Judah Messer Leon (15th century)
Encyclopedia
Judah ben Jehiel Rofe, (c. 1420-1425–c. 1498), more usually called Judah Messer Leon, was an Italian
rabbi
, teacher, physician
, and philosopher. Through his works, assimilating and embodying the intellectual approach of the best Italian universities of the time, yet setting it inside the intellectual culture of Jewish tradition, he is seen as a quintessential example of a hakham kolel ("comprehensive scholar"), a scholar who excelled in both secular and rabbinic studies, the Hebrew equivalent of a Renaissance man
. This was the ideal he tried to instil in his students.
, now in the Italian province of Vicenza
. The son of a doctor, he was ordained as a rabbi and received a diploma in medicine while in his early 20s. According to tradition the honorific title Messer (a title of knighthood) was bestowed on him by the Emperor Frederick III
, during the emperor's first visit to Italy in 1452, perhaps for work for him as a physician. The name "Leon
" is the usual equivalent of "Judah", through the traditional identification of the lion of Judah
.
Messer Leon settled as a rabbi at Ancona
at about this time, and established a yeshiva
, or academy, where he combined the traditional study of the Jewish texts with lectures on the non-Jewish program of the medieval secular curriculum. This academy was to follow him wherever he stayed around Italy over the next four decades. He was also licensed to practice medicine, and his successful activities in this field brought him much acclaim. Between 1456 and 1472 he lived in Padua
and Bologna
, where he may have studied further at the famous Universities. He is said to have been awarded the title Doctor in Padua in 1469. After a short stay in Venice
, where his son David
was born, in 1473 he became rabbi in Mantua
. There he fell into a conflict with his colleague Joseph Colon, in consequence of which both were expelled from the city in 1475.
In 1480 he settled in Naples
, then under the accommodating rule of Ferdinand I
. He remained there, with his academy, for virtually the whole of the rest of his life, until he and his son David were forced to flee in 1495, the year after the death of King Ferdinand, to escape the violent pogroms that ensued following the capture of the city by the French under Charles VIII
. An ordination document issued by David in September 1499 refers to his father as by then already dead. Rabinowitz conjectures that Messer Leon had been with David, and died at Monastir (present-day Bitola
in the Republic of Macedonia
) in that year. However, Tirosh-Rothschild (p. 253, n. 104) believes he was still in Naples, and died there in 1497.
, the Ethics
, and the Physics
of Aristotle
, and their analysis by Averroes
, in which he followed the Scholastic
style and methods, composing for his students "summaries (sefequot) on the Scholastic quaestiones (i.e. points of apparent textual contradiction) debated by the Italian academic community", drawing closely on the style and substance of expositions then current at Padua.
These commentaries were written primarily for his close followers. More generally circulated were three textbooks addressing the three foundation subjects of a Renaissance secular education, the trivium ("three ways") of grammar
, logic
and rhetoric
, seen as the essential prerequisite disciplines necessary for higher studies in the humanities, philosophy, and medicine. These subjects he covered with a Hebrew grammar under the title Libnat ha-Sappir (The Pavement of Sapphire) in 1454, a text-book on logic entitled Miklal Yofi (Perfection of Beauty) in 1455, and, most celebrated, a text-book of rhetoric called Nofet Zufim (The Honeycomb's Flow), which was printed by Abraham Conat
of Mantua in 1475-6, the only work by a living author printed in Hebrew in the fifteenth century.
Like non-Jewish contemporary texts, the Nofet Zufim drew heavily on the classical theoretical writings of Cicero
and Quintilian
. But unlike its contemporaries, it took as its exemplars for such theories not the foremost orators of Greek and Roman antiquity, but Moses
and the leading figures of the Hebrew Bible
. In the opinion of Deutsch, the object of the work was both apologetic
and propagandic
. The author desired to demonstrate to the non-Jewish world that the Jews were not devoid of the literary sense, and he wished to prove to his co-religionists that Judaism
is not hostile to secular studies, which contribute to a better appreciation of Jewish literature. Although in later centuries the book was largely forgotten, and was not reprinted until the nineteenth century, in the intellectual circle of its own time it was highly appreciated. Azariah dei Rossi
quoted Leon as a witness to the value of secular studies, and Joseph Solomon Delmedigo
recommended the book to the Karaite Zerah ben Nathan of Troki. In recent times interest has been renewed, with a new scholarly edition with translation and commentary published in 1983.
also became a noted rabbi, physician and author, and defender of the value of the secular disciplines of the Renaissance to Jewish philosophy culture and study. David became best known for his Ein ha-Kore (Eye of the Reader), a sympathetic commentary on Maimonides
' Guide for the Perplexed
; and posthumously for his Tehillah le-Dawid (Glory to David), an encyclopedic summary of Jewish philosophy, edited by his grandson Aaron ben Judah (Constantinople, 1577).
