Adorján Czipleá

Who was Adorján Czipleá?

Adorján Czipleá was a Hungarian Christian Kabbalist and mystic. Not much is known about his life except for the fact that in 1662 – after some years of formal education in his native country – he journeyed to England in order to continue his philosophical and theological studies. There is no knowledge regarding the circumstances of his death, which occurred within two years after his arrival.

While in England, Czipleá wrote a controversial short treatise entitled De ente et malo which circulated among a narrow group of prominent European intellectuals including, among others, Henry More, Joseph Glanvill, Thomas Vaughan and Franciscus Mercurius van Helmont. Although this work appears to be lost, records of its radical views survived in contemporary accounts of it. Probably the most detailed of these accounts is found in Méric Casaubon’s letter to Edward Stillingfleet, dated September 1670:

One such queer scholar was Mr. Adorján Czipleá, who held that the fallen angels did nevertheless not fall from Being since they possesse the attribute of intelligence which is, according to Plato, equivalente to that of existence.