Inferno, Purgatory, and Gehinnom: Shared Cosmographic Spaces in Italian-Jewish Descriptions of Hell

Abstract

This article addresses the explicit utilization of Christian discourse about hell and purgatory within the writings of sixteenth-century Italian Jewry. The vast majority of Jewish texts about hell (gehinnom) from the period ignore Christian discourse on the topic or only allude to it obliquely. Three unpublished Hebrew sources, two of them drawn from informal marginalia, demonstrate a more open approach, in which the infernal cosmography and terminology of Christianity are consciously and explicitly appropriated. These sources not only serve as important case studies for Jewish understandings of hell during the period but also can shed broader light on the types of cultural maneuvering that characterized Jewish cultural life in the Christian milieu of Cinquecento Italy.

Full text

Inferno, Purgatory, and Gehinnom:
Shared Cosmographic Spaces in Italian-Jewish
Descriptions of Hell
AVI KALLENBACH ,Bar-Ilan University, Israel
This article addresses the explicit utilization of Christian discourse about hell and purgatory within
the writings of sixteenth-century Italian Jewry. The vast majority of Jewish texts about hell
(gehinnom) from the period ignore Christian discourse on the topic or only allude to it obliquely.
Three unpublished Hebrew sources, two of them drawn from informal marginalia, demonstrate a
more open approach, in which the infernal cosmography and terminology of Christianity are
consciously and explicitly appropriated. These sources not only serve as important case studies for
Jewish understandings of hell during the period but also can shed broader light on the types of cultural
maneuvering that characterized Jewish cultural life in the Christian milieu of Cinquecento Italy.
INTRODUCTION
THOUGH THE JEWS and Christians of early modern Italy had much to disagree
about, the existence of hell was broadly a matter of consensus. Scholars and
theologians of both religions believed that sinners would receive their just
deserts in an infernal afterlife, often envisioning it as a subterranean realm of
fiery tortures. Both faiths consigned some sinners to damnation and others to
temporary purgation, and both faiths expended no small efforts to discussing
the dimensions and demarcations of this underworld, whether it be in
Scholastic treatises of theology, kabbalistic homilies, or imaginative poems.
1
My thanks to Professor Alessandro Guetta and Eugene Matanky for their insightful commentsand
corrections.Funding for this research was provided by Bar-Ilan University’s presidentialscholarship.
1
For general discussions of the Christian discourse on hell and purgatory in early modern
Europe, often with a focus on the impact of the Reformation and the status of purgatory in
particular, see, for instance, Delumeau, 373–400; Camporesi; Eire; Marshall; Malý; and
Tingle. Next to nothing has been written about the Jewish views of hell during this period.
See, however, Altmann. On early modern controversies regarding animal reincarnation—
regarded by some kabbalists as a far more severe and far more interesting punishment than
afire-and-brimstone hell—see Ruderman, 1988a, 121–138; and Ogren.
Renaissance Quarterly 77 (2024): 623–57 © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Cambridge
University Press on behalf of Renaissance Society of America. This is an Open Access article,
distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and
reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited.
doi: 10.1017/rqx.2024.107
https://doi.org/10.1017/rqx.2024.107 Published online by Cambridge University Press

The contours and imagery of inferno and purgatory of Western Christianity,
on the one hand, and the gehinnom of Judaism, on the other, are
extremely similar, distinguished mostly by small theological contentions and
the identities and religious affiliations of the souls consigned to torture in the
hereafter.
Though the significance and extent of it are debated, there is little doubt that
the Jews of early modern Italy interacted with and participated in the culture
and literature of their Christian neighbors. They were native speakers of Italian
dialects and thus could easily converse with Christians. Moreover, they could
read texts in Latin and Italian, even quoting these in their own works written in
Hebrew. Inasmuch as the issue of hell is concerned, however, quotations
of Christian texts or ideas are scarce. Theological and mythical discussions of
hell in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by kabbalists such as
Menahem Azaria da Fano (1548–1620) and his student Aaron Berachia da
Modena (d. 1639) leave little to no impression of the Christian discussions
of the issue from the period.
2
Likewise, the various poetic portrayals of hell
(and the afterlife in general), from the medieval Immanuel of Rome
(ca. 1261–1335) to the seventeenth-century Moses Zacuto (ca. 1625–97),
seem intent on omitting any mention of or allusion to the literary achievements
of Dante.
3
On the surface, the marked presence of hell in the culture and
discourse of early modern Italy—be it the Scholastic commentaries on
Dante’sCommedia, the Catholic interest in providing precise measurements,
descriptions, and quantifications of hell, or the Reformation controversy regarding
purgatory’sexistence—furnished little material for Jewish discussions of the very
same topic. Though signs of influence may be discerned, rarely does one find this
manifesting as explicit acknowledgment.
This general silence seems to be borne less of ignorance and more of
intentional acts of omission. While the Jewish literature of the period is often
in dialogue with Christian texts, such dialogue did not always take place
explicitly. Italian Jewry was a minority culture, desperately seeking to assert
its cultural superiority over an often hostile Christian majority, and the use
of non-Jewish sources could prove to be a delicate issue, with missteps
2
Fano, fols. 25
v
–34
r
; Modena, fols. 108
r
–111
r
(“Siftei Renanot”39–41). On the latter, see
Bar-Levav.
3
For broad overviews of Immanuel of Rome’s poem Heaven and Hell and its relationship to
Dante’s works, see Gollancz; Cassuto; Roth, 86–110; and Fishkin. On Zacuto, see Zacuto; and
Andreatta. Another imitation of Dante—Moses Rieti’sMiqdash Me’at—focuses on Paradiso
instead of Inferno and Purgatorio, is clearly indebted to Dante, and even alludes to him briefly.
See Bergman, Guetta, and Scheindlin. For overviews of Dante’s presence and influence in the
literature of Italian Jewry, see Salah; and Guetta, 2019.
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occasionally provoking internal censure or protest.
4
Moreover, certain ideas,
concepts, and texts were more congenial to Jewish adoption than others. It is,
after all, one thing to imitate or draw inspiration from a Christian portrayal of
hell; it is something else altogether to quote one, implicitly conferring upon its
writer the status of an auctor.
5
If one accepts Robert Bonfil’s contention that Jews
in Renaissance Italy engaged with the contents of Christian culture inasmuch as
they “could be considered neutral”and “perceived as different from, or better yet,
opposed to Christian identity,”one may perhaps understand the general
reluctance to acknowledge non-Jewish discussions of hell which were naturally
colored by the deeply theological concerns of the Christian religion.
6
Nevertheless, isolated islands of acknowledgment do crop out of this sea of
silence. The evidence is admittedly scarce, but the fact remains that at least
some Jewish writers, seeking to better understand the nature of hell and wishing
to shed light on the ancient Jewish texts that described it, did gaze across the
religious divide. The present article is dedicated to an exploration of three
instances of this phenomenon—explicit attempts to interpret gehinnom in
light of Christian hell and purgatory.
The purpose of the present study is threefold: 1) to explicate new sources for
the study of the cultural history of Italian Jewry in the early modern era; 2) to
offer one of the few studies of Jewish beliefs about hell in the early modern
period; and 3) to probe the contexts and conditions that made explicit acknowl-
edgment, and more importantly appropriation, of Christian notions about hell
possible. What precisely motivated the individuals discussed in this article to
quote Christian texts about hell? Why do they feel comfortable importing
the Christian structure of hell into their theological discussions while other
theological aspects of Christianity are happily ignored? What kinds of texts
do they quote? And why do they write about these subjects in the specific con-
texts they do? The answers to these questions can better shed important light on
how hell was envisioned by Jewish writers and thinkers living in
Counter-Reformation Italy as well as help illuminate the dynamics of Jewish
culture in early modern Italy and the way Jewish scholars navigated the use
of Christian beliefs and sources in their own writings and thought.
4
The case of the young preacher David dal Bene represents an interesting example of the
kind of outcry the quotation of non-Jewish sources or ideas in religious contexts could elicit.
See Kaufmann. Arguably, the controversy surrounding Azariah de Rossi’sMe’or Eynayim was at
least partly inspired by his use of non-Jewish sources. See, however, Bonfil, 1983.
5
See Salah; and Guetta, 2019.
6
Bonfil, 1994, 151. For further discussions of the relationship between Jewish thought and
the culture of the Renaissance (and the use of non-Jewish sources in Jewish texts more broadly),
see, for instance, Roth; Tirosh-Rothschild, 1988; Tirosh-Rothschild, 1991, 64–74; Lesley;
Busi; Ruderman, 1988b; Shear; Guetta; and Savy, 299–306.
