4. Renaissance & Reformation

4. REnaissance & Reformation

Marranos and Conversos

Elizabeth of Austria, the daughter of Emperor Sigismund’s daughter Elizabeth of Luxembourg and Albert II of Germany, married Casimir IV, King of Poland. They had four children who would produce the most important personalities in the history of the occult, through an inter-mingling of the Order of the Dragon, descendants of the Knight Swan, the Medici and the supporters of Martin Luther. The Renaissance began during the de facto rule of Florence by Cosimo de Medici (1389 – 1464), the influential Italian banker and politician and the first member of the Medici family. Eleonora of Toledo, the wife of Cosimo I de Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany (1519 – 1574), great-grandson of Cosimo the Elder and a knight of the Order of the Golden Fleece, was brought up in Naples at the household of Don Samuel Abarbanel (1473 – 1551), the son of the famous Kabbalist, Don Isaac Abarbanel (1437 – 1508), and his daughter-in-law Benvenida.[1] Both Eleanora and Cosimo I had their portraits painted gesturing the secret hand-sign of the Jewish converts to Christianity known as Marranos, and also as Conversos, a deliberate positioning of the hand where the index and the fourth finger are touching together, while the second and fifth fingers are spread apart.[2] Their children would intermarry with the important houses of Este, Sforza, Visconti, Gonzaga and Savoy—who were hereditary claimants of the Kingdom of Jerusalem—producing several Grand Masters of the so-called Priory of Sion, popularized in Dan Brown’s sensationalistic The Da Vinci Code.

On August 2, 1492, on Tisha B’Av (“the Ninth of Av”)—a day commemorated in Judaism as involving great disasters, primarily the destruction of both Solomon’s Temple, Isaac Abarbanel, famously led 300,000 fellow Jews out of Spain carrying a Torah. The following day, Christopher Columbus (1451 – 1506) set sail for the New World. Contrary to popular assumption, Columbus’ voyage was not funded by Ferdinand and Isabella, but rather by two Jewish Conversos, Louis de Santangel and Gabriel Sanchez, along Abarbanel.[3] “In the same month in which Their Majesties issued the edict that all Jews should be driven out of the kingdom and its territories—in that same month they gave me the order to undertake with sufficient men my expedition of discovery to the Indies,” announced Columbus in his account of his expedition.[4] “The connection between the Jews and the discovery of America was not, however,” noted the famous Jewish historian Cecil Roth, “merely a question of fortuitous coincidence. The epoch-making expedition of 1492 was as a matter of fact very largely a Jewish, or rather a Marrano, enterprise.”[5] A portrait of Columbus painted by Renaissance painter Sebastiano del Piombo (c. 1485 – 1547) has him deliberately gesturing what is believed to be a secret hand-sign of the Marranos.

Thomas of Torquemada (1420 – 1498), despite that fact that, like the Catholid Monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella themselves, was as of Marrano origin, to be one of the chief supporters of the Alhambra Decree enforced the expulsion of the Jews from the Crowns of Castile and Aragon in 1492.[6] Torquemada was the first Grand Inquisitor of the infamous Spanish Inquisition, a group of ecclesiastical prelates that was created in 1478, for “upholding Catholic religious orthodoxy” within the lands of the newly formed Kingdom of Spain, ruled by the Catholic Monarch, Ferdinand and Isabella. Torquemada was concerned that of the more than half of the Jews of Spain who, like many Muslims, converted to Christianity in order to escape persecution, known as Marranos, continued to hold secretly to their faith. Owing to the use of torture to extract confessions, and his advocacy of burning at the stake for heretics, Torquemada’s name has become synonymous with cruelty, religious intolerance, and fanaticism. This led Torquemada, despite that fact that, like the Monarchs themselves, was as of Marrano origin, to be one of the chief supporters of the Alhambra Decree enforced the expulsion of the Jews from the Crowns of Castile and Aragon in 1492.[7]

While secret conversion of Jews to another religion during the Spanish inquisition is the most known example, as Rabbi Joachim Prinz explained in The Secret Jews, “Jewish existence in disguise predates the Inquisition by more than a thousand years.”[8] There were also the examples of the first Gnostic sects, which comprised of Merkabah mystics who entered Christianity. Likewise, in the seventh century, the Quran advised the early Muslim community, “And a faction of the People of the Scripture say [to each other], “Believe in that which was revealed to the believers at the beginning of the day and reject it at its end that perhaps they will abandon their religion.”[9] As reproduced in 1608 in La Silva Curiosa by Julio-Inigues de Medrano (1520’s – 1585-1588?) in 1492, Chemor, chief Rabbi of Spain, wrote to the Grand Sanhedrin, which had its seat in Constantinople, for advice, when a Spanish law threatened expulsion. This was the reply:

Well-beloved brothers in Moses, if the king of France forces you to become Christian, do so, because you cannot do otherwise, but preserve the law of Moses in your hearts. If they strip you of your possessions, raise your sons to be merchants, so that eventually they can strip Christians of their possessions. If they threaten your lives, raise your sons to be physicians and pharmacists, so that they can take the lives of Christians. If they destroy your synagogues, raise your sons, to be canons and clerics, so that they can destroy the churches of the Christians. If they inflict other tribulations on you, raise your sons to be lawyers and notaries and have them mingle in the business of every state, so that putting the Christians under your yoke, you will rule the world and can then take your revenge.[10]

Samuel Usque (c.1500 - after 1555), a Portuguese Marrano who settled in Ferrara, wrote an apology titled the Consolation for the Tribulations of Israel, where he warned European rulers:

You should consider how much harm you bring upon yourself by compelling Jews to accept your faith, for these ways… in the end become the means that undermine and destroy them [European rulers].

Jews were God’s chosen people, he reminded his readers, and when they were forced to convert, they became God’s chosen agents against their oppressors:

Since throughout Christendom Christians have forced Jews to change their religion, it seems to be divine retribution that these Jews should strike back with the weapons that are put into their hands to punish those who compelled them to change their faith…[11]

The Medicis were one of several influential Italian families, sometimes referred to as the Black Nobility, who included the Orsini, Farnese and Borgia families, often protectors of the Jews, at times even suspected of being secretly Jews, who also produced a number of popes. The House of Borgia, for example, an Italo-Spanish noble family from Aragon, which rose to prominence during the Italian Renaissance, was widely rumored to be of Jewish origin.[12] Several rumors have persisted throughout the years, primarily speculating as to the nature of the extravagant parties thrown by the Borgia family. One example is the Banquet of Chestnuts, a supper purportedly held in the Papal Palace by former Cardinal, Lucrezia’s brother, Cesare Borgia (1433 – 1499), who was a major inspiration for Machiavelli’s The Prince.

The Jews of Florence were one of the oldest continuous Jewish communities in Europe, and one of the largest and one of the most influential Jewish communities in Italy. The fate of Tuscan Jewry in the early modern period was inextricably linked to the favor and the fortune of the Medicis. Many Jews who settled in Florence were merchants and money lenders. The Jewish presence in Italy dates to the pre-Christian Roman period. Though a Jewish presence was registered in Lucca as early as the ninth century and a network of Jewish banks had spread throughout the region by the mid-fifteenth, the organized Jewish communities of Florence, Siena, Pisa and Livorno were political creations of the Medici rulers.

