Essays

RECENT LITERATURE ON CHRISTIAN KABBALAH

Saverio Campanini
If one considers the scant esteem in which Christian Kabbalah was held, having been termed a step-child of theology, one can maintain that its study developed quite beyond the most optimistic forecast of its initiators.1 Not only did its academic ranking grow without interruption but, especially in recent years, its study has been so favourably reconsidered that it almost challenges that of Kabbalah itself, that is to say of Jewish Kabbalah. Christian Kabbalah has become a fundamental issue for understanding the kabbalistic revival which took place in the last century and does not seem to have settled down in the century that has just begun. After the pioneering studies of Gershom Scholem, Joseph Blau, Franois Secret, Chaim Wirszubski, and Frances Yates, we note in the last years the first signs of a new stage in the study of this interesting phenomenon. Examining two recent contributions to the field, I would like here to point out a possibly undesirable development, whose roots are in some sense intertwined with the very nature of a paradoxical nonJewish Kabbalah. Moreover, I will try to suggest how we could avoid evident dangers and unnecessary misunderstandings Speaking of dangers, the most serious one, in my opinion, is the concept of Christian Kabbalah itself, which was defined with remarkable efforts by the authors of the preparatory studies dating back to the 1950s and 1960s and is being radically questioned in favour of a more elastic notion tending to encompass virtually all occurrences of the word Kabbalah in a non-Jewish context and coming to signify, more or less, anything whatsoever. I would call this a very serious problem, if the sense of proportions would not forbid it, particularly because it affects in a very similar way also the academic study of the Kabbalah tout court, especially after the death of Gershom Scholem (1982), which marks an essential turning point in the recent historiography of Jewish mysticism. A process of revision touching on single statements and even the general view of the discipline as established by Gershom Scholem is inevitable and, according to many, highly welcome; nevertheless the revisionists theses have not always brought about a real advancement of
1

our knowledge nor an amelioration of our heuristic tools. Similarly, the studies dedicated to Christian Kabbalah, too, far from profiting from hastily conducted revisions, on many occasions show the traces of a conceptional uncertainty, not to say of a regrettable confusion. If one underlines the undeniable, deep influence of the Christian kabbalist Franz Joseph Molitor on the metaphysical premises motivating the explorations of the young Scholem, one ends up implying, or rather stating, that Scholem himself, who was beyond any doubt no Jewish mystic but an external observer of Kabbalah, could be reduced to the genealogical chain (which he himself first proposed) of Western researchers of Jewish mysticism, inaugurated by Johannes Reuchlin or, in a certain sense, by Giovanni Pico della Mirandola. The short circuit, very post-modern and therefore quite attractive, manifests itself in the intentionally paradoxical statement that Scholem himself could be defined as a Christian kabbalist.2 We can leave this interesting de-constructionist puzzle for another occasion and ask directly the question, according to the perspective chosen for this review, if there is still a consensus, if not a normative, binding definition of what Christian Kabbalah means, in order to connect the different contributions to the field in some sort of common discourse. We thought we knew what the traditional definition of Christian Kabbalah implies but, reading the most recent academic production, we note a proliferation of personal definitions destined, by their very nature, to be functional slogans appropriate for fulfilling academic requirements, to last no longer than lespace dune dissertation. These remarks do not conceal any sort of censorial agenda, but are aimed rather at searching for some clear vision and exploring whether it need be that the majority of recent contributions seem unable to find a way of dialogue with other researchers engaged in the field, dealing, apparently, with absolutely disparate, or even incompatible subjects. As a discipline of the arcane exists, we believe a discipline of the manifest also exists: in its name we will attempt this brief survey and, through two examples of recent research dedicated to Christian Kabbalah, we will try to find out whether a new consensus could emerge from the data at our disposal and from the rich list of desiderata which, as is well known, has not grown shorter in recent years.3
See Steven M. Wasserstrom, Religion After Religion. Gershom Scholem, Mircea Eliade and Henry Corbin at Eranos, Princeton/NJ 1999. 3 I have reviewed, in the Journal of Jewish Studies, two other recent contributions dedicated to Christian Kabbalah: Karen De Len-Jones, Prophets, Magicians, and Rabbis. Giordano Bruno and
2

See Ernst Benz, Die christliche Kabbala. Ein Stiefkind der Theologie, Zrich 1958.

