“Traditional” Catholics rejoin that it is because modernist prelates are not traditional that they are tyrants. It is this fantastic Janus-mind of the “traditionalists” that consigns them to a fantasy world where they cannot be effective because they are proceeding from specious premises. One cannot get more “traditional” or more tyrannical than Pope Leo X or Archbishop Uriel of Mainz, who are role models for the Vatican modernists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
The destiny of Catholic lay people, friars and parish priests, from the Renaissance to the present, is to be placed under the heel of occult tyrants in the Vatican who are grand masters of masquerade. It was said of even the leaders of the pagan Roman Republic that they fulfilled their sacred duty of protecting the commons from the aristocracy. This has too often been the reverse of the case in the Church of Rome since the Renaissance. The bishops and cardinals failed to protect the common Catholic people from the aristocracy of the popes and in most cases, colluded with them. Was this Christ’s plan for the members of His Church for whom He shed His life’s blood, a two-tier system in which specially privileged, costumed gangsters lord it over the Faithful?
“Daniel Bomberg established his famous printing house in Venice and even received the blessing and approval of Leo X. In subsequent years Bomberg printed two editions of the (Babylonian) Talmud (and an edition of the Palestinian Talmud), based on the explicit approval of the pope.” 48
The full ramifications of what the Pope of Rome wrought when he granted permission for the publication of the “Talmud Bavli” (Babylonian Talmud) are nearly incalculable. Sincere Judaic converts such as Johann Pfefferkorn had related to the hierarchy of the Church the fact that rabbinic Judaism effectively could not exist without recourse to the Talmud of Babylon, which served to increase their “obstinancy.” The Talmud was the sustenance of the religion which institutionalized not only the denial that Jesus was the Christ, but idolatry, nullification of the Word of God in the Bible,49 and the robbery, murder and financial oppression of non-Jews. Without an authoritative printed edition of the Talmud Bavli at hand, Judaics and their rabbis were more susceptible to Catholic evangelism, and what is more, they might begin to enjoy a life free of the curse of tyrannical micromanagement of their lives by Talmudic bureaucracy and its regulatory minutiae. Before Leo X, the legacy of the faithfulness and vigilance of the popes and Councils of the Middle Ages had produced a crisis for the Talmud in Europe and Britain. By the dawn of the early Renaissance the Talmud was nearing extinction — existing mainly in fading and crumbling manuscripts of widely varying textual reliability and authority. Pope Leo X rescued the Babylonian Talmud from eradication, a circumstance largely unknown, even today. The Cryptocracy has seen to it that the Church of Rome has been made notorious as a Talmud-burner, not a Talmud-preserver.
The Van Bombergens had been a wealthy Catholic merchant dynasty in Antwerp. The scion, Daniel van Bombergen (1483—ca. 1550), later known as “Daniel Bomberg,” emigrated to Italy, where his master-craftsman printing facility was established with a reputation for superior quality paper and binding, and meticulous attention to detail. Bomberg partnered with the Judaic pseudo-convert to Catholicism, Felix Pratensis, an Augustinian monk known in Catholicism as Fra Felice de Prato, to found, under the initial aegis of Pope Leo X, a publishing enterprise which printed many thousands of volumes of sacred rabbinic books over the course of twentythree years of operation.
