The Occult Renaissance Church of Rome

by Michael Hoffman

  “It is known from other sources that Fisher read and admired Pico” (i.e. Giovanni Pico della Mirandola)…Pico had rediscovered the cabala, the ancient Hebrew oral tradition of divine wisdom. Christian cabbalism aimed to harmonize all knowledge, and thus effect the conversion of the Jews. Fisher came to see the cabala as analogous to the apostolic tradition, those ‘unwritten verities’ which supplemented and explained the scriptures.” 75

  For years Erasmus acted as a liaison between Reuchlin and Fisher, avidly encouraging their correspondence and Fisher’s enthusiasm for Reuchlin, while advising Reuchlin on how he could kindle it; then when questioned about Reuchlin by English Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, Erasmus denied it all. He told Wolsey that he and Reuchlin “were not close,” and that he “derived little from the Talmud and Cabala.”

  The tactics of Erasmus and the authors of the Epistolae obscurorum vivorum were predicated on suppression and censorship—the confident expectation that Pfefferkorn’s pamphlets could be rendered difficult to find and, what is more, by the time the conspirators were through traducing him, that his reputation would be so trashed that few would trouble to read him even if they could obtain his publications.

  There is another dimension to the anti-Pfefferkorn propaganda: the bizarre phenomenon of Jew hate employed to advance Judaism. In the third printing of Epistolae obscurorum vivorum it was said that Pfefferkorn “still stank like any other Jew.” To the charge that Reuchlin was favorable to rabbis and anti-Christian Judaics, both Reuchlin and the authors of the Epistolae, maintained a leitmotif of personal revulsion toward individual Judaic persons. This was a masquerade but it reveals a striking fact: the Church of Rome from the Renaissance to the late nineteenth century maintained a twopronged strategy of ethnic snobbery and hostility toward individual “Jews” on the part of the lower orders of Catholics, while the papacy and curia were in thrall to the gnosis of Hermetic-Kabbalism and Platonism. Among parish priests and literate layman, books and pamphlets contrary to Judaic persons were allowed to circulate at the parish-level and in these same circles memories of the inquisitorial, token Talmud burnings were kindled. This was a sophisticated and successful ploy. Judging by the level of anti-Judaic suspicion and wariness among the Catholics in the pews up until the eve of Vatican Council II, a casual observer would conclude that the popes had managed to remain loyal to the Gospel after all.

  Yet in fact, throughout the entire post-Renaissance era, Neoplatonic-Hermetic-Kabbalism obtained an ever greater hegemony over the Vatican. Whenever it was a choice between a proven leader of a Catholic-populist movement seeking freedom from rabbinic control and influence, whether led by Fr. Charles Coughlin, or Pfefferkorn, or Savonarola, occult elements at the top of the Church of Rome saw to it that these servants of God were silenced and suppressed. The image, maintained by media and academia, of a relentlessly “anti-Jewish” Church of Rome existing from the Middle Ages through the pontificate of Pope Pius XII, has proved to be a remarkably successful imposture.

  In addition to allowing for a measure of populist anti-Judaic action and polemic in the parishes, in elite Renaissance Catholic circles, the all-important rescue of the Talmud and Kabbalah from incineration was based partly upon a premise most of us would find laughable today: the use of the Talmud and Kabbalah as fertile textual sources “for the proselytization of the Jews.” From Giovanni Pico onward, a lie of epic proportions was sown among bishops, abbotts, cardinals and popes. It was declared with a straight face that the Kabbalah and the Talmud offered proof that Jesus was the Messiah. Therefore it was proposed that these venerable rabbinic books should be preserved from destruction and distributed. From the hands of Pico, this outrageous falsehood was transmitted by Reuchlin to the numerous eminent churchmen increasingly tainted by the tenets of the Neoplatonists and Hermeticists. One of these was Pietro Galatino, prior of the Franciscans of Bari and Apostolic Penitentiary under Pope Leo X, in his foliosized volume of 425 pages, De arcanis catholicae veritatis (“On the Hidden Catholic Truth,” 1518; reprinted in Paris in 1603).

