis derident homines prophani, nee differe putant a Timeo Platonis, in quo etiam extructio mundi describitur. Sed pius lector scit, ingens esse discrimen prophanarum descriptionum et huius, traditae divinitus." 36 CR 7, cols. 581-585. 34

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son and the holy spirit, the benefactions of the mediator and the true invocation."37 And as he adds this revelation - at its core it is the doctrine of the trinity, christology and soteriology - is completely different from any sophisticated philosophy or what he calls the doctrine of law. Melanchthon continues in the manner of a fictitious dialogue asking what recognizes a (Christian) mind by realizing that God exists more than Plato's mind who by contemplating this most wonderful architecture of the world, the light and figure of heaven, the motions of the stars, this earth, the residence of living beings which is distributed in a great variety, human beings and in them the intellectual part and all other parts which are distributed in such an admirable universe, what does the (Christian) mind recognize more than does Plato's mind, who firmly realizes that there exists a divine being, wise, good, just who is the fountain of the universe and goodness and who created this most wonderful architecture in an admirable art? [...]. Could it not even be that the approval in Plato and Xenophon is more firm and stable than among students of the church?38 Melanchthon confesses that this is not an easy question, but one has to consider what the human mind is able to perceive even after the darkening of the human mind following Adam's fall. In order to distinguish between a philosophical idea of God and the idea of God of Christian revelation, Melanchthon discusses two main differences. The first difference is that pagans cannot grasp the true essence of God. With regard to Melanchthon's remarks about God's essence, it is necessary at least to mention that he uses two different concepts to describe God's essence.39 All attributes of God's essence which are the subject matter of a philosophical idea of God - and Melanchthon knows a full catalogue of divine attributes, as we shall see - he discusses under the concept "qualis sit Deus". To describe the divine essence according to revelation he uses the concept "essentia Dei". At this point of his preface Melanchthon speaks about the divine essence of the revelation.

37

CR 7, col. 581: "Continet enim haec enarratio perpetuam et praecipuam in Ecclesia doctrinam, de vera agnitione atque invocatione Dei, de Patre, Filio et Spiritu Sancto, de beneficiis Mediatoris, de vera invocatione." 38 CR 7, col. 583: "Sed quid, inquies, plus cernit mea mens, cogitans, quid sit Deus, quam mens Platonis, qui, adspiciens hoc pulcherrimum mundi opificium, lucem et figuram coeli, siderum motus, et hanc sedem animantium, terram magna varietate ornatam, et homines, et in hominibus partem intelligentem, et caeteras huic miro ordine adtributas, agnoscit certe, numen quoddam esse sapiens, bonum, iustum, quod et fons est ordinis et bonitatis, et haec pulcherrima opera miranda arte condidit [...]. An non fieri potest, ut firmior et stabilior sit adsensio in Platone et Xenophonte, quam in auditoribus Ecclesiae?" 39 For a detailed discussion of Melanchthon's twofold concept of a description of God's essence and further references see Frank, Philosophic (cited above, n. 6), pp. 204 f.

12

GUNTERFRANK Pagans like Muslims and others are wrong about the essence of God because they ignore the doctrine of the eternal father, the son and the holy spirit although they realize in a natural consideration that God exists.40

The first difference marks the doctrine of the trinity which cannot be realized except through the Christian revelation. The second difference consists in the cognition of the divine will, meaning always his will for the salvation of his people. Plato, Xenophon and Muhammad know (God's) will, as can be seen in the law which is as notion born with us. They know there exists a divine being, wise, honest, charitable, just, pure who punishes the sacrilegious: they see testimonies to his will in daily examples.41

And as Melanchthon stresses, this notion of God illuminates in the confession of all human minds of all sane people. However, "Plato, Xenophon and Muhammad do not know the merciful promise of reconciliation and the son (of God) as mediator".42 In contrast to the philosophical idea of God, the subject matter of church doctrine is what revelation consists of: forgiveness of sins, the consolation of the Gospel, the notion of Jesus as mediator. There is no question that Melanchthon wants to show in his preface the need for realizing the true idea of God as presented in his revelation through his son as mediator. On the other hand there can be no doubt that he also recognizes a philosophical idea of God, which is common to Plato's, Muhammad's and the pagan's idea of God even if this concept is incomplete. According to Melanchthon the only adequate philosophical concept of God is Plato's idea of God. Melanchthon's Neoplatonic Concept of the Notion of God For a philosophical understanding of the notion of God, Melanchthon usually refers to Plato. In all Melanchthon's writings there are only two exceptions where he seems to prefer Aristotle's theology by discussing his concept of substances: His commentary on dialectics of 154743 and his interpretation of the theological declarations of the council of Nicaea,44 published in 1550. These two statements became the reason for scholars at the 40 CR.7, cols. 583 f.: "Errant Ethnici, Mohametistae, et similes de Dei essentia, quia, etsi ilia naturali consideratione agnoscunt aliquid esse Deiim, tamen illam doctrinam de aeterno Patre, Filio et Spiritu Sancto ignorant." 41 CR 7, col. 584: "Alterum discrimen de voluntate Dei illustrius est. Norunt utcunque Plato, Xenophon, Mahomet, voluntatem, quam lex, cuius notitia nobiscum nascitur, ostendit. Sciunt esse numen sapiens, verax, beneficum, iustum, castum, puniens scelera: vident huius voluntatis testimonia in quotidianis exemplis." 42 CR 7, col. 584: "Sed nequaquam norunt Plato, Xenophon, Mahomet promissionem gratuitam reconciliationis et Mediatorem filium." 43 Ph. Melanchthon, Erotemata dialectices, 1547 (CR 13, cols. 526-531). 44 Ph. Melanchthon, Ennaratio symboli Niceni, 1550 (CR 23, cols. 495-498).

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turn of the century, such as E. Troeltsch,45 F. Hiibner,46 P. Petersen47 and of later contributions H.-G. Geyer48 and E. Rudolph,49 to examine his idea of God in an Aristotelian framework and to look at Melanchthon as an Aristotelian philosopher. As I showed elsewhere, these two statements have nothing to do with Aristotle's theology.50 In his interpretation of the council of Nicaea, Melanchthon refers to Aristotelian terminology in order to explain to students in what way the church fathers used concepts like "substantia", U7ro
46

54

Troeltsch, Vernunft (cited above, n. 5), pp. 183 and 185.

F. Hiibner, Naturliche Theologie und theokratische Schwarmerei bei Melanchthon (Giitersloh, o. J.), pp. 19 f. 47

48

Petersen, Geschichte (cited above, n. 6), pp. 95 f.

H.-G. Geyer, Welt und Mensch. Zur Frage des Aristotelismus bei Melanchthon (Bonn, 1959), pp. 53-57. 49 Rudolph, Zeit und Gott (cited above, n. 6), pp. 169-207. 50 Frank, Philosophic (cited above, n. 6), pp. 222-225. 51 After having discussed these concepts Melanchthon concludes: "Discant autem iuniores, quando Ecclesia his vocabulis usa sit." (CR 13, col. 529) 52 CR 13, col. 529: "[...] et Deo gratias agamus, quod aliquo modo et sese et naturamrerum nobis ostendit, et aliquas notitias certas tradidit [...]." 53 The first reference to Plato is to be found in Enarratio in Evangelium Johannes, 1536: "Alii sunt, ut Plato, Cicero, qui moventur ratione, ut sentiant Deum esse aliquam mentem aeternam, sicut Plato dicit, causam boni." (CR 15, col. 103) For more references see Frank, Philosophic (cited above, n. 6), p. 211, n. 83. 54 CR 21, col. 637: "Voluit Deus innotescere et se conspici. Ideo et condidit omnes creaturas et miram artem adhibuit, ut convinceret nos, non extitisse res casu, sed esse aeternam mentem, architectatricem, bonam, iustam, spectantem hominum facta et iudicantem."

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Moreover, in the creation God transferred to the human his own best qualities: wisdom, justice, joy and freedom of will. The philosophical side of Melanchthon's idea of God is the Neoplatonic concept of an essential relationship of the divine and human mind (exemplarism, ju,e£e£/£).55 In his mind, human beings participate in the divine mind. In particular, his concept of "natural notions" (notitiae naturales) is the main expression of this exemplarism. According to Melanchthon "natural notions" are speculative, practical and mathematical-geometrical principles which God implanted into the human mind during creation and which cannot be completely destroyed by the fall of Mankind. In these principles the human mind participates in the mind of God. It is worth noting that these principles include also mathematicalgeometrical notions.56 "Notitiae numerorum", notions of numbers, are one of the most significant proofs for God's existence and essence. "Notions of numbers are the most certain testimonies of God."57 What Melanchthon has in mind is the idea that mathematical-geometrical principles constitute the structure of the universe, since God created it according to the mathematical-geometrical principles of His mind. He therefore praises Plato for his wonderful word of God as a mathematician. That is the reason why all mathematical-geometrical principles have to be related to the wisdom of God as architect of the world.58 For Melanchthon the philosophical idea of God is a "natural notion", too.59 This idea or natural principle implies not only God's existence but includes also numerous attributes of God's essence: it implies that God is a spiritual essence, intelligent, eternal, the cause of the good in nature, i.e., the honest, good, just, and almighty creator of all good things. As Melanchthon argues all these cogitations of the human mind are also included in the Platonic definition, which is true, sophisticated and based on solid proofs, although one has to add how God has revealed himself.60 55

For a detailed discussion see Frank, Philosophic (cited above, n. 6), pp. 86-155. Frank, Philosophic (cited above, n. 6), pp. 278-283. Recent studies have paid much more attention to Melanchthon's concept of God as a mathematician. For this see: D. Belluci, 'Gott als Mens. Die "physica aliqua definitio" Gottes bei Philipp Melanchthon', in Melanchthon und die Naturwissenschaften (cited above, n. 13), pp. 59-71; Ch. Mathuen, 'Zur Bedeutung der Mathematik fur die Theologie Philipp Melanchthons', in Melanchthon und die Naturwissenschaften (cited above, n. 13), pp. 85-103. 57 CR 25, col. 935: "Notitiae numerorum sunt certissimum testimonium de Deo." 58 CR 12, cols. 246 f.: "Quid illo Platonis pulcherrimo significetur dicto rov Ssov iei V£U)fj.£T(>eiv [ . . . ] arithmeticos et geometricos fontes [...] ad Dei architecti sapientiam proferendam atque illustrandamrefert [...]." 59 CR 24, col. 865: "Ratio naturaliter intelligit esse Deum, et agnoscit aliquo modo, qualis sit. Nam mens habet aliquam notitiam legis: sicut Plato dicit: Deus est mens aetema, causa boni in natura." 60 The most comprehensive version of this Platonic idea of God is to be found in the third edition of the Loci theologici, 1559: "Platonica haec est: Deus est mens aetema, causa boni in 56

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Melanchthon 's Philosophical Concept of the Immortality of the Human Soul The concept of "natural notions" as principles in which the human mind participates in the divine mind is also fundamental for his understanding of the individual immortality of the human soul.61 Melanchthon argued repeatedly about the immortality of the soul. The main argumentation is to be found in the chapter "On the immortality of the human soul" in his Anthropology (De anima), published in 1553.62 The starting point for his discussion are the testimonies from the Scriptures, not only for the resurrection of Christ but also for the resurrection of the individual human soul. His second argumentation begins by introducing a philosophical discussion: Melanchthon argues that pagans used to believe in the survival of souls after death, since there are some manifestations of the dead in dreams and visions. However, if philosophers speak about life after death they use to think about the soul surviving death, since souls cannot be brought about by elementary natures but rather only by a celestial nature.63 In order to illustrate his main argument Melanchthon discusses three philosophical proofs for the immortality of the human soul by referring to Plato, Xenophon and Cicero. First (argument): a nature which is not brought about by elements cannot be destroyed. The soul is not brought about by elements, thus, it cannot be wiped out by the fall of the body.64

In the explanation of this argument Melanchthon refers to the Neoplatonic concept of "natural notions":

natura [...]. Deum esse mentem aeternam, id est, essentiam spiritualem, intelli gen tern, aeternam, causam boni in natura, id est, veracem, bonam, iustam, omnipotentem conditricem bonarum rerum omnium et totius ordinis in natura et humanae naturae ad certum ordinem, id est, ad certain obedientiam. Haec omnia complexus est Plato. Sed hae sunt adhuc humanae mentis cogitationes, quae etsi verae et eruditae sunt et ex firmis demonstrationibus natae, tamen addendum est, qualem se Deus ipse patefecerit." (CR 21, col. 610) 61 Fora detailed examination of Melanchthon's understanding of the immortality of the soul see G. Frank, 'Philipp Melanchthons Idee von der Unsterblichkeit der menschlichen Seele', in Theologie und Philosophic 68 (1993), pp. 349-367. 62 Ph. Melanchthon, Liber de anima (1553), in Melanchthons Werke in Auswahl [= MWA], 1-7/2, ed. R. Stupperich (Gutersloh, 1969), vol. 3, pp. 337-339. Melanchthon's Liber de anima became very successful. At least 12 editions are known from the sixteenth century alone. As a commentary it was still used at universities in the eighteenth century. For a detailed examination of Melanchthon's Liber de anima see G. Frank, 'Philipp Melanchthons "Liber de anima" und die Etablierung der friihneuzeitlichen Anthropologie', in Humanismus und Wittenberger Reformation (cited above, n. 8), pp. 313-327. 63 MWA 3, p. 368: "Philosophi nihil dixerunt de restitutione corporum, quam vox divina planissime patefecit. Sed sic qui existimant, post mortem aliam vitam secuturam esse, cogitant, tantum animas superstites esse, quod ut consentaneum videatur, aiunt eas oriri a caelesti natura, non ex elementis." 64 Ibid.: "Recitantur autem haec tria argumenta a Platone, Xenophonte et Cicerone. Primum: Natura non orta ab elementis non corrumpitur. Anima non est orta ab elementis. Non igitur extinguitur propter corporis interitum."

16

GUNTERFRANK It is impossible that in an elemental nature, notions and universals of incorporeal things can be brought about, like the notions of God, numbers, order of the universe and the distinction between good and bad.65

These notions are implanted into the human soul and, insofar, they are the surest testimonies that human souls do not exist by coincidence but were created by an eternal, architectural mind in admirable art. Thus even the notion of the creator shines in the human soul.66 Again, this argumentation has nothing to do with Aristotle's argumentation of the soul as the substance (entelechy) of the body. It rather shows that Melanchthon interprets the human soul in a Neoplatonic way as an example of God's mind. The human soul is an image of the divine mind in which natural notions implanted in the human soul serve as an expression of the similarity or essential relationship between the human and the divine mind. Like his discussion of Aristotle's natural philosophy (the creation in its compatibility with Plato's myth of creation as an alternative to Aristotle's doctrine of the eternity of the world and the philosophical idea of God), Melanchthon's understanding of the immortality of the human soul - part of his commentary on Aristotle's De anima - is characterized by a strong Neoplatonic overlapping of major subjects of Metaphysics. Or to emphasize: When it comes to metaphysics, Melanchthon is deeply indebted to Neoplatonic legacy. ///

It must be pointed out that, unlike Luther's outlook, Melanchthon's worldview, his philosophical theology in general, is characterized by a metaphysical optimism. Even if he obviously neglected Aristotle's ontology in the sense of the world of substances and the idea of the prime mover or the ontological connection of motions - his understanding of nature is a metaphysical-optimistic worldview with three main aspects: 1. The idea of a general causal connection which explains nature and which can be perceived by the human mind;67 2. The idea of the world machine (machina mundi,™ universa machina69) designed through an ordering and intelligent reason, the idea of an architec65 MWA 3, p. 369: "Impossibile est in natura elementari oriri notitias et quidem universales, et de rebus non corporeis, de Deo, de numeris, de ordine, de discrimine honestorum et turpium." 66 Ibid.: "[...] tamen hoc manifestum est, illas insitas notitias non fallax testimonium esse, quod animae non casu ortae, sed magna arte ab aeterna mente architectatrice conditae sint. Ideo et notitia conditoris lucet in nobis." 67 For a detailed discussion of Melanchthon's epistemology see Frank, Philosophic (cited above, n. 6), pp. 159-182. 68 CR 13, cols. 206 f.

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tural mind who created the world according to mathematical-geometrical principles which are the ideas of his own mind and which can be realized by the human mind "more geometrico"; 3. The idea of a theological anthropocentrism insofar as nature in its entirety is created for the use of human beings.70 This metaphysical optimism has arisen under the impact of Melanchthon's theology, particularly his theology of creation and the Neoplatonic doctrine of an essential relationship between the human and the divine mind - i.e., despite the priority of the theology of salvation, fundamental for all Reformers, Melanchthon acknowledges the rationality and intelligibility of the world. It is clear in this regard that the theology of salvation competes to some extent with the theology of creation. By adopting Augustine's motive of the book of nature,71 Melanchthon also declares nature to be a book or a mirror in which God manifests himself, even outside of revelation.72 Recent studies, particularly among scholars of the so-called "social history of science" have shown that this optimistic worldview which in its core is natural theology and is well documented for such authors as Copernicus, Kepler, Galilei, Bacon, and others, became influential through establishing the worldview of early modernity.73 Melanchthon introduced this Neoplatonic tradition among Lutheran as well as Calvinist theologians. Particularly, his Platonic light-metaphysics - "notiones communes" (common notions) and "lumen naturale" (natural light) - had an obvious influence not only on continental philosophers of the early enlightenment, but also on the so-called Cambridge-Platonists. But one important problem remains still unsolved: what is the source of Melanchthon's Neoplatonism? Of course, some fragments of Plato's writings like his Timaios were known by Cicero and Plutarch74 and were influential for the medieval reception of Platonism75. Marsilio Ficino's edition of Plato's Opera omnia was published in Florence 1484-1485 and in Venice 69

CR 13, col. 294. For Melanchthon's idea of anthropocentrism see Frank, 'Gott und Natur' (cited above, n. 13). 71 Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram, MPL 34, pp. 219-222. 72 CR 13, col. 198: "Hanc doctrinam de Deo mens humana circumferens, tanquam liber est et speculum monstrans Deum." 73 An excellent discussion of the establishment of the worldview of early modernity is to be found in D. Groh, R. Groh, Weltbild und Naturaneignung: Zur Kulturgeschichte der Natur (Frankfurt a. M., 1991); see also H. F. Cohen, The Scientific Revolution. A Historiographical Inquiry (Chicago, 1994); G. Frank, 'Wie modern war eigentlich Melanchthon? Die theologische Philosophic des Reformators im Kontext neuerer Theorien zur Herkunft der Moderne', in Der Theologe Melanchthon. Schriften zur Melanchthonpreisverleihung 1997, ed. G. Frank (Stuttgart, 2000), pp. 67-81. 74 H. G. Zekl, Introduction to: Platon, Timaios (Hamburg, 1992), pp. Ixxi-lxxiii. 75 E. v. Ivanka, Plato Christianus. Obernahme und Umgestaltung des Platonismus durch die Viiter (Einsiedeln, 1964). 70

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1491. In this critics are right. There are only few indications of Ficino's Neoplatonism in Melanchthon's writings, particularly the seventeen books of Hermes Trismegistos, which Ficino published first on behalf of de Medici. But there exists a second edition of Plato's writings from the beginning of the sixteenth century, if we leave aside the Hermetic tradition. This commentary is hardly known among scholars. In March 1534, there appeared in Basle the second great edition of Plato's writing Platonis omnia opera, composed by Melanchthon's friend Simon Grynaeus (1493-1541).76 Like Melanchthon, he attended the Latin school and studied under Johannes Reuchlin in Pforzheim. Later Grynaeus became a well-known humanist and scholar in Basle. Strictly speaking, Grynaeus's Greek commentary is the edition of Plato's Timaios. As we know from Christopherus Mylaeus,77 Grynaeus used not only fragments of Cicero, Plutarch and Ficino for his edition but also undiscovered manuscripts. Melanchthon expressly praised Grynaeus for his edition of Plato's writings in a letter of November 1534, eight months after the publication.78 But much more interesting is the fact that one can find in the library of the Augustinian monastery in Erfurt, Melanchthon's copy of Grynaeus's edition with his own remarks on each page. The dedication on the front page, written by the mathematician Hiob Ludolf (1649-1711), praised Melanchthon for his remarks which made Grynaeus's edition "more valuable than gold". Unfortunately, Grynaeus's edition of Plato's Timaios and Melanchthon's remarks have not yet being examined. It should be a desideratum of future research to examine Melanchthon's philosophical writings and the impact of Grynaeus's edition of Plato's Timaios.

76 The complete title is: ATI ANT A FJAATQNOE: Platonis omnia opera cum commentariis Prodi in Timaeum & Politica, thesauro veteris Philosophiae maxima, first edited by J. 6. Valder, 2nd edition - a sign of its success - by M. Hopper in 1556. For bibliographical references see F. Hieronymus, 1488 Petri-Schwabe 1988. Eine traditionsreiche Busier Offizin im Spiegel Hirer fruhen Drucke (Basel, 1997), pp. 1061-1063. 77 C. Mylaeus, De scribenda universitatis rerum historia libri quinque (Basileae, 1551), book 5. 78 CR 2, col. 815: "Sed postquam nunc optimos auctores, primum Aristotelem, deinde Euclidem et Platonem edi curasti, et, ut intelligo, iam adornas editionem Magnae Sytaxeos Ptolemaei, exstant minime obscura iudicii ac voluntatis tuae testimonia." Grynaeus's edition of Euclid's Elementa became also influential for Melanchthon's epistemology. For this see Frank, Philosophic (cited above, n. 6), pp. 159-181.

THE JESUITS AND THE JANUS-FACED HISTORY OF NATURAL SCIENCES

PAUL RICHARD BLUM As I have always done11 refrain from praising the achievements of the Jesuits in natural sciences and mathematics for two reasons: (1) There are other scholars2 who know much more about this specific topic than I do; (2) every instance in history is Janus-faced.3 Most of the histories of sciences take particular moments in history as starting points into the future understanding of this very strain of history as evidence for the progress of sciences,4 without being aware of the circularity of this approach. To give an example: Galileo's mathematization of astronomy is the point of departure of modern astrophysics, which explains why astronomy is based on mathematics (admitting changes within mathematics), and hence the evolution of astron1

This paper develops some views I presented in my book Philosophenphilosophie und Schulphilosophie - Typen des Philosophierens in der Neuzeit (Wiesbaden, 1998), which contains revised versions of my papers in German: 'Apostolato dei Collegi, on the Integration of Humanism in the Educational Programme of the Jesuits', in History of Universities 5 (1985), pp. 101-115, and 'Science and Scholasticism in Melchior Cornaeus SJ', in Ada Conventus Neo-Latini Guelpherbytani (Binghamton, 1988), pp. 573-580; see also 'L'enseignement de la metaphysique dans les colleges jesuites d'Allemagne au XVIIe siecle', in Les Jesuites a la Renaissance, ed. L. Giard (Paris, 1995), pp. 93-105, and 'Jesuiten zwischen Religion und Wissenschaft', in Berichtezur Wissenschnftsgeschichte 18 (1995), pp. 205-216. This paper was written while I was a Fellow at the Center for Philosophy of Religion at the University of Notre Dame; hence it is much influenced by conversations on methodical matters with several colleagues, esp. Alvin Plantinga and Ernan McMullin. I also profited from the perfect services of the University's Hesburgh Library - my sincere thanks to all of them. 2 I should mention at least U. Baldini, Legem impone subactis. Studi sufilosofia e scienza dei Gesuiti in Italia 1540-1632 (Roma, 1992). 3 This expression alludes to the book by B. J. T. Dobbs, The Janus Faces of a Genius. The Role of Alchemy in Newton's Thought (Cambridge, 1991); however, I see the ambiguity of Newton's attitude to occult and mathematical science as a special case of the ambiguity of history as such. 4 As a standard text in this sense see W. A. Wallace, 'Traditional natural philosophy', in The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, ed. Ch. B. Schmitt (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 201-235. The Jesuits' attitude towards sciences is presented here as a growing conflict with the religious premises; Aristotelian philosophy of nature is named "traditional" in contrast to modem challenges and described by means of a check list which contains the common features of science: "mathematical, observational, technological, and disputational" (p. 206). See the comparison of Wallace's with Baldini's approach by M. Biagioli, 'Jesuit Science Between Texts and Contexts', in Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science 25 (1994), pp. 637-646.

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omy is to be described as a story of progress. Or, in other terms again: Science in the seventeenth century is what twentieth-century scientists can acknowledge. Seeing only one of the two faces of Janus is known as "The Whig Interpretation of History".5 Instead, I tend to look back since I am more interested in what it was that brought ideas about and what is the specific content of a moment in the history of ideas. Since the overall theme of this conference is the religious confessions and the sciences, I should like to see if there is anything specifically Catholic or at least Christian in Jesuit natural science. This question by itself stirs up the problem of understanding the history of sciences with the Jesuits as seen from their point of view. It is the inference of religion that makes their contribution to science hard to understand. As a reference to present philosophical problems let me mention the debate on evolutionism versus creationism in twentieth-century America where the borderlines seem to be very clear. Some Christian scholars defend - in various degrees - (1) that the naturalist interpretation of the world makes any reference to God as creator superfluous (if it does not refute it right away), (2) that this interpretation is one-sided in overstating the achievements and competence of natural sciences, and (3) that it still leaves space for a creating activity of God, perhaps even requires God as a voluntary agent, be it for the actualization of natural laws, be it for particular events in nature such as the phenomenon of life.6 On the one hand defenders of 'special creation' try to comply with the standards of epistemology of sciences and thus enter into debates about natural laws, scientific explanation and so on. On the other hand the whole debate is fuelled by a mutual Daltonism: Scientists are laymen in theology and theologians are laymen in the sciences. And, as Marta Feher has shown, this has been the natural state of science and theology since the eighteenth century.7 It seems that before the victory of the new science the lay public shared a set of commonly accepted rationality and reasoning, truth (such as theological), and factual knowledge (together with face-value understanding of metaphors, such as

5

H. Butterfield, The Whig-Interpretation of History [1931] (New York, 1965). The circularity of progressist historiography has been mentioned in passing by A. R. Hall, 'On Whiggism', in History of Science 21 (1983), pp. 45-59, on p. 47. I will not confront the possibility and legitimacy of 'presentist' historiography now; cf. the two articles by A. Wilson and T. G. Ashplant, 'Whig History and Present-Centered History', and 'Present-Centered History and the Problem of Historical Knowledge', in The Historical Journal 31 (1988), pp. 1-61, pp. 253274. 6 See, e.g., A. Plantinga, 'When Faith and Reason Clash: Evolution and the Bible', in Christian Scholars Review 21 (1991), pp. 8-32, the responses by H. J. Van Till (pp. 33-45) and E. McMullin (pp. 55-79) and the reply by Plantinga (pp. 80-109) in the same volume. 7 M. Feher, Changing Tools. Case Studies in the History of Scientific Methodology (Budapest, 1995); cf. my review in Budapest Review of Books 8, 2 (1998), pp. 82 f.

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occult qualities or certain statements in the Bible about the stars8) which - in principle - could be proven not only by experts but by generally competent lay persons themselves. Even though this seems still to be the ideal, the victory of the instrumental interpretation of nature and the prerogative of theories and models over observation in the classical modern sciences created a new gap between lay persons and scholars. This gap - by the way runs parallel to that between sense evidence and theory, for even though the theory claims to be based on experiment it distances itself gradually from sense experience and common-sense intuition. Science creates its lay public, which by definition is not expert, and plays only a passive role in the sense of political and financial supporters of almost arcane scholarship. But not only that - science now constitutes itself by demarcating borders to the public. The paradox of science in the twentieth century, however, is that the roles of experts and public have invaded the sciences themselves because of teamwork and specialization: every expert becomes a solipsist in his discipline and a lay person to the other members of co-operate research. To talk about the Jesuits and natural sciences can therefore mean either to point out their specialization or to find the common ground of culturally agreed assumptions. It can also mean to show the moment of separation between specialists on either side (Christian versus scientific). It is not without irony that the contemporary Jesuit Michael Buckley traces the "origins of modern atheism" back to the seventeenth-century Jesuit Leonardus Lessius, whom he presents as the theologian who started defending Catholicism by means of purely secular philosophical arguments drawn from ancient stoicism.9 The same criticism had been brought forward by the humanist Lorenzo Valla against Boethius.10 The argument is the same as ever: science and faith conflict, and by trying to call on science for support faith cannot win: "When faith and reason clash, let reason go to smash."11 This conflict opens at the very dawn of modern science. One example is the famous Jesuit mathematician Christophorus Clavius (1537-1612) who commented on the Sphaera of Sacrobosco and on the 8 The debate about the "two books" marks the crisis of this commonly accepted pattern; cf. among the vast amount of literature, e.g., I. A. Keller, 'A Catholic Theologian Responds to Copemicanism: The Theological "Judicium" of Paolo Foscarini's "Lettera"', in Renaissance and Reformation 21 (1997), pp. 59-70. 9 M. J. Buckley, At the Origins of Modern Atheism (New Haven, London, 1987), ch. 1, esp. p. 55. For a recent account on the topic see W. Schroder, Urspriinge des Atheismus. Untersuchungen zur Metaphysik und Religionskritik des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts (Stuttgart, 1998); evidently it took some time to identify the rationalist/naturalist option of open atheism. 10 Cf. P. R. Blum, 'Lorenzo Valla: Humanismus als Philosophic', in Philosophen der Renaissance, ed. P. R. Blum (Darmstadt, 1999), pp. 33-40. 11 Quoted from Plantinga, 'Faith and Reason' (cited above, n. 6), p. 12. This is a verse by the Scottish bard William E. McGonagall which I interpret thus: that the Christian supporter runs out of reasonable arguments when he tried to defend faith with the methods of scientific research and vice versa.

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Elements of Euclid and thus - from the above-mentioned point of view merits the status of one of the forefather of modern science. His commentary on astronomy starts with the humanist accounting for the venerable age of this discipline: It not only survived the deluge thanks to columns set up by Adam's sons, it even rewarded men with a life of six hundred years, the time span of the Great Year, granted by God to the ancients in order to accomplish the whole of it.12 The high value of astronomy is also due to its object of study. (Clavius refers to the standard classification according to which the dignity of a scholarly discipline is judged both by the dignity of its subject matter and by the certainty of its conclusions.) The two main features guaranteeing the highest dignity are: "First, the heavenly bodies are without coming to be and without coming to an end [...], secondly, because the heavenly bodies are the causes of all what is here below".13 Two blatant heresies - at least if no qualifications are added - because the physical heaven is not eternal, according to Christian doctrine, and the stars are not, in any unrestricted sense, causes of events in the sublunar world and certainly not of everything. The first assumption had been at the centre of a heated debate among Christian theologians and the Averroists since the Middle Ages; the latter one had engaged Christian defenders of astrology and human freedom. Of course, in Clavius this is all rhetoric - but why? Does Clavius either reckon that his Jesuit audience just does not take his introduction literally, or is he sure hat his fellow theologians will not read his astronomy? Both possibilities would have to play down the role of Christian faith in that context. In his Prolegomena to Euclid, Clavius is more cautious, but at the same time more ambiguous as far as the scientific role of mathematics is concerned. He states: Pythagorei enim, atque Platonic! existimantes, animas rationales certo quodam ac determinato numero contineri, casque de corpore in corpus migrare, (quod tamen Christiana fides falsum esse perspicue docet) testantur [...]. [...]. Aliis autem placet, ideo has artes prae caeteris nomen scientiae, et doctrinae sibi vendicare, quod solae modum rationemque scientiae retineant. Procedunt enim semper ex praecognitis quibusdam principiis ad conclusiones demonstrandas, quod proprium est munus, atque officium doctrinae, sive disciplinae, ut et Aristoteles 1. Posteriorum testatur [...]. l4

12 C. Clavius, In sphaeram loannis de Sacrobosco commentarius [...] (Romae, 1581), p. 3: "Deinde propter virtutes, et gloriosas utilitates, quas iugiterperscrutabantur, id est Astrologiam, et Geometriam, Deus eis ampliora vivendi spacia condonavit, quae non ediscere potuissent, nisi sexcentis viverent annis. Per tot enim annorum curricula magnus annus impletur." 13 Ibid.: "Primo quidem, quoniam [corpora caelestia] sunt ingenerabilia, ac incorruptibilia [...]. Secundo, quia corpora caelestia sunt causa omnium horum inferiorum." 14 Euclidis Elementorum libriXV[...], Auctore Christophoro Clavio Bambergensi, e Societate lesu (Coloniae, 1591), 2 vols., Prolegomena, fol. ):( 4v.

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We may gather from this statement that - according to the first argument - the scientific value (what makes science) of mathematics depends on a conception of the soul in terms of numbers which constitute both the structure of the world and the soul. The problem is that this idea is only to be described in terms of Pythagorean or Platonic metempsychosis (at least for Clavius), which is contrary to Christian doctrine. The other model of justifying mathematics draws upon Aristotle's logic, much less surprisingly, but what is surprising is the fact that Clavius does not make any effort to reconcile both views. Could he possibly believe that the Pythagorean concept of numbers is a fair expression of the Aristotelian method? There are, indeed, alternatives to an epistemological justification of mathematical studies. Philipp Melanchthon, for instance, in addition to a general recommendation of geometry for the study of nature, whereby he refers to the knowledge of God through a thorough observation of method, discloses the structuring quality of mathematics, which he applies to politics and morals: "With regards to the Church, what could be more blessed than if it were constituted with geometrical proportion, which forbids tyranny and general license?"15 In accordance with the Aristotelian concept of distributive justice, geometry is not only a metaphor but is taken as a structure in general, such that may be found in or applied to human conduct. For this reason the Protestant reformer suggests that "geometrical equality" should reign in behaviour, and the teaching of geometry should be added to the other disciplines.16 In Melanchthon's view geometry is useful not only because it makes difficult concepts intuitively clear17 but mainly because the geometrical structure of the human mind (the common notions) equals in the same way the "order of nature".18 Hereby Melanchthon avoids any reference to metempsychosis as the factual basis for the existence of numbers in the soul. Thus he agrees with the later Jesuits in acknowledging the political importance of liberal studies but contrary to them he derives the necessity of mathematical studies from the higher level of cognitive and psychological structures and not only from the scientific value which - as we have seen in 15 Euclidis Megarensis mathematici clarissimi Elementorum geometricorum libri XV (Basileae, 1546); Melanchthon's preface, "Studiosis adolescentibus": "Non enim tantum releganda est haec ars ad mechanicos [...]: sed Philosopho, propter alias multas causas, opus Geometriae scientia. Inde enim oriuntur initia physices. [...]. Deinde quum demonstrationes geometricae maxime sunt illustres, nemo sine aliqua cognitione huius artis satis perspicit, quae sit vis demonstrationum: nemo sine ea, erit artifex methodi. [...]. Denique exulantes animos [...] ad agnitionem Dei traduxit. [...]. Quid Ecclesia beatius esset, si hac geometrica proportione constituta esset, quae et tyrannidem prohibet, et popularem licentiam?" 16 Melanchthon, "Stud, adolesc.": "geometricam aequalitatem in moribus praestare debere, et ad caeteras adiungere Geometriae studium." 17 S. Kusukawa, The Transformation of Natural Philosophy. The Case of Philip Melanchthon [Ideas in Context 34] (Cambridge, 1995), p. 139. 18 G. Frank, Die theologische Philosophic Philipp Melanchthons (1497-1560) [Erfurter theologische Studien 67] (Leipzig, 1995), p. 281.

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Clavius - is not easily reconciled with Aristotelian logic. It is this conflict of methodological approaches to scientific knowledge which lurks behind the establishment of Jesuit studies. The same Father Clavius openly complains in 1581 about his fellow professors' lack of mathematical knowledge and suggests that the professors of mathematics should be present at public disputations and from time to time propose topics for them, an indication that this was not the rule.19 His arguments in favour of mathematical studies refer - as is often the case with the rhetoric of promoting scholarly activities - to the public reputation of the Society of Jesus and to the need to know mathematics for the study of philosophy and specifically physics. But he is rather shy in giving precise information about the import of mathematics to the other sciences. If one looks at the ratio studiorum and the later practice at Jesuit universities, we can state that Clavius's rhetoric was not very successful. The professor of mathematics stands at the low end in the hierarchy of philosophical positions, after the professor of morals, but before the professor of grammar. Mathematics was ordered to be taught in the second year of philosophy for three quarters of an hour, parallel to the course of physics. The topics were to be Euclid's Elementa and, after two months, alternatively "some geometry or astronomy [sphaera], or whatever the students like to hear".20 This is all that remained from the much more elaborated draft of the rules of studies of 1586, when the "ornament" of mathematical studies and their practical impact on poets, historians, etc. was praised.21 There had been a plan to establish an extraordinary school of mathematics (privata academia), led by Professor Clavius, but this plan, which still appears in the 1591 draft,22 was finally dropped. The teaching of mathematics depended much on the initiative of the individual professor. Otto Cattenius, for example, gave quite an extensive lecture on mathematics and astronomy, including the new developments after the discovery of new star of 1572 and the comet of 1577; however, the only reason for his extended lecture was his personal commitment, which he owed to his own teacher Johann Reinhard Ziegler, who cor19 Monumenta Paedagogica Societatis lesu [Monumenta Historica Societatis lesu 92, 107, 108, 124, 129, 140, 141, quoted as MPSI], 7 vols., ed. L. Lukacs (Roma, 1965-1992); here: MPSI 7, pp. 115 ff. According to William A. Wallace (Galileo and His Sources. The Heritage of the Collegia Romano in Galileo's Science [Princeton, 1984], p. 137) the attack on Jesuit professors refers to Benedictus Pererius and Paulus Valla. - The definite version of the Ratio studiorum 1599 recommends that the professor of mathematics may organize a defense of some famous problem monthly or bimonthly during the general convent of philosophers and theologians (MPSI 5, p. 402). 20 MPSI 5, p. 402: "Physicae auditoribus explicet in schola tribus circiter horae quadrantibus Euclidis elementa; in quibus, postquam per duos menses aliquantisper versati fuerint, aliquid Geographiae vel Sphaerae, vel eorum, quae libenter audiri solent, adiungat; idque cum Euclide vel eodem die, vel alternis diebus." 21 MPSI 5, p. 109. 22 MPSI 5, pp. 177 and 285.

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responded with Clavius and Johannes Kepler. Cattenius, it should be noted, ended his career as a professor of morals.23 If Clavius had any effect at all, it was in the twentieth-century studies of Jesuit scholarship, which continue to affirm the importance of mathematics in it. I may just mention William A. Wallace, who in his basic study on Galileo and His Sources, gives an account of Clavius's Prolegomena to Euclid without even mentioning the passage quoted above, the only one in Clavius's text that considers gnoseological arguments in favour of mathematics.24 And in a more recent summary of the Jesuit attitude towards mathematics by Rivka Feldhay we are confronted with Clavius's attempt to reconcile the Pythagorico-Platonist praise of mathematics with the Aristotelian logic of science (based on the text quoted above), but we are aghast at the author's attempt to reduce Clavius's defense of mathematics to a problem of "different vocabularies" and his authorities to "symbolic capital".25 As a matter of fact the two basic assumptions which determined the place of mathematics in the whole of sciences, namely the dignity of its objectum (subject matter) and the certitude of knowledge produced, led to quite different results among Clavius, Benedictus Pererius, and others. I may just mention Pererius who opposed Clavius's claim for mathematics with the argument that mathematical entities lack the status of causes, because they do not fit into the scheme of causa finalis and causa efficiens.26 Mathematical quantities are no formal cause, in the first place, because quantity is an accidental property. Furthermore Pererius destroys the most powerful Aristote23

A. Krayer, Mathematik im Studienplan der Jesuiten: Die Vorlesung von Otto Cattenius an der Vniversitat Mainz (1610/11) (Stuttgart, 1991); cf. my review in History of Universities 12 (1993), pp. 421 f. 24 Wallace, Galileo (cited above, n. 20), pp. 138 ff. As for Jesuit studies Wallace relies here only on secondary sources. Bio-bibliographical data on Jesuit mathematicians have been collected by K. A. F. Fischer in Archives Internationales d'histoire des sciences 34 (1984), pp. 124-162; Archivum Historicum Societatis Jesu 47 (1978), pp. 160-224; Archivum Historicum Societatis Jesu 52 (1983), pp. 52-92. The contradiction in Clavius's argument is also absent in P. Dear, 'Jesuit Mathematical Science and the Reconstruction of Experience in the Early Seventeenth Century', in Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 18 (1987), pp. 133-175, on pp. 136 ff. Dear starts his treatment with emphasizing the "importance of the mathematical disciplines in the Jesuit college curriculum" which is alleged to be "well known" (i.e., nothing more than a common place among Jesuit apologetics quoted in the footnote), but does in no way wonder how and why there always has been "an insufficient number of competent teachers to go around" (p. 135). 25 R. Feldhay, 'The use and abuse of mathematical entities: Galileo and the Jesuits revisited', in The Cambridge Companion to Galileo, ed. P. Machamer (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 80145, on pp. 94 f. 26 B. Pererius, De communibus omnium rerum naturalius principiis et affectionibus (Romae, 1576) (Microfiche ed. by IDC, Leiden, 1987), lib. 3, cap. 3, p. 69: "Res mathematicae ea ratione ut sunt mathematicae et in doctrina mathematica tractantur, (si de causis proprie loqui volumus) nullum habent genus caussae. Nam eas carere fine ac efficiente, auctor est Arist. in 3. Metaphys. tex. 3. [...] quantitas quae tractatur a Mathematico, non est forma quidditativa rei [...] nee mathematicus speculatur essentiam quantitatis [...]."

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lian argument of Clavius's deductionism when he admits that, indeed, the mathematical propositions depend on primary assumptions, from which all further propositions are derived; he says: since these basic premises have no ontological and no causal ground the whole building of mathematical science must collapse.27 In this very statement Pererius also says that the causality of mathematical principles is but a fictitious or metaphorical one (ratione quadam et similitudine). Sometimes one can tell a book by its cover: "On the principles and properties common to all natural things", which tells the late sixteenth-century reader, that Pererius is competing with Renaissance natural philosophers such as Bernardino Telesio who from 1565 onwards published an antiAristotelian De rerum natura iuxta propria principia - in accounting for the common, universal principles of everything in nature. These are not supposed to be metaphorical and hypothetical concepts but have an ontological status in being the real causes of things and properties. He thus promises a naturalist theory and report about observable reality; and his criticism of mathematics is not exclusively concerned with Aristotelian scientific methodology, as the passage quoted is usually presented,28 but is naturalist in the sense that such principles ought to mirror the 'real' causes, whereas the intellectual objects of mathematics by definition are mentally construed. He opposes not substantial forms to mathematical science, as a progressist view might guess, but realist quiddities to quantitative chimeras, leaving aside any Pythagorean interpretation of numbers. Since no one can deny that real beings have quantitative properties, he introduces his verdict by insisting that mathematical objects have no causality inasmuch they are purely mathematical and treated professionally by mathematicians. If it is true that effects depend on causes and that quantities depend on quantitative things, then mathematical proofs are firm but only about dependent properties, and consequently the very nature of things collapses if it is presented as depending on mathematical reasoning. Mathematical demonstrations may be as powerful as one wishes, but only within the realm of mathematical objects, and they do not extend beyond the boundaries which ontologically separate attributes from substances. The 'causal' power of mathematical demonstrations cannot reach the ontological causation of things for which quantity is but an accidens. The laws of quantity are not the laws of things, which accidentally happen to have measure whatsoever. 27 Pererius, Deprincipiis, p. 70: "[...] in rebus mathematicis, vere ac proprie non inveniri causas vel principia, sed tantum ratione quadam et similitudine; quia sicut ex causa manat effectus, et remota causa necessario tollitur effectus, sic apud Mathematicos, initio scientiae ponuntur quaedam generates propositiones, ex quibus postea deducuntur demonstrationes, et illis sublatis necesse est omnes demonstrationes convelli et penitus everti." 28 Dear, 'Jesuit Mathematical Science' (cited above, n. 24), p. 138 with further references.

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Therefore the collapse predicted by Pererius about Clavian mathematics is that of the gap between the rhetorical praise of mathematical studies and the need for an accounting of causes in nature that are real ontological causes. A student of Clavius, Joseph Blancanus (Biancani), tried to support mathematical argumentation in transforming the Aristotelian model of form and matter into Platonic ideas. Since Aristotle admits that the form of material beings is in a way modified (necessitated) by matter (e.g., a wooden saw does not work), Blancanus puts mathematical figures (nota bene: geometrical shapes, not arithmetical numbers) in the place of forms like ideas which are "frustrated" by the imperfections of matter. Thus the object of mathematics is the archetypes which exist accidentally in material beings. Eventually these ideas or archetypes exist identically in God's and the human beings' minds.29 This latter conclusion comes close to Melanchthon's reasoning as quoted previously. The causation of mathematical entities is gained by reconnecting them to God's creative thinking. For my argument here maybe the most important point is that - ironically - Blancanus's defense of mathematics was of very little influence.30 The 'capital' hedged by Jesuit mathematicians is, indeed, 'symbolic' and subordinated to the general 'ideology' of the Society which - no wonder aimed at spreading the truth. What controls the activity of Jesuit scholars is the ideal of an undisputed unity of knowledge, but this could not be achieved totally, because the strategy of the Order was based on theology, scholastic philosophy and humanities, which included endless debates on the prescriptions of teaching and the method of "selecting opinions" (delectus opinionum) and the avoidance of conflicting doctrines.31 Philosophy was supposed to support theology in the same way as the whole school system of the Jesuits was designed to support evangelization. Now the problem was how to streamline all these efforts, and, in my view, science could never play an important role in this. The example of Clavius has shown clearly that a metaphysical, if not theological interpretation of mathematics necessarily leads to Platonist heresy - unless those Platonic arguments are presented in a superficial and rhetorical way and hence are methodologically insignificant. This is true up to and including Galileo, because if there was anything like Platonism in Galileo it was 29 J. Blancanus, 'De natura mathematicarum scientiarum tractatio', in J. Blancanus, Aristotelis loca mathematica (Bononiae, 1615), pp. 6 f.; quoted from: P. Galluzzi, '11 "Platonismo" del tardo Cinquecento e la filosofia di Galileo', in Ricerche sulla cultura dell'Italia moderna, ed. P. Zambelli (Bari, 1973), pp. 37-79, on p. 58. As to the prehistory of this solution, see P. O. Kristeller, Die Ideen als Gedanken der menschlichen und gottlichen Vernunft [Sitzungsberichte der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften, Phil.-hist. Klasse, 1989, 3] (Heidelberg, 1989). 30 Galluzzi, 'II "Platonismo"', p. 57. 31 See as an example the lengthy treatise of Stephanus Tucci. Tractatus "De opinionum delectu " revisus, commenting on the document with this title: MPSI 7, pp. 1-29, resp. MPSI 5, pp. 6-17, 18-33; cf. Blum, Philosophenphilosophie (cited above, n. 1), ch. 4.4.

