Utriusque linguae egregie peritus atque prudens. Federico Fregoso cardinale ebraista e l’identità del suo familiaris ebreo «grandissimo cabbalista»

The intellectual figure of Federico Fregoso (1480-1541) has not been the object of extensive academic attention in the context of the early development of Catholic Reformation. Even less so his engagement as an Hebraist. Although his contemporaries, among which one counts such ecclesiastical and intellectual protagonists as Jacopo Sadoleto, Pietro Bembo and Gregorio Cortese, constantly praised his skills in Hebrew and his devotion to the study of the Scriptures in their original language, not a single study has been dedicated to his education as a Hebraist, nor to the output of his studies. The re-discovery of the Hebrew monumental inscription in the chapel of his private residence at Castel d’Alfiolo, near Gubbio, presented the welcome occasion to collect and analyze the evidence on this neglected matter. The article offers a first assessment of Fregoso’s career as an Hebraist, focussing especially, beside his relationship with Sante Pagnini and Giles of Viterbo, on the quite mysterious figure of his personal assistant in Hebrew: the Jewish physician and poet, in Hebrew and in Italian, Leone di Salomone da Mantova. Many previous misunderstandings are dispelled with the help of new evidence and of a reconsideration of the known but until now unconnected facts, reconstructing the networks and the intellectual milieus of Fregoso’s activities as an Hebraist. A letter from the physician Giacomo Tiburzi da Pergola to Leone di Salomone from the Biblioteca Ariostea is published in a new, corrected, form, together with an appreciation of Fregoso’s interest for Kabbalah.