Eleventh International Conference on The Image

Abstract

One of the most enigmatic peculiarities of seventeenth and eighteenth century Roman Catholicism in general, and Central European Baroque monasticism in particular is a fascination with Christian adaptations of the Jewish mystical tradition and its practices. Visual evidence of this phenomenon includes chronostica, gematria, micrography, notarikon, labyrinthi cubici and amulets with Hebrew inscriptions. Such artifacts are of interest because they comprise, in the illustrations and diagrams found in books and manuscripts of the period and in talismanic objects, the visual manifestation of the Roman Catholic engagement with Christian Cabala. Distinctively Jewish literary and visual forms penetrated elite cultural habits of display and celebration because they formed part of the arsenal of prestige markers in Baroque Catholic Europe. Esoteric knowledge in a variety of forms absorbed the imaginations of secular scholars and magnates and of the prelates and clergy who adopted their cultural and intellectual proclivities and emulated their sumptuous style of life. This paper also examines the principal sources of information about Christian Cabala in the Central European Baroque milieu: the writings about Jews by the Czech-Spanish Prague-based polymath Juan Caramuel de Lobkowicz (1606-1682) and the work of Jesuits Athanasias Kircher and Jan Kwiatkiewicz.