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certainly that part of this thought which conflicted with scholastic metaphysics. The latter served per se as the 'natural' background to theology.32 So against all the evidence in favour of the interest of the Jesuits in mathematics and natural sciences, I cannot tell why they should have dealt with these subjects at all, if not for strategical reasons, i.e., to defend the competence of Catholics in these fields. And theirs is an oblique approach, the core of the activities remaining scholastic philosophy and theology. At this stage one could enter the debate about the "Merton Thesis", a specific application of Max Weber's sociological approach which tried to identify the religious environment as more or less favourable to scientific research.33 Steven Harris, attempting to "transform" the Merton Thesis, presented statistics on Jesuit scientific productivity and held that the Jesuit ideology (he emphasizes "universality, rationality, individuality, and adaptability") was no less favourable to scientific studies.34 However, the sociological approach is not only indirect inasmuch it touches upon features that are by definition environmental instead of central. In the case of the Jesuits, the social group under review presents a feedback or a short-circuit itself, because they did not just happen to favour scientific studies but they rather did so deliberately, i.e., they themselves did not focus on sciences and mathematics but rather on the circumstances fostering them. If it comes to statistics, Harris could not perhaps know Charles Lohr's catalogue of commentaries on Aristotle in the Renaissance up to 1650, in which the texts most frequently commented upon by members of various religious orders were: Rhetoric; De generatione; Metaphysics; De caelo; De anima; Meteorology; Categories; the whole Organon; and Physics (in this sequence).35 This sounds encouraging, but a close look at the commentaries reveals that in most cases metaphysical and generally philosophical controversies are dealt with rather than anything that looks like science in the modern sense. The typical approach to mathematics and nature, perfectly described by Ugo Baldini, holds true not only for the early Jesuits but goes on far into the seventeenth century when the rule was still in force, as follows: 32

See Galluzzi, 'II "Platonismo"' (cited above, n. 30), for the Platonism debate re. Galileo. R. K. Merton, Science, Technology and Society in Seventeenth-Century England [1938] (New York, 1970). 34 S. J. Harris, 'Transposing the Merton Thesis: Apostolic Spirituality and the Establishment of the Jesuit Scientific Tradition', in Science in Context 3 (1989), pp. 29-65, the quotation on p. 32. 35 Ch. H. Lohr, Latin Aristotle Commentaries II, Renaissance Authors (Firenze, 1988); cf. my statistical research based on this catalogue: P. R. Blum, 'Der Standardkursus der katholischen Schulphilosophie im 17. Jahrhundert', in Aristotelismus und Renaissance, eds. E. Keliler et al. (Wiesbaden, 1988), pp. 127-148; without tables and revised in Blum, Philosophenphilosophie, pp. 161-165: out of the 6,653 comments on Aristotle written by members of religious orders Jesuits contributed 1,327 (circa 20 per cent), while 62 per cent of all works were written by non-members of any order (i.e., either other Catholics or Protestants); 283 individual Jesuit authors make up 51 per cent of all religious authors. 33

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La descrizione della matematica come analisi di enti prelinguistici, richiesta dalla nozione aristotelica di 'scientia', ne escludeva una interpretazione formalistica. Quegli enti, e in genere la materia intelligibilis, erano pero oggetti non sensibili: cio lasciava a una fisica non matematica ogni giurisdizione circa la base materiale, 1'origine e il mutamento delle relazioni metriche [...]. Percio 1'applicazione della matematica allo studio di oggetti o fenomeni era giustificata solo come 1'uso d'una sorta di grammatica, che forniva le regole di traduzione di certi enunciati Tisici' in altri, ma non ne stabiliva la verita ne ne forniva spiegazioni. La 'pura mathesis' descriveva tale grammatica, ma non la costruiva, perche la sua origine era ontologica; le sue applicazioni, variamente ripartite in discipline autonome, erano la 'mathesis mixta', le cui dimostrazioni erano analizzabili in sillogismi, con premesse che erano in parte enunciati Tisici', in parte 'matematici'.36

As historians we have to draw our attention - apart from the results that may contradict or confirm 'modern science' - to the debate about the certainty and superiority of scientific discipline - as a debate. What is the rationale in ranking disciplines? What is the ruling concept? The Jesuits were obsessed by the quest for unity of sciences, or, more generally, of scholarship. The unity of doctrine among the teachers of the colleges all over the world was a political aim subordinated to the quest for political power. But this political unity has its theoretical equivalent in the unity of human knowledge, because above it all hovered the task of spreading the one and only true religion. Roderigo de Arriaga, in discussing the unity of science starts from the ideal that the subject matter of knowledge and knowledge itself are identical, because "praedicatum et subjectum, ut propositio sit vera, debet esse idem realiter." On the other hand: "Etsi non sit omnino improbabile, habitus eiusdem scientiae totalis uniri inter se, absolute tamen omnis physica unio inter illos reiicienda est."37 Given the premises of nominalist epistemology Arriaga transforms the simple postulate for the truth of any proposition, that of the identity of subject and predicate, into the multiplicity of scientific propositions which, as a whole, do not form any real or essential unity. Pererius's and the Renaissance philosophers' ideal of a true unified superscience dissolves into separate knowledges, and the only reason Arriaga wants to put forward is the horror of a super-term of knowledge understood as a separate entity.38 "Habitus cuiuscumque scientiae habent inter se ab ipsa 36 U. Baldini, 'Boscovich e la tradizione gesuitica in filosofia naturale: continuita e cambiamento', in R. J. Boscovich, vita e attivita scientifica - His Life and Scientific Work, ed. P. Bursill-Hall (Roma, 1993), pp. 81-132. 37 R. de Arriaga [...], Cursus Philosophicus [...] (Lugduni, 1669), Logica, lib.l, disp. 1, sect. 1 n. 2, p. 44 and sect. 3, subsect. 6, n. 40, p. 51. On Arriaga's concept of science see T. Saxlova, 'Das Seiende als solches in Arriagas Metaphysik', in Rodrigo de Arriaga (+1667). Philosoph und Theologe, eds. T. Saxlova and S. Sousedik (Praha, 1998), pp. 141-168, on p. 143. 38 Arriaga, Cursus Philosophicus, sect. 3, subsect. 6, n. 40, p. 51: "non esse aliam rationem pro hac conclusione, nisi quia non sunt multiplicandae entitates sine necessitate".

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natura ordinem aliquem et connexionem, ratione cuius unam scientiam dicuntur constituere."39 What unifies the realms of knowledge is a kind of natural coordination; this coordination is given both in the totality of physical objects that are studied in various disciplines and in the scientific impulse to exact and complete knowledge of the physical objects: Philosophiam esse unam scientiam non unitate rigorosa, (constat enim pluribus habitibus, etiam specie diversis, [...]) sed unitate ordinis, quatenus omnes illius habitus ordinantur per se ad exactam cognitionem corporis substantialis completi, quod est objectum attributionis totius philosophiae, quae, dum agit de motu, de actione et passione, de quantitate, etc. intendit exactam cognitionem corporis substantialis completi, quod est principium et subiectum illarum rerum.40

Arriaga aims at a dialectical unity of knowledge in sciences which gives way to parallel approaches to objects, the identity or variety of which still has to be sorted out by the disciplines. This permits him to avoid the inevitable clash of epistemic approaches of seemingly opposite cognitive faculties, namely faith and science, and grants the unity of knowledge, so desperately sought for. In his treatise on the soul in the same work he discusses the question: "Utrum possint dari simul scientia, fides, et opinio de eodem obiecto." His answer states that "evidentia et probabilitas ut opponantur, debent esse respectu eiusdem potentiae, et obiecti eiusdem actus, et ob idem medium", and if evidence and probability do not clash, as long as they are generated by independent faculties, subject matters, and media, non solum non repugnare inter se duos actus fidei, alterum scientiae, alterum opinionis circa idem obiectum, sed etiam posse eumdem numero actum esse, et scientiae et fidei, et opinionis. [...] quia non repugnat per unicum actum assentiri eidem obiecto ob duo motiva, sicut non repugnat, velle ailquod medium ob duos fines, deambulationem veri gratia ob sanitatem et ob recreationem [...].«'

The variety of epistemic approaches, such as faith, opinion, and reason, find their final unity in the act of assent. Ontological unity is transposed into epistemic assent. From his observations quite distant from one another within the space of the same book, it is evident that his rejecting philosophy as an encyclopaedic science of everything that is real is motivated by his concern to save - at least - the possibility of the unity of faith and reason, given that the 'methods' of both do not proceed at an equal pace. So we may say that authors like Clavius and Blancanus are paying lip service to an overall mathematical science just because the unity of human knowledge is at stake. If there is anything like science involved, it is the in39 40 41

Ibid., sect. 3, subsect. 6, n. 42, p. 52. Ibid., Physica, Prooemium, p. 279. Ibid., De Anima, disp. 8, sect. 6, subsect. 2, n. 113 and subsect. 3, p. 868.

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triguing question what science might mean at all, what the features of an allpervasive structure of scientific knowledge could or should be. We may conclude that Clavian and generally Jesuit rhetoric in mathematical or other key disciplines (especially if it ignores methodological consistency) bears witness to the anxiety about a world of knowledge that is in danger of falling apart. Christoph Scheiner in his 1619 book on Optics makes the convenient statement: "Dei providentia naturam ita finxit, ut ea [sc. oculi] musculorum intervalla adipe inserserit, [...] ut oculus [...] circumferetur leniter [...]",42 and generally: "Oculus animali ad videndum a Deo attributus munere suo perfungitur rerum videndarum praesentia potitus [...]."43 What does God stand for? It is evident that God has nothing really to do in optics because it functions well, once it is made as it is, and one may wonder why Scheiner preferred to say "finxit" instead of "fecit" - in terms of Freudian psychology one might think that this is 'fiction' on Scheiner's part. Apart from his diligent anatomy of the eye, this book is important for its clear separation of the realms of theology and metaphysics from experience and experiment. In fact, in his preface Scheiner tries to establish optics as an independent science, justifying this by describing a particular way for it between physics and geometry: Optice vera et proprie dicta scientia, multa seiuncta, multa cum Physica communia habet. Communia sunt objectum et praecognita. [...]. Geometria enim [...] de Physica linea considerat, sed non quatenus est Physici: Perspectiva autem mathematicam quidem lineam, sed non quatenus Physica est. Veritatem ergo eiusdem rei ambo, sed viis diversis investigant: quod ut rectius praestent, in eorum, quae sensibus incurrunt, indaginem, plurimam impendunt utrique operam; quorum alia quae ita contingunt ut natura fiant omnibusque obvia sint, solamque seduli speculatoris aniadversionem requirant, Phaenomena, sive apparitiones: alia quae absque speculiari Empyrici industria aut non fiunt aut non patescunt; Experientiae vocantur: nine e utrisque plena extant auctorum volumina: quae tantum subi vendicant authoritatis, quantum veritatis usu ipso, experientiaque depromunt. 44

Science depends on the use of truth and on experience. Scheiner not only claims scientific dignity for an apparently narrow field: he separates the dignity of science from the dignity of its object. He does not even allude to its certainty in logical deduction, but firmly holds that the independence of its reasoning makes it a science. In doing so, he concedes to other disciplines their own rights. We could rejoice now and celebrate Scheiner as one of the founding fathers of the scientific method, if not as one of the heroes of free scientific research. But, if so, does he do that as a Jesuit, a Catholic, a de42 43 44

C. Scheiner, Oculus [...] (Oeniponti, 1619), p. 3. Ibid., p. 2. Ibid., Praefatio.

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fender of the Counter-Reformation? I do not think so. Is his "God of the eye muscles" identical with the Crucified who made Saint Ignatius weep daily? And is St Ignatius's tearful eye the object of Schemer's optics? I do not think so. "When I think of the eye, I shudder", said Charles Darwin.45 In our age cultural events and achievements are interpreted as narratives,46 and this includes the sciences; hence it makes sense to talk about the achievements of the natural sciences only in terms of a story in which scientific discoveries and theories are facts. R. G. Colling wood has argued that all physics ends up as history because the physicist cannot help but explain in language (which is historically, culturally, and communicatively restricted).47 And John Polkinghorne declares, for instance, the scientific concept of emergence (according to which complex structures are brought about by simple ones), a story that from time to time has to be told the other way round.48 In the same way the story of the discovery of the mathematical structure of the universe, as propagated by the Galileanists, has to be told in its contrary sense, e.g., as the forgetfulness of substance, in the sense of concentrating on the epistemic instead of the ontological status of causes. All these stories are made up of facts, but facts within a story - like Sherlock Holmes's pipe. One organizing structure of the narrative of the history of sciences is that of the progress of discoveries. Now, the problem for Jesuit science is that in this kind of story it does not have much of a voice, for the micro is in the hands of Protestants and their offspring, known as the Enlightenment, or Butterfield's Whigs. So, one strain of that story is the Jesuits' and their historians' efforts to get access to the micro. But they were hindered by Catholic doctrine: they tried to talk in two different languages, namely that of scholastic philosophy and theology, based on Aristotelian metaphysics and ontology, and in that of science, based on alternative attempts at organising knowledge, through experience and mathematics - and all this in search of a unifying theory. Christoph Clavius repeated the story from ancient sources that mathematics is the most exact science because it derives all conclusions from known principles. Following the criticism to which Pererius gave voice, let us for a moment question this argument: if we suppose that science is about discovery, even more: about discovering the true principles that are causes of what is - is it not a series of conclusions derived from known premises to further, 45

1 quote from Plantinga, 'Faith and Reason' (cited above, n. 6), p. 25. On narrativity in history see for instance H. White, The Content of Form: Narrative Discourse and Historical Representation (Baltimore, London, 1987). 47 R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of Nature [1945] (London, 1960), pp. 176 f.: "The scientist who wishes to know that such an event has taken place in the world of nature can know this only by consulting the record left by the observer and interpreting it [...]. This consultation and interpretation of records is the characteristic feature of historical work. [...]. A scientific theory [...] is itself an historical fact." 48 J. C. Polkinghorne, 'The Nature of Physical Reality', in Zygon 26 (1991), pp. 221-236. 46

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implicitly known propositions and thus simply dull?49 Certainly not as long as these conclusions are depicted in the colours of discovery. That is why John Locke would soon compare the reality with a dark room which is barely enlightened with the candle of our understanding; in this light everything that is drawn from intellectual conclusions is a new world. This simile is only possible in the environment of metaphysical scepticism and sensualism. If one is optimistic in describing reality by pointing to the principles that make the world be as it is in itself (as Pererius postulated); mathematical science is not a candidate suited to describing reality. Let us imagine the mathematico-scientific discourse as parallel to the metaphysico-theological discourse or narrative. This is not a new assumption, since it has been made by ethnologists before, and one could look at the strange behavioural patterns of early modem scholars with the eyes of an ethnologist or folklorist who tries to make sense of what is told to him. Bronislaw Malinowski reported that in certain tribes "garden magic does not by any means 'obscure' the natives' causal knowledge of the nexus between proper clearing of the scrub" and good harvesting.50 So he states that many so-called beliefs, or the stories which generate them, do not conflict unless they are explicitly confronted with one another. To give an example: according to Malinowski a tribe in New Guinea believes that babies are brought to women by a ghost, so that there is no knowledge about the genetic contribution of the father. However, 'someone' has to open the birth channel at least once for all times. For this reason sexual life and marriage, on the one hand, and procreation, on the other, are two non-related events and consequently non-conflicting narratives in the life of that tribe.51 Now, if we transfer this example to the attitude of Jesuits towards nature in terms of substantialist ontology and of mathematics we have two stories that may not conflict unless one tends to "overshadow" (Malinowski's term) the other. At the origin of this conflict was the impulse to unify all narratives into a single one. One way of unifying the narratives was simply to dismiss the non-concurrent one. The other way was to admit the plurality of scientific disciplines so that the narratives were consciously sorted out. 'Narrativity' - as applied so far - is, of course, a narrative itself. It implies on the surface that there is, still, an opposition between narrativity and scientific rationality. It also suggests that parallel narratives are to be avoided if narrativity strives for scientificality. But at this point we should raise three questions: (1) What is the origin of the mono-narrative postulate? (2) Why don't all wise people avoid parallel narratives? (3) How do we know that parallel stories are interchangeable, and to what effect? 49 50 51

In Kantian terms: What is it that makes analytical judgements not tautological? B. Malinowski, Magic, Science and Religion [1948] (Westport, 1984), p. 234. Ibid., pp. 220 ff.

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(1) As we have seen in the example of the early Jesuits the postulate of a unified science has a parallel at least in the politics of power in the Reformation debate (and evidently Melanchthon's geometry of morals acted on both parallels). As soon as parallels are perceived as contradictory to unity, they have to be streamlined into a unified concept of human knowledge (e.g., the way Arriaga reacted). It might help to remember that epical narrative in the proper sense does not shy away from parallel actions, but tying them together is the essence of a novel. (2) Arriaga suggests taking the competing narratives as identical stories about the same subject matter in different languages. He avoids the conflict of narratives without apologetics, which would defend the one or the other. Parallel narratives can be listened to as mutually enforcing two tales about one city. The scientific and the religious approach to nature converge somewhere somehow. (3) Stories are structured in chapters. I doubt that either of the parallel narratives of metaphysical and scientific accounts about nature have come to an end. But I am sure that, as in any novel, we will be able to tell about that book after having read its final chapter.52 The debate about faith and reason, and the one about scientific knowledge versus artistic, moral, religious cognition goes on. Meanwhile, some chapters have closed. Thus we know, for instance, that the scientific claim has sometimes led to an extremely unilateral causality in which the cause—effect connection is supposed to be the ideal of a streamline account about nature. Looking back, and only with this half of our Janus-face, we know that competing efforts to unify knowledge have driven more than one church or religious movement to close its eyes and ears to successful scientific explanations. The other side of the Janusface looks less reproachingly because it views some of the success stories as chapters already closed by the following chapters. The methodical problem in dealing with Jesuit science is the need to account for changing view points, which I expressed with metaphors like "Janus-face" and "narrativity": "Whiggishness" is inherent to the history of science because mono-narrative is what scientific research aims at. Relativism and pluralism imply failures of the scientific approach. The paradox of the Jesuit contribution to that very mono-narrative is that they fostered scientific research by promoting the unity of explanatory strategies, which once it was achieved in the form of 'modern science' - eclipsed their voice in the story.

52 P. R. Blum, 'Die Siihne vor der Schuld. Uber das Riickwartslesen von Geschichten', in Universitas 54 (1999), pp. 481-491; and in English, 'Atonement before guilt: the end of history and the endings of mystery stories', in Intellectual News 6/7 (Winter 2000), pp. 93-99.

SCIENCE AND RELIGION IN ROYAL PRUSSIA AROUND 1600

MICHAEL G. MULLER The Diary of Charles Ogier, a French diplomat who travelled extensively in Poland and, in particular, Royal Prussia in 1635/36,' dwells at length on education, scholarship and theology in the Prussian metropolis of Gdansk (Danzig). His account paints an impressive but, at the same time, somewhat contradictory picture of Prussian intellectual life. With respect to libraries, both public and private, to academic schools or to book-printing, Gdansk seemed to Ogier to be perfectly comparable with the famous centres of learning in Italy or the Netherlands. But there is little mention, on the other hand, of outstanding scholarly individuals. Ogier was impressed with the high educational standards, and the theological expertise, of the local patricians who took pride in defining themselves as the class of the "learned" (Gelehrte). But he appears not to have met any academic theologians of high profile. Moreover, the French diplomat observed that although the burghers of Gdansk officially declared themselves to be strict Lutherans, the city's religious life gave little evidence for such a confessional commitment. As he noted on 13 May 1636, "there is a strange mixture of religion in these parts." Some of the churches, like St Peter and Paul and Holy Trinity, were frequented by Lutherans and Calvinist alike, and to Ogier's observation there were even members of a single family who adhered to different confessions. He personally met the sisters de Neri who although born in a Calvinist family were educated by the Catholic nuns of St Bridget, and one of whom, Aniela, had become a Lutheran when she married the Lutheran pastor at Holy Trinity. Moreover, she - like many other Lutheran women "continues to visit, with the consent of her husband, the nuns of St Bridget since for so many years she had been instructed in the Catholic faith at that monastery".2 The paradoxes reflected in Ogier's account may be explained by specific circumstances that the foreign diplomat was apparently not fully aware of1 2

K. Ogier, Dziennikpodrozy do Polski (1635-1636). 2 vols. (Gdansk, 1950-1953). Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 139-143.

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and that the patricians of Gdansk were, at that time, probably most reluctant to discuss in public. When Ogier visited Gdansk in 1635/36, the Prussian cities were in the middle of a process of confessional re-orientation that was to fundamentally change not only the religious practices of the burghers but also the cultural profile of the urban elites and, not least, the status of science in the urban context. The 1630s witnessed the transition from Calvinism to Lutheranism of urban Protestantism in Royal Prussia. At the same time they marked the end of a period of roughly two generations in which the three major cities in Poland's Prussian province (Gdansk/Danzig, Elbl^g/Elbing and Torun/Thorn) had played a leading role in Protestant science in Poland-Lithuania, and in Central Europe in general. The point to be argued in this article is that these two coinciding processes - the confessional re-orientation and the decline of Protestant science in Prussia - were mutually dependent. The academic life in the Prussian cities substantially benefited from the 'Calvinist hegemony' in the Prussian Protestant churches in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. The Lutheran 'reconquista' in Prussia, in turn, which started in Gdansk in 1605 and was completed, in all three Prussian cities, around 1650 cut the confessional links between Prussia and most of Protestant Central Europe, and it brought about an anti-academic turn in urban culture. In the following, we shall briefly outline the development of what will provisionally be called 'Calvinist science' in Prussia, and discuss the reasons why the academic culture of the Calvinist period did not survive the process of Lutheran confessionalization in the region. Around 1550, at the verge of the introduction of Protestantism in Poland and Lithuania on a larger scale, the province of Royal Prussia seemed rather marginal in the Polish world of science and academic teaching. With Copernicus, of course, who was born in Torun and resided, since 1510, mainly at Frombork in the bishopric of Ermland, Prussia counted one of Europe's outstanding scholars of the time among their inhabitants. His scholarly work, however, was entirely related with Cracow, Bologna, and Ferrara while his ties with his home territory restricted themselves to his ecclesiastical duties.3 In fact, Copernicus's own educational career very much reflects the general pattern of contemporary academic orientation: Not only for Prussian aristocrats and patricians but for the Polish-Lithuanian educated elites in general the university of Cracow linked Poland with European academic life, and served as the obligatory first stop-over on many a peregrinatio academica that might have eventually led to Bologna or Padua, Ingolstadt, Wiirzburg or Leiden. It was primarily via Cracow that Western learning reached the Polish educated public, and that Europe became familiar with the works of Pol3 K. Gorski, Mikolaj Kopernik. Srodowisko spoleczne i samotnosc (Wroclaw, Gdansk, 1973).

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ish scholars. In the late fifteenth century in particular, the latter's contribution to European science was quite significant. The university of Bologna, for example, recruited no less than seven professors for mathematics and astronomy from among the Cracow scholars between 1448 and 1480. In the second half of the sixteenth century the university of Cracow clearly lost its dominant position. This was not so much an effect of the Reformation as such, but much rather a consequence of both Catholic and Protestant confessionalization that gained momentum only from the 1570s onwards. Already the decades around 1550 witnessed, however, a general decline in the academic life of Poland-Lithuania, which was partly due to the formal ban of Poles from university studies in "Protestant localities" abroad that remained in force until the Polish Interim of 1555, but partly also to the anti-academic spirit of the Lutheran Reformation. As figures for Royal Prussia in the 1550s and!560s show, both the university of Cracow and the traditional centres of Catholic learning in Northern Italy and Germany continued to attract Prussian students - and this was true even after the formal recognition of the Confessio Augustana and the consolidation of Protestant church organisations in the province's major towns. The overall number of Prussian students at European universities, however, decreased dramatically, and the humanist model of academic elite education seemed to lose, at least for one generation, much of its former popularity among the urban patricians as well as the aristocracy.4 New patterns emerged instead as the intellectual topography of PolandLithuania started to diversify under the impact of confessionalism. Cracow's monopoly as Poland's centre of science and academic training that had essentially survived the period of crisis was now challenged from two sides simultaneously. In the Catholic sphere, on the one hand, Cracow had to face competition from newly founded academic institutions with a more clear-cut confessional profile such as the famous Academy of Zamosc, a private foundation by the magnate Jan Zamoyski, or the Jesuit Academy at Vilnius that, because of strong support by King Stephan Bathory, soon gained a reputation for being the true academic stronghold of the Polish-Lithuanian Counter-Reformation. On the other hand, the Protestant part of the nation sought to establish their own system of academic education - an endeavour in which the major Prussian towns of Gdansk, Elbl^g and Torun were to play a prominent role. They simultaneously implemented major reforms of their academic gymnasia and jointly pursued, in the 1590s, the project of a

4 M. Pawlak, Studia unhversyteckie miodziezy Prus Krolewskich w XV1-XVIH wieku (Torun, 1988).

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"Protestant provincial school" that was intended to represent nothing less than Poland's Protestant alternative to Cracow or Vilnius.5 The Prussian urban communities seemed, although predominantly German speaking, in many ways predestined to take the lead in the educational efforts of the Polish-Lithuanian Protestants. It was only in the major towns of Royal Prussia that Polish Protestantism acquired an institutional basis solid enough to survive the Counter-Reformation and the mass reconversion of aristocratic 'dissidents' to Catholicism around 1600.6 Furthermore, the rapidly growing economic power of the Prussian commercial centres and the requirements of modern urban administration created, by themselves, an increasing demand for a self-sustained, and autonomous system of higher education. Not least, the councils of all three towns considered it a matter of prestige to highlight the aristocratic, magnate-like status of the urban elites also in the field of theology, education and science. Apart from such reasons, however, political aspects played an equally important role. The commitment of the Prussian patricians to the project of implementing a national system of Protestant education was part and parcel of a complex political strategy that aimed at more thoroughly integrating the Prussian province into the constitutional structures and the elite networks of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth: By adopting the Protestant educational project the Prussian towns could hope to win confidence and support among the dissident leaders of the aristocratic nation, and thus to overcome the political isolation that had threatened their autonomy ever since the formal incorporation of Prussia into the Republic in 1569. The precondition for implementing such a strategy was that the Prussian Protestants established the basis for a co-operation with their Polish and Lithuanian co-religionists on the confessional level.7 In its early years, Prussian Protestantism had developed under the predominant influence of the German Lutheran Landeskirchen in the Holy Roman Empire that provided both the theological personnel and the organisational patterns for the urban churches existing since 1557/58. Communication with the predominantly Swiss or Bohemian influenced, i.e., pro-Calvinist oriented, Protestant communities in the Poland-Lithuania thus remained weak until, after the 1570s, Prussian church politics started to shift away from an increasingly exclusionist German Lutheran orthodoxy. In order to avoid the Prussian towns 5 St. Tync, 'Proba utworzenia akademii protestanckiej w Prusach krolewskich w 1595 r.', in Reformacja w Polsce 4 (1926), pp. 46-59. 6 For the institutional and legal aspects of Protestant church organisation in PolandLithuania see M. G. Miiller, 'Protestant Confessionalization in the Towns of Royal Prussia and the Practice of Religious Toleration in Poland-Lithuania', in Religious Toleration in the Age of Reformation, ed. R. Scribner (Cambridge, 1996), pp. 262-281. 7 See M. G. Miiller, Zweite Reformation und stadtische Autonomie im Koniglichen Preufien. Danzig, Elbing und Thorn in der Epoche der Konfessionalisierung (Berlin, 1997).

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being dragged into the "foreign German quarrels" about the 'true' interpretation of the Confessio Augustana and, at the same time, to join forces with their co-religionists in defence against the Polish CounterReformation, both the lay authorities and the theological ministries of the Prussian towns now pursued a policy of confessional rapprochement with the Lithuanian and Polish Protestant churches that, in 1570, had united in the semi-Calvinist/raterHa coniunctio of the Consensus Sendomirensis. By the late 1580s, the links between the (German) Prussian churches and Polish-Lithuanian Protestantism had consolidated, and the process of integration of the Prussian province into the 'party polities' of the aristocratic dissidents was well under way. In 1595, on the occasion of the Protestant synod of Toruri, the confessional alliance was formalised as the three Prussian towns officially joined the Consensus Sendomirensis, and openly declared that they were part of the community of Polish Calvinist churches.8 Simultaneously, plans for joint action of the 'dissidents' at the national diet, the Sejm, were considered and the ground work for a network of Protestant political actors including the Prussian towns was laid. The project of a Protestant university at Torun was launched by the town's mayor Stroband in this context. To what extent did the confessionally underpinned vision of Prussia's new role as a centre of Polish-Lithuanian academic culture actually materialise over the following years? One phenomenon to be considered in this context is the fact that the attitude of the urban elites towards academic education changed dramatically in these years. Although the plans concerning a Protestant Landesschule were abandoned shortly after 1595 (as the rapid progress of the Counter-Reformation in Poland and Lithuania made it soon appear obsolete), the number of Prussian students at foreign universities dramatically increased and went, within a generation, far beyond the average quota of the pre-Reformation period. By 1600 the patricians of Gdansk could rightly claim to represent a class of Gelehrte, as virtually all officeholders in the council, the courts, the churches, and the town administration now held an academic degree. Moreover, the patrician model of the peregrinatio academica had become much more ambitious than in the past. Not only did it include the leading Calvinist universities in Switzerland, the Reich, and the Netherlands - and, in the case of the medical schools and law faculties, also the traditional Catholic universities in Italy; in the field of mathematics, the school of Cracow - but the average period of university education had also become significantly longer; it lasted from six to ten years. Moreover, the expectations with respect to academic education now 8 A formal declaration to this effect that had previously been negotiated among the councils of Gdansk, Elbl^g, and Torun was issued prior to the synod, in January 1595; Archiwum Paristwowe Gdansk 300 R/Pp 1, 455-469.

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went well beyond the idea of acquiring the necessary practical skills for a political or administrative career. Many Protestant patricians of the late sixteenth century took pride in acquiring a reputation as theologians and scholars, and some of them could indeed claim academic excellence. In Gdansk, for example, the council's legal advisor Christoph Riccius, who had studied at Rostock, Wittenberg, Jena, Strasburg and Leiden, published the first scholarly studies of Polish-Lithuanian constitutional law and, in particular, of the theoretical foundations of the Commonwealth's 'free elections'.9 In Torun, Burgermeister Heinrich Stroband and his associate Ulrich Schober were at the centre of an initiative in the 1590s to propagate, and implement, the pedagogical programme developed by Johannes Sturm at Strasburg; Stroband gained a reputation among Baltic and Polish school reformers as the author of a three-volume Instructio litterata published in 1594.10 Another domain in which the Protestant towns of Royal Prussia developed academic ambitions was, of course, theology. For many years after the Reformation, the Prussian towns and their Protestant churches had remained almost entirely dependent on theological expertise from outside the territory; the Prussian priesthood was initially recruited from moderately Lutheran (Philippist) universities in Germany like Wittenberg or Frankfurt-on-Oder, and also from among exiled Bohemian Brethren or Scottish Calvinists. By the 1590s, however, the Prussian churches were largely in the hands of indigenous Prussian theologians and, at the same time, Prussian Protestantism started to develop a specific theological profile that ever more clearly distinguished the new ecclesiastical milieu from German Protestant thought in the Holy Roman Empire.11 Contemporarily famous theologians like Jacob Fabricius in Gdansk or Jan Turnovius in Toruh were instrumental in re-opening, and promoting, an irenic discourse in a Melanchthonian tradition that was to become exemplary for the efforts leading to the Colloquium Charitativum of 1645. Because of their writings Royal Prussia acquired the image of being one of the last Protestant territories to cultivate a spirit of intra-Protestant confessional tolerance - and thus attracted a number of leading European theologians who, in turn, were to contribute substantially to the province's academic prestige. Even a smaller town like Elbl^g benefited, because of its close ecclesiastical links with both Scottish Presbyterians and Bohemian Brethren, from the presence of theologians as prominent as John Dury and Johann Amos Comenius. At the very centre of academic life in Royal Prussia were, however, the academic gymnasia at Gdansk, Torun, and Elbl^g. As a result of the thor9

See Historia Gdanska, vol. 2: 1454-1655, ed. E. Cieslak (Gdansk, 1982), p. 611. K. Kubik, 'Koncepcje dydaktyczno-wychowawcze w szkolnictwie Gdanskim za czasow pierwszej Rzeczypospolitej', in Gdanskie zeszyty hwnanistyczne 11 (1969), pp. 65-135. 11 See Miiller, Zweite Reformation (cited above, n. 7). 10

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oughly planned, and costly reforms since the 1570s, the gymnasia transformed into university-like institutions that provided high-level academic education for Prussian and Polish-Lithuanian students, but also served as centres for professional science.12 With even more reason than in the case of the (confessionally never actually homogenous) urban churches, one can here speak of a specifically Calvinist venture since it was in the context of the school reforms that the leading Calvinist patricians, theologians and teachers formulated a common project for a cultural reformatio vitae, and established themselves as an informal (in the case of Torun even institutionalized) modernising elite. Moreover, in all three cases the gymnasia and the affiliated churches played the roles of forerunners in the process of Calvinist confessionalization in the 1580s; the rectores gymnasii (Fabricius in Gdansk, Friese and Schober in Torun, Bochmann in Elblaj) were, though not formally members of the respective ecclesiastical ministry, the leading figures in the inner-urban debates that prepared and accompanied the councils' policies of rapprochement with Polish and Lithuanian Calvinism. Nevertheless, one could hardly speak of 'Calvinist scholarship' in Royal Prussia although many among the more noteworthy foreign scholars to join the Prussian gymnasia as professors were either recruited through 'Calvinist networks' in the European academia, or emigrated to Prussia after having been prosecuted as Calvinists. Examples are Bartholoma'us Keckermann and Balthasar Germann, the poets and historiographers Ulrich Schober and Martin Opitz, or the Torun professor of medicine Franz Tidicaeus. However, the Calvinist contribution to creating a scholarly productive environment in Royal Prussia around 1600 consisted in opening the province towards European humanism and in preserving relative confessional freedom rather than in creating a confessionally specific 'intellectual field'. The development of astronomy at the gymnasium of Gdansk may serve as an example. The fact that here the tradition of Copernican astronomy had been kept alive until the turn of the century was primarily due to the efforts of the already mentioned Burgermeister Tiedemann Giese. However, his work was continued by professors who hardly belonged to the inner circle of Gdansk's Calvinist elite, but were recruited from the Reich under purely professional criteria: the Wittenberg trained mathematician and geographer Matthias Meinius and, more importantly, the astronomer Peter Kriiger, who came to Gdansk from Lutheran Leipzig in 1604 and designed most of the astronomic devices for the gymnasium's observatory that opened in 1641. Throughout the period between 1590 and 1640 the astronomers in Gdansk maintained close links with both Copernicus's place of work in Catholic 12 St. Salmonowicz, 'Jesuitenschulen und akademische Gymnasien in Koniglich Preussen im 16. bis 18. Jahrhundert', in Wktad Pomorza Gdanskiego do rozv/oju nauki i os\viaty [Zeszyty naukowe wydzialu humanistycznego Uniwersytetu Gdanskiego 15] (1985), pp. 15-27.

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Ermland, and with the mathematicians and astronomers in Krakow. When Johannes Hevelius took over the professorship in astronomy at the Gdansk gymnasium in the 1640s, he could thus build on a scholarly tradition that had long since ceased to be associated with its Calvinist origins. Nevertheless, the Calvinist-inspired culture of scholarship in Royal Prussia did not survive the confessional re-orientation of the Prussian Protestants towards Lutheranism that started in the first decade of the seventeenth century and was more or less completed in the 1650s. The reasons were, however, not of a religious nature, but had to do primarily with the political motives and side-effects of the shift in confessional politics: The breakthrough of the Counter-Reformation in Poland-Lithuania after 1607 and its rapid progress in the following decades made Prussia's confessional network in the Republic collapse and cut the political links with former coreligionists among the Polish and Lithuanian magnates. Furthermore, the project of Calvinist confessionalization in the Prussian towns met, after the 1590s, with growing opposition from the Lutheran majority of the burghers, and the anti-Calvinist emotions were soon instrumentalized by inner-urban opponents to patrician rule with a view to breaking the rule of the Gelehrte, and to de-legitimize the Calvinist modernizing elites; the patricians were ultimately successful in settling the conflict without making political concessions - but at the price of having to withdraw their support for the intellectual circles around the Calvinist churches and the gymnasia. Not least, Prussia's cultural geography gradually changed after the PolishSwedish wars of the mid-seventeenth century when the German-speaking Prussian burghers became increasingly marginalized as culturally and religiously 'alien' to Poland, and when, as a consequence, the Prussian towns reestablished closer links with the Lutheran towns and territories in the Holy Roman Empire. Under these circumstances, the project of establishing Royal Prussia as the leading centre of Protestant culture and scholarship for Poland-Lithuania eventually lost its raison d 'etre. To launch an equally ambitious alternative project, focussing on the Germanic lands and based on Lutheran Burgerkultur, would have been utterly unrealistic. Charles Ogier's observations in Gdansk in the 1630s, which we cited already at the beginning, reflect the process of transition. Under 12 June 1636 he reports meeting the prominent Calvinist patrician Johann Brandes, whose father Gerhard had been Burgermeister in the times of inner-urban confessional conflict, and whom Ogier presents as a man with a remarkable background of Calvinist education (he studied at Heidelberg and Basle) and with far-reaching connections among Calvinist aristocrats and scholars "in Poland where you will not find any Lutherans". This seemed strange for the distinguished son of a town in which "there are many more Lutherans than Calvinists and other heretics together", and Ogier wondered "how far the

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leading families in this city of Gdansk seem to deliberately alienate themselves from their decent and obedient compatriots".13

13

Ogier, Dziennikpodrozy (cited above, n. 1), vol. 2, pp. 205 f.

PROTESTANT ANATOMY

ANDREW CUNNINGHAM Historians of anatomy and of physiology have written their histories as if anatomy and physiology constituted a single monolithic discipline across the centuries from the Greeks to the twentieth century. What they have written has been primarily histories of discoveries, with a special regard for physiological discoveries. They have treated discoveries about structure (morphology) as anatomical discoveries, and discoveries about function made by anatomists as physiological discoveries. In pursuing such progressivist stories, they have had little, if any, time for questions about the relation of anatomizing to Christianity. Fortunately the present volume puts such questions on the historian's agenda. The Christian religion was crucial to the practice of anatomy in Western Europe from at least 1316, when Mondino de' Liuzzi (Mondinus) produced his Anatomia in Bologna, to the late eighteenth century, with a particular anatomizing tradition which was still explicitly God-oriented surviving in England until as late as the 1820s. The role of religion in this anatomy derived from the position of anatomy as part of natural philosophy, the discipline (or set of disciplines) within which nature was discussed in university teaching and research, among members of some of the religious orders, and in the princely, royal and papal courts, from the thirteenth' century to the end of the eighteenth.1 It was the role of the discipline of natural philosophy to discuss nature as created by the Christian God, and however innocuous any particular theme of natural philosophy might appear to us, however little it might seem to us to call on a creationist view of nature, the practitioners of natural philosophy were well aware that it was at all times God's creation that was under discussion. Take a subject as seemingly innocent as botanical classification, for instance, which might look to us today like early systematics. To its practitioners, who saw it as a branch of natural philosophy, botanical classification was seeking the pattern of family relationships among plants in which God had created them. 1 R. French, A. Cunningham, Before Science: The Invention of the Friar's Natural Philosophy (Aldershot 1996).

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With respect to anatomy, then, its position as a natural philosophical study meant that the body of man, which was dissected and discussed, was looked at as the highest point of God's creation. Anatomy therefore demonstrated God's workmanship, design, intention and providence at its most perfect. Formal demonstrations which made this explicit were regularly held in the best medical faculties, especially those of Italy, on the bodies of executed criminals. The text of Mondino was used as a guide to take the viewer through the body in the most convenient way, following a sequence which both followed the progressive corruption of the body, and also rose through the hierarchy of the seats of the souls. Platonic theory, which was followed by Galen and then by Mondino and other anatomists, placed the lowest aspect of soul in the belly, the next higher aspect of soul in the thorax, and the highest, the 'animal soul' (often equated with the immortal soul), in the head. This was also the order of dissection. The limbs were not usually dissected. To watch an anatomical dissection was to have paraded in front of one's eyes the handiwork, goodness and providence of God. The future physician, who usually formed part of the audience for such dissections, would be able to see the hidden inward parts with which his practice would later deal, their relations to each other and their connections. But even the student physician knew that he was watching the work of God being unfolded before his eyes: he was seeing the body demonstrated as the instrument of the soul. It was because this was such a central function of the anatomical demonstration that not until the sixteenth century do we find the anatomical demonstration being used as an opportunity for research or even for reporting research. As the Padua statutes state in 1465 (and other years), it was the duty of the officiating professor to explain the text of Mondino "line by line, and what he has explained according to text and letter, let him demonstrate by visual testimony in the cadaver itself, not to dispute the truth of Mondino, nor to test the text of Mondino against the evidence of the body. Of course, until the Reformation, all practices of anatomy were Catholic practices. De Zerbis's Anatomiae corporis humanae liber of 1502,2 Benedictus's Anatomice of 1502,3 even Berengario da Carpi's Commentaria [...] super anatomia mundini of 1521,4 however much they disagree among themselves about the detail of the anatomy and about how far one should follow the Greek authors, are all nevertheless equally works of Catholic anatomizing.

2

G. de Zerbi, Liber anatomiae corporis humani el singulomm membrorum illius (Venetiis, 1502). 3 A. Benedetti, Anatomice, sive de hystoria corporis humani, libri quinque (Venetiis, 1502). 4 B. da Carpi, Commentaria cum amplissimis additionibus super anatomiam mundini cum textu eiusdem in pristinum et verum nitorem redacto (Bononiae, 1521).

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Did the Reformation indeed bring into existence one or more forms of anatomizing that we can properly call 'Protestant'? To answer this question we need to ask: what would constitute a 'Protestant' form of anatomizing? In the first place it is necessary to stress that there was no change in the way that the human body was seen as the high-point of God's creation and as evidencing his wisdom and providence. If anything, this theme became more pronounced amongst Protestants. Similarly there was no change with respect to the position of anatomy as a branch of natural philosophy, at least in the university environment. Again, since the Reformation brought no radical reinterpretation of the nature or role of the soul (whether the immortal soul or the governing soul of some of the philosophers), there was no change in seeing the body as the instrument of the (divine) soul in its actions in this world: Protestants believed this as much as Catholics had done. However, I shall suggest here that there are at least three ways in which 'Protestant' versions of anatomy came into practice.5 1. The first innovation came about with the introduction of a new audience for anatomizing. With the Protestant universities, both Lutheran and Calvinist, we find that anatomy has a new role in the university philosophy course. This was something first introduced by Melanchthon in Wittenberg. Under the threat of radical Protestant movements in the 1520s, Melanchthon re-introduced natural philosophy into Wittenberg and thence into other reformed universities.6 First Melanchthon introduced Galenic anatomy in 1539; he felt it was necessary to restore teaching of the soul to the philosophy curriculum, and for this purpose brought back from disgrace Aristotle's De anima ("On the Soul"). In 1540 he wrote a commentary himself, called Commentarius de anima.1 In doing this Melanchthon was possibly the first person since Aristotle himself to treat the De anima as requiring a preliminary knowledge of anatomy. For Melanchthon maintains that it is not possible to understand the soul without understanding something of it in operation, i.e., its instrument, the body. "Galen praeclare dixit", Melanchthon wrote, "Anatomiae scientiam, ducem nobis esse ad Dei cognitionem."8 5 For a more extensive treatment of these issues see A. Cunningham, The Anatomical Renaissance: The Resurrection of the Anatomical Projects of the Ancients (Aldershot, 1997). The relation of religion to the anatomy and the investigation of nature in this period is explored in R. French, 'Natural Philosophy and Anatomy', in Le Corps a la Renaissance, eds. J. Ceard, M. M. Fontaine, J. C. Margolin (Paris, 1990), pp. 447-460, and S. F. Mason, 'The Scientific Revolution and the Protestant Reformation. 1. Calvin and Servetus in Relation to the New Astronomy and the Theory of the Circulation of the Blood. 2. Lutheranism in Relation to latrochemistry and the German Nature-Philosophy', in Annals of Science 9 (1953), pp. 64-87 and 154-175. 6 S. Kusukawa, The Transformation of Natural Philosophy. The Case of Philip Melanchthon [Ideas in Context 34] (Cambridge 1995). 7 Ph. Melanchthon, Commentarius de anima (Vitebergae, 1540). 8 Melanchthon, Commentarius, fol. lv-2r.

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Twelve years later Melanchthon issued a much revised version of this book under the title Liber de anima recognitus,9 and this he modified according to the findings of Vesalius, whose Fabrica had come out in the meantime.10 Through anatomy, Melanchthon now wrote, we see God "through a thick darkness",11 preparing ourselves for that day when we shall know Him face to face. The heart is the domicile of God, the brain is His temple.12 This kind of new philosophical interest in anatomy - as the necessary preliminary to understanding about the soul in the philosophy course was not, as far as we know, accompanied by any formal dissections. Instead, Melanchthon seems to have encouraged the university printer at Wittenberg to bring out two sheets, one of the male and one of the female body, to accompany this teaching. Flaps lifted up to reveal the inner organs. It was a very visual representation. Such teaching of anatomy as preliminary to discussion of the soul can be found in other universities where Melanchthon had influence, and also even in at least two Calvinist universities. For at Glasgow in the 1560s and Edinburgh in the 1580s, too, anatomy came to be taught in outline form in order to teach philosophy students the functioning of the instrument of the soul. This bringing of the philosophical role of anatomical knowledge to the centre of student teaching was a Protestant innovation. 2. The second dimension of anatomizing that I want to suggest is 'Protestant', is the anatomizing approach of the reformer of sixteenth-century anatomy, Andreas Vesalius. I am not claiming that Vesalius was a Protestant by religious persuasion: but I am claiming that his mode of approach to anatomizing, which was to be enormously significant in its own time and highly influential, was Protestant in its structure and characteristics. What I am referring to here in particular, when I speak of its 'Protestant' nature, is the dispute between Catholics and their new rivals the Protestants, over authority: where should one look for the proper source of authority? Thus, when Martin Luther argued against Eck at Worms, or against other opponents at other times, he rejected all forms of authority other than 'the Word'. The Word of God (that is, the Bible as interpreted by Luther) was to be preferred to centuries of tradition of the Catholic church, to the considered and venerated opinions of the Church fathers, to the dictate of the papal see. Here speaks Luther in The Freedom of a Christian on the role and power of 'the Word': 9

Ph. Melanchthon, Liber de anima, recognitus ab autore Philippo Melanth. (Vitaebergae, 1552), reprinted in Philippi Melanchthonis opera quae supersunt omnia, vols. 1-28 [= Corpus Reformatorum = CR], eds. K. G. Bretschneider, H. E. Bindseil (Halae Saxonum, Brunswigae, 1834-1860), vol. 13. 10 A. Vesalius, De humani corporis fabtica libri septem (Basileae, 1543). 11 CR 13, col. 57. 12 CR 13, cols. 57 and 71.

