Federico Fregoso e la più antica iscrizione ebraica di un umanista cristiano a Gubbio (ca. 1533). Esame paleografico e comparativo.

In this text, the author presents to the international scientific world of Jewish Studies the recent discovery made in Gubbio, of a beautiful Hebrew inscription painted in 1533 by the Christian Hebraist Cardinal Federico Fregoso in the church of bishops’ summer residence. The inscription had been forgotten for more than four centuries inside a castle of private property not open to the public. After a report on the history of the discovery, the author carries out a paleographic examination of its letters, containing five verses of Psalm 84, 2-3, 5-6 and 13. It was painted on the ledge that runs along the perimeter of the rectangular plant of the Cappella, at almost 6 meters of height. The letters, of 40 cm of height and 35/40 cm of width, are in a calligraphic Ashkenazi writing that reached its splendor in northern Italy during the 16th century. Until 1500, we should consider the culture of the Po Valley area in northern Italy as Ashkenazi, including the writing letters. It follows an examination of some funerary epigraphs from the 11th and 12th centuries, kept in the Jewish cemetery in Worms. Here, before mid-13th century we cannot find any Ashkenazic style, and the writing used are very similar to the funerary inscription of southern Italy, namely Apulia and in Jewish catacombs of Venosa, dated from the 8th up to 11th centuries. It is very likely that the group of Italian Jews of the Calonimos family coming from Lucca, immigrated to this area in the 9th-10th century, brought this script to Rhineland. Finally, the author makes a comparison between the Gubbio inscription and fifteen other Italian documents engraved in the same Ashkenazic writing in a period between 1389 and 1595. Due to its 36 meters of length, the inscription appears to be the longest and monumental one that is known, comparable only to the synagogue inscriptions. Moreover, as it was depicted in 1533, it appears to be also the oldest Hebrew inscription made by a Christian Hebraist.