Der Todeskuss und andere Krankheiten. Über ein jüdisches Motiv in Johann Baptista van Helmonts Werken

The theme of the „death by kiss”, already well known in rabbinic, kabbalistic and Renaissance studies, is examined anew from the combined perspective of history of words and history of ideas. Numerous texts are quoted attesting the success of the term „mors osculi” in Renaissance literature. The transliteration of the Hebrew original „binsica” is also studied in its vicissitudes from substantive to adjective and from a mystical term for ecstatic apotheosis to an obscure mental disease. At the centre of this shift in meaning stand the works of Johann Baptista Van Helmont, whose frequent usage of the term „binsica“ is the object of a special treatment. Towards the conclusion, the Comeback of philological interests among authors such as Knorr von Rosenroth and Gilbert Gaulmin is documented and described as the terminal phase of the long process of adaptation of a specific Jewish concept within the Christian world.