Kalonymus family 421around a family of scholars, the Kalonymids or KALONY-
MUSfamily, and two almost legendary figures and sages:
Rabbi Judah the Pious (1146–1217) and his disciple, Rabbi
ELEAZARof Worms. Their kabbalistic and theological ideas
were concerned with the hidden and manifest aspects of
the divine and its glory. They had a strong sense of the
immediate immanence of GOD and expressed this by
elaborate prayers and penitential practices somewhat influ-
enced by the concept of penitential and quantitative evalu-
ations deployed in Celtic forms of Christianity.
The most important current of medieval Jewish mys-
ticism was that of the intellectual Kabbala, from
PROVENCE,LANGUEDOC, and Gerona in Spain. It spread
all over the Jewish world. The best known work of this
school and approach appeared in Castile about 1293, the
Zohar(Book of splendor). This was concerned with the
hidden and unspeakable aspects of God and the manifes-
tations that cosmologically emanate from him. The
TORAHwas posited as the interface that allowed humans
to interact with the divine.
See also GNOSTICISM;JEWS AND JUDAISM;NACH-
MANIDES,MOSES;NEOPLATONISM ANDPLATONISM IN THE
MIDDLEAGES.
Further reading:Philip Beitchman, Alchemy of the
Word: Cabala of the Renaissance(Albany: State University
of New York Press, 1998); Joseph Blau, The Christian
Interpretation of the Cabala in the Renaissance(New York:
Columbia University Press, 1944); Lawrence Fine, ed.,
Essential Papers on Kabbalah(New York: New York Uni-
versity Press, 1995); Hava Tirosh-Samuelson, “Philoso-
phy and Kabbalah: 1200–1600,” in The Cambridge
Companion to Medieval Jewish Philosophy,eds. Daniel H.
Franck and Oliver Leaman (Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press, 2003), 218–257, with a bibliography on pp.
455–457.
Kairouan SeeAL-QAYRAWAN.
kalam(speech, scholastic theology) Kalam initially
referred to the “speech” of Allah or GODin the QURAN
and in earlier revelations by prophets. It later acquired a
more technical sense as Islamic scholastic and speculative
THEOLOGY, especially in the phrase Ilm al-Kalamthe “sci-
ence of theology.” Distinct from PHILOSOPHY(falsafah),
kalamencompassed the great debates of Islamic theology.
It was explicitly centered on God, and was part of the
training of religious scholars. From a method of inquiry,
it developed into a method of argumentation using real or
theoretical opponents.
Further reading:L. Gardet, “Ilm al-Kalam,” Encyclo-
pedia of Islam 3.1141–1150; W. Montgomery Watt,
Islamic Philosophy and Theology: An Extended Survey,2d
ed. (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1985); W.
Montgomery Watt, The Formative Period of Islamic
Thought(Oxford: Oneworld Publications, 1998).
Kalevala (Kalewala) The Kalevala has been recog-
nized as the Finnish national epic. However, this heroic
poem was compiled in the mid-19th century from oral
poetry that had its origins perhaps in the sixth century
B.C.E. It was based on interconnected stories of four indi-
viduals: the eternal singer, or sage Vainamoinen or
Wainamoinen, the rash young Lemminkainen, the smith
Ilmarinen, and the slave Kullervo. It was set in the
heroic age of FINLAND. Published before Finland became
an independent state, it quickly became a focal point for
Finnish nationalism, inspiring numerous Finnish
authors, artists, and composers by creating a mythical
national history.
Elias Lönnrot (1802–84) collected and published
these stories in 1849 from then extant oral traditions of
the Finns and other Baltic peoples. A product of a roman-
tic tradition, Lönnrot, a physician who later became a
professor of Finnish literature at Helsinki University,
traveled around the northeastern region of the Baltic Sea
collecting stories from singers, bards, and poets. He
assumed he was merely rediscovering and arranging an
actual coherent and traditional epic poem. He produced
two versions, Proto-Kalevala(1833–34) and the Old Kale-
vala(1835).
Further reading:Elias Lönnrot, The Kalevala,trans.
Keith Bosley (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989);
Felix J. Oinas, Studies in Finnic Folklore: Homage to the
Kalevala (Helsinki: Suomalaisen Kirjallisuuden Seura,
1985).Kalonymus family The Kalonymus were a distin-
guished Jewish dynasty or two families whose descen-
dants in the 10th through 13th centuries were counted
among the most prominent authors of rabbinical litera-
ture and works of MYSTICISMin northern ITA LYand GER-
MANY. They also served as community leaders. Though
they claimed to be from IRAQ, the Greek name of the fam-
ily suggests a southern Italian origin. According to a
13th-century tradition, passed down by the Ashkenazi
Hasidim, the family moved to Germany from Lucca in- This unverified date has been roughly assigned to
the years between 870 to 970.
The most famous family member was Meshullam
ben Kalonymus (930–1005), who spent most of his life
in Lucca. Questions on Jewish LAWwere sent to him
from Jewish settlements in Christian Europe and the
BYZANTINEEMPIRE, a valuable historical source for the
study of this period. Meshullam and his father devel-
oped centers of Jewish scholarship in Christian Europe.
For centuries later members of the family were
renowned in the Jewish society for producing many
leaders of various communities, including Judah the
Pious (1146–1217) and ELEAZAR OFWORMS. Scholars
and leaders named Kalonymus were also prominent in
the communities of PROVENCE, especially Narbonne, but