The Christian Kabbalah

Scholars and philosophers of the later Middle Ages became interested in the mysticism found in the Jewish Kabbalah, and tried to blend it with Christian concepts of the divine.

Ramon Llull (c.1232–1316), who also wrote of worldly affairs like knighthood, was one of the first known Christians to look at Kabbalah, although his study of it was mostly to develop ways to debate Jews and influence conversion to Christianity. His interest got him in trouble because the concepts he was talking about attracted the attention of the Inquisition.

The conversion of Spanish Jews did bring Kabbalistic concepts to Christian theology, especially in Spain prior to 1492. One prominent converso was Abner of Burgos (c.1270 – c.1347), a Bible and Talmud scholar who had a dream of crosses after he developed religious doubts because of a failed Messianic movement in 1295. He embraced used Jewish sources to try to prove the validity of Christianity.

Another converso was Pablo/Paulus de Heredia (c.1405), who wrote an "Epistle of secrets" which is considered the first true work of Christian Kabbalah. Not the scholar that Abner was, Pablo's work misquotes Kabbalah sources and "quotes" sources that are non-existent.

A Christian who adopted Kabbalistic ideas was Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463–1494), a student of Marsilius Ficino. (The illustration shows Pico in the center with Ficino in red next to him.) Kabbalah was introduced to him by another tutor, Rabbi Johanan Alemanno, whose idea was that the study of magic was the ultimate goal and expression of intellectual and spiritual mastery. Pico became convinced that the Kabbalah was necessary to understand the world and the divine, and had a Jewish convert translate the entire body of kabbalistic literature into Latin for him (now being published in its entirety). Pico's "900 Theses" became a foundation of Western esotericism. 

So how exactly does a lifelong Jew decide to convert to Christianity (I mean, when not being forced)? Let's examine Abner of Burgos' personal journey tomorrow, and whether he did it for financial gain.

Slavery and Wet Nursing

Yesterday I talked about philosopher Ramon Lull and his thoughts on the role of human milk in the proper raising of children. He was born in 1232 in Majorca City (now called Palma), which had been recaptured from Muslims in 1229. In his lifetime, Majorca City had a population of up to 30% Muslim slaves from the Christian reconquista.

There is plenty of evidence that women slaves were preferred to men because of their role in household tasks, and especially as wet nurses. Especially in the Iberian Peninsula as opposed to elsewhere in the Mediterranean, wet nurses were often slaves.

Because of Ramon Llull's ideas—and of course the tendency of human populations to despise those who are different—these Muslim slaves were often forced to become baptizata, "the baptized" (converts from Islam), so that they would be proper wet nurses and caregivers for the children.

This relationship could be beneficial to the wet nurse, besides the opportunity to be treated well while they had primary "control" over the newborn. In 1266, a Barcelonan patrician named Romeu Durfort left his baptizata wet nurse a legacy of 40 sous and charged his heir with maintaining her for life. In 1280, a burgess freed her baptizata, Esclarmonda, and all Esclarmonda's children in gratitude for Esclarmonda's wet nursing.

This is not to say that life was wonderful for the Muslim-born mother:

In this society elite Christian mothers were to bear legitimate children and enslaved Muslim women who bore children were urged to convert, watch their masters send their infants to be nursed by someone else, and then serve as wet nurses to the heirs of their masters and mistresses. [link, p.169]

Llull's work on raising children also shows a distrust of "immoral servant women" and warns that mothers should not leave their daughters at home with the servants when the mothers go out. Llull assumes hostility between the wife and her household servants.

For the Muslim-born population, whether they were servants are free, breastfeeding the child of another created a situation referred to as "milk siblings" or "milk kinship." We will take a closer look at the Koran's views on wet nursing tomorrow.

Raising Moral Children

Ramon Llull was a 13th century Catalan mystic and theologian whose controversial writings made him many enemies. One of his more interesting metaphors that perhaps was not so controversial was about raising moral children.

His Doctrina pueril ("Instruction for children") was a guide to moral living addressed to his son Domènec (then between eight and 12 years old). It was important for him to write it out not only as an idea to leave to posterity, but also because he had left his wife and family several years earlier (to become a Franciscan) and therefore was not raising Domènec personally.