Platonic Academy

Growing persecution in other parts of Europe had led many Kabbalists to find their way to Italy, which during the Renaissance became one of the most intense areas of Kabbalistic study, second only to Palestine. According to Gershom Scholem, “the activities of these migrants strengthened the Kabbalah, which acquired many adherents in Italy in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries.” Laying the basis for the rediscovery of the occult tradition of classical philosophy was, as noted by Moshe Idel, one of the foremost scholars of the subject, has pointed out, that “Kabbalah was conceived by both Jewish and Christian Renaissance figures as an ancient theology, similar to and, according to the Jews, the source of such later philosophical developments as Platonism, Aristotelianism, Pythagoreanism, and atomism.”[13]

The key representative of the Italian Kabbalists of the Renaissance was Leone Ebreo (c. 1465 – c. 1523), the son of Don Isaac Abarbanel. Following medieval Jewish sources, Ebreo saw Plato as dependent on the revelation of Moses, and even as a disciple of the ancient Kabbalists. While Rabbi Yehudah Messer Leon, a committed Aristotelian, criticized the Kabbalah’s similarity to Platonism, his son described Plato as a divine master. Other Kabbalists, such as Isaac Abarbanel and Rabbi Yohanan Alemanno believed Plato to have been a disciple of Jeremiah in Egypt.[14] In Ge Hizzayon or Valley of Vision, by Rabbi Abraham Yagel (c. 1553 – 1624), Hermes and Abraham ibn Ezra are mentioned together in a discussion of scientific issues.[15] On the similarity of the teachings of the Greek philosophers and the Kabbalah, Yagel commented:

This is obvious to anyone who has read what is written on the philosophy and principles of Democritus, and especially on Plato, the master of Aristotle, whose views are almost those of the Sages of Israel, and who on some issues almost seems to speak from the very mouth of the Kabbalists and in their language, without any blemish on his lips. And why shall we not hold these views, since they are ours, inherited from our ancestors by the Greeks, and down to this day great sages hold the views of Plato and great groups of students follow him, as is well known to anyone who has served the sage of the Academy and entered their studies, which are found in every land.[16]

Cosimo was influenced by Gemistus Pletho (c. 1355/1360 – 1452/1454), considered one of the most important influences on the Italian Renaissance as the chief pioneer of the revival of Greek scholarship in Western Europe. As revealed in the Nomoi or Book of Laws, which he only circulated among close friends, Pletho rejected Christianity in favor of a return to the worship of the pagan gods of Ancient Greece, mixed with wisdom based on Zoroaster and the Magi.[17] Pletho drew up plans in his Nomoi to radically change the structure and philosophy of the Byzantine Empire in line with his interpretation of Platonism, and supported the reconciliation of the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches in order to secure Western Europe’s support against the Ottomans. Pletho re-introduced Plato’s ideas to Western Europe during the 1438–1439 Council of Florence, a failed attempt to reconcile the East–West schism. There, Pletho met Cosimo de Medici and influenced him to found a new Platonic Academy.

About 1460, Cosimo de Medici the Elder commissioned the translation of the Corpus Hermeticum by Italian philosopher Marisilio Ficino (1433 – 1499), an Italian scholar, astrologer and Catholic priest, who become one of the most influential humanist philosophers of the Renaissance. Ficino was succeeded in the leadership of his academy by Pico della Mrandola (1463 – 1494), one of the first exponents of Christian Kabbalah. Mirandola’s Oration on the Dignity of Man, which is taken as a characteristic example of Renaissance humanism, begins by quoting Hermes Trismegistus, “what a great miracle is man.” Renaissance humanism, however, did not help to diffuse interest in the “irrational.” “On the contrary,” noted Jean Seznec, in The Survival of the Pagan Gods: The Mythological Tradition and its Place in Renaissance Humanism and Art, “the first effect of humanism was to encourage astrology.”[18] According to Seznec, Ficino was inspired by the Picatrix, an astrological book of the Sabians, which focused particularly on what it called “talismans,” which it compared explicitly to the alchemical elixir.[19]

Three works of Sandro Botticelli (c. 1445 – 1510), a purported Grand Master of the Priory of Sion, being some of the most recognized Renaissance paintings, The Minerva and The Centaur, The Birth of Venus, and The Primavera, all dealt with occult themes and represent the magical practice of drawing down planetary influences into images. For the Primavera, had consulted Ficino. Frances Yates commented: “I want only to suggest that in the context of the study of Ficino’s magic the picture begins to be seen as a practical application of that magic, as a complex talisman, an image of the world arranged so as to transmit only healthful, rejuvenating, anti-Saturnian influences to the beholder.”[20] Botticelli’s chief patron, along with the Este and the Gonzaga families, was the grandson of Cosimo de Medici, Lorenzo de Medici (1449 – 1492), also known as “the Magnificent” (Lorenzo il Magnifico) by contemporary Florentines.

Order of the Fleur de Lys

Cosimo the elder was a member of the neo-Arthurian Military Order of the Crescent, founded in 1448, by René of Anjou (1409 – 1480), also known as Good King René, who was a prince of the blood, and for most of his adult life also the brother-in-law of the reigning king Charles VII of France. René was the grandson of Marie of Valois, the sister of John, Duke of Berry, who claimed descent from Melusine. René, through his descent from Charles I of Anjou, was King of Jerusalem, as well as of Naples and Hungary, Duc d’Anjou, de Bar et Lorraine. René married to Isabella, Duchess of Lorraine, and in 1434, was recognized as Duke of Lorraine by Emperor Sigismund, founder of the Order of the Dragon.

Cosimo’s interest in ancient manuscripts, which gave birth to his academy of Platonic studies in Florence headed by Marsilio Ficino, was through the encouragement of René of Anjou, who also fostered the transplantation of Italian Renaissance thought in his own dominions.[21] In his fight to gain the Kingdom of Naples, René had been supported by Cosimo de Medici the elder, whose descendants became Dukes of Florence and later Grand Dukes of Tuscany as well as John de Montgomery (c.1445 - c.1485), Constable of the Garde Écossaise, the Scots Guard. The group wore a Fleur de Lys on their left breast to show that they owed allegiance to the King of France.[22] They participated at the siege of Orleans alongside Rene d’Anjou and Joan of Arc in 1428. René d’Anjou was “Reignier” in Shakespeare’s Henry VI, where he pretends to be the Dauphin to deceive the French heroin Joan of Arc (c. 1412 – 1431), who later claims to be pregnant with his child. Henry VI of England was the son of Henry V, a member of the Order of the Dragon. Henry V, who also claimed Swan Knight ancestry and adopted the swan as a crest, was also a close ally of Philip the Good, founder of the Order of the Golden Fleece.[23]

In 1439, following the granting of its patent, Montgomery, with funding from Cosimo de Medici, and under the patronage of René, formed the Ordre du Lys.[24] In 1444, René ended his war with Philip the Good, founder of the Order of the Golden Fleece, by marrying his eldest son, John II, Duke of Lorraine (1426 – 1470), to Philip’s niece Marie of Bourbon. In 1448, the year of the marriage of his daughter Margaret of Anjou to Henry VI of England, René founded the Order of the Crescent, whose avowed purpose was the re-establishment of the Judaic-Christian Kingdom of Jerusalem.[25] In the same year, the Order was fighting in Serbia, in an army that consisted of Hungarians, Wallachians and Knights of the Orders of the Dragon, the Order of the Crescent and the Order of the Lys. A number of Jewish warriors also joined one or other of the Orders, certainly the Lys, and fought or acted as physicians, alongside their Christian brethren. According to the order’s website, the reasons for this date back to the foundation of the Jewish Princedom of Septimania in the Languedoc region of Southern France in the eighth century.[26] Many of the members who fought in the Balkans were descendants of Jews brought out of Spain and later Byzantium by the Medicis.