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
rabbi
Rabbi
In Judaism, a rabbi is a teacher of Torah. This title derives from the Hebrew word רבי , meaning "My Master" , which is the way a student would address a master of Torah...
, teacher, physician
Physician
A physician is a health care provider who practices the profession of medicine, which is concerned with promoting, maintaining or restoring human health through the study, diagnosis, and treatment of disease, injury and other physical and mental impairments...
, and philosopher. Through his works, assimilating and embodying the intellectual approach of the best Italian universities of the time, yet setting it inside the intellectual culture of Jewish tradition, he is seen as a quintessential example of a hakham kolel ("comprehensive scholar"), a scholar who excelled in both secular and rabbinic studies, the Hebrew equivalent of a Renaissance man
Polymath
A polymath is a person whose expertise spans a significant number of different subject areas. In less formal terms, a polymath may simply be someone who is very knowledgeable...
. This was the ideal he tried to instil in his students.
Life
R. Judah is thought to have been born in around 1420 at Montecchio MaggioreMontecchio Maggiore
Montecchio Maggiore is a town and comune in the province of Vicenza, Veneto, Italy. It is situated approximately 12 km west of Vicenza and 43 km east of Verona, SP 246 passes through it....
, now in the Italian province of Vicenza
Province of Vicenza
The Province of Vicenza is a province in the Veneto region of northern Italy. Its capital city is Vicenza.The province has an area of 2,723 km², and a total population of 840,000 . There are 121 comuni in the province...
. The son of a doctor, he was ordained as a rabbi and received a diploma in medicine while in his early 20s. According to tradition the honorific title Messer (a title of knighthood) was bestowed on him by the Emperor Frederick III
Frederick III, Holy Roman Emperor
Frederick the Peaceful KG was Duke of Austria as Frederick V from 1424, the successor of Albert II as German King as Frederick IV from 1440, and Holy Roman Emperor as Frederick III from 1452...
, during the emperor's first visit to Italy in 1452, perhaps for work for him as a physician. The name "Leon
Leon (given name)
Leon is a name of Greek origin, derived from the first known Leon, the King of Sparta, Leonidas I . In Greek, Latin, French, and Spanish Leon means "lion". Derived from the Greek λεων meaning "lion", this name was borne by a 5th-century BCE king of Sparta...
" is the usual equivalent of "Judah", through the traditional identification of the lion of Judah
Lion of Judah
The Lion of Judah was the symbol of the Israelite tribe of Judah in the Book of Genesis of the Hebrew Bible .-Lion of Judah and Judaism:...
.
Messer Leon settled as a rabbi at Ancona
Ancona
Ancona is a city and a seaport in the Marche region, in central Italy, with a population of 101,909 . Ancona is the capital of the province of Ancona and of the region....
at about this time, and established a yeshiva
Yeshiva
Yeshiva is a Jewish educational institution that focuses on the study of traditional religious texts, primarily the Talmud and Torah study. Study is usually done through daily shiurim and in study pairs called chavrutas...
, or academy, where he combined the traditional study of the Jewish texts with lectures on the non-Jewish program of the medieval secular curriculum. This academy was to follow him wherever he stayed around Italy over the next four decades. He was also licensed to practice medicine, and his successful activities in this field brought him much acclaim. Between 1456 and 1472 he lived in Padua
Padua
Padua is a city and comune in the Veneto, northern Italy. It is the capital of the province of Padua and the economic and communications hub of the area. Padua's population is 212,500 . The city is sometimes included, with Venice and Treviso, in the Padua-Treviso-Venice Metropolitan Area, having...
and Bologna
Bologna
Bologna is the capital city of Emilia-Romagna, in the Po Valley of Northern Italy. The city lies between the Po River and the Apennine Mountains, more specifically, between the Reno River and the Savena River. Bologna is a lively and cosmopolitan Italian college city, with spectacular history,...
, where he may have studied further at the famous Universities. He is said to have been awarded the title Doctor in Padua in 1469. After a short stay in Venice
Venice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...
, where his son David
David ben Judah Messer Leon
David ben Judah Messer Leon was an Italian rabbi, physician and writer, who defended the value of secular disciplines and the Renaissance humanities as an important part of traditional Jewish studies.-Life:...
was born, in 1473 he became rabbi in Mantua
Mantua
Mantua is a city and comune in Lombardy, Italy and capital of the province of the same name. Mantua's historic power and influence under the Gonzaga family, made it one of the main artistic, cultural and notably musical hubs of Northern Italy and the country as a whole...
. There he fell into a conflict with his colleague Joseph Colon, in consequence of which both were expelled from the city in 1475.
