CHAPTER SIX

UNITY AND DIVERSITY IN GILGUL: YOHANAN ALEMANNO

The reality of all the parts of reality is drawn from their (i.e., the parts’) connection and their unity. For the essence of a thing is its unity and connection, not its separation.1 Yohanan Alemanno occupies a central position in the history of Renaissance developments of notions of harmony and accord as conflated in the subjects of man and his soul. This sense of overall unity and connection is reflected in his life’s activities as well as in his writings. Indeed, Alemanno was active in both Christian and Jewish circles in Mantova, Padova and Florence, bringing together these rival sister religions in a veritably unprecedented point of communication from which he both exerted influence and adapted general Renaissance trends to his own patterns of thought. As one of the Jewish teachers of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola,2 Alemanno helped to shape the “Prince of Concordia’s” philosophy of concordance through his own syncretic tendencies to combine various forms of diverse thought, such as philosophical rationalism, Jewish mysticism, and Hermetic magic. Conversely, his tendency to emphasize ideas such as the unity of truth and the centrality of man in that cosmic picture of unity may reflect the influence of trends from the Florentine Academy and from the general Renaissance milieu upon his own modes of thought. Whatever the case may be, Alemanno held to a unique theory of unity that uni- fied within itself diverse sources and ideas and that culminated in the nodal point of man as the dynamic and fluid intermediary. As one who claimed that “all kinds of wisdom are worthy of study,

”כל חלקי המציאות .Yohanan Alemanno, The Song of Solomon’s Ascents, p. 593 1 מציאותם נמשך להקשרם והתאחדם. כי מהות הדבר הוא התאחדו והקשרו לא הפרדו.“ 2 The literature on Alemanno’s connection to Pico abounds. For the most poignant survey, see: Fabrizio Lelli, “Un collaboratore ebreo di Giovanni Pico della Mirandola: Yohanan Alemanno.” 186 chapter six because they all support each other and are mutually connected,”3 Alemanno employed diverse sources in his picture of man and his soul, such as Pseudo-Empedocles’ Book of Five Substances4 and ibn al- Sid al-Batalyawsi’s Book of Imaginary Circles.5 Incidentally, for this latter source, man is “the intermediary” and “the borderline between the world of the intellect and the world of the senses,”6 uniting within his being the two basic opposing natures of existence, an idea that would have a profound influence upon Alemanno’s own anthropology of unity. For the purpose of discussing the nature and position of the human soul, Alemanno’s syncretism went beyond the mere grafting of diverse disciplines and involved internal conciliations as well. In his Hay ha-‘Olamim, for example, the distinct philosophical characters of Gersonides, ibn Tufayl, Averroes, Judah ha-Levi and Maimonides all come together for Alemanno in order to elucidate the role of the Active Intellect in the shaping and destiny of the soul.7 Such is also the case for another important theme treated by Alemanno regarding the fate, destiny and position of the human soul, namely, the kabbalistic con- cept of gilgul neshamot. As is readily apparent in his treatment of gilgul, Alemanno strikingly studied and attempted to connect some of the polyvalent trends from variegated centers within the specific ‘field’ of kabbalah itself. An unprecedentedly prolific copyist and transmitter of source materials from diverse centers and schools of thought, Alemanno extraordinarily brought together texts on the subject of gilgul from Ashkenazic, Spanish and Byzantine forms of kabbalah. This concept of the soul’s transmigration, which takes its form in the conflation of

3 Einei ha-Edah, Jewish Theological Seminary ms. 888, fol. 6b, quoted in Arthur M. Lesley, “The Place of the Dialoghi d’amore in Contemporaneous Jewish Thought,” p. 178. 4 According to Klaus Hermann, a version of this work appears in Paris ms. 849 within a philosophical treatise on the soul included by Alemanno on fols. 25a–39b. See: Hermann, “The Reception of Hekhalot Literature in Yohanan Alemanno’s Autograph MS Paris 849,” p. 67. This philosophical treatise, which discusses the theory of tempera- ments and divides the soul into seven parts, seems to have affinities with Alemanno’s psychological masterwork Hay ha-‘Olamim. Though it is beyond the present study, the tract of psychological philosophy in Paris 849 deserves detailed further analysis. 5 For more on this book’s influence on Alemanno, see: Kaufmann, Jahresbericht, pp. 56–60; Idel, “The Anthropology of Yohanan Alemanno;” and idem, Ascensions on High, pp. 181–187. See also: idem, “Sources for the Circle Metaphor,” pp. 158–160. 6 Kaufman, Hebrew part, p. 27, quoted in Idel, “The Anthropology of Yohanan Alemanno,” p. 202. 7 See the appendix to Fabrizio Lelli’s “Prisca Philosophia and Docto Religio,” pp. 69–87, which is an annotated translation of chapter 43 of Hay ha-‘Olamim.