Elia del Medigo

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Elia del Medigo (also called Elijah Delmedigo and sometimes known to his contemporaries as Helias Cretensis) (c. 1458 - c. 1493) was the last major Jewish Averroist. He was born in Candia, on the island of Crete, which at that time was under the control of the Venetian Republic, but spent ten years in Rome and northern Italy, although returning to Candia in his last years. Del Medigo's family had emigrated to Crete from Germany.

He is remembered for a number of translations, commentaries on Averroes (Ibn Rushd in Arabic) (notably a commentary on Averroes' Substantia Orbis in 1485), for his influence on many Italian philosophers of the early Renaissance (especially Pico della Mirandola but also other Platonists of the Florentine Academy), and for his for his treatise on Jewish philosophy, Sefer Bechinat Ha-dath (Investigation of Religion), published many years after his death, in 1629.

Del Medigo had a traditional religious upbringing in Candia, demonstrating considerable breadth. In addition to rabbinic learning, he studied philosophy, and had a good knowledge of Arabic and of Greek, as well as Latin and Hebrew. It is likely that he also studied medicine, and it may have been with that intention that he originally went to Padua, whose University was the most important center for traditional Aristotelian philosophy in Italy. By 1480, he was in Venice, where he wrote Quaestio utrum mundus sit effectus, and supported himself by giving classes in Aristotelian philosophy for the sons of wealthy and important families.

He moved to Perugia and continued to give classes in "radical Aristotelianism," that is, heavily interpreted with the ideas of Averroes--with whose work Elia was very familiar--and other Islamic commentators. Del Medigo became quite well-known as a major Averroist in Italy. It was in Perugia that he met Pico, and wrote two pamphlets for him.

Another important student of del Medigo's at that time was Domenico Grimani, a Venetian, who eventually became the Cardinal of San Marco. Grimani proved to be a consistent patron, and with his encouragement, del Medigo wrote several manuscripts which received wide distribution among the philosophers ot Italy. He stayed in close contact as well with Pico, and traveled to Florence, the site of Ficino's Platonic Academy, to give classes and to make translations for Pico from Hebrew to Latin, although he never collaborated with him on any manuscript.

Del Medigo, however, was no Kabbalist, and was disenchanted with the syncretic direction Pico and his associates were moving in, combining concepts of magic, Hermeticism and Kabbalah with Plato and Neoplatonism. He became disappointed with Pico, and he was discredited somewhat by the backlash from Pico's imprisonment and the interdiction of his 900 Theses. These factors, combined with the tension that arose between del Medigo and the Italian Jewish community over his secular intellectual interests and his associations with gentile scholars, and with the financial difficulties he experienced attendant on Pico's disfavor, led del Medigo to leave Italy for good, and to go back to Crete.

In his last few years, del Medigo returned to Jewish thought, writing the Sefer Bechinat Ha-dath for his students, clarifying his disagreement with the magical and Kabbalistic theories that inspired Pico's Oration on the Dignity of Man, and his belief that a man cannot aspire to become a god, but rather that Judaism requires that a man must "fight for rationality, sobriety and the realization of [his] human limitations."^[1]

[edit] Notes

1. ↑  Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on del Medigo -- http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/delmedigo/ downloaded 1/17/2006.

[edit] References

• The Jewish Encyclopedia, article on Averroeism -- [2]]
• Italian Ashkenazi website -- [3]
• Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy article on del Medigo -- [4]
• Paul Oskar Kristeller, Eight Philosophers of the Italian Renaissance. Stanford University Press (Stanford California, 1964.)
• Sefer Behinat Hadat of Elijah Del-Medigo, critical edition with introduction, notes and commentary by Jacob Joshua Ross, Tel-Aviv: Chaim Rosenberg School of Jewish Studies, 1984