Thesis 8>7
Latin
Quae dicunt interpretes super .xiiii. amphorismo, perfecte intelligentur per ea quae dicunt cabaliste de morte osculi.
Copy-text Farmer 1998 (farmer1998:24847-24848), u/v as Farmer prints them; the OCR prints the number as '827'. Wirszubski prints 'Cabalistae' and a comma after 'per ea' (wirszubski1989:9816-9817); Novak cites 'XIV aphorismo' (novak1982:871). 'cabaliste' is the copy-text's e for ae.
English
The interpreters' comments on the fourteenth aphorism will become fully intelligible through the Cabalists' teaching on the death of the kiss. unverified draft
'amphorismus' is rendered 'aphorism', an oracle of the Chaldean collection (corazzol2019:429-432). 'mors osculi' is the Latin for the Hebrew mitat neshiqah, which Pico elsewhere calls binsica (wirszubski1989:2904, 7816).
Doctrine
The thesis claims that a Chaldean commentary on a fourteenth aphorism is fully explained by the Cabalists' doctrine of the death of the kiss (farmer1998:24847-24848). Farmer glosses the doctrine from the Commento on Benivieni's canzone, where Pico says that among the Cabalists binsica, the death of the kiss, occurs when the soul in intellectual rapture unites so closely with separate things that it leaves the body entirely (farmer1998:24923-24926). In the same passage, which Wirszubski prints, Pico says the Cabalists hold that Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron and Miriam died in this way (wirszubski1989:7814-7822). Wirszubski identifies the Kabbalistic source as Recanati's discussion of Jacob's death at Genesis 49:33, from which thesis 28.44 is taken (wirszubski1989:7910-7924). In Recanati the soul that has comprehended what it can and adheres to the superior soul divests itself of its earthly garment and adheres to the Shekhinah, and this is the death of the kiss (wirszubski1989:7960-7965). Corazzol reads the superior soul there as the tenth sefirah, the lowest of the ten emanated entities through which God created the world (corazzol2019:458-459, 591-592). Wirszubski calls the choice of the fourteenth aphorism largely conjecture (wirszubski1989:9819-9821). Corazzol proposes the oracle that bids the soul 'shut the god within her, completely inebriated', but holds it impossible to determine what the interpreters said of it (corazzol2019:141-143, 580-582). That oracle belongs to the Chaldean instructions for theurgy, the rites by which the theurgist lets his soul separate from the body and ascend (corazzol2019:140-143). Corazzol adds that for Recanati the death of the kiss corresponds to the inebriation of the stored wine, which joins this thesis to 8>6 (corazzol2019:600-601).
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Context
The section contains fifteen conclusions on the sayings of Zoroaster and his Chaldean commentators (farmer1998:24715-24718). Farmer judges it likeliest that Flavius Mithridates forged the Chaldean materials Pico claimed to possess (farmer1998:24794-24799), and Corazzol argues that Moncada, alias Mithridates, wrote them (corazzol2019:199-220). Corazzol notes that in 8>6, 8>7 and 8>11 Pico says the Chaldean texts can be perfectly understood through Kabbalah, and traces the Kabbalistic notions of 8>6 and 8>7 to Recanati (corazzol2019:443-454). In his own Cabalistic theses Pico returns to the death of the kiss twice (farmer1998:24926). Thesis 11>11 explains the sacrifice of rational souls by the archangel as the separation of the soul from the body, which Wirszubski finds nowhere in 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). Wirszubski concludes that Pico conceived pure Cabala as a contemplative activity whose highest reward is the death of the kiss (wirszubski1989:8160-8165). For a 'Zoroastrian' parallel to the death of the kiss Wirszubski points to Ficino, Theologia Platonica 13.4 (wirszubski1989:9876-9878).
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Reception
Novak argues that this thesis and 11>11 date Pico's knowledge of the term to before 1486 and so before his meeting with Yohanan Alemanno (novak1982:869-879). He notes that only the Commento links the death of the kiss with the Song of Songs, and infers a second, later source (novak1982:978-985). Andreatta, in the volume Giovanni Pico e la cabbalà edited by Fabrizio Lelli (filosofia_cabbala:11-12), lists 8>7 with 11>11 and 11>13 as Pico's uses of the motif in the Conclusiones (filosofia_cabbala:827-830, 835-861). She follows Wirszubski in reading the Commento passage as Pico's graft of Recanati's account onto Gersonides' commentary on the Song as interpolated by Mithridates (filosofia_cabbala:890-899).