  Galatino’s work was written for Leo X and includes a servile glorification of the Medici dynasty and a defense of that imperial lawyer (“counselor”) of the Holy Roman Empire, Johannes Reuchlin. De arcanis catholicae veritatis was selfadvertised as a debating manual for use against the “perfidious Jews” by way of quoting from the Christ-affirming Talmud (!). The fallacies and non-sequiturs in that premise indicate the extent to which even the educated classes of Europe and Britain largely had no working knowledge of the authentic contents of the Babylonian Talmud, and were prone to believe whatever they were told by “papal theology experts.” Sowing deliberate misdirection and misunderstanding, Galatino incorporated broad swathes of material from the massive, medieval Pugio Fidei, by the Dominican linguist Raymond Martin (“Raymundus Martini”), 76 regarded by most of our contemporary professorcracy as a massive refutation of the Talmud religion and its rabbis. A cursory reading will confirm that faulty impression. It is a poisoned chalice, however: in many respects a learned work containing many valid criticisms of the Talmud — and one fatal poison that corrupts the whole with deadly efficiency: Martini upholds the ludicrous proposition upon which the Neoplatonic-Heremtic-Kabbalistic conspiracy is founded, that the rabbinic Oral Law of which the Talmud is the most prominent part, “proves Christ is the Messiah.” To sustain this claim Martini was impelled to state, “Yet of some such (rabbinic) traditions we can believe…” 77 More than two centuries later, Galatino expanded this hoax exponentially.

  In addition to encomiums for Reuchlin, Galatino disparaged Johann Pfefferkorn by degrading Pfefferkorn’s patron and advocate, Rev. Fr. Jacob von Hoogstraeten. What was being promoted as an age of Renaissance enlightenment was actually a new dark age of occultism where Catholic intellectuals plunged into delusion.

  A Pfefferkorn Catechism

  Reading the reviled Judaic convert Pfefferkorn is like reading the Catechism of the Council of Trent. His texts are a blessed relief from the trending occult deceptions and a model of true Catholic catechesis. Here is an extract from Pfefferkorn’s Der Juden Spiegel:

  “…there are some Jews who would agree that Christ was God and man, but by no means do they want to believe in Mary’s virginity or even hear anything about it. Moreover, they assert that it is not natural to give birth to a child as a virgin. And secretly they say among themselves that Mary was outlawed. With such and other abominable words they revile the noble and blessed Mother and Queen of Heaven, Mary, from whom arises all our blessedness. To these blind and stubborn blasphemers of Mary, I answer that I am quite disconcerted by their evil defamations, for they still agree that Christ was God. And in order that they might notice their own ignorance all the better, I want to demonstrate more clearly to them how Adam and Eve were created by God pure and free of any sins. Since God Almighty brought Adam and Eve into this world free of the devil and of any sin, it also suited Him to free Himself and be granted pure birth. For Mary conceived Jesus supernaturally by divine providence without losing her virginity and without having been impregnated. In such a supernatural way and by divine providence, she gave birth, for God has power over all things. And if the Jews came to think about it honestly, they could derive from my words the virginity and purity of noble Mary. In better witness, however, I will put before them and before all of you Jews, your Scripture and ask you to read what is written in the third chapter of Genesis (3:15): “A woman will strike at the serpent’s head.” Oh, blessed Mary has struck the serpent’s head, i.e. his power, and has crushed it completely by her pure, virgin birth, Mother Mary who deserves to be honored.

  “…Likewise, the Jews who have been led by the false Talmud to a wrong path, continue to walk on it in good spirits. If, however, learned people were to come to them to make them knowledgeable about the Holy Scripture and were to take the false Talmud away from them, they would learn of the right way and would indeed have to follow it. Therefore, confiscate their books and burn them. Then you will st
eer them onto the path of truth all the easier.

  “One could object to my arguments by saying that it is not right to deprive someone of his possessions by force. Answer: Where you do not do it they will be wronged and oppressed much worse by taxes, customs’ fees, interest, and fees for protection, than if one seizes their books. Their salvation must be sought more by this than by money. Moreover, I believe that God, Mary, and the whole heavenly host would be greatly displeased by the books; and because one tolerates such bad books and all kinds of blasphemies in Christianity, although one could get rid of them, I am surprised that God has not punished us yet as he punished Sodom and Gomorrah, etc. So, you rulers, who hold power over people, have heard the…reasons why the Jews remain so obstinate. You could indeed confront them and help them find the way to eternal salvation…” 78

