A Humanist in the Kloyz:

New Perspectives on the Maharal of Prague

and Jacques Bongars

Joanna Weinberg

“Truth will spring from a distant land”—these are the opening words, or
rather the playful adaptation of Psalm 85:12 (11)—of an entry in Jacques
Bongars’s Album amicorum. Written in Hebrew in a careful semi-cursive
Ashkenazi hand, this Judaic homage to the great Huguenot scholar could
well be judged to be the first entry in the book.1 A Hebrew reader, opening
the volume from the right, would find the Hebrew text on the first page of
the album. Dated March 12, 1585 (21 Adar Sheni 5345), it does appear to
be, if not the first, at least one of the first entries in the Stammbuch.2
The truth that springs from this exceptional document provides a salu-
tary lesson for all scholars, challenging as it does our expectations that
we have read well and have therefore constructed a correct version of the

1
I am indebted to Professor Walther Ludwig for bringing the precious document to my
attention. Some months after I completed this article, Elchanan Reiner published an
edited volume, Maharal Overtures: Biography, Doctrine, Influence [in Hebrew] (Jerusa-
lem: Zalman Shazar Center, 2015), in which he pays attention to the discovery discussed
in this article. See pp. 9–10 and 101.
2
Bern, Burgerbibliothek, Cod. 468, 297. Most of the entries date from the latter part of
1585, when Bongars was on his journey to Constantinople, and there are none later
than 1587. The undated entry of Van Herberstein may, according to Walther Ludwig,
Stammbücher von 16. bis zum 18. Jahrhundert: Kontinuität und Verbreitung des Human-
ismus (Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 2012), 17–18, have been written before the
Hebrew entry, but there is no actual proof for this assumption.

Copyright ! by Journal of the History of Ideas, Volume 77, Number 4 (October 2016)

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 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS ✦ OCTOBER 2016

particular scholarly discipline we claim to control. For, as I hope to show,

this Hebrew text necessarily questions conventional wisdom and our own
presuppositions about two great figures of the late sixteenth century: the
Christian diplomat and classical scholar Jacques Bongars (1554–1612) and
Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel, better known as the Maharal of Prague (ca.
1525–1609).
Jacques Bongars, a central figure in the republic of letters, was born in
Orleans in 1554, studied law in Bourges with Cujas, and worked on the
Scriptores Historiae Augustae and Eusebius in Rome.3 In 1581 Bongars
published a much-admired edition of Justin’s third-century history of the
Macedonian monarchy, the Epitome Pompeii Trogi, including the pro-
logues and fragments of Trogus’s original text. Bongars visited the doyen
of humanist philology Justus Lipsius in Leiden in 1584. On April 12, 1585,
as attested at the beginning of his semi-official diary, he set out from Vienna
to Constantinople.4
According to the standard biographies, it has been impossible to estab-
lish where and how Bongars spent the time between his departure from
Leiden and the commencement of his expedition from Vienna. What was
known was that during an excursion through Transylvania and Wallachia,
Bongars took time to transcribe Roman inscriptions; strangely, he made no
reference to these antiquarian activities in his description of his travels
through these territories. A portion of the inscriptions was later published
in the appendix to his 1600 Rerum Hungaricarum scriptores, which was
dedicated to his traveling companion, his “frater” Guillaume le Normant
de Trougny.5
It is more than likely, as Walther Ludwig has argued, that during Bong-
ars’s travels from Vienna to Constantinople he was already in the service of

3
For a recent volume of studies devoted to Bongars’s life and work (published in conjunc-
tion with an exhibition and conference celebrating the 400th anniversary of Bongars’s
death), see Florian Mittenhuber and Claudia Engler, eds., Jacques Bongars: Humanist,
Diplomat, Büchersammler (Bern: Stämpfli Verlag, 2012). See, too, Ruth Kohlndorfer-
Fries, Diplomatie und Gelehrtenrepublik: Die Kontakte des französischen Gesandten
Jacques Bongars (1554–1612) (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 2009).
4
The diary is published in Hermann Hagen, Jacobus Bongarsius: Ein Beitrag (Bern: A.
Fischer, 1874), 62–72. The opening sentence is “Party de Vienne vendredy apres disner,
12e Avril” (62).
5
On de Trougny, see François Secret, “Documents oubliés sur l’alchimie au début du
XVIIe siècle,” Chrysopoeia 3, no. 3 (1989): 210–11 and 402. Secret collects reports of de
Trougny’s reputation as an alchemist. See, too, Hugh Trevor-Roper, Europe’s Physician
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 93, on de Trougny’s discussion with the physi-
cian Turquet de Mayerne about the imminent arrival of Elias artista, or Elijah the alche-
mist, as indicated in MS British Library, Sloane 20083, 1. “Ars occulta detecta ab Elia

522
Weinberg ✦ New Perspectives on the Maharal of Prague and Jacques Bongars

the French king: his appointment as permanent conseiller du roi lasted

nearly thirty years.6 After his return from Constantinople he lived in Ger-
many, but was constantly on the move as he undertook missions for the
king. Only after he resigned his ambassadorial post in 1610 did Bongars
return fully to his scholarly pursuits. It was in 1611 that he produced his
monumental compilation of French crusader chronicles from unpublished
sources, the Gesta Dei per Francos, which was inspired not only by nation-
alist ideals and anti-papal zeal but also by antiquarian passion.7 He died in
Paris, but according to Isaac Casaubon did not receive the funereal honors
due to such a luminary.8
The historical and intellectual biography of my other protagonist,
Judah Loew ben Bezalel, the Maharal of Prague, is also difficult to recon-
struct. This is due both to the lack of reliable documentary evidence and to
the Maharal’s idiosyncratic and particularly abstract mode of writing,
which has led to highly contradictory interpretations of his works.9 He was
probably born in Poznań. Since official documentation is mostly lacking,
Maharal’s biographers normally cite the testimony of his contemporary,
the astronomer and chronicler David Gans, celebrated for his connections
with Kepler and Brahe. Gans supplied the core information in his chronicle
Tsemah David (Prague, 1592). Under the entry for 1592 he gives the fol-
lowing potted biography of the Maharal:10

