When kabbalistic teachings made their way from southern France into northern and then central Spain, they were introduced to rabbis who were literate in multiple languages and well-versed in philosophy and the work of Moses Maimonides, leading to both competition between, and synthesis of, philosophical and mystical ideas. One of the most remarkable figures of this era was Abraham Abulafia, born in Zaragoza to a distinguished family around 1240. Tamar Marvin writes:
Abraham Abulafia sought, and claimed to have experienced, mystical union and even prophetic visions, alongside a more studied, intellectual knowledge of Kabbalah. . . . Abraham began his advanced learning with a study of The Guide of the Perplexed, Rambam’s late-breaking philosophical magnum opus. . . . This quickly led Abraham to a place of esoteric seeking.
In the summer of 1280, in a quixotic attempt to convert . . . Pope Nicholas III to Judaism, thus provoking the beginning of the messianic age, Rabbi Abraham arrived in Rome. Unfortunately for him, the pope died unexpectedly in August of 1280, arousing suspicion of Abraham and leading to his imprisonment. After his release, Abraham continued teaching and writing in Italy, but by 1285 he had sufficiently aroused the ire of the great Rabbi Solomon ibn Adret (Rashba), who placed him under a ban as a messianic pretender and effectively proscribed ecstatic Kabbalah, resigning it to obscurity.
Read more on Stories from Jewish History: https://trmarvin.substack.com/p/before-the-zohar