Among his pieces of advice for raising children properly, he includes 

...not to expose their children to romances, songs or musical instruments that encourage them to be lustful. To preserve their children’s budding intellects and overall bodily health fathers should ensure that spicy food never be served, as it could overheat their humours and damage their developing brains, and nor should rich food, which would lead them into ill health, gluttony and lust later in life. [link]

Llull does not discuss breastfeeding or wet nurses, but he does emphasize the "health benefits and moral properties" of human milk in the raising of children. Solid food should not be introduced to the child's diet too early, lest the child become "mean and stingy." Llull associates the feeding of children with breast milk with charity, generosity, good upbringing, and the development of moral character. His idea that breast milk contributed to the development of morality was picked up by later philosophers, especially in the Iberian peninsula. The illustration comes from a later published copy of Llull's Doctrina and represents the tree of morality, the choices one makes as one grows that could lead to either joy or punishment.

This was not a strictly religious view in that there is no reference in the Bible to breastfeeding, nor in early Jewish writings. In fact, only the Koran among the Abrahamic religions mentioned the topic. Verse 46:15 mentions a bond between the baby and the source of breast milk that last until the child is about two years old. This was an interesting wrinkle on the subject of wet nurses, since in parts of the Iberian Peninsula, wet nurses were commonly Muslim slaves. Tomorrow, let's talk about wet nursing, slavery, and a little about "milk siblings."

The Death of an Inquisitor

The picture is misleading, I'm afraid, because the subject of today's post died a natural death, but it is certain that there were plenty of contemporaries who would have been glad to see him executed sooner.

Nicholas Eymerich (c.1316 - 1399) was an Inquisitor General from Catalan who made lots of enemies through his hyper-zealous search for heresy of any kind (according to his opinion). At one point he fled to Avignon and the pope's support when he had gone too far in Aragon.

He returned to Aragon in 1381 and discovered that his rival, Bernardo Ermengaudi, had been named Inquisitor General. Eymerich ignored this turn of events and continued to act as if he were the inquisitor. When he forbade the teaching of Ramon Llull in Barcelona—one of his problems with Llull was the idea of the Immaculate Conception of Mary, which Eymerich did not believe—King Peter IV found out and ordered him drowned, but was persuaded by Queen Eleanor of Sicily to exile him instead. Eymerich ignored the order of exile, because the king's son John was on his side. In 1386, Peter IV died and John succeeded him, which allowed Eymerich to act with impunity.

Remember the term "hyper-zealous"? Eymerich in 1388 declared he would interrogate the entire town of Valencia for heresy, imprisoning the chancellor of the university. This was too far for King John, who freed the chancellor and exiled Eymerich, who took sanctuary in a church for two years until he finally decided to leave and go to Avignon again.

After John's death in 1396, Eymerich returned to the Dominican monastery in Girona where he had his start. He was 80 years old at the time, and so a little less energetic. He lived in the monastery quietly until his death in 1399.

Now, about the Immaculate Conception of Mary: this is something every Roman Catholic in the 20th century grew up knowing. We assume that this concept was established long ago, and so it is a surprise that the 14th century saw it as a controversy. Many Roman Catholics are even uncertain of what it means. What is it, and what did the Middle Ages think of the idea? That's a good topic for tomorrow.

The Life of an Inquisitor

Ramon Llull's system of philosophy was officially condemned by an Inquisitor General of the Roman Catholic Church, Nicholas Eymerich, a fellow Catalonian—though not a contemporary: Eymerich was born around the time of Llull's death.

He was born in Girona, in Catalonia, and entered he local Dominican monastery while a teenager, learning theology there before being sent to Toulouse and then Paris to further his education. He then returned home to become the theology teacher at the monastery.

His knowledge was so recognized that in 1357 he was named the Inquisitor General of Aragon. In his vigorous pursuit of heretics, he targeted many fellow clerics for small details that he considered blasphemous, earning himself many enemies in the Church. When he decided to interrogate a well-respected Franciscan, Nicholas of Calabria, King Peter IV of Aragon arranged to have him removed from his position in 1360.

