Elijah da Nola and Moses Finzi: Medicine and Aristotelianism in Sixteenth-Century Bologna.

As is well known, one of the Jewish tradition’s most important contributions to the establishment of Aristotelian philosophy in Latin Europe consists in the translation of the many commentaries on Aristotle which, especially from the second half of the fifteenth century onwards, was accomplished by some of Italy’s leading Jewish cultural figures.5 In particular, the translation of Averroes’s commentaries was one of the most significant contributions to the construction of the Latin Aristotelian corpus in the fifteenth and six- teenth centuries. From reading the biographies of these translators, two elements clearly emerge: their contact with university circles and their close relationships with Christian intellectuals, to whom many translations were dedicated and which they themselves promoted in many cases. Elijah Del Medigo participated in many academic circles, especially in Padua, although he never graduated from the university. Abraham de Balmes, a graduate from Naples, was a very active intellectual in the university environment of Padua and the publish- ing world of Venice, where he was also linked to Cardinal Domenico Grimani. Qalonimos, a relative of de Balmes, graduated in medicine from Naples and worked on philosophical translations after his move to Venice, collaborating with Christian printers and dedicating one of his translations to Cardinal Egidio da Viterbo. Jacob Mantino also dedicated many of his translations to Cardinal Ercole Gonzaga, and, like the other Jewish intellectuals we have men- tioned, he graduated in medicine, after which his prestige was such that he was thought to have been allowed to teach at the Bologna Studio. Therefore, their involvement in translations represented only one aspect of these Jewish intel- lectuals’ activities: they were also part of a wider network including university institutions and religious commissions that had a decisive influence on their philosophical development.