The fact that Felix had been the handler of the youthful Giles of Viterbo, squares the circle of conspiracy. Bomberg was a gentile. “It was Felix who initially persuaded Bomberg to found a printing press in Venice. The first (Catholic printing) privilege was granted Bomberg in 1515. Between then and 1538 Bomberg had produced 186 Hebrew texts,” including “the first complete Babylonian Talmud 1519-1523.” 50
In fact, the astute businessman Bomberg obtained that privilege through his partnership with Felix “Fra Felice” Pratensis, for it was Felix who had first “been granted a tenyear papal approbatio and a comparable privilegio by Pope Leo X in Rome…” 51
Bomberg petitioned for a similar privilege for his operations in Venice. Through Felix Pratensis’ connections inside the papal curia, he managed to assist his Catholic partner Bomberg in excluding all other rivals, including the Catholic Aldus Manutius, who was at the time the leading printer in Venice. “When his petition was granted, Bomberg had effectively won for himself a monopoly of all Hebrew printing in Venice…he had the support and imprimatur of Pope Leo X, who had openly vouched for the value of Hebrew works for the Christian religion The importance of Pope Leo’s approbation for the success of Bomberg and Pratensis’s publishing project should not be underestimated…” 52
The deluge of conspiracies against the Church of Jesus Christ on the part of the Renaissance popes and their hierarchies is often of such a depth that one almost needs wings to stay above it and not drown. Bomberg obtained his printing monopoly largely due to having been selected for that bonanza by Giles of Viterbo, 53 who had been placed on his Kabbalistic path in his youth by his Judaic Augustinian-monk “tutor,” Bomberg’s future partner, Felix “Fra Felice Prato” Pratensis. Viterbo, who we introduced earlier, was a second generation Catholic-Kabbalist of power and influence.54
During the negotiations over the printing rights for the Talmud, Giles was Superior-General of the Augustinian Order. His monk, Martin Luther, reported to him in Rome in the winter of 1510-1511. Leo X made Giles a Cardinal in 1517. He was a serious contender for the papacy in the conclave that ended in the election of the Dutchman Adrian VI. His influence continued in the curia under the pontificate of Clement VII. He initiated hundreds of future leaders of the Church—Catholic scholars, prelates, monks and priests—in the Satanism of the Kabbalah. As we shall see, he was responsible for inspiring the publication after his death of an overt and blatant herald of the Kabbalistic expropriation of the Catholic Church, included as an illustration in the first-ever “Catholic” publication of the Syriac New Testament.
With Giles in Bomberg’s corner, it was no wonder that the Catholic merchant from Antwerp was transformed into the Talmudic printer of the age, issuing large print runs of high quality, multi-volume folio sets. The Bomberg Talmud itself became one of the great ornaments of typographic achievement and book production of the sixteenth century. It is not an exaggeration to say that it was the finest edition of the Babylonian Talmud in western history up to the time of its publication, and it ensured the continuation and expansion of rabbinic Judaism over the next two hundred years. Through Bomberg, the Renaissance Pope of Rome served as the father of a new birth of Talmudic Judaism.
Bomberg’s editorial staff consisted, in addition to Felix, Jacob ben Hayyim ibn Adoniyahu, a Judaic scholar who “was a full fledged Kabbalist.”55 Bomberg published Kabbalistic books, such as the Zror ha-mor, in addition to the Talmud. Bomberg’s rabbinic texts issued under the supervision of Ibn Adoniyahu were invaluable for the success and continuation of Judaism. Writing in the nineteenth century of Ibn Adoniyahu’s work for the pope’s printer more than three hundred years earlier, C.D. Ginsburg stated that the Bomberg volumes overseen by Ibn Adoniyahu were so authoritative that no textual redactor of modern times should dare to deviate from them without giving a conclusive reason for doing so.
Other rabbinic and Judaic scholars on Bomberg’s payroll were: the leader of the Venetian Judaics, Rabbi Hiya Meir ben David, as well as Rabbi Meir Katzenellenbogen, the chief rabbi of Padua and judge of the Judaic court of the Republic of Venice; his son, Rabbi Shmuel Katzenellenbogen, and Chaim ben R. Moshe Alton, Avraham de Balmes and David ben-Eliezer Halevi Pizzighettone.