He [Maharal] was head of the yeshiva [rabbinic academy] and

head of the rabbinical court of Moravia for about twenty years.
He then came to the holy community of Prague in 1573, where he
attracted many disciples, and founded a meeting place for sages, a
house of study, known as the Kloyz, teaching for eleven years and

artista Ex ipsius Trogny authographo mihi data Sedani et in mei gratiam ab ipso authore
conscripto januar. 1622.” (The same autograph is in MS British Library, Sloane 693, 52.)
6
Ludwig, Stammbücher, 8.
7
See Christopher Tyerman, The Debate on the Crusades (Manchester: Manchester Uni-
versity Press, 2011), chap. 2.
8
Casaubon expresses his grief about Bongars’s death in several letters to friends. In a
letter to Jacques Auguste de Thou he states that had Bongars died in Germany he would
have received the due honors appropriate for such a learned person. See Isaac Casaubon,
Epistolae (Leiden: Caspar Fritsch & Michael Bohm, 1709), esp. 824, 479.
9
For a recent overview of the life and work of the Maharal of Prague, see Alexander
Putik et al., eds., Path of Life: Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel, ca. 1525–1609 (Prague:
Academia, the Jewish Museum in Prague, 2009).
10
David Gans, Tsemah David (Prague: Solomon Cohen and Moses Cohen, 1592), 64v
[Mordechai Breuer, ed., Tsemah David (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1983), par. 352, 145–
46].

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later for another four years.11 On 4 Iyyar 5352 [April 16, 1592] he
set off for the holy community of Poznań and there for the second
time became head of the yeshiva and head of the rabbinical courts
of all the Diaspora of Poland.

Other documents attest to the Maharal’s official position in Prostitz in 1587

and to his return to Prague after 1595. There he served as “the chief rabbi
[obrigste raby] of all Jews in Prague”—and it was in Prague that he died in
1609.
The Maharal was famous or notorious both for his uncompromising
legal rulings, such as prohibiting the use of gentile wine, and for his promo-
tion of an enlightened educational program that overturned traditional
modes of study. (His conservative attitudes and reforming tendencies often
created tensions within the community, particularly between the religious
elites and lay leadership.) As this paradox may suggest, Maharal’s writings
defy quick generalizations. A systematic theologian, the Maharal viewed
the world both celestial and human through the prism of opposites that
may complement or contradict one another. On the whole he used the clas-
sical rabbinic sources as the backdrop for his longwinded and inelegant but
original discourses. Though he discouraged the study of humanist litera-
ture, he permitted the pursuit of scientific disciplines such as astronomy,
which might somehow enrich understanding of Torah and aid the upstand-
ing Jew in combatting philosophical ideas inimical to Judaism.12
The Maharal created his sermons according to his own highly sche-
matic structures. Within this system there was a clear and distinct polarity
between Jew and gentile, who, according to the Maharal, reside on different
levels of existence. Such conspicuous differentiation between Jew and gen-
tile led Jacob Katz to argue that, despite the Maharal’s occasional reference
to encounters with Christians, he developed this insistence on strict separa-
tion between Judaism and other religions in the midst of a Jewish commu-
nity that was insulated from the vibrant gentile world in which he lived and
prayed.13 This view was challenged by Haim Hillel Ben-Sasson in a series

11
On the Kloyz as an academy for scholars, see Reiner, “Wealth, Social Position, and the
Study of the Torah: The Status of the Kloyz in Eastern European Jewish Society in the
Early Modern Period” [Hebrew], Zion 58, no. 3 (2003): 287–328, at 295.
12
See Maharal’s Netivot Olam, chap. 14, and the discussion of the text by David Ruder-
man, Jewish Thought and Scientific Discovery in Early Modern Europe (New Haven:
Yale University Press, 1995), 77–79.
13
Jacob Katz, Exclusiveness and Tolerance: Studies in Jewish–Gentile Relations in Medie-
val and Modern Times (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961), 131–42. For a discus-
sion of the opinions of Katz and Ben-Sasson, see Ruderman, Jewish Thought, 64–67.

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Weinberg ✦ New Perspectives on the Maharal of Prague and Jacques Bongars

of pioneering articles in which he argued that the Maharal’s notion of

nation as a kind of natural organism suggests that he had somehow imbibed
the arguments of the Christian confessions and sects, particularly those of
Bohemia and Moravia.14 In recent years Ben-Sasson’s ideas have been devel-
oped in various ways: Otta Kulka, for example, has suggested that Imman-
uel Tremellius’s Hebrew translation of Calvin’s catechism, apparently
popular with the Bohemian Brethren, bears comparison with some of the
Maharal’s educational theories. It is difficult to understand this analogy.
Tremellius’s missionary letter to his fellow Jews introducing the catechism
makes clear that the work will put his fellow Jews on the right path; and
the content of the catechism reads like any catechism with a series of tenets,
including the belief in “Jesus the Messiah our lord who was beget by the
holy spirit and born of Mary the virgin.”15 Moreover, since the Maharal
pays virtually no attention to non-Jewish writings, it is difficult to justify
the singling out of specific texts in order to shed light on the development
of his thought.
The Maharal pronounced on the intrinsic differences between Jew and
gentile on innumerable occasions. A couple of passages should illustrate the
powerful rhetoric he employed in order to convey his highly ideological
theology. In his 1585 Novellae (Hiddushim), on the non-legal discussions
and homilies and stories of the Talmud, the Maharal commented on a nota-
ble debate in the Babylonian Talmud dealing with the seven Noahide laws
incumbent on all heathens (Sanhedrin 59a).16 In the course of the argument,