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HELL AND ITS REALMS IN THE JEWISH TRADITION
Jewish literature, from antiquity to the early modern era, has had much to say
about the nature, function, and makeup of gehinnom. While it was rare to find
an entire book dedicated to the subject, hell crops up in several central Jewish
texts. The Talmud, kabbalistic works, ethical literature, and medieval theological
tracts all had somethingto say about hell, ranging from the briefest of mentions to
lengthy schematic mappings or detailed theological discussions. Many works con-
taining discussions of gehinnom had been printed by the sixteenth century and
were thus widely accessible, furnishing scholars and laypeople alike with a rich
and diverse literature about the infernal. To name just two examples: the
Zohar, the near-canonical text of Kabbalah—printed in two competing editions
in the mid-sixteenth century—is peppered with dozens of mythical descriptions
of hell as well as several exhaustive lists of hell’s various compartments.
7
Likewise,
Moses Nachmanides’s (ca. 1194–1270) Sha‘ar ha-Gemul—a theological work
about the immortality of the soul and the nature of divine reward and
punishments, printed three times in the sixteenth century
8
—includes a dedicated
section on the nature and theology of hell.
9
A full account of the development of gehinnom in the Jewish tradition is
certainly beyond the scope of this study; nevertheless, a cursory overview of
the trends arising from a wide range of sources may prove a helpful backdrop
for appreciating the unique rapprochement between Jewish and Christian
beliefs that these sources seek to effect.
10
In particular, it will be shown that
many Jewish sources treated hell as a specific and real location and also
commonly divided it into distinct parts, each dedicated to a different degree
of punishment—trends that ran parallel to those taking place in Christian
theology during the same period.
7
The Zohar is a collection of Hebrew and Aramaic texts composed in thirteenth-century
Castile, but pseudo-epigraphically attributed to the second-century sage Rabbi Shimon Bar
Yochai. The literature remained diverse and fluid up until the mid-sixteenth century, when
it began to be standardized through printing. It remains to this day the semi-canonical text
of Jewish Kabbalah. For overviews of the work and its reception, see Scholem, 1941, 156–
245; Lachover and Tishby; Arthur Green’s introduction in Matt, 1:xxxi–lxxxi; Huss; and
Abrams, 224–438. All references to the Zohar in this article refer to the printed editions and
not to medieval recensions or microforms. The two competing editions of the Zohar were
printed in Cremona (1558) and Mantua (1558–60).
8
Printed as a standalone work in Ferrara in 1556. It was printed as part of Nachmanides’s
legal work on burial and mourning, Torat ha-Adam, in 1518 (Constantinople) and 1595
(Venice).
9
See Feldman, 290–300.
10
Broad overviews, covering multiple periods, include Samuel; Bronner; and Beavis et al.
Scholarship pertaining to specific periods or texts will be quoted in subsequent notes.
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Already in antiquity, rabbinic texts treated gehinnom as a physical locum.
11
Though some traditions place hell on another plane of existence,
12
in most cases
it is incorporated seamlessly into the cosmography of the world.
13
It is described
as a massive subterranean chamber (often quantified with precise
measurements) filled with fire, ice, and other tortures.
14
Moreover, it can be
physically entered not just through death but via material terrestrial openings.
15
To be sure, there have been many attempts in Jewish history to allegorize such
physical descriptions. In the Middle Ages, philosophers with more rationalistic
tendencies were loath to take seriously the notion of gehinnom as a real
location, preferring to cast the mythology of hell as an elaborate allegory.
16
That being said, several medieval writers—Saadia Gaon (882–942),
Nachmanides, and Hasdai Crescas (1340–1411), to name just a few prominent
examples—explicitly emphasize that gehinnom is a distinct and concrete
realm.
17
Besides abstract discussions of hell from antiquity to the Middle
Ages and into the early modern era, one finds mythical, poetic, and
cosmographical attempts to describe hell in vivid detail—reinforcing the notion
of gehinnom as a material reality.
18
Such descriptions are especially prevalent
and colorful in the Zohar, as mentioned above.
Gehinnom was, however, rarely treated as a single undifferentiated location,
and there is a long history of dividing it into distinct madorim—literally,
“dwelling places”for the deceased. Such demarcations are evident already in
antiquity. The number seven has been an enduring commonplace—likely an
11
For overviews of the rabbinic view of gehinnom as reflected by talmudic and midrashic
texts from antiquity and the early Middle Ages, see Cohn-Sherbok; Milikowsky; Bronner,
89–92; and Bernstein, 243–81.
12
See, e.g., Babylonian Talmud, Tamid,fol.32
v
:“Gehinnom is above the firmament;
some, however, say that is behind the Mountains of Darkness.”All translations of Talmud
are from the Soncino edition.
13
See, e.g., Babylonian Talmud, Pesahim, fol. 94
r
:“Egypt is four hundred parasangs by four
hundred, and it is one sixtieth of the size of Ethiopia . . . and Eden is one sixtieth of Gehenna;
thus the whole world compared with the Gehenna is but as a lid to the pot.”
14
Fire is near ubiquitous. For ice, see Townsend, 23–24.
15
Babylonian Talmud, Eruvin, fol. 19
r
.
16
For Maimonides’s allegorical understanding of hell, see Hyman, 80–82; Ehrlich, 2014;
and Kasher.
17
For Saadia, see Ehrlich, 2010; for Nachmanides, see Feldman, 290–300; for Crescas, see
Klein-Braslavy.
18
For a detailed cosmographical description of hell from late antiquity, see the text
described by Schäfer. For an overview of the extensive mythical descriptions of hell in the
literature of the kabbalistic Zohar, see J. Weiss. For ancient and medieval Hebrew texts that
describe a figure being given a comprehensive tour of hell, see Himmelfarb, 29–40.
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attempt at creating symmetry with the number of heavens in talmudic lore. These
seven chambers are often given names based on synonyms for the underworld
appearing in the Bible and other sources. The precise list varies from source to
source, but one famous version from the Talmud reads as follows: “[1]
Netherworld [She’ol], [2] Destruction [Avadon], [3] Pit of destruction [Be’er
Shahat], [4] Tumultuous Pit [Bor Sha’on], [5] Miry Clay [Tit ha-Yavan], [6]
Shadow of Death [Tzalmavet], and [7] the Underworld [Eretz Tahtit].”
19
An
account cited by Nachmanides supplements the seven madorim with an eighth:
the absolute nadir of hell, referred to as arqa (Aramaic for “earth”).
20
In other
accounts, arqa is understood as the general name of that realm that contains
the seven components of hell.
21
Besides distinct chambers, Jewish sources also broach the issue of different
gradations of punishment in gehinnom—including the distinction between
those subjected to temporary purgation and those eternally damned. In one
influential talmudic text, the schools of Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel debate
as to which types of sinners are eternally damned and which must simply
undergo purgation for several months.
22
In this early text, all of the
punishments seem to take place in a single, undifferentiated location—gehinnom;
naturally, however, some texts sought to coordinate the notion of distinct
gradations of punishment for different degrees of sin with the stratified structure
of hell itself. Thus, the Midrash Psalms notes that “behold! there are seven
habitations for the righteous and seven habitations for the wicked—for the wicked
according to their works and for the righteous according to their works.”
23
Likewise, in one passage of the Zohar, a detailed list is provided that assigns
19
Babylonian Talmud, Eruvin, fol. 19
r
. Technically the talmudic text designates these as
the seven “names of gehinnom,”but the list was later interpreted (or adapted) to denote distinct
chambers.
20
The name is derived from the Aramaic verse in Jeremiah 10:11: “Thus you shall say to
them: ‘The gods that have not made the heavens and the earth shall perish from the earth [arqa]
and from under these heavens.’” Nachmanides quotes several early sources in his description of
hell in his Sha‘ar ha-Gemul. The origin of the exact details about arqa is unclear.
21
This is the scheme appearing in Seder Rabba de-Bereishit in which the earth is divided into
seven worlds, one of which is arqa, containing the seven chambers of hell. See Schäfer. This
scheme is quoted by thirteenth-century Castilian kabbalist Joseph Gikatilla in his Ginat
Egoz. See Gikatilla, 243–46.
22
Babylonian Talmud, Rosh Hashanah,fols.16
v
–17
r
.Onthistextanditsparallels,see
Milikowsky; Costa. See also Babylonian Talmud, Bava Metzia,fol.58
v
:“All who descend
into Gehenna [subsequently] reascend, excepting three . . . he who commits adultery . . .
[he who] publicly shames his neighbour and [he who] fastens an evil epithet [nickname]
upon him.”Brackets in original translation.
23
Braude, 1:166.
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distinct categories of sinners to different realms of hell (e.g., “the fifth
compartment is called Sheol. Judged there: Heretics, informers, those who reject
the Torah, and those who deny the resurrection of the dead”).
24
Elsewhere in the
Zohar, however, a more binary division is evident, with special focus being placed
on two of hell’s seven chambers: avadon and she’ol.Theformer,itisargued,isa
place of eternal destruction and damnation; the latter is a place of temporary
suffering and eventual salvation.
