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Enochic Studies in the 1400s--Works and Authors

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Overview

The interest in Enochic Studies first developed in 15th-century Italy in esoteric circles during the Renaissance. In 1460 Cosimo de' Medici acquired the mss of the Corpus Hermeticum and in 1463 Marsilio Ficino completed its first translation. The Corpus Hermeticum, collected in the 11th century by Michael Psellos, was seen as a compendium of the most ancient human wisdom and was attributed to Hermes Trismegistus, who in turn was associated or identified with Enoch.

The "Christian Cabalists" were the first ones who actively tried to recover the wisdom of Enoch and his "lost" book(s). Giovanni Pico della Mirandola claimed that he had it as he possessed the "seventy secret books of Ezra." What Pico had was actually a copy of Menahem Recanati's cabalistic commentary. Pico commissioned a Latin translation of Recanati's work, that was completed in 1486 by Guglielmo Raimondo Moncada (Flavius Mithridates).

While the Christian Cabalists were more scholarly-oriented toward the continuous search for manuscript evidence, other intellectuals were more engaged in magical and visionary experiences. In the 1480s, humanist Ludovico Lazzarelli, also a translator of the Corpus Hermeticum, endorsed Giovanni "Mercurio" da Correggio as a prophet and messiah. Like Lazzarelli, other humanists of the time, such as Carlo Sosenna and the Jewish scholar Abraham Farissol, report that Giovanni da Correggio claimed to be the "Young Hermes," the son of Hermes Trismegistus, Methuselah and Enoch. On Palm Sunday, 11 April 1484 Correggio entered the city of Rome, riding on a white donkey in imitation of Jesus, surrounded by his family and disciples, claiming to be "the angel of wisdom," "Poimandres" (or Pimander, a Hermetic manifestation of the mind of God), and "the most perfect manifestation of Jesus Christ." ("Ego Joannes Mercurius de Corigio, sapientiae angelus Pimanderque in summo ac maximo spiritus Jesu Chrisi excessu, hanc aquam regni pro paucis, sic super omnes magna voce evangelizo"). Acting as a sort of Enoch redivivus, Lazzarelli published in 1490 an Epistula Enoch in support of Giovanni da Correggio.

In 1494 Johannes Reuchlin also mentioned the Book of Enoch in De Verbo mirifico. He did it in association with the books of Solomon, which seems to indicate some familiarity with Ethiopian traditions he may have acquired in Rome where since 1479 under Sixtus IV a group of Ethiopian pilgrims had settled at the church of St. Stephen of Abyssinians.

@2014 Gabriele Boccaccini, University of Michigan