The Impact of the Kabbalah in the Seventeenth Century: The Life and Thought of Francis Mercury van Helmont (1614-1698) (review)

T H E JE W I S H Q UA R T E R LY R E V I E W, Vol. 94, No. 1 (Winter 2004) 185–190 ALLISON P. COUDERT. The Impact of the Kabbalah in the Seventeenth Century: The Life and Thought of Francis Mercury van Helmont (1614–1698). Brill’s Series in Jewish Studies 9. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 1999. Pp. xx Ⳮ 418. This remarkable volume constitutes a learned and far-reaching contribution to our understanding of early modern European scholarship and culture ; to the influence of Jewish learning, specifically the Kabbalah, within that world; and to the manifold ways in which ideas and concepts from one cultural context are reshaped and represented in their transmission into another context. In her monograph (which began as a Warburg Institute dissertation under the direction of Frances Yates and D. P. Walker) Coudert has produced a multidimensional study of a number of intersecting topics. This is a long book, extensively documented, intricately argued, and not easily summarized. In what follows, I will briefly describe the contents of the work and conclude with some general thoughts on Coudert’s overall argument. Her work is, firstly, a biography of an extraordinary figure. Coudert traces van Helmont’s life and activities as a diplomat, physician, heretic, and especially as a Christian Kabbalist. In chapter 1, Coudert sketches van Helmont’s upbringing near Brussels as the son of one of the most notable Paracelsian physicians of the seventeenth century, Jan Baptista van Helmont (1579–1644). In keeping with the Paracelsian distrust of traditional educational methods and authorities, van Helmont gave his son Francis the seventeenth-century equivalent of home schooling. Francis never attended university, and he worked in his father’s laboratory from a young age. Much of this first chapter is taken up with an excellent exposition of the conflict between Paracelsian and Galenic natural philosophy . In her description of the early intellectual influences on van Helmont , Coudert reminds us that seventeenth-century Neoplatonists, hermeticists, kabbalists, Paracelsians, alchemists, and magicians had reached common ground regarding the ability of humans to manipulate sympathetic forces in nature. These overlapping systems of thought provided the intellectual background for van Helmont’s later endeavors. Coudert’s presentation also suggests a way that this early modern version of a countercultural upbringing also provided a lasting sociocultural context for van Helmont’s life. In the next two chapters, ‘‘Diplomat and Courier’’ and ‘‘Arrest and 186 JQR 94:1 (2004) Imprisonment,’’ Coudert describes van Helmont’s career serving Christian August (1622–1708), whose court at Sulzbach offered something of a continuation of van Helmont’s youthful cultural milieu. Sulzbach became a meeting place for figures from various elements of the seventeenth -century countercultural world: religious radicals like Quakers and Anabaptists, mystics of various sorts, and, most importantly for Coudert’s project, Christians interested in the study of Hebrew and Judaism. Van Helmont’s arrest by the Inquisition in Kützingen (near Heidelberg ) in 1662 and his subsequent release—due to Christian August’s intervention —after a year and a half of imprisonment is an episode to which Coudert devotes a great deal of attention. In addition to the chapters in which she discusses this episode, Coudert provides two appendixes with most of the relevant documents related to the case as well as translations into English. According to Coudert, two things are significant about this episode. First, ‘‘a remarkable picture of van Helmont as both a religious and social radical emerges from the inquisitorial documents relating to his case’’ (p. 45); and secondly, these documents ‘‘give a clear picture of how seriously Catholics viewed the situation in Sulzbach’’ (p. 42). It is apparent that an important part of what concerned the Church, as well as conservative Lutherans, was the Jewish element in Sulzbach, for which van Helmont was held responsible. The teaching of Hebrew in Sulzbach was certainly ‘‘suspicious’’ (pp. 48–49, 352–353, 364–365), but the charges went further, accusing van Helmont of being a Judaizer. A rumor that he had been circumcised was included in the charges, and traditional anti-Jewish imagery was invoked (pp. 48, 50–51). The Church’s recognition of Hebraism as an important...