Thesis 11>4
Latin
Ensoph non est aliis numerationibus connumeranda, quia est illarum numerationum unitas abstracta et incommunicata, non unitas coordinata.
Farmer's text runs over farmer1998:26396-26398. Wirszubski prints 'coordinate' for Farmer's 'coordinata' (wirszubski1989:11834), apparently a misprint or OCR slip; Busi prints 'coordinata' (busi2014:24764). The gerundive 'connumeranda' makes Ensoph feminine, although the Hebrew noun is masculine (wirszubski1989:11854).
English
Ensoph is not to be counted in with the other numerations, since it is their unity taken in abstraction and left uncommunicated, not a unity ranked in the same order with them. unverified draft
'Ensoph' transliterates Hebrew 'Eyn-Sof, 'without end' (wirszubski1989:11828). 'numerationes' is the Latin of Pico's translator for the sefirot (wirszubski1989:6836). 'unitas coordinata' (literally 'coordinate unity') is rendered 'a unity ranked in the same order with them', a unity standing in the series it unites; Howlett takes the phrase to mean a plenitude of attributes in one and identifies it with Keter (howlett2021:6513).
Doctrine
Ein-Sof, the Infinite, is in Farmer's gloss God's transcendent nature and the source of his manifest nature in the sefirot, the ten 'numerations' (farmer1998:26462). The thesis makes two claims: negatively, that Ein-Sof is not counted among the sefirot; positively, that it is their unity, abstract and uncommunicated rather than coordinate with them (wirszubski1989:11928). The editor reads the contrast as one between a unity that stands above the series it unites and a unity that would be one more member of the series; this is inference from the Latin (farmer1998:26398). Farmer finds in Ein-Sof, roughly, the abstract essence of God of Latin scholasticism, and holds that Pico apparently meant the thesis to be correlated with the historical theses on the divine essence, 3.1-2 from Francis of Meyronnes and 6.1 from Giles of Rome (farmer1998:26463). The first of these holds that 'the essence generates' is false because essence is ultimately abstract, and the second that the essence can be seen without the Persons (farmer1998:11974; farmer1998:11978). Farmer also links the thesis to 10>15, which makes Night in Orpheus the same as Ensoph in Cabala (farmer1998:26463; farmer1998:25892).
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Context
Wirszubski argues that the more genuinely Kabbalistic a thesis is, the more likely Pico was taking sides in quarrels among Jewish Kabbalists, and that in this thesis his alignment is with the school of Gerona and with Azriel of Gerona in particular (wirszubski1989:11841). The dictum of the Sefer Yesirah, the Book of Creation, that the sefirot are 'ten and not nine, ten and not eleven' was the usual vehicle for debating how Ein-Sof relates to the sefirot (wirszubski1989:11846). Abraham Axelrad's Corona Nominis Boni reports that some Kabbalists added Ensoph to the ten as one more numeration (wirszubski1989:11874). Pico had read Moses ben Nahman's commentary on the Sefer Yesirah some time before 10 November 1486, and that commentary reads 'ten and not eleven' as excluding from the count the hidden thing at the beginning of the Crown, Keter, the first sefirah (wirszubski1989:11892; wirszubski1989:11899). These texts, in Wirszubski's account, explain the negative part of the thesis; the positive part goes back to Azriel, who stated the relation of Ein-Sof to the sefirot as the Platonic problem of the One and the Many (wirszubski1989:11928). Azriel's Quaestiones super decem numerationibus survive in Latin in Vatican Hebrew manuscript 190, and Wirszubski connects Pico's growing acquaintance with that manuscript to the later stages of his Kabbalistic studies (wirszubski1989:11933).
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Reception
The thesis was not among those the commission censured; Blum notes that the Cabalistic theses according to Pico's own opinion went unchallenged (dougherty2008:2808). Pico returned to the relation of Ein-Sof and the sefirot in 11>35 and 11>36, in different terms, and Wirszubski traces 11>36's ten garments of God to Azriel as well (wirszubski1989:11950; wirszubski1989:11969). Wirszubski notes Scholem's observation that Reuchlin saw the likeness between Azriel's doctrine of Ein-Sof and Nicholas of Cusa's coincidence of opposites in God (wirszubski1989:12005).