25
Though there is far more to say on this issue, it should be evident that Jewish
discussions and ideas about hell mirror at least some of the elements of
Christian discussions taking place during the same centuries. Whether due to
their shared sources or due to cases of cross-fertilization, members of both faiths
were wont to envision hell as a concrete subterranean underworld and to specu-
late as to the gradations of punishment taking place within it.
26
Likewise,
Jewish sources, like Western Christianity in the High Middle Ages, ended up
dividing the infernal underworld into distinct realms—though, in the case of
the former, far greater emphasis was placed on the function of the two realms
of purgatory and hell.
27
But these similarities aside, there is no doubt that the
tendency of Christianity toward dogmatic formulations distinguishes it from
Judaism in this respect. As is the case with many theological issues, Jewish
discussions remained flexible and diverse. Thus, divergent approaches,
descriptions, and attempts to allegorize hell were allowed to propagate mostly
unhindered, no final word ever being issued and no major controversies ever
arising.
28
Needless to say, this contrasts sharply with the position adopted by
the Latin Church, in which the precise nature of the afterlife became an
important and even substantive tenet of faith.
24
Zohar Hadash, fol. 79
v
, in Hecker, 108. This passage is part of the zoharic text Midrash
ha-Ne‘elam on the book of Ruth, printed separately from most of the Zohar. See Lachover and
Tishby, 1:2.
25
This is based on earlier traditions. Zohar I, fol. 62
v
. All references are to the Mantua
edition, 1558–60. See also J. Weiss, 26n98.
26
On the question of Christian influence on early Jewish accounts of hell, see Lieberman,
29–56; and Himmelfarb, 127–68.
27
On the development of purgatory as distinct from hell in the Christian tradition, see Le
Goff’s famous monograph. Le Goff’s dating of purgatory’s“birth”to the relatively late twelfth
century has elicited no small amount of criticism. For an example of early criticism of Le Goff’s
thesis, and a call for a greater appreciation of the role played by popular culture, see Gurevich,
148–49. For a more recent discussion, see Watkins, 99–101.
28
As Ehrlich, 2014, puts it “Jewish thinkers in the Middle Ages held a wide range of
opinions concerning the meaning of Gehinnom, thereby perpetuating the ambiguities of the
debate on Gehinnom in ancient rabbinic literature.”
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Arguably, it is precisely this lack of systematization in the Jewish tradition
that may have tempted three Jewish writers in Cinquecento Italy to turn to
the more systematic approaches of their Christian neighbors. Two annotators
and one author incorporated the more concrete doctrines of Christianity into
their own attempts to understand Jewish descriptions of hell, as will be
explained presently.
INFERNO AND PURGATORY IN THE MARGINALIA OF
MENAHEM DA RAVENNA
Handwritten marginalia in printed books are an invaluable resource for the
study of Jewish beliefs in early modern Italy, not only providing new infor-
mation about the beliefs and scholarship of well-known individuals but also
bringing to light entirely new figures who would otherwise be lost to history.
Menahem Immanuel ibn Hanamel da Ravenna is one such figure. His only
formal literary legacy was a short legal query.
29
He compensates, however,
for this sparse literary activity with truly voluminous marginalia appended
to the margins of his printed books. The present study is the first scholarly
treatment of this figure.
The efforts of cataloguers and my own archival work have located six printed
books owned and annotated by Ravenna. Three of the books are kabbalistic
tracts (Menahem Recanati, Ta‘amei ha-Mitzvot [Constantinople, 1544],
Zohar [Cremona, 1558], Ma‘arekhet ha-Elohut [Mantua, 1558]). The other
three are a Hebrew manual of sample contracts (Le-Khol H
efetz [Venice,
1552]), an incunable copy of Joseph Albo’s philosophical work Sefer
ha-Iqarim (Soncino, 1485), and, finally, Sebastian Münster’s Aramaic-Latin
dictionary (Dictionarium Chaldaicum [Basel, 1527]). Identification is based
on Ravenna’s ownership inscription appearing on the title pages of four out
of the six books. The other two books (Zohar and Ma‘arekhet ha-Elohut) lack
title pages but can be definitively identified on the basis of handwriting and
annotation style.
Ravenna’s writings reveal next to nothing about his personal life. The
aforementioned legal query demonstrates that he maintained correspondence
with two fairly prominent sixteenth-century figures: Jewish legalist Moses
Provencal (1503–76) as well as the kabbalist Mordekhai Dato (1525–ca.
1590), both active in Northern Italy (and Mantua more specifically). In
Ravenna’snotes,onefinds two non-Jewish interlocutors quoted by name: a
Spanish diplomat named Mateo and an Italian canon, Marco Marini, who
29
The query was sent to the prominent Mantuan legalist Moses Provençal (1503–75). See
Provençal, §10, 25.
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will be discussed below. Ravenna’s style of handwriting and extensive use of
Italian in his otherwise Hebrew notes leave no doubt that he, like most of
his interlocutors, was also a Jewish Italian. Though he primarily cross-references
Hebrew books in his marginalia, he does quote several books in Latin and
Italian; he almost exclusively references printed books (as opposed to
manuscripts). He mentions the burning of the Talmud in Rome (1553) and
the Gregorian Calendar Reform (1582), and he only quotes books printed
before 1593, placing his activities in the second half of the sixteenth century.
As mentioned, one of the books owned by Ravenna was a copy of Ma‘arekhet
ha-Elohut—an uncharacteristically organized and methodical discourse on
kabbalistic theology originally penned, it seems, in Barcelona in the early
fourteenth century.
30
In this volume, the main work is dwarfed by the
voluminous commentary appearing alongside it, the work of fifteenth-century
Spanish émigré and kabbalist Judah Hayyat. Hayyat, who was commissioned to
write a commentary of the work, was less than fond of the author’s kabbalistic
doctrine and dedicated the majority of his commentary to lengthy digressions
and attempts to subvert the author’s views. Among other things, he sought to
champion the mythical, theosophical approach that had prevailed in his former
homeland of Castile—an approach that was encapsulated in the Zohar but had
yet to gain significant traction in Italy.
31
Toward the book’s end is a very short discussion of the fate of righteous
gentiles in the world to come.
32
Arguing with the author of Ma‘arekhet
ha-Elohut, and citing proof from earlier kabbalistic sources, Hayyat avers that
gentiles—no matter how righteous—simply cannot enter the garden of Eden
(i.e., paradise) and must descend into gehinnom.
33
There is, however, some
profit to the righteous gentiles’efforts. If wicked gentiles must bear the full
bruntofhellanditstortures,righteousgentilesareallowedtoresidenotin
the deepest fathoms of gehinnom but in its uppermost layer. Hayyat, who
seems to view the garden of Eden and gehinnom as existing on another plane
of existence, posits that the two realms lie one atop the other, with a thin
diaphanous barrier separating the realm of punishment from the realm of
30
The volume has been split in two and is housed in two separate collections (both of which
classify the heavily annotated book as a manuscript): Ben Zvi Institute, MS 260 and Benayahu
Collection, MS V 105. The identification of the annotator as Menahem da Ravenna, based on
incontrovertible evidence from handwriting, annotative practices, and content, is my own, in
contradistinction to the conclusions reached by Benayahu himself. See Benayahu, 791–92. On
the work more generally, see Scholem, 1945; Gottlieb and Hacker, 289–343; Elqayam, 1990;
and Elqayam, 1993.
31
On Hayyat and his commentary, see Scholem, 1945; Ogren, 139–62; and Idel, 213–16.
32
Ma‘arekhet ha-Elohut, fol. 151
r
.
33
For earlier discussions of the fates of gentiles in the afterlife, see Perry; and D. Weiss.
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reward (“for nothing but a hairsbreadth separates the garden of Eden from
gehinnom”). The righteous gentiles are thus able, from their elevated position
in gehinnom, to derive an iota of pleasure from the light of paradise, even if they
are barred from actually entering it. Hayyat—who was expelled with his
coreligionists from Spain and underwent great hardships during his arduous
journey to Italy—concludes emphatically: “God forbid they should be in the
garden of Eden! For no man with a foreskin shall benefit from it!”
34
This is all the fifteenth-century Hayyat has to say on the matter, and though
he lived his entire life in Christian countries he saw no need to draw any parallels
to analogous Christian discussions of the issue. This is not at all surprising.
Besides a somewhat understandable antipathy to Christianity, evinced here by
his theological position, Hayyat, as mentioned, subscribed to the mythical
Castilian form of Kabbalah; as a result, he eschewed elaborations of Kabbalah
based on non-Jewish sources, be they philosophical or theological.
35
Menahem da Ravenna, writing just a century after Hayyat, was different in
this respect; he was willing to bestow theological mercy on the gentiles as well
as draw from their sources in order to do so. To this end, Ravenna offers an
interpretation of Hayyat’s description, effectively subverting its anti-gentile
message. Below is a translation that preserves the mise-en-page of the source text:
Ravenna’s Handwritten Annotations in
the Margin
The Printed Text of Judah Hayyat’s
Commentary (with Ravenna’s
Interlinear Annotations in Bold)
The fully righteous are in the garden of
Eden C]
The fully wicked are in the gehinnom B]
The intermediately wicked are between the
garden of Eden and gehinnom A]
There are three places for reward and
punishment: [A] is called the garden of
Eden [C] which is called paradiso; [B] is
called gehinnom which is called inferno;
[C] between the garden of Eden and
gehinnom—that is, the highest level of
gehinnom—is a place for intermediate
ones, and it is called purgatorio [A].
