Postel, Guillaume

Abstract

Guillaume Postel (1510–1581), primarily known as a Christian Kabbalist, was a sixteenth-century polymath, an eclectic scholar and philosopher, a self-taught linguist and geographer, a Jesuit, and a heretic. He held the first chair of Arabic in Europe, and he is often considered the first European Orientalist. With his works, he has indeed contributed to renovating the representation of Islam in the Western culture, exploring and describing the Ottoman society and tradition. He has enlarged the scope of the fifteenth-century humanistic interest in the Hebrew language and the Jewish esoteric tradition. As a traveler and wandering scholar, he established relationships with literati from all over Europe, becoming their friend, master, and collaborator. Along with Orientalism, he has offered an invaluable contribution to early modern universalism as well. In a period of transition such as the sixteenth century, Postel was a child of his time, proclaiming himself a prophet, a New Elias, and announcing the forthcoming Age of Restitution, the Fourth Age of Man, i.e., the realization of a global religious and political unity of all people.