In scripturam sacram problemata — Venice 1536

In scripturam sacram problemata. — Bernardinus Vitalis Venetiis excudebat. Mense Iulio. M. D. XXXVI. 

Venice, Bernardino Vitali, 1536

First edition

4to (210 x 156 mm). *⁴ a-z⁸ &⁸ ɂ⁸ Ꞧ⁴ A-I⁸ K⁴ L-R⁸ S¹⁰ T-Z⁸ Aa-Cc⁸ Dd⁶: (4), 415, (1) leaves.

Watermargin in lower blank margin of quires R-Y. Contemporary limp vellum with overlapping fore-edges, 6 cm of the upper part of the lower fore-edge gone .

Edit16 21023; ustc 832914. Not in Adams (G 470 shows Paris 1575 only).

„His evident familiarity with the works if Marsilio Ficino and Giovanni Pico della Mirandula, with the Hermetic texts and the Talmudic and Kabbalistic traditions, suggests close contact with the Venetian intellectual circles  influenced by the Platonic ‚Renaissance‘ and with the scholars of the Venetian Jewish community … Such contacts, together with the probable connections with Egidio da Viterbo and the Venetian Augustinians engaged with editing the Joachimite texts, may explain the most typical aspects of Giorgio’s thought …

Already in 1532 he had met Luca Bonfius, friend of Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, with whom he had a long conversation about the most important Kabbalistic themes; and the following year Agrippa … had cited Giorgio among the greatest students of the Kabbalah. Giorgio’s name was already widespread among European followers of the secretior theologia (more secret theology) … Finally, in July 1536, he published in Venice In Scripturam Sacram Problemata, a work which had considerable success, especially in France where it was reprinted in 1575 and 1622.

In this book, Giorgio used a completely different procedure, tackling the ‚problematic‘ discussion of scriptural passages, of their apparent divergences and the different meanings to be attributed to them through recourse to Kabbalistic interpretation … He points to the Bible as the source of all knowledge, from mathematics to geometry, from music to ‚true and divine astronomy‘, from medicine to natural philosophy and ethics. Thus in the Problemata he says that he has treated not only the problems concerning the origin and order of the fabrica mundana, but also the creation of man, the coming of the Mosaic revelation and the history of Law; also the themes concerning ‚vaticination‘ from the biblical prophets to the prophecies of Hermes, Zoroaster, Orpheus, Pythagoras, and Plato derived from the the communal divine officina, and thence to the more secret truths of the Gospels.

Above all, he announces that he will have recourse to Kabbalistic exegesis according to the method of the Zohar, by which the sense of the Scripture may vary in 72 ‚facets‘, thereby revealing unknown ‚treasures‘ of wisdom. It is no suprise that in this book the most subtle theological and domatic arguments, subjected to the Kabbalah analysis, alternate with prophetic, messianic, and eschatological themes aimed at the expectation of the necessary renovatio of man and the world … (Cesare Vasoli in: Dictionary of Gnosis & Western Esotericism: Leiden, Brill, 2006, pp. 395ff.)

Both De Harmonia mundi and the Problemata were placed on the Index Romanus in 1590 and the Index librorum prohibitorum et expurgandorum in 1607.