Dialogues Of Love/ 1551/ Leo The Hebrew / Judah Abravanel

The Dialogues of Love by Leo Hebrew are undoubtedly one of the major philosophical works of the European Renaissance. Leo, son of the theologian Isaac Abravanel, was born in Lisbon between 1460 and 1465. In 1492, he left Spain and went to Italy, where he settled first in Naples and then in Genoa, until 1501, when he returned to Naples. In 1506, he left Naples for Venice, and from that date onwards his places of residence in Italy are no longer known with certainty. He probably died in 1521; the Dialogues of Love were published posthumously in 1535, in Rome, in Italian. A Jewish Kabbalist, his dialogues contributed, along with those of Marsilio Ficino, to the spread in France of a neo-Platonism closely linked to the humanist movement. His influence would nevertheless transcend time; a century later Spinoza would borrow from him the concept of God's intellectual love.