In 1490–1492, the Order of the Fleur de Lys became involved in moving large numbers of Jews out of Spain and Portugal and resettling them in the domains of the of the Medicis and those of René II of Lorraine (1451 – 1508), the son of René of Anjou’s daughter Yolanda of Bar, and Ferry II of Vaudémont, a member of her father’s Order of the Crescent.[27] René II succeeded Ludovico Sforza as Grand Master of the Order of the Lys. Married twice, René II of Lorraine’s first wife was Jeanne d’Harcourt de Montgomery, Countess of Tancarville, daughter of René de Montgomery, René of Anjou’s godson, and son of John Montgomery. After Jeanne’s death, he married Phillipa of Guelders, the daughter of Adolf, Duke of Guelders (1438 – 1477). Adolph’s mother, Catherine of Cleves (1417 – 1479), was the daughter of Adolph I, Duke of Cleves (1373 – 1448), who was raised by Emperor Sigismund as duke and a Prince of the Holy Roman Empire in 1417. Catherine commissioned the Hours of Catherine of Cleves, upon the occasion of her marriage to Arnold, Duke of Guelders (1410 – 1473). The Hours is considered one of the most lavishly illuminated manuscripts to survive from the fifteenth century and has been described as one of the masterpieces of Northern European illumination.[28]

Mona Lisa

Succeeding René as Grand Master of the Order of the Fleur de Lys was a close friend of Cosimo, Francesco I Sforza (1401 – 1466). Francesco and his father-in-law Filippo Maria Visconti (1392 – 1447) commissioned the Visconti-Sforza tarot decks, the oldest surviving tarot cards.[29] Francesco’s son, Ludovico Sforza (1452 – 1508) commissioned Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper. He was married to Beatrice d’Este, in a double-wedding in 1491, orchestrated by da Vinci, with his niece Anna Sforza and Alfonso I d’Este, Duke of Ferrara (1476 – 1534), of the House of Este, who was reputed to be of Davidic descent.[30] Alfonso I d’Este later remarried in 1502, to the notorious femme fatale Lucrezia Borgia (1480 – 1519), the illegitimate daughter of Pope Alexander VI (1431 – 1503).

Il sorriso di Caterina, la madre di Leonardo, by the historian Carlo Vecce, one of the most distinguished specialists on Leonardo da Vinci, da Vinci’s mother was a Circassian Jew born somewhere in the Caucasus, abducted as a teenager and sold as a sex slave. As summarized in the Jerusalem Post:

One thing, however, is beyond dispute: Leonardo, although deeply critical of the injunction of the Torah against idolatrous images for ignoring the transcendental relationship between painting and God (he considered painters to be the grandchildren of God) was, nonetheless, deeply influenced by Jewish mysticism. Given his quest for the original, his exposure to and participation in the world of Christian Kabbalists and Hebrew-speaking Renaissance philo-Semites in Florence and Milan, his universalism, esotericism, ecumenism, admiration for the Jewish concept of free will, his rejection of dogmas, contempt for the Inquisition and its raging friars like Savaronola (nothing appalled Leonardo more than the bonfires of the vanities), it could not have been otherwise.[31]

As the capital city of the dukes of d’Este, Ferrara was a center of Italian and European Judaism. Ashkenazi Jews from Germany and Sephardim, welcomed after their expulsion from Spain, lived under the protection of the local authorities. In 1448, upon a request from Leonello d’Este (1407 – 1450), Pope Nicholas V suppressed the anti-Jewish sermons of the friars. In 1451, his brother Borso (1413 – 1471) declared that he would protect the Jews who entered his lands. In 1473, Borso’s half-brother and Alfonso I’s father, Ercole I d’Este, Duke of Ferrara (1431 – 1505), in opposition to papal demands, protected his Jewish subjects, particularly the moneylenders. In 1481, he authorized Samuel Melli of Rome to buy a mansion in Ferrara and turn it into a synagogue, which is still used. The Spanish Jews were also well received by Ercole I in Tuscany through the mediation of Jehiel of Pisa (d. 1492) and his sons. Jehiel was on intimate terms with Don Isaac Abravanel, with whom he carried on a correspondence. The Italian rabbi and Kabbalist Johanan Alemanno (c. 1435 – d. after 1504), the teacher of Pico di Mirandola, seems to have lived for years in Jehiel’s house.[32] In 1492, when the first refugees from Spain appeared in Italy, Ercole I allowed some of them to settle in Ferrara, promising to let them have their own leaders and judges, permitting them to practice commerce and medicine, and granting them tax reductions.

Alfonso I’s sister Isabella d’Este has been proposed as a plausible candidate for da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, who features the hand-sign typical of Marranos.[33] Isabella married Francesco II Gonzaga (1466 – 1519). Gianfrancesco I Gonzaga, Marquess of Mantua (1395 – 1444), the first Gonzaga to bear the title of marquess, which he obtained from Emperor Sigismund, was Francesco II’s great-grandfather. His son, and Francesco II’s grandfather, was Ludovico III Gonzaga (1412 – 1478), Marquis of Mantua, who married Barbara of Brandenburg, niece of Emperor Sigismund. Isabella and Francesco II’s son, Ferrante Gonzaga (1507 – 1557), was a knight of the Order of the Golden Fleece, Grand Master of the Order of the Fleur de Lys and a purported Grand Master of the Priory of Sion. Ferrante’s nephew and successor as Grand Master of the Priory of Sion was Federico II Gonzaga (1500 – 1540). Isabella d’Este was a renowned patron and collector who supported artists such Andrea Mantegna, Titian and Leonardo da Vinci, who supposedly preceded Charles III, Duke of Bourbon, as Grand Master of the Priory of Sion. Purportedly, da Vinci had succeeded as Grand Master of the Priory of Sion after Sandro Botticelli, Yolande de Bar and her father René of Anjou. Botticelli’s chief patron was Lorenzo de Medici, along with the Este, the Gonzaga families.

Francesco I Sforza was also the grandfather of Cosimo I de Medici. In 1537, Jacob Abarbanel, who was one of the two brothers of Isaac Abarbanel, was instrumental by influencing Cosimo I de Medici in allowing Jews and Marranos from Spain and Portugal to settle in Florence. Cosimo’s wife, Eleonora di Toledo, was the daughter of Pedro Álvarez de Toledo, Viceroy of Naples. Before eventually settling in Tuscany, Eleonora was brought up in Naples at the household of Jacob Abarbanel’s son Don Samuel Abarbanel and daughter-in-law Benvenida, whom she continued to honor as her mother.[34]

Nostradamus

René of Anjou, who was well-versed in the occult, included at his court a Jewish Kabbalist known as Jean de Saint-Remy, who, according to some accounts, was the grandfather of the famous mystic Nostradamus (1503 – 1566).[35] Michel de Nostredame, usually Latinized as Nostradamus, was a French physician and reputed seer. Nostradamus’ family was originally Jewish, but had converted to Catholicism before he was born.[36] Nostradamus is best known for his book Les Propheties, a collection of predictions of future events, first published in 1555. Joachim of Fiore and Savonarola and others were major sources for his prophecies.[37] Catherine de Medici, great-granddaughter of Lorenzo the Magnificent, grandson of Cosimo de Medici the Elder. Catherine, a leading sponsor of Nostradamus, was also a practitioner of the Black Mass.[38] Cosimo Ruggeri (d. 1615), who was reputed as a master of the occult, black magic and witchcraft during his lifetime, was believed to be Catherine’s own “trusted necromancer, and specialist in the dark arts.”[39]

Catherine married Henry II of France (1519 – 1559), son of Francis I of France (1494 – 1547), one of Europe’s two most powerful kings, and a knight of the Order of the Garter and the Order of the Golden Fleece. Francis I was the grandson of Philip II, Duke of Savoy, and married Claude of France, the daughter of Louis XII of France. A prodigious patron of the arts, Francis I promoted the emerging French Renaissance by attracting many Italian artists to work for him, including da Vinci, who brought the Mona Lisa, which Francis I had acquired.

