Salute e salvezza. L'Iggeret ha-qodesh e i suoi lettori

The article presents, in the context of a general survey about medicine and religion, the adespotous medieval kabbalistic treatise on healthy and holy sexual intercourse. The peculiar perspective adopted is the history of reception: from medieval echoes, Humanistic translations into Latin through the movie industry and the mass media. The significance of this short treatise lies, more than enywhere else, it is argued, in its various readers and their differing, diverging and even contradictory agendas. The body is perceived here as the place of a historic confrontation between cultures and religious allegiances, but its value in itself is recognized, albeit from opposing perspectives, as inescapable.