14
Haim Hillel Ben-Sasson, “The Reformation in Contemporary Jewish Eyes” [in Hebrew
with English translation], Proceedings of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities
4 (1970): 239–326, at 295–314; Ben-Sasson, “Jews and Christian Sectarians: Existential
Similarity and Dialectical Tensions in Sixteenth-Century Moravia and Poland-Lithuania,”
Viator 4 (1973): 369–85; Ben-Sasson, “Jewish-Christian Disputation in the Setting of
Humanism and Reformation in the German Empire,” Harvard Theological Review 59
(1966): 369–90. See also Mordechai Breuer, “Maharal of Prague’s Disputation with the
Christians: A Reappraisal of Be’er hagolah” [in Hebrew], Tarbiz 55, no. 2 (1985–86):
253–69.
15
Sefer Hinukh behirei Yah (Geneva: Stephanus, 1554), 4. Otto D. Kulka, “The Histori-
cal Background of the National and Educational Teaching of the Maharal of Prague” [in
Hebrew], Zion 50 (1985): 277–320, at 289–91. For a recent discussion of the Maharal’s
theology, see David Sorotzkin, “The Counter Political-Theology of Maharal of Prague
and the Formation of Modern Orthodox Judaism,” Rabbinic Theology and Jewish Intel-
lectual History: The Great Rabbi Loew of Prague, ed. Meir Seidler (London: Routledge,
2013), 187–201; and Pavel Sládek, “Judah Löw ben Betsalel—the Maharal of Prague: A
Theologian with Humanist Bias,” Jewish Studies in the 21st Century: Prague—Europe—
World, ed. Marcela Zoufalá (Weisbaden: Harrassowitz, 2014), 59–83.
16
Hiddushe aggadot, vol. 3 (London: L. Honig and Sons, 1962), 163–64. MS Oxford,
Bodleian Opp. 103, which contains the Maharal’s corrections, does not indicate any
changes for this passage (fol. 148a). The Maharal uses the Aristotelian definition of

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a statement attributed to Rabbi Johanan is cited: “A gentile (or heathen)

who studies Torah deserves death.” This pronouncement was then chal-
lenged, and seemingly contradicted, by Rabbi Meir, who states: “How do
we know that an idolater who studies Torah is like a high priest? From the
verse, ‘You shall therefore keep my statutes and my judgements which if
man does he shall live by them’ (Lev. 18:5). Priests, Levites and Israelites
are not mentioned, only ‘man’—hence you may deduce that even a heathen
who studies the Torah is like a high priest.” What higher accolade could be
accorded a gentile? Torah study elevates the heathen to the most sacred of
roles. But another voice in the Talmudic text puts paid to the full signifi-
cance of such a tolerant view: “The statement refers to the Noahides’ study
of the seven laws that pertain to them.” In other words, gentiles are merito-
rious as long as they study the laws that apply to them.
In his elucidation of the passage, the Maharal reworded the last state-
ment about the Noahides in his own inimitable style:

And the solution is that this statement refers to the seven com-
mandments that a Noahide is duty bound to observe; in that
regard he is considered like a high priest. But Torah is not appro-
priate for the gentile on account of the exalted levels of the
Torah—he would be entering a level that is not meant for him and
of which he is deprived—consequently he becomes deserving of
death and non-existence.17

Such a strongly worded statement may be further elucidated by consid-

eration of another passage from the Maharal’s Tiferet Yisrael (Venice,
1599), a philosophy of Torah and its status in the world. In the penultimate
chapter, the Maharal presents a disquisition on the Oral Torah. Following
traditional notions, he argues that the Written Torah (the Pentateuch) can-
not be understood without the Oral Torah (the authoritative traditions and
exegetical interpretations embodied in the early rabbinic writings). The
Oral Torah therefore constitutes the covenant between God and Israel. In
the final lines of this plea on behalf of the eternal validity of the Oral Torah,
the Maharal writes:

It is only by means of the Oral Torah that we understand the true

meaning of the Torah; only then is a person connected to the

motion: “Motion is the act of Being that is in potentia as such.” Thus the gentiles are
only “in potentia.”
17
Hiddushe aggadot, 3:164.

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Weinberg ✦ New Perspectives on the Maharal of Prague and Jacques Bongars

Torah, while the Torah is the bond that joins the Holy One blessed
be He to Israel. But without the Oral Torah a person is unable to
be connected to the Torah, since the Torah is in a separate category
and we can interpret it only by means of the Oral Torah. Thus it
is that the Holy One, blessed be He, made a covenant with Torah
which is a connecting link because every covenant binds two par-
ties together . . . Therefore, even if the idolatrous nations of the
world possessed the Written Torah we would not pronounce that
the nations possessed a connection with Torah; for the only con-
nection is through the Oral Torah and they do not possess Oral
Torah, which is the unique possession of Israel. Thus Torah in gen-
eral was bestowed on Israel alone—the idolaters therefore can pos-
sess neither Written nor Oral Torah.18

The Maharal does not mince words: the true Torah belongs to Israel and to
Israel alone.
The first (or last) page of Bongars’s Album amicorum, an entirely dif-
ferent kind of literary artifact, forces the reader to reevaluate the Maharal’s
homiletic outpourings on this subject. It reads:

Truth will spring from a distant land. Let it be known how these
two devout men, one called Don Giacomo [Jacques] and the other
Don Guglielmo [Guillaume], came here to the holy community of
Prague from France. They went to the Bet ha-Midrash [Academy]
of the great eminent scholar [Gaon], our teacher, Rabbi Loew
[Maharal]. Since they were going to stay here in Prague for several
months it was their wish to learn the Holy Tongue. They asked the
Gaon to provide them with an educated person who would speak
to them in the vernacular. The Gaon therefore sent a message to
me requesting that I should teach them [lit. study with them,
“lamadeti imahem”] the modes of the holy tongue as the good
Lord would inspire me. I should not refrain from giving them all
possible help. Thus, since the Gaon had requested it and they, too,
I learned with them until they knew how to read the Pentateuch,
Prophets and Writings in the Holy Tongue. Verily, I discovered
that they were intelligent men who were expert in all disciplines

18
Judah Loew ben Bealel, Tiferet Yisrael (Venice: Daniel Zanetti, 1599), chap. 68, 62,
col. c. (See the British Library copy of Tiferet Yisrael, 1935g1, which contains vestiges of
a Christian reader’s French and Latin marginal notes. It appears as though a later Jewish
reader tried to expunge the Latin annotations.)