Francis I’s sister, Marguerite of Navarre, was a poet, novelist, and also an important sponsor of the French Renaissance, gathering around her a protected circle of poets and writers, including François Rabelais (1483 – 1553), author of Gargantua and Pantagruel. It is in the first book that Rabelais writes of the Abbey of Thélème, built by the giant Gargantua, where the only rule is “fay çe que vouldras” (“Fais ce que tu veux,” or “Do what thou wilt”). The word “thelema” is rare in classical Greek, where it “signifies the appetitive will: desire, sometimes even sexual,”[40] but it is frequent in the original Greek translations of the Bible.

Marguerite’s most notable works are a classic collection of short stories, the Heptameron, and a controversial religious poem, Miroir de l'âme pécheresse (“Mirror of the Sinful Soul”), a mystical narrative of the soul as a yearning woman calling out to Christ as her father, brother and lover. As explained by Christopher Prendergast, “It derives directly from the series of erotic love songs exchanged by a bridegroom and his bride in the Song of Songs, interpreted since the twelfth century as an allegorical expression of the love between Christ and the individual believer.”[41] The theologians of the University of Sorbonne condemned her work as heresy and ordered copies to be burned. A monk said Marguerite should be sewn into a sack and thrown into the Seine. Students at the Collège de Navarre satirized her in a play as “a Fury from Hell.” However, Francis I forced the charges to be dropped and obtained an apology from the Sorbonne.[42]

Henry II’s sister, Margaret of Valois married Philibert of Savoy (1528 – 1580), a knight of the Order of the Garter, and a claimant of the kingdom of Jerusalem. Amadeus VIII (1383 – 1451) of Savoy, Antipope Felix V, was elevated by Emperor Sigismund to the Duke of Savoy in 1416. Amadeus VIII’s mother was Bonne of Berry, the daughter of John, Duke of Berry. Amadeus VIII married, Mary of Burgundy, the daughter of John of Berry’s brother, Philip the Bold, who was the grandfather of Philip the Good, founder of the Order of the Golden Fleece. Amadeus VIII and Mary’s son Louis, Duke of Savoy (1413 – 1465) married Anne de Lusignan. Their grandson, Charles III of Savoy (1486 – 1553), Emmanuel Philibert’s father, became head the Savoy dynasty, which had now also received the titles of the kingdoms of Cyprus, Jerusalem and Armenia. When Emmanuel Philibert and his wife, Margaret of Valois, asked Nostradamus’ help to produce an heir for the throne, he assured the princess to rejoice, because the child with whom she was pregnant, “Would be a Son, who would be called Charles, and who would become the greatest Captain of his century.”[43] Their son was Charles Emmanuel I, Duke of Savoy (1562 – 1630), known as the Great, Marquis of Saluzzo, Duke of Savoy, Prince of Piedmont and Count of Aosta, Moriana and Nice and also Titular King of Cyprus and Jerusalem.

Medician Stars

Charles Emmanuel’s son, Victor Amadeus I, Duke of Savoy (1587 – 1637) married Princess Christine Marie of France, the daughter of Henry IV of France and Marie de Medici. The artist Bronzino (1503 – 1572) painted the young Marie gesturing the Marrano hand-sign, just as he had of her grandparents, Cosimo I and Eleanor of Toledo. Marie’s father, Francesco I de Medici, was also passionately interested in alchemy and spent many hours in his private laboratory, the Studiolo in the Palazzo Vecchio, which held his collections small, precious, unusual or rare objects and where he conducted alchemical experiments. The Studiolo was completed from 1570-1572, by teams of artists under the supervision of Vasari and the scholars Giovanni Batista Adriani and Vincenzo Borghini. The walls were covered with paintings representing mythological themes or representing trades. In the center is a fresco of Prometheus receiving jewels from nature.

Galileo Galilei (1564 – 1642) was sponsored by Marie de Medici’s uncle, Cosimo II de Medici (1590 – 1621), the son of Cardinal Ferdinando, whose father was Cosimo I de Medici. Cosimo II’s mother was Christina of Lorraine, the daughter of Charles III of Lorraine (1543 – 1608) and the favorite granddaughter of Catherine de Medici. Christina’s brother, Henry II, Duke of Lorraine, married Margherita Gonzaga, daughter of Vincenzo I Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua, a knight of the Order of the Golden Fleece, and nephew of Louis Gonzaga, another purported Grand Master of the Priory of Sion. Vincenzo I Gonzaga’s wife was Eleonora de Medici, the sister of Marie de Medici.

During and after the regency, Marie de Medici played a major role in the development of Parisian artistic life by focusing on the construction and furnishing of the Luxembourg Palace, which she referred to as her “Palais Medici’s.” Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens (1577 – 1640), then court painter to the Duchy of Mantua under Vincenzo I Gonzaga, had first met Marie at her proxy wedding in Florence in 1600. She commissioned Rubens to create a 21-piece series glorifying her life and reign to be part of her art collection in the palace. This series is now known as the “Marie de’ Medici cycle,” currently housed in the Louvre Museum, and employs iconography throughout to depict Henry IV and Marie as Jupiter and Juno and the French state as a female warrior.

Cosimo Ruggeri, who had been the trusted sorcerer of Catherine de Medici, was a personal friend of Marie de Medici’s favorites, Concino Concini (1569 – 1617) and his wife Leonora Dori.[44] Leonora Dori suffered from debilitating depressions and paralyzing spasms, which the queen and her courtiers believed to be due to demonic possession. Dori was arrested, imprisoned in Blois and accused of sorcery and subsequently burned at the stake. She had been treated by the court Marie’s court physician, a Marrano named Elijah Montalto (1567 – 1616), who had been raised as a Christian in Portugal and openly returned to Judaism on settling in Venice.[45]

Montalto was one of the teachers of Rabbi Joseph Solomon Delmedigo (1591 – 1655). Delmedigo’s only known works are Sefer Elim (Palms), published in 1629 by Menasseh ben Israel, dealing with mathematics, astronomy, the natural sciences, and metaphysics, as well as some letters and essays. As Delmedigo writes in his book, he followed the lectures by Galilei, during the academic year 1609–1610, and often referred to Galilei as “rabbi Galileo.” Delmedigo declared in Sefer Elim, that the proofs of Copernicus’ theory are convincing, and that “anyone who refuses to accept them can only be classed among perfect imbeciles.”[46] Galileo was also a friend of Cardinal Francesco Maria Del Monte (1549 – 1627), a member of the court of Christina’s husband, Cardinal Ferdinando. Del Monte, who was reputed to be a homosexual, was a sponsor of Caravaggio, and his interests also included alchemy.[47] Together with his brother, del Monte helped Galileo win a lectureship in mathematics in Pisa in 1589 and in Padua in 1592. Ferdinando also supported the education of his niece, Marie de Medici.

