«Una lettura rinascimentale del sogno nel trattato Ḥokhmat ha-Nefesh di Eleazar da Worms (1176-1238)»

In the Kabbalistic circle of Renaissance Rome, animated by the Augustinian General and later Cardinal Egidio da Viterbo (1469–1532), Jewish mystical texts on dreams - their interpretation and function - were studied and translated. After an initial excursus on the understanding of dreams in Jewish thought from antiquity to the early modern period, this article turns to the fifth book of the Ashkenazic compendium Sode Razayya, entitled Ḥokhmat ha-Nefesh (“Wisdom of the Soul”), attributed to Eleazar of Worms. This text presents the dream as a magical-divinatory and ecstatic technique, enabling contact with angels and access to supramundane knowledge. The work entered Egidio’s library through a manuscript copied in 1515 by Elijah Levita (London, BL, Add. 27199) and was later translated into Judeo-Italian (BL, Add. 16390). The paper compares selected passages from the Hebrew text and its vernacular translation, focusing in particular on the section Ḥokhmat ha-Ḥalom (“Wisdom of the Dream”). It explores the dream as a means of angelic consultation, mystical ascent, and recovery of primordial knowledge, while also examining the ethical profile of the dreamer. Special attention is given to the adaptation of Ashkenazic mystical imagery in early modern central Italy and to the linguistic features of the vernacular translation, characterized by Hebrew transliterations and traces of oral transmission.