In 1480 he settled in Naples
Naples
Naples is a city in Southern Italy, situated on the country's west coast by the Gulf of Naples. Lying between two notable volcanic regions, Mount Vesuvius and the Phlegraean Fields, it is the capital of the region of Campania and of the province of Naples...
, then under the accommodating rule of Ferdinand I
Ferdinand I of Naples
Ferdinand I , also called Don Ferrante, was the King of Naples from 1458 to 1494. He was the natural son of Alfonso V of Aragon by Giraldona Carlino.-Biography:...
. He remained there, with his academy, for virtually the whole of the rest of his life, until he and his son David were forced to flee in 1495, the year after the death of King Ferdinand, to escape the violent pogroms that ensued following the capture of the city by the French under Charles VIII
Charles VIII of France
Charles VIII, called the Affable, , was King of France from 1483 to his death in 1498. Charles was a member of the House of Valois...
. An ordination document issued by David in September 1499 refers to his father as by then already dead. Rabinowitz conjectures that Messer Leon had been with David, and died at Monastir (present-day Bitola
Bitola
Bitola is a city in the southwestern part of the Republic of Macedonia. The city is an administrative, cultural, industrial, commercial, and educational centre. It is located in the southern part of the Pelagonia valley, surrounded by the Baba and Nidže mountains, 14 km north of the...
in the Republic of Macedonia
Republic of Macedonia
Macedonia , officially the Republic of Macedonia , is a country located in the central Balkan peninsula in Southeast Europe. It is one of the successor states of the former Yugoslavia, from which it declared independence in 1991...
) in that year. However, Tirosh-Rothschild (p. 253, n. 104) believes he was still in Naples, and died there in 1497.
Works
Messer Leon wrote extensively, including commentaries on the LogicOrganon
The Organon is the name given by Aristotle's followers, the Peripatetics, to the standard collection of his six works on logic:* Categories* On Interpretation* Prior Analytics* Posterior Analytics...
, the Ethics
Nicomachean Ethics
The Nicomachean Ethics is the name normally given to Aristotle's best known work on ethics. The English version of the title derives from Greek Ἠθικὰ Νικομάχεια, transliterated Ethika Nikomacheia, which is sometimes also given in the genitive form as Ἠθικῶν Νικομαχείων, Ethikōn Nikomacheiōn...
, and the Physics
Physics (Aristotle)
The Physics of Aristotle is one of the foundational books of Western science and philosophy...
of Aristotle
Aristotle
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...
, and their analysis by Averroes
Averroes
' , better known just as Ibn Rushd , and in European literature as Averroes , was a Muslim polymath; a master of Aristotelian philosophy, Islamic philosophy, Islamic theology, Maliki law and jurisprudence, logic, psychology, politics, Arabic music theory, and the sciences of medicine, astronomy,...
, in which he followed the Scholastic
Scholasticism
Scholasticism is a method of critical thought which dominated teaching by the academics of medieval universities in Europe from about 1100–1500, and a program of employing that method in articulating and defending orthodoxy in an increasingly pluralistic context...
style and methods, composing for his students "summaries (sefequot) on the Scholastic quaestiones (i.e. points of apparent textual contradiction) debated by the Italian academic community", drawing closely on the style and substance of expositions then current at Padua.
These commentaries were written primarily for his close followers. More generally circulated were three textbooks addressing the three foundation subjects of a Renaissance secular education, the trivium ("three ways") of grammar
Grammar
In linguistics, grammar is the set of structural rules that govern the composition of clauses, phrases, and words in any given natural language. The term refers also to the study of such rules, and this field includes morphology, syntax, and phonology, often complemented by phonetics, semantics,...
, logic
Logic
In philosophy, Logic is the formal systematic study of the principles of valid inference and correct reasoning. Logic is used in most intellectual activities, but is studied primarily in the disciplines of philosophy, mathematics, semantics, and computer science...
and rhetoric
Rhetoric
Rhetoric is the art of discourse, an art that aims to improve the facility of speakers or writers who attempt to inform, persuade, or motivate particular audiences in specific situations. As a subject of formal study and a productive civic practice, rhetoric has played a central role in the Western...
, seen as the essential prerequisite disciplines necessary for higher studies in the humanities, philosophy, and medicine. These subjects he covered with a Hebrew grammar under the title Libnat ha-Sappir (The Pavement of Sapphire) in 1454, a text-book on logic entitled Miklal Yofi (Perfection of Beauty) in 1455, and, most celebrated, a text-book of rhetoric called Nofet Zufim (The Honeycomb's Flow), which was printed by Abraham Conat
Abraham Conat
Abraham ben Solomon Conat was an Italian Jewish printer, Talmudist, and physician....
of Mantua in 1475-6, the only work by a living author printed in Hebrew in the fifteenth century.