In 1605, Christina of Lorraine invited Galileo to tutor her son Cosimo II de Medici, who would eventually become his most important patron. Galileo was generously welcomed to the Medici court after his discovery of the four largest moons of Jupiter—Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto in the summer of 1609, which Galileo called the Medicea Sidera (“the Medician stars”), honoring all four Medici brothers, Cosimo II, Francesco, Carlo, and Lorenzo. Since Cosimo I established the dynasty in the middle of the sixteenth century, in the mythology articulated by the Medici, Jupiter was regularly associated with Cosimo I, the founder of the dynasty and the first of the “Medicean gods,” as Vasari, who painted the mythological themes of the Pallazo Vecchio, referred to them. Galileo asserted in the dedication of the Sidereus nuncius that these celestial bodies were monuments to the Medici dynasty.[48] Galileo used the Medici court to advance his claims and the theories of Copernicus.

According to legend, Christine Marie herself was interested in the occult, and rebuilt Palazzo Madama, following the advice of master alchemists. Apparently, when she became regent after Victor Amadeus I’s death in 1637, the alchemists divulged the secret of the locations of the cave entrances to her.[49] The Savoy family is said to have been quite interested in alchemy. Emmanuel Philibert moved the capital of the recovered Savoyard state to Turin, which is associated with numerous occult legends. It is said that Apollonius of Tyana hid one of his powerful talismans in the most secret of three secret caves. The caves are said to exist in an underground labyrinth in the vicinity of Palazzo Madama and Piazza Castello, where the Savoy family allowed alchemists to undertake secret experiments. Palazzo Madama was begun at the end of the fifteenth century and completed in 1505, for the Medici family. It housed two Medici cardinals and cousins, Giovanni and Giulio, who both later became popes as Leo X and Clement VII. Catherine de Medici also lived here before she was married to Henry II. Cardinal Francesco Maria Del Monte, patron of Caravaggio with an interest in alchemy, lived there until his death in 1627.

Martin Luther

In 1546, The famous German painter Lucas Cranach the Elder (c. 1472 –1553), painted his close friend Martin Luther (1483 – 1546) gesturing the Marrano hand-sign. In his earlier career, Luther wanted to convert Jews to Lutheranism. In his later period, however, when he wrote Von den Jüden und iren Lügen (“On the Jews and Their Lies”), written in 1543, he denounced them and called for their persecution. In the treatise, Luther argues that synagogues and Jewish schools be burned, their prayer books destroyed, rabbis forbidden to preach, homes set on fire, property and money confiscated. Luther demanded that no mercy or kindness be show toward them, and afforded no legal protection, and “these poisonous envenomed worms” should be drafted into forced labor or expelled for all time. He even advocated their murder, writing “[W]e are at fault in not slaying them.”[50] And yet, Luther nevertheless admitted that his “justification by faith alone,” one of his most controversial doctrines, was the “true Cabala” in his Commentary on Galatians.[51] Luther’s interest in the subject, related Louis I. Newman, likely derived from the works of the Christian Kabbalist Johann Reuchlin (1455 – 1522), whose nephew was Luther’s friend and collaborator, Philipp Melanchthon (1497 – 1560). During his second visit to Rome in 1490, Reuchlin became acquainted with Pico della Mirandola at Florence, and, learning from him about the Kabbalah, he became interested in Hebrew.[52]

At first, Luther’s challenge to Catholicism was welcomed by Jews who had been victimized by the Inquisition, and who hoped that breaking the power of the Church would lead to greater tolerance of other forms of worship. Abraham Farissol (c. 1451 – 1525 or 1526), attendant at the court of Lorenzo de Medici, regarded Luther as a Crypto-Jew, a reformer bent on upholding religious truth and justice, and whose iconoclastic reforms were directed toward a return to Judaism.[53] Some scholars, particularly of the Sephardi diaspora, such as Joseph ha-Kohen (1496 – c. 1575), were strongly pro-Reformation.[54] As explained by Samuel Usque, since so many Marranos left Spain for England, France and Germany, as well as the Low Countries,

…that generation of converts has spread all over the whole realm, and though a long time has elapsed, these converts still give an indication of their non-Catholic origin by the new Lutheran beliefs which are presently found among them, for they are not comfortable in the religion which they received so unwillingly.[55]

The role of Jewish converts in the spread of the doctrines behind the Reformation has been pointed out on several occasions. During the Middle Ages, Jewish converts who attacked their former faith included Nicholas Donin, Paul Christian, Abner-Alphonso of Burgos (c. 1270 – c. 1347), John of Valladolid (b. 1335), Paul of Burgos (c. 1351 – 1435) and Geronimo de Santa Fe (fl. 1400 – 1430). Impelled by his hatred of Talmudic Judaism, Paul of Burgos, an erudite scholar of Talmudic and rabbinical literature, composed the Dialogus Pauli et Sauli Contra Judæos, sive Scrutinium Scripturarum, which was a source for Luther’s On the Jews and their Lies. Victor von Carben, who was involved in the Pfefferkorn controversy, Emmanuel Tremellius, who published a Latin version of the Hebrew Bible, Jochanan Isaac, the author of two Hebrew grammars, and his son Stephen, all became Protestants and wrote polemics against Catholicism.

According to Rabbi Abraham ben Eliezer Halevi (c. 1460 - after 1528), a Sephardic rabbi and Kabbalist affiliated with Abraham Zacuto and Isaac Abarbanel, the Reformation was a crisis through which the world must pass before the arrival of the messiah, where Luther was God’s agent sent to destroy corrupt Rome before the end of the world. Halevi claimed to have referred to Luther, when foretold before the Reformation, as early as 1498, “that a man will arise who will be great, valiant, and mighty. He will pursue justice and loathe debauchery. He will Marshall vast armies, originate a religion, and destroy the house of the clergy.”[56] Halevi was aware of Luther’s treatise, written in 1523, titled That Jesus Christ was Born a Jew, where he argued that as Judaism was firmly founded in Scripture, to be a good Christian one had almost to become a Jew, and if the Catholic authorities persecute him as a heretic, they would prosecute him as a Jew.

Like many of his contemporaries, Halevi believed that the year 1524 would be the beginning of the messianic era and that the Messiah himself would appear in 1530–31. About 1524, Jews coming from Europe described with joy to Halevi in Jerusalem the anti-clerical tendencies of the Protestant reformers. On the basis of this report, the Kabbalists regarded Luther as a kind of crypto-Jew who would educate Christians away from the bad elements of their faith.[57] Halevi related that a great astrologer in Spain, named R. Joseph, wrote in a forecast on the significance of the sun’s eclipse in the year 1478, as prophesying a man who would reform religion and rebuild Jerusalem. Halevi adds that “at first glance we believed that the man foreshadowed by the stars was Messiah b. Joseph [Messiah]. But now it is evident that he is none other than the man mentioned [by all; i.e., Luther], who is exceedingly noble in all his undertakings and all these forecasts are realized in his person.”[58]