527
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and languages. The time came for their departure. Because we had
formed a great deep friendship, they asked me to inscribe my name
as a memento in this book. Consequently, in view of the long-
established friendship and since their request was both honorable
and fitting I shall inscribe my name. And the name by which all
people call me is Judah Seligmann Waal son to his father Jacob
Bak of blessed memory, the judge in the holy community of
Prague, dated Friday, 21 Adar Sheni 345 [March 12, 1585] here
in Prague the capital. Ventura the Jew of Venice who is presently
in Prague.19

The truths that this letter reveals are indeed astonishing. Jacques Bong-
ars and Guillaume le Normant de Trougny entered the Maharal’s Bet ha-
Midrash (or Kloyz) and asked him to provide a Hebrew teacher, since they
were intending to stay in Prague for a few months. The Maharal turned to
a trusted member of the rabbinic elite, son of a judge of a rabbinical law
court.20 Judah Seligmann, or Ventura, an Italian Jew, as the designation
Waal (or Wohl) indicates, was a Venetian of the Bak family.21 The Maharal
encouraged or insisted that Judah teach Hebrew to the two Christians. And
he obediently took them through the Hebrew Bible and became impressed
by their erudition and culture. The men struck up a close friendship, and
before they took leave of each other, Bongars produced his Stammbuch and
Ventura wrote an affectionate description of the course of their friendship
on the first (or last) page of the book. The story of the intimate relationship
that developed between these Christians and one Jew is documented in the
album belonging to one of the two visitors to the Jewish academy, Jacques
Bongars. (Judah Seligmann refers to both Bongars and de Trougny, but
since the Stammbuch belonged to Bongars, the reconstruction of this
remarkable story revolves around him.)
Who would have known that Bongars was immersed in study of the

19
Bern, Burgerbibliothek, MS 468, 297. I have slightly emended my translation, first
published in Ludwig’s Stammbücher, 23, and I differ from Ludwig in the interpretation
of the document. The last line reads: “Ventura Hebreo di veneçia al presente in prago.”
The spelling prago rather than praga is uncommon. I am grateful to Fabrizio Lelli for
helping me to establish this point.
20
His name appears on a 1577 list of elders of the Prague community. See Gottlieb Bondy
and Franz Dworsky, Zur Geschichte der Juden in Böhmen, Mähren und Schlesien von
906 bis 1620 (Prague: Gottlieb Bondy in Prag, 1906), 2:559n772: “Juda Seligmann
Jacobs Sohn.”
21
On the Bak family of printers and their connection with Prague, see Olga Sixtova,
Hebrew Printing in Bohemia and Moravia (Prague: Academia, the Jewish Museum in
Prague, 2012), 60.

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Weinberg ✦ New Perspectives on the Maharal of Prague and Jacques Bongars

Holy Tongue in the gap months between leaving Lipsius in 1584 and begin-
ning his journey to Constantinople in April 1585? It had not even been
noted that Bongars was in Prague in 1585. But there are letters that further
document his stay in Prague and provide information about his scholarly
network. In a fawning letter of January 14, 1585, Andreas Dudith, the
apostate Hungarian bishop then living in Breslau, wrote to Bongars in
Prague.22 He wanted Bongars to come and stay with him in Breslau—he felt
rather isolated in that Lutheran stronghold and kept inviting the good and
the great to stay with him. But he also appears to have tried to convince
Bongars of the high quality of Prague’s religious and learned residents,
encouraging him to visit a fellow Huguenot, Guillaume d’Ancel.23 It was
to d’Ancel that Bongars was later to dedicate his Rerum Hungaricarum
scriptores. Dudith also insinuated that Bongars could do worse than fre-
quent Jesuit company.24 He then poured praise on Bongars’s host for his
erudition and wisdom, but strangely without referring to him by name.
On January 1, 1585, Bongars had written from Prague to Nikolaus
Rehdiger (or Rehdinger), another resident of Breslau.25 The letter yields
precious information about Bongars’s plans for his journey to Constantino-
ple. He spoke of the difficulties of the journey that lay ahead and listed
various routes that he and his companions could take.26 Prague is compared
unfavorably with Breslau, which he considers to be much more elegant.27

22
University Library of Wroclaw, MS Akc. 1949/594, 70, 43r–44v. For a recent treat-
ment of Dudith, see Gábor Almási, The Uses of Humanism: Johannes Sambucus (1531–
1584), Andreas Dudith (1533–1589), and the Republic of Letters in East Central Europe
(Leiden: Brill, 2009), 239–327.
23
University Library of Wroclaw, MS Akc. 1949/594, 70, 43v: “Mihi sane si istic sim,
vel unus Ancilius vir, magni vir iudicii, eloquentiae, prudentiae singularis instar sit
omnium: quem si meis verbis officiose salutare non gravabere, magnam tibi gratiam
debeo.”
24
“Iam si te Jesuitarum capit Societas, estne aliquid, quod in eorum consuetudine desid-
eras? Sed ne me iocari existimes . . .” He expresses the same sentiment elsewhere. In a
letter to Reuter of 1583, Dudith writes: “If I were you, I would go to Paris to listen to the
professors of the Sorbonne and to the Jesuits. I am not joking. There are often distin-
guished men and outstanding philosophers tucked away in such groups of people, and in
the orders of the Dominicans and the Franciscans.” Quoted in translation by Gábor
Almási, “Andreas Dudith (1533–89): Conflicts and Strategies of a Religious Individualist
in Confessionalising Europe,” in Between Scylla and Charybdis: Learned Letter Writers
Navigating the Reefs of Religious and Political Controversy in Early Modern Europe, ed.
Jeanine de Landtsheer and Henk Nellen (Leiden: Brill, 2011), 161–84, at 167.
25
University Library of Wroclaw, MS. Akc. 1949/713, letter 44, 23v–25r. “Jac. Bongar-
sius Badrianus Nicolao Redingero S.D.”
26
Ibid., letter 44, 24r: “Nam ipso ineunte vere Vienna petenda erit: ne mihi illam, quae
hostis communis et maximi impetum toties excepit, repressit, reppulit, invisam relin-
quam: inde porro Hungaria, modo per Caesarem liceat, quem audio difficilem esse in
commeatibus nostris hominibus per Hungariam concedendis. Et si hoc non succedit, pet-

