Thesis 28.44
Latin
Cum anima comprehenderit quicquid poterit comprehendere, et coniungetur animae superiori, expoliabit indumentum terrenum a se, et extirpabitur de loco suo et coniungetur cum diuinitate.
Copy-text Farmer 1998 (farmer1998:18397-18399), u/v as Farmer prints them. The OCR of Farmer reads 'mdumentum'; the word is 'indumentum', as Wirszubski prints it (wirszubski1989:2894). Wirszubski puts a comma after 'suo' (wirszubski1989:2895). Novak's citation reads 'anime', 'expoliebit' and 'ut ex(s)tirpabitur' (novak1982:1016-1017); the German study cites 'coniungentur' and 'coniungitur' (kabbalah_paradigma:1809-1811). These are citations, not witnesses, and the entry follows the copy-text.
English
When the soul has taken in all that it can take in, and is united to the higher soul, it will put off its earthly garment and be pulled up by the roots from its place, and it will be united with the divinity. unverified draft
'extirpabitur' is literally 'will be uprooted'; Wirszubski's English of the Hebrew source has 'withdraw from its place' (wirszubski1989:2903). 'diuinitas' stands for the Shekhinah, the divine presence (farmer1998:18423); the source has 'adhere to the Shekinah' (wirszubski1989:2903). 'coniungetur' after the future perfect 'comprehenderit' is kept as a second condition ('and is united'), following the source's 'and adheres to the superior soul' (wirszubski1989:2902).
Doctrine
Wirszubski identifies the direct source as Recanati's Commentary on the Torah, folio 78a-b (wirszubski1989:2897). In his English of that passage, the soul's conjunction with the body is like the ripe fruit that falls from the tree, and the soul that has comprehended what it can and adheres to the superior soul divests itself of its terrestrial garment and adheres to the Shekhinah (wirszubski1989:2899-2903). Recanati ends: this is the death of the kiss (wirszubski1989:2904). The thesis keeps the conditional sentence and drops both the simile of the fruit and the name of the death (editorial observation on farmer1998:18397-18399 and wirszubski1989:2899-2904). Farmer glosses the 'superior soul' as presumably the intellectual nature (farmer1998:18422). He glosses 'divinity' as the Shekhinah, the divine presence, an alternate name for the tenth sefirah (farmer1998:18423-18424); a sefirah is one of the ten emanated states of God's nature (farmer1998:17608-17609). The garment is the figure of 28.35, where Farmer reads garments as the sefirot that clothe the Ein-Sof, God's transcendent nature, and calls the idea a medieval commonplace (farmer1998:18195, 18266-18271). Farmer's cross-reference, 28.27, names the same terminus: the sea into which all rivers run is the divinity, the tenth sefirah (farmer1998:18074-18075, 18145-18147). The thesis therefore describes an ascent of knowledge that ends in the soul's separation from the body and its union with the lowest sefirah (editorial inference from farmer1998:18422-18424).
unverified draft
Context
The section is given according to the secret doctrine of the Hebrew Cabalist wise men (farmer1998:17476-17479). The Recanati passage Wirszubski translates comments on Genesis 49:33 and on the dictum that six righteous ones, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron and Miriam, were beyond the power of the angel of death (wirszubski1989:7919-7924). In the same passage the adherence of the soul to the superior soul also explains the fire around Ben Azzay as he expounded the Law and the influx of prophecy (wirszubski1989:7947-7960). Wirszubski notes that Recanati is there quoting Azriel of Gerona (wirszubski1989:7981). He traces the allegory of the kiss as the soul's adherence to God to Maimonides, from whom the Kabbalists took it (wirszubski1989:7852-7857). He finds Maimonides' theory of prophecy, the union of the human intellect with the Active Intellect, still recognisable in Recanati's reading of the death of the kiss (wirszubski1989:8070-8073). Farmer adds that Pico could have correlated this thesis with dozens of mystical theses in his text (farmer1998:18425-18427).