The several Jewish converts to Lutheranism, whom Luther knew, influenced him in many directions. These included Matthew Adrian, a Spanish Jew, the teacher of Conrad Pellican, the grammarian, and Fabritius Capito, a friend of Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466 – 1536). Luther sought the advice of Jewish students and Rabbis on numerous occasions. Jews paid visits at his home to discuss with him difficult passages of the Bible, especially for the revision of his translation. On one occasion, three Jews, Shmaryah, Shlomoh and Leo visited him in Wittenberg, and expressed their joy that Christians were now busying themselves with Jewish literature and mentioned the hope among many Jews that the Christians would enter Judaism en masse as a result of the Reformation.[59]

Erasmus of Rotterdam witnessed the medical skills of the alchemists Paracelsus (1493/4 – 1541) at the University of Basel, and the two scholars initiated a letter dialogue on medical and theological subjects.[60] Paracelsus, like Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa (1486 – 1535), was a student of Johannes Trithemius (1462 – 1516), a German Benedictine abbot and a polymath, who was denounced as the “Devil’s abbot.” Trithemius acquired a diabolical legend of his own resembling that of Johann Georg Faust (c. 1480 or 1466 – c. 1541), an itinerant alchemist, astrologer and magician, whose story of selling his soul to the Devil inspired Marlowe’s The Tragical History of the Life and Death of Doctor Faustus (1604) and Goethe’s drama Faust (1808). Trithemius warned Johannes Virdung in a letter dated August 20, 1507, of a certain trickster and fraud styling himself Georgius Sabellicus, Faustus junior, fons necromanticorum, astrologus, magus secundus, etc. According to Trithemius, Sabellicus boasted of his powers, even claiming that he could easily reproduce all the miracles of Christ. Trithemius alleges that Sabellicus received a teaching position in Sickingen in 1507, which he abused by indulging in sodomy with his male students, though evading punishment by a timely escape.[61] According to Johannes Manlius, drawing on notes by Melanchthon, in his Locorum communium collectanea (1562), Johannes Faustus was a personal acquaintance of Melanchthon who described him as a “sewer of many devils.” Manlius recounts that Faust had boasted that the victories of the Emperor Charles V in Italy were due to his magical intervention.[62]

In his book De Occulta Philosophia (“On the Occult Philosophy”) published in 1531–1533, Agrippa, mentioned the Templars in connection with the survival of Gnosticism, and thus, according to Michael Haag, “thrust the order into the phantasmagoria of occult forces which were subject of the persecuting craze for which the Malleus Maleficarum was a handbook.”[63] Agrippa’s study of Reuchlin first inspired him in the project of a radical restoration of magic. In 1509-1510, he discussed the idea with Trithemius, to whom he dedicated the first draft of his De occulta philosophia, Agrippa’s most notorious work, his masterpiece, and the one which gave rise to his reputation as a black magician.

Counter-Reformation

By the end of the Counter-Reformation, the period of Catholic resurgence initiated in response to the Protestant Reformation, all hope of conciliating the Protestants was lost and the Jesuits became a powerful force.[64] Marranos were also involved in the society’ founding. The Spanish theologian Ignatius of Loyola (1491 – 1556) had been a member of a heretical sect known as the Alumbrados, meaning “Illuminated,” which was composed mainly of Conversos.[65] Although there is no direct evidence that Loyola himself was a Marrano, according to “Lo Judeo Conversos en Espna Y America” (Jewish Conversos in Spain and America), Loyola is a typical Converso name.[66] As revealed by Robert Maryks, in The Jesuit Order as a Synagogue of Jews, Loyola’s successor Diego Laynez was a Marrano, as were many Jesuit leaders who came after him.[67] In fact, Marranos increased in numbers within Christian orders to the point where the papacy imposed “purity of blood” laws, placing restrictions on the entrance of New Christians to institutions like the Jesuits. Jesuits believed that Joachim of Fiore had prophesied the coming of their society.[68] By his own admission, Loyola, who was a nobleman who had a military background, modeled his new order on the Templars, resurrecting the ideals of the warrior-monk.[69] Seven years after papal approbation of the Society, the Inquisitor of Rome was still accusing Jesuits of being Illuminati, sodomites, heretics, and abusers of the confessional.[70] He expressed his hope that Loyola “unless worldly considerations interfered with a righteous judgment” would be burned at the stake.[71]

In 1554, Loyola named Francis Borgia (1510 – 1572), a great-grandson of Pope Alexander VI, commissary general of the Spanish provinces, who was also eventually chosen general of the society in 1565, and canonized in 1670 by Pope Clement X. Borgia became a caballero (“knight”) of the Order of Santiago in 1540, while some of his brothers were caballeros of Santiago and of the Valencian Order of Montesa, who regarded themselves as Templars.[72] Francis Borgia’s brother, Don Pedro Luis Galceran de Borgia, who was arrested on charges of sodomy in 1572, was a Grand Master of the Order of Montesa, whose members considered themselves Templars.[73] Francis’ successes during the period 1565-1572 were such that he has been called the society’s second founder.[74] He established a new province in Poland, new colleges in France and initiated Jesuit missionary work in the Americas. In 1565 and 1566 he founded the missions of Florida, New Spain, and Peru. His emissaries visited Brazil, India and Japan.

In 1565, Borgia, as the newly elected Superior General, sent a group of Jesuits with the army that was put together to relieve Malta from the Great Siege. As Emanuel Buttigieg indicated, the Jesuits and the military-religious Order of Malta, held “a relationship characterized by shared aims and extensive co-operation, as well as by highly critical voices from within the Order of Malta at the perceived over-bearing influence.”[75] Originally known as the Order of Knights of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem, or Knights Hospitaller, they were a medieval Catholic military order, who inherited the wealth and properties of the Templars after that order was disbanded. It was headquartered variously in the Kingdom of Jerusalem, Rhodes and Malta, until it became known by its current name. After seven years of moving from place to place in Europe, the knights gained fixed quarters in 1530 when Charles I of Spain, as King of Sicily, gave them Malta.

Despite intense opposition in the Curia, it was Cardinal Gasparo Contarini (1483 – 1542) who succeeded in convincing Pope Paul III to approve the Society of Jesus, and he is in part responsible for the bull Regimini militantis ecclesiae.[76] In Italy, Loyola and his followers were most warmly welcomed by a group influenced by the humanistic movement, who are sometimes referred to as “the Catholic evangelicals” or the Spirituali, of which Contarini was a member.[77] The Spirituali were the leaders of the movement for reform within the Roman church, who took many of their ideas from older Catholic texts, but certainly found inspiration in the Protestant Reformation, especially Calvinism. The Spirituali included Cardinal Jacopo Sadoleto (1477 – 1547), Cardinal Reginald Pole (1500 – 1558), Italian poet Vittoria Colonna, and her friend, the artist Michelangelo. Pietro Bembo, Luigi Alamanni, Baldassare Castiglione and Marguerite de Navarre were among Colonna’s literary friends. Pietro Bembo (1470 – 1547) was an Italian scholar, poet who had a love affair with Lucrezia Borgia. Bembo accompanied Giulio de’ Medici to Rome, where he was soon after appointed Latin secretary to Pope Leo X. In 1514, he became a member of the Knights Hospitaller.[78] In 1542, Bembo become a cardinal after being named by Pope Paul III.

Reginald Pole was an English cardinal of the Catholic Church and the last Catholic Archbishop of Canterbury, then papal legate to Mary Tudor’s England. Assisted by Bishop Edward Foxe (c. 1496 – 1538), Pole represented Henry VIII in Paris in 1529, researching general opinions among theologians of the Sorbonne about the annulment of Henry’s marriage with Catherine of Aragon, so he could marry his mistress Anne Boleyn.[79] Cranmer, who was Pole’s successor as Archbishop of Canterbury, along with Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, the king’s Lord Chancellor, Thomas Cromwell, Richard Rich, and Thomas More, the author of Utopia, all figured prominently in Henry VIII’s administration.

