The Role of the “Jew” in Franciscus Mercurius Van Helmont’s “Adumbratio kabbalae christianae”

Abstract

While the use of the Jews as scapegoats is well documented, less noted is how they have provided a pretext for exploring and writing about heterodoxical ideas that otherwise might cause problems for the author. A case in point is the Adumbratio kabbalae christianae, by seventeenth-century esoteric thinker Franciscus Mercusius van Helmont. Although ostensibly designed to convert the Jews, a close examination reveals that the text was intended to inform like-minded Christians about an esoteric mode of thought that, at the time, was repudiated by Church authorities.