36
And in the book of the Zohar they said, that
that which the sages said that the nation of
the world have a portion in the world to
come, this means that they dwell in the
upper [A] layer of gehinnom [B] and from
there receive pleasure from the garden of
Eden [C] which is adjacent to it.
34
All translations are the author’s except where otherwise noted.
35
Idel, 220–26.
36
צדיקיםגמוריםבגןעדןג
רשעיםגמוריםבגיהנםב
בינונייםביןג"עלגיהנםא
ג'מקומותלשכרועונש
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The note has been added to the immediate left of the printed text of Hayyat’s
commentary. The Hebrew letters used to label the three realms in the note are
duplicated with signe-de-renvoi in the main text, matching each realm of the
afterlife with each of the realms described by Hayyat. If one takes Ravenna
seriously and applies the implications of what he is saying to Hayyat’s statement,
he seems to be taking pity onthe righteous gentiles whom Hayyat so emphatically
condemned to hell. If the righteous gentiles are in purgatory, this implies that
their tortures are fixed in duration; they may yet emerge from the underworld
and ascend to paradise. Interestingly, Hayyat conflates a three-tiered system of
reward and punishment (righteous, wicked, and intermediate) with Hayyat’s
ethnic and ethical division between Jew, righteous gentile, and wicked gentile.
More important, however, than the exact fate of righteous gentiles is the fact
that Ravenna has unabashedly adopted a thoroughly Catholic, tripartite divi-
sion of the afterlife.
37
This division of hell would have been all too familiar
to a Jew living in Italy in the aftermath of the Council of Trent, during
which bishops were enjoined to “diligently endeavour that the sound doctrine
concerning purgatory . . . be believed, maintained, taught, and every where
proclaimed by the faithful of Christ.”
38
But though Ravenna uses Catholic
vocabulary and conceptions, he buttresses this demarcation with thoroughly
Jewish prooftexts. Thus, on the top of the very same page, Ravenna quotes a
text from the Zohar. This passage was referenced above, but it is worth quoting
in full, as it represents one of the most explicit cases of a Jewish text mirroring
the Western-Christian binary between purgatory and hell:
In gehinnom there are chambers upon chambers, two, three, up to seven . . .
and whosoever contaminates himself with [his evil ways], when he arrives at
that place, he descends to gehinnom and he descends to the lowest chamber.
For there are two chambers next to each other: she’ol and avadon. He who
paradiso ' א[נק'גןעדן]ג[הנקר
inferno ב[נק'גיהנםרשע
purgatorio [ ג[ביןג"עלגיהנםהיינובמדרגההעליונהושםמקוםלבינונייםוהואנק'פורגטוריאו]א]
37
On the controversies regarding the existence of purgatory in the wake of the Reformation,
see Malý.
38
Waterworth, 1848, 233. Whether Ravenna would have been exposed to forced
conversionary sermons, some of which may haveaddressedthenatureofhell,isunclear.
Forced sermons as an institution were primarily a phenomenon within the city of Rome but
were less regularly enforced in other Italian states. See Michelson, 2016; and Michelson, 2022.
For examples of conversionary sermons in Venice and Modena, see Michelson, 2022, 109–10;
and Aron-Beller, 2020, 24, 168 respectively (note, however, that these latter examples both
date to the seventeenth century). As mentioned, Ravenna’s precise geographic whereabouts
within Italy are unclear.
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descends to she’ol is judged there and he receives his punishment and they raise
him up to another higher chamber. And [he continues to rise], stage after stage
until they raise him up [entirely]. But one who descends to avadon is never
raised up.
39
The division here between eternal damnation and temporary purgation is
indeed explicitly delineated in this zoharic passage; the congruity with the
binary division between purgatory and hell is almost too precise to ignore.
40
Nevertheless, Ravenna’s choice to focus on this passage, among several sources
within the Zohar and elsewhere, is in and of itself telling. Ravenna could easily
have discussed the seven chambers of gehinnom with not two but seven
gradations of punishment. He had ample sources for doing so (as discussed
in the previous section). Instead, he focuses on a passage that corresponds to
a simpler binary division between hell and purgatory, essentially reinforcing
the Western Christian position on the issue.
In addition to these notes, Ravenna provides important information as to the
particular circumstances that gave rise to his syncretic approach. Glued to the
aforementioned page of Ma‘arekhet ha-Elohut is a loose note in Ravenna’s hand-
writing. At its top are written instructions to insert the note at the relevant page.
Part of the note is illegible, but what can be made out reads as follows: “from
Don Marco Marino a canon of St. Antonio de Vienna [i.e., a member of the
congregation of Saint Anthony] in Padua [and he asked me in the year] 1578: in
how many places does the soul receive reward and punishment? [and I answere]
d him that they are three.”
41
Ravenna goes on to explain that he responded to
Marino’s question by quoting the aforementioned zoharic passage and defining
the biblical words avadon and she’ol as inferno and purgatorio, respectively.
Marini, who seems to have discussed the issue with Ravenna in person, “copied
[this zoharic passage] and went on his way.”
42
Ravenna adds that he later
learned that Marini had incorporated this discussion into his own book.
The canon with whom Ravenna discussed hell was no obscure figure. Marco
Marini (1542–94) was a linguist and translator of Hebrew, Aramaic, and
Arabic; over the course of his life, he served the pope as a censor of Hebrew
books and the Venetian state as secretary of correspondences with the
Middle East. His most famous work by far is Arca Noe (or in Hebrew, Tevat
Noah [Venice, 1593]), an extensive lexicon and concordance of Biblical
39
Zohar I, fol. 62
v
. The passage in question is part of a distinct zoharic stratum known as
the Tosefta. See Lachover and Tishby, 1:3.
40
On this distinction in zoharic literature and elsewhere, J. Weiss, 26, esp. n98.
41
מדוןמרקומארינוקאנוניקוס'אנטוניאודויאינהבפדאוה][לייושל"חבכמהמקומותהנפשמקבלשכר
ועונש]ואמר[תילוכיהםג'מקומ
ותהג"ע/והגיהנם/והאמצעי][אותופוראגאטוריאו .
42
והעתיקווהלךלו . Alternatively, this might mean “he translated it”in this context.
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Hebrew.
43
In his publication of this book, Marini enlisted the help of several
Jewish figures: Leon de Modena, Samuel Archivolti, and Israel Zifroni all
contributed short poems and commendations in Hebrew to the book’s paratextual
materials. It seems that Marini, like many Hebraists, also enlisted the help of
Jewish interpreters in his attempts to understand the more obscure words of the
Bible—in this case, turning to Menahem da Ravenna to help him understand
the meanings of the biblical words for the underworld, avadon and she’ol.
Marini evidently found Ravenna’s citation of the Zohar compelling—and
indeed, he does include the zoharic passages and Ravenna’sexplanationin
his Arca Noe in the relevant entries for these biblical terms (see fig. 1).
Notably, his debt to his Jewish interlocutor is never acknowledged.
It seems, then, that Ravenna’s turn to Christian conceptions of hell was tied
not only to his passive knowledge of Catholic beliefs but also by his active
engagement in dialogue with a Christian canon.
DANTE IN THE MARGINALIA OF RABBI EZRA DA FANO
If Ravenna refers only to theological commonplaces without citing any particu-
lar texts, his contemporary Rabbi Ezra da Fano (ca. 1530–1608) penned a pair
Figure 1. Marco Marini’sdefinition of the biblical word avadon. Courtesy of the National
Library of Israel.
43
On Marini, see Scotti; Parente, 171–72; and Lasagna.
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of notes that explicitly reference not just the concept of hell but a Christian
portrayal of it. Ezra da Fano was an Italian rabbi and kabbalist who lived in
Mantua and Venice intermittently.
44
He took part in the communal politics
of his day, published important Jewish classics, and instructed prominent
Jewish figures in Kabbalah. He was also a prolificscribewhocopieddozens
of manuscripts, many of them kabbalistic. Like Ravenna, he wrote almost
nothing original of his own but did append often extensive marginalia to the
manuscript books he copied and the printed books he purchased.
Five printed books with Ezra da Fano’s annotations have been identified—four
of them kabbalistic. The most impressive byfarisasetoftheMantuaeditionof
Sefer ha-Zohar (Mantua, 1558–60) bound in six volumes, four of which are
housed in the Schocken Library in Jerusalem.
