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By Maurizio Harari
Living in Rome in 1544, he became acquainted with the renowned Kabbalist Johann Albrecht von Widmannstadt, a protégé of Cardinal Egidio Antonini of Viterbo. Giles of Viterbo, who like Widmannstadt had been a pupil of Baruch of Beneventum, was the author of the Historia viginti saeculorum, where he asserted that the Etruscans had originated from Chaldea. This created a sort of Sacred History parallel with that of the Jews...
All this conformed to the revival of interest in Classical Antiquity taking place under the de’Medicis and the humanistically oriented Pope Leo X (who was the son of Lorenzo the Magnificent). A similar pseudo-historical theory, elaborated by another Viterbo scholar, Annius, emphasized Etruscan primacy among the other peoples of ancient Italy and attempted to link both pagan and Christian history in a universalistic framework. In fact, in 1498 Annius had first identified Janus as Noah, trying to contextualize Etruscan origins in a time immediately following the Great Flood. He also interpreted the institutional role of the Etruscan rulers called Lucumons in an absolute monarchist sense.
One must consider that Postel, at this stage of his complicated intellectual adventure, was attempting, through the study of ancient Near Eastern languages, to reconstruct primordial cultural unity. This unity presumably existed before and beyond any deceptive modern distinctions between West and East. In this sense, only Etruscan studies seemed to give the concrete possibility of finding the crucial join between paganism and Christianity.
In 1547 Postel was living in Venice as chaplain of the Hospital of Destitute People at Saint John and Paul’s Church.
* The accepted date for the foundation of Rome Kingship rule in Rome is 753 B.C. The first form of government in Rome is Elohim gods Kingship.