Confronting Kabbalah: Studies in the Christian Hebraist Library of Johann Albrecht Widmanstetter

Maximilian de Molière is an assistant researcher at the Universities of Halle and Munich who specializes in the history of the Jewish book, Kabbalah, and Digital Humanities. He obtained his Dr. phil. in Jewish History and Jewish Studies at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (University Munich).

Acknowledgments

List of Figures

List of Tables

Abbreviations and Transliteration



1 Introduction

 1 Widmanstetter’s Life and Library

 2 Kabbalah and Its Christian Interpreters

 3 Jewish Books in Christian Hands

 4 The Book as a Material Object



2 Christian Hebraist Book Collecting in the Era of Expulsions of Jews

 1 Chronology of Acquisition

 2 Traces of Late Medieval Jewish Libraries

 3 Books Acquired from Private Libraries

 4 Booksellers and Book Agents

 5 The Habsburg Ambassadors in Constantinople

 6 Conclusion



3 Coveted Kabbalah: Widmanstetter’s Collaboration with Jewish and Convert Scribes

 1 The Availability of Kabbalistic Books

 2 Editing a New Recension of the Zohar: Francesco Parnas (1536–1537)

 3 Compiling Kabbalistic Anthologies: Paulus Aemilius (1537–1538)

 4 Receiving the Manuscript of an Expert Scribe: Hayyim Gatigno (1553)

 5 Losing Control: Moses Gad ben Tobiah (1555)

 6 Conclusion



4 Barrels of Books: The Care of a Christian Hebraist Library

 1 Protecting and Presenting: The Materiality of Christian Hebraist Books

 2 Writing the History of Jewish Books: Title Inscriptions

 3 Sorting Jewish Books into Christian Libraries

 4 Conclusion



5 Exceeding Piety: Widmanstetter’s Hebraitas

 1 Writing and Translating Hebrew

 2 Reading the Talmud

 3 Wider Perspectives on Hebrew Texts

 4 Conclusion



6 “Muhammad’s Jewish Heresies”: Reading the Quran through Kabbalistic Books

 1 Studying Arabic in Early Modern Europe

 2 Widmanstetter’s Polemic on the Quran

 3 Muhammad’s Alleged Jewish Sources

 4 Conclusion



7 Revisiting Kabbalah: The Sefirotic Tree in the Syriac New Testament

 1 The Christian Elements of the Plate

 2 The Printing of the Syriac New Testament

 3 Guillaume Postel and Or Nerot ha-Menorah

 4 Widmanstetter and the Ten Sefirot

 5 Conclusion



Conclusion

 1 The Afterlife of the Library

 2 Confronting Kabbalah



Appendix A: Widmanstetter’s Correspondence

Appendix B: The Books of Bomberg’s 1543 Catalog in Widmanstetter’s Library

Appendix C: Widmanstetter’s Itinerary from 1539 to 1557

Appendix D: Catalog of Widmanstetter’s Hebraist Library

Bibliography

Index of Authors

Index of Titles

Index of Places

Index of Bindings

Index of Previous Owners

Index of Scribes

General Index