Christian Kabbalah in the Renaissance
By Crofton Black
(Treadwell’s Bookshop, London, 5 March 2008)

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Christina gave the usual Treadwell’s introduction outlining the length of the talk, the Q&A afterwards then inviting all for drinks afterwards upstairs. She stated that she had been ,since opening Treadwell’s four and a half years earlier, curious about Christian kabbalah and modern magic. Bearing no resemblance to Jewish kabbalah, it was somewhat like Einstein’s mother in that many are aware of the origins but focusing on the Christian kabbalah.

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Crofton began the lecture stating that it is not known when the earliest transmission occurred between Jewish and Christian kabbalah or from others sources to Jewish kabbalah and even from Christian to Jewish kabbalah. In 1486/7 Flavius Mithridates (F.M.) translated five thousand pages for his student Pico della Mirandola, three thousand pages of which still survive to this day. The translation was done in a remarkably fast time, about a year, and from the annotations made by Pico it can be seen that he read, understood and used this in his own works.

In the 16th and 17th centuries Christian kabbalah was used to serve Christian purposes and this was at odds with the mainstream of Christianity. The Christian kabbalists all found common threads in the same reasoning and defenses in referring to the same sources and copying each others works. F.M. translated the Bahir but not the Zohar, four commentaries on the Sefer Yetzirah (Book of Formation) but not the book itself. He translated Abulafia’s Sitrei Torah commentary on The Guide to the Perplexed. The two main things to come out of these writings used by Pico were:

1. The idea of the Sefirot and their role in Creation
2. Kabbalistic interpretative methods (e.g. recombining letters to create new words)

Pico was confronted with new exciting ideas, that of the Creation story and new interpretative methods. F.M. inserted phrases in to the translation with Christian themes that were not in the original texts. For example:

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Handout - Part I

Example of Christianizing kabbalistic interpretation; taken from C. Wirzubski, Pico della Mirandola’s Encounter with Jewish Mysticism, Cambridge, Mass., 1989 p107

Ms. Vat. Ebr. 190, f.226r:#
AZ is est tunc vel subito ut in textu [Exodus 15:1] Az cecinit Moises … indicat omnes decem numerationes secundum representationem suarum literarum Aleph indicat trinitatem trium superiorum corone sapiencie et intelligencie unitam in unitate essencie. Zain vero secundum numerum suum qui est septem indicat a pietate usque ad regnum.

‘AZ, meaning “then” or “suddenly”, as in the test “Then Moses sang…” … indicates all ten sefirot according to the representation of its letters. A indicates the trinity of the top three, crown, wisdom and intelligence united in unity of essence. Z by its number which is 7 indicates from piety down to kingdom.’

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The common interpretation for kabbalists for the passage was modified as shown by the words in italics above; to play up the top three sefirot and portray them in a Christian light.

Pico who was composing his 900 conclusions was preparing for a grand debate in Rome. He proposed that any opposing philosophical views could be reconciled if properly addressed. Of the 900 conclusions 120 were based on Christian kabbalah.

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Handout - Part II

Pico, 20th kabbalistic thesis secundum opinionem program:
‘Si interpretationem suam advererint Cabalistae super hac dictione AZ quae significant tunc, de trinitatus mysterio multum illuminabunter.’

‘If kabbalists paid attention to their interpretation of this word “az”. meaning “then”, they will be greatly illuminated about the mystery of the Trinity.’

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From the above quote it is very hard to figure out the background text. Pico states in his writing that he purchased the manuscripts from the Jews at great expense as they did not want to part with them to the Latins. Pico was enthused to have these texts as he wanted to use them to verify Christianity. He stated that “...l there was no better science to prove Christianity than magic and kabbalah…”

Pico was prevented from holding the grand debate and his conclusions were subjected to a Papal review. Of the 900 conclusions 13 were said to be interpretable as heretical including the quote above. Pico wrote a defense against these accusations and this was banned. He fled to France where he was imprisoned and then released through the intervention of Lorenzo de'Medici. After this he did not mention Christian kabbalah directly again.

Other scholars took an interest in Christian kabbalah including a Jewish convert to Christianity. Sha’areh Orah (Gates of Light) was translated in 1516 and Sefer Yetzirah (Book of Formation) in 1552. Reuchlin used texts directly, reading them in Hebrew and using their ideas in to his works (he did not publish his translations). In the 16th century Christian kabbalah was used in the Latin readership to promote Christianity and not to promote debate about the subject itself. Pico believed that the teachings came from Moses and were not subject to textual corruption, as he was of the belief that the Greek translations of the psalms were more accurate than the Hebrew.

Pico argued that Christian kabbalah was demonstrable justification for Christianity and was one of the four levels of biblical interpretation. This mirrored the PARDES as used by the Jews. Pico stated that the Christian kabbalah was of the fourth level of interpretation. Pico believed that the Messiah should be interpreted by Christian kabbalah and not literally as Jesus got them thrown out of the land and that they would inherit the Heavenly Jerusalem.

Pico did not set out for Christian kabbalah to be its own body of work but in order to prove Christianity. He viewed himself as a good Christian despite the action of the Church against him. Garcia scrutinized Christian kabbalah and amongst his conclusions found that it was not a Christian method of interpretation and that it was not part of the Oral Law and instead simply an invention.

Paolo Riccio, a convert from Judaism in Northern Italy, translated an abridged Christian kabbalah and was the first to be published. He also wrote a cryptic but ordered introduction to Christian kabbalah that contained sixty six conclusions (Pico’s conclusions were not as well ordered).

Riccio correlated Christian kabbalah with the non-literal reading and based it on the way that the mind works through sense impressions. He argued that the mind can rise above the (flawed) sense understanding of the world to a higher form of understanding, i.e. Christian kabbalah. His work was described in Aristotelian theory that was typical of medieval philosophy. Riccio wrote that Adam had a higher understanding and that this was lost in the Fall. He wrote that in the future Christian kabbalah would make literal interpretation redundant.

In the 1500’s during the Reformation the mediation of Church and God as well as Catholic interpretation of scripture were being questioned. Non-literal interpretations were gradually rejected by some and the four levels of interpretation were made obsolete. Brassicanus in 1531 published the Book of Formulas of Spiritual Understanding. He was reviving older Christian non-literal methods. He simply commented that they seemed (to him) similar to kabbalah.

Christian kabbalah did not make many in-roads in the counter-Reformation although Sixtus of Sienna made a veiled reference to it in his work as illustrated in the quote below:

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Handout - Part III:

Pico’s example of letter combination, from the Heptaplus (1489), later quoted by Sixtus of Sienna in his Bibliotheca sancta (1566) among others:



‘The father, in / through the son, who is the beginning and the end / rest, created the head, the fire and the foundation of the great man with a good pact.’

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In conclusion:

F.M. translated for Pico and added his own words. Pico wanted to use Christian kabbalah to prove Christianity and to fit it in to the four levels of interpretation. Riccio related it to Aristotle’s works and in the 16th century it reached a peak indicated by Sixtu's work indicating the nearest it got to orthodoxy among Christians in general. It continued flourishing in to the 17th century and has remained a "specialist" activity since.


Edit: updated with some corrections.