The Great Parchment. Flavius Mithridates' Latin Translation, the Hebrew Text, and an English Version (The Kabbalistic Library of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, edited by Giulio Busi, Volume 1)

Description

In 1486 Giovanni Pico della Mirandola charged Flavius Mithridates, alias Raimundo Moncada, a converted Jew of Sicilian provenance, with the task of translating from Hebrew into Latin a whole kabbalistic library, encompassing most of the Jewish mystical works then available. Mithridates spent months, if not for years, filling thousands of folio pages. When Pico died in 1494, the manuscripts with the translations came to the Vatican Library in Rome, where they have remained almost untouched till today. The entire kabbalistic library of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola is now being published in monographic volumes. The series is a joint project carried out by the Institut für Judaistik of the Freie Universität Berlin (Germany) and the Istituto Nazionale di Studi sul Rinascimento (Firenze, Italy). It aims to bring to light the real contents of a central undertaking of the Renaissance that has been inaccessible for centuries. The "Great Parchment" was probably written at the beginning of the 14th century by an author whose name remains unknown to us. Most likely, he was an Italian kabbalist. The title "Great Parchment" refers to the physical appearance of the text. In fact, it was originally written on a large parchment scroll, together with drawings depicting the various stages of the emanation.