The Dominican Order decided that Eymerich would be a good Vicar General, but there was opposition, notably from King Peter IV, who supported a different candidate, Bernardo Ermengaudi. The dispute required the pope to make a decision, but Urban V chose a compromise candidate, Jacopo Dominici.

Eymerich remained an Inquisitor General, further annoying the king by attacking the Ramon Llull's teachings. (One of his objections to Llull was that Llull believed in the Immaculate Conception of Mary while Eymerich did not.)  The king forbade him from preaching in Barcelona, but Eymerich became political, not only ignoring the king's command but also supporting a revolt against him in 1376. When the monastery where Eymerich was hiding was surrounded by 200 horsemen seeking him, Eymerich fled to Avignon where Pope Gregory IX was residing.

While in Avignon, he justified his approach to the position of Inquisitor by writing the Directorium Inquisitorum, the "Directory of Inquisitions" with his definitions of heresies, trial procedures, and proper jurisdiction of the inquisitor. He discusses how to find witches and the actions that are considered parts of witchcraft and therefore heretical: casting salt into a fire, burning bodies of animals and birds, baptizing images, mixing names of angels and demons, etc.

Armed with this clear explanation of why he was right in his actions, he decided to return to Aragon in 1381, only to discover that Ermengaudi had become Inquisitor General in his absence. Ignoring this turn of events, he decided to continue acting as if he were Inquisitor General. This did not work well for him. I'll explain further next time.

Ramon Lull's Life

Ramon Llull (1232 - 1315) has been mentioned before. Born in Majorca, he married but lived what he later called a licentious life until, at the age of 30, as he writes in his autobiography Vita coaetanea ("A Contemporary Life"),

Ramon, while still a young man and Seneschal to the King of Majorca, was very given to composing worthless songs and poems and to doing other licentious things. One night he was sitting beside his bed, about to compose and write in his vulgar tongue a song to a lady whom he loved with a foolish love; and as he began to write this song, he looked to his right and saw our Lord Jesus Christ on the Cross, as if suspended in mid-air.

He develops three goals: change his life completely and focus on God, convert everyone to Christianity, write the definitive book against the errors of unbelievers.

The first goal meant leaving his wife and two daughters and travel the world, never to return to his family.

He approached the second goal a little more methodically. In order to convert the Saracens, he needed to be able to talk to them. After giving up all his worldly goods and making several pilgrimages to shrines, he went back to Majorca and purchased himself a Muslim slave in order to learn Arabic from him. He spent the next nine years studying Latin and Arabic, and expanding his knowledge of both Christian and Muslim theology and philosophy.

The third goal would take the remainder of his life, as he wrote and re-wrote a series of books, producing a massive philosophical system that tries to cover so many ways to examine questions and determine proper answers that it includes features that are considered precursors to computation theory and an election theory 450 years before French mathematicians developed it.

His philosophical system was enormously elaborate, and did not catch on in his lifetime. In the generations following, however, people like Nicholas of Cusa adopted some of Llull's ideas. Others were not so supportive. In 1376, an inquisitor named Nicholas Eymerich obtained a papal bull to prohibit Llullian teaching. Llull's philosophy was forbidden in the Faculty of Theology in France.

One of Llull's great successes was part of his second goal: he believed that to spread the truth of Christianity required understanding the language of those you wanted to convert. He argued all over for the creation of schools of language to aid this goal. In 1311, the Council of Vienne at Llull's urging created chairs of Hebrew, Arabic, and Aramaic at the universities of Bologna, Oxford, Paris, and Salamanca.

As understanding as he seemed to want to be, he argued that Jews refusing to convert needed to be expelled from their countries.

He produced many written works, including his book about knighthood, summarized here.

There is a story that Llull was stoned to death sometime in 1315 or early 1316 in Tunis, where he spent several years trying to convert the Caliph and the people. Llull's tomb is in Majorca, at the Franciscan church in Palma.

Nicholas Eymerich is an interesting character, and since this blog has not looked closely at the job of an Inquisitor, I think it's time.

The Ritual of Knighthood

The modern knighthood ceremony in England is nothing like the original. Fortunately, we have the Buke of the Order of Knyghthood by Ramon Llull (1232 - 1315) to give us a detailed explanation of the different stages and their significance. True, there could be a knighting on the battlefield as a reward for service, just as modern armies can have a "field commission" or "battlefield promotion," but the proper service was more involved, and took place in church.