45
The large uncut margins of
these quarto volumes boast a wide range of notes from both Fano himself as
well as subsequent generations of Mantuan readers and writers. Fano’s notes,
written just a few years after printing, explain the text, mark passages as interesting,
and add emendations from manuscripts and other printed editions. Occasionally,
to elucidate the more cryptic passages of the Zohar, Fano quoted midrashic and
kabbalistic books, in both print and manuscript. Though he generally restricts
himself to Jewish sources in his notes, very rarely he does reference Christian
translations or interpretations of the Bible, without offering further specification.
Indeed, among all of his notes, there are only two instances of unambiguous
references to non-Jewish figures, which will be discussed presently.
46
The first note in question appears alongside a zoharic elaboration of the
biblical story of Cain’smurderofhisbrotherAbelandhissubsequent
exile.
47
The passage speculates as to Cain’s ultimate fate, concluding that the
biblical murderer (or perhaps his soul?) was interred underground in a realm
called arqa. It will be recalled that the name arqa was associated with hell in
different Jewish texts, being designated either as the eighth and lowest of
hell’s chambers or as the name for the location of hell itself. Regardless, the
passage suggests that Cain was damned to arqa for all eternity.
Fano, writing a note in the margin, ponders as to the precise position of arqa
vis-à-vis the other chambers of gehinnom listed in traditional Jewish sources. To
this end, he envisions hell as a series of concentric circles—each circle
representing one of the seven names of hell. In this scheme, arqa constitutes
44
On his life and activities, see Benayahu; and Simonsohn, 706.
45
The four volumes are Schocken Institute for Jewish Research, RE-7-10, RE-7-12,
RE-7-14, RE-7-15. On this copy, see Benayahu, 836–41; Mayer; Abrams, 2019, 80–82;
and Kallenbach.
46
One of these two notes was transcribed by Benayahu, but with no discussion.
47
Schocken Institute, RE-7-10, fol. 54
v
.
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the eighth outer circle: “[arqa] is besides the seven places by which our rabbis called
gehinnom and it goes around them and it is the first circle.”
48
This seems to accord
with the position of Seder Rabba de-Bereishit (in contradistinction to that of
Nachmanides) which designates arqa as the locum that contains the seven
chambers of hell; Fano envisions this containment in terms of concentricity.
Arqa has been named by this zoharic text. But what are the names of the
other seven chambers of hell? Fano offers two possibilities. The first is a
non-Jewish source: “And Dante composed a book about these seven places
and in the introduction to that book you will understand [the] names of
those chambers.”
49
The second is a Jewish source: Fano mentions what rabbinic
sources have to say on the matter, “and our rabbis stated that gehinnom has
seven names Bor, Shahat, Dumah, Tit ha-Yavan, She’ol, Tzalmavet, and Eretz
Tahtit.”
50
The seven realms of hell can thus be categorized either according
to the sins enumerated by Dante or according to the infernal synonyms listed
in rabbinic texts and stemming from the Bible (see fig. 2).
Fano’s continued interest in Dante is evident just a few pages later: there he
appends a very similar note to another zoharic discussion of hell. It is the very
same zoharic passage broached by Ravenna, which distinguishes between two
major chambers of hell—avadon, the realm of the damned, and she’ol, the
realm of souls who must undergo purgation. But unlike Ravenna, who focused
on the distinction between purgation and damnation, Fano is far more inter-
ested in the general fact that both the Zohar and Dante divide hell into distinct
chambers. In this instance, Fano is more precise as to which part of Dante’s
work he is referring: “And see Dante in the Purgatorio. And at the beginning
of the introduction to the commentary of that book, you will find the parts
of terrestrial gehinnom [corresponding to] the seven parts of the world,
51
and
likewise gehinnom has seven parts”(see fig. 3).
52
Here, in other words, Fano
not only cites Dante but aligns the seven parts of gehinnom with the equivalent
realms in the Divina Commedia. These seven realms are identified, it seems, not
with the circles of inferno but with the terraces of purgatory. In this instance,
Fano does not even bother to quote rabbinic literature, and simply mentions
Dante as a source for dividing gehinnom into separate realms.
48
זהוחוץמהז'מקומותאשרכנורבותינולגיהנםו]ארקא[הולךסביבםוהיאהעגולההראשונה .
49
ודאנט"יחיברספרבאלההז'מקומותובפתיחתהספרההואתביןכלהשמותמאלההמקומותואיךקראו
אותם .
50
רבותינואמ'ז'שמותגיהנםבורשחתדומהטיטהיוןשאולצלמותארץתחת . As noted by Benayahu,
Fano is quoting a list drawn from the Zohar itself. See Zohar II, fol. 263
r
.
51
This likely refers to the seven divisions of the earth proposed by Seder Rabba de-Bereishit.
52
ועייןדאנטיבפורגאטורי]או[ובתחלתהקדמתהפירושלספרההואתמצאחלקיגהינםבארץבז'חלקי
הארץוכןגהינםז'חלקיםהם .
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Dante was no exception to the general Jewish reluctance to quote Christian
discussions about hell in their writingsduringthisperiod.Thesanguine
approach of some twentieth-century historians of Italian Jewry—producing
statements such as “Dante was widely quoted by Italian rabbis of the
Renaissance”—is simply not borne out by the evidence.
53
Although some
Figure 3. Ezra da Fano’s second marginal note about Dante. Fano’s note marked with a square.
Courtesy of the Schocken Institute in Jerusalem.
Figure 2. Ezra da Fano’sfirst marginal note about Dante. Courtesy of the Schocken Institute in
Jerusalem.
53
Sermoneta, vol. 5.
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important Italian Jewish figures did read and reference Dante, explicit
mentions of him are not abundant.
54
As suggested before, reticence about a
popular non-Jewish source need not necessarily be attributed to a lack of
interest. In the case of Dante, at least some Jews did indeed own his books
and read his works.
55
But though Dante may have been read, it may not
have always been culturally acceptable to quote him in the context of religious
writing. Fano is, in other words, an outlier.
Fano, it seems, is doing more than drawing a comparison between Jewish
visions of hell and Christian ones. Indeed, he seems to be identifying the two
accounts, and perhaps even modeling Jewish texts after Dante’s description.
The choice to portray hell as concentric circles is not unknown in Jewish
sources, but it is quite rare.
56
That Fano envisions hell as eight concentric
circles—arqa being the outer circle, encompassing seven circles from the
rabbinic list—may suggest that Dantean notions of hell’s geometric structure
served as a model (though, admittedly, both may simply have drawn from
the common imagery of the celestial spheres). That being said, it is unclear
the extent to which the Italian kabbalist is trying to incorporate the entirety
of Dante’s vision into his zoharic readings. Does Fano acknowledge the
distinction between the Inferno and Purgatorio? Or perhaps he only adopts
the Purgatorio (which he explicitly quotes) but rejects the Inferno as a
Christian invention? The notes, being extremely laconic, leave much to
the imagination, and it is hard to reach any definitive conclusions.
Regardless of these details, the very use of a literary text to discuss zoharic
cosmography is notable. Fano does not seem to be treating Dante as mere
allegory—abella menzogna—but as a factual description of the afterlife,
equivalent to the Zohar’s own sober attempts at cosmography, an approach
very much at odds with the way the Commedia was traditionally understood
during the period.
57
Could it be that Fano, unconcerned about whether or
not Dante’sCommedia constituted heresy—and cognizant of the parallels
between Dante’s multidimensional vision of the afterlife and traditional
54
Salah.
55
For evidence of Jewish ownership of copies of the Commedia, see Baruchson-Arbib, 171;
and Francesconi, 87.
56
For instance, see the cosmographical work Ma‘aseh Bereishit penned by early fourteenth-
century kabbalist David ben Judah he-Hasid. Most manuscripts of the work contain a diagram
of hell depicted as a series of concentric circles. Whether or not this diagram is original, or a later
accretion, is unclear.
57
Whether or not Dante believed himself a mystical visionary (as famously argued by
Bruno Nardi), the fact remains that the commentary tradition is firmly united in viewing
thepoemassomeformoffiction or allegory. See Nardi; Barolini, 1992, 3–20; Moeus;
Wilson; and Corbett.
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Jewish beliefs and visions—wasabletotakethepoem’s“ubiquitous truth
claims”
58
more seriously than his Christian contemporaries?
Shedding some light on the way Fano approaches the Commedia is the issue
of the precise bibliographical medium in which he accessed it. For, indeed, if
one takes Fano at face value, he is not quoting Dante at all. In both notes, Fano
references an introduction—in the first note, “the introduction to that book,”
and in the second, “at the beginning of the introduction of the commentary of
that book.”As Dante wrote no introductions or commentaries, it follows that
Fano is not, in fact, quoting the words of the Florentine poet himself, but rather
those of his later interpreters. Prose introductions to the Commedia were a
prominent feature of its fifteenth- and sixteenth-century editions. Fano may,
for instance, be referring to Christoforo Landino’s commentary edition,
which indeed begins with a succinct summary of the “Sito, forma, et misura
dell’inferno.”