  In concluding his section on Judaism, Pfefferkorn solicits the ruling powers of Christendom to receive Judaic converts to Catholicism with kindness:

  “Therefore, you are invited and asked to welcome the Jews kindly and to instruct them graciously when they come to you and want to convert to Christianity. Look with mercy upon these people of God who have miserably left everything they possessed in this world and put all their trust in you and have no other comfort than the pious Christians. Support them, so you will build the path Christ has taught. That way a flock of sheep can develop (cf. John 10:16), and this will undoubtedly happen.” 79

  Reuchlin was called upon by civil and church authorities to give testimony on the subject of the confiscation of non-Biblical rabbinic books. In his published Recommendation against confiscation, he stated that the Talmud was free of all blasphemy and that the statement by Jesus in John 5:39, “Search the scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life: and they are they which testify of me,” was a reference to the Talmud. He plied Giovanni Pico’s line that the Talmud and Kabbalah buttressed Christian truth. He denigrated the Good Friday liturgy which had the temerity to castigate “perfidious Jews.”

  When it was published there was a great deal of “noise” inside the Church raised against Reuchlin’s Recommendation, some of it sincere and some of it doubletalk employed to prop up a facade of orthodoxy among the hierarchy who were conspiring with Reuchlin.

  Sincerity poured forth from the theology faculty at the University of Cologne. They issued a thorough examination of Reuchlin’s texts in favor of Judaism and called on him to recant his heresy. One can obtain a sense of how well-protected Reuchlin was by higher powers inside the Church from the content and tenor of his rejoinder to Cologne’s Catholic theologians, among them the esteemed Arnold van Tongern. With no fear of reprisal, Reuchlin termed them “vile scoundrels, lowlife slanderers” and “wicked dabblers.”

  “Giorgio Benigno Salviati, titular archbishop of Nazareth at Rome (‘Romae iepiscopus Nazarenus’) and formerly a wellrespected humanist professor and a protege of both the Medicis and Cardinal Carvajal, composed Whether Jewish Books, Which They Call the Talmud, Should he Suppressed or Kept and Preserved, which Neuenahr published in Cologne in 1517 as the centerpiece of a pamphlet titled the Defense of the Most Distinguished Man Johannes Reuchlin. The very title page of this work proclaims that Benigno had been the first member of the Roman commission to cast his vote in favor of Reuchlin. Benigno paints Reuchlin, from Rome’s perspective, as the premier humanist of the north…

  “In 1519, Reuchlin published a new collection of letters: the Letters of Illustrious Men. An important feature of this book is the goal of projecting an image of unity between Reuchlin and the Roman curia. The second volume of this book (the first volume is a reprint of the letters Reuchlin published in 1514), begins with a reprint of Reuchlin’s 1498 speech in the Sistine Chapel before Alexander VI and, otherwise includes many letters to and from the most distinguished churchmen of Rome. For example, one 1517 letter from Rome recounts a conversation between Francesco Poggio and Leo X: ‘Francesco Poggio of Florence recently beseeched the pope: ‘Holy Father, I will take the side of Reuchlin, and I wish to stand in his place. I read all of his research, all that I was able to get. An injustice is happening to that man.’ After a while, the pope responded to him: ‘Poggio, don’t worry. I will not allow that man to suffer any harm.” 80

  In 1519 Reuchlin’s Illustrium vivorum epistolae (“Letters of Illustrious Men”), a summation of support for him from members of the Church hierarchy, was published by Thomas Anshelm and circulated throughout Italy, much of the rest of Europe and Britain. The authenticity of these letters was not challenged. They were documentary evidence of the support for Reuchlin at the highest levels of the Church. They were his allies in spreading the Talmud and Kabbalah. The Kabbalist Cardinal Giles of Viterbo had four of his letters published in Illustrium vivorum epistolae. In one of those letters Giles wrote to thank Reuchlin for having “saved the Talmud from the fires.” With regard to Reuchlin’s trial, in which members of the hierarchy rescued Reuchlin from a guilty verdict, Giles wrote on October 25, 1516, “…in your trial…we understand that we have defended and preserved not you but the law, and not the Talmud, but the Church. It is not that Reuchlin has been saved by us but that we have been saved by Reuchlin.” 81