The latter Judaic scholar (Pizzighettone) was responsible for the textual integrity of the heretofore hand-printed Mishneh Torah, the huge twelfth century anti-Christian polemic and legal treatise of the famous Moses Maimonides, which was published by Bomberg in 1524. Like his Talmud, the publication of Bomberg’s Mishneh Torah with the blessing of the Church of Rome, hel
ped to perpetuate within Judaism Maimonides’ blasphemy against Christ and his appeals to violence against Christians, by institutionalizing it in the form of a printed multivolume series of high quality.56
After Bomberg’s death, more Catholic printers took his place, building on his foundational Talmud text, which remained unsurpassed and largely intact, even though subsequent editions would bear the name of the printer who undertook the work. With regard to one of Bomberg’s Catholic successors, Marc Antonio Giustiniani, who published the Talmud in Venice from 1546-1551, the eminent Polish Rabbi Moses Isserles acknowledged the partnership which existed between the rabbis and Catholic printers and how it benefited Talmudic Judaism:
“Isserles well understood that, ever since Daniel Bomberg had received his monopoly…to print Hebrew Hebrew books, Jews depended heavily on Venetian Christian printers for print editions of foundational rabbinic texts. Indeed, Giustiniani’s edition of the Talmud, which the Venetian patrician had begun to print, tractate by tractate in 1546, was designed to meet the needs of Polish yeshiviot (rabbinic schools)—and became the standard for all subsequent editions. Isserles recognizes in his ruling that one might claim that ‘these (Christian) printers have taught Torah and without them, Heaven forbid, the Torah would have already forgotten Israel, and thus it is appropriate to assist this mission so that there will be no ruin.” 57
From time to time Rome believed it necessary to placate outraged conservative Catholic opinion by mounting a farcical assault on the modernizing innovation of Catholic sponsorship of antichrist rabbinic books. Hence, in 1548, the Church of Rome instituted a new measure, through the Senate of Venice, forbidding Judaic persons from employment at Catholic publishing houses in any capacity, whether as printers, typesetters or editors. The next year, in 1549, legislation governing the Venetian Printer’s Guild declared that no one could work as a printer unless they were members of the Catholics-only guild. This was red meat to Conservatives, and then as now, they were gulled by what was effectively a hoax: “The prohibition against Jews working in presses…was not rigorously enforced. Witness Katzenellenbogen’s collaboration with Bragadini to print the Mishneh Torah. For that matter the Venetian printer’s guild was not actually established until 1567.” 58
For those who can penetrate the vast apparatus of “The Inquisition”—the intellectual construct that brooks no dissent from the florid image of wretched Italian Judaics besieged by a veritable holocaust of repression and book burnings—the delight of encountering a concealed truth awaits them. The rabbis experienced a Renaissance of their own under the sixteenth century Neoplatonic-Hermetic-Kabbalistic popes of Rome. Beneath the reverberating anathemas and denunciations issued by the Counter-Reformation, it was principally the thunderbolts hurled at Protestants that were backed with consistent, violent repression across decades, unrelieved by any interregnum or respite. Many rabbis thrived in papal Italy during the Renaissance. Two momentous achievements by the papists: the execution of Girolamo Savonarola toward the end of the fifteenth century, and the neutralization of the campaign of Johann Pfefferkorn early in the next one, ended, for all intents and purposes, the possibility of any grassroots holy war on the occult popes and their enormous networks of banking, nepotism and patronage.
The life of Rabbi Judah ben Joseph Moscato (ca. 1533-1590) in Catholic Italy (he was a native of Osimo in the papal states), is the epitome of this closeted reality. He was a prominent representative of what has come to be known as “the Italian-Jewish Renaissance.” The Mantua-based rabbi was the author of an erudite commentary on Judah Halevy’s anti-Christian polemic, Kuzari, which was published by the Catholic printing house of Giovanni di Gara in Venice in 1594. Moscato’s scholarship reflected “deep engagement with Renaissance culture, both in its humanist and its Platonic/Hermetic manifestations…Moscato was a Jewish chauvinist, but his version of chauvinism allowed him to engage with secular culture, since he strongly believed that all that was worthwhile in secular culture ultimately derived from Jewish culture…He…cites a number of Jewish authorities on the theft of philosophy and sciences from the Jews, reaffirming a Jewish version of the prisca sapientia.” 59
The Renaissance popes made certain to protect their Kabbalistic allies. If Rabbi Moscato’s name had been Luther or Calvin he would have been burned in short order. Instead, he flourished in the homeland of the popes. Despite the diversionary palaver about a “witch hunt against Jews” by Renaissance pontiffs, “Northern Italy was the center of Hebrew printing from the late fifteenth through the early seventeenth centuries, and by the middle of the sixteenth century, print was the preferred, indeed even assumed, medium of publication for Italian Jews, and numerous editions of medieval and classical Hebrew texts had been issued.” 60
During the Renaissance, the Church of Rome was responsible for the diffusion and popularization of the Talmud and Kabbalah throughout Europe and the Middle East: “Italy’s importance was magnified by its geographic centrality in the Jewish world. The Jews of northern Italy traded with Jews throughout the early modern Jewish world, from Germany and Poland-Lithuania to the Ottoman Empire and North Africa, by way of ports in Venice and other cities and overland routes across the Alps. Books printed in Italy circulated to all these areas, and books printed in the farther reaches of Jewish settlement made their way to Italy. Moreover, northern Italy drew in Jews from a wide variety of Jewish communities—from Iberia, southern France, southern Italy, former Byzantine lands, Germany, and the Middle East—who brought with them their medieval traditions and manuscripts, leading to rich possibilities for textual production and publication. Italy continued to be an important print center into the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries…” 61 This distribution network included Britain and the Protestant nations of Europe, and having erased the network’s existence from their comical histories, Catholic apologists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries proceeded to excoriate Protestants for “initiating the Judaizing of the West from their publishing base in Amsterdam.”