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Historiography
Corazzol reads 8>6 and 8>7 together as a claim that Kabbalistic and Zoroastrian doctrine agreed on the theurgical effects of communion with God as against those of the idolatry proper to witchcraft (corazzol2019:632-636). Pirtea, in a chapter on Pico's esotericism, treats the death of the kiss as Pico's appropriation of a Kabbalistic motif, joined to the Christian mystical metaphors of inebriation, erotic frenzy and divine darkness, and cites 8>7 (selfknowledge_notes:971-972, 1032). The German study of Pico's Christian Kabbalah, whose author is not named in the corpus copy, links binsica with the union of the sefirot Tiferet and Malkhut and cites 8>7 and 11>11 (kabbalah_paradigma:1868-1871). It reports that Wirszubski found the source chiefly in Levi ben Gershom, beside Maimonides and Recanati (kabbalah_paradigma:1874-1875). Wirszubski's own text assigns Recanati the list of the dead and the definition, and Gersonides only the link with the Song (wirszubski1989:7975-8012). The thesis makes the death of the kiss a key for reading a Chaldean oracle about the soul's ecstatic ascent, so that a Talmudic motif read through Recanati becomes evidence for the concord of Chaldean and Hebrew wisdom (editorial inference from corazzol2019:141-143, 632-636 and wirszubski1989:7910-7924).
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Pico's sources
- Menahem Recanati, Commentary on the Torah, fol. 77va-78vb, on Genesis 49:33 and the death of the kiss: the Cabalists' doctrine Pico invokes, as identified by Wirszubski through thesis 28.44 (wirszubski1989:7987)
- Chaldean Oracles, des Places fr. 97 (Psellus 17, Plethon 11): the oracle Corazzol proposes, with reserve, as Pico's fourteenth aphorism (corazzol2019:580)
Quotations cited
- “it is, however, impossible to determine how the words of the interpreters upon them read” — Giacomo Corazzol, From Sinai to Athens: Giovanni Pico della Mirandola's philological quest for the transmission of theological truth (corazzol2019:581)
- “Which verse or verses of the Chaldaean Oracles might count as the” — Chaim Wirszubski, Pico della Mirandola's Encounter with Jewish Mysticism (wirszubski1989:9819)
- “Death by kiss thus corresponds to the state of inebriation” — Giacomo Corazzol, From Sinai to Athens: Giovanni Pico della Mirandola's philological quest for the transmission of theological truth (corazzol2019:600)
- “date Pico's knowledge of the term to before 1486” — B. C. Novak, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola and Jochanan Alemanno (novak1982:878)
Not established
- Which oracle Pico counted as the fourteenth aphorism: Corazzol's identification is offered as arguable (corazzol2019:580-581); Wirszubski calls the matter largely conjecture (wirszubski1989:9819-9821).
- What the Chaldean interpreters said of it: not established by the sources consulted.
- The discrepancy between the German study's report of Wirszubski (Levi ben Gershom as chief source) and Wirszubski's text (Recanati for the doctrine) is noted, not resolved.
- Any reaction to this thesis by the papal commission: not established by the sources consulted.
Discussed in
- Giacomo Corazzol, From Sinai to Athens: Giovanni Pico della Mirandola's philological quest for the transmission of theological truth (2019)
- (unidentified), Filosofia e cabbala nel Commento al Cantico (n.d.)
- (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)
- (unidentified), Self-Knowledge, Illumination and Natural: notes on Pico sources (n.d.)
- Chaim Wirszubski, Pico della Mirandola's Encounter with Jewish Mysticism (1989)
Farmer's cross-references
- 11>11 Modus quo rationales animae per archangelum deo sacrificantur, qui a Cabalistis non exprimitur, non est nisi per separationem animae a corpo
- 11>13 Qui operatur in Cabala sine admixtione extranei, si diu erit in opere, morietur ex binsica, et si errabit in opere aut non purificatus acces
- 28.35 Nulla res spiritualis descendens inferius operatur sine indumento.
- 8>8 Magi in .xvii. amphorismo nihil aliud intelligunt per triplex indumentum ex lino, panno, et pellibus, quam triplex animae habitaculum, caele