529
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Bongars was also not impressed by the imperial court—“imperial only in

name”—and observed that the people’s liberty was constantly endan-
gered.28 More relevant for our discussion here is that it is in this letter that
he revealed the name of the learned host to whom Dudith alludes, Thad-
daeus Hagecius (Tadeáš Hájek), none other than Rudolph II’s personal phy-
sician and also an astronomer, a close colleague of Tycho Brahe and a
powerful patronage broker.29 Hagecius’s home was indeed an international
meeting place. Bongars, and presumably also de Trougny, would have met
Bernard Gilles Penot, who was working on an alchemical project in Hageci-
us’s home at the time.30 Testimony to their stay under the same roof is
indicated by Penot’s praise of both travelers in his treatise Quaestio an
magia sit licita.31 Bongars was not an alchemist himself, but he clearly
moved in alchemical circles, and even expressed enjoyment in reading
alchemical tracts. And at the end of the dedication to the appendix to his
1600 Rerum Hungaricarum scriptores, Bongars specifically referred to Le
Normant’s expertise in alchemy, while subtly implying that alchemy was
not a profession where he dared to tread unaided.32 Although he does not
seem to have been involved in the furious debates about alchemy that shook

enda erit Polonia, ut inde cum negociatoribus aut Transilvaniam, aut recta ipsum itineris
nostri caput Byzantium petamus.”
27
Ibid., letter 44, 24r: “Urbs ipsa vasta, et longe infra elegantiam Breslae vestrae.” Nico-
las Henelius the annalist concludes his Breslo-graphia hoc est Bratislaviae Silesiorum met-
ropolews nobilissimae delineatio brevissima (Frankfurt, 1613), 78, with a citation from
Joannes Michaelis Brutus’s letter to Dudith, also heaping praise on Breslau, a city “in qua
constituit Deus exemplar unicum iustissimae civitatis et moderatissimae . . . ,” and extol-
ling it above all other cities in Europe he had visited.
28
Ibid., letter 44, 24r–24v: “in aula praeter nomen, nihil imperatorium: gentem ipsam
multum de maiorum suorum animis remisisse video: quae quotidie libertatem suam immi-
nui tacita patiatur.”
29
Ibid., letter 44, 25r: “ex aedibus D.d. Thadaei Hagecii, in quas me abdidi ad hos paucos
menses.”
30
See Wilhelm Kühlmann and Joachim Telle, eds., Corpus Paracelsisticum: Dokumente
frühneuzeitlicher Naturphilosophie in Deutschland (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2013), vol. 3, nr.
128, 576–78.
31
Bernard Gilles Penot, “Quaestio an magia sit licita,” reprinted in Theatrum chimicum
(Strassburg, 1659), 1:665–69: “Idcirco in gratiam priorum doctissimorumque virorum
Guglielmi Le Normanti Trogniani et Jacobi Bongarsii omniumque disciplinarum
versatiss . . .” Penot was in Prague and working in the house of Thaddaeus Hagecius on
an alchemical project during the same time that Bongars and Le Normant were there.
32
Jacques Bongars, Rerum Hungaricarum scriptores varii historici geographici (Frank-
furt: Wechel, 1600). Appendix ad res Hungaricas in qua Transylvanicae inscriptiones
veteres nonnullae et annales exscripti de templis Leutschovienensi et coronensi, “Ista tu
Guillelme frater, non ignoras esse a spiritibus illis metallicis et mineralibus, quibus terra
parens ita gravida est, ut etiam aureos cincinnos, virides inter cespites; et inter torrentium
fluviorum arenulas, aureas glebas proiiciat . . . Sed alta illa et secreta Mysteria vereor
ingredi penitius; ad quae nec accedere fuerim ausus, nisi te manuductore, cui vivida vis

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Weinberg ✦ New Perspectives on the Maharal of Prague and Jacques Bongars

the European scholarly establishment, it is telling that it is to Bongars that

Andreas Libavius dedicated his monumental Commentarii alchymiae.
Bongars does not speak about his Hebrew lessons to his correspon-
dents, nor does he mention Rabbi Judah in his letters. This reticence
remains puzzling. But one scholar who belonged to Bongars’s tightly knit
scholarly community mentions the Maharal on two separate occasions:
Bartolomäus Scultetus, mayor of Görlitz, in Upper Lusatia, a renowned
astronomer, cartographer, chronologer, and Paracelsian, and a colleague of
Brahe and Kepler. In Jewish writings, it is the astronomer David Gans who
pays memorable attention to Scultetus when in his chronicle he dubs him
“the greatest living astrologer.”33
Scultetus kept a diary. On March 6, 1585, he entered a rather surpris-
ing bit of information—that on his way from Prague to Poland the Maharal
had met him in the Blue Lion Inn in Görlitz and proceeded to give him a
lecture on the Jewish calendar, part of which Scultetus incorporated into
his chronicle.34 Apparently, the meeting went well, for in the entry for April
15, 1600—that is, fifteen years later—Scultetus jotted down casually: “This
evening Rabbi Jehuda, the Loew, dropped by to see me.”35 The entries in
the album and diary testify that Maharal did not leave Prague for Poznań
before 1585, as scholars relying on Gans’s vague description usually sug-
gest. Instead, he spent time in the company of gentiles, apparently speaking
about innocuous subjects such as astronomy, a subject that, as Adam Mos-
ley has shown, drew together scholars from all over the learned diaspora.36
Indeed, in the previous year the Jesuit Antonio Possevino had met the
Lutheran Scultetus in Görlitz and their conversation focused on the hot
topic of the day, the Gregorian reform of the calendar.37

