The Christian Cabala, a Christianised version of Jewish mysticism originating in Renaissance Italy, reached England in the early sixteenth century and was met with a variety of responses from English Catholics in the Reformation period. While ‘cabala’ was used as a slur by both Protestant and Catholic polemicists, Robert Persons drew positively from the work of the Italian cabalist Pietro Galatino, and in 1597 Sir Thomas Tresham, then a prisoner at Ely, described in detail a complex cabalistic design to decorate a window. While the Christian Cabala was only one source of inspiration for Tresham, he was sufficiently confident in his cabalistic knowledge to attempt manipulations of names of God in his designs for the window at Ely and to insert measurements of cabalistic significance in the gardens on his Lyveden estate. Persons’s and Tresham’s willingness to draw on Christian cabalism even after its papal condemnation suggests the intellectual independence of English Catholics, who were prepared to make use of esoteric traditions to bolster their faith. The evidence for experiments with cabalism by a few English Catholics highlights the need for further re-evaluation of the significance of esoteric traditions within the English Counter-Reformation and the eclectic nature of post-Reformation English Catholic mysticism.

中文翻译：

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托马斯·特雷沙姆爵士和克里斯蒂安·卡巴拉

基督教卡巴拉是起源于文艺复兴时期意大利的犹太神秘主义的基督教化版本，于 16 世纪初到达英国，并在宗教改革时期受到了英国天主教徒的各种回应。虽然“cabala”被新教和天主教辩论家用作诽谤，但 Robert Persons 积极地借鉴了意大利阴谋家 Pietro Galatino 的作品，并在 1597 年，当时在 Ely 的囚犯 Thomas Tresham 爵士详细描述了一个复杂的阴谋设计装饰窗户。虽然 Christian Cabala 只是 Tresham 的灵感来源之一，但他对自己的神秘学知识充满信心，可以在他的伊利窗户设计中尝试操纵上帝的名字，并在他的 Lyveden 庄园的花园中插入对神秘学意义的测量. 即使在教皇谴责之后，Person 和 Tresham 仍愿意利用基督教阴谋论，这表明英国天主教徒的思想独立，他们准备利用深奥的传统来支持他们的信仰。一些英国天主教徒对阴谋论进行实验的证据强调了进一步重新评估英国反宗教改革中深奥传统的重要性以及改革后英国天主教神秘主义的折衷性质的必要性。