Giovanni Bernardo De Rossi dalla polemica anti-ebraica alla bibliografia

The article focuses on De Rossi's early published and unpublished production, in which he attempted to define his profile as an expert in Jewish Studies through the traditional genre of anti-Jewish polemics. His moderate tone, his vast usage Protestant Hebraists and his critical ideas on certain arguments traditionally used against the Jews since the Middle Ages, caused a fierce albeit prudent opposition and involved him in a polemical battle that left him disappointed and to the realization that this was not the field in which he would want to pursue his academic career. The early disappointment, the absence of a mature readership for his "modern" views convinced him to abandon the polemical and missionary literature and convinced him of containing his talent to Biblical philology and bibliography. Jewish studies have thus gained one of the most revered experts in the field of the history of Jewish literature, of Jewish bibliography and of the history of Hebrew printing and the missionary aim has lost a reluctant champion. This represents a first attempt at exploring the diachronic dimension of De Rossi's oeuvre.