According to William Popper, rabbinic books were unmolested from the pontificate of Leo X until 1550 and the election of Pope Julius III. “…at the beginning of the pontificate of Julius III the Golden Era of Jewish literature continued as a reflection of the sunshine of papal favor…(Even) after the pope had issued a bull on April 29, 1550, repealing all previous permission which might have been given to possess or read forbidden books, as far as the Jews were concerned he still acted generously, instructing cardinals and papal delegates to respect Jewish religious observances, and not to annoy them in any way.” 62
Even under pressure from conservative Catholic cardinals, as late as December 5, 1553 Julius III renewed papal privileges for the rabbis of Ancona. “The Pope had shown himself especially friendly to the Jews of that city.” Carafa’s plan for a “general destruction of Hebrew works…was clearly more than the Papal court at Rome had originally planned.” 63
Half a rabbinic loaf being better than none, Pope Julius III conspired to preserve one part of the Talmud from interdiction: “…in the catalogue of prohibited books which the Inquisition published in Milan and Venice in this year (1554), while the ‘Talmuth’ is mentioned as one of the works forbidden to the faithful, nothing is said of other Hebrew books…Julius III issued a bull on May 29, 1554 which cited the edict of the Inquisition directed against the ‘ghemarat Talmud’ and which ordered its surrender, under penalty of death. But by emphasizing the term ‘gemarah,’ (Gemara) the inference was allowed that other works, and even the mishnayoth (Mishnah) as such, were not subject to destruction…” 64
In other words, the first part of the Babylonian Talmud containing the Mishnah, the foundational core of the Oral Law traditions of the Pharisees contemporary with Jesus, was permitted publication even in 1554.
“But the Church burned the Talmud!” the traditionalist papists will say in defense of their idolatrous destroyers of Catholicism. Right. It was burned. But that came after Leo X, and even then the destruction w
as fraught with compromise, trade-offs and skullduggery. After the Talmudic horse had decisively departed the Augean stables of the Vatican, only then was there a public show of hostility toward the Talmud. We call it a show because much, though not all, of the “destruction” was a sop to orthodox Catholics and the masses, to maintain their belief in the myth of an anti-Talmudic, antiKabbalistic papacy. The limited incidents of destruction, deliberately magnified by the Cryptocracy into an image seared into our minds of a vast bonfire of Judaic books over centuries, was an operation that was never intended to return the Talmud and Kabbalah to the place they had occupied in the Catholic Middle Ages, when they existed only as hard-written copies of what amounted to rabbinic hate speech, studied and analyzed by Catholic scholars for purposes of refutation and apologia.
A few examples: Pope “Saint” Pius V is an unassailable icon in the eyes of “conservative” and “traditional” Catholics, in part because he assisted in organizing and inspiring the defeat at the naval battle of Lepanto of a formidable Turkish invasion fleet. Decades before this, the Kabbalist conspirator Giles of Viterbo had opened the Fifth Lateran Council with a call for a crusade against the Muslims. These facts of themselves exonerate no one of the crime of betrayal of Jesus Christ. They act as a signature image; a general branding which is supposed to represent the sum of the churchman under study. Need we know nothing else about Giles other than the fact that he was an anti-Muslim orator? Is Lepanto the sole alpha and omega of the papacy of Pius V? The dark forces intend for us to neglect the details of the lives and acts of these churchmen based on generalized, supposedly signature events which have the effect of being investigation-stoppers. Yet if we look deeper we discover Cardinal Giles Viterbo was at the heart of the conspiracy to silence Pfefferkorn and exonerate Reuchlin, and at the center of the revolutionary papal publishing enterprise that saw the unprecedented dissemination, in handsome heirloom editions, of the Talmud and Kabbalah.
The Occult Renaissance Church of Rome Page 34