Towards the end of 1529, an Englishman, Richard Croke (c. 1489 – 1558), a follower of Erasmus of Rotterdam, travelled to Venice on a secret mission, which seems to have been the idea of Cranmer, who had proposed to Henry VIII that he should consult canonist lawyers and leading Jewish rabbis as to the legality of his proposed divorce.[80] Croke consulted the leading theologian of Venice, expert in Hebrew studies and in touch with Jewish scholars, the Franciscan friar Francesco Giorgi (1466 – 1540), one of the most famous of the Italian Christian Cabalists, as the author of De harmonia mundi. As a member of the patrician Zorzi family, Giorgi had contacts with Venetian government circles as Contarini, and was entrusted with missions of number of delicate missions.[81]

“Giorgi’s Cabalism,” explained Frances Yates, “though primarily inspired by Pico, had been enriched by the new waves of Hebrew studies of which Venice, with its renowned Jewish community was an important centre.”[82] Like Pico, he saw correspondences between the Kabbalah and the teachings of the Hermes Trismegistus, which he lent a Christian interpretation. These influences were integrated into Giorgi’s Neoplatonism in which was included the whole tradition of Pythagoro-Platonic numerology, even of Vitruvian theory of architecture, which, for Giorgi was connected with the Temple of Solomon.[83] Giorgi was also briefly in contact with the famous sorcerer Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa.[84]

As Yates pointed out, the mission to Venice to consult with its Jewish rabbis and Kabbalists was an odd maneuver considering that Jews were not allowed in England at the time.[85] The affair ultimately led to the English Reformation and the establishment of the Church England, which separated itself from the Catholic Church in Rome. Garter knight Thomas Cromwell (c. 1485 – 1540), whom Pole regarded as an emissary of Satan, was one of the strongest and most powerful advocates of the English Reformation. He helped to engineer an annulment of the king’s marriage to Queen Catherine so that Henry could lawfully marry Anne Boleyn. Henry failed to obtain the Pope Clement’s approval for the annulment in 1534. In response, Parliament endorsed the king’s claim to be Supreme Head of the Church of England, giving him the authority to annul his own marriage.

[1] Stefanie Beth Siegmund. The Medici State and the Ghetto of Florence: The Construction of an Early Modern Jewish Community (Stanford University Press, 2006), p. 446 n. 37.

[2] Ralph Oppenhejm. Spain in the looking-glass, trans. K. John (McBride: New York, 1956) p. 54; cited in D. Lazzeri, F. Nicoli, Y. Zhang. “Secret hand gestures in paintings.” Acta Biomed (December, 2019). Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7233791/

[3] Charles Garcia. “Was Columbus secretly a Jew?” CNN (May 24, 2012). Retrieved from https://edition.cnn.com/2012/05/20/opinion/garcia-columbus-jewish/index.html; Meyer Kayserling. “America, The Discovery of.” Jewish Encyclopedia (1906). Retrieved from https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/1385-america-the-discovery-of

[4] Cecil Roth. History of the Marranos (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1932), p. 271.

[5] Ibid.

[6] Ezer Kahanoff. “On Marranos and Sabbateans: A Reexamination of Charismatic Religiosity – Its Roots, Its Place and Its Significance in the Life of the Western Sephardi Diaspora.” כתב עת לעיון ומחקר (Journal for Research and Research), vol. 8.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Joachin Prinz. The Secret Jews (New York: Random House, 1973) p. 5.

[9] Al Imran 3: 72.

[10] Julio-Inigues de Medrano. La Silva Curiosa. (Paris Orry, 1608), pp. 156-157, with the following explanation: “This letter following was found in the archives of Toledo by the Hermit of Salamanca, (while) searching the ancient records of the kingdoms of Spain; and as it is expressive and remarkable, I wish to write it here.”

[11] Samuel Usque. Consolation for the Tributations of Israel, trans. A.M. Cohen (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1965), p. 193; cited in Jerome Friedman. “The Reformation in Alien Eyes: Jewish Perceptions of Christian Troubles.” The Sixteenth Century Journal, Vol. 14, No. 1 (Spring, 1983), p. 30.

[12] The Menorah, Volumes 20-23, (Intercollegiate Menorah Association, 1932), p. 163; Vicente Blasco Ibáñez. The Borgias: or, At the feet of Venus (P. Dutton & Co. Inc., 1930), p. 242, 313; Sarah Bradford. Lucrezia Borgia: Life, Love and Death in Renaissance Italy.

[13] Moshe Idel. Kabbalah: New Perspectives (New Haven: Yale UP, 1988).

[14] Ziyyur. quoted from Moshe Idel. “Jewish Kabbalah and Platonism in the Middle Ages and Renaissance,” Neoplatonism and Jewish though, p. 333

[15] Fabrizio Lelli. “Hermes Among the Jews: Hermetica as Hebraica from Antiquity to the Renaissance.” Magic, Ritual, and Witchcraft, University of Pennsylvania Press, Volume 2, Number 2, Winter 2007, pp. 133.

[16] Mazref la-Hokhmah, chap. 25, quoted from Idel, “Jewish Kabbalah and Platonism in the Middle Ages and Renaissance,” Neoplatonism and Jewish though, p. 336.

[17] Hanegraaff, Wouter. Esotericism and the Academy: Rejected Knowledge in Western Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), p. 38.

[18] Jean Seznec. The Survival of the Pagan Gods: The Mythological Tradition and its Place in Renaissance

Humanism and Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1972), p. 57.

[19] Baigent, Michael, & Leigh, Richard. The Elixir and the Stone: The Traditions of Magic and Alchemy

(Middlesex, England: Viking, 1997), p. 38-39.

[20] Ibid., p. 77.

[21] Ibid.

[22] “The History of the Order of the Fleur-de-Lys.” Retrieved from https://www.orderofthefleurdelys.org.uk/order-history/

[23] Natalie Jayne Goodison. Introducing the Medieval Swan (University of Wales Press, 2022).

[24] “The History of the Order of the Fleur-de-Lys.” Retrieved from https://www.orderofthefleurdelys.org.uk/order-history/

[25] “Rene I King of Jerusalem and the 2 Sicilies.” The Order of the Fleur de Lys. Retrieved from https://www.orderofthefleurdelys.org.uk/order-history/rene-i-king-of-jerusalem-and-the-2-sicilies/

[26] “The History of the Order of the Fleur-de-Lys.”

[27] “Cosimo de Medici and the Sforzas.” Retrieved from

https://www.orderofthefleurdelys.org.uk/order-history/cosimo-de-medici-and-the-sforzas/

[28] John Plummer. The Hours of Catherine of Cleves (New York, George Braziller, 1966).

[29] Franco Pratesi. “Italian Cards - New Discoveries.” The Playing-Card, 18, 1, 2 (1989), pp. 28–32, 33–38.

[30] Edward Gelles. The Jewish Journey: A Passage through European History (The Radcliffe Press, 2016), p. 154.

[31] Erol Araf. “Exploring the Jewish roots of Leonardo da Vinci.” Jerusalem Post (October 16, 2019). Retrieved from https://www.jpost.com/opinion/exploring-the-jewish-roots-of-leonardo-da-vinci-604860

[32] Richard Gottheil & Isaac Broydé. “Jehiel of Pisa.” Jewish Encyclopedia.

