Introduction: Mystical Speculation

Medieval W. Christendom
The search for the deeper meaning of received texts and traditions is a constant of religious
communities, and the Christian majority and Jewish minority of medieval western Christendom
were no exceptions. Within the Christian majority, numerous mystical and pietistic groups
emerged. To an extent, the Roman Catholic Church was successful in absorbing many of these
groups into its fold; some of these groups, however, seemed to cross the boundary into heterodoxy,
giving rise to the perceived proliferation of heresy and the elaboration of repressive mechanisms for
dealing with what was viewed as a dangerous threat. The same creative forces are evident in the
Jewish world as well, where new interpretations of the biblical and rabbinic texts and traditions
abounded as well.

In northern Europe, the most potent of these new tendencies was to be found in the
Rhineland area, in a twelfth-century movement dubbed by modern scholarship Hasidei Ashkenaz
(The German Pietists). This loose movement was headed by some of the most venerable and
illustrious rabbinic families in the area. These thinkers advanced novel understandings of
traditional biblical imagery, and their heretofore-unpublished writings are slowly being edited and
analyzed. The pietistic teachings of this group have been far better known. The major repository of
these teachings is the well-known Sefer Hasidim, a compilation of many literary forms, perhaps
most prominently didactic tales with moral and ethical directives. These teachings generally take a
radically negative view of surrounding Christian society, urging upon the pious believer extremes of
self-abnegation.

Mystical speculation was somewhat broader and more diversified across the southern areas
of Europe during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. These diverse mystical movements advanced
alternative methods for plumbing the deep secrets of the universe, involving a variety of
reinterpretations of traditional Jewish teachings and behaviors. With the passage of time, one
mystical stream became increasingly prominent, that called loosely theosophic Kabbalah. This
version of medieval Jewish mysticism posited a multi-faceted divinity, whose various sefirot or
sectors interacted dynamically with one another and with the lower levels of the universe as well.
As this tendency matured and achieved preeminence, its adherents produced the classic work of
medieval Jewish mysticism, the Zohar.