ingenti arti Naturae portarum claustra reseravit feliciter” (620). The dedication is dated
Kal. Mart. 1597.
33
Tsemah David (1592), 112r [Breuer, Tsemah David, 407–8].
34
Ernst Koch, “Scultetica,” Neues Lausitzisches Magazin 92 (1916): 20–58. Even before
Scultetus met the Maharal, he took note of Jewish calendrical matters. See his Almanach
und SchreibKalender auffs Jahr nach der Geburth Christi MDLXXXIIII (Görlitz, 1584).
The final leaf describes “Mobilia Festa Hebraeorum ex veteri Testam.” Clearly, Scultetus
knew more than the Old Testament because he refers to post-biblical designations of the
months, giving dates according to rabbinic practice. For example, he refers to the month
of shevat (January or February) as “schevat neomenia princip.anni arborum” (see Mish-
nah, tractate Rosh ha-Shanah 1,1) or the month of Marheshvan (November) as “1 marh-
esvan neom. Mensis diluvii” (for the dating of the flood in Marheshvan, see Seder Olam
Rabbah, chap. 4).
35
Koch, “Scultetica,” 28: “Zu abends ist bei mir gewesen Rabbi Jehuda oder der Löwe.”
36
Adam Mosley, Bearing the Heavens: Tycho Brahe and the Astronomical Community
of the Late Sixteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).
37
Koch, “Moskowiter in der Oberlausitz und M. Bartholomäus Scultetus in Görlitz,”
Neues Lausitzisches Magazin 84 (1908): 80–81.

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 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS ✦ OCTOBER 2016

Bongars stayed in the home of Thaddaeus Hagecius, where he got to

know firsthand the ways of the court. And for three months he would wend
his way to the Jewish quarter to study with Judah Seligmann. But why did
he go to the Kloyz, when he could have easily joined one of the classes given
by Joannes Fortius Hortensius, who not only taught Hebrew grammar but
also used Jewish interpretations in his lectures on the Hebrew Bible at
the Charles University?38 Was it because, like many other Christians, he
thought that it was better to get his information from the horse’s mouth?
A Jewish teacher would be able to convey traditions of learning that had
withstood the test of time. But why, more generally, did he learn Hebrew?
The contrast with Bongars’s correspondent and friend Isaac Casaubon is
only too stark. As Anthony Grafton and I have tried to demonstrate,
Casaubon’s Hebrew learning was an integral part of his scholarly persona,
and is discernible throughout his intellectual legacy: in his manuscripts, in
his annotated books, and in his own writings, whether editions of classical
texts or in his monumental attack on Cesare Baronio.39 Bongars does not
refer to Hebrew matters in any of his works nor, as far as I know, in any of
his letters. But of course he was not able to lead the sedentary life of a
scholar that Casaubon enjoyed. Until 1610—namely, two years before he
died—Bongars was constantly on the move and involved in matters of state.
And yet there is evidence that Hebrew was not just a passing fad for
Bongars, a way of whiling away the time in Prague before setting off to
Constantinople. Vestiges of Bongars’s study of biblical Hebrew are clearly
to be seen within the leaves of the magnificent library that he acquired
and which is now housed in Bern.40 Bongars owned thirty-three Hebrew,
Hebrew–Latin, Yiddish, or Hebrew–Italian works. Among these was a
Hebrew Bible containing the books of Joshua, Judges, Samuel, and Kings,
printed by Robertus Stephanus in Paris in 1544.41 Bongars’s collection
bears all the hallmarks of a so-called Christian Hebraist’s working library.
It includes Jean Mercier’s useful textbooks: his Latin translations of the
medieval Jewish commentaries, such as those of Abraham ibn Ezra and
David Kimhi.42 These texts provided budding Christian Hebraists with the

38
Stanislav Segert and Karel Beránek, Orientalistik an der Prager Universität (Prague:
Univerzita Karlova, 1967), 21–28.
39
Anthony Grafton and Joanna Weinberg, “I have always loved the Holy Tongue”: Isaac
Casaubon, the Jews, and a Forgotten Chapter in Renaissance Scholarship (Cambridge,
Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2011).
40
I am most grateful to Sabine Schlüter of Bern’s Universitätsbibliothek for sending me a
list of Bongars’s Judaica and for providing me with photographs of some of the pages of
his books.
41
Bern, Universitätsbibliothek, ZB Bong I 406:3.
42
Abraham ibn Ezra, Decalogus praeceptorum divinorum cum . . . commentario Rabbi

532
Weinberg ✦ New Perspectives on the Maharal of Prague and Jacques Bongars

aids for study of these commentators, known for their more rationalistic
and literal interpretations of the Bible. Bongars’s signature graces David ibn
Yahya’s work on Hebrew prosody, a work that fascinated Hebraist scholars
of this time and was used in their quest for understanding the nature of
poetry.43 He also owned Johannes Drusius’s translation of the Proverbs of
Ben Sira (Franeker, 1597), a crucial source for humanist collectors of Ada-
gia.44 No less typical for such a library is Paulus Fagius’s collection of
selected Hebrew prayers (Isny, 1542), a description of Jewish table liturgy
recast in a Christian setting.45 Particularly intriguing is the copy of Me’on
shualim (Habitation of wolves) by Moses of Rieti, which he possessed in its
Italian translation, printed in Venice in the 1580s.46 Apparently, like his
friend Isaac Casaubon, Bongars had no interest in Judaism’s mystical tradi-
tion: he does not appear to have acquired any books of Kabbalistic or mys-
tical content. The Latin chronological speculations of the controversial
English Hebraist and divine Hugh Broughton were part of Bongars’s
library, but so, too, was Broughton’s Hebrew correspondence—some of
which was translated into Latin and Greek—which included an exchange
of letters on biblical history and the Messiah with a Jew from Constanti-
nople.47
Bongars’s Hebrew ambitions were clearly on a lesser scale than those
of Scaliger or even Casaubon, but impressive nonetheless. He annotated his
copy of the bilingual Hebrew and Latin Josippon, the medieval Josephus, a
work scanned by Jews and Christians alike for historical material about the
second Temple period, whether they thought the work was authentic or
not. From his few annotations it would appear that he was reading the
facing Latin translation, a reprint of Sebastian Münster’s popular rendition
of the text.48 Bongars the Christian philologist manifests himself in his mar-
ginal note on one passage, which describes the struggle for power between