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Historiography
Wirszubski reads the thesis historically, through the Latin translations of Azriel, Axelrad and Moses ben Nahman that Pico owned (wirszubski1989:11851). Farmer reads it comparatively, as Pico's Kabbalistic counterpart to the scholastic abstract essence of God (farmer1998:26463). Howlett reads it philosophically: Pico embraces Ein-Sof as the unity beyond the sefirot, joining Kabbalah to the Plotinian One through the Platonizing Kabbalah of the Gerona school (howlett2021:5423). She posits that the 'coordinated unity' Pico sets against Ein-Sof is Keter, God revealed in the universe as distinct from the God of retraction (howlett2021:6513). She then asks whether this leaves Pico with two Ones, one outside creation and one within (howlett2021:5450). Copenhaver places the thesis as the start of Pico's Trinitarian sequence, the hidden God beyond the summit of the sefirot, and in his note cites the same texts of Axelrad, Moses ben Nahman and Azriel that Wirszubski adduced (copenhaver2019:18328; copenhaver2019:24304). The three readings agree that the thesis sets the hidden God above the sefirotic order, and they disagree on what Pico was drawing on; the editor notes that only Wirszubski, with Copenhaver after him, names texts Pico demonstrably had in Latin (wirszubski1989:11936; copenhaver2019:24305; farmer1998:26464; howlett2021:5425).
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Pico's sources
- Azriel of Gerona, Quaestiones super decem numerationibus (Latin in Vatican Hebrew manuscript 190), fol. 167r: unity is the foundation of the many and the power of all: source of the positive part of the thesis, according to Wirszubski (wirszubski1989:11930)
- Abraham Axelrad, Corona Nominis Boni (Latin in Vatican Hebrew manuscript 190), fols. 182v-183r, reporting those who add Ensoph to the ten numerations: the view the thesis denies; also the only earlier Latin use of Ensoph as a feminine noun Wirszubski knows (wirszubski1989:11874)
- Moses ben Nahman, commentary on the Sefer Yesirah (Latin in Vatican Hebrew manuscript 191), fols. 41v-42r, on 'ten and not eleven': accounts, with Axelrad, for the negative part of the thesis (wirszubski1989:11892)
Quotations cited
- “his alignment, unless I misjudge the evidence, is with the Geronese school” — Chaim Wirszubski, Pico della Mirandola's Encounter with Jewish Mysticism (wirszubski1989:11844)
- “which I posit to be Keter” — Sophia Howlett, Re-evaluating Pico: Aristotelianism, Kabbalism, and Platonism in the Philosophy of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (howlett2021:6515)
Not established
- Whether Pico meant 'unitas coordinata' to name Keter, as Howlett posits, or no particular sefirah; the thesis does not say.
- How Pico planned to correlate the thesis with 3.1-2 and 6.1; Farmer says only that he apparently meant to.
Discussed in
- Giulio Busi and Raphael Ebgi, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola: Mito, magia, Qabbalah (2014)
- Sophia Howlett, Re-evaluating Pico: Aristotelianism, Kabbalism, and Platonism in the Philosophy of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (2021)
- Chaim Wirszubski, Pico della Mirandola's Encounter with Jewish Mysticism (1989)
Farmer's cross-references
- 10>15 Idem est nox apud Orpheum_et ensoph in Cabala.
- 11>35 Si deus in se ut infinitum, ut unum, et secundum se intelligatur, ut sic nihil intelligimus ab eo procedere, sed separationem a rebus, et om
- 11>36 Ex praecedenti conclusione intelligi potest cur dicatur apud cabalistas quod deus induit se decem uestimentis quando creauit saeculum.
- 3.1 Ideo haec est falsa: Essentia generat, quia essentia est ultimate abstracta, et generat formaliter praedicatur. u
- 3.2 Potest uideri essentia sine personis, et una persona sine alia.
- 5>1 Per numeros triplares, qui a Platone in Timeo ponuntur in triangulo animam significante, admonemur quousque in formis numerandis sit progred
- 6.1 Potentia generandi in diuinis nec est essentia diuina precise et absolute sumpta, nec relatio uel proprietas, nec constitutum ex ambobus, ne