Bidspirit auction | Leo Hebreu [Judá Abravanel] –

Leo Hebreu [Judá Abravanel] – PHILOSOPHIE D'AMOUR DE M. LEON HEBREU: Contenant les grands & hauts poincts, desquels elle traite, tant pour les choses Morales & Naturelles, que pour les diuines & supernatureles. Lyon. Benoist Rigaud. 1595. 816 (47) pp. 12 cm x 8 cm. B. - French edition from Lyon, 1595, translated from Italian by Seigneur du Parc [Denys Sauvage], from Champagne. A capital work by the great Portuguese philosopher Judah Abravanel (Lisbon, c. 1465 – Italy, c. 1535), son of the rabbi and adviser to King Afonso V, who, together with Pedro da Fonseca and Francisco Sanches, forms the great trinity of Portuguese philosophical thought of the sixteenth century. The first Italian edition, Dialogi d’Amore, was published posthumously in Rome in 1535 by Antonio Blado d’Assola — extremely rare, with only two known copies: one in the Italian National Library and the other in the possession of Benedetto Croce. The Dialogues of Love, written c. 1502, take the form of a dialogue between Philo — love — and Sophia — wisdom — in which Abravanel sets out his Neoplatonic doctrine, according to which love is the ontological foundation of reality, conceived not only as sentimental but also as intellectual. Through love God created, and through love the creature returns to God. A work of colossal influence during the Renaissance, it was translated into Portuguese, French, Spanish, English, Latin, Hebrew, and other languages. Montaigne, who owned a copy in his library, wrote: “Mon page faict l’amour, lisez-luy Léon Hébreu et Ficin.” Its influence extended for another century, when Spinoza borrowed from it the concept of amor intellectualis Dei. Contemporary binding in flexible vellum with a handwritten title.