Hebrew Divine Names into Latin and Italian, Shiv'ah Shemot and other Samples from Egidio da Viterbo’s Workshop

This article deals with evidence, texts, commentaries and notes from Egidio da Viterbo’s collection of Hebrew manuscripts and from his Latin autographic manuscripts that shedding light on Egidio’s devices and perspectives in approaching the Hebrew language and the Hebrew divine names. This evidence is found in translations, marginalia, and book notes which were penned by Egidio himself and by people who assisted him in his reading the Hebrew texts. After providing an insight into Egidio’s premises and aims in the study of Hebrew literature, based on his autographic comments, the first part of the essay focuses on a set of translations from Hebrew into the Italian vernacular prepared by Jewish scribes and scholars for Egidio. The translators’ techniques, methodology, and selection of kabbalistic, aggadic, and midrashic material is examined. Although this translation project is of crucial importance for the transmission of the mystical Jewish literature to the Christian world of the Renaissance, it has received almost no scholarly attention so far. In the second part, this article takes into account a compilation (MS London, British Library, Add. 16390, vols. A–B) that includes, in its first volume, an anonymous glossary entitled Shivʿah Shemot (Seven Names), on the divine names occurring in the Bible, accompanied by masoretic explanation, and in its second volume, excerpts of a Jewish mystical text in vernacular translation entitled Raziel. They are both to be ascribed to Egidio’s workshop and to a collaboration with Elia Levita. The final part of this article concerns two autographic notebooks by Egidio (MSS Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Lat. 596–597), in which our author records and translates Hebrew roots and divine names that he collected during his reading of Hebrew exegetical and mystical works. The combined analysis of these various witnesses opens different viewpoints on the ongoing activities which Egidio promoted, supporting the spread of Hebrew and Jewish studies in Renaissance Rome. Moreover, it enlightens on some of the propaedeutic materials which contributed to Egidio’s key endeavor to attain a mastery of Kabbalah and to shape his own syncretic kabbalistic system