Talk:Judah Messer Leon (15th century)
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[edit] State of the article / things not there
I've uploaded text from the 1906 Jewish Encyclopedia, and updated it using what I could find on the net. I haven't unfortunately been able to consult either Rabinowitz or the relevant pages of Tirosh-Rothschild, which are probably the two most imporant sources.
Things I haven't added, that probably should be fitted in:
- What he was like as a rabbi: his attempt to ban Gersonides's commentary on the Torah; his view that his statements as rabbi in Ancona should be binding on all Jews in Italy; and his self-description (also used by others) as Meor Hage'ulah (Light of the Exile) [1]
- Zonta noting he probably wrote much more, which may have been lost, or has never been thoroughly examined.
- Means and prestige: Connection to the da Pisa family, the most powerful Jewish banking family in Italy.
- Context: University of Padua had opened its doors to Jews in 1406.
- Students: Yohanan Alemanno was a pupil, and substantially continued with Messer Leon's curriculum in his own academy. According to Zonta Abraham Farissol may also have been a student, and was Messer Leon's scribe in Mantua; also Abraham de Balmes; and of course Messer Leon's son.
- Languages: Very extensive knowledge of philosophical texts in Hebrew and Latin, but not apparently Arabic or Greek.
- Commitment to Aristotelianism and Scholastical logic-grounded approach: Scholastic approach rather than Judaeo-Arabic logical tradition (eg Elijah del Medigo), using it to minutely marry-up Christian commentators and Latin texts with the Jewish tradition based on Averroes. But Aristotelian logicism rather than the new more freewheeling Humanism and Platonism of Florence (and the Kabbalah) (eg the next generation). Though does Nofet Zufim reflect the changing intellectual landscape?
The article could also probably use a rather better lead, and a thorough going over for style. But this is where I'm going to leave it for the time being. Jheald 11:33, 8 October 2007 (UTC)
The article Jewish philosophy from the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy has a paragraph which puts Messer Leon nicely into context, and describes The Book of the Honeycomb’s Flow as "a masterpiece of cross-cultural humanistic scholarship".
It also flags the relevance of Messer Leon's attitude to Kabbalah, with its growing significance at the time: "But Messer Leon failed to curb the spread of Kabbalah, whose underlying Platonic metaphysics he abhorred and whose appropriation by Christian Platonists he held in deep suspicion. Indeed, his own son turned toward the Kabbalah and sought to combine its teachings with the Aristotelianism favored by his father". Jheald 10:47, 7 October 2007 (UTC)
