Allison P. Coudert. The Impact of the Kabbalah in the Seventeenth Century: The Life and Thought of Francis Mercury van Helmont (1614–98). Brill's Series in Jewish Studies. Leiden: Brill, 1999. xx, 418 pp.

Abstract

Allison Coudert is not the first historian to underscore the importance of the seventeenth century as a critical moment in the history of Jewish-Christian relations in Western civilization. Scholars engaged in Spinoza's thought have focused for some time now on the rich converso culture of Amsterdam and its mediating role between Judaism and Christianity.1. I refer here generally to the many volumes edited and written by Richard Popkin, Yosef Kaplan, David Katz, E. G. E. Van der Wall, and many others. More recently, the messiahship of Shabbetai Zevi and the crisis his apostasy precipitated in the Jewish world have been scrutinized within the broader context of Jewish-Christian interactions.2. See, for example, the work of Yosef Kaplan, Jacob Barnai, and Elishevah Carlebach. Coudert is the first, however, to study closely the circle of Christian thinkers and their fascination with the Kabbalah at the court of Sulzbach, especially Francis Mercury Van Helmont, the son of a famous Paracelsian physician, and his close colleague, Christian Knorr von Rosenroth, the compiler of the greatest Latin collection of Kabbalist writings ever published, the Kabbala denudata.