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ANDREW CUNNINGHAM One thing, and only one thing, is necessary for Christian life, righteousness and freedom. That one thing is the most holy Word of God, the gospel of Christ [...]. 'Men shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God'. Let us then consider it certain and firmly established that the soul can do without anything except the Word of God and that where the Word of God is missing there is no help at all for the soul. If it has the Word of God it is rich and lacks nothing since it is the Word of life, truth, light, peace, righteousness, salvation, joy, liberty, wisdom, power, grace, glory, and of every incalculable blessing.13

In an exactly similar way, when Andreas Vesalius argued against Professor Curtius at the demonstrations at Bologna in 1540, or against his old teacher Sylvius in later years, Vesalius rejected all forms of authority other than 'the body'. He rejected the authority of Galen and of all other anatomical writers, if they do not agree with 'the body'. "I am no anatomista", says Curtius to Vesalius in the middle of their very public quarrel in front of the students at Bologna as Vesalius pointed to a particular vein, "but there can well be still other veins nourishing the ribs and the muscles beyond these". "Where, I ask?", Vesalius demanded, "Show them to me".14 The body is to be the sole authority for Vesalius, whereas for Curtius the authority of Galen was superior and not to be challenged merely by what is visible in the body to the eyes of the anatomist. In the Fabrica too, Vesalius refers to the human body explicitly as a book from which one can directly read the truth. At one time he speaks about "paradoxes drawn from the non-lying book of the body",15 at another of awaiting an opportunity to dissect "this true book of ours, the human body - man himself who, because of his great abundance of remarkable things and the artifice of his Maker that he shows, is most worthy of being investigated.16 Making the text of the Bible or the text of the body one's sole authority enabled Luther the theologian and Vesalius the anatomist to see new things in their chosen books, both positive and negative things. On the negative side Luther could see that many of the Church's claims with respect both to doctrine and discipline had no biblical warrant. On the positive side, he could also (he believed) see that there were explicit duties laid on the Christian by the Bible, which the Church was not heeding. Vesalius too, looking at the text of the human body, on the negative side could see that certain things described by Galen from the body of the ape were simply not present. Equally, on the positive side, he could see that certain features not described 13

Luther's Works, eds. J. Pelikan, H. T. Lehmann, vol. 31, p. 345. Andreas Vesalius' First Public Anatomy at Bologna 1540, an Eyewitness Report by Baldasar Heseler, Together with His Notes on Matthaeus Curtius' Lectures on Anatomia Mundini, ed. R. Eriksson (Uppsala, 1959), pp. 272 f. 15 Vesal, Fabrica (cited above, n. 10), fol. 3v-4r. 16 A. Vesal, Anatomicarum Gabrielis Falloppii observationum examen (Venetiis, 1564), p. 171. 14

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by Galen from the body of the ape were indeed present in the human body. Another anatomist, this one certainly a Protestant by religious conviction, Renatus Henerus, rejected criticism from Sylvius, who had been Vesalius's teacher in Paris, saying that one should not trust "a Frenchman, German or Italian if they put their faith more in authority than in their own senses".17 This is a delicate area, and I should stress that I am not claiming that this 'Protestant' way of anatomizing is inherently more virtuous than the 'Catholic' way or superior to it. And later it was certainly the case that Catholics would introduce similar claims about the superiority of personal experience when arguing against other Catholics about Nature and its behaviour: I am thinking here primarily, of course, of that good Catholic Galileo in his arguments against the defenders of Catholic orthodoxy, the Vatican. So, in time the privileging of sense experience and reason over ancient authority was not to be exclusive to Protestants. But at the turning point of the Reformation, the period from about 1517 to about 1540, it seems to me that it was: indeed that the central claims of the Protestants about doctrine and discipline (at least in the case of the Lutherans and the Calvinists) and their authority to make such claims, were built on this very issue. 3. Finally I want to mention a third dimension to Protestant anatomizing. In this case I am referring to the attitudes toward anatomizing of someone who was an extreme Protestant - a 'spiritualist' - and who, from this religious position, believed that traditional anatomy had no meaning, role or value to the true physician, indeed that it was positively misleading. The true Christian physician needed to look not at the dissected human body, but elsewhere for knowledge of the true anatomy of man. I am referring here of course to Paracelsus. As a 'radical' Protestant, Paracelsus rejected the very form of authority to which Luther and his followers appealed: the written word of the Bible. For Paracelsus and his followers, the source of authority on all matters, religious and otherwise, lay within them. The Holy Spirit spoke to them personally: it literally inspired them. The inspired ones were repudiating external authority of all kinds and asserting that they themselves were arbiters of their own destiny. Paracelsus believed that only people who have the direct, inner, experience of the Spirit have real knowledge of God: and only those who have direct, inner, experience of things (res) have real knowledge of things. And this meant that in medicine too, only the Spirit gave true knowledge. In the view of Paracelsus this was the only route to a properly Christian kind of medicine. In Paracelsian medicine there was no room whatsoever for the anatomical tradition deriving from Galen, and which Ve17 R. Henerus, Adversus lacobi Sylvii depulsionum anatomicarum calumnias pro Andrea Vesalio apologia (Venetiis, 1555), as cited in R. French, William Harvey's Natural Philosophy (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 38 f.

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salius and his teachers were devoting themselves to recover, nurture, preach and practise. In this Greek tradition, anatomy was treated as the fundamental underpinning, both literally and metaphorically, of Galenic medicine. With the rejection of the heathen medicine of Galen, Paracelsus also rejected its anatomical tradition: It astonishes me that you set up the dead body as a ground of knowledge of what is useful for the living body, without considering that the essence, property, being and spiritual force (Kraft), which is the highest part of anatomy, have died and become corrupted [...]. Thus I warn you that if you ever wish to preserve the living body, not to seek its benefit in the dead.18

Paracelsus's views on harmony and wholeness did not accord with the Galenic views of 'part-ness' and cutting. The relation between cause and effect was quite different in the two approaches: where the Galenist looked for a geography of physical connections (structure, action, use), Paracelsus looked for a network of sympathetic relations connections spiritual not physical. An anatomist like Vesalius saw with his bodily eyes, Paracelsus with his spiritual eyes - by the light of nature. Intuition and faith held, for Paracelsus, the place that pointing with the finger and witnessing with the eyes held for Vesalius. The human body that Paracelsus saw bore no relation at all to the body that Vesalius saw. The body that Paracelsus saw could not be captured in a physical image. These are three ways in which some anatomizing became 'Protestant' in the early years of the Reformation: 1. by being made fundamental to the philosophical study of the soul in Protestant universities; 2. by taking the Lutheran challenge to authority as its model in seeking a ground of authority, as in the case of Vesalius, and hence preferring the text of the body to the text of the ancients: and 3. by rejecting altogether the tradition of anatomizing the body for the outward eyes, in favour of an anatomy of inner revelation, as with Paracelsus. Only further research will show whether there were, after the Reformation, further new traditions of research in anatomy which can authentically be recognized as Protestant.

18

As translated by H. L. Coulter, A Divided Legacy: A History of the Schism in Medical Thought, 3 vols. (Washington, 1973-1977), vol. 1, p. 407.

RELIGION AND MEDICINE: ANATOMICAL EDUCATION AT WITTENBERG AND INGOLSTADT

JURGEN HELM Introduction Research about the relationship between religion and medicine in the sixteenth century has produced contradictory results.1 Sixteen years ago Richard Toellner categorically denied that the confessional struggles had any effect on the medical faculties.2 As Toellner argues, the Wittenberg example demonstrates that medicine was completely untouched by the Reformation, because Martin Luther (1483-1546) was personally interested only in theology and the law, but not in medicine.3 A diametrically opposed view is maintained by Roger French and Andrew Cunningham. In their opinion, important innovations of sixteenthcentury medicine and their adoption by contemporaries were basically influenced by the Reformation and its consequences. French, for example, claims that the acceptance of the corrections of Galen's anatomy, as they were presented by Andreas Vesal (1514-1564) in his De humani corporis fabrica libri septem (1543), was primarily a matter of religious confession: "By the end of the sixteenth century, anatomy had split up into groups over the Vesalius affair. Many Catholics wanted to defend Galen and the learned tradition in general", while a "number of Protestants took the line that the individual's own duty to order his knowledge of God meant that authority 1 The following paper summarizes the results of two previous studies on Wittenberg and Ingolstadt anatomy, respectively. See J. Helm, '"Medicinam aspemari impietas est." Zum VerhSltnis von Reformation und akademischer Medizin in Wittenberg', in Sudhoffs Archiv 83 (1999), pp. 22-41, and id., 'Protestant and Catholic Medicine in the Sixteenth Century? The Case of Ingolstadt Anatomy', in Medical History 45 (2001), pp. 83-96. 2 R. Toellner, 'Die medizinischen Fakultaten unter dem EinfluB der Reformation', in Renaissance - Reformation. Gegenscitze und Gemeinsamkeiten [Wolfenbiitteler Abhandlungen zur Renaissanceforschung 5], ed. A. Buck (Wiesbaden, 1984), pp. 287-297, on p. 297: "In Wittenberg findet ein EinfluB der Reformation auf die Medizinische Fakultat nicht statt." 3 Toellner, 'Fakultaten', p. 294; see also G. Miihlpfordt, 'Das Naturliche bei Martin Luther (I)', in Medizin und Naturwissenschaften in der Wittenberger Reformationsara [Wissenschaftliche Beitrage der Martin-Luther-Universitat Halle-Wittenberg 82/7 (T 45)], eds. W. Kaiser, A. Volker (Halle, 1982), pp. 203-240, on p. 218.

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had to be given to personal observation".4 And considering the reasons of anatomical innovation in the sixteenth century, Andrew Cunningham suggests in his book The Anatomical Renaissance that Vesal himself was a Lutheran, because "his work in anatomical reform [was] replicating precisely Luther's work in religious reform".5 In the light of these contradictory positions, it would be fruitful to compare in detail the work and the writings of these sixteenth-century anatomists whose affiliations were unambiguously Catholic or Protestant. Were the Catholics - as French assumes - more conservative than their Protestant colleagues in adopting Vesal's corrections of the ancients? Was Vesal himself, who Cunningham supposes to have been a Lutheran, perceived as Protestant by contemporary Catholic anatomical teachers? And anyway, did anatomists of the sixteenth century connect their activities with religion,6 and are there any differences between Catholics and Protestants?7 The present paper deals with anatomical education at a Protestant and at a Catholic university.8 The Protestant orientation of Wittenberg University, which was founded in 1502, is out of question - the "Leucorea", Martin Luther's and Philipp Melanchthon's (1497-1560) academic home, was the starting point of the Reformation and served as a model for all universities joining the ranks of Protestantism.9 There is also no doubt that the University of Ingolstadt belonged to the Catholic camp. In the first half of the century its character was moulded by Johannes Eck (1486-1543) and his numerous writings. Eck had been appointed to a chair for theology in 1510 4 R. K. French, 'The Anatomical Tradition', in Companion Encyclopedia of the Histoiy of Medicine, vol. 1, eds. W. F. Bynum, R. Porter (London, New York, 1993), pp. 81-101, on p. 88. 5 A. Cunningham, The Anatomical Renaissance. The Resurrection of the Anatomical Projects of the Ancients (Aldershot, 1997), pp. 234 f. Cunningham's paper in the present volume is more reserved in claiming Vesal's putative Protestantism. 6 In his paper on 'Wittenberg Anatomy', Vivian Nutton points out that "Lutheran anatomists" focussed anatomical education on theological implications. But Nutton's paper does not define what was specifically 'Lutheran' in Wittenberg anatomy. See V. Nutton, 'Wittenberg Anatomy', in Medicine and the Reformation, eds. O. P. Grell, A. Cunningham (London, 1993), pp. 11-32. 7 Andrew Wear perceives interactions between Christian religion and anatomy, but does not distinguish between specifically Catholic and Protestant views on anatomical matters. See A. Wear, 'Medicine in Early Modem Europe, 1500-1700', in The Western Medical Tradition. 800 BC to AD 1800, eds. L. 1. Conrad, M. Neve, V. Nutton, R. Porter, A. Wear (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 215-361, on pp. 287-289. 8 In the sixteenth century the universities of the Empire had split up according to confession. See, for example, A. Seifert, 'Das hohere Schulwesen. Universitaten und Gymnasien', in Handbuch der deutschen Bildungsgeschichte, vol. 1:75. bis 17. Jahrhundert. Von der Renaissance und der Reformation bis zitm Ende der Glaubenskampfe, ed. N. Hammerstein (Munchen, 1996), pp. 197-374, on pp. 282-292, 312-329. 9 See G. A. Benrath, 'Die deutsche evangelische Universitat der Reformationszeit', in Universitat und Gelehrtenstand 1400-1800. Biidinger Vortrage 1966 [Deutsche Fiihrungsschichten in der Neuzeit 4], eds. H. Rossler, G. Franz (Limburg/Lahn, 1970), pp. 63-83.

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and turned out to be Luther's and Melanchthon's strongest academic opponent in the years after 1517.10 In 1550 the Bavarian Duke Albrecht V felt himself entitled to write to Pope Julius III that his University had been particularly firm "in sowing and planting of the Catholic faith and the orthodox doctrine".11 In the second half of the century the confessional orientation of the Ingolstadt University became even stronger, because it was more and more controlled by the Jesuits. Finally, in 1588, the Arts Faculty was completely taken over by the Society of Jesus.12 The universities' confessional orientation is reflected by the academic careers of several sixteenth-century graduates. The best known of them is Leonhart Fuchs (1501-1566), who left Ingolstadt twice for religious reasons before finally being appointed to a chair at the Protestant University of Tubingen.13 Veit Amerbach's (1503-1557) case was the exact opposite: He left Wittenberg because of irreconcilable theological differences with Luther and Melanchthon and made his way in Ingolstadt from 1543 on.14 After 1568, when (according to a papal instruction) the professio fidei tridentinum was required for all graduates at Ingolstadt, the orthodox faith of Ingolstadt teachers was constantly supervised.15 As a consequence, Philipp Apian (1531-1589) was no longer permitted to teach in the Arts Faculty because he refused the oath. But later, when teaching at the Protestant University of Tubingen, he was unlucky as well: In 1582 he opposed the Formula of Concord and lost a chair of mathematics for the second time because of theological reasons.16 To sum up, there is no doubt that confessional differences between Protestant and Catholic anatomical education must become evident by compar10 For a brief sketch of Eck's life and work see M. Weitlauff, 'Eck, Johannes', in Biographisclies Lexikon der Ludwig-Maximilians-UniversMt Miinchen, part 1: Ingolstadt-Landshut 1472-J826, eds. L. Boehm, W. Miiller, W. J. Smolka, H. Zedelmaier (Berlin, 1998), pp. 88-91. For the history of the University of Ingolstadt see C. Prantl, Geschichte der LudwigMaximilians-Universitat in Ingolstadt, Landshut, Miinchen, 2 vols. (Miinchen, 1872). 11 Quotation taken from Seifert, 'Schulwesen' (cited above, n. 8), p. 313. 12 See A. Liess, 'Die artistische Fakultat der Universitat Ingolstadt 1472-1588', in Die Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat in ihren Fakultdten, vol. 2, eds. L. Boehm, J. Sporl (Berlin, 1980), pp. 9-35, on pp. 26-33; and in ibid., A. Seifert, 'Die jesuitische Reform', pp. 65-89, on pp. 65-73. 13 About Fuchs see E. Stubler, Leonhart Fuchs. Leben und Werk (Miinchen, 1928), and (with detailed bibliographical information) F. Krafft, 'Fuchs, Leonhart', in Biographisches Lexikon der Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat Miinchen (cited above, n. 10), pp. 135-142. 14 See H. Flachenecker, 'Amerbach, Veit', in Biographisches Lexikon der LudwigMaximilians-Universitat Miinchen, pp. 10-11, and G. Frank, 'Veit Amerbach (1503-1557). Von Wittenberg nach Ingolstadt', in Melanchthon in seinen Schiilern [Wolfenbiitteler Forschungen 73], ed. H. Scheible (Wiesbaden, 1997), pp. 103-128. 15 See Prantl, Geschichte (cited above, n. 10), pp. 269-273, and L. Liess, Geschichte der medizinischen Fakultat in Ingolstadt von 1472 bis 1600 (Miinchen, 1984), p. 104. 16 About Philipp Apian see C. Schoner, 'Apian, Philipp', in Biographisches Lexikon der Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitat Miinchen (cited above, n. 10), pp. 16-18.

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ing Ingolstadt and Wittenberg academic medicine. Both of these universities were involved in the theological disputes from the very beginning, and their members not only had to teach, but also to prove their orthodox faith. To point out similarities and differences between Wittenberg and Ingolstadt anatomy, the present paper will, firstly, describe the relevance attributed to anatomy by Wittenberg teachers and, secondly, put the question, whether or not aspects of Wittenberg anatomy can be found at Ingolstadt University. Anatomy at Wittenberg An examination of Wittenberg medicine has to face the fact that it was not Martin Luther but Philipp Melanchthon who created the Protestant educational system.17 Convinced that the new religion could only flourish on the basis of classical education, Melanchthon had reorganized the Arts Faculty. His system of sciences, composed of languages, rhetoric, dialectic, natural sciences, ethics, and history, was adopted by all of the Protestant universities, and his textbooks, written for instruction in the Faculty of Arts made Melanchthon the "Praeceptor Germaniae", as he was later called.18 Even anatomy was touched by Melanchthon's educational programme, particularly because Melanchthon for himself was very interested in contemporary academic medicine.19 Melanchthon's devotion to medical subjects is clearly demonstrated by his declamations. Twenty-two of these academic orations, which were held by different Wittenberg teachers, deal with medical topics.20 There are, for 17 It is therefore not surprising that Toellner did not find any mutual influences between religion and medicine. His paper (cited above, n. 2) does not mention Melanchthon at all. 18 See W. Friedensburg, Geschichte der Universitiit Wittenberg (Halle, 1917), pp. 157-159; H. Ahrbeck, 'Melanchthon als Praeceptor Germaniae', in Philipp Melanchthon. Forschungsbeitrage zur vierhundertsten Wiederkehr seines Todestages dargeboten in Wittenberg I960, ed. W. Elliger (Berlin, 1961), pp. 133-148; P. Baumgart, 'Humanistische Bildungsreform an deutschen Universitaten des 16. Jahrhunderts', in Humanismus im Bildungswesen des 15. und 16. Jahrhunderts [Mitteilung der Kommission fur Humanismusforschung 12], ed. W. Reinhard (Weinheim, 1984), pp. 171-197, on pp. 185 f.; H. Scheible, 'Melanchthons Bildungsprogramm', in Lebenslehren und Weltentwurfe im Ubergang vom Mittelalter zur Neuzeit. Politik - Bildung - Naturkunde - Theologie [Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften in Gottingen, Phil. Hist. K.I., 3. Folge, Nr. 179], eds. H. Boockmann, B. Moeller, K. Stackmann (Gottingen, 1989), pp. 233-248. 19 For a brief sketch on this topic see W. U. Eckart, 'Philipp Melanchthon und die Medizin', in Melanchthon und die Naturwissenschaften seiner Zeit [Melanchthon-Schriften der Stadt Bretten 4], eds. G. Frank, S. Rhein (Sigmaringen, 1998), pp. 183-202; R.-D. Hofheinz, '"Die Medizin indes zu verachten ist nicht Dummheit, sondem Frevel": Melanchthon (1497-1560) und die arztliche Kunst', in Deutsche Medizinische Wochenschrift 125 (2000), pp. 436-439. 20 Melanchthon's medical declamations were recently translated and commented on by R.-D. Hofheinz, Philipp Melanchthon und die Medizin im Spiegel seiner declamationes medicae (Diss. Med. Heidelberg, 1998). See also H. Scheible, 'Melanchthons biographische Reden', in Biographie zwischen Renaissance und Barock: Zwolf Studien, ed. W. Berschin (Heidelberg,

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example, biographical texts about famous physicians like Hippocrates, Galen, or Avicenna, and there are some declamations following the humanist Laus artis medicae. One motif, however, occurs in most of these texts. In his oration De vita Avicennae Melanchthon writes: "The whole world order is a wonderful theatre, in which God wants to be looked at, and he wishes that the obvious testimonies of his presence, his wisdom, and his goodness will be considered here."21 When contemplating on the artful junction of the single parts of nature - Melanchthon points out - human reason has to accept the fact that our world is not a work of chance but is designed by a wisely acting creator.22 In the oration De dignitate artis medicae, which was presented by Melchior Fendt (1486-1564), Melanchthon asks: "What is more suitable for human beings than proving God's providence by looking for His testimonies in nature and then recognising Him as the creator?"23 And in the Encomium medicinae Melanchthon claims, that it would be foolish to despise the sciences. But disdaining medicine would be not only foolishness, but impiety.24 According to these short quotations, in Melanchthon's view the connection between observation of nature and knowledge of God was one of the main functions of academic medicine. This connection between nature study and knowledge of God was systematically elaborated in Melanchthon's Initia doctrina physicae, which were completed in 1549.25 As Melanchthon writes, the order of nature not only proves the existence of the prudent creator,26 but also shows His provi1993), pp. 73-96, on pp. 74-79. The sixteenth-century prints of Melanchton's declamations are listed in H. Koehn, Philipp Melanchthons Reden. Verzeichnis der im 16. Jahrhundert erschienenen Dnicke (Frankfurt a. M, 1985). In the present paper the declamations will be quoted according to Philippi Melanchthonis opera quae supersunt omnia, vols. 1-28 [= Corpus Reformatorum = CR], eds. K. G. Bretschneider, H. E. Bindseil (Halae Saxonum, Brunswigae, 1834-1860). 21 CR 11, col. 826: "Universa haec rerum natura mirandum theatrum est, in quo se Deus conspici, et expressa testimonia suae praesentiae, sapientiae, bonitatis, considerari voluit." 22 CR 11, col. 826. 23 CR 11, col. 809: "Quid est autem honestius et homini convenientius, quam in natura quaerentam vestigia divinitatis, confirmare veram de providentia sententiam, agnoscere Deum opificem, et custodem generis humani, [...]?" 24 CR 11, col. 199: "Stultitiam esse sentimus contemnere reliquas artes, quas humanum ingenium excogitavit. At Medicinam aspernari, non stultitia, sed impietas est." 25 Ph. Melanchthon, Initia doctrinae physicae (Vitebergae, 1549). I quote according to CR 13, cols. 179-412. A short introduction into Melanchthon's Initia doctrinae physicae is given by B. Bauer, 'Gott, Welt, Mensch und Steme in Melanchthons Initia doctrinae physicae', in Melanchthon und das Lehrbuch des 16. Jahrhunderts. Begleitband zur Ausstellung im Kulturhistorischen Museum Rostock, 25. April bis 13. Juli 1997 [Rostocker Studien zur Kulturwissenschaft 1], ed. J. Leonhardt (Rostock, 1997), pp. 149-172. See also S. Kusukawa, The Transformation of Natural Philosophy. The Case of Philip Melanchthon [Ideas in Context 34] (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 144-160, and C. Link, Schopfung. Schopfungstheologie in reformatorischer Tradition [Handbuch Systematischer Theologie 7/1] (Giitersloh, 1991), pp. 81-119. 26 CR 13, col. 200: "Ergo natura non extitit casu, sed a mente aliqua orta est, quae ordinem intelligit."

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dence and His goodness, because He created nature for the benefit of all living and particularly of all human beings.27 The opinion of Epicurus and Democritus, however, who regarded nature as the contingent result of incidental combinations of atoms, is passed off as being absurd.28 At first glance, Melanchthon's ideas of natural philosophy, as they are briefly sketched out here, do not look very ingenious. Just like many theologians before him, Melanchthon seems to conclude from the appearances of nature that there must be a wise and friendly God, who created all natural things and living beings.29 But however, between this simple kind oftheologia naturalis and Luther's Protestant theology there would be considerable differences. According to Luther, human reason alone is unable to gain real knowledge of God. In Luther's view, God himself and His intentions with His world reveal themselves only to those, who believe in the words of the Gospel. And it is only in the light of this belief, which is accorded to man by God sola gratia, that human beings are able to observe the vestigia Dei in nature.30 It is not surprising, therefore, that in the past some theologians criticised Melanchthon for giving up the core of Luther's Protestant theology and preparing the way for the rational theology of the eighteenth century.31 But this criticism overlooks the fact that Melanchthon in his writings constantly distinguishes philosophy from theology. Relying on Luther's distinction between the Gospel and law,32 Melanchthon maintains that answers given by natural philosophy regarding religious truth are limited and insufficient to describe adequately God's plans for mankind (soteriology) and His Trinity.33 In Melanchthon's view (and in agreement with Luther), theologi27

CR 13, col. 204. See Link, Schopfung (cited above, n. 25), pp. 84-87. CR 13, col. 191:"[...] eruditaphysica confirmat honestas opiniones in bonis mentibus de Deo et de providentia, ideoque Epicureos prorsus sustulisse providentiam adparet, quia veram et eruditam physicam aspemati sunt, et furenter finxerunt confusionem atomorum." 29 See W. Spam, 'Naturliche Theologie', in Theologische Realenzyklopadie [= TRE], vol. 24 (Berlin, New York, 1994), pp. 85-98, on pp. 85-88; H. Rosenau, 'Natur', in TRE 24, pp. 99-107, on pp. 100-103; K. Gloy, 'Naturphilosophie', in TRE 24, pp. 119-132, on pp. 123126. 30 See D. Lofgren, Die Tlieologie der Schopfung bei Luther (Gottingen, 1960); Link, Schopfung (cited above, n. 25), pp. 27-80; G. Ebeling, Luther. Einjuhrung in sein Denken (Tubingen, 1964), pp. 259-279. 31 See G. Frank, Die theologische Philosophic Philipp Melanchthons (1497-1560) [Erfurter theologische Studien 67] (Leipzig, 1995), pp. 28 f., and his critical review on pp. 185 f. 32 CR 13, col. 198: "Ut autem in doctrina Ecclesiae, necesse est saepe commonefieri homines de discrimine Legis et Evangelii, ita hie praemoneo auditores, physicam de Deo notitiam, esse Legis notitiam, non Evangelii." See also Kusukawa, Transformation (cited above, n. 25), pp.165-167. 33 CR 13, col. 199: "Tenenda est igitur physica aliqua definitio, congruens naturali iudicio et demonstrationibus. Talis est haec Platonica: Deus est mens aeterna, causa boni in natura. Hanc definitionem sciamus physicam esse, quae etsi multa complectitur, adfirmat enim, Deum non esse corpus, sed mentem aeternam, immensae potentiae, sapientiae, bonitatis, veracem, iustam, et conditricem bonarum rerum, tamen tenuior est, quam definitio Ecclesiae necessaria, 28

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cal statements of this kind need a foundation in the words of the Gospel.34 Nevertheless, Melanchthon considers natural philosophy very important: It produces rational evidence for defeating Epicurean materialism and for disproving the Stoics' belief in fate and should therefore be pursued despite its limitations.35 It must be pointed out that - strictly speaking - Melanchthon does not constitute a 'natural theology'. In his view, the study of nature cannot replace the word of the Gospel and cannot be regarded as a sufficient source of revelation. But, nevertheless, in Melanchthon's view natural philosophy verifies and confirms the biblical truth and is therefore useful for the rationabilitas of revelation.36 There was a close connection between Melanchthon's natural philosophy and those parts of medicine which deal with the structure and functions of the human body. Consequently, at Wittenberg anatomy was not only looked upon as a fundamental medical discipline, but as a subject worth of study by all Christians. In his declamation De doctrina anatomica, which Jakob Milich (1501-1559) gave as a lecture in 1550, Melanchthon claims that anatomy can be considered as a nutrix, as a 'provider', of many virtues. The first of them would be that anatomy helps to realize God's existence: The construction of the human body would prove that man is not accidentally but intentionally composed, and therefore man himself furnishes proof of God's providence.37 And the oration De vita Galeni points out Galen's "divine anatomical books": Not only students of medicine, but all those attracted by philosophy should read them, for Galen had wisely said that anatomical education would be the beginning of theology and an access to the knowledge of God.38 But at Wittenberg great importance was attributed to anatomy not only because of its closeness to natural philosophy, but also in the context of Melanchthon's anthropology, which was best formulated in his book Commentarius de anima. First published in 1540,39 it was one of the most read books at Wittenberg University. On the first pages Melanchthon explains in qua Deus patefecit tres Personas, et arcanam voluntatem de colligenda Ecclesia aeterna, et de remissione peccatorum." 34 CR 13, cols. 199f. 35

CR 13, col. 191; see Bauer, 'Gott' (cited above, n. 25), pp. 161-163. See Frank, Philosophic (cited above, n. 31), pp. 231 f. 37 CR 11, col. 941: "Nutrix est multarum virtutum haec ipsa aspectio aedificii multarum in nobis partium. Et quia prima virtus est, agnitio Dei opificis, valde confirmatur adsensio de providentia, cum admirandam artem, in tola fabricatione hominis consideramus". 38 CR 11, col. 501: "Hoc tempore inquit se scripsisse divinos illos libros anatomicos qui extant, qui quidem non solum Medicinae studiosis, sed omnibus Philosophiae amantibus in manibus esse debent; profecto enim praecipua pars est Philosophiae, doctrina de partibus humani corporis et earum officiis. [...]. Itaque sapientissime Galenus inquit, doctrinam anatomicam initium esse Theologiae, et aditum ad agnitionem Dei". 39 Ph. Melanchthon, Commentarius de anima (Vitebergae, 1540). 36

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why teaching about the soul requires anatomical information: Because it would be impossible to understand completely the nature of the soul, the teaching has to rely on the soul's visible actions. Starting from these actions, one can draw conclusions about the soul's basic abilities (potentiae animae) and thus acquire some knowledge about the nature of the soul.40 But this process of cognizing the soul needs detailed information about the parts and the organs of the human body, by which the soul performs its actions.41 To sum up, in Melanchthon's view the empirical foundation of his teaching about the soul depends mainly on anatomy. Consequently more than half of his Commentarius de anima deals with human anatomy, and hence his book differs basically from other sixteenthcentury textbooks about the soul. It is true that in these books the structure of some parts of the body is dealt with incidentally,42 but in none of these works do we find a turn to anatomical information in any way comparable with Melanchthon's attention to anatomy. In the Commentarius de anima Melanchthon's description of human anatomy is mainly based on Galen. As I have shown elsewhere, the anatomical and physiological passages of this book go back to at least fifteen different writings by Galen, which are quoted in the original Greek or paraphrased in Latin.43 Later, in the new edition of his De anima, published as Liber de anima in 1552,44 Melanchthon explicitly points out the value of Vesal's Fabrica.45 Some of Vesal's new anatomical findings were adopted by Melanchthon, but it is obvious that he handled these corrections of his De anima with great care. Melanchthon avoided playing Vesal off against Galen and endeavoured not to shake Galen's position as medical authority despite the shortcomings and mistakes in the latter's anatomical books.46 Nevertheless, an important role was attributed to Melanchthon's Liber de

40

Melanchthon, Commentarius, fols. Ir-lv: "Etsi enim substancia Animae non satis perspici potest, tamen viam ad eius agnitionem monstrant actiones. Itaque cum de actionibus dicendum erit, potenciae seu vires discernuntur, describentur organa, qua in re simul tota coiporis, ac praecipue humani, natura explicanda est. Itaque haec pars, non solum de anima, sed de tota natura hominis, inscribi debebat." 41 Melanchthon, Commentarius, fol. 21r: "Frustra autem de potentiis dicitur, nisi & organa monstrentur, quod cum faciemus, propemodum tota corporis humani descriptio inserenda erit." 42 See K. Park, 'The Organic Soul', in The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, ed. Ch. B. Schmitt (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 464-484, on pp. 482-484. 43 See J. Helm, 'Die Galenrezeption in Melanchthons De anima (1540/1552)', in Medizinhistorisches Journal 31(1996), pp. 298-321. 44 Ph. Melanchthon, Liber de anima, recognitus ab Autore Philippo Melanth. (Vitaebergae, 1552). In the present paper the Liber de anima is quoted according to CR 13. 45 CR 13, cols. 21,24,31,41,62. 46 See Helm, 'Galenrezeption' (cited above, n. 43), pp. 316-319.

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anima in establishing Vesal's anatomy at German universities by several medical historians.47 It is crucial for the rank of anatomical education at the University of Wittenberg that in his De anima Melanchthon tries to explain the condition of man after the Fall with the help of contemporary anatomy and physiology. In this he relies on the Platonic-Galenic tripartition of the soul, which locates reason in the brain, affects in the heart, and natural instincts in the liver, and on Galen's ideas about the effects of the so-called spiritus (or •nveufjuna in Greek) in the human body. As Melanchthon writes, in man there was originally a perfect harmony between knowledge, will, and affects automatically congruent with God's will and His law.48 But now, after the Fall, the knowledge of God has been darkened and the affects are aimlessly wandering around and sweeping the will along with them.49 This is the situation of man, which can - as Melanchthon argues - only be mended by God, who alone is able to restore the old order: God's word impresses man's reason, renewing man's knowledge of God, and His spiritus sanctus blends with the spiritus in the heart of man, and thus renews the affects, which then correspond with God's will.50 47 See M. Roth, Andreas Vesalius Bruxellensis (Berlin, 1892), pp. 244 f., V. Fossel, 'Philipp Melanchthons Beziehungen zur Medizin', in Zwanzig Abhandlungen zur Geschichte der Medizin. Festschrift fur Hermann Baas (Hamburg, Leipzig, 1908), pp. 33-40, on pp. 37 f.; H.-Th. Koch, 'Melanchthon und die Vesal-Rezeption in Wittenberg', in Melanchthon und die Naturwissenschaften (cited above, n. 19), pp. 203-218. 48 CR 13, col. 169: "Fuit autem ante peccatum talis imago, ut potentiae omnes congruerent cum Deo. In intellectu fulsit firma Dei noticia, voluntas et cor congruebant cum Deo, id est, habebant rectitudinem et iusticiam congruentem cum Deo, et libertas voluntatis non erat impedita." See also CR 13, cols. 163-164: "Deus condidit in homine potentias adpetentes, quae si natura hominum integra mansisset, tantum ordinatos motus habuissent, et fuisset dulcissima harmonia potentiarum inter se congruentium. [...]. Et hae adpetitiones et hi adfectus omnes fuissent ordinati, congruentes ad legem mentis, imo etiam accensi ab ipso Spiritu sancto, qui suas flammas miscuisset spiritibus natis in corde et in cerebro." 49 CR 13, col. 164: "Sed haec suavissima harmonia turbata est lapsu primorum parentum. Nunc sunt quidem adpetitiones et adfectus, sed vagantur et longe aberrant a lege Dei, et in non renatis non sunt accensi a Spirito sancto." See also CR 13, col. 163: "Horribiliter enim haec hominum natura languefacta est. In mente caligo est de Deo, et magnum chaos dubitationum. Voluntas aversa est a Deo, non timet Deum, non ardet fiducia et dilectione Dei, negligit aut tristi fremitu fugit eum. Corda varie errantibus adfectibus aliis atque aliis incenduntur, et voluntatem secum rapiunt." 50 CR 13, col. 171: "Hie igitur filius aeterni patris, Dominus noster lesus Christus nobis donatus est, ut [...] sit sacerdos perpetuus, colligens Ecclesiam voce Evangelii, in qua decretum de reconciliatione patefecit, quod et ipse cum sit Aoyog aeterni patris, in mentibus nostris effatur, et ostendit nobis patrem placatum, ac Spiritum sanctum effundit in corda nostra, ut vero amore et laeticia cum aetemo patre et ipso copulemur. Ita restituitur in nobis vita et iusticia aeterna, et renovatur imago Dei verbo lucente in mente, ut agnitio Dei sit clarior et firmior, et Spiritu sancto accedente motus congruentes cum Deo in voluntate et corde." The role of the spiritus is explained by Melanchthon in a previous chapter: "Spiritu vitali et animali actiones praecipuae efficiuntur, vitae conservatio, nutritio, generatio, deinde sensus, motus, cogitatio, adfectus in corde. [...]. Et, quod mirabilius est, his ipsis spiritibus in hominibus piis miscetur ipse divinus spiritus, et effecit magis fulgentes divina luce, ut agnitio Dei sit illustrior, et adsen-

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These statements would lack their empirical foundation, if Melanchthon had not precisely shown in the previous chapters of his book how the spiritus are prepared in the human heart by refining the blood,51 how the internal senses of the brain work and are connected to the external senses,52 or how the affects are evoked by certain movements of the heart and changes of the spiritus.53 And for understanding these basic functions it is necessary to have some knowledge about the rough anatomy of the body, e.g., the attribution of the organs to the three body cavities, the structures and functions of the single parts of the body, and the connections between them. Concerning the Protestant distinction between Gospel and Law, Melanchthon's anthropology plays - just like his natural philosophy - the part of the Law. The rational knowledge about the condition of man after the Fall is theologically subordinated to the Gospel: It solely intends to prove man's great and absolute dependency on divine grace, which is not at the disposal of man's reasoning. Only in his doctrine about the spiritus and the effects of the Holy Spirit, which he does not develop until the Liber de anima, does Melanchthon's approach come close to a reasonable explanation of divine action. There is no doubt that Melanchthon's integration of anthropology into Protestant doctrine affected anatomical education. Information about the structure and functions of the human body was an important part of this anthropology, and hence anatomy was considered useful not only for the medical sciences, but also (and perhaps mainly) for the self-knowledge of man. Therefore it is not surprising that anatomy was regarded as a basic discipline for all students, not only for the few training to be physicians. This fact is proved by announcements of lectures on Melanchthon's De anima held in the faculty of arts, in which the importance of anatomical education is often pointed out.54 That Melanchthon's conception of anatomy made inroads also into the medical faculty, is to be supposed because lectures about De anima were often given by those Masters of Arts who some years later rose to become professors at the medical faculty. Sebastian Dietrich (died about 1576) and Bartholomaus Schonborn (1530-1585), for instance, were

sio firmior, et motus sint ardentiores erga Deum." (CR 13, cols. 88 f.). - See D. P. Walker, 'Medical spirits and God and the soul', in Spiritus. IV. Colloquio Internazionale (Rome, 7-9 January 1983) [Lessico Intellettuale Europeo 32], eds. M. Fattori, M. Bianchi (Roma, 1984), pp. 223-244; J. Helm, 'Die spiritus in der medizinischen Tradition und in Melanchthons Liber de anima', in Melanchthon und die Nalurwissenschaften (cited above, n. 19), pp. 219-237. 51 CR 13, cols. 88 f. 52 CR 13, cols. 120-122. 53 CR 13, cols. 125-129. 54 Announcements of lectures held at Wittenberg University between 1540 and 1569 were collected and published in the seven volumes of the Scripta publice proposita (1560-1572).

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appointed to chairs of medicine in the 1570s55 - both of them had lectured about Melanchthon's De anima in the 1540s and 1550s, respectively.56 We may assume that this personnel continuity guaranteed a continuity of doctrine. Moreover, Jakob Milich lectured about De anima in 1540, after he had joined the Medical Faculty four years ealier.57 To summarize, at Wittenberg anatomy was taught within the framework of Protestant theology in two respects: firstly, it was an important constituent of Melanchthon's natural philosophy, which intended to prove the biblical truth and to defend it from godless heresies. And secondly, it was an integral part of Melanchthon's anthropology, which aimed to explain the condition of man after the Fall. Hence, Wittenberg anatomy was not merely a medical discipline, but (as taught in the Arts Faculty) part of the basic training of all students. Not only physicians, but also future theologians and lawyers were confronted with anatomical information.58 As for anatomical innovation, Wittenberg anatomy was up-to-date. There was a great willingness to adopt new findings, but without totally rejecting the ancients. In his Liber de anima Melanchthon, to a large extent, still adhered to Galen, although he did supplement Galenic anatomy with some of Vesal's findings. And the statutes of the Wittenberg Medical Faculty, which were set up in 1572, determined that anatomy had to be taught according to the ancients, particularly Galen, and according to recent authors like Vesal and Fallopius, who had corrected the mistakes made in previous centuries.59

55

About Dietrich see Friedensburg, Geschichte (cited above, n. 18), p. 280 and p. 304. Schonbom is portrayed in H.-Th. Koch, 'Bartholoma'us Schonborn (1530-1585). Melanchthons de anima als medizinisches Lehrbuch', in Melanchthon in seinen Schtilern (cited above, n. 14), pp.323-339. 56 Scriptorum publice propositorum a professoribus in Academia Witebergensi ab anno 1540 usque ad annum 1553, vol. 1 (Witebergae, 1560), fol. 177r-178r; Scriptorum publice propositorum a gubernatoris studiorum in Academia Witebergensi, vol. 4 (Witebergae, 1561), fol. 66r-67v. 57 Script, publ. prop. \ (cited above), fol. 24r-25r. 58 See Nutton, 'Wittenberg Anatomy' (cited above, n. 6), p. 23. 59 According to the statutes, anatomical education was one of the duties of the third Professor of medicine: "Tertius tractabit anatomiam et doctrinam de simplicium alimentorum et medicamentorum differentiis ac viribus et in sectionibus corporum atque cognitione simplicium exercebit auditores pro temporum ratione ac praestabit ut, quae de anatome a veteribus, ut Galeno, et recentioribus, ut Vesalio et Fallopio, quaeque de medicina simplici accurate perscripta sunt et superioris seculi errores corrigunt, versentur in manibus discentium." Quotation taken from Urkitndenbuch der Universitat Wittenberg, part 1: 1502-1611 [Geschichtsquellen der Provinz Sachsen und des Freistaates Anhalt NS 3], ed. W. Friedensburg (Magdeburg, 1926), pp. 381 f.

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Anatomy at Ingolstadt For the first half of the sixteenth century, there is only little evidence of periodically performed dissections and a regular anatomical education at Ingolstadt. We are much better informed about the second half of the century. In 1555 the visitation report of a committee, which did not flatter the faculty, resulted in a ducal order that the medical students should be educated both theoretically and practically. The professors were admonished to present their patients to the students and to perform anatomical dissections of male and female human bodies periodically.60 The mention of anatomizing in this context suggests that such dissections were not usually performed at the time. But the ducal message was partly understood, as a curriculum proves, which was probably written between 1556 and 156061 and sent to the University of Freiburg several years later.62 "Non enim imaginaria est philosophia, sed autopsiam vel autaisthesin desiderat medicina". "Medicine requires sensual perception", and for this reason - as the curriculum says - a skeleton should be obtained for teaching the osseous structure. This sounds Vesalian, but in fact the passage ends with a strong reference to Galen: He has - as the text goes on - principally condemned the idle, inconsistent and harmful opinions based on Aristotelian philosophy, which should not be taught by the professors.63 In general, this curriculum can serve as a model for sixteenth-century Hippocratism and Galenism. In the text Galen himself is called "docendi atque discendi praestantissimus magister".64 Hence, the curriculum lists more than 120 writings by Hippocrates and Galen as set texts to be read by medical students. It seems clear that this catalogue of works reflects the ideal concept of a humanist physician rather than the reality of medical education, but what is striking is that for the author of the curriculum, presumably Johann Ammonius Agricola (1488-1570), there was obviously no con-

60 Liess, Geschichte (cited above, n. 15), p. 284: "Sy [the medical professors] sollen verrer, so offt mans gelegentlich bekhommen mag, anathomias fumemen und in dem alien den auditoribus tam universal! quam particulari virilis et muliebris corporis anathomia einen augenscheinlichen gutten bericht thun. Do es auch on beschwerung der patienten beschechen khan, sollen sy die auditores zu zeiten mitt fiieren und also die practic neben der theorie lernen." See also Liess, Geschichte, pp. 76 f. 61 Ibid., pp. 78-80. 62 About this curriculum see E. Th. Nauck, 'Der Ingolstadter medizinische Lehrplan aus der Mitte des 16. Jahrhunderts', in Sudhoffs Archiv 40 (1956), pp. 1-15, and Liess, Geschichte (cited above, n. 15), pp. 77-86. 63 Nauck, 'Lehrplan', p. 12: "Opiniones inanes, absurdas et noxias, quales multae sunt ex Aristotelis philosophia ortae, ac quaedam ab ipso Galeno passim damnatae, non serio tuebuntur professores." 64 Ibid., p. 13.

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tradiction between Galenism and personal observation.65 Consequently, the skeleton mentioned in the curriculum was bought for the faculty in 1564 by Ammonius,66 who, by the way, not only in the catalogue, but also in his writings turned out to be a convinced Galenist.67 A somewhat different picture emerges from a catalogue of lectures printed in 1571. A whole chapter of this catalogue is devoted to anatomical education,68 in which the need for sensual perception is emphasized. In this context the acquired skeleton is pointed out because it could help viewers to understand the connection of the bones and the course of the muscles. Moreover, the practical skill as well as the theoretical knowledge of the anatomists is dealt with: dissection is called "corporis humani pulcherrimae fabricae orthotomia", and it is to be performed not by barbers, but by the professors themselves, who alone are able to show the students "exactissime" the appearance, texture, location, size, substance, and the connections of the single parts.69 In my view, this passage is more than a vague allusion to Vesal. Although no anatomical author is explicitly mentioned, we may conclude that Vesal's De humani corporis fabrica libri septem form the background of this chapter on anatomical education. This assumption is confirmed by the writings of the two professors teaching at the medical faculty in 1571, who were responsible for this catalogue of medical lectures. Both of them, Adam Landau (died 1573) and Johann Lonaeus Boscius (1515-1585), praise Vesal lavishly in their publications. Boscius, for example, writes in his Oratio de optima medico & medicinae autoribus that in anatomy Vesal surpasses not only the Arabs but also all the ancients.70 And in his introduction to Laurentius Gryll's De sapore dulci et amaro, which was published by Adam Landau in 1566, Landau explicitly points out Vesal, Columbus, Valverde and Fallopius, because these anatomists - as he writes - have more than compensated for the shortcomings of

65 According to the curriculum, dissections should be performed regularly: "Virorum quoque ac mulierum quotannis unam, aut plures, data occasione, anatomias facient, unanimi consensu professores." (Nauck, 'Lehrplan', p. 13). - The curriculum proves Wear's statement that "a true Galenic anatomy could be critical and progressive", because "Galen himself had written that anatomy could be improved by observation." (Wear, 'Medicine' [cited above, n. 7], p. 272). 66 Liess, Geschichte (cited above, n. 15), p. 87. 67 Ibid., pp. 131-135. 68 Ibid., pp. 300-302. 69 Ibid., p. 301. 70 J. L. Boscius, 'Oratio de optimo medico & medicinae autoribus', in Tomus primus orationum Ingolstadiensium, in quo gravissimae & utilissimae, omnium facultatum materiae, suis quaeque distinctae partibus, continentur, a clarissimis & doctissimis eiusdem Academiae Professor ibus, alUsque eruditis viris partim scriptae. partim ab ipsis vel aliis recilataee, ed. V. Rotmar (Ingolstadii, 1571), fols. 268r-276r, on fol. 275v: "In anatomia Vesalius non Arabes modo, sed cunctos veteres superavit."