Like non-Jewish contemporary texts, the Nofet Zufim drew heavily on the classical theoretical writings of Cicero
Cicero
Marcus Tullius Cicero , was a Roman philosopher, statesman, lawyer, political theorist, and Roman constitutionalist. He came from a wealthy municipal family of the equestrian order, and is widely considered one of Rome's greatest orators and prose stylists.He introduced the Romans to the chief...
and Quintilian
Quintilian
Marcus Fabius Quintilianus was a Roman rhetorician from Hispania, widely referred to in medieval schools of rhetoric and in Renaissance writing...
. But unlike its contemporaries, it took as its exemplars for such theories not the foremost orators of Greek and Roman antiquity, but Moses
Moses
Moses was, according to the Hebrew Bible and Qur'an, a religious leader, lawgiver and prophet, to whom the authorship of the Torah is traditionally attributed...
and the leading figures of the Hebrew Bible
Hebrew Bible
The Hebrew Bible is a term used by biblical scholars outside of Judaism to refer to the Tanakh , a canonical collection of Jewish texts, and the common textual antecedent of the several canonical editions of the Christian Old Testament...
. In the opinion of Deutsch, the object of the work was both apologetic
Apologetics
Apologetics is the discipline of defending a position through the systematic use of reason. Early Christian writers Apologetics (from Greek ἀπολογία, "speaking in defense") is the discipline of defending a position (often religious) through the systematic use of reason. Early Christian writers...
and propagandic
Propaganda
Propaganda is a form of communication that is aimed at influencing the attitude of a community toward some cause or position so as to benefit oneself or one's group....
. The author desired to demonstrate to the non-Jewish world that the Jews were not devoid of the literary sense, and he wished to prove to his co-religionists that Judaism
Judaism
Judaism ) is the "religion, philosophy, and way of life" of the Jewish people...
is not hostile to secular studies, which contribute to a better appreciation of Jewish literature. Although in later centuries the book was largely forgotten, and was not reprinted until the nineteenth century, in the intellectual circle of its own time it was highly appreciated. Azariah dei Rossi
Azariah dei Rossi
Azariah ben Moses dei Rossi was an Italian-Jewish physician and scholar. He was born at Mantua in 1513 or 1514; and died in 1578. He was descended from an old Jewish family which, according to a tradition, was brought by Titus from Jerusalem...
quoted Leon as a witness to the value of secular studies, and Joseph Solomon Delmedigo
Joseph Solomon Delmedigo
Joseph Solomon Qandia Delmedigo was a rabbi, author, physician, mathematician, and music theorist....
recommended the book to the Karaite Zerah ben Nathan of Troki. In recent times interest has been renewed, with a new scholarly edition with translation and commentary published in 1983.
Descendants
Following on from his father, Messer Leon's son, David ben Judah Messer LeonDavid ben Judah Messer Leon
David ben Judah Messer Leon was an Italian rabbi, physician and writer, who defended the value of secular disciplines and the Renaissance humanities as an important part of traditional Jewish studies.-Life:...
also became a noted rabbi, physician and author, and defender of the value of the secular disciplines of the Renaissance to Jewish philosophy culture and study. David became best known for his Ein ha-Kore (Eye of the Reader), a sympathetic commentary on Maimonides
Maimonides
Moses ben-Maimon, called Maimonides and also known as Mūsā ibn Maymūn in Arabic, or Rambam , was a preeminent medieval Jewish philosopher and one of the greatest Torah scholars and physicians of the Middle Ages...
' Guide for the Perplexed
Guide for the Perplexed
The Guide for the Perplexed is one of the major works of Rabbi Moshe ben Maimon, better known as Maimonides or "the Rambam"...
; and posthumously for his Tehillah le-Dawid (Glory to David), an encyclopedic summary of Jewish philosophy, edited by his grandson Aaron ben Judah (Constantinople, 1577).
Jewish Encyclopedia Bibliography
- Cat. Bodl. cols. 1331-1332;
- Nepi-Ghirondi, Toledot Gedole Yisrael, p. 200;
- Gerson Wolf, Bibl. Hebr. iii.333-334;
- De RossiDe Rosside Rossi is a surname, and may refer to:*Bernardo de Rossi, Italian theologian and historian*Bernardo de' Rossi, Italian bishop*Properzia de' Rossi, Italian Renaissance sculptor*Fabrizio De Rossi, a fictional character in the 1997 film Titanic...
, Dizionario, ii.7; - Leopold DukesLeopold DukesLeopold Dukes was a Hungarian critic of Jewish literature.-Biography:Dukes spent about 20 years in England, and from his researches in the Bodleian library and the British Museum Dukes was able to complete the work of Leopold Zunz...
, Ehrensäulen, pp. 55 et seq., Vienna, 1837; - Heinrich Grätz, Gesch. viii.243-244.