of a number of women saints. That the additions have
to do with women would seem not to be a coincidence.
Neither would the fact that some of the women saints
are of Spanish origin, and one, St. Melanie, is believed
to have made her living by writing. Rather, this collec-
tion appears to be a mirror in which its author and her
audience, the nuns of her convent, recognize themselves,
a feminine adaptation of a masculine work.
Further Reading
Antolín, G. “Historia y descriptión de un Codex regularum del
siglo LX (Eiblioteca del Escorial: a.1.13).” Ciudad de Dios
75 (1908), 23–33, 304–16, 460–71, 637–49.
Benedictines of Bouvert. Colophons de manuscrits occidentaux
des origines au XVIe sie”le. Fribourg, 1976, 36.
Pérez de Urbel, J. Los monjes españoles en la Edad Media. 2
vols. Madrid, 1934.
Cristina González
LEÓN, MOSÉS DE (1250–1305)
Spanish cabalist. Cabala means “receiving,” referring to
that which has been handed down by tradition. By the
time of Mosés de León, the term was used to denote the
mystic and esoteric teachings and practices of a growing
body of mystical literature.
Little is known about his life; he settled in Guadala-
jara sometime between 1275 and 1280 and relocated to
Avila sometime after 1291. Best known for his revelation
of the Zohar (The Book of Splendor or Enlightenment)
to fellow cabalists, he also composed twenty cabalistic
works, only two of which have been printed: Ha-Nephesh
ha Hakhamah (The Wise Soul) and Shekel ha-Kodesh.
(The Holy Shekel, or Weight). By 1264 he undertook the
study of Maimonides’ Neoplatonic philosophy, a belief
system that rejected a literal interpretation of Torah and
sought to spiritualize its teachings.
While in Guadalajara, Mosés de León composed a
mystical midrash, which he titled Midrash ha-Ne’elam
(Concealed, Esoteric Midrash). A midrash is an analyti-
cal text that seeks to uncover the meaning of biblical pas-
sages, words and phrases and often employs philology,
etymology, hermeneutics, homiletics, and imagination.
This work represents the earliest stratum of the Zohar
and contains commentary on parts of the Torah and the
Book of Ruth. Between 1280 and 1286, he produced
the main body of the Zohar, a mystical commentary on
the Torah written in Aramaic, which is spoken by Rabbi
Shim’on ben Yohai and his disciples as they ruminate
over distinct passages of the Torah.
The text upon which the Zohar was purportedly
based was said to have been sent from Israel to Cata-
lonia, where it fell into the hands of Mosés de León
of Guadalajara, who assumed the task of copying and
disseminating different portions of it from the original
manuscript. After the Mamluk conquest of the city of
Acre (Israel) in 1291, Isaac, son of Samuel, was one of
the few to escape to Spain. When he arrived in Toledo
in 1305, he heard reports about the existence of a newly
discovered midrash of Rabbi Shim’on ben Yohai. Os-
tensibly written in Israel, the manuscript was unfamiliar
to Isaac. He sought out Mosés de León, who assured
him that he owned the original ancient manuscript upon
which the Zohar was based and offered to show it to
him if he came to his residence in Avila. After their
separation, Moses became ill and died in Arévalo on his
way home. When Isaac learned of the news, he traveled
to Avila, where he was told that the wife of provincial
tax-collector Joseph of Avila was living. After Mosés de
León’s death, Joseph de Avila’s wife had made a deal
in which she would offer her son’s hand in marriage to
the daughter of Mosés de León’s widow in exchange
for the ancient manuscript. During Isaac’s visit, Joseph
de Avila’s wife denied that her late husband had ever
possessed such a book, insisting instead that Mosés de
León had composed it himself.
Mosés de León attributed the work to Shim’on ben
Yohai, a famous teacher of the second century a.d.
known for his piety and mysticism. Ben Yohai lived
in Israel, where he reportedly spent twelve years in
seclusion in a cave. After his death, his book was either
hidden away or secretly transmitted from master to
disciple. When Mosés de León began circulating book-
lets among his friends containing previously unknown
teachings and tales, he claimed to be a mere scribe
copying from an ancient book of wisdom. In addition,
he distributed portions of the book rather than entire
copies. No complete manuscript of the work has ever
been found. When the Zohar was fi rst printed in Italy
in the fi fteenth century, the editors combined several
manuscripts to produce a complete text. Other manu-
scripts located later were added to an additional volume
which was printed later. Today, most standard editions
comprise some 1,100 leaves consisting of at least two
dozen separate compositions.
The Zohar consists of a mystical commentary on
the Pentateuch, describing how God—referred to by
the cabalists as Ein Sof (the infi nite, endless)—rules
the universe through the Ten Sefi rot (Ten Spheres). In
other cabalistic texts, the sefi rot are often organized in
the form of a hierarchy of divine emanations from the
apex of the Godhead with Keter or Da’at (the highest
aspect of God) being followed by Hokhmah and Binah
(divine wisdom and understanding respectively). Ein
Sof is rarely emphasized in the Zohar. Instead, the work
focuses on the sefi rot as the manifestations of Ein Sof,
its mystical attributes in which God thinks, feels, and
responds to the human realm. The characters include
Rabbi Shim’on and his comrades, biblical fi gures and
the sefi rot. At times the distinction between the latterLEODEGUNDIA