59
Alternatively, he may refer to the commentary of Alessandro
Vellutello and specifically to the “descrittione”that the humanist commentator
adds as a preface to each of the three parts of the Commedia.Notably,
Vellutello’s“descrittione dell’inferno”includes striking woodcuts of each
realm of hell with their respective titles, which may very well have left an
impression on a casual reader such as Fano.
60
Whatever the case, Fano’s focus on a commentator’s introductions suggests a
more complex relationship with the work than simply that of a traditional
reader. Rather, Fano may have been a so-called non-reader. “Sustained by
paratextual information such as covers, titles, editions, woodcuts and other
illustrations that accompany the text,”he may have known of Dante and
known something about his works, but not necessarily have read the
Commedia cover to cover.
61
Indeed, if Fano wished to understand the structure
of hell without poring over lines of terza rima, the prose introductions by
Landino and Vellutello would have been invaluable tools. This being the
case, any attempt to understand Fano’s notes as offering precise alignments
between the Zohar and the Commedia might be beside the point; Fano may
have had only a passing knowledge of Dante that he casually applied in his
notes. The point is not the details but the general insight that a prominent
Christian poet described worlds already anticipated by the Zohar itself.
58
Barolini, 1990, 142.
59
First printed as Comento di Christophoro Landino fiorentino sopra la comedia di Danthe
Alighieri poeta Fiorentino (Florence, 1481). On Landino’s commentary, see Gilson, 2005,
Gilson, 2017, 24–34; and McNair, 166–200.
60
First printed as La comedia di Dante Aaligieri con la nova espositione di Alessandro Vellutello
(Venice 1544). On Vellutello’s commentary, see Procaccioli; and Gilson, 2017, 175–94.
61
Quote from Nethanel, 113–14. See also Bayard.
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THE INFERNAL COSMOGRAPHY OF ABRAHAM YAGEL
Ravenna and Fano confined their literary efforts to informal notes in the
margins of their printed books; by contrast, their contemporary Abraham
dei Gallichi Yagel (1553–ca. 1623) was a prolific writer and literatus who
made a habit of adapting and translating Christian materials for his works.
Though a doctor by profession, Yagel had wide-ranging interests in science,
philosophy, astronomy, astrology, magic, and Kabbalah. Among his works
published in his lifetime are Moshi‘aH
osim (a tract about treating the plague),
LeqahTov (a simplified Hebrew guide to Jewish faith, modeled after Casinius’s
Catholic catechism), and Eshet H
ayil (a commentary on the “woman of valor”
passage in Proverbs 31).
62
Published only in the twentieth century was his Gei
H
izayon: an account of a heavenly journey taken with his father, in which he
discusses philosophical and scientific issues with the souls of the deceased.
63
He
also penned two large encyclopedic works dedicated, among other things, to
astronomy, cosmography, Kabbalah, magic, and science—Be’er Sheva and
Beit Ya‘ar ha-Levanon, which both remain in manuscript to this day. David
Ruderman’sstudyofAbrahamYagel’s life and works has highlighted the overarch-
ing vision that guided Yagel’s efforts: his was a world dominated by parallelism,
unity, and interconnectedness. He sought to point not only to the parallels between
different layers of reality but also to the threads that united both the Jewish and
non-Jewish sciences.
64
That Yagel would seek to harmonize the Jewish and
non-Jewish visions of hell ought then not to come as a surprise.
Yagel addresses the issue of hell and its nature in two contexts within his
writings. The first, discussed at length by David Ruderman, appears in Beit
Ya‘ar ha-Levanon as part of a kabbalistic discussion about the possibility of
animal transmigration (the notion that human sinners may be punished via
reincarnation into the bodies of animals). Yagel expounds upon the idea by
making recourse to traditional kabbalistic sources. In passing, however, he
suggests that transmigration—a doctrine that the Church regarded as particu-
larly odious—may parallel the Christian notion of purgatory. In doing so, Yagel
subtly defended the Jewish notion of transmigration from Catholic objections;
transmigration, so he argued, was not altogether different from Catholic notions
of the soul’s purgation after death.
65
62
Moshi‘aH
osim was published in Venice in 1587. On LeqahTov (Venice, 1595), see
Faierstein. On Eshet H
ayil (Venice, 1606), see Weinstein.
63
Yagel, 1990a. The original Hebrew text was edited the same year by Ruderman: see Yagel,
1990b.
64
Ruderman, 1988a.
65
Ruderman, 1988s, 121–38.
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However, a very different presentation of purgatory, and hell more generally,
appears in Yagel’s other encyclopedic work, Be’er Sheva.
66
In this work, preserved
in a single autograph copy, hell and purgatory are discussed cosmographically—
not as symbols for such subtle processes as reincarnation, but as a series of
concrete, subterranean chambers.
67
The discussion is part of Yagel’s broader
effort in Be’er Sheva to offer a comprehensive depiction of the cosmos and the
earth. Having described the ten celestial spheres and the four elemental spheres, he
reaches the earth, and from there plumbs the depths of hell itself. Yagel’s depiction
of terrestrial hell is a fascinating and unprecedented blend of Jewish and Christian
traditions about the afterlife, and besides some passing comments by Ruderman it
has yet to be studied thoroughly.
68
For my purposes, it mirrors the descriptions of
Ravenna and Fano, and represents yet another attempt to seriously and explicitly
incorporate Christian descriptions of the underworld into a reading of Jewish texts
and an understanding of the world more generally.
Yagel begins by framing his discussion of hell as a matter of consensus
between Jewish and non-Jewish scholars (“it is a tradition among our sages
and is also agreed upon by the Christian scholars”).
69
He then discusses the
entrances of hell as described in the Talmud, and broaches the nature of
hell’sfire. After these preliminaries, he proceeds to describe hell’s structure,
positing a ten-fold division:
The sages saw that it was good to divide this place . . . according to gradations of
wickedness, one atop the other. And based on our sages of blessed memory . . .
as well as the [teachings] of the wise men of the [gentile] nations, we see that
[hell] is divided into ten chambers, with innumerable subchambers.
70
Yagel bases this number on general parallelism with the other layers of reality
(the godhead, the heavens, and the earth) as well as on the existence of ten
categories of sin, each of which requires its own punishment in its own
dedicated realm. To demonstrate this latter point, Yagel launches into a long
excursus about the ten categories of sin. The sins are listed in order of increasing
wickedness. The first two categories are completely rooted in Jewish legal
principles: unintentional sins “from which even a righteous man cannot be
66
This work is attested in a single autograph manuscript: Bodleian Library (hereafter BL),
MS Reggio 11.
67
The discussion appears in BL, MS Reggio 11, fols. 25
v
–34
r
(Be’er Sheva 2.7–9).
68
The discussion is mentioned in passing by Ruderman, 1988a, 137: “Yagel has elsewhere
expounded upon purgatory in an elaborate excursus in Hebrew on the ten circles of hell.”
69
BL, MS Reggio 11, fol. 25
v
:[ מקובלאצלחכמינוז"לוגםמוסכםאצלחכמיהנוצרי]ים .
70
BL, MS Reggio 11, fol. 25
v
:ראוהחכמי]ם[כיטובלחלקהמקוםהזה...למדרגותזהלמעלהמזה
וזהלמטהמזה.ומסודחכמינוז"ל...גםמטעםחכמיהאומותראינוכינ
חלקלעשרמדרגותכלוליםמדרגות
אחרותעדאיןמספר .
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saved”and sins in which the sinner is not certain that he has indeed sinned (for
which he would, in the Temple period, be required to bring a conditional guilt
offering). The next seven categories of sin are based on ethical considerations:
sloth, pride, gluttony, lust, wrath, greed, and envy (in that order). The final
category of sin represents the actions of a thoroughly wicked man, who is not
compelled by base desire but rather sins willfully, actively defying his creator.
It is clear that the bulk of Yagel’s framework is dominated by the seven
capital or deadly sins of Christian ethics—an appropriation not unprecedented
in the Jewish tradition, but certainly not common. While many Jewish polem-
icists objected to the usefulness of such a categorization, the model was adopted
favorably by at least one fifteenth-century Provençal scholar, Isaac Nathan of
Arles.
71
Ravenna also adopts the concept in one of his marginal notes.
72
Yagel, for his part, prominently includes the seven sins in his Hebrew
catechism, LeqahTov:
Teacher: What are the seven [types of] abomination within the soul?
Student: They are the seven capital categories of sin, from which all sins
derive. And [as] they seem trivial, a man may not be careful [to avoid them].
But if he is seduced by them, they drive him from the world.
