Transmission and Reception of Isaac ibn Sahula’s Kabbalistic Commentary on Two Psalms

Abstract

In his largely fabulous Historia eclesiastica, politica, natural y moral published in Valencia in 1610, the Dominican Luis de Urreta offers a brief survey of the riches of the Ethiopian imperial library with great admiration. The universal character of the Emperor’s library ensured that it also contained a good selection of Jewish authors and Hebrew books. Among them one can find two names that are in fact one: Isaac ben Sahula. This article documents how Christian knowledge of this author and of some of his works came about, through which ways it became very much widespread, also examining in passing the false attributions of works or rather ideas that became commonplace, especially between the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries. Finally, it will show that a very large part of his fame derived from a single Hebrew manuscript.