Orientalism, Aramaic and Kabbalah in the Catholic Reformation: The First Printing of the Syriac New Testament.
Byrne, Joseph P.
Orientalism, Aramaic and Kabbalah in the Catholic Reformation: The
First Printing of the Syriac New Testament. By Robert J. Wilkinson.
Studies in the History of Christian Traditions 137. Leiden: Brill, 2007.
xvi + 225 pp. $129.00 cloth.
Robert Wilkinson, currently a research fellow at Wesley College in
Bristol, U.K., completed his Ph.D. in history at the University of the
West of England in 2004 after reading Oriental Studies at Cambridge. The
present work and its companion volume, Kabbalistic Scholars of the
Antwerp Polyglot Bible (Leiden: Brill, 2007), flow directly from work on
his dissertation, "Origins of Syriac Studies in the Sixteenth
Century." On one level, Orientalism is a specialist's study
that provides and corrects important details in the forty-year history
of the publication of the 1555 editio princeps of the New Testament in
Syriac in Vienna. On another, however, it is a well-crafted and readable
narrative of the introduction of Syriac studies into the circles of
Roman intelligentsia between the Fifth Lateran Council and the middle
stages of the Council of Trent. On yet a third level Wilkinson paints in
broad strokes an intriguing picture of the reasons behind and the state
of Semitic language study in mid-century Rome.
Though the subject has generated ample scholarship, with which
Wilkinson maintains a steady and unobtrusive dialogue, the story of the
publication of the Syriac New Testament is not widely known. It centers
on a single manuscript brought by a small delegation of Maronite
Christians to the Lateran Council at the invitation of Pope Leo X. This
came into the hands of the perfect recipient, the lawyer and canon at
St. John Lateran, Teseo Ambrogio, a pioneering linguistic and liturgical
scholar who had produced a parallel edition of Eucharistic liturgies in
Latin, Greek, Armenian, Ethiopic, and Syriac. Though tasked with
publishing this text and a Syriac psalter, Tesio experienced delays and
ended up losing the psalter manuscript during the battle of Pavia in
1527. In 1529, at the age of sixty, Tesio passed the text to the young
German scholar Johann Widmanstetter, who was accompanying Charles
Habsburg to his imperial coronation in Bologna. Tesio went on to publish
the first Western study of Syriac and Armenian (Introductio, 1539) but
died a year later. In 1555 Widmanstetter published the New Testament in
Vienna with the aid of the relatively well-known French scholar
Guillaume Postel, with whom Tesio had earlier studied Armenian in
Venice.
On the eve of Luther's revolt many Catholic intellectuals had
been linking the recent geographical "discoveries" by the
Spanish and Portuguese with the beginning of the end times and the
associated imperative to unite the Christian Church, east and west. This
eschatological imperative fueled the efforts of men like Tesio to bridge
the linguistic and ecclesiological gaps and to provide the printed
Bibles and other texts in the many languages--including Syriac and
related Semitic languages--needed to complete the conversion of the
world. Wilkerson further links this impulse and the progress of the
Syriac New Testament to another, parallel strand, the Roman
intellectuals' interest in Jewish Kabbalah, which had been piqued
by members of the Medici popes' entourages with roots in the
syncretic interests of the Florentine Academy of Pico della
Mirandola's day. For Tesio and others the Syriac language was
related closely enough to Hebrew to shed important light on the esoteric
intricacies of the Jewish texts. These, they believed, held further keys
to understanding eschatological matters. Wilkinson introduces the reader
to Egidio (Giles) of Viterbo, the cardinal, humanist, supporter of
Reuchlin, and general of the Augustinian Order, as a major proponent of
this movement, which died or scattered during the anti-Talmud activities
of the Roman Inquisition beginning in 1553. With support from the
esoterically inclined Ferdinand I, however, Widmanstetter and Postel, at
the time a professor of Arabic at Vienna's University, published
the work two years later as the first Oriental-language text printed in
Vienna.
This short overview suggests the ways in which Wilkinson's
story is interwoven with the events, personalities, and trends of
mid-sixteenth-century Catholic intellectual and religious history. For
the non-specialist with knowledge of the period, the story provides new
and insightful narrative layers that interlink major phenomena and
personalities. Wilkerson chose to organize his chapters by focusing each
on one of the key players, which allows him to develop each
person's thread, but necessitates foreshadowing and backfilling
that disturb the narrative flow. For the specialist, Wilkerson explains
important links between the era's kabbalistic interests and the
study of Syriac in Rome, a linkage that came naturally to Renaissance
scholars but has been missed by historians. He also places Postel,
excluded from Widmanstetter's dedication, in his rightful place as
associate in the project, a role generally denied him by history. In
addition, Wilkerson delineates the otherwise unacknowledged patronal
role of Marcello Cardinal Cervini, the briefly serving Pope Marcellus
II.
Marring this edition is a series of proper noun variations that may
lead to confusion and should have been caught during proofreading--for
example, Padua for Pavia, Padova/Padua, Striedl/Streidl, de la Foret/de
la Forest, Giorgio/ Georgio--a reminder of the care that should go into
a fine scholarly publication.
doi: 10.1017/S0009640709000213
Joseph P. Byrne
Belmont University