Abraham Aben Ezra / accedit latina interpretatio per Io. Mercerum (Paris, 1566–68),
Bern, Universitätsbibliothek, ZB Bong I 412:8; Libellus Ruth cum scholiis masorae ad
marginem: Item in eundem succincta expositio nondum in lucem emissa, cuius in manu-
scripto exemplari autor praefertur R. D. Kimhi / omnia per Io. Mercerum . . . recognita
(Paris, 1563), Bern, Universitätsbibliothek, ZB Bong I 412:6.
43
See Grafton and Weinberg, Holy Tongue, 109–10.
44
Bern, Universitätsbibliothek, ZB Bong IV 977.
45
Bern, Universitätsbibliothek, ZB Bong IV 605:2.
46
Bern, Universitätsbibliothek, ZB Bong VI 203:8.
47
Hugh Broughton, Familia Davidis, quatenus regnum spectat: Cum Chronographia
sacra ad redemtionem usque continuata (Amsterdam: Zacharias Heinsius, 1606), Bern,
Universitätsbibliothek, ZB Bong I 119:1; Broughton, Parshegen nishton (Amsterdam,
1606), Bern, Universitätsbibliothek, ZB Bong IV 1:1; Broughton, Sefarim shetayim
(Amsterdam, 1606), Bern, Universitätsbibliothek, ZB Bong IV 1:3.
48
Josippus de bello Iudaico (Basel, 1559). This reprint of Münster’s translation was

533
 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS ✦ OCTOBER 2016

the Hasmonean brothers Hyrcanus and Aristobulus in whose time it is said

“Jesus the Nazarene was apprehended.” Bongars jots down in the margin:
“This is not Jesus the savior. Rather, it refers to Jesus the Nazarene who
lived under the Maccabean dominion of the son of Simon the Maccabee.
This was a hundred and ten years before Jesus the Nazarene who lived
under the rule of Pontius Pilate and suffered in the time of Tiberius the
Emperor.”49 Bongars had put his finger on a controversial historical record
that the twelfth-century Jewish scholar Abraham ibn Daud had already
called into question.50 Bongars also read through the abbreviated version
of the book of commandments by Moses of Coucy (the Semag)—another
Münster production in the same volume as the Josippon.51 Reading such a
book, which was structured according to a traditional classification of the
positive and negative commandments, Bongars would have gained an entry
into the legal and theological world of traditional Judaism. Naturally, the
picture is not complete. We cannot know whether he read all his books
with the same intensity as did Casaubon, nor can we ascertain when he
acquired his Judaica library. But considering this evidence together with our
album entry, we must necessarily conclude that Bongars’s Hebrew classes in
the Maharal’s den were part of a larger intellectual or religious quest.
The Maharal’s discussion of Written and Oral Torah, mentioned
above, occurs in the penultimate chapter of the Tiferet Yisrael. The penulti-
mate chapter of this work has been analyzed in an illuminating manner by
Ben-Sasson and bears summary here. The chapter begins with a discussion
of the Karaites, the so-called Scriptualists or lectuarii, as Guillaume Postel
called them, who challenged rabbanite hegemony.52 The Maharal insisted
that the term should be regarded in positive terms, and like Scaliger he
denied that the Sadducees of old should be identified with the Karaites. He
then proceeded to record a discussion he had had with a gentile scholar

included in the potpourri of works printed by Sebastianus Lepusculus, professor of

Hebrew in Basel from 1556 to 1575.
49
Josippus de bello Iudaico, 82: “Non Jesus servator. Sed Jesus nazarenus qui fuit sub
sovrano macabaeo Simonis macabaei filio 110 annis vixit ante Jesus nazarenum qui sub
pontio pilato vixit et tiberio imperatore passus est.” Bern, Universitätsbibliothek, ZB
Bong V 50.
50
Abraham ibn Daud, The Book of Tradition: Sefer-ha-Qabbalah, ed. and trans. Gerson
D. Cohen (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1967), 20–21.
51
Ibid., 308.
52
Guillaume Postel, Linguarum duodecim characteribus differentium alphabetum, intro-
ductio, ac legendi modus (Paris: Lescuier, 1538), sig. 102v. Postel describes three Jewish
sects of Syria: the Talmudists, the Karaites, and the Samaritans. He refers to the Karaites’
strict literal interpretation of the “sacred books,” and in particular, to their marriage
laws.

534
Weinberg ✦ New Perspectives on the Maharal of Prague and Jacques Bongars

who asked him the following question: “You Jews hold the view that since
the gentiles do not agree about their religion, the religion itself can have
little value. But have the Jews not had their disputes? Both Zadok and Boe-
thus, who were leaders of large sects, denied the validity of the Oral Torah.
Moreover, many of the laws of the Torah are subject to countless controver-
sies in the Talmud.”53 The Maharal’s long response goes to the heart of the
exegetical matter and gives him the opportunity to reset his own ideological
position in a larger framework. Thus he argues that literal exegesis—the
Sadducean or Boethusian position—is undertaken only by idiots. The root
and foundation of religion cannot be challenged, for it is in this sphere that
its unity and essence is anchored. The disputed rulings that characterize
rabbinic discourse should not be regarded as signs of weakness or defect,
but rather the necessary consequence of discussion of the minutiae of the
law. But the law itself, the Torah, remains immutable.
Sectarianism and Karaism were the talk of the town in the late six-
teenth and early seventeenth centuries. Comparisons were forged between
Karaites and Huguenots, and different confessional groups became identi-
fied with one or another sect, be it Pharisee, Sadducee, or Karaite. The
Maharal had not read the relevant writings of Scaliger or Drusius or Serra-
rius, in which these issues were bitterly debated.54 But, as Ben-Sasson has
suggested, the Maharal may have heard about these discussions and here
integrated them into his impassioned defense of the Oral Torah.55 Was the
gentile of his discourse a rhetorical ploy or did he actually meet and discuss
these matters with a real gentile? In light of the evidence that I have put
forward, it is not unlikely that such a conversation did actually take place,
thus presenting concrete proof for the brilliant intuitions of Ben-Sasson and
other scholars that the Maharal did have contact with the non-Jewish
world. If the Maharal could regale Scultetus with the complicated details
of the Jewish calendar, it is likewise plausible that he would have engaged
in this kind of theological debate with another scholar from his circle. It
has to have been a scholar who knew something about Jewish texts and
who was interested and engaged in the theological issues of the day. It need
not have been Bongars—but we cannot exclude the possibility.