Preferably, a knighting was planned ahead for a feast day, which would bring more people to the church where the service as held, and therefore there were more people who could pray for the success of the new knight. Feast days were more significant in the Middle Ages, and their eve was considered a time for fun and feasting. These activities were not, however, the best start to a new knight, and so the candidate (usually a squire after some years of service as "apprentice" to a knight) was supposed to spend the knight in the church, praying.

After his night of prayer, the squire attends mass, during which there is a moment when he promises to follow the ideals of chivalry. He (and everyone else) then hears a sermon about:

...the fourteen articles upon which the faith is founded, the ten commandments, the seven sacraments of the Holy Church, and the other things that pertain to the faith...

The stress in the sermon is on his behavior as a knight supporting the Church.

After all this, the noble who is going to perform the actual knighting takes the stage. He should embody the highest knightly ideals so that his good qualities inspire the new knight. The squire kneels at the altar and raises his hands and eyes upward to God.

Then comes the "strap and the slap." The noble girds the squire with a sword, he then kisses the squire on the cheek to welcome him into knighthood, and then slaps him hard. "The slap" is a common part of different rituals throughout history. It helps the moment stick in the new knight's mind, it reminds him that he will suffer for his Faith, and has been called the "last blow he will ever receive that he will not defend against."

The new knight then mounts a horse and walks around so that all can see him. The noble who knighted him gives him gifts; the new knight also gives gifts; there is feasting and a tournament.

If you are interested in more from the Buke of the Order of Knyghthood you'll find a translation at the Gutenberg Project. For more on Ramon Llull, come back tomorrow.

The Ritual Slap

In Matthew 5:39, Jesus tells his followers "But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also."

In the ritual of knighthood, after the girding on of the new knight's sword, he receives a hard slap "so that he will remember what he is promising and the great burden he must carry and the great honour he is taking through the Order of Chivalry" (to paraphrase Ramon Llull's Book of the Order of Chivalry).

The blow or slap to the cheek was a part of many rituals.

The kings of Babylon—including Nebuchadnezzar himself—would submit themselves on the fourth day of the Babylonian new year to being struck on the cheek, reminding them of the importance of humility. [link] A priest in the Mesopotamian Akitu festival would slap the king and have him kneel before the statues of the god Marduk, to remind him that the gods are more powerful than kings. [link] 

Some believe Jewish tradition includes a slap at times, with an added "Mazel Tov," as this writer tells. It is a token slap, not hard. Here, however, it is argued that it does not originate in the Torah and should not be considered Jewish tradition. "Official" or not, it still happens, apparently.

Benvenuto Cellini in his autobiography tells of his father striking him a hard blow specifically in order to cement in his memory the image of a salamander seen in the fire.

The Roman Catholic sacrament of Confirmation involved a light slap on the cheek in order to show the willingness of the confirmed to "suffer for their faith." The blow on the cheek appears in medieval liturgical books. It was officially removed from the ceremony in 1971.

The practice of using a light blow to the cheek to signify a change in a person's status—reminding them of humility, elevating them to knighthood or Catholic adulthood, etc.—has existed from ancient times through medieval and into modern times. Is a common origin likely? Did the Babylonian and Mesopotamian idea of the slap denoting humility inspire Judaism and lead to the New Testament saying, and did that get carried through the Middle Ages as part of not only knighthood but also confirming a Christian's standing as an adult? We can't be certain.

What we can be certain about is the ritual of knighthood, which was explained in detail. We'll look at that next time.

Scottish Independence...

...is a big topic these days. Today, in fact, Scotland is voting whether to stay in the United Kingdom or strike out on its own. If it did, it would be the 20th largest economy in the world, thanks especially to its top three imports. In order of their importance, they are oil, gas, and whiskey. Let's talk about the third one.

Lindores Whisky

Unlike wine, the fermented juice of grapes, whiskey is a distillation of fermented grain. Before the Common Era we find evidence of distillation in Babylon and Mesopotamia, originally for developing perfumes and medicines. We are not sure when and where the process was first adapted for drinking, but the Ancient Celts might have been using it to produce their version of the Latin aqua vitæ ["water of life"] for which their term was uisgebeatha or just uisge [pronounced "whiskey"].