[33] Tom Kington. “Leonardo da Vinci experts identify painting as lost Isabella D'Este portrait.” The Guardian (October 4, 2013). Retrieved from https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/oct/04/leonardo-da-vinci-lost-portrait-isabella-deste

[34] Stefanie Beth Siegmund. The Medici State and the Ghetto of Florence: The Construction of an Early Modern Jewish Community (Stanford University Press, 2006), p. 446 n. 37.

[35] Baigent, Leigh & Lincoln. Holy Blood, Holy Grail.

[36] Edgar Leroy. Nostradamus: Ses origines, sa vie, son oeuvre (Jeanne Laffitte, 1993), p. 24.

[37] Peter Lemesurier. Nostradamus: The Illustrated Prophecies (O Books, 2003).

[38] Jean Bodin. De la démonomanie des sorciers.

[39] Leonie Frieda. Catherine de Medici (London: Phoenix, 2005).

[40] Max Gauna. The Rabelaisian Mythologies, (Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1996) pp. 90-91.

[41] Christopher Prendergast. A History of Modern French Literature: From the Sixteenth Century to the Twentieth Century (Princeton University Press, 2017), p. 61.

[42] Percy W. Ames. The Mirror of the Sinful Soul (London: Asher & Co., 1897), p. 42.

[43] Samuel Guichenon. Histoire généalogique de la royale Maison de Savoie justifiée par Titres, Fondations de Monastères, Manuscripts, anciens Monuments, Histoires & autres preuves autentiques (Lyon, Guillaume Barbier, 1660), p. 708. Retrieved from http://cura.free.fr/dico3/1101cn135.html

[44] Eugène Defrance. Catherine de Médicis, ses astrologues et ses magiciens envoûteurs : Documents inédits sur la diplomatie et les sciences occultes du xvie siècle (Paris, Mercure de France, 1911), p. 311.

[45] Michael Heyd. Be sober and reasonable: the critique of enthusiasm in the Seventeenth and Early Eighteenth Centuries (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1995), p. 58.

[46] Sefer Elim (Amsterdam, 1629), p. 3.

[47] Franca Trinchieri Camiz. “Music and Painting in Cardinal Del Monte's Household.” Metropolitan Museum Journal, Vol. 26 (1991), pp. 214.

[48] Mario Biagioli. “Galileo the Emblem Maker.” Isis, Vol. 81, No. 2 (June 1990), pp. 232.

[49] Diana Zahuranec. “Turin Legends: Royal Alchemy.” (August 23, 2015). Retrieved from https://dianazahuranec.com/2015/08/23/turin-legends-royal-alchemy/

[50] Martin Luther. On the Jews and Their Lies, cited in Robert Michael. “Luther, Luther Scholars, and the Jews.” Encounter 46: 4 (Autumn 1985), pp. 343–344.

[51] Cis van Heertum. Philosophia Symbolica: Johann Reuchlin and the Kabbalah (Amsterdam, Netherlands: Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica, 2005).

[52] Gotthard Deutsch & Frederick T. Haneman. “Reuchlin, Johann von.” Jewish Encyclopedia, (1906).

[53] “Luther, Martin.” Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd Edition, Volume 13, (Detroit, New York and others, 2007).

[54] “Martin Luther (1483-1546).” Jewish Response to Anti-Semitism. Retrieved from http://www.jewishresponse.com/blog/client/page.cfm/Martin-Luther

[55] Usque. Consolation for the Tributations of Israel, p. 195; cited in Friedman. “The Reformation in Alien Eyes,” p. 30.

[56] Cited in Jerome Friedman. “The Reformation in Alien Eyes,” p. 32.

[57] H.H. Ben-Sasson, “The Reformation in Contemporary Jewish Eyes,” in: PIASH, 4 (1970); S.W. Baron, in: Diogenes, 16, no. 61 (1968), 32–51; “Reformation,” Jewish Virtual Library.

[58] Ibid.

[59] Newman. Jewish Influences on Christian Reform Movements, p. 625.

[60] “Letter From Paracelsus to Erasmus.” Prov Med J Retrosp Med Sci. 7 (164): 142.

[61] Karl Engel. Faust-Schriften vom 16. Jahrhundert bis Mitte 1884 (1885), pp. 2-4.

[62] Leo Ruickbie. Faustus: The Life and Times of a Renaissance Magician (Gloucestershire: The History Press, 2009).

[63] Michael Haag. The Templars. The History & the Myth (Profile Books, 2008), p. 257.

[64] “Trent, Council of” in F. L. Cross, (ed.) The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (Oxford University Press, 2005).

[65] Kahanoff. “On Marranos and Sabbateans.”

[66] Antonio Domingues Ortiz (Ediciones ISTMOS: Madrid). Retrieved from http://www.amijewish.info/crypto-names2.html

[67] Robert A. Maryks. The Jesuit Order as a Synagogue of Jews (Leiden: Brill, 2009).

[68] Marjorie Reeves. Joachim of Fiore and the Prophetic Future (New York: Sutton Publishing, 1999).

[69] Baigent & Leigh. The Temple and the Lodge (New York: Arcade Publishing, 1989).

[70] Pietro Tacchi Venturi. Storia della Compagnia di Gesù in Italia, 5 vols (Rome: La Cività Cattolica, 1950), I.2:278–81; cited in Barton T. Geger, S.J. The First First Companions: The Continuing Impact of the Men Who Left Ignatius. Seminar on Jesuit Spirituality, 44/2, Summer 2012, p. 18.

[71] Paul Van Dyke. Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits (C. Scribner’s Sons, 1926), p. 128.

[72] “Enique Garcia Hernan. The Borgia redeemed? The Life and work of St. Francis Borgia (1510-1572)” The Ninth Portsmouth. Ramon Perez de Ayala Lecture on Spanish Civilisation. p. 18.

[73] E. William Monter. Frontiers of Heresy: The Spanish Inquisition from the Basque Lands to Sicily (Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 134.

[74] “The Borgia who became a Jesuit in secret.” Catholic Herald (October 10, 2012).

[75] Emanuel Buttigieg. “Knights, Jesuits, Carnival and the Inquisition in Seventeenth-Century Malta.” The Historial Journal, 55:3 (September 2012), p. 572.

[76] John W. O’Malley, S.J. “The Jesuits, St. Ignatius, and the Counter Reformation.” Studies in the Spirituality of the Jesuits. Vol. XIV, n. 1 (January 1982).

[77] Ibid.

[78] Francesco Bonazzi. Elenco dei Cavalieri del S.M. Ordine di S. Giovanni di Gerusalemme, 1136-1713 (in Italian) (Naples: Libreria Detken & Rocholl, 1897). p. 37.

[79] “Pole, Reginald.” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press.

[80] Frances Yates. The Occult Philosophy of the Elizabethan Age (London & New York: Routledge, 2001), p. 36.

[81] Franz Dittrich. Gasparo Contarini 1483-1542 (Nieuwkoop, 1972), p. 456; Yates. The Occult Philosophy of the Elizabethan Age, p. 35; Jutta Gisela Sperling. Convents and the Body Politic in Late Renaissance Venice (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), p. 77.

[82] Yates. The Occult Philosophy of the Elizabethan Age, p. 33.

[83] Ibid., p. 34.

[84] Ibid., p. 46.

[85] Yates. The Occult Philosophy of the Elizabethan Age, p. 37.