unverified draft
Reception
Pico uses the doctrine in his own voice in the Commento and in theses 11>11, 11>13 and 8>7 (wirszubski1989:7791-7822, 8074-8125; farmer1998:24847-24848). In the Commento on Benivieni's canzone he writes that the Cabalists say Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron and Miriam died of binsica, the death of the kiss, when the soul in intellectual rapture is so united to separate things that it leaves the body entirely (wirszubski1989:7814-7822, 7838-7839; farmer1998:24923-24926). Wirszubski argues that Recanati's text accounts for that list and for the definition, but not for Pico's link to the Song of Songs, which came from Gersonides' commentary on Canticles in Flavius Mithridates' Latin (wirszubski1989:7975-8002, 8008-8012). He shows that Mithridates' version inserts 'cabalistarum' into Gersonides' sentence on the deaths of Moses, Aaron and Miriam (wirszubski1989:8057-8063). In thesis 11>11 Pico adds the Platonic distinction between the separation of the soul from the body and of the body from the soul, which Wirszubski finds in none of Pico's Kabbalistic sources (farmer1998:26598-26601; wirszubski1989:8074-8082). Thesis 11>13 says that whoever works in Cabala without admixture will die of binsica if he stays long in the work (wirszubski1989:8118-8125). Among the Zoroastrian theses, 8>7 explains the interpreters of the fourteenth aphorism by what the Cabalists say of the death of the kiss (farmer1998:24847-24848).
unverified draft
Historiography
Wirszubski treats 28.44 as the clue that identifies Pico's Kabbalistic source for the death of the kiss, and he rules out Maimonides as the direct source despite their affinity (wirszubski1989:7904-7916). Novak reopens the question: he considers the Guide a valid possibility, since Pico owned three Latin translations of it and regarded Maimonides as a Kabbalist (novak1982:988-991, 1008-1012). Novak agrees that Recanati was in all likelihood a source and notes that Recanati's final words are missing from the thesis (novak1982:1019-1027). He likewise derives the connection with Song 1:2 from Gersonides in Mithridates' translation (novak1982:1028-1035). The German study of Pico as a paradigm of Christian Kabbalah reads the higher soul as the intellectus in habitu and sets the divinitas, as the Shekhinah, beside the world soul (kabbalah_paradigma:1785-1791). The same note reports that Greive read the higher soul as the whole sefirotic world and as paradise, and states that Farmer reads it as Yesod (kabbalah_paradigma:1811-1813). Farmer's note on 28.44 in the corpus copy reads 'intellectual nature', not Yesod (editorial observation on farmer1998:18422). The thesis is the Hebrew root of the mors osculi that Pico carried into the Commento and his own Cabalistic and Zoroastrian theses, where Wirszubski finds the Platonic distinction of the two deaths grafted onto it (editorial inference from wirszubski1989:7910-7916, 8074-8082).
unverified draft
Pico's sources
- Menahem Recanati, Commentary on the Torah, fol. 78a-b (on Genesis 49:33, the death of Jacob): direct source according to Wirszubski; the thesis omits Recanati's closing identification with the death of the kiss (wirszubski1989:2897)
Quotations cited
- “The direct source is Recanati, fol. 78a-b” — Chaim Wirszubski, Pico della Mirandola's Encounter with Jewish Mysticism (wirszubski1989:2897)
- “And this is mytat nesiqah” — Chaim Wirszubski, Pico della Mirandola's Encounter with Jewish Mysticism (wirszubski1989:2904)
- “affords the clue for the precise identification of his Kabbalistic source” — Chaim Wirszubski, Pico della Mirandola's Encounter with Jewish Mysticism (wirszubski1989:7911)
- “However, Recanati's final words are missing from it” — B. C. Novak, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and Jochanan Alemanno (novak1982:1020)
- “Pico could have correlated this thesis with dozens of mystical” — Stephen A. Farmer, Syncretism in the West: Pico's 900 Theses (1486) (farmer1998:18425)
Not established
- Whether Pico read Recanati fol. 78a-b in Hebrew or in Mithridates' lost Latin: Wirszubski states that he does not know what the lost Latin looked like (wirszubski1989:8049-8050); Farmer holds the section's sources unsettled (farmer1998:17488-17496).
- What 'anima superior' denotes in Pico's reading (the intellectual nature, a sefirah, or the whole sefirotic world): the sources consulted disagree and none decides it.
- Where Greive's reading (cited at kabbalah_paradigma:1811) is argued: his book was not consulted.
- Any reaction to this thesis by the papal commission: not established by the sources consulted.
Discussed in
- (author to be confirmed from front matter), Erkenntnistheorie und christliche Kabbalah: Das Paradigma des Pico della Mirandola (n.d.)
- B. C. Novak, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and Jochanan Alemanno (1982)
- Chaim Wirszubski, Pico della Mirandola's Encounter with Jewish Mysticism (1989)
Farmer's cross-references
- 28.27 Sicut congregatio aquarum est iustus, ita mare ad quod tendunt omnia flumina est diuinitas.
- 28.35 Nulla res spiritualis descendens inferius operatur sine indumento.