Jean-Pierre Rothschild, « Moïse b. Sabbataï, lecteur du Livre des causes et adversaire de la kabbale (Italie, XIVe siècle) », HAL-SHS : histoire des religions, ID : 10670/1.lpc4oc
This previously unknown Hebrew writer is a unique witness of the blend of Aristotelianism and Neoplatonism as well as of Jewish and Christian sources in Jewish philosophy in Italy (first half of the 14th century).The intellectual history of Italian Judaism between the second half of the 13th century and the first half of the 14th century has long been reduced to one (usually Hillel of Verona) out of three important philosophers (H. of V., Zerahyah Hen of Barcelona (established in Italy) and Juda Romano), and split between “the end of the Middle Ages” and “the beginnings of the Renaissance”, as well as between the research about these philosophers and works about kabbalists in Italy in the period (Abraham Abul‘afia, Menahem Recanati). The first who studied the philosophy of that time as a whole (but without including Kabbala) and produced decisive contributions to the edition and understanding of the works of Hillel of Verona and Juda Romano was Giuseppe Sermoneta from the 1960s to the 1980s, followed by his student Caterina Rigo. Yet Moshe b. Shabtai remained entirely unknown, none of his writings being neither printed nor commented upon, not even mentioned. While we are in possession of three translations of the Liber de causis made by the philosophers Zerahya Hen, Hillel of Verona and Juda Romano (all of them edited by myself), Moshe b. Shabtai is the first witness of an intensive reading and use of this book; while Juda Romano is supposed (with good reasons, teste his cousin Emanuele Romano) to have been the head of a philosophical school of sorts, MbS is the first (critical) disciple that has been identified till now (giving inter alia an interesting testimony of the use of JR’s partial translation of the Theoremata de esse et essentia by Egidio Romano). His explicit and particular relation to kabbala (though also critical) also opens new insights in the relationship between two groups of thinkers, philosophy- vs. Kabbala- oriented.