A Hebrew Dante: Moshe da Rieti's "Miqdash Me'at," its Cultural Background and its Reception

Rieti的摩西·本·伊扎克(Mosèdi Gaio，Rieti 1388年-罗马，1466年前)是15世纪上半叶主要的犹太裔意大利哲学家和诗人。他的主要作品《Miqdash Me‘at(小庇护所)》是一首由约5000首希伯来诗句组成的诗歌，采用Terza rima(但丁的神曲中使用的韵律)，具有宗教、科学和哲学内容。利用与耶路撒冷圣殿不同区域相对应的细分，Rieti首先阐述了中世纪琐碎和四分相的亵渎或“外部”科学。他特别提到了各种古希腊思想家，如亚里士多德、欧几里得、托勒密和波菲里，以及阿拉伯(al-Fārābi、al-GhazāLī、阿维森纳、阿维罗斯)和犹太(日耳逊尼德)哲学家。他的主要参照点是迈蒙尼德，他使亵渎的科学与律法“调和”。在所有学科中，诗歌占有特殊的地位，因为它允许作者对理性沉思的热爱充分表达出来。作品的另一部分包括对天堂的描述，在总体灵感上让人想起但丁，但也在使用从犹太文学传统中提取的元素。Rieti的工作可能代表了由哲学家犹大·罗马诺(约1293-1330年后)创立的犹太-意大利学派的后期阶段，该学派将迈蒙尼德理性主义思想的中心地位和从Liber de causis中提取的新柏拉图元素联系在一起。在该学派中表达的知识的丧失和通过半预言的愿景可能恢复的想法，在Rieti的工作中特别强调。他的全部作品是中世纪晚期/文艺复兴早期犹太人和意大利文化中最重要和最具原创性的诗歌/哲学作品之一；但只有通过19世纪的不完整版本才能获得，没有注释或评论。一个法国/德国研究小组，其首席研究人员具有互补的研究技能和经验(过去曾合作过)，与一些年轻研究人员计划对其进行彻底研究，其中将包括完整的英文散文翻译和带有大量注释的评论版本，以及对文化背景和接受情况的深入研究。亚历山德罗·盖塔(巴黎Inalco)是犹太-意大利思想史(主要是哲学和文学)专家，已经写了大量关于摩西·达·里埃蒂的著作；伊丽莎白·霍伦德(歌德大学，法兰克福)是希伯来诗歌和希伯来宗教诗歌评论的专家。为期三年的文献学、哲学和文学研究将使专家和更广泛的受众能够看到一部非凡的、几乎不为人所知的中世纪晚期欧洲犹太文学作品。

Moshe ben Yitzhaq of Rieti (Mosè di Gaio, Rieti 1388-Rome, before 1466) was the main Jewish-Italian philosopher and poet of the first half of the 15th century. His main work, Miqdash me’at (Little Sanctuary) is a poem of about 5000 Hebrew verses in terza rima (the meter used in Dante’s Divine Comedy) with a religious, scientific and philosophical content. Using a subdivision that corresponds to the different areas of the Jerusalem Temple, Rieti expounds first the profane or “external” sciences of the medieval trivium and quadrivium. He specifically refers to various ancient Greek thinkers, such as Aristotle, Euclid, Ptolemy and Porphyry, as well as Arab (al-Fārābi, al-Ghazālī, Avicenna, Averroes) and Jewish (Gersonides) philosophers. His principal point of reference is Maimonides, who “reconciled” the profane sciences with the Torah. Among all disciplines, poetry occupies a special place, as it allows the author’s love of intellectual contemplation to express itself fully. Another section of the work includes a description of Paradise, reminiscent of Dante in the general inspiration but also in the use of elements drawn from Jewish literary tradition. Rieti’s work probably represents the late stage of a Jewish-Italian school of thought, initiated by the philosopher Judah Romano (ca. 1293-after 1330), that associates the centrality of Maimonides’ rationalistic thought and neo-platonic elements drawn from the Liber de causis. The idea of the loss of knowledge, and their possible recovery through semi-prophetic visions, expressed in that school, is particularly emphasized in Rieti’s work. His oeuvre is among the most important and original poetic/philosophical endeavors of the Late Middle Age/early Renaissance Jewish and Italian culture; but is accessible only through a 19th century incomplete edition, without notes or commentary. A French/German research group, whose principal investigators have complementary research skills and experiences (and worked together in the past), together with some young researchers, plan a thorough study of it, that will include a complete English prose-translation and a critical edition with extensive notes and an in-depth research of the cultural context and reception. Alessandro Guetta (INALCO, Paris) is a specialist of Jewish-Italian intellectual history (mainly Philosophy and literature) and has already written extensively on Moshe da Rieti; Elisabeth Hollender (Goethe University, Frankfurt) is a specialist of Hebrew poetry and commentaries of Hebrew religious poetry. Three years of philological, philosophical and literary research will make a remarkable and virtually unknown work of European-Jewish literature of the late Middle Age available to specialists and a broader audience.