This project was funded by the German Research Foundation DFG (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft).

In the second half of the 15th century, Jewish scholar Yohanan Alemanno (ca. 1435-1504) developed a body of thought which was heavily influenced by Italy's Humanist culture. His definition of wisdom is a great testimony of a new idea charecterizing Renaissance culture as a whole - that of a universal Sophia. According to Alemanno, Man gains insight into the secrets of Creation and ultimately the immortality of the soul, provided he is capable of mastering the different disciplines of mystical knowledge. In this way, Alemanno converged towards the neoplatonic Humanism of his time, and was familiar, much more than most of his Jewish contemporaries, with the ideal of harmony between different traditions and disciplines, first theorized by Christian polymath Giovanni Pico della Mirandola (1463-1494) . Albeit that the blueprint for Alemannos definition of wisdom had its roots in the Christian scholarly world, his understanding of wisdom (Hebr. חכמה, khókhmah) was to demonstrate its autonomy - an autonomy which is deeply rooted in Jewish wisdom traditions - in all its strength.

In examining one of Alemanno's most important works, an untitled autograph (MS Paris 849) preserved in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris, the project aimed to explore the Jewish equivalent of the Renaissance's Universal Man and to highlight the interaction between Jewish Humanism and that which was influenced by its Christian surroundings. This manuscript contains an encyclopedia of mystical, magical, kabbalistic and philosophical writings and can be considered as the Hebrew counterpart to Marsilio Ficino's Corpus Hermeneticum.

The goal of this project was to edit, translate and comment on MS Paris 849 in its entirety.