«Filologia e Qabbalah. La collezione ebraica di Egidio da Viterbo alla biblioteca Angelica di Roma» [Philology and the cabala. Egidio da Viterbo's Hebrew Collection in the Biblioteca Angelica]

The purpose of this essay is to reconstruct Christian humanist and Kabbalist Egidio da Viterbo's Jewish library. This analysis focuses mainly on the study of the manuscripts of the Egidian collection held in Rome in the Biblioteca Angelica. The first part looks at the intersection between Egidio's intellectual biography and the building of his Jewish and Kabbalistic library. The second part presents and examines the manuscripts which belonged to him in the Angelica collection from a codicological and historical perspective. Some of the manuscripts contain works which were composed by Jewish intellectuals under Egidio's protection (including Elia Levita), others were copied on commission by Egidio, yet others are Latin translations from Hebrew in which Egidio participated directly. Eminent personalities from the political and cultural scene of the Roman Renaissance such as Pope Leo X contributed with their gifts to enlarging the library collection. Each manuscript contains marks from Egidio's pen sometimes with a signature alone, an ownership note or notes in the margin. These highlight Egidio's multi-faceted intellectual vision which saw philosophy, philology and mysticism, Hebrew and Christian culture not as distant and conflicting but rather as complementary and mutually perfecting spheres in a single divine inspiration towards a superior sphere of knowledge and consciousness.