Distillation of alcohol was done in 13th century Italy, using wine. Ramon Lull (1232 - 1315) even wrote about the process.

We think Christian monks brought the process to Ireland and Scotland between the 11th and 13th centuries, where the lack of grapes made it the best option for creating a strong alcoholic drink. The first recorded batch of Scotch whisky shows up in the Exchequer Rolls for 1494-95, granting eight measures of malt to Friar John Cor to make aqua vitæ. Friar John was a monk at Lindores Abbey in Fife. Irish whiskey was mentioned earlier: the Annals of Clonmacnoise in 1405 record the death of a chieftain from "a surfeit of aqua vitae" at Christmas.

The Dissolution of Monasteries (1536 - 1541) in Scotland by Henry VIII forced many monks into private production. Sad, because by this time Scotland was the world leader in production of whisky. Keep in mind, however, that whiskey at that time was not aged, and so was a very different drink from what we expect today.

You may also have noticed that I have spelled the word two ways. "whiskey" is the word used in Ireland and the United States; "whisky" is the spelling used in Canada, Scotland, and the rest of the world. Some U.S. brands use the e-less spelling despite this convention. "Scotch whisky" is whiskey made in Scotland. There is discussion these days about whether some Scottish distilleries would even move to England after independence in order to keep the same export policies and fees in place. We should know soon whether this will be an issue.

Doctor Illuminatus

A brilliant scholar and fervent theologian/philosopher did such a good job at achieving his aims that the Church realized they had to suppress his work!

Ramon Llull was born in Majorca in the 1230s and probably was a courtier at the court of King James II of Aragon. He had a vision at the age of 30; while about to write a love letter, he turned and saw Christ on a cross hanging in the air. This image appeared to him five times, inspiring him to the religious life with very specific goals, one of which was to convert the Muslims to Christianity.

He did not intend simply to travel eastward and preach to the Muslim world; he had a more reasoned plan than that. He would counter their religion with logical and philosophical arguments that were so clear as to compel them to abandon their faith for his. His first task was to counter their great scholar, Averroes, and his first step was showing that theology and philosophy could be reconciled.

The Arab world had found comfort in separating the two, explaining that what was true in philosophy could be false in theology. Averroes himself had relied on this distinction to avoid persecution for his heretical idea about the non-existence of a unique soul that survives death. Llull decided to prove the Arab world wrong by reconciling philosophy and theology, raising the Christian West to an intellectually superior status that the East would have to fall in line with. He allied the natural and there supernatural, arguing that divine truths needed to be approached with reason guided by faith. Likewise, faith needs reason, lest it be misguided by personal desires or emotions. Llull had created a machine, the Ars Magna ["Great Art"], which would affirm the truth of propositions by lining up geometrically shaped pieces when levers and cranks were used. The machine was a three-dimensional representation of his "Llullian Circle" that could demonstrate all the possible truths of his system.

Llull's followers called themselves Llullists and spread the glory of his writings.* He met John Duns Scotus in 1297, who gave him his nickname of "Doctor Illuminatus" for the illumination he brought to the faith. His followers gained such influence in Spain that they were able to endow chairs at the Universities of Barcelona and Valencia.

Lullian Circle [source]

We know that he was stoned to death by the Muslim inhabitants of the town of Bougie on a mission to North Africa. Documents by Ramon Llull exist that can be dated to December 1315, but he was probably dead shortly after.

Despite his fame and religious zeal during his lifetime, and his martyrdom, he has never been considered for canonization by the Roman Catholic Church. The Church realized that his ideas were too radical. Sixty years after Llull's death, Pope Gregory XI (1327 - 1378) condemned his work, as did Pope Paul IV (1476 - 1559) a century after Gregory. Linking the natural and supernatural together was not going to work for the Church as a whole, despite the efforts of the "Illuminated Doctor." There were too many things that relied on faith for the Church to insist that, without reason, they would not pertain.

Centuries after Llull's death, some of his other writings were discovered that made his name prominent in the field of "election theory," but we'll save that for another time.

*He is considered to be the first major writer in the Catalan language.