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the Greeks caused by their lack of human bodies.71 In light of these facts I think it not only chance that from 1571 onwards we have records of dissections being performed at the Medical Faculty. According to Siegfried Hoffmann, the bodies of nine executed criminals were transferred to the faculty to be anatomized between 1571 and 1588.72 And in 1576 Duke Albrecht V renewed the order to the municipal council that after an execution the corpses should immediately be delivered to the faculty.73 Hence, anatomizing was not only called for, but actively practised in the years after 1571. Obviously in Ingolstadt the adoption of Vesalian anatomy was not hindered by the teachers' Catholic faith. Adam Landau as well as Johann Lonaeus Boscius were 'good Catholics'. This is proved not only by the fact that they taught at Ingolstadt for quite a long time (Landau for twelve, Boscius even for 27 years),74 but also by further evidence. The catalogue of lectures, for example, claims that just as in the Faculties of Theology and Law, so too, in the Medical Faculty a restoration of the old doctrine is necessary to protect medicine against the odd opinions and obvious deceptions of certain modern authors.75 The old medicine, which should be striven for and which could counter the attack of the Paracelsists, may - as the text says properly be called 'Catholic medicine'.76 In opposition to Arno Seifert's objection which rejects a confessional interpretation of 'Catholic' in this context,77 I am sure that 'Catholic' here refers precisely to the confessional schism in the sixteenth century. This assumption is supported by Landau's

71 A. Landau, 'Epistola dedicatoria', in L. Gryllus, De sapore dulci et amaro (Pragae, 1566): "Sed, cum ille [i.e., Galenus] corpora hominum non secuerit, longe plus lucis & certitudinis huic cognitioni labore & assiduo studio recentiorum quorundam accessisse. Quod igitur a Graecis olim propter inopiam cadaverum humanorum fuit praetermissum, id Vesalius, Realdus Columbus, lohannes Valverde, Gabriel Fallopius, & alii praestantes anatomici tanto cum foenore recompensarunt, ut in hac medicinae parte declaranda nihil propemodum amplius desyderari posse videatur." 72 S. Hofmann, 'Leichensektionen im 16. Jahrhundert in Ingolstadt', in Sammelblatt des Historischen Vereins Ingolstadt 83 (1974), pp. 284-286. 73 Liess, Geschichte (cited above, n. 15), p. 305. 74 Ibid., pp. 139-142. 75 Ibid., p. 298: "Mirum profecto non est, si non solum in hac celebri schola cum conservanda, turn aliquo modo restauranda theologiae ac iurisprudentiae professores suis praeclarissimis disciplinis optime prospectum cupiant, sed medicinae quoque doctores conspirantibus sententiis in id sedulo incumbant, ut vetustioris solidiorisque medicinae integritas tarn contra pravas vulgi opiniones, quam adversus recentiorum quorundam apertas calumnias sarta tectaque asseratur." 76 Ibid.: "[Adamus Landavus] qui quicquid iam longo tempore diversis in academiis Germaniae atque Italiae praestantissimorum virorum institutione sibi doctrinae vel experientiae comparavit, id universum discipulis sciendi cupidis optima fide communicaturus est, veteremque medicinam, quam non immerito catholicam appellare licebit, ea semper explicabit industria, ut [...] falsitas autem medicinae Paracelsicae principiis quibusdam imaginariis exstructae, constantibus argumentis subversa corruat [...]." 77 Seifert, 'Schulwesen' (cited above, n. 8), p. 354, n. 195.

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oration De cormptionis artium causa, & antithesi veteris & novae medicinae, which was delivered in 1568.78 In his speech Landau establishes - very polemically - a link between Luther's Reformation and Paracelsus's challenge to the medical world. As Landau argues, Luther was the first to attack traditional teaching in schools and universities and thereby to damage the unity and the context of the sciences.79 Landau then describes the negative consequences Luther's attack had for law,80 philosophy,81 and medicine. According to Landau, medicine had been given by God to the primi parentes, and in temporal succession up to Landau's time medicine had become more extensive and more reliable and had been formed to an art.82 Particularly Hippocrates and Galen were involved in this process.83 In Landau's view, however, Paracelsus despises this old medicine and places himself outside the tradition.84 His confused doctrine is therefore propagated by people whom the religious and public authorities do not permit to teach, and hence it is taught not at the universities, but "in angulis", in the corners.85 One aspect of this oration should be particularly pointed out: Landau constructs, it is true, an antagonism between traditional and 'Catholic' medicine on the one hand and new and 'Protestant' medicine on the other. But this confessional antagonism is not - as French has suggested86 - constructed along a line between Galen and Vesal, but between traditional medicine and Paracelsianism. If, in addition, we consider the evidence for Landau's and Boscius' adoption of Vesalian anatomy, the implications of these findings are obvious: In the view of these Ingolstadt professors, Vesal was not a reformer who needed to be singled out as one of Luther's adherents intending to shake the grounds of the medical world. On the contrary: Vesal was regarded as belonging to that traditional medicine which had been given by God and which had been successively improved from the first days of God's world. In other words: Landau's Catholicism does not imply that he was uncritically clinging to ancient authorities like Hippocrates and Galen. As Landau writes in the above-mentioned introduction of Gryll's De 78 A. Landau, 'Oratio de corruptionis artium causa, & antithesi veteris & novae medicinae', in Rotmar, Orationes (cited above, n. 70), fol. 285r-299v. 79 Ibid., fol. 286v-288r. 80 Ibid., fol. 288v-289r. 81 Ibid., fol. 289v. 82 Ibid., fol. 291r "Nam simul ac Deus hanc mundi machinam creavit, singulisque naturis vim qandam indidit, quae vel obesset, vel prodesset hominum generi, eo statim temporis momento medicinam quoque coli et observari voluit, praecepitque primis parentib. ut earn colerent & exercerent, quae deinceps continuata temporum serie ad nos usque pluribus in locis auction & locupletior, & in artis formam redacta, pervenit." 83 Ibid., fol. 291r. 84 Ibid., fol.291r-291v. 85 Ibid., fol. 295v-296r. 86 Cited above, n. 4.

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sapore, medical art is too broad to be constructed and perfected by only one human being because of the shortness of human life.87 Therefore Galen's medicine was amplified and corrected in many ways,88 and it would be absolutely wrong to devote oneself slavishly to Galen's words.89 To summarize, instead of absolutely clinging to the ancients, Landau insists on a medical tradition, which he states to be the Catholic one. While Protestantism is claimed to be a threat to this old tradition, Vesal and other recent anatomists are considered part of Catholic medicine, which has been successively completed and improved from the very beginning. What is striking, however, is that Landau does not mind that exactly the same medical tradition was cultivated at Wittenberg and at several Protestant universities.90 Do these findings imply that there is no difference for the students between learning anatomy in Ingolstadt and in Wittenberg? As the abovementioned statutes of the Wittenberg medical faculty show, with respect to the authorities consulted in anatomical education there was no difference between Wittenberg and Ingolstadt. But, nevertheless, I think - and will try to show this at the end of this paper - that a distinction between Wittenberg and Ingolstadt can be made. As shown in the previous chapter, at Wittenberg anatomy was considered to be part of a Lutheran philosophical education established by Melanchthon during the first half of the century. This integration of anatomy into Protestant thought resulted in an anatomical education, which, in stressing the importance of anatomy for theological reasons, was taught to all students in the Arts Faculty, based to a large extent on Melanchthon's De anima. In Ingolstadt, however, anatomy was - as far as the sources suggest - never taught in the Faculty of Arts. We may assume that around 1550, the teaching on the soul was in accordance with Veit Amerbach's Quatuor libri de anima,91 which only incidentally deal with the human body. Later, when the Jesuits 87

Landau, 'Epistola' (cited above, n. 71): "Certe [...] ars per se longa ac difficilis ob vitae brevitatem ab uno homine simul inchoari & perfici nequit." 88 Ibid.: "Quin etiam res ipsa testatur, post aetatem Galeni medicam artem in pluribus locis non mediocriter auctam, amplificatam & excultam fuisse." 89 Landau ridicules certain (unnamed) contemporaries, who "ex Galeno Deum quendam faciunt, qui nunquam erraverit" ('Epistola'). 90 As Stefan Rhein showed convincingly, the so-called "Wittenberger Paracelsismus", stated by Heinrich Haeser and later by Wolfram Kaiser, lacks any textual foundation. See S. Rhein, 'Melanchthon und Paracelsus', in Parerga Paracelsica. Paracelsus in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart, ed. J. Telle (Stuttgart, 1991), pp. 57-73. But this is not to say that sixteenthcentury Protestantism was absolutely unaffected by Paracelsianism: The rapid spread of Paracelsus's writings and ideas from around 1570 on was mainly due to Protestant court physicians, see A. Wear, 'Medicine' (cited above, n. 7), p. 317, and H. Trevor-Roper, 'The Court Physician and Paracelsianism', in Medicine at the Courts of Europe, 1500-1837, ed. V. Nutton (London, New York, 1990), pp. 79-94. 91 V. Amerbach, Quatuor libri de anima (Argentorati, 1542).

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were extending their influence to the Arts Faculty, anatomical education of the youngest students seems to have been even more unlikely. According to Loyola's Constitutiones, the teaching of medicine should not be performed by members of the Society of Jesus.92 Therefore, it is not astonishing that in the second half of the century the Ingolstadt discussion of De anima as part of traditional Aristotelian philosophy included only the most necessary anatomical essentials.93 The second aspect of Wittenberg anatomy, its conformity in stressing the theological framework of anatomical knowledge, is absent at Ingolstadt as well. This is not to say that at Ingolstadt anatomical education was performed for purely practical reasons, as the 1571 catalogue of lectures might suggest. In this text, anatomy is first and foremost regarded as necessary for surgery,94 and something like an overriding philosophical or theological background is definitely not mentioned. On the contrary, there are some texts written by Ingolstadt medical professors which put anatomical knowledge into the wider framework of sixteenth-century theology and philosophy, but these writings do not form such a uniform picture as the Wittenberg anatomical texts. Johann Ammonius Agricola, for example, uses anatomy for a moral call on the students to keep discipline and not to hurt each other. In his oration De praestantia corporis humani, which was held in 1561,95 this appeal is founded on a long elaboration about the microcosm of the human body, which is claimed to correspond to the macrocosm of the political state. The liver is thought to be the Duke, caring for the nourishment and the physical well-being of his subordinates,96 the heart distributing the lifegiving heat by the spiritus vitalis in the arteries is correlated with the Emperor,97 and the brain mediating sensation and motion by the spiritus animalis is identified with the Pope,98 spiritually controlling the whole organism by a triumvirate consisting of "imaginatrix facultas, cogitativa, &

92 Ratio Studiorum et Institutiones Scholasticae Societatis Jesu per Germaniam olim vigentae, tomus 1, ab anno 1541 ad annum 1599, ed. G. M. Pachtler (Osnabruck, 1968), p. 54. 93 See, for example, C. Viepekhius, Assertiones de anima (Ingolstadii, 1568); A. Hunger, Adversus veteres et novos errores de anima conclusionum centuria (Ingolstadii, 1575) (resp. J. Diettmar); G. Schroetel, Disputatio philosophica, desensibus internis (Ingolstadii, 1590) (resp. W. S. Kepser). 94 Liess, Geschichte (cited above, n. 15), p. 301: "Quae quidem anatomes exercitia et oculis subiectae demonstrationes maximum in arte medica habent usum, potissimum vero frequens ilia dissectionum inspectio chirurgicen, (quae ut antiquissima, sic certissima medicinae pars existit) promovet ac illustrat, siquidem eius praecipuum offlcium versatur in vulnerum, ulcerum, luxationem, fracturarum, tumorumque sedibus accurate cognoscendis." 95 J. Agricola, 'De praestantia corporis humani', in Rotmar, Orationes (cited above, n. 70), fol. 259r-268r. 96 Ibid., fol. 261r-262v. 97 Ibid., fol. 263r-263v. 98 Ibid., fol. 264v-265r.

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memoratrix".99 This wonderful microcosm of the human body proves - as Ammonius says - the Creator's ineffable providence and his immense goodness.100 In a similar manner Cyriacus Lutz (died 1599), who was professor at the Medical Faculty for twenty-eight years from 1571 on, but who spent only eight years at Ingolstadt,101 emphasizes the importance of medical knowledge for theology in his books.102 In this context he mentions Galen's De usupartium, in which contemplation of the human body is claimed to be a guide to knowledge of God's power, wisdom and goodness.103 These texts by Ammonius and Lutz, however, remain unique findings: Ingolstadt anatomy is far away from the uniformity of Lutheran anatomical education found at Wittenberg University and produced by Melanchthon's power of systemizing. Conclusion Obviously the Catholic teachers at the University of Ingolstadt were no less willing than the Protestant Wittenberg professors to adopt the new anatomical findings of the sixteenth century. Just as at Wittenberg, Vesal and his contemporaries were not looked upon as a threat to medical tradition, but as an integral part of medical science, a science deemed imperfect and therefore, in its details, in need of correction. But this is not to say that confession did not influence anatomical education at all. Whereas at Wittenberg anatomy was constantly taught within a theological framework (which, by the way, was the same at the Protestant universities of Jena and Greifswald),104 and whereas the Protestant teachers meditated systematically upon possible theological implications of anatomy, at Ingolstadt we can find only a few, more or less arbitrary attempts of this kind. And furthermore: While at Ingolstadt anatomy was regarded as belonging only to medical education, at Wittenberg it was considered part of the philosophical training of all Protestant scholars. 99

Ibid., fol. 265v. Ibid., fol. 266v. 101 About Lutz see Liess, Geschichte (cited above, n. 15), pp. 145 f. 102 See, e.g., C. Lucius, De medicina philosophica (Ingolstadii, 1597), pp. 9 f., 21 f., 36 f.; C. Lucius, De considerando praesenti christianae reipub. statu, et academiarum officio (Ingolstadii, 1589), pp. 21 f. 103 Lucius, De considerando statu, p. 22: "Circa usum non est ignorandum aut negligendum, quod scientia Medica non solum curae valetudinis corporeae in Repub. instituendae, sed & aliis scientiis addiscendis & docendis, ipsique S. Theologiae utilis esse queat; atque hoc (ut alia argumenta gravia nunc taceam) ex ipso Galeno clarissime pateat. Galenus enim Medicos libros de usu partium corporis humani exacte scribens, in opificis admirationem, & laudem ipsi dicendam saepius effertur; in Deo, potentiam, sapientiam, & bonitatem summam esse agnoscit, & mire praedicat; [...]." 104 See Mutton, 'Wittenberg Anatomy' (cited above, n. 6), pp. 24 f. 100

SECTION TWO WAYS OF TRANSMISSION

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THE INFLUENCE OF HASDAI CRESCAS'S PHILOSOPHY ON SOME ASPECTS OF SIXTEENTH-CENTURY PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE

MAURO ZONTA Introduction The foundation of modern physics in the seventeenth century was preceded and in some way encouraged, in the sixteenth century, by confutations of Aristotelian physics. In these confutations not only a critique of Aristotle's doctrines about void, infinite, space, motion and time is found, but also some new theories about these points are suggested, thus paving the way to a new interpretation of the general laws which rule natural phenomena. Historical research on the origins of these new theories has suggested that some of them at least were related to the critique of Aristotle's physics carried out by the so-called 'new physics' of some fourteenth-century scholastic philosophers: William of Ockham and John Buridan. Now, this view on the farremoved, indirect sources of modern physics might need a partial reappraisal, on account of the role played by some late medieval Hebrew sources. The role of Jews as 'transmitters' of Arabic science to Europe in the twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth centuries has been acknowledged, especially in the fields of medicine and astronomy; but this 'transmission' of science seemed to have stopped at the end of the Middle Ages. Only very recent research has shown that the cultural exchange between Jewish science and philosophy and European science and philosophy continued until the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Studies on sixteenth-century Jewish thought have shown that some Hebrew commentators of Aristotle read and widely employed as sources not only late scholastic commentaries, but even humanistic and Renaissance texts;1 on the contrary, very little is known 1

H. Tirosh-Rothschild, 'Jewish Philosophy on the Eve of Modernity', in History of Jewish Philosophy, eds. D. Frank, 0. Leaman (London, New York, 1997), pp. 499-573; H. TiroshSamuelson, 'Theology of Nature in Sixteenth-Century Italian Jewish Philosophy', in Science in Context 10 (1997), pp. 521-570.

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about the direct or indirect knowledge of medieval Hebrew philosophical texts by Latin Renaissance authors. Also a recent and very valuable volume by David Ruderman2 does not say anything new about the latter point. Of course, while making such a statement, it should be stressed that we are speaking of Hebrew philosophical texts proper, not of kabbalistic ones: as a matter of fact, many kabbalistic authors were known to European thinkers after the end of the fifteenth century, mostly through Latin translations or adaptations made by Jewish converts. We are referring, in particular, to some classical texts of Jewish philosophy: apart from Maimonides's Guide of the Perplexed, which was translated into Latin very early (probably at the beginning of the thirteenth century), and circulated in a new Renaissance translation from 1520 onwards, we do not know about the existence of any complete Latin translation of such texts as Gersonides's The Wars of the Lord or Hasdai Crescas's The Light of the Lord, which were the most original results of late medieval Jewish thought in Europe, and which carried out important and consistent critiques of some points of Aristotelian philosophy and science. In particular, one should stress the importance of Crescas's critique of Aristotle: he aimed at destroying Aristotle's physics and, in general, his philosophy in order to build a new philosophy, which would become a better basis for defending the Jewish religion. Some of these Jewish confutations of Aristotle might have been suggested by contacts with followers of the 'new physics' or, in Crescas's case, by some concepts of fourteenthcentury Christian theology (e.g., John Duns Scotus's doctrine of the infinite); but Gersonides and Crescas were able to employ such suggestions for building a set of original theories. As we will see, some of these theories were known and employed by sixteenth-century Italian non-Jewish philosophers. Gianfrancesco Pico's Confutation of Aristotelian Science and Its Jewish Source One of the main witnesses of sixteenth-century criticism of Aristotle's physics is the Examen vanitatis doctrinae gentium, a work published in 1520 by the Italian philosopher Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola.3 The Examen vanitatis is a deep critique of philosophy, which aims at showing its inconsistency and the superiority of the Christian religion: the doctrines of the refuted gentes coincide mostly with those of Aristotle. For his confutation, 2 D. B. Ruderman, Jewish Thought and Scientific Discovery in Early Modern Europe (New Haven, London, 1995). 3 G. Pico della Mirandola, Examen vanitatis doctrinae gentium et veritatis Christianae disciplinae (n.p., 1520).

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which takes six books, Pico employs many arguments drawn from other, mostly non-Aristotelian or anti-Aristotelian philosophers. Pico is not simply trying to destroy philosophy qua philosophy, but, rather, to build a 'new philosophy' based on a new concept of scientific demonstration, which, in his opinion, would be more correct than the traditional, Aristotelian way of demonstration. But, as observed by Charles Bernard Schmitt, "whereas he combated Aristotle in the name of religious truth, these same arguments were utilized by many of his successors in the name of scientific truth".4 In fact, Pico's critique inspired such sixteenth- and seventeenth-century philosophers and scientists as Giordano Bruno, Galileo, Pierre Gassendi, thus achieving a role in the establishment of modern science. In reality, Pico's original intention was clearly in agreement with Crescas's: a philosophical defence of religion through an anti-Aristotelian critique. Rather significantly, Crescas's The Light of the Lord was one of the most important sources of Pico's book. In the sixth book of the Examen,5 Pico tries to point out what, in his opinion, are the errors of Aristotle's physics. In particular, he examines some key-concepts: motion, time, place, void. For discussing each one of these concepts, Pico, while criticizing Aristotle, explicitly quotes Crescas's arguments, under the name of "Hebraeus Hasdai" or "Rabbi Hasdai". In particular, he employs Crescas for criticizing the eternity of the world (through a demonstration against the uniqueness of circular local motion), for confuting Aristotle's definition of time as "the number of motion" (according to Crescas, time is rather a measure, "the measure of motion or quiet between two instants"), and for stating the non-existence of a natural place for each element. As for the last point, Pico, using Crescas and John Philoponos, builds up a concept of place as a void space which influenced Giordano Bruno's idea of space, and then also Tommaso Campanella and Gassendi. Finally, Pico is inspired by Crescas in his explanation of void and of the motion of heavy bodies. As a rule, Pico follows only Crescas's conclusions, not the detailed reasoning behind them; but sometimes he follows Crescas almost literally, and this literal correspondence leads us to think he had some direct knowledge of The Light of the Lord. The hypothesis that somebody (possibly, one of Pico's non-Jewish, Hebrew-literate friends) translated the complete text of Crescas's work from Hebrew into Latin for Pico's use seems to be rather far-fetched - such a translation has not been found. We might suppose that some of Pico's associates (maybe a Jewish scholar) communicated to him the key-points of Crescas's critique of Aristotle's 4 Ch. B. Schmitt, Gianfrancesco Pico della Mirandola (1469-1533) and His Critique of Aristotle (The Hague, 1967), p. 159. 5 The following description of Pico's dependence on Crescas is based on Schmitt, pp. 128159.

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physics: this might explain his use of Crescas's conclusions only. In Italy, personal contacts between Christian and Jewish scholars were rather frequent: the first evidence of them dates back to the beginning of the thirteenth century. As we will see, a similar hypothesis might explain the utilization of some of Crescas's physical arguments against Aristotle which are remarkably different from those known by Pico - by another sixteenth-century Italian philosopher, Giordano Bruno. Crescas as Indirect Source of Bruno's Physical Theories: Old and New Findings Bruno was one of the main and-Aristotelians of the sixteenth century: although he did not build a new system of science, he attacked some keypoints of Aristotle's physics. In particular, while discussing two points, the infinity of the universe and the plurality of worlds, Bruno used arguments which might have been drawn from Crescas. His writings which discussed these points ex professo are the Latin treatise De immenso et innumerabilibus (1591) and the Italian dialogue Del'infinito, universo et mondi (1584). Harry Austryn Wolfson, while publishing and translating into English part of the first book of The Light of the Lord, pointed out similarities between the latter and some passages and argumentations found in Bruno's cited works. According to Wolfson, the name of Crescas is not mentioned by Bruno, but still one cannot help feeling that there must be some connection between them. While any single one of his arguments might have occurred to any one who set out to study Aristotle critically, the accumulation of all of those arguments creates the impression that there must have been some connecting link between Crescas and Bruno.6

In particular, Wolfson lists the argumentations of Bruno against Aristotle's definition of place, in favour of the existence of the void and against the theory of the lightness of air, where he employs the same arguments of Crescas. But far more convincing, according to Wolfson, is the fact that both Bruno and Crescas confuted Aristotle's arguments against the possibility of a circular motion in an infinite body using the same proofs, in Wolfson's words, both of them dismiss all these arguments by declaring that those who believe the universe to be infinite claim also that it is immovable. Both of them argue that the infinite would be figureless, that it would have no weight and lightness, that it would have neither end nor middle, and that when an infinite acts upon a finite or upon another infinite the action would be finite. Both of them at the conclusion of their refutation of the argument against infinity take up 6

H. A. Wolfson, Crescas's Critique of Aristotle (Cambridge, Mass., 1929), p. 35.

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Aristotle's discussion of the impossibility of many worlds and refute it by the same argument. 7

Wolfson was not the first scholar to point out similarities between Crescas and Bruno, but his suggestions on this point have found no followers. Karen Silvia de Leon-Jones, who has recently published a book on the use of Hebrew sources in Giordano Bruno's writings,8 has totally neglected nonkabbalistic, philosophical sources. In any case, the Brunian arguments noticed by Wolfson are always drawn from the first part of the first book of The Light of the Lord; but Crescas's masterwork takes no less than four books. Are there other parts of The Light of the Lord which show some similarities to Bruno's doctrines? As I will try to show, those similarities exist, and this fact strengthens the hypothesis of a dependence of Bruno's physical doctrines on Crescas's. In the fifth book of De I'infinito, universe et mondi, and in the seventh book of his De immense et innumerabilibus, Bruno lists two series of arguments, allegedly from Aristotle, against the existence of an infinite number of worlds. Each one of these lists is followed by a refutation of the listed arguments. In the De I'infinito, thirteen arguments are listed, in the De immenso seventeen.9 Of these arguments, three at least show a close resemblance to the arguments employed by Crescas for his discussion of the possibility of the existence of a plurality of worlds. The second question discussed by Crescas in the fourth book of The Light of the Lord is "whether the existence of one world only is possible, or that of many worlds together".10 Crescas states that there is evidence in favour of both hypotheses. First, he argues in favour of plurality, stating that the existence of the world is the result of an act of volition of God, and, in particular, results from God's grace and benevolence; so, as his benevolence and generosity have no limit, God might have created more than one world, without any limit, so that it is possible that there are many worlds. Second, he gives two arguments against this theory: first, if there are many worlds, what is the nature of the space placed between them? This space should be either full or void. The ancient philosophers (Crescas clearly refers here to Aristotle) stated that a void is impossible; so, the space between the worlds 7

Ibid., pp. 35 f. K. S. de Leon-Jones, Giordano Bruno and the Kabbalah. Prophets, Magicians, and Rabbis (New Haven, London, 1998). 9 Le opere italiane di Giordano Bruno, 2 vols., ed. P. de Lagarde (Gottinga, 1888), pp. 389396; Jordani Bruni nolani opera latine conscripta, 3 vols., ed. F. Fiorentino (Neapoli, 18791891); vol. l,pt. 2, pp. 244-254. 10 H. Crescas, Sefer or ha-shem (Ferrara, 1555; repr. Jerusalem, n.d.), pp. [122]v-[123]v. An English translation and commentary of these pages by Crescas can be found also in W. Z. Harvey, Physics and Metaphysics in Hasdai Crescas (Amsterdam, 1998), pp. 36—40, where, however, no reference to Bruno's use of Crescas is found. 8

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should be occupied by a body, but this hypothesis is impossible too, because it would imply (according to Crescas's argumentations) that we see not only the stars of our world, but also the stars of the other worlds - a fact which is proved false by our senses. Second, according to Crescas the plurality of worlds would have no reason, because the only reason for the existence of a plurality of individuals in our world is generation, which aims at the preservation of species, but the world - according to Aristotle - is not corruptible, so that it has no need of preserving itself through generation. Finally, Crescas argues that, as the Creator is simple in the highest degree, from him only one simple thing can derive, because the emanated being is similar to the emanating being. After this, for each argument Crescas discusses the opposite argument. As for the first, Crescas states that the existence of many worlds by divine grace is voluntary, thus not being necessary; but what is not necessary is only possible, and, if there is an obstacle against a thing which is possible but not necessary, such a thing cannot be. So, if the plurality of worlds can be but a result of divine grace, God would be limited in any case: since it is impossible that there exists an infinite number of bodies, His grace should produce only a given number of worlds - a fact which would imply an absurd limitation of God, who is unlimited. As for the other two arguments, Crescas explains that the existence of space between the worlds is not a real problem, because, if this space is void, this fact does not imply any absurdity; if it is full, this space is so big that it would be impossible for the inhabitants of one world to see the stars of another world. Second, the non-necessity of the existence of many worlds is not a sufficient reason for stating that there cannot be a plurality of worlds; also the proof against this, drawn from the extreme perfection and simplicity of the Creator, is not cogent, as the unity of the world is not necessary to God's perfection and unity. One should notice that, in the De immenso and in the De I 'infinite, Bruno ascribes to Aristotle all the arguments he uses against the plurality of worlds but, as a matter of fact, some of them are not found in any of Aristotle's writings. Among these arguments, three seem to have been drawn from, or at least inspired by Crescas's masterwork. They are listed in the following table:

HASDAI CRESCAS'S INFLUENCE ON PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE Giordano Bruno, De I'infmito, universo et mondi, fifth book"

Giordano Bruno, De immenso et innumerabilibus, seventh book12

Sixth argument: as the circles of the worlds, being circular, are mutually tangent in one point only, there must be a space between them, and this space is either full or void. If so, either this space contains another world (which is impossible), or it is void (which is absurd, because a void does not exist).

Eighth argument (ch. 5): between the worlds, there should be an interstitial space which is not part of the world. If so, it must be either full or void, but both hypotheses are absurd because all the matter is contained in the worlds and cannot be found outside of them, while, on the other hand, the void is not existent.

Bruno's confutation: worlds are placed in a space which contains them, just like our heaven; it does not matter if it is full or void.

Bruno's confutation (ch. 12): it is not absurd to imagine that this space is void.

Eighth argument (in reality, ninth): if there is more than one world, this would be a result of God's omnipotence. But this does not imply necessarily that God creates them, because an infinite number of worlds implies an infinite passive potentiality in of matter - which is absurd.

Twelfth argument (ch. 6): it is true that it is impossible to limit God's omnipotence, which is infinite. So, God, if he wants, might create other worlds, apart from ours. But nature is finite.

Bruno's confutation: matter is ready to receive everything, as is shown from the existence of many peoples and species of animals.

Bruno's confutation (ch. 15): although nature is finite, this fact does not hinder God's omnipotence.

Eleventh argument (in reality, twelfth): a plurality of individuals cannot derive from God, who is one; this might be only through a division of matter, which might occur only by an act of generation. But nobody thinks that the worlds are generated one by the other.

Fifteenth argument (ch. 6): a plurality cannot derive from one thing; this plurality might only result from an act of generation. But, in the case of the existence of many worlds, this is not clear.

1

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' Le opere italiane di Giordano Bruno (cited above, n. 9), pp. 393-396, 408-412. Jordani Bruni nolani opera latine conscripta (cited above, n. 9), pp. 251-253, 272-283.

12

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Bruno's confutation: the existence of many things does not imply that all of them are generated one by the other. E.g., the animal species were originally produced as a result of an action of nature, not through generation.

Bruno's confutation (ch. 18): everything in the world is produced either through generation, or by nature directly. Nature has produced several species independently; so, it might have produced several worlds too.

As one can see, Bruno freely employs the argumentations given by Crescas about these three points, with some quasi-literal correspondences. If we exclude that Bruno read Crescas's Hebrew text directly - a fact which is highly improbable - we should think that he resorted to a Jewish scholar who transmitted to him the contents of Crescas's discussions on the infinity of the universe and the plurality of worlds. The problem of Bruno's and Pico's Jewish intermediate source, who made Crescas's arguments known, might be solved in the light of recent research by David Harari.13 Harari has shown that Bruno read Judah Abrabanel, the Renaissance Italian Jewish philosopher known as Leone Ebreo, who often employed Crescas's doctrines in his Italian works (the most important of which is the famous Dialoghi d'amore, first published in 1535). More significantly, according to Harari, Bruno knew not only Leone Ebreo's still surviving writings, but also other ones which are now missing. Among these is found the philosophical treatise De harmonia caeli, where, probably, also such problems as the infinity of the universe and the plurality of worlds were discussed, possibly in the light of Crescas's doctrines. Harari has shown that the De harmonia caeli was written on the request of Gianfrancesco Pico, whom Leone Ebreo knew personally, and might have been known also by Giordano Bruno. From these considerations, and from the above-collected data, one is led to conclude that Leone Ebreo might be the Jewish scholar who communicated to Pico Crescas's critiques against Aristotle, and that Bruno might have read Crescas's above-discussed arguments in Leone Ebreo's De harmonia caeli - a conclusion which, if proved true, would further confirm the role played by late medieval Jewish philosophy in the establishment of modern philosophy and science.

13

D. Harari, 'Traces of the Fourth Dialogue of Judah Abrabanel in Giordano Bruno's Heroid Furori' [Heb.], in Italia 1 (1988), pp. 93-155; D. Harari, 'Who Was the Learned Jew that Made Known Hasdai Crescas's The Light of the Lord to Gianfrancesco Pico Delia Mirandola?' [Heb.], in Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Thought 14 (1998), pp. 257-269.

LANGUAGE AND MEDICINE IN THE EARLY MODERN OTTOMAN EMPIRE

ELEAZAR GUTWIRTH Introduction As is well-known, during the second half of the nineteenth century there was a movement or transfer of manuscripts from Cairo to the great libraries of Europe and the East Coast of the U.S.A. The provenance of the manuscripts was the room of discarded paper, or 'Genizah', of the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Old Cairo, and some material came from the Basiatyn cemetery. The most spectacular and most publicized aspect of this transferral was Solomon Schechter's conveyance of approximately 140,000 items to the University Library Cambridge after his journey to Cairo in the winter of 1896/97. As was to be expected, given the tendencies of Jewish Studies in the 1890s, given the ideologies determining their research priorities and also given the nature of the material from the Cairo Synagogue, the first generations of Genizah scholars devoted themselves primarily to the material in Semitic languages, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic. They created a tradition of scholarship, identified manuscripts, classified and listed them. These technical and scholarly achievements and the formulation of research objectives and instruments of research were extremely important, leading to the creation of fields of research where scholars had more or less common goal. Indeed, there is a strong sense of continuity and, in some cases, present-day work is frequently indebted to these Genizah pioneers, even unthinkable without them. I have tried to delineate elsewhere the reasons for, and the effects of, the absence of a comparable tradition in the case of the research on the manuscripts in Judeo-Spanish, from the 1890s to 1981.1 Suffice it to say here that 1 I am concerned here with the history and culture of Iberian Jews before and after the expulsions of the late fifteenth century rather than with linguistic definitions. I use Spanish or Judeo-Spanish as an umbrella term. On the Hispanic (Judeo-Spanish, Spanish and the vernacular in Hebrew script) fragments from the Cairo Genizah see for example E. Gutwirth, 'Fragments of a Judeo-Spanish Ballad from the Geniza' [Heb.], in Jerusalem Studies in Folklore 5/6 (1984), pp. 71-83; id., 'Fechas judias y fechas cristianas', in El Olivo VIII 19 (1984), pp. 21-

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the research on the manuscripts in Judeo-Spanish in general and those on medicine in particular lacks this kind of tradition and starts much later. It is only in the last two decades that attempts have been made to identify and study with some consistency unpublished manuscripts in Spanish including medical ones. These efforts have led to the publications of the text or parts of the texts of various manuscripts in Judeo-Spanish from the Genizah collections. My main objective has been the discovery of unknown material. Within this context another priority has been to reveal the range of genres in which Spanish was used. This applies to the medical manuscripts as well. They cover a large spectrum of types of materials. The point may need emphasis for two reasons: firstly because of the traces of preconceptions about the cultural character of Judeo-Spanish speaking communities, which used to be described as the barbarous, isolated, poor communities of the East. The second reason is related to what, in a study of Ottoman medical history, Rhoads Murphy2 has termed the "false dichotomy" between scientific and superstitious medicine. The case of one Genizah manuscript, which was classified as Arabic but contained a text in Judeo-Spanish aljamia,3 may be mentioned. It is part of what was a larger codex on paper. What is left are two conjoined leaves in a Sephardi cursive. Although undated, it may possibly be argued on paleographic grounds that it belongs to the fourteenth century. One page has fortunately retained an incipit according to which the manuscript contained an aljamiado transcription of a work by Arnau de Villanova entitled Recevtario.* A completely different manuscript in JudeoSpanish aljamia in a Sephardi Oriental hand, possibly of the seventeenth century, also comes from the Genizah.5 It contains instructions on how to elaborate "Azeite de arodel6 machukado bien y bien [...] se mete en una redoma de garganta larga y el azeite ke sale ensima se akoje [...] muy bueno para todo modo de esfrialdad o para bentozidad" ("oil of arodel well crushed [...] put it into a long necked flask and the oil that comes out is good for colds and flatulence"). Another manuscript on paper of which some con30; id., 'Religion, Historia y las Biblias Romanceadas', in Revista Catalana de Teologia 13 (1988), pp. 115-134; id., 'A Medieval Spanish Translation ol'Avot: Genizah fragments', in Annali dell' Istituto Orientals di Napoli 49 (1989), pp. 289-300; id., 'The family in JudeoSpanish Geniza letters (16th-17th century)', in Vierteljahrschrift fur Sozial- und Wirtschaftsgeschichte 73 (1986), pp. 210-215. My thanks go to the University Library Cambridge for the permission to publish material in its possession. 2 R. Murphy, 'Ottoman Medicine and Transculturalism from the Sixteenth Through the Eighteenth Century', in Bulletin of the History of Medicine 66 (1992), pp. 376-403. 3 The terms aljamia, aljamiada and aljamiado all refer to the vernacular in Hebrew script. 4 Incipit Recevtario qe ordeno el disqreto savio Arnau de Vil[lanov]a Disho el disqreto savio mediqo Arnau de [...]', see E. Gutwirth, 'Geniza Fragments in Judeo-Spanish', in Anuario de Filologia 9 (1983), pp. 219-223. 5 Ibid. 6 Arodel = possibly from Portuguese 'arunda' - 'genero de plantas orientales de la familia de las orquidaceas', i.e., arundo canax or arundo cano.

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joined leaves have survived, is in a Sephardi rabbinic cursive in JudeoSpanish aljamia. It contains astrological prognostications for male and female, arranged according to birth signs. Thus, under mazal sartan li-nekevah ("sign of Cancer for female") we read alongside personal prognostications about the fate of the woman, others which are of a clearly physical and medical nature such as "she will have good flesh and eyes and voice [...] she will be sick at the ages of five and thirty-eight and 49 and 64 and she will die of fever."7 Another manuscript, possibly of the fifteenth century, seems to act both as prescriptions against ringworm, haemorrhage and for the treatment of kidneys as well as a kind of amulet and talisman, as may be judged by its symbols and sacred names of angels.8 This wide range of types of medical material in Spanish in the Genizah might be shown further by the presence in the University Library Cambridge's other collections of Genizah material, under the call mark Or. 1080 (that is the material acquired before Schechter's journey to Cairo), of a fragment of the printed De materia medica by Dioscorides, translated by Laguna. This is a completely different type of work and can be approached, as is the case with printed texts, from a different perspective.9 In addition to such Genizah manuscripts where Spanish is the dominant linguistic element, there are others of a more hybrid type. Older generations of researchers, accustomed to the material in Hebrew, Aramaic and Arabic, might have seen these as eccentric curiosities which, unlike the materials they were familiar with, were not representative of the culture of the Jews of Cairo who used the Genizah. But, by now, it should be clear that we can speak of a corpus of medical materials from the Genizah in Spanish, mostly in Hebrew characters and mostly manuscript. This is possible principally because of the original material discovered in the last two decades. But it is possible also because of the renewed awareness that hybrid materials which include Spanish are also of relevance. Similarly, a few fragments, although published without reference to the Genizah, may possibly be equally pertinent to an evident phenomenon: the existence of a hispanophone reading public and linguistic community in early modern (fifteenth to seventeenth centuries) Cairo. The Genizah material that I mentioned rarely answers the questions of conventional literary history based on printed material, questions as to title, date of completion or publication, authorship, etc; it could be used to answer different types of questions, the ones now underlying scholarly endeavour in the history of medicine as in other areas. Of these I propose to concentrate here on the questions which touch on the history of reading and the function of read7 8 9

E. Gutwirth, 'Geniza Fragments' (cited above, n. 4), pp. 219-223. Ibid. E. Gutwirth, 'Sephardi Culture of the Genizah People', in Michael 14 (1997), pp. 9-34.

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ing medical material in this linguistic community. Above all, I am interested in the historical and intellectual context of the Genizah corpus of medical manuscripts for a hispanophone public. /

There is, to begin with, the question of dates. The Genizah material I mentioned is rarely dated but the approximate paleographic impression is that most of it is late medieval and early modern. Although it is sometimes assumed that the Iberian communities in Cairo originate with the expulsion of 1492, contemporary texts do attest to the existence of Iberian Jewish communities from at least the time of the attacks on the Iberian juderias in the summer of 1391. Thus, David ibn Abi Zimra, the sixteenth-century rabbi of Cairo, speaks of the community of Catalanos from the time of the Ribash10 ("mi-gerush shel katalanos ve-zeh karov le-120 shanah b-ymei Ribash"11), that is to say, from the end of the fourteenth and beginning of the fifteenth century. Recent work has attempted to collate, as it were, some of the evidence for the currents of migration from the Iberian peninsula to Cairo. This was done in order to reconstruct the cultural phenomenon behind the increase of manuscripts in Hebrew in the characteristic Sephardi hand of the period, amongst Genizah material as well as the parallel and more noticeable increase of Genizah material in Judeo-Spanish aljamia. There were Jews and converses who travelled from the Iberian peninsula to Egypt and left traces of their travel throughout the fifteenth century. But one also finds remarks which attest to a general perception of Egypt as a haven rather than as a purely accidental destination. By the 1480s, that is to say, before the expulsions of the 1490s, there was in Cairo a fully formed and distinct linguistic community of Iberian Jews and converses who could be the object of descriptions such as those of Obadiah di Bertinoro, in his letter of 1488, where he mentions fifty families of converses in Cairo.12 The contracts between Iberian Jews and Iberian Christian shipowners around 1492 for transportation of books such as those published by Hinojosa Montalvo, are also part of this history.13 There is no doubt that the expulsions enriched this community but it is also highly probable and, in many cases, documented that conversos continued to travel to Cairo after the expulsions. 10 Ribash - acronym for Rabbi Isaac ben Sheshet Prefet (or Barfat) (1326-1408), Spanish rabbi and halakhic authority. 11 Ibn Abi Zimra, Teshuvot, vol. 3, p. 472: "[T]he kofutsayin are like ma'araviyim for they were from the expulsion of the catalanos about 120 years ago in the days of Barfat"; see I. M. Goldman, The Life and Times of Rabbi David Ibn Abi Zimra (New York, 1970), p. 218, n. 2; p. 85. 12 Gutwirth, 'Sephardi Culture' (cited above, n. 9). 13 J. Hinojosa Montalvo, The Jews of the Kingdom of Valencia (Jerusalem, 1993).

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//

The first factor that I would like to point to here is, therefore, the existence of a continuity of cultural character and endeavour. More precisely it concerns the relation of this linguistic community to one of the most important cultural phenomena in late medieval Iberia, that is to say, the creation of a vernacular prose, a prose which was intellectually ambitious, a serious prose which included scientific texts. Jewish investment in this cultural project has been dealt with elsewhere, but here I would like to point to the sciences in general and medicine in particular as part of this project. One may recall the currency amongst Iberian Jews, for example of a 23-folio aljamiado manuscript of Juan de Sacrobosco's Sphaera mundi,]4 beginning, in Hebrew characters: "el tratado de la esfera en cuarro capitulos", or the case of the fifteenth-century Iberian Jewish scribe, Joseph ben Rabbi Gedaliah, who, in 14II, 1 5 invested his time and effort in a Hebrew transcription of the Libra conplido en los iudizios de las estrellas by Abu al-Hasan ibn Abi al-Rijal, a book described by O'Callaghan16 as the most important of the Alfonsine collection of astrological treatises, a complex and sophisticated work reflecting classic Greek and Arabic astrology. Also at the Bodleian Library in Oxford, and more relevant to us, is the product of the labours of another scribe; an aljamiado manuscript containing a Portuguese translation of an astrological work which includes, amongst other sections, one, on the ways of counteracting sickness, epidemics and plagues caused by the influence of the stars. There are traces, such as marginal glosses, of at least eight different hands. So that we can speak not only of one author, translator, copyist, and scribe, but of a Jewish Iberian reading public of vernacular medical texts or texts relevant to medicine. This manuscript was acquired by John Dee in Louvain in 1562. On a leaf of the manuscript we can read the inscription, published by Gonzalez Llubera:17 "These bookes were written by a Jewe in Hebrew characters but in a vulgar language whereof Dr Dee did make speciall Account". These considerations could possibly lead to rethinking or reinforcing what we know about the connections between Iberian Jewish scholarship and that of Renaissance England.18 In any case the inscription could be interpreted as showing an early, sixteenth-century awareness of the impor14 See H. Zotenberg, Catalogue des manuscrits hebreux [...] de la Bibliotheque Imperiale (Paris, 1866), no. 1105. 15 Bodley Laud. Or. 282 I.; I. Gonzalez Llubera, 'Two Old Portuguese Astrological Texts in Hebrew Characters', in Romance Philology 6 (1952/53), pp. 267-272. See also G. Hilty, El libro conplido en los iudizios de las estrellas (Madrid, 1954). 16 J. O'Callaghan, The Learned King (Philadelphia, 1993), p. 143. 17 Gonzalez Llubera, 'Two Old Portuguese Astrological Texts' (cited above, n. 15). 18 E. Gutwirth, 'Edward Lee and Alfonso de Zamora', in Miscelanea de estudios arabes y hebraicos 37/38 (1988/99), pp. 295-299.

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tance or character of the phenomenon of fifteenth-century Jewish aljamiado scientific texts. Equally relevant to the field of medicine is the case of the fifteenth-century translation into the vernacular of Isaac Israeli's (Qairwan, 845-943) Treatise on Fever. Around 1450, one Castilian Jewish translator engaged in this translation produced the manuscript of more than 130 folios (and, according to Latham, approx. eighty-four thousand words),19 preserved at the Escorial. Apart from its specialized lexic features, others, such as cases of synonyms and paraphrases, could be interpreted as traces of the fifteenth-century Jewish Castilian translator's own individual labours. At least this is the impression confirmed by a reading of Esther Boucher's recent paleographic transcription,20 presented as a dissertation to the Universite Laval in Canada in 1990, which permits us to follow a text which is superior to Jose Llamas's earlier pioneering effort.21 In the first half of the fifteenth century, the Mallorca-born physician, Simon ben Zemah Duran, wrote a letter on a natural ingredient. Here it may be of interest to recall that, amongst other sources for determining the precise nature of the substance, he used what he calls "a Roman book": "u-ve-sefer refu'ot la-romyim ra'iti" ("in a book of remedies of the Romans I have seen"), and this book of the Romans was concerned with Romance terms in current use amongst the Jewish women of Mallorca in his lifetime (1361-1444). Again, this is a case of the fifteenth-century Iberian Jews' possession and reading of Romance medical literature.22 ///

Apart from the factor of continuity, that is, the attention to the possession, the creation, and also the reading of medical texts in the vernacular there is a further context for the Spanish medical material in the Genizah. This second context may be described as the engagement in medicine and related areas by the Iberian Jews in the Ottoman Empire including Egypt in general and Cairo in particular. This engagement was closely connected with the possession of books (mostly manuscripts it would appear). The books were of various kinds but included the classics of Greek, Arabic and some Latin medicine as well as books on simples, materia medica, herbals, medical pre19

D. Latham, 'Isaac Israeli's Kitab al-Hummayat and the Latin and Castilian Texts', in Journal of Semitic Studies 14 (1969), pp. 80-95. He already referred to Llamas's edition and asserted that "[i]t leaves much to be desired". 20 E. Boucher, Contribution al estudio paleografico y linguistico del Tratado de lasfiebres de Isaac Israeli (Montreal, 1995). 21 Ishak ibn Sulaiman al-Isra'ili: [Kitab al-Hummayat] Tratado de las flebres, ed. Jose Llamas (Madrid, 1945). 22 Teshuvot Simeon ben Zemah Duran (Lemberg, 1891), no. 28.

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scriptions, etc. This is a phenomenon which may be reconstructed from the travel narratives of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Viaje de Turquia, that masterpiece of sixteenth-century Spanish prose, completed around 1552, is also a storehouse of narratives about Iberian Jewish physicians in the Ottoman Empire. There are certainly more than one would suspect from Heyd's article on Moses Hamon,23 a standard reference on the history of Ottoman Jewish physicians. Heyd relies partly on the Viaje, although without having read Bataillon's Erasme or its more upto-date rendition in translation by Alatorre.24 One of the Viaje's stories concerns Pedro de Urdemala's Jewish master when he was a captive in Constantinople. The story itself aims to show the ingenuity of the Christian Spanish captive - Pedro de Urdemala - in vanquishing his Jewish master in front of the Sultan. But it is the circumstantial details which may be of interest here. The Jewish physician at the Sultan's court is portrayed with a big book - "like those in Church" - written in Hebrew characters. The narrative insists on the fact that the Jewish physician wants to speak in the Romance with the Christian Spanish captive. He writes about the books of the Iberian Jewish physicians elsewhere, too: "Are they literate?" asks Juan de Votoadios. Pedro replies that only very few are, and those are the ones "who went there from here". Earlier he had specified that many Jews had, as he puts it, "run away" to the Ottoman Empire from Spain. Pedro continues and says that they have no universities but they teach each other and do things almost by inheritance, so that the father leaves his barreta and his book (to his heirs). The typical book of Iberian Jewish physicians in the Ottoman Empire is described as follows: "a book which says in the Romance: 'in order to cure such and such a disease such and such a remedy'", a description which could apply perfectly well to some of the manuscript fragments mentioned above. Their books do not contain the causes of the illness, asserts Pedro. But there are some who know Arabic and read Avicenna. They do not understand much of it. Pedro de Urdemala's interest in the books of the Iberian Jews in the Ottoman empire is expressed elsewhere. Thus, in one of the dialogues Juan asks him whether their books are expensive and Pedro replies that when the physician of the Great Turk, Amon, died (in 1554), his library was estimated to be worth five thousand ducates because it was all in manuscript and "he had paid for it - as I often heard him swear, says Pedro - eight thousand ducates and surely they were worth as much, although I would not give four reales for it". To which sally Juan replies, "nor would he have given two reales for your library". Elsewhere attention is paid to the Jews' cures by means of herbs brought from India or 23

U. Heyd, 'Moses Hamon, Chief Jewish Physician to Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent', in Oriens 16 (1963), pp. 152-170. 24 M. Bataillon, Erasmoy Espaiia, tr. A. Alatorre (Mexico, 1966).