  These words by the Superior General of Luther’s own Augustinian order were not by accident. A heresy conviction for Reuchlin due to the efforts of Hoogstraeten and Pfefferkorn would have led to a larger investigation of members of the hierarchy of the Church of Rome and exposed the extent to which the Neoplatonic-Hermetic-Kabbalistic theology had infected the Pope, the Curia and the hierarchy. By saving their co-conspirator Reuchlin, the conspirators were themselves saved from being swept out of the Church with an iron broom. The trial of Reuchlin would be the last time a direct frontal assault was launched on the occult infiltration of Rome. Henceforth, minor occult adepts, scapegoats, rivals and challengers to papal authority would be executed or imprisoned, but never a deep cover member of the conspiracy (Giordano Bruno was not deep cover).

  Many other members of the hierarchy were on board with Reuchlin, from Jacob Questenberg, the papal proto-notary, to Cardinal Adriano Castellesi, a member of the papal commission that had vindicated Reuchlin. The highest member of the hierarchy to conspire on behalf of the occult conspiracy was Pope Leo X. It was the revolutionary Leo who, in 1520, took the shattering and unprecedented step of explicitly licensing Daniel Bomberg to publish the Babylonian Talmud with overt papal permission.

  It was Leo who, in 1517, privately paid homage to the publication of Reuchlin’s book of black magic, De arte cabalistica, which had been dedicated to him. But so bold was this pope in his diabolism that he permitted a public witness to his private endorsement. On May 25, 1517, he authorized the head of the Vatican library, Philipp Beroaldus the Younger, to write to Reuchlin as follows: “The pope read your book on the cabala avidly, as is his wont when reading good things.” These words were published in 1519 in Illustrium vivorum epistolae without papal objection.

  We scratch our heads today in wonder at how the Pope and his hierarchy could get away with supporting the Neoplatonic-Hermetic-Kabbalistic conspiracy with such brazen chutzpah. The impunity was achieved in part by depicting the advancement of the Talmud and Kabbalah in terms of the humanist advancement of knowledge in the field of the language arts, and specifically Hebrew philology. All who obstructed this glorious learning were repellant ignoramuses, as Erasmus stated in a letter to Hoogstraeten on August 1, 1519:

  “You will find you have done much, not only for the Dominican Order but also for the whole order of theologians, if you use your authority to suppress the brainless calumnies of some people who pour out their poisonous attacks on knowledge of the ancient languages and humanities, the fair name of which they blacken by prating of Antichrist and heresy and other histrionic stuff…”

  Several weeks later, in an October 19 letter to Albrecht of Brandenburg, Erasmus would deny any sympathy for Reuchlin, “For what do I have in common with Reuchlin or Luther?” A little more than a year later, o
n November 8, 1520, the chameleon Erasmus wrote to Reuchlin, “It has always been my aim to separate your cause from the issue of Luther…”

  When papalolaters have endeavored to explain away Reuchlin’s diabolism they have stooped to paint him in Lutheran hues, as a crypto-Protestant, when in truth Reuchlin was an always-faithful papist. It was popery above almost all other objections, which the Protestant movement protested. Hence, on that single point alone the Reuchlin-was-a-Protestant-sympathizer canard is demolished. The absolute authority of the papacy was absolutely required for the forward movement of the conspiracy, from Ficino and Giovanni Pico through Reuchlin and onward. The progression was seamless. That the occult Catholic conspiracy would eventually contaminate certain leaders and movements within Protestantism cannot be gainsaid. To claim that it was Protestants who originated the occult infiltration of Christendom when it was the Church of Rome which had pioneered it, is a shameless act of misdirection and scapegoating that compounds the trail of deceit.

  The Fifth Lateran Council’s final session (March, 1517) took place during the Reuchlin controversy. The supposed assassination attempt on Leo X in April of that year, was alleged to be a poisoning plot supposedly hatched by the young Cardinal Alfonso Petrucci. The pope ordered the torture of Petrucci’s consigliere, Marcantonio Nini, who is reputed to have implicated Cardinals Adriano Castellesi, Francesco Soderini, Bandinello Sauli as well as the pope’s chamberlain, Cardinal Raffaele Riario. Petrucci was likely guilty of a plot, and he was executed. Riario, a power-broker in the Roman curia was ruined by a huge fine of 150,000 ducats. He died four years later, a broken man.