53
Judah Loew ben Bealel, Tiferet Yisrael, chap. 69, 62 col. d.
54
On these issues, see Grafton, Joseph Scaliger: A Study in the History of Classical Schol-
arship, vol. 2, Historical Chronology (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 414–15, 519–12;
Johannes van der Berg, “Proto-Protestants? The Image of the Karaites as a Mirror of
the Catholic–Protestant Controversy in the Seventeenth Century,” in Jewish–Christian
Relations in the Seventeenth Century: Studies and Documents, ed. J. van der Berg and
Ernestine G. E. van der Wall (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1988), 33–49.
55
Ben-Sasson, “Reformation,” 303–5.

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 JOURNAL OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS ✦ OCTOBER 2016

Apparently, the Maharal’s theological ideology remained purely theo-

retical in multinational Prague, where he not only prayed and served his
community, but also strayed into the worlds of the other.56 In light of the
knowledge that we now possess, David Gans’s report in his chronicle
Tsemah David that the great Gaon was called to an audience with Rudolph
II is certainly not implausible.57
The Maharal who welcomed Bongars and Le Normant de Trougny
into his domain and who positively assisted their initiation into Hebrew
Scriptures does not sit easily with the Maharal who denied that gentiles
could ever possess Torah. True, Judah Seligmann taught them Hebrew
Bible—the forbidden domain of Oral Torah, as represented by Mishnah or
Talmud, is not mentioned. But nevertheless the act of teaching Holy Writ
to gentiles went strictly against the grain of the Maharal’s basic teachings.
Is this simply a case of diplomatic compromise? As a leader of a community
often subject to persecution, the Maharal may have been forced to set aside
his theological principles. Faced with a request from scholars who had
friends in high places, he may have thought it best to accommodate their
wishes. But this interpretation is difficult to square with the Maharal’s mul-
tiple pronouncements on the necessary exclusion of all gentiles from the
truly sacred and divine realm. Should we rather conclude that appearances
are truly deceptive and that the Maharal’s writings do not portray the
whole man, just as Bongars’s writings fail to tell us the whole story of his
life and scholarly passion?
In a pioneering article, Anthony Grafton described the encounter
between science and humanism in Rudolphine Prague as two worlds in
collision.58 Here I have tried to show multiple worlds in collision, from
Breslau to Prague, from Poznań to Görlitz to Prague and back. One entry
in a Stammbuch opened up these multiple worlds and their complex inter-
action. It revealed an exquisite picture of friendship between a Jew and two

56
For a discussion of different scholarly positions on the nature of the Maharal’s connec-
tions to the non-Jewish world, see David Ruderman, Jewish Thought, 63–67.
57
Tsemah David (1592), 64r [Breuer, Tsemah David, 143]: “Our lord the upright
emperor, the great and extolled Rudolph . . . sent for the Gaon the Rabbi Liwa bar Bezalel
and received him with warmth and spoke to him face to face as normal human beings
speak to one another. The substance of their conversation is secret and has not been
divulged. This meeting occurred here in the holy community of Prague on Sunday, 3rd
Adar 352 (1592).” For a different, but interesting, approach to the meeting between the
Maharal and Rudolph, see Hillel Kieval, “Jewish Prague, Christian Prague, and the Castle
in the City’s Golden Age,” Jewish Studies Quarterly 18 (2010): 202–15.
58
Grafton, “Humanism and Science in Rudolphine Prague,” in Defenders of the Text:
The Traditions of Scholarship in an Age of Science, 1450–1800 (Cambridge, Mass.: Har-
vard University Press, 1994), 178–203.

536
Weinberg ✦ New Perspectives on the Maharal of Prague and Jacques Bongars

Christians that flourished in the most improbable of places, the Maharal’s

academy of higher Jewish learning. Such a story provides yet one more
example of the various ways and means that Jews and Christians interacted
in friendly rather than polemical modes in early modern Europe.59
The words ascribed to Melanchthon are most certainly apposite in this
context:60

These little books certainly have their uses: above all they remind
the owners of people and at the same time bring to mind the wise
teaching which has been inscribed in them. And they serve as a
reminder to younger students to be industrious in order that the
professors may inscribe some kind and commendatory words on
parting . . . At the same time the inscription itself teaches knowl-
edge of the character of the contributor, and quite often significant
passages from otherwise unknown and little-read authors are
found in albums. Finally, they record biographical details that
would otherwise be forgotten.61

Oxford University.

59
See Daniel Jütte, “Interfaith Encounters between Jews and Christians in the Early Mod-
ern Period and Beyond: Toward a Framework,” American Historical Review 118, no. 2
(2013): 378–400.
60
This is the English translation of M. A. E. Nickson, Early Autograph Albums in the
British Museum (London: Trustees of the British Museum, 1970), 9–10, which was trans-
lated from the German text published by Robert and Richard Keil, Die Deutschen
Stammbücher des sechzehnten bis neunzehnten Jahrhunderts (Berlin, 1893), 9–10. On
the source of this and other statements ascribed to Melanchthon about the pedagogical
value of Alba amicorum, see Werner Wilhelm Schnabel, Das Stammbuch: Konstitution
und Geschichte einer textsortenbezogenen Sammelform bis ins erste Drittel des 18.
Jahrhunderts (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 2003), 254–60. Melanchthon himself
was an inveterate writer of album entries. See Hans-Peter Hasse, “Melanchthon und die
‘Alba amicorum’: Melanchthons Theologie im Spiegel seiner Bucheintragungen,” in Der
Theologe Melanchthon, ed. Günter Frank (Stuttgart: Thorbecke, 2000), 291–338.
61
See Robert and Richard Keil, Deutschen Stammbücher, 9–10.

537