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to the "recetazas de un pliego". Again a description which could well apply to the Genizah manuscripts I mentioned earlier.25 Bataillon has argued that the filiation of the Viaje is with printed cosmographies or travel literature. In 1548 there appeared in Florence the Trattato de costumi et vita de' Turchi of Giovan Antonio Menavino, with an Italian translation by Georgiewitz. In 1550, Munster's Cosmography also gave some information on the customs and institutions of the Turks.261 will not enter into the large polemic concerning the truthfulness of the account, whether it is firsthand or not, or who was its author, a polemic which has by no means abated, to judge by Florencio Sevilla and Ana Vian Herrero's recent article in Criticon.21 It may, nevertheless, be remarked that even Bataillon conceded that "pudo utilizar ciertos relates orales de cautivos fugados". Not irrelevant is Heyd's remark on the intensity and frequency of the appearance of Turkish words in the text.28 In the final analysis it is evident that the stories as they stand bear a close resemblance to the incipient picaresque literature as well as to the Rabelesian spirit or analogues noted by Bataillon and to motifs of international folklore. It may be recalled that medieval satires against physicians referred to their books and to issues such as the immorality of the physician who examines a female patient. En Maymon Galipapa's satire which I studied some time ago could be a Hebrew example of the genre of invective contra medicos.29 To us it is not particularly important whether Pedro saw one naked hand of the princess Mir-i mah at the Sultan's court or two naked hands or whether she really did take off her veil for him. What may be inferred is something different. Indeed the Viaje contains a long series of stories about Jews in the Ottoman Empire. Particularly noticeable are the many stories about Jewish physicians at court. And here there are certain components of the stories which are of particular interest; the Jewish physician Moses Hamon; the amalgam of the motifs of the Jewish physician at court with those of the Jewish exiles from the Iberian peninsula, their books, their herbs and herbals, their preservation of Spanish, the dynasties of physicians - the practice of medicine as a family inheritance along with the titles and the books. Above all there is the underlying subliminal message, so clearly communicated even after the often risible and absurd details of the stories 25

Viaje de Turquia (Buenos Aires, 1942, and ed. Fernando Salinero, Madrid, 1980). Bataillon, Erasmo (cited above, n. 24). A. Vian, F. Sevilla, 'Para la lectura completa del Viaje de Turquia Edicion de la "Tabla de materias" y de la "Turcarum origo'", in Criticon 45 (1989), pp. 5-70. 28 Bataillon's admission, in reply to his critics, may be found in a footnote in the Spanish edition (see above, n. 24) on p. 682, n. 42; Heyd, 'Moses Hamon' (cited above, n. 23). 29 E. Gutwirth, 'En Maymon Galipapa: Texto y contexto de un intelectual ilerdense (s. XIV)', in Adas Coloquio de Historia de los Judios en la Corona de Aragon (Lerida, 1992), pp. 339-348. 26

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become blurred, namely that all these themes are significant, that they form a noteworthy part of the culture of the period. A work written at a time of hostilities between Spain and the Ottoman Empire and trying to raise morale, asserts the cultural superiority of Spain by satirizing that of the Ottomans. It is a measure of the importance of Ottoman Hispano-Jewish medicine in the vernacular that such efforts are invested in attacking it. IV

The travel narratives, which are sometimes so clearly differentiated from travel novels or fiction, present their own problems. But both genres coincide in that they pay attention to such phenomena of the Iberian Jewish exiles in the Ottoman Empire, as their preservation of the vernacular, their possession of books of medicine and herbals, their importance in the profession of medicine and as apothecaries in early modern Egypt. Indeed the travel narrative of Luis de la Ysla, a Spaniard who had been born as a Jew and raised as such in Illescas, seems as fantastic as that of the Viaje. And yet it is not a novel but an autobiography whose provenance is the Archive of the Inquisition in Valencia.30 The narrative of the many travels of Luis de la Ysla after 1492 bears witness to the preservation of a number of cultural traits amongst the Iberian Jewish exiles in Italy and in Egypt. But what is of interest here is the fact that when Luis de la Ysla, around 1506, decides to travel to the Ottoman Empire, he does so as the servant of a Portuguese surgeon who is a converse: "Maestre Rodrigo cirujano Christiano Nuevo". Rather than seeing it as an anecdotal, accidental coincidence, one might interpret this as a random sample of the large migration of converses and Jews to the Ottoman Empire, a migration which included that of the large proportion of individuals engaged in medical professions. The travel literature proper confirms such an interpretation. Nicolas de Nicolay, who was in Constantinople around the middle of the sixteenth century, published a book about his impressions in 1567-1568. He writes at relative length about the Jewish physicians in the Ottoman Empire and relates the themes of medicine to those of languages and books. The visual images in Nicolay's book are part of its success story. Lyon Davent is the artist. The engraving "Medicin luif' has the Ottoman Jew holding possessively a volume in his right hand; the binding seems particularly luxurious. It has been recently argued that the iconic element is paramount and that symbolism and a special dynamic characterize the relation between text and image in this book. It is a dynamic of serenity but it is the serenity of the 30 F. Fita 'El judio errante de Illescass', in Boletin de la Real Academia de la Historia 6 (1885), pp.130-140.

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master, the serenity of the wise en scene; the analogy being from the rising cultural phenomenon of the sixteenth-century theatre. The case of the visual representation of the Ottoman Jewish physician conveys, apart from the high social status, also the argument contained in the text's literary representation, namely that the access to the book is an essential part of the Jewish physician's image.31

V This relation between the particular cultural practices of Renaissance Europe and the physicians of the Ottoman Empire is a subject which deserves more attention but one may mention here the frequent amalgam of interests in such themes as visual representations, the remnants of antiquity and the Jews of the Eastern Mediterranean that one finds in the sixteenth-century narrative of Thevet's Cosmographie Universelle (Paris, 1575). My main interest concerns his story about a Jew of Alexandria. One day, during Lent, Thevet showed a rabbi a portrait of Dioscorides who looked like that Jew. On the island of Bogaz Assar he dines with a rich Jew who is one of the greatest herbalists in Asia. The elderly man shows him all the antiquities of the island and the place where Dioscorides had died. On the island of Baharen he meets two Jewish physicians who discuss "the nature of the pearl", a discussion which evokes for us the discussion on the nature of the pearl in the Shevet Yehudah (and of course in many other sources such as Cardan). In Cyprus, a visit to the tomb of Galen elicits a comment on the Jews who have many books by Galen which are unknown to Latinate Christians and which they keep secret. While the main thrust of these stories concerns the fruits of the Christian traveller's observations and his appropriations of the culture of the Orient, they could also be seen as evidence for the type of channels through which the Jewish population of the area could absorb the interests of learned Europe. Such channels work in both directions. They might partly explain the phenomenon of the manuscript (part of the Hebrew manuscripts collection of Gaster at the John Rylands Library) in JudeoSpanish aljamia in an Eastern Hebrew hand that contains three medical works by the physician of the Emperor Charles V, Luis Llobera de Avila, which I studied on another occasion.32

31 N. de Nicolay, Dans I'Empire de Soliman le magnifique, eds. M. C. Gomez Geraud, S. Yerasimos (Paris, 1989), p. 181. 32 F. Secret, 'Les hebraisants Chretiens de la Renaissance', Sefarad 22 (1962), pp. 122 ff.; E. Gutwirth, 'The Hispanicity of Sephardi Jewry: A Genizah Study', in Revue des Etudes Juives 145 (1986), pp. 347-357.

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VI

KriStof Harant de Polzic et Bezdruzic (1564-1621), a sixteenth-century nobleman from Western Bohemia, is an example of one of these travellers who left us a narrative of his voyage to Egypt. He refers to the Jews of Egypt in 1598 as engaging in medicine, pharmacology and commerce in medicines. Some of the points of relevance here are obscured by the French translators of the Cairo edition33 who decided, for the best of motives, to leave out much of the narrative concerning the Iberian Jews of Cairo because it perpetuates racial stereotypes. To us their importance lies not only in the data but in the contiguities of the themes and the way Harant moves from one motif to the next, thus associating them; he moves from a paragraph on the expulsion of the Jews from Spain to another on the economic activities of the Jews in Cairo and from there to the Jewish involvement in pharmacology and medicine. He refers to the books which the Jews of Cairo have on medicine: Galen, Hippocrates, the Almansor of Razis, Serapion, Aristoteles, Plato, as well as others in Turkish and Arabic. Harant, it may be mentioned, prides himself in citing proverbs in their original languages; he quotes a Spanish proverb "la osadia mucho aprovecha en las cosas dudosas" and on occasion speaks with Jews - in fact, a Jewish woman - in Spanish. He also mentions the Jewish printing press in Constantinople where he asserts that Jews print in Spanish. It may be remarked that he is not as wrong as one might imagine, granted that most of these productions were in Hebrew characters and that the fact had been noted before. In other words, a traveller with interests which include Spain and its Jews, and who seems to have read Beuter's history of Spain sees a certain congruence in speaking of the exiles, of the Jews of Cairo and of their activities in fields such as medicine, pharmaceutics, spices.34 On a first reading this seems to be a mere restatement of Pierre Belon's description. Pierre Belon du Mans (1517-1564) had visited Egypt in the late 1540s (he left it in October 1547) and the editio princeps of his Observations came out in Paris in 1555. As a herbalist (amongst other interests) he was especially attentive to questions relating to herbs, drugs, botany and medicine. In the third book of his Observations (fol. 18 la and 192b) he tells us how the physicians in Turkey, Egypt, Syria and Anatolia are mostly Jews. It is easy for the Jews to know everything about medicine because they are able to use the books of the Greeks, the Arabs and the Hebrews which were 33

Voyage en Egypte de Christophe Harant, eds. C. and A. Brejnik (Cairo, 1972). See, e.g., K. Harant, £esta Krystofa Haranta z Polzic a z Bezdruzic a na Pecce z kralovstvi Ceskeho do Bendtek: odtud do zeme Svate, zeme Judske [...], ed. F. Ko2ik(1854 and Praha, 1988). My thanks to Prof. Alfred Thomas of Harvard University for his help with this text. 34

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translated into their vernacular, such as those by Hippocrates, Galen, Avicenna, the Almansor, Serapion and others. Most of the pharmacists in the cities of Turkey are Jews. They have more simples and herbs and ingredients than they have in Europe, not in quantity but in diversity. The best Venetian druggist or pharmacist will not have such a range of small herbs as those in Turkey.35 All the same, in his list of medical books available to the Jews, Harant does seem to add some and omit others, so that his description is not identical with that of Belon. Jean Palerne, who was in Cairo and Alexandria around 1581, wrote a chapter in his Peregrinations devoted to the description of the religious, i.e., the priests of Egypt. After describing the "quatre sortes de Religieux Mahometistes", he speaks of their priests. They are dressed like laymen and are ignorant and full of superstition like all the rest of the people without any knowledge of the sciences "apart from a few who - imitating the Franks try to learn medicine from the Jews."36 This shows a particular interest on the part of European travellers in the involvement of Jews in medicine but also in their elaboration, commerce and knowledge of pharmaceutical substances. It is an interest which persisted for a long time. Thus Jean Thevenot arrived in Egypt at the beginning of 1657 and stayed in Cairo about two years. The first edition of his Voyage du Levant appeared in 1665. In a chapter on Ethiopia37 he decides to devote considerable space to the civettes (civet cat or civet), from whose anal glands a substance is extracted which is highly prized in perfumery. The Jews of Cairo have many of these civets amongst them. The animal is very savage - so Thevenot tells us. The Jews of Cairo hold them in great square cages with bars. They feed them with raw mutton and beef. The sweat is extracted twice a week. They extract about a drachma every time. When extracted, it is off-white tending to grey and it slowly changes to brown. Again we find the association of the Cairo Jews with pharmaceutical substances. Jews, books, medicine, the vernacular are components of an image which seem to be indelibly associated in these descriptions of the Levant from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Needless to say, such travel literature has its own rules and logic. Sometimes it depends on earlier descriptions. Observations about Jews are rarely unmediated by religious or racist bias. It 35 The editio princeps of Belon's Observations was published in Paris in 1555 by Guillaume Cavellat and Gilles Corrozet in quarto with woodcuts by Arnold Nicolai. On him and Sephardi Jewry see, e.g., E. Gutwirth, 'Fragmentos de Siddurim espanoles de la Geniza', in Sefarad 40 (1980), pp. 389^01. 36 Voyage en Egypte tie Jean Palerne Foresien 1581, presentation et notes de S. Sauneron (Cairo, 1971), pp. 114f. 37 The first edition of Thevenot's Voyage du Levant dates from 1665. For this reference, see pp. 285 ff. of the Paris 1980 edition, with introduction and notes by St. Yerasimos.

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is possible that the recourse to Avicenna and to translations from the Hebrew in Europe38 is part of the background, determining the frequent mention of Avicenna in these travellers' narratives whereas many others, such as Hispano-Jewish authors, are ignored. We do not expect to see mentions of, for example, Campanton's medical super-commentary in these travel narratives. As is well-known, present-day readers move between two poles, two attitudes, towards these travel narratives, perceiving them, on the one hand, as unproblematic, i.e., as sources which may be presented or paraphrased as histories of Ottoman Jewry, and, on the other, as plagiarisms or topoi, and hence rejecting them outright. I think both are excessive positions. Every theme must be examined on its own terms. Indeed, does this association of Ottoman and, in particular, Cairo Jewry, with medicine, herbs, substances and spices, books, the Iberian Jewish vernaculars, really contradict the internal evidence, such as that in Hebrew-letter manuscripts, for example? The internal evidence offers a rich and complex picture which contrasts with the relatively simple descriptions of the travellers, but it also confirms them. A rich array of types of writing exists. Much of the evidence is still in manuscript and the basic work of identification and provenance still remains to be done. Even the problem of the language cannot be said to have been resolved in all cases. Alliance manuscript H 154 A was cited by Gottheil39 when analysing and editing another Bodleian Library manuscript. The character of the work contained in the Alliance manuscript may be gauged from the statement on folio 1, which expresses the intention of the book: "we shall bring the primary, secondary and tertiary forces or properties of the foods and drugs and we shall mention every property's name in the Arabic tongue and afterwards in la'az". Gottheil writes: "what the la'az is I do not know . Sometimes it is Spanish." The characters, according to Gottheil, are similar to those in manuscript Livorno 74 (I suspect this is Gottheil's mistake for manuscript Livorno 79), which is in an early sixteenth-century hand. One aspect of the working method of medical authors and, therefore, of the type of medical literature being read in the Ottoman Empire, consisted of the compilation of books of properties about the herbs, simples, foods, etc. Others were prescriptions arranged under a heading for the symptom. An example of the first might be an unpublished Genizah fragment from the circles of the Sultan's court. T-S K14.48 is a fragmentary manuscript in Hebrew concerning medicine. On folio 28 verso we have what seems to be a statement of intentionality or introduction. The author writes that he composed and collected the book 38

N. G. Siraisi, Avicenna in Renaissance Italy (Princeton, 1987). R. Gottheil, 'Fragments of a Medical Vocabulary from the Cairo Genizah', in Jewish Quarterly Review NS 20 (1935/36), pp. 7-27. 39

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("kibasti ve-hibarti") from the writings of the great men of the past, such as Avicenna, "because many times I was with the King Sultan Salim may his soul repose in Eden when he was hunting in the cold or in the heat we would be travelling in the cities and in the fields and in the vineyards to hunt". He also was with "bno yarum ve-nitsa ve-gava me'od", his exalted son who evidently was alive at the time of writing unlike his father who had died in 1520 of cancer (if it is indeed Selim I, father of Suleiman, as opposed to Selim II who died in 1574 of a concussion and alcohol). He continues and asserts that people had become ill "because of the (torah) exertions of the journey and the heat and the cold" and "people as they are people cannot remember all the simples which are in existence and the various remedies [trufot ha-mithalfot be hiluf ha-zeman] which change with time". That is why he decided to write in a book the medicines which are in the field so that anyone may find them ("trufah asher ba-sadeh [...] imtseah kol over veshav u-ve-zeh yhieh lo yeter se'et"). This is one example of the currency of the practices described vaguely by the travellers; that is, the interest in writing lists or treatises on simples based on reading, field observation and experience. That is to say that we have works resulting from the selection of previous written sources according to the needs of the time and place and also works based on observation. This again confirms and refines the impression given by the Viaje de Turquia and other sources. Heb.e.63 at the Bodleian Library contains three separate manuscripts of different dates and characteristics. Two of these have been transliterated and analysed in a number of model linguistic studies by Cynthia Crews.40 None of them is a complete codex. One was dated paleographically by Birnbaum to between 1400 and 1450. He identified the Hebrew hand as Spanish. Crews assumes that 'her doctor' was either an old exile himself in 1492 or that his writings were brought over to the Middle East (?) by HispanoJewish exiles after 1492. This manuscript contains prescriptions for various symptoms or afflictions arranged by brief rubrics in Hebrew which are translated into Spanish, the language of the prescription itself. That is to say, this would be an example of that medical literature which the Viaje de Turquia presents somewhat contentiously as typical of Ottoman Jewish medicine and written in the Ibero-Romance language. The second manuscript contrasts quite sharply with this first one. Bound from folios 95r to 102v, it contains a large number of Turkish words. The paper is Oriental. The author could read not only Judeo-Spanish but also other forms of Ibero-Romance. It is important to recall that he is copying from a number of older sources then extant and at his disposal, including 40

C. Crews, 'A Judeo-Spanish Medical MS (c. 1400-1450)', in Vox Romanica 22 (1963), pp. 192-218; id., 'One Hundred Medical Recipes in Judeo-Spanish of c. 1600', in Revue des Etudes Juives (1967), pp. 203 ff.

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sources in Judeo-Spanish, the language of the instructions for the preparation of the ingredients and also of some of the names of the ingredients. Here again the text is fragmentary. That is to say, we have two texts, both fragmentary, both medical, both assumed to be 'Oriental' but in JudeoSpanish, and both bought from Wertheimer, the Hungarian Orthodox Jewish bookseller in Jerusalem, in 1896. This is the time when he was offering material to Oxford. This is also the time when he mentions explicitly the Genizah as a source and place of provenance of manuscripts, as I have argued in a recent article.41 Crews thought of the Judeo-Spanish of Constantinople and Salonika, the Balkans and North Africa as points of reference. This is quite natural if we bear in mind that most of the linguistic studies at her disposal in the 1960s were on twentieth-century - rather than fifteenth- to eighteenthcentury - Judeo-Spanish and were based mostly on oral research in these locations. The identification of Cairo as a likely place of the provenance of such manuscript fragments would have been improbable at a time when few Judeo-Spanish texts from the Genizah had been identified, transcribed, studied or published. Even the few that had been referred to in print were not mentioned by her. For us the compilation from older sources in Spanish, that is to say, the reading habits of these Jewish medical writers are particularly interesting. This is the public of works in Spanish but also of more hybrid works where Spanish is one of the elements. Thus, for example, T-S K.14.6 is another unpublished manuscript work of medical lexicography from the Cairo Genizah. It is arranged alphabetically. On folio 2 verso, under letter kaf, we find the item kaved, i.e., liver; "ve-khen be-aravi" ("the same in Arabic"); and then we readfigado be-la'az. The letter dalet infigado has been added but the reading is quite unambiguous as it contains the diacritics while most other words, of course, are unvocalized. That is to say, there is no possible mistaking the term forfegato. This may deserve emphasis as it is frequently the case that editions of Hebrew manuscripts from the Genizah confuse Ibero-Romance terms with Italian giving a false image of the provenance and culture of the manuscript's writers and readers. This manuscript, in what seems to me to be an exquisite example of a regular Sephardi Hebrew hand of the late Middle Ages, is directed at a public which could understand a Castilian Romance equivalent. Under kmehin (a kind of mushroom, morel) we find the explanation la'az trufes ("hem shorashim agulim nimtsa'im tokh ha-arets") or again, on folio 2v, writing about yatu'a, tetimale, a herb which contains liquid and is a purgative, the author adds "it is good for getting rid of verugas". 41 E. Gutwirth, 'Coplas de Yo$ef from Cairo', in Revue des Etudes Juives 155 (1996), pp. 387-400.

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These medical texts - more than two are at issue - inscribe themselves quite naturally in the cultural context we are trying to reconstruct, that of Iberian Jewish exiles who have functional and historical reasons for the proliferation in their communities of medical and herbalists' texts in their Romance vernaculars in the Near East between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries. This may be the context reflected in the correspondence of a Spanish-born rabbi who was the Rabbi of Cairo for about forty years in the sixteenth century. In the Teshuvot (responsa) of David ibn Abi Zimra we witness42 a flourishing concern with matters relating to drugs, medical ethics, medical practice and herbs. Thus there are mentions of frequent plagues in various communities; ethical questions are raised about the fees of doctors and also of pharmacists, or questions about male doctors feeling the pulse of a woman patient or those, again, about a married female nurse who touches the private parts of a male under her care. There are references to bloodletting by pricking the ear lobe; to the medicinal quality of mother's milk used in medicine and cosmetics and also to cool off fever and as an eyeliner when mixed with egg white; references to the medical uses of barley water; to mummy powder; to semak, described as the congealed blood of an unclean animal; to tariak., described as the flesh from a viper or adder or other snakes; to kahua made from a fruit called albon; to mahkuh, a drug to help bring up children; to trees and plants used for medicinal purpose, such as roses; to sugar water; to contraceptives; to blindness and diseases of the eyes. Evidently, the studies of Friedenwald, Zimmels and Goldman do not exhaust the richness and value of the material at all. In any case this Hebrew source gives us an idea of the types of interests in medicine pursued by the Jews of his period and place, Cairo in the first half of the sixteenth century, which confirms and enriches the impressions of travellers and serves as background to the Genizah corpus. When Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo mentioned that his book on the Natural History of the Indies, written in Spanish, would be read in Turkey, he knew what he was saying.43 The world of readers of herbals, texts on simples and medicine was a cosmopolitan one. Scholarship which aims at reconstructing it cannot exclude cultures such as the Iberian. Conclusion I have tried to show the possibilities of reconstructing a historical context for the reading culture of Iberian Jews, whose books are being identified 42

Goldman, Rabbi David ibn Abi Zimra (cited above, n. 11); see the bibliography there for the works of his predecessors (H. Friedenwald, H. J. Zimmels and others). 43 G. Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdes, Historia generaly natural de las Indias [Biblioteca de autores espanoles], ed. J. Perez de Tudela Bueso (Madrid, 1959).

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amongst the Genizah and other materials. For reasons which are quite unrelated to the history of medicine but closely bound with the history of religion (the pogroms of 1391; the expulsions from the Iberian peninsula, the rise of the converses), the history of medicine in the early modern Ottoman Empire is related to that of the culture of the fifteenth-century Iberian Jews. Its study can therefore benefit from close attention to the language, the culture and the religion of the Iberian Jews.

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SECTION THREE

JUDAISM BETWEEN TRADITION AND SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERIES

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TRADITION AND INNOVATION: RELIGION, SCIENCE AND JEWISH CULTURE BETWEEN THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES

GlANFRANCO MlLETTO

In the introduction to his encyclopaedic work Shiltei ha-gibborim, the Manto vian physician Abraham Portaleone wrote the following: Since God wanted to punish me and I fell ill, two years have elapsed and are wasted, because the whole left side of my body is dead and I can neither put my hand on my lap, nor go out, supported on my cane, because my feelings and my ability to move around are lost. I have considered my actions and looked at him, who sees me [Gen. 16: 13], since, in addition to my sins, which are more numerous than the hairs on my head, the outcry of my neglect of the Torah, before God, has grown loud, because I let myself be satisfied in my youth with the Sages of the Greeks. I had the arrogance to pursue the philosophy and medicine, which, through their polished words, led me astray to eat impious bread on a dark path [cf. Prov. 4: 17], and I did not meditate on the legacy of the community of Jacob dutifully enough [Deut. 33: 4]. Therefore, God became enraged with me and I was shaken with horrible pains, which overwhelmed me. My nerves yielded to the pains and my sighs still have not ceased, so that owing to the bitterness in my soul, I was neither able to get any sleep, nor to endure. / remained silent about goodness and my distress was aroused! [Ps. 39: 3] But when I lifted my eyes [to the heavens] and repented in my heart, I said to myself: 'perhaps my sins will be atoned for, if, as a reparation for my trespasses, a father teaches his sons, how they are able to become righteous through God [Isa. 45: 25], when they take the Torah to their hearts and meditate on it day and night, in order to maintain caution and composure' [see Job 3:21].' The introduction, by Azariah Figo, to his commentary on Giddulei terwnah is similar to the above by Portaleone: As the Omniscient knows: no sooner had I left my childhood and adolescence behind me - this time is vain and I went after the vanity of a love of the 'children of strangers', secular studies of various kinds - but immediately upon 1

A. Portaleone, Shiltei ha-gibborim (Mantova, 1612), p. 2b.

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GIANFRANCO MILETTO reaching the beginning of the harvests of the time of my adolescence, who bestows kindness upon sinners, granted me mercy, so that my eyes were opened wide to my ignorance [...]. So I beheld and recognized the shame of my youth, whereby I had made the principal thing unimportant and the unimportant the principal thing. I was exceedingly ashamed, that my hands were weakened from the essential words of the Torah, the study of the Gemarah and all related to it, namely the books, which deal with it, from which one learns, how one arrives at bliss through observance of His precepts, praise be to Him!2

Such acknowledgements are to be considered as no more than a literary device, a standard opening, which should not be taken seriously, since Portaleone and Figo would display a inconsistent behaviour, which would place the credibility of their words in question. In his description of Solomon's Temple, Portaleone inserts many chapters on the secular sciences. For example, chapters 4-12 include a thorough discussion on music and musical instruments. In addition the description of the various tasks of the priests and Levites during the Temple's service offers Portaleone the opportunity to explain the social and political structure of old Israel (chapters 40-43). A description of the vestments of the High Priest, leads a thoroughgoing explanation of precious stones and their power and value, whereby even the current trading prices in Amsterdam are given, along with the techniques used to recognize forgeries (chapters 48-49). Mention of animal sacrifices and incense gives rise to thoroughgoing discussions on biology and botany (chapters 50-56; 77-85). Figo appears to be more convincing in his rejection of the secular sciences. The main theme of his collection of sermons, Sefer bina le-ittim (Venice, 1648), is the appeal to his listeners to occupy themselves with the Torah and to follow its commandments, because the truth, which leads mankind to eternal happiness, can only be found in the Torah. The human mind is too weak to establish the truth. One should not listen to those who assert that man's highest bliss consists in speculation and philosophical investigation. The wisdom that man attains with his mind is altogether false [...]. Only the wisdom of the sacred Torah, which draws nourishment from the source of knowledge, from God Himself, is the firm foundation of truth.3

2 Giddulei terwnah, ed. L. Goldschmidt, Introduction, p. 42, quoted from R. Reichman, '"Was aus der Hebe erwachst, ist wie die Hebe selbst" (Mischnah Terumot, 9,4). Zum hermeneutischen Anliegen Azarja Figos in seinem halachischen Kommentar Gidulei Teruma\ lecture held at the colloquium of the Leopold-Zunz-Zentrum zur Erforschung des europaischen Judentums, 'Geschichte und Kultur der Juden in der Renaissance: Neue Wege der Forschung', 28-30 June 1998; see also D. B. Ruderman, Jewish Thought and Scientific Discovery in Early Modern Europe (New Haven, London, 1995), p. 202. 3 A. Figo, Sefer binah le-ittim (Lemberg, 1864), vol. I, sermon 20, p. 56b; quoted from I. Zinberg, A History of Jewish Literature. Italian Jewry in the Renaissance Era (New York, 1974), p. 175.

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Zinberg considers Figo "a typical preacher of the old Franco-German type, a great pietist, a fanatical teacher of morality and a strict supervisor of piety, who wishes to know of no theories where it is a question of commandments and religious laws and customs."4 Recently Ruderman has seen the judgement on Figo in the right perspective.5 On the one hand, he points out the use in Figo's sermons of medical analogies and references to scientific inventions and discoveries, especially in the fields of optics and astronomy; on the other hand Ruderman deduces from the ongoing friendly relationship with Leone Modena, that Figo had no objections or criticisms about Modena's studies in medicine and sciences. Also, Bettan admitted that Figo's renunciation of his secular interests was either made too late or was not quite complete enough to affect the essential character of his preaching.6 And Barzilay, although he considers Figo a "anti-rationalist", acknowledges that Figo's resistance to rationalism and secular learning, far from being absolute, is actually of a very qualified nature and motivated by national and social considerations, extraneous to philosophy and science as such, rather than by their inner shortcomings and inadequacies. Though, as pointed out earlier, an analysis of the inner weaknesses of rationalism and secular learning is found in his writings, it must not be treated very seriously, as in it he merely reiterates the criticisms of his great predecessor, Judah Moscato. In the final analysis, the prime motivation for Figo's resistance to secular learning and rationalism stems from his deep concern for the Jewish community and its spiritual survival in the face of grave external and internal dangers.7

What should our opinion be concerning these apparent contradictions? Is it right to speak of an oscillation between acceptance and rejection of gentile wisdom in Italian-Jewish culture of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries?8 The differentiation between rationalists and anti-rationalists - the juxtaposition of centrifugal and heterodox forces as opposed to the traditionalists and the representatives of orthodoxy - do not these concepts correspond more with our modern-day way of thinking than with the historical reality?9 The established, unquestioned principles of the era, were challenged by the new discoveries and knowledge, and the traditional culture were thrown into a state of turmoil. This was a time of profound cultural transformations 4

Ibid. D. B. Ruderman, Jewish Thought (cited above, n. 2), pp. 203-208. I. Bettan, Studies in Jewish Preaching (Cincinnati, 1939), p. 230. See also Ruderman, Jewish Thought, p. 203. 7 I. E. Barzilay, Between Reason and Faith. Anti-Rationalism in Italian Jewish Thought 1250-1650 (The Hague, Paris, 1967), pp. 203 f. 8 See Y. H. Yerushalmi, From Spanish Court to Italian Ghetto (New York, 1971), pp. 373 f., quoted from Ruderman, Jewish Thought (cited above, n. 2), p. 203. 9 See Sermoneta's review of Barzilay's book in Kiryat Sefer 45 (1969/70), pp. 539-546. 5

6

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and crises which was not just problematic for Jewish culture, but for Christian culture as well. The new geographical and astronomical discoveries gave rise to a new conception of the world. In the field of philosophy the Aristotelian system, which still dominated in the universities, was attacked by Francis Bacon, Bernardino Telesio, Giordano Bruno and Tommaso Campanella, who set against the dogmatism of many Aristotelians a new philosophy based on the observation of nature and on experience, not on the authority of Aristotle. As a result of the humanistic confidence in the powers of human intelligence, there grows an intolerance vis-a-vis any type of authoritative limitations on the reason. The medieval principle philosophia ancillafidei, which states that science must come from and be enlightened by theology, was questioned, and the separation of the sciences from theology was demanded. In the letter, which Galileo sent on 21 December 1613 to father Benedetto Castelli, this question is clearly formulated.10 The precepts of the Holy Scriptures - writes Galileo - are absolutely true and indisputable. The Holy Scriptures cannot be wrong, but those who interpret them can be, particularly if they take them literally. In this case, not only many contradictions would be manifest, but even heresies, such as attributing to God human form and feelings. The Holy Scriptures use a simple and graphic language for the common people. They must be interpreted, in order to understand the true meaning of their words." In the questions which concern nature the Holy Scriptures should be the last to be considered, because they are in themselves not of the same precision and consistency as nature. Both have their origin in God: the Holy Scriptures are inspired by the Holy Ghost and nature is ruled by the laws which are laid down by God. But nature behaves steadily and immutably, without regard as to whether her laws are understandable to humans. What the effects of nature and experience show us to be true, may not be challenged by the apparently opposing words of the Holy Scriptures.12 Because two truths cannot contradict each other, the Scripture interpreters must try to find the true meaning of the words, which agree with the knowledge of nature gained through experience and reasoning. Because the interpreters are not directed by the Holy Ghost and thus can be mistaken, it is better not to use the Holy Scriptures when it comes to matters of science. The purpose of the Scriptures is to relate a moral lesson to mankind and not to teach the natural sciences. For these, God has provided mankind with reason and senses.13 10 Lettera a don Benedetto Castelli, in Le opere di Galileo Galilei, 20 vols. (Firenze, 18901909), vol. 5, pp. 281-288. 11 Ibid., p. 282. 12 Ibid., pp. 282 f. 13 Ibid., pp. 283 f.

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A few decades before Galileo, the publication of the work of Azariah de' Rossi entitled Me'or einayim (Mantua, 1574) caused quite a stir among Jewish intellectuals.14 For de' Rossi, the rabbinical authority was only valid in the essential aspects of Jewish tradition, namely for the Halakhah and the fundamental principles of the religious faith. In this regard, their conclusions are part of God's revelation, and, therefore, neither changeable nor challengeable. But, what the old masters had to say on other subjects, such as astrology or scientific questions, should be considered to be their personal opinion. And here they are talking about secondary aspects (milleta bealtna, i.e., "side aspects") of the tradition, about which differences of opinion should be allowed. The latter is an area of research, of human knowledge, which has grown continuously from generation to generation, and about which an autonomous personal opinion is legitimate. Azariah's understanding on this matter is given in the following quote: There is no doubt that everything that we received from our Sages regarding the commandments of the Tora, her roots and branches till the top, everything is the Word of God. In love and fear, we hold it as a crown on top of our heads [...]. Secondly, it is easy for every intelligent person to understand that, whatever our Sages say on scholarly topics, such as astrology or the form of heaven and earth and so on, originates purely in their own human mind. When they dealt with this kind of research, everyone did it according to his own talent, or based on the traditions of the previous generations from whatever nation. There is no gift of prophesy involved. In this area [of scholarship] we have their permission to listen to those who opposed their views in order to test them by our level of knowledge. This does not imply any judgement on the value of one or the other side.15 And in another passage correlated with Maimonides's opinion about rabbinical statements on astronomy, Azariah writes: Subject-matter, which by its very nature could not conceivably have been uttered at Sinai, as, for example, some historical account, or matters which you clearly know they stated as their own opinion, not having been bound by Holy Scripture, should be interpreted by every intelligent person in such a way, that these writings are in harmony with what is known to succeeding generations [...] if, what the Sages stated, does not conform to known truth, we needn't be 14 For the opinion of A. de' Rossi concerning the relationship between religion and science see L. A. Segal, Historical Consciousness and Religious Tradition in Azariah de' Rossi's Me'or 'einayim (Philadelphia, 1989); G. Veltri, 'The Humanist Sense of History and the Azariah de' Rossi Critique of Philo Alexandrinus', in Jewish Studies Quarterly 2 (1995), pp. 372-393. For de' Rossi's conception of nature see J. Weinberg, The Voice of God: Jewish and Christian Responses to the Ferrara Earthquake of November 1570', in Italia Studies 46 (1991), pp. 6981. For other bibliographical references see R. Bonfil, Azariah de' Rossi. Selected Chapters from Sefer Me'or einayim and Matsrefla-kessef[Heb.] (Jerusalem, 1991), pp. 131-133. 15 A. de' Rossi, Sefer me'or einayim, ed. D. Cassel, 3 vols. (Vilna, 1864-1866) [repr. Jerusalem, 1970]; here vol. 1, p. 196.1 have quoted from the translation in G. Veltri, 'The Humanist Sense' (cited above, n. 14), pp. 390 f.

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GIANFRANCO MILETTO too particular, since they had not spoken on the issue in the matter of a prophetic tradition, but only as scholars of the time with respect to that matter, or because they heard it from scholars of those times.16

Azariah's intention was apologetic in nature. The distinction between normative and non-normative issues in the rabbinical literature, and the restricting of rabbinical authority to only the religious and ethical area, has as an effect that one could accept the presence of inconsistencies in the "side aspects" of the Jewish tradition, as, for example, the rabbinical chronology, and freely examine the rabbinic statements in such matters without placing the authority of the rabbis on the "main points" (the normative issues) of Judaism in question.17 It appears, that de' Rossi regarded the critical approach to marginal aspects of the Jewish tradition as the most effective means of defending Judaism, but his intention was misunderstood. Azariah de' Rossi remained an isolated voice in the Jewish cultural milieu of his time, and, just like Galileo, he was considered to be a heretic. Their intention - to separate the science from the faith - seemed, at that time, to endanger the whole system of the religious tradition. Unfortunately, their respective religions found themselves in a state of weakness, which explains the violent reaction to each suggested innovation. The Catholic Church was weakened by the Protestant Reformation and the Jewish tradition was troubled by external and internal difficulties. Externally, the Jews were exposed to attacks from the Catholic Church, which, in the spirit of the Counter-Reformation, strove even harder to convert the Jews or to remove them from Christian society through oppressive social and cultural policies. Internally, Jewish culture was in a state of deep crisis, which was manifest in mystical and eclectic tendencies.18 The numerous assertions of the superiority of the Jewish culture that pervade much of Jewish literature in the sixteenth century, are a symptomatic expression of the consequences of the collapse of the medieval philosophical edifice, and an attempt to react to a sense of cultural inferiority towards the new discoveries and inventions.19 The risk for Judaism was great. It was a matter of preserving their own cultural identity. The intellectual position of Azariah was increasingly challenged by his Jewish contemporaries, who preferred to integrate, as much as possible, the whole of the Jewish tradition with the secular world, and,

16 De' Rossi, Me'or einayim, vol. 2, p. 270; see also Ruderman, Jewish Thought (cited above, n. 2), pp. 33, 270 f. 17 R. Bonfil, 'Some Reflections on the Place of Azariah de' Rossi's Meor Einayim in the Cultural Milieu of Italian Renaissance Jewry', in Jewish Thought in the Sixteenth Century, ed. B. Cooperman (Cambridge, Mass., London, 1983), pp. 23-48, esp. p. 37. 18 Ibid., p. 35. 19 Ibid., p. 34, and id., 'Expressions of the Unity of People of Israel in Italy during the Renaissance' [Heb.], in Sinai 76 (5735 [1975]), pp. 36-46.

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thereby, to prove Judaism's superiority.20 This was carried out through a revised interpretation of the Bible, considered to be the origin of all science and knowledge. Portaleone introduces his chapter about the art of war as follows: All intelligent people know that our Holy Torah is a means of salvation, in which everything is contained. Just as its commandments and precepts, which guide us to the eternal blessedness - so that we might enjoy the splendour of God's presence, in the light of the life of the future world - do not remain inaccessible for us, so there is nothing lacking in the Torah, from that which is useful, to guide mankind, at all times, toward perfection in his political life. Whereas some Gentile scholars have spent all days of their life trying to establish which course of action must be taken during times of war and peace, the Torah enlightens us effortlessly, without straining our eyes, and shows us in a flash, from all of the world's ways, the one which we must follow and what we must do, in order to remain in the shadow of wisdom, protected from the impiety of the Gentiles.21 And Judah Moscato had this to say about the Bible: "Everything is contained in our perfect Torah either explicitly or by way of implication, through its words, the Gematria or the mere form of the letters."22 The proof of the epistemological superiority of the Torah is that, whereas the secular sciences are interdependent, the Torah is complete and stands on its own: Someone cannot be an astronomer without prior knowledge of physics and mathematics, nor a doctor without prior knowledge of natural philosophy. Nor can a person acquire any knowledge unless he is accustomed to logic [...]. It follows, that one [field] justifies and prepares for the next, otherwise, the one which follows would have no foundation. But our Torah does not require any other wisdom nor any external knowledge, for everything is in her; she guides and informs herself with her own conclusions, principles, and ideas.23 The Jewish tradition is therefore considered a whole, inclusive entity, an absolute standard of truth. It is not science, as such, which is condemned, but only that science, which claims alone to have, or to be able to reach the truth - that is, theoretical knowledge, lacking empirical foundations based solely on intellectual constructs of the human reason, which, in its nature, "is weak, inadequate and bound to falter."24 Genuine wisdom is based exclu20

Ibid., pp. 36 f.; and Ruderman, Jewish Thought (cited above, n. 2), pp. 119-121. Portaleone, Shiltei ha-gibborim (cited above, n. 1), chap. 41, pp. 35b-36a. Judah Moscato, Sefer nefutsot Yehudah (Warsaw, 1871), sermon 14, p. 4la; quoted from Barzilay, Between Reason (cited above, n. 7), p. 180. 23 Figo, Sefer binah le-ittim (cited above, n. 3), vol. 2, sermon 43, p. 27a, quoted from Ruderman, Jewish Thought (cited above, n. 2), p. 210; see also Moscato, sermon 14 (cited above, n. 22). 24 Figo, Sefer binah le-ittim, vol. 2, sermon 43, p. 26b, quoted from Barzilay, Between Reason (cited above, n. 7), p. 201. 21 22

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sively upon empirical knowledge, acquired through experience. "What is proved from the senses and experience - says Figo - is truthful [...] but theoretical speculation, denuded of perceptive knowledge, to me is meaningless."25 Divine Providence also preferred to communicate the Torah on the basis of perceptual knowledge. Thus Figo: The Divine Wisdom understood that the Holy Torah would not be accepted by the Israelite Nation on the basis of knowledge stemming from study and research [...] but rather with things felt and familiar through seeing and hearing.26

Figo's words remind one patently of Judah Halevi's medieval critique of philosophy, but are also consonant with the empiricism of this era; they sound modern and are up-to-date. They agree with that understanding of wisdom, which in Italian-Jewish culture was already being debated at the beginning of the Renaissance. At the end of the fifteenth century, Jacob ben David Provenzale, in a letter, (which, as was usual during the Renaissance, was meant for publication) answered the question of Rabbi David ben Judah Messer Leon concerning secular wisdom, that only theoretical philosophy, namely, Aristotelianism, which is contrary to the Torah and denies the creation of the world, was to be censured. On the other hand, the study of the practical sciences, namely, nature, medicine, astronomy and the pursuit of crafts, such as metalworking and agriculture, is commendable and should be furthered, because the practical sciences give us knowledge about things which are a part of God's creation. And, even though studies in the practical sciences are nowadays taken from the works of foreign authors, the practical sciences are already to be found in the Torah. And the rabbis have never rejected knowledge, which, according to experience, is true, even if it was related in a foreign language. Because the Torah is truth and all that is true is the Torah.27 Some years later, similar ideas were asserted in the work of Rabbi Jehiel Nissim Vitale da Pisa, Minhat kena'ot. For Rabbi Jehiel, the natural sciences such as geometry and medicine are wisdom, whereas knowledge beyond nature (namely metaphysics), which pretends to explain all phenomena trough logical argumentation, is subject to doubt and arrives at false conclusions.28

25 Figo, Sefer binah le-ittim, vol. 2, sermon 43 p. 26b, quoted from Ruderman, Jewish Thought (cited above, n. 2), p. 210. 26 Ibid. 27 See C. Sirat, La philosophic juive au Moyen age selon les textes manuscrits et imprimes (Paris, 1983), trans, into It. by B. Chiesa, publ. as La filosofia ebraica medievale (Brescia, 1990), pp. 526 f. The letter She'elot u-teshuvot bi-debar limmud ha-hokhmot was published by E. Ashkenazi, Divrei hakhamim (Metz, 1849), pp. 63-75. 28 R. Vitale da Pisa, Minhat Kena'ot (Berlin, 1898), pp. 110-112; see also R. Bonfil, Rabbis and Jewish Communities in Renaissance Italy (London, Washington, 1993), p. 287.

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The conception of science as a result of experiential knowledge is also the fundamental principle of the modern philosophers, who challenge the dogmatic authority of the Aristotelianism. For the Jewish scholar, it is easier on the basis of this common conception of science, to integrate the foreign culture into Jewish tradition. A science, which does not pretend to possess absolute truth, but confines itself to describe the appearance of things, can be integrated into Jewish tradition without great difficulties.29 And, if one considers the natural sciences as a part of the divine revelation, every distinction between the secular science and religion fades away. It follows then that in a religious work such as Portaleone's Shiltei hagibborim, his treatment of scientific subjects is not in conflict with his decision to return to his faith, as he stated in the introduction to his work. What Portaleone and Figo regret is not the study of the sciences, as such, but rather the study of the sciences without the enlightenment of the Torah. The return of Portaleone and Figo to their faith involves a new conception of science according to the Bible's principle of timor domini initium sapientiae.

29

See Ruderman, Jewish Thought (cited above, n. 2), p. 211.

JEWS BETWEEN PROFANE AND SACRED SCIENCE IN RENAISSANCE ITALY: THE CASE OF ABRAHAM PORTALEONE

SAMUEL S. KOTTEK Introduction Abraham Portaleone (1542-1612) was the son of a family of physicians who served the Dukes of Mantua for six generations.1 Among Abraham's forefathers, Guglielmo (Benjamin) Portaleone was particularly successful and was awarded a title of nobility by the King of Naples in 1438. Abraham's father, David Portaleone, was allowed to treat Christians by special permit of the Pope. Abraham fathered three sons and a daughter. Only his son David continued the medical tradition of the family. David's son Guglielmo2 (Benjamin) is the last known of this dynasty of physicians, together with his nephew Solomon Portaleone who succeeded him in 1684. We worked several years ago on a manuscript written by Guglielmo Portaleone and treasured in the Budapest Kaufmann Collection.3 Abraham Portaleone earned his medical doctorate in 1563 at the University of Pavia. In 1566 he became town physician in Mantua, and followed his father in this tenure. In 1591 the Pope Gregory XIV granted him the official permit to treat Christian patients. He became personal physician to the Dukes of Mantua, Guglielmo and Vincenzo Gonzaga. 1 See S. S. Kottek, 'Abraham Portaleone (1542-1612): An Italian Jewish Physician of the Renaissance Period; His Life and Will: Reflections on Early Burial', in Koroth 8, 7-8 (1983), pp. 269*-278* [Eng.] and 223-238 [Heb.]. A brief bibliography is appended. On Shiltei hagibborim, see N. Shapiro, 'R. Abraham Portaleone - physician and encyclopaedist - and his book Shiltei ha-gibborim' [Heb.], in Ha-rofe ha-ivri 33 (I960), pp. 137-144. 2 See S. S. Kottek and E. Anati, 'Benjamin (Guglielmo) Portaleone, a Jewish Physician in Mantua (17th century)', in Memorial Volume for Nathan Cassuto (Jerusalem, 1987), pp. 92109. 3 See M. Weiss, Katalog der Hebraischen Handschriften und Bucher in der Bibliothek des Prof. Dr. David Kaufmann (Frankfurt a. M., 1906), p. 158. The manuscript bears the number 458 in the catalogue.