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The first book we are going to examine bears the inviting title Alchemy of the Word. Cabala in the Renaissance,4 written by Philip Beitchman, also author of the essay I Am a Process With No Subject. The book is divided into four chapters (In the Beginning; The Secret of Agrippa; Bibliographica Kabbalistica and The Kiss of the Spouse, Cabala in England [14971700]), not all of them concerning our subject: the author aims at an original reconstruction of the history of Kabbalah, based on a very personal identification of the latter with the Zohar and a rhizomatic theory drawing heavily upon the thought of the French philosophical duo G. Deleuze and F. Guattari. It is quite difficult to criticize Beitchmans philosophical speculations because they are developed on a programmatically different plane, unassailable if one does not share the premises of the author. We will therefore limit our discussion to the third chapter, which is intended as an hommage to Gershom Scholem and his Bibliographia Kabbalistica, published for the first time in 1927.5 In the design of the author this is a commented bibliography on Christian Kabbalah, a very much awaited enterprise, especially in a field in which complete bibliographical surveys and reliable orientations are still woefully lacking. Unfortunately we must conclude that Beitchmans bibliographical tour de force does not adequately fill the aforementioned lacuna, nor does it provide the reader with reliable information. A complete catalogue of the omissions is, of course, an impossible enterprise, but even a simple list of the mistakes occurring in this bibliography would fill all the space at our disposal. We read of unheard-of names such as Pietro di Galantini6 or of a certain Joseph Pfefferkorn,7 but far more interesting are the imaginative translations suggested by Beitchman, such as the title proposed for the Italian Piazza universale di tutte le professioni del mondo, written by Tommaso Garzoni: the piazza of the Italian title becomes unexpectedly a castle. Probably the author had in mind the Italian word piazzaforte, which means bulwark. On the basis of this doubtful foundation it was far from difficult for Beitchman to find associative connections with the interior castle of the allegedly kabbalistically minded Teresa of Avila, but the drift of the differ(a)nce could no longer be halted: the next amazing leap
the Kabbala, New Haven and London 1997; and Joseph Dan (ed.), The Christian Kabbalah. Jewish Mystical Books and Their Christian Interpreters, Cambridge/MA 1997. 4 Philip Beitchman, Alchemy of the Word. Cabala in the Renaissance, Albany/NY 1998. 5 We will remark, en passant, that Beitchman seems convinced that the title of Scholems book is Bibliographica kabbalistica! 6 We believe the author meant Pietro Galatino. 7 His correct Christian name was Johannes.

brings Beitchman, and the astounded reader, before the walls of Kafkas Castle. A copied work at least this was clear to the discarded old philology could only worsen the original: here one can say, beyond any doubt, that Beitchmans book is at its best a bad compilation of not always excellent sources. Without implying anything about the legitimacy of postmodern hermeneutics and its drift or rhizome readings, the most positively minded thing one can say about Beitchmans book is that it constitutes an involuntary, catastrophic parody thereof, rhetorically as well as factually. Nonetheless, this book still has, in my opinion, one merit: it should help to warn us against tackling a slippery subject, such as Christian Kabbalah, without the appropriate Hebraistic tools. A quite different book, although not without some analogies as far as the method and the project are concerned, is represented by the essay of Andreas B. Kilcher bearing the title Die Sprachtheorie der Kabbala als sthetisches Paradigma.8 Kilcher displays, unlike Beitchman, philosophical alertness, but his diffusely argued plea does not fully convince. His starting point the thesis according to which the kabbalistic theory of language was revived in Western aesthetics, paying no attention to historical developments or to differences among diverse kabbalistic doctrines correctly expresses the situation concerning relatively late authors who allude to a vague kabbalistic ideology, but at the same time it contributes to the misleading picture of a one-stream transmission, subsumed in a single coherent model (Kilchers paradigma), supposedly valid for all approaches to Jewish mysticism. The aim of this book is not, in its core, historical; indeed, it could be synthesized in the following formula: to read Schlegel with Harold Blooms spectacles. The essay is a quite refined, intentional misreading, claiming to be objectively founded on the examined texts. But, although paradoxes constitute the daily bread of those interested in Christian Kabbalah, one must object: if every reading is a misreading, the hermeneutical operation suggested by Kilcher, in order to be successful, must fail. We will carefully avoid, therefore, pronouncing Kilchers attempted experiment a failure; rather we will try to find some clues there to decide whether the old distinction, stemming from Gershom Scholem, between genuine and pseudo-Kabbalah deserves to be defended or not. If we examine Christian Kabbalah against the background of Scholems suggested definition of Jewish Kabbalah, i.e., that the latter is to be
8 Andreas B. Kilcher, Die Sprachtheorie der Kabbala als sthetisches Paradigma. Die Konstruktion einer sthetischen Kabbala seit der Frhen Neuzeit, Stuttgart 1998.

