The first collected edition of the two foundational texts of Renaissance Christian Kabbalah, and the first appearance in print of Reuchlin's De arte cabalistica beyond its rare 1517 first edition. For collectors of Western esotericism, this volume represents an essential primary source: the moment when Jewish mystical tradition entered the Christian intellectual mainstream, with consequences that would ripple through Agrippa, Dee, Bruno, Fludd, and the entire subsequent history of occult philosophy.
Reuchlin's De arte cabalistica (beginning at p. 719) has been called "la Bible de la Kabbale Chrétienne" by François Secret, and the description is apt. Cast as a Socratic dialogue among three interlocutors meeting at Frankfurt (Simon the Jew, an exile from the 1492 Spanish expulsion; Marranus the converso; and Philolaus the Pythagorean), the text represents the first systematic, book-length treatise on Kabbalah by a non-Jewish author. Drawing on the Zohar, Joseph Gikatilla's Sha'arei Orah, and a manuscript miscellany now identified as Halberstamm 444 at the Jewish Theological Seminary, Reuchlin argues that Kabbalah and Pythagoreanism share a common root in ancient wisdom, and that both find their fulfillment in Christianity. The form of presentation, in which an unconverted Jew teaches his companions at length about Hebrew mysteries, was remarkable for its time and suggests an intellectual generosity that Reuchlin's opponents found intolerable.
This is not merely historical context: Reuchlin had just emerged from the "Battle of the Books," the decade-long controversy sparked when he refused to endorse the confiscation and burning of Jewish texts demanded by the apostate Johannes Pfefferkorn and his Dominican backers. That Herwagen chose to bind Reuchlin's work with Galatino's (and that this copy later passed through Dominican hands in Toulouse) adds a certain piquancy to the volume's history.
Galatino's Opus de Arcanis, which occupies the first 718 pages, takes a different approach to Christian Hebraism. A Franciscan friar and papal penitentiary under Leo X, Galatino marshals the Talmud, the Zohar, and kabbalistic sources not to celebrate Jewish learning but to turn it against Jewish readers, arguing that their own texts (properly understood) affirm Christian doctrine. Joseph Scaliger later argued that much of the work derived from earlier Dominican polemics, but this did nothing to diminish its influence on Renaissance thought. The two texts together offer a remarkable spectrum: Reuchlin the humanist seeking wisdom where he found it, Galatino the controversialist deploying the same sources for apologetic ends.
The provenance of this copy traces an instructive path. It passed from an unidentified Marian monastery (possibly Benedictine, given the invocation of St. Scholastica) to the Dominicans of Toulouse, a community founded in 1215 by St. Dominic himself. The Couvent Saint-Romain at 3, rue Espinasse was the reconstituted Dominican presence after the Revolution; the community weathered expulsion in 1880 and again in 1903, finally relocating to Rangueil in 1957. The rue Espinasse convent was demolished in the early 1970s and its library dispersed.
The binding deserves note: an attractive French calf over period boards with a sympathetically restored spine. The gilt initials on the boards ("C P" and "C F P") may indicate an intermediate owner between the monastic and Dominican periods, or perhaps an earlier institutional mark. The folio format and Basel imprint mark this as a book intended for serious study (Herwagen's investment in Hebrew typography was considerable), and the survival of such a volume in period boards, with centuries of institutional provenance intact, is increasingly uncommon.
An essential acquisition for any collection focused on Renaissance Kabbalah, Christian Hebraism, or the intellectual history of Western esotericism.
Provenance
(1) Early manuscript ex libris inscription on title page: "Ex Libris Beatae Mariae [Vallis?] Scholasticae" (a convent or monastery dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. Scholastica; exact institution unidentified).
(2) Two stamps of the Couvent des Dominicains Saint-Romain, Toulouse: blue oval stamp ("Couvent des Dominicains / St Romain / Toulouse") and purple circular stamp with Dominican cross ("Couvent Dominicaine des P.P. / 3, Rue Espinasse / Toulouse"). Repeated on BB4 and BB6. Small circular shelf label with manuscript number "55."
(3) Manuscript ownership inscription: "Eigentum de[s] Franz Haberland" (German private collector, 20th century).
(4) German antiquarian dealer's pencil notes on pastedown recording bibliographic details.
REUCHLIN, Johannes (1455-1522) & GALATINO, Pietro (Petrus Galatinus, ca. 1460-1540) De Arte Cabalistica libri tres, bound with Galatino's Opus de Arcanis Catholicae Veritatis. Basel: Johann Herwagen, 1550. Folio (32.4 x 21.6 cm). [24], 891 [i.e. 791], [33] pp.; pagination irregular due to misnumbering, complete. Text in Latin with extensive Hebrew passages throughout. Woodcut printer's device on title page; woodcut historiated initials. Reuchlin's De arte cabalistica begins at p. 719. Occasional early marginal annotations in a scholarly hand, including cross-references on p. 602.
An attractive French calf binding over original boards, the spine sympathetically restored. Boards with blind-ruled triple fillet border and gilt-stamped central lozenge device enclosing a quatrefoil pattern, flanked by the initials "C" and "P" on the upper board, "C," "F," and "P" on the lower (former owner?). Small gilt fleurons at corners. Spine with raised bands forming six compartments, gilt-lettered "P. GALATINI / DE ARCANIS / CATHOL. VERITATI" and decorated with gilt fleur-de-lis stamps in each compartment. Hinges secure.
Text block tight and complete. Chip to upper right corner of title page (not affecting text). Light water staining to outer margins throughout, not affecting legibility. Moderate toning throughout with occasional foxing. Additional institutional stamps on BB4 and BB6 (same provenance as title page). A sound, unsophisticated copy in an appealing period binding.