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In 1584 he published De auro dialogi tres,4 where Portaleone described not only the medical virtues of gold, but also its chemical (and alchemical) properties according to the best available sources. This work was addressed to the Duke of Mantua, to whom he had sent earlier a brief sketch on this topic.5 Gold had been used in pharmacopoeia since antiquity, and was considered heart-strengthening by Ibn Sina. Paracelsus used it against infections. Solutions of gold (aurum solubile, or aurum potabile) were in use as well. Portaleone remarked that his aim was "to examine whether gold has medical indications as believed physicians of old, or not."6 The second book, Shiltei ha-gibborini1 (in Hebrew), is a description of the Temple in Jerusalem, the way Priests and Levites performed their duties, but the author devotes whole chapters to a wide range of topics, including zoology, mineralogy, chemistry, botany, as well as music, warfare, philology - and more. Portaleone thus appears as a Renaissance scholar, interested in all possible avenues of science. The autobiographic details which are contained in the conclusion of the work are enlightening. Abraham Portaleone was given a thorough Jewish education with some of the best Italian rabbis and scholars, such as Rabbi Meir Katzenellenbogen of Padua (1482-1565), Rabbi Joseph Zarka (Bonaiuto) of Mantua, Rabbi Joseph Sinai8 and others. Later, in Mantua, he studied with Rabbi Judah and Rabbi Abraham Provenzale.9 Even during his medical studies in Pavia, Abraham Portaleone never completely neglected Talmudic studies. He then settled in Mantua, helped and later succeeded his father in his practice and also performed circumcisions.10 4 A. Portaleone, De auro dialogi tres, in quibus non solum de auri in re medica facilitate, verum etiam de specified ejus, et caeterarum rerum forma, ac duplici potestate qua mixtis in omnibus ilia operatur, copiose disputatur (Venetiis, 1584). 5 'Questio de auro, pro Ser"+11 Duci'; see Ms. 458 of the Kaufmann Collection in Budapest (cited above, n. 3), pp. 775-776. This brief essay is dated 1582. 6 Quotation from the conclusion of Shiltei ha-gibborim: "I compiled, on his [Guglielmo Gonzaga's] request and hurriedly [Heb. al regel ehad], a book in Latin (on the use of gold)." See A. Portaleone, Shiltei ha-gibborim (Mantova, 1612), fol. 185b, left. See also ibid. fol. 78a, Portaleone's detailed description of the preparation of grains of refined gold, "which will protect your health for many days [i.e., years] with the help of the Almighty, and you will suffer no heart condition [lit. abuse, cursing - Heb. ta'alat lev]". 7 Shiltei ha-gibborim ("Shields of the Mighty") was published in Mantua in 1612, a few months before the author's death. It was allegedly printed in his own house, under his own direction. He was rather critical toward his helping hand, the printer R. Elishama (cf. fol. 184b). 8 R. Joseph Sinai was most probably the son of Leon Sinai who owned a remarkable library including 112 books and manuscripts. See R. Bonfil, The Rabbinate in Renaissance Italy [Heb.] (Jerusalem, 1979), p. 177, n. 25. 9 Abraham Provenzale was the Rabbi of Casale Monferrato in the Po Valley. He taught Abraham Portaleone not only Talmud, but also Latin and logic. Azariah de' Rossi refers to him as a "storehouse of science". 10 Portaleone performed 360 circumcisions and entered all details on these ceremonies in a special booklet as was (and is) the custom.

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Abraham Portaleone mentions two works, one on materia medico, the other on medical cases (written in Latin), which have seemingly not survived. They were actually never published.'' In 1605, Portaleone suffered a left hemiplegia, from which he slowly recovered, at least partially. This illness prompted him to resume his Jewish studies and to write his work on Jewish antiquities. According to the author himself, Shiltei ha-gibborim was researched and compiled between 1605 and 1607. On Abraham Portaleone's will, written in 1605, we did a paper years ago.12 We intend to show in the present study how Abraham Portaleone intimately combines sacred and profane science in a work pertaining basically to Jewish antiquities and addressed formally to his sons, and practically to enlightened Jewish readers. A few selected examples will now be discussed. Music and Musical Instruments Portaleone has an elaborate chapter (ch. 6, fol. 6a-7b) on music, while speaking basically of the Levites' duties in the Temple. The Levites performed a number of duties while helping the priests. When King David planned the Temple, the number of Levites fit for work was 38,000. Of these, 24,000 were overseers of daily work at the Temple; 6,000 were officers and judges; 4,000 were gatekeepers; and 4,000 praised the Lord with their instruments (1 Chr. 23: 3-5). But the number of the Levites "who were instructed in the songs of the Lord, all who were skillful, was two hundred and eighty eight" (1 Chr. 25: 7). Some twenty names of musical instruments have been identified through the biblical text, the most famous one being the kinnor, a kind of lyre - the instrument played by David.13 Portaleone describes the biblical instruments, referring extensively to 'similar' instruments of his time. He also expands on the laws of harmony and brings a wealth of details on music in ancient times in other cultures. Most probably, Portaleone was influenced by the Mantuan rabbi and scholar 11 Some of Abraham's cases were described by his grandson Guglielmo (Benjamin) in his own work entitled Consulti medici (still in manuscript), cited above, notes 2 and 3. Abraham apparently left these two medical works to his son David, who most probably handed them over to those of the next generation who practised medicine. 12 Cf. S. S. Kottek in Koroth (cited above, n. 1), pp. 228-233 [Heb.] and pp. 271*-274* [Eng.]. Contrary to Jewish custom, Abraham Portaleone commanded his sons not to bury him until 72 hours had elapsed after his death. But this is beside the topic of the present study. 13 On music and musical instruments in the Bible, see (for instance) A. Sendrey, Music in Ancient Israel (London, 1969); G. Larrick, Musical References and Song-Texts in the Bible (Lewiston, 1990); J. Montagu, Musical Instruments of the Bible (Oxford, 1996). On music in Shiltei ha-gibborim, see Daniel Sandier, The Music Chapters in Shiltei ha-gibborim by Abraham Portaleone [Heb.] (Diss. Tel Aviv, 1980). As a matter of fact, several chapters of Portaleone's work deal with various aspects of music (chapters 4 to 11, fol. 6a-9a).

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Judah Moscato (c. 1530-c. 1593), another example of enlightened Renaissance Jews. In his book on sermons,14 published in 1589, he has a long development on music (sermon 1). Both authors argued that even the basic concepts of Renaissance music were prefigured in the Psalms and that King David may be considered a pioneer of the discipline of music. It should be mentioned that Mantua was then a renowned musical centre. Claudio Monteverdi spent there twenty-two years of his life at the court of the Dukes of Mantua. Jewish composers such as David Civita, Allegro Porto, and more particularly Salomone de' Rossi15 were contemporaries to Abraham Portaleone. Mantua was thus a particularly prominent location in the history of music in general and of Jewish music in particular. Portaleone had therefore no difficulty in finding accurate information on this topic. Glyptography (Sympathetic Ink) When describing the Holy Tabernacle in the desert, the author describes how the Tabernacle itself and the utensils (the Ark, the Holy Table, the altars, etc.) were dismantled and carried by the Levites from one encampment to the other. The camp of the Children of Israel was organized like a military camp; therefore the author indulges in a long development on military art and practice. Arms and shields are described (as well as 'modern' arms, gunpowder etc.), the laws of ballistics, the camp's lighting - and much more. In the context of warfare, secret messages sometimes have to be sent to friends or allies, while passing through alien or hostile territory; in such cases 'sympathetic ink' may be useful, and therefore a whole chapter is devoted to this technology. Portaleone advocates three methods (ch. 42, fol. 39b): (1) Prepare a solution of atramentum sutorium16 (called %aAxavS-ov in Greek). The author mentions that the word was often spelled kankanthum by 14 See J. Moscato, Nefutsot Yehuda (Venice, 1589). The work contains 52 sermons, i.e., a full weekly cycle through the year. 15 Salomone de' Rossi was a scion of the Min-ha-Adumim family, which counted several other musicians - and the famous philosopher Azariah de' Rossi. Salomone de' Rossi composed a number of works of Jewish (Hebrew) content (Ha-shirim asher li-Shelomo [Venice, 1622-1623]). These pieces were composed for special festive occasions; some of them became famous in the synagogal festive liturgy. 16 Atramentum is the last entry in Dioscorides's De materia medica, book 5, ch. 182 (183), in Medicorum graecorum opera quae exstant, ed. C. G. Kiihn (Lipsiae, 1821-1833), vol. 25: Pedant Dioscoridis Anazarbei de materia medicina libri quinque [...], illustravit C. Sprengel (Lipsiae, 1821), p. 827: "Atramentum, quo scribimus [...]". Johann Jacob Woyt, in his Schatzkammer medicinisch und natiirlicher Dinge (Leipzig, 41726) (s.v. atramentum) distinguishes between atr. commune scriptorium ("Gemeine Dinte zum schreiben"), and atramentum sutorium fossile nigrum et album: "gegraben weiss und schwarz Vitriol", quoting from Agricola and Paracelsus.

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ignorant scribes. When one writes something (on the clothes of the messenger) using this solution, once it has dried out, it is invisible. If you then put on it some solution of acorn (gall), the writing appears to sight.17 (2) Write with a solution of lemon juice or apple juice. If the place is later warmed up, the script appears. (3) Write on someone's body with the milky, sticky juice of unripe figs; if you later rub the place with charcoal, you will be able to read. The first method may be called 'scientific',18 whereas the others are based on popular lore. Then Portaleone introduces a remark based on Jewish law. He quotes the verse "You shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you " (Lev. 19: 28). The ketovet ka'aka ("a printed mark") is a hapax legomenon in the Bible. Tattooing is thus prohibited by Jewish law, although the Sages discuss the question whether this is only so if the inscription is related to idolatry, or is a general prohibition19. Be this as it may, Portaleone rightly remarks that such inscriptions on the body, being easily washed away by water, are not actually tattooing. Nevertheless, he adds, an observant Jew should prefer the other methods, in order not to come close to the biblical prohibition.

17 Woyt (cf. above, n. 16), leaning on Lemery (cf. Pharmacopee universelle, 1697), advocates the same method in the opposite way: "Write with a solution of acorn (Gallapfelwasser), this will be invisible, but if you put on it some solution of Vitriol [i.e., sulfuric acid], the script will become visible (s.v. atramentum sympatheticum)". Among ancient sources which Portaleone may have used, Pliny (Naturalis historia = Nat. Hist. 34, 125-128), speaking of atramentum sutoriwn (here, shoemakers' black) mentions that it was used as a drug as well, and remarks "appellant enim chalcanthon". Other possible sources of the Renaissance period were Matthiolus, Fallopius, Brasavola, Agricola. On its use for sympathetic ink, see Geronimo Cardano who mentions it in two of his works: De subtilitate (Lugduni, 1554) and De rerum varietate (Basileae, 1557). The work of Giovanni Battista della Porta, Magiae naturalis, sive de miraculis rerum naturalium (Antverpiae, 1560), gives all the details (use of vitriol and solution of gall, or vice versa, and use of juice of fruit or vegetables). This work was translated into Italian and published in Venice (1560,21584,31588). Seven years after Portaleone's work, another Italian, Pietro Maria Canepario, published De atramentis cuiuscunque generis [...] in sex descriptiones digestum (Venetiis, 1619, repr. 1680, 1728). In the Quarto descriptio, cap. XXV, Canepario speaks on "Plerique modi scribendi literas latentes" (pp. 282-285). He mentions how to write on the body (aliquo membro corporis humani), as well as using succus limonis, and does not omit the use of aqua stillatitia gallatum and thereafter solutum vitriolum (p. 283). Canepario, as Portaleone, was a physician, "Venetiis medicinam profitenti". 18 Portaleone's knowledge on materia medica and botany, which is illustrated in several parts of his work, may have stemmed from the Dispensatorium of Valerius Cordus (1535), or from the works of Leonhart Fuchs, or of Foes or Wecker; but we call attention to the fact that a city pharmacopoeia was published in Mantua in 1559 (one of the first ones, if not the first). 19 See Babylonian Talmud, Makkot 21a. And in the Codes: Maimonides, Yad, Avodah Zarah 12, 11; also Shulhan arukh, Yore Deah 180, 1.

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Skirmish (Warfare) After his chapter on cryptography, Portaleone describes several ways of sending messages over a distance, with smoke (during day-time) or fire (at night), or with carrier-doves.20 Then the author has a development on the danger of skirmishes in warfare. He uses the term scaramouche,21 stressing the effect of surprise, particularly at night. Here, the author quotes from the Bible, the passage featuring Abraham's attack on the army that had taken his nephew Lot prisoner. His party counted only 318 fighters, but "He divided himself against them, he and his servants, by night, and smote them, and pursued them [...]" (Gen. 14: 15). This method is quite efficient, Portaleone remarks, but dangerous, for it may happen that two portions of the same party attack one another in the dark; therefore he suggests wearing white clothes above the armour and helmet, in order to be able to recognize each other. He even ventures an original commentary to the biblical source, the Hebrew va-yeihalek ("he divided himself) being similar to a word meaning cloth, or overall (haluk, close to halak). So, according to Portaleone, Abraham used this stratagem of wearing (white) overalls. It appears that Portaleone's interest in philology and linguistics knew no limits. The importance of infiltrating groups of warriors behind the lines of the enemy is also stressed (ibid.). And again the author quotes from the Bible. In case your own army is taken into such a snare, he says, your rear-guard should turn round and face the enemy, as did David's general Joab in his battle against Ammon and their allies led by Aram (2 Sam. 10: 9-10).22 Finally Portaleone remarks that the speed of an attack and the effect of surprise are of prime importance, as documented in the Bible (Josh. 10: 9; 11: 7).23 In one word, these are the lessons of the Bible for 'modern' warfare.

20 When speaking of doves, Portaleone mentions a chapter in the Babylonian Talmud (Hullin fol. 139b) where the Sages deal with the breeding of birds. 21 Scaramouche (Hal. Scaramuccio) was the name of a famous character of the Italian and later French theatre (early seventeenth century but after Portaleone's times). In fact escarmouche (Ital. scaramuccia) means a limited battle, sometimes also an ambush, or, as the author puts it, "playing with the enemies in order to keep them worrying" [fol. 39b and 40a]. 22 (2 Sam. 10: 9-10): "When Joab saw that the front of the battle was against him before and behind, he chose of all the choice men of Israel and put them in array against Aram"; the rest of the army was put in array against Ammon on the rear front. 23 (Josh. 10: 9): "So Joshua came unto them suddenly [...] (at) night". This was the battle at Giv'on, won by Joshua against a coalition of five kings. The other episode (Josh. 11:7) features another battle, at the waters of Merom, against an even stronger coalition, including horses and chariots. Here again Joshua won the battle.

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Chemistry: Common Salt Salt was directly related to the performance of sacrifices at the Temple: "Every meal offering you will season with salt" (Lev. 2: 13). Salt is a substance that prevents decay, therefore the Bible speaks of "a covenant of salt forever before the Lord" (Num. 18: 19).24 Portaleone devoted chapter 76 of his work to salt, its various kinds and ways of preparation. Only one aspect will be considered in the frame of this essay.25 In the territory of the Dukes of Parma and Piacenza there is a place called Sales (or Salis). A well (or a pool?) containing salted waters exuding from the depth of the earth, on which floats some kind of natural oil with a very strong smell, can be found there. This oil, writes Portaleone, is very effective in healing "cold" diseases caused by (excess of) phlegm (i.e., the white humor), in the form of ointments. In order to separate the salt from the water, once the oil has been removed, the water is boiled in big copper vessels together with the blood of cattle and sheep. This method is, "as agreed upon by all", the only way to isolate the salt from the water, for it causes the salt to solidify. This effect (so Portaleone) is akin to the effect of lab-ferment on milk in the curdling process (preparation of cheese). With Jewish law forbidding the consumption of blood,26 were Jews allowed to use salt prepared in that way? The problem was that no other kind of salt could be imported in the Duchy of Parma, and this rule was strictly implemented. Portaleone states that "a renowned Jewish rabbinical authority" (whom he does not name) had given permission to all Jews to use this salt. Salt is obviously considered a basic, if not vital, component of the human diet. I think I was able to identify this rabbinical authority: Rabbi Menahem Azariah da Fano (1548-1620), in his Responsa (no. 27) published in 1600.27 Even a good part of the wording has been faithfully reproduced by Portaleone. The topic was again mentioned, quite similarly, in the halakhic 24

The context is here that of heave offerings (Heb. terumah) which are instituted as "a statute forever" (ibid.). A "covenant of salt" is a bond lasting forever, as the biblical allegory has it. 25 See Portaleone, Shiltei ha-gibborim (cited above, n. 6), fol. 78a. 26 According to Jewish law, meat can only be cooked and eaten once the blood has been extracted. It. is stated in the Talmud that blood cannot be thoroughly extracted from meat unless it is well salted [Hullin fol. 113a]. Blood takes the salt out of the water by allowing it to coagulate, whereas salt takes the blood out of meat by absorption and draining; this is indeed an interesting case of reciprocity. 27 The Responsa of Menahem Azariah da Fano were first published in Venice (1600), then in 1788 (Dyhernfurth) and again in Szeged in 1892. Da Fano lived for some time in Mantua and was still alive when Portaleone died. It seems to me that Portaleone refrained from mentioning his source - possibly because he disagreed with allowing the use of salted products from the Duchy of Parma outside the Duchy. He indeed cautiously remarked: "But I certainly have no intention of objecting to this ruling or of abolishing a custom which has been established for a long period" (Portaleone, Shiltei ha-gibborim [cited above, n. 6], fol. 78a, left col.).

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encyclopedia Pahad Yitshak28 compiled by another Italian scholar (and physician), Isaac Lampronti (1679-1756). Precious Stones This topic will be only briefly mentioned, as we studied this aspect in a previous paper.29 When describing the Priests' garments, Portaleone has a long development on the twelve precious and semi-precious stones of Aaron's breastplate. The High Priest's breastplate was called hoshen mishpat ("the breastplate of judgment"), due to its oracular properties. But Portaleone does not restrict his study to the twelve stones; he expands to a (limited) lapidarium. Let us give two examples: Aetites30 is a stone of intensely green colour [...]. It is called in the language of our ancestors "the stone of conservation" [Heb. even tekumah] [...] and it is permitted to wear it on the Sabbath [...].31 It will be helpful for a woman in order not to miscarry [...]. Some (authors) call aetites the eagle-stone, for they (the eagles) put them with their eggs when they hatch them. These (stones) can be found at the shore of the Ocean and in Persia. Inside this stone there is a second one which can be perceived when shaking it. If aetites is hung at the left arm of the woman, she will not miscarry. And it will be helpful to a birthing woman, if tied at her hip. It helps against epilepsy. And the Chaldeans [i.e., magicians]32 said that if you place one (such stone) on food, if there is in it any poison, you will not be able to swallow the food; but as soon as you put the stone away, the food may be swallowed easily, (fol. 5la, left col.)

28 See Pahad Yitshak, s.v. melah (= salt). This encyclopedia was published irregularly over a long period (from 1750 until well into the nineteenth century). This excursus first appeared in print in part 5, fol. 125b (Livorno, 1839). 29 See S. S. Kottek, 'Names, Roots and Stones in Jewish Lore. Between Magic, Theology and Medicine: An Overview', in Proceedings of the 32th International Congress on History of Medicine, Antwerp, 3-7 September 1990 (n.d. [1991]), pp. 63-74. - Chapters 46 to 49 of Shiltei ha-gibborim deal with this topic. 30 Aetites is not one of the twelve stones of the breast-plate. It is however mentioned in ancient Jewish sources, as we shall see. 31 This even tekumah is mentioned in the Babylonian Talmud, Shabbat fol. 66b. The rabbis - echoing obviously popular belief- allowed wearing this preventive means even for a woman who had never before aborted, and even for a woman who did not actually know that she was pregnant, but could possible be with child. This excursus is not mentioned in the parallel section of the Jerusalem Talmud - which does not prove that aetites was unknown to Palestinian Jewish women. 32 This statement on the 'Chaldeans' is taken verbatim from Pseudo-Albertus, The Book of Secrets, book 2, no. 41. See The Book of Secrets ofAlbertus Magnus of the Virtues of Herbs, Stones and Certain Beasts Also, A book of the Marvels of the World, eds. M. R. Best, F. H. Brightman (Oxford, 1973), p. 46. See also Albertus Magnus, Book of Minerals, trans. D. Wyckoff (Oxford, 1967), book 2, ch. 5 (s.v. echites), pp. 87 f. In the (genuine) Book of Minerals, Albertus adds another version of the 'Chaldean' method: if aetites is put into the food of someone suspected of being a poisoner, he cannot swallow it, but if he is innocent he will readily eat.

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In this case, Portaleone leans on Pseudo-Albertus Magnus, but also apparently on Pliny (Natural History 30, 130), who speaks of the eagle-stone.33 Among the Byzantine authors, Aetius of Amidos mentions this stone. It is also listed in Kiihn's edition of Dioscorides's De materia medico, but it seems that it was inserted by some later author or copyist.34 PseudoDioscorides mentions wearing the stone on the left arm, also on the hip "ut cita dolores pariunt". Its use against epilepsy is there as well: "comitiales insigniter juvat". Sapphire (Greek a-a-ntpsiQog, Heb. sapir) was one of the stones of the High Priest's breastplate. It was the second stone of the second row, and has been traditionally related to the tribe of Issakhar.35 This stone comes from the Orient and from India (fol. 46a). In his lapidariwn (fol. 50a), Portaleone more precisely states that sapphire is found "in Calicut, in Cannanore, and in the towns of the realm of Bissanagua."36 Sapphire, he says, has a greenish (or yellowish) colour resembling that of crocus (in its pale kind), like the colour of clear pure skies. Then Portaleone quotes Francesco Roeo37 accord33 Pliny states: "Lapis aetites in aquilae repertus nido custodit partus contra omnes abortuum insidias" (Nat. Hist. 30, 130); see also Natural History 36, 151. 34 Aetites is listed in Dioscorides's book 5, no. 161 (160) (in Kuhn's edition [cited above, n. 16]). But it is not listed in Max Wellmann's critical edition, as it could not be found in early manuscripts of Dioscorides's work. Julius Preuss (Biblical and Talmudic Medicine, trans. F. Rosner [New York, 1978], pp. 385 f.) mentions the fact that Abraham Portaleone identified even tekuma with aetites, but he thinks that he was describing in fact "the green jasper of modern mineralogists", adding that this stone was "surely worn as a birth amulet by the Assyrians". I am afraid that in this case Preuss's comment was neither relevant nor justified. 35 There are, as a matter of fact, two traditions regarding the relationship between the stones and the Tribes. This one is defended by Maimonides (cf. also Targum Yerushalmi); followed by R. Bahya ben Asher (thirteenth century) - who wrote an elaborate commentary on the stones of the breastplate. 36 These towns are located in the Kerala province, on the south-west coast of India. Sapphire is found in Ceylon and Burma as well. 'Bissanagua' stands for Vijayanagar, a Hindu kingdom in the South of India (1336-1565), which was overthrown by the Mogul ruler Akbar at the battle of Talikota. Here Portaleone's source was apparently Garcia da Orta, whose Coloquios dos simples e drogas da India was first published in Goa in 1563 (cf. Lisboa, 1895, vol. 2, pp. 215 f.). The author, speaking of sapphire (cafira), states that it may be found "in Calecut, and Cananor [sic] and in several places in the kingdom of Bisnagua [sic]". Elsewhere, da Orta writes 'Bisnaguer' (cf. ibid., p. 198). Da Orta's work was translated into Latin (by Clusius) and into Italian (Venice, 1576, 1582, 1589). I am grateful to Dr Gianfranco Miletto for this reference to da Orta. 37 Francesco Roeo (Rueus, Rueo) = Francois de la Rue (c. 1520-1585); he published De gemmis aliquot, Us praesertim quarum D. loannes Apostolus in sue apocalypsi meminit. De aliis quoque, quarum itsus aevi apud omnes percrebuit, libri II (Francofurti, 1608). This edition, which is not the first one, is appended to a work of Levinus Lemnius (= Lievens Lemmens) on biblical parables and metaphors relating to herbs and trees. Roe'o's De gemmis was first published in Paris in 1547. The work went through at least ten editions. As explained in the title, Roeo describes the precious stones mentioned in the Apocalypse of St John (21: 18-21). There Sapphire is the second stone of which the fundamenta of the Holy City's walls were made. I wish to thank the staff of the Osier Library (McGill University, Montreal), Ms Wayne LeBel in particular, for checking for me in Roe'o's work.

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ing to whom its colour is "caeruleo", and there are inside the stone kinds of darker clouds resembling the flame of sulfur when it is set on fire, with small dots looking like bright gold.38 The proprieties (Heb. segulot) of this stone are numerous: it preserves the health of the eyes and of the whole organism. It also works on the soul, enabling it to be constantly prepared to serve the Lord and to study his Laws and precepts39. It is also effective for achieving peace and serenity. Portaleone now 'explains' the relationship to the tribe of Issakhar. These people were devoted to the study of the Law and stayed in their tents (cf. Deut. 33: 18). The fact that sapphire has the color of "clear pure skies" is related to the fact that Issakhar "have the understanding of the times" (1 Chr. 12: 32).40 Moreover, according to the Midrash, the first Tables of the Law were made of sapphire or a sapphire-like stone (Midrash Tanhuma, KiTissa 26)41. During the Theophany at Mount Sinai, "There was under His feet, as it were, a pavement of sapphire stone" (Ex. 24: 10). In Ezekiel's vision the divine throne is made of sapphire (Ex. 1: 26; 10: 1). Thus, the approach of the Jewish tradition to sapphire - in prophetic as well as homiletical texts - is one of high spirituality.42 In his lapidarium (fol. 50a), Portaleone mentions proprieties of the sapphire stone that are more practical. It extirpates the abscess called carbuncle, carbono in the vernacular, [...] it also protects against scabies [or itch, Heb. gerev] and impedes abundant perspiration. It causes the face to look bright and nice. It wards off terror, trembling and melancholy. And (this is here repeated) it prevents eye diseases.

Without indicating his sources, Portaleone adds that "the magicians" know how to make sapphire become "white and translucid", looking "like a diamond of first quality". Portaleone acknowledges that he is indebted to Pseudo-Albertus when describing the geographic origins of sapphire (fol. 46a). But apparently he 38 The "small dots looking like gold" are characteristic of lapis lazuli (which was the sapphire of the ancients); they are, in fact, grains of pyrite. In Albertus's Book of Minerals, II, 2,20 (cited above, n. 32), they are described s.v. zemech = lapis lazuli (p. 125). 39 This is the version on fol. 46a - serving as an introduction to the virtues and peculiarities of the tribe of Issakhar. 40 "Understanding the times" is related to the science of astronomy and to the calendar. See the commentary of R. David Kimhi (1160-1235) on 1 Chr. 12: 32. (Kimhi's biblical commentaries were so valuable and popular that the earliest printed Hebrew Bibles included them, e.g., Stephanus's Biblia hebraica [Parisiis, 1539-1542]). 41 This samphirinon (or sanphirinon), Gr.ff-afrp/p/poi',was most probably lapis lazuli. It is stated elsewhere that Moses' staff was made of samphirinon (Midrash Tanhuma, Beshallah 21). 42 Even the widely accepted protection of eyesight attributed to sapphire has been related to the biblical statement (Ps. 19: 9): "The precept of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes". Its effect on the soul may be related to the verse "The Law of the Lord is perfect, restoring the soul"(Ps. 19:8).

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leans as well on Albertus Magnus when speaking of its medical proprieties (fol. 50a). Regarding the medical properties of sapphire, Dioscorides43 mentions that it is considered effective for those who have been bitten by a scorpion; also for those suffering from ulcerations of the bowels. It stops tumors developing in the eyes, abscesses and boils. It helps to close ruptured membranes (Gr. L/jitevov). Obviously, Dioscorides was not, in this case, Portaleone's source of information. For Bahya,44 sapphire is good for the eyes, and is helpful for any pain or swelling anywhere. Conclusion We have discussed in this essay some aspects of the multi-faceted work of Abraham Portaleone, a Jewish physician and touche-a-tout of the Italian late-Renaissance period. Shiltei ha-gibborim was composed within a period of two years, by a crippled scholar who must have had a sizeable library and/or learned informants at his disposal. One can find detailed information on multifarious disciplines, such as zoology, botany, mineralogy, weights and measures, warfare, oenology, numismatics, chemistry, music and philology -1 am afraid the list is incomplete. Most impressive in our eyes is the blending between detailed scholarship in Jewish antiquities and in the science and technology of his time. Portaleone illustrates 'modern' technology with comparable (?) ancient Jewish sources and brings 'modern' aspects in his description of the Temple of Jerusalem. This may seem (and actually often is) somewhat irritating for a historically trained mind. It was aimed, however, at giving his children, to whom the book was dedicated (and his readers beyond them) a testimony from a highly cultured mind, and to us it appeals as a lesson in Renaissance scholarship.

43

Dioscorides, Materia medica, ed. Kiihn (cited above, n. 16), book 5, ch. 156 (157), p.

817.

44

R. Bahya b. Asher's commentary on Exod. 28: 18 has most probably been used by Portaleone for his development on Issakhar (and the other tribes as well). According to Bahya, "It is written in books on Natural Science that these twelve precious stones are the basic ones, all the others being only variants or derivations".

SCIENCE AND RELIGIOUS HERMENEUTICS: THE 'PHILOSOPHY' OF RABBI LOEW OF PRAGUE

GIUSEPPE VELTRI Introduction Known as the "Hohe Rabbi Loew" or, by his Hebrew acronym, "the Maharal" (Morenu ha-Rabbi Liva, "our teacher, the Rabbi Loew"), Judah Loew ben Bezalel was portrayed in his lifetime above all as a Talmud teacher and rabbi. According to the numerous posthumous legends, however, which spread even beyond the world of the Ashkenazim, he became famous as the creator par excellence of the Golem and was extolled as the rabbi who had been granted the highest possible favour, namely of having been summoned to the Hradshin (Prague Castle) by the German Emperor Rudolf II, and allowed to discuss secret matters (Kabbalah and alchemy) with him. Until well into the 1950s, Judah Loew received scant attention from scholars. Indeed, Gershom Scholem wrote in 1957 that Loew's writings were "well-nigh forgotten."1 In the last thirty years, however, scholarly interest in his work has undergone a veritable revival. Innumerable studies have been and are being devoted to different aspects of his Weltanschauung and philosophy. Rabbi Loew is even regarded as the only philosopher of the Ashkenazic world of his time to have constructed a system of far-reaching significance.2 Judah Loew belongs to the leading lights of Prague Jewry's so-called aetas aurea or "Golden Age", a short period towards the end of the sixteenth century until about 1611 when an atmosphere of relative tolerance between Christians and Jews is said to have prevailed.3 He left behind a leg1

G. Scholem, Die jtidische Mystik in ihren Hauptstromungen (Frankfurt a. M., 1957), p.

372. 2 Thus J. Katz, Ben yehudim le-goyim (Jerusalem, 1960), p. 140; cf. B. Gross, 'Der hohe Rabbi Juda Loew als Theologe und Gemeinderabbiner', in Das aschkenasische Rabbinat. Studien iiber Glaube und Schicksal, ed. J. Carlebach (Berlin, 1995), p. 141. 3 Thus L. Zunz, Zur Geschichte und Literatur, vol. 1 (Berlin, 1845; repr. Hildesheim, 1976), p. 269: "The happiest epoch at all of Prague's Jewish community seems to have been the last quarter of that [i.e., sixteenth] century until about 1611 during the reign of Rudolf, when Rabbi Loew was the Chief Rabbi and the generous Mardochai ben Samuel Meisel leader of the community."

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acy steeped in legends, but historically pale, more as if his pupils and contemporaries had actually tried to cast a saintly aura about him rather than to pass down authentic facts about the nature of his work. But he is also one of those figures who themselves contributed to the welding of their own lives to their teachings and politics, so much so that it would be hazardous to undertake an analysis of his ideas without taking all these factors into consideration. The following is thus an attempt to sketch the main strands of his vita, weaving in some of the ideas of his theological system. At the outset, however, it should be pointed out that changes and developments in his thought are hardly noticeable. It was not unusual for Rabbi Loew to prepare his writings and sermons in a parallel fashion, a sign of his endeavour to have his systematic teachings appear consistent and monolithic. As a methodical approach to portraying the Maharal against his Jewish background and within the Christian environment of his time, two main aspects will be focussed upon: Loew's reaction to Azariah de' Rossi and his confrontations concerning the citing of contemporary Christian authorities. About His Life The Maharal was born at the beginning of the sixteenth century. Because of the lack of reliable sources, ascertaining more precise details about his life is extremely difficult. As a rule, most modern scholars follow the speculations of his first biographer and distant relative Meir Perles, who in 1718 authored the Sefer megilat yuhasin meharal mi-Prag ("Book of the Genealogy of the Maharal of Prague") for his relative Isaiah Katz.4 Because of this family connection it is usually assumed that the contents of Perles's memoirs were somehow reported to him, but no proof of this can be found. Perles's Sefer megilat turns out to be a hagiography. This is already evident in the places where the author praises the virtuousness and erudition of the whole Loew family, namely Judah's great-grandfather, his grandfather Hayyim, his father Bezalel and his own four sons. It is no mere coincidence that the biographer underscores the origins of the Loew family: he wants to stress precisely the line of continuity from Judah to his great-grandfather, claiming that on the younger man's tombstone in Prague the following words were engraved: 4 M. Perles, Sefer megilat yuhasin [...] meharal mi-Prag (Prague, 1864). A German translation is available: 'Megillath Juchassin Mehral miPrag. Die Deszendenztafel des hohen Rabbi Loew von Rabbi Meir Perles', trans, and introd. S. H. Lieben, in Jahrbuch der judischliterarischen Gesellschaft 20 (1929), pp. 315-336. A thorough analysis and discussion of the sources and secondary literature on Loew's life is offered by B. L. Sherwin, Mystical Theology and Social Dissent (London, Toronto, 1982), pp. 187-189.

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Our master and teacher, the Rabbi Judah Liva'i. And this for Judah, as a teaching and a testimony, a sage, versed in the six orders of the Talmud; in the whole world there is nobody who can equal him in acuity of understanding and comprehensive knowledge and memory. He is from the line of the Gaonim, who are descended from our Lord David, the son of Jesse.5

Some of the problems in the biography of Loew and his family are solved in an elegant manner by Perles. This is, for instance, the case with the question of the supposed reason for Loew's migration to the East. Perles considers Poland to be the place for scholars already in the time of grandfather Hayyim. This is supposed to explain why Judah's father, i.e., Bezalel, moved to Poland despite the difficulties involved. Indeed, it is true that this country was noted for its scholarship at that time: Jacob Polak (1460-1532) and later his pupils Solomon Luria (1510-1574) and Moses Isserles (d. c.1572) taught there. But it was actually the general and-Jewish climate of fifteenth-century Germany with its diverse expulsions and pogroms which was more likely to have actuated the migration.6 Perles opines that Loew was born in 1512. Nathan Griin, who published the first critical biography of Rabbi Loew in 1885,7 was already voicing doubts about the reliability of this claim. On the basis of observations about the birth date of the Maharal's older brother Hayyim, a school comrade of Moses Isserles, he cast doubt on Perles's assertion. The suggested date of 1520 is even more problematic, however, as Byron L. Sherwin has thoroughly demonstrated. The determination of the exact birth date is accordingly extremely difficult, as only the period from 1512 (Perles) to 1525 (a date provided without further evidence)8 comes into question. In Loew's case, establishing his exact birth date is no mere idle pursuit. As a matter of note, it is scholarly researchers who are attempting to attribute a biblical age to him in order to date the beginning of his published teachings in his mature years. Andre Neher, a French scholar who has devoted several important studies to the Maharal, writes on this point: "We take 1512 to be the year of the Maharal's birth. No serious reason can be in5 See the German translation by Lieben, 'Megillath Juchassin', p. 320. To my knowledge, however, such a tombstone is not preserved. Perles's reliability is to be doubted. He writes (according to Lieben's translation) about Rabbi Loew's tombstone thus: "He rests with his wife under a tombstone, and because of the pious modesty of both of them, neither the title of Rabbi nor Rabbi's wife is mentioned, but only: Here rests (!) Rabbi Judah ben Bezalel and his likeminded wife Perel, daughter of Rabbi Samuel." The rendering is quite imprecise and does not at all correspond to the wording of the tombstone which has been preserved. On the latter, see Epitaphs from the Ancient Jewish Cemetery of Prague [Heb.] [Fontes ad Res Judaicas Spectantes 162], ed. O. Muneles (Jerusalem, 1988), pp. 272-278. 6 On this, see B. Weinryb, The Jews of Poland. A Social and Economic History of the Jewish Community in Poland from 1100 to 1800 (Philadelphia, 1973), p. 39 and p. 339, n. 26; cf. Sherwin, Theology (cited above, n. 4), p. 25. 7 N. Griin, Der hohe R. Loew und sein Sagenkreis (Prag, 1885). 8 Encyclopaedia Judaica 10 (1971), p. 374.

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voked for a later date, for this would have the effect of shortening the Maharal's life and of making his ceuvre a more youthful product."9 This dubious argument is indefensible, for Perles's claims are not historically reliable, regardless of whether or not the rabbi's longevity has any bearing on the evaluation of his work, an assertion which Neher has still failed to explain. Nothing is known about Loew's youth. In this respect, too, his biographer Perles is at pains to blend the historical with the legendary. A third of his story about Loew's vita is concerned with the circumstances surrounding his marriage to Mrs. Rabbi Loew, since criminal courts had left her rich father with "nothing but his bare life", and only through a miracle did she manage to obtain a dowry and thus marry the respected rabbi. It is worth our while to look at this episode: From my fathers I heard that at the age of 32 he [Rabbi Loew] took a wife under special circumstances. He was namely betrothed with the daughter of the (community's) leading official, the honourable and glorious Rabbi Samuel, son of Rabbi Jacob who through wealth, property and good standing was a great man of his day and also had close relations to the court; this 'rich Shmelke', as he was called, sent him to Przemysl at his expense to study with Gaon Maharshal [= Solomon Luria, Posen 1510 - Lublin 1573]. Shmelke himself had a very respected son in Przemysl named Joshua Shmelke, from whom the line of the Shmelkes branches off, e.g., the Gaon our master and teacher, the rabbi Rabbi Shmelke from Ostra, and the Gaon our master and teacher Shmelke, head of the Levites; Horvitz, who was the head of the court of the holy Trani community, the son of the great rabbi our master and teacher Joshua he-Arukh, head of the Levites. Meanwhile four evil criminal courts fell over Prague, and the man was so fleeced by them that only his bare life was left him. The man was already old, advanced in years and unable to move about as before; he therefore wrote his son-in-law that it was impossible for him to carry out his duties, but he did not want, God forbid, to make the marriage impossible for him; therefore he was leaving it up to him to enter another marriage if he saw fit to do so. However, the son-in-law replied to him that he did want to keep his promise, but - if he [Shmelke] feared she would otherwise remain unmarried - he should marry her off elsewhere; then he would know what to do, (for) he hoped for God's help. The bride now set up a business for herself in order to feed her elderly parents by selling bread and other baked goods. It was then a time of war; one day there came a rider on horseback, a spear in his hand, who thrust it into a loaf of bread, intending to make off with it. The maiden grasped the reins of the horse and wept and implored him not to rob her of the bread, as she was poor and had to feed her aged parents with her little business. 9

"Nous adoptons la date de 1512 pour la naissance du Maharal, aucune raison serieuse ne pouvant etre invoquee pour une date posterieure, qui aurait pour effet de raccourcir la vie due Maharal et de rajeunir son ceuvre" (A. Neher, Lepuits de I'exil. Tradition et modernite: la pensee du Maharal de Prague, 2nd ed. [Paris, 1991], p. 10, n. 2).

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The rider answered: 'Look, I have been gripped by hunger; for three days now I have tasted no bread, should I then die of hunger? On my horse I have a Pastav10 cloth which I will give to you as a pawn for the loaf of bread; (even) if I bring you the two groschen for it within 24 hours, take the cloth as compensation.' And so it happened. After a longer while she opened up the cloth and found gold ducats amidst all its seams. Whereupon he [the father] wrote and let his son-in-law know that he wanted to come to the wedding, for through a miracle he had become rich. At that time the bride was twenty-eight years old, the bridegroom thirty-two; her name was Perel, a pearl with no imperfections.11

The story with its fairytale-like features serves to extol in a literary fashion the virtuousness of Loew's wife, from whom the Perles family name originated. The only historical fact to be derived from this story is the legend of the origin of the Perles family. If it does contain a historical core, then it is the information that Judah Loew was quite poor. In the financing of his rabbinical studies he was supported by his father-in-law. Only once does Rabbi Loew speak of his teachers, and then without naming any names.12 By contrast, his brother Hayyim is not inhibited about mentioning his teacher Sefardi (in his introduction to Be'er mayim Hayyim), who taught him the Pentateuch with Rashi's commentary. The fact that Rabbi Loew does not remember his teachers does not in the first instance imply that he wished to distance himself from them,13 but rather indicates his awarenesss that he was the homo novus of the new generation. Loew seldom mentions contemporary scholars by name. Apart from his brother Hayyim, he cites the following figures and works in his polemics: Azariah de' Rossi's (c. 1511-1578) Me'or einayim, Eliezer Ashkenazi's (1513-1586) Ma'ase ha-Shem, and Don Isaac Abrabanel (1437-1508). Moses Isserles and his Sefer torat ha-olah are not mentioned explicitly, but are nevertheless implied several times.14 This silence as well as the harsh polemics he directed against his contemporaries aim consciously at highlighting the stupidity - a word he often uses - of his generation. This aspect also has ontological connotations (see details below). The verifiable data of his life concern the period from 1559 to 1573 when Loew - according to the historiographer David Gans - was Rabbi of Nikolsburg and Chief Rabbi of Moravia.15 His leadership of the Jewish community of Moravia demonstrates how closely his personal experiences and 10

The word is not clear. Quoted from: Perles, 'Megillath Juchassin' (cited above, n. 4), p. 322. 12 In his sermon on the Great Sabbath, published in 1589 (Derashah le-shabbat ha-gadol). 13 Sherwin, Theology (cited above, n. 4), p. 197, n. 9. 14 For the details see ibid., p. 25. 15 Cf. David Gans, Tsemah David, quoted according to the following edition: David Gans, Zemah David. A Chronicle of Jewish and World History (Prague, 1592), ed. M. Breuer (Jerusalem, 1983), p. 145 f. 11

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consequently his reform plans of Jewish life were bound up with his philosophical premises. During his time as Chief Rabbi of Moravia the statutes which had been in effect until then were collected. The first 311 paragraphs, which under the direction of Menahem Krochmal served after 1662 as the basis of a binding canon for the Moravian Jewish communities, dealing with teachings and school matters, the funds for the support of Palestine, the standardization of the election of the elders, and the community structure. It is not certain, however, which of these statutes date back to the sixteenth century and the influence of Rabbi Loew.16 The task of re-organizing the Jewish communities was twofold in nature: political, developing as it did because of the circumstances of the rabbinical office in Moravia, and also theoretical, as the result of reflections on the rabbinical office.17 Throughout his work Rabbi Loew complains about the then prevailing situation in which a rabbi's election was subject to governmental influence,18 and also about the limitation of the office to a mere three years. In this manner a rabbi was forced to follow the will of the community, as he would otherwise fear he would not be re-elected. Moravia's Constitutiones contain a prayer, usually ascribed to Rabbi Loew, for those who obtained their office without the benefit of governmental influence. Rabbi Loew's concern that the rabbinical leadership would lose its authority if it were influenced by lay people and their demands - which indeed corresponded to the situation at that time - was above all of a theological nature; at least the reasoning behind it was theological. A rabbi's authority is not based on the election by his community, but rather on the semikha (i.e., the rabbinic ordination). A rabbi, like a king, should be able to assume the leadership of his people; and as a king is distinct from his entourage, so is a rabbi distinct from his followers. He should be the forma and his community his materia. While the emphasis on the royal dignity of the rabbinical office reflects the messianic expectations of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, basing its authority on the semikha probably indicates a parallel discussion in the world of Christianity. The papal view of the priesthood, which had been expressed in the Council of Trento some decades before, underscored precisely its separation from the community, wherefore, e.g., a priest had to practice celibacy. According to the Council, he owes his vested authority not, as Luther thought, to the community, but to his ordination by the bishop in his jurisdiction. 16 On this, see H. Teufel, Zurpolitischen undsozialen Geschichte derJuden in Mahren vom Antritt der Habsburger bis zur Schlacht am Wei/ten Berg (1526-1620) (Erlangen, Niimberg, 1971), pp. 302-305. 17 On this see Gross, 'Der hohe Rabbi Juda Loew' (cited above, n. 2), pp. 141-150. 18 Moses Isserles offered another opinion, basing his argument on the principle that "the law of the king is the law." Accordingly, he recognized the appointment of a rabbi by the king.

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A further problem which likewise had theological-philosophical implications and was presumably also raised in Moravia concerned the use of nonJewish wine. The reason for its prohibition was already provided by classical rabbinic Judaism: as non-Jewish wine may have served as a libation for idolatrous purposes, a Jew who drank of it could thus be guilty of idolatry. Most authorities, however, had ended up sanctioning its use because Christians were not (or no longer) regarded as idolaters.19 Loew's resistance to this relaxation of the rabbinic Halakhah was due less to the tendency not to treat Christians as idolatrous any more than to the isolation of the Jewish community. Israel, the first effect of the Creation, is the "form" and the nations are the "material." That Israel is a community of "chosen" people is no accident but the very determinant of its being. In the Exodus from Egypt and in accepting the gift of the Torah on Mount Sinai, Israel chose between "being" and "not-being". In Gevurot ha-Shem 72 (cf. Tiferet yisra'el 1) Rabbi Loew explains the relationship between Israel, to whom the gift of the Holy Spirit and of prophecy was vouchsafed, and the other nations as a natural (God-given?) one between human beings and other creatures: human beings were bestowed with an intellect higher than that of other creatures. The nations had no such natural disposition from the outset. In this way he explains the rabbinic aggadah about the rejection of the Torah by the nations of the world.20 Therefore the nations and Israel share no common ground; between them is only opposition, as between form and material, which are only in antithesis to each other. Neither privately nor as a rabbi was his life in Moravia crowned by great success; this circumstance comes to light in a polemic against an odd custom that is known as "nadlerism".21 "Nadler" is Middle High German for "bastard", a swearword that was making the rounds, especially among the upper classes. "Nadlerism" accordingly is a term for the use of nasty swearwords by Jews against fellow Jews, like, e.g., "bastard." In his ethical tractate Netivot olam Loew quotes a letter from his former pupil Israel. Besides excessively praising Rabbi Loew, Israel complains that the rabbinic authorities were not managing to prevent the scandal of nadlerism within the Jewish community. If Rabbi Loew, however, would only take a stand on it, then the Jewish people of Moravia would obey and the problem would be eliminated.22 Whether Israel actually wrote him such a letter or not cannot be de19 In the Middle Ages this issue was a vexata quaestio. See L. Jacobs, A Tree of Life. Diversity, Flexibility and Creativity in Jewish Law (Oxford, 1984), pp. 93 f. 20 On this see J. Katz, Exclusiveness and Tolerance. Studies in Jewish-Gentile Relations in Medieval and Modern Times (Oxford, 1961), pp. 140 f. On this point Katz thinks Rabbi Loew was relying on Judah Halevi's Sefer kuzari; cf. J. Guttmann, Die Philosophic des Judentums (Munchen, 1933), pp. 144-148. 21 On this see Sherwin, Theology (cited above, n. 4), p. 31 and pp. 169-172. 22 Judah Loew ben Bezalel, Sefer netivot olam, ch. 8.