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understood as a genuinely Jewish phenomenon, then the former must be impossible. Does this mean that no difference is possibly justified between, say, Reuchlins De arte cabbalistica and Schillers Kabale und Liebe or Thornton Wilders Cabala? Scholem considered, in his ideological scheme, Christian Kabbalah acceptable as the forerunner of the academic study of Jewish Kabbalah on a historical basis, that is, of the philology of mystical texts. But Scholem, who once had the weakness to confess that the philology of a mystical discipline has something ironic about it, was also committed to another path, almost clandestine, the one of the construction of a metaphysic of Kabbalah, and it seems that this model has no place for Christian Kabbalah. In the large undertaking to revise Scholems ideology, Kilchers book finds its place among other contributions, but we would rather ask: is this book also useful in helping us to better understand Christian Kabbalah? His definition of Christian Kabbalah is functional to his purpose of making sense of many modern texts where the mention of Kabbalah is only a very pale echo of a faded memory, but as such seems too vague to be heuristically powerful. This was, with all its shortcomings, precisely the reason behind Scholems taste for definitions and particularly behind his binding definition of what constituted genuine Kabbalah, whether Jewish or Christian. His aim was not to make the study of Kabbalah more interesting, but simply possible, trying to help us to ascertain why some books are good and many are bad, for, also in kabbalistic matters, not everything can be said, whatever the vox populi might opine. The Torah has many aspects, many facets, maybe even infinite ones, but this does not mean that every statement is equally correct. One could say that Kilcher, with great reliability, has collected the major part of the relevant literature, systematizing it in an ambitious frame, but not always finding the appropriate linguistic formulation. What is lacking, in my opinion, is a possible and highly desirable enrichment of our knowledge about the sources nurturing the Christian kabbalistic ideology. The return to the sources does not imply a nostalgic, anachronistic antipathy toward the de-constructive approach: as a matter of fact, the edifice which has to be de-constructed, according to the common sense, first needs to be built, and we still know too little about the paths of diffusion of Jewish mystical themes in the Western world. The aim of the distinction between Christian kabbalists who took the trouble to learn Hebrew and Aramaic in order to read the sources of kabbalistic knowledge and the ones who simply evoked Jewish Kabbalah in order to smuggle their own speculations is not to confer legitimacy on one ideology rather than on another. Precisely this point should become clear to our generation, now that the ideological Zionist transplantation of the Wissenschaft des Judentums has revealed all its limitations: whenever an ideological construction crumbles, it is safe to go back to the texts, paying respect to their language and to the historical context in which they were composed and read. In other words: only a philological approach can help us out of the impasse of modern ideology. The usage of the term Kabbalah by Christian authors, so freely open to inventiveness, should be gauged according to the distance from the original kabbalistic sources: this distance, somehow structural, has to be seen as an opportunity to make the kabbalistic discourse understandable, not as an open door for obliterating all relevant qualitative differences. Referring to the famous simile suggested by Scholem about the philology of Kabbalah being sheeps clothing under which a wolf is presumably hiding, the accent of current debate seems to fall more on the wolf rather than on the sheep. We are not obliged to follow the metaphysical agenda concealed, according to Joseph Weiss, under the historical incognito surrounding Scholems literary activity. We should rather take his preparatory works at face value and persevere on this long road. In the academic study of Kabbalah (Kilcher suggested the term endogenous Kabbalah, showing once more his awkward feeling for the inappropriate formulation) the biggest problem is that the main bulk of the relevant sources lies semi-forgotten in libraries and archives, still in manuscript form. Entire systems and academic careers have been built on an extremely fragile textual base, mostly availing of the texts published in the second half of the nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century. To this very day we are forced to use editions which fulfil, at best, religious requirements and bear the appropriate haskamah, but leave unfulfilled the wish for scientific criteria with respect to textual constitution and datation. Nonetheless a faulty edition provided by pious circles in Israel or in the United States is far better than a general theory based on manuscripts which are completely inaccessible for the reader who does not live in the neighbourhood of Givat Ram. Kabbalah was seriously misunderstood in the course of its diffusion in the Western world but this was not due, as Beitchman assumes, to the intrinsic structure of Kabbalah itself nor because, as Kilcher seems to believe, it was forced, in a Christian environment, to fit into concepts which were extraneous to its original agenda (giving

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birth to an exogenous Kabbalah). The crudest deformations and the most outrageous mistakes in the Kabbalahs difficult journey among the Christians are due, simply and predictably, to ignorance and the hear-say transmission of knowledge. Therefore, it is more than ever urgent and legitimate to defend the distinction between serious researchers and charlatans, between reliable sources and blind alleys, between, say, Francesco Zorzi and Eliphas Levi. It is more urgent than ever to strive for a description of the Christian kabbalistic phenomenon (but the same could be said, as we have seen, about Jewish Kabbalah) based on new surveys of the sources, on a critical revision of the relevant bibliography and on a renewed impulse to edit the many texts which still lie unread in many European libraries. Only afterwards will it be possible to lay the foundation of an historical synthesis to try to elucidate this still obscure page of Western history, at the meeting point of cultures and religions, in the name of a received knowledge (Kabbalah), which is still beyond our comprehension, but whose importance as a cornerstone for the history of Jewish Studies can no longer be underestimated. In her Rosicrucian Enlightenment Frances Yates observed, reviewing the still unsurpassed Les Kabbalistes Chrtiens de la Renaissance by Franois Secret: He reaches no conclusions, and his book is more in the nature of a bibliography than a book.9 In his reprint of the latter work, Secret could respond: Que de livres et de manuscrits avons-nous examins depuis 1964, qui invitent retarder encore toute synthse prmature!10 We can only comment that these words have not lost their validity in our own day. _______________________________ Saverio Campanini is Lecturer in Jewish Studies in the Institute of Jewish Studies, Free University of Berlin.

Frances Yates, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment, London 1972, p.

227.
10

Franois Secret, Les Kabbalistes Chrtiens de la Renaissance, nouvelle dition mise jour et augmente, Milano 1985, p. xiii.