Guillaume Postel, Orientalist and Visionary of Universal Concord

Guillaume Postel was born in 1510 at Barenton in Normandy into a poor family and was orphaned as a child. With great sacrifice he studied in Paris, at the Collège Sainte-Barbe, and became one of the greatest experts in oriental languages of his time. He was both a rigorous philologist and a visionary convinced that he had a mission: to unite all humanity in one faith and under one government, through reason and the knowledge of sacred texts.

From Paris to Constantinople

In 1535 Postel set out for Constantinople with the French embassy to Suleiman the Magnificent. There he perfected his Arabic and bought oriental manuscripts for the king's library. Back in France, he was appointed by Francis I royal lecturer in mathematics and oriental languages, and in 1538 he published an alphabet of twelve different languages, one of the first European works of its kind, followed by an Arabic grammar.

In 1544 De orbis terrae concordia appeared in Basel, the book that sums up his programme. Postel argued in it that the fundamental truths of Christianity could be demonstrated rationally, so as to convince Muslims, Jews and pagans without resorting to force. That same year he joined the Society of Jesus in Rome, but was dismissed as early as 1545 because of his excessively singular ideas.

Kabbalah and the Mother of Venice

Settling in Venice, Postel worked as a chaplain in a hospital and there met an elderly woman devoted to the poor, whom he called Mother Zuana. He became convinced that she was a prophetess, the new Eve destined to complete humanity's redemption on its feminine side. This experience marked his thought for ever, and from then on it combined philology, prophecy and hopes of universal renewal.

In the same years Postel devoted himself to Jewish Kabbalah with rare competence. He translated into Latin large parts of the Zohar, which remained in manuscript, and in 1552 published in Paris a Latin version of the Sefer Yetzirah, the “Book of Formation”. In the same year his Latin translation of the Protevangelium of James appeared, an apocryphal gospel on the childhood of Mary that he had brought back from the East.

The Inquisition and the Last Years

In 1555 Postel presented himself of his own accord to the Venetian Inquisition to defend his doctrines. The judges concluded that he was not a heretic but a man out of his mind, and had him locked up. His works, meanwhile, were placed on the Index of Prohibited Books. Transferred to Rome, he remained in prison until 1559, when, on the death of Paul IV, popular riots opened the prisons of the Inquisition.

Back in France, in 1562 he was confined to the priory of Saint-Martin-des-Champs in Paris, where he lived for almost twenty years in a kind of supervised freedom. He received visitors, continued to write and died there in 1581, respected as a scholar and tolerated as a visionary. His visitors included scholars and diplomats from various countries, drawn by his extraordinary knowledge of oriental languages and texts.

Postel decisively broadened the sources of Christian Kabbalah, making accessible texts that Pico, Reuchlin and Agrippa had only been able to glimpse. His figure, suspended between philologist and prophet, shows how in the Renaissance the study of languages could become a form of spiritual search and even a political project.