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termined beyond doubt. However, we do have good reason to doubt that Rabbi Loew's authority was so highly esteemed that everyone would approve of intervening words from him. From the letter we can infer that it was precisely the rabbi's claim to authority which was called into question, at least in this matter, for Rabbi Loew as Chief Rabbi of Moravia had also not been able to solve this problem. This conclusion is confirmed by another source where we learn about his special interest in the subject. Solomon Luria, already mentioned above, treats nadlerism in Yad shel Solomon and in several of his responsa. In fact, in one responsum he condemns nadlerism with reference to a particular family who had been affected by it: Rabbi Loew's own family. In view of this the letter takes on a very personal dimension: Rabbi Loew's complaint that he suffered from a continual loss of authority in Moravia and his struggle against a unpleasant custom which he himself had to put up with. Under his direction a meeting of all the rabbis in Moravia took place in 1573. What they discussed has not been passed down.23 It is also not certain whether doubts were cast on Rabbi Loew's leadership at this meeting or whether his reform plans were quashed, as some scholars maintain. It is a matter of certainty, however, that for unknown reasons he resigned his office in 1573 and moved as a private person to Prague, where, with the support of the Jewish patron Mordecai Meisel, he was appointed head of the Klaus Synagogue (Die Klaus).24 The move to Prague apparently meant no loss of personal authority, because Meisel's patronage had considerable weight, both within and outside of the community. An episode illustrates this point. Ten years after the founding of the Hevra Kadisha, the "holy society" responsible for religious burials, it became necessary to draw up new statutes in order to continue carrying out this work. It was not the incumbent rabbi of Prague, Isaac Melnik, who was entrusted with the task, however, but Rabbi Loew.25 When Isaac Melnik died in 1578, Rabbi Loew seemed to be the most promising candidate for the vacant rabbinical post of Prague. A confirma23 On this see H. Schwengen, 'Geschichte der Juden in Ludenberg', in DieJuden und Judengemeinden Mahrens in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart, ed. H. Gold (Briinn, 1929), p. 321 and p. 328, n. 8. 24 Hardly any critical historical literature about the personality of Meisel (Meisl, Meysel, and many other variants) is available. In an essay published in 1893, Alexander Kisch clearly pointed out Meisel's role as Rabbi Loew's patron; see A. Kisch, 'Das Testament Mardochai Meysels mitgetheilt und nach handschriftlichen Quellen beleuchtet', in Monatschrift fur Geschichte und Wissenschaft desJudentums 37 (1893), pp. 25-40, 82-91,131-146, esp. pp. 87 f.: "Without a doubt it seems to me that Meisel's great humanistic deeds are partly due to Rabbi Loew's spiritual inspiration, and, conversely, that the work of the high Rabbi was only possible because of Meisel's material support." 25 Here 1 am following the interpretation of Sherwin, Theology (cited above, n. 4), p. 30. Considerable doubts remain, however: did Loew owe his authority primarily to Meisel's influence or rather to the low opinion in which Melnik was held?

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tion of this impression is the invitation he received to deliver the sermon for the Sabbath of Repentance (shabbat teshuvah) in the Old-New Synagague (Altneuschul) - a privilege normally reserved for Prague's Chief Rabbi. It is difficult to establish whether it was the contents of his quite vehement sermon or even internal conflicts within the community which were to blame for his failure to secure the office.26 Instead of Rabbi Loew, Isaac Hayyot became Melnik's successor. This choice could be interpreted as being directed against Rabbi Loew, because Rabbi Hayyot subscribed to the pilpul (lit. "pepper"; i.e., a hermeneutic method, the sharp-witted handling of the casuistry of halakhic and aggadic questions), a method which Rabbi Loew opposed, considering it dangerous for the education of young people. About Loew's life from 1578 to 1597 we are in the dark because of the scarcity of sources. From 1584 to 1587 he seems to have been Chief Rabbi of Posen, and from 1588 to 1592 again head of the Klaus Synagogue. In 1589 he delivered a sermon on the occasion of the Great Sabbath (shabbat ha-gadol) of Passover. Although the Chief Rabbi post was vacant, his application was again turned down and Rabbi Mordecai Yaffe was selected instead. Most likely with the help of the influential Meisel he had a meeting with the German Emperor Rudolf II, as David Gans reports.27 What they discussed, however, has not been passed down. The opinion of the historiographer David Gans, that they dealt with "coded, sealed, hidden things", should not be understood as meaning that Rudolf II and Rabbi Loew talked about esoterica, especially alchemy and Kabbala, but merely that the subject matter was kept secret. This is also how one can interpret the tradition originating with Loew's son-in-law, Isaac Kate, according to which Loew and Rudolf spoke about nistarot ("something secret").28 Several months after paying the visit to the Hrad, Rabbi Loew left Prague and moved to Posen where he became Chief Rabbi of Poland. In 1597 he again returned to Prague where he held the rabbinical post from 1599 until his death in 1609. His time as Chief Rabbi was not a quiet one. The attempt to set up his son Bezalel as his direct successor in the office failed. Thereupon his only son left Prague for the Bohemian town of Kolin where he died shortly afterward in 1600. In the following year Rabbi Loew suffered a second major loss: his patron, Mordecai Meisel, died on 14 March 1601; as a result the Prague community lost an influential connection to the court of the Emperor. The bitter consequences of this loss were first felt later that year when the President of the Bohemian Chamber and the Emperor Rudolf 26 Cf. Griin, DerHohe R. Loew (cited above, n. 7), pp. 19-22, and Sherwin, Theology (cited above, n. 4), p. 31. 27 Gans, Tsemah David (cited above, n. 16). 28 For other opinions see R. J. W. Evans, Rudolf II and His World (Oxford, 1973), chapters 6 and 7; cf. also B. Z. Bokser, From the World of the Cnbbalah. The Philosophy of Rabbi Judah Loew of Prague (New York, 1954), p. 47.

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II confiscated Meisel's entire property: the cash alone amounted to 516,250 gulden. In the following year the Jewish community had to suffer through a rather gloomy affair. On 27 July 1602, Rabbi Loew and other community figures were arrested in the Town Hall because they had been accused of the murder of Elijah Pollak by two informers. As a consequence the synagogues of the city were shut. Only after supplying a large sum of money were those arrested set free. This obscure episode from Rabbi Loew's life became known only recently when Abraham David discovered a chronicle of the Jews of Prague dating back to 1615.29 The episode - assuming it really did take place - documents that any goodwill the Emperor may have previously shown to Prague's Jews turned sour after the death of the banker and patron Meisel or, that now the true money-grabbing face of imperial politics revealed itself. At the same time it can be inferred that the term aetas aurea when applied to the lot of Prague's Jews at that time must be considered extremely problematic, at least in the latter period of Rudolf s rule. Rabbi Loew's tomb, as Meir Perles reports, is "a very handsome, splendid construction" that can still be admired today. He was buried there together with his wife. The legends of the rabbi who met with the Emperor and created the golem only began to evolve later. The Hermeneutics of the Awareness of the Past Rabbi Loew's literary production is impressive. The commonly used edition of his works, which is however by no means complete, numbers eighteen volumes. Much has certainly been lost or was destroyed in the fire which engulfed Prague in 1689. Indeed, hardly any of the halakhic writings and responsa are extant, although he doubtless had to make many decisions in the course of his work as a rabbi. Among his extant works the following deserve special mention: (1) A supercommentary on Rashi's commentary on the Pentateuch (Gur arye, "The Lion's Cub"), which appeared in 1578; (2) the encyclopedic, anonymously published (1582) Gevurot ha-Shem ("The Powers of God"), where he sketched a plan of his future literary work; (3) Tiferet yisra'el (1599, "The Fame of Israel"), dedicated to the festival of Shavu'ot, and dealing with revelation; (4) Netsah yisra'el, a book bearing the imprint of messianic ideas which Loew dedicated to the Ninth of Av; published in 1600, it deals with exile and salvation. Other works not included in his original plan and dedicated to Jewish festivals are: (5) Or hadash ("The New Light") for Purim; (6) Ner mitsvah ("Candelabra of the Commandment") for Hanukka. These appeared together with the apologetic work (7) Be'er ha-golah ("The 29 Eng. trans, in A. David, A Hebrew Chronicle from Prague, c.1615 (Tuscaloosa, London, 1993), pp. 55-67.

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Fountain of Exile") in 1600. In addition, two ethical works appeared in 1589 and 1595: (8) Derekh hayyim ("The Way of Life") and (9) Netivot olam ("The Eternal Paths"), a commentary on the Mishna tractate Pirkei avot ("The Sayings of the Fathers"). At bottom Loew's entire richly shaped literary oeuvre is nothing but a continuous commentary and a study of talmudic stories, the aggadot, to which he devoted a further special commentary: (10) Hiddushei aggadot ("Commentary on the Aggadot"), which has only recently been discovered and published. Loew saw himself as a commentator and exegete of the Jewish past, the wisdom vouchsafed by God to the people of Israel. When wisdom is given once and for all, the task of the recipient consists in the jealous safekeeping of this treasure and in carefully passing it on to future generations. With this in mind it is possible to understand his harsh polemics against the typical humanistic view of the past, which was characterised by using the new scientific achievements also to criticise the "simple-minded" past. In his polemic with Azariah de' Rossi of Ferrara, an Italian Jewish scholar, Rabbi Loew formulates his conception of the past with clear and sometimes hair-raising polemical language which backs up his philosophy of Judaism as an ontological unit. It was concerned above all with truth and the authority of the rabbinic tradition derived from it. Several centuries earlier Maimonides (1136-1204) had already expressed doubts about the historical credibility of the rabbinic non-legal literature, interpreting it in a rationalist-literary way. In his Moreh nevukhim (1190, "Guide for the Perplexed") he described the aggadot as "poetic parables".30 Critics regarded this attitude as dangerous, not only in connection with reservations about Maimonides's rationalist tendency, but also with respect to the Christian exploitation of internal Jewish quarrels. One need only mention that the evaluation of the rabbinical storytelling art, the aggadah, was one of the main subjects of the compulsory disputations of Paris in 1240 (Nicholas Donin and Rabbi Jehiel ben Joseph), Barcelona 1263 (Fray Pablo Christiani and Rabbi Moses ben Nahman) and Tortosa 1413-1414 (Geronimo de Santa Fe and Joseph Albo).31 In any case rabbinical writings were spoken of in denigrative terms. Petrus Venerabilis, for instance, referred to them as "diabolici libri".32 Not until the Renaissance, however, did the subject of Judaism's critical attitude to its own tradition become an open dispute, when the Mantuan 30 W. G. Braude, 'Maimonides' Attitude Towards Midrash', in Studies in Jewish Bibliography, History and Literature in Honour of I. E. Kiev (New York, 1971), pp. 75-82; see also G. Veltri, 'Zur jiidischen und christlichen Wertung der Aggada', in Frankfurter Judaistische Beitriige 22 (1995), pp. 61-75. 31 On this see H. Maccoby, Judaism on Trial. Jewish-Christian Disputations in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1982). 32 H. Schreckenberg, Die christlichen Adversus-Judaeos-Texte (II.-J3. Jh.) (Frankfurt a. M., 1991), p. 186.

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scholar Azariah de' Rossi, also as a result of the influence of Christian colleagues, dismissed the aggadot as unreliable, and considered it to be a fabrication of primarily ethical significance. Azariah was of the opinion that the nature of the aggadah could not be historically qualified. It ought not to be taken literally,33 because it consisted of "fabricated conjectures". He reached this opinion, however, also on the basis of a comparison of pagan, Christian and Jewish sources. One of the most famous examples he cites as proof that the aggadah is a fabrication is its treatment of the death of Emperor Titus. The aggadah, which regarded him as a Temple-destroyer deserving of punishment had him die because of a mosquito which, after the Palestine War, had gotten into his nose and had bored itself into his brain. The creature was found during the autopsy which Titus himself had ordered, but the rabbis voiced differing opinions about its - in any case enormous - size and appearance. Azariah disputed this fairy-tale story not only because of its physiological impossibility, but also - what was novel - on the basis of nonJewish descriptions of the death of Emperor Titus, who died of a fever, perhaps malaria, which at least still had a certain connection to the deadly insect.34 Rabbi Loew saw Azariah's ideas as being in opposition to Jewish tradition; therefore he sharply attacked them in the sixth chapter of his apology of Judaism, his tractate "Fountain of Exile" (Be'er ha-golah), which appeared in 1600: I would have already ended what I had to say, if a book from someone belonging to our people had not reached my hands. I was told that the book contains some new ideas. When I saw it, I was very pleased as a bridegroom is very pleased when he looks at his bride. While reading it, however, my heart broke and my spirit poured out in my insides. Woe befall the eyes that have seen it! Woe befall the ears that have heard such words! Cursed be the day that these things were published and made known! A human being who is not in a position to understand the words of the Sages, not even one of the most minor points, much less the deeper ones? How could he dare to speak against them and to discuss with them as if they were men of his generation or even his fellows?

With all his strength Rabbi Loew defended himself against a comparison of the rabbinic authorities with the new scholarly disciplines. In his view even the mere mention of foreign authorities had to be rebuked: Every generation has its scholars, every one its sages. Have we had anything to compare with them? If you look attentively at them, you will find that the amoraim did not contradict their predecessors (rishonim), the tannaim. Also the successors of the amoraim did not contradict them, being well aware of 33 On this see J. Weinberg, The Me'or 'Enayim of Azariah de' Rossi: A Critical Study and Selected Translations [unpubl. Ph.D. thesis] (London, 1982), p. 219. 34 Ibid., p. 224; see also G. Veltri, 'Wertung der Aggada' (cited above, n. 31), pp. 73 ff.

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their worth. Indeed, those who follow are not the equals of those who have gone earlier, who were close to the Prophets. And now, in our generation, which is characterized by imperfection and stupidity, someone is standing up and speaking against the holy ones who lived more than a millenium before us and saying: 'Observe my method and be wise!' In several places he has drawn upon the support of worldly and idolatrous writings and treated the words of our sacred Sages who were faithful to God like trivial and inconstant speeches.

The ideas that the Maharal would obviously like to combat are contained in Azariah's work:35 It stands without a doubt that everything that has been passed down by our Sages about the arrangements of the Torah, its roots and branches up to the treetops, is God's word which we are to set upon our heads with love and fear like a crown [...]. Moreover, there is a second thing (to take into account), which is a matter of course for every honest person, and that is, that what is found in their [the rabbins'] works about science, like, e.g., astrology, the form heaven and earth, etc., comes entirely from their human comprehension. For they devoted themselves to their research, each according to his intellectual gifts or on the basis of what he received as tradition from the Sages of the preceding generations, from whatever nation. All this occurred with the gifts of the Prophets or their help. In this area (of science) we are permitted with their consent to listen to those who wrote against them and to investigate the issues according to our knowledge. We would not like to compare the worth of these figures with the work of those. The rabbins (rabbanan) of Yavneh used to say (according to the section Haya koreh [Babylonian Talmud Berakhot 17]): 'I am a creature and my fellow-man is a creature', which the Tosafists explained thus: 'He has just as much as intellect as I do to distinguish between good and evil.' For in truth they say in the section Ketsad ma'avarin [Babylonian Talmud Eruvin 53a]: 'The intellect of the former is like the entrance of an arbour, that of the latter, however, is like that of the eye of a needle.' Or as they say in different places: 'If the former were human beings, then we are donkeys' etc., and in the first section of the tractate Yoma [Babylonian Talmud Yoma 9b): 'Better the fingernail of the former than the belly of the latter.' Truly, after what the predecessors (rishonim) accomplished has come (down) to the descendants (aharonini) and gone beyond what they (the descendants) themselves achieved, doesn't it seem that the parable of the dwarf riding on the shoulders of giants applies to these very attainments, a parable that the author of the Shibbolei ha-leket mentions in the name of an old Sage in his introduction? In this way one can rightfully claim that the superiority which the First possess over the Last with respect to prophecy - because they were closer to the Prophets - corresponds to that which the Last possess over the First in the newly sprouting branch of science and experimentation.

Azariah gives us clearly to understand that in his study of the past he represents the principle of judgement through the individual. He was a scholar who in his research refers to the achievements of scientific analysis. Thus

35

A. de' Rossi, Sefer me'or einayim, 3 vols., ed. D. Cassel (Vilna, 1864-1866), p. 196.

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his work is an echo of the Querelle des anciens et des modernes,36 which took place in the Renaissance despite or probably precisely because of the cultic reverence of Antiquity. The idea, however, that is expressed by Maharal is Platonic in nature: in the beginning, wisdom was perfect; since the Fall of Man up to our days things have only been going downhill. The sources of wisdom have already been sealed. In his worldview the earlier generations are closer to the truth than the later ones, which is the reason why all criticism per se is taboo. Hope rests in the tikkun olatn, the restoration of the original status. If the profane sciences, where we can use them, contradict the texts of the Sages, then it is our fault. Because of the decline of wisdom, this does not permit us to draw any conclusions about the truth of tradition. As for the legend about Titus, once again the Maharal emphasizes that Azariah has not understood anything. The story is the expression of a deeper science. Of course the Sages do not speak of a material mosquito, but about the effective force which penetrated Titus's brain. Titus, the destroyer of the Temple, the arch-villain of Jewish history who wanted to drive a wedge between God and Israel, was vanquished by one of the smallest creatures of Divine Creation. It is difficult to classify Rabbi Loew according to clear categories. For his critical attitude towards the Ashkenazi pilpul and his educational reform plans he certainly deserves a place among the scholars of the Late Renaissance.37 He owed his salient interest in the natural sciences, albeit limited to certain areas, to the Prague intellectual scene of his time. The astronomers Tycho Brahe (1546-1601) and Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) were contemporaries whom he came to know through David Gans.38 Nevertheless, his attitude to secular scholarship, his total opposition to the use of non-Jewish sources by commentators on Jewish traditional literature to call it into question, hence his rejection of the ideas of Jewish Renaissance figures such as Elijah Levita, Azariah de' Rossi, Leone Ebreo, and also Eliezer Ashkenazi indicate that he belongs rather to the anti-humanistic direction of thought, in particular if one considers a critical look at the past and the belief in progress to be essentials of the humanist's worldview. Neher regards him as the precursor of the Neo-Orthodoxy of the likes of Samson Rafael Hirsch, Meir Loeb and Isaac Breuer, just as Azariah de' Rossi left his mark on what came to be known as "Science of Judaism" (Wissenschaft des Judentums)?g I shall 36 On this see H. Baron 'Querelle of Ancients and Modems', in Renaissance Essays, eds. P. O. Kristeller, Ph. P. Weiner (New York, 1968), pp. 95-114. 37 Cf. J. Maier, Geschichte derjildischen Religion (Freiburg, Basel, Wien, 21992), p. 527. 38 A. Neher, David Gans (1541-1613), disciple du Maharal de Prague, assistant de Tycho Brahe et de Jean Kepler (Paris, 1974). 39 Neher, Le puits de I 'exit (cited above, n. 9), p. 81.

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leave open the question of whether this is a more plausible picture of the long-term influence of the rabbi from Posen. Rabbi Loew was both a theologist as well as a philosopher of Judaism. His view of the sciences and of history can in no way be said to stem from a brusquely reactionary attitude nor is it at all tantamount to a relapse into the dogmatic religious ideas of the Middle Ages, as some modern authors maintain. His philosophy of Judaism is an attempt to reflect philosophically on Jewish tradition. He sees the Creation as not being separated from the Revelation on Mount Sinai; the latter seems to him to be the actualisation of a choice of being which was already in effect in God's first act. Israel had wisdom passed on to it which belongs intrinsically to its being and can ontologically no longer be separated from it. The nations by contrast were created after Israel, and represent the materia: Ontologically they can add nothing to the form, i.e., Israel. This explains why there is no common ground between the nations and Israel, only mutual opposition. It is safe to say that this radical stance was due to the then prevailing anti-Jewish atmosphere, both in Moravia as well as in Bohemia, sometimes in contrast to the moderate policies of the Emperor. Doubt about the trustworthiness of Antiquity would break down precisely the holistic system of tradition, if one assumes that the Revelation took place once for all time. For this reason the rabbinic authorities are not to be reproached and their utterances decried as mere worldly wisdom. The search for the "real meaning" or, as Loew expresses it, the sibbat ha-sibbot (causa causarum), should be the task of exegetes. The fact that rabbinic sayings are occasionally not accepted because they are inconsistent with reason only means that people have not understood anything. The truth always lies beyond the sibbah kuruvah (causa proximo), the literal meaning. It is hidden. One example will explain this attitude. The sixth section of his Be'er hagolah deals with the criticism of rabbinic literature formulated by scholarly circles who claimed that the Sages had hardly any idea or knowledge of the human sciences. Although they were not so far away from them, nevertheless they spoke about the sciences as if these were completely alien to them. The criticism was even more scathing: The scholars alleged that the rabbis had attributed wholly wrong causes to happenings in the natural-science sphere. The Maharal replied that the critics had failed to recognize the truth. What they regard as the cause is the obvious reality, i.e., the natural, what is close to the matter, not to the cause. This could only satisfy physicists and mathematicians, but not the Sages. The latter had spoken of supernatural causes, causa causarum (sibbat ha-sibbot). To explain his meaning Rabbi Loew cites an example from Babylonian Talmud Sukkah 29a:

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GIUSEPPE VELTRI Eclipses of the sun occur for four reasons: because of the lack of prayers for the dead on the part of the head (High Priest) of the Sanhedrin; because of the lack of aid to a fiancee who has asked the city for help when at the point of being raped; because of homosexuality; because of the simultaneous murder of two brothers. Eclipses of the moon and sun are also due to four reasons: because of those who falsify records (or signatures); because of those who allow false witnesses to step forward; because of those who breed small animals in the land of Israel; because of those who chop down trees in good condition. These causes of eclipses of celestial bodies named by the rabbins according to their knowledge are rejected by human understanding (ha-hush ha-nigleh). For it is known that eclipses of celestial bodies depend on the paths of these bodies, on their conjunction and opposition, on their remoteness or closeness, on their length or width. Thus how can they say that eclipses depend on such things when we know the exact point of time on the basis of a calculation? How is it that the rabbins want to make these things dependent on certain sins? The question is wrongly put. For it was not in the interests of the rabbis to determine the ha-sibbah ha-keruvah (causa proximo) - for it is a truism that eclipses of celestial bodies are influenced by their paths - but they named the causa causorum. If we had no sin in the world, we would have no eclipses of celestial bodies. For there is no doubt that the eclipse of a celestial body is an imperfection and a flaw in the universe. If there were no sin, the order of creation would not permit eclipses to happen, because they constitute an imperfection and a flaw in the universe, as everyone realizes.

The core of the discussion is that the perfection of the universe and the world is only a paradisiacal condition which, because of sins, no longer exists. The Rabbi plays with the word Ikh, at first as the technical term for eclipses of the sun and celestial bodies and then as a verb and noun meaning "fault", "defect" and also "punishment". He does not tell us why certain sins cause eclipses of the sun and celestial bodies.40 To answer this - according to the Rabbi - exceeds the limits of human understanding. In this way Rabbi Loew reaffirms his refrain, the main concern of his studies, namely to prove that the knowledge of the rabbis is on a level different from that of the scholars of the world. Mentioning (Christian) sages in connection with rabbinic literature is therefore inappropriate. Without a doubt Rabbi Loew regards the sciences merely as ancillae theologiae, yet also sees them as dangerous because of the autonomy they claim. On could illustrate the scientific vision of the Maharal with the image of the legend associated with him, the legend of the golem which he created. But at first the summarised version of the Prague legend by Gershom Scholem: Rabbi Loew (is supposed) to have made a golem, which, it is true, served its master in every possible task throughout the whole week; but because all crea40 The theory of a connection between sins and atmospheric events is very old. Hesiod maintained that because of the sins of an evil person there are famines and infectious diseases (Erga, 240-245); on this see G. Lanata, Medicina magica e religione popolare in Greciafino all'eta di Ippocrate (Roma, 1967), pp. 30 f.

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tures rest on the Sabbath, the Rabbi transformed the golem back to clay before the onset of the Sabbath each time by removing the life-giving name of God [Shem]. However, one time the Rabbi forgot to remove the Shem. The community was already gathered for the service in the synagogue, indeed had already recited the Sabbath Psalm 92 when the golem with all his tremendous strength started to go wild, shaking houses and threatening to destroy everything. Rabbi Loew was summoned; it was still twilight and the Sabbath had actually not yet begun. He rushed to the maniacal golem and snatched the Shem from him and the golem crumbled into earth. [...]. The Rabbi was not able to reawaken the golem to life and buried his remains in the attic of the ancient synagogue, where they still lie. 41

Secular science is the golem as it is like a handmaiden of theology - ancilla was the name already given to it by the scholastics. It works, driven by the motor of God's name, as long as it submits to it. But in the case of a programming mistake, the golem, i.e., science, runs amok. The Maharal saw himself forced to snatch the theological support of a science wildly out of control in order thereby to halt the march of the (heteronomous) sciences. The remains of (secular) scholarship still lie today in mouldering university records.

41 G. Scholem, 'Die Vorstellung vom Golem in ihren tellurischen und magischen Beziehungen', in G. Scholem, Zur Kabbala und ihrer Symbolik (Frankfurt a. M., 1973), pp. 257 f. Some examples of the legend are also to be found in Kunstliche Menschen. Dichtungen und Dokumente iiber Golems, Homunculi. lebende Statuen und Androiden, ed. K. Volker (Frankfurt a. M., 1994), p. 30.

THE RELEVANCE OF GEOGRAPHY FOR THE JEWISH RELIGION

JOHANN MAIER Introductory remarks Religion and geography Until the modern era reliable knowledge of the real nature of the form and extent of large regions and continents, of the shape of coastlines and of the course of rivers, remained a rather limited matter and was usually mixed up with fantastic ideas. In addition, the prevailing religion exercised a considerable influence on the development of a more or less coherent picture of the world. An investigation of the relevance of geography (in the sense of reliable knowledge) for developments within a religion leads, therefore, to characteristically different results than the investigation of the relevance of a certain religion on the development of geography as a science. A paper treating the relevance of the Jewish religion for geography would, for instance, have to begin with a description of Jerusalem and its Temple as the centre of the entire cosmos or creation, as the navel of the world, with the Land of Israel as a unique part of the creation related to the election of the people of Israel and to the Torah.' The Christians shared the concept of the "Holy Land" as the centre of the world and, as a consequence, this idea dominated the geographical conceptions in the Christian realm throughout the Middle Ages, enforced by pilgrimages to the Holy Land and the crusades as pilgrimages in arms. The effects were not to the advantage of the development of geography as a science in the Christian world,2 particularly not in comparison with the development of geography in the Muslim countries.

1 G. Stemberger, 'Die Bedeutung des "Landes Israel" in der rabbinischen Tradition', in Kairos 25 (1983), pp. 176-199; I. M. Gafni, Land, Centre and Diaspora. Jewish Perceptions of National Dispersion and Land Generality in Late Antiquity (Sheffield, 1997). 2 M. Kratochwil, H. Hunger, 'Geographic', in Lexikon des Mittelalters 4 (1988), cols. 1265-1270.

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Practical knowledge In spite of the described Israel-centred concept Jews generally disposed of a wider knowledge of geographical facts than ordinary Christians or Muslims. The main reason was the Diaspora situation of the Jewish people, the necessity to maintain close relations between the dispersed communities. Such communal contacts relied in many cases on family connections, which also played a major role in commercial activities.3 Some of the extant evidence results, furthermore, from reports of travellers,4 and ofshelihim, messengers sent by communities in the Land of Israel to the Diaspora.5 Commercial relations presupposed, of course, an appropriate familiarity with the relevant geographical conditions, and maritime trade presupposed a professional skill including even astronomical elements.6 A prominent stimulant for the collection of geographical facts was, of course, the art of warfare which, however, in the case of the Jews was of lesser practical significance. An additional source of practical knowledge was the astonishing grade of mobility among Jews, particularly among the rabbinic class, for rabbis changed their position usually several times during their lifetime. In the era of the printed book an additional phenomenon emerged: learned Jews were eager to see their literary products in print and travelled sometimes over long distances in order to find an appropriate printer. But despite all the practical knowledge accumulated under the described circumstances an astonishing lack of interest for geography as a science prevailed, and this was due to certain traditional presuppositions. Geography in Judaism By comparison with disciplines like medicine or astronomy7 the medieval Jewish contribution to geography appears as a rather modest one, particularly in contrast to the rich Muslim literature on the subject. There existed, 3 Communication in the Jewish Diaspora. The Pre-Modern World, ed. S. Menache (Leiden, 1996). 4 Jewish Travellers in the Middle Ages. 19 Firsthand Accounts, ed. with an introd. by E. N. Adler (London, 1930; New York, 2 1987); Y. Levanon, The Jewish Travellers in the Twelfth Century (Winnipeg, 1980); M. Kiichler, 'Ein judischer Reisefuhrer aus der Kairoer Geniza (UCL T.-S. Arabic Box 53, fol. 2); Teil 1: Der Text und sein Kontext', in Bulletin der Schweierischen Gesellschaft fur Judaistische Forschung. Beiheft Judaica 4 (1992), pp. 10-25. 5 A. Yaari, Sheluhei eretsyisra'el (Jerusalem, 21977). 6 G. Llompart, J. Tiera i Sans, 'Jufuda Cresques i Samuel Corcos. Mes documents sobre els jueus pintors de cartes de navegar (Mallorca segle XIV)', in Bolletin de la Societat Arqueologica Luliana 40 (1984), pp. 341-350. 7 R. Y. Ebied, Bibliography of Mediaeval Arabic and Jewish Medicine and Allied Sciences (London, \97\); Congreso internacional 'Encuentro de las ires Cultures' 7. La ciencia en la Espana medieval, ed. L. Ferre (Granada, 1992); G. Freudenthal, 'Les sciences dans les communautes juives medievales de Provence. Leur appropriation, leur role', in Revue des Etudes Juives 152 (1993), pp. 29-136.

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of course, a lot of information on certain localities or regions, contained in various literary contexts or transmitted in narratives. Most of them resulted from experiences of merchants and travellers. But in fact it was only Abraham bar Hiyya who towards the end of the twelfth century composed in Spain a geographical work, the Tsurat ha-arets, originally as part of his book Hokhmat ha-hizzayon. Most of its contents concern the division of the earth into the traditional seven clime zones, in details enriched by some 'modern' ethnographic information. It remained for a long time the Jewish standard work of that kind, even after the close of the Middle Ages. It appeared 1546 in a Latin translation by D. Schreckenfuchs, being of some interest to Christian readers because of the Ptolemaic concepts which it shared with other geographic works in the Muslim world. However, by that time many aspects of Ptolemaic geography had already become obsolete, for an ardent interest in cosmography on the basis of new discoveries in the sixteenth century led to impressive publications and soon replaced the Ptolemaic picture of the world. This is true also with respect to the Jewish realm where certain circles and personalities shared the new orientations of the Renaissance culture.8 Abraham Farissol (1451-C.1525)9 composed his Iggeret orhot olam on the basis of new achievements and information. His work, which appeared in Ferrara in 1524 and again in Venice in 1586,10 remained, in addition to Abraham bar Hiyya's book, the most important Jewish work on the subject until the nineteenth century. The popularity of both works, however, resulted not exclusively from their scientific character but also from the fact that both also contained popular traditions of specific Jewish interest.11 And it was mainly for that reason that many Jews did not regard Abraham bar Hiyya's book as out of date so that it appeared in print in Offenbach in as late as 1720. Even in the nineteenth century popular Jewish conceptions of geography remained under the impact of a non-scientific trend. They followed certain traditional patterns deeply rooted in religious convictions and theological preferences, which left only a limited scope for geography. The same is true for other disciplines as, for instance, general history. The only 8 A. Neher, Jewish Thought and the Scientific Revolution of the Sixteenth Century: David Cans (1541-1613), trans. D. Maisel (Oxford, 1986); D. B. Ruderman, Jewish Thought and Scientific Discovery in Early Modern Europe (New Haven, London, 1995). 9 A. Ravenna, 'Abramo Farissol e la sua opera geografica', in Annuario di studi ebraici 3 (1965), pp. 47-51; D. B. Rudermann, The World of a Renaissance Jew: The Life and Thought of Abraham ben Mordechai Farissol (Cincinnati, New York, 1981); Os Judeus e os descubrimentos Portugueses, eds. S. da Ponte, H. Romero (Lisboa, 1998). 10 In Latin: Iggeret orhot olam; id est, itinera mundi: sic dicta nempe cosmographias, autore Abrahamo Perisol, Latina versione donavit & notas passim adjecit Thomas Hyde (Oxonii, 1691). 11 D. B. Ruderman, 'Iggeret orhot olam le-Abraham Farissol', in Proceedings of the Sixth World Congress of Jewish Studies, vol. 2 (Jerusalem, 1976), pp. 169-178.

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legitimate scope of secular disciplines was usually that of an auxiliary information for the requirements of Torah study. Rabbinic authorities regarded the study of the history of foreign peoples and the genealogies of their dynasties as a waste of time. The same reluctant attitude applied to geography: its relevance was restricted to realms in which 'Israel' took some part. In such contexts geography served as a tool for explaining the geopolitical situation of the Jewish people. A specific Jewish interest in landscape, localities and natural conditions existed only in relation to the Land of Israel. The relevant information was, however, usually mixed up with legendary qualities attributed to the land. Many of them are already attested to in the rabbinic sources, but it was in the Middle Ages that they were collected, reworked in a systematic manner and presented in books. The most significant example was provided in the early twelfth century by Judah Halevi in his book Kuzari (originally in Arabic), which in Hebrew exercised an enormous influence on later Jewish religious convictions concerning Israel, its land, the Temple and prophetic revelation, with the existence of Israel in Exile perceived as the anomalous and disastrous opposite to Israel's existence in its proper land.12 Position and function of the Land of Israel correspond to the function of Israel as the 'heart' of an organism consisting of the nations of the world. Later, in the early fourteenth century, Isaac ben Moses Estori ha-Parhi described the Land of Israel in his Sefer kaftor u-ferah.^ Printed for the first time in Venice in 1549, this book remained for a long time the main source of information on geographical details and localities of Palestine. It represents also an impressive early example of historical geography, exploiting biblical and talmudic sources for the identification of Arabic local names. The combination of geographical/topographical information with folkloristic, social and economic observations and notices is of particular interest. The reputation of Jews as experts in geography among Christians around 1500 was due to the fact that the geography of Ptolemy in the western Christian world was lost and forgotten for centuries. In the Muslim realm, on the contrary, it formed part of an emerging geographical science. It was only after the fall of Constantinople in 1453 that western Christianity became again acquainted with Ptolemy's geography. It appeared in print in Ulm in 1492, at a time when the news about discoveries of areas overseas replaced more and more of the Ptolemaic picture of the world. Martin Behaim travelled to Portugal in 1483 in order to obtain such new information, and it was he who, back at home in Nuremberg, constructed the first extant globe. In 12 For an English translation of the relevant passages see H. Hirschfeld, Judah Halevi: The Kuzari (New York, 1964), pp. 88-108, 293-295. 13 Sefer kaftor u-ferah, 2 vols., ed. A. J. Havazeleth (Jerusalem, 1994/96); cf. also Estori haFarchi. Die Geographic Palastinas, trans, and ed. L. Griinhut (Jerusalem, 1912).

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the year 1507 Martin Waldseemuller published his Universalis cosmographia and described in one of its parts the newly discovered 'America'. In 1513 Nunez de Balba arrived in Panama at the shores of the Pacific, and in 1519-1522 the ships of Ferdinand Magellan succeeded in sailing around the world. The prestige of Jewish knowledge of Ptolemy at the beginnings of modern geography was, therefore, of a rather short-lived significance. The 'Table of Nations' in Genesis 10 and Its Actualizations Basic concept The Israel-centric attitude of the Jewish tradition in principle did not exclude a wider outlook, for the biblical tradition contains first of all an account of the creation and of the pre-diluvial history of mankind before focussing on the pre-history of Israel. Genesis 10 supplies the so-called 'table of nations' and reports the distribution of the earth among the sons of Noah as a kind of prelude to the story of Abraham. The chapter comprises genealogies of nations in existence at the time of the text's composers who with their help try to explain their own ethno-geographic situation and status of political power. Scholars assume that the 'table of nations' in its final redactional phase reflects a particular situation during the late period of the Kings of Israel and Judah under the impact of the Assyrian and Neo-Babylonian empire. The basic scheme consists of a tripartite division of mankind after the sons of Noah: Sem, Ham, and Japheth. Sem is the ancestral figure on whom the biblical account concentrates its interest, for among the offspring of Sem are the representatives of the elected people of God: Abraham, Isaac and, particularly, Jacob. Israel's history is the really relevant part of world history, the rest of the nations is only of concern as far as the fate of Israel is concerned, whether in a positive or in a negative manner. The ethnographic scheme of Gen. 10 is closely related to a corresponding geographic one: the realm of the descendants of Sem represents the zone with the best climatic conditions, and serves, therefore, as the frame for the Land of Israel. All other countries, like all other nations of the World, are essentially at the fringes of the Jewish sphere of interest. Consequently, geography is only an interesting subject insofar as it serves as a means to explain a Jewish situation or to substantiate Jewish claims, i.e., as ethnogeography, focussing on the people of Israel and, above all, on Israel in the Land of Israel, and only then also on Israel in the Diaspora. The group of the descendants of Japheth is of principally secondary significance. But it is particularly this group which plays a prominent role in the sources throughout the centuries with regards to ethno-geographic as-

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pects, always connected with regions in the North of Palestine/Syria and, in the course of time, with areas and tribes in a more western position. The Sons of Japheth are, according to Gen. 10 (cf. 1 Chr. 1): Gomer, Magog, Madai, Javan, Tubal, Meshech, and Tiras. The sons of Gomer are: Ashkenaz, Riphath, and Togarmah. The sons of Javan are: Elishah, Tarshish, Kittim, and Dodanim. From the beginning the group of Javan represented the Greeks in the widest sense of the term. It was, consequently, the group of Gomer, which offered more possibilities to explain new ethno-geographic phenomena. And according to the historical experience, it was a fact that peoples from hitherto unknown regions in the North of the Mediterranean and the Near East represented a continuous threat for the Near East. Since Madai seems to have been connected with Persia from the very beginning, the north-eastern areas remained for Gomer and Magog, and Tobal, Meshech and Tiras had to be placed somewhere to the West and North-West of the Javan group. The Book of Jubilees The first notable actualization of the biblical scheme appears in the Book of Jubilees.™ It is an account of the history from the creation to the arrival at the borders of the Land of Israel, applying a chronographic system based on a solar calendar and on periods of 7 x 7 = 49 years, so-called year weeks and jubilee periods. Scholars used to date the book to the second half of the first century BCE but Qumran fragments point to a much earlier date, to the early Hellenistic period of Palestine. Chapters 9-13 contain an actualization of the 'table of nations', which points not only to the wide geographical outlook of the Persian empire but probably also to information gained through the Phoenician trade and colonization in the West. Its main concern relates to the Land of Israel and the realm of Sem. Its western boundaries are described as running from the Tanis (Don) in the North to the Black Sea, the Bosporus and the Mediterranean, thus including Asia Minor, Crete and Cyprus in the realm of Sem.15 Compared with Gen. 10, the Book of Jubilees also exhibits a remarkable ethno-geographic range for the sons of Japheth. It distributed to them practically the whole of Europe save Scandinavia. The group of Gomer still occupies the eastern parts of the North. Magog appears 14 For recent research see J. Frey, 'Zum Weltbild im Jubilaenbuch', in Studies in the Book of Jubilees, eds. M. Albani, J. Frey, A. Lange (Tubingen, 1997), pp. 261-292. Prey's study concentrates on the theological significance of the Land of Israel. 15 A similar claim is attested to in the Sybilline Oracles, attributing to the kingdom of Solomon parts of Asia Minor (Sybilline Oracles III, vv. 167-217; cf. Ill, vv. 569 ff). The motif of Solomon's universal reign was also known in rabbinical traditions (Targum II Esther, chap. 1; Yalkut Shim'oni II, § 172 [concerning 1 Kgs. 5: 1 ff.]), and on that basis it was not so farfetched when in the tenth century the Sefer Yosippon presupposed an alliance between King David and Romulus.

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in the centre, with Madai at his western side, but the land was not what he expected. He left his land, returned to the East and settled among the Semites in Persia. Tubal is situated in northern Italy and on the Balkans, Meshech on the Iberian Peninsula as far as Gadir, and Tiras on the islands of the Mediterranean. Similar traditions contained also some, though fragmentary, Qumran texts. The systematic compilation of ethnographic, geographic and cosmographic traditions during the Jewish-Hellenistic period apparently was an urgent request among certain Jewish intellectuals.16 Such early knowledge of Europe is a fact worthwhile to be included and properly evaluated in a treatment of historical geography. Flavins Josephus Towards the end of the first century BCE Flavius Josephus utilized a host of geographical and ethnographical information, mostly drawn from Hellenistic-Roman geographical authors and from Roman military records. Compared with his real geographic horizon he only reluctantly treated the 'table of nations' in the first book of his Antiquities}1 His influence on later Judaism was negligible, limited to an early medieval adaptation, the Sefer Yosippon (see below). The Sibylline Oracles The Jewish Sibylline Oracles contain a wealth of geo-ethnographical information. They present the material of Gen. 9-10 in an extremely Hellenized manner, and most of the topographic details concern Asia Minor and Egypt. Pseudo-Philo Chapter 5 of Pseudo-Philo's Liber antiquitatum biblicarum also contains many interesting details, which appear again in the medieval collection Megillat Yerahme'el (later called Chronicle of Jerahme'el) by Jerahme'el ben Solomon (c. 1150).l8

16 M. Tilly, 'Geographic und Weltordnung im Aristeasbrief, in Journal for the Study ofJudaism 28 (1997), pp. 131-153. 17 D. Fraenkel, 'Die Uberlieferung der Genealogien Gen. 5,3-28 und Gen. 11,10-26 in den Antiquitates Judaicae des Flavius Josephus', in De Septuaginta. Studies in Honour of J. W. Wevers (Missisauga, Ont., 1984), pp. 175-200. 18 G. Kisch, Pseudo-Philo's Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum (Notre Dame, 1949); H. Jacobson, A Commentary on Pseudo-Philo's Liber Antiquitatum Biblicarum [Arbeiten zur Geschichte des antiken Judentums und des Urchristentums 31], 2 vols., with Lat. text and Eng. trans. (Leiden, 1996); C. Dietzfelbinger, Pseudo-Philo: Antiquitates Biblicae [Judische Schriften aus hellenistisch-romischer Zeit 2] (Giitersloh, 1975).

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The Rabbinic Evidence The targumic, midrashic and talmudic actualizations of Gen. 10 display a surprising picture.19 The geo-ethnographic frame is by far more narrow than that of the considerably older Book of Jubilees. It corresponds more or less to a Hellenistic outlook and concentrates on the Near East and on Asia Minor, reflecting rarely on the wider horizon of the late Roman Empire. This restricted evidence was not primarily due to a lack of information, for many rabbinic passages contain geo-ethnographic details concerning even remote regions. The Sefer Yosippon The author of this fascinating late tenth-century chronicle wrote in the Byzantine parts of southern Italy.20 His actualization of Gen. 10 corresponds to Byzantine territorial and political claims, enumerating among the sons of Javan, the forefather of the Greeks, also Lombardians, Bavarians, Burgundians and even the Danes in the North as well as the southern Slavonic tribes of the Balkans who themselves, according to Sefer Yosippon, pretended to be descendants of Dodanim. Gomer represents the Franks on the River Seine, his son Riphath the Bretons along the Loire, and under Togarmah Yosippon listed ten Turkish tribes in eastern Europe and central Asia including the Khazars. Togarmah was later also the commonly used name for Turks and finally for the Ottoman Empire. The Sefer Yosippon also provided a genealogical foundation for the identification of Edom with Rome: Zepho, a son of Eliphaz and a grandson of Esau, managed to make a military and political career in Carthage, conquered Rome and founded the dynasty of the Roman kings.21 This story eliminated the contradiction which emerged between the attachment of Italy to the realm of the Sons of Javan, a son of Japheth, and the identification of Rome as Edom with its forefather Esau, a descendant of Sem and even of Abraham.

19 A. Neubauer, La geographic du Talmud (Paris, 1868; repr. Hildesheim, 1967); J. Maier, 'Zur ethnographisch-geographischen Oberlieferung iiber Japhethiten (Gen. 10,2-4) im friihen Judentum', in Henoch 13 (1991), pp. 157-194; id., 'Zur ethnographisch-geographischen Uberlieferungen iiber Jafetiten (Gen.10, 2-4) im rabbinischen Judentum', in We-zo't le-Angelo. Raccolta di studigiudaici in memoria di Angela Vivian, ed. G. Busi (Bologna, 1993), pp. 311-356. 20 D. Flusser, Sefer Yosippon, 2 vols. (Jerusalem, 1980), vol. 1, pp. 9-20; vol. 2, pp. 98 ff.; cf. J. Dan, Sefer ha-yashar (Jerusalem, 1986), pp. 261 ff. For an English translation see M. N. Noah, The Book ofYashar (New York, 1972); pp. 185 ff. 21 For an older testimony in a Yelammedenu passage to Gen. 36 see J. Mann, The Bible as Read and Preached in the Old Synagogue, vol. 1 (New York, 2 1971), p. 327, § 152 [Heb.].