73
Interestingly, neither in his catechism nor in his discussion of hell does Yagel
explicitly acknowledge the Christian origins of this concept. Instead, he claims
that the idea derives from the Jewish tradition, pointing to a talmudic passage
that discusses the seven different names of the “evil inclination.”In his dis-
cussion of hell, Yagel expends no small effort to match the order of the capital
sins he has listed to the order of names of the evil inclination as they appear in
the Talmud; likewise, each sin is matched with a distinct biblical figure. Lust,
for instance, is aligned with Solomon, who, according to the Talmud, called the
evil inclination an enemy (based on Proverbs 25:21: “If your enemy is hungry,
give him bread to eat”). Yagel provides the following explanation: Solomon,
infamous for his attraction to foreign women, was well acquainted with the
sin of lust; he referred to lust as an enemy (or more literally, one who hates)
precisely because those who are lustful, having presumably slept with their
neighbors’wives, inspire hatred in all those around them. This method of
aligning different lists and categories is a hallmark of Yagel’s discussion of
71
Ben Shalom.
72
In the aforementioned annotated copy of Ma‘arekhet ha-Elohut: Benayahu Collection,
MS V 105, fol. 158
v
.
73
Yagel, 1595, fol. 11
r
.
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hell in particular and his imaginative homiletical efforts to bridge the gap
between Jewish and non-Jewish sources more generally.
Having laid the groundwork with his list of the ten types of sin, Yagel proceeds
to explain how hell is structured in correspondence to each one of these catego-
ries. Not content to simply align chambers with sins, Yagel also aligns each cham-
ber with one of the celestial spheres. Moreover, two of the chambers are aligned
with specific realms discussed in Christian theology, and seven are aligned with
the classic seven names of hell in rabbinic tradition. In this context, Yagel draws
heavily on a particular mythical Jewish description of hell—included, among
other places, in Nachmanides’s work about the afterlife, Sha‘ar ha-Gemul—
that notes the location of prominent biblical and rabbinic sinners in each
realm. Thus, in characteristic fashion, Yagel creates a symmetry between the dif-
ferent layers of his cosmographic scheme while also effecting a rapprochement
between divergent Jewish and Christian descriptions of the afterlife.
Yagel identifies the first two realms of hell with limbo and purgatorio, respec-
tively. The comparison is notable, but largely semantic. While one cannot really
expect Yagel to include the notion of limbo as a place for the unbaptized in his
scheme, it is interesting that purgatory is also stripped of its Christian overtones.
For Yagel, purgatory is simply one chamber of gehinnom among many. Because
it is the second chamber, it offers some of the least severe punishments for one
of the shortest amounts of time, but it is otherwise not fundamentally different
from the next seven chambers, which also dole out punishment for a limited
duration. The next seven layers—those corresponding to the seven deadly
sins—are made to correspond to the classic rabbinic schema of seven layers
of gehinnom, as shown above. Finally, the last chamber of gehinnom is referred
to as arqa. This last chamber, reserved for those who rebel against God, is
indeed a place of eternal damnation, unlike the other nine.
An example will demonstrate how Yagel seeks to tie these divergent threads
together. According to Yagel, the eighth chamber of hell is dedicated to greed
(or as Yagel translates it, qamtzanut—i.e., miserliness). This corresponds to the
eighth sphere (from above to below)—that of Venus. Venus is associated with
women, who, Yagel informs us, are known misers. Likewise, the realm’s
Hebrew name is Tzalmavet (the sixth out of the seven names of hell in one
prominent rabbinic list), literally “shadow of death.”This alludes to the pun-
ishment given to misers: they are shrouded in darkness, a fitting punishment for
those so myopic as to think their piles of money would avail them in the here-
after. Finally, the biblical villain who is condemned to Tzalmavet (according to
the text quoted by Nachmanides) is King Ahab, who had Naboth executed in
order to take possession of his vineyard. The sin of greed is thus used as an
organizational principle to explain the realm’s rabbinic name, the identity of
its residents, and its astrological correspondence.
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Yagel concludes his exposition of the celestial spheres and hell by drawing
two diagrams. Here the chambers of hell are drawn not as vertical but as
concentric circles, corresponding in structure to the heavenly spheres, evoking
the imagery alluded to in Ezra da Fano’s note, and by extension the imagery of
Dante himself. While Yagel restricted himself to Hebrew in his verbal
exposition of hell, here he uses Italian (inscribed in Hebrew or Latin letters)
to name the sins of each realm of the underworld (see fig. 4).
A LATIN SOURCE FOR YAGEL’S DEPICTION OF HELL
The details of Yagel’s scheme do not seem to correspond to the prominent
literary or theological mappings of hell that prevailed in the period,
Christian or Jewish. The use of the number ten is particularly notable. Ten
is never used in any Jewish sources with which I am familiar as a scheme for
delineating hell—seven or eight being the preferred count. Likewise, in
Figure 4. Abraham Yagel’s diagram of the elemental spheres and the circles of hell. Bodleian
Library, Oxford, MS Reggio 11, fol. 33
v
.
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Christian theological texts, a relatively simple four-fold scheme is preferred
(limbo, bosom of Abraham, purgatory, and hell).
74
Indeed, the portrayal
closest to Yagel’sisthatofDanteintheCommedia, as suggested by Yagel’s
use of the seven sins. That being said, Yagel departs from Dante in several
important respects: the total number of circles, the order of the sins, and,
most important, his choice to include purgatory as a circle within hell as
opposed to a terrestrial mountain separate from it. All of these represent
significant departures from Dante.
The relative uniqueness of Yagel’s depiction of hell and its ambiguous rela-
tionship with Dante’s schema can be explained by his sources. Though Yagel
fully acknowledges his indebtedness to non-Jewish texts and even uses Christian
terminology and concepts, he never names a single source explicitly. Luckily, his
marked fidelity to his sources proves enlightening: Yagel did not borrow his
depiction of hell directly from Dante but rather from a particular astronomical
and cosmographical work: the Theatrum mundi et temporis (Venice, 1588) of
Giovanni Paolo Gallucci (1538–ca. 1621).
Though he was a prominent publisher, little of Gallucci’sbiographyis
known. Born in Salo, he would later move to Venice, where he was one of
the founders of the second Venetian academy and served as a tutor to the chil-
dren of the nobility.
75
It was there, in 1588, that he would print his most popular
work, Theatrum mundi et temporis, which would go on to be reprinted six more
times (thrice in Spanish translation). Richly illustrated, and adorned with several
volvelles, the work offers an overview of the terrestrial and especially celestial worlds.
Gallucci presents the work as an accessible alternative to more complex ways of visu-
alizing the universe; stripped of lengthy demonstrations, it offers novices and schol-
ars alike a visual representation of the heavens and the earth.
76
Gallucci did not, however, restrict himself to the observable world. Between
a discussion of lunar eclipses and maps of the continents, the cosmographer
turned to another issue: the infernal worlds lying beneath the earth’s surface.
He declines to offer demonstrations for the fact of hell’s existence—Scripture
and faith are more than enough evidence, he avers—but does present some
arguments for locating the realm of eternal punishment under the surface of
the earth. He then proceeds to list the realms of the underworld, beginning
with limbo, moving on to purgatory, and concluding with infernus.Herehe
74
See, for example, Giovanni’sMariaBonardo’scosmographicalworkLa grandezza,
larghezza,e distanza di tutte le sfere, printed in Venice in 1589 with the lengthy annotations
of Luigi Groto. There Groto divides infernum into four circles: inferno, purgatory, limbo,
and seno d’Abraamo: see Bonardo, fol. 14
r–v
.
75
Ernst.
76
On Theatrum mundi et temporis, see Thorndike, 5:151; and Mandel, 34n3.
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notes that Dante divides this realm into nine orbs, corresponding to nine types of
sin. “And though we cannot be certain that this is the case,”Gallucci notes,
“it seems to be true.”After all, “if one sin is graver than another, it is fitting
that it be punished in a place more distant from the Empyrean heaven.”
77
Thus, whether or not Dante is to be taken at his word, his scheme is, at the
very least, theologically sound. The list of chambers dedicated to sins follows
this order: Accediosi, Vanagloriosi, Gulosi, Luxuriosi, Iracundi, Avari,Superbi
(the slothful, vain, gluttonous, lustful, wrathful, greedy, proud). Accompanying
Galluci’s verbal description is an illustration of the underworld comprising ten
circles: purgatory, limbo, and then a chamber for each of the seven sins and an
innermost chamber for the Proditores (betrayers or traitors). In the illustration,
each of the circles of hell is populated by stylized human shapes, gesticulating
in what can only be presumed to be agony. In the innermost circle flutters a
winged devil bearing a downturned pitchfork. Beneath the illustration appears
a quotation from Job: “As a cloud is consumed, and passeth away: so he that
shall go down to hell shall not come up”(see fig. 5).
Though he explicitly cites Dante, Gallucci has strangely departed from the
Commedia: not only has he reordered the circles of the Inferno—perhaps based
on his own assessment of the severity of the sins in question—but he has also
subsumed purgatory within the underworld. Moreover, arriving at the number
nine for the nine circles of hell, but including purgatory instead of limbo to
complete this number, is very much at odds with the Commedia. It is beyond
the scope of this study to speculate as to the motivations or sources that led
Gallucci to thus adapt Dante’svision.Suffice it to say that Gallucci is not
presenting a familiar Dante.
