A Remembrance of His Wonders. David I. Shyovitz

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СКАЧАТЬ see that the first pin of those ordered in this way hangs from this stone which it touches; then that the second pin adheres to it by similar contact, and the third, the fourth, and so on with the others. Since, therefore, the power of the adamantine by which it makes the first pin to adhere to it is transferred to all the pins, why is it surprising if the vivifying or animal power of the first heaven is transferred to the second, and from the second to the third, and so on until it comes to the last of the mobile heavens, which is the heaven of the moon, even if there is not another bond or bonding between them than contiguity or contact, as is seen in the proposed example.¹⁷⁰

      The argumentation here is nearly identical to that found in the Pietistic sifrut ha-yihud. The ability of the spheres to transfer their “vivifying force” sequentially, from the outermost reaches of the cosmos inward, cannot be apprehended visually, but the example of the lodestone grants credence to this abstract scientific notion.

      Jewish rationalists, too, were content to explain magnetism in occult terms—without rejecting the broader construct of natural causality. Abraham Ibn Ezra,¹⁷¹ Maimonides,¹⁷² the fourteenth-century southern French philosopher Levi b. Gershon (Gersonides),¹⁷³ and many others discussed the workings of the magnet in their writings, and concluded that its occult workings can be subsumed within the routine natural order.¹⁷⁴ Magnetism should have been problematic for Maimonides and Gersonides in particular, since the Aristotelian natural philosophy to which they were committed held action at a distance to be impossible. Maimonides thus insisted that “even the magnet exerts an attraction upon iron at a distance through a force, spreading out from it in the air, which encounters the iron.”¹⁷⁵ Gersonides, who discussed magnetism several times in his philosophical opus Milhamot Hashem (Wars of the Lord) and in his super-commentaries on Averroes, likewise concluded that “the intervening medium is affected,” and that some sort of physical contact between the mover and the moved object is taking place.¹⁷⁶ For Gersonides, who also uses the language of segulot, occult properties are not a strike against a rationally comprehensible natural order, as Ibn Adret or Ibn Shueb would have it. Rather, they are a means of privileging Aristotelian physics even in the face of potentially conflicting evidence. His account of the occult workings of magnetism, like Ibn Ezra’s and even Maimonides’, is thus functionally equivalent to the Pietists’ discussion of the “subtle substance that attracts [the iron to the magnet] which we cannot see.”

      It must be noted that many of these parallels are of heuristic value only—while they were familiar with the writings of Ibn Ezra, the Pietists never had access to the Guide, and predated William by several decades and Gersonides by a century. But the similarities are suggestive nonetheless. For the Pietists and these philosophical thinkers alike, magnetism is a “wondrous” phenomenon, whose occult workings do not undermine natural causality but rather can be subsumed within it—and can even be invoked to shed light on comparable philosophical and theological doctrines. When we turn to the Pietists’ treatment of the uses of magnetism, however, we find parallels in Christian scientific sources that are far closer in time, and which suggest the possibility of direct exchanges and encounters.

      As we have seen above, the Pietists extended their discussions of magnetism to the devices that worked via magnetic means, and hence they describe the nautical compass in a quite detailed manner. In their treatment of this device, the Pietists betray a familiarity with the state of the art of medieval technology—the compass was first introduced into medieval Europe during the late twelfth century and early thirteenth centuries, when it appeared in scientific and encyclopedic works like the De Naturis Rerum of Alexander Neckham, the Historia Orientalis seu Hierosolymitana of Jacques de Vitry, and the Liber Particularis of Michael Scot.¹⁷⁷ These early authors had a difficult time determining how the compass functioned—like the magnet itself, the workings of the compass were considered to be hidden, and it is not until later in the thirteenth century that figures like Thomas of Cantimpre, Albertus Magnus, and especially Peter Peregrinus authored more detailed accounts of the workings of magnetism. Nonetheless, Neckham, Jacques de Vitry, and others described the compass in a mechanistic manner, rather than attributing its workings to magic or the supernatural, indicating that they understood this object to function naturalistically despite its occult status.

      Where did the Pietists come upon this knowledge? One possibility emerges from the passage in Arugat ha-Bosem cited above, in which Abraham b. Azriel invokes “the power of stones” (ko’ah avanim) as an archetypical “remembrance” of God’s wonders. As we have seen above, the notion that stones have intrinsic “powers” was a mainstay of contemporary lapidaries, which listed the properties and uses of various minerals and gems. Magnets features prominently in these collections—and, significantly for our purposes, the composition and translation of lapidaries were a site of intellectual exchange between medieval Jews and Christians.¹⁷⁸ The best known medieval lapidary, Marbode of Rennes’ eleventh-century Liber de lapidibus, was translated several times into Hebrew (notably by the twelfth-century French polymath Berakhiyah ha-Nakdan) and circulated in Ashkenaz during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.¹⁷⁹ Indeed, many of these lapidaries circulated under the generic title Sefer Ko’ah ha-Avanim—indicating that these scientific treatises on the occult properties of various gemstones were likely what Abraham had in mind when he invoked the ko’ah ha-avanim in his explication of Psalms 111:4 in Arugat ha-Bosem. Recently, Gad Freudenthal and Jean-Marc Mandosio have suggested that the Hebrew translations of Marbode’s lapidary achieved popularity in northern France and Germany due to the role they played in the rabbinic curriculum, helping biblical exegetes to understand passages in the Bible (such as the description of the High Priest’s breastplate in Exodus 28) based on the realia described in learned vernacular texts.¹⁸⁰ Moreover, these texts were at times “Judaized” in addition to being translated: at least one Hebrew lapidary from medieval Germany was modified so as to include elements that correspond to the writings of Judah and Eleazar.¹⁸¹ Significantly, that same text contains a detailed description of the use of magnets as nautical compasses, reminiscent of Judah’s own description cited above.¹⁸²

      Judah’s repeated invocation of the therapeutic powers of the “preserving stone” similarly suggests that the Pietists treat wondrous gems not as supernatural phenomena, but rather as natural objects that function via occult means. After all, lapidaries consistently discuss the amulets that can be made from the various stones they treat, and numerous stones are described as being useful specifically for preventing miscarriages.¹⁸³ Indeed, the manner in which Judah describes the even tekumah itself indicates that he saw it not as a deviation from natural causality, but rather as an object whose workings could—and should—be accounted for rationally. As we saw above, Judah believes that this amulet is effective because it works in a physical manner—namely through scent. He takes pains to clarify this point over and over again in his writings. At one point, for instance, he explicitly asks how it is possible for an amulet to have a physical effect: “And if one were to ask: ‘How can a fetus benefit from the even tekumah?’ It is possible to respond that the fetus enjoys the smell of it, and does not leave its appointed place, and remains at rest. And if one were to ask: ‘What scent does a stone have?’ It is possible to respond that the beeswax we light on the Day of Atonement has no smell that we can discern, but the bees smell it. So too, even though we cannot smell it, the fetus smells [the even tekumah] and closes the womb, and does not leave until the stone is removed.”¹⁸⁴ Judah is clearly troubled here by the fact that the effectiveness of this object cannot be accounted for in any discernable way. He therefore attempts to explain it by reference to the beeswax candles lit by his community on the Day of Atonement—a “proof” of God’s existence that also recalls their invocation of dogs’ olfactory abilities discussed above.

      The Pietists invoke scent in their discussions of other magical phenomena as well. A transplanted nose will fall off when its original owner dies because “it smells the death of its [original] body, since some substance reached it, even though it is too subtle to see.”¹⁸⁵ Indeed, just as in the case of magnetism, the existence of some “subtle” substance that СКАЧАТЬ