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Shifting to the West Edom—Rome The application of the name Edom and its forefather Esau to the Roman empire was a result of the Roman dominion in Palestine (63 BCE). It may have had its roots in the late Hasmonean era when Rome still had the reputation for being the most important ally of Judah, while Edom itself already had vanished from the 'map', for since the rule of John Hyrcan I (135-104 BCE) Idumaea had been a part of the Hasmonean state and its population forced to embrace Judaism. Its place in the 'table of nations' was, therefore, free for an actualization or re-interpretation. Initially, a polemic was probably not intended, but later on, under direct Roman administration during the first century CE, the ambivalent character of the Esau figure allowed for a profound negative interpretation, as clearly expressed in the 4 Ezra. Throughout the centuries the twins Jacob and Esau in Jewish eyes represented the two main rivalling powers of the time, Israel (or the dominion of God) and Rome. This evaluation remained valid also with respect to Christian Rome. Edom became, consequently, the prevalent name for the Christian political entity as a whole, and particularly for the Holy Roman Empire. This concept of Edom as Rome also included the notion of the fourth empire of the Book of Daniel (chapters 4 and 7) as the last of all empires, whose fall was expected to precede the appearance of the Kingdom of God or his 'Anointed King'. The concept of four final empires in history had an enormous impact on the views of the whole course of world history, and this not only among Jews. For Jews, therefore, Edom was first and foremost a theologically defined concept and an eschatological cipher, and only then it denoted also a concrete geographical and political fact. The rise of Islam posed questions concerning the position of Edom in the frame of the four empires. But only few authors replaced Edom with Ishmael, the representative of the Islamic world power, for the majority still saw in Edom the fourth empire and regarded the Islamic conquests as first steps towards its fall. Later on, the fall of Constantinople in 1453 stimulated ardent eschatological expectations among Jews, and the same is true regarding the Reformation, which Jews perceived as the beginning of an inner disintegration of Edom. It was not only due to the fact that most of the exiled Spanish and Portuguese Jews settled in the countries of the Ottoman Empire, which in itself stimulated a new interest among Jews in the geography and history of this realm, but also the eschatological significance of the rise of the Ottoman Empire. It was, therefore, not by mere chance that in the sixteenth century Joseph ha-Kohen (1496-1578), author of a famous martyrological chroni-

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cle,22 wrote a history of the Ottoman Empire (including a wide variety of geographical and ethnographical information), together with a history of the kings of France.23 The combination points perhaps to a political-eschatological device against the backgound of the concept of "Edom", corresponding to the real political and military confrontations during that period. In any case, these chronicles found a Jewish readership, unlike the author's Hebrew translations (Sefer ha-india; Sefer Fernando Cortez) of the Historia general de las Indias and La conquista de Mexico by Francisco Lopez de Gomara. None of these translations appeared in print. As a Hebrew author of the Renaissance period he took, of course, notice of the new discoveries, and he was evidently eager to have access to further information about foreign peoples and lands. But the average Jewish reader at that time was more preoccupied by the fate of the exiled Sephardic Jews and by the many other acute problems of regional significance during this period of expulsions and ghettoization. Canaan The 'table of nations' constitutes a scheme of far-reaching historical consequence for the history of humanity and, more importantly, for the classification of languages, for racial theories, and in that connection also for the history of prejudices.24 This is particularly true concerning the evaluation of Ham, his son Canaan and their offspring, who in Gen. 9 are cursed to be slaves forever. Traditions from late antiquity presumed that Canaan occupied the Land of Israel against the will of Noah, illegitimately, because Canaan's lot in the distribution of the lands was the north-western part of Africa, an idea attested to already in the Book of Jubilees 10: 29-34 (before 200 BCE). This motif was not restricted to that source alone, for throughout late antiquity the problem of Canaan remained an often discussed topos in rabbinic texts, and this particularly in the context of Israel's claims to its land.25 Canaan was, in effect, not only a gentilicum but also term for a social status (as slaves). At the 22 J. ha-Kohen, Sefer Emek ha-Bakha (The Vale of Tears) with the Chronicle of the Anonymous Corrector, ed. K. Almbladh (Uppsala, 1981). The introduction contains valuable information about the author and his methods. 23 J. ha-Kohen, Divrei ha-yamim le-malkei tsarfat u-le-malkei otman ha-togar, vols. 1-3 (Jerusalem, 1955/56; publication history: Sabbioneta, 1554; Amsterdam, 1733; repr. Jerusalem, n.d.; Lemberg, 1859). 24 M. Olender, Les langues du paradis. Aryens et Semites: un couple providentiel (Paris, 1989); in German: Die Sprachen des Paradieses. Religion, Philologie und Rassentheorie im 19. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt a. M., 1994); G. Hallack, J. Strange, 'Sem, Ham of Jafet. En studie i bibelsk geografi', in Forum for Bibelsk Eksegese 4 (1993), pp. 9-93. 25 H. Lewy, 'Ein Rechtsstreit um den Boden Palastinas im Altertum', in Monatsschrift fur Geschichte und Wissenschaft desJudentumsll (\933),pp. 84-99, 142-180 (see particularly p. 84).

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same time, kana'an and kana'ani(t), like arammi(t), became a contemporary synonym for 'non-Jew' resp. 'non-Jewish' in Jewish law. Medieval Jewish sources, too, were convinced that Canaan usurped the Land of Israel, his legitimate lot of land being in north-western Africa. Some sources report that a number of Canaanites fled to the North and are identical with Slav peoples, thus justifying the medieval slave trade from eastern Europe to the north-western Mediterranean. On the opposite route, from Africa - the proper lot of the Hamites - slaves were brought to northern countries. This concept had a non-Jewish parallel in the use of the assonance slavi-sclavi, used for the same purpose.26 During the Middle Ages Canaan also served also as a geographic term, namely for the eastern parts of Bohemia-Slovakia, and Slavonic idioms were called the "language of Canaan", a term used also in glosses to explain difficult words.27 Tarshish, Tsarphat, Sepharad and Aspamia Some biblical geographical names which originally referred to SyriacPhoenician or East Mediterranean places such as the famous biblical Tarshish28 (in Gen. 10 also the name of a son of Javan) and, particularly, Tsarphat (Obad. 20; 1 Kgs. 17: 9-10) and Sepharad (Obad. 20), were in the course of time transferred to localities in western regions. This seems to have been a consequence of the continuous enlargement of the geographic horizon regarding the Mediterranean world in the North and West. The latter two, Tsarphat and Sepharad, were in a first step transposed to the region of the Bosporus, in a second step to the far West, perhaps stimulated by the similar translocation of the talmudic Aspamya/Ispamia to various localities called Apamea, and finally to Roman Hispania. Finally, Sepharad stood for the whole of Spain29 and Tsarphat became the commonly used name for France during the late Middle Ages, replacing Gallia and Frantsiyah (or similar) and other older terms of a more regional meaning.30 GRMMY' and GRMNY1 (or similar) also wandered from the East (Karmania in Persia?) to the West, describing in a first step territories linked to the 26 J. Reisinger, G. Sowa, Das Ethnicon Sclavi in den lateinischen Quellen bis zum Jahr 900 (Stuttgart, 1990). 27 R. Jakobson, M. Halle, 'The Term Canaan in Medieval Hebrew', in For Max Weinreich on His Seventieth Birthday. Studies in Jewish Languages, Literature, and Society (The Hague, 1964), pp. 147-172. 28 P. Cintas, 'Tarsis-Tartessos-Gades', in Semitica 16 (1966), pp. 5-37. 29 S. Krauss, 'The Names Ashkenaz and Sepharad' [Heb.], in Tarbiz 3 (1931/32), pp. 423435; D. Neiman, 'Sefarad: The Name of Spain', in Journal of Near Eastern Studies 22 (1963), pp. 128-132; L. Diez Merino, 'Sefarad. Espana o Sardes?', in Miscelanea de estudios arabesy hebraicos 32, 2 (1983), pp. 5-25. 30 Krauss, 'The Names Ashkenaz and Sepharad', pp. 423-435. The first explicit statement is that of Rabbi Solomon ben Isaac to Obad. 20: "Tsarfat is the kingdom which is called Frantsa".

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name Armenia, and later, of course, becoming connected with Germanic tribes and areas, first mentioned in the works of Flavius Josephus who followed Roman sources. However, during late antiquity and the Middle Ages it never served as a name for the German kingdom, notwithstanding the fact that some rabbinical and early medieval sources presuppose an identification with Gomer and even mention a "Land of GRMM/NY'". Ashkenaz The history of the term Ashkenaz, in Gen. 10: 2-5 the firstborn of Gomer, is more complicated, and in Jer. 51:21 it appears in the phrase "kingdoms of Ararat, Minni and Ashkenaz". The sons of Gomer, and among them particularly Ashkenaz, were originally supposed to represent peoples in the Caucasian and trans-Caucasian regions, in the vicinity of the Black Sea,31 but their names underwent continuous actualizations corresponding to the widening geographic horizon in the northern regions of the Mediterranean world. In early late antiquity the term was applied to tribes and areas in the southern Caucasian regions and later on to western areas of Asia Minor. Josephus (Antiquities 1, 124 ff.) identified Aschanazes with Rhegines, a rather ambiguous name which he may have used for an area West of the Bosporus between the Thrakians and Dakians (Moesia). In rabbinical sources, however, Ashkenaz remained within the boundaries of western Asia Minor. It was because of the invasions of Germanic tribes into the Roman empire from regions North of the Caucasus and the Black Sea during the migration of nations that the term could be used also for them. This was particularly true for the Goths, who, e.g., in Christian sources, also became connected with the biblical figures of Gog and Magog, a traditional and very common eschatological motif in the Byzantine empire during the early Middle Ages. Gog (Ezek. 38—39) had always symbolized a mythological threat from the North.32 In Ezek. 38:2 and 39: 6 Gog is combined with Magog, who appears in Gen. 10: 2 as the second son of Japheth. His genealogical relationship to Ashkenaz, the firstborn of Gomer, presupposed a geographic position to the East of the latter. It was, therefore, inevitable that Ashkenaz moved to the West to the same degree that Gog/Magog draw nearer to the north-eastern boundaries of Byzantium. A more precise definition of this 'North' depended, however, on the exact geographical position of the person using it. 31

Perhaps derived from the similar Persian word achshaenas for 'dark' which may have caused the term 'Black Sea'; cf. E. Olshausen, Einfiihrung in die historische Geographic der Alien Welt (Darmstadt, 1991), p. 211 n. 303. The similarity to biblical Ashkenaz is striking and should be taken into account. For biblical Ashkenaz particularly see J. Simons, The Geographical and Topographical Texts of the Old Testament (Leiden, 1959), p. 10. 32 J. Kaltner, The Gog/Magog Tradition in the Hebrew Bible and the Qur'an: Points of Similarity and Dissimilarity', in Union Seminary Quarterly Review 49 (1995), pp. 35-48.

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During the early Middle Ages, the South of central Europe was already occupied by Bavarians, Alemanians and Burgundians, and its north-western side was framed by Lotharingia (Heb. Lotir) and the 'Land of the Rhine', with Saxonia and the Danes in the north-eastern parts, as attested to by the Sefer Yosippon (see above).33 Consequently, all that remained for Ashkenaz at that time was areas to the East of them. However, this position was not primarily determined by geographic necessities but also related to the origins of those tribes who emerged from the East and finally settled in western areas: Huns, Avares and Slavonic peoples. Saadiah ben Joseph Gaon (d. 942), from his Mesopotamian point of view, related Gomer to the Turks. He placed Madai in Persia, Tobal somewhere in the Middle East, and Meshek in eastern Persia. Ashkenaz of Gen. 10 he identified, however, as SK'LBH, S(c)lavia,34 and Riphat as Frandzha (the Frankonian kingdom). For a certain time Ashkenaz seems to have been geographically identical with the realm of Great Moravia. The emergence of the Carolingian empire changed the situation profoundly, for the new political world power required a definition according to Gen. 10, a difficult task, since 'Franks' for some time had been the commonly used name for Christians in general in the Near and Middle East. It was, however, difficult to find a proper position for Ashkenaz: Tsarphat was already identical with northern and central France, and the genealogy of Gen. 10 provided no further possibilities. It was, consequently, the new reality after the division of the Carolingian empire which coined the future mode of speech: Tsarphat became the name of the kingdom of France, Lotir still remained in use for a long time for the territory of the 'middle empire', and the eastern empire, the future kingdom of Germany, had to be identified with one of the members of the Gomer group in the nearest position, Ashkenaz or Togarmah. Thus Ashkenaz shifted once more to the West and became the neighbour of Tsarphat.

33 There is no place for Ashkenaz in this list. However, it has been supposed that the Sefer Yosippon, nevertheless, identified Ashkenaz as Germany. But this term appears there later (in ch. 64, line 61; see D. Flusser, Sefer Yosippon [cited above, n. 20.], vol. 1, p. 298), in connection with the campaigns of Vespasianus. The list of the campaigns rests probably on an older source in which Ashkenaz may have represented Germanic tribes or the Roman province name Germania. The passage reads: "Vespasian [...] came to the land of the West and (to) Ashkenaz and Britannia and Saxonia and Iskotia". But "land of the West" explicitly refers to "Germaniyah" in the Sefer Yosippon (ch. 21), in accordance with the Roman province name, and it may well be that Ashkenaz has to be located at the South-East of it, in the northern Balkans and northern regions adjacent to them. It is noteworthy that the Sefer Yosippon reports the claim of the southern Slavonic tribes to be sons of Dodanim, of the Javan group, but its author was aware of their different, Slavonic origin. Ashkenaz may, therefore, in his eyes refer to a region occupied by Slavonic tribes. 34 See Perushei rabbenu Sa'adya Ga'on la-torah, ed. Y. Kafah (Jerusalem, 1963), p. 22.

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It is a widely accepted opinion that the "king of Ashkenaz" in the famous correspondence between Hasdai ibn Shaprut and the king of the Khazars35 has to be identified with the Emperor, Otto I. But this interpretation is problematic in view of the fact that there appears also a "king of the Giblim" and a "king of the Slavs [SKL'B]". Hasdai ibn Shaprut (c.915-c.970), an Andalusian politician and diplomat, described his country in his letter to king Joseph in the following manner: It may be known to my Lord, the king, that the name of our land, in which we dwell, is in the holy language Sepharad, and in the language of the Ishmaelites [Muslims], the inhabitants of the land, it is al-Andalus. And the name of the kingdom is Cordoba. Its extension is 25,000 yards and its width 10,000; it is situated to the left of the sea which extends to your country [the Mediterranean Sea and the Black Sea] and protrudes from the Great Sea surrounding the whole earth. And between this land and the Great Sea, behind which there is no more human settlement, nine grades of the grades of the firmament, along which the sun runs one grade every day according to the words of the scientists, the astronomers. [...]. And from this Great Sea which surrounds all the earth, to the Land of Constantinople there are 3,100. And the state of Cordoba is far from the shore of the sea, which extends to your land about 80 milin. I found in the books of the scholars that the length of the Land Khazar amounts to 60 grades, which are 260.10 milin, the distance between Cordoba and Constantinople. [...]. And the extension of the Land of Sepharad, the kingdom of Abd al-Rahman and the Emir of the believers, may God be with him, is 16 grades, which are 1,100 milin. This is the extension of the land of his reign in its boundaries, a fruitful land with many rivers and springs and with hewn-out cisterns, a land of corn and wine and oil, with plenty of products and delicacies and all sorts of sweet fruits, plantations and gardens, bringing forth every fruit tree and all sorts of the trees, by which they cultivate the silk worms. For of silk we dispose here in abundance, and in the mountains of our country and in its woods people collect purple snails [...]. And the kings of the earth, hearing about his [the king of Cordoba's] greatness and strength, bring tributes to him und try to please him with gifts and precious things, among them the king of Ashkenaz and the king of the Giblim, who are al-Tsiqlab, and the king of Constantinople, and other kings. It is through my hands that their gifts arrive and through my hands that their reward is sent out. [...]. And all these emissaries, who bring the gifts, I am used to interrogating regularly about our brethren of Israel, the remnants of the exile [...] and my emissaries finally told me of the Harasan merchants that there exists a kingdom of Jews who are called after the name al-Khazar. I could not believe to their words [...] until the arrival of diplomatic emissaries from Constantinople with a letter of their king to our king. I asked them about that matter and they answered that it is really true and that the name of the kingdom is al-Khuzar, the distance between Constantinople and their land being a way of 15 days on sea; but that on

35 A. Zifroni, J. Toporowski, Rabbi Yehudah Halevi. Sefer ha-kuzari (Tel Aviv, 1964), pp. 337-349 (letter of Hasdai ibn Shaprut).

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Hasdai sent a certain Isaac ben Nathan as his emissary to the Khazars. He addressed the Byzantine Emperor with a request for support, but after six months he was told to return to Cordoba because of the wars and the bad climatic conditions in the region. Hasdai attempted to send a letter to the Khazars by Jews of Jerusalem via Armenia, but at the same time two emissaries of the king of the Giblim arrived at Cordoba, accompanied by two Israelites. They promised to deliver a letter to the king of the Giblim who would send it to the Israelites in the land of the Hungarians, and also to the Russians, and farther to the Bulgars, from where the letter would arrive at its destination. He mentioned also that according to a tradition the mountains in the Khazar region were called Se'ir, which in the Bible denotes the region of Edom, a rather strange suggestion. Now, who are the Giblim? As the Hungarians are mentioned as their nearest neighbours the name could refer to the Croatians who at that time played a role of some importance. In the Bible gebal is an ambiguous name with 'mountain' as basic meaning, but also a contemporary name for Byblos (cf. Ezek. 27: 9). In antiquity, however, the name was also used in connection with mountainous regions, also in the South (Ps. 83: 8; cf. Targum Jonathan to Gen. 36: 21). In use was also the gentilicum gibli, plural giblim (Josh. 13: 5 and 1 Kgs. 5: 32), of unknown significance. Josh. 13: 5 presupposes for the Gibli land a position in the North, in connection with the Lebanon, and mentions the Giblim in 1 Kgs. 5: 32 among the specialists of Hiram of Tyrus, in connection with the building of the Temple of Jerusalem under Solomon. In any case, both passages presuppose a position in the North of Israel. In Arabic Jebel is a very common name for the mountainous region South of the Caucasus. From a more western, Byzantine view it seems to have been applied to Slavonic tribes,37 for the letter of Hasdai presupposes the equation of the Giblim with alTsiqlab. The identification with Croatians is plausible in the case of this letter, for the Russians (of the kingdom of Kiev) are mentioned in the same context. If so far true, what does Ashkenaz mean, apart from the Giblim in the first passage? The Ottoman empire or the Bulgarian or Kievian state? In the eyes of contemporary Mediterraneans the prestige of the Ottoman empire was not as significant as in the eyes of later German historians. The author of the already mentioned Sefer Yosippon, which was written in Byzantine Italy not long after Hasdai's letter, regarded the Ottoman empire as a satellite of Byzantium, not worthwhile mentioning but as a usurping power. Characteristically for his attitude he used a report on the coronation 36

Ibid., pp. 342-344. S. Krauss, 'Die hebraischen Benennungen der modernen Vdlker', in Studies in Memory of George A. Kohut (New York, 1935), pp. 379-412 (esp. p. 399). 37

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of Otto in his work, but for his description of the coronation of Vespasianus! Doubts about the prevalent identification of the "king of Ashkenaz" and of the "king of the Giblim" are, consequently, still justified. The Khazar king responded in a letter to Hasdai38 that the Khazars affiliate themselves with Togarmah of the Japheth group, and that Togarmah had ten sons: 1. 'VYVR, 2. TVRYS, 3. 'VVR, 4. 'VGVZ, 5. BYZL, 6. TRN', 7. KZR, 8. YNVR, 9. BVLGR, 10. S'VYR. In Spain, Abraham ben David39 (d. c. 1180), in his Sefer ha-kabbalah, enclosed a list of the various parts of the Jewish Diaspora. It mentions, from the East to the West, after the Khazars the Greek islands, followed by Romi ha-gedolah, here evidently Byzantium. As a second group, "the whole land of Ashkenaz and Togarmah and Tsarphat". After them he mentioned Italian territories and finally Sepharad. The position of Togarmah seems to be West of Ashkenaz or perhaps South of it. Another passage defines the spheres of interest of the rival powers Persia and Rome in a peculiar way.40 It reflects the Byzantine-Persian wars during the early seventh century, evidently without a detailed knowledge of the regions in the West and North-West. To the realm of Rome are attributed here: Romi, Ashkenaz, Tsarphat and parts of Javan, Egypt, Pelishtim (here: North Africa), and Sepharad. Ashkenaz comprises apparently all the provinces in the North and north-eastern parts of the former Roman empire between the Black Sea and Tsarphat (Gallia); its definition depends, however, on the extension of Romi.41 Togarmah certainly does not refers to the Khazars, for their place is far away on the shore of the Volga.42 It may be that the author was aware of the targumic explanations for Togarmah as GRMM' (or similar), which most rabbinic sources still located in Asia Minor. For Abraham ben David Togarmah represented probably the kingdom of Germany between Ashkenaz as land of the Slavs and Tsarphat as France. But the ethno-geographic and political situation in the regions between Byzantium in the South, Kiev/Russia in the North and the known middle and western European lands was at that times rather complicated and characterized by many changes. Hungarians, Bulgars and Croatians appeared on the scene and for some time represented political powers of considerable significance while the former provinces of the Roman empire could still be regarded as parts of Romi.

38

Ibid., pp. 353-363. G. D. Cohen, A Critical Edition with a Translation and Notes of the 'Book of Tradition' (Sefer ha-Qabbalah) by Abraham Ibn Daud (Philadelphia, 1967), pp. 67 f. 40 See ibid., p. 40. 41 Cohen translated Ashkenaz in both passages as "Slav country". 42 See Cohen, Critical Edition (cited above, note. 39), pp. 92 f. 39

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Solomon ben Isaac (acronym Rashi, 1040-1105) was the first author who used leshon Ashkenaz for the German language,43 leshon Kena'an for Slavonic, and the term 'land of Ashkenaz'44 for a corresponding geographical area, in analogy to Tsarphat for the kingdom of France. But at that time it seems already to have been an established custom to speak of the western Diaspora as that of Sepharad, Tsarphat, and Ashkenaz, covering the whole geographical realm of the Iberian peninsula, the whole of later France, and all the regions of central and eastern Europe. Also in the future the term Ashkenaz designated more than 'Germany': it wandered back to eastern Europe, in connection with the German colonization during the late Middle Ages and the beginning of the modern era. Referring to Jewish inhabitants, the term Ashkenaz covered the whole area of central and eastern Europe, and 'Ashkenazim' finally became the prevalent label for Jews of all northern regions of Europe including eastern Europe, representing a particular synagogal ritual and linguistic tradition of its own, in analogy to the 'Sephardim'. Some authors of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries tried to establish a closer link between Ashkenaz as 'Germany' and Germanic tribes, in most cases on the basis of the similarity of certain names. All these assumptions were far-fetched and motivated by apologetic tendencies amongst German Jews. It was, for instance, assumed that the similarity between Ashkenaz and Tedeschi or Saxoni led to the new connotation 'Germany',45 or that, in the same manner, it was due to an assonance to Skanza/Scandz/As-Skandz/ Ascanaci.46 Similar attempts are equally unconvincing.47 D. Flusser, in his edition of the Sefer Yosippon (II, 104 f.), pointed once again to a responsum of Paltoi (bar Abbaye) Gaon (active c. 842-857) as proof,48 but this text provides no evidence for an identification of Ashkenaz with 'Germany'. It is more likely that it refers to an area in eastern Europe, similar to Saadiah ben Joseph Gaon's identification with Slav lands. Of unknown origin and date is a passage in the Seder malkei Romi49 which mentions a time when "the Ashkenazim began to rule over the Romans". It is not clear to whom the 43

Commentary to Babylonian Talmud Sukkah 17a; Gittin 55b; Bava Metsia 73b. Commentary to Babylonian Talmud Ketubbot 77b; Hullin 93a. 45 P. Rieger, 'Ashkenaz = Deutschland', in Monatsschrift fur Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums 80 (1936), pp. 455-459; id., 'Leshon kena'an - die Sprache Deutschlands', Monatsschrift fur Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums 81 (1937), pp. 299-301. 46 D. Simonsen, 'Kleinigkeiten', in Judaica. Festschrift zu Hermann Cohens siebzigstem Geburtstag (Berlin, 1912), pp. 297-301. 47 L. Wallach, 'Zur Etymologic ashkenaz - Deutschland', Monatsschrift fur Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums 83 (1939), pp. 302-304; S. W. Baron, A Social and Religious History of the Jews, vol. 6 (New York, Philadelphia, 31971), pp. 3 f. (pro Wallach); D. Flusser, Sefer Yosippon, vol. 1 (cited above, n. 20), pp. 298 f. 48 J. Miiller, Teshuvot ge'onei mitsrah u-ma'arav (Berlin, 1888), p. 37, § 149. 49 A. Neubauer, Mediaeval Jewish Chronicles, vol. 1 (Oxford, 1887; repr. Jerusalem, 1967), pp. 185 f. 44

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term Ashkenazim here really refers, most likely to the Goths, but perhaps to Charles the Great. None of these arguments for an identification of Ashkenaz with 'Germany' is really reliable.50 For a Jewish author in Italy or Spain it was plausible to look for Ashkenaz in northern central Europe and in eastern Europe. But from the viewpoint of Mesopotamian/Syrian authors before the period of the crusades Ashkenaz still remained the name for peoples North of the Caucasus, in central Asia and extreme eastern Europe, and therefore it was sometimes also used for the Khazars. A fragment from the Cairo Genizah of unknown exact date expresses a universal claim for the authority of the Jewish Exilarch in Mesopotamia, enlisting Tsarphat, Sepharad, Ashkenaz, Madai, Peras (!) and Javan.51 But it is rather improbable that this list envisaged concrete geographic statements; it is more likely a list of traditional names aimed at impressing Jewish readers. The Karaite lexicographer David ben Abraham Alfasi (tenth century) connected Ashkenaz with the Khazars, and Riphat with the Franks,52 the latter probably in the wider sense of the Carolingian empire. During the period of the crusades the name Ashkenaz was preferably applied to 'Franks' - the same is true for the Sefer Yosippon, written from a Byzantine point of view. In the eyes of authors in the western Mediterranean and in northern France Ashkenaz was a region East of the Rhineland and in the North of Alemania, in its eastern part still a land of Slav peoples. For authors in Spain, southern France and Italy Alemania was the nearest region of later Germany, and they used it also as pars pro toto, as later in the Romance languages. The Spanish Jewish author Benjamin of Tudela, who wrote his itinerary in the late twelfth century, called the kingdom of France explicitly 'Tsarphat', as Rashi had done long before him.53 According to Benjamin Alemania begins at Verdun. He called Cologne the capital of a kingdom which extends from Cologne as far as Regensburg, and adds, "which is called Ashkenaz". East of Regensburg he turns to the "Land Bohemia, which is called Praga. This is the beginning of the Land Asklaboniah. And the Jews who dwell in it call it Canaan, for the people of this country sell their sons and daughters to all nations. They are the people of Russia".54 so Very cautious in this respect also A. Grossman, Hakhmei ashkenaz ha-rishonim (Jerusalem, 1981), pp. 1 ff. 51 S. Schechter, Saadiana (Cambridge, 1903), p. 84. 52 The Hebrew-Aramaic Dictionary of the Bible Known as Kitabjami' al-Alfaz (Agron) of David ben Abraham al-Fasi the Karaite, 2 vols., ed. from manuscripts in the State Public Library in Leningrad and in the Bodleian Library in Oxford by S. L. Skoss (New Haven, 19361945), vol. 1, p. 159 (and vol. 2, p. 608). 53 M. N. Adler, The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela (repr. New York, 1964), Heb. text p. 74; Eng. trans, p. 81. 54 Ibid., n. 42; Heb. text pp. 71 f.; Eng. trans, pp. 79 f.

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The medieval commentaries on Gen. 10 exhibit a broad spectrum of actualizations, most of them unsensational and, of course, with variations according to the regional viewpoints and conditions of the time. The last medieval example is the commentary on Genesis by Isaac Abrabanel, who expressed an extraordinary esteem for the sons of Japheth, particularly the sons of Javan, the Greeks - and this some decades after the fall of Constantinople! His word in praise of the vanished eastern Christian power are evidently intended to put an indirect blame on the western Holy Empire and its anti-Jewish attitude. The chronicler Solomon ibn Verga, one of the comparatively 'modern' Jewish authors of the Renaissance period, quotes a list from an EgyptianJewish source which describes the extension of the rule of Soliman I in terms of Gen. 10 and uses other biblical names: Togarmah (Asia Minor), Uts, Madai, Meshek, Tiras, Ever ha-Nahar (Mesopotamia), Edom (the biblical land at the South of Judaea), Moab, Canaan (!), Philistaea, Arabia and Sinai, Egypt, Ludim (eastern North Africa), Kushim (Ethiopians), Teman (South Arabia).55 Such traditional names would evoke a positive theological evaluation of the role of Soliman in Israel's history. It was he who had readily received the Jews who had been expelled from the Iberian Peninsula, and his expanding politics and military achievements gave rise to the hope that Edom/Rome as the 'fourth empire' of Daniel was about to collapse. Solomon ibn Verga was not the only allegedly 'modern' Jewish historian who referred to biblical genealogies. Joseph ha-Kohen (s. above, EdomRome) began the first chapter of his History of the Kings of France and of the Ottoman Dynasty of Togar56 with a genealogy according to 1 Chron. 1: 1-7. He continued: "The sons of Gomer are Francos who dwell along the river PRVNTH and the river Seine; Riphat are the Bretanos who dwell in the land Bretania along the river Loire, which runs towards the Ocean, the Great Sea." This passage (with a textual error) corresponds to the actualization of Gen. 10 at the beginning of the tenth-century Sefer Yosippon, but not at all to the chronicler's own situation. Additional Sources of Information 1. Throughout the Middle Ages the Hebrew versions of the Alexander romance exercised a far-reaching influence among Jews, providing them with more or less fantastic information about remote regions and peoples in the Middle East and in India.57 55

Sefer shevet yelmdah le-rabbi Joseph ibn Verga, ed. Y. Baer (Jerusalem, 1946/47), p.

145.

56

See above, note 23. A Hebrew Alexander Romance According to Ms. London, Jews' College No. 145, ed., trans, and introd. W. J. van Bekkum (Leuven, 1992); id., A Hebrew Alexander Romance According to Ms. Heb. 671.5 Paris. Bibliotheque Nationale (Groningen, 1994). 57

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2. In the High Middle Ages the news about the conversion of the Khazars to Judaism focussed Jewish interest on central Asia and the eastern Mediterranean regions. 3. Traveller accounts, like that of Benjamin of Tudela, contain much topographical information, but their main goal was, of course, a description of Jewish communities and their environment. The last part of Benjamin's book abounds with legendary material about the Middle East, a region of special concern for Jewish readers because of prevalent concepts of the fate and future of the "ten lost tribes" of Israel.58 The "Ten Lost Tribes of Israel" and Eschatological Expectations After their conquest of northern Israel in 722 BCE the Assyrians exiled parts of the population to the Middle East where they disappeared. According to Jewish tradition the Assyrians deported the entire population of the ten northern tribes of Israel. Throughout the centuries their fate remained a subject for preoccupation, speculation and hopes, and information about their alleged fate and their current whereabouts stimulated geographical and eschatological fantasies.59 One of them is the legend about the impassable river Sambation which, somewhere in the East, separates the "ten lost tribes of Israel" from the West. The waters of this fantastic stream were believed to allow passage only every seventh day, during the Sabbath, when Israelites were not allowed to walk farther than a limited distance. One of the primary aims of the traditional Jewish concern for history was the hope to learn something about the last period of world history, presupposing a divine device behind the whole course of history. Events of the past were used in a typological way as models for events in present times or in the future. The restoration of idealized situations, conditions and personalities of the past formed an important part of the eschatological concept. One of these expectations was the restoration of Israel with all its twelve tribes under an "anointed" Davidic ruler. Throughout late antiquity, the Middle Ages and even during the modern era it was a fixed pattern of the eschatological view that the future re-appearance of the "ten lost tribes" would constitute a decisive turning point before the final phase of history. Rumours concerning the fate of the ten tribes were, in consequence, always a cause for the emergence of messianic movements. In contexts of that kind geographic information materialized; in most cases, however, of a legendary character, mainly regarding the geographical place and circumstances of the 58 59

See above, n. 4. D. A. Law, From Samaria to Samarkand. The Ten Lost Tribes of Israel (Lanham, 1992).

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ten tribes. To a certain extent their location was of a similar significance for the Jews as that of the "land of the Prester John" in contemporary Christian sources. In two instances these preconditions led to spectacular events with remarkable consequences and repercussions. During the late ninth century a man appeared in North Africa and Spain who called himself Eldad ha-Dani. He pretended to stem from the tribe of Dan in a Jewish kingdom consisting of some of the lost tribes in the land of Havilah (Gen. 2: 11; 10: 7, 10: 29, etc.). In his writings he also described some of their rulings, manners and customs, later subject to intense scholarly discussion.60 He also mentioned "sons of Moses" beyond the river Sambation. Whoever he may have been, his accounts (transmitted in several versions) provoked messianic hopes and exercised a far-reaching influence. As early as 1480 a printed version appeared in Mantua, symptomatic for the widespread demand for information of that kind. The second instance leads us into the early modern period. The Jews were, at that time, still under the impression of the expulsions from the Iberian peninsula and from Provence, and deeply preoccupied with the difficulties they experienced during the following decades. Under these conditions acute messianic expectations emerged throughout the entire Diaspora, nourished by speculations and a popularized kabbalistic theology. The question of the "lost ten tribes" emerged again, and rumours about the discoveries of new territories and unknown peoples affected the Jews in a particular way: they did not see it primarily as new geo-ethnographic information in a scientific sense but as evidence hinting at a decisive eschatological phase which would be connected to the re-appearance of the "lost ten tribes". At a time of general excitement about the alleged discovery of new maritime connections with India and the emerging consciousness of the discovery of a new continent and unknown peoples, there appeared in Venice in 1523 a person similar to Eldad ha-Dani. A certain David ha-Re'ubeni claimed to be the brother of Joseph, king over the tribes of Reuben, Gad and Half-Manasseh. He stated that the king had sent him to Europe in order to organize military support for his wars against the Muslims. In view of the triumphant rise of the Ottoman empire the prospect of a second front against the new Muslim threat was, at a first glance, an attractive perspective, and certainly also of potential importance for the position of the Jews in Christian countries. The converses, at that time in a precarious situation, seem to have been particularly eager to find out about possible changes resulting from to David's ac60 A. Epstein, Eldad ha-Dani, seine Berichte tiber die zehn Stamrne und deren Ritus (PreBburg, 1891/92); S. Krauss, 'New Light on Some Geographical Data in the Works of Eldad ha-Dani and Benjamin of Tudela' [Heb.], in Tarbiz 8 (1936/37), pp. 208-232; M. Schloessinger, The Ritual of Eldad ha-Dani, Reconstructed and Edited From Manuscripts and a Genizah Fragment (Leipzig, 1908).

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tivities. David, therefore, attracted the attention of Jews and non-Jews alike. He also wrote diaries in which he described his travels from the "desert of Habour" to the West. Most of its content consists of legendary material drawn from various sources.61 In a time of rumours about newly discovered lands, however, such 'information' could easily be regarded as reliable. But unlike the affair of Eldad ha-Dani, which remained an inner-Jewish event, David ha-Re'ubeni also attracted the attention of prominent non-Jews. He found ways to contact the Pope in order to obtain from him letters of recommendation for negotiations with kings and the Emperor. During the year 1525 he found access to the court of Pedro III of Portugal, who seemed to be interested. But the negotiations failed because of the activities of Solomon Molcho, a Marrano who, under the impression of David's appearance, decided to return to Judaism in 1527. He devoted himself to kabbalistic studies and messianic speculations, which also determined the further behaviour of David. They both had to leave Portugal, and after two adventurous years continued their activities in Italy, and that in spite of the imminent death penalty for a "relapsus". Finally they dared to approach the Emperor at Regensburg. Charles V, however, as an ardent Catholic and realistic politician, ordered their imprisonment. Solomon Molcho found his death in Mantua in 1532, condemned to the stake for being a relapsed Christian, and David was brought to Spain; about his last years nothing is known.62 Jews and Geography During the Beginning Modern Era The first three decades of the sixteenth century were characterized by intensive Jewish messianic expectations.63 The famous exegete Isaac Abrabanel and some kabbalists calculated the beginnings of eschatological events for 1503/04; Asher Lemlein began his messianic propaganda in northern Italy and southern Germany at the same time. The kabbalistic messianic prophet Abraham ben Eliezer ha-Levi was active during the twenties of the sixteenth century, when the Reformation in Germany led to expectations concerning the fall of Edom, further nourished by the fall of Constantinople in 1453 and by the sacco di Roma in 1528. Against this background rumours about the discoveries in America formed only details within a fixed eschatological scenario. However, in the beginning of the second part of his History of the Kings of France and the 61

Sippur David ha-Re'uveni, ed. A. Z. Escoly (Jerusalem, 1940/41). About him see also M. Halter, Le Messie (Paris, 1998). 63 A. H. Silver, A History of Messianic Speculation in Israel from the First to the Seventeenth Centuries (New York, 1927; Boston, 21959). 62

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Ottoman Dynasty of Togar,64 the chronicler Joseph ha-Kohen devoted some passages to the expeditions and discoveries of Portuguese and Spanish sailors in Africa and America and mentioned Amerigo in particular, but finally turned his attention to the Far East. Not from America, but from Asia did a Jew of that time expect news of decisive relevance for Israel's history. All this happened notwithstanding the fact that in certain Jewish circles of the late sixteenth and beginning seventeenth centuries a new approach to secular learning was beginning to emerge, as a tool for the defence of Judaism within a humanistic and Renaissance culture, particularly in Italy. For instance, Abraham ben David Portaleone, in his Shiltei ha-gibborim, did not so much rely on medieval Jewish authorities, but preferred biblical and classical sources as well as modern (contemporary) publications in order to demonstrate that Jews in the period of the Jerusalem Temple had attained cultural standards comparable to those of the modern gentile environment. Such learned Jewish circles, however, did not determine the worldview and historical outlook of the majority. As soon as information about the new continent spread among Jews many of them assumed that the "Indians" in America might be descendants of some of the "ten lost tribes".

64

See above, n. 23.

INDEX OF NAMES Jewish names are listed under the first name: e.g., Abraham Portaleone and not Portaleone, Abraham; Azariah de' Rossi and not de' Rossi, Azariah. Abraham bar Hiyya (d. c. 1136) 138 f. Abraham ben David (c. 1110-c. 1180), also Abraham ibn Daud 106, 151, 158 Abraham ben David Provenzale (16th c.) 109 Abraham ben Eliezer ha-Levi (1460-1528) 157 Abraham Farissol (1451-c. 1525) 138 Abraham Portaleone (1542-1612) 99 f., 105, 107-118,158 Abu al-Hasan ibn Abi al-Rijal (fl. 1040) 83 Agricola, Georgius (1494-1555) 63, 68, 112 Albertus Magnus (c. 1193-1280) 116, 118 Amerbach, Veit (1503-1557) 53,67 Ammonius Agricola, Johann (c. 1488-1570) 63,68 Annius of Viterbo, Johannes (15th c.) 4 Apian, Philipp (1531-1589) 53,54 Aristotle (384-322 BCE) 5-10, 12, 16, 23, 27 f., 46, 71-77, 79, 102 Arriaga, Roderigo de (1591-1667) 29 f., 34 Augustine (354-430) 8,17 Avicenna (980-1037) = Abu AH al-Hussain ibn Abdallah ibn Sina 55, 85, 90-92 Azariah de' Rossi (c. 1511-1578) 103 f., 110 f., 120,123, 129 f., 133 Bacon, Francis (1561-1626) 17, 102 Bahya ben Asher (13th c.) 117 Behaim, Martin (1459-1507) 140 Belondu Mans, Pierre (1517-1564) 89 Benedictus, Alexander (b. 1490), also Benedetti 45 Benjamin of Tudela (12th c.) 153, 155 f. Benjamin Portaleone (d. c.1683) 109 f. Berengario da Carpi, Jacopo (1460-1530) 45 Berosus (fl. before 280 BCE) 4 Blancanus, Josephus (d. 1624), also Biancani, Blancani 27 Boethius (c.480-524) 21 Boscius, Johann Lonaeus (1515-1585) 64,66 Brahe, Tycho (1546-1601) 133 Brasavola, Antonio (1500-1555) 112 Bruno, Giordano (1548-1600) 73,75,77-79,102 Buridan, John (c. 1295-c. 1358) 71 Campanella, Tommaso (1568-1639) 74, 102 Canepario, Pietro Maria (fl. 1619) 112 Cardano, Geronimo (1501-1576), also Cardan, Cardanus 88, 112

Cattenius, Otto (fl. 1610) 24 f. Cicero (106-43 BCE) 5,13,15, 17 f. Clavius,Christoph(1537-1612) 32 Comenius, Johann Amos (1592-1670) 40 Copernicus, Nicolaus (1473-1543) 17,36,41 Cordus, Valerius (1515-1544) 112 da Orta, Garcia (c. 1499-1568) 117 David ben Abraham Alfasi (10th c.) 153 David ben Judah Messer Leon (1470-1526) 106 David ha-Re'ubeni (d. 1532) 156 f. David ibn Abi Zimra (1479-1573) 82, 94 della Porta, Giovanni Battista (1535-1615) 112 Democritus (460-370 BCE) 56 Dietrich, Sebastian (d. c.l 576) 61 Dioscorides (40-90) 81, 88,112, 116, 118 Duns Scotus, John (1266-1308) 72 Dury, John (1596-1680) 40 Eck,Johannes(1486-1543) 52 Eliezer Ashkenazi (1513-1586) 123, 133 Elijah Levita (c. 1468-1549) 133 Epicurus (341-271 BCE) 9, 56 Euclid (325-271 BCE) 18, 22,24 f. Fabricius, Jacob (1576-1629) 40 Fallopius, Gabriel (1523-1562) 62, 64, 112 Fendt, Melchior (1486-1564) 55 Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdes, Gonzalo (1478-1557) 95 Ficino, Marsilius (1433-1499) 4,17 f. Fuchs, Leonhart (1501-1566) 53,112 Galen (129-C.209) 45,47-51,55, 58 f., 61-63, 65 f., 68, 88-90 Galilei, Galileo (1564-1642), also Galileo 17, 19,24 f., 27 f., 49, 73,102-104 Cans, David (1541-1613) 124, 127, 133, 138 Gassendi, Pierre (1592-1655) 73 f. Germann, Balthasar (fl. 1606) 41 Gersonides. See Levi ben Gerson Grynaeus, Simon (1493-1541) 18 Guglielmo Portaleone. See Benjamin Portaleone Harant de Polzic et Bezdruzic, KriStof (1564-1621) 89 HasdaiCrescas(1340-c.l410) 71-78 Hasdai ibn Shaprut (c.915-c.970) 148 f. Henerus, Renatus (16th c.) 49 Hermes Trismegistos 4,18 Hevel ius, Johannes (1611 -1687) 42

160

INDEX OF NAMES

Hippocrates (c.460-c.370 BCE) 55, 63, 65 f., 89 f. Ibn Sina, Abu All al-Hussain ibn Abdallah. See Avicenna Isaac Abrabanel (1437-1508) 123, 154,157 Isaac ben Moses Estori ha-Parhi (1280-C.1355) 139 Isaac ben Sheshet Prefet (1326-1408) = Ribash 82 Isaac Israeli (845-943) 84 Isaac Lampronti (1679-1756) 115 Jacob ben David Provenzale (fl. 1480) 106 Jehiel Nissim Vitale da Pisa (c. 1493-1572) 107 Jerahme'el ben Solomon (fl. 1150) 142 Joseph ben Judah Zarka (Bonaiuto) (fl. 1391-1429) 109 Joseph ben Rabbi Gedaliah (fl. 1411) 83 Joseph ha-Kohen (1496-1578) 144f., 154,158 Joseph Sinai (16th c.) 109 Juan de Sacrobosco (fl. 1230, d. c. 1256) 21 f.,83 Judah Abrabanel (c. 1460-1523) = Leone Ebreo 78, 133 Judah Halevi (before 1075-1141) 106, 125, 139 Judah Loew (c. 1525-1609) = Maharal 119-129,131-136 Judah Moscato (c. \ 530-c. 1593) 101, 105 f., Ill Judah Provenzale (16th c.) 109 Keckermann, Bartholomaus (1571-1608) 41 Kepler,Johannes(1571-1630) 17, 25,133 Kriiger, Peter (d. 1615) 41 Landau, Adam (d. 1573) 64 Leone Ebreo. See Judah Abrabanel LeoneModena(1571-1648) 101 Lessius, Leonardus (1554-1623) 21 Levi ben Gerson (1288-1344) = Gersonides 72 Locke, John (1632-1704) 33 Lopez de Gomara, Francisco (1510-1564) 145 Ludolf.Hiob (1649-1711) 18 L u i s d e l a Y s l a ( f l . 1506) 87 Luther, Martin (1483-1546) 3, 5 f., 9 f., 16, 47-49,51-54, 56 f., 65 f., 125 Lutz, Cyriacus (d. 1599) 68 Maharal. See Judah Loew Maimonides. See Moses ben Maimon Matthiolus, Pier Andrea (1501-1577) 112 Meinius, Matthias (1544-1601) 41 Meir Katzenel lenbogen (1482-1565) 109 Melanchthon, Philip (1497-1560) 3-8, 23, 27, 34,46 f., 52-61,66 f, 69 Menahem Azariah da Fano (1548-1620) 115 Menavino, Giovan Antonio (fl. 1548) 86 Milich, Jakob (1501-1559) 57,61

Mondinode" Liuzzi (c. 1275-1326), also Mondinus 44 Mordecai Meisel (1528-1601) 120,126-128 MordecaiYaffe(16thc.) 127 Moses ben Maimon (1135-1204) = Maimonides 72,104,113,116,130 Moses Hamon (fl. during rule of Sultan Mehmed II, 1444-1481) 85-87 Moses Isserles (c. 1510/1520-c. 1551/1572) 121,124 Muhammad (570-632) 10,12 Mylaeus, Christophorus (d. 1570) 18 Nicolay, Nicolas de (1517-1583) 87 f. Obadiah di Bertinoro (fl. 1488, d. 1550) 82 Ogier, Charles (1595-1654) 35,42 f. Opitz, Martin (1597-1639) 41 Paleme, Jean (1557-C.1592) 90 Paltoi (bar Abbaye) Gaon (fl. 842-857) 152 Paracelsus (c. 1493-1541) 49 f., 65 f., 109,112 Pererius, Benedictus (1536-1610) 24-27, 29, 32 Perles, Meir (1666-1739) 120-123, 128 Philo of Alexandria (20 BCE-50 CE) 8 Philoponos, John (6th c.) 73 Pico della Mirandola, Gianfrancesco (1469-1533) 72f.,78 Plato (428-348 BCE) 4 f., 8-18, 27, 89 Plutarch(c.46-c.ll9) 17f. Polak, Jacob (1460-1532) 121 Pseudo-Albertus Magnus (late 14th c.) 116,118 Rashi. See Solomon ben Isaac Razis (860-932) 89 Reuchlin, Johannes (1455-1522) 4, 18 Ribash. See Isaac ben Sheshet Prefet Riccius, Christoph (1590-1643) 40 Rueus, Francesco (c. 1520-1585), also Roeo, Rueo, de la Rue 117 Saadiah ben Joseph Gaon (882-942) 148, 152 Salomone de' Rossi (1570-1630) 111 Scheiner, Christoph (1575-1650) 31 Schober, Ulrich (16thc.) 40 f. Schonborn, Bartholomaus (1530-1585) 61 Serapion(c.200-150BCE) 89 f. Simon ben Zemah Duran (1361-1444) 84 Solomon ben Isaac (1040-1105) = Rashi 123,129,146,151,153 Solomon ibn Verga (c. 1450-1520) 154 Solomon Luria (1510-1574) 121 f., 126 Sturm, Johannes(1507-1589) 40 Telesio, Bernardino (1508-1588) 26, 102 Thevenot, Jean (1633-1667) 90 Thevet, Andre (1502-1590) 88 Tidicaeus, Franz (1554-1617) 41 Tucci, Stephanus (16th c.) 27 Turnovius, Johann (1567-1629), also Jan Turnowski 40

INDEX OF NAMES Valla, Lorenzo (1407-1457), also Vallensis, della Valle 21 Valla, Paulus (1522-1588), also Vallius 24 Vesal, Andreas (1514-1564) 48,51 f., 59, 62-64, 66, 69

161

Waldseemuller, Martin (c. 1470-c. 1518) 140 Williamof Ockham (1285-1349) 71 Xenophon (430-355 BCE) 11 f., 15 Zerbi, Gabriele de (15th c.) 45 Ziegler, Johann Reinhard (1569-1636) 24