Yagel’s verbal presentation of the ten circles of hell—as well as his diagram—
is identical to that of Gallucci. Moreover, his arguments for placing hell under-
ground, as well as the justification for different chambers for different sinners,
seem to paraphrase the explanations offered by Gallucci. To name just one exam-
ple, Gallucci, arguing that inferno and purgatory must be underground, offers
the following argument: “[Given that] good [men] and evil [men] are most dis-
tant from each other, and [given that] no place is more distant from the
Empyrean Heaven than the center of the earth . . . therefore [it follows that]
the center of the earth, and the places around it, are the places of wicked
men.”
78
Abraham Yagel follows suit and writes as follows: “And the Christian
sages said that since the wicked and righteous are two diametrically opposed
opposites, it is fitting, in accordance with divine justice, that their punishments
be diametrically opposed [as well]. And just like the soul of the righteous man
77
Gallucci, fol. 38
r
.
78
Gallucci, fol. 38
r
.
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ascends to God . . . above, so too it is fitting that the soul of the wicked man should
descend below. And the lowest point of all existence is the center [of the earth].
Therefore, gehinnom must be at the center of the earth.”
79
This explains why
Figure 5. Giovanni Paolo Gallucci, Theatrum mundi et temporis (Venice, 1588), fol. 39
r
.
79
BL, MS Reggio 11, fol. 25
v
.
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Yagel bothered to include limbo and purgatory in his scheme without adapting
their theological content. They are simply elements of a diagram that he has
faithfully copied. Yagel’s innovation, then, is not to map the contours of hell
from scratch, but to appropriate an existing map and paint it in Jewish colors.
A more detailed study of Be’er Sheva would reveal the extent to which the
work as a whole is based on paraphrasing and borrowing the cosmographies
of non-Jewish sources. Gallucci may have been just one source among many,
or, alternatively, may have furnished some of the astronomical and geographical
material in Yagel’swork—not just the description of hell. Regardless, the
adoption of Gallucci’s scheme of hell accords well with Yagel’s general efforts
to point to the parallelisms that unite all layers of reality. A hell of four or seven
layers would not have fit well into Yagel’s scheme. A hell of ten layers, however,
corresponds to the ten spheres, the ten sefirot of the godhead, and the ten parts
of the world. Gallucci’s model conveniently provided such a schema. If Yagel
had doubts as to the authority of the somewhat playful vision of a specific
Christian astronomer, he could convince himself with his own homiletical
acrobatics. The ten circles, in Yagel’s mind at least, made sense and
corresponded well with the teachings of Judaism, the writings of Christian
astronomers, and the repeatable nature of the cosmos.
CONCLUSION
The cases of Menahem da Ravenna, Ezra da Fano, and Abraham Yagel offer
important insights into the way a Jewish audience perceived Christian views of
hell, and how these views were neutral enough to be incorporated into the study
of Jewish texts. I argue that Jewish writers borrowed their visions of hell from
lived experience as well as from Christian texts that framed hell not as a matter
of faith but as a matter of concrete reality; furthermore, their descriptions of hell
may have also had polemical motives, since comparison could help them assert
the superiority of the Jewish religion over its Christian competitor.
Ravenna differs from Fano and Yagel in that he never quotes a textual source
for his ideas about hell. Indeed, he presents the existence of purgatorio and inferno
as part of a common view of the world, considered obvious to him and everyone
around him. That Ravenna was writing in Catholic Italy shortly after the Council
of Trent, as mentioned above, wouldonly have reinforced his familiarity with this
particular view of the afterlife. To be sure, Ravenna’s relationship with Marco
Marini may also have contributed to this perception. His conversations or corre-
spondence with the Christian canon may have accustomed him to discussing cer-
tain issues using a Christian idiom. Nevertheless, the fact that Ravenna quotes no
Christian texts and no Christian sources, only Jewish ones, seems to indicate that
it is precisely because he regarded the existence of purgatory and hell as
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commonplace, neutral knowledge that he felt comfortable superimposing them
on a Jewish textual discussion. Had Ravenna drawn these ideas from a reading of
a theological text instead of his acquaintance with popular ideas, perhaps he
would have been more reluctant to draw comparisons.
Fano and Yagel are arguably also dealing with a neutral notion of hell.
Though, unlike Ravenna, they quote or paraphrase specific texts in their treat-
ment of hell, the sources they have picked are telling. That Fano’s conception of
Dante is filtered through the commentary tradition is important. The
commentaries of Landino and Vellutello, like many fifteenth- and sixteenth-
century readings of Dante, take Dante’s wor(l)ds very seriously. They do not
just visualize Dante’s hell; they mathematize it, offering exact measurements
of its chambers and debating the precise size of the Devil or the specific location
of inferno’s entrance. Such discussions conferred upon the work an aura of
cosmographical reality that somewhat removed it from the particularistic sphere
of the Christian religion. This framing of Dante’sCommedia in terms of “infernal
cartography”
80
may have been precisely what allowed Fano to draw comparisons
between the Zohar’s descriptions of hell and those of the Italian poet.
81
Hell
presented not as classical or Christian allegory, but as neutral cosmography,
could be more easily digested by a Jewish religious scholar. Yagel’sturnto
Gallucci’s description of hell may represent a similar move. Though Gallucci
does not hide the religious overtones of his description, he does nevertheless
incorporate his description into a book of cosmography and astrology. Like
Vellutello and Landino to Dante, Gallucci frames Catholic beliefs about the
afterlife as part of a scientifically neutral discourse; hell framed not as theology
but as part of a general description of the cosmos would have allowed Yagel to
more easily accept it into his work.
These points notwithstanding, it is worth considering what precisely a
comparison between Jewish and non-Jewish sources is ultimately meant to
accomplish—or to put it differently, who benefits, culturally speaking, from
drawing a comparison between Christian and Jewish notions of hell? Ravenna,
Fano, and Yagel all present Jewish gehinnom in expressly Christian colors. All
three of them, however, argue that these colors arise from a faithful reading of
ancient Jewish texts—be they texts that are truly ancient (such as the Talmud)
or texts believed to be ancient (such as the pseudo-epigraphical Zohar).
Ultimately, this kind of cultural maneuvering undermines the Christian claims
to exclusivity and suggests that anything reasonable said by Catholic theologians
or Christian cosmographers had already been anticipated in Jewish texts. While
80
Kleiner, 23–24.
81
On such technical, cartographical approaches to the Commedia, see, for instance, Kleiner;
Foà; Engel; and Padrón, 260–65.
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this kind of thinking is precisely the type of strategy used by Christian Hebraists
to strengthen the theological claims of Christianity, when applied to hell (which,
it has been argued, was viewed through a lens of geographical neutrality) the com-
parison in fact buttressed the Jewish sense of uniqueness and legitimacy. Just as
Judah Moscato could justify his use of non-Jewish sources (specifically, the rhe-
torical works of Agricola and Cicero) by arguing that “for to me, these foreign
streams flow from our Jewish wells,”so tooRavenna, Fano, and Yagel could easily
have argued that the layout and structure of hell had already been presented in
ancient rabbinic texts long before Catholicism, Dante, or the works of Christian
cosmographers.
82
From their perspective, it was the Christians borrowing from
Jewish texts, and not the reverse.
Finally, the issue of medium ought to be addressed. The handwritten
annotations of Fano and Ravenna, which are terse, informal, unorganized, and
haphazard, were likely not written with an audience in mind. These were almost
certainly private notes written during reading as a form of physical engagement
with the text—that is, a form of “book use.”
83
In Yagel’s case, though he did
share his book with others, he did not, it seems, have any intention of publishing
his work, in print or manuscript. It is not impossible that the less public nature of
these written endeavors afforded writers a more open approach to Christian
sources, allowing them to engage more explicitly with potentially theologically
charged issues such as hell.
84
Perhaps it is no coincidence that I have yet to find
a printed Jewish source in Hebrew from the period, written for a large audience of
Jews and potentially Christians, that makes similar comparisons. If this is the case,
marginalia or private manuscripts may afford a glimpse into marginalized modes
of thought harbored by Italian Jews but often omitted from their public works in
order to avoid censure from their correligionists. It is not unreasonable to assume
that Jews were aware of theparallels between Christian and Jewish notions of hell.
Many of them may have identified the two discourses as two perspectives on the
same place. The explicit evidence attesting to this comparison may, however, sur-
face only in the more informal mediums that have been discussed in this article.
***
Avi Kallenbach is a PhD candidate at Bar-Ilan University. His research
explores the Jewish study of kabbalah in early modern Italy through the lens
of annotations inscribed in the margins of manuscripts and printed books.
82
Quoted by Idel, 1992. See also Bonfil, 1994, 164–67.
83
Sherman.
84
On the use of “Hebrew manuscripts in the age of print”as a medium for conveying
potentially subversive ideas, see Dweck, 31–58.
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