The Cordelier Jean Thenaud wrote this treatise, a kind of vade mecum on kabbalah, at the request of Francis I. This critical edition examines the process of the Christianization of kabbalah’s central themes and evaluates the knowledge cultivated men had of it in the sixteenth century.
Keyword: Religion, immortality of the soul, Hermes Trismegistus, Moses, Plato, Marsilio Ficino, Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Johann Reuchlin, humanism, sixteenth-century literature