The first collected edition of the two foundational texts of Renaissance Christian Kabbalah, and the first appearance in print of Reuchlin's De arte cabalistica beyond its rare 1517 first edition. For collectors of Western esotericism, this volume represents an essential primary source: the moment when Jewish mystical tradition entered the Christian intellectual mainstream, with consequences that would ripple through Agrippa, Dee, Bruno, Fludd, and the entire subsequent history of occult philosophy.
Reuchlin's De arte cabalistica (beginning at p. 719) has been called "la Bible de la Kabbale Chrétienne" by François Secret, and the description is apt. Cast as a Socratic dialogue among three interlocutors meeting at Frankfurt (Simon the Jew, an exile from the 1492 Spanish expulsion; Marranus the converso; and Philolaus the Pythagorean), the text represents the first systematic, book-length treatise on Kabbalah by a non-Jewish author. Drawing on the Zohar, Joseph Gikatilla's Sha'arei Orah, and a manuscript miscellany now identified as Halberstamm 444 at the Jewish Theological Seminary, Reuchlin argues that Kabbalah and Pythagoreanism share a common root in ancient wisdom, and that both find their fulfillment in Christianity. The form of presentation, in which an unconverted Jew teaches his companions at length about Hebrew mysteries, was remarkable for its time and suggests an intellectual generosity that Reuchlin's opponents found intolerable.
This is not merely historical context: Reuchlin had just emerged from the "Battle of the Books," the decade-long controversy sparked when he refused to endorse the confiscation and burning of Jewish texts demanded by the apostate Johannes Pfefferkorn and his Dominican backers. That Herwagen chose to bind Reuchlin's work with Galatino's (and that this copy later passed through Dominican hands in Toulouse) adds a certain piquancy to the volume's history.
Galatino's Opus de Arcanis, which occupies the first 718 pages, takes a different approach to Christian Hebraism. A Franciscan friar and papal penitentiary under Leo X, Galatino marshals the Talmud, the Zohar, and kabbalistic sources not to celebrate Jewish learning but to turn it against Jewish readers, arguing that their own texts (properly understood) affirm Christian doctrine. Joseph Scaliger later argued that much of the work derived from earlier Dominican polemics, but this did nothing to diminish its influence on Renaissance thought. The two texts together offer a remarkable spectrum: Reuchlin the humanist seeking wisdom where he found it, Galatino the controversialist deploying the same sources for apologetic ends.
The provenance of this copy traces an instructive path. It passed from an unidentified Marian monastery (possibly Benedictine, given the invocation of St. Scholastica) to the Dominicans of Toulouse, a community founded in 1215 by St. Dominic himself. The Couvent Saint-Romain at 3, rue Espinasse was the reconstituted Dominican presence after the Revolution; the community weathered expulsion in 1880 and again in 1903, finally relocating to Rangueil in 1957. The rue Espinasse convent was demolished in the early 1970s and its library dispersed.
The binding deserves note: an attractive French calf over period boards with a sympathetically restored spine. The gilt initials on the boards ("C P" and "C F P") may indicate an intermediate owner between the monastic and Dominican periods, or perhaps an earlier institutional mark. The folio format and Basel imprint mark this as a book intended for serious study (Herwagen's investment in Hebrew typography was considerable), and the survival of such a volume in period boards, with centuries of institutional provenance intact, is increasingly uncommon.
An essential acquisition for any collection focused on Renaissance Kabbalah, Christian Hebraism, or the intellectual history of Western esotericism.
Provenance
(1) Early manuscript ex libris inscription on title page: "Ex Libris Beatae Mariae [Vallis?] Scholasticae" (a convent or monastery dedicated to the Blessed Virgin Mary and St. Scholastica; exact institution unidentified).
(2) Two stamps of the Couvent des Dominicains Saint-Romain, Toulouse: blue oval stamp ("Couvent des Dominicains / St Romain / Toulouse") and purple circular stamp with Dominican cross ("Couvent Dominicaine des P.P. / 3, Rue Espinasse / Toulouse"). Repeated on BB4 and BB6. Small circular shelf label with manuscript number "55."
(3) Manuscript ownership inscription: "Eigentum de[s] Franz Haberland" (German private collector, 20th century).
(4) German antiquarian dealer's pencil notes on pastedown recording bibliographic details.
REUCHLIN, Johannes (1455-1522) & GALATINO, Pietro (Petrus Galatinus, ca. 1460-1540) De Arte Cabalistica libri tres, bound with Galatino's Opus de Arcanis Catholicae Veritatis. Basel: Johann Herwagen, 1550. Folio (32.4 x 21.6 cm). [24], 891 [i.e. 791], [33] pp.; pagination irregular due to misnumbering, complete. Text in Latin with extensive Hebrew passages throughout. Woodcut printer's device on title page; woodcut historiated initials. Reuchlin's De arte cabalistica begins at p. 719. Occasional early marginal annotations in a scholarly hand, including cross-references on p. 602.
An attractive French calf binding over original boards, the spine sympathetically restored. Boards with blind-ruled triple fillet border and gilt-stamped central lozenge device enclosing a quatrefoil pattern, flanked by the initials "C" and "P" on the upper board, "C," "F," and "P" on the lower (former owner?). Small gilt fleurons at corners. Spine with raised bands forming six compartments, gilt-lettered "P. GALATINI / DE ARCANIS / CATHOL. VERITATI" and decorated with gilt fleur-de-lis stamps in each compartment. Hinges secure.
Text block tight and complete. Chip to upper right corner of title page (not affecting text). Light water staining to outer margins throughout, not affecting legibility. Moderate toning throughout with occasional foxing. Additional institutional stamps on BB4 and BB6 (same provenance as title page). A sound, unsophisticated copy in an appealing period binding.
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